Chapter 8
At the end of this age, the age of the Lord's second coming, the Lord Jesus will rapture the mature Christians to reign with Him for a thousand years. These will be the overcomers. They are not special Christians with extraordinary spiritual power, but are simply people who have allowed God's life to grow in them, spreading into and controlling their soul. The overcomers are not special; they are normal Christians. This is exactly the spiritual condition God wants for all of His children. And this is what Paul calls "arriving at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).
Those Christians who are not ready in this age will suffer at the time of the great tribulation in order that they might become mature through suffering. If the time now is not sufficient to cause them to mature, they will undergo discipline for a thousand years in outer darkness where there will be the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Surely, every genuine Christian wants to be an overcomer and be kept from the hour of trial that will come on the whole inhabited earth (Rev. 3:10). How can we be overcomers? In this chapter we will see that the tabernacle also shows us a clear and practical way to become overcomers.
We have already mentioned the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22:1-14. In Luke 14:15-24 we find a similar story, but with a different emphasis. In Luke, the guests who were invited to the great dinner had many excuses for not going to the wedding feast. One said that he had bought a piece of land and needed to go out to see it; another said that he had bought five yoke of oxen and was going to prove them; and another had gotten married and could not go. When the slaves told their master that no one would be coming, he became angry and commanded them to go out and find the poor, the crippled and the lame that they found in the streets and lanes of the city. After bringing them in, there was still room at the table. The master again ordered his slaves to go out and compel everyone they found on the roads to come, until the house was filled.
The great dinner in Luke is different from the wedding feast in Matthew, which refers to the recompense in the kingdom. The great dinner represents God's full salvation. God, symbolized by the man who prepared the dinner, has prepared His full salvation and sent the first apostles as His slaves to invite the Jews. But, because they were occupied with their many riches and were proud and wealthy, they rejected the invitation. Then God sent the apostles to invite the people who were in the streets. Because of their poverty and misery they quickly accepted the invitation. But there was still room in God's salvation for more people, so He sent His slaves to the Gentile world to bring them to the house of His salvation that it might be filled.
This shows us that our first function is to preach the gospel to people. We have the words and the ministry of reconciliation to compel people to be reconciled to God in the first stage. After that, our work continues as we lead people to know the Lord in the Holy Place and in the Holy of Holies. When we preach the gospel we are offering people the possibility of taking the first step to become overcomers. Today we need to preach the gospel to those who do not believe and we must help those who believe to continue to be reconciled in order to participate in the wedding feast in Matthew 22.
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