The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 94

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RE-CREATION

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This view has obtained currency especially in Germany, where the Old Testament is less read than even the books of the Apocrypha, with the exception of the Psalms and a few selected pericopes. On the contrary, this service of shadows has even in the smallest details a special significance to the New Testament Church only the significance is different. This service in the history of the Old Covenant witnesses to us the wonderful deeds of God, whereby of infinite mercy He has delivered us from the power of death and hell. In "Ca.^ personalities of the Old Covenant it reveals the wonderful work of God in implanting and preserving faith in spite of human depravity and Satanic opposition. The service of ceremonies in the sanctuary shows us the image of Christ and of His glorious redemption in the minutest details. And finally, the service of shadows in Israel' s political, social,.a,nd. domestic life reveals to us those divine, eternal, and unchangeable principles that, set free from their transient and temporal forms, ought to govern the political and social life of the unread.

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Christian nations throughout all ages.

And yet this does not exhaust the significance that this service always had, and still has, for the Christian Church. Not only does it reveal to us the outlines of the spiritual house of God, but it actually operated in our salvation First, it

prepared and preserved amid heathen idolatry a people

which, as bearers of the divine oracles, offered the Christ at His

coming a place for the sole of His foot and a base of operations.'^ He could no more have come to Athens or Rome than to China or No one there could have understood Him, or have furnished India. instrument or material to build the Church of the New Covenant. The salvation which was cast like a ripe fruit into the lap of the Christian Church had grown upon a tree deeply rooted in this servHence the history of that period is part of our ice of shadows. of as the life our childhood and youth remains ours, even tho own, as

men we have

put

away

childish things.

Secondly, the knowledge of this service and history, being parts

Word of God, were instrumental in translating God's children from nature's darkness into His marvelous light. However, as the Holy Spirit performed special work for the saints of those days that has a different tho not less important of the

* In Dutch, " life-center .

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