United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The blessedness of self-denying efforts for the salvation of souls cannot be estimated. It is god-like; it is harmonizing with our dying Lord; co-working with him in carrying out the redemptive scheme; wakening a joy which the harps of eternity alone can utter. "They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever."
They all failed because the world can never be saved by the imposition of ideal institutions from without and by force; it can only be by the spirit of Christ working from within. But to some extent they all succeeded, too, for the world is a better place to live in because of the gradual and cumulative redemptive effort of the Christian ecclesia, the Church of Jesus.
That 'Angel' had redeemed Israel from Egypt, had led them through the desert, had been the 'Captain of the Lord's host. The name of Jehovah was 'in Him. He it is whose coming is here prophesied, and in His coming Jehovah comes to His temple. We next note the aspect of the coming which is prominent here. Not the kingly, nor the redemptive, but the judicial, is uppermost.
"The Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must go at death; there they worked out many seeds of their past actions in the astral worlds. None but advanced beings can perform such redemptive work effectually in the astral worlds.
The guidance was gentle, though accompanied with so tremendous and heart-curdling a judgment. The drowned Egyptians were strange examples of gentle leading. But God's redemptive acts are like the guiding pillar of fire, in that they have a side that reveals wrath and evokes terror, and a side that radiates lambent love and kindles happy trust. 'In Thy strength. Cf.
As the Originator of the redemptive fellowship, the Creator of the new conscience, the Captain of our salvation who opened up the way through His death into the holiest of all, we give to Jesus and to no other the title, "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."
The creative week ended with the 'rest' of the Creator, not because His energy was tired and needed repose, but because He had fully carried out His purpose, and saw the perfected idea embodied in a creation that was 'very good. The redemptive work ends with the Servant's satisfied contemplation of the many whom He has made like Himself, His better creation.
His resurrection was to be the crowning miracle, the sign forever confronting his nation, Jonah's deliverance from apparent death was such a miracle as convinced the Ninevites that he had a message from God for them, so Christ's resurrection was to become the keystone of the arch on which the whole structure of the redemptive system should rest. "He was raised for our justification."
Whitman, in celebrating manly pride, self-reliance, the deliciousness of sex; in glorifying the body, the natural passions and appetites, nativity; in identifying himself with criminals and low or lewd persons; in frankly imputing to himself all sins men are guilty of, runs the risk, of course, of being read in a spirit less generous and redemptive than his own.
This is the solution which finds in the atonement of Christ the last and most glorious example of a universal law of human life and history. That law is that no redemptive good for men is ever secured without the suffering and sacrifice of those who seek to confer that good upon their fellows.
Word Of The Day