Ques. Will you kindly explain Rev. 3:3? Will the Lord come to those that are His and watching for Him, as a thief in the night?
W. W.
Ans. 1 Thess. 5:2 tells us that "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." The day of the Lord is His coming in judgment with His saints-His appearing. When He comes thus, we shall appear with Him. He comes for His heavenly saints long before this. To them He is the bright and morning Star. "But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief." 1 Thess. 5:4. Rev. 3:3 shows us how the Church has sunken down and become like the would, with a name to live, but dead, as a Church. All that are His own will be taken out of it. (John 14:3; 1 Thess. 4:15-17.) Those who are left behind, are left for judgment. (Matt. 25:10-12; 2 Thess. 1:7-9.) They are not Christians except in name.
Heb. 12:15 is a warning to the Hebrews to see that they stand in the grace of God. Forms of religion will not avail; they are to see that divine things are real to them and appreciated by them.
2 Tim. 3:5. Those described here are a mark that we are now in the last days of the Church's history. Real Christians are to separate from such company.
Ques. Explain Ex. 12:10. What is that to us? H. A. C.
Ans. This would suggest to us that we cannot feed on Christ apart from the thought of His blood which shelters us from judgment. The sprinkling of the blood, and the feeding on the lamb go together. (See also John 6:53, 54.)
Ques. What does Heb. 12:14 mean, special reference to the later part of the verse "Follow... holiness, without which no man can see the Lord"?
A. E.
Ans. This holiness or sanctification is the practical outcome of the divine life which is in every believer. Every believer is born of God, and has thus in him a life that is given him from God. (1 Peter 1:23.)
While the Epistle to the Hebrews does not mention life, it implies it. This we see in such verses as: Chapter 3:6,14; where the confidence of faith carries the believer on steadfast to the end. And in Chapter 6:9, 10, this divine life is seen in its work and labor of love toward God's name and to His saints. In Chapter 10:18 its faith to live by is seen.
And here its desire for a holy life; practical sanctification is put before the believer as what he is to follow.
No one could be a true believer without these desires, for they flow from the life given from God. And no one but a true believer has these desires, without which no man shall see the Lord.
The law demanded holiness and man could not give it. Grace meets the sinner's need, supplies the desire for holiness and works it in the believer.
Though sin is still as a root in the believer, yet the believer is no longer under its power. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath set me free from the law of sin and death." Rom. 8:2.
In Heb. 12:5-11 we see how God's chastening love deals with His children to make them partakers of His holiness. And by His exceeding great and precious promises we become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (2 Peter 1:3,4.)
What a blessed portion is ours in Christ. Our sins all washed away in His precious atoning blood; sip, the old nature in us, condemned and put to death in the death of Christ, (Rom. 6:6,) and we have now life in Christ, risen from the dead, so that we should no longer live unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again." (2 Cor. 5:14,15.) His love is the constraining power to live by.
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