Continued From The Last Episode
Text Of Interest:
“But ye are come unto mount
Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an
innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the
firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the
spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that
of Abel.”
Heb 12:22 – 24 (KJV
However, like I rightly said in the
earlier episodes, when an unbeliever receives the message of Christ and
believed in it, he or she has come into Christ. And I said In Christ is a
place, and when one has come into Christ his association change from what it
used to be. The text of interest which is quoted above highlights some certain
facts about the place the believer has come into and we shall be dealing with them
as we continue. And as a place it has description that makes it unique and
differentiates it from every other place. So someone can really identify if
actually he or she is in Christ by the description of the place he is. If the
description does not suite what is obtainable in Christ, it means that person
or individual is in a wrong place though he claims to be in Christ. The
quotation above says we have come unto mount Zion, it went ahead to describe
this mount Zion as a city of the living God. Therefore, mount Zion is a city and not an ordinary mount, and if it is a city, it is named after the living God,
which suggests that the city belongs to the living God. There are many places
in the Bible where the word or term mount Zion appears, but I would like us to
look at one of them and accentuates on its relevance as regards to the word In
Christ.
The prophet named Obadiah made a
crucial statement in his book and I quote “But
upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the
house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.”(Obadiah 1:17). The
statement mount Zion here is referring to a physical location, indicating that
it is a city or place and the prophet says that ‘shall be deliverance’. To
understand the meaning of the word deliverance which is an English word we have
to know the Hebrew word it was translated from and the Hebrew word is pleytah.
The word pleytah means escaped portion or remnant, suggesting that upon mount
Zion shall be the escaped portion or remnant. It is important to note that the
subject of the whole chapter is war. This implies that the prophet is saying
that upon the mount of Zion shall be the escaped people from the war. That is
the remnant of the war shall be found upon mount Zion. It is not indicating
that the remnant shall be delivered in mount Zion, but the delivered shall be
found upon mount Zion, deliverance didn’t take place on mount Zion but the
delivered are found on mount Zion. So the delivered were in the hand of the
enemy and were set free and brought to mount Zion a place of safety. This shows
that mount Zion is where people who are delivered from war are kept and
nourished and brought up in God’s way since it is the city of God.
To coalesce the two quotations I have
used above, that is Obadiah 1:17 and Hebrews 12:22, we have to 'spiced' it up
with another quotation in order to create better understanding of where I am
driving to. Let’s see what Apostle Paul wrote in his epistle to the Colossians
and I quote “Who hath delivered us from
the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear
Son.” (Colossians 1:13). The statement ‘delivered us’ from the quotation
above is an aorist statement, indicating what has been said at presence but will take place
in the future, though it sounds like a present event. So the reality of it is not depended
on feeling but of knowing. So in the quotation above, God has delivered from
the power of darkness, meaning that before we came into Christ we were in the
hand of the power of darkness and deliverance has taken place by the hand of
God. And He didn’t just deliver us but He brought us to the Kingdom of His Son.
In this case, the delivered are found in the Kingdom of His Son, the Kingdom of
His Son is the place the playtah are found. Therefore, all believers are
delivered from the power of darkness and brought to mount Zion which is the
city of the living God.
Therefore, the mount Zion in Hebrews
12:22, is not physical place, but a spiritual city of God, where all believers
come into. This mount Zion is Christ, because “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are
passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Better
still should be referred as the Kingdom of His Son. This suggests that since
the delivered are now in the kingdom of Christ, they do not need to be
delivered again, but what they need is to understand the place they have come
into. The understanding of the place will definitely put their mind in the
right shape and remove the wrong mentality of captivity they have suffered in
the hand of the power of darkness. This means, they have to go through
orientation in order to be able to identify themselves with the new environment
they have come into. For this reason we are going to talk some more on the
environment of Mount Zion the city of the living God.
To be continued…..
Till I come your way again, keep on
basking in the Arena of Indubitable Truth!
Chukwuemeka C. Asiegbu
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