The Final Events.
Parousia: Laodicea’s Need of Accepting Christ’s Evaluation.
Part Sixty-one in a Series.
https://steps-to-personal-revival.info/
In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived.
When Christ calls Himself the beginning of the creation of God, He isn’t saying that He was the first being God created and that He hadn’t existed before that time. The word beginning here simply means the source or the origin or the chief cause. Christ is saying I am the source of all creation.
This is what the New Testament teaches clearly. “All things were made by Him (Christ) and without Him was not anything made that was made.” John 1:3 Speaking of Jesus, Paul says “By Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in the earth He is before all things and by Him all things consist.” Colossians 1:16, 17, 1 Corinthians 8: 6, Ephesians 3: 9
Jesus is saying to the Laodicean church “I am not only the True Witness, I am also the Source of all creation. I can recreate you into my image, but only if you allow me to do so. I can create in you a new heart I can make you a new person, but only if you repent and accept my true evaluation of you.”
He is not only saying I’m telling you the truth about yourselves as painful as that may be. He is also saying I am the solution to your problems. That is why He calls himself by two titles. I am the Faithful and True Witness. He says this because you need to know your true condition. You aren’t even aware of it. You are in denial regarding it, so you need the truth. And then He says but I have the solution to your problem. I am the source of God’s creation. I made everything and I can recreate your heart.
Christ is willing to fulfill in us the New Covenant promise.
The Final Events will end with the splendor of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ also known as the Parousia. The Signs of Parousia are detailed in the Final Events Blog series and emphasize the Imminent Return and Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and the Love of the Father for all mankind.
In Christ’s letter to the Laodicean church, we have learned that Christ is not speaking only to a few people in the church. He is addressing the leadership, but through the leaders He is speaking to the entire membership. The problems Jesus points out in Laodicea are not the problems of only a few of its members. They are the problems of the whole corporate body of Christ, the last generation of Christians and they apply especially to those who call themselves Christians.
Although Christ’s spiritual evaluation of us is negative it is nevertheless true. The question for us becomes: are we willing to accept his evaluation of our lives painful though it is? It’s painful when someone says to us, you’re wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked especially when we are a church that claims to have the truth. It is very painful. But if we are going to experience Christ’s solution to our problems, we are going to have to accept what the True Witness is saying to us. Let’s not apply this message to other churches let’s apply it first to ourselves.
We have been deceived regarding our own spirituality just as the Jews were deceived regarding their experience with God. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it.” Jeremiah 17:9
The Jews rejected Christ because they did not accept His evaluation of them. We must not do the same.
When we look at Christ’s evaluation of us in the letter to the Laodiceans we will have to make a response. Is it true? Is it false? If we decide it is true, then we will take His counsel. If we decide it is false then we will refuse the counsel and be spewed out of his mouth, thus the words of Jesus to Laodicea become vitally important to you and me.
What is our problem as identified by the faithful and true witness? What is it that we don’t know? What is it that has deceived us? What does Jesus mean when he says that our works are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm? Does he mean that we aren’t doing enough works? I don’t think that is true. We are not lacking works, but our works have a problem. We will dig deeper and unpack this as we explore this in upcoming posts.
The Final Events.
Signs of the Parousia: Laodicea’s Need of Accepting Christ’s Evaluation.
Part Sixty-one in a Series.
https://steps-to-personal-revival.info/
The Final Events will end with the splendor of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ also known as the Parousia. The Signs of Parousia are detailed in the Final Events Blog series and emphasize the Imminent Return and Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and the Love of the Father for all mankind.
