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Our Lord gave special significance to the last meal He shared with His disciples. He said, “I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:16 KJV). During that meal, “he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: for I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come” (vv. 17-18).
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Our salvation by God’s infinite grace will be fully manifested when we behold our resurrected Savior in glory. Thus, “it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11, KJV).
What we have experienced, namely, full justification before God by faith, and what we are experiencing, namely, progressive sanctification, will be completed on that great day! “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
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When the true church, the spiritual body of Christ, finally experiences “the marriage supper of the Lamb” just before His second coming to the earth, she will be a spectacular bride, clothed “in fine linen, clean and white” (Rev. 19:8, KJV). Part of that bride was the church at Corinth, beset with carnality and various heresies. Paul wrote to them: “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ ” (2 Cor. 11:2).
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“All Israel” shall see their Lord and Savior, first by faith (in response to the preaching of the two witnesses of Revelation 11) and then (more than three years later) by physical sight at His second coming. Soon after that, they will behold Him serving them at the inaugural kingdom banquet! Our Lord told the Jews,
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We have presented two reasons Israel’s national conversion to Messiah cannot occur at His Second Coming in glory. First, people are converted by hearing and believing His Word, not by seeing Him physically, even in His glorified state. Second, Israel must have experienced her spiritual transformation three-and-a-half years before Christ’s return in order to take His Gospel message to all the Gentile nations of the earth (Matt. 24:14).
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National, ethnic Israel will turn to their long-rejected Messiah in genuine faith at least three years before they see Him at His second coming and at the inaugural banquet. By the midpoint of the 70th week of Daniel, 42 months before He returns to establish His kingdom, 144,000 Israelis will have been sealed by God—12,000 from each of the 12 tribes—to evangelize the entire world (Rev. 7:1-8; 13-14). The Messiah assured His disciples that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14, KJV).
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At the dawn of the millennial kingdom on earth, our Lord Jesus Christ will reveal Himself in bodily form to all glorified and non-glorified believers. Just as He revealed Himself and His true identity to His astonished disciples for 40 days after His resurrection, often at mealtimes, so also will be His self-revelation at the inaugural kingdom banquet.
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The greatest banquet in the history of the world will occur at the beginning of Christ’s 1,000-year kingdom in the Holy Land. The menu was announced 2,700 years ago (Isa. 25:6), and our Lord confirmed that the beverage would be the “fruit of the vine” (Matt. 26:29).
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In the early years of church history, there were men who denied the true humanity of Jesus. They were the Docetists, a significant branch of Gnosticism. They considered it blasphemous to imagine an infinite, holy, transcendent God contaminating Himself by assuming human flesh. This attitude reflected Greek philosophy, which held that matter is evil and that only the mind and spirit are good.
Reposted from 2011.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the triune God, who became the God-man by virtue of His virgin conception and incarnation, is the only human being in the universe who possesses a glorified body.
Consider for a moment the raising of Lazarus from the dead. This was one of the most spectacular sign miracles that the Lord Jesus performed at His first coming. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews were astounded by what Jesus did that day in Bethany near Jerusalem.
