Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

The Truth Exemplified in Israel's History

In our previous meditation we referred to the truth as illustrated in the case of Israel, when in the land after crossing Jordan, and now the further phase of the truth can also be seen in that connection, in that Israel, while being in the land where all the fulness was, and while it was a land flowing with milk and honey, only experienced fulness as their own in proportion to the establishment of the testimony of the Lord's sovereignty. They did not come immediately and automatically into the enjoyment of the fulness. They were in the realm where it was, in the realm of every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in type, but although it was all there they were not enjoying it, except just in so far as they, by definite exercise and spiritual activity, made the great fact of the Lord's sovereignty an actuality on the spot. That is a very important thing to remember. They had to go on, and their going on was a matter of conquest, and their conquest was a matter of bringing the absolute Lordship to bear upon each step, each phase, each new situation. Thus, as they brought in that perfect sovereignty of the Lord, that He was Lord, and applied it progressively, so they became possessed of the wealth and fulness, that was there. You can see how true that was by several instances of their doing the opposite.

You know the tragedy of Ai, for instance. There were two things in the tragedy of Ai. There was an Achan. But he is only one of the causes of the tragedy. The other - and this is so elementary and so well-known - was the fact that they said, 'Well, only a few of us need go up against Ai. Ai is nothing like the proposition that Jericho was, and does not need a whole force to go up against it. Just a few of us can go up, and we shall easily take Ai'. In thus acting they were taking the sovereignty of God unto themselves and not recognizing that whatever the proposition was, great or small, it still required the Lord and that, apart from the Lord, nothing was possible. It requires the sovereignty of the Lord to deal with the whole thing.

Then again there was the case of the Gibeonites. The secret of the Gibeonite is this, that the Gibeonites eliminate the element of conquest. They compromised, they came deceitfully, and they succeeded in shelving the whole idea of battle and got the elders of Israel acting in this matter as though it did not require any battle at all. This thing could be dealt with without any fight! The Gibeonites succeeded in ruling out that element of conquest, and in doing that in effect ruled out the Lordship of the Lord, because this whole thing had to be taken by conquest. It was only another subtle form of undercutting the absolute Lordship of the Lord, and you see it in the fact that the elders of Israel did not refer the matter to the Lord. They simply dealt with it themselves "off their own bat", as we say, and put the Lord's Lordship on one side. That is just what the enemy is always out to do, subtly or openly in some way to eliminate this mighty thing that has to be registered. Well, that brought Israel into limitation again. You have only to go on to the book of Judges to discover what that meant for Israel

Later as you know, they began to tire of conquest and to slacken their pace and their energies, and the idea of conquest dropped into the background. Some came to Joshua at one time and said they were a great people and asked him for a certain part of the land, hill country and forest country, and Joshua said, 'Well, prove your greatness by conquest'. They wanted it by gift and not by conquest. Joshua, typical of the energy of the Holy Spirit, says that the only way of knowing fulness is by bringing the sovereignty, the authority of the throne to bear upon the situation to subdue it. He has put all things in subjection under His feet, and the Lord will not countenance anything that is not being made subject. Universal subjection: no compromise, no leagues and no accepting without subjecting to the Lord. You see the principle at work. So they failed to come into the absolute fulness of the land because they failed in the matter of the Lordship of Jehovah, and the principle is well illustrated there for us in the spiritual life. Fulness is bound up with the throne all the time.

David and Saul

There are other illustrations in the Old Testament. We referred in our previous meditation to David as anointed, and what the anointing means as to the throne; that the anointing is essentially bound up with the throne, points on to the throne. And now in this connection we have Saul. Saul was anointed, but Saul never came to fulness. He was only king in any real sense for three years out of the forty for which he held the name of king, and after three years, in which he certainly did not come to fulness, because he violated the object of the anointing, he lost everything and it passed over to David. Saul is a terrible tragedy. Anointed unto fulness; but fulness is bound up with the throne, absolute dominion. Now, the Lord tested him. 'Go, smite Amalek. That is what you are anointed for. There is some other thing here holding sway. There is another power which is against the Divine throne, another order of things in existence. Go and smite Amalek: that is what you are anointed for, to establish the throne of the Lord above every other power'. But Saul compromised in the smiting of Amalek, violated the very object of the anointing and lost the fulness. It passed to David. The anointing coming to David and the anointing being observed in all its implications by David brought David right through to fulness as it is displayed in Solomon. Why? Because the anointing for David meant the subjecting of every hostile thing. Oh, on the right hand and on the left, in all directions, David subdues - true kingship - and comes to fulness. Unto that he was anointed.

[Shammu]

Elijah and Elisha

Again, take the case of Elijah and Elisha. I think Elijah and Elisha fit into the last verse of the first chapter of Ephesians - "...gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all". Elijah is the head and Elisha is the body. Elijah, the anointed head (for, although there was no recorded act of anointing of Elijah, he undoubtedly had the Spirit) goes to heaven and Elisha, who succeeds him on the earth, standing in relation to him as the Church stands in relation to Christ in heaven, is anointed. Elisha is the only prophet of whom it is recorded that he was anointed. There is the anointed one on the earth. You see the two sides. In Elijah you have power: in Elisha you have fulness. Elisha was the fulness of Elijah. A double portion of his spirit; "the fulness of him that filleth all in all" in type. Power and fulness by the anointing.

But look at the direction in which the anointing is operating through these men. You will see how the anointing is operating on Mount Carmel. There is another hierarchy, another system, which has risen against the sovereignty of Jehovah, and, on Carmel, Elijah fights out that battle for the rights of God. It is the throne of the Lord that is in view. That is fought out and then Elisha follows on; and is he not all the time having to deal with the matter of the kingdom? Well, power and fulness are the work of the Holy Spirit, but on the ground that the throne is established.

The Case of Ananias and Sapphira

We pass away from the Old Testament and come into the New, and the thing is so patent there that it hardly needs pointing out. You take a case like that of Ananias and Sapphira. Now, Ananias and Sapphira strive to get fulness by violating the Holy Ghost. That was the charge, that Satan had filled their heart to lie to the Holy Ghost. They tried to stand possessed of something, of fulness, by violating the Holy Spirit, and in effect that was countering the great testimony that has just been given under the Holy Ghost's mighty energies and directions as to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Lord! "God hath made him Lord and Christ." That is the Holy Ghost's testimony on the day of Pentecost. The others come under that and accept that, move into that, and they know spiritual fulness. Ananias and Sapphira violate the Holy Ghost's movement in relation to the throne, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, thinking to have something in that way. What happens? They lose everything. You can only have fulness along the line of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is what it means.

Well now, that truth need not be much more fully opened up or argued. You and I have to recognize it as something which has been established all the way through by God. It is written through the whole of the Scriptures that spiritual power and spiritual fulness are not bound up with receiving the Holy Spirit as such. It is in that, but that is not it in itself. You see, we concentrate upon either receiving the Holy Spirit or being filled with the Spirit or having a baptism of the Spirit, and we think that is power and fulness. In a sense that is quite true; but we have to see the meaning of the Holy Spirit. It is not just that we receive the Spirit or are filled with the Spirit. It is what the Holy Spirit means by filling us: and what does He mean? He means the establishment of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in us. We cannot have the real value without the real meaning. That is why it is so necessary that, to know the power and fulness of the Spirit, there should be an utter emptying and breaking down of everything in us to make way for the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Now, before I pass on, have we grasped this fact, that our spiritual enlargement, our spiritual increase, our spiritual wealth, our spiritual fulness and spiritual power is not a matter of gifts as such? It is a matter of the Lord Jesus being really and truly Lord within and throughout in every part.

The Anointed Ministries of Prophet, Priest and King

The Lord Jesus embodies and embraces the great threefold function of Prophet, Priest and King, and in what that means He has to be established in us in the power of the Holy Ghost. You see, the Prophet, the Priest and the King were anointed ministries, and, as we know quite well, God has never been interested in just having certain offices here on the earth amongst men. God does not play like that, having a set of prophets, a set of priests and a set of kings, as though it were a game. God is not interested in that sort of thing. No, God has great spiritual principles in view all the time, and those who went by those names in the Old Testament embodied something of a heavenly thought, and that heavenly thought is gathered up in the Lord Jesus, and it is all in the anointing, it is all by the Holy Spirit. Then as Head, embodying those things, He has to come upon the Church and the Church has to come under the value of that.

Now, what are the values? What is the value of an anointed prophet? Well, just this. The anointed prophet is the man who has the sanctified mind, who can say, "We have the mind of Christ". The prophet stood for the mind of God in a day when men had lost the way, when the mind of God was not apprehended. He was the embodiment of the mind of God for his day by the Spirit. The Spirit came upon the prophets and they knew the mind of the Lord for the day; they had, as differing from all the other minds around them, a sanctified mind. That is to say, by the Spirit, their mind came under the government of God.

The priest: what is he in spiritual principle? He is the man of the sanctified heart. He has to do with, and only with, the question of inward holiness, righteousness. That is the priest's function; the man who represents the sanctified heart by the Holy Spirit. In a day when all around was corrupt, the priesthood, when it was according to God's mind, was a thing which stood for holiness, for righteousness, in the midst of corruption.

The king: he is the one who, by the anointing, represents the sanctified will, to execute, to do, to govern, to rule, to have things done. The sanctified will is what the king represents when really under the anointing, and it was in respect of this very thing that Saul violated his anointing. He had a will of his own. David on the other hand was a man who willed one will with his God, a man after God's own heart who would do all His pleasure. That is a king in principle. He does according to God's mind.

All that is gathered up in the Lord Jesus. He has the mind of the Father. He has the heart that is free from all the corruption and taint of self-interest and worldly interest; a heart that is pure in the sense that it is only set upon the delight of the Father. He has the will of God which He has come to do, the sanctified will. He is Prophet, Priest and King in the embodiment of all the spiritual principles thereof by the anointing. This constitutes spiritual ministry you see; and the Church, the members of Christ's Body, coming under His absolute Lordship can only function as, by the Holy Ghost, they have the sanctified mind, the sanctified heart, the sanctified will. That means just this, that your will and your mind and your heart have been broken. That is to say, your reasoning as sovereign has been dethroned; your desiring as governing has been dethroned; your choosing, your doing, as the governing thing in your life has been absolutely shattered and laid in the dust, and His mind, His heart, His will, is established by the Holy Ghost in you. Fulness comes that way. You can never know the fulness of the Lord's thoughts only as your own thoughts have been set aside, and that means the sovereignty of the Lord. You can never know the fulness of the Lord's desires and purposes only as your own have been set aside. You can never know the will of God in fulness, all that glorious will, good, acceptable and perfect, until you have presented yourself a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable, not being conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind. That simply means that His will has taken the ascendency over your will. That is the way of fulness. So all the time it is the matter of the Lordship of Jesus Christ which governs our power in life, spiritual power, and our fulness.

[Shammu]

The True Nature of Spiritual Service

Now before we close, a little word further in one other connection; for, as this matter of the throne governs power and fulness, so it governs the matter of service. What is service to the Lord in the highest sense? Oh, if only the Lord's people could see this, if it could get into them, it would make such a lot of difference; for I think the majority of the Lord's people have the idea that Christian service is represented by the number of things you are doing for the Lord, the amount of work as work that you are doing: how many souls you speak to about salvation, or how many you lead to the Lord, how many meetings you address and messages you give, and all that sort of thing. I am not saying that is not the Lord's work, but I am saying that that may be much less than the service the Lord is really after: and it is proving to be so in every instance. If we state positively what service is in its highest expression, we can see everything else in the light of it. We serve the Lord most and supremely in bringing the Lordship of Christ to men. Until the Lordship of Christ has really been effected in lives there is going to be limitation in those lives, even though they may be saved. Beloved, there is far, far more bound up with the Lordship of Christ in a life than there is in that one just being saved from hell and from sin, and not until that Lordship of Christ is established in the whole life of the child of God does the Divine purpose really become served. So that service, in the fullest sense, is bound up with the throne. It is the throne that has to be served, not men. This means one or two things.

Such Service Alone Possible through the Holy Spirit

This necessitates the Holy Spirit. If it is the Holy Spirit's pre-eminent object and work to establish the absolute exaltation of the Lord Jesus in this universe everywhere, then the Holy Spirit is required for this work, and you know it. If you have a battle over the question of sin and salvation, as very often you do, you will have an infinitely greater battle over the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the life - the absolute Lordship. But you know this is true. You can get any number of Christian people to listen to you if you are talking about the ordinary and accepted and general ideas of Christian service; but begin to talk to them about the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ and see what you get. It is not such easy going. They have no interest in that. It is a fact, and for this work nothing less than the power of the Holy Ghost is necessary. I believe that is the point where people have missed the way. Everybody is prepared to quote Acts 1:8 "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you". They will go on - "and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth." But what does that mean with regard to the majority of people? Well, in the first place, of course power is the great word! It is something to have, to feel, to experience. Of course we all admit and acknowledge that it is a matter of the Holy Spirit, power by the Holy Spirit. What then of the result? Well, we shall be witnesses. What does that mean? We shall go out and preach the Gospel. Does it mean that? It may mean that, mark you, but that is not the full meaning of it. "Ye shall be witnesses unto me." What was the witness they bore in every place? Jesus Christ is Lord! 'This Jesus has been regarded by men as a mere man and something less or worse even than that by a great many, but He is none other than God's exalted and reigning Son. He is at God's right hand exalted. He is King. He is Lord. He has all power in this universe.' That was the witness. It was that that enraged hell. But that was in the power of the Spirit, and it requires nothing less than the mighty power of the Holy Spirit to carry that testimony forward and establish it. It is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and it is no small thing to bring in the throne. Oh no, you have every kind of resistance that is available to the enemy when it is a matter of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. So it is a work of the Spirit; it is only by the Spirit that it can be done.

[Shammu]

Such Service Involves in Bitterest Conflict

Then of course, as I have said already, this matter more than anything else involves in conflict. If you or I are really out in the testimony, not to Jesus as Saviour only, but to Jesus as Lord, as sovereign Head, the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ, if we are out in that testimony, we are out in the fiercest conflict. It is true. It explains a good deal. You may meet some conflict when you are out in the matter of soul-winning and you do, because the enemy sees quite clearly what that may lead to: for, in God's purpose, it is never intended to stay there. If men and women are saved from hell and sin, it represents, in the first place, a translation from his kingdom into another, and he knows what that portends. Satan always takes full account of the significance of any step, but when you go on right to the full end and bring the full end in view immediately into the situation - the Lordship of Jesus Christ - ah then you are in the fight, then it is warfare indeed. You are anointed to that battle, and you know it. We said in our previous meditation that, immediately the anointing came on the Lord Jesus, the Devil came out of hiding. There is this fact that we had better take full account of at once and reckon with, that, when the Lordship of Jesus Christ comes right clearly into view, what will follow inevitably is the drawing out of all the power of Satan, and that under God's own act.

Let us illustrate. Go back to Egypt with Israel. Here, in type, is the kingdom, the power and the glory in view, bound up with Israel, and Moses stands in Egypt with the challenge in the authority of the one who is I Am, who is Lord Jehovah. It is the question of who the Lord is, who Jehovah is. Is Jehovah Lord? Moses stands there to say, 'Yes, Jehovah is supreme Lord'. Very well, the challenge is presented, the challenge of the Lordship of Jehovah. The testimony is brought in by Moses. What is the result? Steadily, steadily, with ever increasing strength, the powers of evil come out until the last drop of Satanic power, of evil resource, is exhausted. God exhausts the store of antagonism. For what purpose? To show who is invincible; and you can never prove who is invincible until you have exhausted all the resource on the side of your opponent. We are hearing in these days claims to be invincible. All right, that is to be put to the test. It will never be proved if any resource remains unused at the end. When God has finished, He will say 'Now, you have used your last ounce of power and you are broken. Who is invincible?' So, in Egypt, God had to draw out Pharaoh's power to the last degree to prove that He was Lord: otherwise it would still have been an open question. Oh, it is a terrible thought, but that is how it is going to be.

It must be like that. Satan is going to be drawn out, extended to his last ounce. It is a terrible thing, but that is what the Word reveals, that when Satan is at last cast down it will be because he has not another card to play, another shot to fire, another resource to draw upon: he is exhausted. Ah, who will be invincible then? The Lord will stand possessed of many resources then. But the point, you see, is that, when you come into the conflict of the sovereignty of the throne, you may expect to be launched into a fight in which Satan is going to be fully extended, and you will meet the full force of Satanic power. That is why you must have the anointing, for only the Holy Ghost has the power equal to that or superior to that. But it is true that, once you get on the line of the throne, you are on the line of intensive conflict. I do not want to dishearten you, but you are not going to have an easier time. There is going to be no let up in this battle. But let us lift up our eyes to the end. Though today may seem intolerable, almost unbearable, let us lift up our eyes. We are with the invincible Lord, whose invincibility is going to be established over all the powers of the enemy to the last drop. But it is conflict, and when it comes to seeking to bring the Lord's own children into the fulness of Christ, which is really by way of the absolute Lordship of Christ, then it is battle all the way along, with increasing fierceness and intensity.

The Lordship of Christ the Key to Recovery and Enlargement

So we see that it is the throne always that governs the matter of service, service in the full sense, and that can be proved in many ways. You have only to take up the letters of the New Testament, and in so many of them you find situations and things which, in their arising, have brought limitation amongst the Lord's children, which have stood athwart the path of their spiritual progress, which have weakened them in the way, which have challenged the Divine end in them, and wherever and whenever you find something like that, you find that the letter is written to meet that situation with a note of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Is it Romans? Has the law come in there, the law as the way of righteousness, standing across the path of progress into that full righteousness of God? Well, what is the difficulty? It is just stated in these words - "They... going about to establish their own righteousness, have not subjected themselves unto the righteousness of God" (10:3). What is this? This is something that has got up, that is not of God. You will go on with Romans and you find you will never come into fulness until you have presented yourself a living sacrifice, which, in a word, is subjection.

Pass from Romans to Corinthians, and the limitation, the hindrance, the circumscribing there, is so patent. To meet it, "Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (2 Cor. 2:2). "We preach... Christ Jesus as Lord" (2 Cor. 4:5) - the Lordship of Jesus Christ. For them, that meant their going down into death, the letting go of all the "I". This one says, and that one, and another! Jesus Christ and Him crucified means the end of all that; and now Jesus Christ is Lord.

You find it so all the way. Is it Galatians? Well, there again, something has come in to interrupt the course. "Ye were running well; who did hinder you..." (Gal. 5:7); an interruption again, bringing into limitation. What is the appeal, the basis of deliverance? "I have been crucified with Christ." His Lordship is my deliverance from every limitation.

Philippians: here too something has come in to interrupt, and we find strained relationships, broken fellowship. What is the ground of appeal here? "He emptied himself... becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name." The exaltation of the Lord Jesus through humility is presented to them.

In the Hebrews, it is the old story again. They have been brought back, brought down from the heavenlies to the earthlies, to traditional religion again. How is the situation met? "Of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever" (Heb 1:. He is introduced as the King supreme: and so the principle is found everywhere.

The way of fulness, the way of power, the way right to God's end is only on the ground of Christ being Lord in every part and in everything.

[Shammu]

Chapter 8 - The Throne, The Holy Spirit, and Prayer Warfare

"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name... and bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever" (Matt 6:9,13).

"For this cause I... cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers" (Eph. 1:15).

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father..." (Eph. 3:14).

"...with all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints" (Eph. 6:18).

We have been occupied with the significance of the words "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory", and have been seeing that this is all now gathered up into the Lord Jesus as exalted at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

We want now to continue with one more aspect of this same great inclusive truth. The Lordship of Jesus Christ is the occasion of warfare in prayer. In the passage in the sixth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, we have this simple but very important clause - "praying at all seasons in the Spirit". Praying in the Spirit; and you notice that, in keeping with every other phase of this matter which we have already considered, the connection of the Spirit and prayer here is with ascendency. It is in the realm of conflict for ascendency. We are very familiar with this paragraph of the letter.

    "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For 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. Wherefore take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Stand therefore..."

And this heads right up to this praying in the Spirit.

This is warfare in prayer, this is prayer in the realm of conflict, which has the tremendous issue of the throne in view, ascendency; and I want you to notice that, between the beginning and the end of this letter, there has taken place a change. The first declaration is -

    "...made him to sit at his right hand... far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion and every name that is named... and he put all things in subjection under his feet" (Eph. 1:20-22).

Now, at the end of the letter we have this -

    "Our wrestling is... against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies."

In the first place, they are seen as under His feet, fulfilling the passage which has been much before us, Acts 2:34-35 -

    "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet."

Above all rule and authority, principalities and powers, and yet, when you get to the end, the warfare is going on and it is in relation to the subjecting of those self-same principalities and powers. The meaning is perfectly clear that, although it is true in the case of the Lord Jesus, it has to be made true in the case of the Church. There is something yet that has to be done to make that thing good in another realm, to make that truth an applied truth. The Church has to stand right into all the values of what is true concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and that has to be made good in the Church and applied by the Church as a testimony and an effectual working thing in the Church's life and the Church's ministry.

The Church Related to the Throne

So here, the Holy Spirit is seen to be the sphere, so to speak, in which prayer of a warring kind is to be waged with the throne in view, with ascendency in view, and this implies certain things. In the first place, it implies that the saints are as much related to the throne as the Lord Jesus is Himself. It makes it perfectly clear that ascendency is the ascendency, not only of Christ, but of the Church. Dominion is not only the dominion of Christ, but of the Church with Him. The enemies also of Christ are seen to be exactly the same enemies with which the Church has to contend. In a word, the great issue which is gathered up in the Lord Jesus is the same issue for the Church. Of course, that is well known and recognized, and there is nothing new in the way of revelation about that. But that is where we begin, namely, by recognizing that this implies quite clearly that the saints are related to the throne, that that is God's thought concerning the Church, and it is in connection with that Divine thought that the tremendous spiritual conflict into which the Church is hurled rages. It is the throne matter that is in view. It is absolute spiritual ascendency in union with Christ over all hostile powers.

The Life of the Church Threatened Because of the Throne

If that is true, and this war in relation to the throne concerns the Church, then it implies this second thing, that the life of the saints, because of that relationship, is threatened. The adversary, the hostile forces, are set against the very life of God's people because of what is in view. These are simple implications, but you and I have to be mightily gripped by these implications. It is not enough for us to know. It may be that some of you are even now saying, We know that, we have heard that many times! I would urge you to ask yourself whether you are really actively in the good of this light; not whether you know, but whether you are actively in the good of it, whether you have come to an active position in the realization that the very life of the Lord's people is threatened because of the great issue which is in view; that is, their coming to the place where the Lord Jesus is of absolute ascendency over all principalities and powers, to be governing with Him in the heavenlies. What does that mean to you in a practical way? How is that working out in your life? Oh, may I appeal to you? It is a terrible thing for you, dear friends, to be brought up - may I put it in that way? - to be brought up with truth and light of this kind if it is not going to mean anything more than that you have learned these truths as truths. It is a terrible thing. One of the most deplorable conditions today in this world is that there are many who have a great deal of light but it amounts to nothing as a power, as an effective working, as a registration in the realm of spiritual antagonism. That is a terrible thing, and we must, in our heart of hearts, beseech the Lord that our hearing of things like this shall not be a mere listening to truth, and a knowing of things merely as they are set out in the Word of God. We must really challenge our hearts with these things and ask ourselves as we go along, 'Well now, I know that or I have heard that. At least now I am enlightened about that, but what does it mean? How is it working out? How much do I count now that I know that?' That is the thing, and, unless really we come to count for something, all this truth might just as well be unknown to us. It can only be a terrible responsibility to know without really counting by our knowledge.

So I urge this upon you, that here is this tremendous implication. The fact that this is a tremendous warfare means there is a threat to the life of God's people because of the Divine destiny of those people in the thought of God.

[Shammu]

The Throne Reached by Prayer

Now, we have to recognize that there are certain other things which become necessary. This whole thing is headed up in prayer. Let us square ourselves to that at once. Any other form of activity may be more interesting. It might appeal to us much more to talk about these things, to preach them, to disseminate the truth or truths; but the thing is headed up in prayer. That is where the thing finds its expression. It is by that means the throne is reached and the testimony of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus is established, by prayer. When the Apostle has said everything, he crowns it all and gathers it all into this -

    "...praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints";

and, as you know, it is all a part of what he has been saying about the armour. As he has been taking note of his Roman guard and marking down every bit of his equipment, he has come at last to see that all that armour, all that the man possesses for offensive and defensive, counts for nothing if the man is not vigilant, on the alert, watching. The best equipment counts for nothing unless you are in a spirit of activity, alert and watchful and given to this business by perseverance. Paul sees his guard who is not going to be caught, not going to be taken off his guard, who is vigilant, diligent, watchful, who is applying himself, and Paul says that for us its counterpart is prayer. Our devotion, our watchfulness, our perseverance is in relation to prayer, and it is all to be in the Spirit. This soldier is in the spirit of things. For us it is the Holy Spirit; we have to be in the Spirit about this business. So it is all gathered up into the matter of prayer.

The Need for Enlightenment

Now then, if that is true, if this tremendous issue is to be secured by prayer, surely it is necessary that the Lord's people should be enlightened about this matter. You see, we shall never give ourselves to this kind of prayer, to praying with this issue in view, unless we have been enlightened as to what the situation is: and when I say enlightened, I mean something more than informed. You can inform yourself by reading the letter to the Ephesians, but that is not being enlightened. Beloved, immediately you and I are enlightened about a situation something happens, and you can prove and test whether it is enlightenment or information by the result.

Think of the world situation today. May I illustrate? I hate to touch the realm of things, but let me illustrate. Supposing what is being carried out now on the Continent had all been written in a book beforehand, as representing the plan, the device or tactics of the enemy, and then people had got hold of the book and read it. They would probably have said, 'Well, that is a wonderful scheme: that is very clever, and that is very terrible'. But it has not come home, you see. It is in a book. They have acquainted themselves with this thing, but it is still in a book. But then supposing the day comes when that thing, as being actually in operation, comes down their street, dropped out from the clouds, the whole thing with all its tremendous significance, that it is either victory or an end of everything; destruction, death, total ruin and loss, the loss of everything unless it is victory. It has come home and they are awake now, they are alive to it. It is no longer merely in a book, it has become an actual living reality. It has become inward, not outward. It has touched them in an inward way by the reality of it. It is tremendous and terrible when the thing becomes real. For ourselves, even while we are feeling very much and very deeply things going on over there, and already there may be a sense of fear creeping over us, we still have a kind of objective relationship to it, and it is still a little difficult to put ourselves into that or put that on to ourselves and feel that we are in it. It is still out there. But supposing tonight it all happens; supposing the clouds shed their hordes and the thing came right down into your garden, and the whole thing is set up like that, and destruction and havoc are going on all around. Oh, we are alive to it then, it is a reality as it never was before. Although in a way we knew objectively that the thing was true, now it has touched us, moved us.

That is what enlightenment means, and we can test it. We can determine the nature of our knowledge by the effect it has upon us, and if all our knowledge about this great conflict, this age-long warfare and all these matters of the Church's Divine destiny, and all that is bound up with that, is not really moving us to prayer, it is inadequate knowledge, it is a knowledge which lacks the essential. To be really acquainted by the Holy Spirit with this thing has an effect upon us.

You have that great and beautiful illustration of this very thing in the book of Esther. Here is the throne, and there are the Lord's people: there is Esther; and there is Mordecai; and there is the enemy. The enemy plots against the life of the Lord's people. Esther is away there out of touch with things, in seclusion. Mordecai is here and he knows all about this plot, but he cannot do anything directly: he cannot assail the enemy, he cannot go to the throne. But there is one who has touch with the throne by reason of relationship, and that is Esther. Now, what is necessary? The necessary thing is for Mordecai to get the information through to Esther, to acquaint her with the situation, and to bring home to her the seriousness of this situation, and, when once Esther is really acquainted with the situation and it is brought home to her with all its terror by Mordecai, then she moves in relation to the throne.

Here we have the story written in a picture again. The Church has to be made aware of a situation, and has to be touched deeply and terribly by that situation, and, as the result, the Church must spontaneously at all costs move to the throne in intercession about this; because it is the very life and destiny of the Lord's people that is at stake. But there it is, and we cannot have a detached relationship with this terrible situation. We cannot. So it is necessary for us to have a true enlightenment, and that is why we read those earlier passages or clauses introductory to the prayers of the Apostle in this letter; for when you look to see what it is he is praying for, it is for two things. The first is enlightenment, and the other is empowerment, and in both cases this praying is in relation to the calling, the destiny. That you may know what is the hope of his calling and then, "that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man", in relation to the calling. Prayer, you see, is in that direction, in relation to this tremendous issue in the Church's life, the very throne itself, ascendency over all the powers of evil.

That is the first necessity, enlightenment of the true kind; not information, but a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I do entreat you, not caring how much is said so long as what is said is really grasped, I do entreat you to test the nature of your knowledge by its practical result in your life. It counts for nothing if there is no result, no moving. Oh, that we might have the true kind of knowledge, that our knowledge might be of this kind, that something results from it, and that something a "praying at all seasons in the Spirit".

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The Testimony of the Christ's Lordship Bound up with the Church

Then another necessity is that the Church must apprehend that the Head does move through the members by means of the Anointing in relation to this issue. It is by the Spirit that Christ moves through the Church in connection with this tremendous matter of His own Lordship as a testimony to be established and applied. The Lord Jesus is not doing this independently or alone. All through the Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, this is borne out in every way, that God moves through His chosen agents and agencies in relation to His intentions. He has bound up His intentions, His purposes, with an instrument, and He does not move apart from that instrument, and if that instrument fails Him, God's purpose is suspended. I know what problems that raises in the merely intellectual realm, but the fact has to be recognized and we will not argue the problem. The Lord Jesus has bound up the testimony of His Lordship with His Church, and that Lordship waits upon the Church for its being made effectual. It is a fact, and to make the fact effectual amongst principalities and powers is the business of the Church. This thing is going to be done through the Church, but the Church today must be made to grasp the fact, must apprehend it, that the Head moves through His members, through His Body, in relation to the great issue which is at stake. We cannot sit back and fold our arms in passive inaction with the thought, 'Well, the Lord has purposed and He will fulfil His purpose. The Lord has designed, and His design will come to pass, whatever I do or do not do'. All Scripture forbids any such attitude, and show us that, strangely enough, God takes up an instrument.

So, coming back to Esther again, you see she must come in and act in relation to the nation. The thing is bound up with her and the great word is, "Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther there undoubtedly represents the Church. The issue is bound up with the Church. Supposing she had said, 'Oh well, they are the Lord's people: He is sovereign, He will look after His people; He cannot be dethroned from His sovereignty, He will have His way. I need not disturb myself, I will just trust the Lord'. Well then, the whole object of that Divinely preserved book goes. It has no place in the Scriptures at all, if you say that. It is there to emphasize this one thing, amongst others, that God is Lord and that this threatened seed are His people and He is deeply concerned for them and their life, but that He must have an instrument upon which there comes to rest His own concern about this matter, and through that instrument He saves the situation and overthrows the enemy and brings his counsels to naught. That is the place the Church holds, and we have to grasp that. Have you grasped that?

There is a sense in which God is impotent, the Lord Jesus is impotent, while His Church does not function, and the fact that He is Lord, far above all, remains a fact remote from things until the Church comes in and applies it and makes it effective. It remains there as a fact in Himself. It has to be brought out from Himself into expression and the Church has to know that. You and I have to know that.

Paul is a great example of this himself, He knows all about the Divine eternal purpose, the thing purposed from before times eternal. Paul might well have said, 'Well, what can I do in that matter? That is settled from eternity. It will make no difference either way what I do'. But no! here is the man who knows it all, getting on his knees and saying, 'I cease not to pray for you in relation to this thing. I pray unceasingly'. Here is the intercessor in relation to the thing which exists in God as a settled matter, but which needs intercession for its being made effectual. 'I pray': and then he says to the Church, 'Look here, you must pray, you must step into that position between the eternal purpose and its realization, you must stand in that gap for God and with God, to pray this thing through against all the forces of evil'.

Boldness in Access

Then, beloved, as a necessity to this ministry, this intercession, you and I, the Lord's people, must have perfect assurance of our access. It is that which the Apostle mentions, as you notice, in the third chapter of this Ephesian letter, verse 12 -

    "...in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him."

There must be nothing whatever in us of that uncertainty which stands outside and wonders if peradventure we dare draw near. No, the Apostle says that in this ministry we have to have perfect assurance that we have access. We must have confidence, we must have boldness in access. It is a very important thing that. You know quite well that one of those - shall I use the phrase? - "Fifth Column" tactics of the enemy is in some way to sap your assurance in your approach to God. Is that not true? Well, if by accusation, by bringing up something in your life, something that has happened, some mistake, some "slip up", he can interfere with your sense of acceptance, he has paralysed you in the warfare of prayer. By any means, he will seek to put a dead hand upon that confident access, that boldness in coming to the Lord. Blessed be God, the provision is here. "We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins" (Eph. 1:7); and then we have boldness in access. The Blood deals with all that, it is the ground of our confidence. But oh, watch against that movement of the enemy, secretly and subtly, not in the open at all, where he is trying to affect your boldness, your confidence, in the matter of access.

Esther was afraid to go in to the king. That will not do and Esther had to come to the place where she gathered up everything and said, 'I am going in and if I perish I perish'. We can go beyond that surely and have no fear. If we know the virtue of the Blood, we can have boldness and confidence in access. "Let us draw near in full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:22). But mark that, watch it, watch it carefully - the necessity for this sense of assurance in our coming to the Lord, and let us brush aside every interference with that confidence. Let us apply the Blood to everything that the enemy would bring up to interfere with that confidence, and let us come with boldness to the Throne of Grace. There are tremendous issues at stake and any kind of uncertainty here jeopardizes those issues.

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The Fellowship Of His Sufferings

Then one other thing. This kind of ministry, this kind of warfare in prayer, has to have a lot of discipline behind it. Really it is not a thing for novices. Anybody cannot enter into this. It is not a thing that you can take up because you see it as something to be taken up. It can only really be entered into when you know something of the fellowship of His sufferings Paul says, "I... fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his Body's sake, which is the Church" (Col. 1:24), and that is a necessary background to this kind of work. Now you say, 'We are ruled out, we have not got it. We are too young'. I want to say this to you, that it is unto this very end that the Lord will deal with you, that He is dealing with you. If He is making you to know something, even in a small way, of suffering together with Him, of the fellowship of His sufferings; if He is working in you the work of His Cross, emptying you, breaking you, undoing you; if He is working at all in you that which in your experience is not pleasant to the flesh, and you are feeling the pressure of His dealings with you, remember, it is all to bring you to the place where you can intercede with Him; for no one really intercedes effectually in whose heart the thing has not become a real agony, a real concern, a travail. We have to come to the place where the Lord's interests in His people, the life of the Lord's people, is a real concern to us in order that we should be intercessors, and it is unto that the Lord is working in us. If we have tasted a little of this thing, if we have known the fury of the oppressor, if we have known spiritual suffering, if we have really in any measure come into the antagonism of the enemy, we are able to feel for the Lord's people and we are able to pray intelligently. So the Lord would seek, by His dealings with us, to bring us into the place where we can prevail in prayer. Remember that. That is what He is doing in us to make us one with Himself, with regard to the sufferings, the need, the peril of His people, to intercede effectually on their behalf.

I think of Esther again. She is much in my mind as I am speaking. She had to have a year's preparation for that intercession, and six months of that was with bitter aloes, and that speaks very loudly. Yes, we have to know something of the death of the Lord Jesus in our own experience, something of the bitterness of the emptying of the self life, an undoing of our own strength in order to come to the place of prevailing, of real effectual warfare. It is those who have most deeply known fellowship with the Lord in suffering, who have felt His hand upon them most heavily, who are able most effectually to cry to the Lord and to intercede for others. It is the price of a great ministry, beloved, and we must recognize that it is unto that ministry that the Lord has really to fit us.

A Call for Utterness

Now, I am going to close with just one other word. This ministry, this work, this warfare in prayer, is going to cost us everything. We had better face it. It is an utter position, a matter, in effect, of really taking our very lives in our hands. That is to say, we cannot effectually wage this warfare if we have any of our own interests to preserve. Oh, you see, there is all the difference between going into our room and praying, and our meeting the enemy's mighty kick back to our prayer. They may be two different things because you may take it if you are coming into this, the enemy is going to mark you, and all that you have is going to be involved in this. If you have personal interests, well, you are going to be put out of it at once. It is the case of Gideon again and the sifting down of that mighty host. 'Those of you who are afraid, well, you had better go home. You are out of the fight.' 'Those of you who are concerned for your wives, children and homes, you had better go'. And then the last issue: 'Those of you who have your own personal interests to serve, likes to gratify, you had better go home'. It is only those who have gathered everything into this, and who say, 'I am in it and all that I am, all that I have', in it in an utter position, it is only those who can wage this warfare; and they are the overcomers, they are the ones who come to the throne.

You see, while the Lord would be gracious, and the Lord could give His protections and preservations, He requires on our part such a position and attitude as will give the enemy no ground to play with. If you and I have got some personal interest, we are thinking all the time, 'Oh, I had better not go for the enemy too strongly, he might touch that'. Be sure he will and he will put you out because of that, for he knows that is your weak point. You must have nothing like that for the enemy to play on and by which to put you out. You have to be in with everything, as I said, in a sense taking your very life in your hand and saying, Well, I am in this thing and I am in it for all and with all.

Oh yes, that may be the dark side, but there is another side. It is the throne side. "These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth" (Rev. 14:4). These are they who are the utter ones, these are the glorious ones, these are the ones set on high. Beloved, we are called into the universal testimony of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ, to the making effectual of that Lordship now in a spiritual way, and in a literal and manifest way throughout the ages to come. For the time being, it is a matter which is contested, disputed, resisted by all the hosts of evil, and into that the Church is called, to bring that issue through to finality, and when that day comes the heavens will be freed and emptied of all the principalities and powers, and the Church itself will come into that place to govern: the Church will be the new "principalities and powers and world rulers" - not of this darkness, but of this light. What a change it will be! It is in that momentous issue that we really are now, and no less a matter than that. All our spiritual conflict has to do with that. Let us then put it into its right place, see it in its right relationship. There is the biggest possible issue bound up with our spiritual conflict. But what I want to keep particularly in view now is that this is all primarily a matter of the Holy Spirit operating through prayer, a Church praying in the Spirit.

Oh, let the Lord cause it to light upon our prayer life, our times of prayer, and lift them up from the petty earthly things right up in this realm where the ultimate things of God are touched and effected. The Lord teach us something of the meaning of praying in the Spirit at all seasons for all saints, and watching thereunto with all perseverance.

The End

Up next: "Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, Forever"

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"Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, Forever"
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - What is the Kingdom?

 "Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom"  (Matthew 16:28).

"To whom he also shewed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).

"But when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women" (Acts 8:12).

"And he entered into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, reasoning and persuading as to the things concerning the kingdom of God" (Acts 19:.

"And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, shall see my face no more" (Acts 20:25).

"And when they had appointed him a day, they came to him into his lodging in great number; to whom he expounded the matter, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved" (Acts 28:23-24).

"Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet" (1 Corinthians 15:23-24).

"After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come... And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen" (Matthew 6:9,10,13).

I do not know what version of the Bible you have in your hand, but if you have a modern translation you will find that the second half of Matthew 6:13 is not there. However, the people who made this version from which I am reading put a footnote, which says: "Many authorities, some ancient, add For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." Now, I am not going to have any argument with the authorities, but I believe we have very good reason for retaining the second half of that verse, and I think that the ministry that the Lord has given me for this week is based upon that questioned half-verse. I am going to speak about something in the Bible that some men say is not in the Bible: "Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever."

WHY SHOULD THOSE WORDS BE RETAINED?

Before we can go on any further we must state why we believe that that half-verse ought to be there. The whole Bible, especially the New Testament, is built upon those three words: "Thine is the KINGDOM" stands over the whole Bible; "and the POWER" stands over the whole Bible; "and the GLORY" - all the Bible is gathered into that. The New Testament is especially true to those three words, so that half-verse which is questioned is justified by the whole Bible.

We read that wonderful word in 1 Corinthians 15:23, which looks right on to the end of the Bible. It says: "Then cometh the end, when he (the Son) shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father." The Kingdom belongs to the Father, and Jesus included Himself in that prayer: "Our Father, which art in heaven... Thy Kingdom come." In the end the Son will deliver up the Kingdom to the Father: when He has done the work of the Kingdom He will hand it to its right owner. You will notice that this is very comprehensive: "Then cometh the end... when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power." Those are three very rich words: all RULE, all AUTHORITY, and all POWER. You cannot get outside of that! That comprehends every form of opposition to the will of God, and it says that all that opposition will at last be subjected and subdued. In a minute we are going to ask the question: 'What is the Kingdom?', but here we begin with this very comprehensive thing: "Our Father, which art in heaven... Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth... For thine IS the kingdom." The Kingdom is that which is above all other rule and authority and power that is against the will of God. 1 Corinthians 15:23 says: "Then cometh the end." The end of what? EVERYTHING that is opposed to the will of God. That little word: "Thy will" is a tremendous word! It reaches out to the uttermost bounds of everything opposed to the will of God.

Now the Lord Jesus knew what He was talking about. I expect you have used those words many, many times, for they are called 'The Lord's Prayer'. Whether that is the right title or not we will not discuss, but it came out of a vast spiritual knowledge; and this is one of the things, dear friends, that we must recognize in order to get an enlarged spiritual understanding: that in every small fragment that came through the lips of the Lord Jesus there was a whole universe of meaning. When we use these words: "Thy will be done", how little we understand of what we are saying!

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THE BATTLE FOR THE KINGDOM OF THIS UNIVERSE

Let us see something of the range of that one fragment - "Thy will be done".

From before the foundation of this world, and all through the ages, there has been an immense cosmic conflict, and that conflict always had one issue: 'Who shall have the kingdom of this universe?' There was the One to whom the kingdom belonged, and it belonged to Him for ever and ever; and then there was the other one who aspired to have possession of that kingdom, and whose ambition was to be the "god", the "prince" of this world. And so, at some point, this great conflict commenced, this great cosmic conflict for the control of this universe. Once again we go back to 1 Corinthians 15: 'He must reign till He has PUT DOWN all rule, and authority, and power' - and that is what is going on now, and we are involved in that conflict. That will explain a very great deal!

We have a kind of microcosm of this whole conflict. In our arrangement of the Bible it is contained in twenty-eight chapters. It is only a little pamphlet, called "The Book of the Acts of the Apostles", but the Apostles never gave it that name! I would like to know what they would have called it. I know what I would call it, but that title is far too big and far too difficult: "A Microcosm of the Conflict of all the Ages." We think that the Book of the Acts is just a history of apostolic times. Well, it is that, but oh! it is the story of the conflict of the ages. In this little book heaven and hell are in deadly conflict, and the conflict concerns the kingdom. It is very impressive that this book BEGINS with the kingdom and ENDS with the kingdom. It begins by saying that Jesus, after He was risen, appeared unto His disciples "by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God" (1:3), and in chapter 28:31, the end of the book, the Jews were crowding into the little apartment of the Apostle Paul and he was "preaching the kingdom of God". These three words stand wonderfully over this little book! The Apostles and all the workers in that book were fighting the battle of the kingdom. They never arrived at any place in the world that then was but that this battle commenced. They went everywhere 'preaching the kingdom of God', and their arrival in every place was always anticipated by the rival to the kingdom of God. They were working out this little fragment: "Thine is the kingdom." It was not just a little bit of ritual, or a formal prayer: it was the battleground of the universe.

Now where in the New Testament did this real battle begin? It really began almost immediately after the Lord Jesus had said to His disciples: "There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom," though perhaps I ought to say that it entered upon a more intensive phase from that time. There ought to be no chapter division between Matthew 16 and 17, for after that verse it goes immediate]y on to say: "And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart: and he was transfigured before them." Now there are those people and teachers who think that the Transfiguration was the fulfilment of those words: "the Son of man coming in his kingdom", but that is only half the truth. What was the meaning of the Transfiguration? The Gospel by Matthew, as you know, is the Gospel of the Kingdom, and the Transfiguration was the manifestation of the King in His glory. You must have a king before you have a kingdom, so in the Transfiguration you have a foreshadowing of the King in glory. The Kingdom is vested in the King. They came down from the mountain - and what would you expect to happen? Well, you would expect that those men would go out into the world and say: 'We have seen the King in His glory', but Jesus said emphatically: "Tell the vision to no man until...". Until when? "Until the Son of man be risen from the dead."

Now link together two little words. "Tell the vision to no man UNTIL...". Then He said: "Tarry ye in the city (Jerusalem) UNTIL ye be clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49), and UNTIL 'ye receive the promise of the Father' (Acts 1:4). That little word 'until' links two things together. 'Until the Son of man be risen' - that involves the Cross. 'Until ye receive the promise of the Father' - that involves Pentecost. The Cross and Pentecost introduce the Kingdom. Before the Cross it was: 'Tell no man!' After the Cross and Pentecost they went everywhere preaching the kingdom.

We are answering the question: 'What is the Kingdom?' I hope I am not tiring you. I am only laying a foundation, and in a few minutes I will be saying something which I think will be helpful, but we must be clear as to what the Kingdom is.

First of all, the Kingdom is not a realm, but the personal rule of a Person. It is the dominion of a Person, that which belongs to that Person. You see, you must be very clear about that, because the whole conflict centres in the question of to whom the Kingdom belongs. The Kingdom is the sovereign government of God over all. It is the will of God deciding everything eventually. Only in a secondary way is the Kingdom a sphere, or a realm, and it is the realm in which God's will is absolutely sovereign: "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." God is absolutely sovereign in heaven, and there no one ever challenges His will. Angels and archangels bow in adoration and submission to the will of God in heaven, and if the Kingdom becomes a realm, it is only the realm in which it is like that.

You will be able to tell from that whether you are in the Kingdom. It is so easy to talk about the Kingdom, and to say "Thy kingdom come", and "Thine is the kingdom", but the fiercest battle that ever raged in the history of this world rages over that Kingdom.

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THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Perhaps some of you are not quite sure of the difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of heaven. I have often been asked that question. Well, I think the answer is quite simple. If you look in the Gospel by Matthew, and remember that that Gospel was written for Hebrews, the phrase is usually "The kingdom of heaven", but if you look where it was written in Greek you will find that it is "The kingdom of God". This is not always so, because there were always some Hebrews even amongst the Greeks, but it's a general distinction. To the Jews it was the Kingdom of heaven. Well, the Jews understood heaven, and the Greeks did not, but they quite understood deities. They had 'gods many', and 'god' was a kind of comprehensive term for them. So "The Kingdom of heaven" was all right for Jews, for they understood, and the Greeks understood "The Kingdom of God".

Well, that is only a technicality, and it has not helped you very much, but it is part of the answer, at least, to what is the difference between the Kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of God.

THE KINGDOM IN THE HANDS OF THE ENTHRONED KING

Let us try to come to a close with something quite helpful. What have we been saying? The dominion belongs to God: "Thine is the kingdom." The securing of that Kingdom for the Father was committed to the Son, so that the Lord Jesus has the Kingdom of God vested in Himself, and as He moved from His Cross He said: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth" (Matthew 28:18). So after the Cross, in the Book of the Acts, the Kingdom is in the hands of the enthroned King, Jesus Christ.

Now your problem arises, and here is something that is going to test every one of you. It has been my problem many times. If Jesus is on the throne of the Kingdom, and all authority is committed unto Him, what about things like this?

"Are they ministers of Christ? ...I more: in labours more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep: in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren: in labour and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, there is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches" (2 Corinthians 11:23-28).

And Jesus is on the throne! I venture to say that if you were in any one of those things you would ask the question: Is Jesus really on the throne? If all authority is in the hands of Jesus, why all this? And this is not the only list of Paul's troubles! Now, Paul, are you quite sure that the Kingdom belongs to Jesus? When something goes wrong, some tragedy enters into our life, when some great sorrow overtakes us, is not our first temptation to ask the question: Is the Lord really Lord? Please, Paul, answer my question! And Paul will answer by saying: 'This is all the battle of the Kingdom. Oh, no, things have not gone wrong. They are all going right, for this all says that the devil does not like what we are doing. If you will only wait until the end, you will see.' And it was this Paul who wrote: "Then cometh the end... when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power." You see, we just look at the things of the present, but Paul looked through the present to the end.

Well, were all these sufferings for nothing? Was Satan lord after all? What are we doing here tonight? Millions and millions have come this way and owe their debt to the Lord through this Apostle Paul. I can see a picture: a great multitude which no man can number, out of every nation and tribe and tongue, and the Lord Jesus standing with His arm around His Apostle Paul and saying: 'Look, Paul, do you see this great multitude? Do you remember that night when you were shipwrecked, and that day when they beat you with rods? Paul, this is all the fruit of that. The Kingdom has come and your sufferings have brought the Kingdom in.' That may be a bit of imagination, but I believe there is a lot of truth in it.

It depends on how we look at things. Do we interpret these adversities as the victory of Satan, or do we interpret them as the way of the Kingdom and look through to that day when He shall have subdued all rule and authority?

Well, we have got out into a big realm! How much more there is in "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done"!

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - The Kingdom Of Light In Conflict With The Kingdom Of Darkness

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:1-3).

"But and if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them... Seeing it is God, that said, Let there be light, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:3-4, 6).

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness overcame it not" (John 1:1, 4-5).

We proceed to consider a little further what the Kingdom of God is. We have seen that from the beginning there has been a great conflict in this universe as to WHO shall have the dominion. The New Testament speaks of two kingdoms, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, the Kingdom of the Son of God's love and the kingdom of that one who wants to usurp the place of God's Son, and all through the history of this world those two kingdoms have been in deadly conflict. As to the Kingdom of God, we have said that it is the sovereign rule of God. We speak of 'entering the Kingdom of God', and in that way we think of the Kingdom of God as being a sphere of God's rule, but there is something about which we must be very clear, although it is not easy to explain.

GOD RULES BY HIS OWN NATURE

We could think of a kingdom being just a place, and a number of people in that place, and then we could think of some person, a dictator, an autocrat, having dominion in that place over those people. We could say that Egypt is the kingdom of Mr..., and that China is the kingdom of someone else, but that is not the idea of the Kingdom of God. You see, God does not rule just as an autocrat or as a dictator. God's Kingdom is composed of those who are like Himself. That is what it is going to be at the end. The Kingdom is coming now, and when it has fully come it will just be, and only be, people who are like God Himself. I wonder if you understand what I mean when I say that God rules by His own nature? God's government is on the basis of what God is. That is how He is ruling now. When we say: "Thy will be done", we have to go on immediately and say: "As in heaven, so on earth." The Kingdom of God is according to that which satisfies the nature of God.

We have, then, two things to consider. The first is this: that to belong to the Kingdom of God we have to be reconstituted according to God. You know, the door is closed to every man and woman who has not been reconstituted according to God. Let us think of it like this: Someone wants to be in the Kingdom of God and they come to the door, and on that door they see the word: "Cannot." 'You cannot come in here. Something has to happen in you before you can come in here. This realm belongs to people who are altogether different from what you are by nature.'

You remember that the Lord Jesus told a parable of someone who made a great feast, and in order to attend and participate in that feast the guests had to wear a certain garment. Well, the people came with the garments on, but when the master of the feast came to look over the people he found one man without that garment. He said to that man: 'Friend, how did you get in here without the garment on?' In effect he said: 'You have no right here.' The master of the feast said to his servants: 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him out!' It was in that parable that the Lord was expounding this very principle: if you are going to be in the Kingdom of God something has got to happen that makes you suitable for that Kingdom.

Now, of course, you know that I am talking about the third chapter of the Gospel by John. I am quite sure that this man, Nicodemus, would have had an awful shock if he had been told that he was the man without the wedding garment, but this chapter makes it perfectly clear that it was Nicodemus. The only difference between Nicodemus and the man in the feast was that the latter got in and was thrown out, but the unborn-again Nicodemus never got in at all. Now, you note that it was about the Kingdom that Nicodemus was concerned. He was a very religious man, and highly educated, a man held in high esteem amongst the men of this world. Perhaps you would have found no fault with him, but Jesus said to him, without any hesitation: "Except a man be born from above, he cannot SEE the kingdom of God" (John 3:3), and: "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot ENTER into the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). Far from being able to ENTER, he cannot even SEE!

There is something about this Kingdom of God that necessitates having an altogether new constitution. We are hearing a great deal in our times about outer space, and we send men into it. Have you seen pictures of those men? You can hardly recognize that they are men! They are so laden with artificial apparatus that you can hardly see them. They have no natural qualification for living in outer space, and have to have artificial lungs. In a sense, they have to be reconstituted upon another principle. That is just an illustration of John chapter 3. Jesus might have said to Nicodemus: 'Nicodemus, if you got into the Kingdom of God you would die. You have not the equipment to live in that rare atmosphere.' That is very simple. If you had to bring a man or a woman whose life is in this world, to whom this world is everything, into a meeting like this, where we are singing these wonderful hymns and talking about these heavenly things, you know, the eyes of that man or that woman would be on the door all the time. They would be wriggling in their seats and saying: 'I will be glad when this is all over and I can get out. Let me get out of this as soon as I can!' You see what I mean? They are not constituted according to the realm of God.

So the Kingdom of God is what God is in His own nature. It is not just a sphere in which God rules as an autocrat. It is the realm in which God's nature is expressed. Peter spoke about His "precious and exceeding great promises through which ye may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and that is only another way of speaking about the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now we come to the real message for now.

[Shammu]

THE KINGDOM OF GOD THE RULE OF DIVINE LIGHT

What is God like? If the Kingdom of God is the realm where God's nature rules, this opens a door to very many things. I only want to speak of one of those things now, but it is a matter of fundamental importance. It is the matter which just went to the heart of Nicodemus' case. The Scripture says: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5), so the Kingdom of God is the rule of Divine light, but Divine light has always been a focal point of intense conflict.

The Bible opens with a conflict. There is a state of things in nature which God attacks - He begins to make a tremendous assault upon a condition of things, and the first attack of God was upon darkness. "Darkness was upon the face of the deep", and I do not think that God just looked at that darkness and in a very soft voice said: 'Let us have some light.' I believe that there was an angry look on His face and He said: 'Let light be! This is a situation that I never intended to exist and which I will not tolerate. It is a contradiction to My very nature.' So the Divine fiat was uttered in a strong voice: "Let there be light!" Do you think I am reading something into the story? No, I have the whole Bible behind me to support what I am saying. That is why I gave you 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, and if you can listen to the tone in the voice of the Apostle Paul when he is saying those words, you would not find anything very meek and mild - "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving LEST the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ should dawn upon them." This darkness is the work of the devil, and God is against it.

I repeat that the first attack of God was made upon darkness, and the natural is a parable of the spiritual. You know that throughout the whole Bible redemption is centred in light, as the redemption of the natural earth was by light. The first phase of the redemption of the earth was by reason of warfare against darkness, or light overcoming darkness.

You can take up that principle right through your Bible. I can only touch on a few points now. We were hearing about Abraham this morning, and Abraham was another movement of God's rule concerning His Kingdom, and that new movement in redemption was on the basis of light. Our brother called it vision, but it is the same thing. Light is vision, and vision is light. It was left to the great martyr Stephen to tell us how this happened: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia" - if you like, "when he was in darkness" - (Acts 7:2). The God of glory APPEARED, showed Himself. Abraham had his eyes opened to see the God of glory, and all the great redemptive work of God went forward through Abraham on that basis. It was a marvellous illumination! Jesus said to the Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see MY day" (John 8:56). What a light Abraham came into! He was a great key to the whole plan of redemption.

You leap over a few centuries and you see the seed of Abraham, the children of Israel, in the darkness of Egypt. If you want to see what God thinks and feels about darkness, look at the ten judgments upon Egypt! God entered into a tremendous warfare with the darkness of Egypt, and that phase of the warfare headed right up to this: on that fatal night for Egypt, in all the deadly darkness, the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. The first-born sons of Egypt died in the darkness, but the first-born sons of God went out in the light. And that was not the end. All the way through the wilderness journey, in the darkness of the night there was a pillar of fire, and that light above them was in warfare against the darkness around them. They were redeemed from being lost in the wilderness by the pillar of fire, the light in the darkness.

Now, how much of the Old Testament am I to employ to show you how true this was? The Prophets were centres of light in the darkness of the people of God to redeem them from their darkness. If you take Isaiah alone, what an example he is of this very thing! His great ministry took its rise from: "I saw the Lord... high and lifted up" (Isaiah 6:2). Again and again he spoke about the darkness and the light, and at last, with a vision beyond, he cried: "Arise, shine; for thy light is come" (60:1).

I want to get this right home. All that is truth which may be objective, but let us come back to this: There is a tremendous conflict between these two kingdoms of light and darkness. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 we are brought right to the very work of the devil: "The god of this world hath blinded." What, then, is THE supreme work of the devil? It is not that he makes good men bad men, nor that he drags good men down into the mire of sin, nor that he brings strong young men and beautiful young women down into moral corruption, nor makes atheists and infidels. Those are only by-products. They are the results of something else, and that is: "The god of this world hath BLINDED." Remove their blindness, open their eyes, and these things will be dealt with quite simply. The work of the devil is to keep people in the dark. Light is the most fatal thing to the kingdom of Satan; he fears light more than he fears anything else. He is the "prince of darkness". He has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, and why has he done so? It is a precaution against something, and one little word explains it: "LEST the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ should shine." 'If those people get the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, MY kingdom is gone. The battle is over for me. I am lost.' So that Satan will do anything to keep us from having light.

There is a real touch of genius in Bunyan's "Holy War". Satan and his kingdom are making their assault upon Mansoul in order to capture it - the city of Mansoul is besieged by the powers of darkness. Satan says to his captains: 'There is one man that you must capture. If we capture that one man the city is ours. Focus all your attention upon the Lord Mayor!' What is the name of the Lord Mayor? His name is Mr. Understanding. 'When you have captured Mr. Understanding put him down in a dark dungeon so that he does not know what is happening. The rest of the battle will be easy.' That is the genius of John Bunyan, but where did he get it? He got it from Paul. Do you remember this little phrase of Paul's: "Being darkened in their understanding" (Ephesians 4:18)? Paul is speaking there about all the moral evils of the Gentile world, and he says they are due to one thing: their understanding is darkened.

Now, dear friends, you perhaps wonder why I am speaking to you like this. You may say: 'Well, we are not in the dark. We are saved people.' I will ask you to explain one thing to me: Why is it that invariably when we are going to have a conference where the Lord is going to give more light, we have to come to it through so much conflict? That is quite true of this very conference. All kinds of things arose to get in the way. But that is only a simple example of a great truth.

We have spoken of the prophets, and they were points of light in the darkness of Israel. Will you tell me that they were not in a conflict? Because they were points of light they were points of the most vicious assault of the evil powers. Jesus said: "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), and every day and everywhere Jesus was in conflict because He was a light. It was true of the apostles. Wherever they went, even without beginning to preach, they found themselves in conflict. It is as though the devil and his powers said: 'We will not have this in our kingdom!', and they will stop at nothing to quench the light. And the Lord says: "Ye are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14). Here is the challenge. Divine light is POSITIVE. You cannot have Divine light and be neutral. If God has shined into your heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, your life is a challenge to the kingdom of Satan, and his attitude to you will be: 'We will get you out as soon as we can!' You will find that Satan will stop at nothing to quench that light. You see, Divine light is not just teaching and theory; it is a menace to the kingdom of Satan. Are we in the Kingdom of God? That is what it means. Individual Christians are to be like that - their very existence disturbs the kingdom of Satan.

And what is true of the individual is true of the little companies of the Lord's people. Satan does not mind you organizing communities of people called Christians. I don't think he troubles about them very much, for the simple reason that they don't trouble him, but if any little company of the Lord's people anywhere are really in the light and are focal points of the significance of Jesus Christ, Satan will do everything to destroy that little company.

I must add this as I close. Remember that this is not only an initial matter in the Christian life. Every fresh step of advance in the spiritual life is the result of some new light. We only make progress in the spiritual life by more and more Divine light, and the evil one does not want us to advance to the fullness of light. As soon as we think we have got all the light, then death will set in.

Well, I must leave it there for the present.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Kingdom Of Life In Conflict With The Kingdom Of Death

"And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden" (Genesis 2:9).

"And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:15-17).

"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:22-24).

"The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

"The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up, after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen: to whom he also shewed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God: and, being assembled together with them, he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, said he, ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1:1-5).

"But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:.

We are occupied in these messages with those words: "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory", and I must take you back for a minute or two to where we began.

You will remember what we said about the last verse of Matthew 16 and the first verse of chapter 17. Jesus said to His disciples: "There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom", and because there are no chapter divisions in Matthew's writing, the record runs straight on into what is our chapter 17: "Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart: and he was transfigured before them." Many people have thought that the Transfiguration was the fulfilment of those words at the end of chapter 16, for they think it was the "Son of man coming in his kingdom", but we have given good reasons for saying that that was only half of the truth. The Transfiguration was the King presented in His glory, but it was on the Day of Pentecost that the King came with the Kingdom, spiritually.

THE COMING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT THE POWER OF THE KINGDOM

Now it is from that point that we have to take things up. "Thine is the kingdom, and the power." It was on the Day of Pentecost that the Kingdom came in power, for although the disciples had seen the King, they had not received the power of the Kingdom. At the beginning of the Book of the Acts the King is speaking to them "the things concerning the kingdom", and then, having Himself been present as King and speaking these things concerning the Kingdom, He said to them: 'Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye receive power, and ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you not many days hence.'

What we want to see at this time, as the Lord helps, is what it is that the Kingdom and the power focus upon. What is it that the Kingdom and the power focus upon? In other words, if the coming of the Holy Spirit is the power of the Kingdom, upon what does the Holy Spirit focus His attention? I hope you will not think that I am exaggerating when I say that this is the most important thing in the Bible, and it is most manifestly true that it is the most important thing in the New Testament. Be very patient with me, for I want to get this very clear. What is the focal point of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Kingdom and the power?

What is the supreme mark of the Holy Spirit's interest? Let me put that in another way: What is the supreme evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit? Now I am not going to give the answers that a lot of people are giving today. They are saying: 'Except this... and that... you don't know anything about the Holy Spirit!' Whatever there may be of other evidences of the Holy Spirit, and we are not discussing that, there is one supreme evidence of the Holy Spirit, and that truth is found in the Bible from the first chapter to the last. There are, of course, a lot of these other things which are not found in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but you will find this one thing everywhere through the Bible, and it comes out into full manifestation at the beginning of the Book of the Acts. Well, one word: Resurrection. Resurrection is the greatest thing in the Bible, and most certainly in the New Testament.

RESURRECTION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

You open your Bible with this: "The spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters." What was He there for? Why was He brooding over the waters? Because the world had been baptized into the judgment of death. The baptismal waters had overflowed the whole earth in judgment and everything was in a state of darkness and death, so the Spirit of God was there for the purpose of resurrection - and it is something to be noted that it was on the third day of the creation that living things came into being on the earth. The earth began to produce living things on the third day, and everyone knows that it was on the third day that the Lord Jesus rose again.

Well, we cannot pass through the whole Bible on this matter. Undoubtedly Abram was in the realm of death. The beginning of his life with God was like a resurrection from the dead, and the climax of Abraham's life was the resurrection of Isaac. Later Israel as a people were in Egypt, the place of death. The judgment of death was executed upon Egypt, but, as by the power of resurrection, God brought His people out of the land of death and darkness. It is said that they were "baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Corinthians 10:2), and we know that baptism is through death into life. Later the nation was in Babylon, the land of spiritual death, and there the Lord called deliverance from Babylon a 'resurrection'. The Lord said, through the prophet, "I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel" (Ezekiel 37:12).

That is only a very imperfect indication that resurrection governs the whole of the Old Testament.

[Shammu]

RESURRECTION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Now when we come into the New Testament we come to these words of the Lord Jesus to His disciples: "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses." What did that witness turn out to be? It is in one statement: "And with great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 4:33). They were witnesses to two things, or to two sides of one thing. They were witnesses to the FACT of the resurrection, but they were more than that; they were witnesses to the POWER of the resurrection.

Why did the Lord Jesus dwell forty days with His disciples after His resurrection? Luke puts it into one statement: "He also shewed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days." That is the answer to the question - "MANY proofs". He was going to leave them without any ground for a question about this matter of the resurrection, and they were going to have the evidence of the resurrection by many proofs.

Now, dear friends, resurrection is not just a doctrine. It may be Christian teaching, but it is not Christian doctrine without up-to-date evidence. Do you know that all the writing and the teaching about the Lord Jesus and the resurrection was not done until thirty-five years after it all happened? I do want you to get this. You see, we have it in a book, and I could be just telling you what is in the book, for there it says that Jesus died, was crucified, and God raised Him from the dead, and then He appeared to His disciples for forty days. You can read all that in the book - but not one apostle had a book, that is, a New Testament or any part of it. The teaching came after the truth, the fact. What is in the book came thirty-five years after the fact. If people were to ask those apostles: 'Now how do you know that Jesus rose from the dead?', they would never have said: 'It is in the book.' They said: 'It is inside of us!' It is a part of our own spiritual history, and you will only have to wait a little while to see the proof of that. You will do all that you possibly can in this world to kill this testimony, every kind of power that is known will be used to kill this testimony - and this testimony will prove to be greater in power than all the powers in this universe. When Jesus said: "Ye shall be my witnesses", He meant that the apostles themselves would be personal witnesses to this great fact. When Matthew wrote his Gospel, he did so because the things that were going to be in it had already been proved to be true in the world. Christianity had got on very well for at least thirty-five years without any written record, for it rested upon facts which were proved in the lives of those who preached. The impact of this Kingdom was upon a realm greater than this world.

THE KINGDOM OF INDESTRUCTIBLE LIFE

The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of indestructible life. Do you get that? Let me say it again. This is not only a statement of Christian truth; it is a test of Christian life. The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of indestructible life, but the Kingdom of God is in conflict with another kingdom, and this is a thing we have been emphasizing all the time. We have seen that the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of LIGHT in conflict with the kingdom of darkness, and now it is the Kingdom of God as the Kingdom of LIFE in conflict with the kingdom of death.

I wonder if you have ever stopped to think about: "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you"? I think there are a lot of mistaken ideas about this matter of power. So many people tell us that THIS is what the power of the Holy Spirit is, and that... and that. Well, they may be more or less right, but what I am saying to you, dear friends, and what I believe to be the truth, is that the power of the Holy Spirit is the power of Divine life. If I had the time I could prove it from the Scriptures. You have only to see how power is linked with resurrection in the New Testament to see that that IS the power of the Holy Spirit. What does the Word say about the Holy Spirit's action in raising Jesus from the dead? It focuses upon the life that was in Him, and says that when Jesus was in the grave He did not see corruption. Peter quotes the Scriptures about this - "Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption " (Acts 2:27), and then applies that Scripture to Jesus and says: "Nor DID his flesh see corruption" (Acts 2:31). The whole natural course of things was held in control. And then Paul says: "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11). You see, the power of the Holy Spirit was demonstrated in suspending the power of death. And then there is that superlative word of the Apostle Paul: "The exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead" (Ephesians 1:19-20).