DAY OF REST – Part 2 of 2

 People tell me that understanding everything in the Bible is not a great goal. For me, it is an unobtainable goal because all Holy Scripture is the Word (Jesus) of God. If He had not wanted us to consider it, He would not have inspired it to be written.

  Why would it matter to those who believe to understand creation and time? Because only God can create, and only God can re-create. There must be a Creator to save us in the end! Then when shall we be saved? At the end of time in this world. Is it not rational, therefore, to consider when time ends? Is it no interesting to know when Christians can “rest” from this world?

  When I was a child, I believed that the world would end. No thing is forever! That is from the Second Law of Thermodynamics and is called, “entropy.” I was a budding scientist even as a child because I understood that someday the sun would burn out.

  But long before that, I too would “burn out.” The decay of our bodies is a non-isentropic process that is irreversible by the laws of the world. Only the Law of God can regenerate my flesh and bones to what they were in the beginning; not my beginning, but the quality in which God created Adam — with incorruptible isentropic flesh and bones! Man was created immortal, and their bodies were as durable as their immortal souls.

  Death commenced when Adam was cast out of the perfect environment of Paradise in the Garden. Let us examine whether the “world clock” started then or earlier. Won’t that be fun… or at least interesting? Now, go explore time… all eight days of it! 

KEY VERSES: ¹ Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. ² For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. ³ For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

“So I swore in My wrath,

‘They shall not enter My rest,’

”although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. ⁴ For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; ⁵ and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”…  ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. (Heb 4:1-4.8-9) 

  “Rest” is asleep. Death is  likened to sleep: “The graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection” (Mat 27:51-52). Seventh Day Adventists believe in “soul sleep;” that the soul rests until the resurrection. When the daughter of Jairus died, her soul left when she died but returned to her when her body was “awakened.” (Mark 5; Luke 8). Her soul was active in “heaven” while her flesh and bones “slept.”  That agrees with Jublilees 23:31 — “their bones will rest in the Earth, and their spirits will have much joy.”

  “Joy” is “chara” in the Greek, meaning “cheerful,” or “calm delight” (Strong’s Dict.).  Rebirth is that calm delight that is called “hope,” but that state is not reached until the soul is in heaven. Jairus’s daughter, like Lazarus, was safe in “Abraham’s Bosom,” because they both had the faith of Abraham, and Abraham’s great faith comforted them. Their hope had become reality, and Abraham comforted their living souls. That was temporary until Jesus was resurrected, then all the patriarchs were then comforted in Jesus’s Bosom until Jesus returned for their flesh and bones at the rapture. In a way, they slept with Abraham in his bosom just as sacred literature credits Jacob (Israel) with doing.

  Right now, the Hebrew patriarchs sleep in the bosom of “Joshua” (Jesus) because that was what was inferred to the Hebrews. The writer even mentioned that in verse 8 of the key verses. “The people of God” — the chosen and peculiar Hebrews (Deut 14:2) and the chosen and peculiar Gentiles (1 Pet 2:9) — look for a day of rest. Hence, as is written, “To live is Christ; to die is gain” (Phil 1:21) because death is rest (sleep) from the tribulation of the world. The Christians who have died with steadfast faith have endured tribulations of the world to the end (Mat 10:22-23). Then, “rest” is from the tribulations of the world.

  Now back to the subject of time to conclude part 1: Life is tribulation. Death is rest from tribulation. Just as God rested on the seventh “day” in the genesis of the earth, God will rest on the seventh “day” of its “re-genesis.” Perhaps the “days” in Genesis chapter one are 1000 year-days just as the life in this world is seven-thousand years — six-thousand years of God working to regenerate His creatures, and one-thousand year “day” of “rest” when he comes back to rule the world; what is called the “second coming of Christ.” For pre-millennialists, before that thousand-year day of rest, their sleeping bones will be taken-up (raptured) and reunited with their joyous souls.

  If God (Jesus) rests on the seventh day again, then that “day” will be the thousand-year reign. Then the existence of the world before it is destroyed and regenerated is seven-thousand years. Jews believe Anno Mundi commenced with the Genesis 1:1. Perhaps it truly started when Adam was cast out of the Garden where life was immortal, into mortality, where God had to continue His work again for six more “days” before He rests again for another “day” of one-thousand years.

  My implication is that perhaps creation was not seven “days” but seven-thousand years. The “clock” (sun) would have been superfluous since Adam and Eve would not have been “clock-watchers” since until they sinned, they were immortal.

  If that is true, then Adam’s ticking “clock” would not have started until he was cast out into the world. Remember that isolation from God is “death” and both Adam and Eve missed that point when they ate forbidden food. If that is the case, Adam died on the first “world day” at 930 years of age (AM 930). No man, even Methuselah, would break the one “day” mark. Indeed, Adam did the first millennial day. Only Melchizedek (pre-incarnate Jesus) would live beyond that limit.

  Adam never aged in the Garden. His time would not commence until he was out of the Garden into the world. Some write that Adam sinned on the fifth “day” in the Garden. If “day” was meaningless, that “day” could have been any period within eternity.

  Jesus, a priest on the order of Melchizedek, would be Priest for six-thousand years and Priest and King for another thousand. The Edenic Covenant from Genesis 3:15 is that Adam would be redeemed. The Book of Adam and Eve assigns that as five-and-one-half “days” and referred to that as 5500 years. Adam would be redeemed during the sixth “day” or AM 5500, if time started with sin.

  If Jesus comes to reign at the beginning of the seventh “day” then Adam would be redeemed 500 years previous. Perhaps the redemption is when Christ comes to rapture those who are dead in Christ, or perhaps, as I write in my book, The Skull of Adam, that Adam was one of those resurrected when Jesus was; when the curtain was torn asunder.

  That is not known, so it makes sense that nobody knows the day nor the hour (Mat 25:13), not even the year, that Jesus will come for those in Christ. However, we do know the times. It is in the sixth day. What year is it, according to the Jewish calendar? AM 5781. We may be in the sixth “day” if they are correct. Although Jewish writers call that 5781 from the beginning of time, what if it is from the beginning of “death,” or life in the world? “Now is the time of salvation” as is written, “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom 13:11).

  Anno Mundi is the "year of the world," not the "year of the beginning." The clock began ticking for Adam, not in the protective atmosphere of the Garden, but in the world. For Anno Mundi to be accurate, the focus would be in the world where time is of paramount, not in the Garden where it is not!

  Existence in the world is true “sleep” because the soul is empty of those not in Christ. They are dead to Jesus. “Rest” will come after they awakened from that sleep. “Rest” is not when one first believes, but when they have obtained the prize (1 Cor 9:24). The “prize” is salvation when the bones leave their place of rest and become joyous with their soul. That is the General Resurrection, or the rapture of the pillars of the Church. That “day” is regeneration to Paradise lost. Then there will be no more “time” for the dead as they enter the eighth eternal “day.”

  You see here that for God, one day is as a thousand years, but conversely one-thousand years is as one day. With that, creation was perhaps seven-thousand years, and the world is as if seven days. If eternity is the eighth day, according to Jewish writers, then a “day” in scripture can be any period between 24 hours and infinity. It is whatever God defines to suit His Purposes. Whatever the time,  now we are nearer to that day than when we first believed, and now is the time to live like it! 

(picture credit: Wired Uk; "Doomsday Clock")

nearer to that day than when we first believed, and now is the time to live like it!