Stitching the Lord Jesus’ one-thousand-year earthly kingdom reign together with His eternal new heaven and new earth has been no easy task for this writer. One has to climb to the top of the highest mountain if they are to experience the ultimate view. Most of the time the trails up to this view are steep and sometimes treacherous.
But the view from the top is often found to be well worth the risks. This writer believes that if one can catch a small glimpse of the end purpose of God, all the pieces of the process of achieving that end will more easily fall into place.
Every study of God’s Word should begin with more knowledge of God. The more that we know about this absolutely amazing, invisible Being revealed from His Word, through His Son, and from His creation, the more we grow first to admire Him, then to stand in awe of Him, and finally and hopefully to deeply love Him.
A good place to start is with God’s eternal nature. Said simply, God has always been. He did not have a starting place, and He will have no end. God could not have created Himself because there never was a time when He was not. He is said to be “from everlasting to everlasting (Psa. 90:10). From everlasting goes back throughout all eternity. God had no “starting place.” If we believe this, then all that is had to come from Him. He had to become the source of everything – everything.
If this is truly the nature of God, then everything that exists, exists because God willed it to exist. Everything that is in time and space – including time and space itself – originated from Him. “For you create all things and by your will they exist” (Rev. 4:11). To everlasting means that everything that is to come must come from God. The future of this small planet, the coming kingdom reign of Jesus Christ, and the new heaven and earth must come from Him (Rev. 20-22).
Narrowing the character of God down, the seraphim’s words to the prophet Isaiah come to mind. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3)! The Hebrew word “holy” is kadosh meaning “set apart.” Simply put, God is not like us, nor is He like anything that He has created. He is the “Totally Other.”
He stands outside of all that He has made – every visible and invisible thing. He created it all and He sees it all in one glimpse: our small sun, moon, and the innumerable stars along with this comparatively tiny earth with all its inhabitants and all the countless heavenly beings. God is far bigger than anything that our puny human minds could ever imagine.
God must chuckle within Himself as He observes us attempting to box Him in and make Him like us. From just a casual understanding of what we know about God, it seems futile to even try. The shepherd boy says it, “Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure: Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him” (Psalm 2).
Thus all we can do is, as the song writer puts it, just stand amazed in His presence. Blessings!