The gradual work of separating sheep and goats will require all of the Millennial Age for its accomplishment. During that age, each individual as he comes gradually to a knowledge of God and his will, by conforming or not conforming thereto, takes his place at the right hand of favor, or the left hand of disfavor accordingly as he either improves or fails to improve the opportunities of that golden age. By the end of that age, all the…
APPLICATION OF THIS PARABLE Next follows a description of the work of the Millennial Age. “Before Him shall be gathered all nations” This means all the people of the world outside of the Lord’s holy nation, His peculiar people, the Church. Everybody except the Church will be before His great white Throne of Justice, Mercy and Love; that will be their judgment time. Six thousand years ago, Adam and his entire race were judged in Eden, and the sentence was…
“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. And being…
“Lazarus represented the God-fearing people of other nations debarred, until the close of the Jewish Age, from those blessings conferred upon Israel specially. As the linen represented Israel’s justification, so the sores represented moral defilement in this class, for whose justification no sin-offering had at that time been made. They were not even typically cleansed, and had as yet no share in the rich promises of the kingdom. They were on the contrary outcasts, strangers from the commonwealth of Israel….
(Matt. 25:14-30) HOW SHALL WE PAY OUR VOWS? This is an important question with all the truly consecrated, and one surely of paramount importance. Let us consider, then, that when we consecrated ourselves fully to the Lord, we thereby signified that we would hold nothing back for self. That consecration included all our possessions, our time, our physical energies and our mental attainments. And it implied the sacrifice of all our former earthly ambitions hopes and aims, so that we…
The following extracts with regards to Matt 13:24-30; 36-43 were taken from various Bible Student materials VERSE 24 “Another parable put Him forth unto them (This parable stands related to the one before, “The Parable of the Sower” The first prepares the way for the other. The first deals with the individual; the second with the church collectively.) Saying, The kingdom of heaven (Practically every parable which our Lord uttered was given to teach something respecting the character of the…