Judgment Day

The Final Act on the Final Day

This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God.

2 Thess. 1:5

Judgment Day refers to a future event when God will call all men and women to account for their acts of righteousness or wickedness done on this earth. All wrongs performed on this earth will be righted, all righteous deeds honored, and all souls called into account. The Apostle Paul declared that our judgment is imminent, “The Lord is near” (Phil. 4:4). Christians will be accepted based on Christ’s work on their behalf. Their good works were all achieved through Christ’s shed blood and his most gracious grace. Believers do not have to demand justice in this life for the Lord himself will right all wrongs on Judgment Day. Believers are free to minister life not justice for God for in his omniscience is perfectly capable of knowing men and women’s hearts.

When the end comes and we are taken for judgment above, we will then clearly understand in God the mysteries that puzzle us now. Not one of us will think to say, “Lord, if it had been some other way, all would be well.”

Julian of Norwich, Showings

 

“The Old Cross and the New”

The Two Crosses

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Gal. 6:14

I love the writings of A. W. Tozer. When you first pick-up Tozer, he reads like an old curmudgeon. He seemingly dislikes everything about post-World War Two Evangelicalism. However when you read carefully and thoughtfully, you find a profound love for the church and insight into the power of the gospel that many writers miss.

Tozer was a modern day mystic: a mystic in the most positive sense of the word. A mystic sees and experiences a real spiritual world beyond the world of sense (Eph. 6:10). Mystics seek to please God rather than the crowd. They cultivate a close fellowship with God, sensing his presence everywhere. Also, mystics relate their experiences to the practical things of life. Mystics sit at the foot of the Cross.

Tozer examines the difference between Christ’s work on the Cross, the old Cross, and today’s worldly compromised Christianity, the new Cross. His quote is worth reading several times.

The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. The cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all. But what are we to say when the great majority of our evangelical leaders walk not as crucified men but as those who accept the world at its own value—rejecting only its grosser elements? How can we face Him who was crucified and slain when we see His followers accepted and praised?  Yet they preach the cross and protest loudly that they are true believers. Are there then two crosses? And did Paul mean one thing and they another? I fear that it is so, that there are two crosses, the old cross and the new.

. . . But if I see aright, the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics—but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.

A. W. Tozer, God’s Pursuit of Man (Camp Hill, PA: Wingspread, 1950), 53.

Are You a Mystic?

Mystics Hear God

When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

John 10:4

A mystic is someone who has a deep internal hunger for the Lord Jesus Christ. A mystic’s life is ruled by seeking, loving, and worshiping Jesus Christ alone. He or she enjoys the peace that comes in resting in the arms of the Abba Father of Jesus. They are able to receive the mercy, forgiveness, grace and reconciliation granted them by the finished work of Christ on the Cross. Their hearts are surrendered to the Word made flesh and they will follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They accept the acceptance by which they have been accepted in Christ.

All mystics can hear God in real and personal way. According to John 10, all believers can hear God. Therefore, all believers who truly follow Christ are mystics. A Christian believer may not hear an audible voice, but they can and will sense an inner prompting of the Holy Spirit. All sincere believers are guided by the Spirit.

Do you hear God? Are you a mystic? Being a mystic is not bad, all true believers are mystics.

A mystic is one who . . .

1. Sees a real spiritual world beyond the world of sense.

2. Seeks to please God rather than the crowd.

3. Cultivates a close fellowship with God, sensing his presence everywhere.

4. Relates his or her experience to the practical things of life.

Warren Wiersbe, Listening to the Giants