Jesus - Prophet of God
God said to Moses, “ I will raise up a prophet from among your people and I will put my words in his mouth. Those who reject my words which he will speak in my name will be held accountable to me” (Deut. 18:18-19).
The miraculous birth of Jesus, his earthly ministry, his death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into the heavens prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus was and is that prophet!
Since Jesus is a prophet sent to us by God, his words become doubly important. His words stand supreme. If our understanding of things to come is not in conformity with his heavenly directed proclamations, ours must change!
Only Jesus can bring his own prophecies to pass. He alone can say, “All power is given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). The words of every other prophet, past present or future, must agree with the teachings of Jesus. He must have the last word.
The heart of this study can be found in the words of Jesus, “The Son of man will come in the glory of his Father” (Matt. 16:27).
When Moses said to God, “Show me your glory”, the answer was, “No man can see me and live” (Exodus 33:18,20). Jesus will return in the glory of God, the very glory that Moses was not allowed to see because earthly bodies cannot endure that experience. Paul understood this; he wrote,
“Follow after righteousness, faith, love, patience and meekness…obey this charge without spot and without stain until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ…Blessed and almighty God, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Who alone has immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, and whom no man has seen or can see”(1 Tim. 6: 11-16, Lamsa).
Can we be absolutely certain that Paul was applying those words to Jesus? The following Scriptures answer that question.
John the Baptist was the first one to say of Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). In a vision the Apostle John saw ten kings making war against the lamb, “but the Lamb will overcome them: for he is the Lord of lords and King of kings…”(Rev.17: 12-14).
When Jesus, the Lamb of God, the King of kings, returns in the full power and glory of God, no earthly being will be able to survive His presence.
Jesus did not return to the heavens in a blaze of heavenly glory, but that is how he will return!
“When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels, He will punish those who do not know God…on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people” (11 Thess. 1:7-10 NIV).
Jesus will return with the same glory he had in heaven before he came to this earth. In his prayer to the Father, Jesus, said, “(Glorify Thou Me, Father, with Thine own glory which I had in They presence before the world existed” (John 17:5 The Berkeley Version).
When Jesus left heaven's glory he put on an earthly body in order to die for our sins. He became, “Lower than the angels, but now he is crowned with glory and honor” (Heb. 2-9).
Now, “the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word…of the Son he said, “ Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Heb, 1:3,8 NIV). Jesus said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).
Our redemption is a joint effort between the Father and the Son. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (11 Cor. 5:19). They did everything together. In Genesis 1:1 we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, and in John 1:3 where it is speaking of the Son, we read, “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made”.
Solomon was a very wise man but even he had trouble understanding such a God. After the temple was completed, he said, “I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell in forever…But will God really dwell on the earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:13,27 NIV).
The one greater than his creation became a part of it! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1.14). God became like us so that some day we could become like him! John wrote, “We know not what we shall be, but we do know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (John 3:2).
Our present earthly bodies must become heavenly bodies like our Lord's. Flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of God. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed into His likeness. Our dying bodies will have become bodies which can never die. This “mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor.15: 49-53). Jesus said, “The righteous will shine like the sun in their Father's kingdom” (Matt. 13:43).
It is important to realize that Jesus could not have been clothed with the glory of the Father before he returned to the heavens, because even his disciple's earthly bodies could not have endured such glory. John explains that when Jesus spoke of those who believe in him having living water flowing out from their innermost being, he was speaking of the Holy Spirit who had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet glorified. (John7:37-39).
Jesus ascended into the heavens about ten days before Pentecost when his followers were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Therefore, Jesus could not have been glorified until after he had left this earth.
Jesus is a heavenly being and we must become heavenly beings also to be with him. And we shall! When the Sadducees argued with Jesus about the resurrection, he corrected them saying they didn't know the Scriptures or the power of God, for in the resurrection we will be like the angels of God in heaven. (Matt.22: 23 -30).
“Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthly bodies that they might conform to his glorious body, by the power with which he is able to subdue all things to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Jesus will not come to an earth, which is cluttered with the debris of human failure. He will not rule over a kingdom inhabited with both resurrected beings and mortals. Jesus has a better plan than that.
In his prayer to the Father he said, “I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me…”(John 17:24 NAS).
That's the better plan! We must become a part of the heavenly scene, “in order to see his glory”!
“For the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout…and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17 KJV).
Where are we going to spend eternity? With Jesus! He said, “I go to prepare a place for you…and I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there you may be also” (John 14:2-3).
The place he is preparing for us is not this world; he is going to destroy this world! Our hope for the future is a new heaven and a new earth.
“The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat, the earth and the works in it shall be burned up…Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth…”(11 Peter 3:10,13). If that fire were to burn at the end of a one thousand year earthly reign of Christ, whose works would be burned up?
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…I heard a voice from heaven say, “The dwelling of God shall be with men and they shall be my people and I will be their God, and I will wipe all their tears away. There shall be no more death or sorrow or pain for the former things have passed away. I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:1-5).
“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy…The sound of weeping and crying will be heard in it no more” (Isa.65: 17-19 NIV).
Although some of Isaiah's prophecies sound earthly, he is still speaking of a kingdom which David calls an “everlasting kingdom” (Psm. 145: 13). Since there will be no more crying there will be no more death! Where there is no more death, there must be eternal life! Since this present earth will pass away, any future kingdom land which continues on into eternity, must be the new heaven and earth!
The following is a personal interlude:
During a casual reading of the Bible many years ago the following verse of Scripture caught my eye and changed my life.
“Every scribe instructed in the kingdom is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13:52).
At that time my faithful companion and guide was a Scofield Reference Bible. But as my study of the kingdom progressed I began to question some of the assumptions found in the footnotes of that Bible.
The word forever became increasingly important to me. God's promises to Abraham were everlasting promises. The promise of land reached out into eternity. David saw this, he wrote, “The righteous will inherit the land forever” (Psm. 37:29).
This was God's plan from the beginning, one day the King will say, “Come blessed of my Father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). This promise includes the, “hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1:2 KJV).
Both the kingdom land and its people must endure forever for this promise to become a reality, and it will! “The Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore” (Psm. 133:3).
I was thrilled with what I was learning. However, there remained one problem: how does Revelation Chapter Twenty fit in with the rest of the Bible? It occurred to me that I had been interpreting the rest of the Bible according to that chapter instead of interpreting that chapter by the rest of the Bible!
In the Theocratic Kingdom (Vol. 11 page 512) regarding the rules of interpretation, we read, “The passage assumed to be contradictory ought to be explained by the vast amount of testimony preceding it, then the lesser ought to be interpreted by the greater, the brief by the more extended, the doubtful by the plainly revealed”.
I felt justified in not liking the way Revelation Chapter Twenty ended, especially since Dr. C. I. Scofield seemed to feel the same way! He wrote, “When the prophets paint the picture of the millennial earth, they dip their pencils in the rainbow…Now in conclusion, are you asking me to tell you what is the end of all this? Alas, dear friends, one shrinks from opening that page, but it must be” (Pp 115,117 Addresses on Prophecy).
I also shrink from sharing some things which I have found that may dismay and possibly hurt those I know and love. But it must be!
Revelation Chapter Twenty begins with an angel who has the key to a bottomless pit. The angel binds Satan with a chain and locks him up in the bottomless pit for a thousand years.
If there is no such thing as a pit, which has no bottom, then the expression the “bottomless pit” cannot be taken literally. And if it cannot be taken literally then neither can the thousand years.
In The Apostle John's day the oceans of the world seemed bottomless. On page 91 of The Secrets of Enoch, we read, “The dry I call earth and the midst of the earth [the wet!] I called abyss, that is to say the bottomless” (From The Lost Books of The Bible).
This idea goes back even further than that! In Ezekiel there was a prophecy concerning the king of Tyre which seems also to refer to Satan. “They shall draw their sword against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. They shall thrust you down into the pit, and you shall die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas” (Eze. 28:7-8 RSV).
“When I bring up the deep over you, and the great waters cover you, then I will thrust you down with those who descend into the pit, to the people of old” (Ezekiel 26:19-20 RSV). The reference to the people of old, could be, those who perished in the flood.
The Apostle John associates the expression “bottomless” pit with the sea. He sees a beast with seven heads and ten horns rise up from both the bottomless pit and the sea. (Rev. 13:1, and 17:7,8).
The oceans, or shall we say the bottomless pit, are very much a part of this earth. At one time Satan had access to God, as we see in Job 1:6-12, where Satan speaks out against Job. The day came when the “accuser of our brothers”, who is also called the dragon, that old serpent, the Devil and Satan, was cast into the earth and all his angels with him! (Rev. 12:7-11).
In 11 Peter 2:4, we read, “God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment” (NKJV). Vines Expository Dictionary explains that the word hell in that verse comes from a Greek word which only appears once in the New Testament, it speaks of “pits of darkness”.
Satan and his angels are confined to this earth at this present time. This earth has become their prison. Their chains and the bottomless pit cannot be taken literally and neither can the thousand years. Would Jesus come to reign in the very place where Satan and his angels are confined?
If Jesus came to reign on this earth a thousand years before all his enemies were totally defeated, wouldn't he have left the Father's side a little early? “He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND of GOD, waiting from that time onward until HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOOL FOR HIS FEET,” (Heb. 10:12-13 NAS). The capitalizations refer to Psalm 110:1.
Paul had Psalm 110:1 in mind when he wrote; “He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).
It is the resurrection which defeats the last enemy death. Since the last enemy is death, Satan, his angels, the wicked and all that is evil must be eliminated, either before or at the same time as the resurrection occurs.
Our hope, our destiny, is not Revelation Chapter Twenty. It is Revelation Chapter Twenty-one. It is after this old world passes away that “all” our tears will be wiped away.
The first resurrection of Revelation Chapter Twenty is that spiritual experience when those who are dead in sin are brought back to spiritual life again.
The thousand years are going on right now, Satan is marshalling his forces now in preparation for that last battle which will end life on this earth, as we know it!
These rather simplistic explanations may not satisfy one whose expectations of a millennial earthly reign of Christ have been a long held point of view; but Jesus who is coming in all the glory of God to make right all that is now wrong, will wipe away not only our tears, but also our differences. It will be wonderful when all that has separated us vanishes in the light of his presence. There will be no disappointment in heaven!
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