Glorious
even in death and grave among the dead
God “waited”?
...... Contemplate the saving merits of Jesus’ humiliation and suffering “three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth”— “in the heart of the earth”
as in “death, the wages
of sin” according to “the Law” which “is the strength of sin”, and to the
dictates of Types and Prophecy .....:
In that
Christ took our sins and our guilt and our punishment upon Himself, yea, in
that Christ “was made sin, for us”, joy, ‘reigned in heaven’. As the Son
was lying in the tomb, dead and buried,
the Father who made the Promise and planned the future, had known this day from
eternity, and was well pleased in what He saw. God from the beginning saw Jesus Christ made Sin for us and
veritably made the Wages of Sin for us; God saw Jesus Christ made the curse and
death, “for us”— the curse of His Holy Law! Dead
and buried, Christ overcame DEATH, even death that reigned in us. (“The death of death in the death of Christ”,
John Owen.) Dead and buried, Christ conquered death, like Israel in
passing-over through the Dead Sea, conquered!
And God overcame and was Victor over the adversary in the depths, “The
earth with her bars was about Me forever; yet hast Thou brought up my life, from, corruption.” With this scene, where Jesus was “cast
into the deep, in the midst of the seas and the floods compassed Him about”,
the day – God’s Sabbath Day — is forever
linked. “For His work is perfect” and “whatsoever God doeth, it
shall be forever.” Jesus’ very work — God’s work — God and angels beheld, beholding Jesus in the grave! “And God blessed the Seventh Day, and
hallowed it.”
Indeed –
just like Mrs White wrote ..... or not just like Mrs White wrote! See the difference? It is the difference between the still ongoing
work of God, and God’s work of completion and perfection. Because there shall
be a “restitution of all things,
which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world
began” — as in Genesis 2:2-3. Soon shall dawn this Sabbath Day of
‘Rest and Rejoicing’, with heaven and earth united in praise, as from this one
Sabbath to all other Sabbaths (Isa. 66:23), the nations of the saved shall bow
in joyful worship to God and the Lamb. Alleluiah! Because on this Sabbath’s-Day that Jesus lay in
earth’s woeful heart, shall
be a “restitution of all things”— that “which God hath spoken by the mouth of
all His holy prophets since the world
began”. Acts 3:21.
“When was fully come the Day of Pentecost”.....
All sabbaths
converged on the day “God thus concerning spake .... the Seventh Day” — the
Sabbath, “when”, “in Sabbath Day’s ripeness midst of
afternoon, the First Day of the week pending”, “God raised Christ from the dead
in the exceeding greatness of his power which He worked”, “and rested”. The Rubicon has been crossed; on its yonder
side lies the Old Testament Sabbath of the Law’s exacting strength— death and
grave; on this side, the New Testament Sabbath of Liberation and Freedom in
Christ Jesus— God’s People and Sabbaths’ Feast on the New Earth. Therefore it
is written, “In the Sabbath’s fullness ....” Mt28:1.
Is it not
precisely the principle from
which the EARLIEST, APOSTOLIC, Church departed when it based its reason for the
validity of the Christian Day of Worship-Rest on the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Why may ‘the scene’ and ‘the day upon which’ Jesus ‘lay
in the tomb’, not ‘for ever be linked’
with his ‘rest’ in, and through,having
‘conquered’ in and by, resurrection?
Why should
it link to the day after?
1) Preparation of the Passover midst of daylight
after noon, Jesus’ crucifixion and death divided
day, and light and darkness, and life and death;
2) The Foresabbath midst of daylight after noon,
the grave’s door divided day, and
light and darkness, and The Dead and ‘the dead’;
3) The Sabbath Day midst of daylight after
noon, Christ’s resurrection divided day,
and darkness and light, and death and life.
All,
“according to the Scriptures”, strictly!
Why may the Church
– the first, faithful Church – not have argued God and angels saw Jesus’ ‘completed’
work that ‘flowed’ and ‘resulted’ from the meritorious,
redeeming and saving humiliation and suffering of
1) his whole
life? Jesus’ whole life most importantly his last days, hours, and moments
of
2) descent into hell’s heart, dying, and death and grave? — Jesus’
whole redeeming and saving work being ‘completed’
in
3) his resurrection
from death and grave? And having been ‘completed’
in resurrection, being ‘completed’
4) in
that very day Christ resurrected on?
The Father
and heaven took no ‘rest’ or ‘joy’ in an incompleted, work of salvation in
death and grave. The Father never ‘waited’ during the course nor stopped at
any stage of his Work of Salvation
until He “triumphed gloriously”, until “Thy Right Hand, o LORD, is
become glorious in power”, until “thy Right Hand, o LORD, hath dashed in
pieces the enemy; and in the greatness of thine Excellency Thou hast overthrown
them.” — The Song of Moses and the Lamb was sung on that same Sabbath of
redemption from Egypt, but not until that “great work” was DONE— the great work
of the LORD’S redemption was FINISHED! (Ex15)
The Father ‘rested’ in the Son’s completion
of all God’s works through Resurrection from
and over death and grave. Then,
God, rested, and in that sense and magnitude and glory, neither before, or
after, ever again.
Therefore
what an anticlimax, what disappointment, what frustration of God’s Eternal
Purpose with this day of triumph
being postponed until fulfilment on
the “pending, First Day of
the week”?
God
determined to Christ’s glory that He should also on the Seventh Day and third
of the prophetic ‘three days’, be in death and grave as the wages of sin by
strength of the Law. The Son obeyed the Father’s Command even herein; and God was well pleased in the Son therein, and the heavens joyed over the
Son’s obedience to the Father’s command about the Sabbath Day, even in death
and grave. But not even this or as much,
can or may be said of the First Day of the week! In fact, when Christ “early on the First Day
first appeared to Mary”, God fifteen hours or so and more than half a day ago,
had had raised Christ from the dead and grave and had had finished atonement
for sin and had had reconciled us with God in
Him, and had had finished all the works of God and God in the full
fellowship of Father Son and Holy Spirit had had rested in the highest glory of
God’s power, already on the Seventh Day.
By these
accomplishments in the grave and from the grave and death together, God wrought victory on the Seventh Day and finished and rested in
Jesus Christ. God not as much as
reserved for the First Day of the week the sanctity or worthiness of Christ’s
concealment in death or grave among the dead. By the First Day of the week’s
dawning, God long since had had finished the restitution of all things in
Christ in the Most Holy Place of his Own Being, and had had made an end of the
energising of the exceeding greatness of his power in the Son— both by death and grave and
resurrection from death and grave, both
glorious, honourable and purposed according to God’s Eternal Purpose— both reserved for his holy Sabbath the
Seventh Day of the week, only.
Therefore,
by ascribing the First Day of the week the sanctity of Jesus’ resurrection, the
Sabbath is not only deprived of its rightful heritage in Christ’s resurrection,
but it is left, bereaved of its belonging and part in the dignity and merit of
Jesus’ blessed, holy and meritorious status in death and grave. Valiant even
among the dead is the Lord, and his day is, “The Lordly Day”. Rv1:10.
(So actually
“the day of the Lord” (Genitive Nomen) at the coming of the Lord in judgment in
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, was virtually identically, “The
Lord’s Day” (Adjectival Nomen). In the
resurrection of Christ “the day of the Lord”, “The Lord’s Day”, “the Sabbath of
the LORD God”, “the Seventh Day”, and “the last day” (see many times in the
Gospel of John so used), are become almost indistinguishably one day: ‘the
Sabbath Day’. I said, in the resurrection of our Lord, which should explain
fully what I propose is a fact.)
Therefore,
if the First Day is given the honour of the Resurrection, it should also have
borne the scandal of Jesus’ death in the grave for the first part of it— which
dignity all the Sunday-resurrectionists are too ashamed of, to allow Sunday as
their own day of Jesus’ resurrection.
The trouble
one gets oneself into once one started to ‘argue, not based on any command
from God found in the Bible ....’!
‘Forever be linked’ therefore, Jesus’ and
the Father’s ‘rest’ in the Kingdom of
God’s victorious suffering because
God in Christ in death through suffering,
and, by resurrection, from suffering and the dead and death and grave, ‘conquered’! For his work is perfect
and all God’s works perfected on the day in which Jesus lay in death in Joseph’s tomb, even the day in which He went out of Joseph’s tomb. It, for ever will be for the Church of
Christ The Day of Rest and Rejoicing! Completed,
God’s works are glorious; incompleted, God’s works are failed— abandon the thought!
Why not, if the Seventh Day Adventists may as above
think of Jesus’ death, may they not think the same of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as his rest FROM the tomb and FROM the dead? Why may they not do just that with regard to
the Resurrection and inseparably ‘link
together’ and associate as, and for, motive, reason, and basis of, and for, the Christian
Day of Worship-Rest, Jesus’ resurrection
from the dead? Why not?
Then why not
embrace Jesus’ resurrection from the dead for the reason for being of the Lord’s Day?
Either the Resurrection hallows the Sabbath, or it hallows the First
Day, and hallows the one or the other as “the Lord’s Day”. It is no question
the Sabbath would be the Day of God’s final finishing of all his works in
Christ, through Christ; it is no question God did make true his promises and
Law and prophecy “thus concerning the Seventh Day” in Christ. Sunday has no
foot to stand on except the wooden leg we have fabricated for it, the
impossible fallacy God used the First Day to raise Christ on. The only question
remaining is whether we are going to acknowledge and accept the Resurrection
for what it in truth is, the finishing and perfecting act of God of all His
Works, even of God’s Rest— God’s rest indeed through Jesus Christ on, and of,
and in, the Seventh Day.
I first
said, ‘Death and grave are not God’s rest, but the devil’s punishment’. Now I say, no, even in death and grave it is Christ, who is glorious in punishment and death? Exactly, yes! Because both ‘aspects’ are true, and to
weaken the genuineness of the one, is to weaken the genuineness of the
other. “The Law is the strength of sin”,
and the glory of the ministration of the Law is divinely glorious; yet, says
Paul, it is like no glory at all against the Glory of the ministration of the
Gospel. The two are distinguishable, but just as surely, inseparable. Christ
was made sin for us; Christ took the devil’s punishment on our behalf –
‘substitutionally’. Let no man divorce that which are married in the Name of
Jesus Christ. Jesus’ death in the grave even, was glorious and God
well-pleasing and honouring, exactly because He took on Himself the devil’s and
our punishment for sin— because it was the Son’s obedience to the Father’s will.
1) Jesus “finished” Sacrifice outside the
sanctuary on the cross;
2) He “finished” Sprinkling his blood on the altar inside the sanctuary in the grave. [Why did Moses make the outside of the tabernacle with skins!? Precisely why God clothed Adam and Eve in skins.]
3) Jesus “finished” First Sheaf Wave Offering
of Resurrected Life in the Most Holy of his own Being; “Whose Name is: The
Holiest of All.” (Is57:15, Ex15:17b) — for which there was no similitude in
blood offerings, but only in the Fruit of Life offerings.
Abib 16—
“Celebrate the month of Abib” means, “Feast Sabbaths’ Feast” (Col2:16) because God “appointed a day in which He
would judge the world” on that sixteenth day of the First Month and coinciding
Sabbath Day in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Therefore
do not let anyone (of the world) judge you in feasting of Sabbaths’ Feast : whether of
1) month’s
(“according to the Scriptures the third day” of passover, 16th day of the month
of Abib, 1Cor15:3-4)
2) or
of Sabbaths’ Feast” (“according to the Law”, “the Seventh Day
Sabbath of the LORD your God”, Lk23:56).
Here, the
passover’s sabbath and all ‘sabbaths’ – Leviticus 23, Deuteronomy 5, and Genesis 2:2-3 – are joined together in Christ for ever upon
the Seventh Day Sabbath of the LORD your God by the power of the glory of the
Father who resurrected Christ from the dead through the Holy Spirit.
Like the
Berlin wall divided the one German people, and when it came down united them,
the dividing wall of the Law has been taken out of the way and the People of
God are made one nation under Christ, so in the Sabbath when God raised Christ from the dead,
1) Abib
16 (‘the Law’— “the day after the sabbath” of the passover and in itself no
sabbath yet), and
2) Sabbath
(‘creation Sabbath’ from the beginning and before and after the Law) and not
The Sabbath of the LORD YOUR, God,
yet,
coincided once for all and converged in the
resurrection from the dead of Christ Jesus— “therefore the Son of Man is Lord indeed of
the Sabbath”— the Sabbath has been “made, for man”.
Why must the
Seventh Day Adventists in colaboration with the world, transfer that meaning
which God before, promised the
Sabbath, then in Christ made true and sealed
by having raised Him from the dead in the Sabbath— why do even they, transfer
that meaning to the day of the no-god no-lord sun of the world’s worship? Why must everybody transfer God’s ultimatum
for the Sabbath, to Sunday— Sunday that never got involved between God and his
People like the Sabbath did?
2 June 2009 (13 September 2009)
Gerhard Ebersöhn
Suite 324
Privaatsak X43
Sunninghill 2157
http://www.biblestudents.co.za