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But Ye Are Come Unto Mount Zion

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from conference messages given in 1969. This is a literal transcription, words which have been added for clarity are indicated by square brackets [ ]. A book of the same title has also been published by Emmanuel Church using a different editorial approach.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Understanding the Times in Which We Live

Chapter 2 - A New Israel

Chapter 3 - You Have Come to Mount Zion

Chapter 4 - "The Controversy of Zion"

Chapter 5 - Zion - the Embodiment of the Spiritual Values of Jesus Christ

Chapter 6 - A Final Shaking

Chapter 7 - Their Eyes Were Opened

Chapter 1 - Understanding the Times in Which We Live

We remember, oh Lord, that it is written: "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." By the Word of the Lord were the heavens, the earth, created. Our prayer, Lord, is that Thou would speak acts; that Thy Word may be Thine act. Not just words, Lord, but words of power - Divine fiat by the Word; something done. Make it like that, even now, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, amen.

The matter that the Lord has laid on my heart for these morning first sessions is that of what has come to us, and what we have come to, by the coming of the Lord Jesus.

For this present hour, I just want to lay down two fragments of Scripture around which we shall move at present. The first is in the Old Testament in the First Book of the Chronicles, chapter 12 at verse 32: "And of the children of Issachar, men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do."

The other is in the New Testament in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter one and verse one and two: "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son."

Knowledge of the times... at the end of these times... has spoken in His Son... or as you see: "in Son", Sonwise. And these scriptures and their context, you will notice, are in a time of crisis and change; very big crises, very significant change. In the Letter to the Hebrews, the reference to the end of certain times and the introduction of other times represents a tremendous crisis; what Dr. Campbell Morgan called, "The Crisis of the Christ." I'm sorry he stole that wonderful way of putting it, I'd liked to have been the originator of it! But that is what it is that is before us: the crisis of the Christ, which is, of course, the crisis of the dispensations.

And then the Hebrew Letter brings us to the crisis of our own time. Not only the great general movement from one regime to another, but the specific application of that movement to our own time. And as in the setting of the passage in Chronicles, so in this Letter to the Hebrews, the important thing is not just to know of a change of times, of regime, of Divine economy, but to have understanding of what it is; what the change is. We shall see, I think, it is of immense consequence not only to know that there are different dispensations, different economies in the Divine sovereignty, but for the Lord's people to know the nature of the times in which they live.

I venture to suggest to you, that perhaps the most important thing just now, is for the people of God to know the nature of the time in which they live, so far as God is concerned... tremendous amount of confusion... complications are immense and far-reaching just now in Christianity. Many, many people don't know just where they are; what is right, and what is not right; what is the truth, and what is not the truth, and so on and on. And, I repeat, the important thing, the supremely important thing, is to have knowledge: "understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do now" now - what we ought to do now, what Christians ought to do now, because of the peculiar and particular nature of what God is doing now. I think you will agree with me that is very vital.

Now, in the Scriptures, throughout the Bible, of course we do have many crises, many movements through a crisis from one state, position, order, to another. I am not going to even mention them, but you know that so it is, the Bible is marked throughout by reaching a point from which everything takes a new complexion, represents a new phase of the movement: the going of God. The Bible is just full of that sort of thing, God moving, moving by stages, and every stage marked by some crisis. When we use the word 'crisis', we mean we are brought face to face with something of tremendous significance which is going to govern the whole future and make all the difference in the future.

Now from the Divine side, these crises are onward movements: they are God moving on. From the human side, they are God moving back, because things have deviated on the human side. Things have gone off the direct line of God and other things have come in which God never fully intended, if He intended them at all. They were not in His original pattern; there has been deviation, so that a crisis arises which has this two-fold meaning: God is going on, but in order to go on, He must bring back. He must take His people back to the point from which they departed. That is exactly where we are. God is going on, He is not giving up, He is not defeated, He is not having to revise His program: He is going on. But from the standpoint or side of His people, He is having to pull them back and say: "Look here, you have gone off the line, you have moved away from My intention. You have deviated, you must come back to the point, and pick things up again with Me. I am going on; if you want to go on, you must come back and rejoin Me at the point where you deviated."

I think that is perfectly clear that the two aspects of any crisis are always those; and the crisis is therefore, one perhaps, and very often, of leaving an entire regime (what I have called economy, order, development) leaving it in its entirety, leaving it behind and moving with God in a new entirety, on new ground to what is wholly and originally, exactly, according to His Mind. These are things involved in these crises. This is the method of God.

I believe that the Lord wants to show us this week something of the present crisis in Christianity, and if that's too big a word... if it seems too objective; then the present crisis in your life and in mine in relation to His original thought and His full thought.

Now we have to put in there this: man never really learns anything theoretically.

You are not going to learn anything by volumes poured out upon you in words from this desk this week. That sounds pretty hopeless, doesn't it then? "Why come here, why do you men talk to us?" No, you are not really going to learn anything by all this: I say, really learn. Man never really learns anything... only by experience. Take that in, underscore it. God knows that, and that is why God is so practical. That is why God will take years and years, centuries; three or four thousand years. He's governed by this thing: that men don't learn by what they are told, they only learn by experience. That is, they have got to have a history with God, under the hand of God, before they learn anything.

Do you think you know something? How do you know it? How have you come to know it? By attending conferences? No, no, there can be a terrible tragedy along that line. I know definitely of people who have had the fullest teaching for many years: 20, 30, 40 years... you could hardly have more than they have had, and at the end they have jettisoned the whole thing; washed their hands of it. They know it all! They said, "We know it all. We know all that. You cannot tell us anymore than we know!" Alright, alright. So you may come here year after year and think you know. Well, how do you know?

God knows that we really know nothing only by history, by experience. This sounds very elementary and simple, I know, but we have got to get down to this. You see, we are coming to this point of spiritual understanding of the times, our time, and knowing "what Israel ought to do."

Now I ought to put an hour in just there, in brackets and in parenthesis, on two Greek words in the New Testament. I took the trouble to go through the New Testament with these two Greek words and I, myself, got a surprise, after a good many years of studying the New Testament, to find that I got sheets of paper full of references, and the whole thing was divided into two columns, on two words, both of which are translated into the English word "know." And they're two entirely different words in two entirely different realms. One whole column is the word which means "knowing information." Information. You know it, because you have been told. You've heard it, you've read it, and so you know that way. It's another Greek word entirely, which is the word which means you have a personal experience of that thing, and you know it because it has done something in you and become a part of you. It's your history; it's your experience. It's your life - it's you!

The New Testament can be divided by those two Greek words. I'm not quoting Greek, I'm just telling you what's there. There they are. "Know" - "This is life eternal, that they may know Thee," not by information but the word is here: "experience." "Have an experience of Thee." This is Life, you see, something very definite.

Well, I mustn't go on with that, but just indicate it and point it out. And here we are with Issachar who had knowledge of what Israel ought to do. And our New Testament is built around these two words; different kinds of knowledge. Different kinds of knowledge. We leave that as we go on.

Now, we have said that the Bible is marked by time marks and that we are brought with our New Testament to a new time mark or crisis. And everything for you, for me, for all the Lord's people, is going, really, to depend upon whether we have this spiritual discernment, understanding... this spiritual knowledge.

This Spiritual Knowledge

This kind of knowledge of the second category of which I have referred - of what God is really doing now, what He is working at now; not in general, but in particular - oh, if only this week could bring us all to that discernment! This is going to be more than a Bible conference of words and teaching. It's going to have tremendous issues. And let me say at once, I hope you are here for a crisis. I hope that you are here prepared to be turned upside down and inside out, prepared to leave a whole regime if God says, "That's finished with," and to really embrace His present economy and commit yourselves to it. I hope that is the position in which you are. You will be found out on that as we go on with this important matter of recognizing and understanding, and especially and inclusively, of what happened, really happened, when the Son of God, Jesus Christ, entered history and came into this world. Oh, perhaps you think you can give an answer to that. What happened? I know some things you would say. But, I am convinced, dear friends, (and it doesn't very much matter what I am convinced of, but for what it's worth, I put it that way) that very, very few Christians today really understand what happened when Jesus Christ came into this world. That is what we are going to spend hours upon, trusting the Lord to give us the opening of our understanding.

You see, the coming of Jesus Christ into this world, into history, split history down the middle. It split history down the middle; on the one side it said, "Finished," and on the other side, "Beginning." A great, great, immense divide was represented by the entering into history of Jesus Christ. We have got to understand that divide.

There have been, of course, three cycles in relation to Him. First there has been:-

The Historical.

I don't know how it has been with you, perhaps you have come in at a later point, but I remember when I first came to the Lord and became interested in the things of Christ. It was the time when everything was being made of the historical Jesus. The books that were being most read were those classics of the Life of Jesus or the Life of Christ. Some of you know of Dean Farrar's "The Life of Christ". All those things. The Jesus of Palestine, the Jesus of Bethlehem, of Nazareth, of Capernaum, Jesus of Jerusalem, Jesus of the mound outside Jerusalem called Calvary, Jesus of Gethsemane, the Jesus of the three and a half years, or the thirty years - the Jesus of history.

Everybody was interested in that: they watched Him walk, and go, and speak and act, here and there, and everywhere, and it's all written up as the Life of Jesus. Well, that's what engaged us. There is nothing wrong, of course, with it; it is quite good. I suspect some of you are still reading lives of Christ, on that level. That was a phase, and it may be a phase still, but then there came a change, and we passed into what we might call:-

The Theological or Doctrinal Christ.

After that, all this arose about the Person of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the Deity, Godhead, and all of what is called "the fundamentals of the faith of Jesus Christ" - the theological and doctrinal and, my word, what a phase it has been. What a tremendous battleground the Person of Jesus Christ has been.

Two phases. I wonder whether this second phase is passing. Of course not, with some; with many it's everything. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. I'm not here saying it's wrong to be occupied with the Person, the Deity, the Eternal Sonship, the Virgin Birth and so on, of Jesus. Nothing wrong with that, that is all right, you have to have that, but get over it. Get over it! Sooner of later, you'll have to get over it; it just won't do... the thing (I was on the verge of saying "it won't do the trick"!) It just won't get you through.

Your theology is not going to get you through when you move into a realm of such terrific spiritual conflict that your very faith will be struck at, at its roots. You may be shaken of all that you "know" in that way. It will not stand. People are not going to really get through the final crisis on theology, on Christian doctrine, though it may be fundamental. They cannot get through on that.

Now, there's your two phases. They may run concurrently, or they may be more or less defined as periods. But, there's another one, a third one, which is the ultimate, which is the supreme. It's about that we're going to speak, I'm not going to mention it now. We shall spend hours on that. Shall I, just to save you, it's:

The Spiritual Phase.

See, you can have the historical and you can have the theological without the spiritual; and though you may have all that, and not have the spiritual, you are not going to survive. You haven't touched the real heart and core of the great divide, the great change that has taken place with the coming of Jesus Christ. It's the spiritual life of Christ that matters, not the historical. It's the spiritual understanding of Christ and not the theological that matters. But if you don't understand that, hold on for a day or two, and we'll be getting nearer as we go along.

Well, these three phases are clearly recognized, are they not? And we have come, now, to the last: the spiritual, the revelation of Jesus Christ inwardly by the Holy Spirit; Supreme, absolutely essential, indispensable. As I said, God, when He moves (and He is moving now on this line if you can discern, on this line) He, of course, is moving onward, but He is moving backward. And if you get hold of that last thing that I have just said, you will see how true it is how God is moving back in order to move on.

What is the New Testament based upon? The historical life of Jesus? No. The theological life of Jesus? No. It's all there. That's not His foundation. The real root of Christianity, this new dispensational crisis and movement, the real root is gathered into the words of the Apostle Paul, who so, so, very much represents in himself, in his own experience and history with God, the nature of this whole dispensation. And in the simple but profound words, it is all gathered up: "It pleased God - it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me." This is something more than the Damascus Road objective experience. That was just the turning point in the great crisis. That was the impact upon him of a meaning which was to begin then and unfold through all the rest of his life. "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me." That's it. Not to me, in me.

What he later wrote, quoted here last night: "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory would give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge" (our word, our second category word, but with a prefix: in the full knowledge) "of Him." A spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him, of Christ. That's inward, that's inward: right deep down at the very source and centre of our being God has made us to see, and to see the significance of His Son, Jesus Christ. Out of that, Christianity comes, true Christianity, and anything less than that is dangerous Christianity. Dangerous for the individual concerned and dangerous for the Church.

This is what I mean by the spiritual crisis, the spiritual aspect, above and beyond and more than the historical and the theological or the doctrinal. The spiritual: the revelation of Jesus Christ within. That's it.

The Lord alone can do that. We all have to pray to the Father of Glory to do it. But it can be done, and it can be done here. It can be done so that we go away saying, "I have seen. I have seen! I can never be the same. A whole regime is left behind, an entirely new order has come in for me. I am out of something, and I am in something else; I have seen! I have seen Jesus Christ." That's the focal point, dear friends, of the message that I have to bring to you.

Now the Bible... let's get back again onto larger lines (and I must keep this enemy [time/watch] in view as much as I dislike him!) the Bible is divided, (and this is child's talk) into two main divisions, what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament. But, note, it is more than a division of books. Genesis to Malachi comprising so many books, one half of the Bible, then from Matthew to Revelation, so many books, and thus the Bible is divided into two. Oh, but it is much more than a division of books. It is this great divide.

This Great Spiritual Divide

The four Gospels, what do they really mean? When you have stood back and asked the question, what do they represent? Well, there are two things I am going to say about it. First of all, they introduce the Person Who Himself is the crisis. The Person, Who is Himself the crisis, and brings in and precipitates the crisis and changes the dispensation in its entirety.

They've introduced the Person Who does that and Who is that: the crisis of the Christ.

But you notice, of course, common place, that all the four Gospels, while differing in details of content, some containing what others don't, and so on, having their own differences, all four Gospels head straight, direct, up to the Cross. Every one of them has this characteristic in common, whatever other differences there may be, they all have this in common, that they end with the Cross. The Person of the crisis is introduced, and the crisis itself is the crisis of the Cross. The Cross is the crisis of the change that has come in with the Person. Be patient, as we move on. And this is what it amounts to: here is the Person, here is His earthly life and walk, work and teaching, but none of that can become of any value to anybody until the Cross has been planted over it all.

You can have all there is about the historic Jesus and the theological Christ, but nothing matters, nothing will happen until all that is in those Gospels is brought right up to the Cross, and the Cross makes effective the crisis of the Person. You see that? Lay hold of that.

So that the result and the issue is this: that really between the two divisions of the Bible, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, right there is the Cross. Right there's the Cross. You've got to put the Cross between Malachi and Matthew, so far as books are concerned, put it right there, because on the one side of the Cross all that goes before and leads up to Malachi so far as books are concerned (I am not speaking about the chronological order, so far as the arrangement is concerned) all that has been in that from Genesis to Malachi, on that side of the Cross, the Cross says: "No more, no more. No, finished! That's done with." The other side of the Cross... what? Yes, "all things new."

I haven't got a bit of Fromke-itis [referring to Devern Fromke] or I should draw a big cross. And I would draw a thick line right down the centre, from top to bottom, not only on the Cross but above the Cross, right from the heavens, down through the Cross to the depths. A wide line, a no man's land, and then on that side of the Cross I would write one word: NOT! Not. One big comprehensive word: N-O-T as big as the Cross. On the other side of the Cross, the onward side, not the backward side, the onward side, I would put one other word: B-U-T. "BUT"! NOT... "BUT".

Now, dear friends, I have just said something that can take up all your time for the rest of your life. Do you know those two words are two governing words throughout the whole of your New Testament? If you would like now to make a very closely, analytical study of your New Testament in the light of this, and underline every occurrence of those two words, you will have an immense, new comprehension, revelation, of the meaning of Christ and of the difference that He has made, of the great divide, and of what we are in.

"Not" - "But"

I dare not launch out onto it. It applies to everything! How much dare I say without being involved in this? It applies to, it is made to apply to, the very beginning of Christian history in the individual. Open your Gospel by John. Where are you at once? "Which were born NOT of the flesh, NOT of bloods, NOT of the will of man." Here's your big NOT at the very beginning! "BUT of God." NOT... BUT.

Now, if I went on to show you how this applies to everything in the New Testament (we are going to come to it later on in some particulars) but here we are: that Cross, with its great divide and centre looking backward over all that has been right up to that point and saying, "NOT". Not! Not any longer. No more, finished. A closed door, no way through. Heaven is in God's great "NOT". Ah, but in the resurrection... and resurrection is the positive, isn't it? Always.

Not... not, BUT! Now "neither" is only another word isn't it, for "not". "Neither is circumcision anything or uncircumcision, BUT!" NOT! Not, BUT a new creation. So you could go on. It is just wonderful how those two words open up everything and give us an insight into what has come to us, and what we have come into with the coming of Jesus Christ.

This great division - with the Cross there between the testaments: the end of Malachi, which is a tragic, tragic book of the failure of everything in the past, and at the beginning Matthew... hope, light, life, everything fresh, new. The great "BUT" of a new order of things. It's the end of a system and the beginning of an entirely new one. The Cross of the Lord Jesus has written these two words large over the whole history covered by the Bible. The Bible is intended to comprehend human history, and human history is comprehended in these two words: "Not"  "But."

Now there is something here that I must say, that I think may be helpful. I hope it will be. You see, the Cross, the Cross is a very practical thing. With God it is not the doctrine, or just the doctrine, of the way of salvation, the way of redemption. It's that, it's not the theology of the atonement and all such doctrine, and it is certainly not just the historic thing represented by the crucifix. The Cross is an immensely practical thing with God, intended to make actual this divide; and although you may know all about the message of the Cross (or think you do), you may be just full of the teaching of the Cross. The test, really, of the knowledge that you have about the Cross is whether this divide has been made in you, made in you; that the Cross has resulted in the leaving behind of one entire regime and system and order.

Oh, I know you say, "Of course it has meant that I have left the world and the things of the world". Oh, that is almost nonsense to talk like that. You really don't know what you have got to leave behind. But you will learn under the hand of God what the Cross means about the elimination, the moving away, further and further away. We are coming to that in Hebrews. I'm battling all the time not to overtake too much. But you come, we are going into this letter to the Hebrews, and you will come to a phrase which, of course, of course, you know: "Let us therefore go to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach." What does that mean to you?

"Without the Camp"

It takes a lifetime to learn what that means, and it means going through some literally terrific, devastating experiences of our soul life. This is the work of the Cross. It's a going out on the one side. A going out of, what? An immensity, but it's "to Him." Oh, it's to Him - that is another immensity, isn't it? You see what I mean? The Cross is a tremendously practical thing, forcing this gap, this divide, wider and wider as we go on so that the fact is (like it or not like it) the fact is that as we move more and more in spiritual understanding and apprehension of the meaning of Christ, we find ourselves more and more alone so far as many Christians are concerned, and certainly so far as the traditional system of Christianity is concerned.

Well, now to bring this (which is only preparatory, introductory) to a close, let me say, again coming back to the starting point, the progress, progress in the life and purpose of God with which this letter to the Hebrews has to do in its entirety. You know that, don't you? "Let us...", what? "Let us" that is one of the key words, key phrases, to the whole letter. "Let us..." "Oh no, you've gone too far, brother. You said 'let us go on.' You've gone too far. Therefore, let us leave!" That is the first letter. Therefore, let us leave, let us beware, let us go on.

What I am saying is that progress in the life and purpose of God for the individual and for the Church, depends (and if you forget everything else, write this inside) depends upon spiritual discernment.

Spiritual Discernment

This kind of spiritual knowledge and understanding as to the nature of this great change that has come in with the Lord Jesus... discernment of it! Now, if you go back, and we will for a moment, go back to our Old Testament passage, 1 Chronicles 12. Note the chapter don't you? Have you scanned the chapter? It is a new movement isn't it? It is a crisis, a turning point. David is out there, outside the camp. He's outside the camp. He is in the wilderness, he is in his cave. And now there are coming to him men of all the tribes, or of many of the tribes, just nuclei, just a few, a kind of remnant of Israel, coming to him outside the camp. And they're described as their various characteristics, men, men of valor; men of courage; men of strength, great strength; men of ability to make war; men who are committed with all their might, for it says: "These came with a perfect heart."

Very good, and so then, all these coming ones, who are falling away to David, are characterized by these things. And then right there, this: this change of complexion, it looks like a new, a different category: men of Issachar who had knowledge of the times (understanding of the times) and knew what Israel ought to do. Right at the heart of this return movement, this new movement of God which is a recovery movement, right at the heart of it, there is put this contrasting, almost striking thing: "men who had understanding of the times, and knew what Israel ought to do." And I venture to suggest that with all the driving force of these other men, all their muscles, all their physical force, and all that side of things, but for these men of Issachar there would have been something lacking which might have spoiled the whole movement. I believe it is put there to show that with all, with all that is being done (rightly and well-meaningly) the thing that must be here right at the heart of everything is spiritual understanding, spiritual discernment, spiritual knowledge, knowing what the significance of this time is, knowledge of the times and what this means.

Oh, this is not just something happening that men are doing. No, this has a meaning, a deep, a profound, Divine meaning; and these people have seen it. They have understanding as to the meaning of this present time and because they have understanding, they know what Israel ought to do. Don't you feel that's important, very vital?

Well, you say, what did the men of Issachar really see? What was it that they understood? What was it that they knew Israel ought to do? Pause and think. Look at the context again. Of course, it's historic in illustration, but spiritual in principle, and the answer to that in this dispensation is the Letter to the Hebrews. Where do you read it in your Letter to the Hebrews? "God, having in times past (old times) proceeded in this way, adopted this method; He is finished with those times and hath at the end of such times and methods spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things."

We have come to David. God's chosen, sovereignly chosen, God's elect, God's appointed, God's intended ruler, God's principle of heavenly authority amongst the Lord's people - all that David means. They knew that Israel ought to turn back to David and put David in the place for which he had been anointed of God.

Now that's simple, isn't it, in language, but don't forget it represented something. You've still got Saul alive, you know! You've still got the old regime of Saul. He is not dead yet, he has his forty years to run and, my word, what a problem for Israel! God's man, anointed man, is not in his place fully, he is on the way there; but this is God's way.

Turn over to your letter to the Hebrews and there you are! What is the movement, the final movement, the full movement, which embraces all the parts, the fragments, comprehends all and makes everything final? Fulness and finality are the words to write over the Letter to the Hebrews. It is a Christ movement with spiritual understanding of what He is, Who He is, what He represents in the universe of God - it is the spiritual apprehension of Christ. Oh, the words sound so feeble, don't they? So feeble... Perhaps familiarity robs them of their strength and point; but, dear friends, everything for Christianity, everything for Christianity, for destiny, depends now upon an adequate apprehension of the meaning of Jesus Christ in God's order of things. And this is going to be devastating, devastating to a whole system, and a Christian system, so called. Just devastating for you, for me; it will be that.

It is going, for us, to disintegrate. Our Christianity may disintegrate. Perhaps you don't understand what I mean. Yes, there is going to be a big "No" of God written over a whole Christian system and men, although they are not intelligent as to this, they do sense, strongly and growingly sense, that they have got to do something to keep Christianity intact. I believe that the whole ecumenical movement is a tremendous effort to save Christianity from collapsing.

The whole World Council of Churches is to put Christianity on crutches and save its reputation. Men are doing this, a tremendous effort, because there are those who are saying Christianity has had its day, it's had its day, it no longer means anything. And you say, "Well, that's infidelity, that's apostasy!" But, dear friends, don't you make any mistake; if you are going on with God, you are going to come into spiritual experiences in your life with God where you will be tested on every point of your Christian life as to whether this is valid, as to whether this will stand up to the situation, as to whether this is going to get me through. Yes, on the things that you believe most strongly and think you know most fully, you are going to be tested. Don't make any mistake about it - the time may come when in your life you will be tempted to question the very deepest realities of your past conviction.

There are men and women in this world who are going through that now. Quite easy? I think of some of those who have spent long years in prison and I read what they wrote before, and I have to say, I wonder if they believe that now? I wonder if they hold to that now? I wonder if that is getting them through now? I wonder... That is a tremendous statement that they made about the all-sufficiency of Christ, and so on and so on, but I wonder, I believe they will come through because He is Lord, because the heart is right with Him. But, mark you, I am simply saying this: that this great question of the real, spiritual significance of our faith, of our Christianity, is going to be put sorely to the test. It is going to be found out then whether it is Christian tradition, Christian doctrine, Christian theology, the Christian system generally, commonly accepted, or whether... what? It is Christ! It's Christ. We are going to be stripped down to Christ. Stripped down to Christ, the place where we say, "All I have left after all my learning and teaching and Christian work, all I have left is the Lord Himself." But is that going to be a fatal position? Not at all!

You know about the old woman on the ship, don't you? In a tremendous storm, she looked at the captain and said, "Captain, are we going to be sunk? Is this the end?" The captain said, "You had better pray." Oh! Has it come to that? Yes, we will be wrecked on Christ and then we will be found out whether we are under the "Not" or under the "But." Shall we pray...

Now, Lord, for Thee it is to interpret, explain and apply and give the understanding. Our reaction to it all is: this flesh cannot, this flesh cannot. We in ourselves cannot. We know it, BUT, Thou art sufficient. Our hearts are open to Thee, Lord, our hearts, we trust, are truly toward Thee. Make use of this feeble ministry to give us interpretation of future experiences in Thy dealings with us, Thy strange ways. Oh Lord, open our eyes and give us spiritual understanding we ask in the Name of Thy Son, amen.

Chapter 2 - A New Israel

In all its terms and meaning, all that we could desire, and we believe all that Thou dost desire, would be fulfilled... Not as a part of our programme, but from our very hearts we say, "Lord, Break Thou the bread of life to me." Thou art the Bread of Life. Give us of Thyself this morning. May there be a true ministration of Christ in this hour. Send Thy Spirit, Lord, in a new way to us. Open our eyes that we may see Thee, Lord. Answer this prayer for Thine own name's sake, amen.

The Letter to the Hebrews, chapter one, verses one and part of two: "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things...." And the peril running immediately alongside of our reading of those words is the peril of familiarity. What I mean is this: that after more than sixty years of being actively in ministry of the Word, therefore closely acquainted with the Scriptures, these words are more alive and more meaningful today than ever. So it ought to be. My trouble is that I haven't long enough to live with these words, and with this letter.

You ought not to know your Bible, in a certain sense, you ought, and we ought, to be coming to it every time as though we did not know it. And it ought to be to us like that: something which we really, after all, do not know. I cannot convey to you my own sensing of this. I can only make a statement like that, as to how it ought to be. I'm not coming back to you with some addresses which I have made up out of the letter to the Hebrews. The trouble is, the difficulty, is to convey that sense of immensity, vitality, urgency that is present with me in this letter, as in other parts, of course. It must come to you in that way and that is why we pray: "Oh, send Thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me that He may touch mine eyes and make me see beyond the sacred page." Beyond the sacred page - that is where we have to see. We see the letter, we see the page, we see the words, we know them. They are so familiar, but it is something in and beyond the actual writing, that we have got to see. The Lord help us this morning.

Now having repeated those words at the beginning of this letter, and I trust that you have already grasped the significance of the introductory words which are really a comprehending of the whole letter or the truth that is in the letter, I trust you have seen the two things that comprehend this letter. In times past: fragments, pieces, portions, bits, aspects. Now: all that and much more gathered up together, comprehended, brought together in completeness. No more different portions, no more different times, no more different ways, but now, one time, one way, one all-comprehendingness. It is all here. Fulness is reached. This is the other time, the subsequent time, the ultimate time of fulness, completeness.

So this letter brings us the ultimate fulness of all things in the Son, not only comprehending, not only fulness, but finality. This is the ultimate, the end; there is nothing beyond this. It is the end of all God's speaking. God, Who did speak, but in those many different ways, forms, methods, has now spoken finally, fully and finally; nothing beyond. We ought to be impressed with that, you know.

I don't know what you are looking for, what you are expecting, what you are praying for. God has given all that you could ever ask or pray for. It is present, it is now. He has no more revelation to give, only of what He has given. Revelation now and henceforth, is not new truth, it is only light on the Truth. Are you clear about that? That's where we are then, with these first words comprehending the letter.

Now I want you just to go over to chapter twelve of this letter, just to pick out again our governing words. Remember what we said yesterday about the two, two, all-inclusive, governing words which are running right through the New Testament? Chapter twelve, verse eighteen: "For ye are not come...." Ye are not come. I'm not going further with that this morning. Ye are not come - then what? Verse twenty-two: "But ye are come...." Not - but. And I'm not going to follow on with neither of what is said in connection with those two words here. Not this morning, that comes later, the Lord willing, as we get into that tomorrow. But here you have in these two statements, verses 18 through 21, a comprehending of all that has been. It is very comprehensive as we shall see; and then it's ruled out, finalized, with this word "not." Then with verse twenty-two, the introduction of another great order of things; wonderful, beyond... beyond our fathoming.

I am not exaggerating, dear friends, when I say that I could go on for a whole year here on verses twenty-two and onward. The fulness and profundity is so great because it comprehends the Bible. But leave that for the time being. It is this great divide between the "not" and the "but". The not and the but... and as I said at the beginning yesterday, we are at this time concerned with what we have come to in the advent of Christ and His Cross. What we have come to, what we are.

I wonder if you will ask this simple question, "What are you?" I wonder what your answer or answers would be. Perhaps you would say, "Well, I am a child of God. Well, I am a Christian." All the answers would be manifold. Now, this morning I want to focus all that as the Lord enables, to tell you what we are.

Here then is the great, great divide between the "Not" and the "But" as concentrated in this one letter. Other letters are very far reaching, very great and comprehensive; but in this letter, the particular meaning is that all that lies on the two sides of the Cross is concentrated in this letter called the Letter to the Hebrews.

Now, to get right to our business, you notice that I am not dealing with the detail, only with the general statement. Under the not - "ye are not come to..." - under that "not," you have the constituting of the former Israel. You are taken to Sinai, and at Sinai the former Israel was constituted a nation. They were a people, a rabble, a multitude before, and a mixed multitude at that; now, here at Sinai, they are constituted the ancient Israel, the former Israel. They were Hebrews made into Israel. Hebrews, Jews... now Israel as a nation. I know the name goes back before that, Israel, as to the person - Jacob's new name and his family - but here they are constituted as a nation out from the nations, separate from the nations, distinct among the nations, a nation called collectively 'Israel'.

Something New

There, in history, something new among the nations, something new in this world, on this earth. A new beginning of God: God's act, God's doing. I need not take time to quote the Scriptures: "I have chosen you," says the Lord. "You are My people," implying, "You are the result of My action in history."

The first word is "God," and that word always stands right at the head of every new movement of God. God. God! Genesis: "In the beginning GOD..." - God in action at the beginning. It is God taking the initiative; and this people is the result of the Divine intervention in the history of this world with a Divine action, His Own prerogative, wholly, completely, uniquely of Himself. God in creation: a new beginning.

That is the Old. You come to the New, and the New opens with the Gospel by John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" - "In the beginning... God"! But this is another new movement, "a new creation" is here indicated, pinpointed, and it is described. "In the beginning God created... man" (Genesis 1:1,26). Here in John a new humanity and mankind is brought into view under a "Not" and a "But." "Which were born, not of flesh, not of the will of man" - "Not of bloods". It's in the plural. Why is it in the plural? All right, we will not assay to tackle our liberal theologians, but the Holy Spirit is always very exact and correct, and when the Holy Spirit causes it to be put in a way that you almost overlook it, hardly struck by it, and He puts it this way, "not of bloods," not of Joseph and Mary. That is the mingling of bloods, isn't it? That is the ordinary, natural mankind, the mingling of bloods, two sexes. "Not" - this is a direct application to the virgin birth. Not all that "but of God"!

These are born not that way. As the people of God, they are not born that way. You are never born a Christian. You are never born naturally a child of God. You never inherit Divine Life by natural birth. Well, it goes without saying, "but of God." God's act! God's act to produce a new mankind, a new and different humanity never produced by the will of man, never produced along natural lines at all, but... not, "but of God" a new humanity, a spiritual race. Not a natural race at all, a spiritual race.

But then, what? What is the implication both of this letter, comprehensively, and of the New Testament, as a whole? What is it? A new Israel.

A New Israel

That is what this letter is saying to Hebrews, Hebrews: not those Hebrews of history, a new Israel has come in.

I think you ought to note, if you haven't, it is a very simple thing, of course, everybody should be familiar with it; but I am very glad to notice that in a late translation and interpretation of the Bible, especially the New Testament, called "The Amplified," I am very glad and happy to note, on this as I am going to mention in another connection presently, that wherever the name "Christ" is mentioned in the New Testament, in that place, right through this Amplified New Testament links with the name and word "Christ-Messiah." Messiah. It never divides between Christ and Messiah. It puts them together, they are one because, as you know, "Messiah" is the Hebrew of which "Christ" is only the Greek, meaning to say, "The Lord's Anointed." The Lord's Anointed. Keep that in mind. The Christ is the Messiah. The Messiah in the history of Hebrew mentality, concept and expectation, the Messiah of the old Israel is the Christ of a new Israel. One name, same name, same meaning, but carried over now; and so wherever you read the word "Christ" in your New Testament, don't forget the hyphen, say "Messiah."

It is most impressive if you read that version: every time you come on the mention of "Christ" and then it says, "Messiah." I say: "impressive." Does it impress you? Do you see the meaning? Do you see the significance? Do you see what this is driving at? A new Israel because this is, shall we say, a "new" Messiah? Is that quite correct? It is the One Messiah, it is the old Messiah; and here this letter is saying all of the old Israel's hopes, expectations, conceptions, of their coming Messiah - all that ever they had associated with that name of the Coming One, Messiah, is taken up in Christ, comprehended in Christ. He comprehends and fulfills it and goes beyond their conception; and, as we shall see, beyond their acceptance.

Well, it is a new Israel, not that one of their limited, narrow, exclusive conception, mentality, or even expectation. Much, much greater and much bigger than all that which the old Israel ever hoped for, looked for, expected, prayed for. Much bigger indeed, and we will come back to that in a minute. It is a new Israel beginning with (and I must use the word, though it is not quite exactly right) the "new" Messiah, the Christ, the "Christos," the Anointed One.

Now this, as we have said, is a new act of God. A new act of God is the Messiah, the Christ, and a new act of God is the new Israel; and there are two governing, dominating features and factors in this new Israel as the act of God. Two aspects: the Resurrection of Christ, God's act, God's unique act. The Resurrection is God's specific, peculiar act in history. It is the act of God. God raised Him! God raised Him! Not resuscitation: resurrection; and, of course, God saw to it. God saw to it that there was no doubt whatsoever that He died, that He was dead. So far as He, as a man was concerned: dead and buried. And if you are in the grave for three days and three nights, you have pretty good ground to conclude that that person is dead. All right! No resuscitation, no breathalysing, no, nothing of that. He is dead. He died. And now only God... only God and the intervention of God can make for anything further. He is God's Act, in His Resurrection.

But then, the other aspect of this act of God is Pentecost. Pentecost was God's act. God did it! The intervention of God by the Third Person of the Trinity, the intervention of God in history to bring as from death, as from death this new race... this new race. I do wish that all people who are so interested in this word "Pentecost" would recognize really what Pentecost was. They limit it to this and that and something else, "This is Pentecost". The Lord save us from this restricted conception. Pentecost is the act of God in bringing to birth a new, altogether new, humanity. And if your Pentecostalism or experience (forgive me using the very phrase) doesn't mean that there is a new humanity of a different order that is God's doing and not the result of any kind of soul, psychic, or any other force produced by the energy of man, it is not something that you have to stand back and say, "It's God; and it is God producing a new kind of humanity, unique, different. God's act!" Resurrection and Pentecost are one thing as God's act, firstly in the One Son and then in the sons to be. That is all very simple I know, but I am working on toward the object.

Now then, you come back to your New Testament, and especially to begin with to the Book of the Acts; and what have you in the Book here? The gradual dawning, the gradual dawning, upon the apostles (yes, the apostles) and then upon the believers; the gradual dawning of what has happened, what has happened, what the meaning of Christ was. It is dawning... it is the faint rays seemingly of a new day just coming up over the horizon and shooting across the sky, and in their consciousness something happening. Notice, in the beginning, they still continued to go up to the temple, in the ordinances of the temple, the ritual of the temple, the time of prayer at the temple. They are still going up, but something is happening, something is spreading over their sky, and that fades out. It fades out! They are losing that attachment. They are losing that mentality. They are meeting in homes, wherever they can meet: not meeting in the temple any longer. No, it is not a sudden thing that has happened that they make a sudden break. I say it is the dawning of the meaning of a new day.

It is so real, so clear; they don't put it into any system of teaching and say, "You must come out of that denomination. You must come out of that system. You must leave that order of things." No, it is just happening. Something is happening, and they are finding themselves out. And note this that I am going to say: first of all, it is not a physical separation. It is not a physical separation, first of all, it is an inward spiritual separation. I will put it this way: they find themselves out before they are out! They find that they no longer belong. No one has ever told them that they must leave their denomination, their church, their mission; their this, that, and the other organization. No, something has happened inside.

You know, in the old creation, God commenced from the outside; and in the new, always from the inside. And in this spiritual dispensation it is that you just find yourself somewhere, perhaps where you never intended to be. Peter never intended that he quarreled and argued with the Lord about the house of Cornelius, "No, Lord, not so." All right, Peter, what has happened to you? Don't you know what has happened to you? You are going to know, and Peter does come to know, doesn't he? Oh, he will write later on, he'll write about the spiritual house of God. Well, do you see what I mean? Something has dawned, has broken. It is a new day, and the dawn has come in, and the light is growing, growing. That's the first movement.

Oh, dear friends, do take hold of it! It is an organic thing. It is a movement of Life within. It is not legal, "Ye must" or "Ye must not" - "You must leave this and leave that in order to come to God's fulness." It is not that at all. I say, stay there until you cannot for your very life's sake, for your very walk with God's sake, for your very knowledge of the Holy Spirit within. Stay, stay. "Come out-ism" is a dangerous thing. That is not how it was. It was from the inside. It is the way of the Holy Spirit, the initiative of God, the act of God, the dawning of a new awareness that "Something is happening to me because it is happening in me." I know what that means. I have had crises like that. I have had crises like that when I knew that something had happened to create a divide, and "Now, Lord, what am I to do? If I take action, look what will happen." And so I stuck and on a false pretext went on. At the end of some months, I found myself like this - I was not in it. "No, that is not where I am finding the Lord. That is not where Life is," and I have gone back to the Lord and I have said, "Lord, what am I to do?" He said, "So many months ago, I took you out in spirit. Now perhaps you will have to follow in body." Oh, don't you put a teaching on that. Don't take hold of that and crystallise it into a doctrine. It is a spiritual movement because this is a spiritual dispensation.

That commenced, as I have said, at the beginning of the Book of the Acts, and before you are through that book, what will you find? You will find that the light has been growing and growing; and you are having in the letters that are compassed by that book (all these letters, every one of the Pauline letters is compassed by the Book of the Acts, isn't it? And others) you'll find that in all these letters which come out, you have the growing revelation of what? Of what had happened, what has happened; what the meaning of the resurrection of Christ and the advent of the Holy Spirit really meant. It is a growing revelation, not of some new thing as a thing, but of what was at the beginning, at the root of things.

So God is moving (so to speak) backward, in order to move onward; and you have this growing revelation under these two words, "Not - But." An inward thing "Not - But." The Day is moving on. It'll come, it'll come to its glorious consummation when what happened at the beginning is found in the consummation, the "New Jerusalem, coming down from above" - the sum of this new thing that happened with the coming of the Lord Jesus. And we will be coming back to that in Hebrews later on. But you are marking the way, the consummation of the initiation, the growing light, transforming the mentality.

Oh, I have the New Testament you see, right present, all of it in mind as I am speaking. The growing light - increasing understanding of what this new dispensation means: growing. You will have many, many exact statements in the growing light which has grown from the day when he first had Christ revealed in him; as he said. Growing light... Paul didn't have it all at once; it was growing all the time, the growing light, as he will say presently, "The Jerusalem which is beneath is in bondage. Cast out the bondwoman." Not that Jerusalem, "but the Jerusalem which is above is our mother." Our mother. You see the language and what it means? And is it not impressive and significant that it is at the end of the letter to the Galatians?

Do you know what the Letter to the Galatians is about? Think again. Well, it's along this line of contrast of the "not" and the "but", isn't it? Not circumcision; not, not, not; but, but. And at the end of that letter he uses this so significant phrase in Galatians 6, is it 16? It doesn't matter very much, it is right at the end of the letter: "the Israel of God," the whole Israel of God. The new Israel. That, that throws light upon the whole letter, you see. One Israel is gone, the old Israel is gone! That is the argument of the letter, isn't it? That is why he got into such trouble. That is why this letter is such a battleground! That Israel: no more... not, but now another with its Jerusalem headquarters above, its birthplace above, (I'll come back to that later). The Israel of God; a new Israel entirely.

Well, now, I must get on... We must, dear friends, (and this is a very vital point in our consideration or in what the Lord is trying to say to us) we must recognise the new dimensions of God in this thing that has now come in on the "but" side.

The Dimensions of God

What was the tragedy of the old Israel? Of course, the tragedy of the old Israel, finally, is their dismissal. Their dismissal: "The kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." That happened and it stands today. The kingdom of heaven taken away - not for that Israel, but for another! The tragedy of Israel, of course, is that they are dismissed from the dispensation, or the dispensational movement of God. These years... it has lasted for two thousand, how many more years we do not know, probably, not so long... you leave that alone.

Here I am going to upset a lot of you: you leave Israel alone for the time being. You will get into terrible confusion if you get down on this earth with an earth touch in these things. Some of us have lived through things - we remember the Kaiser (forgive me, that is not an attack upon any nation or people) but we do remember him going to Jerusalem and having a new door broken into the wall of Jerusalem so that he never went in through any of the old gates of the old Jerusalem, but because of who he was, who he was, a new gate must be broken in the wall for him. And people fitted that into prophecy, see? And said, "Therefore, the Kaiser is... So-and-so, the Messiah!" All right, say no more. Was he?

When General Allenby entered Jerusalem and brought the Turkish rule to an end, the prophetic school laid hold of it, brought it down to earth and said, "The end of the time of the Gentiles." How long ago was that? Was it? Was it? Mussolini. A dear man of God but caught up in this kind of thing, went from Belgium to Rome to see Mussolini to say to him, "You are the last Caesar to reconstitute the Roman Empire." Whereupon Mussolini had a great statue made of himself, statue made of himself, the last Caesar and a great relief map of the revived Roman Empire with ten kingdoms behind his statue. The last Caesar of the revived Roman Empire? We need say any more? What about him? God help the last Caesar.

You see, and you go on like that; confusion, if you come down onto this earth. Leave it alone and see what God is doing, and God is doing a spiritual thing, not a temporal thing.

I could take an hour to enlarge upon that last phrase, "not a temporal thing." Do you see, in the sovereign activities of God, now He is confounding and confusing and breaking down all temporal representations of His heavenly kingdom? Men are trying to set up local churches after New Testament order. You have never had more confusion in local churches than you have today! They are trying to set up things, constitute things, Christian movements, Christian institutions, Christian organizations, and they are all in confusion and don't know what to do with one another. As Billy Graham said, "The psychiatrists are chasing one another around to give some explanation of their own troubles." Well, that may be exaggeration, but do you see what I mean? God is breathing upon every temporal representation in order to have a spiritual expression of Christ! That is the heart of what we are saying, and that is what is here.

Now I was saying, we must recognize the dimensions of this that has come in with Christ and into which we have come. The spiritual dimensions are diverted from Israel's tragedy, Israel's tragedy... yes, of being set aside in this dispensation. But why? Why? Have you ever answered why? The answer is in one word, friends - exclusivism: "We are the people. Truth begins and ends with us. You will never be able to get anywhere with God if you are not circumcised. Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot be saved. The nations are dogs, are dirt." (Poor Jonah, poor Jonah was caught in this.) "We are the people. We are the beginning and the end of all God's work. You have got to come on to our ground, be on our ground, or you are out." You never will be on God's ground if you do not come up out of that. I could enlarge upon that, of course.

Exclusivism - and God never meant that when He took them out of the nations, made them a distinct people, constituted them His Own peculiar people. He never meant that. He only meant to plant them in the nations to show the nations what a God He is, WHAT A GREAT GOD HE IS! And this, this startled and stunned Jonah; that God could ever think in mercy upon anybody outside of Israel; Nineveh.

And so you have it all the way through haven't you? And that is the trouble in the New Testament with the Lord Jesus: it is the exclusivism of Judaism that is the battleground. The battle in the life of the Apostle Paul was that, was that! He was hammering at this brick wall of Jewish exclusivism, and all his sufferings are because of that.

This new Israel is so much greater than the old because Christ, this Messiah, is so much greater than their conception of a Messiah. The immense dimensions of the New Israel! We have got to recognize this, and resist exclusivism where Christ is concerned, as we would resist a plague; where Christ is concerned. I am not talking about fundamental truths and the personality of Christ; I am talking about the greatness of this One Who is introduced, hath spoken at the end in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of..." an exclusive party? - "ALL things." That is Paul's great word all the way through isn't it: "all things... all things, all things," and in the end, "to sum up all things in Christ." And if I need to safeguard, I am not talking about universalism. I am talking about God's ultimate realm and sphere where it will be nothing but Christ. The rest will be outside altogether; wherever that outside is, it will be outside and not inside. "For without..." - that is the last word of Revelation, "For without are the dogs, (and so on), and everything that makes a lie." That is false, that is out, that is gone. Within: of the all things... Christ. Well, there we are.

Now, what is the governing concept here in this letter right at the beginning? "Has spoken at the end of these times in Son." There is no article - "in Son." What is the meaning of Son or sonship? Always fulness. Always fulness! The fulness of the Father is in the Son, Divinely conceived. The Son is the fulness of the Father: the Firstborn is the fulness and takes up all that is of and in the Father. Fulness! Then, as we have said, sonship is finality, is finality. And then as to this letter, as to the whole revelation, sonship as here revealed, explained through this letter, and in the first chapters particularly, superiority! Using that word in its right sense.

Superiority

Do you notice the superiority of this Son? "Appointed Heir of all things." This catalogue, the catalogue here of things?

Superior to Moses. There you have it.

Superior to Joshua. If Joshua had brought them into the rest, there would be no more: he didn't, therefore, he never reached finality. Superior to Joshua, this One, this Son, to Moses, to Joshua, to... angels?

Superior to angels... and think of the angelic ministries right through the Bible; their ministries, visitations, deliverances, activities! One angel in one night, by a breath of his nostrils wiping out a whole, mighty army; investing Jerusalem, one angel. Think of it all... and the old covenant was mediated by angels, it says. This letter is arguing about the angels who ministered the old covenant. Yes, superior to angels.

Superior to Aaron and all his system and economy of priesthood. Superior to that; it comes under the "not." The tabernacle that was, this letter says "there was a tabernacle" past tense. There was a tabernacle and there was a Holy of Holies and a Holy Place; there was... Superior is Christ to all that, and what a place it had!

Superior to the old covenant, and this letter deals with the covenant, the old covenant, and "the day comes," quoting Jeremiah 31:31, "...the day comes, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant." This letter has a lot to say about the new covenant.

Superior to all the sacrifices... millions upon millions of sacrifices slain through the generations, and the river and ocean of blood of those sacrifices; immeasurable, humanly speaking, covering centuries. How vast! One Sacrifice only, One Shedding of Blood only, Superior to the whole lot! Superior to the whole lot, hundreds of years of sacrifices and blood shedding, and this One, single Sacrifice, shedding of blood: Superior to the whole lot.

NOT - BUT... this is what we have come to.

Well, so we go on; this is the letter, isn't it? How great then is sonship in Christ! How much vaster than any traditional or historical expression, representation, system, order, economy - we have come to this.

Now I must close somewhere. What is the consummate issue of all this? Can we bring it all, what we have said, and all that can be said, and could not be said, can we bring it down to one, inclusive, comprehensive issue? We can! We can; and oh, I don't know about you, you may have doubts as I have about some translations, new translations of the New Testament, but I do thank God for this Amplified. I do, because at this very point it has helped me as nothing else has helped me.

You see, I have studied theology. I have studied Christian doctrine. I know the doctrines of grace. I know the Letter to the Romans. I think I do, at any rate I am fairly well-acquainted with what is there and of what the theologians said about it, and the doctrinaires. And when you mention the Letter to the Romans, of course, Luther and all the rest spring into view with their phrase: "justification by faith," - "righteousness... by faith." Oh, I tell you, friends, that strikes me cold. It may not you. It may mean more than that to you, but to me as one who has, you see, had to deal with all this theology and doctrine and system of Christianity in its doctrines and so on, it is awfully wearisome.

Theology is a very wearisome thing you know, isn't it? A deadly thing, I think. But this [Amplified] version has come to my rescue.

When I read and heard the word "righteousness," what did it mean? Well, you see, in the Old Testament, the symbol of righteousness is brass. In the symbolism of the Old Testament, the symbol of righteousness is brass. Brass? Oh, how hard is brass, how cold is brass! I am not interested in brass! Are you following? Do you understand what I mean? And that is what that word came to mean to me, even in the New Testament. It was all glorious teaching, but I am not talking about the teaching, I am talking about the phraseology, the terminology. What is it that is represented there? Now here my version has rescued me. Oh, I am basking in the sunlight of this every day now, rejoicing in this. What does it say? Wherever that word "righteousness" or "justification" occurs in the Amplified New Testament, you have: "Right standing with God." Right standing with God! Dismiss your theology. That is it!

That has been the quest of humanity from the beginning. It doesn't matter where you go, in the darkest heathenism, the most ignorant, unenlightened realms of humanity, right through, right through all the strata... the one thing, whether man will put it into words or not, whether it is in his phraseology or vocabulary, the one thing deep down in every human creature is to be in right standing with God. All these heathen rites, sacrifices, rituals, after all they are trying to find a place of right standing with, well, they say "God," and they have no right conception of Who God is or what God is. "He Whom they ignorantly worship" said Paul, "Him declare we unto you." To the Unknown God. Here it is.

I remember very early in my Christian life I tackled a monumental book, Professor Edward Caird's "History of Religion and the Greek Philosophists" ["The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers"]. Don't you tackle that, I nearly spun round. But in this magnus opus, Caird concentrated it all into one statement: "There is not a human being on this earth, of any race whatever, who does not have a consciousness of standing in relation to some supreme object of worship whom he calls god." Is that true? Of course it is, everywhere. The consciousness of standing in relation to a supreme object of reverence, and he calls that object "god." He doesn't know anything about that object, but he just calls it "god." Now then, here we are, the quest of humanity all through with greater or lesser enlightenment and understanding, or little or none, or much after all within, is the quest to be on good terms with this object called God; right standing with God.

Now we ought to start all over again with the beginning of Hebrews! Here is the One, the Son, the Son, and the great thing about this Son, and the glorious thing about this Son is He is in right standing with God. All this other in the past was an attempt to get onto right standing with God, and it never, never did it, it was a failure. The quest for right standing with God. Here is the Son, first of all, inclusively, comprehensively, the Beloved of the Father, the Beloved Son. "My Beloved Son," could you have terms that more gloriously express right standing with God? Right standing with God. Think on that. Dwell on that.

And then the letter goes on, "in bringing many sons to glory"; and all the rest of the letter, which we leave now, is the way of right standing with God in the Son.

Glorious letter! How great, comprehensive, wonderful, this is, it is. And that is only the fringe of it. We will get more into it later if the Lord wills, but I think you have really got enough for the time being. The Lord help us, we pray...

Oh, send Thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me, each one, that He may touch our eyes, make us see, make us see oh Lord, that the result of this hour in Thy Word would be, might be, that this people will really be able to say, not mentally, but in the heart, "I have seen the Lord, I have in some new, more wonderful way seen God's Son, seen what God is doing," and that we are able, Lord, to understand now what we are, what we are - God's new and final Israel. Teach us more of what that means, but set Thy seal upon this time.

Now, Lord, there is a little interval, and immediately this is closed now, these people are going to turn and talk about all sorts of things. Save us, Lord... the whole value of this can go in five minutes if we are not very watchful, very watchful in setting a seal against our lips, having the door of our heart kept. Lord, help us, for we are not here just for meetings and messages, we are here for life crises. You precipitate them, Lord, for Thy name's sake, amen.

Chapter 3 - You Have Come to Mount Zion

While we wait upon Thee... on Thee, Lord, we wait... and while we do need Thee to bless us and ask Thee to bless us while we wait on Thee, we would rise even higher and say, Lord, satisfy Thyself. Get to Thyself the reward of Thy sufferings, the travail of Thy soul. Lord, find Thine own satisfaction; ours will, we know, follow. We shall not lose anything if the Lord gets what He wants. And so, may we find our blessing in Thy blessing, for Thy name's sake, amen.

The Letter to the Hebrews... and we are this morning coming to the concentration of the whole letter in one section. In chapter twelve you will note that this concentration of the whole letter in this section is governed by the two words: "NOT", "BUT." Verse 18:

"For ye are NOT come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them; for they could not endure that which was enjoined, if even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake: BUT ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh."

Not... but. We shall not dwell upon the various details gathered under the "not" simply to say that this does represent a tremendous change over from one whole system of Divine activity and method in the past which is (or was) of the nature of the tangible, the sentient, the palpable; what you could see with your natural eyes and hear with your natural ears and touch with your hands and register by all your natural senses of soul and body. That comprehends the past system, and over it is written: "Not". Not anymore. That kind of thing is left behind. And, mark you, dear friends, that it is because that has been overlooked or not recognized that Christianity is in the poor state that it is in today, for Christianity is built upon this "not," very largely. You will see that perhaps more as we go on the positive side, but register that: what you are not come to. Take it clause by clause in its significance. Each clause with its significance... what we are not come to.

We are not come to a system that can be appropriated and known by natural senses. That is very comprehensive, it touches a very great deal, does it not? That is finished. The Cross has cut in between that and this "BUT we are come."

But... We Are Come

Now I want to be very implicit and careful. Did they really come to Sinai? You see the description, the Holy Spirit through the writer is making it very, very definite and positive and emphatic that this was something very real - so real that even Moses, who had such access to God, such fellowship with God, with whom God did speak Face to face as a man to his friend, this man said: "I exceedingly fear and quake." Was that real? Was that imaginary? Was that just abstract? No, this thing was very real. People cried out, "Stop! We can't bear this. We cannot endure this." Very real! That is what they came to. If you had been there, no doubt you would have said, "There is no imaginary thing here. This is something terrific." "But we are come," and do you mean to say that it is less real... the "but" than the "not"? That this that we are come to is abstract while that was concrete? Oh no, I am sure that this is even more real, after its own kind, in its own realm; and, dear friends, that is the point upon which we must focus everything, the reality of what we are come to.

When you go on and break this all up into its details, if you are in your own senses, senses of mind and soul, you are just completely baffled. It seems so... well, idealistic or imaginary, so ethereal, so unreal. You see, to the natural, the spiritual is unreal. To the natural man, the man of soul, what is essentially and intrinsically spiritual is unreal. Their reaction is "Oh, let's be practical! Let's come down to earth, let's get out of the clouds and get our feet solidly on the terra firma," (as the Irishman said, "terra cotta"!). "Let's get down to things that we know are real." That is the reaction of the natural man to the spiritual. But to the spiritual, spiritual things are far more real than the tangible. And this that we are come to, to say the very least, is as real as what they came to at Sinai, if after a different order.

Now I want you to note the tense, because it is very important to get the tense: "we ARE come to Zion, Mount Zion." Not we are coming, not we are going, not we shall then arrive at Zion, "we are." I know you will go on singing it, "We Are Marching Upward To Zion." We know what you mean. If you want one of the most hilariously, comic, humorous things, try to march to the tune of that hymn; that song! I remember many years ago, there was a conference of Christians and they decided at a certain time of the conference they would have a procession around the town. So they all formed up in procession, and had a brass band to lead. And the leader, who was neither a musician nor a soldier, shouted to hymn so and so: "Come ye that love the Lord, and let your joys be known... we're marching upward to Zion." And the band started and the people started to try to march. You never saw anything so funny in your life. If you don't know what I mean, take that tune outside sometime and get a dozen people to try to march to that tune. Can you imagine it now? Do you know that tune? Oh no... well, I just put that in as perhaps a little bit of humour, but it has the point: we are not marching upward to Zion. The Word says: "But ye are come to Zion," present tense. We are supposed to be at Zion now. Have you got that?

There is here, of course, a contrast between Sinai and Zion, but it is not only contrast here, but note, in keeping with what I have just said, it is more than contrast, it is consummation! This Zion was on the horizon for Israel right at the beginning. I think it is an impressive and amazing thing that you find the people through the Red Sea, through the Red Sea, and on the far side. And then you look at Exodus and find them on the far side, Exodus 15, and you have this, right there, before ever they had marched into the wilderness and on to the land - or got anywhere other than on the other side of the Red Sea - you have this: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance, the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for them to dwell in, the Sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established." Right at the beginning Zion is in view as the end, the consummation of their journeyings and their experiences. During the next forty years? Ah, and many more... Zion is on the horizon from the beginning.

Zion is Not the Beginning, Zion is the Consummation of Everything

This is the Letter to the Hebrews. In old times, old times, they were on the journey, stage by stage, phase by phase, step by step. You remember that chapter which is just full, smothered, with that word in Numbers, "and they journeyed... and they journeyed... and they journeyed." I think it is forty times in one chapter, "and they journeyed." Old times... The Letter to the Hebrews says, "We have arrived, we have arrived!" How? Because all the bits and pieces, phases and stages, steps and movements, have come to their consummation in Jesus Christ. We have arrived, we are come to the end of all God's movements in His Son. He is the consummation of all!

Now then, still this word "Zion," which it says we are come to, remains a bit abstract so far as our mentality is concerned. We must, therefore, get down to see what this Zion is that we have come to. We have said: consummation, comprehension (or comprehensiveness), but what is it? What makes it up? What is the constitution of Zion as God's end?

Well, then, first of all, we say:

Zion is an Inclusive and Comprehensive Term.

In other words, we are come to the all-inclusive and all-comprehending thought and intention of God when we have come into the Lord Jesus. We may have to grow in our apprehension and understanding of what we have come to, but God has nothing whatever to add to what we have come to. We have got it all! In Christ, we have all!

God has reached His end in His Son, finished His New Creation in His Son, and entered into His rest. And so the letter here says, "We who have believed do enter into His rest." It is a comprehensive term, is Zion, it is coming into all that God has placed in His Son for us. Christ is the sum total of all God's work over which is written: "It is finished." It doesn't mean just come to an end, it is all completed, it is all completed, it is all perfect!

You know, the formula when the priests brought the sacrifice for the atonement and placed their hands upon the head of the sacrifice, they uttered a formula which in the Greek is "tetelestai, tetelestai" - "It is perfect." They had gone with their trained eye over that sacrifice, turning up every hair to see if there was one of another colour; any minute point of contradiction and inconsistency, through and through, opening its mouth, examining its teeth; every part gone through the trained eye of the meticulous priest. And when he finished his examination, the sacrifice had been put up for ten days under that scrutiny to see if there would be any development whatever of an inconsistent, imperfect element. At the end, he brought it forth and put his hands on it and: "tetelestai", "It is perfect." That is the Letter to the Hebrews isn't it? By one offering, forever He has perfected, made complete; and when Jesus cried, "It is finished," it was the cry of the verdict of an Offering Perfect, without spot or blemish, to God. It is perfect. It is complete. His work and His Person are in right standing with God.

The sum of all God's work is represented in the symbolic name, "Zion." But Zion is seen to be not only Christ Personal, but a corporate thing. It is the people of Zion, as well as Zion - the people of Zion, a corporate thing; and Zion then is a people who are in the good of the complete and perfect work of Christ, a people who are the vessel of that work of the Lord which is complete.

Zion... It's so easy to say things like this, isn't it, this is perhaps Bible teaching, you might say good Bible teaching; but, oh, my friends, we have got to see before we get through this week that it is not just as simple as that. And you will discover almost every day of your life that this position of standing in and being in the good of the finality of Christ's work is not a simple matter - it is challenged, up hill and down dale, all the way along, that you should be moved, we should be moved, from this position of the perfected work of the Lord Jesus.

That is what I mean when I say we are not marching upward to Zion, we are come to something perfect, and we should be the people embodying that perfect work of the Lord Jesus! I do not mean that we are perfect, but His work is perfect; and He Who is perfect is with us and in us. The time will come when that perfection will be manifested. I think that is a very wonderful fragment, isn't it, in Thessalonians: "When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believe" - marvelled at! And I suppose we shall marvel more than anyone else.

Well, that is Zion. It is Christ and Christ collective, Christ corporate, the foundation of everything. His perfect work as His perfect Person - that is Zion!

Now, I'm keeping, of course, very close to the background, the symbolic and typical background of the Old Testament, because while the things of the Old Testament have gone, the meaning and the spiritual principles are eternal so that the spiritual meaning and principle of Zion is taken over and applied here. That is why the very name is taken out of the Old Testament and brought here into the New: Zion.

So that the next thing about Zion is that it is:

The Very Symbol of His Absolute Victory.

Do you remember the beginning of Zion? After they had brought David back from his exile and made him king, the Jebusites occupied this site and they sneered at David from Zion and said, "You shall not come in hither"; and they fortified it with the blind and the lame and said, "These are enough to keep you out of here. This is an impregnable stronghold, so much so that the weakest can hold it, save it. If the weakest, the blind, and the lame can do it, well, the strongest... of course it goes without saying what the strongest can do!" The Jebusites considered this Zion to be absolutely impregnable, the last word in the unassailable and "uncapturable." Is that a word in the dictionary? I don't think it is. It's good enough for our use! "You shall not come in here, indeed, it is quite impossible for you to do so." - "Alright," says David, they accept the challenge, "We take up the gauntlet. You will see."

Well, we know what happened. He did break through and break in and take the stronghold and destroy the erstwhile impregnability, and it became the city of David, the City of the Great King. His great victory, his immense victory, is centred in, registered in, established, in Zion. And Zion is the very symbol and synonym of the great prowess of God's King, of God's Anointed.

Now, bring it over: "for ye are come to Zion," the City of the Living God, ye are come to Zion. What have we come to? We have come, we have come to the supreme victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over the erstwhile and impregnable - and what was that? We quote from Matthew: "I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." And what have you heard as the exposition of "the gates of Hades?" I am not sure that in the early days I didn't make this mistake, "gates" in the Bible, of course, in the Old Testament cities, the gates were the place of the counsels of the elders where they came to their decision by discussion and counsel and made their decisions for the city and the land. And so we have said the "gates" are the counsels of Hell. Don't you make that mistake. That's right, but that is not what it means. What is the otherwise impregnable stronghold of the prince of this world? It's death. It's death! So the Risen Lord in the presentation of Himself in the Book of the Revelation, right at the beginning, says, "I am He That liveth, I became dead; but behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages; and I have the keys of death and of Hades." The spiritual stronghold into which the Lord Jesus broke; that impregnable stronghold of "him (Hebrews) who had the hold of death". He was able to say here, "Whatever you take from Me, you can't wrench that out of My hand. In the end, I'll have you. I have the hold, the power, the authority of death."

Spiritual death is a tremendous thing, a terrific thing, so much so that the Apostle Paul almost exhausts the vocabulary in this connection when he says that we should know "the exceeding greatness of His power, exceeding greatness of His power." Exceeding greatness of God's power! Think of that! The psalmist would say, "Selah" - "think of that!"

God, God! The exceeding, the power of God which exceeds: "The exceeding greatness of His power which is to us-ward who believe, according to the working (the energy, the word is the 'energy') of the strength of His might, which He wrought (or energised) in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead." What language... what language! It is simply, I say it is beyond, Paul's expression. He had a very good vocabulary, but he is finding himself put to it to express and explain what it meant to raise Jesus from the dead - to overcome death!

Oh, it is so easy to say, "God raised Him from the dead," but do you see what it meant? The illustration, of course, (and the illustration always fades in the presence of the reality) the illustration is Egypt and Pharaoh and the gods of the Egyptians. See how God is just, shall I say, panning out His power in those ten judgments. The first is a great power, the second is a great power and more, and the third is still more, and on to ten. Ten... you know the symbolic meaning of ten in the Bible, but we'll not stop for details. On to ten. Increasing power, increasing power breaking down something, steadily, steadily breaking down a great force; and when you come to the consummate thing, what is it? It is life and death, the death of all the firstborn in Egypt; and when that is registered, the people are free: out they go, resurrected!

It is an illustration. Types, I say, are always poor things in the presence of the reality; the reality is the raising of Jesus Christ from the dead by the glory of the Father, by the exceeding greatness of His power - and that is to us-ward. Dear friends, I don't think we have begun to understand what it cost, and what power lies behind, our being born again, our being brought from death unto Life.

Now I come back to Zion, because that's Zion.

"Ye Are Come to Zion"

Ye are come to the immense victory of the Lord Jesus in the realm that supremely challenged God and heaven: the realm of death. Death. And so you have here in this letter, especially in the first chapters, so much about death, haven't you? "He tasted death for every man." He tasted death for every man! He delivered all those who through all their lifetime were subject to fear through fear of death, to bondage through fear of death! Underline death in those early chapters because it is basic to all that follows; and when you come to the end of the letter, you have that great note struck again, oh what wonder: "Now the God of peace, Who brought again from the dead that Great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, make you perfect." We are brought again from the dead. There is the potential, there is the dynamic, of our being made perfect. The death, which put a period to all spiritual perfection before, has now been broken by the Great Shepherd of the sheep.

I say put a period? You in Hebrews remember Aaron and all his sons, the priests? It says they could make nothing perfect because they died. Death put a period to their work, and nothing was perfect. But He has perfected forever. Why? Because He lives forever, "I am alive unto the ages of the ages," therefore, that is the hope and dynamic of your being made perfect.

Oh, thank God, "the exceeding greatness of His power" which is going, eventually, to present us before the presence of His glory without spot in exceeding joy, a glorious church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, presented (oh, what a word) "faultless!" What a sweep of the board that is! Faultless! My, we down here now, are just obsessed with one another's faults and with our own. Faultiness; faultiness, and that's your trouble - you're looking for the perfect assembly, the perfect church, and the perfect Christian, and you are just all the time occupied with what is not perfect; the fault and faults. To present us faultless - "He is able to present us faultless before the presence of His glory in exceeding joy." Why? Because He has conquered death! Death is the stronghold, the stronghold, and He has plundered the stronghold of Satan.

"He plunged in His imperial strength to gulfs of darkness down: He brought His trophy up, at length, the foiled usurper's crown."

The crown of Satan is death. The crown of Christ is Life: "I will give unto you the crown of Life." Well, are we spending too much time on details about Zion? This is what we have come to, or are supposed to have come to! May we be given strength and faith to apprehend what is being said; enter into the marvelous joy of it.

Number three about Zion, and Zion again was, and is, in its spiritual meaning and reality:

The Centre of His Dwelling.

His dwelling... the Lord dwelt in Zion. The Lord was found in Zion. You notice the words from Exodus 15? "Thy sanctuary, thou wilt bring them into Thy sanctuary"; to the mountain. "Thy sanctuary". We know historically that it was there that God had His Sanctuary; and I will say here that without dealing with details, as in Hebrews 12, verse 18 and onward, that Jerusalem and Zion look like synonymous terms, don't they? As though they are interchangeable. They are not exactly the same thing, but dare I stop to deal with the difference that there is? It may come out without any special consideration, but here: "the city which Thou, O Lord, hast made" - the heavenly Jerusalem.

Well now, here we come then to this place of His dwelling, the place where the Lord is. If you were asked where you would find the Lord, I wonder what you would answer? Well, for one week in the year at any rate, at Wabanna! [Wabanna is where the conference was held.] Or you might mention other things, "If you want to find the Lord, you come to our meetings. You come to our company, our place of worship, or you go to So-and-so; you go to So-and-so and you will find the Lord there"; and so you localise the Lord. I know in the Old Testament they had to go to the places where He caused His Name to be. That is in that geographical and literal sense, no longer the case.

To understand this, here is a great danger into which Christendom has fallen; and we are all in danger of localising the presence of God. I mean literally, literally saying: "This is where you have to come," or "That is where you have to go, if you want to find the Lord." Don't you be deceived; it's not true. We have passed from that system. That is under the "not." That is under the not... it sweeps all that conception away. There are no sacred Ephesus's or Philippi's or Thessalonica's, if they were, they would be today where they were two thousand years ago. They are not; have gone. The Lord was met there, but you won't meet Him there any longer, not in that way. No, not even in Jerusalem, and not in Rome! But bring it down, bring it down: where is the Lord? The Lord Jesus has given us... is it a formula, a prescription? "Wheresoever two or three are gathered into My name, there I am." There I AM! There I Am. That is the only "localisation" (I hesitate to use the word "locality") that is the only localisation of the Lord!

Now, at any place where you may have met the Lord, any company of the Lord's people where people may have met Him, as soon as they cease to be spiritually Zion, what Zion really is spiritually, the Lord leaves that just as He left the tabernacle in Shiloh. It is not sacred. The tabernacle isn't sacred or it would be preserved until today. No, things on this earth are not sacred to God. The place where the Lord is and is to be found, is in Zion. Ah, but what Zion means, what Zion is, what we have been saying Zion is - that is what we have come to!

Now you can go and put up a building and get a congregation and put over the door: "Zion." No! No! No! This is this mentality, you see, this mentality. No, Zion is a spiritual thing, a spiritual people, and the great thing about them is... you meet the Lord there when you meet them, and with them you just meet the Lord. You are not meeting a technique, a form, a ritual, a doctrine, a teaching, an interpretation and all that. You are just meeting the Lord. "Ye are come to Zion..." oh, let that be a test as well as a statement.

We will give up everything, and rightly so, we can let anything go - buildings, places, and all our constitution - we let it all go if people are not finding the Lord when they come where we are. Paul brings it down to the individual: "Ye are a sanctuary of the Living God." That is an individual application, "the temple of God." I must hurry on. The place of His dwelling is the place where Christ is in the finality of His work, the fulness of what He has done, where things are according to Christ. That is Zion!

Number four:

Zion is the Seat of Divine Government.

Go back again of course, "Zion, the city of the great King." Out of Zion shall the government go forth. Out of Zion shall He rule the nations. Zion, the seat of His sovereignty and government, where His throne is. I, a few minutes ago, hinted at the difference between Jerusalem and Zion; what difference there is... Zion, as I understand, is what Jerusalem ought to be; and Jerusalem isn't always Zion, but it is what Jerusalem ought to be: the governmental centre. I'm sure I'll get myself into a lot of trouble if I follow that on... however, courage!

All, all the people of God are not the seat and centre and expression of this government. And in the Revelation, you will have something more than the holy city, the new Jerusalem, you will have "nations walking in the light thereof." You will have an extra circle. Yes, they are in the Kingdom. Now I, mark this, I am not now discriminating between the Church and the Kingdom. That is not my point, but I am saying that there are overcomers. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne." That is Zion, but the Jerusalem doesn't always conform to that, so far as the Lord's people are concerned.

I think I had better leave it there, but, you see, it's just like that, this is a great difficulty with many. You present the ultimate, full thought of God for the Church - what God's Mind is about the Church, the Heavenly Jerusalem - yes, you present it, but look at all these Christians: one foot in the world and the other foot in Christianity. All these "Christians"... do you mean to say that they're in the Church; they're in the Church? When we think of what the Church really is, you'd see. Oh well, don't make a technical doctrine of it, but remember, there is such a thing as God having a governing people. It is one thing to be the citizen of a country, or even of a city, it is another thing to be a member of the royal household. See what I mean?

Zion is the very epitome, the very essence, of God's thought for His Church, to which the Church (as a whole) does not all approximate, but it, it's this governmental thing. Now, at the beginning it was like that. The literal Jerusalem in Judaea was, of old, the centre of the government of the land. You come into your New Testament, and you find that things move from Jerusalem. They move. You say, "Antioch becomes the new centre, it takes the place of Jerusalem". That is the way expositors put it, they make a geographical movement of it. Well, alright, you can have it if you like, but it isn't true. Let us go to Antioch then and have a look and see what this is.

What are they doing in Antioch? There were certain brethren in Antioch and "they fasted and prayed, and the Holy Ghost said...." They are off the earth, they are out of the world, they have left things here, they are linked with heaven and by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, the Heavenly Government is in operation. The Heavenly Throne is governing there. No, it is not a board meeting.

I do not know if any of you know the cartoons of E. J. Pace. Years ago in the Sunday School Times, he had a very good one. I think it was a humourous one, but very good. He called it, "The First Board Meeting of the New Testament," and here is Jerusalem and all the believers are gathered in a congregation in Jerusalem, and there are two big hands with a big board in it, in the hand, a big board, this huge piece of timber, smashed down on that building and "they were all scattered," scattered throughout all Judaea, throughout all Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth; and he calls that "The First Board Meeting."

No, not in Jerusalem literally and, no, not in Antioch literally. Zion is where heaven is governing and not men, where the heavenly councils are operating: "and the Holy Ghost said..." The Holy Ghost! That is what we have come to, or ought to have come to. I hope I haven't offended any of you board members, you committee men, you church directors. No, no, we are coming to reality. Zion is testing... challenging our whole system. And here, at this point, Zion means it is that where Heaven rules, the Ascended Christ governs through the Holy Spirit, makes the decisions, gives the decisions, directs the courses. "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul unto the work where to..." the board meeting has appointed them? No, "I, I, have chosen them." This is Heaven acting, and that is fruitful, isn't it?

Now, I must finish... Number five about Zion:

Zion is the Place of Secured and Established Fellowship.

Now this is rather interesting, instructive. Go back to your Old Testament. When the hearts of the men of Israel turned from Saul to David to bring him back and to make him king, what happened? The first movement was to Hebron, and there they stayed for seven years at Hebron. What is Hebron? Do you know the meaning of Hebron? Fellowship, fellowship, that is Hebron. Now you can put that over a fellowship if you like, and call it "Hebron," but let it be true. However, they brought and first of all made him king in Hebron. It was a partial thing. It was a movement unto fulness, but seven years in Hebron, seven years (spiritually interpreted) of securing fellowship. And after the seven years, up to Jerusalem to Zion; and the values of Hebron are now centred in Zion; that is, Zion is that in which the true fellowship of the Spirit is established!

You have got to read the rest of this section of Hebrews to see the marvelous fellowship that is there. Why, what have we come to? Even "to the spirits of just men made perfect." I don't think I'll ever get to that in this convocation. We... we are come to a marvelous fellowship in heaven. To "hosts of angels," in fellowship with the angels; fellowship with "the spirits of just men made perfect"; in fellowship with "Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant." In fellowship with everything; it is fellowship that is in Zion, heavenly fellowship, heavenly fellowship. And you know quite well if you just get a little taste of heavenly fellowship, it is heaven.

Some of you have come from far places where you have little or no real spiritual fellowship; and whatever other values there may be about convocations, I have always found that one of the greatest values, even more than the ministry, has been these lonely pilgrims coming from far and near in the songs of ascents up to Zion, and finding that heart-ravishing fellowship which has sent them back to their lonely places feeling and knowing: "Well, I am not alone after all! I thought I was alone. I was Elijah looking for a juniper tree to say, 'It is enough, oh Lord, take away my life. I am the only one left.' But I discovered that there are seven thousand in Israel!" Fellowship is a marvelous thing. That is Zion in truth. "Ye are come." Oh, that we might live in the good of that always, and in our loneliness and isolations and exiles, know that our fellowship is in heaven. Alright, I must just mention these things and go on.

It took seven years to get it, and then establish it in Zion. In Zion. Well, what is it? Again, it is the fellowship of Christ being in His right place and His full place. David is now in his right place, and in his full place, for which God chose and anointed him. He is there: our Greater David in His place; right place and full place - and wherever that is true here, that is Zion. And it is not Zion unless it is like that. We're near the end, friends, I have a quarter of an hour.

Number six:

Zion is the Ground of our Festivities.

I have almost said this in what I have just said. What does it say? "Zion, the city of our solemnities." That is the phrase in Scripture, "the city, the place, of our solemnities." What did that mean? Well, it was the great feasts and festivals of the people which they had in Zion.

God had ordained that this people should be a festive people. Now this portion in Hebrews says that is what we have come to. We have come to numerous angels in festal array. The city of our festivities. Well, need I say any more? I believe this, I know this: that if you have anything that approximates to Zion spiritually, anything that is really and truly spiritual Zion, however small it is, you will have a feast of good things. Where these things, these five things that I have mentioned are true, where these things are true, you will never be hungry, spiritually hungry. The Lord will see to it that there is plenty there. You will not be miserable, but full of joy!

We need something more than religious picnics; we need Zion's spiritual festivities. "Hosts of angels in festal array." I don't know that I understand that altogether, but I think I can glimpse it. My, when the angels see Zion, how happy they are! How glad they are! There is certainly joy amongst the angels when you have things like this. When they look at a spiritual Zion, they put on their festal garments and say, "This is it. This is it!" The angels rejoice. Well perhaps that is an imperfect interpretation, I do not know, but I am sure it is a part of it, because we register this, don't we, when we have anything that approximates to Zion in this way... Zion's fellowship and the King really in His Place of Governing - we register heaven's feeling about it and say, "My, this is good"; and we no longer condemn poor old Simon Peter. We fall into the same wonderful and glorious trap, "It is good to be here. Let us never go away from Wabanna again. Let us build three tabernacles."

We sang, just before this ministry this morning, didn't we sing about "above the warring world below..." We have got to go back to it, but may we go back with something of the joy of Zion, the City of our solemnities, spiritual festivity. I must leave that then with that and come to the last thing about Zion; and this is only the first fragment in the whole section. There is another one which will probably take the whole of our time tomorrow, number eight, but that is not coming now.

Number seven:

The Place of our Spiritual Franchise.

Is that a difficult word, idea? Well if you do not know what I mean, I remind you of Psalm 87: "The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." Then the psalmist picks out those places in the world that men boast of. "I was born in Philistia. Think of that!" - "I was born in Tyre. Think of that! I am a Tyrite. I am a citizen of Tyre." - "I was born in Ethiopia. Think of that!" The psalmist, you can almost hear and see him pout: "But this man was born in Jerusalem! It shall be said of Zion, it shall be said: this man was born there." Something absolutely superior. This man is a citizen of Zion, he is born there, his name is registered there, and the psalmist concludes that whole survey, comparison, and contrast with: "All my wellsprings are in Thee." All my wellsprings are in Thee; the Place of my franchise: "I am registered in heaven, I am a citizen of heaven."

"Our citizenship," says the apostle, "is in heaven; from whence we look for a Saviour." "Our life is hid with Christ in God." Not only have we been "born from above" (you're familiar with all that, aren't you, in John: "born from above" is always the correct translation, not "born again," but "born from above," that is something more than being born again) "Born from above" and our names written in heaven in the Lamb's Book of Life. Not only that, that is glorious, but you have the franchise. Paul boasted of his freemanship: "I am a freeman born," and they all had to yield to that, even the Roman Empire had to bow to that, a freeman born. The poor centurion captain had a bad time when he heard that. My word, his life was at stake for having put chains on a free man! Our citizenship is in heaven, our franchise is in heaven, we are "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ." You could pile it on! This one was born there at Zion, in Zion, in Zion. I must leave that with you, I do trust it is just not a lot of either interesting or even fascinating Bible teaching, but this is a challenge: "Ye are come to Zion."

The Lord help us to see what we have come to, what we really are in the Divine thought. The Lord make this true of us, wherever we may be, and of the little companies with which we may be related and connected, that it is in this true spiritual sense, Zion indeed!

Lord, make this more than teaching and doctrine and truth and Bible exposition. Do put the challenge into it, into every one of our hearts, "Is this true of me? Am I a citizen of Zion? Are these things real in my life?" Help us to attend to it. Answer our prayer, for the sake of Thine own glory and satisfaction in Thy Son, amen.

Chapter 4 - "The Controversy of Zion"

Lord, in no formal way, no mere custom, but in a very deep and strong consciousness of need, we pray. We must pray. We are this morning allowing ourselves to be put under new responsibility. If Thou shouldest speak, as we have asked Thee to do, then the words that Thou dost speak will judge us in that day. We realise that it is no small thing even to allow ourselves to hear the Lord speak, but Lord, it is a matter of capacity also. We cannot understand unless the Spirit of wisdom and understanding gives us the ability. Things are going to be said which may be the truth, but we will not understand unless something is done by Thee in us, and we certainly cannot follow through in obedience unless Thou, Lord, dost do this thing. As Thou didst say to a very beloved disciple, "You cannot follow Me now, whither I go you cannot follow Me now. You shall afterward." That "cannot" is over us and on us. We cannot follow through unless, Lord, there is something done by Thee. Now all this we bring, and what is true of hearing and obeying is just as much true of speaking. We are not authorities. We are not teachers. We cannot speak unless Thou, Lord, dost the speaking. The anointing must do it. We submit ourselves... that this time shall be an anointed time, a Holy Spirit time, in both ways and all ways. It shall be the Lord this morning. Grant it that the glory may come to Thee and any fruit may accrue to Thy glory. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we ask this, amen.

We return to continue with that first fragment of Hebrews chapter twelve, verse twenty-two: "But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." - "Ye are come to Mount Zion."

Now, for this morning, I want to link with that one or two other passages of Scripture. First of all, back in the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter thirty at verse eight... Pardon me, it's chapter thirty two, Isaiah chapter thirty two at verse ten... and I think I'm still wrong! Chapter thirty: "Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever." And then will you turn to the second Psalm, and I want you to read this psalm, perhaps we will begin at verse six, having glanced at the earlier part: "Yet have I set My King upon the holy hill of Zion. I will tell of the decree: the Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee."

Now you keep that psalm in mind, please, as we go on. All the rest of it, from that verse and before, take a glance; but I want you now to turn to the Letter to the Romans, and to your great favorite, chapter eight. No, I'm not going to read what you want me to, chapter eight at verse nineteen: "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him Who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

Now, of course, you want the next bit, but I am leaving that and going on to verse twenty-nine: "For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren: and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified."

Now between those two portions that we have read, we have this: verse twenty-two and twenty-three, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body."

We are occupied with what we have come to, "Ye are come," ye are come, and we have been thinking about Zion, the Zion to which we are come. And we have said seven things about Zion, seven things to which we have come, constituting this position; and I come to this eighth this morning, which is of very serious and solemn moment. I feel that if the Lord gets His Word through this morning, very largely (so far as this ministry is concerned) the conference may hang upon it. It is the most practical issue in this whole consideration, position: what we have come to in coming to Zion. Here, as you note in this passage, Zion and Jerusalem look to be synonymous. "Unto Zion... to the heavenly Jerusalem." No 'and' between, making them different things, and you eliminate the 'ands' from this whole section because you're not dealing with different things. In these various matters that are mentioned, this is all of one. It is all one thing. However, that by the way. Here Zion and Jerusalem come together, are spoken of as being one, and that gives us our starting point for this present consideration: Zion as the heart of Jerusalem, as the very essence of all that Jerusalem was intended to be, as the real spiritual meaning of Jerusalem, the concentrated point of all that Jerusalem represented.

Zion and Jerusalem in history and in the nations, have always been the storm center, the storm center of history, the storm center of the nations. Of course, it would take a long time for us to even look generally at the history of Jerusalem. You can do that at any time, but how many sieges, how many investments, how much was Jerusalem the object and centre of world attention and concern! Again and again and again, eyes were turned toward Jerusalem, for Jerusalem's destruction, for Jerusalem's wiping out, for Jerusalem's possession. A long, troubled history is the history of Jerusalem, even to our own time; a world centre of conflict and controversy that everybody recognizes: Zion... what the prophet calls, "the controversy of Zion."

The Controversy of Zion

Zion-Jerusalem has been a controversial object in history and in the nations all the way along. It is extraordinary, isn't it? You wonder, "Why? It's not such a wonderful city, is it? It's not so great." How long would it take you to walk across it, or even to walk around it? What is it, and what was it? Perhaps it's a better specimen of world cities today, so far as structure is concerned and modernization. But what was it and, even now, what is it? How can it compare with London, New York, Paris, and any of these others you might mention? Well, they might be centres of attraction, truly. There was a tremendous battle in our own lifetime to get a hold of London. Oh, if you had been in the battle of London, you would have known. Fourteen months, day and night without cessation, the city bombed, fired upon, attacked, assailed. If you had been in that, and seen it happening, great areas going up in dust and smoke, you would have said, "Well, London is an object. It counts for something." Of course, most of you people know nothing about it in that way. I hope you never will, but there it is.

But Jerusalem - Jerusalem! What is that? Why, not once or twice in a lifetime, but right through the long history of centuries, there has been a controversy over Zion. And if you look closer and look into it more carefully, you will come to see this: that Zion, or Jerusalem, was always a sign. It was a sign. There was a significance attached to it, and the significance was not its temple aspect of buildings and structures and economies and so on. Why, Babylon can go far beyond all that. It was a spiritual thing, for you notice this: whenever the spiritual life of Jerusalem, as representing the people, the nation, whenever the spiritual life was right, was right; whenever it was a matter of right standing with God, Jerusalem was in the ascendant. Attack if you like, let the hoards of Babylon or Assyria come against Jerusalem and encamp. There is a Hezekiah inside! There is a people inside who are right with the Lord! Waiting on the Lord! Crying to the Lord! Making the Lord their trust. And so much the worse for Assyria, for Babylon. In a night, their hosts are wiped out by the Angel of the Lord. When things are spiritually right, it doesn't matter how fierce, forceful, and great the assault - the antagonism - they stand, come through.

But from time to time, it was not like that inside. The spiritual state was low. There was declension. There was wrong. The standing before God was not right, and then Jerusalem was always in weakness, always in fear, in dread. Weakened from the inside, spiritually it could not stand; and at last, at last, after more than one successful assault, or breaking down; overcoming, at last, because, simply because of this poor, low, spiritual condition, Jerusalem is destroyed. Finally destroyed... that is, robbed of its place in the Divine economy and purpose. It's a sign of a spiritual condition. Zion has always been such a sign, a barometer of spiritual Life.

It is absolutely useless, dear friends, to refer to tradition and say, "Well, God did this in the beginning, and this is the place where the oracles of God are found and the temple of God is and the great tradition of Israel as the chosen people. It's here, and we rest on that." No, tradition won't support now. History will not support now. Institutions will not support now. It seems as though God has no regard, at length, for temple, or ark, or altar, or priesthood. He cries through the prophets: "Away, away with you. I want none of your sacrifices." Isaiah 58... what a chapter: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice." Then, what follows? "Yet they seek Me daily, they love to know My ways." "I will have none of it", says the Lord. "I will have none of it. These are not the sacrifices I want. This ritual is not what I am after. This traditional system is not what I desire. It's a spiritual state." And only on that can the Lord associate Himself, ally Himself, to Zion.

For I am saying that Zion has always been a sign of spiritual condition, and that has been made evident by whether there was ascendancy - ascendancy, the support of God - making them superior to every adverse force; or whether they were a shame among the nations, a reproach among the nations. With the prophetic element, the prophetic element pointing on, of course, to something else, as is always so in the prophets. You have Jerusalem crying, crying the great heart cry: "Woe is me. Woe is me. All ye that pass by, all ye that pass by, have pity. Have pity, all ye that pass by." What a tragic situation for Zion. Shame amongst the nations! And which of the two things? Ascendancy or shame, glory or dishonor. Right at the centre of history and the nations bound up with a spiritual condition; dependent upon a spiritual condition.

You know, there is a lot to be gathered into that statement, dear friends, which I could never stop even to explore. But if you look at this letter to the Hebrews again and see that we are come to Zion, we are not come to some thing, some religious thing, some tradition. We are not come to historic Christianity - if I may put it that way - we are come to a spiritual situation which is calculated to startle us.

"Oh," we say, "We are in the day of Grace. This is the dispensation of Grace!" True! Is the Letter to the Hebrews on any other ground than the ground of Grace? Surely not, but do you know in this letter the most awful things in the Bible are written: "How shall we escape..." we, we escape, we Christians, we believers of this dispensation, "how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Our God is a consuming fire... it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God." This is said to these people, these Christians; and other things like it.

I am always having people come to me on this question of whether one's saved, or not saved, finally lost, raising the question out of Hebrews 6 and other parts. These statements, you see, "For it is impossible to renew them again to repentance," and so on. Don't raise that with me please, but I am pointing this out, that this letter in the day of Grace; a day which brings into view not some new Christian system, not the formation of a new Christian tradition, but a spiritual condition without which everything else is as nothing. Come to Zion... yes, but you have come to the controversy of Zion. You have come, we have come, to the great battle of Zion; and it's a spiritual battle. There it is then. What a battle!

Well, now, having said that, and that is the background of it all, I don't want to make you glum. I see your faces are getting a bit heavy and your chins are dropping a bit, you think I am getting back to Sinai, I think, from Zion! No, no, as I have said, this is a very solemn time. You are going to have a lot of teaching this week. It is not going to avail one little bit if there is not a corresponding spiritual position.

Well now, having said that and laid that as the background of all, it is the battle, the controversy, of Zion. And, what is the nature of this controversy? Let us look at one or two things about it, and I am working toward a very, very vital thing, which I trust we shall reach before we are finished.

The Nature of the Battle

What was the nature of the battle with Israel, centred and represented by Zion-Jerusalem? It was the battle in relation to a calling and a vocation. They were called by God. They were chosen by God. They were an elect race (see why we came to Romans eight?) an elect race, a chosen people. In history on the earth they were the elect of God. Chosen, and called, and separated... what for? To be saved? Just to be different? Just to be that? No! For a vocation, a calling, a testimony in the world, a testimony among the nations. A mighty, heavenly vocation on the earth... called for that - to reveal God, what God is like, the reality of God, the glory of God, the holiness of God, the power of God - a vessel of testimony among the nations, to the nations, to the world. Zion, as we have been saying, is that which represents God's full thought for mankind. The fulness of God's thought is vested in, centred in, Zion. And because of that, the battle starts.

That is, as it says here, "the city of the Living God." In history, it was the city of David, God's anointed king. And do you notice the history of David? Up from birth... up? It looks like down and out... but, no, steadily, steadily up. Let all the forces of Saul and his malice, his devil-driven soul, be concentrated against this young man. And what that young man suffered; you know the story. He seems to be a marked man. As we say, I do not know whether you have the phrase in this country: "a speckled bird". He seems just right from the beginning to be a marked man. The devil had put a mark on that man and was watching him, pursuing him. Poor David cries: "I am like a pelican in the wilderness... a sparrow upon the housetop." Oh yes, the object of a fierce and furious, relentless malice, for his undoing. But he holds on his way steadily; not because he is so strong, for there was times when David broke down: "I shall now perish, I shall now be killed."

He resorted to some subterfuges, a man of like-passions with us, very human; nevertheless, through it all, whether it is in the land of the Philistines by compromise (a mistake from which God sovereignly delivered him) or wherever it is - in the cave of Adullam, in the wilderness driven hither and thither for his very life - his spiritual course is on and up spiritually (it doesn't look like it outwardly) on and up until eventually, anointed, he comes to the place of the anointing, the throne. And Zion is the place of the consummation of that history of Divine election, Divine choice, Divine (dare I use the word in these days) foreordination. He is there, on the throne. He is in the place of the full thought of God, and that is centred in him. It is the place of the absolute sovereignty and Lordship of God's anointed, is Zion. We are come to Zion. We have been saying this: there is Another Greater than David that is here, and there is another Zion, greater than that, that is here. But it is on that point, dear friends, just focused upon that one inclusive and consummate point of the Absolute Sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ that all the conflict rages and is centred.

You turn to your New Testament, you know that's true. You know their message, as they went out into the world that then was, everywhere their message was, "Jesus Christ is Lord: we preach Jesus Christ as Lord." That brought them up against Caesar, and all the Caesars, because Caesar said: "I am lord." The Roman Empire said: "Caesar is lord," and they worshipped Caesar; and the argument, contention, accusation, was, "These men are preaching another king but Caesar." Ah yes, that's where the controversy was, on this one thing: the Absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. The controversy of Zion is on that point ultimately, ultimately: God's Anointed.

Now you see why we read Psalm 2, "Why do the nations rage?" Raging nations... we are coming to that in another connection shortly. The raging nations, the kings of the earth gathering themselves together against the Lord and against His Anointed. "Let us cast their bonds from us, let us get rid of them. They're a menace, a menace." - "Yet have I set My King upon My Holy Hill of Zion." I have set My King! The raging, the storming, the controversy, focused about the Anointed One, in the Anointed One, God's Anointed.

But do you notice, it was not very long in the New Testament, you only reach what is marked off mechanically by chapter 4 [of the book of the Acts]. Oh, there's a use, of course, in having this thing that that man in Paris did, just a few centuries ago, when he divided up the Bible into chapters and verses; that's quite a modern thing. Quite useful for our purposes of reference, but, and I have said this often, it is a very, very good thing to wipe those things out sometimes, and read straight on, blind to the chapters. And you notice when you read chapter 4, as it is marked, you reach a point in the controversy, the controversy of Zion - oh, the battle is on! The battle is on, the forces of evil in this world have set their mark upon this Anointed One and the proclamation of Him. And when they are at work killing James and imprisoning Peter, the Church meets, meets... Zion gathers, Zion gathers. And what do they do? They quote the Second Psalm. They quote the Second Psalm to the Lord: "Lord, Lord, Lord," and then they quote, "Why do the heathen or the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing... against the Lord, and against His Anointed?" They quote it, and what happens? What happens? "The King is in His Holy Mount Zion": He intervenes, He intervenes.

Oh, yes, Herod seems to have scored a great success in killing James; and he is so pleased with himself, and the people are so pleased with him. It seems he is going to do the whole business. He takes Peter and puts him in prison. That's alright, so much the worse for you, Herod! What is the end of that story? He was eaten of worms and died, and the next sentence: "But the Word of the Lord went on... prospered." There is the Holy Hill of Zion and the One Enthroned you see, because there was right standing with God then. So they quoted Psalm 2, meaning that time, time, has no place in this, geography has no place in this; but wheresoever there is a true representation of Zion - there may be assaults, seeming successes of the evil one and his powers - the issue is with Him Who is in Zion. The issue is victory. God has set His Holy One upon His Holy Hill Zion. The Anointed is there.

Now, dear friends, you are listening to all this as Bible exposition perhaps. I do not know what you are thinking, what your reactions are; but I know what I am after. I am after something, and I hope you will move with me to the object that we are seeking to reach. If we have come to Zion (and you have, perhaps, been very pleased with the seven things about Zion, "Oh, beautiful! Oh, wonderful! Oh, glorious! Yes, Zion. Let's sing more about Zion. Let's have it as the city of our solemnities. Let's have some festivities!") alright, alright, all true, but you have to meet number eight. If we have come to Zion, we have come to the controversy of a spiritual position on the part of a people; the controversy of history over this people in union with the Ascended Exalted Lord. It's a controversial matter in this universe. Principalities, powers, world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits, all focused upon one thing: the denial of the Absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ and the Church is the custodian of that testimony. That's our calling. That is the vocation of the people of God, to be that. Against, then, the battle is against all that is against the testimony of Jesus. And look at the context of that phrase, the context of that phrase in the Book of the Revelation. I'm so glad the Lord has led Brother Tom along these lines these evenings. It's just what we were saying this morning; a terrific battle that is on for "the testimony of Jesus."

Well, that is the focal points of it, but then the battle, mark you, not only is in the atmosphere, so to speak (it's there, that is its realm, the heavenly places, the atmosphere, in a sense an abstract thing); but notice again, as in the type in the Old Testament, so in the spiritual reality in the New, this antagonism has its media, its vehicles, its channels, its means... and what is it? It is the world spirit.

The World Spirit

This evil world in its spirit... I don't think yet we have really grasped what the New Testament has to say about this world. This world: it is an enemy of God. It is an enemy of all that is of God. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world."

In a great cry from the heart of the Lord Jesus, the prayer just before the Cross: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, the geographical sphere that is called the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil one who rules in it." No, this has not registered yet upon the Church. The world spirit... I think you must know something of what I mean.

During this very year, the past months of this very year, I've had to have a lot to do with governmental departments or government departments. And they (my contacts with them) have been in relation to interests of the Lord; means for the work of the Lord; interests of the Lord. And do you know... well, I've known something about it in the past, but every... (I was going to use an expletive!) every blessed touch with this world, these government departments and the men at the head of them and the people, have met me with frustration. Unreasonable frustration! No reason, indeed every other reason why they should have helped, and they couldn't tell me, I'm quite sure they couldn't tell me why they didn't. I've reasoned, I've argued, I've pointed out that there's nothing, nothing at all that would be not to their interests. And yet, frustration! Frustration at every point, on no good ground at all.

The strange thing is that after four months of that, from one department to another, this department said, "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, but you must go to So-and-so." Alright, over to So-and-so: "Oh yes, oh yes, but you must go to So-and-so." And like that all the time, and never getting anywhere. Strange thing is in the end, when it was all finished, they, on their own account put in the thing they said would never be allowed! But what a history of touching this world. Time servers. Men who were governed by something, they knew not what. Frustrating. Frustrated! This is what I mean by this world. It's not going to help us. Indeed, it is going to obstruct all the way along.

And you see in the Old Testament, it was these world interests, world forces, the world, that was all the time against Zion. If you had asked them why, they would have had to sit down and think hard: "Why is it that we do not like that silly little city? Those people - who are they, what are they? Why don't we like them?" They would have had difficulty in answering their own question, but there is something sinister behind it all.

Those sinister intelligences know something. What do they know? They know what the elect is called for, and that in the long run, in the long run, Mr. Screwtape knows that that elect is going to be his undoing. He is going to lose his world power, his world title as prince of this world. He is going to lose it all at the hands of this One in Zion and through that corporate expression of His Sovereignty, His Lordship - that Zion that we have come to. He knows, and if you are related to that, I am going to comfort you by telling you: you are a marked man; you are a marked woman. And don't, don't succumb to second causes and say, "It is my landlord. It is this and that and something else." Oh, that may be the vehicle and the medium, ah, but there is something much more sinister than that behind it all. Our wrestling is not with flesh and blood, landlords, or anybody else in the ultimate issue. Committees? Organizations? No, there is something behind all this: the world spirit. The world spirit.

I remember that Dr. Campbell Morgan, to whom I owe very much, in his lecture on the Letter to the Corinthians simply said this: "The whole reason for those conditions in Corinth - so shameful, so terrible, from which you turn from some matters in disgust and shame, is because the world spirit in Corinth had got into the church." Well, there you are. The battle is with the world spirit. As in the old literally, so now in the new spiritually.

I need not dwell upon 1 Corinthians, need I? The world spirit? The wisdom of this world? The apostle is up against that. The conception of power in this world; he is up against that. "The wisdom and the power of God are Jesus Christ," he says, "as Lord." Alright, that is another line.

Let us go on, and this is the final phase to which I want to get so definitely this morning. It is what Romans eight, the parts we have read, bring us to as the very sum of all this that we are saying about the controversy of Zion.

The Tumult of the Nations

The tumult of the nations. Psalm 2, of course, says, "The nations rage, the kings of the earth gather together..." tumult in the nations. And the reason for it? Why the tumult in the nations?

Is there anybody here this morning who would not agree with me when I have said the nations are in tumult just now? Was there ever a time when the world, almost in its entirety, if not in its entirety, is in tumult, was in tumult, as it is now? Tumult... not only in the peoples and the nations, but convulsions in nature; convulsions in nature. We have never had it like this, have we?

All these convulsions. I don't know how much you are in touch with it, but somehow or other we know about it. The earthquakes, famines, the disruption of seasons, and what not. There is (and it is the best word for it): "convulsions in the nations." Romans 8: "The whole creation groaneth." Why, the groaning and the moaning that I have heard in these meetings is nothing to what is going on in the creation, it's bad enough...! I'm not sure, mark you, please forgive me, I'm not sure whether the moanings and the groanings in these meetings that I hear, are 'we within ourselves do groan' whether it's the same thing... it may be! However, that's a little humour, by the way.

"The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together." Sunodinos: together. There is an integration in a groan, it is integrated by this travail in the whole creation. "And not only so, but we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, do groan within ourselves, waiting..." Waiting! The creation is groaning inwardly like this and travailing if we had a spiritual ear to hear; groaning with us for something. It is subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by the will of Him Who subjected it. What is it groaning for? What is this travail to bring forth something? And what is it that is to be brought forth? Note the rest: The elect!

You come on that section, that great controversial section of Romans, about predestination, foreordination, election. Now don't come to me about that. I am not having anything to do with these systems of predestination or the rest of it. What I am saying is there is such a thing as God's elect hidden, hidden in the nations. God knows. You don't know, I don't know, and I cannot tell you who is elect and not elect. God knows. They are there, hidden, and within some there is this spirit of travail, longing, groaning: "Oh, that this vanity, void, not attaining, would be removed and we should emerge, emerge, come out, be born." The travail should precipitate.

There we touch the heart of things. What are all these convulsions in the nations about, and in nature? As we are moving toward the end of the dispensation, why this... why this tumult, convulsions? Why? Because God has something here that is not wanted here by this world and its prince. It is something like Jonah in the big fish. The moment or the hour came when the big fish said, "Oh, look here, what have I got inside? What is this that I have got?" And it got the most awful attack of dyspepsia: "Oh, to get rid of this. I'll never be comfortable until I have precipitated this that I have got inside. Let me, let me get rid of this. Let me get this out." Of course, under the sovereignty of God, but he makes for shore, and precipitates. And I think when that fish turned back into the sea he said, "Oh! There, now I feel alright. He is gone... he is gone!"

Now am I exaggerating, imagining? Come back with me, with Israel in Egypt. What is happening? Convulsion after convulsion in Egypt. Convulsion! Under the Sovereignty of God, yes, so that steadily, gradually, persistently, Egypt is coming to the place: "Oh, won't it be a good day and a good thing when we get rid of these people!" You notice what happens at the end? "And they thrust them out!" They precipitated them, they vomited them out; and I suppose although Pharaoh's army pursued to bring them back, the many (if not all) in Egypt said, "Thank God they have not succeeded and brought those people back again. We are rid of them, and it is a very good riddance." Now, that is not interpretation. No, there is a people in there, God's elect, and sooner or later the place where they are will want to get rid of them. "They are a menace... a menace."

But come over to Babylon, they're there. They're there! We haven't very much to indicate, but we have Daniel and his three friends; and we must conclude that they were not the only true ones in Babylon. There is Ezekiel. There is a remnant in Babylon, God has a people. He is doing something through seventy years, and then the seventy years are completed and what happens? The Prophet Isaiah cries, chapter forty-three: "For your sake have I sent to Babylon, and brought down all their nobles." And how did it happen? Belshazzar has his feast, the hand writes on the wall: "thy kingdom is divided, and removed." That night was Belshazzar slain. How? Cyrus and his army went stealthily through the night, moved along the wadi, the valley, the dry valley, through into Jerusalem, underground, and to use the phrases of the prophet, had "broken in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron" and come up in the middle of Jerusalem. Slain Belshazzar, "For your sake, for your sake, because of you, the elect, I have sent to Babylon, and brought down their high ones." The people inside are a menace! And God's object of all His activities (world convulsions, if you like) I believe, dear friends, as we get nearer to the end when the Church is to be raptured, when the Church is to be extricated, these convulsions are significant, very significant that the day of our emergence is near.

Do you remember the phrase, I wish we had it in the literal Greek, the words of the Lord, prophetic words of the Lord, about "the end." The end. He says, "The tumult of nations, men's hearts failing them for fear for the terrible things which are coming upon the earth" but the literal there is not "distress of nations," the literal Greek is "no way out for the nations." No way out for the nations! Oh my word, isn't that true today - they are trying to find a way out; and there is no way out for the nations. But then note, when that time comes: "Lift up your eyes, for your Way out draws near." Your Way out... there is a Way out for the elect when there is this investment. Well, you've got the teaching, haven't you now: "You have come to Zion."

I wonder (I don't know, of course, in the smaller world of the New Testament it may have been true under those persecutions and martyrdoms, I think it was, but the world is such a much bigger world now than then, this great world compared with the little world of the Roman Empire then) I wonder if there was ever a time in the history of this world when the saints were going through spiritual pressure more than they are now!

Spiritual Pressure

I am not talking now only of outward persecutions. Some are in that, but even here, at this time, this week, dear children of God have said to me: "I never in my life knew so much spiritual conflict, spiritual pressure. It sometimes gets unbearable, intolerable. I wonder how I am going to get through." Well, many of you may not know anything about that. If you don't, don't worry at the moment, but if you do know that dear friends, and some of us do, we never in our lives (and some of us have had a long life with the Lord) knew such intense and almost naked spiritual pressure that at times it does seem to get to the point where we'll break, we'll break. Many dear children of God all over this world write to me in these terms about this. What does it mean? You have come to Zion - that is what it means.

Leave your theology of election and predestination. Leave that - that won't get you anywhere, only into trouble and confusion; but take the fact that God has a people in this world, in the nations, hidden in the nations, whom He knows, "The Lord knoweth them that are His." He knows them, and they are of the greatest interest to the devil. They are marked, and they are involved in the controversy of Zion. If you would like to leave the word "Zion," if that creates mental pictures, leave it, forget it, see the meaning, the spiritual meaning, of something that is standing for the testimony of Jesus, that is standing for the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ, that is standing for the true vocation of the Church! A people like that aren't going to have an easy time. I am sorry to say that to you, but we have been told that this week, haven't we, very, very pointedly.

But here it is, and you will go back and perhaps there will be troubles, difficulties, this kind and that, family, business, what not; and then you will say: "What has happened to me? What has gone wrong?" It has all gone right. Oh, I wish we could believe that. If what I am saying is true, it is the controversy of Zion, that conflict over something very precious to the Lord, because Zion was very precious to the Lord in history, wasn't it? Read the Psalms. Something very precious to the Lord is being challenged, combatted, by all the forces of evil, nakedly and by every kind of means. And this is the explanation of the present convulsions. This prince, this prince of this world and this world spirit and system, knowingly or unknowingly, is sick of us. The nations are closing their doors, driving out those who represent the Lord. The world is narrowing down its scope for what is of Jesus Christ. It is pressing in. The explanation? The time, the time of the Way out for the Church.

And of course, it is a false hope on the part of the world. It may have been true that the Egyptians were very glad when those people had gone. They felt at rest for a time, but it didn't last very long. It was a transient thing and their later history was a bit troublesome. Babylon may have felt a bit more comfortable when that remnant had gone back to Jerusalem, but it didn't last very long, "I have brought down..." The Lord destroyed Babylon, as He destroyed Egypt. And it may be that when the Church is gone, the prince of this world and his kingdom may say: "Well, there! They have gone. They are out. Now we can have it all to ourselves." But, if you notice, the context of that is they don't have it to themselves very long. Then there comes the judgments. The judgment of this world is just waiting until the Church is out, and that time is drawing very near.

I think I have said enough have I? I could say much more as to the aspects of this conflict, the means used by the enemy to try and undo this testimony, to try and destroy Zion. The means used? Well, one is confusion. These evil powers and spirits are spirits of confusion. They always were. There never was a time, I venture to say, in the history of this world, when there was more confusion, and confusion in Christendom, in Christianity. And it is brought down to the least local expression of Zion. Confusion. Is it true? Is it true you do not know what to do, where you are, how to answer, what it means? Spiritual confusion invading everything that is on this earth... confusion.

Spirits of corruption to defile, to defile - corruption. Spirits of deception. Was there ever a time when there was more deception? Everywhere: deception. Oh, I dare not stay with that, dare I? But here it is, the things that are misleading, assuming a divine complexion, that are false, are a lie, they won't last. They will have their day and cease to be. The roots, the seeds of their disintegration, are in them. There's a falsehood there in the semblance of good and right - deception.

Divisions. No end to this, no end. To the last two of the Lord's people there will be this attack to divide, to get us apart somehow. Yes, in the Church universal, split up; in the local churches, yes, division, and division following division; and in the family, and in the two; the two. We are in a battle! It is a terrible thing to say, but you know however much there may be of love and certainty that the Lord brought you and your wife together, or you and your husband together, very often there is a battle over your fellowship. Is that saying too much? It is true. A battle... misunderstandings can come in there and divide and isolate. Anywhere! Anywhere the spirits of division are at work today, and the slogan of their forces is "divide and conquer." It depends on the ground on which you are standing. If you're standing on natural ground; on doctrinal ground; on theological ground; on interpretation ground; if you are standing on any of those grounds, you won't hold together. You won't hold together. If you are standing on the ground of Christ only, and His Lordship, that is the answer.

I close this then with: Zion is very precious to God for the reason that His Son is His Appointed King on His Mount Zion. Ah, there is a great love of this testimony of Zion. It is for His Son's sake. You and I must have His Son's sake as the motivating part of all our ways. "Ye are come to Zion," but you have come to an involvement in a great conflict! So, help us, God.

We just ask Thee, Lord, that all the authority which has been given to Thee in heaven and on earth may cover, encompass, and embrace what has been said here this morning. Thou knowest it's not easy. It took a battle even to get it out; but, Lord, we need to be protected. The Word needs to be protected in our hearts. All the significance needs to be protected. We trust Thee, Lord. We trust Thee and all the mighty virtue of Thy blood to protect, for the glory of Thy Name, amen.

Chapter 5 - Zion - the Embodiment of the Spiritual Values of Jesus Christ

Lord, we are subjects of Thy pity, of Thy compassion this morning. We do not even know what to ask of Thee... for we perhaps do not really know our truest need. We think we know sometimes. There are things which are very real to us as needs; but Lord, it is true: Thou knowest all the truest need of our hearts, and only Thou knowest. According to Thy knowledge, speak Lord, make it personal, make it individual as well as collective that while Eli did not hear the voice of the Lord, even in the tabernacle, there was one who did. Pick us out for speaking this morning as Thou didst call Samuel, "Samuel," may we be called by name, may we know the Lord is speaking to us. Do not allow our minds and thoughts to be diverted onto other people or we shall say that is something for them; but do keep it directly, where afterward, we can truly say, "The Lord has spoken to me." Now for all that is needed, Lord, in us and for us for this, do that by the wisdom and the power and the grace of Thy Holy Spirit, we ask it in the Name of the Lord Jesus, amen.

By now I think you know that there is a book in the New Testament which is called the Letter to the Hebrews! Perhaps you think you know something about that, I'm going to read again. We are getting very near to the end of this time of gathering and ministry. I feel that it is very necessary for things to become very definite, concrete, and that we should at this time expect the Lord to be focusing things on very clearly defined issues, but once again let us read at the beginning of this letter, chapter one:

"God, GOD, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by diverse portions and in diverse manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds; Who, being the effulgence of His glory, the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the Word of His Power, when He had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."

Chapter twelve (I trust that it has not lost its music) verse 18: "Ye are NOT come unto a mount that might be touched"; verse 22, "But ye ARE come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."

When you go away from this convocation, I wonder what you are going to say about the ministry and the messages: "Brother Kaung, well, his subject was 'the overcomers'. Brother Fromke, well, I don't know if I can put it into a phrase; we know what he has been leading us to. The other man... well, his subject was 'Zion.'" Is that what you're going to say? The Lord be merciful to you... I could almost wish that we forgot that word "Zion" as such, if it represents a subject.

Look through Zion because, you see, what we have in the beginning of this letter: "God hath spoken..." in Zion? No! Through Zion. God hath spoken in His Son. If we have used the Old Testament name (which is always a type and a symbol) if we have used it to help us by gathering up all the historical associations of that name in the Old; let us still remember, it belongs to the "not" as to a name and as to a place and as to a thing, a mountain and so forth; it belongs to the "not". What belongs to the "but" is what lies behind that name, its spiritual value, its spiritual meaning, its spiritual essence and if we were asked, "What is that?" we have got to come back and answer: "God has spoken in His Son". What is beyond, behind, through Zion is His Son... He has spoken in His Son, "Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom He made the worlds".

God has spoken! How has He at the end of those times, now spoken? The speaking of God from a certain point in history on to the end is "in His Son". Is it necessary to walk around that? Not about His Son, not the teaching, doctrine, of Christ, but the Person - in the Person! He hath spoken in a Person. Do try to get hold of that, it's in Christ, that God speaks! In Him. Now let us try to break that up for a few moments.

You see, Zion (if you are going to use the word, the name again) Zion is in representation the fulness of Christ. That is what this letter is about: fulness and finality in Christ. And Zion, as a name, represents that. The fulness of God's Son - that is Zion. And that fulness is God's speech for and in this dispensation. God's speech is the fulness that is in His Son.

Now you remember when you go back to the beginning of the Old Testament and God has intervened in the history of this earth in what is called "the creation," it all begins with that word: "God". "In the beginning, God." In the beginning: God. And then what? God spake, God said, "Let light be" and so on. God spoke, God spoke, and out of His speaking everything came.

You come over to your New Testament and although it is not so arranged chronologically (quite, for a good heavenly reason, the Holy Spirit's wisdom) the Gospel of John really does stand at the beginning because the other three begin on this earth in history, Bethlehem; or in the case of Mark, the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. But John overleaps all time and goes right back to the dateless beginning, and he opens with this: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh." Here in this new beginning of a new creation, of a new order, the "but" era: God speaks.

The Word

We have heard something this week about "the Logos" or logos. I am not trying to add (certainly not to improve), but I am going to say a little more about that. The word there you know, "In the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was with God, the Logos was God... and the Logos became flesh, tabernacled among us." In the beginning was the Logos. John has taken that word, of course, from the Greek, which in the Greek world had its own particular meaning.

First of all, in the Greek mind, the word "logos" meant "a thought," a thought, something in the mind: that is where it begins, "the thought" or, if you like to make it general, "thoughts". Logos is first of all: thought, or a thought. Then, keeping to the Greek, it is "the expression of the thought," the thought put into expression. It may be words, but what is in the mind is expressed, given expression. That is the content of "logos". It might go beyond that in the Greek, but in the Bible it certainly does.

It is true Logos, the Word, was Divine thought, something in the mind of God first before ever there was expression or utterance; something that was the mind of God. You say, "In the beginning, in the beginning was the mind, the thought, of God." What a large world that door opens up, doesn't it? You've got the whole of our New Testament there, the mind and thought of God behind everything else. But then, that mind and thought of God was expressed, given expression: "God said". Out of His thought, out of His mind - God said. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians: "God, Who commanded light to shine in darkness, hath shined into our hearts." God said, by expression. By expression. What happened? Ah, that's the point. That's "the Word".

You see (follow me closely, I am going to perhaps be exacting on you for concentration for a little while), when God expresses His mind, it is not something just in language, in verbiage, in diction. Whenever God spoke, and whenever God speaks, something happens. God's speaking, according to the Bible, is always an act. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." The Word of the Lord is an act. In this letter, you come to chapter four: "The Word of God is quick, powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, joints and marrow," and so on. God's Word is an act. It is a Fiat, something happens.

God's thought put into expression resolves itself into something that wasn't before. You can never be the same after God has spoken, even if you were to refuse it, resist it; that's been a crisis. So Jesus will say, "The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you. They shall judge you in the last day. If you don't believe on Me, the words that I speak, you will have to meet those in the last day" because this is something not just said, but something put into the universe which is a crisis. The Word of God is a crisis. The Word of God is an act.

But that does not exhaust the word "Logos" as used by John and as "the Word of God" in the Bible. There is a third aspect, a third aspect to "the Word". It is the thought, the mind or the mindedness of God. It's the expression of God by which something happens. It's the act of God, but then the third aspect of Logos is its Person. It takes up its residence in a Person, it becomes personal; in other words: it becomes Incarnate. The mind of God, the expression of God is incarnate. It is in a Person.

Any encounter with Jesus Christ is a crisis. Any encounter with Jesus Christ is meeting God. God was in Christ. It is an encounter with God! It's not just what Jesus says, although that, of course, is an expression of the mind of God in words, but, you see, it is a personal encounter that has to be; not an encounter with what is written in the first place, not an encounter with words - though they be Divinely inspired words - it is an encounter with a Person. So, "The Word became flesh," incarnate.

Shall we go over it again: The incarnation of the Divine thought in a practical issue in history, in an act, in a Fiat. Ask Saul of Tarsus whether his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road was a Fiat. The whole dispensation answers that very loudly. It was an act of the incarnate and glorified Word of God. This is the Logos: "God hath spoken in His Son" Who is, then, the embodiment of His Mind, Who is the expression of that Mind, Who is the incarnation of that Mind. And this whole letter, so called "Letter to the Hebrews," or to Hebrews, is just an analysing of that or a summing up of that: God speaking, God speaking in... the Bible? In His Son! God speaking in His Son; and all which follows that, from chapter one at its beginning right through to the end, is just the, shall we call it: the exposition of God speaking in His Son. You must read the Letter in the light of that. God is speaking!

So when you come to chapter twelve, this section from verse twenty-two onward, what have you? You have the gathering up, the gathering up of that speaking of God in His Son and concentrating it. And if you break up the section, you will see it's a concentration of what is true about the Person of the Lord Jesus and you must look at Zion like that, it begins there, "We are come to..." will we say, "Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God..."? No! That is symbolic language. We are come to the Son of God in all His meaning! All that follows that, which I'm not going to even touch upon, I know you would like me to talk to you about the "spirits of just men made perfect"; what does that mean? And the "great company of angels in festal array" you'd like to know something about that. Perhaps, you'd like to know a little more about the church of the first-born ones whose names are enrolled in heaven. I'm not going to touch on any of that. I'm keeping here this morning: God speaking in His Son, the thought, the thought of God expressed, the thought of God Incarnate, Personified, so that "Zion" as a typical word or name, is the embodiment of all that.

God speaks - or in the Old Testament God spoke - in Zion. He spoke out of Zion. You go through the Psalms and you go through Isaiah's prophecies, especially the last chapters of those prophecies, we'll refer to them again, perhaps presently. You go through them and see how God is speaking out of Zion. It even comes to this: "The Lord... shall roar out of Zion". God speaks out of Zion, in other words: out of His Son - "hath spoken in His Son".

Now, having stated that, that's the position. And you see I'm trying at the end of this ministry to become focused, become centred, get the real heart of all this. Now, what is the heart of all this? According to the statement at the beginning, God, at the end of those times, in these times, in this time, has spoken... how? How? Sonwise - in His Son. The absence in the original of the definite article "His" Son, it doesn't make any difference, because the very next statement is: "Whom He appointed Heir of all things." So this Son is His Son. We note that and pass on.

The governing law of God's speaking is sonship. Is sonship... that is the thing which governs God in all His speaking. Are you getting it?

Sonship

And as has already been said: sonship is not a beginning thing, it is a final thing. It is an ultimate thing. Romans eight again: "waiting... for our adoption," the manifestation of the sons. The end which governs all God's speaking in Christ is sonship. If you would like to change the word, it is "adoption". It is put at the end. Sonship - adoption; an end, an object, toward which God is moving by the speaking in His Son.

By birth we are children, by adoption we are sons; remembering the difference in conception. Someone holding a little baby yesterday, not of the family or even of the same race, said, "You see, I have adopted her!" Oh, no, that won't do here. That won't do here. That is not the Scriptural conception of adoption. As you've been told, and ought to know by now, the Scriptural meaning of adoption is someone already in the family by birth who has grown to maturity and then the day of maturity, coming of age, the celebration, the festivity, the coming of age day, when the father takes his own child, now mature, puts the toga on him, invests him with the symbols and insignia of authority to be as the father in this world. Everyone meeting that adopted son has to reckon with the father. He is, in effect, the father. He has been adopted or, the word really in Hebrews is "placed". Placed in this position of responsibility because of maturity. Now we will have to come back to that from another standpoint as we go on.

What I am saying is that is the end to which God is working. His beginning is begetting. His beginning is birth from above, bringing in a family, but, mark you, it's not easy to marshall all this into a good order that you can get a hold of, but I think you'll figure it out as we go along. Even in the born child there is the spirit of adoption. The adoption has not come yet, but there is the spirit of adoption. That is what Paul says, in Galatians: "because we have the spirit of adoption we cry, Abba, Father."

I think once here I told you what that really means. What does "Abba" mean? Why put the two things together, is it just two words of different languages? "Abba" is one language, "Father" in another? Isn't this a matter of supererogation? Oh no! "Abba" is the quality, not the relationship, it is the quality of a child, a little child. And when a little child turns to its Father and says, "dear Father" - you have got "Abba". It is a heart relationship, Abba - dear Father. There is something very close, very intimate. It is a mark of spiritual infancy. Of course, that is the first thing we lisp, isn't it? When we're really born from above, we don't say when we go to pray: "Almighty Most Terrible and Fearful God...." Our first lisp is now, "Father". That is the beginning of the Christian life. We have the Spirit of adoption, although we have not come to the adoption yet. That's coming if the Spirit of adoption develops us for adoption. That's the whole course of the spiritual life, you see.

Well, that's all here, and I'm saying that the final object toward which God the Holy Spirit is working is what is called adoption, sonship. It is governing everything, it is governing everything. It is the end which is brought to bear upon the whole course. What is God doing? Well, Hebrews will tell you, won't it? All the discipline, all the discipline of the child of God, of the children of God, is governed by this one object: sonship. So you have: "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, for whom the Lord loveth (His children) He chasteneth, He disciplines. He scourges every son to be set by Him, to be placed."

The Discipline of the Christian Life

"And what child, or what potential son, is he who has no discipline, whom the Father chasteneth not?" The writer uses a very strong word, as you know, about such. They are not true sons, they are illegitimate children who have come into a false position, if they be without discipline.

There is a tremendous revolt against discipline in this world, throwing off of authority and all control, all government, all discipline; a revolt against it everywhere, especially in youth. The Word says that is how it is going to be at the end: "disobedient to parents" and so on. This doesn't all go well, does it, for God's final purpose of a family, not of infants, but of grown sons, for eternal responsibility. Now we're back with brother Kaung! Eternal responsibility... governmental position in the Kingdom in the ages to come; there is so much about that in the New Testament. That is Ephesians, that is! Discipline... for that! The dealings of God with us in this way, this way.

Oh, look again, if you want this illustrated, look again at the history of Zion. What a disciplined thing Zion was, wasn't it? God was having no nonsense with Zion. God was tolerating nothing less than His full thought in Zion. When Zion deprived Him of what He had brought Zion into being for, He then set Zion aside; showed that He had no longer interest in that as a thing. He disciplined Zion. Read again your Psalms. Read again the prophets. They are all concerned, as we shall show, with Zion. What discipline! What discipline! Through the years, and finally the seventy years of exile in captivity, what discipline of the people of Zion!

Shall we just look for a moment at Isaiah... I did say a little while ago, you look at the last chapters of Isaiah, you'll find they are all concerned with Zion, these final chapters. Let us look at, shall we, chapter sixty-one, for we are very near the end aren't we of Isaiah when we come to sixty-one. What is it? Or you can go to sixty, if you like, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." But go to sixty-one: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me... the Lord hath anointed Me...." You know, again it is the two-fold interpretation: Zion is here pointing on to the other One Who used these very words and applied them to Himself.

Now sixty-two, (cut out the numbers sixty-one and sixty-two, chapter divisions are artificial): "For Zion's sake will I not hold My peace, for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her..." yes, alright, "righteousness..." remember your Amplified? Until her right standing with God, until her right standing with God "go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth... nations shall see thy right standing with God, and all the kings thy glory." "I will not hold my peace until that happens," this is the cry of the prophet, and you can go on in these last chapters of Isaiah, if you like, perhaps we shouldn't spend too much time with that, but there it is; and what I am going to come to in that very connection is this: that Zion, Zion, was the burden, the concern, the heartbreak, of the prophets.

Prophetic ministry always focuses upon Zion. Have you got that? It's not only the Old Testament prophets; that's pointing to something else. The work of true prophetic ministry relates to this Divine thought that is enshrined in this word "Zion" as we have it in the Letter to the Hebrews. To have this amongst the nations, this expression of the fulness of Christ in sonship in a corporate body... that is the end toward which God is working and carrying out all His work of discipline. I do want to apply this in a practical way.

You see, we (rightly so perhaps, perhaps rightly so) are concerned with the work, what we call the "Lord's work", concerned with evangelism, getting souls saved. Nothing wrong with that! That is alright, don't think I am undervaluing that. The work of preaching and teaching, and having meetings and conferences and all that we can compass by this word or phrase, "the work of the Lord" we are concerned about that. Very much concerned about it. Perhaps you ministers are very much concerned about your ministry, that is, the next address that you're going to give, and you're filling up your notebooks now. You've got a congregation in view. The work of ministry, of evangelism, or whatever else may come within that term, "the work of the Lord". Perhaps you are very much, more than anything else, concerned with that: "We must be in the work, we must be given to the work."

And my brother is going to forgive me, because as I say, I am trying to focus this thing right down. We have been having something in these evenings that I consider to be the very essence of the Lord's interests. It's the same thing that I am talking about only in other language: "the overcomer," the essence of the Divine thought and intention in Zion. Brother Kaung has been laid on his back for many weeks, and we should not have got that if he hadn't been. And some of us know that the Lord sometimes sees that it is far more economical to take us out of "the work" than to keep us in it; to lay us aside from all our busyness for Him to get the essence of things. He is after the essential, the intrinsic!

Men are after the big. Pragmatism governs so much of Christian work. I venture you don't know what I mean by that word, it means: if a thing is successful, then it is right. That's shallow thinking. The devil has got a lot of success; is he right?! Many things are apparently very successful, growing, increasing, and everybody says, "My, that is the thing!" Is it? That's pragmatism. If a thing is successful and popular and everybody is flocking to it, it must be right. Alright, Jesus of Nazareth: oh, they flocked, they followed, He told why, told why. He said, "...because you did eat of the loaves and fishes... because you saw the signs and wonders... and a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after signs," and they flock for that. But, but short life... short-lived. Presently they are all forsaking. They are being sifted out. He is being left alone. All the marks of success are being withdrawn from this world's standpoint, and at last, is this a successful movement with Him hanging on the Cross? Is that pragmatic? We know today, we know today! No, no, not that. Not because people are flocking here or there, crowding, rushing; not because a thing seems to be gaining much ground and becoming big, not necessarily. Wait for that. Wait through the tribulation and then you will get "a great multitude, which no man can number." But that's not pragmatic in this earthly sense. You see what I mean?

The discipline, the discipline of being sifted down from the husks to the kernel, from the chaff to the wheat. And "wheat corn is bruised," says the prophet Isaiah. Wheat corn is bruised, it is bruised. He is after the true, genuine bread, and the constitution of that is something that has been ground to powder, has been bruised. Does this explain something to you of your own history? It is very true, it's the Word, you see. Therefore there is this section in Hebrews about sonship, "the chastening of the Lord".

The Chastening of the Lord

And chastening for every one of us may mean something different. What would be chastening to you would not be to me, but what would be chastening to me wouldn't be to you. You can get away with lots of things, but the Lord knows where to find you out, and where you can't get away. I might be able to force myself through some things on sheer natural soul force. I don't know whether that is true now, but I might be. Perhaps in the past it has been true, but the Lord knows just how to chasten me, and that is chastening for me and perhaps for no one else, that thing. Oh, don't just bring that word "chastening" into a narrow definition; it's the thing that "gets us" individually: finds us out, the thing which to me is real discipline.

There's some nice, very patient, forbearing, longsuffering temperaments, you know, and they can be spoken to and treated ill and they don't ruffle a bit, they just go on. But with someone else, the Lord brings a rather awkward person into their home and my word, that person is disciplined! Do you see what I mean? Chastening, discipline, is what it means to us individually. But whatever that is, and you may say, "Well, why does the Lord do this with me? Look, He doesn't do that with all these other people, they are getting away with it, until I went into the house of the Lord, saw things from His standpoint. The Lord is dealing with me and letting off all these other people in that way, but He has got me." Now, do I revolt and say, "It isn't fair! The Lord is not fair, He doesn't do this with other people...." Oh, no, this won't do. He is focusing upon this end, this sonship matter, for adoption for eternal responsibility. Well, get hold of that, and we will go on.

With Zion again in the background of our thought, let us pick out one more thing about Zion.

I expect you well know, of course you do, it's common place, that in the very blood and constitution of a true Israelite, a true Hebrew, a true Jew, in the very constitution and blood, there is a consciousness or sense of destiny: "We are the chosen people, and we are chosen for God's purpose and intention. It isn't something that we have taken on as an ideology, as a philosophy of our existence, it is in our blood." They can't get away from it, it is themselves, isn't it? It is like that. A true Jew, citizen, and child of Zion has this, this inwrought sense and consciousness of destiny. It is the reason, the ground, of why they have been able to suffer so much, why they could go through their persecutions and survive; why they could endure so much. It's not because they make up their minds, not just the strength of their will, it is something born in them, part of their very being. It is elemental to them that they are a people of destiny. They hold on to it, they cling to it, they are still at the wailing wall. It's born out of this. Alright then, that belongs to the "not".

Here we are with the "but". "We have come to Zion." And we have come to Zion in this sense: there is by right, if it is a true citizenship in heaven, "this one was born there"; if it is a true child of God, there is something about such a true child of God that, although they may not define it, they may not know even the Scriptures about it, within them they have this sense of destiny; that there's some purpose governing our salvation, there is some meaning beyond their present comprehension for which we have been called. There is something in us, in our very constitution, that says, "called according to His purpose."

A Sense of Destiny

This is essential to Zion. This is what the New Testament is all about, and this is what this Letter to the Hebrews is all about. This is true sonship.

We don't like these ideas, we don't like this language, but you see, with the Jews, the true Jews, there was this element in them of selectiveness. You don't like that language, do you? Brother Kaung got very near it last night, but he didn't use the language. Selective... something separate, something different, something other, something not general, but particular. The inwrought consciousness of being called and chosen for something, which we call destiny. And only that will keep us going through the discipline, only that will keep us going through the suffering, the adversity, the perplexity.

Have you not been, as I have more than once and more than twice, at the point where you would have despaired? Been left to yourself, you would have given up, and gone out, and taken another way, and even washed your hands of Christianity. Have you never been pressed? Well, if you haven't, alright, thank the Lord; but there is such pressure, you know! And even this man, with all his wonderful experience and knowledge of the Lord, came to a point where he said: "I was pressed out of measure... I despaired of life." "Paul? You despaired? And you were always telling people not to despair! You were writing about the God of hope, and you tell me you despaired? And you told people to be in the ascendant, on top, and you say: 'I was pressed beyond my measure.'" Yes, alright, perhaps you don't know all that, perhaps you know a little of it, but the children of Zion are kept by something. They are held by something. It is this indefinable something which we call "destiny".

There is a hold on us that won't let us go. There is a grip upon us that even when we say we are going, we can't go. Even when we come to the depths of despondency, we don't go out after all. We don't, that's all. We decided to, but we don't. No, it's not something to analyse and put into a system of teaching, doctrine, but it is some deep reality that is holding us. We are children of destiny, "the called according to His Purpose." Oh, I would like you, if you want a little Bible study, to go through and underline that word "according," according as, according to. A marvelous word that is, with Paul. It is all according to something. Zion was elect, chosen, separated, made distinct, because of destiny... its great purpose: and there was that in its very constitution, in the very blood. In the very blood a sense that, "There is something beyond, unto which we have been called."

Now I am coming back to the prophets, you see. The prophets were supremely concerned with Zion, just because of Zion's destiny. Oh, how burdened they were about Zion, and of course, in their case, their burden and their concern for Zion was the recovery of Zion. Zion had lost out. Zion had ceased to be what it was called to be; what God intended, it had lost. Now the prophets are all concerned with the recovery of Zion and Zion's testimony. That's prophetic ministry. That could open up another hour or two, couldn't it?

Oh, prophetic ministry. "What do you mean? Foretelling? Foretelling events?" Alright, if you like to have that, you can. But the real essence of prophetic ministry is the recovery of the fulness of Jesus Christ which has been lost. It is a recovery and a reinstating of the testimony of Jesus in the Church. Well, that's our evenings, isn't it? That is true prophetic ministry, and don't bring prophetic ministry down to this and that and something else. The gift of prophecy; what is the gift of prophecy? What is the gift of prophecy? Only foretelling? It may be that, or it may never be that at all and still be the gift of prophecy. The gift, the function, the anointing of prophecy is the recovery of the full testimony of Jesus, the recovery of all that Zion means as the fulness of Christ, and any ministry that does not have that as its objective, clear and strong and definite, is not prophetic ministry. The prophets were thus burdened. Read Isaiah 43 again in the light of that; which we haven't time to do.

Well, now we come to near the end of this morning. Again then, Zion is the embodiment of the spiritual values of Jesus Christ. Underline that word.

Spiritual Values

Test everything, test everything by the spiritual values. Not from the standpoint of pragmatism at all, but from the standpoint of its spiritual (which means its eternal) value. The ministry of any brother, my own, or anyone else's, is not going to be judged by the number of conventions or meetings at which I speak and the amount of Bible teaching that I give or he gives. It is never going to be judged by that. Understand that. You may have your diaries full of engagements, preaching engagements; you may be on the way of a very, very busy Bible teacher.

You say in America, "teach the Bible, teach the Bible!" You may be very busy and you may have no time for anything else; and yet, with all the sum total, it's not going to be judged, dear friends, by how much you have done in that way. It is going to be judged by its eternal, spiritual value; what the essential spiritual value is when this life is gone, when I am gone, when you are gone, when all the teachers are gone, and we arrive in heaven and discover what was taken up then, in our lifetime, and is there. "The things which are seen are temporal" in the preachers and the teachers and the conferences. "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." And that's the standpoint of Zion: the essential spiritual value of everything.

Are you, dear preachers, teachers, really burdened in heart that every bit of your ministry shall have a spiritual, eternal value? Not the address, not the address! A great teacher, a principal of a theological college, but a real man of God to his students, put it this way: "Do not be concerned with the winning of your sermon, but be concerned with the winning of the people." Meaning, of course, their spiritual life. No, it isn't whether my address is successful, accepted, or not. It is what is the spiritual, lasting value from eternity's and heaven's standpoint of anything. Surely our ambition ought to be that when it is all over here, when it's all over, when there are no more conferences down here, no more ministries and addresses down here, and we all gather above, our ambition is to find there people who say: "Look here, I wouldn't be here but for what the Lord did in me through your ministry." That's it, isn't it? Oh, focus upon that, for Zion is, let me repeat, the embodiment of spiritual values. Not a place, not a sect, not anything temporal. That's not Zion, now it is the concentrated and intrinsic spiritual values of Jesus Christ. That is Zion.

On what note shall I finish this morning? Well, with all that in view, of course, the right note of course, would be:-

God's Jealousy for Zion

Prophets shared the jealousy of God over Zion. The Lord said: "I am jealous for Zion, for Jerusalem, I am returned with great wrath and great jealousy." Where is God's heart set? Not on any temporal expression of the old Zion. That is the "not". But... God's jealousy, God's concern, God's wrath, relates to the true, intrinsic, spiritual values of His Son Jesus Christ. He is focused upon that. He will look after those spiritual values. He'll look after the spiritual values, that ought to comfort us in the ministry, especially. See, people may repudiate, may discredit, and may go away and leave us. Alright, that discipline is pretty hard, but wait awhile, perhaps in their own lifetime they will come back or they will confess: "Look here, I got something from you which has been my real salvation. I didn't recognise it at the time, but I know now that what you were saying, what you were doing, was the thing which has become my... my deliverance, my salvation, in the time of trouble."

Well, it is like that. God will look after the spiritual values if you are concerned more with spiritual values than building up something big down here. That is where His jealousy is. Sooner or later His wrath will be shown from Zion, in that sense. The enemies will have to bow, they will have to surrender as in the eternity, "every knee shall bow, and tongue confess..." all the enemies of Christ are going to be very much humbled. God is going to roar out of Zion. Well, let us be quite sure that it is Zion in this sense: "Ye are come to that, to Zion." We leave it there for now. The Lord interpret. We pray...

We do pray, Lord, that this very hour may be used by Thee to produce those essential eternal values... not just be an hour with ministry, more or less appreciated, but that there may be something wrought, something planted, something put inside us constitutionally, that shall appear in heaven and in glory as the Divine fiat, the Word, the Word of God, which did something. So help us. Seal this time then, in that way; forgiving all mistakes and errors and faults in the human, and take charge of Thine own interests, for Thy Name's sake, amen.

Chapter 6 - A Final Shaking

Lord Jesus Christ, we seek Thy face... it is written, "The light of the glory of God is in the face of Jesus Christ." Oh, Thou Who didst forfeit, for that one terrible moment, the countenance of Thy Father in order that we might never come there... that we might be received and abide in the light of the countenance of God, do this morning bring us into that very blessed inheritance through Thy Cross: the Face, the Countenance, the Towardness, the Unforsakingness of God. May this indeed be a time within the veil when we dwell in the light of the countenance, the face of the Lord, Lord Jesus Christ, in all that great and wonderful meaning, we now seek Thy face. As we wait on Thee, show us Thy face Lord, for Thy Name's sake, amen.

In this final hour of this particular ministry, it is necessary to seek special grace to gather up and concentrate all that has been said throughout this week. And I think, perhaps I should say I feel that the leading of the Lord is to do this with one part of this letter to the Hebrews before us. As the letter is drawing to a close, and we reach that part of it which is marked as chapter twelve; and it is in verses 25 to 28, it is in those verses, not all of them: "See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh." Remember the beginning is: "God hath spoken in His Son."

"See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused Him that warned them on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him that warneth from heaven: Whose Voice then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, saying, 'Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven.' And this word, 'Yet once more', signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe."

A kingdom which cannot be shaken. The significance then, as we have been trying to see and show, the significance of this letter, so called to Hebrews, for the present time the "yet once more"; that is, in this dispensation which has come in with Christ, the shaking firstly of the earth side of things and then the shaking of the heaven side of things. The earth side, I think, had a special reference to what was just about to happen in old, traditional, historic Judaism. This letter was probably (I cannot be positive about it because all the expositors and scholars are divided about who wrote it and when it was written, to whom it was written exactly, you need not worry about that) but I am fairly sure that it was related to what the Holy Spirit knew was about to take place in the historic Judaism and earthly Israel.

The probability is that this letter was written in the year 69, and you know what happened in the year 70. If that is true, it was a very short distance from the writing of this letter, to the destruction of Jerusalem which was so utter, so terrible. Some of you, pastors especially, will have read Josephus; and if you have, the section on the invasion and destruction of Jerusalem is one of the most terrible things you can read in history. It took place in the year 70, when everything in that Jerusalem was devastated and desolated and the Jews scattered, as Peter says, "throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia" and everywhere else. The earth side was certainly shaken, not only shaken but brought down and devastated; and from that, it has not yet recovered. There is no temple. There is no integrated Israel on the earth.

Well, that is the earth side, and this is the prophecy, as you know, taken out of the Old Testament that this would happen and it is interesting, very interesting, significant, and instructive, to go back to the setting of that prophecy (which we are not going to do) to see the setting of it in the history of Israel, and just the conditions that were arising in the time of Haggai. The prophecy is taken up, brought right over here, so many, many years later, and applied to the situation which is reached in this letter to the Hebrews at that crisis time: the shaking of the earth.

Shaking of the earth... of course it applies particularly to the shaking of the earth Jerusalem, the earth Israel. We say that and leave it, but that is only half of the statement: "Yet once more will I shake not only the earth (and the earth side), but the heaven also." And in the light of what we have been saying this week in the mornings and in the evenings, or what the Lord has been saying (may I say that at any rate of the evenings) in the light of all this and of this letter in its full content, we are surely right in saying that Christianity, which is the other side (if you like, the heaven side) is going to be subjected also to such a shaking; to such a shaking. Maybe we will not be far wrong if we say it has begun. It is on, it is proceeding, it is spreading. And however you may feel it has not reached your country yet, well, if you are talking of merely material things, of outward economies, there may be symptoms of it; but spiritually, it is world-wide. The shaking of Christianity, the shaking of what we may call the heaven side of things, as different from the historic, earthly Israel; but the point is that there is a universal shaking to take place in the economy of God, in the sovereign ordering of God.

A Universal Shaking

What for? Here it says, "in order that there shall be nothing left but what God Himself has established." Note the little phrase: "As of things which have been made." Who made them? Who made them? Things made. The things which God made, has made, and established, are the things and the only things which will ultimately remain, and the shaking is for that.

Now this letter is a comprehensive comparison and contrast (or discrimination) between the passing and the permanent; between the temporal and the spiritual; between the earthly and the heavenly. That's the Letter to the Hebrews. That is what we have been emphasizing all the way through, the "not" any longer. A comprehensive "not": "Ye are not come..." and the "but": "But ye are come." Two great comprehensive orders, economies, sovereignties - whatever you may call them - this whole letter has to do on the one side with the things which are transient and not abiding, and on the other side, the things which are permanent and which remain that, that the things which cannot be shaken... (here is your "that" again) that, the things which cannot be shaken shall remain. This is the comparison and contrast, or discrimination that is made by this letter as a whole.

And here, as a kind of parenthesis, let me put this. You see, it is important for us to remember that this letter was written to a people who for a long period had held the position of a people whom God had taken out of the world to Himself, showing that it is possible for such a people to miss the way. It is possible for such a people to make their position an earthly one, just an earthly one, or make that position earth-bound. And that is the force of this letter, not to Israel only, but to Christians. This is the "on-high calling" letter, isn't it? This is the heavenly side. This is the New Israel which God has taken out of the world to Himself and for Himself. But through and through this letter runs this reminder that a people who were like that for so long, taken out for God, to God, did in the end miss the object, miss the way, did not arrive. Chapter three is all on that, they did not enter in, they "perished in the wilderness."

Oh, this terrible battle between what ought to be said and what time allows to be said.... Oh, dismiss your chapters again and see chapter three (I must put it in, enemy or no enemy) dismiss chapter three. There you have the people who failed to enter in, who perished in the wilderness, you see," They could not enter in" is the word, "because of unbelief." That is chapter three, but chapter four opens... and you are not far into chapter four before you have this: "the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." I am not going out on that! But the point is, that in the wilderness where they perished, it was because they did not discriminate between soul and spirit; in effect (they didn't understand the doctrine, of course) but they lived in their souls. That is the self-life, the self-direction of everything: how this affects us, what are we going to get out of this, what this means in our interests. The self-life is the soul-life. The spirit is not that. The spirit is unto God; is the God-life.

But this cleavage was not made in the wilderness; and although they had come out by such a mighty work of God, and become God's people, and were separated unto Him, because they persisted in what we now call in New Testament terms "soul-life," soul- life, as the people of God, and there was no discrimination, no clear cut between, as of a "two-edged sword," see, cutting both ways, up and down, because there was no clear cut between the self-life and the Life of the spirit, they perished in the wilderness. And do you tell me that that is not a possibility for Christians? That is the point of the letter, you see. Dismiss chapter three and four as simply mechanical divisions, and pass right on and say, "Why did they perish in the wilderness? Why did they not enter in?" Why? Well, here we are: there was not this clean cut between self and the Lord, between soul and spirit.

It's a large matter about which you have heard too much, I think, there is too much talk about that just now. It has become a very fascinating subject. You will never capture people more quickly and mentally than when you begin to talk about soul and spirit. It is a very interesting mental subject, isn't it? Most fascinating. I am coming to the place where I want to talk about the things and not the names, the meaning and not the language or the terminology; however, that is by the way.

Now, you see, what I am saying is this letter was addressed to a people who for a long time had held the position of a people separated unto God, but who eventually missed the way and lost the inheritance; lost the meaning of their separation, because, well, we come back again: the earth-bound, the earth-bound Judaism - earth-bound. And God says, "I will shake that, I will shake that earth-boundness, and I'll shake it so devastatingly that there will be no temple and no Jerusalem and no headquarters for the nation at all, the whole thing will be smashed. I will shake that earth side." And He did, and has done, and it has gone on all these centuries.

But He doesn't stop there. Then He goes over to the other side: "I am going to shake this other thing too - this Christianity." It came in from heaven, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, but what have men done with Christianity? Brought it down to earth, made it earth-bound, made it something. The Lord, foreseeing that, prophesies: "I will shake that also, I will shake that also", and Christianity as a merely earthly system, will go into the melting pot, it will go into the fire, and only that which is really truly heavenly, of the Spirit of God, will survive and come out.

You see the force of this letter? Hence (and here, dear friends, another week is required) if you go through this letter, you will find that it is divided along two lines: the line of precaution, of warning; and the line of resolution. Now, a little Bible study for you (not here) you go through and mark the nine times in which the word "lest" occurs.

"Lest"

"Let us..." first, "Let us fear, lest a promise being left us of entering in... any one of you should seem to come short...." "Lest." Nine times that word "lest" is used through the letter. Trace it and see its context. "Lest..." for this reason; "lest..." for that reason.

Perhaps, I'll touch on just an illustrative piece in each section. Then ten times, ten times (nine times "lest" - precaution and warning) ten times you have "let us..."; let us... let us... ten times. And connected with that phrase "let us", it's an admonition to resolution: be resolved! It's no use, you can't take anything for granted about this, you aren't going to get there by drift, and that is the first "lest" you see. "Lest by any means you drift past." That's the real language. You drift... and the picture behind is a picture which is a very simple one but very, very clear in its implication.

I used to be a yachtsman in Scotland, and we would go out on our day's sail, but the most anxious moment, the most (should I say anxious?) tense moment, was when we came back to pick up our moorings. If the tide was flowing strongly, the current, the wind, there were our moorings. You have got to take off your power, take down your sails, get your head toward the mooring; and then everybody one with the boat hook-up in the bow, someone lying down flat on the deck with outstretched hands to get hold of that mooring and to grab it and hold it, because the tide or the current flowing would even pull you into the sea if you didn't hold tight. But, the tenseness, the peril was you would miss it and drift past it; and there were the rocks over there. Drift past... miss, and drift, carried by the tide or the current or the wind. Oh, it was a tense moment. You got it and held on and were able to pull the boat up on the moorings and make fast. The tension is gone. We've reached home. It is alright now, everything is alright. Now that is the picture here which is actually used. "Lest we drift past." Drift... drift... drift. "Lest!" Caution, warning!

All this is presented (and, oh, what an all it is!) this fulness and finality in Christ brought in with verses one and two and all that is in this letter, the great inheritance, a tremendous "all"; and the first warning is: "You could drift, you could drift; you could be carried past and carried away by the current, by the present breeze." Now, Paul puts it in other words in another way: "carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight and cunning craftiness of men..." - same thing.

That's an illustration of the "lests," and I say there are nine of them. That's why I say we want another week! But there: "Lest, lest we drift," and over and alongside of that is the exhortation, "Let us", let us!  "Let us hold fast... let us lay hold... let us go on." And I am just going to put another fragment in because I think it is illuminating, it may have a point of application: "Lest because of the deceitfulness of sin, we are subverted."

The Deceitfulness of Sin

Have you ever thought about that? What is the deceitfulness of sin, if the word "sin" is a comprehensive word? Now don't you narrow it down to one of its meanings. Sin has many aspects. It works in many ways. You can call this sin and that sin and something else and a thousand things "sin". Yes, but they are only aspects of the one thing. What is the meaning of the word "sin" in the Bible? Missing the mark, missing the mark. You may miss it because of this or that or of many things, but in the end it amounts to this: you've missed the mark. Sin, comprehensively, is "missing the mark." The deceitfulness of sin to subvert you from the mark, what Paul calls "the prize of the mark of the on-high calling."

"Missing the mark," the deceitfulness to subvert. "How? What do you mean by that deceitfulness?" Well, for me, at the moment, for this purpose this morning, it is policy in the place of principle. There is nothing more subverting, more spiritually injurious, than policy - being politic.

Oh, how I have seen tragedies in the life of godly men, servants of the Lord, on this thing. You know, men brought face to face, (more than one, I have one or two in mind) face to face with God's full purpose, full purpose, but... they had a position in the Christian world. And this full purpose requires a lot of things: adjustment as to position, adjustment as to position... as to relationships. "If I do that, my large door of opportunity for the Lord will be closed. If I do that, I will lose my influence for the Lord... if I take that way, maybe I shall be involved in, well, so much that, you know, will mean loss for the Lord." Someone responsible for an organization; somehow or other it has got to get support: "Now, now, if I take such and such a line as has been indicated, I will lose my clientele. I will lose my financial support!" That's policy, politic, alongside of what God has indicated; and the issue is, "Will I trust the Lord to look after what is of Him? I am no longer interested in anything that is not of the Lord, but if it is, can I trust the Lord to look after that while I obey Him and go His indicated way? Or shall I hold on to my place of opportunity, open doors, and influences for the Lord... See? And take this other course."

Do you see what I mean? The deceitfulness of missing the mark, and I have seen more than one tragedy, that after years (it is so manifest to everybody) that man has missed the way. That man was meant for something more, something other. The Lord meant something for that man, but policy came in and he argued for his policy that it was in the interests of the Lord! The deceitfulness of sin, and this letter says, "You can be subverted by the deceitfulness of sin: policy instead of principle." Does that fit in anywhere? Well, it is necessary, you see, to pinpoint all this teaching. But there it is.

So here we come back. Hebrews, the Letter to the Hebrews, is a statement of what is abiding and permanent as over against what is passing and transient; and does not that matter? Surely it does supremely matter!

The Shakeable and the Unshakeable

The New Testament is comprised of twenty-six books, if you'd like to have twenty-seven, you can; say twenty-six books, and most of them, most of them, were written to combat some form of a universality of effort to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. Would you like me to repeat that? It's a big mouthful, I know. Most of the New Testament was written to combat some form of a universal effort to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. Got it now? That's the statement; very comprehensive, and you've got to break it up and apply it to each book of the New Testament, see?

Oh! Oh, what then? Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and Acts and on... this is written to combat something! And when you take that as the key, my word, are we not in a combat in Matthew? Isn't the Lord Jesus in a combat in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John? It's an atmosphere of combativeness, of conflict, of antagonisms. In Acts... is that true? And so you go on with the letters. Here is some form in each one, some form of this universality of effort to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. It's a comprehensive... the New Testament is a comprehensive countering of a many-sided attempt to subvert the Church and pervert the meaning of God's Son. In that statement, you have got your New Testament in its real meaning; do try to get hold of it in that way.

Now, the chief point of attack in this comprehensive or universal effort, the chief point of the attack has always been, and still is, the measure of Jesus Christ, the measure of Christ: "We must, in the first place, keep Him out altogether, give Him no foothold." That's the battle of the ages and of the nations. As soon as you bring Jesus Christ into a vicinity, trouble arises, conflict begins. "You must keep Him out!" Oh, look how it was with Paul as he went from city to city. He was hardly there, hardly there, hardly said anything - I don't know how much he had said in Philippi - what he had said he said to just a little handful. We don't know exactly how many were by the riverside, outside the city, and he went into the city, not preaching as far as we know, not raising issues as far as we know, but the devil knew. The devil had possession of that damsel, that priesthood, the priest-woman of the temple; and how subtle: "These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation." Why, the devil is preaching the Gospel! It looks as though the very devil himself is glorifying the Lord Jesus! Ah, there is something very subtle here, as the issue shows. But the point is, from the unseen world where the real intelligence of the significance of Christ is recognized, is possessed, there is this combativeness coming in wherever that which is representative of Christ, or that which is Christ in effect, arrives. Trouble arises at once. "Keep Him out, keep Him out; and if He's got in, drive Him out! Do everything to drive out what is of Jesus Christ if He has got anywhere at all."

But then that is not all to drive Him out. To subvert those who are His embodiment there, to subvert, to deceive, to turn aside, to bring in false teaching, false Christian ideologies, that which is "other" in its essence, not essentially Christ, something put on to Christ - Christ plus... Christ plus - put on. There are many things which are being imposed upon Christianity with all good meaning, but they are not the essence of Christ. That is the, the point of attack: in some way either to prevent, to force out, or to limit, in some way or other, the measure of Christ. And you know, dear friends, or you ought to know, that it is the measure of Christ which is the governing thing. Not only that Christ has got in, no, but the measure of Christ. That is Ephesians, isn't it? The ultimate thing is the measure of Christ.

The Measure of Christ

And if you were to use that word "measure" you're always transported to Ezekiel, aren't you? The end of Ezekiel, what is it? It's the temple. Now I'm not putting any interpretation on that, whether that is going to be literal and all the Old Testament sacrifices restored. You can have your own interpretation about that. I am not touching that; but what I have there is that when that temple does come into view, it is a Heavenly Temple, and the Heavenly Messenger has his measuring line and taking the prophet round, round about, "he took me around, he took me in; round, about, in and out..." how detailed! How meticulously detailed that is with every point, every fragment, every iota, is given a measurement. It's according to this measure, this Heavenly measuring reed or line. It is measured by that. Its place is only by reason of its having that measure; and now, whether you like the interpretation or not, I believe that stands right at the heart of the Letter to the Ephesians and the New Testament, and to this Letter to the Hebrews.

Spiritually, we have come to a New Jerusalem, we have come to the dwelling of the Most High God. We are come to Zion. We are come to that which Ezekiel spiritually saw: a Spiritual Temple. We have come now to that which in every detail is measured "according to Christ." "Is this Christ? How much of Christ is here?"

"According to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" that's the beginning of Hebrews, isn't it, as well as Ephesians. See? And so, the chief point of the attack is always to take something of Christ away, divert from Christ, put something in the place of the very essence, the essential: Christ. Any how, any how, any how, any thing... so long as the end of it is less of Christ, not so much of Christ, not more of Christ. It has to do then, with the Lordship of Christ in everything.

The Lordship of Christ? We used to open with singing: "Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all." A lovely idea, beautiful thought, a wonderful thing! But do you see what it means? Not only the thing as a whole, this wonderful Temple, House, Sanctuary; but to the last detail in the whole heavenly order, the last detail: Christ. In your life, in mine, He is the decision! He is the controlling principle! This is the Kingdom.

Oh, our Christian phraseology does need redeeming and revising. We talk about the kingdom, the kingdom, "We are out in the work of the kingdom, for the spread of the kingdom." I say, these words, "kingdom," "church," and all the others, need redeeming. They need revision.

What is the kingdom? Well, in the original language it's quite clear, but we've missed it by some other mentality. The Kingdom of God is the sovereign rule of God. The sovereign rule of God, that's the meaning of it. And that here is brought down to a detail. It's not just some comprehensive conception of a king. No, it's where I go today, what I do today, what the Lord would have about me today. That's the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom which cannot be shaken is of that kind, where it's all Christ. Hence the necessity for making known the ground upon which security rests "cannot be shaken."

The Ground on which Security Rests

Security is, of course, a very huge thing today, a very lively concern, isn't it, in this world? Security... security. Well, your Metropolitan Insurance - an immense organization - and it's one word: it's "security". See what I mean? In every realm this word, "security" is governing. There is nothing secure, eternally secure, but what is established by God and that is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That is the positive side to the New Testament always, and so I am going to conclude by reminding you of the nine and the ten.

Why nine precautions? Why nine times: "beware, lest... beware, lest..."? How precautionary the Lord is, even with His best servants, His most used servants... if they are really under His sovereign government, what precautions He takes. Do you remember? Had He ever a greater servant than the apostle Paul? Was there ever a servant more used of God than he? I venture to say in the annals of eternity, that man stands very high in preciousness to the Lord. "Lest, lest by reason of the greatness of the revelations, I should be exalted above measure... a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan was given... I besought the Lord three times that He would take it away. And He said..." not "No," the Lord is always positive: "My grace is sufficient." But the precaution of the Lord is to keep a most used and valuable servant from deviating, from the awful snare of pride, even in holy things, the things of God and heaven, for spiritual pride is the worst kind of pride. And pride, pride... the devastation that pride works. "Lest I should be exalted..." God's precaution: "Lest... lest"; and here you have these nine "lests." Look at them, friends. Go through, not just as Bible study, interesting... but note the peril that is associated with each "lest". Take it to heart. And so this book has this running right through from beginning to end, "Lest..." "Lest..." "Lest..." "Be on your guard! Watch! Is this of that kind that abides forever, indestructible and unshakeable? Is it Christ?"

Be utterly committed. That's where the other side "let us, let us" and the "let us" ten times. If you sum it all up, it amounts to this: "Be unreservedly and utterly committed." Committed! I think that means something more than becoming a Christian, many, many who are still children of God, yes, genuinely born-again, but they are not utterly committed. Not utterly committed, there are some other interests. They have got one foot, or even a toe, in the world - still something where there are alternatives to utterness. But the exhortation here, ten times mentioned: "Let us... let us... because, because, because of this peril... let us!" The great "Let us" of chapter 6:1, isn't it? "Let us go on!" Don't drift, don't leave yourself to the mercy of the present current, the tide, the wind. There is nothing that will keep us safer than being positive.

I like that translation of the phrase, you know that our English is, "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord" and I think it is Moffatt who has translated it and I like it, "Maintain the spiritual glow!" Oh, it's a safeguard. There is nothing more safeguarding than being positive. Remember David on the housetop? The tragedy, catastrophe, calamity of David's life, which left its scar on him, was being on the housetop when he ought to have been in the battle; reclining when he ought to have been going.

Israel dilly-dallied in the wilderness of forty years instead of getting on with it; going. "Let us go on to full growth; not laying again the foundations... but, let us go on, go on." So often weariness, tiredness, discouragement, despondency, perplexity, disappointments make us sad, make us sad... takes the initiative out of us, and we are inclined to sink down. And then, again and again in our spiritual history, we have to gird up the loins of our mind: "No, this won't do! This won't do. This is a cul-de-sac. If I get down here, there is no way through, the only way is to come out of it and go on." Beware of your cul-de-sacs, your backwaters, your "no thoroughfares". Keep on the high road, the main thoroughfare. In this sense, if you like, in this sense you can be marching to Zion; whether the doctrine is right or not, have the spirit of it. And you'll sing again in that hymn, "I'll walk the golden streets." How we carried on that tune last week, and the Bible says there are no streets in the New Jerusalem! There is only one - a street of gold - all of God is in the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, only one, only one thing: a golden street. You are not going to choose your locality there! You are going to be put onto the Lord's highway. You see the figurativeness? It is just that: all of God, a golden street, and only one. We'll have to learn how to live together someday!

But the point, the integrating, uniting thing is: "Let us go on to full growth." If we are all of that mind, we will not be caught by these subverting things, these alternatives, these pluses, these impositions. We will not be caught. No! "Is this going to mean, really and truly, an increase of Christ, a greater fulness of Christ; or is it some interesting thing, some fascinating thing, something that is going to be for the moment, for the time being, and then presently it is going to fade out, and I am going to be left high and dry?" That is what happens with so many of these things. They are just for a time. You can see history strewn with the wreck of things which at one time seemed to be the thing, the ultimate thing. Well, the only thing that is the thing is the increase of Jesus Christ. The test of everything: the increase of Jesus Christ. And the universal challenge, contest, is on that.

I have said enough. I close there, praying, as I trust you will do, that this will not be a subject of a conference; a man's theme morning by morning. The Lord will make the challenge of it, "For yet, yet again, I will shake not the earth only, but the heavens"; and the shaking has begun. It has begun. Christianity has entered the great shaking. What is going to remain? Not the things that are made, not the earth-bound things of Christianity; but that Kingdom, that Sovereign Rule, which cannot be shaken. It is Zion, "as the mountains are round about Jerusalem," it cannot be shaken. That is the Old Testament idea, but here it is. It is what is really and truly Spiritual and Heavenly that is in us and that we are in. It is that (to use our first word these mornings) to which "we are come." The Lord help us.

Lord, with the indelible pen of the Spirit of the Living God, write the terms of the New Covenant on our hearts, on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. Write indelibly, so that it may not pass with the week, with the ministry, with the gathering of the people - however all this may be blessed and joyous - but that the Lord's own intention, revealed to us, may abide in our hearts. Continually check us up; arbitrate between the two courses; keep us from the options, the alternatives; and may we always come back to this: "Does this mean more of Christ?" Lord, so help us. We ask with thanksgiving, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, amen.

Chapter 7 - Their Eyes Were Opened

Just a brief word, dear friends, at this point. If you will please turn to the familiar 24th chapter of the Gospel by Luke. The Gospel by Luke, chapter 24, at verse 16: "But their eyes were holden that they should not know Him." Verse 31, "...and their eyes were opened and they knew Him."

I would first like you to notice the exact way in which these things are said: "Their eyes were holden that they should not, that they should not, know Him." And their eyes were open? No, "...their eyes were opened!" Notice that in both places it is as though something deliberately happened to them or acted; as though there were an act on the part of someone, that made them unable to know Him; as though someone had put a veil over their eyes deliberately, just deliberately, that they should not know Him. And then it was as though that was just as deliberately removed; and they were not open, but opened! An act in removing that blindness and they knew Him by the act.

You may not agree with me, I don't mind if you don't, but I believe that from the time of the disciple's call to the day of Pentecost, they were in a state of parenthesis. Everything was parenthetical. And that parenthesis was gathered up and cumulative in the forty days after the Resurrection. So that what was happening in that parenthetical period was incidental; that is, a number of incidents without any finality. Something happened and another thing happened, but it never went through. It just happened, just happened. On the day of Pentecost, the incidents were gathered together and made the permanent, normal Christian life; the continuous thing. This was something happening now, and He vanishes. It hasn't gone through, hasn't been established, nothing positive and remaining. Another thing will happen like that, perhaps in a moment, in an hour, and He vanishes, He took off. It's an incident, and another incident. And when you come to the day of Pentecost, all the "incidents" are gathered together into one basis of life for the whole dispensation.

And that, I believe, is the meaning here... this particular incident at Emmaus, on the road to Emmaus, and at Emmaus. Do you notice, in that walk (it's a focal point, I feel, of this whole conference) on the way to Emmaus, these two who walked and were sad. They were in despondency and despair. Their hearts were down, as we say, in their boots. Everything had gone; nothing left. They were dwelling upon the Cross from the purely natural side; on the death side of the Cross, the death side of the Cross. If you stay there, that's where you will be.

Oh, I have been in a time in my life where the message of the Cross, yes, the message of the Cross... but always the death side. It was as though [I was] standing over a corpse and dissecting it, bit by bit, bit by bit, taking this corpse to pieces and exposing it, dwelling upon it, examining it. The self, the self... all occupied with this wretched dead corpse, and that was the interpretation of the message of the Cross: the death, the death, the death. And you know, it got nowhere. It led to a lot of confusion and a lot of contradiction, and this is where these two were, just on the death side of the Cross from the natural standpoint. The death, the death. "We trusted that it had been He that should redeem Israel," but, but, but... "three days elapsed," and so on and so on. And so they were as they were: sad and miserable, perplexed and wretched because they were on the death side only.

The Lord Jesus, incognito, came along side, took out the Bible and went through the Bible showing that although the Cross was constituent in the purpose and work and plan of God, the Cross was not an end; was not an end only of the natural. The Cross really was intended to be an open door to a new hope, "Blessed be the God and Father...."

Peter, who was one of these men up there in Jerusalem, very miserable, came to see and say, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath begotten us again to a living hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And the Lord Jesus on that walk opened the Scriptures and He opened, so to speak, He opened the Cross into a new life, a new realm, not an end in death, but a beginning in Life. And you notice what a change, what a change in them; they got to the end of the day, to the end of the journey, and they had said, "The day is far spent! The day is far spent, it's dangerous to be on the road now at night, the brigands are on the road, it's dangerous, and, uh, well, we're tired." But brigands or no brigands, tiredness or no tiredness, they went back to Jerusalem at the double, because He had shown that the Cross, while it was in the plan of God for a purpose, really, it was not an end, but a beginning.

Now then, to our words: "Their eyes were deliberately holden that they should not know Him. But after He had expounded the full meaning of the Cross... ought not, ought not the Christ to suffer and to enter into His glory." The full meaning of the Cross; the Life side; the glory side; He had given them that. Their eyes were opened; deliberately opened. What I am saying is this, dear friends, that there is a Divine Fiat which should take place when, when the Cross has had its place, done its work, been accepted for its own meaning, but we have moved on, onto Resurrection ground; onto the Life side. Then our eyes are opened. And the focus of all this, which I think to be so important, oh, I can't tell you how important I know it to be: the real issue of a right apprehension of the Cross and entering into it, it's meaning, is that a spiritual faculty inside is created for spiritual understanding.

I'm going to explain it in this way. For years, for years, I was a Christian. Yes, I know I belonged to the Lord. I was a preacher of the gospel; I was an expounder of the Scriptures. Yes, I could take you through all the scriptures, and find Christ in all the Scriptures. I could do it all! Expound the scriptures, analyse the books of the Bible; give it to you all like that. Then, there came a crisis, a deep crisis: a crisis of the Cross, yes, for an end; an end that has its place and an essential place, but the crisis of the Cross, or the climax of the Cross, in a new position!

A New Position

And what was the chief mark of that new position? It is what I have always called, and many of you have heard me speak of it, my open heaven, an opened heaven; a faculty, a spiritual faculty was, so to speak, born within. Whereas before all this work on the Scriptures was hard going, having to get the latest books on the doctrine of the Cross; and all that... cumulating all the works belonging to the theological libraries. My word, it was hard work! As I have said: finding the straw myself for making the bricks! Oh, years of it.

The crisis, the turning point, now that was forty-seven years ago. From that day to this, I have never had to put in any labourious work to get a message! An open heaven! If you don't believe it, believe me, remember what I said this morning: I want another whole week just to touch on one aspect of things. You know, it's like that! It's like that. It's the twelve baskets full over after all the feedings, of all the days and the hours. An opened heaven! You're seeing, seeing, seeing! More and more!

But what was it that I came to see with that new faculty? It's a wonderful thing. It's a faculty; it isn't an intellectual ability at all. Nothing like that, I haven't got any brains, I'm a no-talent man in that realm. No, it isn't there. What did I see? Did I see the Cross? No, I did not, in the first place. Did I see the Church? Not in the first place. However much of the Cross I've come to see, and however much of the Church I have come to see, how did I come to see? I saw the Lord Jesus. And I came to see that it's the Person that makes the Cross. You can have a thousand, a million crosses, with not that effect. It's the Person.

You've got to interpret the Cross in the light of the Person. Who is it that is in the Cross? That's why Paul said to these very, very intellectual Corinthians, "I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." And Him crucified! No, seeing the Lord Jesus, that alone is the way of seeing the meaning of the Cross.

The Church? Oh, a wonderful subject, the Church. Wonderful subject. The Church... you can keep on for years talking about the Church. How did I come to see the Church? I came to see it, and I believe I did, because when I saw, it was an emancipating thing; from all the imitations, all the imitations, all the traditions. I saw the Church because I saw the Lord Jesus; that He! If you understand the Lord Jesus, you know what the Cross and the Church is. You know what the Church is if you see the Lord Jesus because, after all, what is the Church? It is but the embodiment, the corporate embodiment of Himself. And this Church is a vast thing because it is as great as Christ. And if you can get the dimensions of Christ, you'll see the dimensions. Do you see what I am trying to say?

Here then, everything is gathered into and focused upon one thing. You have heard the expositions. Perhaps you have been in the despair of the death. Perhaps everything has gone; everything is gone. Or perhaps you have been in confusion, but you've heard the expositions, Moses and the Prophets, and all the Psalms. But you still are held until an act, an act of God the Holy Spirit; a Fiat which means your eyes are opened; your inward eyes opened. Something has happened.

Oh, how I've known all that! These men were men of the Bible. They were Hebrews, as far as we can tell. They knew the Scriptures; men of the Bible, but when they had their eyes opened, it was as though they had never known the Bible at all. It's a new Bible!

You've had all the teachings, the expositions. Dear friends, what we need is this act; this inward act. Oh, I can't explain it. I've no time even to try to expound it, but it is something infinitely precious, infinitely wonderful if the eyes are opened and you see not Zion as a doctrine, a teaching... not even the overcomers as some thing in the Bible, but you see Him.

Oh, I'm not thinking about visions, you know I'm not, of a person... these psychic apparitions, visitations. I'm thinking of a spiritual seeing of the significance, the significance, the implications of the Son of God: vast, eternal, beyond all comprehension... His greatness. And it's Himself that interprets everything; interprets everything by the act of the Spirit. That act of the Spirit must come upon all Scriptures and everything else in our tradition, and open our eyes.

That's what I meant, you see, they had the incident; the incident of the opened eyes. And it meant a lot. They went back to Jerusalem; told them all about it. But still they hadn't seen because presently they will say, "Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" They're still in the "not". They hadn't seen, they hadn't seen. But from the day of Pentecost, the act of the Spirit: an entirely new conception because they had now, by the Spirit, seen the Lord.

Do you understand what I am saying? And I say to you, go away from this time saying, "Lord, with all the teaching, all we've heard, all the Bible before us, do this inward thing of creating this spiritual faculty, being able to see what no natural eyes can see." It will be transforming.

And they went to Jerusalem and they broke in on the others. And what does the chapter say? They told them how He was made known unto them in the breaking of bread. The Cross on all its sides, death and Life. This, oh that the Lord would make this simple time, this short, brief time, in the breaking of bread, time when we see, we see Him. Now eyes are not open, but opened; something happens to us. Ask the Lord to make it like that after this week: opened eyes!