KINGDOM
BIBLE STUDIES
“Teaching the things concerning the Kingdom of God. .
. "
THE HEAVENS DECLARE
Part 29
CAPRICORNUS—THE GOAT
(continued)
We continue
in our study of the Sign of CAPRICORNUS — THE GOAT. The goat in the scriptures is a sacrificial animal. And while the Sign is known as the goat, it
is a very strange creature indeed. On
the old star charts the front half is pictured as a goat and the rear half as a
fish. It is a goat with a fishes' tail;
it is half-goat and half-fish. This
Sign has a strange appearance on the old star charts because it shows a wounded
goat, with its head bowed and its knee bent under, fallen down in the posture
of dying. On the other hand, the tail
of the fish is wiggling, vigorous and living!
Note that from the dying goat comes a living fish — the living fish thus
takes its being out of the dying goat and derives all its life and vigor from
thence. The living fish emerging from
the dying goat therefore has an important meaning. In addition to the falling and dying of the goat, Capricornus is
the Sign of a mystical procreation and bringing forth. It speaks of life that springs forth from
the death of the sacrifice. That which
dies is a goat; that which is brought
forth is a fish, the familiar and
well understood symbol of the spiritual body brought out of the dying of the
Lord Jesus Christ. What could better
symbolize this than the Sign before us?
The goat and fish are one — one being, the life of the dying reproduced
and continued in a spiritual product which is part of the one and the same
body. The goat of sacrifice is
projected into a new creation, which is yet an organic part of itself.
LIFE OUT OF
DEATH
Some of the
brightest stars in the constellation of Capricornus are AL GEDI, which means
"the Kid”; DENEB AL GEDI meaning "the Sacrifice cometh"; and
MA’ASAD, "the Slaying." God
commanded the children of Israel, saying, "Take ye a kid of the goats for
a sin-offering" (Lev.
9:31). So Aaron "took the goat,
which was the sin-offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for
sin" (Lev. 9:15). And of the goat
of the sin-offering Moses said, "It is most holy, and God hath given it
you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before
the Lord" (Lev. 10:16-17). We see
here a picture of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, for truly He became our sin-offering, being "wounded for our transgressions:” and
"bruised for our iniquities," He was "cut out of the land of the
living; for the transgression of my people was He stricken." Each and every son of Adam is born in sin
and shapen in iniquity and, because we have sinful natures and dwell in a world
where every filthy sin and foul evil abounds on every hand, we accept our
environment of corruption as normal and tolerable, never remembering anything
better. A man who is born amid poverty,
squalor, disease and crime often pays little heed to his condition since he
knows nothing better, but a man born to wealth, fame and power, reduced to
poverty and misery, is cast into an agonizing hell. No man on earth can properly understand the terror, the horror,
the abject dismay of the death Christ suffered when He took upon Himself the
form of a man and became obedient unto death, because no man remembers the excellence and glory and
exaltation of that world of life he enjoyed with the Father before the ages
began. Paul tried to express the extent
of the Christ's impoverishment and the depth of His humiliation with these word
of inspiration: “You know the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He
was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich" (II Cor
8-9). And again, with the use of words
that, though inspired, are yet feeble, he exhorted us to let the same mind be
in us that was in Christ Jesus: “Who
being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took
upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled
Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross"
(Phil. 2:5-8).
We will
never grasp the enormity of Christ's sacrifice until the Holy Spirit somehow
gives us the ability to see the death of Christ in all its lifetime scope and
experience — not as six hours on a cross but as thirty-three and a half years,
fully participating in the death realm in
all its aspects, man as we are man, flesh as we are flesh, weak as we are weak,
limited as we are limited, tempted in all points as we are, suffering in all
ways as we do, grappling with all the forces within and without that we
struggle with, that through His suffering He might become the very first man to overcome it all, the first perfect man, the first man to break out of the dungeon of sin and the
prison house of death — righteous, victorious and living! The Word of God, through His incarnation,
became the son of man that we who
were born sons of men might through
Him become sons of God, yea, perfect sons of men and incorruptible sons of God. What a sacrifice that was and what a death
He died! A brother shared the following
experience which graphically portrays to our understanding the magnitude of
Christ's sacrifice. "Years ago,
when I was still at home on the farm, we had a manure pile in the field, the
former owners had been cleaning out the barn and piling the manure there for
years. There was a colony of snakes
living in this manure pile, and on a sunny day one could see several of them
lying on the sunny south side, sunning themselves. One day I was emptying a load of manure on the north side, and I
sneaked up over the pile to get a look at the snakes. There were several lying there; and as I stood looking at them,
the Lord seemed to say to me, How would you like to become one of those
creatures and live among them in this manure pile! I shuddered at the thought of it. I just couldn't comprehend how terrible it would be. To lower myself to that extent was
unthinkable. Then the Lord said to me,
For my Son to leave His home in the glory above, to become a man in the
likeness of sinful flesh, for your sake and your salvation, was much than
that. I have never forgotten that
experience. It made me appreciate much
more the sacrifice He made for me."
George Hawtin
ably wrote of this death-realm:
"Now it naturally follows that, if our blessed Lord spent all the
days of His earthly existence in death, we also are doing the same, and I shall
advance many infallible proofs to show that the very thing men have called life is not life at all, but death. Indeed we may claim that three score and ten years are the years
of our life and, of course, we all understand what is meant by that statement,
but the real truth is that the three score and ten years during which we dwell
in this corruptible body are not the years of our life, but the years of our death.
When we mortals put a man in a
coffin and bury him in the dark, cold earth, we say the man is dead, and indeed
he is; but have you heard what Jesus answered when one or His disciples said to
Him, ‘Suffer me first to go and bury my father?’ The strange reply He gave was this 'Follow Me: and let the dead bury their dead' (Mat.
8:21-22). How strange that statement
sounds to us who do not understand what death is, but the Lord was really telling
them that the able bodied men who were carrying the coffin to the cemetery were
just as dead as the man who was lying
breathless within it. In other words,
the very thing we insist is life God says is death. The sooner we learn
that lesson the sooner we will release as useless all things that pertain to
this realm of death that we might be enabled to firmly lay hold on life, even the life which Jesus gives, aionian life, or
the life of the ages. When the truth of this dawned upon my soul,
I found many earthly things slipping away from me in a manner I had nor known
hitherto. Who among us could ever
desire to lay fast hold upon that which he discovers to be naught but
death? The things that are dead we bury
out of our sight, and I think I am right in saying that the lusts and
temptations that belong to this death lose their grip upon us when we know that
they are naught but death and that the flesh life to which these temptations
cling is but a vapor that the wind driveth away. I cannot see myself slaving to lay up great wealth in store for
that which I know is dead. What an
abominable lie has gripped our hearts, deceiving us into endless labor and
travail until on every side men and women are dying of heart attacks in their
worry to provide worthless goods for this body of death. — end quote.
In order that
the Christ could become a ransom (release) for our sins, He had to shed His
blond and die on the cross; and in order to die He had to become mortal —
subjected to this whole dreadful realm of sin and death. He had to surrender Himself to the
condition, circumstances, powers and state of being of the death-realm. He became a man, a mortal like the rest of
us. When He was still a babe in His
mother's arms, when King Herod discovered that the Magi, instead of coming to
tell him where the baby could be found, had tricked him and returned to their
country by another route, the wicked Herod was exceedingly wroth. He had found out that this babe was to be
the king of the Jews, and this endangered his position as king. So he wanted the baby destroyed, and sent
soldiers to kill every male child under two years old in that vicinity. Joseph was warned by God in a dream about
this plot to destroy the child and instructed to flee into Egypt. Why did He flee? here was a miracle child, the Son of God! Could anything happen to Him? Yes, if Herod's men had gotten their hands
on Him He could have been killed like all the others; for you see He was just
like them. He was mortal and could have
been killed. He was born to die, but
not yet; it was too soon, He had a work to do first, and when that was accomplished, then He was ready to die. "But we see Jesus, made a little lower
than the angels for the suffering of death." This was part of God’s purpose, so He humbled Himself and became
obedient even unto death, the death of the cross. The writer of Hebrews tells us just how human He was, “It was
right and proper that in bringing many sons to glory, God should make the
leader of their salvation a perfect leader through the fact that He
suffered. For the One who makes men
holy and the men who are made holy share a COMMON HUMANITY. So He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
for He says, I will declare thy name unto my brothers in the midst of the
congregation will I sing Thy praise.
And again, speaking as a man, He says, I will put my trust in Him. And one more instance, in these words,
Behold I and the children God has given me.
Since then, ‘the children’ have a common physical nature as human
beings, He also became a human being, so that by going through death AS A MAN,
He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil” (Heb.
2:10-14), Phillips Translation).
Sharing our
humanity, being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, He had the same sinful
nature we have. Now do not mistake
what I say! I do not say that Jesus had
the same fallen condition of Adam — I say that He had the same sinful nature Adam has and had from the
beginning. The question is just
this — when did Adam receive his sinful nature — before he sinned, or only after
he sinned! A sinful nature is simply a nature that sins or that is liable to
sin. If Adam had not been created with
a nature capable of sinning, how, I ask, could he have ever been tempted.? How could he have sinned?
The correct answer to these questions reveals to our spiritual
understanding the amazing fact that the sinful nature had to precede the first sin, not follow it. Can we not see the simple truth that it was not the act of sinning that gave Adam the sinful nature
— rather, it was the sinful nature that caused
him to sin! It was therefore necessary
for Christ Jesus to come in exactly the same state as the first Adam was in
before he sinned and plunged the race into death. He could not have been tempted otherwise, but He was subject to
all the temptations man is subject to.
"He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without
sin.” The suffering was not suffering
surrounding the cross. In order to be a
perfect sacrifice He had to be perfected before He went to the cross. It was through the years that He lived as a
man, that He suffered through temptation.
You and I haven't suffered much this way, because when the temptation
gets too severe we just yield to it and sin!
He couldn't sin, for if He had, He could not have been our Capricornus,
our goat, our perfect sin-offering required to redeem the race. So he had to resist and overcome all
temptation, and this must have been excruciatingly difficult for Him to do many
times, for He had all the desires and inclinations of the human, sinful nature
to battle with.
I would draw
your reverent attention to these significant words of inspiration which we
quoted earlier, but now I will share them as they are beautifully translated in
the Amplified Bible. "Let this
same attitude and purpose and mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus — Who,
although being. . . one with God and in the form of God, possessing the
fullness of the attributes which make God God, did not think this equality with
God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained; but stripped Himself of all
privileges and rightful dignity so as to assume the guise of a servant, in that
He became like men and was born a human being.
And after He had appeared in human form He abased and humbled Himself
still further and carried His obedience to the extreme of death, even the death
of the cross! Therefore God has highly
exalted Him . . ." In this
wonderful passage we have the summary of all the most precious truths that cluster
about the person of the Son of God.
There is first His wonderful divinity:
"in the form of God," "equal with God." Then comes the mystery of Him laying aside
that glory in that phrase of deep and inexhaustible meaning: "He stripped
Himself," "He emptied Himself."
The humiliation follows: "The form of a servant," "Made
in the likeness of men,' "found in fashion as a man." Then comes the crushing and mortification of
suffering and death: “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross." And all
is crowned by His glorious exaltation:
"God hath highly exalted Himself!”
Christ as God. Christ becoming
man, Christ as man in humiliation revealing the glory of the Father in a body
of flesh, and Christ in glory as Lord of all: such are the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge this passage contains.
The great
truth we want to grasp here is that Christ (the Word) dwell from eternity in
the form, the essence, the nature and the being of God. In that divine nature He was eternal,
untemptable and incorruptible. But
when He laid aside that glory, emptying Himself of it, taking upon Him the form
and nature of man, He, the ETERNAL ONE, subjected Himself to the dread power of death, becoming obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. When the
Christ laid aside His eternal heavenly glory, the UNTEMPTABLE ONE took upon
Himself all the frailties and weaknesses of human nature so that the One who cannot be tempted was found in a nature
that could be tempted and indeed He was in all points tempted like as we
are. The inspired apostle James says
that "every man is tempted, when
he is drawn away of his own lust, and
enticed. Then when lust hath conceived,
it bringeth forth sin" (James 1:14-15).
Was Jesus truly tempted in all points like as we are, or did He have
some mystical advantage over us, some inherent quality of divinity, some unique
spiritual power which enabled Him to be oblivious to the cravings and demands
of the flesh? Anything, to be a
temptation for us, must excite something within us that responds to the
temptation. That for which we have no
desire, can never tempt us. I used to
think, as many do, that Jesus was so high and holy that He could not affected
by the base things that allure us. He
was indeed high and holy, but not to the extent that He could not be touched by
the same infirmities, weaknesses, and feelings that touch us. While some may still find it hard to
believe, because of our superstitious religious view of Christ, He knows
exactly how the person feels who is tempted to lie, cheat, curse, steal,
murder, or commit adultery. There had
to be the desire in His flesh, the inclination in His nature to answer the
temptation, but, blessed by God! HE
OVERCAME IT ALL! He was tempted in
every point as we are, YET WITHOUT SIN.
As we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, so He had the indwelling Father
and by that overcame all temptation and in the one instance of His intense
desire to go His own way, He resisted even unto blood. He was the first to do this and HE ENTERED
INTO IMMORTALITY AND INCORRUPTION.
There is
something diabolical about temptation, something satanically bewitching and
bewildering. It stirs up our senses and
excites our emotions and passions. For
the time being the forbidden thing seems more important than anything else in
the world. It weakens our powers of
judgment, both moral and spiritual.
People who are otherwise very intelligent and self-controlled will in a
brief season of temptation commit wholly unthinkable follies — which they often
live to regret a whole lifetime afterwards.
It paralyzes our will. Our many
good resolutions melt like wax in the hour of temptation. All this temptation frequently does simply
by being permitted to press in upon us.
It is like chloroform. If it gets
too close to us, it will deprive us of the very possibility of offering
resistance. But, praise God, "God
is faithful, who will not suffer you in be tempted above that ye are able; but
will with the temptation make a way of escape, that ye may be able to hear
it" (I Cor. 10:13). May God in His
great mercy give us a true insight into the glory of what is offered us in this
truth — that our great HIGH PRIEST, whom we have in the heavenlies, is One who
is able to sympathize with us in each and every circumstance, because He knows,
from personal experience, exactly what we feel and face. Yes, that God might give us courage to draw
nigh unto Him, He has placed upon the throne of heaven One out of our midst, of
whom we can be certain that, because He Himself lived on earth as a man, He
understands us perfectly, is prepared to have patience with our weakness, and
give us just the help we need to overcome and enter into His glory. May God give us eyes to see and hearts to
understand the depth of the mystery of which I now write. Had the Logos, the Word of God remained in
that bright glory world above, in that spiritual dimension detached from this
realm of flesh and corruptibility, He might have been ever so desirous to help
us and lift us up to godhood: but, if He had never tasted death, how could He
allay our fears as we tread the verge of Jordan? If He had never been tempted, how could He succor those who are
tempted? If He had never wept, how
could He dry our tears? If He had never
suffered, hungered, wearied on the hill of difficulty, or threaded His way
through the quagmires of weakness and grief, how could He have been a merciful
and faithful High Priest, having compassion
on the ignorant and wayward? But, thank
God, our High Priest is a perfect one!
He is perfectly adapted to His task, and is able to lead each and every
member of God's elect out of this valley of the shadow of death over into the
victory and glory of perfection and incorruptibility!
He who alone
is life, having never touched death, humbled Himself for our sakes and became obedient unto death. He stooped to die and lived thirty-three and
one half years in it. Then at the end
He went to the cross. Earth's voices
must fall silent here, for they will never be able to tell the story of how it
is that life comes out of death. I
would have said that such a thing would be impossible had He not said of His
life, “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (Jn
10:118). When He expired on the cross,
He passed into the totality of death, and on the resurrection side of the tomb
He proved that there is NO FINALITY TO DEATH, that even in death He was
wondrously alive, for, said He, "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again." It
was not simply that He had faith that GOD would raise Him from the dead. NO!
The power He possessed was the power to take His own life up again and
this power is a power He both had and executed WHILE HE WAS DEAD! There can be no other explanation. A child of five should be able to understand
that one cannot lay his life down and take it up again unless he has life even in death.
In the power of that life which the Christ still possessed, being dead,
He passed back from the realm of death to the realm of life, and on the
resurrection side of the tomb He cried in triumph, "Behold, I am alive
forever more (Rev. 1:18). And now He is
alive in the flesh, praise God, triumphantly holding in His incorruptible hands
the keys of both death and hell, and is abundantly able to offer life eternal
to dead men who believe in Him.
"The hour is coming, and now
is," He has proclaimed, "when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live" (Jn. 5:25).
Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, by partaking of death during the days of
His flesh and ending all death by the power of His resurrection, has brought to light both life and
immortality. Notice, precious friend of
mine, it is not said that He has created
life and immortality — He has brought it
to light, turned His searchlight upon it, disclosed it, revealed it, opened
it up, proclaimed it and made it known.
Christ is life. In Him is life. In Him alone is
life. And the man or woman who has been
quickened by Christ HAS LIFE, is passed
from death unto life, and shall never
die. "I AM (not I will be) the resurrection and the
life," says Jesus, “he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and
whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall
never die. Believest thou this?”
(Jn. 11:25-26). Sad to say, even some
who profess to be teachers of God's elect and sons of God do not believe that
simple truth which Martha embraced that day when the Christ brought life and
immortality to light in her awakened consciousness. Our Lord Jesus plainly told us, "My sheep hear My voice, and
I know them, and they follow Me: and I
give into them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father which gave them Me is greater than
all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hands.” (Jn.
10:27-29). The moment any man hears the
voice of the Son of God and becomes a sheep following Him, at that moment, the
gift of God, which is eternal life, is
given to that believing man and the life of God begins to live and dwell and abide in that
man as a well of water springing up unto eternal life. Christ is the Tree of Life, and all who
partake of Him receive life, not in
some future age, not in some distant resurrection, but here and now, for He gives them eternal life. Apart from Him there is naught but darkness
and death. "Whoso drinketh of this
water shall thirst again," were the words He spoke to the troubled woman
at the well of Samaria, "But whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give Him shall become a fountain
within him, springing up unto eternal
life” (Jn. 4:14) Christ is the
fountain of life. He alone is the
fountain of eternal youth, of eternal consciousness, of eternal being. This is the wonderful message of the NEW
COVENANT, the covenant of life.
Again I would
quote briefly from the inspired writings of George Hawtin. "Sweet mystery of life, at last we’ve
found Thee! And we have found that
Thou, O Christ, art life — not that life which flourishes as grass in the field
today and tomorrow the wind passes over it and it is gone, nor life like ours,
which is as a mist which the wind driveth away, but life aionian, life
everlasting, life eternal, life evermore, the life of the ages. Well spoke our beloved Lord when He said,
'Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him
that sent Me, HATH EVERLASTING LIFE, and shall not come into condemnation, but
IS PASSED FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE,’ or as Rotherham has translated it, 'hath
passed over out of death into Iife'
(Jn. 5:24). It is a wonderful hour in
the experience of any man when he passes from death ‘across to life,' and that is exactly what happens when we believe on Christ. As the Father
hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself, and
to all who believe on Him life is given, even that eternal life which God
Himself is and which abounds like rivers of living water within us when Jesus
Christ comes in to abide. Oh, taste and
see that the Lord is good! Blessed is
every man that trusteth in Him! With
this wonderful realization firmly abiding in our hearts; we are better prepared
to grasp the truth Christ clearly gave us when He said, 'Verily, verily, I say
unto you, The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God: and they that hear
shall live' (Jn 5:25). Think on that statement, child of God. Was not Jesus telling us that we are dead as dead can be? And did He not make two remarkable statements
— first, the hour is coming, and,
second, the hour now is when the dead
shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live? Have not we who have believed proven the
truth of this in our very spirit and in our experience? The greatest proof in the universe that
Jesus Christ is alive forevermore is the fact that, when we believed, He came
to dwell within us. He came to live His
life in us. He came to deliver us from
our sin and our habits and make us to know that death would never more hold our
spirits in its vice-like grip. Do we
not know that He who lives and was dead, and, behold, He is alive forevermore,
has come to us that we might live also and has
raised us up together with Himself to share with Him the life of the ages” — end quote.
Yet some tell
us that the dead are dead — that there is no life or consciousness or being for
the child of God apart from or beyond or above physical existence — should you lay this tabernacle aside there is nothing — you cease to exist — you are gone!
I do not hesitate to tell you that it is a wicked lie, a monstrous
deceit, and a dreadful denial of the life
we have now been given in Christ
Jesus. Let's get right down to brass
tacks here. Do you want to hear the truth
beyond all the superstitions you've heard, beyond all the emptiness and
hopelessness of Old Testament economy?
Eternal life is first and foremost spiritual,
not physical. To hear some preachers
teach it one would think that a man cannot possess eternal life except it be
manifest on the physical level — in
an immortal body. I think that no man understands the first
thing about life out of death who misses the clear and unmistakable
understanding given by Paul in his words to the Romans: “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”
(Rom. 8:10). The body is dead, just as God told Adam it would
be. So for the man who has received
Christ his body is still dead because
of sin but his spirit is alive
because of righteousness — Christ’s righteousness, of course, for there is none
other, the righteousness that comes with Him when we believe into Him and He
gives us Himself and with and by Himself His life. This life which even
now is reality within us is that life and immortality which has been BROUGHT TO
LIGHT through the gospel. Hear and
believe the wonderful news, precious friend of mine, YOUR SPIRIT I-S A-L-I-V-E
BECAUSE OF THE INDWELLING CHRIST! Those
who minister the finality of death — when your body dies you’re dead and gone,
non-existent — minister under the blindness of the OLD COVENANT, the
ministration of death. They know not that the Christ has come and
given us life, they understand not that Christ IS NOW the resurrection and the
life, they comprehend not the glad truth that eternal life is even now a
glorious and eternal reality in "the
inner man” which is renewed day by
day,” they, like the patriarchs and the prophets under the Old Testament, and
like the Jews to this very day, are still
awaiting the Saviour and looking to some future day for the
resurrection, totally oblivious to the wonderful fact that “If ye then BE RISEN
with Christ, seek those things which are above (in the higher realm of the
spirit; where your eternal life is), where Christ sitteth on the right hand of
God” (Col. 3:1). I am here to tell you that CHRIST IS
COME! I proclaim to you today the glad
tidings of the NEW TESTAMENT, the ministration of life. God has anointed me
to declare the RESURRECTION WHICH I-S, not one that shall be! Those who
minister the finality of death minister the Old Covenant and know nothing as
they ought to know and have seen nothing — the heavens have never been opened
to them. Their ministry is not one of
faith and hope and present reality, but of fear
of death and a sense of foreboding and depression. They know not the life that transcends the body, the life that is first of all
realized spiritually rather than
soulishly or physcially. Death is
emphasized, dramatized, its power glorified by men who minister, not out of the
power of life, but out of the fear of
death. It is the fear of death that
drives many in this hour to seek the immortality of the body. And make no mistake! “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead SHALL ALSO
QUICKEN (MAKE ALIVE) YOUR M-0-R-T-A-L
B-O-D-I-E-S by His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11). That is the hope yet to be fulfilled in and through the
manifested sons of God. But I say to
all who have not the consciousness of that eternal life which is already yours,
that resurrection in which you are already raised, that eternal consciousness,
existence and being you already are, I say to those who are striving for physical
immortality because of the fear of the
finality of death — Christ has already come and Himself partook of flesh
and blood, that through death He might destroy death, and might DELIVER THEM
WHO THROUGH FEAR OF DEATH ARE ALL THEIR LIFETIME SUBJECT TO BONDAGE. Under the Old Testament life and immortality
had not yet been fully brought to light.
No wonder the old saints often lived and spoke as those subject to
bondage. No wonder they emphasized the
power of death, the hopelessness of death, the finality of death! But how sad that the redeemed of Jesus
Christ, His brethren, so often prove that they know so little of the
deliverance and life He has given and the song of joy: "Death is swallowed
up in victory. Thanks be to God who
giveth us the victory, through Christ our Lord!” My brother! art thou living in the full experience of this
blessed truth? He delivers from the
fear of death and the bondage it brings, changing it into the joy of knowing that “we have passed from death unto life!
Since then, we
have been made alive because of our spirit being quickened by His Spirit, Paul
leads us on to another marvelous truth which I fear multitudes of earnest
believers are failing to see, including some elect saints of God. "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began, but a now
made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who HATH
ABOLISHED DEATH, and HATH BROUGHT life and immortality to light through the
gospel" (II Tim. 1:9-10). The Word
of God is true. It is not a silly fairy
tale or a superstitious myth. It is not
a lie. Men are liars. God is true. And when God says, “Christ who hath abolished death,” we
poor puny worms of the dust had better believe it, and cease calling God a liar
by telling Him He is wrong. For
"he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar" (I Jn. 5:10). Oh, read it and re-read it and rejoice in it
with joy unspeakable and full of glory!
Through His thirty-three years of death Christ hath abolished death and
through the power of His glorious resurrection He has brought that resurrection
life into us so that it is
wonderfully true that "when we were
dead . . . He hath quickened us
together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2:5-6). Christ on Calvary bore every sin of every
sinner. He was made a sin-offering (Capricornus—the goat) for us, He who knew
no sin. And since He became our
sin-offering, therefore when He died, our sin died. Calvary atoned. And then
and there the total and unending death that fallen on Adam and his race fell on another. “The bread that I will give is my flesh,
which I will give FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD” (Jn. 6:51). Oh, the victory of Calvary means so much
more than any of us ever realized in the past.
It was such a pathetically ineffectual work, according to the way it was
once taught us. It was weak and so
limited in scope, so incomplete! Christ
came to save the world (Jn, 12:47); God sent His Son “that THE WORLD through
Him might be saved” (Jn. 3:17). But it
was all in vain. He wasn't able to do
what He came for. That’s what the
preachers say. Thank God, that long
night of darkness is passing! Thank
God, a fuller, deeper message now goes forth, which does not limit the God of
Israel, which does not belittle and besmear the atonement, the all-inclusive
work of our Saviour Jesus Christ! He
did not die in vain! He was not a
failure! Calvary was not a defeat, but
an exultant victory. And there He, the
spotless sinless Lamb of God actually gave His life for the life “OF THE
WORLD.” Let us never again forget that
fact.
The world was
lost. All had sinned. And the
wages of sin is death. Oh, let us
grasp this one great spiritual truth!
Babylon has lied to us. Let us
forsake her shame and deceptions and evil imaginings! She has led us to believe that the wages of sin is anything and
everything else but what God says it is.
What a fraud! What a fiend she has made of the God of love and
mercy and grace! And it made her the
richest earthly institution which ever did exist or ever will. But no: the wages of sin is actually
death. And Jesus died. Therefore the world goes free. It doesn't take
a Doctorate in mathematics or physics to figure that out. The equation is very simple. Yes, friend, Christ actually gave His life
"for the life "OF THE WORLD:” not for one half of it, not for just a
few Christians who are “not of this world.”
He actually paid the full penalty for the sins “OF THE WORLD”—A-L-L OF IT.
Jesus actually paid it all! All
men, because of sin, had come under the curse and were dead. They were lost,
bound for eternal night. But Jesus, the
only Man who was born to die, the last Man who ever did actually die, became the sin-offering for every sinner, and bore
those sins to dark Calvary. Listen to
this! I did not write it. It is the Word of the eternal God which all
of us in the past have loudly proclaimed to be inspired; yet not one of us
believed a word of it, except the little scraps here and there which suited our
fancy, tickled our vanity, or appeared to support our superstitions. Here is what God says: “Therefore as by the
offense of one judgment came UPON A-L-L MEN to condemnation; even so
by the righteousness of one the free gift
came UPON A-L-L MEN unto justification of life” (Rom. 5:18). Oh, if we could but get all the poor victims
of pope and popery to read and believe that one verse of scripture, then all
their bowing and scraping and paying would stop immediately. And if we could get all the Christians in
the churches to somehow believe it, what a transformation it would bring. And if all who treasure the beautiful hope
of sonship could somehow believe it, how it would hasten the day of
manifestation! Jesus gave His life for
the life of the world. That ends the
matter for all time and eternity. So
Paul could write, “The wages of sin is
death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Because of this John
the beloved could write, “He is the propitiation (mercy-seat, sin-offering) for
our sins: and NOT FOR OURS ONLY, BUT
ALSO FOR THE SINS OF THE W-H-O-L-E
W-O-R-L-D” (1 Jn. 2:2). And because of this Paul could affirm,
“Christ.... HATH ABOLISHED DEATH.” He
could also write, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the
angels for the suffering of death... that He by the grace of God SHOULD TASTE
DEATH F-O-R E-V-E-R-Y M-A-N” (Heb. 2:9).
Certainly “every man” includes Adolf Hitler, Nero, Cain, and every other
son of Adam from the dawn of history to the end of the last age that will ever
come. And because of this we, like the
woman at the well, "KNOW that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour OF
THE W-O-R-L-D. That is the free gift to
every son of Adam who was ever born or ever will be. Let God be true, and every man a liar! For death is actually abolished, there is no longer any such
thing. When Jesus died, sin died. When He arose, death died. The abolishment of death became an actuality
in very fact on the resurrection morn, when the triumphant proclamation went
forth, "He is not here: for He is risen" (Mat. 28:6). It was effective even from the day that God
closed Eden's gates, though not manifested.
But now
someone is going to question the foregoing statements and ask us why it is
that, if death is abolished, men continue to die. The answer is, of course, men do not continue to die. Oh, we know their bodies go to the
grave. And we call this death. It is not death. God does not call it death.
Those who equate death with a body in a coffin know absolutely nothing
about death. Ye who were dead hath He quickened! I was lying neither in a coffin at the
funeral parlor nor in a dark hole in the ground when I was quickened and made
alive in Christ. Death was not my body
in a coffin, and the life I have received is not an immortal flesh-body. Don't you see? What men call death is not
death, and what men call life is not
Iife. Only when the Holy Spirit
enables us to see the true nature of all things can we understand a mystery so
deep. One man came and by the grace of
God tasted death "FOR E-V-E-R-Y
M-A-N." Mark carefully, He
only tasted it. He remained in death
for thirty-three and one half years culminating in the death of the cross. He merely sampled it. But He sampled it in the place of every son
of Adam. He actually tasted death
"FOR E-V-E-R-Y M-A-N.” Do you believe it? Dare you believe it? The
mystery is just this. Jesus died for
the whole race of men. When He arose He
injected He injected life into the
stream of humanity, so that there is a spiritual
quality in man that transcends the body realm. It is a dimension of being
that even the grave cannot hold. It is
that "light" which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world, and that light is Christ (Jn. 1:4,9-10).
No life beyond the grave? Then
Christ did not die and rise again, He
did not taste death for every man, He
did not give His life for the life of
the world, He did not abolish death
and bring life and immortality to light!
That light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world is the spiritual sense of being, that in man
which is eternal and deathless, which God will pursue until
it is brought to the image and likeness of God that He may become
"All-in-all." This free gift came (has already come) upon
ALL MEN unto justification of Iife (Rom.
5:18). Can anything be plainer! Any other doctrine is OLD TESTAMENT
doctrine, not the gospel of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ who hath
abolished death.
Hearken
to the Word! One day a poor man, a
heartbroken father, came to the Master.
His little daughter had passed on.
He said, "My daughter is dead”
(Mat. 9:18). He thought she was
dead. Little did he comprehend that the
One who stood before him is the resurrection and the life. But what did the Master say? A strange word for Old Testament saints, for
sure. "And when Jesus came into
the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels and the people making a noise, He said
unto them, Give place: for the maid is
not dead, but sleepeth. And they
laughed Him to scorn." What did He
say on another occasion! "Our
friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awaken him out of sleep"
(Jn. 11:11). Oh yes, a little farther
on, because the disciples misunderstood Him, He also said that Lazarus was
dead. This which we call physical death
is the nearest thing to death that we know.
But the New Testament everywhere draws a clear and sharp distinction
between death and sleep.
What is the difference? you ask.
There is a great difference, indeed!
A dead man has no life,
consciousness or being. But a sleeping man IS STILL ALIVE THOUGH
UNCONSCIOUS TO THE WORLD AROUND HIM.
And he is STILL CONSCIOUS ON ANOTHER PLANE. Thus, the martyr Stephen "fell asleep" while beholding
the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God, and
crying with a loud voice into that bright world beyond the mortal, "Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit! (Acts 6:54-60). As to the earth realm he was asleep;
as to Christ in His glory at the right hand of the Father he was wondrously alive in the spirit. As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
"But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which
are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even
as others which have no hope. For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him"
(I Thes. 4:13-14). This passage
contains a two-dimensional truth. From
the earthly aspect those who have gone by way of the grave sleep; from the
heavenly aspect they come with Jesus
when He comes, out of the heavenly and spiritual dimension of consciousness and
being. Since Jesus came and brought
life to men this thing we call physical death is merely a sleep, merely a
divine provision on the way to the fullness of life whereby we lay aside this
sin-cursed house of clay, to live in the spirit unto God. Paul understood this mystery and wrote of
his own destiny: "For me, to live is Christ—His life in me; and to die is
gain. If, however, it is to be life in
the flesh and I am to live on here, that means fruitful service for me; so I
can say nothing as to my personal preference—I cannot choose, but I am hard
pressed between the two. My yearning
desire is to depart — be free of this
world, to set forth — and be with Christ,
for that is far, far better; but to remain in my body is more needful and
essential for your sake" (Phil 1:21-24, Amplified). Peter, too, knew that he had apprehended a
life that transcends this physical, for he wrote: "Yea, I think it meet,
as long as I am in this tabernacle, to
stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our
Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me.
Moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have
these things always in remembrance" (II Pet. 1:13-15). No morbid tale here of the finality of
death, of unconscious non-existence, of darkness and nothingness! Ah Peter knew that the body was merely a tabernacle, a tent, a house, a covering
for the incorruptible life of God in his inner man, the new creation born of
the incorruptible seed of the Word of God which liveth and abideth
forever. Hallelujah!
While it is
gloriously true that Christ has given His life to all men, to the whole world,
yet it is evident that there must be a progression in the development of that
life in the experience of every man until every vestige of the death realm has
been swallowed up, spirit, soul and body.
To those who walk with Christ there is an ever-increasing consciousness,
growth, increase, unfoldment, maturation and triumph of that life. The mighty working of His power within is followed by this very precious and
understandable result: "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the
dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ shall also quicken (make alive)
your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom 8:11). I believe I now see more clearly than I have
ever done why it was that Paul, who, as you and I do, still dwelt in the
hellish bondage of a mortal body cried out, "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this
mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put
on incorruption, and this mortal shall
have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is
written, Death is swallowed up in
victory. O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength
of sin is the law. But thanks be to
God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ" (I Cor. 15:53-57). We are,
indeed, terribly and horribly in bondage to the body of this death, and with us the whole creation is groaning, waiting for the day when the sons of
God will deliver them from the bondage of corruption. I do not need to argue with any man to prove our present
mortality in the flesh. If you must sleep to live, you are mortal. If you
must eat to live, you are obviously
mortal. If you must breathe to live, you are unquestionably mortal. We are all aware of our constant and unremitting decay as the
aging process etches its marks upon
us. Our present mortality is naught but
death, although we live in the spirit.
Think of it! Meditate deeply
upon it and cling to this realm of death no more. Reach up, my beloved, with the blessed arm of faith and embrace
that bright realm above where that which is true in our spirit reaches down and
takes hold upon our outer man, where
this mortal puts on immortality,
where death in all its aspects is swallowed
up of life, where in that final victory of His life within the sons of God
will upon this earth shout in triumph over both death and the grave.
Truly we
yearn for this change, for our desire is not to be unclothed, but to be clothed
upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life (II Cor. 5:1-5). Yea, we groan inwardly for this
transformation to take place. I continually meet up with brethren who
confess that they have already put on physical immortality and incorruption,
that they have already passed over the grave and cannot and will not die. I must be very honest and frank with you, my
beloved brothers I have not one whit of a desire to live forever IN THIS BODY
OF HUMILIATION. There is no more
frightening thought, no more repugnant possibility, than the idea that I might
live forever in this body of humiliation!
Thank God, there is to be a change!
"Who will transform and fashion anew the body of our humiliation to
conform and to be like the body of His glory and majesty, by exerting that
power which enables Him even to subject everything to Himself” (Phil. 3:21,
Amplified). The thought of merely
adding immortality to this body of humiliation, with no other change, the
suggestion of such limitation, that I might have to bathe, anoint my body with
deodorant, brush my teeth, and use Scope throughout eternity, the hint that I
might retain this base form, that I might remain as I am unendingly, falls as far short of what I conceive of a body
transformed and fashioned like unto the body of His glory and majesty as hell
falls short of heaven! The body of
incorruption shall resemble this vile body no more than does the oak tree
resemble the chemical elements of the earth which were raised up into the
substance of the tree by the mighty working of the subtle and mysterious life
force sown in the earth as a seed.
Son of
God! If we would be fashioned like unto
Him, co-sharers of His glory and power and wisdom as the God-man, we must not
simply rest content with the faith that trusts in the cross and its pardon; we
must follow on
to know the fullness of the New Life, the life of glory and power in human
nature, injected into man through the resurrection of Christ from the dead, of
which the spirit of the glorified
Jesus is the witness and the source. Now, practically everything in relationship
to our sonship depends upon the clearness with which this great truth that I
have stated is recognized. The Holy
Spirit of God inspired the message of these words in Rom 5:9-11, "Much
more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the
death of His Son, much more, being now
justified by His blood, we SHALL BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE... and... we joy....
in our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement." The double provision of Christ is here clearly set forth: reconciled by His death; saved
by His life. Christ’s death is the atonement, reconciling men to God,
granting a full and free admittance back into Eden’s lovely garden from which
our disobedient foreparents were once banished. But Christ’s life is
the Tree of Life in the garden, the source of the life which shall work in us
the complete transformation into the divine
nature. Sin, sickness, sorrow, fear
and death are all part of a power in
our life; let us fully understand that it can only be met by another higher
power. The power of sin and death works
all through our life. The death of
Christ, which is the atonement, reconciles us to God, but only the life of Christ
can come against the power of sin and death and deliver our life from destruction. Reconciliation places us, in God’s eyes,
back in Eden’s garden; but the Tree of Life is the power that delivers my life
from the dominion of sin and death. He
redeemeth my life, by His life, from death!
Christ's life, not His death, living in our life, absorbing it,
impregnating it, transforming it causes us to live. This is the meaning of that profound sentence in which Paul
records the first great work of salvation and pointedly distinguishes it from
the second great work of salvation, saying, "if when we were enemies we
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being
reconciled, we shall be saved by His
life. The first is the dying goat;
the second is the living fish!
"We
shall be saved by His LIFE," says Paul.
Paul meant no disrespect to the atonement when he said, "We shall
be saved by His life. He was bringing
out one of the great facts of salvation.
If God gives atoning power with one hand, and power to save the life
from destruction with the other hand, there is no conflict between these. Both are from God. If you call the one justification and the other glorification,
God is the author of them both. If Paul
seems to take something from the one work and add it to the other, he takes
nothing from God. Atonement is from
God! Reconciliation is from God! Power
to conquer sin and death is from God. Christ is all in all, the beginning and
the end. When the thing we want is
deliverance from the guilt of sin, condemnation, let us appropriate the gift
God has given us to remove our guilt—the DEATH of Christ. "In whom we have redemption through His
blood, even the forgiveness of our sins" (Col. 1:14). When the thing we want is power to redeem
our life from sin, corruption and death, then let us apply the gift which God
has given us for our life, the LIFE of the Son of God. "He that hath the Son hath life.”
When an
Israelite was bitten by flaming serpents in the wilderness, he never thought of
applying manna to the wound. The manna was for his life. But he did think of
applying the brazen serpent. The manna
would never have cured his snake bite;
nor would the brazen serpent have kept him from starving! Suppose he had said, now I am healed by this
serpent, I feel cured, and I need not eat this manna anymore. The serpent has done it all, and I am well." The result would have been, or course, that
he would have died. The man, to be sure, was cured, delivered
from the judgment of his rebellion against God, but he has to LIVE, and if he
eats no manna his life must languish,
go to destruction, die. Without going
to any trouble about it, simply by the inevitable process of nature, he would
have died. The manna was God's
provision to redeem his life from
destruction, after the serpent has redeemed it from judgment. And if he did
nothing to stop the natural progress of corruption, in the natural course of
things, he must die. Now there is no
contradiction between these two things—the manna is from God and the serpent is
from God. But they are different gifts
for different things. The serpent removed the judgment, but could not sustain
life; the manna gave life, but could not deal with the sentence. To apply this to the case in hand. The
death of Christ, on the one hand, is the brazen serpent. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up (on the cross)” (Jn
3:14). Christ's life on the other hand, is the manna—the bread of life. “This is the bread which cometh down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not
die. I am the living bread which
came down from heaven: if any man eat of
this bread, he shall live forever;
and the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of
the world” (Jn 6:50-51). In the light
of these remarkable words we can reach only one of two conclusions. Either all who have believed on Christ since
that blessed day when these wonderful words poured from His divine lips have
partaken of Him, eaten of His living flesh and have not died but have begun to live
forever, or, else, NO ONE HAS EVER EATEN OF HIM FROM THAT DAY TO THIS, for
all have continued to go by way of the grave.
Either Jesus has given eternal
life to all who eat of Him, and there is
a life, consciousness and being that transcends the grave, or He lied and did
not give His flesh for the life of the world, so that none has ever sat at His
table and received the life of which He spake.
Do you really believe that God is that wicked that He would send forth
redemption and then withhold it for another two thousand years? Let me ask you a question, my friend. If you had the power of immortality in your
hand right now, would you wait another two thousand years to use it while
billions of mankind continued to go out into endless nothingness? Wake up!
my beloved. Let us get beyond
the fantasy of a merely carnal and earthly and physical understanding of
truth! “He that hath the Son HATH
LIFE,” saith the Lord. “And we know that we HAVE PASSED FROM DEATH UNTO
LIFE,” add all who know and love the truth.
Of all the
wealth of scripture truth nothing is more certain or clear than the fact that
our sins are not forgiven by bread, nor are our lives nourished and supported
by death. Our life is not made
incorruptible and eternal by Christ's death, nor transformed from day to day
from the power of sin and death by the atonement. Our life is not redeemed from destruction by the crucifixion of
Christ, nor is it brought to perfection from day to day by the death of Christ. But we are saved, as the Holy Ghost saith,
"by HIS LIFE.” We cannot live upon death. And after, by the atonement, we are
forgiven, and have entered by faith through the gateway into Eden's fair
garden, the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, having acceptance before God, we shall
then be saved, delivered, changed, transformed, perfected and fully glorified
BY HIS LIFE. The atonement gives us the
right to enter back into Eden but only the tree of life can make us live! To, sum up, therefore, it is one thing to be
reconciled by the death of Christ, and quite another to be saved by His
life. If reconciliation and
justification could make men be CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF THE SON OF GOD then
all the baby Christians in all of Babylon's harlot religious systems would be
well on their way to sonship. The death
of Christ can make one a justified believer, bringing him to life, but only the mighty working of the
indwelling life of God's Christ can enable us to put on the mind of Christ and be transformed in
thought, desire, emotion, nature and body into His likeness. He redeemeth my life from destruction. How?
By His life. This is the power
of a full and complete salvation!
Unspeakable are the blessings of the high and heavenly realm of God's
incorruptible life which flow to the soul from the union with Jesus in His glorified
life. Blessed Tree of Life! It is
ours, for Jesus is ours. Blessed life
of the ages! We have the possession
within our earth of its hidden power, and we have the prospect before us of its
fullest glory. May our daily lives, in
all we think and say and do, be bright and blessed proof that the hidden power
dwells within, daily preparing us for the glory to be revealed. May the eternal and incorruptible fruit of
our redeemed life within be our power to live to the glory of the Father, our
fitness to share the glory of the Son.
Beyond the
fact of the revelation of the wonderful law of life out of death as wrought out in Jesus Christ, there is also the
mighty operation of this principle in our own life and experience as sons of
God. A dear friend of many years penned
some precious and enlightening insights to the outworking of life from death in
us which I am moved to share with my readers at this point. She wrote: "The carnal mind would have
us to believe that the way Up is Up.
Thus we have pressed our way into ministry, pressed our way into the
things we have desired, 'stood on the promises,' demanded of God our 'rights,'
sought to have our own way in both spiritual and physical things—forgetting
that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets saying, “My ways are NOT
your ways neither are My thoughts your thoughts.’ It is true, children of God, that God wants to take us UP — high
into the realms of God — UP to Jerusalem — but God would have us to know that
the way UP is always DOWN! If we would
go up; we must first go down, for God is operating by the principle of death
and resurrection. He has plainly stated
that nothing is quickened (made
alive) except it first die. In this
walk, you do not gain by keeping — for you are able only to keep that which you
are first willing to lose. In this walk
you do not live by living — you live by dying.
The laws of the Kingdom of God are in reverse to the laws of this natural
realm. The way to life is death, the
way to victory is defeat, the way to glory is shame, and the way up is down!
"We have all been soulish — viewing the
things of God through the intellect of soul, through the emotionalism of soul,
through the beclouding of the appetites of the flesh — and our concepts of
heaven, of the Kingdom of God, of
salvation, and of the purposes of God have long been contaminated with self’s desire for comfort and
blessing. God is changing all that,
praise His name, and we are beginning to learn to give up some of our childish things that we might grow to
the maturity of the Christ, the most outstanding characteristic of whom is
utter SELFLESSNESS. We have hitherto
been possessed of that old 'do-good-to-me' concept of the Kingdom of God. We were expecting great liberty — something
that would, no doubt, gratify our senses and promote our ego — something,
perhaps that would, no doubt, gratify our senses and promote us in the sight of
men. And if you will be honest, saint,
you will have to admit that such has been your concept of sonship, or Kingdom,
or eternal life, or heaven, or whatever doctrine has been uppermost in your
mind in recent years. The old concepts
of heaven — with its streets of gold and pearly gales — surely we are able to
see that there is nothing in that that would appeal to the spirit of a man. It is the flesh that is interested in gold, and
pearls, and precious stones. God chose
these things which are so highly esteemed among men to depict the far greater
riches of a realm we cannot see with the natural eye. We interpreted them literally because we were so flesh-minded
that we could not see beyond the symbol to the reality it represented. The riches typified by these precious things
are far greater in value to the spirit of a man than the literal could ever be. As one said not long ago, ‘Those things are
too cheep.’ What does' the spirit care
about such things? Does it really
matter to the spirit what kind of a street it walks on? If we have not come to an understanding of
this before, let us now ask God to elevate our thoughts and see with the
spiritual eye the glory that is portrayed in these cheap earthly
materials. Streets of gold? Jesus said,
‘I am the way (the street).' Gates of
pearl? We are that pearl of great price for which Jesus sold all that He
had. Precious stones? ‘They (God’s people) shall be mine, saith
the Lord, in the day that I come to make up My
jewels!
Some will, no doubt, say, ‘I passed
those ideas by a long time ago. I have
come to a knowledge of sonship!'
Ah! But how soulish we have been
in our understanding of sonship. Sons
of God! Glorious thought! And in it we have seen great glorious
ministry, miracle working power, people falling at our feet in awe of the
presence of God manifested in our lives.
Can you not see that that, too, is a desire of the flesh — EGO panting
for recognition — SELF waiting to come into its own! If we have been thinking along those lines, we have never yet heard the Word of God — for he who hears
knows that one does not come to glory
through glory: one comes to glory
through shame. Joseph became a mighty
prince of Egypt — but do consider the pathway that brought him there: DOWN into the pit, DOWN into slavery, DOWN
into the dungeon. He was on his way up,
but the way up was down! Oh, that the
saints of God in this hour might come to the recognition and understanding of
the ways of God! 'That I might know
Him,’ Paul cried, 'in the fellowship of His sufferings, BEING MADE CONFORMABLE
TO HIS DEATH, that I may (also) know Him in the power of His resurrection.’
"There
was a time when the apostle Peter was faced with this dilemma, even as we
are. It all began with a simple
question: ‘Peter, lovest thou Me?’ Peter's reply was, ‘Yes, Lord.' Then, ‘Feed My lambs.’ Again the question came, 'Peter? Do you love Me?’ Peter was cautious as he answered, 'Yes, Lord. I love you.' Another command: ‘Feed My
sheep.' One last time, 'Peter? Do you love Me?’ It was a frustrated Peter who replied this time, ‘Lord, you know I love you!' And a patient Jesus who answered, 'Feed My
sheep!' It was not insignificant that
the Lord addressed Peter three times.
There is something beneath the surface here. In the first realm, the realm of the flesh, the realm of the
outer court ministry or the first heaven, the Lord asks, 'Do you love Me?’ And the Christian answers, 'Yes, Lord.' Because the Lord knows the immaturity of one
at that level, He gives only the instruction to feed the young ones, the lambs, the babies. That is all that is
required of the first level of Christian experience. It was, however, a higher level to which the Lord referred in the
second question, and with the question, He was bringing Peter's thoughts
higher: ‘Peter, do you love Me in the
second heaven, in the holy place, in the Spirit filled level?' What else could Peter do but say, 'Yes,
Lord. I love you here, too.' The lambs are beginning to mature in that
realm, and the Lord, therefore, says to Peter, 'Feed My sheep.’ There is yet a
higher realm, and we dare not stop before we reach it. This is the realm of the holiest of all, the third heaven of which Paul spoke, and now the Lord is asking Peter,
'Do you love Me here, Peter? Do you
love Me in the HOLIEST OF ALL?’ Can we
not feel Peter's emotions when he answers, 'Oh, yes, Lord I love you here,
too!' Do we not also sense the cry of
the Saviour's heart in saying, ‘Then, feed My sheep.' He didn't stop there, however, for the Lord went on to say, 'When
thou wast young, thou girdest thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldst: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall
gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.' These were the Lord's instructions to Peter as to HOW he would
feed the sheep in the third realm, for the word continues in saying, 'This
spake He signifying by what death he should die!'
"Because
these words were spoken not only to Peter but unto us as well, there are some
things that we must not fail to grasp.
First, this event transpired on the THIRD occasion of Jesus’ appearing
to His disciples after His resurrection (Jn. 21:14), offering the clue that
Jesus was giving insight into the condition of the THIRD REALM experience, the
entry into, the Holiest of all, or Kingdom life manifestation. It must be remembered that that realm is
seen in the tabernacle of Moses as containing only one piece of furniture: the
ark of the covenant. The Hebrew tells
us that the ark was a COFFIN — a wooden coffin overlaid with gold. To enter into that realm, then, is to enter
into such a state of bondage that it is a condition of death. It was to this death that Jesus was referring when He said, 'When you were
young (immature), you went where you wanted to go — you did what you wanted to
do — you, in effect, did your own thing. But when you are old (mature) you will
stretch forth your hands and another
shall gird thee and carry you where you would not want to go.' This was the description of Peter's death —
not a physical death that would plant his human body six feet under the ground
— but a death to his own will, to his own way, to his own opinions and
thoughts; and this, saint of God! is the only way that we shall ever, obey His
command to FEED HIS SHEEP who are seeking pasture in that third realm
experience. Those who have come to the
door of that holy place will not hear a word that is contaminated with the will of men or the ways of the flesh. The
sheep of that third realm pasture desire the ESSENCE, the FRAGRANCE of His
knowledge, and will settle for no less than the SWEETNESS of the perfume of HIS
NATURE and HIS LIVING PRESENCE upon us!
"It was
pure LOVE who was hanging on the cross two thousand years ago — and it was as
His own belly was ripped open by a Roman spear that the New Wine of the Kingdom
of God began to flow. He was bound — not by nails — but in the spirit to a wooden cross, pouring
out His life's blood that you and I might live through Him. In the words, then, that Jesus spoke to
Peter was an invitation: an invitation
to share His cross, partake of His sufferings, to come out of the liberty of self and into the bondage of love — that bread might be taken from
the inner man and dealt out, broken and bruised, to the multitudes! Jesus says, also, to us as to those who
walked with Him so many centuries ago:
‘Give ye them to eat' (Lk.
9:13).
“Broken
bread—a love dealt out
To Adam’s
hungry soul
Torn from
the riven sides of those
Whom Jesus
Christ makes whole.
A
nature—binding deep within
A man to
other men
That pours
out life to share with them
Its liberty
from sin.
Wounded
hands—that serve e’en those
Who drive
in them the nails
Living out
the spirit’s truth
Of love
that never fails.
A
bondage—binding sons of God
To the Tree
of Life, you see,
The living
out of God’s great love
Thus
setting mankind free.”
—Connie
Asbill