Читать книгу The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things - Andrew Jukes - Страница 14

that there shall be “a restitution of all things,” adding that “God hath spoken of this by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”¹ St. Paul further declares this wondrous “mystery of God's will, that He hath purposed in Himself, according to His good pleasure, to rehead² and reconcile³ unto Himself, in and by Christ, all things, whether they be things in heaven, “that is the spirit-world, where the conflict with Satan yet is,⁴ “or things on earth,” that is this outward world, where death now reigns, and where even God's elect are by nature children of wrath, even as other men.⁵ Further St. Paul asserts that “all creation, which now groans, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”⁶ In another place he declares, that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself,”⁷ and that Christ “took our flesh and blood, through death to destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;”⁸ that “if by the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many;”⁹ that “therefore as by the offence of one, or by one offence, judgment came on all to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, or by one righteousness, the free gift should come on all unto justification of life,” while “they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ;”¹⁰ that “as sin hath reigned unto death, so grace might reign unto eternal life,” yea, that “where sin abounded, grace did yet much more abound.”¹¹ To another church he states the same doctrine, that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,”¹² and that “the end” shall not come “till all are subject to Him,” that “God may be,” not all in some, but “all in all; for He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet; the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”¹³ So he says again, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, . . . that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth,even in Him.”¹⁴ To the same purpose he writes in another epistle, “that at the name of Jesus, (that is Saviour,) every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father;”¹⁵ “for to this end