The Kingdom of God!

 

Chapter 77

 

There is a lot of misunderstanding in the Body of Christ today about the judgments of God. If you read only the surface meanings of the judgments of God in the Bible it is very easy to see a vengeful, angry, God who is going to pour out His rath on the people of the earth. However, God sent His Son to this earth to demonstrate the true heart of His Father so that we can understand Him. Jesus destroyed many of the manmade concepts of His Father while He was here on this earth with us.

For the next couple of weeks, I want to talk to you about the Right and Left Hand of God. There are so many misconceptions among the Church today about these two hands of God.

Very few Christians are aware of the difference between the right and left hand of God. For the most part we have been taught that God is a one armed or one-handed individual. The thought of God having a right hand and a left hand should not be strange to us. In the Scriptures we find the right hand of God mentioned many times, and the left hand of God is mentioned on just a few occasions.

A lot has been said as to the meaning of the right hand, but few have any understanding or revelation of the significance of the left hand. First, let us look at the meaning of these two words, right and left. The word "right" as used with "hand" is generally the Hebrew word "yamiym" meaning STRONGER, MORE DEXTEROUS. The word for "left" is "smowl" meaning DARK.  From the meaning of these two words, it is very easy to understand that God's right hand is His strength and dexterity, or His wonderful ability to do all things. The implication is that the right hand of God is the GOOD HAND of God, doing GOOD things.

The Psalmist confirms this when he says in Psalms 16:11,

"In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy RIGHT HAND are PLEASURES for evermore"

 

Again, in Psalms 118:15-16,

 

"The voice of REJOICING and SALVATION in the tabernacles of the righteous: the RIGHT HAND of the Lord does valiantly. The RIGHT HAND of the Lord is exalted"

 

To which the prophet Isaiah adds in Isaiah 41:10,

 

 "Fear thou not; for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God: I will STRENGTHEN you; yes, I will HELP you; yes, I will UPHOLD you with the RIGHT HAND of My righteousness"

 

But, as we have noted, the left hand in the Old Testament means DARK and from this we can readily understand that it signifies the opposite or what we call bad or evil. The left hand represents the DARK SIDE OF GOD. This is the hand of God that most have trouble understanding. The distinctive work of these two hands is graphically portrayed in the wonderful parable Jesus told of the sheep and the goats.

 

Jesus said in Mat. 25:31-46 (NIV),

 

 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. '

"Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

"Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?"

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

"Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

 

"They also will answer, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?" He will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

 

It is important to understand in this parable that this separation of the sheep from the goats was brought about, not on the basis of whether one had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal saviour, but solely on the basis of WORKS. Everything depended entirely upon what the sheep or goats had DONE or had NOT DONE.  There was nothing of faith or a spiritual experience connected with this separation. The sheep were set on God's RIGHT HAND because of the fact that they had done something. They had given meat and drink to the Lord's brethren, clothed them, visited them, and comforted them.

 

 

All of these things the Lord said they had DONE TO HIM. But the sheep confessed that they had never seen Him, so how could they have done these things to the Lord? He answered, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."  All of this is a kind of ministry performed unto the Lord Himself and it brought all of these people into a separation unto the RIGHT HAND of God! This brought them through an entrance into a Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

 

This kingdom was not to be some far-off land of ivory palaces, golden streets, beautiful mansions, white night gowns, wings and harps, where there is nothing to do and all eternity to do it in. THIS IS A KINGDOM. And because it is a kingdom it denotes ruler ship and advancement of all kinds. It indicates the bringing of a great many people into a higher realm. But the people who had never done all these things mentioned by the Lord were separated unto the LEFT HAND of God! They received no kingdom. There were no rewards for work done or attainments reached. They entered the dark side of God where they were put under Kingdom Authority and were placed in a process of fiery judgment to receive correction.

 

There is a lot of revelation truth in these words of Jesus: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." The word punishment is from the Greek "kolasis" which means simply, punishment. But it comes from the root "kolazo" which sheds precious light upon the nature of the punishment. 'Kolazo', according to Strong's Concordance, bears only two shades of meaning, namely, 'to curtail' or 'to chastise'. To "curtail" means to restrain as a person is restrained in jail or a child is restrained when he is "grounded" for a week because of some disobedience. 'Chastise' has one simple meaning according to Webster's New World Dictionary: to punish in order to correct, usually by beating.

 

It should be clear to any thoughtful mind that the subject here is not meaningless, sadistic, unending torture, but PURPOSEFUL CORRECTION. While the King James Version states that these goats go into 'everlasting fire' and 'everlasting punishment' that is not quite the meaning of the Greek. The Greek word here translated everlasting is 'aionios', and aionios is the adjective form of the Greek noun 'aion'.  Aion nowhere means eternal!  Its simple meaning is 'an age'. In its plural form it means 'ages'. This fact can be unquestionably and incontrovertibly demonstrated from numerous Testament passages.

 

Now, once we understand that aionios is the ADJECTIVE FORM of the NOUN aion, a simple little sixth-grade grammar lesson should once and for all establish the exact meaning of 'aionios'.  A noun is a word that tells what you are talking about.  A noun is a word that names something, a person, place, thing, quality, etc. Boy, water, tree, age (period of time), truth are nouns. An adjective, however, is a word that is used with a noun to describe the noun. It is a word that tells you what kind, what color, etc.

 

If you wanted to tell about the hat a woman was wearing you would describe the hat in some way. You might say that it was a large red hat. Large, red are adjectives, words that describe what kind and what color the hat is.

 

Some words are both nouns and adjectives, that is, the same word can be used both ways. Sometimes the adjective form of the word is identical to the noun form, while at other times the spelling is slightly different. But anyone with even an elementary knowledge of grammar (English or Greek) knows that the meaning of a noun and the meaning of the same word in its adjective form MUST CORRESPOND! It cannot have one meaning as a noun and an exactly OPPOSITE meaning as an adjective!

 

Let me illustrate it this way. If we say, "John is in college," the word college is a noun. But if we say, "John has sixteen college credits," college is an adjective, modifying the word credits - telling what kind of credits. Now we all know what a college is, so we understand what kind of institution John is attending in the first sentence. Since we know the meaning of college, when we come to the second sentence, we have no difficulty understanding what kind of credits John has - college credits. No one in his right mind is going to read that and conclude that John has just finished kindergarten, or that he has a diploma showing he finished sixteen lessons in leather craft at the YMCA, or that he has $16.00 worth of credit at a department store!

 

College as a noun and college as an adjective cannot have altogether different meanings. They mean the same in both cases! And yet men who should know better tell us that the Greek noun 'aion' means an age, or ages which is TIME, and then proceed to explain how the adjective form of the same word, "aionios", means exactly the opposite - unending, everlasting, ETERNAL!

 

A child of ten should be able to understand that is not so. The adjective 'aionios' modifies two nouns in Mat. 25:46: punishment and life. It tells what kind of punishment and what kind of life Jesus is talking about.  It is ages-lasting punishment and ages-lasting life, or the LIFE OF THE AGES.

 

Now I can hear someone protesting, "But isn't the life we have received from God ETERNAL LIFE?"  Certainly, God's life is eternal life. But we have received that life injected into TIME, so that the inworking of that life through the processing's of God is experienced in relation to TIME rather than ETERNITY.

 

Let me explain. Anything that is absolutely eternal is not only unending, but is also UNCHANGEABLE. Anything that changes in any way is not eternal, for in the change some end and a new one acquired.  In every change something ends and something else begins, at least in form. That which dwells in an eternal state knows NO CHANGE. Change is possible only in that which is limited, imperfect, or not fully developed.

 

The Lord declares of Himself, "I am the Lord, I CHANGE NOT" (Mal. 3:6), and the inspired apostle says of Him, "with Whom there is no VARIABLENESS, neither shadow of turning" (James 1:17). But we, in our spiritual life, are STILL BEING CHANGED! "And all of us ... are constantly BEING TRANSFIGURED (changed) into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another" (II Cor. 3:18, Amplified). Thank God! we are being changed! The life of God that has been deposited in us, which is His Word, is perfect and will never change. The manifestation of that life, however, is subjected to a process limited by our understanding of His Word. The manifestation of that life is in a limited, imperfect, underdeveloped stage, and in some measure immature. This is why Paul said in Rom 12:1-2,

 

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

 

God has dispensed that life into us in a time frame and through a process of time with its experiences and revelations, the spiritual life may be perfected and matured and brought to the fullness of that which HE HIMSELF IS.  When the process is completed and we are fully conformed to that life within us, we will see Him AS HE IS and there will BE NO MORE CHANGE.

 

Complete eternal security is known only by the overcomers who have fully and forever conquered every vestige of the world, the flesh, and the devil, having been conformed into the image of the Son. Of these triumphant ones it is written, "To him that OVERCOMETH will I give to eat of the TREE OF LIFE," and again, "He that OVERCOMETH... I will NOT BLOT HIS NAME OUT of the Book of Life" (Rev. 2:7; 3:5). The inference is clear ... until this "overcomer" state is attained, it is possible to have one's name BLOTTED OUT of the Book of Life. That could not be ETERNAL LIFE, for if it were absolutely eternal it could not be lost! Little wonder then, that our Lord says to the Church at Smyrna, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a CROWN OF LIFE" (Rev. 2:10).

 

It is my deep conviction that He speaks not of the death that takes this old body to the cemetery, but the death that comes by the INWORKING OF HIS CROSS until all that pertains to the realm of carnality has been completely and forever dealt with. Then, and only then, are we CROWNED WITH LIFE His life reigning within without interference or possibility of defeat!