"But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
"And then they will see the son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angel, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of Heaven.
3 comments:
our hope is in Jesus, the son of God. faith, hope, and love. press on toward the goal. the four winds...more than i can imagine, my heart knows it is true.
Okay, this first paragraph comes down to a poetical way of saying that the whole human world will be in turmoil...
but there's a question or two about the rest of it.
1) "son of man." Aramaic idiom for "me"? The symbolic figure from the book of Daniel, standing for a new worldwide empire of a human/humane (rather than ravenous!) nature? Humankind (== "son of Adam")? or literally a certain human being we call "Jesus"? Or the fulfillment of his legacy?
2) What's this "coming in clouds with power & glory" bit? Is this just another version of "God is coming, and man is she pissed!!!"? Is it, in other words (as some people seem to take it) about God setting everything right by force & violence, like we humans would (imagine we could) do it only more so?
3) How are "his elect" gathered, and for what reason? Literally?-- to take off into the sky somewhere? Or gathered into an invisible pattern on this earth? To merely escape, or to serve as a means of redemption? And does this imply an invidious distinction between we "elect" and all you Wicked folks?
I must say that I, just in the course of the past couple years, have had an immense experience of the coming of the Lord. This has set my whole life into immense turmoil, incidentally. The arrival of the Savior in my life has been followed, particularly starting in the last six months, with a very intense sense of the "elect of God" being gathered together. I have the sense that God is gathering a spiritual community together to do the will of the Lord, and this feels like an active action on the part of God, not merely the independent decisions of many individuals.
Micah Bales
http://lambswar.blogspot.com
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