Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Inspirational
- Fiction No
The room was filled with an atmosphere of peace, I knew in my heart as I held him in my arms and wiped his gaunt face, this will be the day I have to give him up. He squeezed my hand and struggling he said "Son stay away from cisterns, stay close to the well, be Full of The Holy Spirit, and Stay True To Your Calling Stand Fast, This is Only The Beginning, I will meet you in Glory, and don't worry, I will be the same, just watch for me I will be somewhere near Jesus".
I leaned over kissed him and whispered "I Love You Dad" and he took his last breath. Even though I knew he had departed to a place of victory, an empty feeling of loneliness, grief and uncertainty flooded my soul. What do you mean Poppa He was only gone a few seconds? Yes, but it seemed an eternity. I knew I could no longer have coffee or go fishing with him, and I could no longer get advice or council from his wisdom. He was one of the few that were able to keep my feet on the ground, and I wondered, would I be able to make it without him?
I was having coffee with him one morning complaining about a job I had, how the people were a bunch of hirelings the owner was a Du-fuss and didn't know anything etc.etc. On and on I went, complaining for about an hour. Dad just sat there never spoke a word, just sipped his coffee as many old timers do. Finally I asked him what he thought about all that, his answer was short and simple. "Son if you ever find the perfect place to work, or the perfect church, make sure you don't go to either place". I said what do you mean? Dad said, "cause it won't be perfect anymore"...No his name wasn't Solomon, but he sure knew how to handle me... I was a little scared and knew I was going to miss him, Yes, even his rebuke when needed. I think I know how the disciples must have felt, when Jesus left them and went back to glory...
"And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up: and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel: which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11).
"While they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight"...There was a cloud to receive Him...What kind of a cloud was that? Was it a moisture cloud?..No..No..No.. This was the same Shekinah glory cloud that had filled the tabernacle. In His prayer He had prayed: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5). When He was born into this world, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes. When He left this earth, He was wrapped in glory clouds. This is the way He returned to the Father's right hand...
I want you to notice especially those precious words, "This same Jesus." Men often talk of needing a new Christ for a new age. In a book, which has been widely read, the writer states that a changing order demands a fresh revelation of God, that we cannot think of any past revelation as "the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” He declares that inasmuch as times change, people change, and our viewpoints change, it is not to be supposed that the Christ of two thousand years ago will meet the needs of men today. God reveals Himself in different ways and He may have another revelation of Himself which will soon break upon us making all previous ones obsolete!....It is very common to hear people using that kind of language today....but when we turn to the blessed Book of God, we find that our Lord Jesus Christ is God's last word to men. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, verses 1 and 2, we read..."God, who at sundry times and in divers manners . . . in many ways...spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son...whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds."...The word translated, "worlds" here is the customary word for "ages,"...and that verse can be translated.."By whom also He fitted the ages together." Christ is the beginning.. Christ is the center...and Christ is the end of all the ages.."Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and Upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself accomplished a purification for sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb. 1:3). And there He sits today, the same blessed Savior that He was when here on earth.."Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today, and forever”!
This is the One who came in grace into this world, assumed a servant's form, passed angels by, and became a Man for our redemption. Do we need a different Christ? Where will we find Him? God Himself has already come down to us and there is none higher than He to come.
We look for no other Christ; there can be none other. God has been fully revealed in Him. I believe that is involved in the expression: "In the beginning was the Word". "The Logos." I wonder sometimes whether the Spirit of God did not intend this message given through John, to be the answer to the yearning cry of Plato and his followers throughout the Greek-speaking world. You remember that Plato, dazed, amazed, as he thought of the great mysteries of life, death and eternity, said on one occasion to that little group in Athens discussing these questions: "It may be that some day there will come forth from God a Word, a Logos, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain." And the Spirit of God, through the Apostle John, says, "Yes, and He has come, the Logos was made flesh, became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
Jesus Christ the same yesterday and Jesus Christ the same today . . . for having by Himself made purification for sins He has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. I wonder if you have ever noticed that the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is attributed to every Person of the Holy Trinity. We read in one instance that the Father raised Him from the dead . . . we read again that...He was quickened by the Spirit...and then we hear Him saying, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."...
The Father raised Him from the dead. The Spirit raised Him from the dead...and the Son raised Himself from the dead...He says, "I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it again."
Hallelujah! Poppa gotta stop and shout awhile, be right back!
So intimate is the relationship subsisting between the three Persons of the Trinity that the one Person does not act apart from the other. As Christ walked here on earth, the Father walked here also, and now that He has gone back to the Father He says, "I will send the Comforter;" but He also says, "If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him." By the reception of the Holy Spirit we now receive the Father and the Son. How wonderfully are we blessed! When our Saviour comes again, God is coming to take control of things in this world...Father, Son and Holy Spirit in council in the past eternity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working out our salvation here on earth; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bringing in the glory by and by when the long period of man's trial is over, when the kingdom is fully established, and the Lord Jesus Christ abides forevermore. Oh' Glory to God!!
In the seventeenth chapter of John the Lord Jesus Christ is addressing the Father in His great High Priestly prayer, and He says, "And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." He came from that glory into the degradation and humiliation of that, which resulted in the cross, and now He has gone back to that glory but He remains a Man in glory still. Does your soul get hold of that? Some Christians have lost the blessedness of it; they think Christ is no longer the Man Christ Jesus that He was when here on earth, but Scripture says, "There is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). And as the Man in glory He is seated on the Father's throne, waiting until the day of His triumph when His enemies shall be made His footstool. For the One who is coming back is Jesus Christ who is "the same yesterday and today and forever."
"This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." Away with the ridiculous errorists who tell us that Christ will never come back again as a Man, that He only exists now as a part of the all-pervading spirit of the universe! He who walked on earth as the lowly Man of Galilee, knelt in agony in Gethsemane's garden, cried in anguish from the cross, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" later surrendered His spirit in peace to the Father as He exclaimed, "It is finished!" He, who was raised from the dead, walked for forty wonderful days among His disciples and then led them out one day to the Mount of Olives. Was suddenly parted from them and ascended up and up until a cloud, the royal chariot of heaven, came down and received Him out of their sight and wafted Him away to the Father's house from which He had come...this same Jesus will be unchanged when He comes back. I remember when a boy we sang in Sunday School:
"I think when I read that sweet story of old. When Jesus was here among men. How He called little children as lambs to His fold. I should like to have been with them then. ."I wish that His hands had been placed on my head. That His arms had been thrown around me...And that I might have seen His kind look when He said, 'Let the little ones come unto Me.' "
I can remember as well as though it were yesterday how I would say to myself, "My! I wish I had been born sooner. I wish I had lived when Jesus was here. Those boys in Galilee and Judea had something I will never have. He is so changed now, I will never hear His voice as they did; I will never see those kind eyes as they did; I have been born altogether too late."
But after I was saved and began to understand this blessed Book of God, I learned that the same precious, adorable Saviour, unchanged and unchangeable, is the One I shall see when He returns. The only difference is that He will come in His kingly robes. He was here on earth in lowly garb, but it is just the outward semblance that is changed. He will be in royal apparel when He returns. How gladly we will greet Him and bow at His feet when we adore Him as King of kings and Lord of lords.
He came the first time to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself and on yonder cross He, the Lord of glory, died. There He bore the judgment that your sins and mine deserved; there as our Surety He took our place. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). Today He lives in glory, the exalted One, mighty to save, for "God hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified," Peter says, "to be both Lord and Christ." And He is the risen One. He is inviting weary burdened souls to find rest at His feet.
The cycle from birth to death is a testament to our human mutability. The supple, sweet flesh of a newborn prospers like a flower and then fades and wrinkles and is finally cast off in death. Human personality never ceases changing. Some freshen with time, others sour, most do a little of both. Relationships wax and wane. To meet one twenty years from now may be to meet another person. Forests rise and stand for a millennium and fade into deserts. Rivers cut canyons and disappear. Newtonian physics, with its straight lines and right angles, is replaced by Einstein's elegant curves of relativity. The only thing that is sure is change! We humans appear for a little while to laugh and weep and work and play, and then we are gone. This is a melancholy thought at best. Our souls long for something solid.
But the great truth is, God does not change, and neither does the Holy Spirit or the Son, Jesus Christ. In fact, the very same Old Testament Scriptures and wording that describe God the Father's immutableness are applied directly to Christ (Psalm 102:27.Hebrews 1:12.Isaiah 48:12 and Rev. 1:17). This means that though the Savior has ascended into Heaven and dwells in that splendor, he is the same! He is the same in his wrath and his love and mercy and compassion and tenderness as he was here on earth. Yesterday Jesus "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death" (Hebrews 5:7). Today he is the high priest before the Father who is able to sympathize with our weakness because he "has been tempted in every way, just as we are yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). And forever this same Jesus "always lives to intercede for them" (Hebrews 7:25). Our priest is eternally the same and eternally contemporary. We need not fear opinion changes or mood swings in Jesus!
No matter what lies ahead in this always changing world with its drifting continents and fading suns no matter what the seas may bring, we must sustain ourselves with this double-focus...remembering those who have gone before...and focusing on Jesus Christ, our eternal, unchangeable contemporary. Those who truly do this will navigate the roughest seas....
I still hear the last words my Father whispered to me, as he crossed Jordan, the Holy Spirit has brought them to my memory many times over the years,
"Son stay away from cisterns, stay close to the well, be Full of The Holy Spirit, and Stay True To Your Calling Stand Fast, This is Only The Beginning, I will meet you in Glory, and don't worry, I will be the same, just watch for me I will be somewhere near Jesus". .....continued
"Hallelujah What A Saviour"
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