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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (19257)	7/18/1998 10:21:00 PM
From: Jamey	Respond to of 39621

THE PARABLE OF THE NET(continued) (MATTHEW I3:47-50) The parable of the net sums up the truth embodied in the preceding parables. Jesus here likened the kingdom of heaven to a net drawn in from the sea containing both good and bad fish: Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 13:47-50) This parable again emphasizes that the kingdom of heaven includes both those who are saved and those who profess to be a part of the kingdom of heaven, in contrast to the universal usage of the term "kingdom of God," which refers only to those who are saved. The parable declares that the sphere of profession represented by the bad fish will be separated from the true fish, or true believers, at the end of the age. The age in mind here, as in the previous parables, is the whole inter-advent period from the time of Christ on earth to the time of his second coming. The parables do not take into consideration the special character of the church age from Pcntecost to the Rapture. The climax accordingly, is different from that at the Rapture. At the rapture of the church, believers will be caught out of the world and taken to heaven, but all others will be left on the earth. At the Second Coming, however, there will be a worldwide judgment, and those who are saved will be separated from those who are not saved, whether Jcws or Gentiles, as the millennial kingdom does not allow unsaved adults to enter the kingdom. This is brought out later in Matthew 25:31q6 as well as in Ezekiel 20:33-38. The illustration Christ used refers to a net that could be as long as a half mile. It would require several boats to carry it out to sea and as many to bring it back to land. The gathering of the fish would be much too large for any one boat to handle. Likewise, this refers to the worldwide judgment at Christ's second coming when those who are not worthy to enter the kingdom will be discarded and put to death. At the Second Coming there will be a series of judgments dealing with those living on earth. Jews and Gentiles will be judged and unbelievers purged out. old Testament saints will be resurrected and rewarded (Dan. 12:2-3). Also, the martyrs of the Great Tribulation, who died because they would not worship the beast, will be resurrected to share in Christ's millennial kingdom (Rev. 20:1-3). ~ The content of the Matthew 13 parables does much to illustrate what will happen between the first and second comings of Christ. Instead of bringing in the prophesied kingdom in his first coming, Christ here predicted a long period of time in which the prophecies of these parables would be fulfilled. The climax of the second coming of Christ will involve the divine judgments. Then, and only then, will Jesus fulfill the prophecies of a kingdom on earth which, according to Revelation 20, will go on for a thousand years before the present heaven and earth are destroyed and a new heaven and new earth are created. This revelation should have alerted the disciples to the fact that Jesus would not bring in the kingdom immediately; it seems, however, that they did not understand this even at the time of Christ's ascension, and still wanted to know when he would bring in the kingdom. The content of these parables makes impossible the postmillennial concept that the present age is the Millennium in which Christ is going to rule in the hearts of people from sea to sea. It also does not in any sense justify the amillennial contention that the millennial kingdom prophecies are being fulfilled in the present age. Rather, it confirms that the fulfillment of the kingdom promise, as far as the millennial kingdom is concerned, will be postponed until the second coming of Christ. Meanwhile, in the present age the mystery form of the kingdom is being fulfilled-that is, the form of the kingdom not anticipated in the Old Testament, in which Christ rules spiritually in the hearts of believers without fulfilling the prophecies of the kingdom on earth. John Walvoord Santiago