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The Lord's Testimony and the World Need

by T. Austin-Sparks

(The substance of these messages is reproduced as spoken.)

First published by "Witness and Testimony" Publishers in 1935.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The World Need: "Life"

What Do We Mean by Life? - The Lord's Testimony - The Answer: "Resurrection" - An Experimental Knowledge of the Meaning of the Cross - The Power of His Resurrection has to be made Manifest again in the World - A Holy Ghost Living Revelation of Christ

Chapter 2 - The Vessel of the Testimony

A Chosen Vessel - The Previous Vessel Supplanted - A New Cruse - Divinely Apprehended - The Vessel Liberated - The Vocation of the Vessel

Chapter 3 - The Need - God-given Vision

The Initiation of the Spiritual Life - The Continuance of the Spiritual Life - The Consummation of the Spiritual Life - Vision Needed for Service - Vision Emancipates - Vision Unifies - Vision Sustains - The Nature of the Vision - The Vision of Christ as Sovereign Head of the Church - The Vision of Christ in Universal Dominion - The Vision of the Church which is His Body - The Vision of the "Overcomer" Vessel

Chapter 1 - The World Need: "Life"

Romans 1:1-6.

In this matter of the world need, everything can be gathered up in one word, "life." It does not matter where we look we find that that is the need.

We have witness borne to that fact in all directions, and we can gather those up into some specific forms of expression.

We begin with the widest range. There is the witness to the fact in the realm of the ungodly. Upon that we need not dwell very much, but it is quite patent that the world outside of Christ is showing in a new way, with a new strength, its desire for life, its need of life. It has its own ideas of how that need is going to be met, and its quest for life takes its own peculiar forms, the forms peculiar to the world's own blindness, darkness and ignorance. Nevertheless it is manifest that the world is seeking life. We do not mean by that that it is seeking its life in God. We do not mean by that that it is seeking what we understand by life, Divine life, spiritual life, eternal life, but it is seeking what it would call "life." Life is the thing which it desires.

Passing from that more outward realm, the general mass of ungodly men and women, to inward circles, we have the witness to this fact which is clearly borne (perhaps, again, largely in ignorance) by what we may call the nominal Church. As to how far the nominal and secular "Church" is alive to the real nature of its need we may not be able to judge, but it is giving very real evidence of its consciousness of a need, and by the means it employs and the methods it adopts it is showing that life is the thing that it is after. The very fact that it is entering so strongly into competition with the world along the line of pleasures, and amusements, and entertainments, and many other forms of occupation, is, on the one hand, a proof that it is conscious of the lack of something to satisfy, and, on the other hand, it reveals that only what it would call "life" will justify its existence. Although perhaps unconscious of the full implications of its ways, it is displaying the fact that what is needed is life, and that only life will satisfy. It would say that to be without these things which it adopts is to be dead, and we in that realm - a very superficial realm - hear people speak very often of "a live religious community" because it has many of these activities. They say: That is a very live Church! and when you ask: What do you mean by being alive? What are the characteristics of this life? the reply is: Oh, it has this, and it has that, it has a dramatic society and a good concert programme, and many other things. That is what is meant by being alive. So its quest is for life; mistakenly, blindly, nevertheless it is all a disclosure of the fact that only life can justify its existence, and only life will meet the need.

Then, moving perhaps a little more inward, we have the witness of those many doubtful and mixed religious movements, with their tremendous sweep, things about which we may well have serious questions, to which we could never give our full heart confidence. We see them as religious movements, as Christian movements, with a Gospel in part, in smaller or greater degree, sweeping the earth, and carrying multitudes with them, drawing crowds after them. We ask: What is the secret of the success of these things? It does not require a very thoroughgoing investigation to disclose that there are serious doubts as to the soundness of their position, of their doctrine. There are serious lacks in some, and there are serious preponderances in others. What is the secret of their sweeping success, and that so many are caught up and carried on by them? The answer is that these things have a semblance of life, they are the offset against a state of religious spiritual death. They are in contrast with what is merely traditional and historic in Christianity, which has become moribund. It is that which is called "life" about them which draws so many after them, which gives to them their success. And in that realm of these successful (?) Christian movements, when you take the long spiritual, Divine view about success, there is a witness to the fact that, after all, it is life that is needed, that the world in every part needs life.

There is a still more inward sphere where we have the witness of the spiritually hungry of the Lord's children. We would not overestimate this; we would not be caught in imagining that things are better in this direction than they are, for you can really only prove that people are spiritually hungry by what they are prepared to sacrifice in order to get their hunger satisfied, and what they are prepared to suffer and endure. But nevertheless, though we might even have to sift this company, there is undoubtedly a hunger amongst the Lord's own children all over the world which is showing itself, which is not difficult to discover. In almost every place there are those who are altogether disappointed with what there is available of spiritual life and food, and the question which is being asked in all directions is: Where shall we get food? The tremendous increase and development of the Convention movement amongst the Lord's own people is one sidelight upon this fact; the fact that, if any servant or servants of God really have something of spiritual food to give they will always find those who are ready for it, and there is always an open door for such ministry. This, with so many other symptoms, and indications, is a witness to the fact that there is a need, a deep, strong need for life, for what is living, in every realm.

That is the general situation as to the world need. It is all gathered up into that word - LIFE.

What do we mean by Life?

But we must analyse and define the word. If we were to ask any of these people what they mean by "life," I think we should discover, whether they used the actual words or not, that what they think of, what their hearts are after, can be expressed mainly in three words :

(1) REALITY. If you asked again: What do you mean by reality? you would be led to understand that what is meant, and what is desired, is a living experience as over against a theory, a doctrine, a creed, a form; that which comes into the inner being as a living reality. Probably the word "experience" itself would be used by more than would use any other word, and they mean "reality." Life for them means that which is real, as over against that which is only theoretical, mystical, abstract, a matter of words.

(2) POWER. The second thing which would arise in an enquiry as to what is meant by "life" would be "power". We use the word "dynamic" a good deal. It is life, not merely as something active as over against the inactive, but life which is in the direction of power; being able for this or for that, whatever it may be; being put into a position of ability by having the resource of energy, vitality, effectiveness. It is all gathered up into the word "power."

(3) FULNESS. Thirdly, in the definition of "life" we should undoubtedly be led to understand that what is meant is "fulness." Another word which might be used is "satisfaction," but seeing that man is not easily satisfied, it would require a very great fulness to arrive at real satisfaction. So that "fulness" is a feature of "life."

This sums up the world need - life, which means reality, something which comes within the compass of living experience; which means power, dynamic, force, ability, resource to accomplish, to achieve, to arrive, to be effective, as over against being weak, defeated, failing, never reaching a goal - a sense that you have come into a realm where your deepest need is met, and that you need not seek in any other realm for the answer to that need. That is the world need.

We are concerned with the world need, and the Lord's Testimony, so that we may proceed to see in the Lord's Testimony the answer to the world need. We have touched the world at every point, and the Lord's Testimony, therefore, touches the world at every point. We are not going to dwell with the first realm mentioned, the world of the ungodly; and we are not going to be occupied very much with the second realm, that of the nominal and secular Church; we may be more immediately concerned with the other two, certainly with the fourth, the spiritual hunger of the Lord's people, but we may incidentally touch that realm of doubtful and mixed Christian activity.

The Lord's Testimony - the Answer:

"Resurrection."

The Lord's Testimony is the answer to the need at every point, and just as all the need is summed up in the one word "life," so all the answer, as represented by the Lord's Testimony, is summed up in the one word "resurrection." A very superficial reading of the New Testament will make it perfectly clear that "resurrection" is the key word to New Testament Christianity. If you have not gone through the book of the Acts, for instance, marking the occurrences of the word "resurrection," and noting their connection, you have missed one of the most profitable, helpful and important studies of that book. It is the key word to the Christianity of the New Testament.

"Resurrection" has also to be defined, just as we have defined "life," and we look to the New Testament to define its own terms. "Resurrection," as defined by the New Testament, means also four things:

Firstly, it means an entirely new position for man. Let us give full weight and force to every word; an entirely new position for man. "Resurrection," then, means that there is nothing of the old left, that all is new. It means that man is in a position which he has never occupied before, and that in that position, there is none of that obtaining which has obtained before. One of the most important things for all the Lord's people to know is that resurrection in union with Christ does mean that everything as to position must be entirely, utterly new.

Secondly, resurrection means that the basic message of Christianity is the Cross, because there can be nothing new in this way until all that is old is put away. In order to secure that all is new the Lord very definitely cuts in between the new and the old; and the Cross, therefore, is basic to resurrection, because resurrection has no meaning only in the realm where death has taken place. It is futile, it is foolish, to talk about resurrection with Christ without recognising that it presupposes death with Christ, and that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, for any spiritual value in us, demands that the death of the Lord Jesus shall also have had a spiritual effect in us.

The Testimony of the Lord is in resurrection, which means an entirely new position for man, and unto that an utter winding up of the old position, with all that is related to it.

Thirdly, resurrection means, on the positive side, an entirely new power in man. This power is not of man, not in any form, of any kind. Life and work in resurrection union with Christ is on the basis of the power which comes from God alone, and not one bit of it from man. It is here that there has been such sad failure in apprehension, that here man can do nothing, man is a minus quantity, man can provide no ground of power for the accomplishment of what lies in the realm of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Everything in that realm is of that nature, that no human power can achieve it either in life or in service. Is it not strange that, although that is made so clear, and although that might be generally accepted as a fact, the whole history of the Church and the history of the majority of Christians contradicts that, that the Church and multitudes of believers have sought both to live as Christians and to do the Lord's work by energies of their own. Look at the enormous amount of human energy which is poured into Christian activity and counted upon for the accomplishment of Christian ends. Almost entirely what is called "organised Christianity" is upon the basis of man projecting and developing plans, programmes, schemes, enterprises, purposes; and drawing in all the human resources of mind and brain, of will, of material, of interest, of enthusiasm, to accomplish those ends, and at the end of these many centuries we find something which, with the enormous development, falls far short of a few short years at the commencement of the Christian era in its power of accomplishment.

See the power of accomplishment in those first years. See how things went down before the Lord's Testimony at the beginning. See how every force which opposed it had to yield. See how even mighty empires, in putting forth all their resource to quench that Testimony, were themselves quenched, while the Testimony went on. And see today the ability of world forces to resist the Testimony, to stand against it, to hold it up! (Perhaps we are wrong in saying the Testimony; we should say organised Christianity.) What is the meaning? The answer is to be found here, that in resurrection union with Christ the power is altogether other than that of man. It is an entirely new power, to which man has got to yield, and not that which man has got to take hold of and use or try to use. It is an entirely new power, all of God.

Fourthly, an entirely new knowledge is bound up with resurrection. Here is what is called "revelation." On resurrection ground there is, for those who are truly there in a living, spiritual way, a new knowledge which is of the character of Divine revelation by the Holy Spirit. To put that in other words, it is a direct teaching of the Holy Spirit to the heart of the believer of that which relates to the Lord Jesus. That, as differing entirely from accepting a Christian history, a Christian tradition, a Christian story, a Christian doctrine, a Christian creed, something which has become commonly accepted as being the interpretation of Christianity through the centuries, but that which comes directly to the believer as the work of the Holy Spirit in revealing Christ to the heart; revelation, not apart from the Word, the Scriptures, but through the Scriptures; not just grasping the letter of the Scriptures and knowing what is in the Bible as you might know what is in any other book (although you might regard the Bible as different and superior to all other books); but as a shining through the Scriptures, so that the spiritual content is disclosed, not all at once, but progressively, very largely through experience. It makes necessary the trials and adversities and difficulties, situations of perplexity; paving the way for a disclosure of Christ to meet that particular need. A living, active, practical unveiling of Christ to the heart by the Holy Spirit, an opening up of the great realm of eternal, spiritual reality, as gathered up in the Person of Christ. Resurrection means an inward knowledge after that kind.

We may add one other thing. Resurrection means an entirely new fulness. That is, resurrection means the limitless; moving in the realm which has no bounds. A living, spiritual experience brings that consciousness upon you, so that it matters not how long you may have gone on with the Lord, and how much the Lord may have taught you, how full may be your apprehension of the Lord, you are very conscious that you are only yet at the beginning of things, and it matters not how long you go on, you will always remain there, that you are only at the beginning of things. You have come out into the limitless, and there is infinitely more to be known than all that you have known and do know. But the heart is at rest, satisfied in Christ.

Resurrection brings that consciousness, that you have come into fulness, but that fulness is so much beyond you that you know quite well that you can go on for ever. It is a very blessed thing to have ministry in that realm. The question of too many in ministry is: Shall I be able to last out? I shall soon exhaust all the texts in the Bible, and what is going to happen then? It seems that multitudes of preachers have exhausted all the texts in the Bible, and have gone outside for their texts! Resurrection is what is needed. It brings into this realm of a new position, a new power, a new energy, a new fulness, through the Cross. That is the Testimony of the Lord for the world need.

Gathering all that up, and putting it into other words, it means this: The need which is supplied in the Lord's Testimony is, firstly,

An Experimental Knowledge of the Meaning of the Cross.

That is a far more challenging statement than may dawn upon us at the moment. We look into every realm where we see spiritual death, or, as we have put it, the need for life, which means that there is death more or less, and we ask, in every one of those directions where there is death, What is the cause of the death? What will be the way of life? We find that the cause of death is the fact that either there has been ignorance of or rejection of that meaning of the Cross which has an inward application. In many realms that meaning of the Cross is not known. It is an altogether new revelation. All that is known about the Cross is that objective work, grand and glorious, but only a part of what Christ has done for us by His Cross; and there is little or no knowledge of that vast realm of that other important, essential aspect of the Cross, that what Christ has done for us has got to be made good in us. That is, if He died for us, the effect of His death has to be registered in us, and we have got to die with Him. And Christ in death as us is not only the death of sin, but the death of the natural man. He may be a very good man according to the standards of this world, but in the death of Christ, with all his goodness he has died, as well as with all his badness.

That is accepted in, shall we say, an intermediate realm of believers as a doctrine, as a truth, but it goes no further. In another realm that is rejected, and what is called the subjective side of the Cross is refused. You will find in all those realms a lack of spiritual life. There may be much truth, much doctrine, what is called "light." There may be a good tradition, and a history in the past which was mighty, but you will find there death now, a severe limitation of spiritual life, and you can trace it basically to this fact that the full meaning of the Cross in an experimental way does not obtain there. Therefore the need is for the Cross in its fulness to be brought again into this world, represented, expressed in the lives of the Lord's people.

That means, secondly, that

The Power of His Resurrection has to be made Manifest again in this World.

The thing which muffles the power of God, which neutralises its expression, works against its exercise, obscures its manifestation, is uncrucified man. If you want to know the power of God nakedly active, all that numbing, deadening, muffling, uncrucified natural man must be got out of the way.

If Paul was an example of the power of God working through a man, then Paul is a clear example of how that which is natural as a ground of strength and wisdom has been set on one side, for this man has been brought down to a very low place of utter dependence upon God for his very life, not only spiritually but physically. "We despaired even of life," he said. "We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead."

Then, thirdly,

A Holy Ghost living Revelation of Christ.

Not preaching and teaching about Christ, but a Holy Ghost revelation of Christ. These are the things which gather up what we have said.

Unto the meeting of this need there must be vessels. There must be individual vessels, and there must be collective vessels, though they be small. There must be ministries, in all of which these things are true, that the Cross has become a very real thing in the setting aside of what is of nature, of man, in which the power of His resurrection is the power which is being exercised, the power which is of God and not of man, in which there is a living apprehension of Christ by the revelation and illumination of the Holy Spirit.

The world need in every sphere is life. The answer of the New Testament is, Yes, but resurrection is the life that is needed. Resurrection means, first of all, a place of death, so that there can be resurrection. That is the Cross in its fulness. There must be the working of that Divine power which is all of God and not of ourselves. That must obtain and reign in vessels. There must be not doctrine, not teaching as such, not what is called "light," but there must be revelation by the Holy Spirit through the Word, so that there is a growing apprehension in a living way of the fulness of Christ. This is resurrection, and this must be expressed, exhibited, maintained in vessels, individual and collective, and in ministries.

Now that is a general survey of the position. There is a great deal more gathered up into that than we have time to mention, but, that being the need, we see the direction in which prayer is needed. We are brought back to seek the Lord with real purpose of heart that, as to ourselves and as to His Testimony in this earth in the nations, He will move to bring these things into a place of reality again, the real meaning of the Cross, where man does let go, and entirely resigns from the work of the Lord in a right way; that is, where what is of man ceases and gives place to what is of God. But where that is done through a definite experience of the Cross initially and continually the Lord will do a new thing. In a word, the Lord would have crucified men and women, crucified companies of His children, thoroughly crucified instruments, living in the power of God, which is the power of resurrection, living under an open heaven, with the Holy Ghost revealing Christ to the heart. This is the direction for prayer, that He will raise up a ministry after this sort.

Chapter 2 - The Vessel of the Testimony

2 Cor. 4:1-7.

More than once we have heard it said that what the world needs today is another Paul. But two things have to be said in answer to that statement. One is that another Paul, or even Paul himself, would hardly get a hearing in the Christian world of today. He would be found to be running too severely counter to the Christianity of our time that it would do with him what Judaism did with the Lord Jesus, and with Paul, at the beginning. The other thing, which seems somewhat to contradict that is this, that it is very necessary and important to remember that Paul was a representative of the Church, or corporate vessel of the Lord's Testimony for the dispensation, and that the Lord never intended to repeat Paul personally, and to have an individual or personal Paul in every generation of this dispensation. But what the Lord did intend was that the whole of the Church should be in this dispensation what Paul was. Paul was brought in as a type, a representative, an embodiment of the whole Church for the dispensation, and that which was embodied by His servant Paul was to be the very constitution of the Church. Those features of Paul's spiritual life were to be the constituents of the Church throughout the dispensation so that we should be nearer the mark if we said that what is needed today is not another Paul but THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO PAUL, as spiritually constituted. It is not the individual or the personal Paul, but it is what came in through and with Paul spiritually, as constituting the Church, the whole Body.

A Chosen Vessel

That is the foundation of our present consideration. We are dealing with the vessel of the Testimony, and we know that right at the outset of Paul's spiritual life that very word is attached to him. In the very first hours of his relationship to Christ in a saving way the words concerning him were: "A chosen vessel unto me." We find that in the full unfolding of his spiritual life he does become a representative vessel, that is, a vessel to which the Church is to be conformed so far as the spiritual elements are concerned.

We are not forgetting that the Church is to take its pattern from Christ; that Christ is the Pattern of the Church, and that the Church takes its character from Christ and is to be conformed to Christ. But Christ has become in a peculiar way revealed to and in and through His servant Paul for practical purposes here in relation to the Church. It only needs to be said that not in a definite and systematic way was the Church revealed through Christ, but Christ revealed in that definite and systematic way the truth of the Church to and through His servant Paul. It is not the Church of Paul, but the Church of Christ; but the revelation of Christ has come through Paul. We must remember that no revelation is of value only in so far as it is wrought into the very experience of the person to whom it is given; so that it is Paul's spiritual history and experience which gives value to the revelation, and in that sense the truth has become of practical value because wrought in a man.

When we consider this chosen vessel, this representative vessel, there are quite a few things which are related.

The Previous Vessel Supplanted

We begin by saying that he, representatively, was the vessel which supplanted the other vessel. Perhaps the best way of explaining that is to turn to the Scripture itself, and compare two passages.

We look at a familiar passage in Jeremiah 18, where we are shown the potter's house, the potter's wheel, and the potter's vessel.

Verses 3-4, 6:

"Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.... O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel."

Now note, verses 7-10:

"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them."

Now turn to the letter to the Romans, chapter 9 and verses 21-25:

"Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honour, and one for dishonour? But what if God (though willing to show forth His wrath, and to make known His power) endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction (and cast them not at once away)? And what if thus He purposed to make known the riches of His glory bestowed upon vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared for glory? And such are we, whom He has called not only from among the Jews, but from among the Gentiles, as He saith also in Hosea, 'I will call them my people which were not my people, and her beloved which was not beloved'" (Conybeare).

The implications are perfectly clear from the context. Israel was a nation concerning whom God purposed good. That nation did evil, and the Lord repented Him of the good, and He plucked up that nation. When did He pluck up that nation? Changing the metaphor, it was the day when He cursed the fig tree, and the Jewish nation, which did evil in His sight although He had purposed good for it, was set aside.

That was the first vessel, and it was marred in the hand of the Potter. The Potter proceeds to make another vessel as is good to Him, to take its place, which supplants it, and which will fulfil the purpose which He had in His heart which the other vessel has failed to fulfil. The vessel which supplants the vessel that was is the Church, and Paul is a type of that as the chosen vessel. The whole history of Paul is a clear unveiling of the fact that God has brought in another vessel, which puts Judaism out of the way.

Is not that the import of the life of Paul, that Judaism is put away? And was not his supreme conflict with Judaism, the vessel that was still seeking to push itself into the place of God's purpose, but which God had repudiated? The Lord made another vessel, the Church, to be brought into its place. Paul was the very type and spiritually the embodiment of that, so that Paul becomes, as the representative, the vessel which supplants the other vessel.

That carries with it a very definite and wide significance for the Church. It means that in God's thought the Church is a vessel which spiritually fulfils all that purpose which was represented by Israel, but which Israel failed to fulfil. That is a very wide sphere of meditation, as to why Israel was constituted, the purposes of Israel. Those purposes are many and varied, and very wonderful; but Israel failed. God brings in a new vessel to fulfil those purposes spiritually, to take up all the spiritual things which lay behind what was typical in Israel. We only have to read the letter to the Hebrews (in the writing of which we verily believe Paul had some influence, and a very definite influence) to see that fact established, that in the Church there are spiritually all those things which lay behind the religious life of Israel.

We leave that for the moment with this closing remark, that the Church comes in and is represented by Paul as something which is in the place of a merely external religious system, even though that system may have been in vital relationship with God, even although that may have been brought about by God. Immediately that thing fails to be a spiritual force in the world it ceases to be God's instrument, God's vessel. And the same will have to be said of Christianity, any part of Christianity which goes the same way. Immediately it ceases to be a spiritual force in the world it ceases to be God's instrument.

So we draw our first conclusion from this, namely, that the Church is called in to be a spiritual force, and not merely an organised religious system. That is the vessel which comes in with Paul, and is bound up in his person.

A New Cruse

The second thing, which is closely akin to it, is that Paul very clearly represents the new cruse, a newness of the vessel. We are now thinking of the clean and clear cut which is seen in the life of the Apostle between what had been as his life religiously, and that which came in by his new relationship to the Lord Jesus. Things were undoubtedly absolutely new. We do not mean by that that they were just fresh. There is all the difference between freshness and newness. You can make an old thing look fresh, but that is not the sense in which we are thinking of this new vessel. It is not fresh, it is new. It is something which never had been before. It means that there was an entire and final end to one history. That history of the Apostle Paul before the Damascus Road experience was closed fully and finally. The end came to that history, and an entirely new history began there. The two are divided by three years of solitude in Arabia, and then the beginning of something which was so utterly different from all that had been. There was no carrying over from the past. It would be well for you to read again thoughtfully these letters of Paul, in order to be confirmed in that one thing, of how completely the past history was closed for him, and how utterly different and new all was from the time when he came to see who Jesus of Nazareth was, and all that was bound up with Him.

Now come back to our point, which is Paul as representative of the vessel of the testimony, the embodiment of all the spiritual features and principles of the Church according to the mind of the heavenly Lord, and in this second thing we find the Church defined as something which is utterly new, carrying over nothing from the old life. It is, in its constitution, in all its members, in all its methods, in all its means, in all that it is and all that it has, something absolutely new. It brings nothing over from the old creation, from the old life; that is, there has been a history brought finally to an end where the Church is concerned. To put that more simply it means this, that the Body of Christ, the Church which is His Body, is composed of a company of people who have a clean cut between an old history and a new, and who do not bring over into their new realm, their new life, their new service, anything of the old creation, not even religiously.

That has been the snare of the enemy with so many, that while it is admitted that you do not bring over your old sinful ways or old sinful life, you do bring over something religiously. Now Paul is an outstanding example of the fact that that is not so. He will tell us that, so far as his religious life was concerned, it was of the white-heat kind, passionate, intense; "more exceeding zealous," he said. He came to see that it was all wrong, and it was all governed by other forces than the Holy Ghost. You may take it that any life governed by any other force than the Holy Ghost is a deceived life. It does not matter, though we may be intensely, and passionately, and utterly devoted to the Lord's interests, if we are putting the strength of our own natural life behind that passion we may be the most deceived of all people. I never had any doubt, but I am more convinced today than ever I was, that the ground of deception is a strong natural will projected into religious things, and the stronger the natural will projected into spiritual things the deeper the deception. In the case of Saul of Tarsus you have a terrific will projected into the realm of religion, and he has to confess in the end: "I verily thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus." He did what he thought he ought, and found that he was under deception, it was working in exactly the opposite way to which he thought it was working. There is a terrific danger of projecting any part of our natural life into the things of God.

The Church, in the mind of the Lord, is a thing which is new, out from heaven, all its energies and spiritual resource are of the Holy Ghost. You cannot have that until you have definitely closed the old creation history.

This is something for us to lay hold of, if we cannot understand it completely. If it seems somewhat beyond us, nevertheless to lay hold of, as simply as we can. The necessity that the Lord has a vessel which is new, that is, which has its old history of the natural life closed, and is now something altogether under the control, and government, and direction of the Holy Spirit, is something for which to pray, that the Lord shall get a people like that. That is what we mean when we say that Paul was brought in by the Lord to be a representative of the Church, and the embodiment of the principles of the true Body of Christ. What is needed through this dispensation is that what is revealed through the Apostle Paul should be the nature of the Church: no carrying forward of old creation elements.

Divinely Apprehended

The third thing in this vessel of the testimony was a definite, Divine act of apprehending. Paul spoke of himself as having been apprehended of Christ Jesus. That is how he explained his experience on that road, that he was suddenly, out from heaven, apprehended. He was laid under arrest. It was as though, to speak in our more up-to-date language, the Lord said suddenly: I have got you! I have been on your track for a long time, but now I have got you! And Paul knew that he was apprehended. But it was a sovereign act, an act from heaven.

Our present thought in connection with this apprehending is that he represents the Church in that. The Church is not something which man can make. It is not something constituted by man. It is not something that we can set up, that we can bring about. It is not something which we can organise, and get people to join. We cannot make adherents to the Church. The Church which is called "the Church" today is very largely made up of those who have come under some sort of human influence, yielding to which they have "joined the Church"; and the trouble after that is to get rid of them, you wish most of them had never joined. When you get on to that level that is bound to be the trouble. The point is this, that the Church is a Divinely constituted thing, a thing which is the expression of the Divine Sovereignty. All that we can do is preach Christ. The Holy Ghost has to do the rest, and any member not added by the Holy Ghost to Christ will be a weakness to His Body. Apprehended of Christ Jesus! You are very safe when you are on that ground.

The Vessel Liberated

Once more, in this representation of the vessel we see the vessel liberated. Of course, our special means of seeing how completely this was so is Paul's own letter to the Galatians, the key word of which is "liberty," "our liberty in Christ." We know by now what the difficulty was. Those Judaisers still regarded Judaism as the Church, with its ritual, its form, its system, its order which they desired to impose upon every convert, and cause every believer to observe in the rigid letter of the law. Paul, in his own experience, by his own Divine revelation, stood utterly and absolutely against that whole thing, having seen that Christ is no longer a set of laws and regulations, external rites and forms; but Christ has fulfilled all that in His own Person, and now makes good spiritually to His own the value of that. He is the Altar; God and man meet in Him. He is the Sacrifice; sin is dealt with in Him. He is the Priest; the one Mediator between God and man. He is the very Tabernacle itself, and all gathering together in worship is not now to some temple, to some specific building, of necessity, but anywhere so long as He is the Centre; He constitutes the Church. The Church does not constitute itself by a membership roll and a special building, a place of assembly; it is being together with Christ in the midst which is an expression of the Church. He is the Church by His presence in and with His own. And so you go over the whole system and you find that it has ceased to be some external thing, and it has become purely a spiritual relationship to Christ in a living way. But the Judaisers said, No! except ye be circumcised you cannot be saved! This and that must be observed as the law! And so the battle raged, and Paul fought through to victory for the liberty of believers from all the law.

We have not to fight today that battle with Judaism, but a similar situation has arisen as Christianity has become very largely a system of external forms, rites, orders, largely man-governed, regulated and controlled; and the life has very largely gone out of the whole thing, it is a matter of bondage and spiritual death. Paul stands as a vessel absolutely liberated from all that sort of thing, and so he is a representation of the Church, whose liberty is of that character that Christ is Everything, and knowing Christ in a living way you have everything. You are not under any kind of external law, and you never need fear that you will break moral laws if you are in a living relationship with the Lord Jesus. The vessel is liberated. "Our liberty in Christ," Paul calls it.

The Vocation of the Vessel

This can be summed up in one word from 2 Cor. 4:6.

Paul said: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels...." What treasure? The shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ! What is the vocation of the vessel? What is the work, the ministry, of the Church? Unto what are we called as parts of that? For the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

That is a great calling, but it is a great searching. We can test Churchmanship by that statement (if we may use that word). We say that we belong to the Church, and we are members of the Church. Well, what about the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ? That is the purpose of the Church. That is the object of the vessel. Nothing can substitute that, but a very great deal can veil it.

We would like to add one word more to this, that in the case of Paul, not only was that true, but there is a marvellous manifestation of God in that vessel, especially in the direction of resurrection life. It seems that this is one of the primary aspects of the revelation of God in Christ. If you look for the traces of the knowledge of the glory of God in the New Testament you will find that the outstanding trace of that glory of God is the power of His resurrection.

Take Paul as an illustration again, and read the whole catalogue of his sufferings, of what he went through, and see him in his brokenness, weakness, feebleness; "in deaths oft," he says, despairing of life, with the sentence of death in him; and yet, what achievement! What ministry! What a tremendous accomplishment! What a range! What a depth! What a fulness! What an endurance! for he is more mighty today than he has ever been. How do you explain it? You do not explain it by Paul's physical strength. No! you do not explain it on any human ground. Though much has been said about his intellect, about his persistence, his wonderful will, and all these things; Paul would repudiate the whole thing, and he does. Here he says: "We have this treasure in vessels of fragile clay, that the exceeding greatness of the power might be of God, and not of ourselves." That is quite definitely saying: I am but a vessel of fragile clay, and if there is any accomplishment, if there is any endurance, if there is any effectiveness, it is to be set down to the power - the exceeding greatness of the power - of God and not of myself! It is God in this vessel, in the power of resurrection life.

Returning to our original thought, we see that Paul is a type of the Church as God means it to be in all its members, that there shall be that there which can never be accounted for on human grounds, the power of God in resurrection. Do you feel like a vessel of fragile clay? What do you follow that up with? Do you say, Well then, I am no good, I can serve no purpose, it is no use expecting anything from me, I have not got what is necessary to be of any use to the Lord! Is that what you are saying, because you feel a vessel of fragile clay? Paul was that, but (a mighty "but") you see what is possible through vessels of fragile clay: The exceeding greatness of His power!

The Church as we know it today is all the time trying to be something other than a vessel of fragile clay; it does not want the world to look upon it as such. It wants to be something very imposing, which can stand up to the world on its own ground, meet it in its own terms. Yes, it has taken on the very habit, or it has developed the very habit, of trying to impress the world with its own resources. But in the New Testament it was a vessel of fragile clay. The comparison between the effectiveness today and the effectiveness then is a very sad comparison.

Now we have to sum up all this in a word of application. We have seen what the vessel of the testimony is, and we must set ourselves more than ever earnestly to pray that the Lord will have a vessel after this kind; that we individually may be such vessels; that companies of the Lord's people here and there may be constituted such vessels; that the Lord may have a vessel, represented by individuals and groups in this earth according to this pattern of His servant Paul, in whom He has given the revelation of His own mind in a living, experimental way as to what the Church, the vessel of the Testimony, should be. It is that which comes in in a spiritual way, as over against a merely historical and traditional way; that which marks the end of the history of nature, and the beginning of the history of the Holy Spirit in man; that which is sovereignly raised up by the Lord Himself, and not brought about by any activities of man by way of constituting it; that which is absolutely free in Christ, and to whom Christ is Everything, He fulfilling all the need of man as typically represented in the Old Testament - ritual, prophet, priest and king, altar and mercy seat, sacrifice and temple. He being all that, and in Him the knowledge of the glory of God going forth through vessels of fragile clay in the power of His resurrection.

Now you see that is a high thing. Can it be? Is it possible? Is it any use praying the Lord to have something like that? If it is true that that is the Lord's will, if that is the Lord's revelation, we shall be wrong in abandoning anything that the Lord has revealed as His will, though it seem impossible, though its recovery be exceedingly hard, nevertheless it is possible. It is possible in the individual. It is possible in you; it is possible in me, that in some real measure these things shall be true. And if it is possible in individuals, then what is the company but the aggregate of the individuals? Therefore the Lord can do this work. We must pray the Lord to bring about something like this in the earth; not a new sect, a new denomination, a new organisation, but His own children living in fellowship with Him on this ground. Let us pray for that very definitely.

Chapter 3 - The Need - God-given Vision

Proverbs 29:18; 1 Sam. 3:1; Zech. 4:1-2; Acts 26:16-19; Rom. 1:1-3.

Were I asked what I considered to be a need which embraces the greatest number of vital issues amongst the Lord's people, I should sum it up in one word, "vision," vision God-given. If you reflect for a few moments you will see that the Bible is almost entirely a matter of vision, that the whole of the New Testament Christianity is a matter of vision, that all Christian life and service which is that in truth is a matter of vision.

Vision, of course, has two parts. It means something seen, and it also means a capacity for seeing; something presented to be seen, and the power of seeing that which is presented. That is vision. There may be a vision in the first sense which is not seen, a presentation not discerned. It would be very difficult indeed to estimate the value and the importance of vision Divinely given.

In the New Testament another word is used for vision. It is the word "revelation." That is a very comprehensive word. No matter at what point we touch the New Testament Christian life we touch vision or revelation.

The Initiation of the Spiritual Life

The initiation, or the initiatory stage, of the Christian life in the New Testament is seen to be a matter of revelation or vision. It is a presentation to the heart and a heart apprehension of the Lord Jesus, and unless that is the nature of the beginning of the Christian life there is something essential and vital lacking. Any Christian life which is simply a matter of giving a mental assent to certain propositions of Christian truth, and the writing down of the name, for instance, upon a slip of paper, saying that you become a Christian, lacks something which is essential to make that Christian life a mighty force. In the New Testament the beginnings of the Christian life are a revelation of Christ to the heart, and a heart apprehension of Him. It is a matter of inward spiritual vision. It may be of a very elementary character; it may be very imperfect so far as the fulness of Christ is concerned; but it is sufficient for its immediate purpose, and it is tremendously real to those who have it; to those who are able to say in any form of words: I have come to see the Lord Jesus as my Saviour! When that can be said in reality it represents vision, if it is the vision of the heart. When you touch the beginnings of Christian life in the New Testament you are touching vision.

The Continuance of the Spiritual Life

When you touch the continuance of Christian life in the New Testament you are touching vision. The continuance of Christian life is the development, the increase, the progress, which means the greater fulnesses of Christ; and whenever you touch some fuller meaning of Christ in the New Testament, whenever you come to some progress, some movement, some advance, some development, some increase, you will always find it is by fresh vision or revelation. It is a further unveiling, a fuller revelation. It is a new heart apprehension of something presented, and something seen by the enablement of the Holy Spirit. It is so different from merely an intellectual grasp of Christian doctrine, which may fall altogether short of that dynamic power of enlarging the spiritual life. True progress as we find it in the New Testament is on the basis of a fresh revelation, a fuller revelation, a new vision. So that the true, living believer marks his or her progress by being able to say, as at the beginning, I have come to see the Lord in a new way, in a fuller way; and that with the eyes of the heart being enlightened.

The Consummation of the Spiritual Life

What is true of the initiation and the continuation is true of the consummation of the spiritual life. If you touch the consummation of the spiritual life in the New Testament you find it has to do with an unveiling of Jesus Christ. What is the consummation of the spiritual life? It is His appearing, and with His appearing there is closely and inseparably linked the completing of our spiritual progress. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God." That is the initiation. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when he shall be manifested we also shall be manifested with him... we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is." That is the consummation of the spiritual life. We shall be like Him because we shall see Him. There is a marvellous changing power in seeing the Lord from the beginning to the end.

Vision Needed for Service

The same thing holds good in service. Touch service in the New Testament, and you find that is bound up inseparably with vision. If the Apostle Paul is an inclusive representation of the true spiritual service, it is patent that the basis of it all with him was vision. He says: "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." He was constituted a minister and a witness because the Lord appeared unto him. He referred to that in his letter to the Galatians, in words very familiar to us: "It pleased God... to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the nations." Service is bound up with vision.

Vision Emancipates

How important is vision, then, if it really is the background, the foundation, the basis of life and service in relation to the Lord Jesus. Vision has a wonderful power amongst the Lord's people. One of the effects of true vision, God-given vision, is to emancipate them from all that is less than the Lord, and that is no small effect. It is an emancipating power. This is where vision is needed so badly today. The Lord's people are so cramped, so small, so narrow, so bound, so shut in, hedged in, so parochial in their spiritual horizon. They are so limited by the common traditional acceptances, by "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be" so far as a system is concerned. That is something which has become static, fixed. Paul himself moved in a very rigid and fixed realm, the realm of "Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," which had almost countless points of application in the sphere of a very rigid system of religious life, which mainly held him down to this earth. Then he had the vision of the Lord, and in the day in which he received his God-given vision he was emancipated from this earth, emancipated from everything earth-binding even in a religious way. He was emancipated from all that which had so rigidly and firmly, and with such terrific power, bound him all his previous life. It is - and we have often referred to it - one of the miracles of the New Testament how a rabid Pharisee, such a deeply dyed Jew as was Saul of Tarsus, should be stripped of the whole of that tyranny and bondage of Judaism, and come right out into a clear place where he said such a thing as this: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation." Think of a man like Saul of Tarsus saying that, with all the history behind him, the birth, the upbringing, and the training. It is not easy to get rid of a thing which is in your blood, and has been in your blood for countless generations. It is you to be that; you can never think of anything else. It is no passive thing, but an active, energetic thing in your very being to take that course. That was Judaism. All that tremendous vehemence of Saul of Tarsus as he was, more zealous than the rest; "I advanced... beyond many of mine own age... being more exceedingly zealous...," he said - all that was in the man's blood. And then you find that man out of it, repudiating it and turning upon it, ready to fight it, with a new force and a new power to lay it low. What has done that? Vision! Not just a mystical vision, but something more than the psychical. It is the miracle of a revelation of Jesus Christ, and nothing other than that will do it. This kind of vision emancipates from all that is less than the Lord, even though it be of a religious order.

Vision Unifies

Then again, vision, true, God-given vision, is a wonderful unifying and consolidating power. The passage we have taken from the book of Proverbs touches that. The Authorised Version reads: "Where there is no vision, the people perish," but the word "perish," while it is very good, does not really indicate what is there in the Hebrew. The Revised Version is a little better perhaps, but it only just seems to touch it: "Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint." More literally it is this: Where there is no vision, the people disintegrate; if you like, go to pieces, fall apart, lose their cohesiveness, lose their solidity. That is very true. You have only to look to the days of Samuel. "In those days there was no frequent vision," and what were those days? Tragic days, terrible days! One of the tragic fruits of those days was that people said, "Make us a king like unto the nations," by which request they repudiated the theocracy, the Kingship of God, and wanted a man in the place of God. That is always disastrous. Up till that time God had been their King, their Lord; He had been on the Throne, but now they have lost their vision and put a man in His place, and what tragedy it was. The people went to pieces in those days. The Philistines got the upper hand, the Ark went into captivity, everything was marked by weakness, disintegration, the people fell to pieces, there was no vision.

There is a pathetic lack of that cohesion amongst the Lord's people today. Why all this disintegration, these fragments, these scattered parts? Why is there all this division amongst the Lord's people? Why? Because man's interpretations have taken the place of the Holy Spirit's revelation. Is that the truth? Oh, yes, that is true! When the Holy Spirit is in His place, and the people are being illumined and taught by Him there are no two minds; there is one mind, one vision, a wonderful integration. This is a tremendous need today, that there should be a new revelation by the Holy Spirit to the heart of God's people, so that they come into that revelation of Christ which the Holy Spirit gives, and with revelation they become one people, dominated by one vision. That is how it was at the beginning. You say: You are putting forth a counsel of perfection, something for which we dare not hope in these days. Well, I do dare to hope for it; not as embracing all the Lord's people, but I believe a far greater measure of this is possible than now exists. We are called to prayer that the Lord will give a vision to His ministering instruments in this day which will bring His people into a new revelation of Himself, and thus bind them together, not as an organisation, nor as a multitude of people who are accepting a certain interpretation, but bind them together by spiritual ties, because they have come to see the Lord in a new way. And all that we are asking for is that there shall be such a ministration of Christ by revelation of the Holy Spirit in this earth, that all that is less than Christ will go, and people will be bound to the Lord Himself. And if they are bound to Him, then there will be oneness, the falling apart will cease.

Vision Sustains

Then again, what a sustaining power vision is. Take the Apostle Paul again as an example. What was it that kept him going? If ever a man (speaking naturally) ought to have given up, it was he. I can conceive of Paul having resigned at quite a few places. If you or I had been the pastor of the Church at Corinth I think we should have resigned very quickly. Perhaps at some of the other places too we should have chosen a roving pastorate (if that is not a contradiction of term), because we could not endure it. But Paul stuck to it to the end; even when they gave him up he did not give them up. And how much he suffered, how much there was to make him break-down, but he went through until he could say: "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." I can hear an echo even of the Master's words in that, in another sense: "No man taketh it from me, I lay it down of myself." It is a continuing unto the end by the power of God. But what was it that kept him going through? It was his vision of the Lord. It was the heavenly vision. It is a great sustaining power, this unveiling of Christ.

The Nature of the Vision

To say that it is a vision of Christ that we need may not get us very far, although we may see the need of it and the value of it. Paul says here that by the prophets concerning His Son revelation has been given in the Scriptures. But what we want to see, what we need to see, is that in the New Testament we have a gathering up in a spiritual way of the deeper meaning of the visions of the prophets. In this word at the commencement of the Roman letter, where the Apostle says that we have received that which was promised through the prophets concerning His Son, we have at least the suggestion that what is in the New Testament is the spiritual value of what the prophets saw, of what is in the vision of the prophets. We can only stay to indicate what we mean, and illustrate it in one or two instances.

We have said that in the New Testament we have in a spiritual way, for our own apprehension of Christ, that which was behind the vision of the prophets in truth and in principle. Let us take perhaps four illustrations from the prophetic vision.

The Vision of Christ as Sovereign Head of the Church

We turn to the prophet Isaiah, in chapter 6 of his prophecies, and read that which is very familiar: "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple." The Gospel concerning His Son, promised through the prophets in the Scriptures. What is the Gospel in that? That is vision! What is our New Testament value of that? The New Testament is full of the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon a Throne, and the New Testament is full of His train filling the Temple. What is that in other terms? It is the absolute Sovereignty of Jesus Christ as Head of His Church. "...raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenlies ("sitting upon a throne"), far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion... ("high and lifted up") and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all ("his train filled the temple")." It is a revelation of Christ in His Sovereign Headship over all things to the Church which is His Body, which is to be the fulness of Him.

Get a vision of that. Get a revelation of that to your heart by the Holy Spirit, and see its emancipating power and its sustaining power. And that is for present revelation to the heart. That is the thing which the Lord has been seeking to reveal to our hearts more and more for a long time.

The point is this, that, inasmuch as that is the side of vision presented, you and I have to seek the Lord for spiritual capacity to see it. And that leads us to that other fragment in the same letter, from which we have just quoted: "That he would grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your hearts being enlightened...". "The eyes of your hearts being enlightened"! That is the other side of vision.

Will you pray this for yourself? Will you pray this for all God's people? When the Lord's people get a new spiritual Holy Ghost revelation of the Sovereign Headship of Christ, and begin to hold fast the Head, they let go of everything that is local, and personal, and different, and scattered on the earth. That is the place to which to come for unity. We cannot be at variance with one another as the Lord's children if Christ is absolute Sovereign Head in our lives. When the Lord Jesus gets the complete mastery as Head in our lives, then all independence of action, and life, and all self-will, self-direction, self-seeking, self-glory and self-vindication will go. These are the things which set us apart from one another.

You pass from Isaiah, and as you do so you remember that you have the results of such a vision seen in this man Isaiah. Such a vision immediately has the effect of humiliating him to the dust. Oh, yes, we lose all our pride, all our importance when once we see the Lord in glory. "Woe is me..." That is humiliation! Then, after humiliation, there is consecration: "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." And, after humiliation and consecration, there comes vocation: "...who will go for us?" "Then I said, Here am I; send me."

A life suitable to the Lord's purposes in service is altogether the result of a revelation of the absolute Sovereign Lordship and Headship of Jesus Christ. It comes out of that. So it was in the New Testament. Go to the book of the Acts and you will see that the service which flowed out there flowed out from the exaltation of Christ which they had seen.

The Vision of Christ in Universal Dominion

Passing, then, from Isaiah, and Ephesians, and Colossians, we move to Daniel. We have to be fragmentary. We cannot go right through Daniel's visions, but, summing up the visions of Daniel, what is the main result? Is it not the course of this world's history moving toward Christ as its consummation? The empires pass like a pageant before the spiritual eyes of this prophet. In swift succession by this vision he sees these mighty world empires, each one going down before its successor. And then at the end he sees a stone, cut without hands, break into the history of this world, and a Kingdom set up, the end of which is not seen and never will be seen; and the dominion, and the authority given to the people of the Most High, and Him coming to reign Whose right it is to reign; the consummation of the history of this world. The pageantry of empires all moving toward Christ. That is a great thing to apprehend spiritually, but the spiritual value of that is caught up immediately in the letter to the Colossians as well as in other places in the New Testament, and there it is made perfectly clear that God's predestined purpose for this world is that Christ shall at the end be All and in all, absolutely pre-eminent universally, and that, although it may seem that other powers are controlling this world's history, there are mighty forces coming in and swaying it, and seeming to touch its destiny. As Daniel saw these forces at work, as he saw, for instance, the conquests of Alexander the Great throughout this world, no doubt he wondered what the end of this was to be. This man had captured and conquered everything, subdued everything, and he had no more worlds to conquer, he had absolute dominion. And then Daniel saw Alexander the Great smashed with a blow, cut off before he reached middle life, and another power coming in. And Daniel looked on! What will the end of this be? He sees the end in the hands of the Son of Man.

You look out on the world today, and you might well say, looking at it naturally: Well, what will happen next? Things are going from bad to worse! Look at the state of things! Look at that awful thing which has its home in Russia, and what it is able to do; the millions of its own children within its own borders done to death on the slightest pretext of allegiance to God! You see that and other things in this world, and you say: What will the end be? Well, the end will be Jesus on the throne of universal dominion; nothing can hinder that! Get that into your heart, and see what a power that vision will have. Vision has mighty power. Where there is no vision the people will certainly go to pieces. You would go to pieces if you were left a prey to these world conditions, and if they were all that you could see; men's hearts truly failing them for fear; but it makes all the difference when you have vision.

Colossians 1 settles it once and for all. "In him were all thing created... all things have been created through him, and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together," and He is destined by the eternal counsels of God ultimately to have pre-eminence in all things. The first chapter of the letter to the Colossians is the spiritual summing up of the visions of Daniel.

The Vision of the Church which is His Body

Pass swiftly from Daniel to Ezekiel, and amongst many visions of God which Ezekiel had we just select one with which we are very familiar, from chapter 40, the vision of the temple which never has been yet, the temple which is for the end. The vision there is of an angel with a measuring rod - a reed - going in and measuring the court, measuring the temple, putting down precisely to a detail the measurement of everything related to that temple; the walls, their height, their length, their breadth; every passage, every corridor, every chamber, every vessel; all put down in its exact dimensions. Then it is precisely stated what these things are for; what this chamber is for, and what that chamber is for. Everything is described in its nature, its dimensions, and its purpose. And then out from the temple the river, from beneath the altar, issuing, gaining volume, depth, width, strength as it goes on and on. The trees on either side, bearing fruit continually, with leaves never fading. You say: What is the Gospel of that? Well, again you look to the letter to the Ephesians, and you have the whole thing quite clearly and precisely described and explained for you.

This temple has its counterpart spiritually in this dispensation in the Church which is His Body; and here in this temple we have Christ presented as the Church, and the measurements of Christ into which His people are to come, so that every one has to function, as Paul says in that letter "in due measure" (Ephes. 4:16). That is your measure in Christ. Do not fall short of it, and do not try to exceed it. And then coming up to our measure when we are together; Paul, says, "Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith... unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Not only have we a degree, but we have a place in which to function in Christ, for there are in this Temple the places of ministry, and every one has his appointed place in ministry, and every joint is to function, every member to fulfil his office: "For as the body is one, and hath many members (1 Cor. 12:12) "...and all the members have not the same office" (Rom. 12:4), yet they all have an office; not all the same, but all having a ministry.

Then there are these chambers for rest for the servants of the Lord. The resting places! And you and I have come to rest in Christ. We are so familiar with this that it strikes no new note of wonder in our hearts, but the Gospel is there in it all, and has come by revelation through the prophets.

If only you and I had that vision, of the Church which is His Body, the wonderful heavenly order, that every one of us is given a measure "according to our measure," and that we have to be effective in that measure! Every one of us is given a place in Christ, and every one of us is given a ministry in Christ, and every one, because we have a place and a measure, and a ministry, may know our own rest in Christ. The spiritual revelation of the Church as the Body of Christ is a wonderful thing, and when we see the Church like that how we feel ashamed of ourselves that ever we thought of some institution down here on this earth being the Church. In this heavenly revelation of what the Church is; all the saints in their place, respectively, coming up to their measure in Christ, fulfilling their ministry in Christ; that is the Church, the Temple, "a holy temple in the Lord." Will you pray for that vision, that revelation? Will you pray that the Lord's people everywhere may have that brought to them? It is something to pray about! That is a need today.

The Vision of the "Overcomer" Vessel

We close with just a word from Zechariah. Amongst the visions of Zechariah is that one from which we have already read in chapter 4. "And the angel... waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep. And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have seen, and behold, a candlestick all of gold...." A candlestick all of gold! What is that in New Testament revelation? It is an instrument here on this earth which is wholly of God for bearing the Testimony of Jesus; something wholly of God; not man-made, man-constituted, but something which God has produced, in which there is the flaming Testimony of Jesus by the oil of the Holy Spirit.

Who shall say that the Lord does not need that today? Who will say that the Lord's people do not need to come back to that, or to go on to that, be for Him a vessel, an instrument, which is wholly God-constituted, made up of those Divine elements of the pure gold in which the Testimony flames and burns, and does not go out, because the unceasing oil of the Spirit is flowing unhindered? It is not impossible! It is not beyond the Lord's will for now.

These are parts of the vision of the Lord Jesus. They are only aspects of Christ, are they not? This is what we mean by the revelation of Jesus Christ. You see Him Head of the Church, Sovereign Lord, so related to His Body that He is the Body and His Body is Himself spiritually. And then all that that means of place, and measure and ministry and enjoyment, of the Lord. Then the Lord as here expressed in a vessel which is all of Himself, with His Testimony livingly, flamingly in it.

Let this not be merely visionary. Ask the Lord to save you from the thing becoming visionary in that sense, but, oh, do pray that this which is Christ may become a living revelation in your heart. It is not something of the mind or of the imagination. Beloved, this is real! It can be put in colder language and terser terms, but this is the thing which has become the passion of some of our hearts; this is the thing which has emancipated some of us; this is the thing which is sustaining some of us; this is the thing which is constituting the ministry of some of us; and so we can say this is the thing which is holding some of us together, whereas nothing else would hold us together. It is the Holy Spirit's enablement of us to apprehend Christ.

We will close by asking the question of the angel: "What seest thou?" What is your vision? In the first place have you got a vision? Everything of life, and progress, and ministry springs out of vision, otherwise it counts for nothing. What seest thou? It is also important, when we have a vision, to be able to declare our vision. If you have a vision, can you state it? Can you declare it? Is it locked up in you?

All this leads, then, for the future to very definite prayer. This is the direction for prayer - the Lord's Testimony in reality, a vessel for that Testimony, true spiritual vision, the revelation of Christ to the heart. The Lord's people everywhere need vision. Let us pray that their eyes may be opened, that we may be, as far as possible, given an eye-opening ministry, that it might be true of us: "...to whom I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith in me." "Where there is no vision, the people perish." "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." Let us ask the Lord to give us the vision Himself.