I want
to bring just three fragments of Scripture together as
basic or background to what I feel the Lord wants to say
to us this morning. In the prophecies of Isaiah, turn to
chapter 6, verse 1: "In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord." I want to take
that last fragment, "I saw the
Lord." Then, in the Letter of Paul to the
Galatians, let us turn to chapter 1 in verses 15 and 16
and see this clause: "it pleased God, to reveal
His Son in me." And then in the Book of the
Acts, chapter 26, verse 19, Paul says: "Wherefore,
I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." I
saw the Lord, it pleased God, to reveal His Son in me,
and I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
We are
getting very near to the end of this time together, and
those of us who have had responsibility in ministry are
asking the question, "I wonder what the people have
seen this week?" What have they really seen, and
what are they taking away in them? What have they seen
with "the seeing" about which the Bible, and
especially the New Testament, has so much to say.
I am not
so much concerned, dear friends, with addressing you. You
know the difference between being addressed and being
talked to. I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to
you about this matter of spiritual seeing. I am quite
sure that even a small gathering like this one represents
different degrees of spiritual seeing. Whether it be the
early beginning of seeing, or whether it be the most
advanced that a company like this may represent, this
matter of spiritual seeing is the most governing thing in
all life.
I think
you will agree with me that although we think of our time
as being perhaps more important than any other time, that
is, we think that things have advanced in our time to
such a degree as they never were like this before, there
have always been times (if this is a time when things
have become more developed and advanced), there have
always been times when this matter of spiritual seeing
was the only hope of the situation.
We are
in a time of unspeakable confusion in Christianity. It is
in the world, of course, but we are not at the moment
concerned with the confusion in the world. We know about
that, but in Christendom I think that there never was
such a degree of confusion as there is today. There is
such bewilderment and almost countless, strange,
perplexing developments in Christianity. There is a
defeating and defying of every attempt to either explain
or cope with them - to understand what they mean.
We have
found it here this week - a tremendous amount of
confusion. You would not believe what comes from personal
conversation. There are questions, endless questions.
From the moment you begin to speak and finish your first
word, people are asking questions. There are questions
about this and that and another thing and all the things
that are going on; and even if you have not had their
questions, you know quite well that the atmosphere is
full of this intrameeting, intrahearing of, intraseeing.
There are these questions concerning the things that are
going on amongst Christians. This is true, is it not? And
the one great paramount necessity is spiritual sight.
Shall I use another word, a New Testament word, spiritual
discernment.
This was
so at the end of the apostolic age. The Letters of John
are written because of this confusion and the defeat of
the Christian mind to be able to comprehend, understand,
define, or explain what was going on. John is saying that
there are many antichrists - many antichrists - many
false spirits, and many false prophets gone into the
earth. The situation was developing then as it has
developed so much more in our time. John made it his
business in writing his letters to try and indicate to
these Christians in their perplexity, the way (the only
way) in which they were going to be able to get through
all this perplexity without becoming involved, defeated,
and led away, led astray.
You
know, multitudes of dear Christian people today are just
being led away, and I think led astray, by the things
that are happening, strange things. It is as in the days
of David when his treacherous son, Absalom, rose up to
capture the throne and the kingdom. He sat in the gate,
and he resorted to all the make-up, polled his wonderful
hair and I do not know what else he did to attract
attention to himself; and then he put on artificial
smiles and words and language, and it says that he
captured, led away, the simple people - the simple, the
poor simpletons of that day - with disastrous
consequences. That was the method, and even Satan himself
is transformed into an angel of light. Very often, unless
you have discernment, you cannot tell the difference
between various things. Surely, in these days, the great
need of the Lord's people is spiritual discernment,
spiritual perception, or what I am speaking of as
spiritual sight.
Now let
us come back to two of the passages which we have quoted.
In Acts 26, the Apostle Paul is reviewing the whole of
his Christian life and ministry. It only lasted thirty
years - thirty years of Christian life, experience and
ministry - but what a thirty years. Thirty years not
exhausted in two thousand, and we have not got to the
bottom of him yet. We have not exhausted him yet.
But
here, he is reviewing those thirty years since the Lord
apprehended him unto the day that he was standing in the
presence of the Roman governors. He is reviewing the
thirty years and all that he had learned, all that he had
been shown and taught, all that he had come into since he
came into Christ, all that the Lord had given him to give
unto others. How great! How full it all was in a span of
thirty years. Why, some of us have been Christians a good
bit more than that, and we have not got a fragment of
what he had.
But
here, he is reviewing it all, and he is attributing the
whole thing to one thing. What happened to him? There was
a tremendous revolution that took place right there on
the Damascus road, with all that opened up to him at that
time, all that began to break upon him and has been
breaking on him ever since, the ever growing expansion of
Divine revelation. All the traveling and ministry that
has been done, he is attributing it all to one thing - to
one thing - "It pleased God, to reveal His Son
in me." It does not say just to me: it was not
just the objective thing on the road to Damascus. You
think about that! "I saw a light from Heaven, above
the brightness of the sun." That is the objective.
But when he is speaking about it in the light of what
issued from it, what began then and has continued and
grown and grown, he does not say it was that "God
revealed His Son to me." In essence he says,
"Something was done in me. On that day, He started
something which has resulted in all this" - "It
pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." - When
you think of what you have in the Bible throughout, you
see it is the result of the same kind of thing.
What do
we have from Abraham? "The God of Glory appeared
unto our father Abraham." Abraham could
say at the beginning of his career, his course, his
history, at the beginning and with his going on and
growing until his seed was as the sand of the seashore
and the stars of the heavens, he could say that at the
beginning of this immense thing, "I SAW THE LORD.
You ask me how I came into this. You ask me
for the explanation of my life, my history, my knowledge
at the beginning, I SAW THE LORD."
So did
Moses. It says that Moses went up into the mount and
"saw the God of Israel" and the Glory; and
under his feet it was as "a sapphire stone." "I
saw the Lord": that accounted for
Moses. "...he endured, as seeing Him Who
is
invisible." A tremendous life, that of Moses.
The principle beneath and behind and over it all was that
he "saw the Lord."
Thus, we
can go on through the Old Testament and come to the
Prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel begins with, "I saw
visions of God." I SAW, and so everything in
Ezekiel as a representative prophet is "I saw
the Lord." Isaiah, you have read it: "I
saw the Lord." And so you can go on because the
very name " "prophets" was
"seers." Seers were men who saw, the seers of
Israel, the men who were the eyes of Israel. They were
the SEEING for Israel, and that explains all the
prophets.
Now we
come over into the New Testament. For some time, the
greater part of three years and perhaps a little more,
there were men in company with Jesus of Nazareth,
physically in company with Him. They were at His side,
hearing Him, seeing Him walk, and feeling His influence,
that magnetic influence of His; and yet, they were not
seeing Him. See how near you can get, how much there can
be; and yet, there not be a seeing of Him?!
You can
go to Palestine today, if you like, you can go to Israel
and see it all and not see Him (I do not mean
physically). But the disciples were with Him, and they
did not see Him until after His resurrection. Then there
is a new note, a new excitant note, when you hear them
after His resurrection meeting others of their company. "We
have seen the Lord. We have seen the Lord." There
is something here that was not there all that time
before, and that accounted for everything afterward.
Now, you
come to this Apostle Paul, and, as we have said, you
explain and account for everything in that man as God's
servant, as the greatest of His apostles, you account for
everything on this one thing as he did, "It
pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." He could
say, "I saw the Lord." Everything stems
from that kind of seeing, an inward revelation of Jesus
Christ.
When the
apostle said this, that it pleased God, to reveal His Son
in him, he was implying that up to that time he was
blind. Oh, yes, he had inherited what? He inherited not
only nature's blindness, for by nature all men are blind
in this sense that they do not have spiritual sight, but
he had inherited the curse which Isaiah was commanded to
pronounce upon his race. "Go to this people and say
to them, seeing you shall not see, hearing you shall not
understand: make this people's eyes closed, ears
stopped," and Saul of Tarsus had inherited that. "Blindness,"
he later said, "has happened to Israel."
He was a great Israelite - so blind. He was content
with his blindness as was Nicodemus; and then the Lord
said, "except, except, except something happen to
you which gives you an entirely new constitution, with a
new faculty of seeing, you shall not see - you shall not
see - and you cannot see the kingdom."
That is
where Saul of Tarsus was. Let the force of that come to
us because we are in a conference, dear friends, where we
have had a lot of Bible teaching. From day to day a lot
from the Bible has been presented. A lot of doctrine - I
do not know how much theology, but I suppose it may be
that some of you are going away with your hands fuller of
Bible knowledge than when you came.
Well,
you will never, never beat Saul of Tarsus on that line.
You can never catch up with him on that line, and you
will never, never measure up to Nicodemus on that ground.
"Art thou a teacher in Israel." A
TEACHER IN ISRAEL - if you knew what it required to
produce a teacher in Israel - a rabbi was in training
from infancy, and how thorough-going that training was in
the Old Testament. Well, you say, one had to go a long
way in the religious education and a long way in the
knowledge of the Bible, the Scriptures; but when you have
got there with Nicodemus, Saul of Tarsus, who was a
rabbi, and many others of the same class and category,
when you have got there, you are still blind - blind, as
we say, as bats.
What I
am saying is that we must get to this business of
spiritual faculty before we finish this conference. We
really must face the issue that we have had a lot of
Bible teaching. We have had a lot here, and perhaps you
have had a lot of it for years. How much of this teaching
is in the line of "God has revealed His Son in
me?!" Not, "I have got Bible knowledge from the
Bible or from the schools or in any way that I have read
or heard", but in isolating myself from all that and
from all others we should be able to say, 'I am a man, I
am a woman, in whom God has revealed by Divine Act, a
supernatural act, has revealed His Son in me.'
We
should ask ourselves, "How do I know the Lord Jesus?
How do I know the Bible? How do I know? Can I say I know
perhaps through the Bible, perhaps through a messenger,
or perhaps through a book?" Yes, but that was only a
vehicle. "Back behind that, I know because God
Himself has revealed His Son inside of me: He has done
something inside. I have seen beyond - beyond the
vehicle, beyond the means employed. I have
seen beyond the sacred page: I seek Thee, Lord. My spirit
pants for Thee. Oh, not just the written Word, but
the Living Word." This is spiritual faculty. This is
a wonderful, amazing thing, this spiritual faculty. It is
a miracle thing, and nothing but that will have upon us
the effect that it had upon this man, Paul, and these
others. Nothing but that - and the test of whether it is
that act of God in us is how it effects us. Nothing at
all but a spiritual seeing would ever have made that
revolution in Saul, Paul, that was made.
What a
revolution! Think of him again. We have never yet sensed
the immensity of that transaction. This man was a rabid,
utter, uncompromising devotee of Judaism and of the
earthly Israel and all connected therewith. He was so
devoted. It tells us that he was zealous above anyone of
his own age. For it, he would persecute unto far cities;
and he did not stop with men, but women and children he
would hurl into prison. He would stand by while that
grand, that wonderful, young man, Stephen was being
battered to death, broken by the rocks. He would stand by
and say, "Go on. Go on. That is it. Finish that
work. Have done with that man." This revolution
turned that man to be just as Stephen was, to be just as
utterly, uncompromisingly committed to the Jesus of
Nazareth Whom he was persecuting. Paul was committed in
all that he would suffer for that new position afterward.
I tell you nothing, nothing on earth, in heaven, or hell
would bring that about, but a revelation in him of Jesus
Christ. That is what did it - that did it!
Only
such a revelation to our hearts will precipitate such
tremendous issues, make those revolutions, bring about
such an emancipation, and set us on a new, utterly new
course. It will do that. It will do that if you have
really seen the Lord.
I must
press on and get nearer to the happy, blessed side of
this, because there is a blessed side as well as the
tremendous challenge of it, but we must be challenged.
You see, I know what I am talking about. I am not giving
you an address this morning, but I am talking to you out
of a little bit of experience of this. It is not the
doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of
the Person of Jesus Christ is His Eternal Sonship. Yes,
we believe in His Eternal Sonship. His incarnation, God
incarnate. Yes, we believe in it, in His incarnation, in
His good life, perfect and sinless life. Yes, we believe
in His atoning death: He was the atonement. Yes, we
believe that and so on - all the doctrine of the Person
of Christ, but it is not that that I am talking about.
You can have all that and not have a revolution. You can
be the uttermost fundamentalist on the doctrine of the
Person of Christ and not ever have this that I am talking
about happen in you. That is the weakness of Christianity
today - it has got the doctrine, got the fundamentals,
got the teaching, got it all, and, then, what they will
do for it!!
Paul had
the revelation of Jesus Christ in his heart, and that was
his support, his confidence, his strength. That carried
him on and carried him through and carried him on to us.
No, dear friends, it is not the doctrine of the Person of
Christ: it is the revelation of Jesus Christ inside,
inside!
It is
not the doctrine of the Cross. I have got to the place
where I am almost heartily sick of the doctrine of the
Cross, just as such. In some places that I go, they have
people talking about the Cross; and they think that I
move about this world with the idea of teaching the
doctrine of the Cross. Identification with Christ in
death, burial, and resurrection: that is the doctrine of
the Cross; and when Christ died, we died with Him. You
can have the doctrine of the Cross, the teaching of the
Cross, of "identification," and still be so
tremendously alive yourself. You can be so touchy, so
touchy, so ready to react to any provocation, any
disagreement, any criticism. Have the doctrine of the
Cross? No, it is not the doctrine of the Cross: it is the
revelation of the Cross.
You can
have all the doctrine of the Church. The Church, the
Church of Ephesians, you know, the Body of Christ -
"very wonderful, very fascinating, captivating,
marvelous." The doctrine of the Church - people are
talking about it in the churches. The churches, the
churches - what are the churches if they are not
fragments of the Church?! And what is the Church, the
Body of Christ? The Body of Christ is a crucified Body,
bearing the scars of Jesus Christ.
You can
have all the doctrine of the Church: I had all that. As a
member of The Bible Teachers Association, I could take a
long blackboard and outline any book of the Bible that
you liked, including Ephesians. I could talk about the
Church and what is there in Ephesians about the Church,
outline it, analyze it, and talk for an hour on it. Dear
friends, I tell you quite honestly, I had never seen the
Church, and I had never seen the Cross although I could
analyze and present Romans so thoroughly and, to my own
satisfaction, quite cleverly.
So the
day came - yes, The Day came and I have to say that He
revealed that in me. What happened? What happened? I shut
myself in my room, and I said, "I am finished with
the ministry, finished with preaching, finished with
teaching. I am finished." I told the Lord that, and
I said, "Lord, unless you do something in me that
you have never done before, I am not going on."
Something happened to bring me there. There was something
in the pulpit, in the Bible class, and in the Bible
school. You can guess that something terrific must have
happened.
What did
it result in? Well, you see, I was the minister of a
church, and I was paid a salary to preach and to teach;
and whether I had a message from God or not, I had to get
one and get one up, and make it up every so often, week
by week in order to draw my salary. The crisis came:
"I will never preach again. No one will ever get me
to preach again, for money or anything else unless I have
got a Word from God. I resign this professional business
all together and will never appear on a platform or in a
pulpit unless there has come a Word from heaven into my
heart." I meant it, and I took action on that
ground. God also took action on that ground - from that
day on, over forty-five years ago, I have never had to
find the straw for the bricks, I have had what I call my
"open heaven."
Am I
drawing attention to myself? Forgive me, but I am trying
to illustrate what I mean. There is a tremendous
revolution that will be made when you "see." I
saw the Cross in Romans, and it slew me. I saw the Church
through Ephesians, not in Ephesians, but through
Ephesians; and my canonicals went, my ministerialism
went, my playing at church went. This is so revolutionary
because this "seeing" brings you into another
realm.
I have
been asked here this very week by someone, "Tell me
what books you have read in order to get all that you
have got. Please put me in the way of getting those
books." See where this leads: how far from the mark
we can get. No, that is not spiritual sight. "It
pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." - "I saw
the Lord." This is spiritual seeing that will
start a revolution, a revolution that will start
something that is to be growing and growing and that we
trust will go on growing until we enter into the fullness
in His Presence and know as we have been known.
How does
this spiritual sight come about? It comes by a great new
birth. That is what Jesus said to Nicodemus. In essence,
He said to him, "You cannot see. By a new birth from
above, you will be able to see. You will get a new
constitution which has in it a new faculty of sight by
which you will be able to see through to the back of
things, through the thing to the meaning of the
thing." There is all the difference between the
thing, which is the letter, and the meaning that lies
behind it. That is a marvelous realm when you see through
even what is written in the Bible to what lies behind in
the Mind of God there; and if you do not have that, you
will often be in perplexity. You will. You will get into
trouble with your Bible, and you will get into trouble
with the Apostle Paul.
Have you
noticed how the Apostle Paul uses Old Testament
Scripture? Have you? Have you noticed what the
theologians and the textual critics have come up against?
- "Paul was using that. He is quoting that. He is
citing that. He is applying that, and in the Old
Testament it did not mean that at all. It did not mean
that: its connection in the Old Testament is altogether
different, and yet Paul was using it like that. He is not
a safe student of the Bible. You cannot rely upon Paul's
interpretation of the Old Testament."
What are
you going to do with this? What are you going to do with
Paul and Hagar in Galatians, the allegory of Hagar -
"Surely he is going on his imagination. Surely he is
reading something into the Old Testament. Surely he is
squeezing blood out of a stone. Did it mean that
really?" - And so I could cite again and again
Paul's use of the Old Testament; and if you looked at it
just there as the natural, if you looked in that way by
the human understanding, you would stumble. You would be
in trouble with your Bible. You really would. But if you
have this faculty of seeing through to a deeper than the
surface meaning, to a deeper than what looks like the
literal meaning, you will find God behind it.
I have
said that the Lord Jesus never directly answered
questions; and so Nicodemus would come to Him with
questions, but the Lord never directly answered his
questions. "We know that Thou art a prophet and
teacher come from God. No man can do the things that you
are doing except God is with him; and now I am going to
talk to you about the kingdom, Jesus. I want you to
explain the kingdom. You know we Jews are just wrapped up
in this kingdom matter. We believe that we are the people
of the kingdom: we really believe that we are the elect
nation for the kingdom. The kingdom, the kingdom - that
is the one thing that absorbs and captivates all of our
thoughts; and now, Jesus, can you tell me something about
the kingdom?"
Does the
Lord sit down and say, "Let us have a study on the
kingdom, shall we?" No, He does not answer it that
way at all by giving a study of the Bible on the kingdom.
He says, "You must be born again." But
Nicodemus says, "That was not what I was asking
about. I was not asking about being born: I was asking
about the kingdom." Well, Jesus gets deeper than
that, "You cannot see it. You will not enter it
unless you are born from above."
Greeks
come to see Him on one occasion. They are up in Jerusalem
sight-seeing, having a look at everything that is
interesting and seeing people of whom they have heard
reports, and Jesus is among them. So they come, find a
crowd around Him, and say to one of His disciples,
"We would very much like to see Jesus. We cannot see
Him out here. Will you introduce us to Him?" That
one says to another one, "Here are some men who want
to be introduced to Jesus. They want to see Him, and they
have come along to the city in order to see Jesus. Will
you do something about it?" They go to Jesus saying,
"We would see Jesus." What does Jesus do? Does
He say, "Oh, that is very nice of them to come and
see Me. I will go out and shake hands with them and have
a little word." Does He? - He says, "The
hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified...
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth by itself alone: but if it dies, it brings forth
much fruit." No, no, no, that is no answer. That
is no answer to these Greeks. That is an evasion. Is it?
Are you
come to see Jesus? Do you see Him crucified, buried,
raised from the dead with this great multitude that
sprang up out of His grave with Him - the Church? This is
the only way to see Him, but that is not what they wanted
or what they were seeking. You see, He did not answer
questions in that direct manner. He got behind to the
meaning, the deep meaning. He is behind everything.
I know
that I am putting a lot into this point, but what I am
saying is that by new birth the faculty of spiritual
seeing is there. It may be in baby form, baby
"measure," but it is there. It is a terrible
tragedy, is it not, that after a little watching, parents
have to come to the conclusion that their baby is blind.
That is so terrible, is it not? But the normal child at
birth has a faculty for seeing, even though it does not
understand everything. It is not able to explain
everything; but it has got the faculty, and at least it
knows when mother comes into the room.
This is
a mark of the new birth: the faculty is there, and, dear
young people, do not think that you have got to at once
come into all that I am talking about of the revelation
of Jesus Christ; but you have got to have the faculty
from the beginning, and, praise God, you can have the
faculty. How good it is when we meet a young Christian,
almost a newborn Christian, who has had a way of life, a
way of behavior, even a way of dress according to the
world, and after a very little time in the Christian
life, he or she says, "The Lord has been telling me
to change my way of behavior. Now He would not have me do
this and that, and He has even told me to change my
dress."
I do
believe that this faculty, just the faculty, will begin
to show things and to light up things. We shall see with
other eyes what the Lord would have and what He would not
have. It begins there very simply, and it goes on and on.
A brother told us last night, and he has moved on with
the Lord quite a bit, that there comes a time when even
in your preaching and in your teaching if you use
something that the Lord does not agree with, you know it
inside. There is a pause inside. There is something
inside that says about that, "No. Oh, no - oh, no.
Look again where that came from."
You see
what I mean? The faculty is there at the beginning, and
it has got to grow and grow; and God forbid that it
should ever cease growing, that we should cease to see or
come to the end of our seeing. Now, you who have gone on
with the Lord the longest, remember that this faculty is
capable of giving you a far greater understanding of your
Lord than ever all your years have brought to you. You
come to the place where you say, "After all, after
all, I am still a child, and there is so much to
learn."
Well, I
am going to close with this faculty. Have you seen like
that this week? Have you seen with your head or with your
heart? With your soul, your reason, your emotions or with
your spirit? How have you seen? Have you seen? This
conference will be a tragedy and a failure if we cannot
go away in this sense, "I have seen the Lord. I have
seen; maybe I have seen only some things, but I can never
be the same. That seeing has challenged me, and I have
got to adjust."
It must
be like that, and if all this is exacting, all this is
testing and somewhat disconcerting, let us remember that
this is the normal Christian life. According to the Lord
and according to the New Testament, this that we have
been talking of is not an extraordinary Christian life.
This is just how it ought to be, as natural as a normal
baby seeing, one whose sight is developed and becomes
coordinated, capable of understanding, growing and
growing, and being governed by seeing. We will be
governed by this seeing in conduct, in behavior, in
choice.
You
know, the devil captured that faculty at the beginning,
and it says that when man "saw that the tree was
good," he saw wrongly. I guess he saw the wrong
tree. The devil captured his eyes, his faculty of sight,
and diverted it from the Tree of Life, from Life. The
result was death by blindness. Well, that is only just a
flash upon it. The devil is always trying to capture the
sight faculty of God's people and divert and attract, but
he does not always do so by presentation of the ugly and
horrible, the satanic, but by the imitation of Jesus
Christ, the imitation of the truth, the imitation of the
angel of light.
And how
shall we escape? How shall we be safe? Only by what John
speaks of: "...the Anointing which you
have received... abides in you... and teacheth you of all
things." He is saying that alongside of this,
there are "many antichrists." How are
you going to know which is Christ and which is antichrist
in all these imitators? The Spirit in you "teacheth
you." The faculty is there: you will have a sense
that that thing, wonderful as it may seem, sweeping
everything before it as it seems to be doing and having
so much truth in it, that thing is a dangerous thing that
is going to lead you off to a day of disillusionment and
disaster. There is a warning, a warning light within, but
I will finish on a positive note.
It is a
wonderful thing just to have that faculty. You may read,
but your reading does not finish with what you read. You
see beyond what you are reading: you can see through to
the beyond, and it is a wonderful thing to have that
faculty. I cannot explain it. I had hoped that this
morning I would have been able to use the projector to
throw on the screen a diagram of what I have been saying,
but that would only be the objective after all, would it
not? But here is this spiritual faculty. It is so true
and pierces right through every encompassing realm to our
souls, and it pierces right through our souls into our
spirits. The Light from heaven brings to birth this
spiritual sight so that we are not governed by these
outer realms, principalities and the powers in this world
with its system and its standards. Also, our spiritual
faculty is not governed by our soul, our own self
reaction to propositions. This spiritual faculty appeals
to the self, our soul: it comes right inside and is
governed by the Spirit, not by our own spirits. Be
careful about that- I hear people talking about being
governed by their spirit. No, no - we are to be governed
by the One Who is in the Spirit, the Spirit inner realm.
We are to be governed by the Holy Spirit, "the
Anointing... which abideth in you" most inwardly. "It
pleased God, to reveal His Son" there, "in,"
IN, IN.
Well, I
have said a lot. Do take it to heart; and if you will do
just one thing, make it your business, if you are really
in quest of God's fullest, to give the Lord no rest until
that faculty is constituted in you, until He has revealed
His Son maybe in or through His Word or in any other way
He might choose. Remember that this faculty in you is the
ultimate thing. You have seen, not everything, but in
this you have seen the Lord.
"I
saw the Lord," said Isaiah. "I was
not disobedient to the heavenly vision," said
Paul. And if this is my last message to you here, I would
pray that the results of this week should be either that
we have seen, or do see, or that you will go to the Lord
about this - that a truly born again, normal Christian
has got a faculty that is something more than the natural
faculty of apprehension.
Let
us pray. We want really, Lord, to be quiet in the
presence of Thy interrogation, Thy exaltation, Thy
presentation. Save us from noisily dissipating. Give us a
solemn quietness before Thee, not only this morning as we
go; and give us hearts that are altogether
consumed with this seeing, knowing, understanding of the
Lord. Please do it: please, Lord, do it in us all. We ask
this in the Name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus. Amen.