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No.6.
The Primal Promise and the Incarnation.
pp. 130 - 133
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Yet God purposely placed every
elect soul "in Adam", who was flesh and blood, a process that demanded that the elect
should be ultimately transferred to Christ. Gen. 15: points to the same process, and the
"pattern" of the ages, can be set out in the form of a letter V, a descent before the ascent
and the goal.
The elect members of the Church of the One Body, are destined to enjoy "spiritual
blessings in heavenly places" and to this, flesh and blood even when unfallen is by its
very nature alien.
What do we know of spiritual beings? Very little. Angels and other ranks of the
spiritual world break into the record of the Scriptures, they exhibit extraordinary powers,
are apparently above the influence and reach of many of the "laws of nature", but very
little positive teaching is discoverable in the Divine record. The earliest institution,
appointed by the Divine will is that of marriage, and this is one thing that is foreign to the
experience of angels.
"This children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world . . . . . neither marry nor are given in marriage,
neither can they die any more: for they are equal to the angels" (Luke 20: 34-36).
At the resurrection, the believer will receive a "spiritual body" (I Cor. 15: 44) and in
this too he will be equal to the angels. Here then is an outstanding divergence. Man from
the beginning was created with marriage as a normal experience. Angels as created are
excluded from such an experience only by "keeping not their first estate" and by leaving
"their own habitation" could any semblance of marriage be attained. The union of man
and wife makes them "one flesh", and their children are called their "seed".
If it be true that marriage is unknown among spiritual beings, it follows that angels
and principalities are all separately created beings. No angel is either the descendant of
or parent of any other spiritual being. There can be no such unity among angels as is
found among mankind. Home, family, parent, child, members of one body, all of one
blood, these features which are essential characteristics of the human race, are all absent
from the spirit world. We can and do use the word "race" of humanity, for it means "A
class of individuals sprung from a common stock; the descendants collectively of a
common ancestor". We cannot legitimately use the word "race" of angels, it has no
meaning or place in the spirit world. It seems, therefore, to be an inevitable conclusion,
that in the wisdom of God, it was imperative that those who were elected to be blessed
with all spiritual blessings, should commence their term of conscious being "in Adam",
even though they had been chosen "in Christ", and would have to be translated.