"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (Jn. 14:1-3).

This is one of the most profound revelations Christ ever shared with His disciples. He was, with words glorious indeed and wonderful beyond the comprehension of the natural mind, showing His disciples a new realm of existence, a new sphere of life, a new dimension of reality they had not touched. He introduced the reality of the Father realm. In essence, Jesus told them, "I am leaving you to prepare a place for you in another realm. I am going to bring you into that new realm - My resurrected, ascended realm. You are going to be united with Me in the power and glory of My Father."

Did these disciples understand? Not any more than we have understood with our natural minds. Consider the incredible blindness of these men who had walked with Jesus and listened for three years to His gracious words of eternal life. God help us to see what the disciples did not! Christ opened up the way for us into a supernatural realm. He ascended up far above all heavens, back into the position of Fatherhood, from whence He poured out of Himself that flow of the Spirit which we need, and whereby we are able to cry, "Abba, Father." He yearns to seat every believer with Him in this heavenly place. He meant it when He said, "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." He meant He would bring us to Himself - united with Him in His glory - right now while upon earth. If you "abide" in Him you must be where He is! He is outside of all that of this earth. He is outside of all that is fleshly. He is outside of all that is natural. He is outside of all that is visible. He is outside of all that is temporal. He is outside of all that is evil. He abides in the realm of Spirit. He dwells in the realm of holiness. He lives in the realm of the unlimited. AND ONLY THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN TAKE US TO WHERE HE IS!

The disciples heard Jesus' promise, "...that where I am, there ye may be also." But like multitudes today, they could understand it only in carnal, physical, material and geographical terms. "He will come someday, rapture me, and take me to His mansion in heaven," they were doubtless thinking. To them, it was all physical, and it was a future blessing. But Christ meant it to be an immediate reality. He wanted to return in mighty spirit power and quicken them in spirit and raise them up and make them sit together with Him in the heavenly places! How can we miss this intention? How clear can He make it? "I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

As we pointed out in our last article, God nowhere in the Bible holds up "heaven" as a hope for the future; but He does promise us "THE GLORY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST" (II Thes. 2:14). And all who are hoping for a mansion in heaven are, in their blindness, totally ignoring the jewels of great price and toying instead with an invention of ignorance, which can bring but disappointment and shame and loss at the end of the road. They say that heaven must be a place, because Christ is now preparing a place for His own. "I go to prepare a place for you." But has anyone ever found where the One who spoke those words called that place heaven? Let them search! Many eyes have searched for many centuries to find such. And it has not been found! Let Babylon's simpletons show us just one statement even, in the Word, which says that Christ is building a mansion for us away up in heaven. Just one statement is all we need to make it true. But there is no such statement to be found in God's blessed Book. The darkness of religious tradition has blinded the people of God, causing them to become spiritual illiterates, staggering in spiritual stupidities, totally unprepared for and unmindful of God's eternal purpose in His elect.

It is wondrously true that Jesus promised His disciples to go away and prepare a place for them. And not only so, but that He would COME AGAIN, and receive them to Himself, that where He is, there they may be also. Nothing short of this would satisfy His heart; He delights to do everything for them. Blessed Lord Jesus! But He does not say, as the preachers love to proclaim, that He would come again and take them to heaven but TO HIMSELF. "I will come again and receive you UNTO M-Y-S-E-L-F." It is not the place - but the PERSON, His own blessed, glorious Person that He keeps before His disciples. Hence, the scriptures nowhere speak of the believer soaring away to some far-off heaven somewhere, but always to be WITH CHRIST IN HIS GLORY. Nothing short of this can fulfill the gracious promise of our Lord, or satisfy the purpose of His heart. He would return and receive them unto Himself, and place them in Him in the heavenly Kingdom of God.

Well did George Warnock write, "In the Lord's discourse with the Jews at the Feast we have a glorious promise of that hidden life. He told them, 'Ye shall seek Me, and shall not find Me: and where I am, thither ye can not come' (Jn. 7:34). Where He was, the world could not come; but in this very hidden place the disciples WOULD COME. Did Jesus not promise the disciples concerning the coming of the Spirit,  '...Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you' (Jn. 14:17). They knew that the Lord was referring to that hidden life, and the manifestation of Christ within them, for they said, 'Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?' (vs. 22). They were beginning to see and understand that there was to be a real manifestation of Christ in them, where they would be in vital union with the Father and the Son, a place which the world could not invade. And so this hidden place could not be found by the Jews; whereas His beloved disciples would enter into it. 'WHERE I AM, thither ye cannot come,' He said to the Jews. But to the disciples, 'I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that WHERE I AM, there ye may be also' (Jn. 14:3). Where is it? Jesus said, 'WHERE I AM.' That is sufficient. It is a place in the Spirit which no man can invade. A hidden place for those who are in the world, but not of it, in the very sanctuary of the Spirit of God! 'For ye are dead, and your life is HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD.' There shall the sons of God be hidden as they work the works of Christ in the midst of a world of wrath and judgment. And then, in God's good time, they shall be MANIFESTED OPENLY. 'When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, THEN shall ye also appear with Him in glory' (Col. 3:4)". -end quote.

To what extent those early disciples were able to grasp such mighty truths we may not surely know, but we do know that for us who live at this end of the age these promises are very wonderful, very precious, and very real indeed. There is something very precious about the word "receive" which the Lord chose to indicate the manner in which He would gather His own to Himself. The Greek word is PARALAMBANO, and according to the Analytical Greek Lexicon means "to take to one's side." And our Lord is just now doing this very thing, for by the moving of His Spirit in these last days He has been gathering His own and placing them by His side. He has been bringing them very near to Himself, into very close communion and vital union with Himself. He has spread a rich feast of truth, has girded Himself and has come forth to serve them. What a glorious thought this is! Our departure from the sects and ways of men has not been to join another sect, as some have supposed, but, rather, that we might be placed by the side of our Lord. What a fellowship! What a place the Son enjoyed! And, astounding grace, the Lord says, "Where I am, there ye may be also!" Yes, even now we are the objects of the Father's love because we are "in the Son." And when we have fully reached the place prepared for us and are sat down to share in the throne of the Son, we, too, shall enjoy that blessed oneness, union, harmony, and love which the Father bears toward the Son. What a blessed assurance and glorious prospect are ours!

A dear friend in California shared the following experience which beautifully expresses the truth of which I now speak. "Several months ago, as I walked about performing my daily tasks - as I lay upon my bed at night - in times of prayer and meditation before the Lord - or caught up in feverish activity - there began to break upon me the vision of a heavenly man. There in my mind's eye, I was beholding with unbelievable realness, the form of a man - gigantic in size - silhouetted against the dark heavenly background. The sky around him was extremely dark, and it was as though I could see through him, for the dark sky could also be seen behind him. But there, etched against the sky, outlined with a brilliant light, was that form, daily impressed upon me, constantly with me, and I began to cry out with much depth of feeling, 'Oh, God. What is it?' Somehow, I was made to know that in some measure I was beholding the resurrected Christ! I am certin that it was only a glimpse of that which is later to be revealed to all those of us who wait for His appearing, but it was a glimpse that lifted my sights to look beyond that which we see in the immediate earth-realm. As that vision was daily presented to me, I began to know within the very depths of my being that that was a resurrection body - and that it was, in fact, the body of Christ which arose from the grave in a glorious victory over death. More than that, I was made to know by the Spirit that somehow, someway, in some mysterious manner, that it is THAT BODY - that very same body that arose from the grave and ascended to the Father - that we are being fitted into!

"How earthy we have been, for we have looked at the divided, carnal, worldly, ununified camp of believers on the earth and have said, 'Behold, the body of Christ.' Never have I been more convinced of anything than this: that verily we are the body of Christ in that we are the materials that will be fitted into that glorious body! But THAT MAN - that GLORIFIED MAN in the heavenlies - is the body of Christ, and it is as we are fitted into that Man that it can truly be said, 'Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.' 'Let not your heart be troubled,' Jesus said, 'ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house (BODY) are many mansions (MEMBERS). If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and RECEIVE YOU...' WHERE??? 'UNTO MYSELF!'

"That place He has gone to prepare is the place in HIMSELF - in that glorified, resurrected body. Herein lies a great mystery! The writer of Hebrews has said, 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil WHICH IS H-I-S FLESH... let us draw near with a true heart...' (Heb. 10:19-22). How we have thought to enter in through the rent veil of OUR FLESH - but the Holy Spirit tells us plainly that we enter through the veil of H-I-S  F-L-E-S-H.

"Thomas Newberry, in his book SOLOMON'S TEMPLE AND ITS TEACHING, points out that in Solomon's temple, which is a type of the New Creation Man, 'there was a two-leaved olivewood, gold-covered door as well as a veil.' Speaking of this door, he said, 'The doors were divided in the center with two folding leaves reminding us of the rent veil, Christ crucified... The one of oil tree, type of Christ risen in His spiritual body.' He further points out that in the temple of Ezekiel, which is another figure of the house of many mansions, the many-membered body of Christ, there was a turning door 'divided in the center, making manifest the way into the Holiest.' The double covering of Solomon's temple, with both the veil and the door guarding the way into the Holiest, speaks to my own heart of a two-fold operation. In the veil, I see the rending of human flesh, both His and ours, in the process of comminuting - and then the entering through the door of HIS FLESH, which is glorified flesh. In order to be placed in our positions in the glorified body of Christ, it is necessary that we pass through the veil of HIS FLESH and have it close behind us or upon us. Thus we are told, 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the (earthly) flesh' (Rom. 13:14). As we enter into THAT FLESH we are immediately CLOTHED UPON with that flesh, and we are IMMERSED in it. Hallelujah! All flesh is NOT the same flesh!" -end quote.

Yes, indeed, Christ is preparing a place for us. And I have news for you, my friend, it doesn't take Jesus 2,000 years to build a mansion! He is building something IN US, and He is building us IN HIM, "that where I AM, there ye may be also." He doesn't say, "where I've been," or "where I'm going," but "where I AM." Now let's see where Jesus was. In the same fourteenth chapter of John, vs. 10 and 11, Jesus says, "Believest thou not that I am IN THE FATHER, and the Father IN ME? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. Believe Me that I AM IN THE FATHER, and the FATHER IN ME: or else believe Me for the very works sake."

Where was Jesus? IN THE FATHER! Yet He says in verse 12, "I go to the Father." He was already in the Father and was going to the Father. And it was in His "going to the Father" that He would prepare a place for us. Can we not see by this that the "place" He is preparing for us is IN THE FATHER, "that where I AM, ye may be also." Where was Jesus? In the Father! And - "In that day ye shall know that I AM IN MY FATHER, and YE IN ME, and I IN YOU" (Jn. 14:20). Ah, the place is in Him, a place of communion and relationship and union with God, a place in the Holiest of all, and in the place are many places, for the body of Christ in its corporateness comprises the fullness of Him. The word "place" is so significant. It's where you leave YOUR PLACE and enter into HIS PLACE! There is a place - I have seen it as the Spirit of revelation and understanding has flooded my mind - a place that is overwhelming and almost intimidating - but there is a place where the body of Christ will be made just like Him, to live and do in the fullness of His power and glory and incorruptibleness.

I proclaim to you by the Word of the Lord that God's people are going to be invested with such a nature of holiness and righteousness, with such love and compassion, with such power and authority that the very nations themselves will have to bow in submission. Never did any king, president, prime minister or dictator speak as the sons of God shall speak. For they shall be literally clothed upon with His divine majesty and authority, and they shall be the living Oracle of God to the Church as well as to the nations. They shall do God's will as God Himself shall direct, and no earthly power will have any power against them. This is the government of God for the age and the ages to come. "Place" means position, office, or rank. Our "place" or "position" in the government of God will depend upon the degree of our relationship and the intensity of our union with the Father. Christ Jesus has FIRST PLACE, for He is "King of kings and Lord of Lords," and "God... hath put ALL things under HIS feet, and gave HIM to be the HEAD over ALL THINGS to the Church, which is His body, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things HE might have the preeminence." But IN HIM is OUR PLACE that He has prepared for us, not only a world to come, or a heaven somewhere, or a mansion in the sky; but a position, a place of eminence, a place of glory IN HIM - there to reveal all the magnificence of the INDWELLING FATHER to all the endlessness of the unbounded heavens!

Many years ago Bill Britton wrote, "The Father has a house in heaven, a realm of life, a habitation and means of expression. For heaven is perfect, sinless, and eternal. And this is the only kind of habitation that God could have. But no one had ever built such a house on the earth realm, in the physical world - until Jesus came. Jesus built the Father a house to live in, a life so sinless, so perfect, so full of wisdom and grace that even God could feel at home in it. Everyone has certain requirements for any house they might live in. If you said to me that you had built a house for me, and that it was free and all I had to do was to move in, I would certainly go take a look at it. But if it was just an oversize dog house, no doors, no windows, just one room with straw on the floor, and a hog trough out front to eat out of, I would tell you very quickly that I would not feel at home in such a place. I am not a dog; I like a kitchen in my house, a rug on the floor, a bed in the bedroom, and a few other amenities of life. Then I would feel more at home in the house. God cannot feel at home in a house full of gossip, lust, fears, profanity, and all the other expressions of the carnal nature. The house Jesus built had none of that kind of material in it. His life was a place where God could feel at home!" -end quote.

The Father's house is in us, and our house is in Him. The Son said, "I am the way ... no man cometh UNTO THE FATHER but by Me." How many Christians stop at the Way and fail to go on to the goal which is union with the Father. The Lord said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." But why does He draw us unto Himself? So that He can bring us to God! Many never get past the Way, they come to Christ and that is as far as they go, thinking they have arrived at the place prepared for them. Peter by inspiration declared, "Christ once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, THAT HE MIGHT BRING US TO GOD" (I Pet. 3:18). The Lord Himself said, "I am the way to the Father." How often we quote scriptures realizing not what they say! I have heard this scripture quoted hundreds of times, and I doubt if one person out of a thousand understood what it said. Listen to what we read in Hebrews about the better hope of the New Testament "by which WE DRAW NIGH UNTO GOD" (Heb. 7:19). Hear what we read in the same chapter, "Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that COME UNTO GOD by Him" (Heb. 7:25). I have heard preachers by the dozens say how Christ is able to save to the uttermost, when exhorting people to come to Christ, never telling, and not realizing, that the uttermost is only accomplished when we have experientially come unto the Father through the Son. The goal is union, not just with the Son, but being united with the Father in His Fatherhood, so that He can write the name of Yahweh on our foreheads. After all, the life Jesus came to bring us is in knowing the Father, for "THIS is life aionial, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" (Jn. 17:3). It is not enough to come to the Son and know Him, we must also be brought to the Father by the Son and know the Father. This is LIFE. The vast multitude of believers in the church systems who have come to Christ, but have never gone on to know the Father, have never discovered that blessed place that Christ has prepared for His own, neither will they find it in that heaven out beyond the stars where they imagine it exists.

You know there is a great difference between the way to a house and the house itself. I may be traveling through the most beautiful scenery, on a lovely, pleasant day, with delightful company, and enjoying every step of the way, and yet I am not content to stay there always. I have gone into that way to bring me to the end, the object of my journey. Christ is THE WAY. What is the end of the Way? The end is God - the Father. Christ wants to bring us to God. You generally find Christians so occupied with Christ that they never get time for God. You ask me, Is there any difference between going to Christ and going to God? A very great difference! In Christ I have the gracious and merciful side of God's character. But that is not the only side of the divine character I need to know. In Christ I have the condescension of God coming near to me, but the object of that condescension is to bring me to the place where I can come unto Him - to be LIKE THE FATHER in every way. It means the knowing and sharing of His Fatherhood, no longer merely a recipient of grace, but a begetter, a source, to have life in ourselves as the Father has life in Himself. You can never be all that God has purposed until you learn the lesson that Christ is going to win your heart that He may bring you to God, yea, to Godhood. Just think, Christ was not, in Himself, self-sufficient when He was on earth. He lived every day with the thought within Him: There is One greater than I, and My blessedness is to live in dependence upon Him, with a will given up to His will and in a trust that counts upon His working. But now, having ascended up where He was before, unto the Father, into His Fatherhood, upon the throne of universal dominion, upholding all and filling all with Himself, He IS THE FULLNESS OF THE GODHEAD BODILY and the source of all. He is no longer the blessed, He is the Blesser. He is no longer just the anointed, He is the Anointer. He is no longer the gift, He is the Giver. And Christ suffered, that He might BRING US TO GOD. What did He suffer? Nothing was too great. He endured all, that He might bring us to God. Are you willing, my brother, my sister, to take time and trouble that you may be brought into union with God? If that has become the object of our desires we will understand the work of Christ far better, and our understanding and knowledge of that work will bring far more abundant fruit.

If I want to be brought nigh to a person I want to know who that person is. If he is a king or a president or a prime minister I approach him in a different way from what I approach a store clerk. Before I married my wife I dated her for a number of months, followed by a twelve month engagement, because I wanted to get to know the girl I was marrying. Before I am brought to the Father I must know who the Father is, and this is what sonship is all about. As I bow before Him I bow before His nature, His will, His word, and His ways. I must say, "He is the Almighty One, the all Holy One; He is Spirit, He is Life, He is Light; He is a consuming fire; He is the All Loving One, and He wants to communicate Himself to me and through me." My soul must bow in lowly stillness and in holy brokenness and in unwavering faith in the absolute knowledge that God is here. In all that He is He wants to impart Himself wholly to me. God is near. And Jesus would bring me to God.

In all spiritual development Christ must be the model. He came into the world as the divine pattern of man's journey into God. Man was to follow His footsteps from the depths of degradation to the heights of glory. As we examine this Forerunner, however, we discover something quite significant. Everywhere we find that Jesus is pointing back to the Father who is the source of all and from whom He Himself came. "My Father is greater than I," He said. Christ came to declare the Father, to reveal the Father, and to lead the inhabitants of earth back to the Kingdom of the Father from which they had become lost. Christ Himself would return to that higher realm, and He would mark out the path before us so that we could return with Him. "I am the way," He proclaimed, "I am the path, the roadmap, the pattern that leads back to the Father."

The following words of inspiration and truth are taken from an article written by Lynn C. Bauman in Sanaa, Yemen, in the year 1975. "All the time that Christ walked among us His deepest desire was to return to His Father, but not alone. He had come to take us with Him and it was this truth which was the core of His message. He spoke of it often, but seldom fully, because we were not yet ready to receive this great revelation. Indeed it was the supreme mystery, the secret locked up in all that had been promised and which was now coming into reality in Jesus Christ. Only He knew its full implications and yet was forced to speak of it mainly in parables. Since His day, however, through the apostles, prophets, saints, and teachers the Spirit has continued to reveal the depth of the message and purpose of Christ, and it is this: At the heart of Reality, at the center of all that is, exists the unmeasured, unimagined, and unutterable Presence of the Father. He is the temple at the center of being, the divine inner sanctum of existence, the still point of the turning world. From Him all things have their source and reality. From Him all things proceed and to Him all things return. There is nothing greater, no wisdom higher, no silence deeper, no light more blinding, no creativity more profound. He is the heart of all, and in Him dwells the Christ who walked among us.

"This (union with the Father) is a solemn and wonderful reality which we are called to experience in Christ. It is not mere words. It is the heart of Christian experience itself. Most of our lives, ministries, and teaching today is devoted to the understanding of how to come to Christ. This is well and good, but there is more. Today, if we will hear His voice, Christ is Himself calling us to grow beyond that stage; to unite with Him so that together we may journey into the Father. He is all the time preparing and readying us so that He can take us with Him into the mystery and bounty of that unfathomable Presence. He desires to save us, to transform us, and to unveil our minds and thus bring us to the point where we can enter into His own spiritual experience with the Father. We are to grow up into Him in all things, to pass beyond all bounds and limitations into fullness, and there to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19)" -end quote.

There is nothing dearer to the heart of God than sonship, for sonship leads to the Father and the fullness of God. Our Father has set in motion a work greater than His original creation, for it is the NEW CREATION, man in the image of God. He is "bringing many sons to glory" - the glory of the Father realm - Fatherhood. The way may be rugged and tedious; but its end is glory. And it is the way along which our Father is bringing us; for, since we have received the Son, we have the right to call ourselves sons of God (Jn. 1:12). And there are many of us. Many SONS, though only one SON. We do not go solitarily along the narrow way. We are but part of a vast multitude known only to the Father. The glory of which we have already spoken, and into which Jesus has entered, is not for Him alone, but for us also. "Many sons" are to be His joint-heirs; reigning with Him on His throne, sharing His unsearchable riches and His unbounded glory, made one in the Father.

There are many across the land today who call themselves "the manifested sons of God" and make much of their exalted position in the Kingdom. Of course we must take their word for it, for in many I fail to detect either the holiness of character or the awesome power and authority that attends such a high calling. How sickening it is to hear men who have nothing boasting that they possess all things! Sons do not become sons merely by asserting that they are sons. A great evil among those who would be sons today is that they proclaim their own sonship. How often are they merely self-styled and self-appointed sons! The model Son did not proclaim His own sonship. "If I bear witness of Myself," He said, "My witness is not true. The Father Himself, which hath sent Me, HE HATH BORNE WITNESS OF ME" (Jn. 5:31,37).

The apostle Peter tells us in words freighted with wonder how the disciples were convinced of Christ's sonship. "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For HE RECEIVED FROM GOD THE FATHER HONOUR AND GLORY, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice WHICH CAME FROM HEAVEN WE HEARD, when we were with Him in the holy mount" (II Pet. 1:16-18). When a person does actually come to the manifestation of sonship he will never need to declare his sonship, for it is the Father who both sends and announces the sons. There is no need for a manifested son to stand up and tell the people that he is a son of God, or that he is reigning with Christ, or that he will never die, or that he is infallible, or that he is in some mystical way reconciling creation, for the Father Himself will declare him, if indeed he is a son of God; and from that blessed moment forward his word will be with such authority and his actions will speak with such power that there will be no need for him to utter a word concerning himself. Those who gather about will cry, "Truly, this is a son of God!"

What this first Son, Jesus, spoke came to pass. It was impossible for Him to speak a falsehood or to say anything that would not come to pass. He made it very plain that what He was saying to the people was not His own word. But whatever He did speak to them, they could know and understand that it was the word of the Father - THE SOURCE. It was the Father speaking through the Son Jesus made it plain that He did not come to do His own will, but the will of the Father. He did not speak of Himself or out of His own desire or will. It was entirely the will and word of the Father. THEREFORE THERE WAS NO POSSIBILITY THAT IT COULD BE WRONG, and therefore the winds and the waves, the diseases and the devils, the elements and all things OBEYED HIS COMMANDS.

Jesus spoke of other sons who would stand in the same position before the world and before the Father in which He Himself stood. They would enjoy the same privileges He enjoyed, but they would also share the same responsibility that He bore from the Father. They would speak the same words of authority and do the same works and show forth their glory in the times when His body would grow up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ. When Jesus said, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also," this most emphatically was not a reference by Jesus to the so-called second coming or to some golden-streeted city in the sky. Jesus is here telling the apostles, and telling us through them, that they, and we, will stand before God in exactly the same position in which He Himself stood and stands. Jesus most definitely spake not of going back to heaven, getting a construction crew together and proceeding to build a lot of mansions.

Jesus went further than this. The first begotten Son said He would send the other sons into the world just as the Father had sent Him. We find this in two places (Jn. 20:21 & Jn. 17:18) where Jesus was telling the Father of this, for He said to the Father, "As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world." The same Father or same INFALLIBLE SOURCE; the same INFALLIBLE WORD from the same INFALLIBLE SOURCE to be in the sons as was in the Son. "And in that day YE SHALL ASK ME NOTHING. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever Ye shall ask the FATHER in My name (nature, identity, authority), HE will give it you. At that day ye shall ask in My name: AND I SAY NOT UNTO YOU, THAT I WILL PRAY THE FATHER FOR YOU: FOR THE FATHER HIMSELF LOVETH YOU, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God" (Jn. 16:23, 27-28). This first Son told the disciples there would come a time when they would ASK HIM NOTHING, and HE WOULD NOT EVEN PRAY FOR THEM! But they were to ask THE FATHER HIMSELF in His name, or in His honor, authority and character. There would come a time when other sons would stand before the Father in precisely the same relationship, the same honor, the same authority and the same character in which He stood. The Father would do whatever these sons asked of Him because the Father loved them in the same way and degree that He loved the firstborn Son.

God has revealed Himself to us in a three-fold manifestation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He brings us into relationship with Himself in each of these three manifestations. All Christians have entered into a relationship with God as Son, experiencing Him as SAVIOUR in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be SAVED" (Jn. 10:9). In this "Saviour-saved" relationship we come to know Him in the joy of sins forgiven, and in the blessed reality of justification before God. Jesus as Saviour is the door, the gate of entrance into the Kingdom of God. As we go on in God we experience Him as the Holy Spirit - the ANOINTING, the presence and power of God working in and manifesting through our lives. But ultimately we must grow up to truly know and experience Him as OUR FATHER.

There is a special relationship with OUR FATHER which Jesus gave emphasis to continually, as when He taught them to pray,"Our FATHER, which art in heaven." A recognition, a conscious awareness, when we pray, that it is to OUR FATHER. It is a significant fact that you can tell the difference between a babe in Christ and a SON by their terminology. The babe knows JESUS THE SAVIOUR and is always talking about Jesus, praying to Jesus, praising Jesus, calling on Jesus, Jesus ... Jesus ... Jesus! This is both normal and scriptural; however, as one grows up in Christ He is led to the Father and receives a revelation of the FATHER. When a baby is born it knows nothing of its Father. This understanding comes through growth and development, and becomes more meaningful and precious as time goes on. "And because ye are SONS, God hath sent forth the SPIRIT OF HIS SON into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father!" (Gal. 4:6). The cry of a spiritual babe is - JESUS! The cry of a SON is - FATHER! Why? Because our sonship is an extension of CHRIST'S SONSHIP, the spirit of sonship within us is the Spirit of THE SON. The NEW MAN within IS CHRIST. The Spirit of the Son, Christ within does not cry,"Jesus!", because it IS the Spirit of Jesus. This Spirit causes us to cry, not Jesus, but FATHER! A simple truth is this: Is there a spirit within you that cries "FATHER!" If so, then know, beloved, that you are beginning to enter into your sonship to God!

Let us suppose that a man by the name of John Smith has a son named Mike. When Mike addresses his father he doesn't call him John Smith! Mike doesn't say, "John Smith, may I have a dollar?" or, "John Smith, I love you!" Rather, he will say, "Father - or Daddy, may I have a dollar?" or, "Daddy, I love you!" Only persons who have NO SONSHIP RELATIONSHIP with John Smith will address him as "John Smith" or "Mr. Smith" or simply "John." A son does not address his father by name, but by relationship. A son of God does not pray to an impersonal "God," nor to the Old Testament "Yahweh," nor to the New Testament "Jesus." "And BECAUSE YE ARE SONS, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, FATHER!" (Gal. 4:6). To all those blessed ones apprehended of God to sonship there is a recognition, a conscious awareness, when we pray, or praise, or worship, that it is to our FATHER...

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the SONS of God" (Rom. 8:14). First we note this word "sons" is from the Greek word HUIOS meaning "Mature sons," a fully developed one, strong to bear the responsibility and position to which he is appointed. There are different words used in the Greek text which speak of the whole range of growth and development from a babe, new born, on through the young lad, till one arrives at maturity. But there is a GROWING UP into Christ, who is the Head, so that "when I become a man, I put away childish things." And God is indeed bringing forth SONS, mature ones, developed and disciplined, conformed to His image, which shall also give expression to HIS NATURE.

How far the average Christian falls short of this in his thinking! The beautiful ANALOGY of our sonship is accepted by everyone. But all this means to the ordinary Christian is that he believes that since he has been saved he is now a "child" of God and doesn't have to go to hell when he dies. With no comprehension of the true implications of sonship to God he just conjures up the nice spiritual feeling of thinking of himself "AS IF" he were literally a "child" of God. Most folk think of being a child of God as sort of an "honorary" relationship conferred upon them by an indulgent God who accepts them as "little adopted human children" to whom He plans to give as their reward for serving Him a beautiful heavenly park - a celestial playground - called HEAVEN. This heaven is for their recreation and enjoyment for eternity... loafing, playing, visiting, running, flying, shouting, rejoicing, playing harps, waving palm branches, and doing whatever sinless thing their spiritually childish hearts may desire.

I once heard the story of a poor and illiterate widow woman who lived far out in the country. She had only one son who was grown and had gone away to a far away city. There her son went into business and made good. Back home, this poor woman barely eked out a subsistence, planting a meager garden and taking in washing from her neighbors, scrubbing the clothes by hand on an old rub-board. The house she lived in continued to deteriorate; the windows broken, roof leaking, steps falling down. Her clothes were faded and patched, her diet improper and monotonous. Each month the poor woman received an envelop in the mail from her son. These envelopes always contained pretty little pieces of colored paper. Being unable to read and understand what these little pieces of paper said she always pasted them up on the wall of her bedroom to remind her of her son. After some years she died, and when the neighbors came in to her house at that time they discovered this large number of MONEY ORDERS made out to her by her son - all glued neatly to her bedroom wall! If only she had KNOWN WHAT WAS HERS she would have lacked nothing through all those years!

How we need to know what is ours as the sons of God! In Romans, chapter eight, Paul says, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely GIVE US A-L-L  T-H-I-N-G-S? The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then HEIRS; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also GLORIFIED TOGETHER" (Rom. 8:32, 16-17).

You see, beloved, our Father does not tease us by dangling before us high things unto which we have no hope of attaining. For many thousands of years the English Channel has lain between England and France, stretching out some 350 miles long and from 22 to 30 miles wide. During those long millenniums there was NO MAN that was ever able to swim across that channel. However, in 1875 a man by the name of Matthew Webb successfully swam across the Channel. Because ONE MAN had actually succeeded, many others were inspired and challenged to try. Many have trained themselves and made the attempt. And some have succeeded! The first woman who swam across was an American girl, Gertrude Ederle, in 1926. Now let us suppose that, unbeknowing to anyone, Matthew Webb had a rope stretched across the Channel and rather than swimming he had pulled himself across. The whole affair then would have been a farce and a fraud and no matter how hard others tried possibly no one would have ever made it. If Matthew Webb would have had an unknown ADVANTAGE over everyone else, it could have meant that the Channel was really unconquerable to the swimming man.

And likewise, let every reader of these lines understand that if JESUS HAD SOME ADVANTAGE OVER US in His walk in sonship to God, then this whole matter of sonship and the high calling of God in Christ Jesus is a FARCE and a FRAUD! If Jesus had an unknown and unfair advantage over us, then there is really no point in our trying to attain to the measure of the stature of HIS FULLNESS - for we shall only fail miserably. But what saith the scriptures? "Inasmuch then as we have a great High Priest who has already ascended and passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession... for we do not have a High Priest who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a fellow feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning. Let US then FEARLESSLY and CONFIDENTLY and BOLDLY draw near to the throne of grace... that WE may find grace to help in good time for every need - appropriate help and well-timed help, coming when we need it" (Heb. 4:14-16, Amplified). And again, "Since therefore, these His children share in flesh and blood - that is, in the physical nature of human beings - HE HIMSELF in a similar manner PARTOOK OF THE SAME NATURE, that by going through death He might bring to naught and make of no effect him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and also that He might deliver and COMPLETELY SET FREE all those who through the haunting fear of death were held in bondage throughout the whole course of their lives ... wherefore, holy brethren, PARTAKERS OF THE HEAVENLY CALLING, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus" (Heb. 2:14-15; 3:1, Amplified). CONSIDER - Jesus Christ! LOOKING - unto Him! HE is the Apostle of our profession. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. When we consider Him we see that HE, being a man, OVERCAME and has ENTERED IN to the fullness of God. As we consider HIM faith is evoked within us to BELIEVE that we can also attain unto that high realm. ONE has successfully made it across into that blessed place in God! ONE has ENTERED IN! And He has gone to prepare a place for us, that where HE IS, there we may be also.

The KEY to our entrance is just this: "LOOKING UNTO JESUS the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). A brother I used to hear teach when I was but a boy told of this experience: "When I first learned to plow, I got on the seat of the tractor, pulled the lever that dropped the plow into the ground, and started across the center of the field. After I had gone a few feet, I turned around to look at the furrow and was entranced by the rushing flow of topsoil along the plowshare - rich and black, the soil turned over. Then I turned back to look where I was going. When I had turned around the first time, I had unconsciously carried the wheel of the tractor with my movement and gotten away from the straight line. I pulled the tractor back into line and looked back at the furrow once more. Behind me, wavering across the field, the undulating line of my furrow revealed, as though etched in the earth, the wandering vision that I had had. I soon learned that there was only one way to plow a straight furrow. When you are about to accelerate the tractor and pull the lever that sinks the plow into the ground, you must sight across the field at a distant point and keep the nose of the tractor squarely on the sighting point. You must not turn around to see how the furrow is coming; if you do, give only a hasty glance to see that all is well. Make certain that the fixed point is straight ahead, and bring the eye back to it. Now I can plow across a field and leave a furrow black and straight a quarter of a mile long; because I have learned that when the guide furrow is being laid in the field, the plowman must keep his eye on a fixed point, be it a tree, a barn, a distant hill, or some other point. Woe unto the man who plows his furrow looking aside, or looking behind, or looking at a crow that may fly across his line of vision."

Looking unto JESUS! There is the "fixed point" PAR EXCELLENCE! Never allow your vision, precious child of God, to be diverted to other people, to ministries, gifts, movements, problems, circumstances, your own fleshly weaknesses, or your past blunders and failures. One and all are but crows flying across your line of vision. Faith to enter into God's fullness will never be ministered to you by Brother Eby or by any other ministry or man! We can help, strengthen, and encourage you along the way, but we are not the "fixed point" of your vision because WE OURSELVES are STILL LOOKING UNTO JESUS to bring US in! I do not hesitate to tell you that I have not arrived - should you look unto me you will inevitably see some lack, you will discover some missing of the mark you will find something LESS THAN THE FINISHED PRODUCT. And what you see will divert your vision from the goal that is found only in Christ Jesus our Lord. "Kingdom-building" preachers will not like these statements they love to proclaim that the "five-fold ministry" will bring God's people unto the perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and set themselves up as lords over God's heritage, drawing men unto themselves to have a following; but what I say is the truth, nonetheless.

OUR FAITH to enter in is HIS FAITH which we imbibe as we BEHOLD HIM and HIM ALONE. HE it is who said, "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go I will come again, and receive you UNTO MYSELF, that where I am, there ye may be also." The revelation of Jesus Christ will evoke fullness of faith in the hearts of God's elect. This revelation comes only by steadfastly fixing our gaze upon the proper fixed point - Christ Jesus the Lord. This pathway to His likeness is perhaps nowhere more beautifully set forth than in the graphic words of the inspired apostle in II Cor. 3:18, But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." BEHOLDING ... we are CHANGED!

What a privilege to walk with God, how we rejoice in this hour; the change is on and we are being changed, praise His name!

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