Do these oft repeated words not contradict.
Nope.
We all live in the hope of the parousia:
"Behold, I tell you a mystery.
We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet:
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible:
and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption;
and this mortal must put on immortality.
And when this mortal hath put on immortality,
then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?"
1 Corinthians 15 51-54
The presence now is a spiritual presence, but the time will come when it is a presence 'all in all' — not just the illumination of a few, or even of many, but of the whole creation.
I wonder ...
In my anti-gnostic-rant moments I ask: What's the point of the cosmos, why bother creating something out of nothing, if all it means is we're dumped down here from the spiritual realm, suffer all manner of trials and tribulations as we try and crawl our way out, and then when we've done it, we bugger off back to the spiritual realm and leave the cosmos to go hang ... that doesn't seem a good and seemly fate for that which God saw as 'good', as Genesis tells us ...
So the enlightenment we experience now, the spiritual comforts, the sense of His immanent presence, is all a premonition, all 'through a glass and darkly' (1 Corinthians 13:12), but then not just man, but the entire cosmos will be transfigured, and Christ will be all in all, and we in Him, and Him is us ... then we shall party hard, dude!
"The judgement is the judgement of the world:
If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away,
behold all things are made new.
But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Christ;
and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.
For God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,
not imputing to them their sins;
and he hath placed in us the word of reconciliation."
Why then, for the love of God Almighty, do we bang on so much about sin and sex and perdition and hellfire and burning and blah, blah, blah ...
"For Christ therefore we are ambassadors,
God as it were exhorting by us.
For Christ, we beseech you, be reconciled to God."
2 Corinthians 5 17-20
His news is the Gospel. In Greek it's 'evangelion' and means 'good news'
It's a crap ambassador for anyone/anything if all he can do is bang on about how shitty we are and how much shit we're in and how we're gonna suffer for it ...
Oh dear ... and I was full of the joys of spring this morning!
