SIDE NOTES

The throne of God is resplendent with the most valuable of all: the divine character and virtues of the Father. These comprise His authority and that by which He rules. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne (Ps. 97:2). He is righteous and just (Ps. 11:7; Zech. 9:9). He loves righteousness and justice (Ps 33:5) He works righteousness and justice (Ps. 99:4).

No human being can see the brightness of the glory of God’s face and live through the experience (Exod. 33:20; 1 Tim. 6:16). Angels are able to behold His countenance (Matt. 18:10), and believers in their resurrected bodies will see His face (Rev. 22:4).

Christ Jesus is our hope of drawing near to God the Father and to dwell in Him with His Son even while we still walk the earth (1 Tim. 1:1; Heb. 7:19; John 17:21; Col. 3:3; Rev. 3:12).

One meaning of “waters” in Scripture is “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues” (Rev. 17:15). Troubled waters symbolize heathen peoples in an uproar (2 Chron. 15:6).

God has ordained that the salvation of the Lord Jesus be carried out on Earth with the free consent and cooperation of those in the one body of His Son, those who have been made a part of the risen Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; 2:16; 3:10; 5:23, 25-27, 30).

The hope of returning to heaven, our true home, to know our true Father, our true Brother, and our true Friend, the Holy Spirit, lies deep within the new, human, spiritual heart (Ezek. 36:26; John 17:3; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23). The resurrected spirit of each believer is already there in Christ (1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 2:5-6; John 12:26; 17:24).

There is nothing good and trustworthy dwelling in the natural state in which we were born, that is, in our “flesh,” which hates God and refuses to obey Him (Rom. 1:30; 8:7). Christ Jesus is the only good and trustworthy thing in us, for He has been made all things for us from God (1 Cor. 1:30; Col 3:11).

In the end times, God’s family will be restored to Him (Mal. 4:5-6; Eph. 3:14-15; Mark 9:12) from the captivity of a double heart (Ps. 12:2), so that they no longer go limping between two opinions (1 Kings 18:21, KJV).

The trumpets were blown in heaven on this occasion for one of the same reasons that the two silver trumpets in Israel were sounded to gather everyone together: to rejoice in worshiping God in His immediate presence (Num. 10:2-3, 10).

TEACHING NOTES

1. True gold, like every created thing in heaven, is transparent because it exists to be illumined by God’s glory (Rev. 21:18, 21, 23).

2. Jesus said that His Father has a “form,” a figure or shape that can be seen (John 5:37). Many people saw His bodily form: Moses alone (Num. 12:8) and again with all the leaders of Israel (Exod. 24:9-11). The body of the Son of God is like His Father’s appearance, for the Son is in His image (2 Cor. 4:4: Phil. 2:6; Col. 2:9). Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

3. The divine light that is of God flashes through His garment in heaven like lightning as an indication of His awesome power (Rev. 4:5; 16:18). The power of the Lord Jesus on Earth also permeated His garment (Luke 8:43–46; 6:19).

4. The primary Hebrew word translated “to worship” literally means “to bow down,” not a matter of words or feelings but an act of humbling oneself. An example is Moses in the presence of the glory of God’s grace (Exod. 34:8). When the glory cloud of God filled the temple, none of the ministering priests were able to stand (1 Kings 8:10-11).

5. The same words translated “lap” in both Testaments are also translated “bosom”. When one sits, the lap is almost the equivalent of the bosom. This represents the intimacy that the Son has “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18).

6. The Lord has made His disciples to be “a kingdom, priests to His God and Father” (Rev. 1:6). Priests are chosen and brought near to God to dwell in His courts (Ps. 65:4). God gave His covenant of peace to the Aaronic priesthood through Phinehas (Num. 25:11-13). The Melchizedek priesthood of those who have believed into Jesus includes a greater covenant of peace (Heb. 7:17, 24) Christ is their peace (Eph. 2:14).

7. He is “a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where [He] has entered as a forerunner for us” (Heb. 6:19-20). Having entered within the veil in spirit, “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen” (2 Cor. 4:18). Our desires and minds are set on “things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2).

8. “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4). If we “[desist] from[our] own ways, from seeking our [own] pleasure, and speaking [our] own word, then [we] with take delight in the LORD” (Isa. 58:13-14). He will move us beyond the heights of the earth by drawing us after Him (Song of Sol. 1:4; John 6:44).

9. The Lord God dwelt within a dark cloud when He visited the Israelites at Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:9; Deut. 4:11; Ps. 18:9).

10. “[No one knows] who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Luke 10:22). “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” Jesus said (John 14:9).

11. Jesus said that there would be “dismay among nations, in the perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world” (Luke 21:25-26).

12. The more judgements of God come upon the earth at the end of the age, the more clearly His glory will appear upon His children. They will begin to “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43; Isa. 60:1-2).

13. “Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you” (Ezek. 2:8). “Thy words were found and I ate them; and Thy words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). “Write in a book what you see… and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things” (Rev. 1:11, 19). “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words [with understanding] … and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near” (Rev. 1:3).

14. The word chancellor is from the Late Latin cancellarius, meaning a doorkeeper or a secretary to a king. God’s chancellor is one who opens the door for others to come to know Him through a written record of proceedings in heaven and their substantiation by the Scriptures. As the risen Lord opened the minds of the eleven apostles and those who were with them to understand the things concerning Himself in all the Bible, now He is opening the mind of His church to deeper revelation of the Father’s heart (Luke 24:27, 33, 45; John 16:12-13, 25).

15. God knew each of us in Christ before we were born into the world (Jer. 1:5; Ps. 139:16). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” and called us according to His purpose (Eph. 1:4; Rom. 8:29-30; Gal. 1:15).

16. Human wisdom and the reasonings of worldly thinkers are useless nonsense to God (1 Cor. 1:20; 3:20). “God has mainly chosen the foolish people… the weak… the lowly and despised, even those considered nonentities, in order to nullify those who think themselves to be somebodies – so that no one may boast before Him” (1 Cor. 1:27-29, paraphrased).

17. The Father delights in one He has called to fulfil His purposes because of the apportionment of the grace of His Son’s character, life, and ministry that He chooses to allot to that person (Gal. 5:22-23; Rom. 12:3, 6; 1 Cor. 12:7, 11; Eph. 4:7, 15-16).

18. The Father has placed His entire trust in His Son, giving Him all authority to bring all creation to completion (John 3:35; Matt. 28:18; Eph. 1:22). The Son warrants this trust because He laid Himself aside from eternity out of love for His Father in order to fully obey and manifest His Father rather than Himself (Phil. 2:6-8; John 5:19, 30).

19. The natural expression of the earthly person in soul and body, called in Scripture “the old self” (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) or “himself” (Matt. 16:24), must be denied and laid aside as worthless to God. The Holy Spirit will enable us to keep in incapacitated on the individual cross that He provides each of us; as Jesus bears His personal one (Matt. 16:24). The life of God in Christ alone is to be manifested in us (Eph. 4:24; 2 Cor. 4:10-11). The natural or old person cannot be changed, for it is hopelessly centered on itself rather than God. Christians change only by having more of Christ Jesus, the one new man, formed in them (Gal. 4:19; Eph. 2:15; 4:13).

20. God the Spirit causes believers to grow up together in all aspects into Christ (Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:15): in His salvation by the Scriptures (1 Pet.

2:2), in the grace of faith and love and of the knowledge of Him (2 Thess. 1:3; 2 Pet. 3:18), and in being fitted together into a holy temple in the Lord (Eph. 2:21).

21. The Father is unveiling more of His heart so His people may know that He has turned their heart back again (1 Kings 18:37) and that He has given them a heart to know and understand Him. (Deut. 29:4; Matt. 13:15) and that they may love Him with all their heart (Deut. 4:29).

22. Whirling wheels accompany certain cherubim (Ezek. 1:15-20; 10:13).

23. When God created the earth, the host of heaven “sang together and… shouted for joy” (Job 38:7; Rev. 12:4, “stars of heaven”; Job 1:6, “sons of God”).

24. The Israelites usually used a trumpet made of a ram’s horn called a shofar, the transliteration of the Hebrew shophar. One of the purposes of their blowing the shofar is the same as that for which it was blown now in heaven: to solemnly prepare everyone for a new revelation or act by God (Exod. 19:13; Josh. 6:5; Joel 2:15).