Behold I and the children God hath given Me.
In Eden we find man standing in innocence, but the act of sin, listening to Satan, brought in moral death. Moral death was in Satan before the creation of man, but it came then into Eden together with the natural death of the body. Just think what a scene it was in that once-fair and beautiful creation! Man was standing there identified with Satan; no harmony in that scene for God; no chord in creation answering to the Creator's heart. But oh! the wonderfulness of the ways of God! If sin reigned unto death, He could turn even that to His own praise, and bring out a greater glory than the glory of creation. He could look forward to that last Adam, and to the time when His tabernacle shall be with man, the earth shall be purged and made new and all shall serve Him.
See what a flood of glory comes in then. If Satan got man in Eden, God shall have redeemed man in glory God's thought was to give an inheritance to those who had lost one by Adam's transgression, not by putting man again into Eden, but by bringing him into a paradise of glory, habitation of God. The Son is sitting there with Him as One who has yet to bring many sons to glory. But we cannot look at it apart from atonement. These sons must all be brought to glory from among a sinner-race; they are unclean and vile, therefore, if there were not the cleansing blood, they would never see God. "Behold I and the children which God hath given Me." None can come except the Father draw them.
How good it would be if our hearts were more occupied with the thought of God's looking all through time, that we His enemies should be brought in one by one and finally be housed away up there, to tell forth His manifold wisdom in ages to come!
"I go to prepare a
place for you...
that where I am,
there ye may be also”.