A Christmas Gift to the American Home and the Youth of AmericaGravengaard, N. P. (Niels Peter)
Religion
A Christmas Gift to the American Home and the Youth of America
Gravengaard, N. P. (Niels Peter)
Christmas -- Devotional literature; Devotional literature
The power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ does not work here in
the same way as in the case of the resurrection of Lazarus; for there
it acted unrestrainedly and visibly, even to the unbelieving Jewish
people. Here it works invisibly, but none the less tangibly, and a far
greater goal is to be attained. I am not to be resurrected like Lazarus
to once more live under conditions of sin, and to once more face death.
I am to be resurrected from death and from the conditions of sin wholly
prepared to be at home in the halls of Heaven. In order to achieve this
I am not to look for _sensations_ and _movements_ in bluish dimness,
but to adhere faithfully to the regulated, law-restrained acts of the
powers within the church of the Lord.
It is in the faith in this action of the powers that we are, with Paul
the apostle, to look forward to the resurrection of all things. I do
not think that through the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
all things are to be restored to the extent, as some have thought, that
even the devil himself is to enter into the kingdom of God and become
a leader of angels as he had been before; nor do I think that the
godless and the infidels will be placed among the Godfearing and the
faithful in the Kingdom of Heaven without repentance and faith. But I
do believe for a certainty that all things are to be restored according
to the eternal design of God in which the power of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ is allowed to act. And for that we are yearning within the
church.
But nature also yearns; that, too, is subject to corruption. That, too,
shall be freed of the thraldom of corruption into the glorious freedom
of the children of God. When the power of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ has penetrated nature, then it will appear as the new earth in
which justice abideth. But just as man must pass through death, through
perdition, humanly seen, so the ancient earth must pass through death
and perdition, and the scripture testifies with equal firmness in the
case of both, that man must die and the earth must perish.
Then the great miracle has happened that everywhere in the life of man
and in nature where the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is
working, the restoration of all things has taken place, and the rest
has been completely segregated from us so that it no longer may tempt
or ensnare us. All bonds have broken. The miracle has been accomplished
in its entire extent in accordance with the counsel of the wisdom of
God--that miracle which was begun when the only begotten Son of God was
conceived by a woman--that miracle which, as far as you are concerned,
took place when He was conceived within you at the sacred moment of
baptism.
It is said about the miracle of Jesus at Cana that it was a _token_,
and that may be said about all the miracles of the Lord. But, of what
are they tokens? Of the fact that His power can conquer everywhere,
_in nature, in the life of mankind, and in the spiritual world_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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