Heir of All Things
As heir, the Son is reigning over all things now. The kings of earth rise and fall but the Son on the throne reigns forever. The Christian rejoices because the power of the wicked one is defeated (Psalm 110); death is conquered by the heir who died and rose again (Revelation 1:17-19); the Son is exalted; He has a name above every name; and He is soon to be publicly revealed in glory before all the earth (Philippians 2:9-11).
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things…
Hebrews 1:1-2a
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” Hosea’s words are as fitting now as they were in the Old Testament. Jesus’ name is used frequently but few know Him. Many are perishing for lack of knowledge. How can they believe in Him who they do not know? There is a famine of the Word of God and the effects are all around us.
God in His infinite mercy does not leave us merely with the name of His messenger in these last days, He tells us who His Son is. God reveals seven perfections concerning the Son in Hebrews 1:2-3 followed by seven Old Testament confirmations concerning the glory of the Son. Seven being the number of completeness and perfection in the Bible the Lord is demonstrating the perfection and completeness of the Son. There is no other Savior to look for, the perfect Savior has come. The first perfection of the Son is that He is the Heir of all things.
First, we must deny that any glory is given to the Son which He did not have before His incarnation. The Son as the second person of the Trinity is always full of glory, from eternity to the present (John 17:4).
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Ten Words That Changed Everything About My Suffering
God permits awful things, but (to paraphrase Dorothy Sayers) something so grand and glorious is going to happen in the world’s finale that it will more than suffice for every pain we experienced on this planet. God will exponentially make up for every tear (Psalm 56:8), and will abundantly reward us for every hurt (Romans 8:18).
I remember it like it were yesterday. I was fresh out of the hospital, barely out of my teens, and sitting at our family table with my friend Steve Estes with our Bibles and sodas. We had become acquainted when he heard I had tough questions about God and my broken neck. He also knew I wasn’t asking with a clenched fist, but a searching heart.
So, Steve made a bargain with me. I’d provide sodas and my mother’s BLT sandwiches, and he would provide—as best he could—answers from the Bible. Though I cannot reproduce our exact words, the conversations left such an indelible impression on me that even now, over fifty years later, I can capture their essence.
“I always thought that God was good,” I said to him. “But here I am a quadriplegic, sitting in a wheelchair, feeling more like his enemy than his child! Didn’t he want to stop my accident? Could he have? Was he even there? Maybe the devil was there instead.”
Decades later, Steve would tell me, “Joni, when I sat across from you that night, I was sobered. I mean, I had never met a person my age in a wheelchair. I knew what the Bible said about your questions, and a dozen passages came to mind from studying in church. But sitting across from you, I realized I had never test-driven those truths on such a difficult course. Nothing worse than a D in algebra had ever happened to me. But I looked at you and kept thinking, If the Bible can’t work in this paralyzed girl’s life, then it never was for real. So, Joni, I cleared my throat and I jumped off the cliff.”
God Permits What He Hates
That night, Steve leaned across the family table, and said, “God put you in that chair, Joni. I don’t know why, but if you will trust him instead of fighting him, you will find out why—if not in this life, then in the next. He let you break your neck, and perhaps I’m here to help you discover at least a few reasons why.”
Steve paused and then summed it up with ten words that would change my life:
The sentence hit me like a brick. Its simplicity made it sound trite, but it nevertheless enticed me like an enigmatic riddle. It seemed to hold some deep and mysterious truth that piqued my fascination. “Tell me more,” I said. “I want to hear more about that.” I was hooked.
God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
Over that summer with Steve, I would explore some of the most puzzling passages in Scripture. I wanted to know how God could permit hateful things without being in cahoots with the devil. How could he be the ultimate cause behind suffering without getting his hands dirty? And to what end? What could God possibly prize that was worth breaking my neck?
He Does Not Afflict Willingly
So, let me parrot some of Steve’s counsel to me that summer. He started off with Lamentations 3:32–33:
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. (NIV)
In the span of a verse, the Bible asserts that God “brings grief,” yet “he does not willingly bring…grief.” With that, Steve was able to reassure me from the top that although God allowed my accident to happen, he didn’t get a kick out of it—it gave him no pleasure in permitting such awful suffering. It meant a lot to hear that.
But what about my question of who was in charge of my accident? When it comes to who is responsible for tragedy—either God or the devil—Lamentations 3 makes it clear that God brings it; he’s behind it. God is the stowaway on Satan’s bus, erecting invisible fences around the devil’s fury and bringing ultimate good out of Satan’s wickedness.
Buck Stops with God
“God’s in charge, Joni, but that doesn’t mean he actually pushed you off the raft,” Steve said. “Numbers 35:11 pictures someone dying in an ‘accident,’ calling it ‘unintentional.’ Yet elsewhere, of the same incident, the Bible says, ‘God lets it happen’ (Exodus 21:13). It’s an accident, but it’s God’s accident. God’s decrees allow for suffering to happen, but he doesn’t necessarily ‘do’ it.”
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What Is New Age Spirituality?
Many who embrace New Age practices believe in karma and reincarnation. As in Hinduism, the ultimate goal in the New Age movement is to achieve oneness with the divine. Adherents of New Age spirituality reject the biblical doctrines of the fall, the sinfulness and depravity of man, the need for an atoning sacrifice, and the need for a mediator between God and man.
What is New Age spirituality?
New Age spirituality is an umbrella term that describes a contemporary religious movement, not an organized religion. Proponents of the movement encourage striving to reach one’s full potential through an eclectic mixture of concepts and practices drawn from Eastern mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, metaphysics, naturalism, astrology, occultism, and science fiction. In its various forms, New Age spirituality is both monistic (believing that all reality is ultimately one) and pantheistic (believing that everything is divine). Unlike organized religions, New Age spirituality has no founding figure, structured leadership, official headquarters, or authoritative writings that are accepted by all proponents. New Age spirituality has held considerable social sway over Western culture over the past three decades. An estimated one in three Americans accepts various elements of New Age ideology.
When did it begin?
References to the “New Age” come from the world of astrology. Roughly every 2,100 years, proponents argue, we enter a new “astrological age” that corresponds to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The exact date of the transition is disputed, but most astrologers maintain that we transitioned from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius sometime in the twentieth century.
The contemporary New Age movement originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, concurrent with the hippie counterculture movement. The Beatles popularized Eastern mysticism and monistic religion in mainstream America after returning in 1965 from a trip to India, where they practiced Transcendental Meditation with the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The 1967 musical Hair promoted the astrological elements of the New Age movement with its catchy opening number, which asserted, “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” In 1969, the promoters of the music festival Woodstock publicized it as “an Aquarian exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Love.”
Who are the key figures?
Academy Award–winning actress Shirley MacLaine promoted the New Age ideas of reincarnation and past life experiences in her 1984 book Out on a Limb. In 1989, Deepak Chopra published his book Quantum Healing, which claims to integrate modern scientific concepts into an Eastern mystical framework with the goal of healing the body. Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth, is among the most well-known proponents of the New Age movement today. In a 2008 article, The New York Times called Tolle “the most popular spiritual author in [the United States].”1 Prominent media personality Oprah Winfrey continues to be one of the most vocal proponents of New Age ideology.
What are the main beliefs?
It is nearly impossible to set out any systematic doctrine associated with the New Age movement, since it borrows from so many religious and esoteric traditions. However, New Age proponents hold in common several broad ideas:Cosmological determination. According to astrologers, the movement of stars and other heavenly bodies determines cultural and societal—as well as individual—development. Accordingly, humanity has moved out of the Age of Pisces, in which we sought to discover our identity and existence, into the Age of Aquarius, in which we seek total peace and unity. Having collectively moved into a new era, we are to embrace the cultural changes that coincide with the current astrological age. This shift has already had an impact on every person and will continue to do so. All that we learned from our parents, and all that our parents learned from their parents, was a result of the influence of the Piscean age and must now be largely abandoned. In the Age of Aquarius, we must learn to accept ourselves as people who do not need to believe in anything that lies outside ourselves. All that is in us and all that is in the universe is God; therefore, to gain unity and balance with God, we must seek to embrace what is happening in this present Aquarian age as the divine expresses itself in us and in others. This form of pantheism attributes to the created order something that belongs exclusively to the eternal sovereignty of God.
Monistic energy. Proponents of the New Age movement believe that God and the universe are one in substance. The New Age movement rejects biblical monotheism in favor of monism or pantheism. Proponents of the New Age believe that there is divine energy inherent in every part of the universe.Read More
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Love on Display
In this the love of God was manifested toward us… (1 John 4:9, NKJV)
Think of the most impressive Christmas display you’ve ever seen. What struck you about it? Was it the huge number of lights? Perhaps those lights were programmed to keep time with the grand plan of a majestic musical score. Those lights would have been even more spectacular at night, their beauty and radiance standing out from the darkness.
Keep that picture in mind as you read these words: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).
Imagine the pitch black darkness of a world spiritually dead in sin. Death reigned everywhere you looked. But, according to plan and right on schedule, the glory of God Himself appeared. The Light of life entered the world, something history had been waiting for since the exit from Eden. John describes that in his Gospel account. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).