A believer's role and a picture of God's Salvation

The role of believers in Judgment “Day” 

I will remind the reader that I am not “authorized” to teach what has been called “inerrant doctrine” to those who read my text. God, through His spirit, which indwells each believer, is the one who ‘teaches’ or harmonizes God’s Word in the mind of each believer.  

I have come to see that God confounds anyone who claims ‘special knowledge’ or a path to inerrant interpretation of God’s Word through special formulations or methods of study of His Word.  

I have also seen that without risking error in a believer’s communication of what God gives them in their personal relationship with Him that believer is drawn away from their personal relationship with God into the hands of those who specialize in convincing followers that agreement with their interpretations of God’s Word will better assure them of a saving outcome to their spiritual path. 

Understanding of the absolute truth of God’s Word is far beyond any believer’s interpretation. God gives the truth of His Word by measure to each believer, which is filtered through the “darkness” of their finite understanding because believers still reside in an unresurrected body. It also seems to be because of the necessity of God to maintain, in believers, an awareness that we remain a mere vapor before him as long as we live in the carnal realm (in an unresurrected body.) 

A picture of God’s salvation process in Jeremiah 29:8-17  

“For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord.....” 

Those Jews who were taken captive to Babylon are a picture of modern day believers who, at the end of the church age, were called out of the local churches as part of God’s “judgment of the house of God” and were scattered in a sinful and unbelieving world.  

........”For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place......” 

In this day of Judgment right before the end of the world, God is accomplishing the final “perfecting” of his saints (all born again believers) through the suffering they must endure living in a world who’s sin is being revealed like never before. Elijah, representing a born again believer, complains bitterly;  

“And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away....God then responds to Elijah’s (and modern day believers) cry; 

......Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him........”   1 Kings 19:14,18 

The number seven represents the completeness of a process and so God is saying that despite Elijah’s fears of being overcome by the priests of Baal (and the overwhelming numbers of those false believers who remain in the local churches today) God has already provided for all that will be saved;  

“That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none. John 18:9 

“Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”  John 16:32,33 

Back to the Jeremiah passage;  

“........For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end........” 

The “thoughts that I think toward you” are actually the presence of the peace and expected end that God has instilled in the hearts of all born again believers at the time of their new birth in Christ, this being a verbal picture of the intimacy between God and both the body of all His believers as well as being a picture between God and each believer with the promise of salvation fulfilled. 

“......Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart....” 

It is a fundamental truth of the Gospel that God gives the power for a believer to search for God with all one’s heart and seek him and find him, only after one has become born again. 

“He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:11-13 

God’s act of saving someone spiritual gives them the power to receive Him.  

Back to the Jeremiah passage; 

“And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord ; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive......” 

God will turn away the captivity of believers from a sinful world at the last day of this day of Judgment, translating them into his spiritual kingdom. The “New Jerusalem” is a term for the spiritual kingdom of God which God set up a picture or image of in the Jerusalem of the Old Testament.   

Not only does this seem to be a picture of God’s protecting love of His elect; 

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,.........how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings.........”   Luke 13:34 

...but it also indicates that God will fulfill, after this time of judgment, His promise to restore His elect to their predestined place in His kingdom, His body, His very self. The only way a promise like this can be believed is if God gives the soul of the saved person, the assurance. It is not the logic of the believer that enables belief, or even the choice, though it is also a choice, but the assurance that God has chosen to give that believer through the faith of Jesus Christ.   

The following passage particularly interested me; 

“Because ye have said, The Lord hath raised us up prophets in Babylon;” 

Imagine God raising up a different kind of prophet(s) during this time of judgment. A prophet represented by each and every believer seeking God through His Word and prayers. Prophets with no special qualifications or  formulas or methodology. Individual believer prophets who simply share what God has given them through their earnest seeking of Him through His Word and prayers and experiences of their relationship with Him as reflected in their day-to-day experiences in the world? 

God’s revealing such prophets in this time at the end of the world may be the culmination His repeated gathering and scattering of those He has called throughout His salvation history of the world throughout time. In this way  they might be separated from a world that is perishing, that God might finally gather the elect to Himself, as the  the unbelieving world is shed. 

“Know that thus saith the Lord of the king that sitteth upon the throne of David, and of all the people that dwelleth in this city, and of your brethren that are not gone forth with you into captivity; Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.   Jeremiah 29:8-17 

“This city” is a reference to both Jerusalem of the Old Testament that God, through Isaiah commanded the people to come out of into the Babylonian captivity. It is also a reference to the local churches of the New Testament that God, through the Holy Spirit called born again believers to come out of at the end of the church age (1988-2011).  The sending of the sword represents the judgment of God, with the spiritual judgment being the the sword  (Word of God and Christ, Himself) , the famine (God removing the Word of God from the churches) and the pestilence (the false teachings of God’s truth