What is light made of? It is a question that has stymied physicists since any study of light began.
Light has properties of two different things, two different views of what its composition altogether, such that one way of understanding light excludes the other. It is as though two opposing systems cannot both exist, yet both do have their supporters among those who study these things.
Light is most commonly believed to be an electronic wavelength, traveling into the visible range. They hold that it contains no substance whatever, but is a light wave, a frequency that allows the eye to perceive it.
On the other hand, just as light does indeed fit the wavelength system perfectly, there are those who believe that light is composed of incomprehensibly small particles, densely packed.
Light has been shown to have weight, so that this particle position is also viable. Science cannot say definitively whether light is merely a wavelength of energy, or that it does or does not have some physical substance,
In other words, science cannot discern the essence that is light. And that is as it should be, because Jesus Christ proclaimed Himself to be the light of this world (Mt. 4:16, Jn. 1:4-19, 9:5, 12:46).
There is a third quality, or type of light. There is light that is visible in the natural realm; we can see it with our eyes, whether it is a mere energy wave or has substance. And there is a light that is visible in the spiritual realm. Often we are instructed to walk in the light. Jesus was not talking about the physical realm, but He was speaking of yet another aspect of light, one seen only by those “who have eyes to see.”
Now, every Christian has eyes to see, but far too many of us do not look through those eyes that perceive spiritual truth. Many do not study the Bible, but they study books about the Bible. This is one of those books. We all have eyes to see, but not all of us are looking. We have eyes to see, but they are closed in slumber. Our spiritual batteries need a healthy charging occasionally.
Our poor minds cannot conceive of the things that compose our inheritance from God. Neither can our understanding encompass that heavenly treasure when we meet our Groom. We can read John’s description of the Lord’s appearance in the book of Revelation (Jn1:12-16). His face shines more brightly than the sun. Yet out of that blinding brilliance shine two other lights, emanating from the very eyes of the Lord. Of what intensity must they be in order to be seen in such facial brightness! Our Lord’s skin has the appearance of burnished bronze.
No, Jesus Christ is not returning as the slain Lamb of God, but as the roaring Lion of the tribe of Judah. Nevertheless, in chapter five, John portrayed Him as the slain Lamb of God in verses six through ten. It is the Lamb of God who opens the seals of judgment against both those who crucified Him, and against those who have persecuted them, His own people.
The scene where the seals are opened is in heaven, and the One who was slain will execute His judgment upon His killers, both Jew and Gentile. For the Jews determined Him guilty unto death, but the Romans carried out the sentence. The Jews will be brought nearly to extinction by the Gentile powers on earth, while the Gentiles will be brought to near-destruction by the coming Lord, at the end of the tribulation, that “time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer 30:7).
Jesus does not come to the earth before the end of the tribulation, when He establishes Himself as King of kings and Lord of lords. He opens the seals, and the angels carry out the specific judgments prophesied, but He remains in heaven until we return to the earth with Him as Armageddon reaches its climax.
But let us speak more of this invisible light, this light of which science knows nothing; for its speed cannot be measured and it is not bound by natural laws. Some human beings can perceive it and some cannot.
Whether one can discern this light depends upon his acceptance of the Gospel. Those who believe that the Lamb’s blood at Calvary was a sufficient price to pay for the sins of which they know they are guilty, these are “born again;” this time, not of the seed of the flesh, but of the seed of God (1 Jn 3:9).
Outwardly, saints (those who are separated by God from the world and to Himself) appear no different from anyone on the street, but they can understand spiritual truth; whereas, no matter the religion, those who have not heard or accepted the Gospel can discern no spiritual truth. Only a vague fear of judgment. What those poor folks need is a dose of the Gospel, the Good News that God loves us, and has executed the penalty for our sins upon Himself, thereby maintaining His justice while saving those who simply believe. If you would have this spiritual light, that is the only thing it takes in order to receive it. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.
The spiritual light is the light by which we discern and understand spiritual truth. It shines deeply into the bottomless Word of God, illuminating it clearly, and allowing us to put diverse threads of thought into a single cohesive whole. It speaks like a voice in the heart, where no ear can hear except among those who have such ears. Those ears are not attached to the sides of our heads, but they are those inner ears that hear the Word of God. If one has an inner eye through which to see God’s truth, then he also has an ear, by which he can separate the wheat from the chaff in doctrinal matters.
Jesus said that there is a kind of light that is darkness. In some, that darkness shines far more deeply than in others. By our very nature as human beings, we have much of this darkness inside us, for all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s glory. Light that is darkness. Dark light.
There is one coming – the prince who is to come, of Daniel 9:26 – who will seem very bright, but his light will be darkness. It will be a darkness so deep that many will be deceived by him. He will promise peace, but he will lead the world into its greatest crisis until that time. It might fairly be said that Armageddon begins with a peace treaty (Dan 9:27). This man will be acclaimed all over the world. He will gain their confidence with his reason and apparent wisdom. Alas, his wisdom is the wisdom of the world, and not the wisdom of God.
This prince who is to come will be that Dark Star. He will seem so fair and balanced and reasonable, a man who understands how to make peace among men. He will appear humble and kind, with quiet self-assurance; but he will be a man on a mission, and will consider himself smarter than all who were before him. For, indeed, he will be of an extremely high intellect. This prince that Daniel speaks of the devil incarnate. Just as Satan entered into Judas, so will he enter into this world leader, and his wisdom will surpass that of his contemporaries. It is possible that this has already taken place.
A very dark star is rising, but he is not rising in the east, but in the west, for he is contrary to God, and stands opposed to His order in every way. God has granted Satan power over nature, and Satan will grant his power and authority to this prince who is to come, the antichrist. The way that this man is first identified as the antichrist is by his imposing a treaty upon Israel, making peace between her and those many who are her sworn enemies. That is to say, the antichrist will burst onto the world stage by ordaining or confirming a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty.
Long before Satan enters into this man, he has already filled the senses of mankind with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – all that is in the world (1 Jn. 2::16). We are teaching our children the grossest forms of violence in the games that we let them play, where life is so devalued that death means nothing to them. Killing becomes a game. The person with the most points wins.
Satan has been this extremely bright darkness since he fell in the rebellion (Isa. 14:12-15). His angels present themselves as ministers of light, but if their message is not of the cross, it is darker by far than the darkest regions of space.
To those who have eyes that see, Jesus said, “Let your light so shine…” He claimed to be the light of the world, and He instructs us to put on the armor of light. Does light have substance? It is armor.
We think of stars as points of light in the night sky, and so they are. They shine from vast, incomprehensible distances. Approach one too closely, and it would vaporize us. Stars are not tiny; they are merely distant. They are not what they seem to the naked eye.
Then, there are movie stars, football and baseball and basketball and hockey stars; there are stars in the financial sector, stars in the military. There are stars in science and medicine.
There are also stars in the angelic realm – the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the seraphim and ranks of which we know little or nothing. There are evil stars: Lucifer and his legions of demons. There are bright men and women upon the earth, both good and bad, both humbly reverent and arrogantly evil. The first thing said of the devil is that he is more subtle, or crafty, or cunning, than any beast of the field the Lord God had made (Gen 3:1).
President Bush spoke of a thousand points of light. Jesus said that we are lights in the world. There are far more than a thousand of us, but not all of us shine as brightly as we ought. Some are but a dim glow. Jesus was not talking about any popular heroes, but our Lord was referring to those who carry forth the word of life, which is to be found only in the Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Word made flesh (Jn. 1:14). The light that emanates from the saints cannot be seen by unregenerate eyes, those not born of the Spirit and the seed of God Himself ( cp. 1 Jn 3:9 and context).
There is light that can be seen, and light that cannot be seen. There is light that is bright, and there is light that is darkness and evil, filled with all manner of deception. Even among the saved, that dark light resides in our flesh, but our spirits are permeated by the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is of Him that we testify, and not of ourselves. There is “natural” light and there is spiritual light. Consider the word of the Lord:
The lamp of the body is the eye.
If therefore your eye is good,
your whole body will be full of light,
But if your eye is bad,
your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,
how great is that darkness!
(Mt. 6:22)
Natural light cannot penetrate far into the body. A flashlight will reveal the bony structure of a thin hand, but deep inside, in the heart, there is natural darkness. We cannot see x-rays, though they pass all the way through the body. We cannot see them, but we can see their effects if we have the means to look at them. We can create images of bones and other structures of the body, but we cannot bring light very far into the body without opening the body..Doctors today can send lighted probes into the body and examine certain structures, but those lights cannot dispel the darkness that resides in the soul of every living man or woman.
“If your eye is good…” A good eye looks to its Father, rejoicing in the presence of the Lord and the Holy Spirit in us. A good eye studies the Word of God, even as he watches for opportunities to serve Him. The infinite depths of spiritual light and true wisdom reside in God, who is the Spirit of truth, the Fount of all wisdom.
The light of God’s grace permeates a saved person, so that his entire body is filled with a right spiritual light. That Light enters via the inner eye, which only those who have such eyes to see can perceive. And it emanates outward from the eye, and through the voice, carrying the light of the knowledge of God’s grace and mercy, and His deep love for sinners such as ourselves, shining it into the sin-darkened souls of the lost and unbelieving.
We do not cease to be sinners when we are born of the Spirit of God, but God uses sinners to carry forth His Word. That is a remarkable thing. We carry this light into the fearful hearts of the lost, illuminating their spirits with the word of reconciliation, of God’s desire for them. And we preach and teach it to others, who are then able to teach still others.
When we understand and accept the truth of the Gospel, knowing that Jesus Christ died in order to bear our own punishment in Himself, that we might be saved by His grace, through faith only, we are immediately illuminated to the truths of the Gospel. These we are then enabled to learn through diligent study.
The ability to read and understand God’s Word is proof of the Holy Spirit within us. No unsaved person can read the Bible and gain any light from it, because faith comes by hearing, not by reading. Nevertheless, unless the one who is witnessing quotes the Scriptures or reads them to a lost person, that person will not be saved it that moment. It is the Word of God, not the voice of man, that gives light to the spiritually blind. Nevertheless, God is able, through the foolishness of our preaching, to enlighten those who believe.
When the light that God puts in us emanates from us, we serve as ambassadors in a foreign land. Paul tells us clearly that we are citizens of heaven itself, members of the household of God, sent to the earth as ambassadors of God (2 Cor. 5:18-21). Any ambassador goes to his assigned country, assimilates into the culture and customs of the land where he is sent; all the while serving his homeland’s interests faithfully.
Every Christian is an ambassador from heaven, and is responsible to serve his homeland’s interests as faithfully as any political ambassador. Perhaps one in ten actually serves God beyond going to church, and maybe tithing. They consider their duties to God complete. It is one of Satan’s greatest works, to keep God’s children from serving Him in the world. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. Are there aliens on earth? By means of God’s grace, there are. They are us..
There are saved souls in every walk of life, from the highest boardroom to the gutters of the underworld. The homeless person you see begging on the street corner might be ministering to others in the lowliest echelons of our populace; ministering the sustenance of both temporal and eternal life; life with a hope that so far exceeds the loftiest temporal heights as to render them insignificant altogether. .
One cannot tell a Christian by his deeds, but by his fruit. Sprinkled among the very dregs of our society are saved men and women, ministering the Gospel to those in direst need. Indeed, there is more genuine faith found among the poorest of the poor than there is in the gaudiest cathedral among the richest of the rich. For the poor have no resources, no wealth in which to trust. Day by day, they look to God for their providence and their sustenance. They know that they are worthless, and they abide in their everlasting hope.
And there are devout men of God in the highest places in our society, and everywhere in between; men who seek out those who are troubled; men and women to whom the troubled are drawn. This should be the rule of life for every Christian, though we all are sinners.
Money buys misery. We do not own the things that we posses; they own us, and they demand and receive our time, attention and resources. There are saints from the wharves and the whore houses to the golf courses, and among those racing horses, the erudite, the cosmopolitan, the moneyed elite. There are saints at every level of our society and economy, each providing his bit of what makes up the fabric of our nation. Each also providing the labor that causes growth in the kingdom of heaven. Remove the saints, and woe betide those who are left. That is what this book is really about, the removal of the saints of God and the taking away of the Holy Spirit in His role as Restrainer of evil. A man will slit his neighbor’s neck for a can of beans.
Everyone who has received the grace of God has a responsibility to lay up his treasure in heaven. Just before He spoke of light-filled bodies, Jesus spoke about earthly treasures versus heavenly treasure. He said:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy
and where thieves break in and steal;
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys
and where thieves do not break in and steal.
For where your treasure is,
there your heart will be also.
(Mt. 6:19-21)
Our homeland is heaven, and when we serve God as ambassadors, we minister the word of reconciliation, of salvation (2 Cor. 5:18-21). Those whose bodies are filled with light will bear much fruit; those with little light will bear little fruit. We should endeavor to enjoy the fullness of the light that is good. This, because we know that there is a light that is darkness, great darkness.
There is a dark star rising n the west, and his deceptive and dark light is spreading rapidly on the earth today. He is Christ’s counterfeit, the antichrist. He preaches a subtle gospel, leaving out the blood of the cross. He stands in many pulpits today, telling the lost everything except what they most need to hear. He is a master of human wisdom and rhetoric. A day of great darkness is dawning (Joel 2:2; 3:20). The closer the world comes to a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, the closer the Church is to meeting her Groom in the air.
There have been many stars of the Christian faith during this long Church Age. There are many today, devout men whose lives are spent in study and communion with and service to God. The Word is a lamp unto our feet. There have been those who have shone more brightly than the rest, and thank God for them! It is through the labors of many generations of saints that we have compiled the tenets of our faith. To fill the body with food, one must eat. To fill the body with light, one must eat the Bread of Life, the Word of God.
But what of that light that is in the unsaved that is great darkness? How is that perceived? Ah, it isn’t perceived. It simply works in the darkness of the deceitful human heart, the pump of emotion; a foreigner from the clear light of God’s greatness, goodness and justice. That light that is great darkness works in sinister, self-advancing deception. Of the heart, Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer 17:9).
The world is crawling with that sort, those whose light is darkness. They follow human judgments and human reason over the Word of God. Arrogance! Even among the most pagan nations of the world, saints are there, laboring in the Word and in service to God wherever He has seen fit to put us. God’s Word is a light for our feet. We walk confidently, not needing to know where our temporal lives will lead, trusting God to make us both fruitful and content, using us according to His purposes in every situation.
Those poor souls who have not heard or have not accepted the grace of God; these are those who rule the world. Jesus told us that Satan is the prince of the power of the air, and the ruler of this world. There is not a government on earth that serves God, nor has there ever been one, except during brief periods in Jewish history. Supreme power corrupts supremacy. Vanity and greed are in our hearts. The things of this world: the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – these are the things after which unregenerate men and women seek. Everything is temporal, and there is nothing of the eternal among them. The sheerest darkness is in the air that we breathe. Despair is the nut that is germinating in every unsaved breast. All their hopes are temporal; alas, they must end at a hole in the ground.
What good is a fancy casket to a dead man? He is dead. He has stepped from time into eternity, and cares not for the trappings of our civilization. His limousine carries someone else. His bank assets are distributed, and he becomes no more than a picture of his former self, a photograph or a painting of him hanging on a wall.
It is the same for the beggar, though he receives no fancy trappings..The poor are buried in a 3/8 inch plywood box with a screen door hook for closure. But he cares no more than the rich man. Worm food.
But that is only the body. The rich man and the poor man alike must stand before God and be judged. Neither riches nor poverty will matter in that day, but whether or not one accepted the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross. He died for our sins, but not out of anger or disgust, but out of love.
True Christianity is the only religion that glorifies God and not man, whose focus is not on the Christian, but upon Christ. Every other religion that man has ever devised requires some moral or other action in order to reach whatever its eternal estate may be. Man has to do something in order to get there. Those who would be saved can do nothing, but simply believe. True Christianity is the only religion that deals effectively with the sin issue. Bad karma? Silliness! Since there has never been but one Man who could earn His way into heaven. Seeing that He was innocent of any sins of His own, He was able to suffer the punishment for our sins, so that we may be saved.
God is a just God. Thus, it is not possible for Him to avoid judging every single sin individually that is ever committed. Judgment must be passed, and the sentence for every sin is death.. What no other religion ever thought of is to have its god pay for the sins of its people. Man would never have arrived at that sort of religion, because he wants to glorify himself. God judged even the sins that would not be committed until centuries later – millennia later – when Christ took upon Himself the entire body of sin.
People do not go to hell today because they are sinners; they go to hell because they have not accepted Christ’s sacrifice as sufficient to pay for their own sins. The payment has been made, but if it is rejected, then the books of that person’s deeds are opened and he is judged accordingly.
How many sins did Adam have to commit in order to become lost? One. Only a single sin separated him from God. Paul said that there are none good, no not one; there are none who are righteous. Those who appear to be righteous are simply fooling themselves about themselves, and probably fooling others as well; but not God
Even the saints continue throughout this life to be under the sway of the flesh and not the spirit. Even the great Apostle Paul admitted that he was a wretched sinner, calling himself the chief of sinners. Oh, it was in his soul not to sin, but the things that he most desired not to do were the very things that he found himself doing. And the things that he wanted to do, those he did not do. He concluded that our very flesh is sinful. Paul cried, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death!” But in the very next verse, he said, “ I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord; so that with the flesh I serve the law of sin, but with the mind, the law of God” (see Rom 7:15-25).
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So, what does all this have to do with the subject at hand? What has it to do with the beginning of the Tribulation or the national identity of the antichrist? For that you must read Midnight Rising, available at amazon.com, christianbook.com, or your local bookstore. If you wish, you can purchase a signed copy at www.midnightrisingbook.net. The dark star may be just below the horizon even now.
