What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 1 Corinthians 14:26
It’s not hard to understand that Christian’s love to speculate on scripture “and the pro’s and con’s of life to understand the outcome of our life. Christians avidly speculate about the day of the Lord especially when you hear songs like; when I Get To Heaven, When the Roll Is Called up Yonder and I’ll Fly Away. I have to admit that I love to speculate about the Second coming, creation, the Godhead and God’s plans because that is where my interest lay.
However, I have to humble myself and relate this undeniable fact to other people. I’m not a miracle worker or God’s counselor. Because God has not given me a complete picture, I cannot fathom an accurate account or present decent picture of what God has in mind. God is a unique person whose ways are more than one can search out. All I have is his word; therefore everything is open to interpretation and the probability of what happen in the bible is both feasible and possible. Although I think I have some things about God down pat, because God has a mind of his own, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see God do everything completely different from the way I have reason to believe or think he will do it.
I have always said you have as much right to be wrong as I am and found that a number of fellow Christians have seen the humor of that phrase. It is not that we are entirely wrong with our speculation it’s because we don’t see the picture through God’s eye. Human interpretation is different from one person to another; for example, one person says I eat to live while another person says I live to eat. Let’s consider that no one relates their ideas in the same manner as you do. Not a single Christians has all the facts and can relate the truth in the manner as Jesus did. If we did we would need something bigger and stronger than elephant to carry our puffed up ego.
What I’ve learned in life everything that was ever invented began with a necessity that needed to be fulfilled. That why the wheel was invented! Since then, man has taken advantage of the wheel in thousands of ways. What’s worse, in today’s world we take the wheel for granted while driving down the road towards the next challenge that demands our creative skills to overcome.
We don’t need to speculate that God had a plan and purpose for creating the heavens and the earth. Although we can speculate that God’s plan and purpose served to shape the environment he ultimately created for mankind. While we may not realize it but the Garden of Eden was a garden where God planted mankind like men would plant wheat with a plan to harvest its seed when it’s growing cycle was complete. We read in Revelation 14 that God intends to swing his sickle to harvest his crop of men and women and then place the matured crop in his barn (heaven.)
As a man who loves to speculate it’s tough to understand that I am just a single kernel of the overall crop that God expects to reap. And although God gave me a mind capable of thinking as he thinks I have a difficult time of understanding life the way he does. Sometimes I think God placed mankind in a temporal environment to teach us to think and understand that life exists eternally. That being true we need to lay a foundation for our lives in the distant future.
Being who was, who is and is to come, our God knows that life is eternal and everyone will need to prepare for the life that is changed by the decisions we make today. To accomplish his goals man was given the intellect to think and make decisions of his own to be used in agreement with a record of his experiences with mankind. He considered that a few men would disagree and reject or ignore his plan by failing to take God’s word to heart, carefully considering them as words of life. His hope was that each man would discipline his mind to think and act in a prudent fashion in eternal life.
God’s had a centerpiece within his plan for man to focus his choices around. When the timing was right God sent his Son into the world to become an intermediary and the only way to eternal life. He became the perfect example of what God desired of man and through his death on the cross Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of God by pardoning mankind from his or her sin. The grace of Christ freed mankind from the slavery of sin and death and broke the strangle hold of the Devil and enabled mankind to serve the God of truth of his or her free will. In addition, Jesus gave man the right to become children of God and live. Eventually God would demand that everyone on the face of the earth voluntarily live according to his plans and personal standards.
The final step was to harvest the crop growing on earth. On that day the fruit of the earth will be graded for blemishes that has spoiled and corrupted for future use. The unusable fruit will be burned with everlasting fire and the fruit that escaped the corruption of the world without spot or blemish will receive a warm welcome from God and enter life through the pearly gates.
Mankind has but a dim view of what is to come. However no mind has conceived seen or heard what God has prepared for those who love him. Scripture gives its reader only a glimpse that God will wipe every tear from our eyes, and what we know as death sorrow and grief of this world will pass away and all things will become new.
However I think we need to understand that God‘s plan for the salvation of mankind seems to be clear and precise. Some of God’s plans appear to highlight enough to grasp his intentions. The creation story for example tells us that God created a number of things to sustain the life of his greatest creation, but he did not reveal everything involved in creating the heavens and earth.
When speculation becomes the theme of Sunday school class we should consider that its only speculation and everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some people are amazed at the thought God spoke things into existence (Hebrews 11:3) when the reality is God gave the command and Jesus made everything that was made (John 1:3) and the world did not recognize him as the one that made them.
Another person believes that God created the heavens and earth from nothing. However there is a possibility that God created the earth from things readily at his disposal. Genesis 1:2 tells us that the spirit of God hovered over the waters. Is it possible that this water came from the river of life flowing from the throne of God?
At the same time is it possible for you to be humble, to consider and respect another person’s opinion as your own. Speculation is having an opinion based on inconclusive evidence, in other words you don’t have or know the whole picture. I can only imagine that if God gave us a complete picture of what he plans to do in the next age, the bible would be ten thousand times longer to contain everything. Regardless of what we expect there is only one thing we should prepare for, eternal life under the reign of God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ, was sent to redeem us from the corruption of this world.
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