My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? The last words of Christ.

[makesends]

Are angels not in the church, the body of Christ? (Heb 12:22, Rev 5:11-12), along with the OT saints (Heb 12:23); e.g., Abel (Heb 11:4), Noah (Heb 11:7), Abraham (Ro 4:3)?

If God loves angels as much as I love puppies, the angels are set!

There are a lot of unresolved 'riddles' in my mind about that. But I don't think we will be one with the angels, in the same way as we will be with God himself —and because of being one with him, one with each other. I believe they will love us because they love God, and will even serve us as they do him, but because of him, without whom we are (and will be) nothing.

So, yes, I believe the angels will be "there", but not as themselves members of the Body of Christ. But there's an awful lot of hints I don't know how to pursue, but only to keep an eye out for, as I study and listen. For eg, who are the "friends of the bride", in (the commonly considered prophetic) Song of Solomon? I don't know.

 

[Carbon]

The suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:10 (Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.) The intimacy of His perfect union with the Father would be cruelly severed.

Question:

How could God be pleased to do this to His innocent Son?


The answer I believe is there in scripture.

But, it is from questions like this (natural questions) that we find teachings like, God did not abandon His son, Penal substitution is based on human teaching, not a biblical teaching, Penal substitution rests on unbiblical ideas of sacrifice, and penal substitution is cosmic child abuse.

 

[Eleanor]

Maybe this goes too far into tangential questions, for relevance to the OP, but one speculation about the final destiny of hell and its residents, (the LOF) to me more easily reduces my gall at the thought of loved ones here on earth, or, for the more compassionate among us, the thought of anyone that God created for his purposes, ending with reprobation, being held to that punishment, is the thought that whatever is good about any of us is God's direct work, in his immanence, and his control and its graces, both common and particular.

That "presence" of God being removed, then, leaves nothing but a husk, a wraith. Or as CS Lewis put it, "a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare." —all emotion, fear and fury and despair and pain, with no hope of resolution. Christ, who had so far been absolutely ONE with the Father, PART OF the Father, if I may, suddenly his consciousness thrown into that kind of separation. Just to think of it produced agony of soul to the point of sweating blood.
Don't take me to be going too far into that, and its implications. While I am sure there is truth to it, I know it is only ignorance and speculation and not itself Scripture, built on the notion of the only good in anyone being God himself (in some way).

Sweating blood pretty well testifies to what you report.

 

[Eleanor]

Question:

How could God be pleased to do this to His innocent Son?


The answer I believe is there in scripture.

But, it is from questions like this (natural questions) that we find teachings like, God did not abandon His son, Penal substitution is based on human teaching, not a biblical teaching, Penal substitution rests on unbiblical ideas of sacrifice, and penal substitution is cosmic child abuse.

Another thought. Just imagine, "if you can," the horror of the substitutionary atonement and how it must have been magnified each time Jesus read the prophecy about Himself.
The suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:10 (Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.) The intimacy of His perfect union with the Father would be cruelly severed.

"Pleased him" in the sense that it was his will to do so.

 

[makesends]

Question:

How could God be pleased to do this to His innocent Son?


The answer I believe is there in scripture.

But, it is from questions like this (natural questions) that we find teachings like, God did not abandon His son, Penal substitution is based on human teaching, not a biblical teaching, Penal substitution rests on unbiblical ideas of sacrifice, and penal substitution is cosmic child abuse.

I can't help but think people who think that way just don't understand —and I'm not saying that any of us do, really— the horror that sin is, and the loving graciousness of our God to do this for us; and even after we have heard, and have been regenerated, to put up with our continuing propensity for rebellion and our self-important satisfaction with our own thoughts, that are not his.

 

[Alive]

Christ was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.