◄ ►

The Heavenly System

The heavens do rule. (Daniel 4:26)

There is a great need today that there should be the rule of the Heavens. But the Holy Spirit has got to do it, and we have got to come to recognize the fact that what we see in organized Christianity is not it. The spiritual people of God are more and more feeling separated from the old system of Christianity and churches and ecclesiastical systems. People are recognizing a deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long, and there is a cry for spiritual reality. Many sermons are clever and full of mental ability, but they are starvation to the spirit. There is all the activity, but it is not spiritual Life, and I believe the Lord is going to show us the nature of the thing that is in the heavens. The thing that man has brought down on to the earth and taken up and perpetuated is only at best a poor imitation of things in the heavens, but in a very large realm it is a caricature of heavenly things.

Man has taken hold of heavenly things and brought them down to earth and made them earthly things. That is where things all went wrong at the beginning. At the first, things were of the Spirit. The people gathered in their homes or anywhere. It was not the place. It was not the ministry. It was the Lord, and they were circled around Him. But then the day came when they said, "We must have public buildings," and then the architecture became a factor, and so things developed, and they became something on the earth for men to take note of. They wanted man to be attracted, and that was the first step in one of the greatest perils that has overtaken the church. For prestige, recognition, the world to be attracted, there is the result that you get the mixed multitudes in the church. If you can attach some big names to it, you can attract the people, and one of the devil's greatest measures has been popularizing the church. The preeminent thing is lost, that the church and Christ is a mystery to the natural man and that it is no use to expect the natural man to appreciate it. The church is essentially a spiritual thing according to the mind of God. What really governs everything is God's conception of things, not ours, and if we are going on with the Lord there is going to be a whole system of change and we are going more and more to view things from the heavenly stand_point. You have got to get into the heavenly system to get heavenly results.

Do not let your good be spoken of as evil.

Abstain from every form of evil. § [Provide] honorable things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men. § For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people’s matters. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. § Beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak. § Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. § Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.

Rom. 14:16;  1 Thess. 5:22;  2 Cor. 8:21;  1 Peter 2:15;  1 Peter 4:15,16;  Gal. 5:13;  1 Cor. 8:9;  Matt. 18:6;  Matt. 25:40

Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.

It is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. § Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.

Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you.

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. § Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you your- selves be like men who wait for their master.

Eph. 5:14;  Rom. 13:11;  1 Thess. 5:6;  1 Thess. 5:7  1 Thess. 5:8;  Isa. 60:1,2;  1 Peter 1:13;  Luke 12:35,36

High-born

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Heb. 10:22).

The darkness of this place will in time turn us to the light of His face - "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6).

"When the believer has a real understanding that he belongs to that new place in glory, the Holy Spirit delights his heart with the things of that place. Set your affection on things above.' I used to pity those who are alone in the world. I pity no one now who has a room where he can find himself isolated from everyone, to be with the Lord Jesus where He is; where he can have his feathers oiled, to come out and face all the roughness here." -J.B.S.

"May the Lord lead us into the shelter of His holy presence, that we may daily grow in the elevation to which He has raised us, and consequently into moral distance from the old man which is so entirely estranged from the light and perfection of the Father's presence."

"If I am risen with the Lord Jesus, I must occupy myself with Him where He is, or I shall fall back to the things out of which He has risen; and the very fact that I am in the scene where He is not makes it the more necessary that I should be fellowshipping with Him where He is."

"We are conversant with man in death and sin and distance from the Father, for that is our state by nature; but to know the Man in glory, One in acceptance with the Father according to all His moral greatness, is new to us and magnificent. And according as we know Him there we become not only superior to, but distanced from, our own state with which we are associated." -J.B.S.

"For. . . your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

Wise Words

Accepted in the Beloved