GOD UNVEILS HIS IMAGE IN FOUR ACTS
Teach me, O Holy Spirit, the Testimony of Jesus! let me Comprehend wonderous things out of the Divine Law!
Blake: Jerusalem Pl. 74.
I am but a fellow-servant with you and your brothers who bear their testimony to Jesus.
Rev. 19:10
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me
Matt. 11:29
“The yoke of the law” is a common rabbinical expression for the study of the scriptures. “Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead” (Rev. 1:5) proposes an exchange of the Scriptures based on his own personal experience for others based purely on speculation.
It is very difficult for man to change his understanding of the meaning of an event, once old accepted interpretations have become rigidly fixed in is mind. But the four acts of God which veil his “Image” (“Let us make man in our image” – Gen. 1:26) appear in a quite different light in prospect from what they really are seen to be in retrospect.
The Resurrection is God’s first act in the unveiling of his “Image.” It is fulfilled in a way man could never have guessed, by an awakening in his skull, not at the end of his history, but within his history. Resurrection is an event happening within the earthly life of man. Our human life has its significance only and always in relation to our resurrection. The man so awakened is “declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead; it is about Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:4).
Participation in the life of the age to come depends on God’s act of awakening the dead.
We are resurrected one by one to unite into a single Man, who is God:
And the Lord will become king over all the earth: on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.
(Zec. 14:9)
Resurrection is an individual experience, an awakening in one’s own skull, followed instantly by a supernatural birth from his skull, a privileged birth in a new creation. This is effected by the grace of God alone; and only of such an awakening does the New Testament use the term “the resurrection.” All other men apart from the resurrected are, at death, restored to life only to die again.
There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife. And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”
(Luke 20: 27-36)
He hath awakened from the dream of life ‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife.
Shelley
God’s purpose lies not in evolving the natural order but in awakening his sons associated with it.
For the created universe waits with eager expectation for God’s sons to be revealed.
(Rom. 8:19)
Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete. I tell you this: so long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a stroke will disappear from the Law until all that must happen has happened.
(Matt. 5: 17-18)
My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this was I born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to truth listen to my voice.
(John 18 37-38)
I was dead and now I am alive for evermore.
(Rev. 1:18)
Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead.
(Rev. 1:5)
The testimony of Jesus should be heard and responded to. Some will be convinced by what he says, while others will disbelieve. The testimony of Jesus cannot be induced at will. It is the unveiling of God’s Image. This sudden and completely unexpected awakening in one’s skull, to find it to be a sepulcher in which you had been entombed, is bewildering and perplexing.
The Resurrection is God’s first act in the unveiling of is primal wish, “let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26).
The one who started the good work in you will bring it to completion by the Day of Jesus Christ.
(Phil. 1:6)
Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). God’s work in you is completed, when “you take the shape of Christ” (Gal. 4:19). Then you will be awakened and raised from the dead.
The first act by which God unveils “the Son who is the effulgence of God’s splendour and the stamp of God’s very being” (Heb. 1:3) is a double act. It awakens the sleeper and brings him forth from his skull: Born anew.
Awake, sleeper,
Rise from the dead,
And Christ will shine upon you.
Ephesians 5:14
He is “born anew … through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for him” (I Peter 1: 3-4).
The “new birth” follows “the resurrection.”
Flesh can give birth only to flesh; it is spirit that gives birth to spirit. You ought not to be astonished, then, when I tell you that you must be born over again. The wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So with everyone who is born from spirit.
(John 3: 6-8)
Man awakens within his skull to discover that he is entombed within it. Intuitively he knows that if he pushes the base of the skull an opening will be made and he will emerge. He pushes the base, finds an opening and comes out the head first in the same manner a child is born. As he contemplates the skull out of which he has just emerged, suddenly there comes a sound like that of a strong driving wind which fills the whole room; he hears the sound of it, but he does not know ‘where it comes from or where it is going.’ His attention is diverted for a moment from the body out of which he has just emerged by the sound of the wind. When looking back to the body he is surprised to find that it has been removed and in its place sit three men; one sits where the head was and two sit where the feet were.
They, too, hear the sound of the mighty win but do not know “where it comes from or where it is going.” They do not see the man who is born from his skull but they find the sign of his birth; a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying on the floor.
Today in the city of David a deliverer has been born to you – the Messiah, the Lord. And this is your sign; you will find a baby lying all wrapped up, in a manger.
(Luke 2: 11-12)
They find the sign of his birth but not the twice-born man, for he is now “declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead.” (Rom. 1-4).
My Father and I are one.
(John 10:30).