QuoteThe Lord knows how to rescue/deliver the godly out of temptation and to reserve the unrighteous unto the day of judgement to be punished... -2 Peter 2:9-
Punishment=Kolasis
Kolasis=Correction.
Punishment.
Penalty.
Kolasis Rooted In Kolazo
Kolazo= 1. To lop or prune, as trees and wings.
2. To curb, check, restrain.
3. To chastise. To correct. Punishment .
4. To cause to be punished.
Correction=Alteration that improves: An alteration that removes an error.
Punishment meant to improve: Punishment, especially meant to improve or reform the person punished.
Law treatment of offenders: The system of dealing with criminals by improvement, rehabilitation, parole, probation.
Treatment of a specific defect.
The act of offering an improvement to replace a mistake. Something substituted for an error.
A rebuke for making a mistake.
The act of punishing.
Removing of errors: The removing of errors from something or the indicating of errors in something.
The act or process of correcting.
Something that is substituted or proposed for what is wrong or inaccurate.
Rectification/ modification/ adjustment/ amending.
Amendation.
Rectification.
Rectification=To set right. To correct.
To purify.
To correct by removing errors.
To adjust.
A quantity applied by way of correcting.
The act or process of correcting.
Something that is substituted or proposed for what is wrong or inaccurate.
Amendation.
To correct something or make something right.
The act of rectifying or the fact of being rectified.
To correct by calculation or adjustment.
To adjust.
To fix/ repair/ remedy/ amend/ correct/ redress/ put to right/ to straighten/ to reform/ to adjust something.
The act of amending, correcting or setting right that which is wrong or erroneous.
"Vessels of wrath fitted to destruction"
Fitted= Katartizo=To mend what has been broken or rent.
To repair.
To complete/ put in order/ to arrange/ to adjust.
To make one what he aught to be.
Finelinen,
What you have said here points to the good coming of all things, and you know what? it reminds me of a time when I was very sick with a serious fever, burning up, I didn't want to eat, or do anything, I ached from head to toe with burning pain, I slept most of a week away in this condition, and had a dream telling me to "just rest and I am doing the work" a very comfortable calm came over me and then all the aches and burning started leting up, in the following morning the fever was broken and I felt fresh and new.
It appears that when we are ovecome of anything the only place we have left to turn is the Lord, and his workmanship I certainly trust far above my own labors.
I appreciated your posting of the word meaning of punishment=kolasis as correction punishment and penalty, it appears to me that we are passing through these things here and now within this life to be refined for glory.
Peace,
Fire Walker
QuoteI appreciated your posting of the word meaning of punishment=kolasis as correction punishment and penalty, it appears to me that we are passing through these things here and now within this life to be refined for glory.
Ditto to what FW said. Thanks for your great work David!
I have been sharing some of it with others
Jack
Christ Triumphant
It is often precisely those who most deeply feel the taint and evil of sin who reject most completely the popular creed; for in proportion to their horror at sin, is the depth of their conviction that sin cannot go on for ever. There is, too, this further question, if sin is to endure for ever in hell, must it not increase and go on increasing for ever and ever? Think to what point of horror the accumulated sin of the myriads of the lost will have reached, when even a few of the cycles of eternity are over: and this vast and inconceivable horror and taint is to go on, and on, and on, for ever, and ever, and ever increasing, under the rule of Him Who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
What The Traditional Creed Really Means
Think of endless blasphemy and rottenness: of moral foulness tainting God's universe: the leprosy of undying evil poisoning all around: cries of endless agony blending with the angelic choir. God knows how painful such thoughts are to write down. But it is a duty to try and bring home to men's minds what the traditional creed really means. "Think, too, how grotesque a parody of the divine justice it is to say, as the popular creed does, that God requires obedience and righteousness here, but if He cannot have these, He will he satisfied with endless disobedience and sin hereafter as a substitute. We are gravely told that if the wrong be not righted within a specified time, justice will be satisfied to increase the wrong infinitely, and perpetuate it to all eternity." I repeat, that the powers of imagination, if taxed to the utmost, could hardly conceive any more ludicrous parody of justice than the above.
How Is The Perpetuation Of Evil Possible?
There is,however, this further difficulty. For we must ask - How is this perpetuation of evil possible? Can a literal fire for ever prey on the hapless limbs, and never consume them? Can nature support this for ever? Are we to return to the hideous conception (of some early writers) of the "intelligent fire," which renews, as it consumes, in order to make the agony endless? Or if we take a more spiritual view of future punishment, can degradation be perpetual? Must not such a process end at some time from its very nature?
Sin Is Finite: The Punishment Is Infinite?
Further, all sin, be it never so black (and God forbid that I should even seem to weaken its blackness), is but finite. Yet, for these finite sins, I am told, an infinite punishment is the due penalty. But finite and infinite are wholly incommensurable terms. Have you ever set yourself seriously to realize what punishment, protracted for ever and ever indeed means? In fact the idea of illimitable time mocks our utmost efforts to grasp it. "The imagination can come to a stand nowhere or ever. On the mind goes, heaping up its millions and billions and quadrillions of millions. It is to no purpose - time, without a beginning - without an end -still confronts it. As thus thought of, the mind recoils from the contemplation, horrified, paralyzed with terror." If we grasp never so faintly the idea of what an infinite punishment means, it becomes clear that no proposition more revolting to the idea of justice can be stated than this, that finite sins deserve an infinite penalty.
Expand the finite as you will, and it still falls infinitely short of infinity.
Hence, it is but the sober statement of sober fact, to assert that a single sentence of unending torment would outweigh the whole sins of the whole human race. To prove this I need but assume that, to which every conscience responds, that what is finite can in justice receive only a finite punishment. But any possible number of finite sins put together will still fall short (nay, infinitely short) of infinity - of infinite guilt.
If it is said, that there maybe some infinite evil in sin, that, even if true (which nobody knows and Scripture nowhere teaches), does not make human guilt infinite. For on any just principle, guilt is determined by the capacities and powers of toe agent, and all these are in man strictly finite. Nay, the Bible, so far from taking this view, tells us that Israel has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins, which involves a direct contradiction of any such theory of infinite guilt. - Is. xl. 2; Jer. xvi. 18. Besides, does not endless punishment prove, if true, that the judge never obtains satisfaction.
Add together all sins ever committed, be their blackness what it may, be their horrors never so great; still the sum of all, because the guilt of finite mortals is but finite, and unless all justice is to be outraged, would deserve a sentence that, however awful, would be finite. Hence it follows that a single sentence of infinite misery would undoubtedly outweigh, if there be such a thing as justice, the sins of all men who have ever lived, and who shall ever live.
Object & Nature Of Punishment
There is again, a difficulty - an impossibility rather - in reconciling endless penalties with the view, which either Holy Scripture or reason give of punishment - its object and nature. This most important topic, with the kindred question of the scriptural doctrine of forgiveness, needs our best attention. Let us briefly consider the latter first. Doubtless God always accepted the penitent. But a wholly novel duty of forgiving has emerged since Christ said, "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate (are hating, keep hating) you." -- S. Luke vi. 27.
God Does Good To His Enemies How Long?
No doubt in this novel view we have a distinct revelation of the divine character. But if so, is it possible to suppose that the Gospel presents us with two contradictory pictures of God, e.g., a God Who does good to His enemies only for the few years they spend on earth, and then proceeds to do them all possible evil in hell? If God's attitude towards His worst foes is love, that attitude is permanent, is eternal; nay, must be so. Whatever be the sin of His enemies, He must be to them the same unchanging God of love, and never more so than when He most inexorably punishes. Note the emphatic "BUT I SAY unto you, love your enemies." Here is the very heart of God disclosed; here is the dividing line; here the spiritual watershed between a true and a false theology.
The True End Of Punishment Vindictive Or Remedial?
Next I say, that endless penalties contradict the true end of punishment. Apart from all question of its justice - apart, too, from the horror it excites - endless torment, is an useless, and therefore a wanton, infliction: it is a mere barbarity, because it is only vindictive, and in no sense remedial. There is something positively sickening in the thought of the cruelty, combined with the uselessness, of penalty prolonged, when all hope of amendment is over, and when retribution has been fully exacted. To go on punishing for ever, simply for punishment sake, shocks every sentiment of justice. And the case is so much the worse when, as remarked, the punishment is really the prolongation of evil, when it is but making evil endless. But the true view of punishment is not to oppose, but to combine its retributive and remedial aspects, for through retribution it aims at amendment. Our day has seen a complete revolution in the ideas men form of punishment and its end: in few things has the advance been more marked over the past than in our recognition of the true object of penalty. But let me ask, to whom is due this marked change for the better in our ideas of punishment? Surely to that Great Being Who guides and orders by His providence all human things. This being so, it is wholly incredible to assign to the divine punishments this very character of mere vindictiveness, which men have in all enlightened systems abandoned.
Chastisement For Our Profit
This is, I repeat, impossible to believe, for when God chastises it is for our profit, as the Bible says. He punishes, as an old Father puts it, medicinally. Yes, it is impossible to believe the ordinary dogma; for if God does indeed by His providence - by His Spirit- direct and enlighten men's minds, leading them to higher and truer thoughts on this subject (as on all others), then to suppose that His own punishments are regulated on the very system, which He has taught us to abandon, is truly impossible. Nor can I discuss this subject without remarking that there is a highly significant expression found in that very passage, most often on the lips of the defenders of endless pain, which yet, curiously enough, furnishes the material for an answer to their creed, I speak of S. Matthew xxv. 46. The term there applied to the punishment of the ungodly is not the ordinary Greek word to denote penalty or vengeance (timoria), but it is a term (kolasis) denoting, literally, pruning, i.e., a corrective chastisement - an age-long (but reformatory) punishment.
Three Stages
It is most important to gain clear conceptions as to the true function of punishment. Three stages may be clearly distinguished - though united by a period of transition- through which men's minds have passed in their treatment of crime. At first all penalties are purely vindictive and personal; in the rudest stage of society we have the wild justice of revenge, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This idea lingers yet in some semi-barbarous districts, e.g., the Corsican vendetta. Next comes a higher conception, in which the wrong done to the state replaces the wrong done to the individual. Society exacts the penalty; the tribunal takes the place of the knife. In this stage our ideas have rested for centuries. But this stage we now see to be, at least, wholly imperfect. It repeats the wrong, and thus tends to perpetuate it: it thinks little of the criminal's amendment, content to rest mainly on the vindictive idea; differing from the rudest stage in this chiefly, that the revenge is exacted in the name, not of the individual, but of the state.
Amendment
At length we are on the verge of a truer conception of penalty: we are beginning to dwell most of all on the amendment of the criminal The main idea is not the wrong done to the injured person, as in the first stage; nor the wrong done to society, as in the second; but it is rather the wrong done to the criminal himself by his crime. This is the reformatory age on which we are now entering with steady, if slow, steps. Need I add that the relation of all this to theology is the closest possible? When we seize on - as perhaps the central idea of sin - the wrong done by the sinner to himself, and not merely the offense against God, true as that is, we can better estimate the true function of punishment as retributive indeed, but in its essence remedial. Nor does any sentimentality lurk here, for we recognize the need of stern retribution, and enforce the penalty: but our aim is different. Through suffering we would always heal. The end aimed at is the extinction of sin, and the restoration of the sinner; for no other end is worthy of God, and of man made in His image and likeness.
George MacDonald -JUSTICE-
http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/31/
Quotepunishment=kolasis as correction punishment and penalty, it appears to me that we are passing through these things here and now within this life to be refined for glory.
mm...Nah Punishment means when My 4 children go AWOL...i BEAT them silly..ya Know so they will NEVER do it AGAIN....if they steal..i CHOP thier arms OFF..get the Picture....
OK Just busting on ya............ :laughing7:
SOUND word bro... Punishment IS correction......... to bring FORTH....
Blessings Taffy
Quote from: Taffy on November 29, 2007, 04:08:26 AM
Punishment IS correction......... to bring FORTH....
Blessings Taffy
The punishment of the Father of all fathers is not merely correction: it is correction that improves, changes, transforms for the better.
Our God punishes with an objective in view, not as an end in itself!
There are dual aspects to our Father's Realm as shown in the following....
Tamiym/ 'ymt means to be consumed, destroyed, exhausted and spent, but also to be finished and made sound.
Kalal has the same meaning, linking destruction, being spent, exhausted, as well as to be finished and made sound.
Tamam, the root word of Tamiym means to be finished, complete, summed up, made whole: linked with to be consumed, exhausted, spent and destroyed.
Shalam/ ~IX, another expression of destruction, has the scope of being finished and ended, made good or whole, & being made sound, coupled with to be restored.
Shebar, rooted in Shabar, means breakout, and being brought to birth; and underlying new birth and breakout? To be crushed and broken. Again there is dual meaning in our Lord's words of destruction and re-creation.
ChalowphThe destructive Hebrew word Chalowph is rooted in being altered, renewed, changed, and to sprout again. It should also be noted that this is not just change, but change for the better.
David I was wondering if you could share where those six words come from and enlarge a bit with regard to them as far how and where they are used.
enjoying this study and thanks,
Jack
Hi there Jack: Some years ago I was in a discussion with a Presbyterian minister who had challenged something I had posted from Andrew Jukes regarding the dual aspects of our Father's world. Well, Jack, I thank God for the challenge that day, because it expanded my horizon regarding the destructive workings of our God. These six words are from over 20 distinct words for destruction in the Old Covenant. I hope one day to be able to expand somewhat on them, but alas, it will not be at this season, my brother.
There is a "sticky" on Bible Questions that continues to develop (Bible Resource Page Plus).
http://www.tentmaker.org/forum/index.php?topic=1475.0
If you can get your head out of the blizzard in Jackson Hole :laughing7: try to explore these words for destruction for a wee excursion.
Destruction HERE (http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?new=1&word=destruction§ion=1&version=str&language=en)
QuoteIf you can get your head out of the blizzard in Jackson Hole try to explore these words for destruction for a wee excursion.
After I build the snowman and make a snow angel I'll get after it. :laughing7:
Thanks brother,
Jack
Hi there Fire and much thanks for your post.
QuoteWhat if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
Fitted= katartivzwThe word katartivzw means the following....
Katartivizw =
To render, to fit, sound, complete.
To mend what has been broken or rent.
To repair.
To complete.
To fit out. To equip.
To put in order. To arrange. To adjust.
To fit, or frame, prepare for one's self.
To strengthen. To perfect. To complete.
To make one what he ought to be.
Wow! Our Father has vessels that are heading for destruction, and linked with destruction is transformation. What God breaks and rends, he repairs...let's call it the Repair of all repairs. And the Repair job encompasses fitting and framing and preparing one for Himself. He destroys, He breaks, He rends: to what end? To perfect & complete, to put in order, to arrange & to adjust. And the final adjustment is to make one what he aught to be! This may not thrill you and I, and Joe down the block , but this is the God to whom the ends of the world are coming.
And lest you think our God destroys only those vessels of wrath, think again. There is one way only into the Tree of Life, and it is by way of the flaming swords of the Lord swirling in every direction. And the promise, yes promise, is that if you save your life, you will destroy it, but if you destroy your life for Me, you will save it. Welcome to the Lord Jesus Christ.
-Vladimir M. Gelesnoff-QuoteThe current Evangelical Theology involves in its system belief in the deathlessness of sin, the indestructibility of error, and permanence of evil. That though there was a time in the history of the universe when sin in any shape or form did not exist, when no cry of pain or sense of guilt darkened the all-extensive bliss and holiness of creation, yet since sin has once effected an entrance into such a scene, it has come in never to go out again, indestructible, unconquerable, ineradicable, endless. Absolute happiness and sinlessness have forever vanished like the phantom of a dream. The 'eternal state' is a universe endlessly finding room for myriads of souls rolling and writhing in the burning agonies of ceaseless flame, eternally sinful, vile and morally hideous. It pictures the "final perfection" yet to be attained as having room for a vast cesspool of immoral and degraded beings, continually existing in opposition to God.
Well thank you Fire: by the way I really like your name.
In 1 Chron. 16:29-34 is a time when the Lord comes to judge the earth & is represented as a period of universal joy and gladness as it is in many of the Psalms. In Isa. 2 & Micah 4, there is a prophecy of the establishment of Christ's kingdom on the earth.
QuoteThe law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar of;
And the result of this judging and rebuking? Blessing or cursing?Blessings, most assuredly.....
QuoteThey shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine, and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.
Thus we find God's judgments spoken of in such a way that we are sure that they are always the expression of his love, and for the good of mankind.
The Lord "kills and makes alive," is another illustration of the gloriously wonderful way of God, see Psalm 83; the Psalmist speaking of God's enemies says
QuoteFill their faces with shame;
What for?QuoteThat they may seek thy name, O Lord. Let them be confounded and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish;
Again: what for? "That they may know that You, whose name alone is Jehovah, are the Most High over all the earth." Thus are we taught that through shame, confusion, and death, men are led to seek the Lord, and to know him as the one supreme, most-high Lord.
QuoteHe turneth man to destruction and saith return ye children of men, truly oh Lord, thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth. (Hos. 4: 4, 5).
How strangely the Psalmist speaks,-- "When he slew them,
then they sought him, and they returned and inquired early after God!" (Psa. 78: 34). But this is God's way; through evil to good, through curses to blessings, through darkness to light, through death to life, is the method of Him whose "way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known."
QuoteFitted= katartivzw
The word katartivzw means the following....
Katartivizw =
To render, to fit, sound, complete.
To mend what has been broken or rent.
To repair.
To complete.
To fit out. To equip.
To put in order. To arrange. To adjust.
To fit, or frame, prepare for one's self.
To strengthen. To perfect. To complete.
To make one what he ought to be.
I just love that word "fitted".
When the Lord first showed me this it opened my eyes to just how wonderful his plan all fits together.
More on being "Fitted"
Katartizo ( fitted ) Is always used for making things as they should be made.
We read in Mt.4:41 & Mk.1:19 of James and John mending (katartizo ) thier nets.
We read in Co.1:10 how we are to be perfectly joined together (katartizo) in mind and judgment with Christ.
In Gal.6:1 we read how we are to restore(katartizo) one who are taken in a fault.
In Heb.13:20-21 we read how our great shepherd through the blood of the everlasting covenant, makes us perfect (katartizo) in every good work to do Hid will.
And in
1 Peter 5:10 we read
10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect(katartizo) stablish, strengthen, settle you.
That after we have SUFFERED a while makes us perfect, establishs us, strengthens us,and settles us.
Brother/sister we are all fitted to destruction , wherein our old man is crucified forevermore no longer to rise again because a NEW MAN is standing where an old man once stood.
God will mend and restore us in His fire unto a perfect man.
Pastor Andrew Jukes: The Second Death & The Restitution Of All Things
But while the law condemns us and shews what man is, this "ministry of condemnation," needful in its place, is not and cannot be God's end.
The gospel, the "ministration of righteousness and life," is God's proper work, and, therefore, as St. Paul says, "remaineth;" (2 Cor. iii. 11.) but the law, the "ministration of death and condemnation," God's "strange work," (Isa. xxviii. 21.) is only a means to the end, and therefore, "to be abolished" and "done away." (2 Cor. iii. 11, 13.) St. Paul's teaching on this point is most express, though spite of his teaching, and spite of the gospel, not a few even of the Israel of God cannot yet steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished.
No less clear also is his witness as to God's promise to Abraham's seed, that it is not and cannot be altered or disannuled by the law, or by that curse and wrath and judgment which the law worketh. (Rom. iv. 15; v. 20; vii. 9, 11; Gal. iii. 10, 19.) So in his Epistle to the Galatians, having first shewn that God's promise to Abraham included all nations, and that the law necessarily could only bring judgment, he proceeds to argue that "this covenant of promise which was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect; for if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise." (Gal. iii. 8, 15, 17, 18) The law, which is and must be judgment to men, is needed to slay and overthrow them in their own eyes.
But this killing is to make alive.
The judgment or condemnation cannot in any case disannul the previous covenant. "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto." Judgment therefore must issue in blessing, not blessing in judgment. But for most the veil is yet on Moses' face, so that in looking at the "ministry of condemnation" men cannot see "the end of the Lord," and that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. (2 Cor. iii. 13; James v. 11.)
I have dwelt the more on this, because so few now seem to see why for us the way of life is and must be through death; and because, if this be seen, God's end and purpose and the reason of His judgments will be more evident.
God our Father judges to save. He only saves by judging what is evil. The evil must be overthrown; and through death God destroys him that has the power of death. A new creation, which is only brought in through death, is God's remedy for that which through a fall is held in death and bondage. Therefore both the "earth and heavens" must "perish and be changed." (Heb. i. 10-12.) Therefore God Himself "turns us to destruction" that we may "return" as little children. (Psa. xc. 3.)
And God's elect accept this judgment here, that their carnal mind may die, and the old man be slain with all his enmity. The world rejects God's judgment here, and therefore have to meet it in a more awful form in the resurrection of judgment in the coming world.
For while here, through the burdens and infirmities of "this vile body," (Phil. iii. 21.) our fallen spirit is more easily broken, and we die to sin more quickly; though even here we need both fires and waters, to make us die to that self-willed life which is our misery. Who can tell how much harder this death may be to those, who, having gone hence, have not the burden of "this vile body" to humble the pride of that fallen spirit, which, while unbroken, is hell, and which must die in us if we would reach God's rest.
Such is the reason for salvation by the cross, that is through death;but the great illustration here as elsewhere is to be found in the law, that appointed "shadow of good things," (Heb. x. 1.) which in all its varied forms of sacrifice asserts the same great truth, that only by the fire of God and through death can the earthly creature be changed, and so ascend to God. The offerings were indeed of different kinds, some of a sweet savour, which were offered on the altar in the tabernacle; (Lev. i. ii. iii.) while others not of a sweet savour were burnt on the earth, in some place outside the camp of Israel; (Lev. iv. v. vi.) figuring the varied relations in which men's works and persons might stand to God, and the varying place and manner of their acceptance to Him. But in either case, whether offered in obedience voluntarily, or required penally for trespass and disobedience, the offering was made by fire, and so perished in its first form to rise in another as pillars of smoke before God.
If then all this was "the pattern of things in the heavens," (Exod. xxv. 40; Heb. ix. 23.) we have another witness that a transformation wrought by fire is yet being carried on in the true heavens, that is the spiritual world. For no Divine change can be wrought even on God's elect, save by "passing through the waters and through the fires" which are appointed for us, waters and fires as real, though not of this world, as those which burnt on the altar of old, or moved in the laver of the tabernacle. Our Lord can no more spare our nature than the animal was spared of old by the priest who offered it.
And as He in His own body, made under the law, did not shrink from, but fulfilled, the types of suffering, so will He fulfill the same in the bodies of those who are His members, that "being made conformable unto His death, they may attain unto the resurrection from among the dead." (Phil. iii. 10, 11.)
In any case the way for all is through the fires, for fire is the great uniter and reconciler of all things; and things which without fire can never be united, in and through the fire are changed and become one.
Therefore every coming of Christ, even in grace, is a day of judgment. Therefore there are fires even for the elect both now, (1 S. Pet. i. 7, and iv. 12.) and in the coming day; (1 Cor. iii. 13, 15.) for "our God is a consuming fire;" (Heb. xii. 29.) and to dwell in Him we must have a life, which, because it is of the fire, for fire burns not fire, can stand unhurt in it. Therefore our Lord "came to cast fire into the earth," and desired nothing more than "that it should be already kindled;" (S. Luke xii. 49.) therefore He says, "Everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt." (S. Mark ix. 49.) For this is the very "baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire," (S. Matt. iii. 11.) that "spirit of judgment and burning," promised by the prophet, "with which the Lord shall purge away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and cleanse the blood of Jerusalem; after which He will create on every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and on all her assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day, and the brightness of flame of fire by night; and upon all, the glory shall be a defence; (Isa. iv. 4, 5.) for "He is like a refiner's fire, and like a fuller's soap; and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He shall purify the sons of Levi as gold and silver are purged, that they may offer to the Lord an offering of righteousness." (Mal. iii. 3). And as by the hidden fire of this present life, shut up in these bodies of corruption, we are able by the wondrous chemistry of nature through corruption to change the fruits and flesh of the earth into our blood, and from blood again into our flesh and bone and sinew; so by the fire of God can we be changed, and made partakers of Christ's flesh and blood. In and through Christ we have received this transmutation; (Rom. v. 11.) and through His Spirit, which is fire, is this same change accomplished in us.
NOTE:
It is surely a significant fact, that the two words used in Hebrew to express destruction, signify also, and are used to express, perfection; and that the word for a sacrifice by fire in Hebrew is the same as that for a bride or wife; e.g. Numbers xxviii. 6. By this double sense a veil covers the letter, veiling yet revealing God's purpose; for His purpose to the creature is through destruction to perfect it, and by fire to make it a bride unto the Lord. For a kindred reason some of the angels are called Seraphim, that is burning ones; for like the Lord, whose throne is flames of fire, (Dan. vii. 9,10.) they also are as fire; as it is written, "He makes His angels spirits, His messengers a flame of fire." (Heb. i. 7, and Psalm civ. 4.)
And as with the first-fruits, so with the harvest. The world to be saved must some day know the same baptism. For "the Lord will come with fire," and "by fire and by His sword will He plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many." (Isa. lxvi. 15, 16.) The promised baptism or outpouring of the Spirit must be judgment, for the Spirit cannot be poured on man without consuming this flesh to quicken a better life; Isa. xl. 7; and compare Rev. viii. 6, 7, which describes the effect produced by the breath or spirit of the Lord sounding through the trumpets of the heavenly sanctuary.) and "His sword, which cometh out of His mouth," (Rev. xix. 13, 15.) is that Word, which kills to make alive again. God is indeed "a man of war;" (Exod. xv. 3.) but His warfare and wrath, unlike the "wrath of man, which worketh not the righteousness of God," (S. James i. 20.) works both righteousness and life, and is set forth in that "warfare of the service of the tabernacle," (See Numbers iv. 23, 30, and viii. 24, 25; margin: and compare 1 Tim. i. 18.) by which that which was of the earth was made to ascend to God through fire a sweet sacrifice.
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/jukes2.html#p169
Quote from: pneuma on December 04, 2007, 04:41:16 PM
Quote
Brother/sister we are all fitted to destruction , wherein our old man is crucified forevermore no longer to rise again because a NEW MAN is standing where an old man once stood.
God will mend and restore us in His fire unto a perfect man.
My brother Pneuma, God who is consuming fire calls us into Himself to walk with Him. He that saves his life will destroy it, but he that destroys his life for My sake shall save it. The way up is down into the tomb of His great glory.
There are a few Hebrew words from the 20 plus distinct words for destruction that have the dual meaning to which Andrew Jukes has pointed our direction.
#07665= shabar ibx from the root shebar
To break in pieces
To break in, or down
To rend violently
To break/ rupture
To be broken, maimed, crippled, wrecked
To be crushed
To be shattered
Linked with to cause to break out, to bring to birth.
#02498 @wlx rooted in @lx chalaph primitive root
To pass on or away
To pass away
Linked with
To come on anew
To sprout again
To alter, change, renew
To change for the better
To show newness.
Double destruction #07670 rooted in #0776 & #02256 lbx (chebel)
Destruction
Birth pangs/ travail
Rooted in #02254 chabal
To be ruined, destroyed and broken & to bring forth in travail.
James 4:6
But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
I've always liked the premise of this verse. God's reason for resisting the proud would be to bring them to a place of humility, that they may receive grace. God is love.
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My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.- Isaiah 26:9