Blessed Are The Rich?

The Son In The Father: Understanding Unity

GOD AS THE LIFE OF THE BODY – By Watchman Nee

 

PART 10: CHAPTER 3

 

GOD AS THE LIFE OF THE BODY

 

We noted earlier how our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What arrests our attention is the special emphasis the Apostle Paul gives to the body. The common concept is that the life of Christ is for our spirit, not for our body. Few realize that the salvation of God reaches to the second after He gives life to the first. Had God desired that His Spirit live solely in our spirit so that only it might be benefited, the Apostle would simply need to have said that “Your spirit is the temple of God” and not mention the body at all. By now, however, we should understand that the meaning of our body as the temple of the Holy Spirit is more than its being the recipient of a special privilege. It likewise means being a channel for effective power. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit strengthens our inner man, enlightens the eyes of our heart and, makes our body healthy.

 

We have also noted how the Holy Spirit makes alive this mortal frame of ours. To wait until we die, before He raises us up is not necessary, for even now He gives life to our mortal body. In the future He will raise from the dead this corruptible body, but today He quickens the mortal body. The power of His life permeates every cell of our being so that we may experience His power and life in the body.

 

No more need we look upon our outer shell as a miserable prison, for we can see in it the life of God being expressed. We now can experience in a deeper way that word which declares that “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” Christ has presently become the source of life to us. He lives in us today as He once lived in the flesh. We can thus apprehend more fully the implication of His pronouncement: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10.10). This more abundant life suffices additionally for every requirement of our body. Paul exhorts Timothy to “take hold of the eternal life” (I Tim. 6. 12); surely Timothy is not here in need of eternal life that he may be saved. Is not this life that which Paul subsequently describes in the same chapter as “the life which is life indeed” (v.19)? Is be not urging Timothy to experience eternal life today in overcoming every phenomenon of death?

 

We would hasten to inform our readers that we have not lost sight of the fact that our body is indeed a mortal one; even so, we who are the Lord’s can verily possess the power of that life which swallows up death. In our body are two forces in action: death and life: on the one side is consumption which brings us nigh to death; on the other side is replenishment through food and rest and these support life. Now extravagant consumption weakens the body because the force of death is too powerful; but by the same token excessive supply reveals signs of congestion because the force of life is too strong. The best policy is to maintain these two forces of life and death in balance. Beyond this, we should understand that the weariness which believers often experience in their body is in many respects distinct from that of ordinary people. Their consumption is more than physical. Because they walk with the Lord, bear the burdens of others, sympathize with the brethren, work for God, intercede before Him, battle the powers of darkness, and pommel their body to subdue it, food and rest alone are insufficient to replenish the loss of strength in their physical frame. This explains in a measure why many believers, who before the call to service were healthy, find themselves physically feeble not long afterwards. Our bodily strength cannot cope with the demands of spiritual life, work, and war. Combat with sin, sinners, and the evil spirits saps our vitality. Solely natural resources are inadequate to supply our bodily needs. We must depend on the life of Christ, for this alone can sustain us. Should we rely on material food and nourishment and drugs we will be committing a serious blunder. Only the life of the Lord Jesus more than sufficiently meets all the physical requirements for our spiritual life, work, and war. He alone furnishes us the necessary vitality to grapple with sin and Satan. Once the believer has truly appreciated what spiritual warfare is and how to wrestle in the spirit with the enemy, he will begin to realize the preciousness of the Lord Jesus as life to his body.

 

Every Christian ought to see the reality of his union with the Lord. He is the vine and we the branches. As branches are united with the trunk, so are we united with the Lord. Through union with the trunk the branches receive the How of life. Does not our union with the Lord produce the same results? If we restrict this union to the spirit, faith will rise up to protest. Since the Lord calls us to, demonstrate the reality of our union with Him, He wishes us to believe and to receive the flow of His life to our spirit, soul, and body. Should our fellowship be cut off, the spirit most assuredly will lose its peace, but so will the body be denied its health. Constant abiding signifies that His life continually is filling our spirit and flowing to our body. Apart from a participation in the life of the Lord Jesus there can be neither healing nor health. The call of God today is for His children to experience a deeper union with the Lord Jesus.

 

Haggard Surprised by Attention on Prayer Meetings

Former pastor Ted Haggard says his decision to hold prayer meetings in his Colorado Springs living room has attracted great interest from the media.

Haggard said Monday he will be holding a press conference before his first prayer meeting Thursday to accommodate requests from media outlets including The New York Times and CBS’ “The Early Show.” No press will be allowed inside the home, Haggard said, adding, “We don’t want to be surrounded by paparazzi.”

READ HERE:

http://blackchristiannews.com/news/2009/11/haggard-surprised-by-attention-on-prayer-meetings.html

 

 

Full text of Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech at the Arab League

Cairo, 7 November 2009

Following is the translated version of the full text of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech delivered in Cairo on Saturday at the headquarters of the Arab League:

 

EXCERPT

 

The 21st century is the century of economic globalization. It is also one marked by great progress of diverse civilizations. China, with its 1.3 billion people, and the Arab world, with its several hundred million people, both shoulder the sacred mission of renewing our centuries-old civilizations. Looking back at the last 200 years, we have missed far too many opportunities. We have 100 reasons, even 1,000 reasons to strengthen cooperation and speed up development with renewed vigor and vitality, so that we can catch up with the changing times. We have no reason whatsoever to dither or hesitate. All political leaders who have a sense of responsibility towards their countries and peoples and all entrepreneurs and other members of the society who cherish high ideals and aspirations should have a keen awareness of the responsibility that history has placed on them. Let us join hands and take the friendly cooperation between China and Arab countries to a new level!

China is committed to deepening political trust and strengthening strategic cooperation with Arab countries. The world today is experiencing major transformation, major adjustments and major development, and the international political and economic architecture is going through profound changes. The standing and influence of developing countries, including Arab countries, are on the rise. Against such a background, it serves the fundamental interests of both sides to solidify political trust and intensify strategic cooperation.

 

READ HERE:

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2009-11/08/content_18846228.htm

 

 

New Road to Zion: How Black Pastors are Reclaiming the Gospel of Social Justice

November 11, 2009 3:30 AM

 

EXCERPTS

 

This numbers game is about unity. Jew, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, black, white, Hispanic; everyone here tonight is on one team with just one message for Richmond’s politicians: Do right. 

 

 

 

NELSON IS AN UNABASHED blast from the past: If the 1950s through the 1970s were the heyday of the African-American church as the organizing base from which blacks rallied to challenge societal injustices, then the 1980s and 1990s serve as dramatic contrast.

The era of the “prosperity ministry” grew from similar styles of preaching that fostered megachurches in the modern white protestant Christian tradition. The rise of the megachurch and the “me” generation holds central the popular preaching message that service to God pays off in earthly rewards to the faithful. Serving as living examples, prosperity ministers became kings of bling with big cars and vast business empires to match their message of heavenly salvation through earthly prosperity.

READ HERE

http://blackchristiannews.com/news/2009/11/new-road-to-zion-how-black-pastors-are-reclaiming-the-gospel-of-social-justice.html

THE BELIEVER AND HIS BODY – By Watchman Nee

 

PART 10 : CHAPTER 1

 

THE BELIEVER AND HIS BODY

 

We should know what place our physical body occupies in the purpose and plan of God. Can anyone deny the relationship between the body and spirituality? In addition to a spirit and a soul we also have a body. However healthy may be the intuition, communion and conscience of our spirit and however renewed the emotion, mind and will of our soul, we can never develop into spiritual men and women-never be perfected but continually lacking in some way if our body is not as sound and restored as are our spirit and soul. We should not neglect our outer shell while attending to our inner components. Our life shall suffer if we commit this blunder.

 

The body is necessary and important; otherwise God would not have created man with one. By accurately searching the Scriptures we can discover how much attention God pays to man’s body, for the Bible has a lot to say about it. Most singular and awesome of all is the fact that the Word became flesh: the Son of God took upon Himself a body flesh and blood: and though He died He wears this garb forever.

 

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE BODY

 

Romans 8.10-13 unfolds to us the condition of our body, how the Holy Spirit helps it, and what ought to be our right attitude towards it. If we appropriate these verses we will not misunderstand the place of a believer’s body in God’s plan of redemption. “If Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness” (v.10). Initially both our body and spirit were dead; but after we believed in the Lord Jesus we received Him into us to be our life. The fact that Christ by the Holy Spirit lives in the believer forms one of the essential tenets of the gospel. Every child of God, however weak, has Christ dwelling in him. This Christ is our life. And when He enters to make His abode in us, our spirit is made alive. Formerly both the spirit and the body were dead; now the spirit is quickened, leaving only the body dead. The estate common to every believer is that his body is dead but his spirit is alive.

 

This experience produces a wide disparity between the Christian’s inward and outward state. Our inner being is flowing with life while the outer man is still full of death. Being full of the. Spirit of life we are very much alive, yet we exist in a shell of death; in other words, the life of our spirit and the life of our body are radically unalike. The former is life indeed, but the latter is verily death. This is because our physical frame is still the “body of sin”: no matter how advanced a Christian’s spiritual walk is, his flesh is nonetheless the “body of sin.” We have yet to possess a resurrected, glorious, spiritual frame; ” the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8.23) awaits us in the future. Today’s body is just an “earthen vessel,” an “earthly tent,” a “lowly body” (2 Cor. 4.7, 5.1; Phil. 3.21). Sin has been driven out of the spirit and the will but it has not been expunged from the body. Because sin remains there, it is therefore dead. This is the purport of “your bodies are dead because of sin.” Simultaneously, however, our spirit is alive. Or to phrase it more correctly, our spirit receives life because of the righteousness which is in Christ. When we trust in Him we receive Him as our righteousness and we also are justified by God. The former is Christ imparting to us His very Self (a substantive transaction); the latter is God justifying us for Christ’s sake (a legal transaction). Without the impartation there can be no justification. The moment we receive Christ we obtain the legal position of being justified before God and additionally the practical experience of having Christ imparted to us. Christ comes into us as life so that our dead spirit may be made alive. This is the import of “Your spirits are alive because of righteousness.”

 

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (v.11). Verse 10 explains how God quickens our spirit; this verse tells us how God gives life to our body. The tenth verse speaks of the spirit being made alive, with the body still dead; the eleventh verse goes further by saying that after the spirit is made alive the body too may live. The first part announces that the spirit lives because of Christ dwelling in us; this part declares that the body will live because of the Holy Spirit abiding in us. The Holy Spirit will give life to our bodies.

 

SICKNESS – By Watchman Nee

PART 10 :CHAPTER 2

SICKNESS

 

Sickness is a common occurrence in life. For us to know how to keep our body in a condition which glorifies God, we first must know what attitude to take towards sickness, how to make use of it, and also how to be healed. Because sickness is so prevalent we cannot avoid having a serious lack in our life if we do not know how to deal with it.

 

SICKNESS AND SIN

 

The Bible discloses a close relationship between sickness and sin. The ultimate consequence of sin is death. Sickness lies between sin and death. It is the sequel to sin and the prologue to death. If there were no sin in the world, there would be neither sickness nor death. Had not Adam sinned, sickness would not have come upon the earth: of this we can be most certain. Hence as with every other woe, sickness was ushered in by sin.

 

Human beings are made up of two natures: the non-corporeal and the corporeal. Both suffered from man’s fall. The spirit and soul were damaged by sin and the body was invaded by sickness. The sin of the spirit and soul together with the sickness of the body attest that man must die.

 

When the Lord Jesus came to save, He not only forgave man’s sin but also healed man’s body. He saved bodies as well as souls. From the outset of His ministry He healed man’s sickness; at the conclusion of His labor He became a propitiation on the cross for man’s sins. Behold how many sick people were healed by Him during His earthly days! His hands were ever ready to touch the sick and raise them up. Judging both by what He Himself did and by the command He gave His disciples, we cannot help but see that the salvation He provides includes the healing of sickness. His is the gospel of forgiveness and healing. These two go together. The Lord Jesus saves people from sins and sicknesses that they may know the love of the Father. In reading the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles or the Old Testament, we continually witness how healing and forgiveness run parallel to each other.

 

We all know Isaiah 53 forms the clearest chapter in the Old Testament on the gospel. Various places in the New Testament make reference to this particular chapter when the fulfillment of its prophecies concerning the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus is in view. “The chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed (v.5 ASV). It tells us in unmistakable terms that both the healing of the body and the peace of the soul are accorded us. This is made even plainer when we consider the two different uses of the verb “bear”: “he bore the sin of many” (v.12) and “he has borne our griefs (Hebrew: sicknesses)” (v.4). The Lord Jesus bears our sins; He also bears our sicknesses. Because He has borne our sins, we need not bear them again; in like manner, since He has borne our sicknesses, we need no longer bear them either.’ Sin has done damage to our soul and body, so the Lord Jesus saves both. He saves us from sicknesses as well as from sins. Believers today can offer praise with David: “Bless the Lord, 0 my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! . . . Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases” (Ps. 103.1,3). What a shame that so many Christians can utter but half a praise for they know but half a salvation. It is a loss to both God and man.

 

Get Ready to Stand in the Fire – By Carter Conlon

08-Nov-2009

Get Ready to Stand in the Fire

Carter Conlon

listen here:

http://www.tscnyc.org/sermons.php

A.W. Tozer – The Deeper Life (Part 1-4)

PART 1

PART 2

Part 3

PART 4

Economics at the Jesus Creed: Michael Kruse 10

EXCERPT

My experience is that Christian leaders of many different stripes do not handle these questions well. They uncritically lift Scripture passages out of context … or maybe read their present context back on to Scripture … to support particular views. There is the prosperity “name and claim it” gospel that cherry picks from passages about faith and blessing. Another view finds free market exchange emanating from the Word … success in business comes close to being equated with spiritual maturity and receiving God’s blessing. Then there is Liberation theology with its roots in sociology and conflict theory (Marxian analysis.) In Mainline Protestantism, Scripture’s “economic” teachings are little more than soft-socialism baptized in theological language. Roman Catholic social teaching is one place where I think there has been some solid reflection on economic issues, although even here I question the way some economic issues are framed. But I suggest that there is something deeper than just poor interpretative frameworks.

READ HERE:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/11/economics-at-the-jesus-creed-m-8.html

 

 

John 9

 

1And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

2And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

3Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

4I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

6When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,

7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

8The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged?

9Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.

10Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?

11He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.

12Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.

 

13They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind.

14And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.

15Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see.

16Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.

17They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.

18But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight.

19And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see?

20His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind:

21But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.

22These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.

23Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him.

24Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner.

25He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

26Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes?

27He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples?

28Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses’ disciples.

29We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.

30The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes.

31Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.

32Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.

33If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.

34They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.

 

35Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?

36He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?

37And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.

38And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.

39And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

40And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?

41Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

 

 

Ezekiel 47: 1-12

1Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar.

2Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led me about the way without unto the utter gate by the way that looketh eastward; and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side.

3And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles.

4Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins.

5Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.

6And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river.

7Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.

8Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.

9And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.

10And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.

11But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.

12And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.

 

 

Matthew 7:24-27

 ²⁴Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

 ²⁵And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

 ²⁶And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

 ²⁷And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

ARTICLES

 

11/4/09 – The Evangelical Immune System Is Switched Off! by Orrel Steinkamp, The Plumbline, Vol. 14, No. 6, November/December – The current version of evangelicalism appears to be terminal.

Read here:

http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/orrel38.pdf

 

Emergent SAMIR SELMANOVIC on Finding God in all Religions

Read here:

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=132
Merton & Nouwen: Sacrificing Truth for Mystical Experiences

Read here:

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=104

 

The First and Final Lie: Self-deification

Read here:

http://www.thebereancall.org/node/8165

 

Discernment Ministry – A Biblical Defense

Read here:

http://www.svchapel.org/resources/articles/23-doctrine/638-discernment-ministry-a-biblical-defense

 

Book Review

10/27/09 – Riding The Third Wave by Jackie Pullinger – Reviewed by First Plumbline Apologetics

http://www.firstplumbline.net/html/jakiepullinger.html

 

 

 

The Cross and The Switchblade -1

On Breeding Spotted Mice – By A.W. Tozer

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LATELY CARRIED an interesting if somewhat depressing story out of London about a certain British peer who had died just a few days short of his eighty-ninth birthday.

 

Having been a man of means and position, it had presumably not been necessary for him to work for a living like the rest of us, so at the time of his death he had had about seventy adult years in which he was free to do whatever he wanted to do, to pursue any calling he wished or to work at anything he felt worthy of his considerable abilities.

 

And what had he chosen to do? Well, according to the story, he had “devoted his life to trying to breed the perfect spotted mouse.”

 

Now, I grant every man the right to breed spotted mice if he wants to and can get the cooperation of the mice, and I freely admit that it is his business and not mine. Not being a mouse lover (nor a mouse hater for that matter; I am just neutral about mice), I do not know but that a spotted mouse might be more useful and make a more affectionate pet than a common mouse colored mouse. But still I am troubled.

 

The mouse breeder in question was a lord, and I was born on a farm in the hill country of Pennsylvania, but since a cat can look at a king I suppose a farm boy can look at a lord, even look at him with disapproval if the circumstances warrant. Anyway, a man’s a man for a’ that, and I feel a certain kinship for every man born of woman; so I cannot but grieve for my brother beyond the seas.

 

Made in the image of God, equipped with awesome powers of mind and soul, called to dream immortal dreams and to think the long thoughts of eternity, he chooses the breeding of a spotted mouse as his reason for existing. Invited to walk with God on earth and to dwell at last with the saints and angels in the world above; called to serve his generation by the will of God, to press with holy vigor toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he dedicates his life to the spotted mousenot just evenings or holidays, mind you, but his entire life. Surely this is tragedy worthy of the mind of an Aeschylus or a Shakespeare.

 

Let us hope that the story is not true or that the news boys got it mixed up as they sometimes do; but even if the whole thing should prove to be a hoax, still it points up a stark human tragedy that is being enacted before our eyes daily, not by makebelieve play actors, but by real men and women who are the characters they portray. These should be concerned with sin and righteousness and judgment; they should be getting ready to die and to live again; but instead they spend their days breeding spotted mice.

 

If the spiritual view of the world is the correct one, as Christianity boldly asserts that it is, then for every one of us heaven is more important than earth and eternity more important than time. If Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; if He is what the glorious company of the apostles and the noble army of martyrs declared that He is; if the faith which the holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge is the true faith of God, then no man has any right to dedicate his life to anything that can burn or rust or rot or die. No man has any right to give himself completely to anyone but Christ nor to anything but prayer.

 

The man who does not know where he is is lost; the man who does not know why he was born is worse lost; the man who cannot find an object worthy of his true devotion is lost utterly; and by this description the human race is lost, and it is a part of our lostness that we do not know how lost we are. So we use up the few precious years allotted to us breeding spotted mice. Not the kind that scurry and squeak, maybe; but viewed in the light of eternity, are not most of our little human activities almost as meaningless?

 

One of the glories of the Christian gospel is its ability not only to deliver a man from sin but to orient him, to place him on a peak from which he can see yesterday and today in their relation to tomorrow. The truth cleanses his mind so that he can recognize things that matter and see time and space and kings and cabbages in their true perspective. The Spirit-illuminated Christian cannot be cheated. He knows the values of things; he will not bid on a rainbow nor make a down payment on a mirage; he will not, in short, devote his life to spotted mice.

 

Back of every wasted life is a bad philosophy, an erroneous conception of life’s worth and purpose. The man who believes that he was born to get all be can will spend his life trying to get it; and whatever he gets will be but a cage of spotted mice. The man who believes he was created to enjoy fleshly pleasures will devote himself to pleasure seeking; and if by a combination of favorable circumstances he manages to get a lot of fun out of life, his pleasures will all turn to ashes in his mouth at the last. He will find out too late that God made him too noble to be satisfied with those tawdry pleasures he had devoted his life to here under the sun.

 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.23.htm

Legacy of Evangelist Billy Graham Continues as he Marks 91st Birthday

Legacy of Evangelist Billy Graham Continues as he Marks 91st Birthday, Groundbreaking for Building Named in his Honor, Grandson to Preach in Georgia

CHARLOTTE, NC (ANS) — Evangelist Billy Graham will celebrate his 91st birthday on Saturday, Nov. 7, and is looking forward to visits over the weekend from several family members at his western North Carolina home to mark the occasion.

Read here:

http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2009/s09110023.htm

THE WEALTH OF THE CHILD OF GOD – by Watchman Nee

CHAPTER NINE

 

THE WEALTH OF THE CHILD OF GOD

 

THE sacrifice of Isaac is the believer’s deepest lesson. It puts to us very straightly the question, Is our hope and expectation still in God, or is it in God and the Isaac we are holding on to? Or, worse still, is our hope in our Isaac only? After all, only God can fulfil His own purpose. When I was without Isaac, I looked to God. With Isaac, I still look to God just the same.

 

Abraham had come not only into the land but into the heart of God. He had become God’s vessel, through whom God could do His work of recovery. This was no mere matter of justification by faith but of the man who was justified. God had secured the man He wanted.

 

Abraham’s experience is God’s standard in dealing with His people. Today God wants not only an Abraham but a corporate vessel. So Abraham’s experience must be that of each individual, not only as such but also as a member of one body. For us all, His purpose is that we should together be Abraham’s seed.

 

Ah, we may say, Abraham’s experience is wonderful, only I am no Abraham. In Genesis 22 Abraham shines. After all these years I’ve never shone! Abraham is God’s model vessel, certainly, but how can I ever arrive where Abraham did? God fulfilled His purpose in Abraham. Can He possibly do so in me?

 

Remember what we said at the beginning. God is not only the God of Abraham but also of Isaac and Jacob. This should serve to remind us at least that Abraham does not stand alone, complete and sufficient in himself as God’s vessel for the fulfilment of His purpose. Isaac and Jacob were also needed along with him. Moreover, if we are to take our part in that purpose, we must know not only the God of Abraham but also the God of Isaac and of Jacob. We must have the experience of these two also, and as we look at their experience we shall find our questions begin to be answered. Abraham is the standard, it is true, but between him and the kingdom of Israel there are these other two. The corporate vessel is secured through the witness of all three. When God is the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and when His people know Him as that, then the kingdom comes.

 

Abraham was the father par excellence. He had to learn to know God as Originator, but the peculiarity of God’s work upon him was that it made him original in more senses than one. He was a true forefather in that he was a pioneer. He was the first man in Scripture to forsake everything; to `cross over’ to Canaan and so be designated a Hebrew; to have intimate fellowship with God as man to man; to beget an heir at one hundred years of age; to reject his own natural son in favour -of God’s miraculous gift; and then to sacrifice that gift at God’s behest.

 

But if Abraham was the father, immediately we see Isaac as a figure of Christ the Son. No history so typifies Christ as does that of Isaac. Constituted the heir by divine promise, he was born, not after the flesh but after the spirit (Galatians 4: 29). Apart from Christ there was no other of whom this was said. Let us briefly recount some other ways in which Isaac may be a type of Christ. To Sarah, Isaac was Abraham’s only true son, the beloved (Hebrews 11. 17). Laid by his father on the altar, he was received back as from the dead to be to him the risen one. After Sarah herself died and her `age of grace’ was past, Isaac’s bride, a figure of the Church, was brought to him from a far country. Yet she came to him as the Church of God’s will, not brought in from without but born from within, for Rebekah and Isaac were of one blood, one family, as are Christ and His own. Moreover, Isaac really did occupy his inheritance. Abraham at one point went down into Egypt and Jacob returned to Mesopotamia, but Isaac was born, lived and died in Canaan. This is the Son who `is in heaven’, who never left His Father’s bosom.

 

So in remarkable detail Isaac is a type of Christ. But leaving aside his typical significance, we must look now at the practical lessons to be learned from his experience. His is in fact the most ordinary experience in the Old Testament. He was a man seemingly without distinctive character, and in this respect is just the opposite of Abraham. Abraham did many things that no one else had done. Isaac did nothing that another had not already done.

 

Ishmael mocked Isaac-and Isaac said nothing. He took no initiative. He followed his father to Moriah and there allowed himself to be laid on the altar-without uttering a word. What his father did, he accepted. He merely asked one question; no more.

 

Even about his own marriage he had nothing to say. He knew nothing of the woman, and was not even consulted by his father about her choice. From the human standpoint everything he did was passive, negative. To us he is the son `doing nothing of himself’ (John 5. 19.).

 

At sixty Isaac himself had two sons. Abraham had had to take action in respect of his children; he had had to cast out his eldest son. Isaac did nothing of the kind; nor was he asked to lay his son on the altar. Everything was difficult for Abraham; everything was straightforward for Isaac. He could not even sin with originality; his sin at Gerah was a replica of his father’s! Three wells were dug by Abraham; Isaac simply reopened them. When Abimelech went to see Abraham, Abraham rebuked him for damage done to the wells. When he went to make a covenant with Isaac, Isaac only asked him why his servants had done such damage; he gave him no rebuke.

 

In his old age Isaac at last did have his own ideas about blessing his sons. He wanted to bless Esau. But God would not let him do something his father had not done; he too had to bless the younger son! In the end, even the tomb in which Isaac was laid was the one provided by his father.

 

In a sense Isaac is the complement of Abraham. Abraham embodies God’s plan, God’s standard. Isaac represents God’s life, God’s power. To see Abraham by himself, without the help of Isaac, is hard for us. Many see God’s demands, and they cannot compass them, because they have not seen His provision. They see the standard, but not the life that satisfies that standard. Isaac gives us a picture of the life.

 

To Isaac Abraham gave all that he had (Genesis 24.36; 25. 5). Isaac did not have to labour, to toil, to spend time in order to get it. All was bestowed upon him. Abraham attained, through long trials; Isaac inherited, in a single outright gift. Of all that he received, nothing was his own work. He did not even have to travel to reach Canaan as his father did; he was born there.

 

So much for his relationship with his father. When we look at his relationship with God we find the same thing. The promise to Isaac in Genesis 26. 2-5 is exactly the same promise as is given to Abraham, and contains the words `I will establish the oath which I swear unto Abraham thy father’. There was nothing new in it that was not promised to Abraham already. And its fulfilment was stated to be `because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws’. Again when the Lord appears to Isaac at Beersheba, He speaks of Himself as `the God of Abraham thy father’ and assures him that `I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake’ (26. 24). All was bestowed upon Isaac because he was Abraham’s son.

 

This fact of bestowal and acceptance is the great characteristic of Isaac. The God of Isaac is God the Giver. He is the God who comes out to us. We must know Him in this way as well as knowing Him as Father. If we only know Him as the God of Abraham there is no approach to Him. As the God of Isaac He comes to us and gives us everything in His Son. None can go forward and attain to God’s purpose unless he knows how to receive in this way. Romans chapter 7 offers us a picture of the man who has not yet found the God of Isaac. He is for ever under the law, and cries constantly: `To will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not.’ He has not seen that everything is offered to him in Christ, nor how full that provision is. The secret is receiving, not doing. The way through is not by the exercise of the will but by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8. 2). We know what the God of Abraham wants-we can’t help knowing-but we don’t know how to get there until we have found the God of Isaac. Victory, life, salvation, all is bestowed, not attained. When you are born into a wealthy home, it is very difficult to be poor! You are rich; you were born that way.

 

We never worked for our salvation, gradually scaling the heights until we attained to it. The Lord sought and saved us. Victory over sin is the same; it is received, not worked for. Oh, may we learn to praise God that He has provided for us such bounty in Christ!

 

Peter says that we `have escaped’ from the corruption that is in the world (2 Peter z. 4). He does not say that we `are able to’ escape, or that we `hope to’ escape, but that we have already done so. This is the God of Isaac. What God has done, we receive and enjoy. We are not constantly waiting, hoping, anxiously seeking for it. We are born into the home; we have it all. Inheritance is ours.

 

Let us get quite clear what the life of the believer is. It is not: `from here to there’. It is: `from there to here’. It starts in God. As Paul says, it is the parents who lay up for the children and not the other way round (2 Corinthians 12. 14).

 

Some of us force ourselves to do things we don’t want to do and to live a life we cannot in fact live, and think that in making this effort we are being Christians. That is very far removed from what Isaac was. The Christian life is lived when I receive the life of Christ within me as a gift, to live by that life. It is the nature of the life of Christ not to love the world but to be distinct from it, and to value prayer and the Word and communion with God. These are not things I do naturally; by nature I have to force myself to do them.

 

But God has provided another nature, and He wants me to benefit from the provision He has made.

 

The only question Isaac asked was, `Where is the lamb? The answer is full of meaning: `God will provide himself the lamb.’ That is the life of Isaac. We ask, and the answer is always the same: `God himself will provide.’ So Abraham called the place of resurrection :Jehovah-jireh’. Everything that is demanded, God Himself gives: that is the experience of Isaac. In Abraham God sets up a standard; in Isaac He shows us His storehouse. Strength, life, grace from God, all are ours to receive that we may measure up to the divine standard of a vessel for testimony.

 

We have looked at Abraham and Isaac; we must look for a moment at Isaac and Jacob, for Isaac lies between the two. In the comparisons just now before us, we have seen what God is giving to us. But we cannot stay there; we must also ask what it is that God is securing in us. We know that Christ is all. But in us there is a rival to Christ, namely, our own strength of nature. That too must find its answer, and when we have dealt with Isaac, that answer will be the theme of our final chapters.

 

Isaac received everything, and by his very passivity sets forth God’s bountiful grace. Jacob lost everything, and in his trials exemplifies the rigors of God’s chastening hand. In Isaac God ministers to us the triumphant resurrection life of Christ. In Jacob we see the other side of the coin; for God is compelled, for Christ’s sake, to apply to us the discipline of the Spirit. The life of nature in us is being reduced progressively to its zero, that Christ may be fully displayed. God’s work in Jacob will in fact be to make room for the God of Isaac.

 

 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/nee/changedlikeness/cha9.htm

 

THE FACE OF GOD – By Watchman Nee

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE FACE OF GOD

 

There is one very striking peculiarity about the history of Jacob, namely, that God never preached to him, He only gave him promises.

 

Jacob was a man who stuck at nothing to accomplish his ends. What should we do with such a man? Surely at least we should exhort him a little, preach to him about his failings. Yet from beginning to end, God never once gave him one such word of rebuke or exhortation. Both Pharaoh and Abimelech reproved Abraham; Abimelech again rebuked Isaac; yet nothing like that happened to Jacob. But God worked. Without stopping to exhort or to explain, God disciplined him.

 

And God encouraged Jacob. The first time at Bethel God promised, `Behold, I am with thee.’ And He was! He led him. The natural strength cannot be changed by doctrine; we can be delivered from it only by God’s chastening, step by step, until it is broken. And if God did not stay with us in this, we should certainly never go through with it. Jacob never longed to make progress; he never wanted to be spiritual, or to follow the example of Abraham and Isaac. God Himself sought him out and stayed with him and dealt with him over those long years, until at last at Peniel, when Jacob had produced his masterpiece of selfexpression, God brought him to his knees and he yielded the mastery. God did every bit of it. We can well afford to trust the discipline of the Spirit.

 

We have God’s words in plenty, but we forget His discipline. We think that to hear sound doctrine is the only means of grace; but if we are His, the Spirit disciplines us all the time just as He did Jacob. He prepares for us a host of different circumstances just with this one object. Everything in our lives is directed by Him to this end, to bring us to the place of Israel. God is an acting God. He will never let us go. Everything the believer meets is measured to him by God. The chastening we experience is for our profit.

 

If we are His, then however bad material we are, God follows us. He is more tenacious than we are. We would need to be greater than God before we could prevent Him doing His work. While we are only men, natural men, God will have His way. While Jacob is there, however bad, God will pursue His goal of an Israel. Trust His tenaciousness, count on His invincibility. Look to Him, and in His time and His way, He will finish the work.

 

There is a further ground of encouragement. We do not have to know what work is needed, or what is going on, in order that God may do the work He has set Himself to do. True, the most pitiable people are those who are wrong and do not know it, for darkness is added to their wrong. But we may be the most pitiable people, and still God will take us in hand. Jacob, as we saw, was up against the most difficult situation in his life. His wives, his children, his possessions, himself-all things which were most precious to him, were in danger. Other people’s things had never mattered to him; now, however, it was his own that were at stake, so he made the most detailed and careful plan.

 

Jacob did not know that he was exposing the nerve-centre of his strength. Esau had been brought on to the scene again by God so that that strength of nature might be fully discovered and exposed. It is God who leads us to it, bringing about circumstances in which we discover ourselves.

 

The whole meaning of Peniel is here. Our natural life has a life principle, which ordinarily we do not recognize. God may take pains to point it out to us, but we do not see it at all until we come to a place like Jacob’s Mahanaim, when God brings into jeopardy the thing we have been most proud of. That pride is the thing God hates. The revelation of that natural strength kills what it reveals. Is there something we secretly boast of? Something we are very careful of because it represents Our greatest achievement, the best feature of ourselves? When God touches that, we are too ashamed to live. God’s touch brings not only weakness but shame.

 

Peniel is `the face of God’. `I have seen God face to face,’ said Jacob, `and my life is preserved’ (32. 30). God uses light to expose to us the true situation, and that is what brings us down to the ground. The light exposes what is the true spring and motive of our life. God in mercy must bring us there, where we see that all we have boasted of and gloried in is shame.

 

Remember, God is dealing with what we really are by nature, and at Peniel He begins His work. For there, in the light of God, we must be as we are, we cannot pretend. Pretence is not Christianity. We may very much want to be different, but what we are by nature, we are. Nothing hinders God more than pretending it is otherwise. The more `humble’ some people are, the more one wishes they would show a little pride, because that would give God a chance to get on with the work. For it is never our pretence, but only God’s touch that brings about the transformation. If the work is to be done by me, it will get me nowhere. From being `natural’ I shall merely become unnatural. But if the work is God’s work, the change wrought by Him has a definite purpose and direction. From Jacob He changes us to Israel.

 

Many of us do not know what has happened at Peniel until later on. We don’t know quite how or when it happened, but things are inconvenient; it hurts to run! It is the peculiarity of the touch of God that we cannot now do the things we used to like doing. In speech, for example, we used to be confident, but now we are hesitant and uncomfortable. With Paul we say, `I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power’ (I Corinthians 2. 3-4). We go and we serve God, and we speak because God wants the task done, and not because, as once we did, we find enjoyment or gratification or comfort in doing it. We shall do the work, but fundamentally it will be God who does it, and not us.

 

Peniel is God’s new start; it is not perfection. There for the first time Jacob was named Israel; yet after that he was still called Jacob very often. There was much that lacked in him, which may be the reason why God did not tell him His own Name there. Peniel is a turning point. Abraham’s road had led to Shechem and on from there to Bethel and Hebron. These, as we have seen, were places characteristic of the land. It was after Peniel that God led Jacob over Abraham’s road.

 

Yet even after Peniel Jacob went on with his plans. If we know ourselves, we shall not blame him. To change in a night is not an earthly thing, it requires the work of heaven; but the fact is that after Peniel Jacob’s strength had gone. We easily call a halt to Jacob, but we do not so easily stop ourselves. Let us not interpret the Bible by theory, but see it in the light of experience. Yes, Jacob went right on pursuing the course he had been following before God met him.

 

When he met Esau, he discovered that he had wasted his time! ‘Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him’ (33. 4). All the crafty and calculating preparation had been to no purpose. Esau was ready to be reconciled.

 

It is good to notice the conversation that follows. `And Esau said, I have enough; my brother, let that thou hast be thine. And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present at my hand: forasmuch as I have seen thy face, as one seeth the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me’ (33. 9-10). Jacob’s form of address to his brother may seem unduly flattering, but we should not regard this as simply a bit more of Jacob’s scheming, however much there may have been of pretence in his humility. There was fact here also. `I have seen thy face as one that seeth the face of God.’ Those we have wronged will always represent God to us. When we meet them, we meet God; and we are judged, unless the thing is settled. How deep were the lessons God was teaching Jacob through this encounter with Esau.

 

`So Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him a house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram; and encamped before the city. And he bought the parcel of ground, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of money. And he erected there an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel’ (33. 16-20). Jacob did now what neither Abraham nor Isaac had done: he built a house and he bought land. He left his tent! But he also built an altar, to God, the God of Israel. He was not yet perfect, had not yet reached Bethel; and whereas God had set his fathers in tents, he had built a house. Yet he had advanced. There was trouble in Shechem. God would not leave him at peace, but let him meet very bad trouble (chapter 34) which would never have occurred had he not settled in Shechem. His very name became offensive to the inhabitants, and his whole household was put into jeopardy.

 

Then at last Jacob was sent by God to Bethel. `And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother’ (35. 1). There at Bethel God completed His work, for nothing could touch Jacob’s heart like Bethel. It was the place where his long experience had begun.

 

Bethel is God’s house, the place where divine power is manifested through the Body of Christ. It is a place into which we dare not bring anything that is not of God. `Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went’ (35. 2-3).

 

As we saw in the life of Abraham, Shechem represents strength, the strength of Christ with us to deal with everything. That strength is ours to prepare us for entering into God’s house; for when we arrive there, holiness will not be merely personal but corporate. In the Body of Christ, all is of God.

 

`And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el’, that is, the God of Bethel. At Shechem He was the God of Israel; now He is the God of Bethel. Jacob had moved on from individualism to relatedness in the Body. God wanted a house, a people, for a vessel. He cannot fulfil His purpose without a corporate witness. In the Church God is the God of Bethel, not just my God.

 

`And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddanaram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel’ (35. 9-10). God appeared, and not in a dream this time. He came at Bethel to confirm and complete what Peniel had begun. Jacob was no longer the rascal, the usurper-he was God’s prince. That which begins when we see the light of God is completed in the house of God.

 

At Bethel God addressed Jacob with the words, `I am God Almighty.’ It was the same address that He had used to Abraham. `I am no longer concerned merely to expose your helplessness, I am here to affirm my might.’ God can speak like this to Jacob because now He has a vessel according to His heart.

 

Again Jacob set up a pillar at Bethel (5. 14) and this time he did something he did not do before: he poured over it a drink offering, typifying joy. The first time he came to this place it was `a dreadful place’ and he only feared. Now he rejoiced. And now the way was opened for him to go forward to Hebron.

 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/nee/changedlikeness/cha15.htm

Who is “God”?

David North

Christians are human beings too. We like security and control just like everyone and we want to know why things in life happen and understand what’s going on. We especially want this when thiings are trying and we aren’t sure why. I’m a Christian and I don’t understand it all either…but there is no need to. AS followers of Christ, We are given understanding as we need it. In understanding God, we have to realize first that we don’t. When we try to imagine him as just a human with God-like powers or as some superbeing with human-like qualities we miss the truth. God is unique–there is nothing and no one else like him. He states that his ways are higher than ours and beyond our understanding…that’s Him describing the raw essence of what He is…more than we are capable of comprehending. Before we were created, He existed.

 

Read here:

http://worldstrider.blogspot.com/2009/11/who-is-god.html

 

[UPDATED] Why Would This Man Try to Burn Down His Beloved Church?

 

UPDATED WITH COMMENT FROM A CHURCH OFFICIAL . . .

The bizarre case of the Huntington Beach man charged with trying to burn down Orange County Church of Christ not one, two, three but four times (!) just keeps getting bizarrer.

 

Read here:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/a-clockwork-orange/izad-chavoshan/

Me worship for the “me” church

Weight of the World – Infographics

Approximately two thirds of the United States’ adult population is overweight.

Distribution of calories around the world.

 

Read here:

http://awesome.good.is//transparency/web/0911/flat.html

Babies ‘cry in mother’s tongue’

German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents’ accents while still in the womb.

Read here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8346058.stm

Can You Smell Me Now? A Guide to the Human Body’s Telltale Emissions

You make an impression. Not personally — who cares about that? But your body emits a thermal signature. Your breathing is loud. You smell (sorry). Your brain crackles with electricity. And it’s all detectable. That’s good news if you want to be rescued from a collapsed building and bad news if you’re planting an IED. At least you’re leaving a mark on the world.

 

Read here:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/st_infoporn/

The House Not Made With Hands -by T. Austin-Sparks

Work in the Groaning Creation
by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Chapter 5 – The House Not Made With Hands

 

 

“Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:26-28).

 

There is a sense in which those three verses summarize this letter, and indicate precisely the object of the letter. The statement about the ‘things which can be shaken’ covers the whole ground of the typology and earthly representation of heavenly things in the Mosaic system. The ‘things which cannot be shaken’ are the spiritual meaning of those things, that to which they point and embody as abiding spiritual and heavenly realities. The Apostle is saying that a shaking is about to take place, and the result of that shaking will be that all those things will be displaced, upset and overturned, and that system will be disintegrated.

 

That, to some extent, fixes the time of the writing of this letter as being prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. The Temple and all its service was going on at the time, but the writer knew that ere long that whole system would be shaken to its foundation and collapse, and would be broken to pieces. That took place shortly after with the destruction of Jerusalem. The probability is that this letter was written about the year A.D. 64, and the destruction of Jerusalem took place in the year A.D. 70. These very Jewish believers to whom this letter was written probably lived to that day and saw the fulfilment of this prophecy. As they were inclined to go back from Christ, in all the spiritual fullness which He embodied, to the outward, historical, traditional system, the Apostle wrote this letter to save them from the awful disaster to their faith which would inevitably take place if they were solely bound up with that system and had no more. He wrote to woo them from the transient and the passing to the abiding and the permanent, and to bring them into the things which CANNOT be shaken.

 

You go through the letter and mark each step, right from the first chapter, as to what can be shaken and what cannot be shaken. The eternal sonship of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be shaken. Our sonship in Him cannot be shaken. Is it the blood of the covenant? It is the Blood of the EVERLASTING covenant, and it cannot be shaken! Is it the Priesthood of the Lord Jesus? It is after the order of Melchizedek; not merely after the order of Aaron, which passes, but after the power of an endless life, which cannot be shaken! Whatever there is in this letter has two sides. There is the outward form used to express something, and that will pass. And then there is the inward thing being expressed, and that will not pass. So the call is to be bound up with the unshakable things, the eternal things and the heavenly things which are always the spiritual things, as differing from the temporal things.

 

The types represented the earthly, physical body of the Lord Jesus before the Cross and the resurrection. Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians that He was “found in fashion as a man”, and we know that that word ‘fashion’ in the Greek means something which is passing. The Greek word ’schema’ is something which is transient, which does not come to stay. It is the same word that Paul uses at the beginning of Romans 12: “Be not fashioned according to this world”, this age. The fashion of this age passes so quickly. “He was found in fashion as a man”, that is, He took a form which was not His permanent form. His permanent form is found after the resurrection, when He had a body of humanity, but different from the form, the fashion, of His pre-crucifixion body.

 

That body concealed an eternal, spiritual reality, and no one was able to discern or perceive that inward, eternal, spiritual reality of the Person of Christ apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God… Blessed art thou, Simon… flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee but my Father which is in heaven.” We know how blind the religious people of His day were as to who He was. That body, that fashion, concealed, hid an eternal, spiritual reality. That is “the mystery”, as Paul calls it. It is that which was associated with the ark of the covenant, the mystic secret of God, into which the Philistines wanted to peer, and which they were so anxious to possess, for when the ark came into a situation it represented some power. It was the secret of Israel’s glory, and they were always seeking to get hold of the secret of Israel’s glory. God was there. That ark was a type of Christ, but it is an ark of acacia wood – a humanity. It is overlaid with gold, it is true, which means that Deity is associated with it, but its purpose, its meaning, is not in the combination of those materials – wood and gold – but in the Spirit that is embodied in that. That was the mystery of Christ.

 

The disciples were wont to regard that earthly body as the essential and indispensable thing. Whenever the Lord Jesus referred to His Cross or to His going away, a cloud came over them, and they became overwhelmed with a sense of foreboding, almost of despair. They were greatly troubled. To them the physical presence of the Lord Jesus was essential, indispensable. If He went away, that represented the losing of Him. It was in that way that the Jews, the Hebrews, regarded the typical system. That Mosaic order and system were their very being; they were bound up with them.

 

In relation to the body of Christ which was prepared for Him to fulfil an eternal purpose, and also in the whole Jewish, or Mosaic, system of types, which was provided as a means to an end, the fashion had to be broken, shattered, in order to bring the reality out. It is the difference between the flesh and the spirit – not merely the flesh in its evil sense now, but simply the natural life, and the spiritual. One has to be broken to make way for the other. The way into the ‘naos’, the very presence of God, was through the sundered flesh of Christ, just as the way into the Most Holy Place, the very Sanctuary, was through the veil of the Temple or the Tabernacle. But that way was not open to all until it was rent from top to bottom, and the veil of the Temple, or the Tabernacle, was that upon which everything else hung. All was gathered up into it. There was God’s side, and there was man’s side, represented in that veil, and the whole system had its focal point in the veil. The priests, as representing all the people, could go as far as that veil, but they could go no further, and that means that the people could go no further. God was on the other side of that, and He came, as it were, to that veil, but there was no way through. Once every year the High Priest went in, but there was no such thing for abiding fellowship or continuous union. When God split that veil from top to bottom He opened the way for all right into His own presence.

 

In the flesh of the Lord Jesus there was the meeting place of God and man. On the one side – God; on the other side – man. But there was the veil, and we know quite well how that veil did hang between them. When the Lord Jesus went to the Cross and THAT BODY was broken, then the innermost secret of His Person was revealed – GOD was manifest. That is why you must have Christ crucified in order to know the wisdom and the power of God. You never get through to know the power of God except by Christ crucified.

 

This letter to the Hebrews says that the shattering of this whole typical system is to make way for the spiritual reality to become predominant, just as the breaking of that body of Christ led to the yielding up of the eternal heavenly secret of His Person. It will always be so. Not only is it true in relation to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year A.D. 70, but it will be true again at the end, when all that is merely external in representation will be shaken, broken, and proved to be temporary, transient, imperfect, and never leading through to the reality. When that happens, those whose lives are bound up with it will go with it. So there is some point in our stressing the necessity for an apprehension of what is heavenly and what is spiritual, and our coming into it.

 

These words are introductory and lead to something quite concrete. We have said that this shaking relates to an earthly system of representation and types. That, then, leads on to the bringing into view of the heavenly system. (System is not a wrong word. God is systematic. He is a God of order and has arranged this universe as a marvellous system. The evil is in making what is earthly take the place of what it is only intended to represent.) There is a counterpart of all that is in this letter. The thing that is brought in with this letter – not discussed as such, but mentioned and taken very largely for granted – is what comes in with chapter 3, verses 3 to 6.

 

It is assumed in this letter that the House of God is represented by everything here. It seems to come, in so far as the phrase itself is concerned, in quite a casual way, which implies that it is taken for granted. It is not something detached or unrelated. It is the thing which gathers up everything else. All that is taking place here is taking place in the House of God. It begins with the “Son”; it goes on with the “sons”, the “brethren”, the “children”; then the priestly ministry in the House; and before it closes it will speak about the Father’s discipline in the House, the child-training of the sons; and the very subject of the inheritance and heirship is something which has to do with the House, the family, the household. The bare mention of the House of God does not suggest another subject, but it suggests the inclusiveness of everything here in the House. That House of God is the heavenly system of which the house of Israel was but a type, a foreshadowing.

 

THE NECESSITY FOR THE HOUSE OF GOD

 

It is necessary to all the Lord’s purposes which are gathered up into that which we have been considering – the bringing of children unto the full meaning of sonship – to have the House, for all that development takes place in, and because of, the House of the Lord. Wherever you fail to get that which truly represents the House of the Lord, and which is in accordance with the spiritual House of God, you will get immaturity.

 

This House of God, fully constituted, is essential to spiritual maturity, and if you have not got it you find that Christians are immature. In what way is it essential? To begin with, there is nothing like a properly, spiritually ordered House for spiritual training. All the lessons that you need to learn can be learned in a properly ordered assembly, and the ordered assembly provides the background for the learning of those lessons. There are spiritual laws which govern the House of God, laws of relationships, laws of position, laws which the Lord enforces and demands shall be observed, which take away from us all our independence, and which definitely hold us into mutual responsibility. There is all the difference between a spiritual assembly as an organism, and the congregation. A congregation is a company of units. They come and go, and may do so for years, for decades, yet responsibility for one another spiritually never arises. But in a spiritually ordered and governed assembly the whole question and law of mutual responsibility for the spiritual lives of one another is demanded, is incumbent, is essential. Everything is relative. In that organism, if one member suffers all the members suffer, so very closely related spiritually are the members. In that organism there is no such thing as independence of action for life. The whole goes with the part, and the part demands the whole. In so far as that law breaks down, then the Testimony breaks down, the life breaks down, and God does not get what He is after, that is, spiritual maturity.

 

Read the letter to the Ephesians, the Colossian letter and the Corinthian letter, and you will see that that is running strongly through the whole, and wherever that law is not observed there is immaturity. In Corinth it was: “I am of Paul”, “I am of Apollos”, “I am of Peter”. That is sectionalism, departmentalism, independence, detachment, fragmentary-ness, and the fruit is immaturity. The true spiritual fellowship is essential to spiritual growth, to maturity, and that is what is meant spiritually by the House of God.

 

It is there that we get our training. If you come under the government of the Holy Spirit you immediately are related by that one Spirit – by whom we are all baptized into one Body – and are made responsible for other believers. If something comes up between you and other believers with whom the Holy Spirit has linked you spiritually, you cannot snap your fingers and say: ‘Let them get on with it! I go my way and they can go their way.’ The Holy Ghost sees to it that you cannot get on! It is like the dislocation of a joint in your physical body. You will be suffering in your soul and in your spirit. There will be an ache, and you will know that you have not got freedom of action and restfulness of heart. There will be something all the time which is working against the free, spontaneous expression of your spiritual life. This thing will be there all the time. What has happened? The Holy Ghost is witnessing against that and life is arrested. Why? Because of the fact that the law of the House of God has been violated. When you come into that realm and know that you are getting some training, you are learning that it is not only necessary to have fellowship and maintain fellowship, but that increase of spiritual life is that way, and increase of spiritual power is that way, that the Body builds itself up in love that way, that prayer becomes mighty that way, testimony becomes effectual that way, and everything for the Lord’s ultimate purpose depends upon that. Unless you recognize that, all these things are weakened and destroyed. And so the Lord brings saints together and relates them in groups, smaller or larger, for the spiritual purpose of representing His House, and in order that the spiritual laws of the House should operate there. It is so different from organizing a ‘church’, and having a ‘church’ roll and ‘church’ services. It is something which is a spiritual order, and a representation of a whole heavenly system, or, rather, the heavenly system itself in operation. Can you see the difference between the Body of Christ and what is called ‘the church’ today? One is an organized system; the other is a spiritual, living organism. The one will pass; the other is eternal, indestructible, heavenly, spiritual. The House of God is essential.

 

The House of God represents an order. Just as truly and fully as Israel’s life was ordered, so is the House of God. If you read the book of Numbers you get but the type and representation of the House of God as ordered. Then you look into the New Testament and you will find the spiritual principles which are embodied in the book of Numbers. You do not organize the Church according to the book of Numbers, but you find that the Holy Ghost orders the Church according to the book of Numbers.

 

You will have representative members. In the book of Numbers they are princes and heads of fathers’ houses. Carry that into the New Testament and what does that mean? It means men who have been brought to a place of spiritual wealth and spiritual dignity in the House of God, and can take responsibility. Moses (as God, mark you: “Thou shalt be to him – Aaron – as God” – Exodus 4:16) there at the door, and then all the fathers’ houses gathered representatively at that door in these princes and these heads of fathers’ houses, and God spoke from that door to all the households through these representative members.

 

Princeliness and headship are spiritual principles. Princeliness speaks of wealth and dignity. Headship speaks of authority and government. In the New Testament the ministry is the ministry of those who already have spiritual wealth and spiritual dignity, and have therefore, by spiritual maturity, come to a place of SPIRITUAL (not ecclesiastical) authority. They are not appointed officially, for you can never appoint people to be full of dignity, nor appoint anyone to spiritual wealth by a formal act.

 

That is a part of the heavenly order, and God takes great pains, when He gets things into His own hands, to see that that is how things are. The Lord is very jealous for princeliness. His people must be able to look up to those who represent the Lord’s higher interests amongst them as their overseers, their leaders. That is a household thing, a Temple thing, a thing which is to have its expression amongst the Lord’s people corporately, and a thing which means strength, growth and development. It is a great thing for young Christians to have had the advantage of having seen princeliness in their leaders, when those leaders were under provocation, were in suffering, affliction and trial, and to have seen the wonderful grace, graciousness, steadiness and dignity of the Holy Spirit, of THE PRINCE HIMSELF, reproduced in them. There is no small significance associated with that title of the Lord Jesus: “A PRINCE and a Saviour.” Watch Him and see the princeliness! That, by the Holy Spirit, is reproduced in the House of God for the good of the House. It is not enough that there should be only one prince in a household. The Lord wants to develop that as a spiritual thing in all the members of the household – to develop spiritual responsibility. Responsibility only comes to those of spiritual means and spiritual dignity; otherwise it is merely official and will lack something.

 

The order of God’s House is many sided. There are the princes of fathers’ houses; there are priests, and Levites, and much more; all signifying the Divine, the heavenly system.

 

If only the Lord’s people would recognize more that they are responsible for one another, there would be development and maturity. That is too long delayed so often. You remember the word which seems to touch this aspect of things most directly, from Ephesians 4: “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto (or amongst) men… and he gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ.” That passage has been grievously mutilated by words being put in which are not there: “He gave some TO BE apostles.” The word is: “He gave some apostles”, that is, amongst men He gave them apostles, pastors and teachers. What did He give them for? For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry. If you put a break between those two sentences you upset the sense. It does not say or mean that He gave them for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the Body of Christ. It says that He gave them for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry. Leave the responsibility with those gifts, and the building up will not take place. It is only when the saints come into the work of the ministry that the building up takes place. When the saints are growing, being perfected, and taking up the work of ministry, the Body grows. If you use a definite article there and say: ‘For the perfecting of the saints for the work of THE ministry’, you are in danger of making THE MINISTRY something apart from everything else. It is “…the work of ministering”. The ministry is a general thing amongst the saints. All the saints have to be in the ministry, and it is only as they are in it that the Body is built up. Are you in the ministry? Are you leaving the ministry with the people whom you call ‘the ministers’? If so, the Body is being deprived of something. If you are growing, in the sense of that word “being perfected”, that is simply ‘for the making complete of the saints’. If you are being made complete progressively, then that ought to be expressing itself in ministry, and that will result in the building up of the Body of Christ.

 

You see how the order of God’s House is necessary to God’s end; how the House is necessary because it embodies an order which is fruitful in the purpose of God.

 

 http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/001143.html

 

 

 

 

Hubble’s New Camera Delivers Another Stunner

 

The Hubble Space Telescope’s new camera is returning incredibly detailed, stunning images of space. This close-up view of an area near the core of the iconic Southern Pinwheel galaxy, or M83, shows very rapid star birth.

 

Read / view photos here:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/hubble-m83-pinwheel/

‘Life… Promised Before Times Eternal’ – by T. Austin-Sparks

 

The Holy Spirit’s Biography of Christ
by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Chapter 2 – ‘Life… Promised Before Times Eternal’

 

 

Our basic passage for these messages is 2 Corinthians 3:3: “…being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh“.

We have seen that the Holy Spirit is writing a spiritual life of the Lord Jesus in the hearts of believers, and we proceed now with this spiritual biography.

 

THE BEGINNING OF THE BIOGRAPHY

 

When a biography is being written of some important person, we always want to know their beginning – something about their birth, their home and their country. That is very important to us where the Lord Jesus is concerned, for what we are trying to see is that what was true of Him the Holy Spirit is seeking to make true in us. His beginning has to be our beginning; His home has to be our home; His country must be our country. All that was true of Him at the beginning has to be made true of us, that is, in a spiritual way.

 

Now, when we open our New Testament, we have the biography of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus in three of the Gospels, and two of those Gospels tell us of His earthly beginning and birth. They give us His genealogy, tracing Him right back to the beginning of man on the earth. The third Gospel gives us the beginning of His ministry, but has nothing to say about Bethlehem, nor His earthly mother, nor His home. It just begins with the ministry of the Lord Jesus, when He was thirty years of age. But the fourth Gospel ignores all that. It has nothing to say about Bethlehem, nor about Nazareth. It says nothing about David, nor Adam, but just leaps right back over all earthly history and takes us into eternity before time was. You know that I am speaking about the Gospel by John, which begins with that dateless time before the world was, and shows us that the Sonship of the Lord Jesus was not a thing of time only, but that it was eternal and supernatural, and not natural. John describes it in this way (and he includes us with the Lord Jesus in this matter): “…which were born, not of bloods (that is, the blood of Joseph and Mary), nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Born of God! When was the Lord Jesus born of God? Not at Bethlehem only, but away back there before time was. And the wonderful thing is this: that the deepest truth in the life of a child of God is that he or she is not a child of time, but a child of eternity, born from above – not in Bethlehem, nor in Switzerland, nor England, nor Germany, nor in any other place here on this earth – but born from above. That is a supernatural act of the Spirit of God.

 

What does it mean to be born? It is to receive life. If, then, we are born from above; if ours is a supernatural birth, then the link with the Lord Jesus is the link of eternal life.

 

We must get hold of this! You may think that when you were born again it was in some place that you can mention, but that is only something to do with this earth. You were not really born again on this earth. You were born where the Lord Jesus was born. You were not really born on any date which you can mention in the earthly calendar. You were born in eternity. Your home is not here at all. Your home is outside of this world and outside of time. In this matter we, like the Lord Jesus, are born with eternal life.

 

This is a very wonderful thing. If the Bible is true, it is a very wonderful book. If Christianity is true, it is a very wonderful thing. We are so familiar with these things about Christianity that we have lost something of the wonder of it all. I think we need to sit down with our Christianity again and really think about it in this way: the Holy Spirit is reproducing what was true of the Lord Jesus in us, and the beginning of His history and the beginning of our history is in eternity.

You ought to look up all those references to “before the world was”, “before times eternal”, and see us in the mind of God away back there! “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29), and the first thing in that image is the eternal life which is in Him. So John begins his Gospel with: “In him was life” (John 1:4), and later in that same Gospel Jesus will say: “I am come that they may have life” (John 10:10). In both of those statements it is taken for granted that no one outside of Jesus Christ has that life. If they already had life why should He come from heaven in order that they should have it?

 

This is very elementary, I know, but we have not got very far yet. This is the beginning of the biography of Jesus Christ which is being written by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers. Of course, it is very simple when you come to think about it. It is very wonderful, very profound, but very simple, for the very first thing that a newly born again child of God realizes is that something has happened which makes him know that he does not belong here any longer. He has a new home, a new nativity, a new genealogy, and it goes – not back to Adam. Thank God for that! – but back, past Adam, into the eternity of Jesus Christ. You understand that I am not talking about the deity of Jesus Christ, but about His Sonship, and I said before that that Sonship relates to humanity. I am not going to argue that out now, but the purpose of God in creating man was to bring Himself into the relationship of Father and children, and by childhood to sonship. That is another thing I am not going to argue about! I think that will come out as we go on.

 

So we begin the biography in eternity. I wonder if you are aware of that! We have a hymn which says:
“I am a stranger here, within a foreign land,
My home is far away, upon a golden strand.”

 

As we go on our life-journey we do find that we are getting further and further away from our natural birth, further and further away from this world, and we are becoming more conscious of our heavenly relationship.

 

ETERNAL LIFE THE GOVERNING FACTOR

 

I want to look at two or three fragments of Scripture:

 

“For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass the judgement came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life” (Romans 5:17,18).

 

“…in hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal” (Titus 1:2). That life, then, links us with what is eternal.

 

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:1).

 

Now I want to say one or two quite important things at this point. This that is called eternal life is the factor which determines everything in history and destiny. Not religion, nor ritual, nor orthodoxy, but life determines history and human destiny. It governs everything. The Bible is God’s Book of world history and human destiny, and it is wonderful how universal the Bible is. It comprehends the whole human race, it governs the destiny of all the nations which make up the human race, and it contains the principles of destiny. And the centre of the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is this that is called eternal life. It is the all-governing factor.

 

Life determines whether God is present or not. The question, down to the smallest detail, is a question of life. Begin with the individual and the individual’s personal experiences. If we understood rightly we should know that this matter of life is governing our personal experiences. We are individually involved in this great governing matter of life, and that determines whether God is with us. The same is true of any company of God’s people, or any company of religious people. The thing that determines whether God is there is this matter of life. God is the source of life, and He cannot be present and life not be there. That, surely, is a very searching thing for our assemblies! Thus, in every sphere, this question of life governs.

 

Now we are going to look at the Bible along three lines. The earthly life of the Lord Jesus was divided into three sections, and each one of those sections has to be repeated in the life of the believer. First, there was His birth and infancy; secondly, His childhood; and, thirdly, His manhood. These are three distinct sections in the biography of Jesus Christ, and the whole Bible is divided into those three main sections. The issue in each of the sections is life.

 

BABYHOOD

The first section is what we call the time of the antediluvians, that is, the people before the Flood, and the great antediluvians were Abel, Enoch and Noah. That was the infancy of the people of God, of the Divine biography which was being written by the Holy Spirit. That infancy is marked by very simple things, as one would expect. We do not expect very much when we are dealing with babies, and here we have, in that particular period, the babyhood of the people of God.

 

One simple thing governed the babyhood of the race, and it is the characteristic of all spiritual babyhood. In doctrine we call it ‘Justification by Faith’. I am afraid I am rather tired of that phrase, for it sounds so theological! Justification by faith is the mark of spiritual infancy, the beginning of spiritual history, but I think some of the music has gone from that phrase. What is justification? Another word used is, as you know, righteousness. But what is righteousness by faith? I love a certain translation, which translates that word ‘righteousness’, or justification, like this: ‘Right standing with God.’ Is that not lovely? ‘Being in right standing with God.’ Is not that what the whole world is craving for? Is that not what the whole human race longs for? Is that not what we all desire more than anything else? God, being what He is, so perfect, so holy, so particular, is it possible that you and I, being what we are, should be in right standing with Him?

 

You know, in business that is a very important thing. In the commercial world, if one business is asked to do something for another, they look at their books to see what transactions they have had with them before, and they say: ‘Are they in right standing with us? Have they paid all their accounts? Are they in our debt’? Are they on good terms with us? Are we quite satisfied with them? Can we trust them? Can we commit our business to them?’ It all depends upon whether they are in right standing or not.

 

That is how it is between humanity and God. So far as humanity is concerned, God may very well ask: ‘Are they in right standing with us? Are they in debt to us? Have they been right in their business transactions?’ That is all gathered up into one word, so far as God is concerned: ‘Are they in the Lord Jesus? If they are it is all right. All the debts are paid and all the business is clean. We can go on with them. We can commit our interests to them.’ That is right standing with God, justification by faith, righteousness by faith. Now you notice what Paul said in that passage in the Letter to the Romans which we read. What is the basis of the New Testament? Life because of right standing with God. That is wonderful! Can it be true? Brother, sister, worried to death about yourself and how God looks at you, worried because you think that God looks at you as you look at yourself, here is this wonderful word which is the beginning! The antediluvian just received life on the basis of right standing with God. That is all!

 

What about Abel? Do you think that he was a perfect man? But the whole of Abel’s life is gathered up into one thing: he believed God, and he knew that he was in right standing with God. (Hebrews 11:4.)

 

What shall we say about Enoch? I think he was a very wonderful person. If you read the chapter in Genesis where Enoch is mentioned you find that it is all about people who are dying because of sin. This one lived so many years and died, that one lived so many years and died, and you are ready to go on with the whole miserable story – but it is interrupted. It just says, in Genesis 5:24: “Enoch walked with God – he was in right standing with God – and he was not, for God took him.” Then you go back to more of the miserable story, until you come to Noah.

 

The whole earth was full of iniquity. The heart of every man was evil, but there was one man and his family which stood on one ground only. Noah, says Peter, was a “preacher of righteousness” – a preacher of right standing with God. The whole world was not in right standing with God, so it had to die, but Noah and his family, who were in right standing with God, were saved from death and from judgment.

 

Did I say that this was infancy? I think there are a great many Christians who have not got further than infancy yet! However, it is a great thing to have got that far!

 

The Corinthians had not got beyond Noah, for Paul said that they were still infants. They were the Lord’s, because they had apprehended the truth of justification by faith, but the biography stopped at that chapter. They were still in infancy long after they should have gone on into the next chapter.

 

Do you see the point that I am trying to make? It is that God has ordained the whole history of humanity upon this basis of life, and the beginning of it is on the ground of right standing with God.

 

CHILDHOOD

 

The second stage in the life of the Lord Jesus on this earth was His childhood, His boyhood. We have not a great deal about His boyhood in the New Testament. There are only one or two things said about it, but it was a long period, and we cannot believe that it was an empty period. It does say that He “grew in stature, and in grace with God and men” (Luke 2:52). He grew in right standing with God.

 

The second period of the spiritual biography of Jesus Christ is much fuller than that, indeed, it occupies practically all the rest of the New Testament, for it is the period between being born and being perfected. It states that He “was made perfect” (Hebrews 5:9). What does that mean? It may create a problem for you in that He who was without sin, whom we think of as being perfect, should have to be MADE perfect, but, of course, our idea of the word ‘perfect’ is not the New Testament idea. The New Testament meaning of the word ‘perfect’ is ‘being made full, or complete’. While for us it may mean being made different in nature, it was not that with Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit was working upon that which was not yet complete to make it complete.

 

I wonder if I am going to get into trouble over what I am going to say now! I am going to ask those of you who have been saved for, say, sixty years: ‘Are you better in yourself today than you were in the beginning?’ I have been saved for sixty years and I think I am a great deal worse today than I was when I was saved! Does that sound terrible? But you know what I mean – I am no more perfect today than I was sixty years ago. If you are speaking about my human nature, what I am as a child of Adam, well, old Adam is as troublesome to me today as ever he was! And yet, something is happening in us. I sometimes say: ‘Well, I may be pretty bad today, but the Lord alone knows what I would have been if He had not saved me!’

 

This is the period from infancy to manhood. I believe that the Lord Jesus had many a temptation and many a trial during those thirty years. We just have a little glimpse of his home life, in that He had some brothers and sisters, and, you know, brothers and sisters can really put you on the spot! I had some brothers and sisters and I was not the eldest of the family! So they were often a very big trial to me. Jesus had some brothers and sisters and we are told that His brothers did not believe in Him. It is not easy when people in your own family do not believe in you. ‘Oh, he thinks he is somebody! He has a lot of strange ideas, but we will knock all that out of him!’ Is that not the way they talk? Jesus was not without those difficulties and trials, and that lasted for thirty years. I do not know how much Mary told her other sons and daughters about Jesus, or whether she still kept it all in her heart, but they could see that He was different, and that was enough to provoke opposition.

 

Well, I need not say more. The period of boyhood was a period of discipline, a period of learning, a period of education. The Old Testament has that period and it is quite a long one, for it is the period of the Patriarchs.

 

Who are the Patriarchs? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. Do you not see what a period of education that was? God had these men in His school and He was teaching them the laws of Divine life. Visit Abraham at school and see what he is learning about the laws of Divine life! Was Isaac at school? Was he learning the great laws of Divine life? Let me put that in another way. Was Isaac being taught the principles of resurrection life? You know, we have some wrong ideas about these men, and we often think that Isaac was a little boy and Abraham could pick him up and put him on the altar. From our standpoint he was a grown man at that stage, not even a teenager. He had grown to have a will, a mind and feelings of his own, and he could have resisted his father. He could have rebelled against him. He was in a hard school, for he had to surrender everything to death in order that he might learn the law of resurrection life.

 

From Isaac we go on to Jacob. Need we say anything about Jacob? Was he at school? He was in a very hard school indeed! The discipline in Jacob’s life was very severe, for God put him through it. However, he came out all right in the end and became the father of the nation, of the twelve tribes. That was resurrection! That was life out of death! That was victory out of adversity!

 

MANHOOD

 

Now you are wondering what the next phase in the Old Testament can be! Well, of course, I leave out a lot, and come to the phase of the Prophets. That is really a longer phase than the part of the Old Testament which is called the Prophets, for Samuel was a Prophet. You go through the whole school of the Prophets, and when you listen to them what do you hear? Can you hear the Prophets? They are crying, they are groaning, they are in pain. What is all this about? It is the travail of life. It is the mature, the manhood phase of the Old Testament.

 

That phase – the travail of life – began immediately Jesus moved from the Jordan. The battle for life began then and from then on to the Cross it was the travail of life. This great thing called ‘eternal life’ has entered into a great conflict in the universe, and Calvary became the centre of the whole universe. It was not just something that happened in a small place called Palestine, just outside Jerusalem. It reached out into all the world, and then it reached beyond the world. Calvary was a great cosmic battle. Paul says that He stripped off principalities and powers in His Cross (Colossians 2:2). It was the great travail of life.

 

Now, dear friends, this ought to help us to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing with us. I do not want to discourage young Christians, nor do I want to cast a shadow over your growing Christian life, but I must say this: the further we go with the Lord, the longer we live with Him and the closer we walk with Him, the more intense becomes this travail of life. Is that true? What do you know about that? We have sometimes said, when we are having a very difficult experience: ‘It does not get easier as we get older!’ You would think that, having walked with the Lord for so many years, He would let us have a little easier time at the end, but He does not do so. Does that explain something? Things are getting more difficult and sometimes the devil says: ‘Ah, this is because the Lord is not with you. If that great Lord that you believe in was with you, you would not have these troubles!’ That is exactly what the devil said to the Lord Jesus when He was on the Cross. ‘Your Father has left you. You are suffering like this because He has given you up.’ You see how the devil twists things! But spiritual maturity involves intensive conflict.

 

I have said that the third period in the Old Testament, that of the Prophets, is the travail of life. How the Prophets are suffering to bring back that Divine life in fullness to the people of God! Yes, the Old Testament closes – but what are you going to say about closing the Old Testament? It closes in tragedy, in hopelessness? Not at all! It closes in order that the New Testament may open, and what does the travail work out to in the New Testament? A new history begins. Out of the travail ‘a child is born, a son is given’, the Old Testament is lifted up on to the heavenly plane, and the Holy Spirit begins all over again in the spiritual realm. He begins with our new birth, takes us on into the period of spiritual growth, where we learn the laws of spiritual life, and then on into the travail of life that the Kingdom should come, and we are called upon to share this part of the biography of Jesus Christ – “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12). And what was the suffering of Jesus? It was the travail of His soul that He should see His seed, prolong His days and be satisfied. That is what He is doing in us now by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is working toward that end – that He should be satisfied, and we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.

 

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000883.html

 

The ‘Parchment’, the ‘Pen’, and the Purpose – By T. Austin Sparks

The Holy Spirit’s Biography of Christ
by T. Austin-Sparks

 

Chapter 1 – The ‘Parchment’, the ‘Pen’, and the Purpose

 

“For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29).

“He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10).

“My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

“…to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

“…being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh” (2 Corinthians 3:3).

 

It is very important for us to recognize just what those last words are saying. What is the meaning of 2 Corinthians, chapter three and verse three? To begin with, we can break it up into three things.

 

Firstly, it says that the Holy Spirit is writing a life of Christ. Secondly, this writing of the life of Christ is in the inner experience of believers. Thirdly, this biography of Jesus Christ is for all men to read. Is that perfectly clear? Well, let us break it up again.

 

THE PARCHMENT

We will begin with the parchment. You know that the New Testament was written originally upon parchment. At one time the Apostle Paul asked someone very particularly to bring his parchments to him, and probably they were his epistles. Now he says that the Holy Spirit is writing a life of Christ on parchment, but this parchment is the inner life of believers. He says: “Not in tables of stone”, and although he does not actually say so, he means that it is not on parchment. The writing material of the Holy Spirit is the inner life of believers. The born-again believer has a new inner life upon which the Holy Spirit can write, but the one who is not born again is not suitable parchment for the Holy Spirit. The Apostle said quite a lot about that in the first letter to the Corinthians. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them” (1 Corinthians 2:14). In other words, the natural man is not suitable writing material for the Holy Spirit, and it is only the spiritual man who is suitable for the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

The Lord Jesus said this to Nicodemus, who was very familiar with the parchments of the Old Testament. He knew all about those manuscripts, but the Lord Jesus told him that he was not suitable material for the Holy Spirit. He could not receive Him, and therefore he could not understand what He was doing. The Lord Jesus told him: ‘You must be born again, for you must be a new man to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying.’

 

This new man is made alive to the Holy Spirit and is sensitive to Him. We have here a tape recorder, and all that is being said is being received because the tape is sensitive. If anyone coughs in this meeting we shall hear it for months, and perhaps for years to come! So it is with the spirit of the new man in Christ. The Holy Spirit is writing a life of Christ, and I do trust that we are all going to be very sensitive to Him in these days.

 

THAT WHICH IS BEING WRITTEN

The next thing that we note is that the spiritual experiences of believers are a repetition of the life of Jesus Christ, and it is upon that statement that our morning meetings this week will be founded. It may take you some time to understand it, but I do want you to recognise what this word is saying. The Holy Spirit is writing a biography of Jesus Christ, and it is a spiritual biography, written in the spiritual life and experience of believers. All that which was true of the Lord Jesus, excepting His deity, is going to be written in our spiritual experience. That is a tremendous statement! And it is going to be a tremendous thing to recognise. You have spiritual experiences, things come into your spiritual history; but if you understand what the Holy Spirit is doing, you should realise that He is writing something about the Lord Jesus, and that something that was true of the Lord Jesus is being reproduced in you.

 

You will recall the passages which we read: “Foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son… Christ fully formed in you… that he might fill all things.” Our spiritual life belongs to the “all things”, and your spirit is one of the “things“.
Let me repeat: The Holy Spirit is now writing a biography, the life of Christ, in the spiritual history of the Lord’s people.

 

SONSHIP THE BASIS OF ALL GOD’S WORK

 

The first great thing about the Lord Jesus was His Sonship, and the Holy Spirit is writing sonship in us. Remember that sonship always relates to God’s purpose, for it is the beginning and the end of His purpose, which is in humanity. While Jesus Christ, as Son of God, is God Himself, sonship relates to humanity. It is in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus that His Sonship is manifested. You see, I am leaving deity aside, for the deity of the Lord Jesus is not something that will be reproduced in us, but, leaving His deity aside, the Holy Spirit is writing His sonship in us. The little fragment that we read said: “That he might be the firstborn among many brethren”, and by new birth we receive the gift of sonship.

 

So, sonship is the basis of all God’s work. It begins in Jesus Christ, and then it is carried on in the born-again believer.

 

THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS

 

We often use the word ‘testimony’ in relation to the Lord Jesus. The ‘testimony of Jesus’ is used in various ways, but it is not a system of doctrine. It is the continuation of the life of Jesus. You can have the doctrine of the testimony and not be an example of the life of Jesus. Our basic word says that we, as living epistles, are to be read and known of all men, but WHAT are all men to read and know? Is it a system of doctrine? Is it a form of Christianity? It is not one of the many things that are said about it, but just Christ going on living in His people. We sing:

 

“Thine be the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son!”

and we put everything on that! He is the risen, glorious Son of God, reliving His life, by the Holy Spirit, in us.

 

Perhaps that is not very encouraging to us, but that is because we are trying to get it all at once. No, this is a whole lifework of the Holy Spirit, and then, after this life, there is that wonderful parenthesis, that interval between this life and the next when we shall all be changed. So we are back at the beginning: “Foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son”, and we are being “changed into his likeness” (2 Corinthians 3:18). That is going on through this life – or, it ought to be! – and then there comes the interval when we leave his world and we awake in His likeness.

 

So the testimony of Jesus in this world is not only that Jesus is alive, but He is alive in us.

 

Now let me repeat: The life of the believer is intended to be the history of Jesus Christ rewritten. “Ye are an epistle” – or a biography.

 

THE SCHOOL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

 

That leaves us with two things. It brings us into the school of the Holy Spirit, where we are learning our lessons, but we are not learning them from a book. We are learning them by what the Holy Spirit is doing in us, which means that when we are in His hands everything that comes into our spiritual history has in it a lesson about Jesus Christ.

 

So the second thing is that we have to look at our experiences and ask: ‘What have I to learn about Christ in this? In what way does this experience provide the Holy Spirit with an opportunity of teaching me something about Jesus Christ?’ Sometimes we cannot understand what the Lord is doing with us! We cannot see the meaning of an experience, but if we are really in the hands of the Holy Spirit, our experiences are going to lead us on to know the Lord better. Therefore we must not reject our experiences; we must not think of them as unnecessary, we must not rebel against them, we must not think that they have no meaning, but we must take every experience into the presence of the Lord and say: ‘Now, Lord, You must teach me what You mean by letting me have this experience.’ That is the foundation of this ministry: learning Christ, but not just in our heads. You may have your heads and your notebooks full of information this week, but it has to go down deeper. The New Testament speaks about “the eyes of your heart” (Ephesians 1:18).

 

So often at the beginning of a conference people come to us with a lot of problems and questions and they would like to take all our time getting answers to their problems and questions. They are not always very pleased when we say: ‘Wait until the end of the conference, and perhaps you will have no more questions to ask!’ If the Holy Spirit is with us He is going to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, and we are going to see with our hearts. That is the best way to see, and the only way.

 

You know, a mother sees in one way, and a woman who has had no children sees in another. When our eldest daughter was a little baby she was in her pram, crying very loudly, and a lady came along and said: ‘What is the matter with her?’ She had not got a wedding ring on. My wife said: ‘Oh, she is tired’, and the good lady said: ‘Well, why does she not go to sleep, then?’ The mother understands what someone who has not the heart relationship cannot understand.

 

The best knowledge is heart knowledge. That word: “The eyes of your heart” is sometimes translated: “The eyes of your understanding”, and understanding is the best knowledge.

 

Now have you got this clear at the beginning? You see, during this conference I am going over the life of Christ and will take up a number of His experiences and will try to show you how those experiences are reproduced in believers so that we become the living biography of Jesus Christ, for that is what those words mean.

 

I would like you to think about this. The four Gospels have a literal biography of Jesus Christ, but they were written AFTER the epistles. They tell us of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus, but when you have that you have not got everything. Indeed, you have only a very little. The epistles were written in order to show us that all that which was in the Gospels has to be made real in us. I have always had a question about going to the Holy Land! If you do not agree with me, well, that does not matter! But, you know, I have been to the Holy Land spiritually. I have seen so much of it in my inner life. I do not need to go to Mount Calvary, for I understand much more of Calvary by not having gone there. I need not go up to the high mountain of the Transfiguration, for I have seen that in my heart. All these things that happened to the Lord Jesus only happened in a temporal way, in order to lay the foundation. The Holy Spirit had not come down then, so in the Gospels He was only writing a historic life of Jesus. He was not writing the inner spiritual experience of that history. That is what He came down to do, and that is very much better than going to Palestine. Well, go to Palestine if you want to, but remember that the Holy Spirit has come to write Palestine in us, and we are going to think about that this week, if the Lord helps us.

 

Are you clear about what I have tried to say? “Ye are an epistle [or biography] of Christ… written not with ink… not in tables of stone”, and we may add, ‘not on sheets of parchment, not by the finger of man, but by the Spirit of God, who is writing upon the tables which are hearts of flesh’. Does that give you a new idea about what is happening? Remember, then, that if you are in the hands of the Holy Spirit, He is trying to write the life of Jesus Christ in you so that all may be able to read.

 

The Christians in the early days were known by different names. They were known as Christians, and by other names, but one of the names by which they became known everywhere was: ‘The people of the way.’ I wonder where that name came from, and how people got that idea? Was it the Christians’ different way of life? Yes, perhaps so. Was it their teaching and their practice? Yes, perhaps. But was it because Jesus said: “I am the way”, and the Christians were going the way of Christ, and people saw that they were going that way? Perhaps that was what it was, and that is what it is meant to be. These people were going the way of Jesus Christ, and not trying to follow His example. That may be important, but they were going that way because the Holy Spirit in them was taking them that way. The Lord Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. There is, or should be, in us an inward urge to go in a certain way, and that way is the way of the Lord Jesus – and in that way we learn Christ. We are ‘People of the Way’.

 

 

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/000882.html

The Lordship of the Man Jesus Is Basic – By A.W. Tozer

 

WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT TEMPTATION these days to substitute another Christ for the Christ of the New Testament. The whole drift of modern religion is toward such a substitution.

 

To avoid this we must hold steadfastly to the concept of Christ as set forth so clearly and plainly in the Scriptures of truth. Though an angel from heaven should preach anything less than the Christ of the apostles let him be forthrightly and fearlessly rejected.

 

The mighty, revolutionary message of the Early Church was that a man named Jesus who had been crucified was now raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God. “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

 

Less than three hundred years after Pentecost the hard-pressed defenders of the faith drew up a manifesto condensing those teachings of the New Testament having to do with the nature of Christ. This manifesto declares that Christ is “God of the substance of His Father, begotten before all ages: Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world: perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting: Equal to His Father, as touching His Godhead: less than the Father, as touching His manhood. Who, although He be God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of the manhood into God. One altogether, not by the confusion of substance, but by the unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.”

 

Even among those who acknowledge the deity of Christ there is often a failure to recognize His manhood. We are quick to assert that when He walked the earth He was God with men, but we overlook a truth equally as important, that where He sits now on His mediatorial throne He is Man with God.

 

The teaching of the New Testament is that now, at this very moment, there is a man in heaven appearing in the presence of God for us. He is as certainly a man as was Adam or Moses or Paul. He is a man glorified, but His glorification did not dehumanize Him. Today He is a real man, of the race of mankind, bearing our lineaments and dimensions, a visible and audible man whom any other man would recognize instantly as one of us.

 

But more than this, He is heir of all things, Lord of all worlds, head of the church and the first-born of the new creation. He is the way to God, the life of the believer, the hope of Israel and the high priest of every true worshiper. He holds the keys of death and hell and stands as advocate and surety for everyone who believes on Him in truth.

 

This is not all that can be said about Him, for were all said that might be said I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. But this in brief is the Christ we preach to sinners as their only escape from the wrath to come. With Him rest the noblest hopes and dreams of men. All the longings for immortality that rise and swell in the human breast will be fulfilled in Him or they will never know fulfillment. There is no other way (John 14:6).

 

Salvation comes not by “accepting the finished work” or “deciding for Christ.” It comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole, living, victorious Lord who, as God and man, fought our fight and won it, accepted our debt as His own and paid it, took our sins and died under them and rose again to set us free. This is the true Christ, and nothing less will do.

 

But something less is among us, nevertheless, and we do well to identify it so that we may repudiate it. That something is a poetic fiction, a product of the romantic imagination and maudlin religious fancy. It is a Jesus, gentle, dreamy, shy, sweet, almost effeminate, and marvelously adaptable to whatever society He may find Himself in. He is cooed over by women disappointed in love, patronized by pro tem celebrities and recommended by psychiatrists as a model of a well-integrated personality. He is used as a means to almost any carnal end, but He is never acknowledged as Lord. These quasi Christians follow a quasi Christ. They want His help but not His interference. They will flatter Him but never obey Him.

 

The argument of the apostles is that the Man Jesus has been made higher than angels, higher than Moses and Aaron, higher than any creature in earth or heaven. And this exalted position He attained as a man. As God He already stood infinitely above all other beings. No argument was needed to prove the transcendence of the Godhead. The apostles were not declaring the preeminence of God, which would have been superfluous, but of a man, which was necessary.

 

Those first Christians believed that Jesus of Nazareth, a man they knew, had been raised to a position of Lordship over the universe. He was still their friend, still one of them, but had left them for a while to appear in the presence of God on their behalf. And the proof of this was the presence of the Holy Spirit among them.

 

One cause of our moral weakness today is an inadequate Christology. We think of Christ as God but fail to conceive of Him as a man glorified. To recapture the power of the Early Church we must believe what they believed. And they believed they had a God-approved man representing them in heaven.

 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.32.htm

 

 

Oswald Chambers – Reality: The Will to Believe the Redeemer

Christianity vs. Atheism – By David North

Atheists pride themselves on rational, logical thought and controlled and measured reponses. They take satisfaction in not relying on the crutch of religious thunking but instead on knowledge, intellect and the will. All well and good–all of these things are of value to all human beings…so why then choose Christianity?

Read here:

 

http://worldstrider.blogspot.com/2009/11/christianity-vs-atheism.html

Creflo Dollar explains how John the Baptist lost his head

Ur Video: The Prosperity Gospel

November 3, 2009

EXCERPT

In November the Global Conversation focuses on the prosperity gospel—the teaching that true Christian faith results in material wealth and physical well-being. While it has its roots in America, it has found fertile soil on other continents as well. To accompany the lead article in Christianity Today by Ghanaian scholar Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, director Nathan Clarke went to Ghana to explore the forms the prosperity gospel takes in that West African nation.

 

View here:

http://www.outofur.com/archives/2009/11/ur_video_the_pr.html

 

 

Mark 14:3-9

3And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.

4And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?

5For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.

6And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.

7For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

8She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.

9Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

Psalm 1

¹Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

 

 ²But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

 

 ³And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

 

 ⁴The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

 

 ⁵Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

 

 ⁶For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

 

In Praise of Dogmatism-By A.W. Tozer

IT IS VITAL TO ANY UNDERSTANDING of ourselves and our fellowmen that we believe what is written in the Scriptures about human society, that it is fallen, alienated from God and in rebellion against His laws.

 

In these days of togetherness when all men would brothers be for a’ that, even the true Christian is hard put to it to believe what God has spoken about men and their relation to each other and to God; for what He has spoken is never complimentary to men.

 

There is plenty of good news in the Bible, but there is never any flattery or back scratching. Seen one way, the Bible is a book of doom. It condemns all men as sinners and declares that the soul that sinneth shall die. Always it pronounces sentence against society before it offers mercy; and if we will not own the validity of the sentence we cannot admit the need for mercy.

 

The coming of Jesus Christ to the world has been so sentimentalized that it means now something utterly alien to the Biblical teaching concerning it. Soft human pity has been substituted for God’s mercy in the minds of millions, a pity that has long ago degenerated into self-pity. The blame for man’s condition has been shifted to God, and Christ’s dying for the world has been twisted into an act of penance on God’s part. In the drama of redemption man is viewed as Miss Cinderella who has long been oppressed and mistreated, but now through the heroic deeds of earth’s noblest Son is about to don her radiant apparel and step forth a queen.

 

This is humanism romantically tinted with Christianity, a humanism that takes sides with rebels and excuses those who by word, thought and deed would glorify fallen men and if possible overthrow the glorious high Throne in the heavens.

 

According to this philosophy men are never really to blame for anything, the exception being the man who insists that men are indeed to blame for something. In this dim world of pious sentiment all religions are equal and any man who insists that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone is a bigot and a boor.

 

So we pool our religious light, which if the truth is told is little more than darkness visible; we discuss religion on television and in the press as a kind of game, much as we discuss art and philosophy, accepting as one of the ground rules of the game that there is no final test of truth and that the best religion is a composite of the best in all religions. So we have truth by majority vote and thus saith the Lord by common consent.

 

One characteristic of this sort of thing is its timidity. That religion may be very precious to some persons is admitted, but never important enough to cause division or risk hurting anyone’s feelings. In all our discussions there must never be any trace of intolerance; but we obviously forget that the most fervent devotees of tolerance are invariably intolerant of everyone who speaks about God with certainty. And there must be no bigotry, which is the name given to spiritual assurance by those who do not enjoy it.

 

The desire to please may be commendable enough under certain circumstances, but when pleasing men means displeasing God it is an unqualified evil and should have no place in the Christian’s heart. To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men. This is such a common truth that one hesitates to mention it, yet it appears to have been overlooked by the majority of Christians today.

 

There is a notion abroad that to win a man we must agree with him. Actually the exact opposite is true. G. K. Chesterton remarked that each generation has had to be converted by the man who contradicted it most. The man who is going in a wrong direction will never be set right by the affable religionist who falls into step beside him and goes the same way. Someone must place himself across the path and insist that the straying man turn around and go in the right direction.

 

There is of course a sense in which we are all in this terrible human mess together, and for this reason there are certain areas of normal activity where we can all agree. The Christian will not disagree merely to be different, but wherever the moral standards and religious views of society differ from the teachings of Christ he will disagree flatly. He will not admit the validity of human opinion when the Word of God is clear. Some things are not debatable; there is no other side to them. There is only God’s side.

 

When men believe God they speak boldly. When they doubt they confer. Much current religious talk is but uncertainty rationalizing itself; and this they call “engaging in the contemporary dialogue.” It is impossible to imagine Moses or Elijah so occupied.

 

All great Christian leaders have been dogmatic. To such men two plus two made four. Anyone who insisted upon denying it or suspending judgment upon it was summarily dismissed as frivolous. They were only interested in a meeting of minds if the minds agreed to meet on holy ground. We could use some gentle dogmatists these days.

 

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.27.htm

 

Quotes from the great depression

Read here:

http://alethonews.blogspot.com/2009/11/quotes-from-great-depression.html

The Occult in the Church (discernment video)

The Manly Stuff by C.T. Studd

Awakening from the Sleep of Sorrow- By Carter Conlon

01-Nov-2009
Awakening from the Sleep of Sorrow- Carter Conlon

Listen here:

http://www.tscnyc.org/sermons.php

http://media.tscnyc.org/wmedia/20091101S1.wma

Oswald Chambers – Christ’s Cross the Conscience of the Human Race

Prosperity Gospel Exposed: If You Don’t Give Money, You Don’t Get None.

A Salvation in a Difficult Situation-Jason Massey

Bible Verses

For I know that for me this will turn out to salvation through your petition and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death.-Philipians 1:19-20

Words of Ministry

The kind of salvation we need depends on our situation. If we are under God’s judgment, we need a salvation that rescues us from this. If we are under Satan’s hand, we need a salvation appropriate to that situation. Likewise, if we are troubled by our temper or face difficulties in our married life, we need still further kinds of salvation.

 

READ HERE:

http://threshingfloor-radio.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/a-salvation-in-a-difficult-situation-jason-massey/

 

 

 

John Piper – Prosperity Gospel: A Tragic Export to Africa

30 Oct 09 – Would you let a teacher, a convicted child molester teach your kids?

The bible very CLEARLY shows that IF Washington DC is NOT destroyed by a nuke by 1 NOV 2009 then Vincent Xavier MUST step down or be removed from ministry in accordance with God’s word.

IF there is no nuke, then he is NOT listening to the Almighty God of the bible, but rather a false god; not listening to Jesus Christ whom has been given ALL power and authority but rather a false christ; not listening to the Holy Spirit, but rather a deceptive spirit that is endangering the lives of believers.

Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets by T. Austin-Sparks

 

The Power of His Resurrection
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 3 – Elisha and the Sons of the Prophets

Reading: 2 Kings 2.

In this chapter Elisha comes into view in relation to the sons of the prophets. They also are mentioned more than at any other time, and on quite a number of occasions they are in evidence in relation to him and his ministry. This has a significance which we must look into, and we should seek the Lord’s help for an understanding of what this really means. Let us refer to a few passages:

2 Kings 2:3, 5, 7, 14, 15-16; 4:38-41; 6:1-7.

The Sons of the Prophets Who and What They Were

We have to go back to the days of Samuel for our introduction to this particular form of the prophetic ministry. Originally the work which was afterward taken up by the prophets was done by the priests. It was the priestly function to instruct the people concerning the law and the ways of God. But in the days of the Judges the priests became so degenerated, and the priestly ministry fell to such a low level, that it became well-nigh extinct, and altogether inefficient and inadequate. Then Samuel came on the scene, himself doubtless a priest. With him there came a transition, and with him there came certain reforms. One of these was the instituting of these schools of the prophets, and we find reference made to one of them as existing at Ramah, with Samuel at the head. You will read about it in 1 Samuel 19.

We may say, what perhaps is hardly necessary, that the term, “sons of the prophets,” must not be taken literally. It does not mean that these were sons of prophets, but young men of spiritual promise who were gathered together to be prepared for spiritual ministry. That preparation was along certain quite clearly defined lines, but mainly with one object. They were to be very thoroughly instructed and grounded in the law, especially the oral law as differing from the symbolic law.

The priestly instruction had been mainly along the lines of the symbolic law; that is, the priests taught rather by action than by word. What the priests DID was the method of instruction originally. But that was symbolism and type, and therefore the people had largely to have discernment and perception. They had to be able to see through a symbolic act to a Divine meaning. When things were in a state of purity the people more or less understood the meaning of those priestly activities; they were able to see Divine thoughts as represented by outward acts. When things degenerated, as in the years of the Judges, spiritual perception and understanding almost entirely disappeared.

What we have as to the natural state of Eli typifies the spiritual state of the people. His eyes had waxed dim, so that he was almost entirely without sight, and he had become so weak, that he had no power whatever to control even the moral life of his own household. And that is a twofold representation of the spiritual state of the people under the priestly order at its end. Spiritual perception, insight, had so far departed and ceased that moral paralysis had set in, and government according to the mind of God had practically disappeared. Therefore, because spiritual insight and discernment (or what was called in those days “vision”) had disappeared, a new form of instruction had become necessary, and that was the oral form. The prophets were trained, not by the symbolic or typical expression of the mind of God, but by the direct declaration of it in word. So that it was the oral law in which they were trained, to proclaim by word of mouth, and not merely by symbolic act, what the mind of the Lord was.

These schools of the prophets were set up with a view to preparing men to declare in a direct way the mind of God. There were other things which were associated with that, such as the spiritual history of their people, and of the world, from the Divine standpoint. Read the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, of Jonah, Haggai, and Daniel, and you will see how much there is of history, direct or indirect, which has been a studied thing. Daniel tells us he was made to know by books, and he mentions in particular his study of Jeremiah. He had come to a knowledge of things through those prophecies, and when you look at Jeremiah, you find that there is a good deal of history in his writing. So that an additional object for which the schools of the prophets came into being was the teaching of “spiritual history.”

Then there was a further aspect of things bound up with these matters, which we might call spiritual patriotism. We emphasize the word “spiritual” since it indicates that God had chosen a people; that God had separated a people; that that people represented something for God in the midst of the nations, and that God was jealous over them because of what they represented for Him. Therefore the prophets were on fire with a holy jealousy that that people should fulfill its Divine vocation. That was the nature of their spiritual patriotism. They were jealous for Israel, because of Israel’s Divine vocation. In the schools of the prophets, that which we call “spiritual patriotism” seems to have been nurtured and cherished.

These were, shall we say, incidental, subsidiary matters in the schools of the prophets. The primary function was that which is the very essence of prophetic ministry, that is, the revelation of the mind of God by inspiration. Not revelation merely by study, by the deductions of the human mind, but revelation by inspiration; revealing the mind of God, because the mind of God had been revealed by the Spirit of God.

Thus the prophets stood as the instrument of Divine representation, the means by which God’s thoughts, God’s desires, God’s will, should not only be proclaimed, but represented. The prophet should be not merely a spokesman, but the embodiment of the truth to be spoken. So we find that the Lord took the prophets through experiences in which the very message entrusted to them was brought out in their own hearts, so that they should be not only spokesmen, but living representations of the truth.

That brings us back to the schools of the prophets in Elisha’s day, and we see that they were for that purpose, to produce men who were representatives of the Divine thought in a living way. You have there the starting point for the relationship between Elisha and these sons of the prophets.

There is this further factor to be remembered that, so far as the sons of the prophets were concerned as differing from the prophets, they were in immaturity, and in a state of preparation; hence the education which came by their relationship with Elisha. You find in the passages to which we have referred all the marks of immaturity in every case, and see what was necessary to bring them to the place where they could fulfill their prophetic ministry and serve God.

That Which Elisha Represents

We must remind ourselves before going on of what Elisha stands for. He represents the power of resurrection life, life triumphant over death, the full issue of the Cross. Elisha’s roots were in Jordan; that is where he began. So that what we expect to find is that in his connection with these sons of the prophets in their immaturity they are under instruction as to what is essential in their ministry, and that that instruction is embodied in Elisha himself; that is, that they will come to see that he has the indispensable element for all ministry.

How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?- By John Piper

How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?- By John Piper

Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?

 

EXCERPT

What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.

 

Read here:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByDate/2009/4368_How_Willingly_Do_People_Go_to_Hell/

 

Bibles seized as Malaysia minorities fear fundamentalism

(CNN) — Authorities in Malaysia have seized more than 20,000 Bibles in recent months because they refer to God as “Allah,” Christian leaders said Thursday.

Read here:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/malaysia.bibles.seized/index.html