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The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1 - Contents
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    II. Pivotal Place of Christ’s Teachings on Life, Death, and Destiny

    Christ came both to restore obscured and lost truths and to enunciate new truths that confirmed, explained, expanded, and completed the original truths of the Old Testament—much of which concerned the origin, nature, and eternal destiny of man. These truths had first been enunciated after Creation and the Fall and were increasingly revealed during the patriarchal period. They were further developed during the Mosaic dispensation, and continued to be clarified and unfolded during the period of the prophets.CFF1 211.3

    But in the two centuries preceding the birth of Christ false philosophical teachings regarding man’s essential nature and destiny made fatal inroads into large segments of Jewish thought. These Innate Immortality concepts came directly out of Greek paganism, as we shall see, through the channel of Platonic philosophy, and profoundly affected the Hebrew concept of man and his destiny and his relationship to God and immortality.CFF1 212.1

    1. PROCLAMATION OF TRUTH AND CONFUTATION OF ERROR

    Much of Christ’s great mission was the proclamation of truth and the confutation of error concerning the basic relationships between God and man. And the truth He proclaimed was personalized and embodied in Himself. He was the predicted hope and Redeemer of Israel. He was the way, the truth, and pre-eminently the life. There was no other. He was the door of the sheepfold and the shepherd of life. He was the bread and the water of life. And significantly enough, He placed special emphasis during His incarnation on life—eternal life, vested in Himself—with immortality for man dependent upon the acceptance of Himself as atoning Saviour, transforming Life-giver, and immortal King of the coming age.CFF1 212.2

    But the Jewish mind had become obsessed with the Platonic concept of the universal Innate Immortality of the soul, and the contingent and corresponding Eternal Torment of the incorrigibly wicked. So it was that Jesus, as we have seen, sought to correct these gross misconceptions and to point out the imperative necessity of man’s acceptance of Him as the Life-giver.CFF1 212.3

    Christ’s death on the uplifted cross was the transcendent fulfillment of the Old Testament types of the Divine Substitute offered in the sinner’s stead—dying that he might not die but have life. And Christ’s triumphal resurrection was not only a vindication of His astonishing claims but the divine guarantee of the resurrection at the last day of all who believe in and receive Him for what He offered Himself to be. That is man’s only guarantee and security.CFF1 212.4

    Picture 1: Resurrection of Righteous:
    The Glad Reunion as the Sleeping Saints Are Called Forth From Gravedom at the Second Advent and Its Atendant Resurrection. Families Are Forever Reunited.
    Page 213
    CFF1 213

    2. KEY TO UNDERSTANDING CONFLICTS OF CENTURIES

    Consequently, the mission of Christ on earth was tied in inextricably with the restoration of the truth and the divine provision of assured eternal life now, vested in Christ, with actual and realized Immortality at the resurrection and Second Advent. A realization of these sublime truths and provisions is essential to a recognition and understanding of the ceaseless conflict of the centuries over the nature and destiny of man—whether conditional or innate, contingent or natural—and of death as ultimate utter destruction, or eternal life in torment. That is the essence of the issue.CFF1 213.1

    This constitutes the key that unlocks the most crucial controversies of the centuries concerning Hell, Purgatory, indulgences, invocation of saints, spiritual resurrection, Universalism, Spiritualism, and kindred issues that have wracked the church across the centuries. That is why Christ’s infallible testimony is not only ultimate but also indispensable in this field.CFF1 213.2

    That is why we need to know not only His express teaching on life (already surveyed) but also His express teachings on the first, or natural, death as a sleep, with its inevitable resurrection awakening, and on the punishment of the wicked through utter destruction by means of the second death. Every major teaching of Christ is related to these basic considerations. His teaching on the “last things,” for example, makes them luminous with new and larger meaning. To this we now turn.CFF1 214.1

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