We continue this afternoon to explore some of the depths and
fulness of that little fragment in the letter to the Hebrews
chapter 12 and verse 22: "Ye are come to Zion".
It is common knowledge that this document called "the letter to
the Hebrews", marks the transition from one dispensation to
another - one order, system and economy, to an entirely different -
from all that was temporal and earthly, material, of God's ways
and God's means in Israel, to the spiritual counterpart of that as
it relates to this dispensation and to the church; that this term
"Zion" is inclusive of all that was in that economy. It came to
sum up everything from the day of Israel's going forth from Egypt,
when the vision was brought fully into view and their being
brought in and planted in the mountain of His inheritance. All
that was subsequent to that, found its deposit and consummation in
what is called "Zion". All that is taken up in a spiritual way and
made the heritage of the church, our heritage, the heritage of
faith.
"Ye are come to Zion". We have been, as I have said, we have been
seeking to explore and exploit the fulnesses of that heritage. We
just take one more fragment of that this afternoon. And we have
for our basic word a fragment in the one hundred and thirty second
Psalm, Psalm 132, verse 13: "The Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath
desired it for His habitation. This is My resting place forever,
here will I dwell; for I have desired it". Of all the full
statements regarding Zion in that Psalm, the fragment for our
present occupation is: "The Lord hath chosen Zion".
In the very blood of the true Israelite is the element of
selection and election, that is: of a difference and a destiny.
Every true Israelite has that in his blood, it is a part of his
very being, of his constitution. The deepest thing in him, in his
consciousness, in his very make-up, is that he is something
different and that he has a particular destiny. It has become
customary to refer to Israel as "the chosen people", or "God's
chosen people", and that is the consciousness of the Israelite -
chosen by God, distinguished by God; in the appointment of God
apart for some particular purpose. That is in his blood: a sense
of destiny.
These two things go together: difference and destiny, apartness
and purpose. I say it's a constituent of their very being; they
can't help themselves, it just comes out. You meet it, sometimes
it shows itself in arrogance, independence, superiority, and in
many other ways, but there it is. They just cannot help
themselves, that's how they are made, they are different! And they
know it, and there is something which is bound up with that
difference in the nature of purpose and destiny, which is their
heritage. And this sense of destiny has always been a tremendous
factor in their history, a tremendous factor in their endurance.
It has been something which has enabled them to endure. And God
only knows what they have had to endure in suffering, in work, in
vocation. It has been a potent factor in their survival, their
very survival. When that consciousness was alive, they were in
strength. When that consciousness faded, passed under some cloud
of doubt and question, they lost its keenness, they were in
weakness.
Their strength or their weakness related to the strength or
weakness of this one thing: this sense of calling, this sense of
vocation, this sense of destiny. When they were in right
relationship with God, that consciousness was regnant, it was the
dominant element in their life. It was a powerful motive and
principle. When their relationship with God was not right, then
that consciousness faded and ceased to be the motive. They hung
their harps upon the willows then, and ceased to sing the songs of
Zion.
Zion, you see, contains this very element and principle and
dynamic of destiny, of purpose, of calling. In the Psalms this is
regnant, we have read a specimen this afternoon. This glory of
Zion, this glory of Zion's calling, purpose, choosing, election,
destiny... it is regnant in the Psalms. People are in a state of
tremendous buoyancy there, because Zion is unclouded, undimmed. In
the prophets it is latent or even absent, so that it became the
chief vocation and purpose of the prophets to recover that very
thing. And the voice of the prophets is always attuned to that one
note, "My servant, whom I have chosen... My elect in whom My soul
delights... I have chosen him... thou are My chosen" (Isa. 41:8).
See, that's the note of the prophets. You look again at Isaiah 43.
You find that is the supreme note there, "Thus saith the Lord, thy
Redeemer", thy redeemer... and their redemption goes hand in hand
with this reassurance, "I have chosen thee". Well now, that all
relates in that part of the Bible to the earthly people and to the
earthly Zion.
We hear coming back to us from this writer in the New Testament:
"Ye are come to Zion", not to that one, but to another
one: a superior, transcendent Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the
spiritual Zion. "Ye are come to Zion". And coming to Zion, amongst
all the other things that it means, means coming to that very
thing, coming to the eternal counterpart of the temporal, that
Divine choosing, that Divine electing, that Divine calling, that
Divine, that heavenly, destiny. We find this made clear in the New
Testament in two ways. Firstly in:-
New Birth.
If it was true that in the very birth, that is, in the very blood
and constitution of the Israelite, this sense of vocation and
destiny was so strong, so powerful... that is true in the new
birth of the child of God. It is there as a great factor: present,
but in birth as a general principle. We do not define it in this
way, we do not give it this kind of definition in words, but when
it is put to us in this way, yes, that's just what we know: that
when we were born again, when we were born again we immediately
became conscious of there being, after all, some purpose in our
being on the earth. It was then that life took on its real
meaning. Whatever we had, thought and felt about life up to that
time, now we become conscious of there being some meaning about
life of which we were never conscious before.
We just feel that now, now we have begun to live, and now
life has got a meaning, a purpose. I say that is there as a
general principle in the very constitution of the new birth. It is
a test as to the reality of the new birth. It's a testimony to a
very great fact that somewhere behind our birth, all unknown,
beyond our understanding and comprehension, there is a design;
there is a purpose. We are no accident, there's a meaning. I say
it's (if I may use this of the spiritual) it's in our blood by
new birth. That, of course, is open to your attesting. You know
it's true.
It is at least, at least, as potent a reality and fact in
the birth of the child of God by faith as ever it was in a Jew. If
your new birth has not brought that, not so that you can put it
in the words, the form, in which I have put it, but
something that you know to be true: that life has only just begun,
and purpose has only just come in, a sense of destiny has only
just arisen; if that is not true of your conversion, then you have
missed something. You have missed something because it is, I say,
a blood constituent of the new generation. It's there as a general
principle in new birth and that is the meaning of being born anew.
But then the New Testament goes on to show us that a life in the
Spirit (which, after all, is the enlargement, the fulness of the
meaning of new birth) a life in the Spirit becomes intelligent
concerning this matter of purpose and destiny and difference:
intelligent and specific.
Intelligent... I mean we come to know what Paul has spoken of
about having been chosen in Him before the foundation of the
world; what Peter meant about the church when he said, "We are an
elect race". It is only another word, another English word for the
same original: chosen, chosen, elect. We come intelligently to
understand that now we are somehow chosen by God, before we had a
being, and that has been introduced to us at our new birth. We
become aware of it, we begin to understand something of what that
means: God has chosen us! We can understand what the Lord Jesus
meant when He said, "Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you; I
chose you". This is something that God has done for which there
is no accounting on any other ground than on the ground that God
did it. It's God's sovereign act. We begin to understand it, that
it is so. And intelligently we are able to grasp more and more the
teaching, especially through Paul, concerning this matter of
election, choosing and calling.
Calling... what a favourite word of Paul's that was: "calling",
"called according to His purpose", called according to His
purpose; called... purpose! Purpose, "according to His purpose...
the purpose of Him", and so on. These are great words which are
all gathered into the one word: "destiny".
Destiny
And a life in the Spirit, a life in the Spirit, mark you, means
growing intelligence about that, a growing understanding of that.
It is not only now the basic consciousness, but the growing
understanding of what that means. And as we grow in understanding
of what it means to have been chosen, to have been
called according to His purpose, life takes on a great
deal more fulness of meaning and value and power. It becomes
something, something of tremendous power and potency in our
lives, as we grow into the understanding of that. It's a
mighty motive, a mighty motive. It is the thing that also girds us
for the race, the journey, and the battle.
You see, this is very closely in keeping with this letter to the
Hebrews, because it is this very sense of destiny that is being
spoken of in relation to men right back from Abel onward. The
whole caravan, as we have called it, from Abel, Enoch, Noah, and
right on. These men had in them this sense of the hand of God
having come upon them with an object, for a purpose. And it was that
sense of destiny which enabled them on the one hand, to leave the
world behind, its affairs and its interests and its possessions,
and on the other hand, to go patiently on, patiently on through
the years. They were men who had seen something; they had
seen something! "Abraham saw My day", said the Lord Jesus, "Abraham
saw My day" he rejoiced to see it. They had seen something,
Abraham had seen something that this world could never give the
answer to: a city and a heavenly country. No matter how much they
possessed of this earth, that never answered to it; they had seen
something that still kept them going.
Moses saw something, yes, he saw the God of Israel, and he saw
the pattern of the things in the heavens, but he saw more than
that. He saw more than that! What a tremendous suggestion
is found in this: "accounting the reproach of Christ greater
riches than of Egypt". "The reproach of Christ"! He had seen
something that could never find its answer in the types and the
figures and the symbols of the whole earthly representation, he
had seen something heavenly!
And so all these men had seen something, you see, and
that seeing was bound up with this sense of being called and of
destiny, and it kept these men going. Of Moses it says "He
endured, as seeing Him who is invisible". He had seen something,
and he endured... he endured! They endured, and what was the power,
the thing, that girded them to endure, to suffer, and to die,
still in faith, not having obtained? It was this something in them
that was a part of them, not something they had taken on, but
something that was
inborn: a sense of purpose, God-appointed destiny. Yes.
The letter to the Hebrews gathers that all up and says, "Seeing
we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let
us run..." Let us run (as they ran) "the race with
patience". Let us lay aside every weight, and the
so-easily besetting sin: that doubt,
that doubt - that's unbelief, as the context shows. Lay it aside...
run with patience. Girded by this same wonderful seeing, sensing,
knowing we are called, we are chosen, we are related to some
tremendous destiny. But then this becomes specific. It
becomes specific; it is not just general.
Zion is something that becomes very concrete in Israel. It is, so
to speak, the gathering up of all that the nation means and all
that the land means and all that the city means, and concentrating
it, so to speak, at one point. It is something very concrete and
concentric. So that this sense of destiny becomes, not something
quite general and spread over and indefinite, but something quite
focused. Focussed, and: "Ye are come to Zion". This is but a
repetition of something we have said more than once in the
conference. This is something that is presented to faith, and
something that you and I have got to recognise as being a matter
which concerns us. So that, while the apostle will present
the truth and tell us the facts about being chosen in Christ,
elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, and so on,
while he would tell us all that, he would say, "Look here: walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called". Make this
something that comes into your every day life, and it will redeem
your every day life from the ordinary, from the monotony, from the
trivial; it will lift you right up on to another level. You know
that you are, as a child of God, related to some
tremendous purpose. And you've got to live on the basis of
a great purpose. It becomes specific in that way. But let me
analyse that.
See, Zion, as we have said, is:-
A Collective Conception.
That is, it is that which joins the Lord's people, all together in
one. They found their concentric point in Zion, as a nation. It
was Zion that was their cohesive strength, the thing that brought
them together. Of course, naturally and literally that was true as
they, at the given times, all went up to Zion. From all the tribes
they came there and their national unity was celebrated or
enjoyed. But, although they had to live apart in many places and
during the intervening months they seemed to be insular, really
they were not, and Zion was the testimony to, and the experience
of, their oneness as a people.
Now, that is a great factor about this whole matter of Zion where
we are concerned spiritually: that it is a collective... shall I
use the more familiar word? A "corporate" thing. And while,
perhaps
in every, and truly in every individual Jew was this sense of
election and destiny, every Jew held that relatedly. No individual
Jew thought that he was the elect and that the whole purpose of
God related to him alone. He knew that what he had of that, that
calling, that election, and that destiny, was a related matter,
and he found the strength of it in the relatedness. See, it is the
people, not the individuals as such; the individuals share it in
their relationship with the whole people. God is after a people
for a purpose and for His purpose. And you and I will have our
main sense and strength of destiny and purpose in a related way.
There is always a great deal of limitation and danger about
individuals thinking that they are the elect, and that their job
is the job of all jobs; God-given. Anything like that is a
breach of principle, and it will certainly lead to a dead end. We
have this relatedly. That is, God's purpose is bound up with a
people, His church, and that which truly represents His church,
that is, which takes the true church character, the heavenly Body
character. Wherever that is found in representation collectively,
there these things obtain. And it's in that relatedness that we
shall come into our purpose in God, and we shall come into this
mighty sense that God is after something. He's after something,
and that we are related to that. It's relatedness, you see, that
is essential to this motive, to this purpose.
If we get out of a right relatedness, a right spiritual
relatedness, a full spiritual relatedness, with that which really
is chosen of God, formed of God, called of God in fellowship with
His Son concerning the eternal purpose that is centred in His Son,
if we get out of a full and right relationship with that, then
life becomes limited and we may get off the track altogether.
Weakness will set in, and it will not be long, it will not be long
before we begin to ask the question whether after all we have been
mistaken, whether all this wonderful truth about being called and
chosen really relates to us....
Now, you see, that's exactly what happened when Israel got away
from Zion. While they were in Zion: all right, no questions, all
is strength, all is life, all is fulness, things are happening.
But when, through their spiritual decline they were moved away
from Zion, they were out of immediate touch with Zion you see, and
became a scattered people. Then big questions arose whether, after
all, they were the elect people, whether they really were God's
people, whether this was not all some wonderful beautiful illusion
that they were called to a special purpose. The whole thing came
into question and they lost their vision. And where there is no
vision the people go to pieces, and that is only another way of
putting this: where there is a loss of a sense of destiny and
calling.
Now, Zion then means:
Relatedness.
Get away from true spiritual relatedness, and you expose yourself
to terrible deprivations and losses. And perhaps to, sooner or
later, to the major question as to whether it is all true or not,
whether all this teaching really holds good and works. You'll find
that it does hold good and it
does work if you're in right relationship, in the right
position. It does! And it works gloriously, and it works terribly!
It works for you and it works against that which is against it.
Now, I know that so many people have this difficulty, "You speak
about being called, chosen for a great purpose, but what is the
purpose of my life? Where do I fit into this and what is my
function?" And you're always making an individual and personal
matter of this in a wrong way. Get focused again about this, get
focused again. If an Israelite should have asked that question,
"What is my place? What is my function? What is my
vocation, for what am I called?" the answer would have
been: "Zion"! Zion. On every point, the answer is Zion. Do you see
what I mean? It doesn't relate to you out there as so many
individuals, it relates to a collective thing that God is doing.
And you will find your place and your function in
a related position. You must not go and take the whole purpose of
God and pull it out to you in some detached position, you have got
to come right into it.
It's a tremendous factor in vocation, in fellowship, in strength,
in purpose, in fellowship... and the enemy spoils the work and
spoils the purpose - brings in weakness and disintegration
immediately he gets us out of fellowship, and that's why he is so
concerned to do it, to do it. But listen to your own heart, listen
to your own new nature. What was it that was in every Israelite in
those days when things were right? They were distributed over the
land from Dan to Beersheba, from the utmost frontiers; scattered.
But
this was true of them all: there was an inward gravitation
toward Zion. They longed for Zion, their thoughts were turning to
Zion. "If only, if only we could get to Zion... it is difficult to
wait for the day to go up to Zion!" Their inner being was all the
time gravitating in that direction. Listen, dear friends, to your
new nature and disposition. Is it not a very part of you to long
for the fellowship of God's people? Is that not true of us? We
just must have it, our life seems to depend upon it. The one, one
great difficulty is when we can't have it.
It is so much more difficult to live an unrelated life. Yes, in
our very being there is this gravitation toward fellowship and
relatedness. It's a part, you see, of the Spirit's work in us, and
therefore it is a violation of our Life, a violation of the
Spirit, the work of the Spirit of God in us to be out of
fellowship, to be unrelated, to be independent, to be what we
call "freelances". You know where that phrase comes from, I
suppose. It comes from the world of journalism. "Freelance"
literally is one who runs about all over the place picking up
little bits here and there without any specific relationship. He
is not related to any one journal, he rushes all over the place
picking up everything like that. His whole life is distributed
and scattered. There is nothing central, nothing cohesive, about
it. He is just a freelance! Well, he may make a living, but he may
maintain an existence or make something good out of it in a way,
but you can't have that sort of thing in Zion. You can't have that
sort of thing in Zion!
Zion means that we are bound together with the people of God
wherever they are, whoever they are. Yes, the people of God,
because they are the people of God, not because they belong to our
society and come along our line of things, but they are
the people of God; we are one with them on the basis of Christ.
Mark you, if that is true, if that is true, God is able to do
things; God will stand by us.
Well, with Israel this whole matter depended so much upon the
fulness of their spiritual life and their allowing that Life to
govern, that inner Life to govern and respond. If ever anybody
should have resisted the gravitation of their Life, they would
have found themselves in a very difficult position. Sometimes a
tribe did that, and disaster followed. And in the case of the
Lord's disciples after His resurrection, there was one man at
least who tried it on and had a very miserable time - poor Thomas
- he stayed outside. He stayed outside, when they were having a
grand time inside, he stayed out, he kept himself apart, and I can
imagine that there was no more miserable man on the earth than
Thomas during those days while he was staying out. It was when he
came in that he found everything, the answer to all his questions
and a new flow of Life. He bowed and worshipped: "My Lord, and my
God".
So much for the value of Zion in terms of relatedness and
fellowship. Remember, this will only be on a twofold basis. On the
one side, the Cross will have to do a very thorough-going work in
us in order to get us in ourselves out of the way. We are
really the difficulty. I will not stay with that, but it is very
necessary to get ourselves, our interests, our
ambitions, our fancies, our likes, our
preferences and all that is just ours personally, to get
it all out of the way: thoroughly crucified and buried. And, on
the other side, the positive side, to be entirely under the
Lordship of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of the Holy Spirit where
the Holy Spirit does dictate everything, and we answer to His
dictates.
Now I want to pass to another point. Zion was, and is:
The Motive of Revival.
What is popularly termed revival is that which is related to one
thing as an objective or an object: it is related to souls being
saved or converted. I think that sums up, almost entirely, the
general conception of the meaning of the word "revival" - people
are being saved on a large scale. Well, we have nothing to say
against that, may the Lord grant it. But this whole matter of
revival is so largely unrelated to spiritual conditions in the
church. It is objective. It is some thing which is bound
up with a certain kind of activity - objective activity, with
certain objective results - unrelated to or out of relationship
with internal spiritual conditions. And, mark you, this matter of
revival can be (and I fear often is) a blind, a blind to the real
need.
A visitation of God in grace by which many are saved, is a
sovereign act. It is an act of sovereign grace, but acts of Divine
sovereignty, of sovereign grace, are one thing, that is the thing
with which there is so much occupation and concern: a sovereign
act of visitation of God in grace for the salvation of souls. That
is right, good, has been, and God grant that it may be again. Man
is concerned mainly with what he calls "revival" in these
terms, meaning outward happenings. God and the Bible think of
revival in terms of the recovery of something. It is re-vival.
It is the recovery of something that has been lost. Now, the whole
of the prophetic or prophet section of the Bible, was occupied
with revival in that sense: the recovery of Zion,
the recovery of Zion. Look through the prophets and see if that is
not the burden, the burden of their message, the burden
of their cry, the burden of their prayer. It's all that Zion
may be recovered, restored, may come again; the recovery of the
glories of Zion, that Zion should come into the place that it once
held. That runs right through the prophets! So that the prophetic
ministry has to do, not just with the sovereign acts of God's
grace externally and objectively, but with the recovery of
something in the people of God themselves. And that really
is God's way of touching the nations.
It was not until that was true of Israel, that the nations were
touched. God made that state of things internally, basic and
contingent for the touching of the nations, and the other will
follow. Yes, the other will follow as day follows night
spontaneously, when God has in His people what He wants. You will
not need to have special efforts to get souls saved. They will be
quietly being saved all the time. There will be something going
out that is touching, touching lives on an ever widening circle
when God gets what He wants amongst His people. It must be! It is
like that. It is spontaneous, it is inevitable.
So, the prophets did not cry and pray that the nations in the
first place should be saved, they prayed that Israel
should be saved, and then they saw that the nations would be
touched. We shall see something of that probably this evening, but
there's the statement of fact: that revival from the Bible
standpoint is internal before it is external. It is recovered,
it is recovery. And for that a prophetic ministry, a ministry
concerning Zion is needed to see what Zion really means
spiritually, stands for, its heavenly aspect, to have that burden,
that vision and that burden, and a ministry - that doesn't mean
only a preaching ministry, it means as much a praying ministry.
It means a burden on your heart; that's a ministry sometimes which
doesn't get on the platform, it's a burden on your heart which
finds expression: "Oh, oh, that the Lord's people... I with them,
were as the Lord would have them be in the full meaning of Zion
recovered!
And the last word follows on that, Zion is:-
A Means to God's Larger, Greater Ends.
Therefore that which it represents, that testimony, that full
testimony to the Lord Jesus in Person, and work, and place in the
Divine appointment, that as a revelation to the heart, to the
hearts of God's people, has to be planted, planted in the nations.
It has to be there. The strategy of God is just this: that He
plants a testimony, a testimony which is so according to His mind,
answering to His thought, that He finds it perfectly safe to add
to that. That's God's way. That's what we have in the New
Testament, just what He did. He planted a testimony in a nucleus
here and a group there. And there they lived in the good of
Christ: His work, His place. And what happened? God added, God
added, added daily to the church, those who were being saved. God
added. But God must have something to which He can add
with a sense of confidence.
God is not going to add to our institutions. God is not just
going to add to and build up our particular, private interests in
Christianity. God is going to add to His Son, and His Son as
represented in His people. He will add according to the measure of
His Son. Believe me, this is the key, this is the key to the
growth of the church. This is a remarkable thing, a remarkable
thing true to history, that where there is something that answers
to God's thought in greater fulness, and Christ is there, Christ
is the basis and Christ is there in expression, God adds to that.
God adds to that. The solution to empty churches, the problem of
empty churches and all that, is along that line. If it is going to
be solved at all, that is the only true way of solving it. God
adds when He has got that to which He can confidently add.
So He must have Zion that He may build up Zion. He is not going
to build up things, He builds up Zion, and Zion is the testimony,
living testimony to, and expression of, His Son in fulness. God
plants in order to add. He plants in order that He may have a
ground of argument with everything else. Remarkable; it opens
another field which we have no time to explore, but Zion was God's
instrument of argument with everybody else. He argued with the
nations concerning Zion. He argued with all the enemies about
Zion. He had there an instrument of argument. If the question were
raised, "Where is God and what is God doing?" Here is the answer.
Is this whole thing true? Here it is, here's the answer. "Does God
indeed dwell with men in these days?" Here is the answer, you see.
No matter what question, what attitude, God argues by having some
concrete thing in hand. "Does it work?" Does this, this (call it
"teaching" if you like) work? Well, here's the answer. God must
have something with which to argue, to argue back and answer.
It's pathetically tragic that God has so little by which He can
argue with other things and other realms. He hasn't got an answer
concretely or adequately. He hasn't got it. But Zion was God's
ground of argument. As we saw this morning, nations, nations came
into God's controversy over Zion. Yes, controversy. God
had, said the prophet, a controversy with the nations, and it was
over Zion. "For your sakes I have sent to Babylon and will bring
down all their nobles as fugitives. I will give Egypt for thee..."
see? The ground of argument is Zion. Oh, that God could have a
ground of argument and answer something which is in His hand...
the means of saying, "Well, here it is, you see! Here is the
thing".
And finally, Zion is that which will be the occasion of the
overthrow of the whole kingdom of satan. That is what is revealed
in the Word. Zion was the occasion of the overthrow of Egypt, of
Babylon, of Assyria, of Rome. Rome lifted up its head against Zion
(I speak in spiritual language now of Zion) and what happened to
Rome? Where is that mighty iron empire? Broken, shattered,
scattered... in dust. God argued on the ground of Zion, you see,
with the nations, with the empires. He does, and all that lies
behind them is the mighty kingdom of satan, and Zion will be the
occasion of the entire overthrow of satan's kingdom and satan's
system. How important, then, how important it is that God should
have that which corresponds to Zion.
Does not this throw a lot of light upon the enemy's ceaseless,
ceaseless and unwaning activity to destroy a full testimony? To
prevent it or destroy it, to mar a vessel that represents any
greater fulness of Christ, to break it up, to scatter it, to bring
reproach upon it, to bring into it that which is a cause of
scandal? Oh, anything, everything to spoil that instrument for God.
To argue back to satan God cannot answer satan, only by some
means here. That's the whole story of the book of Job isn't it?
Satan challenges God and the throne of God, and God answers him in
a man, exhausts him in a man. There is a point in that
story where satan disappears from the scene and is heard of no
more. He's out of court, God has answered him in that man.
God must have a ground of argument with satan, Zion is that.
I trust that you are not thinking in objective terms of Zion, but
saying, "Well, I was born there, my name is in the roll of the
citizens of Zion, and all this then refers to me and relates to
me". Take it, dear friends, like that.