THESIS 88: RULING WITH CHRIST

We are ruling with Christ,[298] seated on thrones in the heavenlies,[299] above all powers, lords, and archists of the Old Age.[300] We reign when we suffer at the hands of statists for advancing the cause of God's Law ("justice"[301]; "righteousness"[302]), which means we endure violence without returning violence (#80) or harboring bitterness. We do not wait for Christ to return and set up an earthly political empire;[303] we overcome evil with good[304] and thereby restore Edenic conditions.[305] Those who reject Christ's Way of suffering and prefer the way of human vengeance and political domination have been deceived by Satan[306] and overcome by the mythology of the Old Age.[307]

Exposition

Implications

What this Thesis means; how it should affect your life; how our lives should affect the world.

Clarifications

What this Thesis does NOT mean; how it should NOT affect your life; how the Old World distorted the truth.

Confirmations

How "mainstream" evangelical or orthodox commentators have confirmed this Thesis (without accepting the overall paradigm)

Deliberations

Readers' questions, complaints, allegations, flames, threats

         -- answered, adjusted, denied, blessed, filed.

Prooftexts

298. Revelation 2:7,25-28; 5:10; 12:11; 17:14; 1 John 2:13-14; 4:4; 5:4-5; Romans 3:4; 8:37; 12;21; Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:29-30

299. Ephesians 2:6; Luke 22:30

300. Ephesians 1:21; 1 Peter 3:22

301. 2 Timothy 2:12

302. Matthew 5:10

303. Revelation 3:21

304. Romans 12:21; 1 John 2:13-14; 4:4; 5:3-5; Revelation 17:14

305. #91; Revelation 2:7,11,17,26; 3:5,12; 21:7

306. Matthew 16:23; Genesis 3:5 + Luke 4:5-7; Mark 10:42-45

307. 2 Peter 2:19-20; 1 Corinthians 6:7

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