ENDURE TO THE END

Speaking of great tribulation, Jesus said: 

²¹ And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. ²² And you shall be hated of all men for My Name's sake: but he that endures to the end shall be saved. (Mat 10:21-22)

 Jesus is describing a very serious time! Soon, all twelve would suffer tribulation, primarily from Nero Caesar, but this must be something greater than that occasion. Think now of Nazi Germany wherein this was commonplace, but Jesus is speaking of the end.

So, what or when is the end? Was the end the death of the twelve apostles? The ‘end’ is telos — when a thing ceases to be. It could mean when the apostles cease to exist, and indeed they endured to the end, but scripture was not written just for them, and neither was it written for only the Jews!

To answer the question, When is the end? Jesus spoke of the end: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Mat 10:28). The end, end is the destruction of your existence. When it is the end for others, for the Christian, the end is a beginning.

That ending is when certain events happen. Of course, some might say it is ‘Judgment Day’ but that is appearance of the dead in the Court of God to reveal why they are guilty.

Paul, on behalf of Jesus, judged sinners at Corinth for in his absence, his Spirit (Jesus) was there for a reason: “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Satan would destroy the flesh, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus would save their Spirits, or souls.

When will that occur? “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first…” (1 Thes 4:16). That is the ‘Day of the Lord’ and ultimately when the flesh perishes, just as when Paul condemned the sinners at Corinth to die on behalf of Jesus because they did not cling to Will of God.

Submitted for your consideration is that the ‘end’ is on the real ‘Judgment Day’ when Jesus leaves the dead in their graves and saves both the body and the souls of those who were righteous in life, counter to the proposition that He will perish the body and the soul in that day.  

It is supposed that the repentant thief was buried in a pauper’s grave as was the custom in those times, so when Jesus comes again, the living soul of that man will be given new flesh and Jesus will save all the substances of that man, Dismus.

Dismus endured to his end, and in the final ending, his flesh will be saved when it becomes incorruptible. Speaking of the ‘Day of the Lord,’ Paul wrote, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor 15:52).

Death is the end for everyone so far as their worldly existence is concerned. Life is not so much that people reside on Earth but that they exist in another realm. Therefore, death is not so much cessation of the body but the perishing of the soul.

The dead shall be judged when Jesus sounds the trumpet. Only the righteous shall stand upright before the Lord, and those who remain in the grave will be told why when they appear before God on the classical ‘Judgment Day.’

Praying for the dead is not efficacious as Luke chapter 16 reveals. The end for them is at their demise. Death delivers the souls of the righteous to Paradise, and the souls of the unrighteous to Hell. Before the time of Jesus, the Jews alone were in Paradise and rested in the bosom of Abraham until Jesus would come for their bodies.

The end for those Jews who had been faithful to God was on the Resurrection Day of Jesus (Mat 27:53). That was the end for them for at that time, their bodies were made alive and joined their souls in Paradise.

The point to this discourse is that the ‘end’ is the end. The end comes when endurance (hypomeno) ceases — bearing the trials prepared for us in the world (i.e., tribulations). Christians shall have tribulations as the apostles did under Nero, and all Christians must endure what is obviously greater tribulations during the period preceding the ‘Day of the Lord” for those who remain alive until that time!

The popular belief is that Jesus will come like a mighty man to save the damned right before they are doomed. That may be the case, but it is far from certain. Jesus spoke of the time, when Christians are in a vicarious prison, afraid even to speak because even their own families will reveal their thoughts. It is in an age when the thought police are everywhere and nowhere can they be avoided. I submit that now is the ‘end’ for you cannot escape detection.

The end, end is when the death angel comes for you if you are not covered in the blood, as in the Passover of the Exodus. That was their end. Those who did not obey the sprinkling of the blood of the lamb were damned. Those who trusted the blood from life provided by God were save from Pharoah and went on their way toward Paradise.

All but a few died before arriving in the land of milk and honey because they suffered great tribulation even as they followed God most of the way. They failed to endure to the end. Endurance is not part way but all the way to the end!

Now consider the days of Noah which is the example for the ending. The test was 120 years of tribulation (Gen 6:3). Their tribulation was wickedness (Gen 6:5) of all sorts, but worst of all, miscegenation by mixing of the kinds (Gen 6:4).

Their end was what seemed to be pleasure, but the result was great tribulation. God shut the door to the Ark and no longer could the wicked enter in and consequently, they retained their wicked natures, even as they would scream for the door to be opened. In His silent manner, God was saying to them, “I never knew you: depart from Me, you that work iniquity” (Mat 7:23) as will be the case on judgment day. (Note that the Ark was a snatching up of the righteous in the same manner as in the end.) That last moment when God sounded His ‘trumpet” ever so silently that only eight entered in and the world was the end of mankind.

That is another way of looking at the end. It is the end of existence in this world whoever it is and whenever it occurs. For the twelve apostles, the end was in the reign of Nero, for us, it is the end of our lives, and for those living in the last days it is when they miss the rapture because of the love of this world.

The ‘rapture’ is when Jesus comes in the sky to gather the harvest. Do not expect many of the righteous to remain because Satan is the fool who sorts them out for God just as he was to do with Job. Yes, Satan is God’s ‘useful fool’ who does all the work for Him. He kills the body by imbuing it in sin, but God ends it for both the body and the soul, just as Jesus revealed.

The end, end is the rapture when God comes for the bodies to rejoin their souls. After that, nothing more can be said or done because those who were righteous shall be saved because they endured to the end, and those remaining shall perish because they did not.

What was it that Christians must endure? The world itself! Jesus came to overcome the world. Jesus said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

How is the world overcome? To trust that Jesus did it for us. We merely lean on the Power of His Spirit and the world is overcome! That is how to endure to the end! The minute we cease to no longer trust Jesus (apostasy) is when we fall (Heb 6:6).

Are you anxious? “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil 4:6; NIV).

(I spent the morning praying for two that are anxious and spent years praying for another person with anxiety.) The best way to cease anxiety is for them to pray and ask God to allay the fear in their minds, so I pray that they trust God to relieve that tribulation.)

Jesus went on telling the apostles about the end: 

¹⁸ And you shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ¹⁹ But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what you shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what you shall speak. ²⁰ For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you. (Mat 10:18-20)

 Jesus suffered those tribulations when He was forced to appear before governors and kings for the sake of Himself. He overcame the world so that you need not!

They — the authorities — delivered Jesus to His death. It was meant to be the end of Jesus! But for God; it was not meant to be! It would not be the end for Jesus because the Spirit spoke for Him.

When Jesus was crucified, His Body gave up the Ghost. That was the silent way that God would speak to Pilate and the repentant thief. They, along, with the centurion, Longinus, heard God ‘speak,’ not in Words but deeds. Jesus revealed His Inner Substance, and it was the Spirit that the Jewish patriarchs had seen so many times before.

Calm Pontius Pilate saw Jesus ‘speaking’ but the anxious chief priests and the governors failed to relieve their anxiety. For them, quick relief, was to execute the cause of their fears; and they would do that, not by welcoming Jesus, but killing Him.

What were their anxieties? That Jesus would be king and reveal their shenanigans, dishonesty, and the multitudes of sins that they were doing. (He called them out as ‘vipers’). Jesus revealed to the world how to allay feelings of anxiety, and it was not to fear those in authority, but to fear the One that can kill both their bodies and souls.

Hence, the world is tribulation! The Word made that plain when in the beginning, Jesus made that clear. Christians, every day, must overcome temptations — the ones that give rise to anxiety. Therefore, everyone alive must endure to the end whatever their end may be. They must overcome, not the gravity of the world itself, but the temptations of the world… spiritual ‘gravity.’

Just as gravity is the adversary that retains people here in this world, spiritual gravity is what retains our spirit at the Earth’s core, or ‘Hell.”

Sin is the pull of that spiritual gravity. The cosmopolitans of Noah’s time could not enter that door because sin would pull them down even when they were swimming against the rising waters with all their strength.

As it turns out, it is not you who must endure all things until the end, but trusting Christ to endure them for you, even all the Way to your Cross.

They are not out to get you, but because sin is of the mind, it is your own thoughts that seek your destruction, The thoughts of Jesus are what saves! Our thoughts are genetic and to whom we belong. It is our thoughts that can kill us, and even the demons know that!

(picture credit; Anxiety & Depression Association of America)

 

THE END