READING:
Rom. 8:19,21-23, Heb. 1:2; 2:5-8, 9-11; 3:1,7-8; 12:5-6;
Rev. 12:5. In our previous meditation, we were
occupied with the School of sonship unto adoption. We are
now going to follow that on to the next stage.
We were
seeing a little of the nature, meaning and need for
transition from spiritual infancy to the School of
sonship. A very real experience is that transition and a
very deep one for those who enter into it. A whole new
set of conditions perfectly strange to us is connected
with that further movement in the life of the child of
God which marks the passage from spiritual childhood to
spiritual sonship, or the School of sonship. I suppose
most of us remember when we went to a new school, or when
we went to school for the first time. Everything was
strange, everything was new. We had to take up things
from the very first point. It was an entirely new world:
and so it is in the life of the child of God. It is an
entirely new world, a new set of conditions, something
with which we are altogether unfamiliar when that point
is reached where God takes us in hand to see that we are
no longer children, but are brought into the School of
sonship with adoption in view; adoption, of course,
according to the Divine meaning of that word, not our
natural meaning.
The Purpose of our Graduation as Sons
Now we
are going for a little while to consider the graduation
from the School of sonship, graduating to that for which
school has been going on, all that child-training which,
as the Lord Himself knows and let us know that He knows,
is for the present not joyous but grievous. But there is
the graduation day. The whole creation waits for that
graduation day with bated breath and an inward yearning,
the day of the manifestation of the sons of God, the PLACING
of sons to which we referred in our previous meditation,
which is the meaning of the word "adoption";
not bringing into the family, but the placing of sons who
have qualified through the school. And what is the
graduation of sonship, unto what is it? It is unto the
Throne.
"Not
unto angels" (not unto angels of any rank, not even
the highest rank of archangels) "did he subject the
world to come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere
testified saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of
him? Or the son of man, that thou settest him
apart?"
That is
the true rendering of the latter sentence; not
"visitest him" as we commonly use the word, but
"settest him apart"; that man, in a word, is in
view with God from eternity for this purpose, to have the
throne, the government, the dominion over the world to
come in union with God's Son, as the sons brought by that
Son to glory.
There is
the Heir in Hebrews 1:2 -
"...whom he appointed heir of all things..."
There
are the heirs in chapter 2 -
"...bringing many sons unto glory..."
The
throne is that which is in view at the end of school, the
graduation, and it is that which is referred to in Rev.
12. The governing principle of Rev. 12 is sonship brought
out to completion, a man child.
"She
was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all
nations with a rod of iron." (This is sonship.)
"And her child was caught up unto God, and unto the
throne." That is the graduation.
The Man Child of Revelation 12
Now, I
am going to stay for the miserable business of getting
rid of a few misconceptions about this chapter. The
accepted and firmly held view concerning this chapter is,
that this woman is Israel and that this man child is
Christ. I will not impute motives and reasons to the
holders of that view, but it does seem to me that only a
prejudiced mind could hold it, a mind not willing to
accept what is, I think, quite patently the truth.
This
book of Revelation begins with a pronouncement from
heaven that what is going to be shown is "things
which must shortly come to pass," and that
pronouncement was made years and years after Christ had
gone to heaven. It was future. Moreover, when Christ went
to heaven, Satan was not cast out of heaven as is the
case in Rev. 12; for, nearly forty years after Christ
went to heaven, Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians,
and in chapter 6 we have this revelation of the nature
and sphere of the Church's warfare: "Our wrestling
is not against flesh and blood, but against the
principalities, against the powers, against the
world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies." Satan was
not deposed when Christ was caught up to the throne.
Thirdly, the dragon was not cheated of his prey in the
case of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus was slain by the
dragon, and it is a part of the great and glorious truth
that it was through death that He destroyed him that had
the power of death, namely, the Devil. Satan, the dragon,
thought he had swallowed up Christ perhaps, but he
discovered that he had been swallowed up. But the Lord
Jesus did not escape the great red dragon by a rapture:
not at all. The dragon got him so far and slew him. But
therein is the glorious sovereignty of God, and that is
another line of truth altogether: God's sovereignty
wrought in the very presence of Satan's triumph. But that
is not this.
Then
this woman is a paradox, a contradiction. She is at one
and the same time in heaven clothed in glory and on the
earth clothed with trouble and travail. She is clothed
with the sun in heaven, and yet in the next breath she is
travailing on the earth. Is not that just exactly what we
have in the letter to the Ephesians about the Church? In
the heavenlies, in Christ Jesus blessed with every
spiritual blessing, and yet at the same time the letter
shows us very clearly right at the heart of it that the
Church is down here and in conflict. She has an earthly
walk and is meeting things down here while at the same
time in the heavenlies. A contradiction apparently: at
one and the same time in heaven glorious and yet on earth
in tribulation. That is the Church. Well, is not that
enough, though there is a lot more here?
I know
there is another interpretation; that this was not only
Israel but Christ Himself, and that we are the seed of
Christ. But that is only just allowed to go so far. It
does not carry us through satisfactorily. But this is the
main position held about Israel and Christ, and I say I
do not see how it can hold water in the light of even the
two or three things that we have just noted.
You see,
you have a correspondence here. In Rev. 2 you have these
very words addressed to the overcomers in the Church at
Thyatira - "He that overcometh... to him will I give
authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a
rod of iron." Then in the letter to the church in
Laodicea we have these further words: "He that
overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my
throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father
in his throne." There is the throne for overcomers
and the rule of the nations. Then those very words are
reiterated in Chapter 12 about the man child caught up to
the throne to rule the nation with a rod of iron. And I
do not see that we can divorce those words from Hebrews 2
- "Thou madest him (man) in order to have"
(that is the sense of the word) "dominion over the
works of thy hands." Of course there is the union
between Christ and His own: that is what Hebrews is
speaking about. "Christ as a son over God's house,
whose house are we..."
So then,
having said that much - and I think it is enough, I am
not dealing with all the data and points in this chapter
- having said that much, we want to come right to our
point in this meditation.
The
graduation from the School of sonship is to the throne,
and it is that throne, with what it means with regard to
vocation, to service, to purpose in relation to God's
eternal intention, that is in view while God is dealing
with us, when God takes us out of the comfortable,
pleasant time of spiritual infancy and childhood, where
everything is done for us, and puts us into that
experience where the thing has to be wrought in us and
where, through this deep exercise of our spiritual
faculties or senses, we become spiritually responsible
sons of God. It is with this in view that God deals with
us as with sons. Now, do grasp the meaning of that, what
it implies. It implies one or two rather important
things.
Spiritual Increase Related to the
Throne and the Glory of the Lord
Firstly,
it does mean that the deepening of spiritual life, as it
is called, or any other terms used for the same thing, is
not a matter which is just to issue in our fuller
blessing. So often people will bring it right down there
to that level of fuller blessing, and we are very often
tempted even there, in the time of fire and adversity, to
react to this whole thing by saying, Well, if I have
heaven, why need I trouble about all this, and why should
I go through all this? Here are plenty of people just
very happy and contented, they are saved and they know
they are saved, and here am I who have sought to go on
with God, and I am having the most awful time. It seems
to me that I have got the worst of the bargain, by
wanting to go right on with God! If we look at it like
that, purely from the personal point of view of blessing,
we have missed our way, and we shall get into
difficulties; because, as we have always sought to point
out, when you come out of this spiritual infancy into the
School of sonship, you graduate from what is personal as
to your own interest and blessing into what is for the
Lord and not for you. From that time forward the whole
motive is, not what I am going to get, but what God is
going to get. That is Ephesians. "That ye may know
what is... the riches of the glory of HIS inheritance
in the saints." Not what I am going to get now: that
will follow, that will be all right, the Lord will be
faithful, but it is something else. We have come into the
school on the basis of God's eternal purpose, and God's
eternal purpose does not begin and end when He has got us
born again. God's eternal purpose is only reached when He
has got us in the throne. Thus it is the Lord, for the
Lord, and what the Lord is after that is the one
consideration. It will be glory for me, but that is not
the motive of it now. It is this great purpose with which
we are called: that is what is governing everything, and
it is in the terms of the throne.
So the
transition from infancy to the School of sonship, being a
very painful thing, and fraught with all sorts of
difficulties, brings us nevertheless into relation with
that which has been in God's mind from before the world
was where we are concerned. Chosen in Christ Jesus
"that we should be to the praise of HIS glory."
All the dealings of the Lord with us in this school have
that throne in view.
World Dominion the Pressing Issue of
the Hour
What I
want to say with special emphasis now is that this
matter, as I see and feel it - and I leave it to you to
judge whether there is any truth in this - is most
fitting in relation to what is happening in the world
today. It does seem to me that this is a time when this
issue is put in a way in which it has never been put
before; that is, the issue of the dominion of this world,
the issue of Antichrist, is so patent. It is the control
and domination of this inhabited earth, and everything
connected with this fresh drive to that end is to set
aside God and His Christ. It is an evil thing, and it
does not need a spiritually minded preacher of the truth
to discern that; for many of our leaders of the State
today have seen it and are using these words. How far
they see, we do not know. But they are seeing that all
that Christianity stands for is at stake. They are
saying, This is a Satanic thing! and they are using the
very phrase - Antichrist. It is discerned by men as to
what the nature of things is, and we are able, in a
special way as enlightened by the Lord, to see what the
end of this is. It is the most far-reaching and terrible
bid for the throne of this world that has been known.
That is what lies behind it and that is what is in view.
Therefore I say that this word is most fit for a time
like this, and I am asking myself and I ask you
prayerfully to consider whether there must not come
something in the nature of a summons to the people of God
to recognize this fact, with reference to their calling,
namely, that they have to get behind that which is behind
the present situation, and that the saints must take the
kingdom spiritually now, in a spiritual way, in order
that they may come to the place of the throne for the age
to come.
We here
perhaps - though let us not think too highly of
ourselves, more highly than we ought to think - but it
may be that our little gathering here with all its
earthly insignificance has yet a significance which is
very far reaching, seeing that we are here in the
audience chamber of God concerning this great matter of
the dominion of this world. In a small way, it affects us
very seriously. I ask you to pray about this, very
earnestly and continually that there might be a movement
of God's Spirit within the circle of His own people in a
new way, to produce this man child that overcomes and
takes the throne. It is quite clear, from Rev. 2 and 3,
that all do not come to that position, and equally so
from all these exhortations and warnings about Israel
missing the goal in the wilderness, falling by the way,
as warnings to the Church to beware of the same calamity.
"Today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your
hearts." I wonder if any of us have a hardened
heart, not against the Lord in a general way, but against
this. You harden by using special terms. Oh, how people
have sought to close the door by sticking labels on!
Get rid
of terms. Call it Selective Rapture, if you like: I do
not call it that. Call it Overcomer Testimony, if you
like. It makes little difference, if you mean by that,
That is an interpretation, that is a peculiar teaching!
Well, that is a hardening of the heart. What if this
should happen to be true! We have to look this thing
square in the eyes. Is there any possibility that this is
true? If there is, it is a tremendous thing; the biggest
issue in the history of this world is bound up with it,
nothing less than the dominion, the throne. I suggest to
you that there is a good deal today which would lead us
to open the door to possibilities, to suppositions.
An Object Lesson and the Need for
Open-hearted Inquiry
You know
certain nations at our own door are suffering untold
misery, because as long as seven years ago they were told
of secret propaganda going on within the borders of their
own country, and working its way secretly and subtly into
high places, but would not believe it. They were told
what that was going to end in, what the object was, what
the result would be, and they said, No, impossible! I ask
you this: If nine months ago a prophet had stood up in
some prominent place in this world and prophesied the
history of the following nine months, what would have
happened to him? Seven or eight countries overrun and
surprised, and this final terrible collapse of France! He
would have been put in a lunatic asylum or have been
lynched, he would have been shut up for safety. But it
has happened: the unbelievable has happened and is
happening. No one would believe it or accept it. See how
they are suffering for saying, Impossible! Ridiculous!
Ah, I
say to you that this should be a lesson to us. That is a
trick of Satan. It is a part of his strategy, to work
subtly and at the same time to make people believe there
is nothing, that all is well; to be working underneath to
the internal disintegration and downfall of a people, and
yet on the surface to be making nice speeches. This is a
Satanic method, and again and again Satan has gained his
strategical advantage by that same means. And I say to
you that at least we ought to come to a thing like this
and say, Well, it is just possible that may be right, and
if there is the remotest possibility of its being right,
it is such a big thing we had better attend to it! I know
many have managed to get past that, but I say again, from
the lowest level of making this appeal, that it just may
be that the Lord's Word is true after all. It just may be
that this is the true revelation of God's thought and
intention, that He chose an elect people, a company which
has come to be called the Church, He chose that company,
that Body, that corporate entity in Christ before the
world was, with a view to it coming through at length to
take the throne as His vessel and instrument for
governing His universe. I say, that may be true. All I
ask you to do is to consider the possibility of its being
true, and if only you will allow that, it will give you
real pause: and then to see that this is quite true so
far as the Scripture and the experience of the Lord's
people is concerned in a spiritual way. God is doing a
certain thing in His people, in many at least who are
pressing on with Him, those of whom we were speaking in
our previous meditation who are marked by a
purposefulness with God. In these He begins to do
something deep and strange and painful, the end of which
is never, never reached in this earthly life, the value
of which is never entered into by anybody during their
time here on earth. It is unto something: it is the
preparation of sons unto adoption to take the throne; and
I urge you to pray with regard to your own place in this,
and to pray for a movement of God's Spirit within the
compass of His people to produce this man child. The
Church, as a whole, is moving steadily into this travail.
Then
will you not pray that the Lord's people may be
enlightened on this matter, enlightened as to what the
issue is. It is between Christ and Antichrist, between
the Church which is Christ's Body and the whole
Antichrist system; for it is quite clear that Antichrist,
though he may be an individual opposed to Christ
personally, is also a church, a system, a terrible
system. Satan has his church opposed to Christ's Church.
Blessed be God, we have this assurance, "I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it"!
The Explanation of the Mystifying and
Painful Preparation
Well
then, that is the matter before us in this School of
sonship, namely, the throne. My dear friends, I want to
get hold of that in my own heart, and I want you to get
hold of it. You see, we are so prone to make our sojourn
on this earth the big thing; I mean in the matter of what
we are able to do, how much we can do and realize and see
in our lifetime, and when we find the Lord shutting us up
and limiting us and seeming to put us in prison, ofttimes
under the strain and pressure of it, when the iron enters
into our soul as with Joseph, we begin to think we have
missed the way. Life is going and it is all unfruitful;
we are not doing anything. It is other people who are
doing the thing, we are not. Thus we make so much of this
present life in the matter of what we are able to do, as
though that were everything, whereas (and this, of
course, is no argument why we should be slack about
doing) so often the Lord has got His greatest
effectiveness in those who have been just shut right up,
unable to do anything outside. Is not that the truth
about Paul himself? Of yes, it is, and Paul, as we have
often pointed out, was the embodiment of the revelation
which was given to him of the dispensation of the Church,
and when we come to the end of his life, we have Paul,
who had had such a wide scope of ministry, who had been
able to do so much, we have this man, with all the values
that are in him put into prison. But we get the
concentrated essence of value from those prison
experiences. We get the letter to the Ephesians, and that
was worth Paul's going to prison, and anything like that
will be worth all that we undergo in the School of
sonship which sees a very great deal of what is here on
the earth closed down, if only the heavenly may become
the far more real and valuable as an expression in us and
through us.
But I
say I want this to get into my heart, into your hearts,
that the Lord is not so much concerned - please do
not misunderstand me - the Lord is not so much concerned
with how much we do now in this life. He is more
concerned with the measure of Christ to which He can
bring us in this life... "till we all attain unto
the... measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ" (Eph. 4:13). It will be Christ corporate who
will come to take the kingdom of this world in the coming
ages, and it is unto that - the fullness of Christ - that
God is working pre-eminently in our experience, and that
is the thing that matters most. It is the most difficult
thing for us to accept; a supremely difficult thing for
any active temperament to accept. To some it is martyrdom
not to be doing something. It may be God's way of getting
the enlargement of His Son in His members, the patience
of Jesus Christ, among other things.
God has
this great thing in view. The issue comes up acutely and
in an intensified form as we get near to the great end.
In order to answer Satan, to have His answer in a
corporate Man, God has to prepare you and me and a
company of his people to take the throne, to be caught up
unto God and to His throne, to rule the nations with a
rod of iron. That, of course, has reference to tomorrow,
the tomorrow of the ages I mean, and there is something
beyond that, namely, our reigning with Him for ever and
ever, another form of reigning. I aspire rather to the
day after tomorrow than to tomorrow. Ruling with a rod of
iron may appeal to us naturally, but we would sooner have
the glorious reign where nothing wants a rod of iron.
"Now unto him... be the glory in the church and in
Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of the
ages" (Eph. 3:20-21). It is a big thing for which we
go to school for a few years and suffer as we are
suffering. It is easy to say that, but it is a painful
thing, this school. The Lord knows what He is doing with
us. It is the matter of this overcoming, and, in the
light of this school or this schooling, we can appreciate
the word "overcomer." There is a lot of
overcoming to be done. We have to get on top of a very
great deal, and the getting on top of many things is
leading us to get on top of the Devil and his kingdom.
Presently, in the great hour when the sons are
manifested, when the man child is caught to the throne,
the creation is to be delivered from the bondage of
corruption.
See then
the meaning of the day in which we live. See the meaning
of the suffering into which we may go yet more deeply,
and how it is to be God's answer to this working of Satan
that has been going on ever since he made a bid for the
place of God's Heir, the Heir of all things. Ever since
Satan made that bid and was cast down from the higher to
the lower heavens it has been going on, and now it is
being brought out in a new way. That is what it is, and
you and I, as part of Christ's Body, are called to be
God's answer to that, and it is to be so now in a
spiritual way. Presently it will be in the full way, the
literal way, that the saints will take the kingdom, and
He shall come whose right it is to reign. The dominion
shall be given unto the saints of the Most High.