Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

The universality of the Church, as brought about by the Person, and living relationship to Him, creates the exclusiveness. That is not a contradictory but a complementary statement, for no one can enter into the Church except by coming into a living relationship with the central Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and immediately, Christ is found to be a boundary as well as a universal centre. This fact will further be seen to affect not only the matter of entrance into the Church but also that of spiritual development in the Church. We can only grow as we are members of the spiritual Church, the Body of Christ, and the Church itself as a whole can only grow and develop in a spiritual way in so far as Christ becomes its life. Our difficulty is that we get mental pictures of a certain defined circle, when we really ought to be seeing that this is a spiritual matter, and that the Church is not only an area marked off, and you may be in it or outside of it, but that the Church is a spiritual state rather than a place, and that "state" determines how far we are livingly in the Church, and the measure of our conformity to Christ.

For my part, I believe that is why we have the distinction in the Word of God between Zion and Jerusalem. While the words are interchangeable, and are very often used of the same place, nevertheless there is a distinction between them. Zion is Jerusalem ideally, as God thinks of Jerusalem. Zion is the word used when God's full Church is in view. Jerusalem may fall short of Zion, may be less than Zion. Jerusalem may represent things as you find them; Zion represents things as God would have them. That difference is very marked in the Word. So that if Zion represents the full thought of God, God's desire is that Jerusalem should take its character from Zion. Bringing that into our own lives, it means that we are partakers in God's thought for Jerusalem just in so far as we are conformed to God's ideal as represented in His Son, the Lord Jesus. Churchmanship is not a matter of coming within a certain defined limit; Churchmanship is a matter of relationship with the Lord Jesus, and of spiritual condition. Failure to have come to that relationship and spiritual condition means exclusion from the Church. You see how destitute of truth the common idea of the Church is, the idea that you can belong to the Church if only you give assent to certain doctrinal propositions, and go through certain rites or ordinances. It is a completely false conception of the Church. The Church is Christ in corporate expression, and membership of the Church is membership of Christ, and our value as members of the Church is determined by the measure of Christ to which we have come. Christ is universal in His Person, and therefore the Church, related to Him, becomes universal, in the sense that it touches life at every point, and in every condition, in a living way; not in a formal way, but in a living way; as an application, an appeal, and a living touch, by reason of Christ being expressed in and through it.

(b) The Cross.

Another thing which constitutes its universality, and at the same time its exclusiveness, is the Cross of Christ. The Cross of the Lord Jesus was a universal thing. No realm has been untouched by that Cross. Is sin proved to be a universal thing? Then the Cross is universal; it touches sin universally. Is man's fallen condition universal? Then the Cross is vitally related to that. All that the Cross stands for is found, and proved, to be of universal application, universal meaning. The only way into the City is by way of the Cross. That means that the Church is universal in its value, in its testimony, in its appeal, in its call, in its invitation; none need be excluded, though at the same time it is impossible to be in it except by way of the Cross. It is universal, and at the same time exclusive.

(c) The Life.

The third thing which bears the same feature is the life which Christ gives to His own. That is a universal life. It is not like other kinds of life. There are other kinds of life, which are limited in their range. Human life is limited. It belongs to man. No one else has human life but man. There is animal life in the lower sense. Life which animals have is a lower order of life; it belongs to animals. There is vegetable life, a still lower order of life; it belongs to that kingdom. These are watertight kingdoms, and the vegetable cannot pass through into the animal, and the animal cannot pass through into the human. So far as the life is concerned, they are exclusive, self-contained. Divine life is another kind of life. When it is given, and becomes the basis of man's life, there is something which he has in common with all children of God, whatever the differences are. He has a common foundation. It is that common foundation which makes fellowship possible, and makes everything real in relation to the Lord; that mighty, working, Divine life, energising, springing up within, gravitating backward to its source in God; and as it gravitates backward to its source it takes its object with it. It is the working of Divine life that brings men out of all nations, and all tongues, and all kindreds, and all temperaments, into a oneness, a universal Church. It is the Divine life in every member, making one Body.

(d) The Holy Spirit.

What is true of the Head, and the Cross, and the life, is true, in the fourth place, of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, Himself indwelling all who are in Christ through the Cross, constitutes a universal Church. The universality of that Church is only maintained in its expression as the Holy Spirit is allowed to govern and dominate. Immediately man begins to rule in the Church its universality is upset, and it becomes something legal, a divided thing. But while the Holy Spirit has free course, and absolute dominion, He maintains that principle of the universality of Christ, and preserves the Church as a thing without barriers, without those hindrances to full fellowship which come about when man takes the place of the Holy Spirit.

These things, as you see, bring the balance, the harmony, of the two factors, universality on the one hand and exclusiveness on the other hand, because none can ever enter into the Church, into the heavenly City, save as he comes under the government of the Holy Spirit.

The Counterfeit of the Truth.

This great fact of the universality of the Church is so tremendously important as to have provoked every kind of effort on the part of the enemy to destroy it, and he has moved mainly along two lines. Firstly, he has wrought along the line of counterfeit universality, and then along the line of earthliness, resulting in divisions, and a false kind of exclusiveness.

As to counterfeit universality, this operates in every realm. It is seen in the social realm under the name of the brotherhood of all men. Behind that there is this subtle, evil work of the enemy to bring about a false universality. You can see it in Babylon. When they went to work to build Babylon it was in that manner: "Let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:4). What was the object? It was a universal brotherhood, to maintain the power of dominion by unity. That is Babylon: and Babylon is an evil thing.

The same thing works in the industrial world. It works, or seeks to work, in the political world, the confederation of nations. It also seeks to work in the religious world, in the great union of the Churches. But it is a counterfeit and false universality. It is not the oneness of Christ and of the Holy Ghost.

Then there is not only the counterfeit side, but there is that earthly side, where spiritual things, the things of God, are dragged down to an earthly level; handled, gripped, manipulated by man, with the result that you get divisions. All the divisions amongst the Lord's people are the result in some way or other of man's interference in the things of God. Then you get an exclusiveness amongst these divisions, which is a false exclusiveness, and not the exclusiveness of the Cross.

These are Satan's oppositions, activities, against the great universality of the spiritual and heavenly Church of Christ. We shall only know and maintain that universality as we keep away from the earth in a spiritual way; as we allow the Holy Ghost to do the governing; as our teaching is not the teaching of man, but the teaching of the Spirit; as the Cross continually operates to keep out all that which is not of God. The heavenly City is universal, but it is exclusive. That then is the Church, but for its real value it must remain heavenly and spiritual in a practical way.

[Shammu]

Chapter 8 - The Light of the City

Clearness of Life and Testimony.

READING: Rev. 21:10-11,18,21; 22:1; Gal. 4:25-26.

The word "clear" occurs on more than one occasion in those passages, and synonymous words are there, such as "pure gold," "as transparent glass." These words suggest the idea of light. They are associated with that light which is spoken of in connection with the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, her light like unto a stone most precious, a jasper stone.

In speaking of the light of the Lord's heavenly people we are touching again a very solemn, and serious, and important feature, something which has a tremendous history associated with it. The entire history of the Lord's people, and of the spiritual life, is one of light and darkness, of truth and falsehood, of purity and adulteration or mixture, of clearness and cloudiness, of openness and secretiveness. And many other words can be used to express this long history, so long and so chequered all because of this persistent, continuous effort to bring what is of God into a place of doubtfulness, of uncertainty, to rob it of the tremendous power of absolute truth, absolute purity, absolute clearness.

Long before Christ came Satan had spread abroad in this earth those Babylonish elements which only waited for an hour when the Church should fall into a state of spiritual declension or weakness to seize the opportunity to pounce upon this spiritual Body and become the parasites which sapped and destroyed its life. So that we find, even before we move out of the New Testament, that where there was a state of spiritual declension there was a condition of Babylonish features, priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, formalism, ritualism, and a host of other things which came from Babylon and are seen in the occult, the mystic, the aesthetic, those ideas which are now the very sum and substance of the whole Romish system. These all came from Babylon, and were in the world waiting for the Church to decline, and immediately that decline took place they took hold, impinged upon the Church. You find them all there in the first chapters of the book of the Revelation, and in other places also, elements of this religiousness of Mystery Babylon. Their object was not to blot out Christianity in a direct and immediate way, not to wipe the Church out of existence, but so to mix things as to bring her into an uncertain place before God, that He could no longer recognise her as His pure Bride.

You notice the call in some of Paul's letters, as well as in those letters to the seven Churches, is to purge out these pagan elements. There is a tremendous amount of paganism represented in the conditions of those to whom he wrote. Take the letter to the Colossians. What was the object of the writing of that letter? Well, the whole spiritual hierarchy, the realm of spiritual beings, angels and archangels, had been, by paganism, so marvellously organised that even Jesus Christ had been placed as but a super-archangel. All the other angels, it is true, had been set under Him in different ranks, but He was given no more than the position of a super-archangel; one of them, though of much higher rank. And the Colossian letter was written, as you will see from the content, on the one hand, as denunciatory of this whole false system of teaching; to destroy it by pointing out how evil the whole thing was, and, on the other hand, to give Christ His rightful place. The first chapter of that letter is the classic as to the Person of the Lord Jesus and His eternal relationship with the Father. He was before all things; all things were made by Him; He is the Head. But all that mischief had been done by mixture, that is, the destroying of the utter purity of truth, the truth which is only in Jesus.

This is but a very small and inadequate illustration of how the enemy has all the way through sought to destroy real spiritual power by introducing elements which would take from the utterness of the truth, destroy the Church's clearness, and work against this ultimate revelation in which she is seen with "her light like unto a stone most precious... a jasper stone..." Pure gold, transparent glass, clear as crystal - that is the characteristic of Zion, the characteristic of the Lord's people; and against that the enemy has worked continuously, in order to compromise the Church's position, the position of the Lord's people, by getting them into an uncertain state in themselves and before God.

Dimming the Fine Gold.

This has been done in the first place, as we have seen, by doctrine. If the enemy can introduce any suggestion of false doctrine, if he can but insinuate the slightest degree of error, he will cause it to work like an evil leaven till a development of that kind has become the occasion for the Holy Spirit's drawing back, the Lord being unable to go on where that is, and a state of compromise, and paralysis, and weakness obtains. The pure gold, the fine gold, has become dimmed.

Not only along the line of doctrine has this been done, but along the line of life. The same method, and the same object, governs the enemy's activities. It is possible to stand very strongly upon what is absolutely orthodox as to doctrine, and to be in a very doubtful state in your own life, your own spiritual life, your own moral life; to be very faithful to the letter of the Word of God, and yet to be compromised in your own spiritual life and testimony. This may be in business dealings, in other relationships, or in your own life before God; something not clear, something not pure, something not clean, something not straight, something doubtful, maybe a secret habit. Oh, it may be one of a multitude of things which takes out of the life that certainty, that definiteness, that positiveness, that clearness, and creates, sometimes almost unconsciously in the one concerned, a fear of being confronted with something, of having to own up to being found out. There is something in the background of the life which is causing an arrest. It is taking the real drive out of testimony, the real impact out of life, and the real fruitfulness and value out of fellowship. There is something there, though very often intangible. You cannot put your hand upon it, but you know there is something there in that life which is not right, which is not clear; and then there develops a secretiveness, an evasiveness, a detachment, or many other kinds of evil symptoms may develop. It is all because there is something there which is not absolutely clear before God. The enemy has got in an element which has destroyed the pure light, and there is a shadow, a film about that life. The enemy's purpose is to destroy that perfect crystal clearness of a life in God, and so paralyse the whole life. The outward form may still be the same, the profession may be just as ever it was, but there is a check.

This is said, not by way of accusation, but by way of indicating one of the favourite lines along which the enemy works to destroy what God has in view for His people, for Jerusalem; namely, that she should eventually come out of heaven having the glory of God, her light like unto a stone most precious, as a jasper stone, and that everything about her should be pure gold, as transparent glass, clear as crystal. Oh, the spiritual value and weight of words and phrases like those!

All this is indisputable and patent. We have to recognise this, that the enemy is continuously seeking to get us into some place where, in spite of ourselves, we feel that we are under a cloud. Sometimes he sets up a false position, and makes us feel that we are false. We may not be false, but he seeks to make us feel that we are false, to get us into that realm where we have lost our confidence, our assurance, our certainty, our standing, our position, where we are weakened by some element which has crept in. The enemy is out to bring God's People under clouds, under suspicion, and to bring them in their own hearts under doubts and questions, so that the clearness, the certainty, the strength is destroyed and they are a big question to everyone, even to themselves.

Poison Gas from the Enemy.

Not only as to individuals, but as to collective instrumentalities of God, this is true. Whenever God raises up an instrument by which He intends to bring His Testimony into greater clearness and greater fullness, the object of which in His desire and thought is to reveal the nature of His Son more clearly, more perfectly, then the concentrated attention of all the powers of evil is to bring that thing under suspicion, and to put over it a great question mark in the eyes and minds of everybody.

[Shammu]

Why are not the Lord's people alive to that fact? For a fact which runs parallel with that, and which is just as mighty a fact itself, is that when you really investigate that thing you find you have no reason for question at all. It was all an unfounded suspicion. This is clearly the Devil's work, to cast over something which the Lord would use for a fuller revelation of His Son, and of what He desires for His people, this film of questioning, suspicions, doubts, so that it is forced into a realm where it is regarded as dangerous, suspicious. Would to God that the Lord's people would obey the injunction to "prove all things"!

You see what the enemy is after, and how he goes to work. It is helpful to know sometimes what the enemy is after, and how he does operate. We may be saved from much if only we are aware of it.

This is a message to our hearts, not only of helpfulness in an objective direction through our being informed as to the danger, the peril, the devices of the enemy, but it sheds light upon the inward experience, and shows that all the Lord's dealings with us are intended to bring us to this state of crystal clearness. "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts" (Psa. 51:6): and what the Lord desires He will get. The dealings of the Lord with His own are purifying dealings, in order to have this crystal clearness, this pure gold, this stone most precious. They are for the getting rid of the dross, getting rid of the film, getting rid of all those secret and secretive elements which work in the direction of deception. Those are like unto a lie, a falsehood. The Lord wants to root all that out of us. He is against everything that is shadowy. He is for everything that is perfectly clear, and so to get rid of the dark substances He puts His fires to work in our lives to purify them. In our individual lives and in the case of such collective instrumentalities as we have mentioned, He does this. He does not allow such to be out of the fire for long. He is after this state of utter purity.

You see what is involved. In the coming generations all the nations have to walk in that light; that is, they are going to have their knowledge of the Lord through the Church's instrumentality. They are going to be governed by the Church. The nations shall walk in the light thereof. What light is this? This is no mere external aurora. This is the out-shining of a spiritual and moral condition of glory. This is something out from the very nature of the thing "having the glory of God." It is from the centre, and works as an expression of a spiritual and moral condition. God is not cleansing, purging, chastening you and me, and causing His fires to work to our purifying, just for the sake of doing it, and He is not doing it just for our own sakes inasmuch as He wants us individually to be good and not bad. I suppose He wants that, but that is not all. God has a mighty, universal purpose in view, an eternal vocation, and that is what He is after, and it requires a condition. That is one of the governing conditions of Zion, namely, the full expression of the Lord's mind. The Lord is always motived by things so much greater and vaster than we understand in the day when we are passing through the trial. We bring it down to a personal matter, and ask questions: Why should the Lord deal with me like this? We narrow down the range of His thought, His purpose, His intention. Because we make it so local we lose the strength and helpfulness which would come to us if we could see the great eternal vocation for which we were being prepared.

"The Wiles of the Devil."

If we had time to note all the secretive things of which the Word of God tells us concerning the earthly Jerusalem, we should find that it was the purposes of God that were so often threatened by those secretive elements. Think, by way of illustration, of Nehemiah's day, when the wall was being built, and how the enemy got one of his own representatives hidden right in the temple itself, and so sought to compromise everything, to weaken the whole work and position, by having a representative occupying a chamber in the temple itself. Then in Ezra's time the adversary said: We serve the same God as you do, let us come and work alongside of you! Subtle! But thank God the man of God was a man of such transparency himself that he could see through things, and he was not deceived. He saw quite clearly that in these people there was darkness. Their condition was not one of clearness, nor of light. There was duplicity, and he shut them out; and immediately he did that they showed quite well where they were. In these and numerous other ways you can mark the enemy trying all the time to get that which was not suitable to God right into the heart of things, in order to destroy the effectiveness, the positiveness of testimony, and Jerusalem's history is a long history of these subtle elements working in the midst.

We come to the day of our Lord Himself. What a mass of this sort of thing he encountered in Jerusalem! They tried to catch Him in His words. They were all the time laying traps for Him. They were working furtively, secretively, by deceptions, by snares, trying to take Him. The whole situation, the whole condition of Jerusalem was like that in His day, and clearness, transparency, was destroyed. Yet the temple worship was going on. Outwardly the whole of the religious system was proceeding as it had been wont to do, yet here was this dark interior. God forsakes it, because of the lie. The Lord put His finger upon that so often in very straight and terse language. "You make clean the outside of the platter..."! "Whited sepulchres"! What a picture! See them going round with their whitewash, making white their sepulchres; and within, He says, they are "full of dead men's bones." They were making the thing to appear something other than it was. Such is the lie, which is the Devil's work, leading to rejection. The Lord's desire toward us is that we should know that state of light, of clearness, of which we have spoken.

The next thing is love. What is the character of New Testament love? Love unfeigned! What a word! Fancy using that word to Christians - love unfeigned! Does that mean that some would love feignedly, feign to love, pretend to love, while really they do not love at all? That which the Lord seeks in every virtue, in every element, is something that is true.

That is what we mean by light in the sense of clearness. It is the purity and inwardness of things. Truth may be in word, in doctrine, but there has to be a corresponding truth in heart, truth in life. Light may be a matter of doctrine, but there has to be a corresponding state of light in the heart. The enemy will not object to us having plenty of the former kind of light and truth, but, if he can, he will seek to destroy its real value by introducing a lie over against it, a contradiction.

This may sound rather strong. Well, it is strong! It must be strong! It has not been put in this way to lay charges against anyone, but by way of warning. It will perhaps explain some things, but we must take it to our hearts as a word of exhortation or admonition. Remember that God never builds in the dark; that is, there can be no constructiveness where there is not light. Before ever God would bring this world back into order and fruitfulness He said: "Let there be light." God is out for the manifestation of the truth. God's works are never darkness, and we can never know constructiveness and progress unless there is absolute light. You know quite well that you cannot go on with people who are not straight, people who are crooked, people who are all the time furtive, not open, not frank, who have somewhere in the background a secretiveness. You have to say, I cannot go on with that one. God is like that. He would say to any one of us who might be there, I cannot go on with you until you are absolutely out in the open, until you have come to a place where you are going to be perfectly honest. Reality is God's demand for any kind of work that He will do. There may be many weaknesses, many imperfections, but if there is genuineness, reality, openness before God, where the spirit is clear and pure, God can go on with His work. But immediately we begin to lock something up inside, hold something back, cease to be perfectly open before God, the work stops. Light in the sense of clearness is an essential for the building of the city of God, because the ultimate purpose for that city is to shine forth with that glory of God in character. With Him there is no variableness, neither shadow cast by turning. That means that God can be relied upon.

The Lord make us like that.

The End

Up next, The Cross, the Church, and the Kingdom

[Shammu]

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore you are free to use these writings as you are led, however we ask if you choose to share writings from this site with others, please offer them freely - free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

The Cross, the Church, and the Kingdom
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Ultimate Meaning of the Cross

"...this mind... which was... in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:5-11).

I feel that there is one big question which it is imperative that the Lord's people should face in these days, and if we can answer that question in a living way and enter livingly into the answer, very great spiritual values will be secured. The question is this - What has God revealed as His supreme objective resultant from the Cross of Christ? The question which springs out of that is - how has God revealed that the objective shall be secured and expressed? Probably it will be that subsidiary question which will occupy us largely in these meditations, leading to the answer to the main question.

As we approach this main question, we may do so by a series of enquiries. Is the supreme outcome of the Cross of Christ found in there being so many Christians enjoying the knowledge that they are saved? Further, is it found in so many saved people seeking to get other people to the same position - enjoying the fact of being saved? Further, is the answer found in having so many saved Christians mainly occupied with their own sanctification, the way of victory, and a fuller life? And, yet again, is it to have so many Christians devoting themselves to the knowledge of deeper things, the deeper things of God? And if we put all the four together, have we got the objective, that is, God's full objective, in the Cross of Christ? All the things that I have mentioned certainly are part of it; but when we have them all - salvation, soul-winning, sanctification, education - does it end there? Are any, or all, of these the end? Will that satisfy God? Will that fill up His desire and expectation and be an adequate outcome of Calvary? Well, that is what we are going to look at, as the Lord enables.

The circle drawn by all the things which we have just mentioned may still be a limited circle in two respects. Firstly, all that may still resolve itself into something personal - my salvation, my service, my sanctification, my spiritual education. Secondly, it may all resolve itself into something very largely, if not entirely, earthly, having to do with life here on this earth - being saved, getting others saved, growing in grace, increasing in spiritual knowledge. It may be quite an earthly thing, although, of course, leading to heaven and having heaven ultimately in view. But is not that, after all, still a circumscribed position? Again, does it represent all the meaning of the Cross?

Now all of these phases that I have mentioned are seen in the New Testament. Indeed, in a certain sense, we may say that the New Testament in sections deals with these respectively. Romans may, in the main, deal with the first - our salvation. Corinthians may deal with the second - our sanctification. The New Testament does definitely provide for each of these in quite a specific and definite way, but what we ought to recognise is this, that we can never, by means of any one section of the Word of God, see the whole purpose of God. We need all the Word of God for all the purpose of God.

A People to Express Christ's Lordship

So when we come really to the Word, we find that the Cross as our basis and as our way leads on to these, but through them ever on and ever up to something much more than they are, either separately or collectively and inclusively, and it is that ultimate something which is the supreme objective resultant from the Cross of the Lord Jesus. When I use that word 'ultimate,' I do not want to divert your mind from the present. I am not using it in the sense of afterward, final, in the sense of time; for that ultimate is now. God has shown that He would have a full vindication of the Cross of His Son now.

Let me stay for a moment for an extra word on what I have just said. We Christians ought to be tremendously interested in our Christianity, interested not merely as a mental matter, but as a heart matter; interested in heart really to discover where we are being led by the whole Word of God. We read the Bible; I suppose we read a few verses every day; some do a great deal more than that; but the Bible is the book of Christians, and we read it more or less. I wonder how many of us really do approach the Bible with this one heart enquiry - where is this leading? What is it all unto? This is not just something by the way in itself. There is something tremendous, something immense, involved. There is always a forward look, a prospect, something in view, something being pointed to, something toward which we are being urged, drawn on; and, putting it all together, where shall we arrive if we see what God has really put into this Word? How many of you do that? If we do approach the Word of God with that spirit - with that enquiry coming from our hearts, that is, born of the very love which has been begotten in us by the love of God: if we are not merely interested in Christianity as our religion but as a heart relationship with the Lord for His satisfaction - if we approach the Bible like that, desiring to know what it is His heart is set upon, and therefore what our hearts ought to be set upon, and if we take the Cross of the Lord Jesus as the key to it all, we shall find ourselves led to some very great conclusions, a very great position.

Can we try - for it will be no more than an endeavour - to set down in a mere phrase what that ultimate something is? May I put it in this way? The ultimate is shown to be the supreme lordship and headship of Christ expressed and manifested in the whole cosmic realm in and by a body of Christians in whom the Divine meaning of the Cross is an experimental reality.

[Shammu]

A Conscious Spiritual Relationship, the Fruit of the Cross

Breaking that up further, what does it amount to? Well, in other words it is this. Firstly, believers living in a conscious, spiritual relationship which is the fruit of the Cross. That is the first fragment - a conscious spiritual relationship which is the fruit of the Cross. It cannot be anything but a spiritual relationship. We cannot live in an actual, personal, physical, conscious relationship with all believers. We do not know them. We know but a mere fragment of all those who exist. We cannot organise this thing, bring it within the compass of an organisation, a society, or anything of that kind. It can only be a spiritual relationship, but it can be a conscious spiritual relationship. That it is spiritual does not mean that it has to be unconscious, abstract, nebulous, imaginary, something somewhere but undefined. No; a personal, conscious, spiritual relationship with all believers; though they may be scattered to the ends of the earth, yet something has been done by the Holy Spirit which has constituted those concerned people of a related consciousness with all other believers. That is absolutely essential to the ultimate - the expression of the lordship and headship of Jesus Christ. That is no abstract, ethereal thing. That is very positive and very practical, and if the whole cosmic realm is to feel the impact of that lordship, this conscious, spiritual relationship is absolutely essential.

All those powers which occupy that cosmic realm, which have their government there, have no interest in, or concern with, doctrines of Christian unity; but they have a great deal of interest in actual, spiritual relatedness; so much so, that they have never ceased from the day of Pentecost, to make it one of their primary objectives to divide the people of God in their spiritual consciousness. If they cannot get in between them in other ways, they will try to set up a sense of distance, of unrelatedness or disturbed relatedness, because of the tremendous importance of this matter of a living, practical, real, conscious, spiritual relationship between the people of God - something more than mechanical and organised, something spiritual.

Then, we spoke of this relatedness as being the fruit of the Cross, because this can never be brought about apart from all the tremendous meaning of the Cross of the Lord Jesus in the realm which is now rent and torn and shattered to fragments so far as spiritual relatedness is concerned. This is a universe which has been broken to pieces, endless pieces. Its harmony and unity have been completely disrupted, and those cosmic powers are the forces which have done it, and are doing it. That hardly needs to be argued. We know it within ourselves - the battle for forbearance, for longsuffering, for endurance, for kindness, for patience, for love, for consideration - all those are very practical matters in the Christian life. Look at the way this breaking up is at work, these endless discords in the whole creation, in the whole universe. There is nothing to meet that but the Cross of the Lord Jesus; and that is one of the primary meanings of the Cross to which we are getting at this time - a people in a living, conscious, spiritual relationship which is the fruit of the Cross in them and in this universe. That is why we read those words in Philippians. The goal is His absolute sovereign lordship and headship. How do you reach it? "Have this mind in you..." And what is the contextual implication and application? "I exhort Euodia, and I exhort Syntyche, to be of the same mind in the Lord" (Phil. 4:2). "Have this mind..." - one mind intervening to overcome two conflicting minds, and the only mind that will do it is the mind of Him Who went to the Cross and let go His own personal and individual position and rights for the sake of others. The Cross alone will meet this situation. Yes, the need is for believers living in a conscious, spiritual relationship which is the fruit of the Cross.

A Spiritual Position Above this Earth

Secondly, the need is for believers as so related occupying a spiritual position above this earth; being here, and yet with a vast gap spiritually between them and what is here - and that includes what is here on this earth religiously, just as much as in other ways; it is possible to be religiously on and of the earth, in a religious way touching the earth. You understand that when I say 'touching the earth' I am not talking about touching the ground physically, but touching that realm in which a curse resides. There is a spiritual feature and factor - it has been cursed. Is that too strong? We could spend an hour or two in showing how true, that is. The mark of the curse is just this, that it does not matter how far men seem to advance and develop and produce and achieve; running alongside of every 'advance' (?), and keeping pace with everything that is called progress, every achievement, every invention, every production, there is the element of a curse which will turn that against man for his own undoing. The very thing that he discovers, invents, produces, for the good of the world, turns out for the world's destruction. In the day in which we live we are faced with the fullest development of that principle of the curse that has been known in the history of this universe. When men make such a marvellous discovery and achieve such a marvellous thing that in a split second they can wipe out tens of thousands of people from the earth with one experiment, what are they going to do when they let loose the developed thing? Invention? Progress? Oh no, there is a curse attached to everything in this creation. Man's undoing is found in his own ingenuity. But that is a very intense and strong aspect and expression of this principle. This earthliness has become very refined in many respects; very religious; but still earthly, still something tied down here with its expectations, hopes and enterprises all here. It is not necessary, I think, to follow that unpleasant line very much farther.

But to return to this second fragment of the general presentation - we are thinking of believers living in a conscious, spiritual relationship which is the fruit of the Cross, occupying a spiritual position above this earth, and who are concerned with earthly things only so far as those things relate to higher interests, heavenly purposes. They are a people living in the realm described in that unique phrase of the Apostle Paul "in the heavenlies in Christ"; a heavenly people; which means much more, of course, than we are saying at the moment.

[Shammu]

Ever-Increasing Spiritual Fulness

Thirdly, the need is for believers who, because of this living, conscious, spiritual relationship, the fruit of the Cross, and because of this spiritual position above the earth, are characterised by ever-increasing spiritual fulness; for when the Lord gets people like that and in that position there is no stagnation, no limitation. There is constant, increasing, spiritual fulness. They have resources, and they have plenty, and far more than they can consume upon themselves. That is not fiction, that is fact. The whole Word of God bears down upon this, that the Divine thought is also a thought of fulness. Wherever you find God reaching His end, it is all by way of fulness. Is it the tabernacle or the temple? - then it is filled with His glory. Is it the river of God? - it is full of water. Is it the trees of the Lord? - they are full of sap. Is it the waterpots? - they are filled to the brim. Is it the Church? - then it is "the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). So we could go on. The Divine thought is always along the line of fulness. And I said, this is not ultimate in time, this is for now - a people who have more than the ordinary, more than just enough to make ends meet or hardly that. The fulness of Christ - that is God's end by way of the Cross, and to be known now.

The Rule of the Heavens Expressed

Then fourthly, and finally for the moment, there is need of believers who, because of the three things already mentioned, are showing that the kingdom of the heavens is a spiritual reality and who are extending its range actually - showing that the heavens do rule, and that they rule through the medium and by the instrumentality of a people, a heavenly people, after this kind. The bringing of the impact of that supreme rule of the heavens to bear upon the cosmic forces of this universe is the vocation of the Church of which we are speaking, of a people like this; and that is the meaning of the Cross ultimately. Where does the Cross lead to? Your salvation, my salvation? Yes, of course. Is that all? And then that I should be busy to get other people into that position? Oh, yes, of course, without question. And then that you and I should be growing in grace progressively, in sanctification, being conformed to the image of His Son? Oft yes, a hundred times yes, without any question. And that we should be increasing in the knowledge of Him, growing in our apprehension of the things of God, that our spiritual education should go on uninterruptedly? Yes, all that is in the will of God. But is that, or are all those things put together, the end? No, the end of the Cross is that the whole realm of evil spiritual powers and intelligences should meet the impact of all that - that there should be a practical registration of it all objectively.

I said that this can all be personal after all - my salvation, your salvation; my sanctification, your sanctification; my life of victory, your life of victory; my education, your education. It can all be very largely individual and personal, and it can all be something here, so that people gather into little groups on the subject of sanctification, others on spiritual education, others on soul winning. Oh no, that is not God's meaning ultimately in the Cross of the Lord Jesus; but He intends that by all those means, along all those lines, this end should be reached - that the whole system of darkness and evil and wickedness should be cast down and brought into subjection to the absolute lordship and headship of Jesus Christ; that every knee should bow to Him. And that should have a very real beginning now where you and I are concerned in this spiritual relationship. It should be a practical thing now, extending and expanding, so that this kingdom of the heavens, expressed through this people, should be registering itself and occupying widening territory so that the power and dominion and evil of the Evil One is being more and more limited. That is the thing for which the Cross of Christ really stands. It brings in the individuals in every stage and phase of the spiritual life, but it goes beyond. It is this cosmic impact that is the ultimate justification of the Cross of the Lord Jesus.

The Needed Discipline of the Cross

Well, that is a challenge to us. At the outset I said that we, as the Lord's people, have to face a big question and I want to say again I do not think it is the question merely of our personal salvation. And it is not just the question of our being more zealous soul-winners. With us it should have become a reality long ago that there is a deep and earnest concern in our hearts for the salvation of others. It is not a question merely of our personal holiness. God forbid that we should overlook any necessities in that direction, that we should be closing our eyes to sins and defects in the spiritual life; but even so, there is something greater than that in view. And as for our seeking to know the deeper things of God, what shall we say about that if it is not going to work out somehow in this realm where we are conscious of the activities of spiritual forces, in this realm into which we have to move - some in this country and some in other countries - where the main problem is not flesh and blood but principalities and powers, the dark things of this universe, those awful, sinful, evil forces which are at work? If we do not reach out to that our quest has failed and will leave much to be desired. That is the big issue. What has God revealed as the supreme result of the Cross of Christ? It is that His Son should be in the place of supreme and absolute sovereign headship in this universe, which will necessitate the deposing of every other sovereignty and name and authority. And the Word of God says that that is going to be done by that self-same Cross having been wrought in a body of Christians to bring them to the place where through them, because in them, that sovereignty, that headship, has been established.

It is a big matter, and it involves us in something very real in the way of spiritual discipline. You cannot go to college or institute to learn that. You cannot get that by conferences and meetings. You cannot get that along any academic lines. This involves us in a very real transaction with the Lord that that Cross, with all that He means by it, shall really do its work in us; and He has endless ways of doing it. The very nature of the work of the Cross involves this, that its operation will always be along the line that we do not like, that we would never choose. If we could have the Cross adjusted to our situation, it would be a very easy Cross. But no; it will always go against the grain; that is the nature of it. It will always call for that which we would never choose. When the Lord leads us on to consider the way that He has indicated, the way for reaching His end, we shall come up against those things. We shall then see that this whole cosmic battle has its centre in us by nature, and it has got to be settled there, at the citadel of the individual's being; and the citadel is the will. Oh, it is one thing to talk about cosmic warfare, about authority over the powers of darkness! Looking out into the battle, anybody who has any experience does not talk lightly about that. They talk very carefully and very prayerfully; for the whole thing, after all, is not outside us, it is in us, it begins in us. It is a matter of your will and my will. The dethronement of Satan and of all his mighty kingdom was accomplished by the will of one Man being utterly in subjection to His Father, and so far as He Himself is concerned He has left the enemy completely worsted and cast out. He has left the enemy in being, not annihilated, in order to bring us to the same place as He Himself has come to, and it will be along exactly the same lines - the battle of the will, taken up on countless points, until Satan no longer has any place or ground in our will, and he is undone. If the Lord will, we will follow that out more closely later on.

You see the big question. Oh, it is a big question! For my own part, though I have been convinced about this matter for years I have never been more strongly convinced than I am today that the one need is for a people to rise up in virtue of an in-wrought work of the Cross to meet these evil forces which are against the purpose of God. May the Lord produce such a people in part, though it may be a small part, through these meditations.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - The Spiritual Resources of the Church for its Heavenly Mission

"But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations" (Matt. 28:16-19).

A Spiritual Challenge to be Answered

There is a challenge in this present time which is, perhaps, more acute and serious than at any other time in the history of this world. No doubt in the early days of the Church the challenge was very strong, but then the surface of the earth invaded by the Gospel was very small compared with the range in our time, and in many other ways things were far less developed then than they are now. The development of the centuries has provided so very much more of ground and means for the operation of the kingdom of darkness in relation to this world, and that challenge of the kingdom of evil is very, very serious and intense in our time. In many ways the Church of God is aware of it - perhaps not completely conscious of the cause or the reason, but aware of the fact that she is being stifled, resisted, in a very large degree nullified; made aware of a certain impotence and ineffectiveness and of the absence of authority and power to meet a spiritual situation which is becoming so intense. I say that is a challenge of this present time which does threaten to make the Church a thing which, speaking comparatively, is not to be taken very seriously. The world can pass on and ignore her, and situations can arise here and there with which she cannot cope, before which she is impotent and helpless - and knows it.

That challenge represents a need, and, while we have not the conceit to imagine that that need can be met by us, yet it behooves us to face the challenge and consider the need, and if God will take up the weak and the small and make them to count for something far, far beyond what they would do naturally, then there may be possibilities where we are concerned, if we really seriously face this matter before God.

We have spoken of a spiritual situation, and it is not necessary, I think, to say to you that, while we are very conscious that the temporal situation is increasingly difficult for the work of God, behind all the external difficulties is a spiritual rulership. The things seen are, after all, only the foreground, the stage, of something far greater behind. "World rulers of this darkness" is no meaningless phrase. It is there that the trouble lies, and, until there is in existence that which can touch things there with the authority of Christ, the situation for the Church is hopeless. We can recite so glibly - it is the slogan of all missionary enterprise - "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations." I think the emphasis, at any rate the deduction in practice, is mainly on "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel," and not upon "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth." "Go ye therefore..."; the word "therefore" has not been given and is not given its real and sufficient place. It is the link between the undertaking and the "all authority" vested in the Lord Jesus. And as for the Church standing in the good and value of that "all authority" well, it does not say much for the authority if the present impact of the Church is the standard of judging it. It is that that constitutes the urgency of this present time.

The Challenge Answered in a Spiritual People

Now, having indicated again that this whole thing is a spiritual matter to be fought out in the spiritual realm, the work of God must in consequence be seen in the spiritual realm before there can be any meeting of the temporal situation and overcoming it. We are brought right here to the heart of things. We have spoken in our previous meditation of a body of Christians, of a certain kind, in a certain position, doing a certain work. What do we mean by that? Well, to use mere words is not necessarily helpful. We must explain our words. If we say a spiritual people, in spiritual relatedness, occupying a spiritual position, pre-eminently meeting spiritual forces to their overthrow, that word 'spiritual' eludes us at once. What does it amount to in practical outworking?

[Shammu]

The Marks of a Spiritual People

(a) Living by Divine, Not Natural, Life

Well, firstly, it means that the life of such people must be spiritual life. In the work of God there can be, and often is, the projecting of a great deal of natural life-force. You may call it by different terms - zeal, enthusiasm, drive, energy, any such word to describe putting yourself into the thing with all your might to make it go. So, by this zest, by this intensity, by this strength, you get the work of God done. Now, it is not that that I am talking about. If this thing is going to be done in the spiritual realm, it is only going to be done by spiritual life, and spiritual life is something altogether different from natural life. As we are basing everything upon the Cross, allowing the Cross to be our basis and our interpretation, it is just here that the great cleavage is made, the great difference is recognised, the great turnover takes place. At the Cross, so far as spiritual things are concerned, all natural life ends; there, all natural energy, as capable of producing any spiritual effect, is brought to an end, is at a discount. Even natural physical life, energy, strength, as producing anything spiritual in effect, counts for nothing. When you are coming into touch with spiritual forces, what is the good of muscular or constitutional strength in the physical, natural realm? Those forces have only to touch the strongest body and it will be broken. So you find in the New Testament that all counting upon the energy, the capability, the strength of the natural life, is set aside, and the men concerned are brought to an end of that and made to know that their spiritual work, their spiritual accountability, takes its rise from Divine life even for the body, so that, under the hand of God, they come to the place where, unless Divine life is administered even to their physical bodies - strong as they have been physically and constitutionally before - they cannot go on, they are at an end.

Paul is a great outstanding example of that. The others were there too. Peter came to his crisis on that. He was very sure of himself and what he could do, how far he could go, what he could go through and endure; but he had to come, by means of the Cross, in the very presence of the Cross, to the place where he recognised that he could never get through on that. The words of the Lord to him had an immediate meaning - "Thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow afterwards" (John 13:36); not 'hereafter,' that is, in the distant Hereafter, in the next life, but "afterwards." After what? - after you have learned this lesson of the utter impotence of human life, and the absolute necessity and potency of Divine life, even in the physical realm.

So that one of the great lessons that this people must learn experimentally is to know how to live by Divine life; and when we get on to that basis all issues are taken out of the hands of natural eventualities. Here is Saul of Tarsus, a man with tremendous force and seemingly great powers of endurance physically, a man of very great natural life - what we should call soul-force. What did the Lord do with him? He brought him to the place where he despaired of life in order that he might not trust in himself, but in God Who raiseth the dead (2 Cor. 1:9). In so describing his experience he simply intimates - 'Well, naturally I am a dead man, the sentence of death is passed upon me.' But here is this man going on - a dead man going on. And we do not find him at the last saying, 'I am now going to be executed, they are now going to finish me, I have got to give in this time.' No! The issue is not with emperors or governments or persecutors. He is going to finish his course - not to have it cut short; no 'broken column' here; he is going to finish his course, keeping the faith to the last moment (2 Tim. 4:7); not having to give up because of circumstances, but, as he puts it in another place, he will offer himself up as a libation (Phil. 2:17). Is he not in exactly the same position as his Lord, Who said of His own life, "No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father" (John 10:18). It is not with the High Priest, it is not with the Jewish nation, it is not with anybody else - it is with Him to say when He will die. They said, "Not during the feast." He said, in effect, 'Yes, during the feast; it shall be on the day of the Passover'; and it was.

Authority in Christ, then, is first of all in terms of life. If there is going to be this impact of the Divine authority upon the spiritual kingdom of evil and death, the people through whom the impact is going to be registered will have to come on to this basis where, even for their very physical life, they have to know the life of God, to know how to draw life from God and how to minister spiritual, Divine life to one another. Divine life is a tremendous thing, and if we are living by it we are not going to die because we are old. We are not going to die because nature says so, or the doctor says so! We are going to die when the Lord says so! And when the Lord has decided that Divine life is no longer required for the carrying on of His work through us, then we shall enter into life still more abundant, and it will not be death. That is the authority of Christ in the universe where death is the master opposing power. Such a people must know this.

To be brought there is not just teaching; this is grim, desperate business. It meets with a challenge, and a challenge from no less a realm than the whole hierarchy of Satan. The answer to that challenge has to come along the line of Divine life known by us for spirit and soul and body.

The Challenge to Life Must be Met Corporately

And how corporate a matter that is! I am talking about a people. Yes, it becomes individual; there has to be an individual exercise and experience; an individual knowledge and application and appropriation; but it is something more than individual. In that battle, every individual needs the cooperation and the encompassing of the Church. Woe betide the poor individual, whoever he or she may be, who gets out into that realm of spiritual conflict without the encompassing of the saints!

So this matter of triumph in the spiritual realm is a Church matter, and when I say 'a Church matter,' I mean it is a corporate matter. The Church may be indicated and implied by two or three in the Name of the Lord, but it must be that at least to minister to one another. Oh, if the Church more largely knew about that and stood right into it, what a lot of tragedies would never take place that are taking place! What a lot of people would be spared to the work of God who are being put out! What a lot of retirements from the work would never take place! Do they represent the triumph of the enemy? Everyone who has to give up for want of Divine life - is that the triumph of the enemy? That is what I mean by spiritual people in a spiritual position meeting spiritual forces - firstly, knowing spiritual life (that is, Divine life) for spirit, the inner man: for soul, for mind: yes, and for body.

[Shammu]

Natural Weakness Essential to Spiritual Power

Here is the great paradox of Christianity - "when I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Cor. 12:10). "My power is made perfect in weakness" (v. 9). Divine life does not make of us Samsons in a literal, physical sense, so that our muscles develop, our biceps become abnormal, and all that sort of thing. Rather, in weakness there is something the withdrawal of which would mean that the frail vessel would crumple up and fade out very soon. There is something there which is not natural; it is the very life of God. Everything has to be accounted for on that basis.

Let me add a word in order to guard against misunderstanding or misapprehension. I am not saying that you are wrong to be healthy, or even to be physically strong. I am not suggesting that you go to the Lord and ask Him to take your health and strength away. But I have said that if that is the basis on which you are working, if it is upon that that you are counting for spiritual effectiveness, you are wrong; it does not count at all. You may be healthy and strong, but you need to recognise that it is not that that will see this work done, but your necessity is as great in the matter of spiritual Divine life as that of the weakest, the most helpless. There may be a place for your health and strength, but something more than that is needed to do the work in the spiritual realm.

(b) Spiritual Knowledge of the Lord by Revelation, Not Intellectual

The same thing holds good in the matter of spiritual knowledge. No amount of natural, accumulated, studied knowledge can touch spiritual things. There is a value in Bible study, there is a value in accumulating knowledge of things in relation to God's Word and God's work. Oh, do not despise that and do not let anything I say turn you aside from diligence in that; but, after all, though you have a vast amount of such knowledge: though you know your Bible throughout: though you be what is called a Bible scholar: all that, at its fullest, stops short of spiritual effectiveness. It does not matter how much of that you have: when it comes to the question of registering upon those spiritual intelligences, there is no natural knowledge that can touch them. You will never overpower the forces of darkness with natural intelligence and accumulated information, however great it is. Spiritual knowledge is of another kind. You may have the intellectual - I say, do not despise it - but you must recognise the need of something extra. Yes, I know the Bible in a way: that is, I know what is here in actual words and sentences and paragraphs; but that will get me nowhere when I come to deal with spiritual things. I have got to have something extra to that - a spiritual understanding, spiritual knowledge. Something has got to come from God by way of illumination and revelation into my own heart concerning God's thoughts in this Book. How can we explain that? It is so difficult, but there it is - perhaps you understand what I mean. Spiritual knowledge is of another order. It is only God Who knows in the way that can meet the spiritual intelligences.

So this people who count for something in that ultimate realm - that realm where there is the only true accountability - this people will have to be a people of spiritual knowledge and of spiritual understanding. Paul prayed that "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know..." (Eph. 1:17-18); and it is not without significance that that prayer for spiritual revelation and knowledge precedes what he writes concerning the wiles of the devil and "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers of this darkness" (Eph. 6:11,12). There is no training in any seminary or institution which can of itself equip you against the wiles of the devil. This requires spiritual training.

Spiritual Training Practical, Not Academic

Let me put here this parenthesis. Some of you who read this may be concerned about your life, your future, and you are wondering whether the Lord would lead you into His service. Some of you are definitely feeling that He will. The question in your mind is, how will you get your training, what about your preparation? Let me say this, that, while sound instruction in the Word of God will be a necessary foundation, do not think that that alone is your training for the work of God. That is not an adequate training, or qualification. The work of God lies in a realm where, though you may have all that, you may be at a discount altogether; you may be frustrated, broken, defeated, as many servants of God are today because they have not got the spiritual goods to meet the situation. Your really vital training will be practical, in the spiritual realm. That is, the Lord will deal with you in such a way as to develop you as spiritual men and women who know spiritual life and have spiritual knowledge, and that will only come by a very practical handling of your life on the basis of the Cross. There are many who are not willing to go through that kind of training. They will go to Bible studies, theological lectures, and all that kind of thing; they are ready for that, but they are not so ready to be put into situations where it is extremely difficult to live, to get on with other people, where you find you are rubbed up the wrong way all the time, and everything goes against the grain. In such circumstances the one drive upon you and the one longing of your soul is to get out of it, to run away and find some other place, some other circumstances; and yet to do so would be to take yourself right out of the hands of God. To remain in His hands means to stay in that situation until the Cross has done its work and you are glad to be there, you are triumphant there, you have gained the ascendancy spiritually there, and the power of the enemy over you there has been broken. That is your training for the work of God. God can put you anywhere if He has you like that, and you will count; but all the rest may be nothing without it.

[Shammu]

(c) Spiritual Influence - the Impact of Christ, Not of People

Then this people must be characterised by spiritual influence. What do we mean by that? Well, we know what we mean when we speak of influential persons. For some reason or other, they are people who count. It may be their strong personality, their personal aggressiveness, their initiative, their conspicuous ability, either inbred or acquired. They are not nonentities; they are positives, not negatives. A lot of that kind of influence has been brought into the work of God, and people have been adjudged influential in the things of the kingdom of God very largely because of this or that natural characteristic, natural acquirement or natural inborn qualities.

Now you may be a giant in natural influence, and yet in the spiritual realm the powers of darkness may laugh at you. Your stature is nothing there, your natural measurement means nothing to them. Your accountability in that realm will be just the measure of your spiritual life; your influence in the spiritual realm, with God, with men, and over the powers of evil, will be spiritual or it will not be at all. So it comes to pass very often that the weak things, and the things which are not, are the very things with which the powers of darkness and men have to reckon, of which account has to be taken. It often happens that if you take stock of some believers you do not think very much of them; you would not give them a second thought; you would put them in the category of people who do not count. But somehow you cannot dismiss them like that. There is something there you cannot explain by their personality or lack of it, by their physical presence, by their training. There is no ground on which you can explain this, and yet you have to acknowledge that they count for something; it is spiritual influence. A people constituted like that are the only people to meet the emergency of this time. Such a people will be the instrument by which God will vindicate the Cross of Christ.

But what does it amount to? To this - everything with such a people has to be attributed to the Lord. That is it. What did we say that God has revealed to be the consummate issue from the Cross? It is this - Christ absolutely transcendent over all other powers, and that expressed in a people. Then so far as that people are concerned the way to this will be by emptying, emptying, emptying - that in all things He may have the pre-eminence. It is the Lord Jesus and not the people that must be in evidence. The evil powers may say, 'Jesus I know, and His servant Paul I know, and that spiritual people I know; but as for you people of pomp and ceremony and natural development, who are you, what are you?

I hope you are really seeing what the Lord is after. The Lord must be manifested in His universe by means of a people of this kind. The challenge comes to us - will we accept all that it means to be of such a kind?

Spirituality Inwrought by Discipline of Circumstances

Now I must add this before I close. What I have been saying may call for an adjustment or a re-adjustment to your circumstances on the part of many of you. You see, my dear friends, young, middle-aged or old - and let us rule out that 'old' in the light of what we have been saying - it may be that you are as much in 'a training college' now as ever you could be. Going to a seminary or institution would not of necessity add anything to your opportunities of being prepared for the work of the Lord. That comforts some of you, but it calls for adjustment. If you are in the hands of God, you are in the school of God. What are you being taught, what are you learning, what is the meaning of it? Well, is it to know the Bible better as a book, and all kindred and associated subjects, or is it to know the Lord? Give me the man or woman who knows the Lord before you give me the one who knows all other things without that. Bible knowledge and all that kind of thing is a valuable, important, yes, in a sense, indispensable foundation and addition, but the thing is to know the Lord. And how will you know the Lord? - in the way in which I have been indicating: knowing Him as your life, knowing Him as your wisdom, knowing Him as your influence. Adjust to your circumstances, to your situation. If I were to appeal for young men and women to come to a course of training, and were to say, 'Now, we are starting a Bible Institute; will you give your lives to the Lord and come and be trained for His work?' I think there would be some who would respond and say, 'Yes, I am going into training for the work of God.' If you are not already in training, you will never become so merely by going to any such Institute. Adjust to your present situation while it is the Lord's will for you to be in it. Adjust to it as you would to a training centre. Enter upon it with a new adjustment as seriously as you would if you were giving notice at business and packing your bag and going into a Bible Institute. Take that attitude toward your present situation and know that, while you are there in His will, God will teach you Himself; and that is the thing that matters. He will teach you how to live by His life, how to know Him with spiritual understanding and knowledge, how to exercise and exert a spiritual influence. I am not saying, 'Do not raise the question as to whether the Lord, after a probation and a testing of that kind, is wanting you to move out more fully into His work.' It may be; but I think you see the point of this word. We have got to adjust ourselves to our whole life situation. Many of you could never depart from where you are; but that is your college, that is where you ought to be learning. But are you? Or are you all the time wanting to get out, merely enduring it, putting up with it, saying, 'Here I am; I suppose I must stay till something else opens up.' What is your attitude? Look at those fellows who row in the boat-race. The time comes when they go into training and they do it with a mind, they do it thoroughly, they set themselves to it. They have one thing in view, and everything has to come into line with that - fitness to fulfil the task before them. We have to take that attitude toward life where we are in the will of God - 'This is a setting in which I am in training, and I set myself to secure all the values possible in this situation of knowing the Lord, proving the Lord, living on the Lord, that I may be qualified to meet the need of the hour' - and it is a great need, a very great emergency, which is confronting the people of God today.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Kingdom of Satan and its Overthrow

"And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore..." (Matt. 28:18-19).

"...and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and he put all things in subjection under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:19-23).

This passage from Eph. 1 is a very wonderful enlargement of the brief statement of the Lord Jesus that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him. The Apostle makes this wonderful exposition of the Lord's own fragment, showing what fulness was included in that "all authority" - far above all principality, all power, all dominion, all names, all ages. That is the "all authority" in its range and compass and content. Then the Apostle says, in effect, that when the Lord Jesus said to His disciples "Go ye therefore...." - 'for this reason, because of this, go ye' - that self-same fulness was gathered into Himself as head of the Church; that is, that the Church stands directly under all that fulness. It is intended to be mediated from the head to and through the members. We might well ask, in a sort of paraphrasing of the words of the Ethiopian addressed to Philip in the chariot - 'Speaketh the Apostle of some other Church or of this one? To whom does that relate?' - for it is very difficult to see anything that corresponds to that in the Church that we know. Does that apply to some other entity, or does it apply to us? I say, there is a lot of room for asking that question in the light of how very far short of that comes the Church known to us. But, dear friends, the Church, in the mind of the Apostle Paul - the Church referred to by him there - is the Church into which you and I have been baptized in one Spirit, and that exceeding greatness of Divine Power is to usward who believe.

Well, that is only another way of bringing us straight up against the challenge and the need of this hour, the challenge to measure up, and to find out why the Church is so otherwise, and how it can be according to that declaration. We commenced our meditations with presenting ourselves with this question - What has God revealed as His supreme objective resultant from the Cross of Christ? and what we have just read and said is the answer - a Church corresponding to that description, a people answering to that presentation of the Divine mind. Such is what God has revealed to be the supreme outcome of the Cross - all fulness gathered into His Son as vitally and organically related to His Church, His Body, and that fulness in action; the exceeding greatness of His power in action in and through that Body in the whole cosmic realm.

At the close of our previous meditation we saw that God is really dealing with us with that end in view, and that we are to regard ourselves as being now in God's training-centre - in the place where, for the time being, His will has appointed us. Training-centres, from the Divine standpoint, are not institutions, nor theological seminaries, but where we are in the will of God - that is our training-centre; and we called upon ourselves to adjust to that, with this mind, that here God has chosen to equip us for the greatest ministry to which mortals have ever been called - the expression of the exaltation and sovereign headship of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I want to follow that up for a little, resuming at that point concerning our equipment for this ministry along the line of personal spiritual experience, discipline, training - equipment for this great Divine purpose of expressing in this universe, and especially in the great realm of spiritual powers and intelligences, the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus, firstly in terms of Divine life triumphing in us over the death that is working in us and over our natural life; and secondly in terms of Divine knowledge greater than any other kind of knowledge - the only kind of knowledge that can undo and set aside the far-reaching and deep-rooted deception of the false knowledge which Satan succeeded in getting the race to take hold of at the beginning; and then thirdly, in terms of spiritual influence - the registration of something which is not to be accounted for by any human magnetism or personal impress or anything at all that belongs to man or woman - a spiritual, Divine influence.

These are the things which constitute the curriculum of the spiritual training which God has undertaken to accomplish in you and in me with a view to meeting that spiritual realm, and that is the service, above all other service, to vindicate the Cross of the Lord Jesus.

[Shammu]

God's Quest - Spiritual Personality in Terms of Christ

Well then, that means one thing. It means that God is after persons. It is persons that are needed - not first preachers, teachers, 'workers,' ministers, missionaries, in the technical sense, but persons. Oh, what a false position we may find ourselves in by these titles! How many a one is called a missionary who is no missionary at all, or a minister who is no minister! There is something much deeper than the title. No title makes us what the title represents, and we can have the title and the uniform and not be the person. No, it is neither official people nor things that God is after - not exponents of some spiritual ideology, teaching, system of truth, but persons, just persons. We have to learn anew to draw lines of distinction. There is all the difference between a church in the New Testament sense, and a congregation. There is all the difference between praying and a prayer meeting. You can have a prayer meeting without praying in the true spiritual sense. There is all the difference between living testimonies on the one hand and ordinances and rites on the other; and there is all the difference between people who officially represent something, and personal embodiments of Jesus Christ. Yes, the main feature in our spiritual training is the person being trained; not the subjects being studied, but the persons being trained.

You see, there is a principle in spiritual training, the training which God is trying to carry out in your life and in mine, and that principle is spiritual personality. And that personality is Christ: not your personality or mine, but Christ's. That principle underlies everything in the Word of God. It is so clear, right on the face of the Scriptures, that God's view of the race is that - it is personal. It is a man; it is Adam.

That is the very principle of representative people in the Bible. Take the priest. The priest is the personal embodiment and representation of the whole nation of Israel. It is a priestly nation, and the priest is the one upon whom God looks as upon the nation. When the priest is right, in a right position and state before God and functioning according to Divine prescribing, the nation is right, and God meets the nation on the ground of the priest. When the priest is wrong, corrupt, polluted, be sure the nation is that, and that is how God sees the nation. It is all gathered up into the one man; the priest. So also with the king: as king, so people. He is the inclusive representation of the nation. It is as though the nation were but one man and that man the king; what the king is, the nation is. You do not need to look very deeply for proof of that. Look at Saul and see the state of the nation when Saul was king. Look at David and see the state of the nation when David was king. And so with prophet. The prophet was the personal representation of the people. He was called upon to do all sorts of extraordinary and strange things, sometimes very degrading and humiliating things, in order to portray to the nation God's view of themselves. What about the very name - Israel? It is the name of a man, of an individual, but it is again the name of a nation; a man's name for a nation. That is the principle, you see; God views the race as a man, as a person.

Now, carry that over to Christ and the principle holds good. Thank God, He does not see us in ourselves. It is Christ Whom He sees when our faith has been reposed in His Son. We sing a tremendous thing when we sing:

What though the accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well and thousands more;
Jehovah findeth none.

That is tremendous! God is looking on a Person, and that Person is His Son. That is why we said that a spiritual personality is what God is after, and that it is the personality of His Son. It is, in its effect and outworking, nothing less than - so to speak - bringing out the Lord Jesus Christ, the exalted, glorified Son of God, from heaven into this universe, to register His presence, with all that such a presence means, amongst the forces of evil. You cannot do that except by being that. That cannot be done along any academic lines of preparation and qualification, or by any official titles and orders; that cannot be done in any other way than this - that God has wrought Christ into us individually in measure, and corporately in the united measures, and that it is Christ coming out by the presence of His people here; Christ moving out, not only on the earth to men and to nations, but primarily, pre-eminently, Christ moving out into the spiritual kingdom back of the nations, back of peoples, back of conditions.

The Impact of Christ upon Spiritual Powers

His presence - what ought it to mean? You ask the simple question - if Jesus Christ were here, what would happen? Even in His humiliation, what would happen? Well, there would be a disclosing of themselves on the part of those evil forces; His presence would make it impossible for them to remain hidden. They would cry, "Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" (Matt. 8:29). What a betrayal! Do they know that there is a time for their destruction? They do! And further, they know that He is the One Who is to bring it about. Tremendous, isn't it? Bring Him out, even in His humiliation, and there is registration enough in every realm. But listen - "the exceeding greatness of his power.... according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name..." Bring that Lord in! Oh, this, dear friends, may sound to you like a wonderful idea. You are asking about the practical possibility of it. I believe that God is wanting to say to us that it has got to be much more like that where we are concerned than it has been - we in Christ and Christ in us; we together in that conscious, spiritual relatedness of which we have before spoken; that has got to tell in the spiritual kingdom. The enemy is having far too much ground and way, and it is not God's will that it should be so; and it is as though the Lord were saying to us, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. What are you going to do about it? It is your, matter! Go ye therefore....'

[Shammu]

Spiritual Personality Secured by the Cross

Now then, - this matter of spiritual personality - which resolves itself into a matter of bringing Christ into events, and that primarily in the spiritual realm - how can it be? And the answer is - only by the Cross, but surely and truly by the Cross. It is the Cross which stands between those two men, the first Adam and the last, representatives of two races. It is just there that the Cross has its place, between the two.

Before we can know what the Cross means, we have to know what those two men really are, what headship in both cases really does imply and mean; for there is a headship on either side. On the one hand is the body of sin; that is racial, the whole race. There is one head to that body of sin. In its own sense and meaning, that head is head over all things to that body of sin. Satan is head over the whole body of sin, the whole race of the first Adam. Christ, the last Adam, is head over this other Body, and head over all things to that Body - "to the church which is his body." We have to understand what headship really means in both cases, and in understanding that headship we shall know what the two men are; and we must understand in order to know the meaning of the Cross.

The Root of Sin Dealt with by the Cross

Remember, then, that the Cross goes right behind all that is secondary to what is primary. Sins are secondary; sin is primary. Sins always have been secondary, they are the result of sin; and, while God has made a provision, comprehensive and conclusive, for sins, He has gone right behind and done something very much more in relation to sin. The point in making that distinction is this - you and I must be perfectly clear on this point that, until the primary thing has been dealt with, there is little hope of the secondary being dealt with. Are you struggling against sins? Well, you will go on struggling. The key to the sins is sin. You have to get behind your sins, to where God has gone. What is sin? Well, sin is Satan's kingdom in principle. Satan's kingdom is not some organised, official system, something literal and temporal, objective. Satan's kingdom is within us, just as, for us as believers, the kingdom of heaven is within us.

The Origin of Sin

How is Satan's kingdom within us by nature? It is Satan's nature in us that is his kingdom, and his nature is sin. It is a working power, like an evil disease - you may call it a toxin, a poison - permeating the old creation, actively at work in the system of the race. That is sin, and that is Satan's kingdom. Now we have got to deal with that side. You will at once see the other side, but we are not on the other side of the Cross yet. We can begin now here - the Cross and sin, the primary thing. We call it 'original sin.' What do we mean by original sin? Well, we mean something that goes right back to the beginning and follows through from the beginning continuously and is with us as from that far, far distant beginning.

Where was that beginning? The beginning was not only far, far back in man's history, but it was far, far back beyond man's beginnings. Sin commenced with Satan, and there are two factors in original sin where he is concerned: firstly its immediate and close up relationship to God, and secondly its seat in the exercise of the will.

Now let us get hold of our Bibles. Of course, your acceptance of our interpretation will depend entirely upon whether you agree that there is always a double thought and a double side to what God has said in the Old Testament - that there is a present and earthly aspect, and also a permanent and heavenly aspect. If that is accepted, then we have no difficulty with these passages that we are going to read.

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O daystar, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations! And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High" (Isa. 14:12-14).

"Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou wast in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was in thee; in the day that thou wast created they were prepared. Thou wast the anointed cherub that covereth: and I set thee, so that thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee. By the abundance of thy traffic they filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore have I cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire" (Eze. 28:11-16).

You see the two things that I indicated as factors in original sin. Firstly, its immediate and close-up relationship to God. It is right in the very presence of God; it is something against God; it is a violation of the uniqueness, the solitariness, of God. There can be no two supreme beings in this universe, there can be only one, and anything which challenges that solitary, unique supremacy is a violation of it, is treachery; and that is where original sin began.

The second thing is that its seat is in the exercise of the will. You notice in Isaiah 14 the five-fold 'I will.' It is the heart of sin, the essence of sin; and the prophet, by inspiration, is caused to disclose something which was probably never uttered in words at all by the one to whom the words are attributed. It is probable, indeed I think it is certain, that Lucifer never expressed himself at all in words. "Thou saidst in thy heart" - so that it was a heart matter, an attitude, a state before God. The inspiration of the prophet amounts to this, that he was made to disclose something that had never come out in verbal and audible pronouncement, something that had been deep down in the heart of this one. You remember the familiar words of Heb. 4:12 - "The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." That is where God goes. It is deep down there in the inner life that this resolve was made, with this five-fold "I will." It is the inner working of the will, and God knows the secret of all hearts. We do not need to utter it. It may just be there; God knows; and that is original sin. It is deep down in the life.

We may as well face this. It is an ugly thing. We cannot understand the Cross until we know this. This only enhances the glory of the Cross, and brings out its matchless splendour, when we see its immense range - how far back it reaches, how far up and how far down. The Cross is a tremendous thing. Well, you see, that is the origin of sin - what we call original sin - and that is the toxin, that is the poison.

[Shammu]

The Nature of Sin

Let us look at its nature. "Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty" (Eze. 28:17). Oh, then pride is the essence of sin. It is out of pride that sin springs. No wonder the language about pride is so strong! "Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord" (Prov. 16:5). "Because of thy beauty"; then self-esteem was the cause; and the accompaniment of pride is always rebellion. Did you ever know a proud person satisfied? Bring along somebody else who looks equally well-dressed, well-supplied; see the reaction of the proud person - 'I will go one better!' Pride, you see, gives birth to rivalries at once, and produces this spirit of rebellion, of discontent with even the best position. Pride is never satisfied; it must always get higher, have more, go better than another. It is rebellion; and rebellion in act led to perversity in nature.

In the Old Testament there are two words which mainly cover the ground of sin - transgression and iniquity. They are the two English words for two Hebrew words which mean respectively rebellion (transgression) and perversity (iniquity). Rebellion in an act produced perversity in a nature. We, in Adam, were caught in the act of his rebellion. Adam rebelled, prompted by a spirit of pride - pride provoked by this suggestion: "Hath God said...? ...God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God" (Gen. 3:1-5). Pride flared up, with desire to have and to be something that God never intended - and certainly never intended in that way, along that line.

The act of rebellion, the counterpart of Lucifer's rebellion, issued in a nature; and who will deny that in our very nature, we are perverse? It does not matter, dear friends, how saintly and consecrated and devoted to the Lord you may be, how deep may have been the discipline in your life, and how great a measure of Christlikeness may have been developed in you - if you have a child, see if it inherits all that! Why, it will not be many hours old before you can see and hear 'I will,' 'I will not.' We do not inherit the Christlikeness of our forebears, unfortunately. Perversity is in every fresh generation. It is there, and from what we may call the simple form of that perversity in the rebellious, discontented, peevish cry of the little infant, right up and on to the vast circumference of this whole creation, in all this anarchy, strife, war, murder, cruelty, 'man's inhumanity to man,' it is the same thing, the same nature, the same in-bred perversity. Man cannot tame it, nor eradicate it nor heal it. He may set up his League of Nations or his United Nations Organization with intent to curb or to cure international perversity, and what happens? Well, so much the worse for the League of Nations when it comes into collision with original sin! We who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, lovers of Him, devoted to Him, know only too well that if we are put to the test, tried by adversity and by suffering and by disappointment and by frustration and by the Divine withholding from us of those things upon which our hearts are set, is it not all too easy for perversity and rebellion to rise up in us? Is it not all too difficult for us to keep it in check? It is there in the old man; that is the nature of sin. And this in Satan is the very fountain head of all this other with which we are so familiar and which is so common in the creation. That is where it came from and that is its nature, and from this source man has become what he is. That is how it is, that is why it is.

Self the Stronghold of Sin

Well, then, we must look at man, and what do we find? What is the central thing in man? It is this same thing - self, self, self, in some way. What is born in the blood will come out. Self-will, self-interest; the calculating upon a basis of how a given proposition or course will affect me, whether it will be to my advantage or disadvantage; and so on without end. It is not seen only in grossly sensual forms, nor alone in the more common forms of ambition that might even be called worthy - the desire to climb the ladder of success, and so on. But this thing can move right through into our spiritual life and become a secret hidden motive even in our quest for blessing, for power. It can come out in a Peter who, when his Lord says to him "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" (John 13: will respond, with eager desire to have as much for himself as possible, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." I do not want to get you analysing and introspective, but I say we have to get down to this thing before we understand the Cross and before this spiritual personality which is Christ can be developed; for it is only, as we have said, by way of the Cross that self-interest, self-sufficiency, self-realisation, and a dozen other forms of self go out. Not only the self which asserts itself, and is aggressive, imperious, seeking and loving the limelight, but also that which is pitying and drawing attention to itself because it is so poor and miserable and wretched a thing - it is all self. Anything which has the effect of bringing us into view is self, and the Cross stands right in the way of that and says No to the whole thing that came from Satan, whatever form it takes - whether it is self-realisation, asserting, forcing, driving, or self-pity with its negatives and its inferiority. Satan is somewhere behind it all, and he will use it, and the effect is the hiding of Christ; and it has got to be dealt with somehow. That is the school we are in. It is this alliance of fallen man with Satan in the very nature of things which sums up the whole Bible from one standpoint, and shows where God stands in relation to man when man is on his own ground and not on God's ground.

Sin Essential to Satan's Kingdom

Well, the issue - it is a kingdom. That is where we started. What is the kingdom of Satan? Something out there, remote, objective? Are you proposing to gird on armour and to go out and attack the kingdom of Satan - something at a distance, in India, in China, in the slums of London? No; the kingdom of Satan is first of all within you. Until something has been done within, Satan is not dethroned, his kingdom is not overthrown; it is there. His strength is in the nature that he has bitten into the race as poison, by man's permission and agreement. That is the dark and terrible side, but it is essential that we apprehend the fact and nature of that kingdom. Until you see that clearly, you have not come near to seeing either the meaning of the Cross or of the kingdom of the heavens, for the Cross comes right in there, to say No - fully, finally; for ever, No - to that fallen creation; and, thank God, it not only says No, but accomplishes it also. We are in the hands of God if we are the Lord's people. We know - and if we do not know there is something wrong somewhere, there is a hindrance somewhere that has got to be looked into - we know, or we ought to know, by the Spirit's witness within us, whenever self asserts itself in any form. Oh, is that not the explanation of those many secret battles and experiences when we have had to get away alone, and have dealings with the Lord? We have said or done something that was not fitting; or our manner, if not the substance of our words, has been wrong; or we have had a self-important bearing, we have been talking about ourselves, and we have been bringing all the tinsel of this life and of this world into view and making something of what belongs to the old creation; and we are miserable afterward, we are wretched about it. 'Oh, was not that all death? Why did I get caught like that?' The only thing to do is to get away into the presence of the Lord and get readjusted. We know a lot about that. We are in the school when that is going on.

I think we must stop there, with just this rounding off. This, dear friends, is the nature of the kingdom that we are called to destroy. This is the nature of the warfare. It is not primarily a matter of dealing with Satan and demons personally, but of dealing with the ground upon which that kingdom is founded and which supports their power. That ground is sin, and sin is this inborn rebellion and perversity. Therefore the overthrow of Satan's kingdom is at the Cross of the Lord Jesus where the background of everything was dealt with, and Satan was cast out - not just personally: do not get pictures of Satan as a person being thrown out - Satan cast out in this sense, that his moral ground of strength was taken from him. He was confronted with another nature in which there was no perversity, and that nature was too strong for him; and there are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises whereby we may become partakers of that same Divine nature (1 Pet. 1:4). It is along that line that Satan loses his power.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The Kingdom of God

We have tried to impart to you something of our strong feeling that we are at a very critical point in the spiritual history of this universe. To anyone who is observing the movement of these times, very little argument or evidence is needed to be brought to them that the movement is a very ominous one. So far as the work of God on this earth is concerned, it is a very serious situation. In different forms, under different names, and in varying degrees of intensity, the whole system of evil - that which is opposed to God - is becoming greatly accentuated; and it is perfectly clear that the effort is greatly increasing to press God out of this world. The place of God, so far as these things are concerned, is to be lessened here; even in those countries which have been called Christian, paganism is gaining the upper hand rapidly, and the mention of God is greatly decreasing. That of course we can see in other parts of the world in very much more intensified forms. What was once an innate tendency, more or less passive, has now become positive and is increasingly so. All this is a tremendous moving together of the one kingdom behind all, to raise the final issue - who is going to be the reigning lord of this creation? I could follow that very much more closely, raising many questions such as that of religious liberty, the freedom of mankind, and so on. But you see the direction of things, and the evil activity, by whatever name it goes. The one upshot of it all is this question of world dominion. We can see clearly that it is resolving itself, not into a number of issues but into one issue - which kingdom is going to prevail? That is a more pressing matter today than ever it was in the history of this world.

All the Lord's people on the earth today stand related to that great issue. So far as we are concerned, we are being brought by the Lord to face it, and it is in that connection that all that has been said and will yet be said in these meditations has its significance.

The Kingdom of God God's Domain

So we stand back from the details to try and focus this thing; and we note that we are set in no less a realm than that of the Divine purpose in creation. What is that? We can only speak of it in very broad terms. We say, then, that it is all gathered up into one phrase - the kingdom of God. We are so familiar with the phrase that I think we may have failed really to grasp what it means. Well, to begin with, the kingdom of God is God's domain; and the domain of God expresses Himself. It must be that. The principle running through the whole Bible is that. Wherever God will be, that sphere must be conformed to Himself, it must take its character from Him, it must express His own mind, it must express what He is Himself. The kingdom of God is God's domain which is expressive of Himself, which takes its character from Him, in which everything to the smallest detail speaks of God, shows what God is like.

The Blessedness of the Kingdom

It speaks of God, and therefore, taking its character from Him and becoming expressive of Him, it is filled with the blessedness of God; I know of no better word than that. You know there is a little fragment, which unfortunately is mistranslated in our version, "the gospel of the blessed God" (1 Tim. 1:11), which is, literally, 'the gospel of the happy God.' You can retranslate what is called the Sermon on the Mount in that way, not, "Blessed are..." these and those and those, but "Happy..." The Sermon on the Mount is, as you know, the setting forth of the moral foundation of the Kingdom, and it all represents a very blessed state of things, so that, when God's kingdom is really established and spread over all, it is full of the blessedness of God. It is not just an imperious, despotic reign and rule of God the All-Terrible. The kingdom of God is a very blessed kingdom, and everybody in it is a very blessed, a very happy, person; and that lies back of the very existence of creation - the intention of God to extend His kingdom.

The Extension of the Kingdom on this Earth

This may, in part, be a speculation, because we do not know the condition of other planets and worlds. It may be that that very blessed state always exists there, seeing that God created all. It may be that this planet is the prodigal, that it has swung out of its spiritual orbit and lost the Kingdom and has to be restored. That is speculation because we do not know, therefore we have to use this phrase 'the extension of the Kingdom' with a certain amount of reservation; but I think we are not wrong in using it in this way - that God, so far as this world was concerned, was set upon extending His kingdom; that this world is the extension of the kingdom of God which we have just defined, and that God created it to be in some particular way a representation and expression of His kingdom; in its spiritual character, to give a manifestation of Himself. There is a great deal gathered into that, of course, which we cannot stay to speak about. The very fact that it was upon this earth that God became incarnate - with all that followed, God being in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself - and all the wonderful revelation that has been given to us as to what God is going to do on and by means of and toward this earth, does at least suggest that the kingdom of God has some particular and peculiar application to the world in which you and I live.

But our present purpose is to indicate the intention of God which has been made unmistakably clear by revelation - that the kingdom of God is the object and motive lying behind this creation; and the kingdom of God is that of which we have spoken - His domain, taking its character from Him, and filled therefore with the blessedness of God Himself.

But the kingdom of God is the sphere which is ruled by God - not under delegated government, but under His own personal government; and therefore infinite wisdom, infinite love and infinite power are the governing factors of His kingdom.

Infinite wisdom is a governing factor in the kingdom of God; wisdom far, far outstripping all the accumulated wit and understanding and knowledge of man to fathom; yes, infinite wisdom. Infinite love, for God is love; and infinite power. Well, that lies behind. That is the kingdom of God in the meaning of this creation.