In the book of the Acts, chapter 2, and the first verse:
"And when the day of Pentecost was in the course of
fulfilment" or, "being fulfilled". We are, in these
gatherings, having our attention taken up with the crisis of
Pentecost and the significance of the Holy Spirit; we
continue with that this morning.
Now, when we take up the Bible we find that there are two
books which are the seed plot from which many succeeding
generations take their character and their explanation. They
are the two books of genesis, one in the Old Testament
(which in the English Version goes by that name) the other in
the New Testament which goes by the name of the Acts. You
must remember that the writer of this second book never gave
to it the title of "The Acts of the Apostles". To him it was
simply The Acts. Others have appended definitions. In that
very fact you have the first similarity of beginnings,
genesis: the books of the acts of the Lord.
Both of these books, one in the Old Testament and the
other in the New, are books of the beginnings of creation.
The first, the beginnings of the material creation. The
second, the beginnings of the new and spiritual creation.
That is a very simple statement, but it is one to keep in
mind always, because, especially this book of the Acts is so
often taken up on its fragments, its parts, its components,
and looked at, and handled, and dealt with, as things in
themselves. We preach on the various incidents; spend a lot
of time with the details of the book, the chapters and their
contents, the movements and the happenings. That is quite
right and we shall continue to do so more and more, but we
shall be particularly helped if we always keep this in
mind: that this whole book is a book of genesis, as truly a
book of genesis in the New Creation, as the other is the
book of genesis in the material creation.
No one would take one part of the Old Testament book and
look upon it (I refer to the first chapters particularly) as
something in itself. We look upon all that we have there in
the first two chapters of Genesis as of one piece; all
making up the creation. We have to do that with the book of
the Acts... to see that everything here belongs to this new
order which has been introduced on the Day of
Pentecost.
Both of these books follow a certain clearly defined line,
the same line. The one in material things, but the other
exactly the same line in spiritual things, the
spiritual principles are the same in both books. In the one those principles are perhaps
hidden, enshrined, embodied in temporal things, in material
things, in earthly things. In the other they are manifestly
spiritual things; we might say,
nakedly spiritual things, but
in principle they are identical. That is
for one simple reason, and yet profound reason:
that they both come from One Mind. They both emanate from a
single Mind with a single purpose. There is not one purpose
in the material creation and another in the new
creation. Behind them both is
the one thought, and one purpose, as I think we shall see.
Now, if you just make a summary of some of the major
features of the beginnings in the Old Testament, it is not
difficult to make your transition to the New. That we shall
do. In the Old Testament book you
have these seven beginnings, the
beginning of the revelation of God. The
fact of God, and the knowledge of God.
Begin there. Secondly, the
fact and the layout, or constitution, or order of the
universe. Thirdly, the fact of the nature of man. Fourthly,
the fact of corporate life and its nature. Fifthly,
the fact and nature of sin. Sixthly,
the cause and the occasion of nations. And lastly, the promise and the principles of
salvation. All those seven things are
at their beginning in the book of Genesis in the Old
Testament.
In our thought, then, we pass over to the book of the Acts, and here we are confronted with
that first and primary fact of the Bible, unmistakable:
"In the beginning... God..." that's
where the Bible begins, that's where
the old creation begins, with the primary fact of God. You
will remember that when the apostle Paul made his so-rich, full statement that, "In Christ Jesus there is a new creation;
the old things have passed away, and all have become new", he was careful to add: "but
all things are of God". As truly in
the New Creation as in the old, it begins with God. It all comes out
of God and when we come to this book
of the Acts, we are encountering God at every point and at
every turn. It is God with whom we have to do, in this book. In the days of these happenings, these
many wonderful happenings, that was the thing that
was being brought home more and more to everybody, the encounter with God.
And we might just pause to remember that in the Old
Testament statement, "In the
beginning God", the word is "Elohim" the Triune God.
The Triune God, it
is the plural term for God. You come
to the book of the Acts there is no
doubt about it that you are dealing with the Triune God and
They are so one, and yet so distinct, that sometimes you don't know which of the Trinity you are
dealing with. There's no doubt you're dealing with God the Father here, for
the book begins with the ascension, or receiving up of the
Lord Jesus. And
all the teaching about that is that "God
raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand". The position in which you find the Lord
Jesus throughout this book, is the direct act of God. And to
take the words of the writer of the Hebrew letter, "And of the Son he saith,
Thy throne, oh God". And it was just
at least the possibility that it might be so that brought
that pause when Gamaliel warned, warned and said: "Let these
men alone. If this thing be of God, you might be
found fighting against God!" We would
like to think that it was not just a philosophical
statement, a bit of human wisdom, but that Gamaliel was
seeing, or discerning, or sensing something in this movement
that was more than human, but whether
that was so or not, the fact remained and remains, that what
we have here is the encounter with God and God's encounter
with man. On the one side, it did prove to be fighting
against God and there are few people in this record who
found that that is, at least, a precarious thing to do.
Herod, outstandingly, found that: "The Lord smote him".
Ananias and Sapphira discovered that. Simon, the sorcerer,
discovered this fact: that here it is not just God's
representatives, not apostles, not a new teaching, not a new
religious system, not a new cult, but God.
Immediately, directly: God!
Dear friends, we do not hurry on just to accumulate truth
and material. I'm sure you agree that
the need today, above all needs, is that men should
encounter God in the church, encounter
God in the preaching, that it should
be the bringing of God into the scene and the situation; the
impact of God, the Triune God. We need to recover
that sense when we meet together, for when they met
together, that was the dominating consciousness, and
when others came in, they fell down
and said: "God is in the midst of you!" In the
beginning, God..." out of that
everything takes its rise and its character.
We are dealing with God. It is a very solemn thing, a very
solemn thing. Should it be less real now than it was then?
Is this another dispensation? Have we moved out of the
dispensation of the Holy Spirit, of the book of the Acts? No, we are still in that age.
We are still under that aegis, but, oh, for this recovery, this
restoration, of the tremendous solemnity of the personal
Presence of God in everything.
Of course we believe these
things, but we take so much for granted, don't we? We assume
so much... If we had the consciousness that they had of God,
the presence of God, the Spirit of God...
if our belief was a living belief, which means that
the thing was real to us, how much more careful we
should be, we
would take the warnings from these tragedies of this book
and walk softly before God. That's on
the one side, there's
a warning in this. Any company of people, be they but one
hundred and twenty (for that was all in that room at that
time, just one hundred and twenty; might be even fewer) you don't have to
have one hundred and twenty,
you can have a dozen or less, but any
company anointed with the Holy Spirit has to be regarded as
having the presence of God, as meaning that God is
there. And as it worked out in this book, not only in the
company and the companies, but in the individuals, the
individuals! And
they were not all apostles of the twelve;
that is why you dare not call this book "The
Acts of the Apostles", because the
apostles are hardly mentioned; only one or two of them figure
in this book. People who do figure here in outstanding
service were not apostles, but they were filled with the Holy
Spirit; they were anointed and what
resulted was that when men met them, they met God, and had to
reckon with God. To touch them was to touch God!
Pentecost means that, you see, right at the beginning. It is
the beginning of things, it's the beginning of things
and you get nowhere until this is recognised, for all comes
out of this - the beginning is God.
Let us pray earnestly for a recovery and restoration of the
sense, and power, and holiness of God...
in our own personal lives, in our personal
lives: "Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of
God?" That's personal or individual. To the same
people the apostle addressed a word as to them corporate: "Know ye not that
ye are a temple of the Holy Ghost?" That's corporate, a
company in Corinth. Now, in the Old
Testament, we do know especially at the beginning, before the
great apostasy, what the Tabernacle and the Temple meant in
this respect: the Presence of God. It
was glorious! It
was joyous, but it was terrible - it was
terrible! Now, we speak about that side, because it is very
important, dear friends, that we have a new sense of God,
but on the other side, the presence of
the Lord, in His
presence... in His presence... there is
joy, there is gladness. When
the Lord filled the Sanctuary, the song began, the Song of the
Lord began.
Well, I need not, and I am not going to enlarge upon this, the first of these many features of
beginnings, out of which everything else comes,
but notice first, the primary factor in the New Creation, is
God. There is nothing cheap about this; nothing common-place
about God; nothing ordinary about God. Perhaps our God is
too small. Perhaps we have made Him like ourselves, and we
do! We do think
of the Lord as being according to our own minds. I so often
have to remind people who come to me, and tell me of their
deplorable state: that they have done
this, and done that or they have failed to do this and that,
and therefore they have fallen out of the favour of God, and they have lost their salvation. And when I come
to say, "What is it you've
done?" They focus it all down on to
some fault, some mistake, some thing. And I have to say, "Is that the size of your God? Is He no
bigger than that? Is He not capable to deal with a thing
like that? To
handle a matter like that? He has been handling tens of
millions of things like that all through the centuries, and
clearing them up. Is He so small as your one delinquency? Is
that the size of your God?" And I know in many other
respects, dear friends, we need to get the true dimensions
of God as the background of everything. We will not get
through unless He is an adequate Lord,
unless He is God over all. And that's
what this book has as its background.
The second characteristic or feature of the creation, of
the two creations, is:
"The Spirit of God brooded
over the face of the deep..." that's the Old Testament statement. When you
come to the book of the Acts, you cannot but, if you are
entering into the spirit of it, the atmosphere of it,
dwelling with it, not just reading on
to read a book, or a story, a narrative
- if you're quietly thinking and
feeling your way from the beginning, giving time, you cannot
but feel that in chapter one of this book (and there were no
chapters when Luke wrote it, it just moves quietly from
phase to phase in one unbroken narrative) that in what is in
our arrangement "chapter one", there is a pause... but a very pregnant pause. There is...
something suspended and something going to happen. I think
if you had been with the one hundred and twenty there, that would have been the thing that you
would have felt: we are in a kind of
parenthesis, we are in a pause. We are holding
our breath; something is going to happen...
there's something, as we would say, "in
the air".
It is only in the book of the Acts, remember, that we know
anything about the forty days after the resurrection.
Although Luke wrote his Gospel, and brought us to the time
of the Lord's ascension, he never said anything about the
forty days, plus ten. When he wrote the "Acts", he put that
in - a period between two periods; a parenthesis, but a waiting, an expectation, a
wondering... a sense of something
going to happen. I am quite sure that that is exactly what
obtained in the Old Testament when, over the chaos the
Spirit brooded. It
was just not negative, nebulous, abstract,
there was something of a tension, something there with a
meaning, something positive in its way - something's going to happen! Whether that was so or
not, there is no doubt about it here.
This waiting, this waiting, this tarrying commanded by the
Lord - tarrying in Jerusalem - was a tarrying which had a
positive element in it. You see, if you're
waiting for something, that you have been told it is going to
happen, you might go out shopping while you are waiting. You might take a
walk around in the country while you're
waiting. Well, we have got to wait, see you're
just waiting, that's all, and so you
occupy the time. But they were not like that.
They were on poise. They
were together, it says; they were all
together. They are under the government of something that is
about to take place, "the brooding
Spirit", creating this sense of suspense, if you like, even
tension. But note again the correspondence in the Old
Testament in the first material creation, the Spirit brooded
over a state of chaos, of un-order (forgive me
creating a word, I prefer it to
"disorder") un-order. If you look at everything from
the moment that the Lord Jesus was crucified, died, you find
something akin to chaos. All
integration has been lost. Things have gone to pieces!
No one knows what to do, where to go,
how to behave. There is no pattern, no plan, no ability to
do anything. Everybody is governed by one big question: "What does it all mean?
Where is it leading?" Well, in mind and heart they were
truly in chaos. You
can see it, all of them like that. No order,
no system; no assurance, certainty, confidence;
all at a loss to know what to do. The Spirit brooding over it all... So it was as this New Creation is about
to be brought into being.
I wonder what was happening during that pause of fifty
days. Of course, from the Old Testament we have some
indications from the types, that is, the presenting of the
first-fruits to God before the harvest.
We have all that, but
have we not something more than that? I trust this is not
imagination, I think there is
Scripture for this. There is that statement made by the
writer of the Hebrew letter about the Lord Jesus (and you know that that letter is about
Him, and particularly in its beginnings, about the Son, the Son)
"And having tasted death, and been made
perfect through suffering, was crowned with glory and honour..." there is this statement: "Whom He appointed heir of all things". "Whom He appointed heir of all things..." that
appointment may have been made before the first creation,
but it would seem to be like this:
that, before God came out in creative activity in the first
creation, before He began what we have in that first book of
the Bible and its first chapters, He had appointed His Son
Heir of all things. Then, "through
whom He made the worlds." The creation
demanded and required that the Son should be in the Divinely
appointed place. Nothing can be done until that happens. He
was the Heir! A usurper came in and
stole the inheritance, but the Son came forth and cast out
the usurper, and recovered the inheritance in His cross, and
now takes His place, Divinely
appointed place, as Heir of all things.
And from that the Spirit of
God proceeds to secure unto Him a new creation in Christ
Jesus. What was happening during
those ten days, in particular? We have intimations that even
during the forty days He was appearing in the Presence of
the Father, but we'll
not make everything of that. During the ten days after He
had gone, was He taking His place, Divinely appointed from
all eternity? Was He being given the place of God's right
hand, which was His by right - the Heir of all
things? I think that's
what the Word teaches very clearly,
that's what is happening. And when He
is in His place, as the heir of the whole created universe, the
Spirit begins the New Creation in Christ Jesus. The rest of this book is the Spirit
proceeding to give to the Son His rights in this
universe.
The Appointing of the Heir of All Things...
From eternity, through redemption, now installed
forever... We will have more to say about that probably, later
on, but note: so
soon as the Son, the Heir, is in His place established,
where Stephen saw Him, the Son of Man... (wonderful thing... that is the only
time, after Jesus used that title of Himself, that it is
used in the New Testament: Son of Man), standing at the
right hand of God. Where Paul saw Him, seated on the right
hand of the Majesty in the heavens. When He is there, the
Heir in His place, the suspense is ended, the
parenthesis is blotted out, the Spirit
comes. And what a breaking of suspense it must have been! What shattering
of tension! It
is as though everything in the universe said: "This
is what we have been waiting for!" And when we say that,
what an abundance of Scripture rushes
in: "the promise
of the Father", "the
promise made to Abraham", "the promise made to David"... all fulfilled
on the Day of Pentecost, the promise
was the promise of the Spirit. "The
promise made to Abraham, that we might receive..." or "that upon the
Gentiles might come the promise..." that
we might receive the Spirit.
When He is there, the suspense is broken. Our brother was
saying something to us yesterday afternoon about this. It's still true; it's
still true in spiritual experience, your
life and my life may be in a state of suspense.
The Lord may have purpose... the Lord may be wanting...
the Lord may be, on His side, prepared...
but the Son is not in His place and everything is in
suspense. How much is held up on this one thing: that Jesus is not
yet absolutely Lord! He is Saviour... ah, yes, but that's
what we get! We're quite
happy about Him being Saviour, because
that's for us! Lord means what
He gets. And
it isn't always so pleasant. Do you
notice this book is just the book of the absolute Lordship
of Jesus Christ? As they went down before Him, as they proclaimed Him - Jesus
Christ as Lord - something broke. Something broke. It's a principle, dear friends of the
spiritual life, the individual spiritual life.
The Lordship
of Jesus Christ is the key to so much release... so much release. And what is true of
the individual may be true of a company of the Lord's
people anywhere. In the company together, as a whole,
without one of its parts standing out, resisting,
rebelling, acting contrary... where
there's a company with Jesus as Lord
completely, you will find release. But where it is not so,
there's suspense; there's suspense. The Lord just cannot find His way, He cannot go on,
He is bound by this is the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the
Spirit of Christ. He's bound to the
Lordship of Jesus Christ. He's committed to that.
He will not depart from it
and He will have it utter, and He will say, "Yes,
on seven points you acknowledge it and accept it, but
there are three points where you don't.
Or nine points, but there is one point where you don't."
Many of you, if you did not know him, know of him, when I
speak of Dr. F. B. Meyer -
a man greatly used of God,
undoubtedly. And
those of us who knew him personally, knew the fragrance of
Christ in that life. Do you know
how he came to be such a fragrant life, and such a used
servant? He tells his own story,
indeed, he was never tired of telling his own story,
giving his own testimony, and it's
on record now. And
I heard him tell it personally. He said, "Up to a point in
my life as a minister, I was very earnest,
I was very sincere. I gave myself
with all my might to preaching, and to working for
God... And there was a considerable amount of blessing. But
I knew that it was not all well; in my own heart I knew
there was something that was standing in the way of what I
felt ought to be the fullness of the Spirit. I longed for
the fullness of the Spirit, I prayed for the fullness of
the Spirit, and this great craving
and longing steadily brought me lower and lower until the
day came when I cast myself at the feet of the Master, and
said, 'Lord, I hand up the keys of
my life, and put them into Your
hands.'" He said, "The Lord looked
at the bunch of keys, and said, 'There is one missing!'"
One missing! He said, "I thought I
was getting away with it with the Lord.
I thought that I was going to get through, and I knew
about that one key in my life that I hadn't
included, that I had kept back, that I had taken off the
bunch and was holding in reserve. And the Lord knew it as
well, and the Lord said, 'We're not going to get any further until
you bring that key. Oh, there is a large bunch of keys, all this you offer Me...
all these things you will do for Me, and be for Me, but...
but.... And
the whole is held up for the one thing. We're not going to get through until it is
a complete surrender.'"
Now, I happen to know what that one key was,
I'm not going to mention it because
it might not be your key at all. It might just divert the
point and you'd say, "Oh well, that's not my trouble!" Ah, but it might be
something else. But Meyer let go...
he broke there and he said, "Lord, here it is. You take it. I give it.
I have nothing more in reserve." That day the blessing
came into his life, and a wonderful blessing it was, for
he got a new lease of life for twenty years - twenty
years. And some of us saw the tremendous change
that took place at that point, and what was afterward of
fruitfulness.
Now, I am not concentrating upon the matter of an
experience like that, but I am
simply concentrating upon the principle
of the old and the new creation. It is the heir of ALL things -
not nine-tenths, but all things in
His place as Heir. "Whom He
appointed heir of..." not this and
that, and a few things, or many things, or most things, but
all things. When that is so, the Spirit proceeds
as He did at that time. Jesus was Lord.
And I may not stay with too much detail, but you, if you
will just look into it, will see that there were two sides
to this matter. There
was what took place in heaven in the exalting and the
instating of Jesus as Lord. But you know, there had been quite a lot
of things amongst these very people, the hundred and
twenty, even the twelve, that they were not prepared to
let go of. Some had said: "Um,
Lord, we have forsaken all for Thy sake,
what shall we have? What
shall we have? What are we going to get out of
it?" There had been an enquiry for the top place in the
Kingdom, a quest for that, you see. There were
jealousies and rivalries and it all amounted to personal
interest, didn't it? Personal
interest, even in the Kingdom of God. The Lordship of
Jesus had to come upon all that, come upon
all that. When that was settled, the Spirit went
on.
If we would take one further feature this morning, and it is quite clear that we are not
going to get through this morning...
when you are dealing with a universe you want more than an
hour or so! But the next, the third feature in these
creations, is what we may call the "Divine fiat".
The Divine Fiat
And God said, "Let light be! And
there was light". That is in the old material creation, the starting point of real activity
down here. When
things are right in the presence of God, the Son is in His
place, in His appointment, then
down here things begin. And there was this Divine fiat: "And God said, Let light be, and there
was light". We can leave the Old
Testament, and see the correspondence to this in Acts.
There is no mistaking this, that the Day of Pentecost was
a day of revelation, of marvellous illumination.
Why, immediately Peter stood up with
the eleven, he said: "Men of
Israel, be it known unto you..." That's a new
movement for Peter, "Be
it known unto you..." the day of the beginning of a new revelation.
And then you go through his discourse,
his discourse; what a revelation is in it! He's taking up
the Old Testament.
If Peter had really seen all this before Calvary, he
would never have denied his Lord, but
it's broken upon him now, and he
begins to use the Old Testament in an all together new way. The book has
become alive and alight! "These are not drunken as ye suppose,
but this is
that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." This is that! That's
something new to Peter; he knew Joel, but he had never "seen" Joel. And
he goes on, goes on with David. What a large section in
that discourse there is about
David, David; what David said, and
what the Lord said to David, leading
right up to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. David
saying, "Thou wilt not leave my
soul in Sheol, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to
see corruption" and Peter says, "All
this is before you now fulfilled!" His Bible has leapt
into life and light. God had said, "Let light be!" - the Spirit of revelation had come! His eyes were opened and
how profound is his insight when he
says that the things which had happened at Jerusalem were
all according to... what? "The
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." "Oh, Peter! Peter! You
denied the Lord Jesus because you were afraid that you
might be involved in the trouble. Peter! Is it you speaking? That all that
which caused you the utmost consternation, and made you go
to the utmost limits to save yourself from being involved
in it, is it you speaking, Peter? 'This was
according to the foreknowledge, pre-determinate counsel of
God...' this was all planned and met
long, long before it happened, in the counsels of God?" Yes, truly, this was the day of the
breaking of the light for a new creation.
Now, that is not all words, friends, it's not all words.
Believe me, it is true. It is true to principle. It is! There is
such a thing as the Bible leaping into life, which was a
closed book. And because it was a closed book, it never
led you, it never saved you, it never meant very much to
you. But something happens,
something happens, God said, "Let there be light!" and the
Bible becomes a new book, what we call "an
open heaven". It lives.
It lives, it throbs. Many things
still we don't understand, but
the thing is living. Our understanding is growing. There
is light.
I bid you read this discourse of Peter again, and see,
the light that this man has got from the Bible,
and in the Bible! It is just wonderful, just wonderful!
There it is: the Spirit brooding.
The Heir in His place. The Divine fiat, "Let there be
light" and there was light. The effects...
The very first effect of the Holy
Spirit's coming at Pentecost over this scene and in this
realm of, to begin with, the one
hundred and twenty, and then moving out.
The first effect was to change all
their sense of disorder or un-order, and chaos, into a
mighty sense of purpose and plan. They're
now an integrated people. They are now a one people. I want to
dwell more fully upon that at some time, but
they are not all fragments, bits scattered here and there. They are not
only gathered in one upper room, they are gathered now
under one mighty Spirit making them inwardly a
unit. And what is it that does it? By the Spirit they have
become possessed of this consciousness: "We are in a mighty movement
God, in a mighty going of God, in a mighty plan of God. There's meaning in life; there's
meaning in things." Very simple, but there it is.
You don't get anywhere until you
have this sense, this strong sense, that you are called
according to purpose. And you never have that sense
until the Holy Spirit comes in. And the Holy Spirit never comes in until
Jesus is Lord. That's the sequence
of things.
The sense that we
are now, we are now saved from a state of
disruption, and disintegration, and emptiness, and void - meaninglessness - we are now in
something, we are in something! Oh,
that every life, and every young life here this morning
might come under this, this tremendous effect of
the Holy Spirit, that you become governed by a
sense that God has called you for something, laid hold of
you for something, that there's a
meaning in things; that you're
in a movement and a purpose of God. Have you got that? It's an early thing, where Jesus is Lord.
It's an early thing where the Holy
Spirit is in possession.
Meaning and purpose,
then order. I am following, mark you, the
Old Testament line. After the meaningfulness came in to
that erstwhile, meaningless creation, or state, then a new
order began to emerge - a wonderful order, a beautiful
order... what the prophet calls, "the ordinances of the heavens, and the
ordinances of the earth". A beautiful order about everything,
isn't there? It's an ordered
creation. And when you get order you always get growth.
Order and growth come together.
We do know that disorder is a very paralysing thing.
Disorder... well, if it means growth
at all, it means the growth of more disorder, and
confusion, and regrets. But a real Divine order produces a
wonderful development, increase. So it was in the natural
creation, so it is in the spiritual. Look at Acts... not through this second chapter,
so-called, before you find it: "And
they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, in
fellowship, in breaking of bread, and in prayers". Lovely order introduced
and it goes on. And growth... and growth. So it should be under the aegis of the
Holy Spirit: fruitfulness and
reproduction. Surely they are characteristics of the
book of the Acts, aren't they? Spontaneous fruitfulness
and reproduction. There's a striking
absence of a lot of things from this book that men today
think necessary to get results and fruit reproduced - no mention of any organised campaigns, no mention of any machinery set up, no mention of any committees or boards; no mention of all these things - it happened! It came about... spontaneous
fruitfulness and spontaneous reproduction.
Very beautiful and very simple, and
not very costly in terms of material things. Tremendous
expenditure there is to get a little result,
but here it is. Oh, for
recovery of this!
We will have to pray again, very much and earnestly about
this whole matter, and seek from the Lord whether this is
right doctrine or not, I don't know and I don't care, but let us seek from the Lord a
renewed fiat from heaven, a renewed
act of God to bring this new creation on to the basis and
ground that it was on at the beginning, and make it
possible for us really and honestly and truly to say "As
it was in the beginning, is now... and ever shall be". We must break off
there, not half-way through that section, but it is enough for
the present.