There is an American approach to Scripture that has likely emerged from a love of individualism and personal interests. Persons often read the Bible to validate themselves. Many hours spent in Bible study do not assure advance in objective thought. It is a bit of arrogance for one to say that the Bible means what I say it means, because I tend to adjust it to my experience. Relating to it is not adjusting it. Relating is helpful if done rightly. Unfortunately the matter often stops there. Scripture should help me to understand my experience, but it goes much further with large objectives. Scripture does not exist to excuse me or validate me fully, even if much of my conduct may be found virtuous. It confronts me with God, and what I need to know of him. It confronts me with myself and what I need to know about myself relating to God. It presents me with a situation that offers redemption to immortality. It presents me with an opportunity to consider in advance the matter of my responsibility at the bar of God, and how to prepare for it.
God appears to be telling us something that could make life easier and more sensible as we contemplate a future that includes blessing or cursing. If we were better thinkers in Bible exposition we might rise above the lower elevations of amateur theology. For example, what if we believed that every person at death is complete for whatever lies beyond the grave? Heaven will be populated with persons holding a range of experiences. Some inheritances will be larger than others, but each person will feel he/she is fully warranted. Just as a pint jar, when filled is full, and a quart jar is filled when full, so the simplistic Christian who never made progress as God’s pilgrim will be full at the level of that person’s desire to relate to God – as lived out in the course of his earth-life journey. Those having, in time, sought God so fulfilling the Scripture, prayer, and the whole of life context will likely have larger volume than lesser devoted. But, all will be full to their own capacity. Heaven is not populated by persons pressed out by divine cookie cutters. We tend to accumulate whatever we deem to be our riches, but God qualifies his children. Emphases from persons and God vary. Mankind pours a little wine in a large glass. God fills the glass, no matter how large or small it may be. All is fitting. All is made suitable.
Melchizedek in ancient times contemplated God, the creation and man’s place in it. The lives of devout persons through the millennia are a matter of record. What they saw and experienced in prayer and devotion, from service and seeking, have come down to us in part, but full information rests in God, with some noted in Scripture and some in history books. The concept that God can indwell persons is largely missed in human contemplation. God is busy out there some place. Persons die, and we are informed by friends that the loved ones are somewhere present. It is suggested that they are looking down, cheering us on. Mother is smiling on us on from heaven’s battlements. Lincoln has found out that he is more popular than ever. Analysts, recognizing the largeness of true religion, wonder what that means to the story. It is unlikely that those who have died know what is happening here. It is over for them, all over. Remembrance is lost in the glory of the presence of God. The perfect Eden is found, why go back to the imperfect? (Isaiah 65:17) We know not all, but enough. We may distort the known with speculations about the unknown. There is no need for the speculation falls far short of the reality. I lived as an embryo in the environment of my mother’s womb. It is not recalled in the external nature, a nature that will be forgotten in the exceeding grandeur of the context of immortality. There is no benefit to the citizens of heaven to relate to human life, or attend earth-life stumbling. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020