KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES

studies in end-time revelation

LOOKING FOR HIS APPEARING

Part 48

COMING AS A THIEF

We must now draw this series of messages, on the appearing of Christ, to a close; and it is with a strong feeling of reluctance that we do so. The theme is intensely interesting, inscrutably profound and abundantly fruitful. Its manifold facets open up an extensive field of vision for the spiritual mind to explore with enlightenment that never flags, because the subject is inexhaustible. However, we must, for the present at least, close our meditations on this most marvelous line of truth and go on to others; but ere doing so, we are moved to call our reader's attention to yet one final thought in connection with our Lord's return - His coming AS A THIEF.

"And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not" (Lk. 12:39-40). "Behold, I COME AS A THIEF. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame" (Rev. 16:15). "Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee AS A THIEF, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee" (Rev. 3:3).

There is a coming of the Lord as a thief. That is not a coming or an appearing that is before the public. It is not an unveiling before the multitudes. A thief does not go down to the public square with a trumpet and say, "I'd like to make an announcement. At three o'clock in the morning I'm going to visit the wealthiest man in this town and I'm going to steal everything I can get my hands on." He doesn't do that. He comes at the darkest part of the night. He comes with softest tread, without noise, without light, without warning. He comes as silently and stealthily as possible, unobserved by the sleepers. He comes to rob. He comes to take away everything that he can. He is after gold and pearls and jewels of great price. Men are unaware of the event until he has come and gone and the items of value to the owner have disappeared with him. The Lord Jesus Himself says that HE WILL COME AS A THIEF.

Almighty Lord! in whom dwellest the wisdom and knowledge of the universe, flood our souls with understanding from above. Remove the dark veil from our minds, and flood our hearts with light divine, that we may clearly behold the sacred secrets of truth long concealed in Thee. Our understanding of this beautiful truth will be greatly enhanced once we understand that in that long ago in Palestine Jesus came as a thief. The carnal mind conceives of Him coming in royal splendor and magnificence, with a band of trumpets sounding, a host of angels announcing His arrival, as He makes His triumphal entry into the world riding in a chariot overlaid with gold, His royal garments glistening with jewels of the rarest kind, and a crown of gold on His head and the omnipotent sceptre of His Kingdom in His hand. Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of all is that Christ came, not to dazzle the world with a spectacular political coup or military overthrow of the kingdoms of the world, but to reveal the Kingdom of God WITHIN MEN, to unveil the internal rule of the spirit by which men and families and communities and cities and nations are transformed from domains of sin, ignorance, fear, evil, greed, lust, sorrow, darkness, disease and death into shining citadels of righteousness, wisdom, love, joy, peace, health, light and life. He came the first time to an out-of-the-way place, in the womb of a woman, and lying in a manger. He came riding on a little donkey. "Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: He is just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9). He came in weakness, in meekness, in obscurity. His coming was shrouded in secret. Very few knew when He arrived in the midst. When Jerusalem and the great city of Rome closed their shops that star-lit night they knew not that the King of glory had come to earth. Even Bethlehem did not know. When He rode into Jerusalem He came not with the flamboyant and dazzling style of an earthly king. There were not legions of angels, no blasting of trumpets, no marching of armies, no royal chariot pulled by lively, prancing, expertly groomed and trained white horses. There was no palace where royal attendants waited to escort Him to His throne, and to await His every command. Our glorious King - yours and mine, beloved - came to the common, ordinary multitude in the most lowly, humble and unpretentious way - riding on a common beast of burden - yet He came in the quiet and hushed movings of His omnipotent Spirit! The kingdoms of the world knew nothing of His coming until it was too late - the feet of iron and clay were smitten by the power of His Word as like a thief He came upon them and spoiled their houses, setting up a kingdom of life and light and love in their midst which shall never be destroyed and of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end, and all the kingdoms of men shall be driven away like the chaff of the summer threshing floor before the wind.

As our Lord came into the world two thousand years ago silently, with softest tread, without fanfare or warning, so does He come to every man. Every well-marked crisis in the life of a child of God is a "coming" or "appearing" of the Christ, whether we know it at the time or not. Many times we encounter Him in the most unthinkable places, and under the most unpropitious circumstances. In places and ways where we least expected to find the Lord, He will meet us face to face. There are times when we are faced with a mountain in circumstances, which appears insurmountable and immovable. This is often the very place where we find Him waiting for us. All the mountains in our lives are raised up through our lack or unbelief, but there are no mountains of difficulty with God.

There are occasions when such appearings of the Lord seem the very opposite of what they are, times when our fate seems to be at the mercy of haphazard influences and accidental events. The greater part of any life-history is unpredictable, and in most cases the really great crises in the experience of any of us are unexpected, take us unaware. If you read our Lord's figurative descriptions of His coming in this light you cannot fail to see how true they are. He says no warning will be given. People will be going about their ordinary avocations in the ordinary way, taking for granted that nothing different will occur from what they have been accustomed to from day to day; outwardly there will be nothing portentous, no sign that the old order of things is at an end; and then, like a thunder clap, the cataclysm will be upon them. "For as the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; SO SHALL ALSO THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN BE."

Is not this exactly what happens in life as we know it now? You have only to look around you to see that these words of Christ are receiving fulfillment every day and hour. It is true of the great movements of history. Consider the events of the past several months in eastern Europe (6-90). What is truer than that great crises prepare themselves insensibly and almost unnoticed, and generally take humanity by surprise? And it is equally so with the individual, and with the spiritual life. How apparently casual, uncertain, inconsequent, are the things which happen to us from hour to hour as contrasted with the effects they produce for weal or woe! Things look so accidental, of such small account oftentimes, and yet they make all the difference between life and death to the soul to whom they occur. By this time tomorrow your whole world may have been turned upside down, your entire outlook on fife revolutionized. What God may have in store for you no man can prophesy; but this I urge you to believe, that it is mercy and not vindictiveness that directs His hand.

Furthermore, we are bidden to look in all the changes of our earthly lot for the appearing of the Lord. This is what the Lord Jesus Himself has told us. He directs and mandates every experience of your life, precious friend of mine, and compels these things, whether good or evil, to be the instruments of His redeeming love, the vehicles of His appearing to, in and through you. In the crises, changes, processings, strippings, purgings and prunings, HE COMES to succour and relieve, to claim us for Himself, to teach us His ways, to inwork of His nature, and transform into His image and likeness. Nothing happens without Him; nothing can reach us which is not directly the token of His presence - or, as I prefer to put it, it is His very own special advent, the parousia, the coming, the appearing of Christ, to the soul thus visited. "Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh."

Some time ago I read the most enlightening testimony of a man - a Christian teacher and scholar - shared at a retreat for Christian teachers at a great university. The meetings were entirely private and the numbers purposely restricted in order to secure the spiritual intimacy without which the interchange of experience would have been profitless. This distinguished scholar opened his heart to his companions and told of the way in which he discovered the reality of the indwelling Christ - Christ present and active, appearing and manifesting in the inner reality of his own spirit. He said there came a time in his life when everything to which he had hitherto clung fell away from him; it was as though some fiend of hell had been planning his ruin. Up to that point he had believed himself to be an exemplary character; but that was because he had never been tested; he had lived a sheltered life and been fortunate in most of his undertakings. Like so many of us he was rather self-complacent, too easily satisfied with his own standard of being and doing, too sure of himself, too ready to judge others. And then, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the blow - he did not say what - which destroyed all the vain fabric of his self-delusion. It was not one thing only that went wrong with him; everything went wrong; and, worst of all, he lost all confidence in his own rectitude of principle and strength of will. He could do nothing to save himself, nothing whatever; he found no comfort, no resting place, no anchorage for his soul; his sense of helplessness could not have been more complete. But when things were at their very blackest a miracle took place. For no reason that he could ever divine - no human reason, anyway - he became conscious of a strange unearthly quietude in his heart; something broke in upon him, as it were, from the world beyond; yet, it was not from outside of him, but from somewhere deep within; he became aware of the presence of Christ within, and the omnipotent power and energizing nature of God within his spirit. He confessed that this was the greatest spiritual discovery he ever made, and he was never afterwards able to see that his own will had anything to do with it beyond directing the inarticulate cry for help that went up from his desolate soul and was thus answered. He simply knew that Christ was there, suddenly appearing in glory as a thief out of his own reality, and the surprise of the realization was quickly superseded by the sense of peace and consolation and wholeness that holy presence brought. His trouble fled; he was content to rest from himself and his woes, and to leave everything to those Almighty hands - not hands in some far-off heaven, but the hands of the reality of the Christ within. Like a thief in the night the Christ stole into the darkness of his state of being and snatched away from him his cherished treasures of his own self-righteousness, self-sufficiency and self-dependency, breaking up his carnal outer house of being. Ah, Christ is always present - yet is always coming - by the manifestation of His presence, the epiphaneia of His parousia, as He steps forth from our inner invisible life in spirit into our outer visible world of consciousness and experience. "Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching."

As a thief! Can the natural mind even fathom the depths of a truth so eternal and sublime? This statement plainly indicates the manner of the Lord's coming. It shows that He is present unseen, doing a work of which men are for a time entirely unaware. His working is therefore in a quiet manner, unobserved and entirely unknown until the discovery is made in consciousness of the handiwork He has wrought in secret. His arising steals its way upon us as the dawning of the day. The sun comes up at an early hour in the morning and if you are awake and up at that time you will see it rise, but if you sleep until noon, a great number of important things can transpire ere you are aware. The morning can be over before you know what is going on! Jesus told His disciples that NO MAN KNOWS THE DAY OR HOUR OF HIS COMING. Certainly not! for He comes "as a thief." If we trust this word of inspiration and truth, then outward symbols and signs indicating a specific time for Christ's return make no sense at all. If the seventy weeks of Daniel, the "seven times" of Israel's punishment, the 1335 days, the 2300 days, the measurements of the Great Pyramid, or any other sign or symbol indicated a date on the calendar when Jesus would return to earth, then our Lord's own words would stand contradicted. This simple yet infallible principle is just the reason why I could proclaim so confidently that "the rapture" would NOT take place in 1988!

The false teaching that the "second coming" of Christ is one singular event limited to a specific date in the future when Jesus Christ will descend from heaven in a body of flesh, with wounds in His hands, feet and side, and that He will flash through the skies, snatching away His faithful followers, carrying them with Him to some far-away heaven somewhere, has given rise to innumerable speculations, predictions, calculations, prophecies and projected dates concerning when this stupendous event is supposed to transpire. The inspiring promises about our Lord's coming have too often been an issue of sensationalism. Men have quarreled and quibbled and fought over a most precious assurance, and have missed altogether the wonderful blessing and the glorious reality. Because of the distorted understanding of this blessed truth many ridiculous theories have been spawned about the "time" and "manner" of His appearing.

In the past few decades, several small groups, devoutly following the leadership of some would-be prophet, abandoned their jobs and professions, sold all their worldly goods, and confidently awaited a precise moment when either the "rapture" would occur, or Jesus Christ would return. All such predictions failed, of course. Usually the news media only inform us of the sheepish admissions of such aspiring prophets that they will have to "re-study the prophecies," but we never hear about the victims of their harebrained schemes who divested themselves of their accumulated goods only to find that the dogmatically trumpeted prophecies were only so much "pie in the sky." Occasionally you will see one of these embarrassed false prophets frantically attempting to discover some alternative explanation as to WHY his confident predictions did not come to pass as he had proclaimed! Over the years I have seen some of the most carefully constructed theories collapse like the proverbial house of cards!

Put away your charts and timetables and calculations and dates, O ye saints of God! for they have all failed miserably and none will ever be right. Thank God that He delivers us from all this fantastic nonsense! And in its place He directs our attention to what HE is doing, yes, that which HE IS BECOMING and FULFILLING in His elect. We look, indeed, for HIS GLORIOUS APPEARING, and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory wherein He has appeared unto us, and in the glory in which He shall yet appear in surpassing splendor, praise His wonderful name!

Before the Lord Jesus Christ departed from this visible world, He said, "I will come again." He, as the glorified Christ, repeated these words to John on the lonely island of Patmos. Here He sharpened His promise and delivered it in a dramatic way. "And, behold, I come QUICKLY; and My reward is with Me" (Rev. 22:12). This word "quickly" is from the Greek TACHU meaning shortly, without delay, soon. Why would Christ say He was coming QUICKLY, SHORTLY, SOON AND WITHOUT DELAY if two long milleniums of time were to stretch out between His promise and its fulfillment? If such was the case, He either lied, deceived, or was mistaken. Two thousand years are N-O-T SOON, SHORTLY OR WITHOUT DELAY by the stretch of anybody's imagination His last word to the Churches is: "I am coming quickly," and this is the testimony of the One who is Faithful and true. He makes His coming to be the "NEXT THING" for the Christian. He sets up neither time nor event between Himself and His body. He takes special pains to assure His people that there is no required delay, no parenthesis of time between Him and the saints. He uses a word which from the earliest days of classic Greek signifies "without delay." When therefore, He says, "I am coming (for He uses the present tense),"He says actually, "I am coming, I am already inthe process of coming, and there SHALL BE NO DELAY." It would be impossible to use language which could more adequately, and without reserve, teach that the coming of Christ is a PRESENT AND CONTINUOUS EVENT. An aged minister once said that he did not believe the Lord was coming for 60,000 years. I concluded that he COULD NOT BE WATCHING FOR IT!

As we have pointed out repeatedly in this series, we have been led to think in terms of the first coming and the second coming, whereas the Bible speaks in terms of the progressive revelation of Jesus Christ. Our God does not talk about the "first coming" and the "second coming" - He talks about the progressive revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He states, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto Me who is to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting" (Micah 5:2). Notice His "goings forth." The plural is used. The goings forth of the Lord speak about the Lord Jesus Christ! Now, the idea of "goings" has to do with the onward marching of God - the unfolding of the purpose of God, step by step. This is what is indicated here. This is what history is all about, the progressive revelation of the Christ, the marching forward of God, the ever-increasing unveiling of Himself to man.

We dare not lose sight of the fact that our Lord has already had many comings, many appearings. We have limited the comings of Jesus strictly to two because of our unscriptural and extra-biblical terms "first coming" and "second coming," but the truth is that He came; He continued to come; He comes; He continues to come; He will come; He will continue to come!

Like the sound of many waters, the testimony of the Word of God resounds with abundant and stunning and inescapable evidence that the coming of Christ is not a single event, but includes many different manifestations. His coming to us is a many sided experience. To multitudes He appears as Saviour. They find Him at the crossroads of their lives. They invite Him to come "Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus!" And this coming is just as real and meaningful and powerful as was His coming long centuries ago. To many He becomes their salvation but they never venture any deeper to know Him intimately. They have only a superficial knowledge of Him. To others He appears as Bridegroom. These hear His voice and are moved by His love, and follow on to know Him in deeper measures of intimacy and union. Unto others He appears as Fire, consuming their hay, wood, and stubble, eliminating by the spirit of burning all that is of self and not of God. The coming of the Lord is as many-faceted as the most dazzling crystal of earth.

There is a principle in the scriptures concerning the coming of the Lord. That is, we must spiritually discern and respond to His comings in our midst and in our individual lives. Jesus said, "Occupy till I come." In the midst of all our activity we are to ever look for His comings. We must be spiritually perceptive and awake at all times. Thus, recognizing His presence and turning aside from all that would distract, we can move with Him in His visitation. As we respond to His comings, be it in blessing, refreshing, quickening, enlightenment, transformation, Lordship, fellowship, communion, judgment, correction, stripping, purging or cleansing - we shall come to KNOW HIM in all His wonderful reality, and be made like Him as His own in the earth.

Oh, listen for the sound of His comings! When all hope seems gone, we receive His promise, "I am coming!" When our lives are pitched too and fro in the storms of life, when all around the darkness hangs like a pall, we bear His voice of encouragement, "I am coming!" In every situation and experience, negative or positive, there rings out clearly His faithful assurance, "Fear not, IT IS I!" Truly HE is our expectation! He is coming. He is always coming. Ears of faith can hear the sound of His chariot wheels. And in His faithfulness He comes to accomplish what is needful for the occasion. Hallelujah!

WATCHING FOR HIS COMING

"WATCH THEREFORE: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have WATCHED, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" (Mat. 24:42-44). "WATCH ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh" (Mat. 25:13). "Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not WATCH, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee" (Rev. 3:3).

These significant passages raise the question as to what Jesus meant by WATCHING. For what are the Lord's people to watch? Did He mean that we should relax on some sunny beach, eyes heavenward, until we see some fleecy white cloud bearing Him along? Well, hardly! Obviously, we are not to watch the sky at all. If Jesus were to come in the literal manner suggested by the traditions of the Dark Ages, and if His faithful saints in various parts of the earth were all watching the sky to see Him come, the vast majority of them would, of necessity, be sorely disappointed. Only those within a radius of a few square miles at the most would be able to see, while those outside this small circle - in other parts of the country and the world - would be denied this ecstacy of joy.

Nor does it mean counting dates or de-coding time-prophecies in the Bible. We are so accustomed to thinking of events being fixed by fixed dates, that it seems very difficult to get bold of the fact that the appearing of our Lord is not an event fixed by a date on the calendar. Through the years we have had a lot of SIGN-WATCHERS, though I dare say most of them have missed the meaning of the signs altogether, for they read with the carnal mind, having the understanding darkened. We can be so taken up with the natural, carnal signs of wars and rumors of wars, of financial collapse, of international events, of conspiracies and alliances, political intrigues, of earthquakes and disasters, until we totally miss the real thing that is happening in the realm of SPIRIT, or hearing His voice within, that He might bring us into complete union with Himself, that we might BECOME His salvation unto the ends of the earth. We watch the evening news, and suppose that we are watching for His coming. We hear of the storms, the drought, the crime, the wars, aids, the rise and fall of governments, and our perspective becomes distorted, and fear and doubt seize hold of our souls, until we become more conscious of the darkness of "this world," than we are of the light and glory and triumph of the INDWELLING CHRIST. Any time we are troubled by or anxious about the things coming to pass in the earth, it is obvious that we are WATCHING THE REALM OF DARKNESS rather than LOOKING FOR HIS APPEARING. "And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, BE YE NOT TROUBLED: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet" (Mk. 13:7). The message is just this: These things, the wars and rumours of wars, DO NOT HERALD THE END! These things must needs be, they always have been in this natural realm and will continue in that realm, but they are N-O-T signs of "the end"! Therefore, BE YE NOT TROUBLED! Let God keep you IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH. All the chaos which staggers the imagination MUST NEEDS BE. God would use all these negative forces to develop our trust and confidence, to drive us inward, that we may find God within as the source of our life, our all-in-all, our total sufficiency.

There are five different words in the New Testament which are translated by our English word "watch." Two of these words, TEREO and PARATEREO bear the meaning of "watching" in the sense of keeping the attention focused upon the object of concern. The soldiers at the cross were there for the purpose of keeping watch over Jesus (Mat. 27: 36,54). The Pharisees watched to see if Jesus would perform a miracle on the sabbath (Mk. 3:2; Lk. 6:7). The Jews watched the gates at Damascus that they might apprehend Paul when he attempted to leave the city (Acts 9:24). THESE WORDS WHICH REFER TO THE PHYSICAL ACT OF FIXING ONE'S ATTENTION UPON SOME OBJECT ARE NEVER USED OF THE COMING OF CHRIST. Another word is NEPHO. In I Pet. 4:7 this word is translated in the King James Version as follows: "But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and WATCH unto prayer." This word, however, which is here translated by the word "watch," literally means "to be sober." The Revised Version of 1900 renders this verse: "Be ye therefore of sound mind, and be SOBER unto prayer." In I Pet. 1:3, even the King James Bible translates the word "be sober" in view of the hope of the revelation of Jesus: "be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." NEPHO does not mean "to watch" but to have a sober mind and character.

The two words commonly used to admonish watchfulness with relation to the Lord's coming are GREGOREO and AGRUPNEO. And they have a similar meaning. AGRUPNEO means "to be sleepless" or "wakeful," and thus "to be vigilant." The noun AGRUPNIA, occurs only twice in the New Testament where it is used to refer to loss of sleep and to wakeful nights (II Cor. 6:5; 11:27). The verb is used of spiritual vigilance in Eph. 6:18, and in Heb. 13:17 it refers to the vigilance of ministries over the flock.

The word GREGOREO means "to be awake, raise, or rise up, as from sleep or death." In the deep shadows of the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus' soul was agonizing in the face of the cross, He longed for His closest disciples to "watch" with Him, that is, to rise up from their sleep to join Him in His spiritual battle and in the exercise of prayer (Mat. 26:38-41). In I Thes. 5:10 the word means "to be alive" in contrast to the sleep of death. The exhortation in Rev. 3:2-3 to the Church in Sardis to watch does not mean that they were not spending enough time gazing into the sky so as not to miss the Lord when He comes. The word refers to their spiritual lethargy and their dead condition. Williams correctly translates the passage "WAKE UP, and strengthen what is left, although it is on the very point of dying...if you do not WAKE UP, I will come like a thief, and you will never know the hour when I came unto you." In other words, they would MISS THE TIME OF THEIR VISITATION! As the historic denominations missed the outpouring of the Lord in the Pentecostal Revival, and as the Pentecostals missed His coming as the rain in the great move of God in 1948, so, if we do not stay awake spiritually, we can miss Him in His comings unto us in this great hour, for ye know not when your Lord doth come. But there was a further aspect of His coming like a thief upon the Church at Sardis, for He came in a spiritual visitation in judgment to strip and purge from them the death of the carnal mind; those outer, earthly things they were cherishing above the SPIRIT of Christ. That is what a thief does - he plunders the house, carrying off those things treasured by the householder! He appears as a thief in the night, and there have often been times that He has stolen out of the dark hour of our ignorance some carnal concept, some religious tradition, some Babylonian garment of exquisite design that we have hidden in our tent of experience. Ah, we must stay AWAKE to joyfully receive Him in His coming to us, His appearing in us; if we fail to do so He will come like a thief, He will come into our world uninvited and unannounced, He will overtake us unexpectedly and break up our life style and smash our religious games, exposing our pretense. Those who are AWAKE TO REALITY do not have their houses plundered. These willingly yield up the things they once prized, which now are counted but dung that they might win Christ.

The word GREGOREO also carries the thought of - to gather all the faculties together, become mentally alert with all forces brought into focus. It points directly to that which pertains to the realm of the SOUL - mind, will, emotion and desire. OUR SPIRIT is quickened by HIS SPIRIT, and he that is joined to the Lord is ONE SPIRIT, thus coming into a spirit of life, for indeed, "the spirit IS LIFE" (Rom. 8:10). It must needs follow, therefore, that the life of God IS THE LIFE IN YOUR SPIRIT. All that God is and has is the reality of your spirit. God is closer to you, my brother, my sister, than the air that you breathe, yea! closer even than the blood coursing its way through your veins, for it is written, "GOD dwelleth IN US, and His love is perfected IN US. Hereby know we that we dwell IN HIM, and HE IN US, BECAUSE HE HATH GIVEN US OF HIS SPIRIT" (I Jn. 4:12-13).

But there is right now a process going on in the soul realm - to where all our faculties are being brought into focus ON HIM - awake to Him, being raised into the higher state of GOD CONSCIOUSNESS. The veil that has hung like a pall over the eyes of our understanding is being removed so that our vision become focused on OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN OUR SPIRIT, that we might comprehend the full implication of the oft repeated truth that it is "Christ IN YOU, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). As someone has said, It is an on-going process now, that shall yet have a glorious climax, "when reality breaks through."

Milleniums ago the Spirit of the Almighty posed the question to Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ... when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4,7). Oh that God might anoint the eyes of all His saints to see that there was a day, glorious and wonderful beyond the telling, in which God laid His great plan of creation and redemption. So majestic and sublime was the wisdom that conceived so grand and excellent a plan that the morning stars flooded God's mountain with harmonious canticles of rhapsody, and the sons of God filled the vastness of heaven with their shouts of joy and expectation as they beheld what the end of that plan would be! There is a chord deep within the depths of my spirit today that still vibrates to that shout of joy. There is a consciousness in my redeemed spirit that in that long forgotten past I was there with Him in spirit beholding with wonder the unfolding of His plan. But as a child forgets the day of his birth, so we, too, have forgotten the glorious things of eternity past, because for a purpose we were born into this world and subjected to vanity.

Lowered from the realm of pure spirit, formed of the dust of the ground, made a living soul, subjected to this gross material realm, the forbidding darkness of the carnal mind enshrouded Adam, and from that hour to this darkness has hung like a thick cloud over the hearts of men, and gross darkness has blinded all to the glories of that bright realm of spirit from whence we came. The whole race of men is groping in terrible darkness and confusion and misunderstanding. The eyes of men who hitherto stood erect in the image of God, living by His Spirit and walking in His fellowship, now behold only the outward illusions of the flesh and lust after things that do not pertain to the spirit. The glory of God has departed. As with Adam, God has caused a deep sleep to fall upon the whole race of mankind, as their soul is separated from the spirit, and their eyes are holden to see God, or any heavenly or spiritual thing. Their only remaining ability is to gaze earthward toward all that is unspiritual, natural and dying. The glory of the celestial realm is shut out and even spiritual sense and understanding has vanished from their hearts. The carnal mind is the dark veil of ignorance and spiritual blindness, for it shuts out the celestial world and imprisons men in the consciousness of sin, sorrow, limitation and death.

And yet - heaven itself, and the image and glory of God - are to be found in man, locked up in that outer form of sensuality and earthiness in the same way the germ of life is imprisoned within the outer shell of the seed. Yea, indeed man IS a seed, and within his inner life in spirit is the life of God, the very seed of Elohim, awaiting only that fructification that comes via the fertilization of the seed by the TRUTH the Word of God. "Being born (begotten) again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the WORD (TRUTH) OF GOD, which liveth and abideth for ever" (I Pet. 1:23). On occasions in God's Word we read that the eyes of certain ones were OPENED. Now if the veil of the flesh is over our understanding, which veil is the natural mind, is it not evident that when the veil is cast aside, when the natural mind is put away, "all of us, as with unveiled faces we mirror THE GLORY OF THE LORD, are TRANSFORMED INTO THE SAME LIKENESS, FROM GLORY TO GLORY, EVEN AS DERIVED FROM THE LORD, THE SPIRIT" (II Cor 3:18, Weymouth). And notice this: "Now the Lord means the SPIRIT; and where the spirit of the Lord is, freedom (from the veil of flesh) is" (II Cor. 3:17, Weymouth). Those who renounce the consciousness of the natural world in order to discover, experience, develop and nurture to fullness the inner life of spirit are no ordinary people. They "walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit," for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made them free from the law of sin and death. They have come out of the fleshly corral of the outer world of illusion and unreality and escaped the prison house of human tradition and understanding, to live in a spiritual realm where the light of God illumines mind and heart, effecting life and transformation. To "walk after the flesh" means that the outward, visible, tangible realm is your source, and may I add that it is the source only of darkness and death. To "walk after the spirit" means to make the inward spirit realm your source, and it is the source of life, light, truth, reality, glory and incorruptibility. If you, like Israel, are lusting after outward things, even an outward God and external blessings, you will never grow to maturity nor come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Thank God, the quickenings of His Spirit are causing us to BE RAISED, out of the sleep of death in old Adam, standing up again in Christ, getting us all-together! We have been so fragmented in ourselves, vacillating back and forth between the flesh and the spirit, with our soulish nature frustrated, emotions spent, intellectually exhausted, our will divided, our minds confused, our desires unfulfilled. But now, praise God! HE is saying to us all, WATCH! AWAKE! RISE UP! ASCEND IN CONSCIOUSNESS! GET YOURSELF TOGETHER! THE LORD IS COMING! HE IS ARISING OUT OF HIS PLACE IN YOUR HEART! HE IS ARISING FROM WITHIN AS THE DAYSTAR! LIGHT IS DAWNING! THE CHRIST IS APPEARING! YOUR GOD IS COMING TO SAVE YOU! AND HIS APPEARING IS FROM W-I-T-H-I-N! It is the hour to gather all our faculties and focus them on HIM - THE SPIRIT WITHIN - and all that He has and brings, praise His wonderful name!

Out of the stupor of minding the flesh, now let us AWAKE and RISE UP to put on the mind of Christ, with our will one in the will of God, our thought-processes renewed into the truth as it is in Christ, our emotions girded up into the joy and peace of the unchanging spirit, our desires seeking only those things which are above, no longer setting any affection on the passing realm of the earthly. When Jesus says, "WATCH therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come," it is the SPIRIT exhorting the SOUL to AWAKE from its narcosis of ignorance that it might become alert and aware of the activity of spirit, bringing the life and authority of God to deliver, heal and restore to soundness even the soul and body realms. Awake, O my soul! and LOOK FOR HIS APPEARING. Many dear saints are "waiting" for Him but they are not "watching." They believe He is coming, but they know not when nor how, so they doze on in drowsiness. He will appear some day, somewhere, they think, so they wait. To be "ready" or "perceptive" one must WATCH. A man in a railroad station may be waiting for the train and fall fast asleep, but the man who is watching for the train will be wide awake. WATCH! I say.

We have passed through a time of great darkness. Thank God, the first rays of light of the new day are painting the eastern sky! Thank God, a few of His chosen ones have arisen to behold the glories of the dawn and to drink in the intoxicating freshness of the morn. But the popular churches are still lost in dreams. They have not awakened. They know not of the dawn. And the Word describes them and their shepherds in very uncomplimentary terms. The heads of the churches are called "the drunkards of Ephraim" (Isa. 28:1-14). Then in Isa. 29:9-11 we are told, "they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your heads, the seers, hath He covered. And all vision hath become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed." And when these drunken shepherds spread tables for their flocks, instead of those tables being loaded with good wholesome spiritual food, the prophet says, "All tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is NO PLACE CLEAN" (Isa. 28:8).

But we who are of the day, and who are not lovers of the drunkenness of false doctrine nor sleepers of the night, have a higher heritage. "We are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as dd others" (I Thes. 5:5-6). We who have received the love of the truth are heirs to a higher calling. We have privileges, and we have duties to perform. We must be about our Father's business. There must be a parting of the ways. It is time to forsake the shame and error, and time to look up, time to arise and shine. The day is at hand. The night is spent. We must go forth and lead the way for all who will follow. "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean" (Isa. 52:1). Because the church today has not received of God's enlightenment, we find Christians in the pathetic state of darkness. Because Christians today, whether baptized in God's Spirit, or not, have stopped far short of God's fullness, and are still spiritual babes, they, with few exceptions, do not discern the spiritual side of life. Their human minds comprehend the natural side, but the spiritual is veiled from their view. They have not arisen above the mists of night. But the day which we have now entered calls for all who will to awake, and to go forth, beholding a more glorious scene.

This more glorious scene of which I speak is of a people who are "looking for Him" and have FOUND HIM! "By night on my bed I sought Him whom my soul loveth: I sought Him, but I found Him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek Him whom my soul loveth: I sought Him, but I found Him not . The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found Him whom my soul loveth: I held Him, and would not let Him go..." (S. of S. 3:1-5).

Symbolically, the Shulamite maiden in the S. of S. sets forth the bride of Christ seeking a more intimate relationship with the Lord. Individually, the bride bespeaks of the soul, the feminine area of our life, seeking the relationship of love (union) with the Lord who is the spirit. That the Shulamite symbolizes the SOUL is clear when you consider how many times she says, "I will seek HIM whom MY SOUL loveth." "By night upon my bed I sought Him whom my SOUL loveth." The word used for bed is a Hebrew word denoting "love bed" (Gen. 49:4; Num. 31:17). It is UNION she desires! "By night" catches the force of the Hebrew plural "nights" as well as "night after night," picturing "the dark night of the soul." The soul arises to go about the city, and to seek Him whom she loveth in the broad ways, and in every likely and unlikely place. Literally, this refers to the city of Jerusalem and the broad places at the gates of the city, where citizens gathered to transact business. Spiritually, it is the assembly, the church, or gathering places of spiritual enrichment, blessing and instruction.

The watchmen mentioned in this beautiful passage COULD NOT TELL THE SEEKER where to go to find the Lord, and in this respect they represent the preachers of the church system in our day who, though they go all about the city, compassing land and sea in search of proselytes, have no answer to the seeker's problem, no eternal reality to offer, for that answer, important above all others, they do not know. But "IT WAS BUT A LITTLE THAT I PASSED FROM THEM, and I found Him whom my soul loveth!" Oh yes, you will have to go beyond the ignorance of the so-called gospel of today's religious systems if you are going to find the Lord, the Spirit, and come into union with Him. Sermons and explanations are but vanity here, for God is found only by those who love Him enough to search for Him until they find Him. "Unto them that look for Him shall He appear..." Neither will such seekers find Him in the broad ways, or with the watchmen, or in any other religious realm where men suppose Him to be. Those places leave us high and dry on the sand, proud in the knowledge that is nothing short of ignorance and foolishness with God. But men who will turn inward and find union with God in the INNER CHAMBER of the human spirit will discover that the glory light of His life within fades into nothingness the endless doctrines and instructions of men. Those blessed souls who truly find the ALL SUFFICIENCY OF THE CHRIST WITHIN are wiser in God and the things of God than all the doctors of the law and the ministers of religion, and richer far than the rarest treasures of earth.

O my soul! WATCH for HIS coming. "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame" (Rev. 16:15). This gives us the picture of a Roman sentry supposed to be on guard duty through the night. They wore a garment, a robe, a uniform; the robe was the profession they made to be guards, the insignia or proof of their position. There was a captain. At certain and unannounced hours the captain made his rounds to inspect and relieve the watch; some times he took one guard and left another. At times a guard became weary and slumped down. Presently he was asleep. Is there anything more despicable and criminal than to sleep at the post of duty? What must be said of a captain who sleeps on the bridge? Or a soldier who sleeps at his post? Or a light-house keeper who sleeps in the night? Of a soul who sleeps in the deceptive bed of religious activities, unaware of the movings and wooings of the spirit? When the captain of the guard discovered the sleeping sentry, as the custom was, he grabbed his tunic from him without waking him. When he arose his shame was evident, the captain had come and gone, had stripped off his profession, made him naked and put him to shame.

SO we are exhorted to "watch" in view of the Lord's coming. Those who are faithless will be stripped of their profession, naked and ashamed before the bare light of day. He comes like a thief to steal from the "professing" church the garment that has under it no it possession." Because He is coming to snatch away the mere profession and make it naked to the gaze of judgment He warns all in the Church to be on the watch, and for each one to keep his garment; that is, to "hold fast" the profession he has made. "Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown" (Rev. 3:11). Cling fervently to the hope within you today, dear child of God. Embrace and never let go the reality you have found in the Christ within. Trade it not for the worthless tinsel pandered by the harlot system in the broad ways of Mystery Babylon. Treasure the truth you know as you would treasure the most priceless gem of earth, and guard it with all the vigilance of your being, for there, and there alone, is reality, life, immortality and glory eternal.

"It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found Him whom my soul loveth: I held Him, and would not let Him go..."

So many people wonder, Will Jesus come in my lifetime? Will I live to see the return of the Lord? Well, start living and allow Jesus to come again in your lifetime! How many lifetimes do you have? You have only this one lifetime - let Jesus come in your lifetime! As someone has said, Let Jesus come in your lifetime and begin to have the TIME OF YOUR LIFE! Then you can cease gazing up into the skies wondering when Jesus is going to come, and you can step into the NOW of God and begin your progression back into God where He is all-in-all in your life. NOW is always the best time to live. TODAY is always the best time to walk with God. THE PRESENT is always the best time to see and know the Lord. I have this peculiar trait of enjoying life NOW. You can dream of tomorrow and you can look back into the past, but all you have or will ever have is RIGHT NOW. It is always NOW. God is NOW. Get into TODAY, into God's NOW and begin living JESUS HAS COME!

 

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