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 Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 41)
The Scope of the Second Coming
Chapter 3 – Themes of the Second Coming
Glory, Exaltation, and Enthronement (continued and concluded)
Given the leap from the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1) to the throne itself (Daniel 7:13-14), it becomes clear why the apostles kept telling the church that the Second Coming would be “the day of the Lord.” However, this promotion is not necessarily intuitive to a 21st-century mind. What do I mean? I mean that if I were in the church that the apostles formed and taught, and heard their repeated statements that the day of the Lord was coming, in which the Lord would receive greater glory, exaltation, and enthronement, I would have protested: “But He’s already “Lord of all” (Rom 10:12) and He already has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18)!”
I would have thought that the church age WAS the day of the Lord because the church exalted Him. How He could receive any more glory, exaltation, and enthronement – except may a lot more people subjected to His rule. He was already #2 to God. How could He get any higher than that without forfeiting monotheism? In other words, to receive any higher rank, we’d have two Gods – not one. And yet the glory, exaltation, and enthronement that Daniel and the other prophets were promising seemed to require it. Recall some of the references we saw from Isaiah:
Isaiah 9:6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 22:21 …And he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.
Isaiah 22:22 “Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder,
When he opens no one will shut,
When he shuts no one will open.
Isaiah 22:23 “I will drive him like a peg in a firm place,
And he will become a throne of glory to his father’s house.
Isaiah 22:24 “So they will hang on him all the glory of his father’s house, offspring and issue, all the least of vessels, from bowls to all the jars.
Jesus Himself confirmed that He’d be coming in His Father’s glory:
Matthew 16:27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS.”
But the prophets simultaneously insisted that there would not be two supreme authorities: only one.
Isaiah 2:11 The proud look of man will be abased
And the loftiness of man will be humbled,
And the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
Zechariah 14:9 And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one.
How can the two who are mentioned at the beginning of almost every single letter of the New Testament – “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” – turn out to be one without being a trinity or binity or some other oddity? That’s what “Implication: God Is One” will unravel. But remember: it can only be unraveled because the Second Coming occurred when it was supposed to.
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