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It makes all the difference in the world whether we consider God's work as having been completed in Eden, and then upset by the devil, or whether we see that this work only began there, that the fall was part of that work, and that redemption, resurrection, judgment, punishment, are simply steps and stages in the same creative process. According to current ideas the fall was an "accident," a mishap to God no less than man, and redemption is then degraded to the level of a makeshift expedient--a "scheme" as it is often called--to repair damages. Such a view makes God to be altogether such an one as ourselves, a being subject to accident and failure, instead of One who worketh all things after the counsel of His will
The redemption is not only for mankind; it is for the universe, for the material earth, everything that sin and the devil have touched and marred has been completely redeemed by Jesus Christ. There is a day coming when the redemption will actually be manifested, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth with a new humanity upon it.
-P.T. Barnum-
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Infinite Wisdom knows the end from the beginning, and will not in the beginning create what will defeat the end. Infinite Power is able to control all things toward a desired end. Infinite Love, as expressed in the words " Our Father," will do the best for its children.
But eternity will show that God is so much larger than we ever dreamed and that questions so important to us now will no doubt seem insignificant and even forgotten then. Our brokenness will be fully repaired. Even those who knew Him best will be awestruck with the splendor of our Savior. The humbling experience will be deep, yet strangely warm, as we gaze on the excellence, the infinite wonder of Christ. That One as magnificent as He would address us like an old friend will overwhelm us as an unspeakable privilege.
David Swartz
THE glory of redemption lies in the preciousness of the thought as treasured in God's heart. Treasured there when He said, "Let there be light," and there till it found supreme expression in the Son of His love.The universe itself was created for full and complete association with this divine thought. And from out its vastness this small earth of ours was chosen for its rare display. Thus did it become the center of God's great chain of events, of an epic progression to the peacemaking of the cross. And from thence to the profoundly stirring disclosure of Himself as All in all.
You are only a soldier in the king's army, and you may die in a ditch, but it does not matter what becomes of you as long as the King is exalted.
Spurgeon
I believe myself that every discontent in the human heart is just a cry out for God, though the heart does not know it...it is the cry of the heart; it is the Divine thing in us, that so few of us really know, the cry of the Divine nature in us. For the devil did not make us. We come out of the heart of God. Even God did not make us with His hands; we came from His heart. And I say that every trouble is the cry of the Divine life in us, which we have wronged, as we have wronged God, the Father.
-A.J. Gossip-
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We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So long as we can fuss and work and rush about, so long as we can lend a hand, we have some hope; but if we have to fall back upon God -- ah, then things must be critical indeed!
But wherein or what can this Alpine apex of faith have to do with the creatures who call themselves Christians, creeping about in the valleys, hardly knowing that there are mountains above them, save that they take offence at and stumble over the pebbles washed across their path by the glacier streams? I will tell you. We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments, instead of up at the snows of purity, whither the soul of Christ did climb. Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self. The true self is that which can look Jesus in the face, and say My Lord.
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