KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES

"Teaching the things concerning the Kingdom of God..."

THE HEAVENS DECLARE

PART 28

CAPRICORNUS -- THE GOAT

In our study of the "Real Meaning of the Zodiac" it has been amazing to many to see that all the major themes of scripture concerning God's great plan of creation and redemption are clearly figured in the Signs of the heavens. Truly God has written the gospel in the stars! Many of the Lord's people have shied away from any teaching concerning the Zodiac out of fear of venturing into the swamplands of astrology -- a valid concern. But we must not be prevented from treading the courts of God’s glorious revelation simply because it has been perverted and counterfeited by the carnal mind. In Job 38:31-32 we read, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" Mazzaroth is a Hebrew word which means "the constellations of the Zodiac." And then, hidden in plain sight in Job chapters 38 and 39, are given the twelve Signs: Battles of heaven -- Job 38:37; Lions -- Job 38:39; Ravens -- Job 39:41; Wild goats -- Job 39:1; Hinds -- Job 39:1; Wild ass -- Job 39:5; Unicorn 39:9; Peacocks --Job 39.13; Ostrich -- Job 39:13; Horse -- Job 39:19; Hawk -- Job 39:26; Eagle -- Job 39:27. An accident? Hardly! But what is the purpose of all this! Does it merely concern some mysterious physical influences of the sun, moon and stars over the earth and men's lives -- or is it something far grander and greater?

In the book of Revelation the Holy Spirit gives us the symbols of the lion, the calf, the man, and the eagle and also of the twelve tribes in the heavens. Are these not the true powers in the heavens that project their dominion upon the earth! Are these not the very ensigns and standards which the enemy fears because he knows that the heavens do rule! These are powerful concepts. The grand truth of it is portrayed for us in Moses' and Aaron's mighty acts before Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. Did not Moses and Aaron and the magicians of Egypt employ the very same signs and perform the same feats? Aaron threw down his rod and it was turned into a serpent. But then the magicians of Egypt were called in and they all threw down their rods, and their rods became serpents also. But Aaron's rod, in the form of a serpent, ran after them and swallowed them all; and then it became a rod again in Aaron's hand. So -- how do we overcome the serpent-enemy! Did not the Lord Jesus say, " And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL MEN UNTO ME" (Jn 3:14; 12:32). Can we not see by this that satan is a serpent and the Christ became a serpent. But, praise God! Christ swallows up all the serpents of the adversary! How do we overcome the devil who goes forth as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour? We send forth the Lord's powerful lion of the tribe of Judah to destroy it! How do we overcome the bellowing bulls of Bashan? We send the Lords’s wild ox (unicorn) against them! How do we overcome the weakness of Adam’s flesh in us? Is it not by the very indewelling power of Him who God sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, who overcame sin in the flesh, and sent the spirit of His victory into us that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. It was by flesh that flesh was conquered! The flesh of Jesus proved greater and more powerful and of more value than Adam’s flesh, so much so that Jesus could say, "Except ye eat My flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you!" We must ever keep in mind, my beloved, that whatever the enemy has perverted or counterfeited, the Lord has something greater and more powerful that we may dispatch to swallow it up. Little wonder, then that the adversary tries to frighten the Lord’s people away from the sacred secrets of the Mazzaroth by setting up the "boogey-man" of astrology! Thus, it becomes obvious that the enemy uses fear to keep saints from discovering that within the Signs of the Zodiac lie the mysteries, the sacred knowledge, understanding, victory, immorality and eternal life! The Signs of the Zodiac in their original purity are a glorious presentation of the wonderful plan of God in creation and redemption, incorporating all the inter-play between good and evil, with the ultimate triumph of truth over error, of light over darkness, of life over death. These marvelous Signs, at the time of the Tower of Babel, were corrupted into a carnal, fleshly system of pagan religion, or mythology, which is seen today in horoscopes and other forms of astrology. But we are looking beyond that smokescreen at the original revelation God wrote in the sky and which has truly gone out into all the earth. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork" (Ps. 19:1). "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10). Truly we see in these twelve Signs of the Zodiac the way or path to full salvation, triumph and the glory of God.

In our study, we now come to Capricornus -- the name is Latin for goat. The Hebrew names associated with the Sign are GEDI and SAIR. Both terms are used in the Old Testament for kids of the goats of sacrifice. There is no prototype of this strange creature, the front half of which is pictured on the old star charts as a goat and the rear half as a fish! But that is precisely what Capricornus is! It is a goat with a fishes' tail; it is half-goat and half-fish. What does it mean? This Sign has a very strange appearance on the old star charts because it shows a wounded goat, with its head bowed and its knee bent under, fallen down in the posture of dying. On the other hand, the tail of the fish is wiggling, vigorous and living! Unless there is some significance to this strange combination, we might imagine that its inventor was having an hallucination. But when the true meaning is understood we can see the wisdom of God in the prophetic revelation portrayed by this wonderful Sign in God's Bible in the Sky.

First of all, we have the figure of a goat. This is a sacrificial animal. The picture and the meaning become even more clear as we consider some of the stars in this constellation. Some of the brightest stars are AL GEDI, which means "the Kid"; DENEB AL GEDI meaning "the Sacrifice cometh"; and MA'ASAD, "the Slaying." God commanded the children of Israel, saying, "Take ye a kid of the goats for a sin-offering" (Lev. 9:31). So Aaron "took the goat, which was the sin-offering for the people, and slew it, and offered it for sin" (Lev. 9:15). And of the goat of the sin-offering Moses said, "It is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord" (Lev. 10:16-17). We see here a picture of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, for truly He became our sin-offering, being "wounded for our transgressions," and "bruised for our iniquities." He was "cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was He stricken."

Note that from the dying goat comes a living fish -- the living fish thus takes its being out of the dying goat and derives all its life and vigor from thence. The living fish emerging from the dying goat therefore has an important meaning. In addition to the falling and dying of the goat, Capricornus is the Sign of a mystical procreation and bringing forth. It speaks of life that springs forth from the death of the sacrifice. That which is brought forth is a fish, the familiar and well understood symbol of the spiritual body brought out of the dying of the Lord Jesus. When Jesus called and appointed His first apostles, He said, "I will make you fishers of men" (Mat. 4:19). When God promised that He would bring again the children of Israel into their own land, His word was, "I will send for many fishers, and they shall fish them" (Jer.16:15-16). So in Ezekiel's vision of the living waters the word was, "And there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither" (Eze. 47:1-9). Christ speaks of the members of His body as "born of water" (Jn. 3:5). In the Kingdom parable of the drag-net and in the miraculous draughts of fishes God's people are symbolized as fishes. Fish thus denote the men who are brought to life out of the dying of the Lord Jesus. The early Christians were accustomed to call believers ECHTHUES and PISCES — that is, fishes. Very early in the history of the Church both the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the great truths of the Kingdom of God were set forth by means of pictures and symbols. Jesus used this method in all His teaching parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Revelation given to the Churches by the apostle John was also communicated by means of signs and symbols. Divine truth is more than just an understanding of the plain statements of the Bible. In fact, though some will be offended when they read it, a literal translation of the Bible is virtually worthless. The truth of the matter is that every word of scripture contains a sublime coded mystery which when deciphered by the spirit of revelation, reveals a wealth of spiritual meaning. The narratives and histories and teachings of the Bible are but outer garments in which the real meaning or life is clothed. And woe unto the man who mistakes the outer garment of the scripture for the truth and reality of God! This was precisely the idea to which the sweet singer of Israel addressed himself when he cried out, Open Thou mine eyes, that I might behold wondrous things out of Thy law!" (Ps. 119:18). Concealed within the statements, stories, laws and events of the Bible are the higher spiritual realities of the Kingdom of God, the very essence of the Living Word.

Do my readers know what an acrostic is? It is a poem, of which, if the first letter of each line be taken in order, these, when put together, will spell a word or a sentence. Now the Greek word for fish is _____; and this in its five letters, acrostically represents the five Greek words which mean in English, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." The Greek words themselves are: ______ ______ _______ ______ _______. The early Christians chose '______, that is , "The Fish," as a convenient secret sign of the truth about Jesus which they believed. The "Sign of the Fish" is found on the walls of the Roman Catacombs, those underground galleries and halls in which the ancient Church of Rome often hid and congregated. Fishes made of bronze, and others made of glass, have also been found in the catacombs. The heathen Romans who persecuted the believers did not understand what the emblem meant; but to the members of the Church at Rome the Fish represented Christ the son of God as Saviour; by extension it meant the members of His body; also, as many kinds of fish are for eating, the symbol came to carry with it the thought of the Lord's people feeding upon Christ, the heavenly, spiritual food. It is very important that we see the great truth of the life that comes out of death. As J. A. Seiss wrote, "As men naturally are but reproductions and perpetuations of Adam, and live his life, so Christ's people are the reproduction and perpetuation of Christ, living His life. They are in Him as the branch is in the vine. They are repeatedly called His body, one with Him, 'members of His body and of His flesh and of His bones.' And so close and real is their life-connection and incorporation with Him that they are called 'Christ.' What then could better symbolize this than the Sign before us? The goat and fish are one -- one being, the life of the dying reproduced and continued in a spiritual product which is part of one and the same body. The goat of sacrifice is projected into a new creation, which is yet an organic part of itself."

This principle of life out of death is one of the most powerful laws of the Kingdom of God. It is the very law of creation and redemption. It is my earnest prayer that the Spirit of God will give each one who reads these lines the spirit of revelation and understanding. If your spirit is able to grasp the truth I now purpose to set forth in the following pages many dark spots will be removed from your spiritual vision and you will see great truths in a light which has been hidden from you hitherto. We must ever keep in mind that light dispels darkness and brings into clear perspective all things that were hidden in the gloomy mists of night. Light is understanding, whereas darkness is error and ignorance. Therefore, when the light shines we see all things as they are and not as they have always seemed, or as we were told they were, or as we imagined. Light shining on any portion of truth quickly dispels the darkness that long hung over that truth making things that seemed confusing or beyond explanation to become simple, reasonable, and easily understandable.

Life out of death is the same as light out of darkness, for in the world of spiritual realities light and life are synonyms and darkness and death are likewise synonyms. "In Him was Iife; and the life was the light of men" (Jn. 1:4). Life and light and darkness and death are first set forth in the opening scenes of the book of Genesis, the book of Beginnings. The life and light are associated with God, whereas darkness and death are associated with creation. Let me point out the significant fact that darkness was the first recorded condition or state of creation, and all that was light and life and beauty and glory came into that darkness, or was spoken into existence out of the darkness. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.. ." (Gen. 1:1-4). Here you will notice that in relation to the creation DARKNESS PRECEDED LIGHT. The spiritual application of this principle is given by the apostle John, "In Him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it or put it out" (Jn. 1:4-5). And again, "For God, who COMMANDED THE LIGHT TO SHINE OUT OF DARKNESS, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 4:6).

There is a great and wondrous reason why the darkness precedes the light in the divine order of creation. Let us begin with God. It has pleased the Lord to leave great truths obscure and well hidden from the prying eyes of the curious and the unbelieving. He shrouds His precious truths in mystery so that none but the earnest seekers who partake of the spirit of revelation are ever permitted to see beyond the outer shell of the letter, and behold the unfolding glories which lie concealed within the inner kernel. Perhaps the simplest yet most profound statement about the nature of God is found in the beautiful writings of the beloved apostle John. He says, "He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (I Jn. 4:8,16). Would that my tongue were eloquent enough to explain it, or that my mind were great enough to comprehend it. But neither is sufficient. When we speak of God's attributes we may say that God is a spirit — infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. This is a very beautiful definition; but it largely defines only God's attributes, whereas the text, "God is love," tells us WHAT HE HIMSELF IS. This text reveals His nature, His state of being. For instance, in speaking of justice, we know that God has justice as one of His attributes, but He is not justice; God IS love. This fact gives us a revelation of GOD'S VERY NATURE. Our poor, lisping, faltering tongues cannot proclaim the gospel as we would like; but we have God's Word that is true for the present time and for all the times of all the ages. God IS LOVE! IS — unchangeably! IS — eternally! God is love in heaven, in earth, in hell! IS — everywhere! And the great practical consequence is for you and me to respond to that God and to that love, to become filled with that love, one with that love, the embodiment and manifestation of that love to all men in all realms. The best and most wonderful word in the universe is Love. For God is Love. And the best and most wonderful word in the inner chamber of our heart must be — Love. For the God who meets us there is Love. What is Love? THE DEEP DESIRE TO GIVE ITSELF FOR THEE BELOVED. Love finds its joy in imparting all that it has, and all that it is, to make the loved one happy and fulfilled. And the heavenly Father, who offers to meet us in the inner chamber —let there be no doubt about this in our minds — has no other object than to flood our hearts with His love.

Love has been described as AN ETERNAL WILL TO ALL GOODNESS. This is THE ONE ETERNAL, IMMUTABLE GOD that, from eternity to eternity, changeth not, that can be neither more nor less, but an ETERNAL WILL TO ALL GOODNESS that is in Himself and come from Him, so that as certainly as He is Creator, so certainly is He the blesser of every created thing, and can give nothing but blessings, goodness, fulfillment, and holiness from Himself, because He has in Himself nothing else to give. The judgments of God can never be rightly understood apart from His nature of love. If God's judgments spring not from His love then they come not from God at all, for He IS LOVE. He possesses the attributes of both justice and wrath -- but He IS LOVE! What ought this to teach us about His judgments! The pen of inspiration wrote, "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth . . . for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness" (Heb. 12:5-10). God doesn't go around purposelessly punishing or vindictively torturing any of His creatures. But He does go about precise paths of bringing forth correction UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS, as the prophet says, "When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will LEARN RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Isa. 26:9).

The words of the following poem strike poignantly at the deep meaning and sublime purpose of God in creation and redemption.

Why did God make the universe, the earth and the sky above?

Scripture gives the answer when it says that "God is love.

Before God made the universe He worked a master plan,

He knew how everything would end before it all began.

He made mankind so He could have an object of His love,

But, man was blind and did not not see -- it came from above.

So God created evil as He had created night,

So man could see the good in Him -- in darkness we see light.

He made the "blackboard" very black, with evil, sin, and woe.

He made an adversary to be His cunning foe.

He made the earth to be a "stage" to show the hosts above,

By all of our experiences, His wisdom and His love.

He locks up all in stubbornness to make His mercy clear;

Lets satan lure all men away, so He can draw all near.

He gives His only firstborn Son to die and save us all;

Yet each in his own class we read; we're blind until our call.

You ask me why God made the earth, the glittering stars above!

The scriptures give the answer when they say that GOD IS LOVE!

— Author Unknown

It is very important that we grasp the deep message in the words of this inspired poem, because, once we understand it, we comprehend as never before the eternal mystery of creation and redemption. It will be a wonderful day for you, dear one, when first your soul becomes enthralled with the revelation that God, before ever the world began or ever the ages were formed, looked forth from His temple of wisdom and omnipotence to chart with resolute care the course and purpose of every age. Your heart will throb as you read the opening proclamation of scripture, "In the beginning — GOD!" In the beginning of what? Not in the beginning of God, certainly, but in the beginning of His creation of all things, in the beginning of time as we know it, in the beginning of the orderly procession of the divinely destined ages. In the beginning stands God, omnipotent and omniscient, creating, sustaining and guiding all things and all people and all the ages of time according to the purpose of His own will. No purpose ordained by God from the beginning can possibly go astray or be hindered by the efforts of devil or man. Oh, for the hour when all creation will grasp the beautiful message, "From Him everything comes, by Him everything exists, and in Him everything ends!" (Rom. 11:36).

If God be the Creator of ALL THINGS, then it must of necessity follow that GOD IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THINGS. We read the passage quoted above from the Emphatic Diaglott, "because out of Him, and through Him, and for Him are ALL THINGS, to Him be the glory for the ages, Amen. All things are out of God, all thing are through Him, all things are for Him, and all things are unto Him, ending in Him. The clearest possible rendering is given by Goodspeed, "For from Him everything comes; through Him everything exists; and in Him everything ends! Glory to Him forever! Amen." The Bible opens with the simplest and yet most profound statement ever recorded by human hand. "In the beginning -- GOD" The sweet singer of Israel declared of Him, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, THOU ART GOD" (Ps. 90:2). Our God was the great active force, the cause of all that began to happen "in the beginning." How awesome the thought that there was a "time" when there was nothing — absolutely nothing — but God! There was no blue-green orb called earth, no silver-shimmering moon, no diamond-studded heaven of stars and planets, no angels, no devils, no man — nothing but GOD HIMSELF. There were not even the 100 elements out of which everything in the universe is constructed — there was only God. Paul caught something of the sublimity of this eternal and Self-existent One and wrote, "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him: and HE IS BEFORE ALL THINGS, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1:16-17).

Let me emphasize this wonderful and important truth: "He is before all things." This can mean nothing else but that God is not one of the "things." He is BEFORE all things. He is before A-L-L THINGS! And just as majestic is the truth that "by Him ALL THINGS CONSIST." Now let us soar down through the corridors of time to the consummation of all things. "For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that GOD MAY BE ALL IN ALL" (I Cor. 15:25-28). GOD ALL IN ALL — this will be the grand conclusion of the whole vast universe and of Christ's redemption. There will come a day — the glory is such we can form no conception of it, the mystery is so deep we cannot realize it — when the Son shall deliver up the Kingdom that God gave Him in His rulership over ALL THINGS — that God may be all-in- all. ALL IN ALL — such is the grand goal of our God! But I must point out that before that long-ago beginning God was NOT all-in-all. He was simply A-L-L. There was nothing else. No "thing" beside Him. There was not even space— for God was ALL. Oh, the mystery of it! This raises an interesting and important question. If God was "before all things," then OUT OF WHAT did He CREATE all things! If there was only God, and absolutely no thing other than God who was all, what kind of material did God have at His disposal from which to construct the all things? If you were standing completely alone, with nothing outside your own being existent, what material would be available for making something other than yourself? The answer is, of course, NOTHING! YOU WOULD HAVE TO MAKE THE "THINGS" OUT OF YOURSELF! And friend, this is precisely what God did. Now we can understand the full import of those words inspired by the blessed Spirit of Truth through the apostle Paul: "Because BY HIM were the all things created. ..and Himself is before all, and the all things I-N H-I-M HAVE CONSISTED" (Col. 1:16-17).

Now let us return to the nature of this God who was ALL. We must clearly see that God is all-inclusive, and that He lacks nothing whatsoever. And God is love -- all goodness. Having said that God is complete and therefore good, we can now go on to describe the attribute through which we are aware of His existence — His desire to share. This is the consequence, the effect of His goodness. Some have said, and I have said it too, that God created man because He was alone and yearned for fellowship — for creatures of like kind with which He could commune. But this falls short of the absolute nature of God which is the nature of love. Love does not give because of the desire to receive; rather, love gives purely out of the desire to bless. The desire for fellowship is the desire to receive — not give! Now God possesses that attribute also, as we shall presently see, but God is first of all love -- the pure and unmixed desire to impart. Here we have the first principle of creation — God's infinite desire to impart led to the creation of a vessel to receive His blessings. The creation of this vessel (the cosmos) was the beginning and the end of creation. He therefore created the universe with all the hosts thereof, and this world with its inhabitants. Thus the Creator could now bestow upon the creation His infinite love and inexhaustible abundance. God is the Lover, creation the beloved! "For God so loved the world . . . "

We have shown that the Creator's nature is sharing or imparting; however, there can be no sharing unless there is some agent that can receive. So God's infinite desire to impart implies a desire to fulfill every possible dimension and quality of desires to receive. Can we not see by this that God's infinite desire to give demands AN AGENT WITH THE DESIRE TO RECEIVE! The very nature of God requires CREATION! To impart or share with others, on any level, can only by considered noble or kind when the recipient desires and enjoys that which is offered to him. When the recipient rejects the gift yet the donor continues to insist on its acceptance and finally forces him to accept, one can hardly consider this an act of giving — much less of love. All who read these lines know by experience that the mere mechanical act of giving is, in itself, unsatisfactory and unfulfilling. We do not give advice to the mountains, nor do we offer money to animals. Clearly there must be a desire to receive on the part of the recipient, a knowledge of what the gift entails and signifies, before we can say we are truly giving. It follows that God could never give anything to anyone without an active desire to receive on their part. So the first step in creation was to bring forth the manifestation of the DESIRE TO RECEIVE! This desire is inherent in creation, although some are so blinded by sin and benumbed by death that they seek for the answer to their craving in all the wrong places, even rebelling against the glorious Giver. But God has a plan for all these, to bring them to repentance (a change of mind and desire), so that they can desire properly and discover the true source of life and blessing. "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that ALL SHOULD COME TO REPENTANCE.'' (II Pet. 3:9).

Armed with the knowledge that there was only God — and no "thing" apart from Him, God was ALL — it readily follows that because of His nature to give God must create an instrument with both the capacity and desire to receive. The only way to accomplish this was for God to withdraw Himself, to remove Himself, that there would be a place or condition where HE WAS NOT. God is light, the scripture declares, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Therefore, let it be clearly known that darkness is nought but the ABSENCE OF GOD! "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep" (Gen. 1:2). You will understand a great mystery when you see how it is that the creation was brought forth in the domain of darkness, the realm from which, though created by God, God had withdrawn Himself! "For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:20-21). Not only was darkness (the absence of God) the first state of creation, it remains the condition of the Adamic creation unto this day. The command, "Let there be light," is not merely an historical event, but a prophecy of the glorious reality that would be birthed out of the darkness of the first creation. The work begins with darkness. God said, "Let there be light," and at once light shone where all before was dark. It is only when the Word of God pierces the dense darkness of our alienated, carnal mind with the divine fiat, "Let there be light!" that our darkness displeases us and we are turned to the light. In that blessed moment the shroud of ignorance and death is removed from our heart and the light of life shines in to illuminate, quicken and transform that world which we are. "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up" (Mat. 4:16). "I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the the light of life" (Jn. 8:12). "Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son" (Col. 1:12-13).

God's method in His going-forth cannot be better understood than by the use of a somewhat uncommon word — parsimony. We may say that God's method of realizing Himself in creation is by parsimony. To use an illustration — if we desire to understand the composition of the great white rays of light, we break them up into their constituents and see them as crimson and purple and gold. To break up the composition of the white light we hold a portion of it back. This is what takes place when we pass it through a prism or through stained glass. Part of it is held back and we see the remainder. This is parsimony. To change the figure, those who love little children often act upon the same principle. We have to shed a portion of our experience, dispense with a part of our resources, yield up a measure of what we are, and become children ourselves if we are to understand and relate to children. We isolate some of our persona, as it were. Your little boy or girl knows you as father, but perhaps your fellow citizens know you as professor, banker, lawyer, doctor or proprietor. You have a larger life than the little child knows anything about, and yet to live your fatherhood properly you have to shed the other persona in the presence of your child and live as a child. What is this but parsimony! Part of your nature is dismissed, or withdrawn, or held back, that the other part lived in the home may become to you a richer experience. Many know me as a man of God, a preacher and teacher of the Kingdom of God, and there is a certain esteem of the ministry the Lord has favored us with; but my little five year old grandson knows me as someone to play cars with! This principle of parsimony helps us to live our life truly. When we get home we shut the world out; when we are at business we live in that as though there were nothing else to live for. To understand character we go forth and prove it, and going forth we insulate or restrict portions of our being.

It is not difficult to see how to apply this to God's great principle of creation. God withdrew Himself creating darkness and void -- this is the self-limitation of Deity; or to state it in other words, God retained, or held back, His full resources in order that there could be formed outside of Himself and beyond Himself and yet within Himself the desire to receive. This is righteous, purposeful, divine parsimony. The desire to receive is the basic mechanism by which the world operates, the dynamic process at the base of all manifestation. The desire to receive affects all creation because it is the basis of all creation. As we view the animate creation we find a remarkable physical dependence upon the external world for survival culminating in man, who has the greatest desire to receive of all creation -- not only for physical things, but also for psychological things like peace, happiness and satisfaction, and above all, the deep inner craving for spiritual life, the insatiable hunger after reality. When God created man male and female in His image He revealed that He is Himself male and female in His nature and attributes. God would never have known the action of giving and receiving had He not known them as characteristics inherent within Himself. The masculine nature is the nature of the Giver. Aggressiveness, boldness, strength, valor, authority, power and dominion are among the traits of the masculine sex. And it is the man who supplies the sperm for the creation of a new life. Thus, man is the Giver. Modesty, gentleness, tenderness, sensitivity and dependence are attributes of the feminine sex. And it is the woman who receives the sperm in the act of procreation. Woman is therefore the Receiver. The realm of her reception is in darkness — the new life, the new creation, the product of her union is formed in the seclusion and darkness of the womb — space. In its beginning the new life is without human form and darkness is upon the face of the deep. What marvelous things are wrought in darkness! Said the Psalmist: "I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them" (Ps. 139:14-16).

I find myself too confined to set forth this truth as I should do, but let us request of God's Spirit the ability to see that it is in darkness that the embryo is created, and in that long ago beginning it was in a great darkness that creation was formed. God the Giver withdrew Himself from Himself creating space, and within that space He brought forth creation -- the Receiver. In darkness the Receiver existed in a state of lack, made to lack a little from Elohim. It was a region of rayless darkness. Deepest night rested over it. It was without from, utterly shapeless in all its parts. It was void, that is, unfilled up. It knew nothing of God who was to become its fullness. In none of its parts was there any reception or filling up. Then the Spirit of God began to move upon the face of this deep. This activity of the Holy Spirit is called that of "moving" over the face of the waters. The word "move" is from the Hebrew RACHAPH and occurs only three times in the Old Testament, the other two being translated "shake" (Jer. 23:9) and "fluttereth" (Deut. 32:11), respectively. Some commentators relate the word particularly to the hovering of a mother hen over her chicks. In any case, the idea seems to be mainly that of a rapid back and forth motion. In modern scientific terminology, the best translation would probably be "vibrated." If the universe is to be energized, there must be an Energizer. If it is to be given life, there must be a Life-giver. The vibrating of God over the creation in darkness is not unlike the movement of the male at that precise moment when he inseminates the female with the seed of life. It is most appropriate that the first impartation of energy into the universe is described as the "vibrating" movement of the Spirit of God Himself — the injection of His life as divine seed into creation! This movement is immediately followed by the divine fiat: "Let there be light!" and into the darkness the light shone. In that blessed moment God and creation began their long journey into union, oneness. The Giver began to give and the Receiver began to receive. The heart of the Father was pleased. Now there was an object to Receive out of His infinite desire to Give! The law of creation was begun.

Think it not strange, my beloved, when your pathway leads you down, down, down into the experience of darkness and despair. It is in the darkness that the desire to receive is first kindled within you. We flounder a bit in our understanding of these things, but as time passes by and the Holy Spirit takes the things of God and reveals them unto us, we begin to understand that in all the universe a thing is a thing ONLY BECAUSE IT HAS ITS OPPOSITE. Good without the knowledge of evil can scarcely be called good at all. Who could possibly speak of the day if night had never been known! There was no first light except there was darkness before it. What could we know of life if there were no death! What would we know of health if there were no sickness? What would we know of wealth if poverty had not spread its spectre upon the earth? No man can be trusted until he has been EXPOSED TO THE OPPOSITES, until he has been moved to desire something beyond his darkness, frustration, limitation and lack. Myriad have been the men who have inquired why God cast the noble and divine spirit of man into the earthly, sublunar plane, into bodies built of clay, where they endure sorrow, temptation, pain, sickness, and the constant trials and ruthlessness which this body of death imposes upon the soul. He might, preferably, have maintained them in His heavenly sphere where all spirits rejoice in His presence, where once the morning stars sang and all the sons of God shouted for joy, where they could merit the ineffable goodness of the divine splendor which is bestowed upon them. Ah! but first, He must create in us the desire to receive; second, He must involve us in the grand purpose of the receiving — to mature us into His image until we have thoroughly learned the great law of His Being, of His Kingdom — it is MORE BLESSED TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE! God created this world peopling it with earthly bodies through which the soul must labor and struggle. By experience and travail, through faith and patience we attain His objective of purification, wisdom, understanding and holiness; without the struggle this necessitates, we would be nothing more than idle recipients of God's blessing. It has been demonstrated time and again that that which costs a man nothing is generally unappreciated. The natural consequence of eating unearned bread, of receiving something for nothing — that is not earned by labor and travail — is folly and shame. Ah, beloved, there is purpose in affliction. There is purpose in trial. There is purpose in temptation. There is purpose in suffering. There is purpose in sorrow. There is purpose in pain. There is purpose in sickness and infirmity. There is purpose in light and darkness. There is purpose in limitation and abundance. There is divine purpose in all the inter-play between good and evil in our lives. One who grows up in a sheltered environment, who is pampered all his life, grows up a weak, spineless individual. ADVERSITY builds strength of character. If we were never exposed to trials and tribulation, we would grow up weak indeed! The more we are exposed to ADVERSE circumstances, the more we have to wrestle with our environment, the more we are challenged by the world around us, the stronger we become. Saints, if we would be the sons of the Most High (the ultimate Givers) we must be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might! Our Father wants us to be strong, so He has wisely given us strong currents of opposition so we will become strong. There is a great and magnificent future ahead for the sons of God, and a great work our Father has for us to do in the age and the ages to come, and He is preparing us and making us ready for the high and holy place He has for us. Can we not see that all the opposing forces we now encounter are working together for our good — to develop the strength, character, wisdom, faith and power we must acquire? Have you noticed how strangely Matthew and Mark speak of Christ's temptation? "And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." (Mk. 1:12; Mat. 4:1). What a strange statement! The Holy Spirit of God drives the sinless Son of God into the wilderness to be tempted by satan, the arch enemy of all righteousness, a murderer from the beginning, the father of lies! Ah, but it was necessary for this Son to be PROVEN, to be made STRONG, to OVERCOME in these realms before proceeding on into His glorious sonship ministry and the death of the cross. Truly God creates darkness and void and uses it, too, for His glory!

You see, God only makes us Receivers in order that we may become Givers. The woman receives the seed of life from the man, but in bringing that child into the world she is miraculously transformed into a Giver! "For the man is not of the woman; but the woman (Eve) of the man. Nevertheless. . .as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman" (I Cor. 11:8-12). The Word of God bears immutable testimony to this wonderful truth. Father Abraham heard the call of God and got him out of his own country, from his father's house and his father's kindred, and sojourned to a land that God showed him. God gave to him the promise of a seed and that in this seed all the families of the earth would be blessed. After many years of experience in Canaan, this man of faith, yet without the promised seed, and seemingly without hope, was visited by the Lord and we read in Gen. 17:1-2: "When Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the ALMIGHTY GOD; walk before Me, and be thou perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly." Now this name, GOD ALMIGHTY, is both interesting and touching. In the Hebrew it is EL SHADDAI. God (EL) means "might" or "power" and signifies the Strong One. SHADDAI is different, though it also describes power; but it is the power not of force, but of all-bountifulness, SHADDAI primarily means "breasted," being formed directly from the Hebrew word SHAD, that is, "the breast," or more exactly, a woman's breast, and is so used in various places in the scriptures. Thus SHADDAI means "the Pourer or Shedder forth" of life as a woman bears her child and then feeds and sustains it with the milk from her breast. God is the Giver out of His own life and He bears out of His own substance his offspring and then feeds and sustains and strengthens it with the "milk" of His Word. Can we not see that all natural things have spiritual counterparts? By her breast the mother has almost infinite power over the child. And how! Because of the child's one basic characteristic -- the DESIRE TO RECEIVE! Some of my readers perhaps have heard the old Greek story of the babe laid down near some cliff by its mother, while she was busy with her herd of goats. The babe, unperceived, crawled to the edge. The mother, afraid to take a step, lest the child should move further and fall over the precipice, only uncovered her breast, and so drew back the infant to her. It is this figure which God Himself has chosen in this name EL SHADDAI, by which to express to us the feminine nature of His Almightiness! Male and female is the image of God, and in it is revealed the law of Giving and Receiving, the law of God's own nature. But beyond this is shown the fundamental law of God and creation — the Giver demands a Receiver, but the Receiver receives only to become a Giver! God's Almightiness is of the breast, that is, of bountiful, life-giving supply! Therefore He can quiet the restless, as the breast quiets the child; therefore He can nourish and strengthen, as the breast nourishes; therefore He can attract as the breast attracts, when we are in peril of falling away from Him. Ah, this is the ALMIGHTY who appeared to Abraham and assured him that he would be blessed according to the promise. And there is a blessed and significant aspect to God's dealing with Abraham that perhaps we have overlooked. When the Lord revealed Himself to Abraham as EL SHADDAI He said, "I am EL SHADDAI; walk before Me. . .and I will make My covenant between Me and thee." The covenant was contingent upon Abraham walking before EL SHADDAI, that is, in exposing his walk, his total being and experience, to EL SHADDAI, until he would learn the nature, ways and law of EL SHADDAI, the law of Receiving to Give. Abraham was the Receiver in the covenant, God promised to multiply him exceedingly and make him great; but then the great purpose of the blessing of the covenant was disclosed: "In thee, and in thy seed, shall ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED" In close relationship and union with EL SHADDAI Abraham would learn the one great law of creation — one Receives so that he may Give! How wonderful are these things!

The feminine Receiver in turn acquires the masculine character of Giver. This principle is seen again in the order of the life-cycle — children are Receivers, everything provided for them out of the bounty of the parents. In due process, however, the child grows up and becomes an adult — a Giver. In maturity, out of his nature to Give, the process of creation is extended. The parent creates, just as God did! a receiver, a new life, to the end that his desire to Give may find fulfillment in pouring lavishly upon the child of his love. So in all of nature the law of creation is in wonder beheld — one Receives to become a Giver; he then himself creates a Receiver in order to Give — and the process goes on from generation to generation, from age to age. Certainly this sublime truth is alluded to in the inspired words of the apostle wherein he says, "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. 1:20).

It might be thought that Giving, the first aspect through which Creator God is known to us, implies diminishing or loss. At times our experience in this world is that, after we have shared or given something, we are left with less than we had before. Although we have perceived it thus, if we are quickened by the Holy Spirit to have eyes to see and hearts to understand the nature of all things, we will soon discern that this is not truly the case, since giving is the prerequisite for receiving. "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again" (Lk. 6:38). This is the law of the Kingdom! When we give we create the correct spiritual atmosphere for the drawing down of forces from above. Can we then say that God became diminished by His sharing with creation? Not at all! In creation God receives the increase of Himself into Himself again so that instead of diminishing there is eternal expansion. So God is a Bestower, a Father. He imparts without being in any way diminished by imparting. The miracle of the widow woman's unfailing cruise of oil, and the feeding of the five thousand from five little leaves and two fishes, with twelve basketsful of fragments left over, are parabolic illustrations of this great principle. God does not give to receive again — there can be nothing of that in the nature of God or in the law of creation. It is simply the law of creation that what one sows produces a harvest. Men sow to reap a harvest but God sows out of His pure and unmixed desire to give. In this He is the measure of the perfect Donor. We could compare this to a rich man deciding to get rid of all his money so that he can provide other people with the opportunity to make money. While he is in possession of his money, he has all that he wants, and consequently no desire to receive. It is only after he has made himself poor that he has enabled others to share of their profits with him, thus making him even richer than he was before. Out of his great love of sharing — a boundless love — comes the essence of the Creator who ceaselessly bestows His blessing by withdrawing Himself, bringing forth a creation in darkness with its lack and desire to receive, and then pouring into the creation of His Life and Light and Love, bringing eternal increase out of Himself and into Himself. Oh, the wonder of it!

Brethren, I deplore the vain prattle that is being preached today concerning so-called "seed faith." From coast to coast preachers are saying the very opposite of what I am saying here. They unashamedly tell people that the way to get out of debt and unleash an abundance of financial blessing is to plant "seed money," to give in order to get! They persuade tens of thousands of Christians that if only they will send in their "seed faith" offering to God's servant God will bless and prosper them, they will soon have all their bills paid, they will have the finest and best of all the good things the world has to offer, and an abundance of the amenities of life. My beloved, I do not hesitate to tell you that the only ones being financially blessed and prospering and getting rich out of this carnal teaching are the slick preachers who are hoodwinking God's precious people into sending them their hard-earned money. It is wondrously true — give and it shall be given unto you! But it is a monstrous farce to teach people to gives IN ORDER TO GET. Giving to get is contrary to the nature of God, contradictory to the law of creation, and runs counter to the principles of the Kingdom of God. It springs not from love, but from lust. It is not of the Father, but of the world. It is not spiritual, rather it is fleshly, earthly. Still the law is there — give and it shall be given unto you! But nowhere in God's blessed Book are we exhorted to give so that it will be given. The premise Is wrong. God so loved that He gave. There is the difference. His is the law of love, the pure and holy desire to bless, requiring nothing in return. You may give to receive — and God will honor it — but verily you HAVE YOUR REWARD. Your reward is the things you receive in return. It has nothing whatever to do with love, with obedience, with the desire to bless. It has nothing to do with the nature of God, no correspondence with the Kingdom of God, and there is no eternal benefit, no heavenly treasure laid up thereby. Oh, that God's elect may learn this one sublime truth — it is more blessed to give than to receive! When the Holy Spirit prompts you to give, then give out of a heart of love and obedience, but do not deceive yourself by thinking you are doing God a service when your motive is to get, when your heart and expectation is set on the increase of money and goods you will receive from your giving.

The spirit of love is not in you till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, universally according to it. It knows no difference of time, place, or person; but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful work. The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded or honored; its only desire is to become the blessing and happiness of everything that needs it. The wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, only gives the spirit of love an opportunity to be more triumphant. The rebellion of Adam but opened up avenues for mankind to experience and know the incredible depths of the love of God! God IS LOVE! And His sons are of His own nature. The SONS OF LOVE! What a blessed title! Little wonder, then, that the whole vast creation, sold under slavery and bondage to sin, sorrow, and death groans and travails for the manifestation of the SONS OF LOVE! To know this is a wonderful help to faith. It teaches us that to love God, or the brethren, or our enemies, or the whole wretched race of men, is not a thing self-effort can attain. We can do it only because the divine love is dwelling in us; only as far as we yield ourselves to the divine love as a living power within, as a life that has been born into us, and that the Holy Spirit strengthens into action. Our part is first of all to rest, to cease from effort, to meditate deeply upon the depths of His love to us, to know that He is in us, and to give way to the love that dwells and works in us a power that is from above. The love of God reigns. The Spirit of God still waits to take possession of the heart where He has hitherto had no room. Love is timeless, eternal, unbounded. God so loved. He loves still. Though one hundred and sixty billions of men have lived and died and gone to Christless graves, HE LOVES THEM STILL. He will deal and deal in mercy and judgment until the desire to receive in them responds to Him as the one and only infinite supply. Oh, my dear friend, can you believe that? His mercy endureth forever, throughout all ages, and love will conquer, praise His name! Don't you believe for one moment the hideous lie that there are vessels created with the desire to receive that somehow will escape God's love and slip away into eternal death or everlasting torment. Such an idea is repugnant to all who know the truth and flies in the face of both the nature and wisdom of God the Creator-Giver.

Hence it is that God, wanting to show us what love is, sent One who from the beginning was sinless; who was conceived without the aid of lust (the desire to receive), who was conceived of the Holy Spirit of Infinite Love, and into whose being there entered no evil passion, since the virgin was sanctified in her spirit, her soul, and her body; so that the Holy thing that was born of her was the incarnation of Love (the pure and unmixed desire to give) in every part of His spirit, in every drop of His blood, and in every organ of His body. People have great difficulty relating to an abstraction or an invisible force. It must be personalized and that is why God has come in the person of Jesus Christ, so that we might see Him and see what God is like. God has been personalized. Love has been personified. God so loved Him that when He died the very heavens were darkened, and the earth trembled under the noonday sun veiling all nature, while silence in earth and heaven lasted until Love had finished His sacrifice upon the cross. Just as the first creation was born when God withdrew Himself, creating darkness, and a vessel in the darkness with the desire to receive, so the new creation came forth in the darkness when God withdrew Himself from Himself on Calvary (My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!) and in that Son who hung in darkness was created a race of men with the desire to receive of HIS FULLNESS, EVEN THE SONS OF GOD. That was Love so divine, so wonderful, so awful, that it could only have been possible for God in Christ to have revealed it at all. This Love is the Love which God imparts to us. This same Love that was in Him must be in us. The sons of God must be the sons of love. Go and learn what that means and the hope of sonship will gleam brightly in your soul.

What a high, holy, heavenly calling! And how reminiscent of Paul's statement in Eph. 2:4-7: "But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come He might SHOW the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ." So vast, so marvelous are the wonders of His grace, it will require the ages to come to continue to unfold these wonders, and He has purposed that there should be a people through whom He would give this demonstration that in the ages to come He might show..." "Show" is from a Greek word meaning "to exhibit, to put on display like a work of art, to demonstrate." The Amplified Bible reads, "He did this that He might CLEARLY DEMONSTRATE through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless, surpassing) riches of His free grace in Kindness and goodness of heart toward us in Christ Jesus." Kenneth Wuest translates, "In order that He might EXHIBIT. . . in the ages that pile themselves upon one another in continuous succession the surpassing wealth of His grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus." Show. . .demonstrate. . . exhibit the riches of His grace — unto whom? Not to those who already know it — that would be useless nonsense. But to those who do not know it! To the whole vast creation of men and worlds who dwell in darkness with the insatiable desire to receive, but to whom has never been revealed the true and eternal and unbounded source of life and reality.

Ah, God is preparing a divine show for all the earth, indeed for the entire universe. The mighty Barnum, in describing his circus, said it was THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. True, Mr. Barnum was a great showman and, for its kind, he had a great show, but God is the Master Showman and is preparing to give the world THE GREATEST SHOW IT HAS EVER SEEN. It is a theatrical of MERCY and GRACE and LOVE in a world of wrath and violence. This will be God's master stroke as the curtain rises on the world's greatest drama — God's Great Show — THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD! Praise His name, once the finishing touch is put on the last stone of His living temple of Kings and Priests, the firstfruits of His redemption, in ages yet to come He shall put His grace and kindness inwrought in us ON DISPLAY so that the entire creation may walk across the stage of His cosmic theatre and behold and see and finally come to understand and appreciate WHAT. GOD HAS PROVIDED FOR ALL MEN IN CHRIST. All who have ears to hear must hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. Across the land and around the world the Spirit is saying today that He is preparing a people, He is preparing a body, He is preparing sons who shall be conformed to the image of His Son, who shall be partakers of the divine nature, who shall have the mind of Christ, who shall be brought to glory and who then shall become the very express image of the Father, the brightness of the Father's glory and the outraying of the Father's person. These shall receive of His fullness until they have within themselves conquered all sin, sickness and death. God is now preparing sons, God is now preparing a body for that first Son, we are the body of the first Son, the body of the Christ, the body of the King of glory, the body of the great High Priest in the heavens after the order of Melchizedek. We are the body of the Giver and in and through these sons, when all have been brought to His fullness, having received of all His glorious and eternal reality, His salvation shall be manifested, exhibited, and demonstrated unto the ends of the earth and unto worlds yet unknown. The Lord is saying to His people in this day: "For this cause have I raised thee up and sent thee to be a light unto the nations and thou shalt BE MY SALVATION to the ends of the earth" (Isa. 49:6; Acts. 13:47).

When those who treasure the beautiful hope of sonship speak the words the Spirit is speaking to the Churches in this hour, people demand, "Who do you think you are?" When we declare that we are called to be the manifested sons of God, to grow up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, to partake of a greater ministry than that of the Church-age, to set all creation free and reconcile all things in heaven and in earth back into God, people ask, "Just who do you think you are?" It really makes no difference who WE think we are, but it makes a great deal of difference that we know WHO AND WHAT WE ARE APPREHENDED TO BE IN HIM. Our ears have heard the sound of the trumpet, we cannot — dare not — settle for anything less, we must follow on to know Him in all His wonderful fullness, to desire to receive of all that He is and has so that we can in turn become His Givers unto all. HE THAT HATH AN EAR LET HIM HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. Let us not sell creation short in these days. The whole creation is groaning and travailing together in pain to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Mankind is sick and tired of sin and fear and hatred and sorrow and pain and empty religious platitudes, rituals, ceremonies and doctrines. The whole race is gripped by the most intense DESIRE TO RECEIVE — there is everywhere an unprecedented hunger for deliverance, life and reality. Let us not deny the Lord who purchased us to be a Kingdom of Priests. While we seek no glory of our own, there is, nevertheless, great wealth and heavenly glory for all who fulfill all the will of God. You never lose with God. You are never diminished by giving, you are never impoverished by pouring out all that you are and have. There is an interesting fact in connection with the life of the great missionary, Hudson Taylor. Hudson Taylor's brother desired above all things to be famous and so he scorned the Christian life and scoffed at his brother's zeal to pour out his life as a missionary among the impoverished and ignorant heathen. He went into business and politics to become famous. Over a century has now passed and throughout the whole world the name of Hudson Taylor is well known, and in writings, when it does appear, his brother is referred to as "Hudson Taylor's brother" — Mr. Anonymous — who gave up all to become famous! The compelling passion of my life is to be filled with all the fullness of God and come into the image of Jesus Christ. The deep cry of my heart is for the satisfaction of knowing that my life counts for God. As God knows my heart, it is not a selfish desire. The reason I want to be like Jesus is because I love Him so, but also because it is the only way I can ever be used in the restoration of fallen creation. I see the needs of the world around me, and realize that I am practically powerless to do anything about it. Oh Yes, I can pray, and give a little, and believe God, and see occasional conversions, deliverances, and blessings. But anyone who says that they have reached the place where their ministry is meeting the needs of the world is either blind to the needs of humanity, a proud hypocrite, or a compulsive liar. "Lord Jesus! Breathe Thy Spirit into all who read these lines until we are like Thee in all of Thy ways that Thou mayest be glorified and all creation blessed. Make us a center of omnipotent God. May the great river of Thy love and grace and power flow and flow and flow until the outflow of Thyself from our center knows no circumference, enveloping all creation in Thy life and light and love. Amen!"

God will make the reality ours.

In the several pages of this writing our theme has been LIFE OUT OF DEATH, or LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS. This is the divine, sublime message of the remarkable Sign of Capricornus — the dying Goat from whom springs the living fish! It is the pouring out of light into darkness, of life into death that quickened creation may be raised up to the glory of the Creator and redound unto His glory. May God make it real to your heart!

To Be Continued...

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