Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 44)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 7 – How the Bible Describes Truth
The Language of Sight and Sound (continued)
The apostle John says, “No man has seen God at any time” (John 1) and Paul says God is the one “whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6). In the same vein, Jesus says, “God is spirit,” meaning that God is not flesh and therefore not detectable to physical senses. All three statements are in agreement that God cannot be seen. And yet we have Jesus in the Sermon on
the Mount promising, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5). Are we puzzled by this “contradiction” or does it not seem to us that we are being promised a greater understanding of God as we purify our hearts? And when Jesus from heaven offers the church at Laodicea “eye salve to anoint your eyes that you may see” in Revelation 3, do we not recognize
that He is concerned about their spiritual blindness, resulting from their lukewarm attitude? Why then, when Paul in Hebrews is exhorting them about the great day to come says, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord,” do some insist that he was preparing his readers for a physical manifestation of Jesus? Is it not
obvious that his meaning is right in line with that of Jesus? The pure in heart would see (understand) the Lord’s coming and the impure would miss (not understand) it. For one kind of person it would be like the Lord had filled the sky with light and for the other it would be like the dark of night in which a thief had come.
Sometimes we are not quite sure whether a word like “see” is being used in the physical (flesh, visible) sense or the spiritual (invisible) sense. As we said, the context usually clarifies. For example, when the New Testament says “they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds” (Matthew 24 and other places) are we to take it in a physical or spiritual sense? We already know, by the additional visual images (parables, if you will) which follow it, that it must be taken spiritually; otherwise, the pictures result in a mass of physical contradictions. But let’s assume we didn’t have that piece of knowledge and had to look elsewhere for our answer. In this case, the phrase shows up again in Matthew 26 when Jesus is on trial before the high priest and the Sanhedrin.
(This section of the chapter to be continued tomorrow)
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