Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927228-82-1

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

The Spiritual Background of the Word of God

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in A Witness and A Testimony magazines, 1934-1935.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Nature, Purpose and Destiny of Man

Chapter 2 - God's Testimony and the Age-long Antagonism

Chapter 3 - The Testimony of Jesus

Chapter 4 - Life Overcoming Death

Chapter 5 - Christ our Exodus

Chapter 6 - The Value of Spiritual Revelation

Chapter 1 - The Nature, Purpose and Destiny of Man

We are going to be occupied with THE SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND OF THE WORD OF GOD. We will start at the beginning, having the Word open at the first chapter.

The first observation which we make is that this world is represented as within a greater sphere. That is a broad statement, but it is the commencing point of any comprehensive and adequate grasp of the whole purpose of God. This world is represented as within a greater sphere; and I think that is quite obvious in reading the first chapter of Genesis.

And then the heavenly bodies are said to have been created with a relationship to this world.

Then we take a leap forward. The encircling realm of this world is said to be occupied by spiritual intelligences. We must draw a line somewhere between the immediate encompassing of this world, and that place to which Satan mysteriously enough has access to the very presence of God. There are, undoubtedly, two realms. One is toward this earth; and one is toward God Himself, in His Own Presence wherever that is. The encircling realm of this world is said to be occupied by spiritual intelligences. The Scriptures in that connection are: "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness...." Then Satan as: "...the prince of the power of the air," and such like passages.

The Godhead in Action

The next thing is that the creation of this universe is said to have been the work of the Divine Trinity in a certain order of operation. I do not mean creation in a certain order of operation, but the Divine Trinity in a certain order of operation.

First of all, what is the Divine order? Let us make a general statement so far as the Godhead was concerned in the creation. From the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. Now, can you substantiate that with the Word? These are not unimportant things; they relate to the whole of the spiritual background of things right to the end. If you lay your foundations here, then you will understand later that those things hold good and apply. Perhaps if I just suggest to you the thing that is in my mind you will more fully work it out afterward. I have suggested to you, that passage concerning the Spirit of God brooding, that there is a state of death and ruin from which the Lord has not finally departed, over which He is still hovering with the intention maintained in His mind that there should be out of that, something for His absolute satisfaction. That carries you right on to that central thing in which God does, ultimately and finally without any chance of the thing breaking down again, accomplish His purpose.

When you see the Lord Jesus dying on the cross, you have on the human side and on the side of the old creation another scene such as you have in the beginning of the book of Genesis. Darkness - and even nature witnesses thereto - over the face of the earth until the ninth hour; darkness, ruin, judgment, death, over that old order of things; it is nothing but void; but the Spirit of God is brooding; "...the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead"; the Spirit of God brings back our Lord Jesus from the dead, and in bringing Him back He becomes the Firstborn from among the dead, and the new order is brought in. The Father; in the Son, by the Spirit. That indicates what I mean by the spiritual background of things, and it is important that we see, not only the order, but where each one comes in in the Divine intention. God is the instigator, the originator; the Son is the sphere of His work; the Spirit is the Agent for realising it; and even the Lord Jesus does nothing apart from the Holy Ghost. He is the Spirit of Jesus, and in Him there is nothing without the Holy Ghost. In His birth it is the Holy Ghost; in the first step of public ministry in relation to the purpose for which He has come, it is the Holy Ghost; all the way through it is the Holy Ghost. To the Cross: "...who through the eternal Spirit offered himself..."; and then in the resurrection it is the Holy Spirit; and He receives the Holy Spirit in ascension and exaltation for His Church; and it is everything still by the Spirit even in the Church. So that the Holy Spirit is seen - from this standpoint deductively as well as from the Word emphatically - to be the executive instrument in all the purpose of God; and the Divine order is just that. Everything originates with the Father; it is in the Son; and it is by the Spirit.

Now there are some very comprehensive, although familiar things bound up with that, they are these.

Christ - The Inclusive Sphere of all Divine Activities

God has a great purpose. That purpose is answered inclusively and exclusively in Christ, and nothing of the Divine purpose is possible outside of Christ; and the formula "In Christ" represents the A and the Z, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega of the Divine intention and purpose. Then within the sphere of Christ, and only within the sphere of Christ, does the Holy Spirit operate in relation to the Divine purpose; that is, so far as having a place in that purpose is concerned. The Spirit of God moves universally in relation to the purpose, but when it is a matter of participating or having a place in the purpose of God, you have got to find your place in Christ. And you will find that everything upon which the Holy Spirit alights to make it fulfil the Divine purpose and give it life, is something relative to Christ, and it represents a new discovery, or a new movement in Christ. We were speaking about Ezekiel's great vision of the temple, and you will remember that we said that that vision of the temple was spiritually an unveiling of Jesus Christ; and Ezekiel, under the control, government, direction of the Spirit of God representatively, is taken into the confines of that temple; he is taken in, through, round, and he is shown every detail of that temple and given the exact dimensions of it. All the chambers, their arrangement, their number, order, position; everything; and an exact figure is put upon everything, every bit within and without; and all that becomes the place in which the Priests and the Levites are to fulfil their ministry in the eternal purpose of God.

Everything is measured for us in Christ, and we have got to find our measure. Some people are too big to be of any use in the House of God; they have to have their measure reduced. Some people are too small and they have to have their measure increased; but they have got to find their measure in Christ, to occupy their place, and fulfil their ministry. The whole thing is presented by God. That which is presented is Christ. And the Holy Spirit brings in and gives the measure of Christ for every one, and the place in Christ for every one; and that is the sphere of the purpose of God, the vocation of His people. It is a simple illustration, but it is important for us to recognise that everything is bound up with Christ, of the purpose of God, and the Holy Spirit's work is to show us the things of Christ.

The Nature, Purpose and Destiny of Man

Now we go on. Certain things are said about man, as to the nature, the purpose, and the destiny of his being. Can you say how, and why this is so, respectively?

Firstly, how? In the image of God; for the glory of God; in the image of God's Son.

What is the nature of man's being? "In the image of God." The purpose of his being? For the glory of God. As to the destiny of His being? "...conformed to the image of God's Son."

1. The Nature of Man.

The image of God! What is the image of God? To what does that fundamentally refer? Trinity!

Tripartite; but it is important for us to get more than a general statement; it is important for us to see the greater fulness of that. We can see, of course, it is so well known, that man is tripartite. He is spirit, soul, and body; but we have been dealing with the order of the Godhead in creation, and there is a close relationship here.

Take the Godhead. The Father is the Source; the Son is the Channel; the Spirit is that which comes from the Source and flows through the Channel. Now if you take that as an illustration and carry that threefold, tripartite, element into man you have got a better truth about the nature of man's being. There is a spring and there is a channel, and there is something that flows through in every part of man's being. This principle of the Divine image, the Godhead, is written upon everything that God has created; specifically, upon man, and man rises to a level of this image, of course, much higher than anything else. Take nature; take the creation, and see the principle upon which God has generally constituted it. It is that threefoldness. What have you in the matter of the constituents of the universe? Well, you have matter, you have energy, you have space. You cannot get outside of those; they encompass everything. Everything is bound up within those three. What is space? Space is height, length, breadth, not depth; only three. The depth is the height of a thing always; that is a dimension that does not come in. You cannot get away from that at all. When you are dealing with space you have got to reckon on one of those three things.

Time; what is time? Past, present, future. You cannot get outside of that. It does not matter where you look in this universe you are bound by three.

If you look into your own being not only to spirit, soul and body, but more closely, you will find the law of three everywhere. You go to the eye and you find your eye is composed of three distinct parts; go to your ear and you find that your ear is composed of three distinct parts; go to your body and you find tissue, blood, and nerve.

Take all the chemical elements as you find them and you have the law of three. And then you will find that you come back to this; a spring, a channel, and something that flows through. The principle of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You have a body; you have a nervous system; and you have life. They are all there. So that this creation is an expression to the last detail, the most minute point, of the threefoldness of God, of the Trinity, of the Godhead. That is the image.

2. The Object of Man.

Now you go to the next thing; the object of His creation. First, as to the nature of his being; then as to the object of his being. We have said, for the glory of God. Put that into one word - Representation. For His glory; representation! Carry that right forward and you will find that the end is this, that eventually the race fulfils its original thought of God in this way: that God is expressed in the universality of His Son Who is eventually, as it were, distributed in the race, that every part of the race partakes vitally of Christ, is corporately one with Christ; not only spiritually, as now, but then literally. There is something more in the corporate than only the spiritual; later the race will be a corporate expression of God's thought in Christ. In effect, while Christ will remain personal and individual, it will be a universal Christ by the Spirit. The work of the Spirit of God. The Trinity is not going to dissolve, break up in the coming eternity. The original creative thought of God is going to be realised to the full in the ages to come. God is really going as a Trinity to be represented in the race; an origin, a sphere, and a life, a power. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are going to be represented by a race. That is the background of the Word of God. If you have never thought of it like that, if you go back to the Word of God with that comprehensive thought, you will find that the Word of God lives anew. I am not talking about the Deification of humanity, that the race is going to be Deified and absorbed in the Godhead; I am talking about God's thought for man and its ultimate realisation that it shall represent Him and express His image and that will be Christ manifested in every part of that race, in all that universe He fills all things; He is all and in all.

Why then do we find this trinity in everything in the universe and particularly in man? It is an expression of God's thought along the line of representation; but you cannot take the fallen race now as wholly representing God; neither can you take a redeemed life, a sanctified believer as wholly approximating to God's original thought. There has yet to be a spiritual body before that full thought is realised. It will be a body; a real body. It is necessary to the original thought of God to have a body; it is a part of the trinity; it has got to be maintained. The fall of angels at the beginning with Satan is the fall out of God's thought. Angels have spiritual bodies. They appeared to men from time to time; if the veil were taken away we should see them. What Satan and his angels lost was their spiritual body; they are disembodied, and their one eternal craving is to inhabit something. You never find an occasion when Satan appears in his own body, nor a demon, but they always appropriate some other, and their longing is to inhabit something. They were disinherited of a body. They have lost God's thought eternally; God's thought for a representation of His mind. We come into our spiritual body and we have come to the last part of God's thought for the race; that is, the purpose is consummated. Representation is a very comprehensive term. It takes you right back and right on and shows you what the Lord is doing now in the saints and in the Church.

3. The Destiny of Man.

The third thing; as to the destiny of his being. That has been said to be, according to the Word, conformity to the image of His Son. You see how closely that is related to what we have just said. What is the difference between the image of God in the first case and the image of His Son in the last case?

The Godhead is trinity.

The image of God's Son is purely moral. The other - so far as we are concerned - is constitutional in the sense of creation. But now, conformity; being made like God's Son, is a moral thing. The consummation is moral. And that work of conformity, of course, is a going back over the whole ground of moral ruin and recovering God's thought in a moral universe. So that simply, the difference between the image of God and the image of God's Son, is the difference between the constitution of things inwardly, morally and spiritually. One way by which that is brought about is the putting of the man in order. Instead of his soul having predominance, his spirit does. The Word of God all the way through shows that it is the moral excellencies of the glory of the Lord Jesus that have got to be appreciated, and by faith appropriated, and inwrought by the Holy Ghost. We are working in this threefold sphere all the time.

Now it is said that God came and walked and talked on earth before man fell. This implies a thought and intent of God. It implies the thought of fellowship; identification with what He had created.

The next phase is that of a usurping of God's place in the life of man on this earth, resulting in God withdrawing from the earth in general, as an accursed thing, and confining Himself to that in which the curse has been virtually or actually judged and removed. You see that thought is a fresh door through which we enter another large realm of Scriptural truth - the usurping of God's place in the life of man on this earth (we need not discuss that, it is clear enough), resulting in God withdrawing from the earth in general as an accursed thing (that also we can assent to). That carries with it in itself a very great deal and has a line of its own. The fact that man ignores that truth, as in the case of Cain, seeking to bring to God the best products of this earth, over-looking the fact that the earth at its best was an accursed thing, and believing that he would find acceptance with God on the ground of the world's best, and finding the door closed.

That is a history which runs right through to our own time. The whole philosophy of humanitarianism is constructed upon that, and is the Devil's lie, and the Devil's negation of Calvary. Then God is seen confining Himself to that in which the curse has been virtually or actually judged and removed. Virtually or actually. Do you get the significance of that? Virtually applies to typology. The thing has been virtually done by the type; actually, later, in the work of the cross of the Lord Jesus. There you get your line running right through. Where is the Name of the Lord? Where can you have fellowship with the Lord? Where can you find the Lord? Where is the Lord at work? Where does the Lord pursue His purpose? Just there where the curse has been virtually or actually judged and removed. So you find an altar represents that place every time. In the passage which we have considered in the conference (Exodus 20), where the Lord speaks about the building of an altar, He says: "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me and if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." And immediately: "in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee."

Where is the Lord? At the altar that is according to His Own mind, not man's man-made altar; the altar which embodies the thought of God which no tool of man's intellect can carve out. It is the deep mystery of God's thought in the Cross of Christ. Where that is, is the place where God is, and to that He confines Himself. Therein is the great importance of recognising that fellowship with God is only, but is always upon the ground of the Cross. The Table of the Lord is the central thing in spiritual fellowship, in assembly life. Wheresoever two or three are gathered, the Lord is, but they are there on the ground of the Cross. The thing that brings the Lord in is that there is a standing upon the ground of Calvary. Abel got through that way, and all who have ever got through have only got through on that ground. God comes in on that ground. Hence, to keep God out of the world, and to maintain his usurping place, the Cross in its true spiritual meaning must be countered, nullified.

Chapter 2 - God's Testimony and the Age-long Antagonism

From this point two things start their course:

(A) God having a specific relationship with this world and a testimony in it.

(B) The Adversary seeking to counter that.

Now these two things embrace all the Scriptures and you cannot touch the Scriptures at any point without touching them. If you pause even for a moment and reflect upon that you will see that the Scriptures in every part from Genesis to Revelation touch these two things - God having a specific relationship with this earth and a testimony in it, and the Enemy seeking to counter that. While that is true in general, there are certain things within that compass, of a specific character. These two things embrace all Scripture, and specifically four things under number one, that is, God having a specific relation to this earth and a testimony in it.

God's Basis of Relationship is the Cross

"A" (1) The basis of God's relationship. What is it? It is the cross! That is quite clear from the fall. By the altar the cross is signified as the basis of any specific relationship that the Lord has with this world, and He never has that relationship only on the ground of what is contained in the cross.

Always allow your minds to expand when you get a thing like that; cover the whole range of things, and recognise that if God is going really to have a definite and positive relationship with anything here, it is only as what the cross represents and contains is established. The cross in its spiritual meaning has got to be represented, and God does not come into relation to anything where the cross in its spiritual meaning is not truly and livingly applied and represented. The cross in its active meaning is the very first thing, the basis upon which God comes in.

What do you mean by God coming in? Well, the Holy Ghost manifesting that He is there. You take the simple and well known illustration of the Moravian Missions in the cold regions of the far North. The missionaries who went there and started work amongst the Eskimos told the stories of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus to the Eskimos, tried to attract them, interest them and win them by His works, His miracles, His kind acts, His character, and they went on and on and on and nothing happened; not a soul was saved. And they could not understand why it was that there was no soul being saved; and after some time, a long time of failure, they were sitting in their hut one evening, and they were singing a hymn together; all unconscious of what they were doing other than that they were expressing their own hearts, they sang a hymn about the cross, the death of the Lord Jesus for the sinner, His giving Himself. It was the story of Calvary in a hymn. An eskimo woman outside heard them singing, drew near and listened, and presently she came in and said: "You never told us that!" "That is something you never told us." That woman was the first one saved. God came in on that; the Holy Ghost came in on that. Just a simple illustration of a far reaching truth. The Holy Spirit, the Lord comes in on the ground of the cross. And beloved, that has got to work out to very fine details and applications.

It is not only true in the matter of salvation: it is true in the matter of God's co-operation. We have sung: "Oh, to be nothing, nothing...." Now, we have been standing on our dignity, standing up for our rights! Someone has been making nothing of us - and we have not liked it, and an impasse has arisen, a deadlock, an arrest, things have got difficult; a good deal of prayer appealing to the Lord has gone on for the clearing up of the situation between us and someone else, and the Lord makes no response, nothing happens until we crash and come down to the place where in emptying of ourselves we apologise, we repent, we take the position of a crucified one, and all that flesh is surrendered to the cross. The Lord comes in there; the Holy Spirit allies Himself with that. It is the principle of Calvary always, and as those who have spiritual responsibility it is important that we should recognise it. We come up against difficulties in the work of the Lord at home and abroad. Do we want the Lord to come in on it? In what way is it necessary for the cross to operate? When you have discovered that you have the Lord coming in.

The basis of God's specific association for every purpose, salvation, fellowship, co-operation is always the cross.

The Means of God's Testimony is the Church

(2) Secondly, what is the means of God's testimony? The Church! The Church is implied right from the beginning, and, of course, coming out in type continuously.

Take your great foundation in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham is the cross; he is the altar; the altar is with Abraham. If you want the symbol of Abraham's life it is the Altar. Isaac is the issue of the altar in resurrection. Abraham, the altar on the death side; Isaac, the issue of the altar, resurrection. Jacob, the issue of resurrection, the Church, Bethel, the Pillar. Bethel, a place outside of the world. A pillar set up and anointed, marking the place of an opened heaven, of Divine revelation and Divine communication. And then, mark you, Jacob after the flesh incapable of abiding at Bethel and having to go on into a spiritual experience of the destruction of the flesh for twenty years, and then changed from the carnal to the spiritual, coming back to Bethel where he can pour out his drink offering, and abide. His first word, in the flesh is: "How awful is this place" meaning: "I cannot stay here." His ultimate word is: "How glorious! I can stay here." In between the man of flesh has been changed for the man of the Spirit. That is the Church. Those features are the features of the Church. "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" and you cannot divide those things. That is only an illustration which can be expanded continuously, that the means of God's testimony is the Church; it is the pillar and ground of the truth. We know pillars in the Old Testament are always symbols of a witness. Covenants were made and pillars, obelisks were set up as monuments of a covenant, an understanding, a witness. "These stones shall witness between us."

God's Methods with Man - Emptying

(3) Thirdly, the nature and methods of God's dealing with men. Let us get the link again: God having a specific relationship with this earth and a testimony in it. The basis of God's relationship - the cross. The means of God's testimony - the Church. Now thirdly, included in that relationship and that testimony, the nature and methods of God's dealings with men within the compass of His specific relationship and testimony - emptying.

The nature and method of God's dealings with men in connection with His Own specific relationship and in connection with His specific testimony in the earth, all His dealings in that two-fold connection have been along the line of emptying. The cross, the basis of God's relationship declares it. The Church, the instrument of God's testimony declares that; it is Jacob. You can never have that true Holy Spirit association, relationship, and you can never have that true instrument of testimony, nor the testimony itself, only in so far as that emptying work has been done. It is an inseparable part of the two things - God's association and God's testimony. And the test as to whether the thing really does carry God with it and is of God, the test as to whether it is a true testimony, a true representation of the Church is as to how far that thing has been poured out unto the emptying of what is of man by nature. You cannot come into the testimony of God in a living way without coming through an awful experience of emptying, until there is nothing left in the end. "How awful is this place"; and it is! The Church is an awful place for the flesh, if it is really the House of God spiritually. It is not something to be jumped at. The testimony is not something to be grasped at. It is something to be looked at and you say: "If I mean business with God - being absolutely poured out until there is nothing of me left... if not I had better not go this way." The flesh cannot go this way. The Master says, always on that side of the cross: "Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now." After the cross - "You shall follow Me afterwards." It is only after the cross you can follow that way. It explains a very great deal. The Lord Jesus never left us in any doubt about this. He made it perfectly clear that to follow Him meant denying self. That means something much deeper than the mere phrase "self-denial." Taking up the cross daily. Into this every kind of relationship and resource is cast: father, mother, sister, brother, children, houses, lands, everything. Emptying, stripping: not always literally in those connections just mentioned, but the law of emptying so that in the end nothing of nature really remains as a factor. The Lord, and the Lord alone is the Factor, the Fulness. Well, again let your mind expand, run right through the Word of God and see if that is true. It was true with Abraham, true with Jacob, true with Joseph, true with Moses, true with David, true with Paul; true all along.

The Fundamental Factor in God's Success

(4) Fourthly, the fundamental factor in God's success. What is it? Now we come to the kernel of everything.

The fundamental factor in God's success is putting Christ into things, getting Christ into things. If you think for a minute, you will see that God aims at getting His Son into the very constitution of things, and the ultimate secret of God's success is that Christ is in it. Get Christ in and you are there; God is there, you have reached His end. Christ in you is the hope of glory, and the only hope of glory.

Now you will see how true that is when we begin on our next section. But I want you to dwell upon that, and think about it, and get as much of the force of it as you can. If only you can get Christ into that man, that woman; there may be a terrific battle, but if only you can get Him in it is all right, you have little to worry about. This is the fundamental factor in God's success. If Christ can be got into the constitution of anything He is Eternal Life. Get life into the constitution and see what it will do. But when that Life is Christ, what is He not capable of doing? It is not getting Christ before Calvary in, but it is the Christ of resurrection with all that it carries with it, the Christ of the exaltation Who said: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth." Get that Christ into the constitution of a thing and it is terrific in its potency. There are no limits to the possibilities when Christ is really in. You will notice God's objective is to put Christ into things.

Take the types of the Old Testament; they carry that as their central element. Christ is implied here. What is the tabernacle? It is Christ in completeness put down in the midst of a people, and when the relationships of a people are right and true, all the combined forces of this world are incapable of standing against that people. As that tabernacle passed over Jordan into the land, as that ark was carried around Jericho, it was Christ in the very constitution of things, and nothing could stand. There is your type. What was there typically and objectively in the Old Testament, in the New Testament becomes actual and subjective. Have Christ in His Church, and nothing can stand when the relationships are right and the spiritual side of things true. Whenever there is a conformity to the spiritual reality of the truth: "Christ in you," and "Christ in the midst of you," then God has got the ground of His ultimate success. You can have all sorts of substitutes for that which simply counters the ultimate issue, but once get that and you can afford to be at rest. Now you see the special value of putting this in a certain way; it carries that particular value. God, putting Christ, His Son, into the constitution of things is the fundamental factor of its success.

The Age-long Antagonism

"B." The Adversary seeking to counter that. We said that these two things embraced the whole of Scripture and specifically under "A", the four things just mentioned. Now we deal with "B." The means and methods of the Adversary's countering.

At that point we ought to stop to try and enumerate some of these; the means and methods of the Enemy's countering. The countering of God's basis of relationship; the Cross. The countering of the means of God's testimony; the Church. Countering the nature and methods of God's dealings with men; emptying. Countering the fundamental factor in God's success; putting Christ into things.

Suppose first of all you made a list of the titles of Satan, you have practically got your key to his system of working. Take some of those titles and see what they imply.

As to his method: as "Satan," he is the "Adversary"; the one set against.

"The Accuser"; his method is here given away by the title.

"The Dragon"; the devourer.

"The Lion"; the destroyer, tearer.

"The god of this age"; an object seeking worship. There he is the supplanter, the usurper.

Satan's Methods of Countering God's Purpose

The point is that if you take the titles they very largely cover the ground of his methods of countering God's purpose, but we can, I think, gather up the whole in two or three broad words. We will take six, dividing them into two.

1. Independence of God. That covers a lot of ground.

2. Substitution for God.

3. Imitating of God.

You will have difficulty in getting outside of those three dealing with his methods and means. You will have to think them out. We have not time to go through the Scripture with them, but there they are.

The second three:

1. Direct assault.

2. Subtle deception.

3. Intriguing mixture and corruption.

And it is an extraordinary thing how subtly he does work. You take the book of Numbers, chapters 23 and 24, as a very simple illustration. As you see they are occupied with the prophecies of Balaam. We know the story of Balaam being hired to curse Israel, and the Lord's intervention in turning the curse into a blessing, so that Balaam was compelled to bless when he came to curse. "And when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel...." He had to bless under Divine compulsion, and when he had blessed to the full, Balaam returned to his place and Balak also went his way. You notice it goes on immediately: "And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab...." The whole chapter is one of ghastly tragedy and Divine judgment. Nothing is said whatever there of how it was done.

You pass immediately from a chapter of blessing into a chapter where the people are under the judgment of a curse. The blessing commanded and given by the Lord is, with apparently no interval, changed for a curse. You want your New Testament to explain that, of course. 2 Peter 2:15,16. Something which changes the whole thing from a blessing to a curse. It is that intriguing mixture and corruption of the Enemy, that when the Lord blesses right up to the hilt something just creeps in even while the blessing is there and corrupts the spirit, and the next thing is the Lord is not there. What has happened? Something was gloriously in the blessing of God and suddenly loses the marks of that blessing, seems dead and withered, and the Lord is not there. Even in the presence of blessing something creeps in underneath. Blessing is a perilous time. Some stream of the flesh flows in quietly when the Lord's blessing abounds. The Enemy takes advantage of a great time of blessing just to pour in something of the flesh. Is not that the history of the Church? Just to counter the Lord's end.

Now we must remember that over all this the object of the Adversary, the Enemy, is to circumvent that fundamental factor in God's success, that is, his object is to prevent Christ from getting into the constitution of man and things. Recognise that and your Word lies open before you.

What are his methods and his means to prevent Christ from getting into the constitution of man and things? "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them." Now he will go from the first degree to the last, embracing everything and anything that will be suitable to his end, changing his method and his means, adapting them, so long as that ultimate thing is frustrated. By his open antagonism and fight as at Philippi or Ephesus. Here is Christ coming, and Christ must not get in here. So with open vicious antagonism he will seek to prevent Christ getting into a place or into a man. If Christ has the facilities on His side as in a Christian country where the Gospel has been preached, as differing from places where Christ is not known, his method will be a substitute for the indwelling Christ, an external Christianity. There are few things which are more terrible barriers to the Christ within than the formula of the Christian system.

Take that as a key to everything. His object is to prevent Christ from getting into the constitution. How does he do it? By what means? On the one hand with the unsaved, and on the other hand through professed instruments of God. Satan has his ministers amongst men. The test of ministry is this, the test of everything in the ministry of God's people is just this - how far does it register a blow, an effectual blow at Satan's ultimate design, keeping Christ from becoming the very life within all His Own? Put that another way, on the positive side. How far does that minister toward Christ having His place and His way within the life of His Own? You have got to know how, and how alone Christ can dwell within the heart. That can only be through new birth.

Now one of the cleverest methods of the Devil against the truth is the counterfeit of that very truth, the Christ in every man. He patronises Christ now, just to divert from the truth, and he will talk about "the Christ in all of us." The Christ in the unsaved man! "Find the Christ in him; meet the Christ in him." It is pure pantheism not regeneration. Elevation, but not regeneration. You see it is a counter, and a very successful one.

Now we see our calling, brethren, we see what our ministry is, we see what the effect of our ministry ought to be. It ought to be the exposing of the works of the Devil on the one hand, an opening of eyes, a making a way for Christ into the life, into the heart along His Own lines, on His Own terms.

We have really touched the central point in the work of the Church, in the testimony of the Church, on two sides, the for and the against; that God's objective is getting His Son into the constitution of things; the Enemy's objective is to prevent that. And even with the Lord's Own children the Enemy tries so often to get them to accept something less than the fact that Christ is in them. If he can do that he really has broken them.

There is much meditation to be done upon all that we have said.

Chapter 3 - The Testimony of Jesus

We have seen that on God's side the basic factor in His success is putting Christ into the constitution of things; but there is man's side, and on man's side there are two laws of God's success, they are faith and obedience.

Two Laws of Divine Success - Faith and Obedience

Now these two laws should be traced in the life and history of every instrument in relation to God's purpose. That is something with which to pause. Let our minds run over the means used by the Lord throughout the ages in the direction of His purpose and we shall see that from the beginning invariably these laws governed every instrumentality. On the other hand it should be noticed what the consequences have invariably been of the breakdown of these laws. We are not going to stay with that. It is mentioned and left for your fuller consideration, but it is tremendously important to recognise it. There are, therefore, two sides to God's success. His Own side, in getting His Son into man and into things; and there is man's side also; and man's side has to do with this dual law of faith and obedience. God can only get His Son into things as faith and obedience are granted Him. They open the way for the Lord, for His success. Where faith and obedience are reserved, God is rendered incapable of realising His end.

Now I want to take another wide sweep of the whole ground, coming right back to the beginning and tracing the course of things which seems to be apparent as back of the Word of God.

The Eternal Counsels of the Godhead

1. We might have as our foundation, the fact that there has been from the beginning a cosmic struggle for the mastery of this universe. I think few of us will doubt that; very few of us will fail to recognise that. But it is not only a fact stated, it is something which implies a good deal, and it is the implications of that fact which will largely govern our further consideration. We follow the apparent course of things and begin at a dateless period with the Godhead in the eternal counsels. It is mainly through the Apostle Paul that we are introduced to those eternal counsels of the Godhead. By the utterances which have come from him we are taken back into the times eternal before the world was, and are told certain things about God foreordaining, predestinating, foreknowing, and then doing certain things according to His foreknowledge, and these are what we term "the eternal counsels of the Godhead."

Christ Appointed Heir of all Things

2. Out of those eternal counsels of the Godhead, the one pre-eminent thing which issues is the appointment of God's Son Heir of all things. "God 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 ages" (Heb. 1:2). This refers to some definite act, some precise issue from the eternal counsels in the Godhead; the appointment of the Son as Heir of all things.

Lucifer Enters the Scene

3. We are introduced by the Word of God in the same period (at what point in that period we do not know, but at some point) to another whose name is Lucifer, the Anointed Cherub that covereth (Lucifer, as we know, simply means luminary), who was an angelic being. Three things seem to be quite clear about him.

(1) He occupied a very high position, but yet he was a servant.

(2) He seems to have had a specific and particular relationship to this world, a relationship which most probably existed before this present creation in a previous order of this world; and he is recognised as the prince of this world, and almost all the relationships which the Scriptures mention where he is concerned are with this world. His interests are all represented as focussed here, both by what the Scriptures tell us and by deduction from the main revelations of Scripture which probably we shall see more fully presently. We may be quite right in concluding that this world was the special sphere of his relationship from eternity, and of his office.

(3) Iniquity was, at a given point, found in him. That iniquity was firstly the iniquity of pride leading secondly, to jealousy or envy. His heart was lifted up with pride and he became dissatisfied with his position as a servant and essayed to occupy a higher position which had not been given to him, coveting that position - jealousy and envy; and thirdly, as the active outcome - rebellion.

Lucifer Cast Out

4. Lucifer is shown to have been cast out with the angels who had entered into rebellion with him, the angels "which kept not their first estate."

A Parenthesis on the Mortality of the Body

A question arises here, by way of parenthesis which may be a little speculative but is not altogether without reason; the question as to whether the bodies of Lucifer and his angels which were spiritual bodies, became mortal by their sin and perished, and both Satan and his angels became houseless. Satan and his angels are now disembodied spirits, and that their one craving is for a body. We have no record at all of them appearing in bodies of their own, but they are always seeking to take possession of bodies. Satan was unable to come in in his own body at the beginning, he had to assume the body of the serpent, and ever since that has been, so far as the Scriptures are concerned, his method of manifestation when he has really manifested himself. And this question as to whether the bodies of these angels (for angels have bodies) by reason of their sin became mortal arises. Mortality, of course, is death, and the history of this present creation is the history of sin resulting in mortality and death. We have very little indeed to go upon that would give us a ground of argument that Adam's body was an immortal body before the fall, or that a change took place physically at the fall, but if we argue inductively or deductively we know quite well that the mortality of the body is the result of sin, and that the redemption of the body is the final destruction of sin in the body. Therefore the destruction of death in the body, and the consummation of the redemptive work of Calvary is this mortal putting on immortality, this corruptible putting on incorruption.

Then, again, that is an inheritance. We inherit a spiritual body, an incorruptible body. We inherit it by our spirits first of all being born of incorruptible life, and the spirit becoming possessed of incorruptible life in new birth is the seed of an incorruptible body which it will inherit. That is not just going to be a mechanical procedure. It is going to be the reward of saints, that spiritual body, that incorruptible, resurrection body. It is the completing, the complement of their new birth, or shall I say of the Spirit of sonship (I am coming to that more fully presently, but it rises here in connection with Lucifer). As to these facts, that evil spirits have not bodies and that their craving is always to occupy a body, that angels have spiritual bodies and have been seen again and again of men, there is no question. Lucifer was an angel. His spirits were angels. They have lost their body. How did they lose it? Is it that of which things later, in the case of all lost ones, are a repetition? Well, we just put the question in there by way of parenthesis because it does arise, and it may help us presently.

Lucifer's World Destroyed

5. Then the world of Lucifer was involved and destroyed; how soon after his rebellion and being cast out we do not know. A previous creation existed; there is no doubt about that. This world in its present creative order has not been so for a hundred thousand years. There was a time when some of us used to be fearful for "Genesis," when we heard of skulls and skeletons being found which were more than six thousand years back, etc., etc.. But there was a previous creation. That creation suffered in a way which resulted in things being as we find them at the beginning of the book of Genesis. The previous world was involved and destroyed. It was the world of Lucifer if our deductions are right. God has done that more than once with this world. We have a phrase now on record as to this present world order: "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." Well, it is but a repetition.

A Question on the Third Creation

Now here another question arises, and I raise it simply for its interest; I am not basing anything dogmatic upon it. Is this new creation which eventually comes in with Christ through His resurrection, the third? Does the third day relate to the history of this world? We know the stamp of number three in everything; we saw it in all parts of the creation. I have always had some difficulty in understanding the real value of "the third day" as related to Christ's resurrection. How emphatic it is; how precise. "Today... tomorrow... and the third day I am perfected." Why this emphasis? What is the necessity? It is not just putting three on things; surely there is something back of it, because all things which are of God are not petty and small and local; they are universal and they are eternal. They relate to the whole range of things in principle; they are vast. And I just raise the question: Is this new creation which comes in with Christ in resurrection the third? And inasmuch as it comes in now with Christ in resurrection, it is the last. It is in the power of a life that is indestructible. You carry the principle of indestructible life through the very universe eventually through Christ. I just mention that because we are getting to the spiritual background of everything and it may be of help. There again it is but one fragment added to our progress toward the end that we have in view.

A New World

6. A new world. I am not now speaking of this new-creation-world in Christ through the cross; I am speaking of this world order from the beginning of Genesis. A new world, and three things in relation to it:

(1) Out of the eternal counsels, Christ is its Prince. Mark you, Lucifer is deposed from the princedom. In this new world Christ is appointed Heir of all things. He is its prince in the appointment of God. Now note, a difference has taken place. This Prince is not a member of the household as a servant, as was Lucifer, this Prince is the Son.

(2) Christ's identification with the creation before the fall. That was mentioned before, you remember, and I said that we should come on it again. We must remember that the Christ of the New Testament is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. And we said that before the fall God walked and talked with man on the earth, and that implied thought and intent. Now He identifies Himself with the world of which He is Prince and comes to it and walks and talks.

(3) The fall. He is separated from it by the fall, yet retains a link with it and a testimony in it. The link and the testimony from Abel onward is the Testimony of Jesus; it is Christ implied.

It is so patent that everywhere from Abel on through the whole Scriptures Christ is in evidence in that specific relationship. All the types whether they be personal or whether they be symbols, are types of Christ. They are here on this earth, they are virtually Christ here, and everything in relation to them has to do with His supremacy, His sovereignty, His Lordship. As we have pointed out, that when there is a right adjustment and relationship to those types of Christ in the Old Testament, and when they are given their right place in the life of God's people, the issue is absolute pre-eminence all the time. Lordship, Sovereignty, Dominion. The Tabernacle, the Ark of the Testimony: these are centres, which, when occupying their right place spiritually in the life of God's people, produce amongst those people the mighty powers of absolute victory and triumph all the time, and they are the testimony of Jesus. (What I have in view is to get you to the heart of the testimony of Jesus, to see what it is.) You see He is by the fall separated from His world, yet He retains His link with it along the line of sovereignty, dominion. Christ is everywhere in evidence through the Old Testament dispensation.

The Incarnation

7. The Incarnation. The Son comes in the flesh personally. Three things:

(1) Identification with, and at the same time separation from, the world. On the one side He identifies Himself with this world and with its race by His incarnation. Yet at the same time, on the other side. He is distinct from it. He is not of it, He is separate from it. United with it, yet separated from it. Identification and separation in the incarnation.

(2) Redemption. The redemption of the race and the potential redemption of the world, the cosmos, and the casting out of the prince of this world. Now we must retrace. Lucifer was cast out. The Son was made Prince. The cast-out Lucifer returns to the domain of God's appointed Prince and recovers a kingdom in this world morally. What was before geographical afterwards became moral. Now you get your order of Christ's redemption. Christ comes, redeems the world and casts out the prince of this world anew, but this time he is cast out morally. Satan is now set at nought on a moral ground, and the success of the Lord Jesus was because the prince of this world came to Him and had nothing in Him. It was a moral victory, a moral power which was his undoing. Well, there in the Cross: redemption was secured for the whole race - and more than that; for the whole creation potentially. That is in Christ's victory at Calvary, and Satan cast out. He is still here, but morally cast out. Thus we have identification and separation; redemption, and the casting out of the prince of this world.

(3) The malignity of Satan from the beginning of the life of Christ. He has recognised the Son, and he has recognised what the issue will be of the Son having come. Therefore, at His very birth he will stand at nothing in cruelty, downright wickedness, to destroy the Son. Having failed there, the Son being under a special protection from the Father, in the wilderness he will try other methods. His point of attack is: "If Thou be the Son...." You see that is the point. And he persisted along that line to the end, seeking to get in between Christ and the Father with a human reasoning and judgment which would make Him doubt His Sonship. God has said through an opened heaven: "This is my beloved Son." "This is a poor plight for a Son to be in; do you think it is true? Do you believe that if you were the Son of God...." You see? And the human side being stirred, provoked, worked upon to thrust itself between what was true of Him in His spirit in relation to the Father. It is our temptation all the time. The human side of our life is in suffering, in affliction, and by reason of the suffering is worked upon by the Enemy to bring about doubt as to whether after all, in the deepest reality of our being, we do belong to the Lord, we are joined to the Lord, that God is our Father. We understand it. It is an attempt through the channel of the human in its time of suffering, to question sonship. That malignity against the Son is seen from the beginning; set against His life and the coming through with His work; eventually working upon men to influence Him out of His work. God's charge against Israel was that they killed the Prince of Life. They cast the Prince of Life out of His Own world.

But that is only point seven, you cannot complete the circle without point eight; and eight is always the resurrection number.

Resurrection and Ascension

8. Resurrection and ascension. Five things:

(1) A Spiritual Prince enthroned. "God hath made Him a Prince and a Saviour." Now this is not just a physical, geographical thing; there is a sense in which without any of the work of Calvary at all the Godhead is absolute Sovereign in this universe though there be fifty thousand Lucifers. It is a moral thing through and through. The whole drama of Calvary is a moral drama; so that Christ's enthronement now is not the enthronement of God as God over His universe because He had been pulled out of His place as God of the universe. The enthronement of Christ is a spiritual and moral enthronement. It is literally until all His enemies shall be made the footstool of His feet, but He reigns now in virtue of a moral victory: "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him..." and that "wherefore" relates to the specific character of the work of His Cross, His death.

(2) From a spiritual Prince there begins a spiritual people. He the Firstborn from among the dead, then a spiritual people begotten in resurrection; a new creation in Christ. Not a physical or literal thing yet, but spiritual.

(3) The Day of Grace. Given, allowed for man to make a choice under the proclamation of the truth concerning Christ. What He has done, and where He is. During that Day of Grace there is a dual growth. On the one side a development with the false prince, the cast out prince; on the other side a development with the enthroned and true Prince.

(4) After the Day of Grace the effected universal separation. (We are not filling in all the stages and movements; we are taking the broad development.) The universal separation between these two things which have been growing, developing, is effected; then the Day of Judgment.

(5) The new heavens and the new earth; Christ universally Sovereign.

Now that is the cycle of things, but there are one or two things of which I want us to take special account as arising out of that. So far we have covered broad stretches; we want now to get specific values.

The Testimony of Jesus

The first is as to the Testimony of Jesus. What is "The Testimony of Jesus." Usually the testimony of Jesus has been considered to be that concerning His Godhead. That is, Who He is as a Member of the Godhead as differing from His being just a Man, a good Man, the best of men, the super-man. The Deity of Christ, the Godhead of Christ, that has been considered to be the pre-eminent factor and feature of the testimony of Jesus. I am not coming down from that, but I am going to say that that is not all. The Testimony of Jesus is that, but what that means. It is not only the Divine Sonship of Christ; it is that as Son He is Heir of all things, and God's universal Prince. It is not upon the Deity of Christ that the Devil rages. The Devil rages upon the truth that, being the Son He is Heir of all things. And it is not just that you can teach and preach Christ as God that provokes the Enemy, but it is the implication of that which stirs the satanic animus; that being the Son of God He is destined to the Princedom of this universe.

The testimony of Jesus is not "Jesus is God" alone; the testimony of Jesus is this: Jesus, being Son of God, is Lord. Now the apostolic message is that. It was the exaltation of the Son of God, not the fact of His Sonship only, but the exaltation of the Son of God to the right hand of the Majesty on high, with what that means; because that stands right over against the original position of Lucifer. That represents forever the doom of Lucifer. He recognises that if that becomes recognised and accepted, he has lost everything and if that acceptance grows apace his time is shortened; that every fresh one who accepts that shortens his time that much. He knows that it is only a matter of time. Does he? "What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment before the time?" They know the time factor. They know that their eternal torment in that specific sense is bound up with His Coming and His work. You reach out to lead men and women spiritually into the truth of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus and you are shortening the Devil's time, and you are provoking him. It is not a cold theology, or even a fundamentalism of the Deity of Christ that stirs the kingdom of darkness. It is, in the power of the Holy Ghost, Christ declared as Lord, Son of God but Lord, Heir of all things. And the testimony of Jesus is something more than the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. It is the Holy Ghost making the Lordship of Christ a reality.

Sonship in the Saints

The Testimony of Jesus has as much to do with His perfect humanity as it has with His deity.

Secondly, the nature of Christ's cosmos will be that of sonship in the saints. Now you get to the heart of things if you recognise that. You see we pointed out that when God moved after Lucifer's fall, in relation to His eternal counsels, it was not a member of the household whom He appointed in the second place, it was the Son over God's House, and it was on the principle of sonship that He was going to establish His order ultimately and eventually rid the universe of that evil thing that had come into it. It was by sonship. Now, if it is a spiritual and moral thing this redemption and this establishment of God's eternal intention, that is going to be a principle in God's cosmos eventually, sonship; not servants but sons. So that sonship means, carries with it inherently, inheritance and dominion. The letter to the Hebrews teaches that throughout; that sonship carries with it inseparably inheritance and dominion. The nature of Christ's cosmos is going to be sonship in the saints. It is "Christ in you." "...But ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." That is the spirit of sonship in us that is pointing on to the nature of Christ's universal dominion.

We are not to be servants in the House of God, we are to be sons. The House of God, beloved, is a very big thing. It is not the local assembly, nor all the local assemblies on this earth; they are of the House of God, but the House of God when it is fully manifested will be universal. There may be differences of position in the House of God, there may be degrees of glory and honour in the House of God, but it is going to be the House of God and the principle is going to be that the Spirit of sonship was introduced into everyone who came into it. Everyone born from above by the Spirit of God has the Spirit of sonship. They may be children for a time, they may, many of them, remain little more than children, but potentially the spirit of sonship is there, or the spirit of sonship is there with all the potentialities; the measure of inheritance will depend upon the measure of growth in sonship, but to get into the House does not require full growth in sonship. Sonship is implicit in the babe, and there is no membership of the family without the implicit sonship. So that the nature of Christ's cosmos, the redeemed cosmos will be that of sonship in the saints.

Sons of God in this World, and the Challenge

Thirdly, what sonship carried with it in Christ when He came into the world applies to every believer. That is, it means identification and separation. We are here related to this world in a very real and positive way for the Lord. At the same time there is a true separation from it. That is what Christ's sonship meant in incarnation, and that is true in our case. We are here for real purposes. It is not only for our training and discipline. That is a part of it. We are here in relation to the testimony of Jesus. If our lives are wholly ordered and governed by the Holy Spirit, and the Lord has His full way, He will put us down on this earth in some place, some sphere, with the intention that there, that place, shall represent the absolute Lordship of His Son because we are there. Our being there will raise hell to get us out because of the implication of our being there. The Enemy regards us as intruders and would force us out, but we are here in a very close identification with what is Christ's by right and what is Christ's potentially by His Cross. And yet there is another sense and realm in which we are absolutely separate from it. That is the nature of sonship. Sonship is eventually related to this earth for eternity as Christ's inheritance. It may have a larger sphere, or door of operations. It may not be earth bound and earth limited, but it is related to this earth and when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ we shall have some relationship to this world.

We have got to take that position for the Lord here where He puts us, and see that we never move out of it other than by the Lord. We have got to be where the Lord puts us and go where the Lord takes us, because just there, for eternity something is represented, and we shall only defeat the Lord's ends in our lives if we begin to make our own programmes.

The Universality of Everything in Christ

Fourthly, we must, therefore, recognise the universal relation of all testimony and ministry in the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in the Holy Spirit which is merely local. And there is nothing in the Holy Spirit which is merely temporary. The Holy Spirit always works in relation to the universality of Christ, and He is doing so now. You may, and I may, be in a locality, but immediately we become insular, local, parochial, water-tight, we have cut ourselves off from the greater resources of the Holy Ghost. We have got to recognise that every place in which we may be, though it may be a small place, is never looked at by the Lord as something in itself. It is always regarded by Him as being but a point in the universal, and is always related to all the rest spiritually; all the rest is affected for good or ill by what goes on there.

The Testimony of the Lord Jesus is one testimony; His Lordship is one Lordship: and to stand in one place in His victory absolutely is in itself to be involved in the battle with all the powers of darkness, not with a local company of them. Do you get that? Not with a local company, a local assembly of evil spirits. No! They are all interested in that place and the Devil himself is interested in that place. It may be one tiny spot on the earth with only two persons, two saints there, and the whole system of darkness is interested in that. It is true! And the more clear and positive the Testimony of Jesus is in a place, the more universal that place becomes in its significance, in its accountability; the more it draws the attention of the Adversary. There may be focal points but they are the focal points of the universal, and we must recognise this, the universal relationship of all testimony and all ministry is the Holy Ghost. We must seek to break down every kind of artificial barrier that localises, and we must seek to recognise, and operate in line with the recognition of the fact, that from this point, this small out of the way point on this earth, the whole range of Christ's interests and of Satan's interests can be touched. You can touch the whole cosmos spiritually from any point. The Lord would work that out with His people I believe. It is one of the wonderful things.

When you get away from the old system of organising Christian work, which is usually departmentalising, a putting up of that which constitutes something in itself, technically constituted Christian work with various kinds of boundaries, human controls and so on - when you get, by the work of the Holy Spirit, lifted clean out of the whole system of human organisation into a realm where the Holy Spirit does the organising, the governing, the running of the whole thing and you are not trying to bring anything about at all, you are working in cooperation with the Spirit, not enterprises, but you are in the Testimony of Jesus in the Holy Ghost, you will find that that ministry steadily, quietly, extends of itself far beyond your local boundaries, and reaches out until it reaches the bounds of the earth and you may have a voice for the whole earth. The testimony of Jesus is universal; it cannot be local. It has a local application, but it can never remain local, because in this spiritual realm of His Lordship and of Satan's attempt to counter that, everything is universal. It is not only earthbound; it reaches to the encirclement of the earth unto principalities and powers. That is the range of this Testimony of Jesus. And the great need for so many of the Lord's people, the Lord's servants, at this time is to be delivered from all that which is so much less than universal. They are just in their own small local circle, their own little kingdom, and that is the beginning and the end of everything for them; and there is no recognition of the mighty impact upon the forces of evil in the universal Testimony of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord make us, in Christ by the Holy Ghost, universal factors. But it represents a good deal of breaking, smashing up of our ideas. It does represent a terrific stripping off of a system in which we have grown up, in which we have been trained; but when the Lord has done it, it is marvellous. You look back and say: "There was a time when that, and that, and that was everything to me; it was my system, my line of things, my very life. I did not see anything beyond it." But the Lord has done that great emancipating thing, and you laugh at your utter folly that ever such things should have been of any account at all. There is emancipation from what is so trivial and petty and earthly and man-made, all that sort of thing, out into the universal, and when you get out there, there are no limits to spiritual possibilities. But of course, you do meet things! You meet something else which you never met in the same way before. That is the position and it is there that the Testimony of Jesus counts.

May the Lord make it all profitable to us and lead us out.

Chapter 4 - Life Overcoming Death

Reading: Numbers 17:1-13.

We have been saying that the Scriptures throughout reveal an abiding and deep seated antagonism between God and this world, and that that antagonism passes into every instrument brought into living fellowship with God, and becomes the expression of God's antagonism, as also the means by which the antagonism in the world is dragged out into the light. So that, all who are in spiritual fellowship with God, know that from God's side there can be no reconciliation with the world in that spiritual sense of the word in which we are using it, and they also know that there is toward them, as toward God, this strong, deep, relentless spiritual antagonism on the part of the world.

We have further seen, that in the true nature of fallen man there is that element which has an affinity with the world, and which causes man spontaneously to gravitate world-ward.

Then we have seen that the Word of God reveals the existence of a great system of spiritual intelligence, which has as its business the maintaining and stimulating of that antagonism, and that all its might is bent upon keeping that affinity between fallen man and this world. So that that whole system of spiritual intelligences is all the time seeking to keep man world-bound spiritually, and to bring about some kind of involving again, even of the Lord's people and the Church, in this world, spiritually. The whole history of the Church's gravitation world-ward in numerous ways is just the history of the success of those spiritual intelligences, to again entangle the people of God in the toils of the world spiritually.

Now we have to some extent dealt with those matters; and we come, therefore, to the next thing which was mentioned in our original outlining of this whole matter; that spiritual death is the law which governs that relationship of man with the world. Spiritual death is the many-sided master-hold of those spiritual forces. In our second analysis, you will remember, it was pointed out, that the very essence of the working of the Lord Jesus by His Cross, was to destroy that affinity, to break the power of that law of death, and to introduce, on the ground of separation from the world, the law of life; a counter law to the law of gravitation toward the world, the realm of spiritual death. So for a brief time we shall be occupied with the law of life in Christ, that which comes by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. How to lift out just enough for a little while is my problem. The Lord will no doubt help.

We may find our helpfulness by reverting to the portion of the Word from which we were reading in the Book of Numbers. We read the 17th chapter, the account of the taking of the twelve rods of the twelve tribes of Israel, and of the sequel in the budding of Aaron's rod. You will notice, if you have the Word open, that this 17th chapter has its setting in a scene of death. The chapter before gives the account of the rebellion of Korah and his company, the disputing of the leadership of Moses and Aaron, and the calling into question of God's appointment. You must ever remember that Moses and Aaron are one, that in principle they are not two men, they represent the two sides of one. Moses is that side which represents government, administration; Aaron is that side which represents priesthood, mediation. Two sides of one ministry, which are clearly seen in the Anti-type of Moses and Aaron, the Lord Jesus Himself; King and Priest, Ruler and Priest, Administrator and Mediator.

Korah with his company rose up and questioned the divine appointment and its absoluteness. You know the issue. The Lord took up that matter. Moses did not take up that matter; Moses did not turn a hand for his own vindication; he fell on his face before the Lord, and his meekness is brought out at that point as never before. But the Lord stepped in and called for Korah and his company to be brought to the door of the tent of the congregation. The issue was that the earth opened, and swallowed up the company of Korah, which, if you look, you will see to have been a very large company. Death engulfed all who were touched and tainted with that thing. Chapter 17 is set in that background of death, terrible death. Korah and his company have touched something which was death, and which worked out in death. There had been a contact in spirit between them and that realm which is death, and spiritual death always precedes the literal carrying out of it, just as spiritual life in resurrection precedes the resurrection literally. There will be no resurrection unto life for anyone who has not already been resurrected spiritually. And when eventually the judgment of death has its literal consummation, it will simply be the fulfilment of what has already been taking place in spiritual death; and in principle Korah had already touched a realm which implied and involved death, and the literal judgment was but the consummation of that.

A Realm of Spiritual Death

Now we pass into this part of the story where the big question for the Lord's people is the fact of there being a realm of death, and of our seeing how possible it is for us to become involved in that, to touch that, and the awful consequences - how can we live? Who can live? You see that is what comes up at the end of chapter 17, but is the issue of chapter16. At the end of chapter 17 you read: "And the children of Israel spake unto Moses, saying, Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Every one that cometh near, that cometh near unto the tabernacle of the Lord, dieth: shall we perish all of us?" Question followed question. Death is working: Death, a realm which can be touched spiritually. How can we live? Can we live at all? The content of chapter 17 is the answer; Aaron's rod that budded. I think it well nigh impossible to fail to see in that rod the type of the Lord Jesus. All those rods, even Aaron's rod, when brought to the tabernacle, were dead. Aaron's rod was among the rest, apparently like them, in death. Judgment has taken place, sin has been judged and dealt with, and death through sin reigns universally. That is sin, as you have it at the end of "Good Friday," as we call it. Even the Lord Jesus, who has voluntarily entered into the universal judgment of sin, taken His place amongst sinful men, and has received the judgment of God upon the sin of the world, looks, at the end of that day, as though He is like all the rest - dead; laid up through the night, the dark night. But then we hear Paul's ringing shout: "God raised Him from the dead," and what we call "Easter Day" is Aaron's rod that budded, is Christ in resurrection. These rods, or at least Aaron's rod, was an almond rod, the stick of an almond tree. In Hebrew the word "almond" simply means "awakening," and it is given that name because it is the first of the trees of spring to break the slumber of winter. The first blossoms of spring are the blossoms of the almond tree, and the almond gets its name in Hebrew simply from the fact that it breaks the slumber of winter first. It is the first to show the new life. A very simple type of Christ, the Firstfruits of them that are asleep, awakened, breaking the slumber of death.

The Fulness of Christ's Victory

There is something more than that. The marvel, the miracle of this particular rod was that simultaneously it had buds, blossoms and fruit, ripe fruit. You have never found that on an almond tree in spring. You have seen the bud, and then later the flower, and later the fruit, but here are all at once. Christ in resurrection is initially the break with death, and at the same time the full fruit of resurrection, and there is present all the beauty of that in the flower. It is a matchless picture of resurrection. Christ does not rise progressively in bud, and later on in flower, and later still in fruit, all is there in a moment; and that is why we can live; for in Him is the fulness of resurrection life. Do they ask, How can we live? Who can live? The answer is here - Christ lives, all is possible. Even in the presence of death and judgment, in a world where death rages, to touch which spiritually means death, it is possible to live in the triumph of His resurrection. I take the simple and the surface lesson of this almond rod and of the resurrection.

Much more there is, but we will ravish our hearts with the first beauty of this thing. You and I know quite well that death is all around us in this world - spiritually, I mean. We know by painful experience that it is all too possible, and all too easy for us spiritually to touch that realm, and to have the touch of it upon us, to feel that cold touch of spiritual death upon our hearts by reason of, in some way out of a thousand ways, just getting a contact. It may be conversation. It is so easy to touch death through not watching your conversation. How often, after a holy time with the Lord, frivolity has come in in your conversation, and you know in your spirit that you have come into a realm of death, it may be by something said about a child of God; you have come down to earth levels in your relationships, your criticisms. I could never, if I tried, touch all the ways in which it happens, but I mention these simply to give point to the truth. There are innumerable ways in which the spirit of one who has been touched by the Lord with His life, can just be involved in that spiritual realm of death. It is a reality to us - we know it. That new law which He has put within us, which gravitates toward the Lord, makes us revolt and recoil from even compulsory dealings with many things in this world. We have to go back, because of the conventions of this world, because of certain duties which have to be performed; we have to go back into the world sometimes to ungodly relatives or associations, but we want to get away as soon as we can, we recoil. That to us is death spiritually. We do not, of course, imply here any lack of love or desire for the salvation of such as are unsaved.

Now we live in that realm, in that world. How can we live triumphantly in a world where death is, and not perish in it? More than that! How can you and I, as the Lord's people, seeking to live a heavenly life in this death-ridden world, live, not only in the presence of men, and women, and things which are dead, but in the presence of all the spirits of death, which are with increasing intensity coming upon the children of God, to register death upon them; these spirits that seek to make them accept death, to put up a real conflict spiritually with something - the only word which expresses it is death; that which is active, malicious, wanting to crush the life out of you and to bring you down and under; how can we live in that? We need a very full victory. That rod declared the fulness of the victory, going right on to the end - ripe fruit. It covers the whole field of resurrection life. Christ risen answers the question, How can we live? Because He lives we live. He, risen, is our life, even in the midst of death.

I know how very simply, very elementary that statement is, but it is not too elementary for me. That does not set the standard, of course, but for me that is a message, and because it is a message to me I give it to you. Beloved, as children of God, we cannot live in this world, only in the power of the risen life of the Lord Jesus, but we CAN live, even in this world, in the midst of the full force of spiritual death, if we know Christ in risen life, the fellowship with Him in His resurrection. We can live, and it is what we have got to learn to do. We have to learn from day to day how literally in our hearts to lay hold of the Lord as our life, to make it possible for us to go triumphantly through this world, this living tomb, this realm of death.

Now all that is according to the truth: all that can have the Word of God brought to its support throughout. You probably realise that more or less. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus has got to become to His own a daily reality. It is not merely something that happened so many years go. We do not celebrate something that happened centuries ago, we celebrate something that is real now in experience. I cannot sing a hymn about something that happened so many centuries ago. I can only enter into this thing if it is a reality to me now. I want the value of it to my own heart now, and then I can sing. This matter of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus has got to become an increasing reality to us in our life, to live in triumph in the midst of death. It is so real and true to experience; very often it is wrapped up so carefully and so cleverly by the enemy, that the whole tendency and peril is to put things down to the account of something else; to put it down to the fault of people, to the accidents of life, to the mere converging of circumstances, to blame somebody, or something. And so it is wrapped up really to divert us from the source of it, so that, being occupied with something which is not the original occasion, but merely a means of it, we shall not get right to the source, and be able to tackle it there. If your experience of spiritual death comes about, in measure, through some means seen or known, and you become occupied with the means, the channel, the instrument, the person or the thing, you have no power to deal with the matter at its fountain head. You simply get up against people and things, and blame them and feel sorry about them. But if you recognise that that is only the wrapping of the enemy, and see that the issue is a question of life and death, and you get right to the source of it, and say, now, although so-and-so may have been unwatchful, unwise, and in measure responsible, I see that the enemy is back of that, and the effect of this thing is intended to be that I am spiritually put out of action, brought down into death; then you are on the way to being able to master the whole situation. And how often when we get back of the thing or the person, and deal with the thing in its spiritual realm, the other thing of itself clears up, and you find that that is taken out of the enemy's hands. It is very true! It is important for us to recognise the ultimate matter, and that is the one of spiritual conflict between the prince of this world and our spirits, to bring us again into the bondage of spiritual death.

Ministry in Resurrection Life

That is not all, but I must close. I want to remind you that it is not only a matter of living. Chapter 18 carries this thing further. It carries it into ministry. The answer of the end of chapter 17 works two ways. It works, on the one hand, toward living in the presence of death, and being delivered from death; it works in the other way, in the matter of spiritual service. It is a glorious thing to notice that it is not only a matter of being able to maintain yourself in life, or being maintained in life, but a ministry in resurrection comes into view. Chapter 18 brings the whole matter of spiritual ministry in resurrection in a new way before the Lord's people. Aaron, his sons, and the Levites, on the ground of this great miracle of resurrection come into a spiritual ministry. It is not necessary for me to remind you that the Levites are, in representation, all the people of God; all the people of God, in consecration, in separation unto the Lord; and their ministry is the ministry of all the Lord's people, and all the Lord's people have their ministry in the Levites. In the New Testament you do not divide the Body literally. Here it is a principle, a type, an illustration of a spiritual reality. In the New Testament it is Christ and His own.

If you want the proof of that, read your Letter to the Hebrews again, and you will find, in the very first chapters of that Letter, the Lord Jesus, Who comes in as the greater than Aaron, speaks again and again of His own as being brethren, children: "I and the children..." "I will declare Thy Name unto My brethren..." "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus...." And there Christ is seen as "A Son over God's house, Whose house are we." It is a priestly family that comes in with the New Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews makes it perfectly clear that that is all on resurrection ground. He, through death, has destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and delivered all those who all their lives were in bondage through fear of death. On the ground of resurrection this priestly family comes in with Him as its Head. That is Numbers 18 quite clearly. And so spiritual ministry comes in, not for a class, but for all the Lord's people. If there is any difference between the sons of Aaron and the Levites it is one of spiritual development, and not of class distinction. It is approximation to maturity, as represented by the sons of Aaron, but the ministry of the House of God is spread over all the Lord's people. Every one of you - take it to your heart - every one of you stands now, in the New Testament day, in the position of the priests and the Levites of Numbers 18. That is a privilege; that is a responsibility.

Now, of course, your mental difficulties will be as to the nature of ministry, and you will perhaps be asking questions. You may ask, Have I to preach, have I to be on the platform, taking meetings? No, it does not mean anything of the kind. It does mean that you have a ministry spiritually, by your very relationship to the living Lord. Oh, that we could get delivered from this mechanical idea of ministry. The Lord has taken tremendous pains with some of us in this matter. Ministry does not consist in someone getting Bible addresses ready, Bible readings and subjects, preparing them, and getting up and giving them forth at meetings. That is not the ministry. The Lord has shown to us that it is impossible to minister in the power of the Holy Ghost, in the Word of God, in truth, unless we have the fruit of Christ's resurrection in us. You have to come, not only to the initial experience of the bud, being raised together with Christ; you have to come to the place where the beauty of Christ in the flower is there; and then the fruit of Christ is there in ripeness. I would not come to you to minister at any time simply because there is in the Bible a good deal of interesting matter that I have seen, and which I would like you to know. My cry to God is, Forbid me to speak to this people, unless You give me a word in my own heart that is meaning something to me. Ministry flows out of living union with the Lord Jesus, and if ministry is not that, it is not the ministry of God. Do not take on ministry in a mechanical, organised way; that will kill you sooner or later. This ministry is only possible in the power and fruit of His resurrection.

Are you knowing the fruit of His resurrection in your own heart, in your own life, so that He is really causing you to partake of the fruit of His resurrection - ripe almonds? It may be in a simple way, but you are knowing that beauty, that unction, that fellowship with the Lord in your own heart. If you are, you need not worry about ministry; that will show itself. The Lord will find ways for you. I have no doubt whatever but that when the Lord gets a child of His into a place where they are really in their own hearts enjoying the fruit of the risen Lord, the Lord will make contacts with that life which will be fruitful, and that will be ministry. He knows where there is someone who is just longing for a taste of the fruit of His risen life, and He will make the contacts. That does not exempt us from being ready, anxious to be used as the Lord will, on stretch to be of service to Him; though all eagerness to minister will be in vain if we are not in resurrection with the Lord Jesus, but, given that, ministry follows, it comes out of that.

Numbers 18 comes out of Numbers 17. The ministry of the House of God is spontaneous, when there is union with Christ in risen life; the fruit is there at once.

Chapter 5 - Christ our Exodus

Hebrews 5:10: "Named of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek."

Verse 10 ends with the mention of Melchizedek. The apostle goes on to say that there is a very great deal that he would like to say about Melchizedek. It is impressive to note that the story of Melchizedek only occupies seven verses in the Old Testament, and then there is one subsequent brief reference to him a thousand years afterward, and that is all you have about him in the Old Testament. Later he occupies a large place here, and the apostle says that he could occupy a very much larger one, if only he himself had an open way to say all that he would like to say. "Of whom we have many things to say, and hard of interpretation, seeing ye are become dull of hearing." The difficulty is not always in the messenger himself, but is sometimes found in the want of that clearness, that openness and livingness on the part of those ministered to; and that means that a good many things have to be held back. I trust that none of us will be in that state, that many difficult things should be held back because we are dull of hearing. "For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food... Wherefore let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection; not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." I think for our purpose that is all that we need read at the moment.

Now first of all let us go back to the main theme of the Conference, and remind ourselves of that with which we have been occupied so far. Briefly it is this: We have been seeing, as revealed in the Word of God throughout, and as proved true in history, that there is a deep rooted antagonism between this world and God, and between God and this world, as also between what is of God and this world. That, moreover, in the very nature of man now since the fall, there is that which is antagonistic to God and His things, and in God that which is antagonistic to that in man, and these two things to be incapable of reconciliation. This world therefore outside of Christ lies under God's judgment, and is spiritually a realm of death. For the present it is not God's method or intention to destroy this world, as He destroyed the former creation, and left it without form and void, and darkness covering the deep. For the present God's purpose and method is to take out of this world spiritually a people, in whose heart that basic antagonism has been destroyed, and in whose heart He has put something which is in fellowship with Himself, and is not antagonistic.

Through this present day of grace, this dispensation of the Gospel, God is in all the nations taking out that people, spiritually taking them out; separating them spiritually from this judged and doomed world. And so God has in every nation through His grace, in response to His Gospel, a people who are inwardly no longer at variance with Him, alienated from Him, in antagonism to Him, but in living fellowship with Him. That number is increasing, but a definite time limit is fixed for the accomplishment of that purpose, and the Day of Grace has its end clearly marked in the purpose of God. When that last hour of the dispensation is reached - and if we are not in the twelfth hour now, we are at the end of the eleventh, we are quite sure; and some of us think that we are very near the end of the twelfth - then that Day will close, and out from the nations God will take by resurrection all those who are asleep in Jesus, and by translation of those who remain alive at the time, He will take those who are in spiritual fellowship with Him. Then the world will be closed down to its fiery judgment, and the Lord will cause this order of things to be destroyed. Peter uses very strong language about that. He says the very elements will be on fire with fervent heat; all these things will be dissolved. Then God will make a new heaven and a new earth, as He has done before, and those who in this dispensation have come into that living fellowship, and have suffered with Him, will come back with Christ to reign.

The Way out of a Doomed World

Our point for now is the way out of this judged and condemned world, the world which is held unto judgment. We are in it by nature. No one here can dispute at least one thing that we have said, and that is the inward variance or antagonism of the human heart with God. You may try and put it in various ways. You may - some do - say it is not God with whom we are at variance, but the kind of Christians we have met who have turned us aside, and so on. But that to me is only an excuse; for the same attitude is taken toward anybody who is a Christian, without proof as to whether they are genuine or otherwise. The human heart is that, and there is distance from God inwardly, and I think it is very difficult to dispute it. We are aware of it. We know quite well that it represents a real work of God's grace to make it otherwise, so that we really do love God, and love all that belongs to God, and that becomes our very life, and our very interest.

Consider then the way out of our natural condition, and our way out of this doomed world, and realm of death. There is but one way out. The Lord Jesus came into this tomb of death. He entered into this state of things. He associated Himself with the race. And, although in Himself there was no sin, He voluntarily took upon Himself the sin of man, entered into the penalty of man's sin, received the judgment of God due to man upon Himself. We shall never know this side of heaven - but we shall know then and fill eternity with worship because we shall know - know and understand all the meaning of that judgment which fell upon the Lord Jesus in that death upon the Cross, which in character was so much more than that of a man being crucified and put to death for his deeds; when God turned from Him, and all hell was loosed upon Him; when in spirit and in soul, not alone in body, He was tormented, because He was there voluntarily accepting the full consequences of the world's sin under the judgment of God. He went down into that judgment and received the wages of sin which is death. His was not just a martyr's death; it was the wages of sin in the realm of His spirit that He knew. He who knew no sin was then made to be sin for us, made a curse for us. He tasted death for every man. Thus when He died He died as a sinner. He died as you and as me. He died as, and in the place of, every other man and woman in this creation, under the judgment of God. He died so in order that you and I might not die in that way.

What He experienced in His soul in that terrible death is what is reserved for every other man and woman in this creation who does not accept that death by faith as the means of their own salvation. When He died, and accepted the full penalty, all the judgment of God, all the result of human sin was exhausted upon Him; there was not another drop in His cup. He drank that cup of the wrath of God dry, and there is no more wrath of God for Him henceforth.

Then, that whole order of creation being brought to an end, God is perfectly free and clear in raising Him from the dead; and God raised Him from the dead with all that other past, and everything now new, without sin, without sin's bondage, without sin's penalty, judgment, without death. He lives for ever after the power of an endless, deathless life. The way out for Him was through death, by death, and then resurrection.

Christ our Exodus

Now Christ is offered in all the value of that to man. The Gospel is that Christ, who has exhausted the wrath of God, and has swallowed up sin in its full dimensions of guilt, responsibility, power, penalty, is offered to you, with all the good of that; that you, by accepting Him in what He has done as your Representative, may be delivered from sin, its power, its guilt, its penalty. You are called upon, and I am called upon, to say what we will do with Christ in that Representative character. If we believe; and if we accept, then God says, Give testimony to the fact that you do so. This is something which must be proclaimed, and proclaimed in a practical way. Here is a representation of a grave; here is that which symbolises the grave of the Lord Jesus. Declare that you accept His death as your death, His burial as your burial, His resurrection as your resurrection. Declare it before men, before angels, before demons; declare it. Your acceptance of that by faith is your only way out.

Do you want to know escape from a doomed world, and a doomed creation? Do you want to know how to get out of that realm where that judgment still holds good apart from Christ? Do you want deliverance, salvation, escape? The only way out is your faith acceptance of union with Christ in that death, when He died as you. Declare that when He died you died. He was buried, and put away from the sight of God. Will you accept that by faith? Then, that having been done, He was raised by God from the dead, no longer to be in or a part of that creation, but outside of it. And He was raised as the Firstfruits, and you, by faith, are to be part of the harvest to follow. Do you accept it? This is the only way out. There is no other way. You say, Yes, I accept it, I believe. Then the Word of God says: "Then they that believed were baptised." Why? Because baptism was their practical expression of faith. The Lord does not believe in mere theories. If you make a declaration of anything in relation to God, sooner or later you will find yourself in a position where you are compelled to prove it. If you are really walking with God, it does not matter what you say as to truth, you will be tested on that before very long. And here is the first step. You say, I believe that I was doomed as a sinner, locked up in a judged creation. Christ came into that. As I was helpless and hopeless and unable to get myself out, He came in and took all the state, and all the result of the state, of my fallen position upon Himself, and through His death found a way out. I believe that!

Practical Proof of Faith

Then the Lord says by His Word, prove it. Here is a means for you of proving it. Here is the symbol of a grave. Declare it in practice, in act. Strangely enough, if ever the Lord speaks to a heart about that matter, and it is not just the suggestion of someone else; I repeat, if the Lord touches the heart about that matter, and the heart does not respond, that life becomes strangely locked up again. Spiritual growth is at once arrested, the Lord has nothing more to say to that life, it does not grow beyond that point. It may be soon, or perhaps a long time afterward, but sooner or later, at any rate, that life begins to be terribly exercised. The question is, Why is it I am not growing? Why is it I am not enjoying the fulness of the Lord? And there is trouble in the heart, and then in the deep exercise before God, the Lord just puts His finger upon that. 'Do you remember that I spoke to you about so-and-so? Well, we have never been able to walk together since then. "How can two walk together except they be agreed?" From that day there has been no progress; be obedient in that and we will go on again.' Many lives are simply locked up like that for years, because of a reservation.

Now you see, coming to the passage we read what the apostle says here about what are called "the principles of the doctrine of Christ." The principles of Christ. Literally it is "the first principles about Christ." He is speaking to believers, as you notice, and he says, You ought to have gone on growing spiritually, but you are still back at the beginning, and needing someone to teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God. Then he uses that phrase, "the first principles" again, and he says that those first principles are the foundation: "Not laying again the foundation...." Oh, do get this. This is not advanced truth. This is not something for advanced saints. This is said to be the first principles, the foundation. And it is said that they are babes, even when they have got these things. They ought to have advanced long past this. This is truth for the immature. It is a sad thing that we have to put such force into our emphasis, to say that today, even to believers. This is for infants.

The Threshold with Six Pillars

"The first principles of Christ." What are they? "Repentance from dead works"; that is one. "Faith toward God"; that is two. "The teaching of baptism"; that is three. "The laying-on of hands"; that is four. "The resurrection of the dead"; that is five. "Eternal judgment"; that is six. Six first foundation principles, concerning Christ. These are not Jewish ordinances, they are foundation principles about Christ. That can be proved without any difficulty. If the apostle had been speaking about Jewish ordinances first principles and foundations, he would have commenced: Not laying again a foundation of circumcision, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover. Those were the foundations of Jewish life.

Then these doctrines here are essentially Christian doctrines. The resurrection of the dead is not an Old Testament doctrine. Hints and references may be found, but there is not the doctrine, for you cannot have the teaching of the resurrection until Christ is resurrected. Resurrection is not merely the re-animation of a body, a corpse. Resurrection is unto life or unto condemnation. And you cannot have resurrection unto eternal life or unto eternal condemnation until Christ has come, because all the issue of resurrection hangs upon Christ's resurrection. We can never be judged in resurrection unto life eternal or unto judgment eternal, only on the ground of Christ's resurrection; because Christ's resurrection has provided the ground of our judgment, has determined for ever our position of faith or unbelief. If you read the rest of this sixth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, the thing is borne out by what is written as touching those "who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost," that it is impossible, if they should fall away "to renew them again unto repentance, seeing that they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh." Does not that put you on this side of Calvary? It is not Jewish ordinances. Christ was not crucified in this sense before Calvary. You see, you are brought right on to New Testament ground, post-Calvary ground, and you are told therefore that you are related to the first principles concerning Christ. It is not a case of Jewish ordinances at all.

Perhaps to you it is hardly necessary to emphasise that, but there are a great many people who say this is purely a Jewish thing, and these are Jewish ordinances that are being referred to. That is why I have stressed this. Amongst the six there is baptism - a foundation; the laying-on of hands - a foundation; a first principle concerning Christ. Is it not conclusive? The apostle says to these people: Now you have laid those foundations - he is taking it for granted that those foundations have been laid - but, he says, the trouble with you is that you have not gone on from your foundations; and here you are away back there, still where the foundations have been laid, have been settled; you are not moving on at all; you have somehow remained in a state of arrest. Now, he says, let them be once and for all settled and go on unto full growth.

The very gateway into the fulness of Christ is through these six pillars. These six pillars form the entrance into the fulness of Christ; they stand right there at the beginning. Repentance from dead works, faith toward God, baptism, laying-on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment. That has all to be dealt with, settled, recognised right at the beginning, and then with that done, move on unto the fulness of Christ. There can be no fulness of Christ until that is settled, but having that settled, the way is open. If the Lord has shown any one of these things as a basic thing, and put His finger upon it, and there has been a holding back, a reservation, you may go on in time for years, but spiritually you have not advanced at all. And it may be after ten, twenty, thirty, forty years you come to the realisation that you have not got through the portal yet, and you say, I am not more than a babe as yet. It is a terrible thing to awake to the fact after all that loss of time. The Lord says, That is My door; and fulness lies that way. There is not one pillar more important than another. Some people seem to think that they can select out of the six what they agree with, and leave the rest.

Here you are face to face with what the Word of God calls "First principles concerning Christ." The only way in which Jewish ordinances come in here - and they do come in, there is no doubt about it; they are in the Letter to the Hebrews all the way through - the only thing is that here you have the Antitype. There had to be in the Old Testament period, that which typically represented faith toward God. The apostle says to the Corinthians that they were all baptised into Moses in the sea, and in the cloud, so that when they passed through the Red Sea that was a type of baptism; and he speaks of the flood as being also a like figure, "whereunto even baptism doth also now save us." In the antediluvian period as well as in the patriarchal you have the same thing. But it was typical there. You come by the Spirit into the meaning of it now, because all that was pointing to Christ, and now you have reached Christ, Who is the fulfilment of it all.

You can go back to the rest of your New Testament, and see everything else in the light of your foundations. You say, Is baptism for all in the will of God? Well, I say, it says here that it is one of the first principles concerning Christ. You say, Is the laying on of hands for all in the thought of God? I say, It is mentioned here as a first principle. I ask you, Is repentance to apply to all? And you say to me, Oh, no, of course some can get in without it! No, you would never say anything like that. And I will say, Is judgment for all outside of Christ, and you will not say, No! only for some. I ask you, Is the resurrection of the dead for all in the desire and will of God? Has He provided that for all? Will you exclude yourself or some from that? Surely not. You see the implication. Who are you, or who am I, to discriminate between what God calls "first principles" and say, That is for some, and not for others. It says nothing like that here. We must be honest with the Word of God in our dealings with truth, and while I grant you that there may be interpretations of these truths, and constructions put upon them which might justify certain reservations, nevertheless the thing itself in its purity is there as a thing for all the people of God. And we must be honest enough to discriminate between the false association with the doctrine, and the pure doctrine itself. I know the enemy has prejudiced the doctrine by what he has tacked on to it, and if we are able to discern the pure meaning of the doctrine, we must not set it aside as of secondary importance, when it says that it is a first principle. The Lord help us to be faithful.

Chapter 6 - The Value of Spiritual Revelation

Reading: John 16:1-33.

Of all that we have been saying together in these gatherings, I think we could sum up everything in one thought, and that is that God is seeking in this age to extricate from this world a people for Himself, in living union with Himself. We have traced through the Word of God the abiding antagonism between God and this world, spiritually; between all that is of God in this world and this world's antagonism to that. We have seen two great factors in that state of antagonism. On the one hand the factor of an inward constitutional "something" in the very nature of man, by which he is bound spiritually to this world, bound up with it; and, on the other hand, the great system of spiritual intelligences bent upon maintaining that inward affinity. And even where it has been broken and suspended, and there has been brought about a counter affinity, through grace, with God and His things, the enemy does not abandon his object. He persists right on in seeking in some way, by force, by deception, by subtlety, to again entangle spiritually in this world. This explains the whole history of the Church, and of the people of God, in their continuous spiritual battle with the world, in which so many have fallen back again into the world, because of the strength of the world's call and draw. The Church has again and again fallen into that entanglement, so that ere the apostolic age was closed, you find in that representation of the Church universally, the seven Churches of Asia, with but one or two exceptions, an entanglement again in this world.

All this has been a very great emphasis upon the need for an utter separation unto God, and we shall pursue this matter, and come to consider now another factor in the conflict, and in the victory.

The Value of Spiritual Revelation

This factor is the supreme value and power of a spiritual revelation. It seems to me to be THE factor in the full extrication and emancipation of a people spiritually from the world unto God. I can see it running through the Old Testament, and I see it standing out so clearly in the New Testament; the supreme value and power of a spiritual revelation as the means of spiritual emancipation. It has been God's method all along. Whenever there has been an entanglement spiritually in this world, and God has moved again to break that entanglement and to deliver from that bondage, to bring out into a clear place with Himself spiritually, He has begun by a revelation of Himself. We will not trace it through - it would take too long - but we can touch upon one or two of the instances, which will immediately show you the principle of God's working in this matter.

The Case of Abram

You may take Abram; that great movement of God toward having a people for Himself in this world, and yet utterly separated from it. We are told that the God of glory appeared unto our father, Abram, when he was in Ur of the Chaldees, and Abram had a revelation of the God of glory. The issue instantly was that Abram left Ur of the Chaldees and came out. The terms and basis of his coming out are so strikingly akin to spiritual relationships: "...unto a place that I will show thee... and he went out, not knowing whither he went." And I say again, that very well represents the spiritual experience of the Lord's people. Very largely, in a certain realm, spiritual people are a "Don't know" people. That is, they cannot interpret themselves to the world, they cannot explain their goings in terms of human wisdom and understanding. To the world theirs is a most foolish and unreasonable line of things. The world would say that it was unpractical, it was altogether contrary to common sense. Abram left Ur of the Chaldees. Abram, where are you going? I don't know! What do you expect to find there? I don't know! Well, what are you going for? Well, I have been told to go, that is all! That is not the way of this world's business, "not knowing whither." You might say that it is being suspended between heaven and earth, and spiritually that is very true of the Lord's people. Yes, it very aptly expresses, defines spiritual experience.

Abram has had a vision, and it accounts for all sorts of extraordinary behaviour that the world could not understand. He is sure of one thing, and that is, of God. He is sure that he is moving under divine compulsion, though he himself cannot understand. He will find that in the course of things he will be more and more bewildered; things will become more and more difficult of understanding, and impossible of explanation; and at any point in his life, if you ask him for an explanation, of a variety of experience and its meaning, he will have to say, I don't know. All that I do know is that God has told me, and I have to do what God has told me. I believe God; the rest I have to leave with Him. Where will you be tomorrow, Abram? I don't know! How long are you going to continue in this kind of life? I don't know! And yet, deep down, as settled as anything can be, is the conviction that he is on sure ground spiritually. God has appeared to him, and he is a man spiritually outside of the world, even outside of the world's intelligence, understanding. He is outside, and he cannot be reckoned amongst those of this world; he cannot be judged by this world's standards; he cannot be explained according to this world; he is outside, resultant from a revelation.

The Case of Israel

Later in his life the revelation of the divine purpose developed; and God, in His foreknowledge, in His eternal present, saw the seed of Abram in bondage in Egypt, and had regard to His determined purpose to bring them out of that bondage. In order to get them out of the world, He will proceed along exactly similar lines to those which He has used in getting Abram out - by revelation. And so, in the 15th Chapter of Genesis, God appears to Abram again, and says to him, Thy seed shall be captives (bond-slaves) in a strange land. He gives him certain details, and then says, after four hundred years I will bring them out. That revelation has come through, as you notice in the chapter, by great conflict, tremendous conflict. God did not say that to Abram until certain things had taken place, until the ground of emancipation had been typically laid, in the sacrifice, the altar, the flame, the torch. You see in these all the symbols of our emancipation from this world - the shed Blood of the Cross, the mighty power of the Spirit, and then powers of darkness beating down, and a horror of great darkness. And then the revelation is given. It seems as though all hell is out to frustrate that revelation, because once that revelation is through - something made known by God - it is something God can never go back upon. Once He has expressed Himself and committed Himself to man, He is bound to do it. And so, to prevent the revelation, all the forces of darkness rage, but God gets His revelation through to His servant in spite of the horror of great darkness and the vultures, and all the forces working in opposition. And the fact - this is the point - the fact that a revelation has come, is the certainty of an emancipation. The emancipation hangs upon the revelation. The revelation is the ground of the emancipation. That is the law that we are indicating.

You see that at work many other times in the Old Testament. In the case of Israel's later emancipation from their captivity the same thing happened. Revelation came, and through the revelation came their deliverance.

Now, when you come to the New Testament you find the law still at work, that God must first of all, according to the law by which He has bound Himself, work according to a revelation. He first of all gives a revelation, before He acts in relation to it.

The Case of Paul

We take the outstanding case in the Scriptures. What is the position peculiarly and uniquely represented by the ministry of the apostle Paul? Undoubtedly it is the Church in the heavenlies. A Testimony, in a word, to the real, spiritual nature of the Church, the Body of Christ, as not being something of this world, but while, in part at least, here in this world, as certainly quite apart from it spiritually, having a heavenly life, a heavenly relationship, and everything heavenly. That is Paul's ministry, that is the thing which he represents. Before ever that could come about, God had to give a special revelation to an instrument, to secure it. We will touch that again later. I am simply trying to indicate the working of this law, that to certain divine ends, before God takes in hand the practical aspect of it, in the working out of it he always gives a revelation of it to some instrument, individual or collective; and it is that spiritual revelation which is of supreme value and power in accomplishing the extricating work.

Revelation of - Not Extra to - the Scriptures

Seeing that law - (I do trust that you have grasped it. I am not wanting to give you just truth. I have a tremendous revolt in me against increasing truth and doctrine as such, and if there is no real eternal, heavenly value for us from what is being said, and it is all for naught, I would pray to be delivered from words. But this, to me at any rate, is of very great importance) - seeing, then, that law clearly in the Word of God, let us seek to get inside of this thing, to reach its inner meaning, and see that, back of all things which are said, there is a spiritual reality and meaning, even in the Word of God. The Word is necessary, but it is only a vehicle. It is a vehicle of light, of truth. The things that are written in this Book have back of them something which cannot be seen, only as the Holy Spirit illumines it. Back of all things said, there is a spiritual reality and meaning for which we need a spiritual faculty. This Book can be an absolutely closed Book, though you may read it through and through, unless the Spirit of God illumines. But once the Spirit of God begins to illumine, this Book lives, it lives from end to end. What is it that you have in the Book? Perhaps you have had it in your pocket all the time, on your desk, on the shelf; but now you have something more than the printed page, even more than the words, and the sentences, and the chapters; you are receiving God's Mind back of it all. That is revelation, and it is that which is the emancipating thing. It is that which extricates, and which is of such tremendous power to deliver the life from bondage. We may organise the Book, organise it into very clever, able, interesting, fascinating Bible Readings, addresses; organise its material into subjects and themes, and what-not, and still there be no spiritual emancipation. The criterion is always this; not, Have we had an interesting time, a very interesting Bible address or Bible reading, a very fascinating presentation of scriptures? The criterion is, How much spiritual revelation has it brought to us? How much have we been brought out spiritually into a larger place in the Lord? That is the test. Back of the things said there is a deeper reality and meaning, and to possess that is to have revelation. I want to emphasise that, because some people think that when we use the word "revelation" we mean something extra to the Scriptures. Let that thought be dismissed from any mind if it has come in. We are bound by the Scriptures, and would not move into any realm of what is extra to the Scriptures. We have no need to. At any rate, for my own part, I have no desire for that, because I have found that the Scriptures have given me far more than enough with which to be occupied without having anything extra to them. When this Book lives, beloved you do not want anything extra. You will find your life is in this. Blessed be God, it can be like that! Now that is what we mean by revelation; it is that deeper reality and meaning back of the things said. That is a power that is of tremendous value.

Experience Necessary to Understanding

Of course, there is one thing that goes along with revelation, and that is experience. I mean this; the disciples had a great many things said to them. They had all that is contained in the four Gospels, at least, and we have reason to believe that they had a very great deal more. John tells us at the end of his Gospel, that if he were to write all the things that the Lord Jesus did and said, he supposed the world would not contain the books. So evidently they had a very great deal more than we have recorded in the four Gospels. But we have a good deal to go upon in saying that they understood very little of it. They had very little of what we are now calling "revelation." We find that when the Lord Jesus had been crucified, their light had gone out, and John 16 was surely fulfilled: "Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice." You will be in sorrow, you will mourn. Then after His resurrection one of the first things that the Lord Jesus did on resurrection ground was to take up the Scriptures as they had them, all the Scriptures of the Old Testament - Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets - and to give them some revelation, with the result that they did not say, Was not that a fascinating exposition of the Old Testament! They said, Did not our HEARTS burn within us..." That is revelation. "The eyes of the heart being enlightened..." It was emancipating. But for the fuller appreciation of all the things that the Lord had said and done in their presence, they had to come into an experience. And as they went on through experiences, some of them deep and dark, through trials, through those weeks of testing and breaking and emptying in their lives, through the pressures, they came into a deep heart understanding of what the Lord had said. And it was by reason of the way in which the Lord had led them, that they came into a real living appreciation of what the Lord had said. It is ever thus. You and I have discovered the meaning of the Word of God by reason of the experiences into which we have been led. We have come into revelation through being broken, through being emptied out. Something has happened, in which our spirits have become open to the Lord, our hearts have been touched. In suffering, in sorrow, in adversity, in trial our hearts have been touched, and we have come into a heart appreciation of the Word of God, and it has become alive to us. Let a life encounter a real good bout of conflict with the devil, and such a one can well understand what Paul has written. You say, Now I know what Paul is talking about. Or again, how some of us remember having plodded away for months and years in ministry, giving the Word of God! There came a day when a brother came and said: "I believe I can see what you have been talking about all this time." Just that; and when that comes about there is life, something can happen, there is emancipation.

The Lord has to do things in relation to His Word in order to bring us into the good of it. Revelation is not only the study of the Scripture; it is our being wrought into it, sometimes by heartbreak, and having it wrought into us. Facts as facts have never yet constituted a messenger of God. Now, you young preachers, take that, and write it down inwardly, and not only in your notebooks. Facts merely as facts have never yet constituted a messenger of God, neither have they constituted a vessel of testimony. The essential to a messenger of God and a vessel of testimony is spiritual understanding; and spiritual understanding comes by life, by something inwrought; and that usually by experience. The Word is: "That ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding."

Spiritual understanding! You cannot gain anything spiritual, only by spiritual life and spiritual experience. It is not a matter of manuals and text-books; it is not a question of what certain people stand for and teach; such may know the teaching for a very long time and never enter into it. That is the danger. I have not infrequently had letters asking me to send literature to certain people, because they would like to teach our teaching and give out our truth. This is a false and perilous position. Nothing makes me recoil inwardly more than that. Such reasoning is not the fruit of life, but the work of the casual mind in the things of God. As an expression of life, it can never be merely a question of a teaching for which certain people stand, of which you come to the conclusion that it is very good teaching, and that everyone ought therefore to have it, and you yourself will do your best to get the teaching out; however justified and right your approval of what is taught may be. God save you from doing that! It is all too possible for people to be in the presence of teaching in that way, and yet never to have come into the real spiritual good of it, while their approval and taking up with it in that way has been thought to secure this; and that is the condition which gives rise to the blind spot in a life. The earnest and active dissemination of the truth as the result of life, while it may involve outward activities of a like kind, is yet quite another thing.

In order to get into the spiritual good of it, really to have revelation, time is very often essential, and a good deal of emptying. Revelation requires a spiritual state, and a spiritual condition, and an emptying of the natural life. There are two factors.

The Way of Revelation

Firstly, time. If you are going to be in a hurry about this thing, you are not going to have it. Time is a great factor.

And then there is the other factor of seeming to be losing rather than to be receiving. You lose what you have, it seems. Yes, the Lord empties out, and then begins right down at the bottom of the vessel to fill up in a new way, but this time it is not mixed, it is something that is pure spiritual understanding. That is a thing of pre-eminent value and tremendous power. It means that such instruments or vessels are brought into a heavenly position, which represents something very great for the Lord spiritually.

Spiritual understanding! What is spiritual understanding? It is, as we have said, the inward apprehension of that deeper meaning and reality of the things said and written by the Lord. It is a thing of the Holy Spirit, with which only the spiritual are conversant. Let me illustrate. When the people of Israel went into captivity, as you know, they were in captivity for seventy years. That meant that all the old men and all the middle aged men died, and only the younger ones were left at the end of the captivity. That again means that the youthful and infant part of the generation had grown up in a foreign country, with a foreign tongue spoken all round. Their fathers and their grandfathers had died, and left them with a foreign language. They learned that foreign language, and forgot their own, so that when the remnant came back from the captivity, they had lost their own language, and you find that in the 8th Chapter of the Book of Nehemiah certain men, who were conversant with the language of the Hebrews, were called upon to stand up in the midst of the congregation on that great day, to read the law, and give the sense thereof. Why give the sense thereof? Because the people did not know their own language, so that these interpreters of the law would read something and say, Now that means so-and-so. From infancy they had learned another language and had lost their own.

Out from that there came the official set of people called the scribes. The scribes were the official or professional interpreters of the law, and they took the law and read, and then said, That means so-and-so. So you see the perils of a professional party of scribes taking hold of the law and saying, That means this. Get away from the spiritual men who really have a spiritual insight into the law, into the merely professional realm where there is only a scholarly understanding of the language, and you get two distinct realms. In the New Testament you find a great deal referred to in the use of the phrase: "You have heard that it has been said..." The Lord Jesus used those words. The interpreters have said that it means so-and-so, "but I say unto you..." The Lord Jesus never contradicted the scribes, but He transcended them and the professional interpreters of the Scriptures, and you find that you have in the New Testament a very great deal brought in which was merely the sense that was given to the Scriptures by the professional party of interpreters. What had happened? The pure language had been lost by the people, so that they could not read the Scriptures in it, and an extra party took up the Scriptures and gave what they thought to be the meaning, but it turned out to be something else in the long run. It was the thought of their own mind cleverly imposed upon God's Word.

We are in a like case today, beloved. The pure language of the Holy Spirit concerning the Word of God has been almost universally lost, and what we are receiving today is the professional, scholarly, giving out its mind about the Word of God, and people are brought up on that. The great mass of Christian people today are not brought up on the language of the Holy Ghost in the Word of God. They are brought up on what so-and-so says. Of course, I know the big question arises as to who is to determine what is the pure language of the Holy Spirit. Well, you can answer that question only inwardly. The test is, Does it result in emancipation spiritually? If it does, all right. If you are walking with God, then the Word of God brought to you, being in the power of the Holy Spirit, will be your spiritual enlightenment, your spiritual quickening, or spiritual liberation. It must be tested out that way. How much does it mean of real spiritual growth out of all those trammels and limitations of our natural life? That is the language of the Holy Spirit.

Now that is spiritual understanding. It is having the sense thereof according to the true interpretation of the Holy Spirit. Revelation, in a word, is the language of the Holy Spirit inside of the written Word of God; not apart from it, but inside of it. Are we conversant with the language of the Spirit? I simply mean this, as you take up the Word of God and read certain words and sentences and phrases, does the Holy Spirit give you a deeper insight into that, and by what He shows you in that bring life into your heart, and liberation and joy? That is giving the sense thereof. The need of revelation is quite clear.

The Outward and the Inward

There is a heavenly background to everything in the Word of God, and it is that heavenly background which constitutes revelation that you and I need to know. If we are only seeing the things on the surface, then we have but an earthly thing after all, and that has been the trouble with God's people all along. They have seen the Old Testament and the order of the tabernacle and the temple; and they have reconstituted the church accordingly, with a ceremonial, with a vestment-order of things, and elaborate buildings. Of course, it is a beautiful reproduction of the Old Testament order of worship; and they would appeal to the Scriptures, and say that Solomon built the most magnificent temple for the worship of God, and point out how your Old Testament is simply filled with this beautiful order of worship. Yes! but that is on the face of things, that is not revelation. You can have the spiritual good of that in an emancipating way in a dungeon, in a catacomb, in a garret. It is the deeper thing that is liberating. You can have all the outward form, and still be spiritually in bondage, and that is for so many THE bondage. But another will say, May we not have what is behind the representation, and still profitably retain the typical order and symbols? We find, however, that the possession of the spiritual reality teaches us that to repeat the typical order is to miss the whole divine intention, to rob it of its distinction, and to convey a false idea.

To retain the typical order when the reality is come is to take a formerly God-given thing and to perpetuate it as a thing of the earth. This is, in effect, to set up an earthly conception of a heavenly nature and life, which all who have been born anew from above have now received and entered into by the Spirit. This earthly conception ever conveys to the natural mind of man the idea that spiritual life consists in the use of sacred words and forms of address, the observance of religious rites and the like; that to be godly and spiritual is, in a properly regulated life, to have a department for these things, a religious side to life, to sanctify the whole, in contrast to others who practise no such ways at all; and that the doing of these things in public and in private is itself spiritual life and that approach to God and worship such as can be known of man down here.

The truth as we have seen is that God, on a ground of His own providing in the Cross of His Son, gives into the convicted, contrite and prepared heart a new nature, a new life, and it is in this life that we know God, pray, worship, serve, and grow up into His likeness.

This life is not without its expression and ordered way when its possessors meet as a corporate company to worship God; for it is led and directed by the Spirit of life within the members joined by the same Spirit to Christ, their living and directing Head on high. But to seek this life in forms of provided expression, or to confine it within such limitations, is to hinder the true spontaneity of its own expression from within, to suppress the pure activity of its powers and glory, and often, if not always, to violate the very law of its operation and freedom, and not least, of its warfare. It is, in a word, to convey a totally false idea both of its nature and of its law of increase, expression, authority and will. It is what is behind that you and I need to know. There is a heavenly order back of everything said in the Word of God.

"The Decree of the Watchers"

Here is an interesting, and I think, illuminating instance of that. Look at the Book of Daniel, and at two passages in Matthew and Corinthians.

Daniel, Chapter 4. This chapter shows the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, of the tree that was cut down. Nebuchadnezzar had become exceedingly high and exalted. "See this great Babylon, which I have made." His pride caused him to reach, like this tree, unto heaven, and he had the dream. The tree was cut down, and Nebuchadnezzar went out like the wild beasts to eat grass; to eat grass like an ox, driven from the habitation of men. Look at verse 17 of chapter 4. Do you notice that extraordinary statement: "The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand (or the matter) by the word of the holy ones..." Have you ever thought about that? Matthew 5:21-22. "...In danger of Gehenna." The fires of Gehenna. The judgement: the council: the fires of Gehenna. The judgment is the lowest court, where the first judgment is given about a matter, a fairly simple matter. Moses appointed those in Israel to go as judges in secondary matters. If any man had a matter that was more or less simple, he went to the judgment. If a matter was more difficult it went to the council, that is, to Moses. If the matter was criminal it went to death, the final destruction and the stoning. You have got three realms of judgment there. Now that which you have with Moses is an earthly representation of something which is in heaven: "The decree of the holy ones."

1 Corinthians 11:30. "...Not a few sleep." "For this cause... not a few sleep," that is, die; "BUT if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." What has happened? Something has gone to the judgment, and it has gone to the council, and there is the death sentence. "When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world." What has happened with these Corinthian believers? The thing has gone to the judgment, and to the council. That has worked out in the Lord taking them away, so that they should not be delivered to the fire of Gehenna with the world.

I do not know whether you can follow that. I believe that is what the apostle meant when, speaking about women having their heads covered in the assembly, he said: "Because of the angels." Why? "The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones." The angelic councils. In heaven there are angelic orders, who are watching, and when certain things take place, of a serious character, those angels come together and deliberate upon that, and pass sentence. What happened with Nebuchadnezzar? What happened at Corinth? The angelic councils saw these things happen at Corinth, this violation of the Lord's Table, and they were so horrified that they came together and said this thing must be dealt with, and they deliberated upon it. "For this cause not a few sleep." The decree is by the sentence of the watchers, the demand by the word of the holy ones. You see you have the presence of some other realm, for it goes on to say: "To the intent that the living may know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men." Do you see what that too indicates? That this judgment and this council and this fire of Gehenna, which had a literal expression on earth through Moses, is only an earthly representation of something in heaven. There is something in heaven, and the Lord Jesus, mark you, in this passage in Matthew is not talking about the judgment and the council of Moses. He is not saying, I say unto you that he that is angry with his brother shall be in danger of this company of men in Jerusalem, who pass sentence upon such things. They are in danger of the judgment, that is, the court. And whoever saith "thou fool," his case is taken to another court in heaven and is judged.

My point is this, that there is a spiritual and heavenly background to everything that is here in the Word of God. I am not taking this as a subject to apply for any purpose in this present gathering, I am simply indicating one thing that is clear in the Word of God, which points to the fact. We could accumulate evidence of this, that God has simply given a pattern of things here in His Word, and that is a pattern of things heavenly. The tabernacle is not THE thing. It is a pattern of something in heaven. The temple is not THE thing. It is a pattern of something in heaven. The judgment, the council, the fire is only a pattern of something in the heavens. "Fear not him who is able to destroy the body, but fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in the fire of Gehenna." That is something in heaven, it goes to the council there.

Now, for our present purpose, what we need to grasp is just this. Revelation is to come to see what that heavenly reality is as back of the representation in the Word of God; and when you get the revelation it is so emancipating, it is so enriching.

But remember that spiritual revelation - and spiritual revelation is for all the Lord's children - is a thing which has bound up with it a great price. It is a costly thing. The enemy is against it. He is against revelation; he is against the receiving of it; he is against the utterance of it; he is against the outworking of it. It is fraught with conflict, and it explains why Paul had such a time as he had. This was clearly because he was all the time giving the spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures, while all those who held those Scriptures were saying: Paul is reading into the Scriptures something of his own mind; it does not say what Paul says it means. And, therefore, they would have none of him, and even Peter had difficulty: "Even as our beloved brother Paul in all his letters, according to the wisdom given unto him... in which there are some things hard to be understood." Peter is having difficulty with Paul, but it is that revelation of the inner meaning of things, that put Paul into a realm where so few could follow him, because of the lack of revelation in them. That is one reason why I believe he wrote the Letter to the Hebrews: "Of whom (Melchizedek) we have many things to say, and hard of interpretation, seeing ye are become dull of hearing." You have not spiritually grown, therefore I must keep quiet about these things. It demands this spiritual faculty inwardly, if we are to receive what the Lord wants us to have. Melchizedek has a tremendous amount to say to us, but we will never understand the seven verses in the Old Testament about Melchizedek, and all the realm that is bound up in those seven verses, unless we have got a spiritual faculty.

The Lord lead us to pray, as we have never prayed, that a spirit of wisdom and revelation may be given unto us. That is what brings a people out, into a price, into a conflict, but into a place of living power, where they have something for the rest of the people of God.

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Nature, Purpose and Destiny of Man

Chapter 2 - God's Testimony and the Age-long Antagonism

Chapter 3 - The Testimony of Jesus

Chapter 4 - Life Overcoming Death

Chapter 5 - Christ our Exodus

Chapter 6 - The Value of Spiritual Revelation