seeing the divine history from Christ’s crucifixion to the New Jerusalem

Isn’t it so mysterious to be talking about, the divine history within the human history?

And yet we, as believers in Christ, are those who daily endeavor to be here, live here, and have our whole being with all our activities and things in the developing divine history hidden within the human history.

This history began with Christ’s incarnation, and it continued with His aromatic human living on earth. Christ was a mystery to man, and no one could really understand Him – but everyone enjoyed being with Him and seeing God expressed through Him.

The divine history continued with the Lord’s crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and then for more than 1900 years now in the church age all the believers, the disciples of Jesus, live in and continue the divine history!

The divine history will eventually consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity – and this is our destiny and our destination!

The divine history: Christ’s crucifixion

Outwardly it seemed that the Pharisees and the priests of the Jews managed to get this Nazarene named Jesus killed by manipulating both the king of the Jews (Herod) and the Roman governor over the Jews (Pilate).

Actually, Christ’s death was predetermined and foreknown by God, and in His crucifixion many amazing things happened hiddenly in the divine history within the outward human history.

What everyone around Him saw was a man being crucified between two outlaws, but what really happened behind the scenes was so much more!

Christ’s crucifixion was a vicarious death, where He was our Substitute on the cross, and it was an all-inclusive death, an all-inclusive judicial redemption.

Through His death on the cross Christ terminated the old creation and He solved all the problems, taking away the sin of the world as the Lamb of God (John 1:29).

In His crucifixion, Christ terminated all the things of the old creation and He redeemed all the things which were created by God and have fallen in sin (Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20).

Also, in His death Christ created (conceived) the new man with His divine element (Eph. 2:15) by abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances.

Lastly, through His crucifixion and in His death Christ released His divine life from within the shell of His humanity (John 12:24; 19:34; Luke 12:49-50).

The divine life within Him was constrained, encompassed, and restrained to not be released because of the shell of His humanity. The Lord Jesus desired to release the fire of His divine life that all man would receive His life and have the divine fire burning in them – this happened through His death!

The divine history: Christ’s resurrection

Outwardly it seemed that either the disciples of Jesus came at night and rolled the stone from the entrance of the tomb and stole Christ’s body, or Christ somehow resurrected or was resuscitated and fled the tomb.

Actually, what happened was that Christ was raised from the dead by God, and He resurrected from the dead! In His resurrection three main mysterious things happened, things which are crucial in the hidden divine history within the human history.

1. In His resurrection Christ was begotten by God to be the Firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; 8:29).
2. In His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) – He was transfigured to become a Spirit who gives life.
3. Lastly, in His resurrection Christ regenerated millions of people to be the sons of God and members of the Body of Christ, the church (1 Pet. 1:3).

In other words, in His resurrection Christ became the Firstborn Son of God as the Head of the Body, He became the life-giving Spirit as the content, reality, and essence of the Body, and He regenerated the many believers to be the members of the Body of Christ. Wow, hallelujah!

The divine history: Christ’s ascension and descension

A few day after His resurrection, Christ publicly ascended to the heavens where He was enthroned as Lord of Lords and King of Kings, Ruler over everything, seated at the right hand of God in the third heavens to be at the highest point in the universe.

He then descended as the Spirit to produce the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God on earth (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:1-4, 16-21).

Seemingly Christ is no longer on earth living among us, but actually in the divine history Christ is still here today in His millions of believers, the members of His mystical yet organic Body.

The church, Christ’s return, the kingdom, and the New Jerusalem

Seemingly what people see today are a lot of zealous followers of Jesus who want to bring Christianity into every countries and get everyone to read the Bible and believe in Jesus.

Actually, the church for the past more than nineteen hundred years has been living in the divine history within the human history, very mysteriously, and is now about to consummate into something. Soon, Christ will return with His overcomers as His army (Joel 3:11) to defeat Antichrist and his army!

The consummation of the outward human history is a great figure, the Antichrist, and the consummation of the hidden divine history is Christ with His overcomers.

These two figures will meet and Christ with His overcomers, the figure in the intrinsic divine history, will defeat Antichrist, the figure in the outward human history – and will cast him in the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20).

After this, the 1000 year kingdom will come, and this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth (Rev. 21-22).

This is the ultimate consummation of the divine history, the final step of God’s history, and at that time the intrinsic divine history will become visible and expressed all over the earth and in the entire universe!

Seeing the real history: the divine history non-fiction!

We need to see what’s really going on. I personally grew up in Romania for the first part of my life under a Communist government and I was taught a certain history. Then, when democracy came to power the history of our people apparently changed!

When I came to the West, to England, I realized that many things I was taught as being the human history of my people and of the people around us are not accurate.

Human history is A MESS – it’s locusts coming and devouring all the people and all the nations. Who knows what’s really going on in Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa, and so many other places?

We may see wars, peace treaties, mass murders, tanks, fight for oil, fight for power, communism, democracy, dictators, earthquakes, tsunamis, and many outward events.

But what’s really really going on is this hidden divine history consummating in Christ with His mighty ones, and the messy outward human history will consummate with Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, who will be utterly against God and His people.

Today we need to learn to practically be in the divine history that we may return with Christ in His second coming to defeat the Antichrist.

We need today to choose to be the overcoming ones, the mighty ones, those in the vital groups in the church life who are daily living in the divine history.

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to see and appreciate the hidden divine history within the human history. Thank You, Lord, for all the processes You went through to facilitate our entry and continual living in the divine history today. Now we as the many members of Your mystical Body can live in the developing divine history today! We choose today, Lord, to be Your overcomers! Make us Your mighty ones who return with You to defeat the Antichrist and his armies! Your kingdom come! Hasten Your return!

References and Further Reading

• Sharing inspired from, How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations (ch. 1), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of the Minor Prophets, week 5 (entitled, The Universal History according to God’s Economy—the Divine History within the Human History).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Will you be an overcomer? / Never lukewarm be, / Ne’er content with what you’ve gotten, / More you need to see.
  # Oh, what a wonderful story / Of me and my glorious Lord. / Together we make our history; / A mingling of God and of man.
  # We’re overcomers, that’s our real name. / God has His city; Satan gets the shame. / God is our portion for eternity