The heavens do rule. (Daniel 4:26)
There is a great need today that there should be the rule of the Heavens. But
the Holy Spirit has got to do it, and we have got to come to recognize the
fact that what we see in organized Christianity is not it. The spiritual
people of God are more and more feeling separated from the old system of
Christianity and churches and ecclesiastical systems. People are recognizing a
deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long, and there is a cry
for spiritual reality. Many sermons are clever and full of mental ability, but
they are starvation to the spirit. There is all the activity, but it is not
spiritual Life, and I believe the Lord is going to show us the nature of the
thing that is in the heavens. The thing that man has brought down on to the
earth and taken up and perpetuated is only at best a poor imitation of things
in the heavens, but in a very large realm it is a caricature of heavenly
things.
Man has taken hold of heavenly things and brought them down to earth and
made them earthly things. That is where things all went wrong at the
beginning. At the first, things were of the Spirit. The people gathered in
their homes or anywhere. It was not the place. It was not the ministry. It was
the Lord, and they were circled around Him. But then the day came when they
said, "We must have public buildings," and then the architecture became a
factor, and so things developed, and they became something on the earth for
men to take note of. They wanted man to be attracted, and that was the first
step in one of the greatest perils that has overtaken the church. For
prestige, recognition, the world to be attracted, there is the result that you
get the mixed multitudes in the church. If you can attach some big names to
it, you can attract the people, and one of the devil's greatest measures has
been popularizing the church. The preeminent thing is lost, that the church
and Christ is a mystery to the natural man and that it is no use to expect the
natural man to appreciate it. The church is essentially a spiritual thing
according to the mind of God. What really governs everything is God's
conception of things, not ours, and if we are going on with the Lord there is
going to be a whole system of change and we are going more and more to view
things from the heavenly standpoint. You have got to get into the heavenly
system to get heavenly results.