KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES

          Only the spiritually ambitious man will lay hold upon the kingdom of God.  To be spiritually ambitious is to earnestly desire God’s best — in His way and time, according to His purpose, and always and only for His glory.  It means to seek first the kingdom of God in all things!  It means to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength.  It means to come only to do the will of the Father, and to do only what we see the Father doing.  To be spiritually ambitious is the very spirit of sonship!  There is a place for ambitious men in  the kingdom of God!  Jesus explained the process, “Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”  He did not turn the man away from the ambition to be great.  He simply told him how greatness can be achieved — become the servant of all!

          Then there are degrees of this greatness.  If you want to be great, be “the servant of all.”  If you want to be first, be “the bond-slave of all.”  The servant and the bond-slave represent degrees of self-giving, and they, in turn, represent degrees of greatness attained, namely, “great” and “first.”  Beyond that is a level to which Jesus Himself attained.  “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.”  In other words, since He went deeper than being servant of all, or a bond-slave of all, in that He gave His very life, so He becomes the Son of God upon the throne of the heavens, which is more than being great, or first, among a group — it is the acme of being!  So the door is open for ambition.  You may be least, or less, or great, or greater, or greatest, or first, or a son of God upon the throne!

          Yet, it does not mean that we give in order to get — that is not the kingdom of God at all!  We do not put on humility and serve others with the motive of becoming great, attaining to exalted positions of power and honor.  If we are serving to gain advantage, to receive a position of authority over others, for the sake of authority, then we are not truly humble servants at all, but devious, cunning, crafty, deceptive, scheming, snaky, contriving, plotting, insincere hypocrites — and our motive is all wrong!  That is not how the kingdom works!  We do not serve to be made great — we serve because we are great with God’s greatness!

          This is not a position of exercising power over others but of serving them.  Serving is the power and the greatness!  The motivation of the desires of those who are truly called to sonship is the same as the Captain of our salvation.  Filled with the great love of God,  the desire to attain to this position is to give ourselves in sacrifice and service for the deliverance and restoration of the rest of God’s creatures.  Having attained to this deliverance from the bondage of corruption as the firstfruits of the creation, our only desire is to labor together with the Lord in the deliverance of the rest of His creation, to lift them up to the same level of life as He has lifted us.  The heart of God, the heart of unconditional, unlimited, and sacrificial love and all goodness, is the greatest heart in the universe.  It is not serving that makes us great, it is true divine greatness that causes us to serve!  Oh, the mystery of it! 

          Let us see how beautifully Jesus taught this by His own example.  Everything is prepared and set in order for the last supper, to the very water to wash the feet of the guests, as their custom was.  Christ and His disciples gather in the upper room to eat and fellowship together on this solemn night.  Each one waits for the other, for there is no servant available to perform the customary service of washing the guest’s feet.  Washing feet was one of the basest tasks in the culture of Jesus’ day.  It was a job usually done by a house slave.  Just as we offer a visitor hospitality, so in Jesus’ time they customarily washed a visitor’s feet.  Washing feet was undesirable responsibility: the roads were dusty well enough.  But the filth of the road was more than dust!  The transportation of that day was the camel, the donkey, the horse, and the mule.  It takes little imagination to understand that the streets and roads were littered with their manure.  The traveler’s feet would be covered with this as well as being caked with dust.  The washing of feet was assigned to the lowliest slave because it meant handling the filth of the streets.  This job was thought to be beneath the dignity of the “good man of the house.”

          Not one of the twelve thinks of humbling himself to do the job, for, after all, are they not the honored ones, the disciples of the very Son of God, the flaming apostles of the kingdom, the future rulers of the world!  Even at the table they were full of the thought — who should be greatest in the kingdom that was then beginning to dawn.  Suddenly, unexpectedly Jesus stood up from the table, and began to take off His inner layer of garments until He was stripped to the waist, wearing only His loin cloth.  He then took a large towel and wrapped it around Himself, poured water into a large brass basin, and, beginning with one of the men at the end of the table, laid heavy emphasis upon His words of a few moments before, “I am in the midst of you as one that serves.”  Oh, the wonder of it! on which angels gazed with adoring wonder.  Christ, the Creator and King of the universe, at whose word all worlds and galaxies flooded the infinity of space, who might with one word have compelled any man or legions of angels to do His bidding, Himself chose the slave’s place as His own, taking the soiled, filthy feet in His own holy hands, and washes them.  It was to this task that the Lord of glory stooped!

          But listen more carefully to the divine why and how of this wondrous spectacle.  Jesus does it in the full consciousness of His divine glory, for the apostle John records, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, rose…”  What a startling combination of sublime cause with curious consequence!  How could Jesus have done this?  How could the Master and the King of the universe wash dung from His disciple’s feet?  He could do it because HE WAS SECURE IN WHO HE WAS.  He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands.  He knew that He had come from the Father and that He was the Son of God and was soon to ascend the throne.  He knew that He was going back to the Father after He defeated sin, sickness, death, hell, and the grave.  He didn’t have to prove anything to Himself or anyone else.  His life had already proven who He was to those who had eyes to see.  And He didn’t stoop so low to become a tyrant, to rule over this world by force.  Oh, no!  He came to heal and bless and deliver and transform, to reign by serving!  Ah, yes, my beloved, once we thoroughly know who we are there is no need to proclaim it, no need to sound a trumpet, no need to wear a badge, to remind people of how special we are.  Once we know that we are the sons of God WE ARE FREED TO SERVE!

          You see, it wasn’t in spite of the fact of His greatness that Jesus took the place of the servant — it was because of His greatness!  The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of the Father’s heart.  The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of divine love and humility.  The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of sonship!  For the hands into which the Father gives all things nothing is common or unclean.   Because one is the offspring of the God of all grace, compassion, love, mercy, and goodness, in whose hands all things are given, it is not difficult for him to stoop so low.  In this taking the form of a servant, Jesus proclaims the divine order of the kingdom of God and the nature of the kings and priests who reign.  The higher one stands in attainment in the kingdom, the more it is his joy to be servant of all!  “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Mat. 20:27).  “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mat. 23:11).

          The higher I rise in the consciousness of being like Christ, the deeper shall I stoop to serve the creation around me.  The reason why we so often do not bless others is that we wish to appear to them as their superiors in blessing, calling, or rank.  But that is not the spirit of sonship!  The truth is that only as a son can we truly be a servant.  It was the Son of God who assumed the form of a servant and humbled Himself.  Ah, beloved elect of the Lord, walk among men as sons of the Most High God!  A son of God is only in the world to show forth his Father’s glory, to demonstrate how God-like and how blessed it is to live only and always to find a way to love, bless, redeem, and restore God’s fallen creation.  Someone has well said, “God has three sorts of servants in the world: some are slaves, and serve Him from fear; others are hirelings, and serve for wages; and the last are sons, who serve because they love.”

          I once read a story which beautifully illustrates why the mighty God would stoop so low as to appear as a servant in His sons in order to restore creation.  A little child was handed over to another by her own father — not because he wanted to part with her, but they were very poor, and so that she could have sufficient food and clothing, a good education and opportunity in life, he gave her into a rich man’s keeping, letting her be adopted by the rich man as his own daughter.  He then hired himself as a servant to the rich man where he was given a small cottage to live on the grounds.  He was always there and daily kept watch over that little life until she matured; and the girl, as she grew up, always felt a peculiar bond with him and that she could always rely upon the unselfish love and wise counsel of him who seemed but a serving man.  Her father, as she supposed him to be, was cold, demanding, and even cruel.  The day came when he repudiated her in a fit of rage because she had brought what he perceived as shame upon his name.  In that dark moment the serving man stepped forward, and flung his arms around her, shouting, with the fierceness of righteous indignation to the man who had so cruelly abused her, “She never was your child!”  Then the girl knew why it was that she had felt such acceptance, concern, care, peace, and joy in the presence of the serving-man.  She had listened to his language of love many a time, not knowing the speaker was her real father!

          Old father flesh, old father Adam, old father the devil repays all men with cruelty, injustice, baseness, lack, pain, fear, sorrow, and death.  But there is a better Father — the One that sent you here, the one who has watched over you, cared for you, counseled you, blessed you, helped you, entreated you, wooed you and overshadowed you with His love as you have passed through this world of tears and trouble.  Even when you knew it not, He was already your Father!  And in Jesus He came as a servant to minister to your need, to lift and redeem and restore you unto Himself and His kingdom.  And now, bless His name, He comes in many sons to reveal His heart of love to the whole vast creation and restore all things.  We, as sons of God, are among men as Him that serveth!

          This is the great miracle of sonship!  It unites greatness and humility in a divine combination.  It is the figure of an ox in the midst of a glorious throne!  Oh, the wonder of it!  This is the new creation in Christ Jesus!  The great secret lies in the indwelling spirit of Jesus.  Being made partakers of His nature and mind we are able to stand before Pilate, and when he says, “Are you a king?” we answer, “Thou sayest it.”  On the same night it is possible to kneel before our brethren with a towel and a basin of water, washing their feet — cleansing their walk — in the spirit of service and humility.  Only in sonship do power and humility find their true relationships and their true balance.  Have you ever seen the President of the United States cutting the grass at the White House?  How about Queen Elizabeth scrubbing the floors of her palace?  Or the Prime Minister of Canada cleaning the toilet?  We don’t expect people of high position to do lowly and seemingly unimportant tasks.  Yet Jesus has revealed the law of a Higher Kingdom, a kingdom where power and servanthood are joined together in a divine outpouring of love, grace, and goodness!

          Lyn Gitchel, a dear friend of ours in Pennsylvania, once shared a precious point about the meaning of what we call ministry.  She wrote, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many.  The whole idea that we have of “ministry” has got warped up in these days, and I believe we shall have to have a new picture of what ministry really is put into our minds by God.  The word ministry comes from two Latin words, minis, (from which we get minus), which means lesser, and tri, which is the Latin word for servant.  Now, when you think about it, a LESSER SERVANT is a whole lot different from what we think of when the word ministry is put in our minds.  We think of  accomplished pastors, famous evangelists, large meetings, crowds with a tremendous flow of miracles and worship, and people that can really hold your attention by their great preaching — and then we find that the word means LESSER SERVANT!

          “The impact of this hit me recently and I’ll share the experience with you.  For most of my life I have served in a professional capacity.  Before I was an ordained minister I was a registered nurse.  I have never really worked as a servant of any kind, until recently.  A friend of mine was doing a little job here in town which involves helping an elderly lady who has had a stroke.  You need to help her in whatever capacity she needs, from housework to bathing her.  My friend had to leave town and, to help her out, I took the job.  Nearly a year later I am still doing it!  One day I was kneeling on the bathroom floor drying her feet when suddenly I said to myself, ‘Whatever am I doing here — I’m supposed to be an Ordained Minister!’  Immediately the Spirit of God answered within my heart, ‘You wanted to minister, didn’t you?’

          “The time has come when we must understand that ministry is not preaching but servanthood.  We are going to have to learn all over again what it means to serve people with the same heart of love that Jesus had when He walked among men.  It was not beneath Him to lift a woman caught in adultery to her feet and speak a word of reassurance to her, nor was it beneath Him to eat at the house of an ungodly tax-gatherer and his friends.  Jesus did not hire a huge auditorium and put out publicity announcing great meetings.  He simply moved among men and women where they were and touched them with love, and healing, and compassion”   — end quote.

          There is the story of a man who desired from the Lord a true understanding of heaven and hell.  One night in a dream he was told that he would soon receive this understanding.  He was taken into a room where a few dozen people were sitting around a huge kettle of stew.  Each one had only a long-handled spoon to eat with, and their arms were straightened so they could not bend them and bring the food into their mouths.  The people were extremely upset and angry at their plight, shouting and cursing those who had done this to them.  This, he was told, was hell.  Then he was taken into another room which would be a picture to him of heaven.  To his surprise, the room was identical.  The large pot was there, as well as people with stiff arms and long  spoons.  There was one major difference, however.  In this room, each one would smile and lovingly dip into the stew with his or her long-handled spoon and feed his fellow on the other side of the kettle!  In this day we are being translated from hell to heaven within ourselves as we learn the ways of the kingdom which is the kingdom of love — by SERVING!

          Every new year the Queen of England publishes her Honors List, conferring titles and decorations upon men and women who have rendered distinguished service to mankind or to the country or to the political party in power.  I have in mind a little Honors List of my own!  There is not much point in publishing it, because you will never have heard of these people.  They include a dear sister who was poor in this world’s goods, who lived in a little house that approached being a shack, yet was committed to God’s purposes for this Day and vibrant with her love of God.  She was always sharing the Word with the neighborhood children who graced her porch, continually cooking and sharing with others, fixing up and maintaining a building for the gatherings of the saints, entertaining the ministries the Lord sent their way, and encouraging everyone.  She never murmured or complained about anything that came her way.

          Honor also goes to a brother who prayed earnestly and is credited with “praying down” a mighty move of the Spirit of God many years ago, by which others with whom he was associated were propelled into world-wide fame, while he unpretentiously cherished the deep truths and hope of sonship and the reconciliation of all things, continuing in prayer, setting an example of righteousness and humility before his family and community, regularly visiting the widows, orphans, and shut-ins.  I honor another brother whose name I do not even know who, during our Conferences in Florida years ago, would sweep and clean the meeting place until the wee hours of the morning (without being asked — it wasn’t his responsibility!), while most of the brethren and the preachers were enjoying rich fellowship over a mid-night spread of food at the local restaurants.  The one thing that these quiet heroes have in common is that they lived the spirit of servanthood without pretense or any motive other than a pure love and the deep desire to bless creation and advance the kingdom of God into men’s lives.  Truly such are to be called great in the kingdom of heaven!  In the spirit of these precious ones we see THE FACE OF THE OX IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE!

          Many Bible commentators endeavor to make a case for the idea that the characteristics of the four living creatures are portrayed in the four Gospels: Matthew showing us Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah; Mark revealing the Lord as the ox, the servant of all; Luke portraying the Lord as the Man above all men; and John manifesting Christ as the eternal Word, or the flying eagle.  Personally, I find very little ground for this.  The truth is, if I were picking one of the four Gospels as a portrait of Christ as the ox-servant, I would choose the book of Matthew.  There are more passages concerning greatness through servanthood in the book of Matthew than in all the other three Gospels combined!  You will note that nearly all the scriptures I have quoted on the subject in this message are taken from the gospel of Matthew!

          Christ was the greatest, yet He took the place of the lowest.  He who stooped from the highest heaven, not only to earth, but to the deepest hell, who descended into the deepest depths to seek for erring and sinful men, is greatest.  That is why He exercises authority today in the heavens and on the earth!  He now takes the highest place as the Head of the body, the High Priest of our profession, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the Head of all principality and power.  He is the greatest!  And He is still the servant of all!

                                                He that would rise to be the highest,

                                                Must first come down to be the lowest,

                                                And then ascend to be the highest

                                                By keeping down to be the lowest.

          God has called a people aside in this hour and brought them to a place of brokenness, humility, and nothingness in the eyes of the world and the church systems of man.  We have obeyed the word the apostle Peter admonished, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (I Pet. 5:6).  God is about to exalt His sons, but it shall be the exaltation of humility.

          Many years ago amidst a great moving of the Spirit of God the revelation of sonship fell with wonder upon our ears and burst with glory within our hearts.  We sat enraptured for hours, day after day, and were taught by the Spirit about the Father and His purposes and about that elect company He has called, apprehended and chosen to be His sons to rule with Him in His kingdom and restore all things.  We learned that these sons would have power unlimited — power over everything!  Power over sin, power over sickness, power over demons, power over the elements, power over the nations, and power over death.  We were going to rule and reign in power, and our eyes sparkled like diamonds in the noonday sun and our hearts swelled with joy in expectation of the wonderful position and authority we would soon have in the kingdom.  We could think and talk of nothing else but the power we would have, and in our glorying we tried at times to usurp and demonstrate this power.  We were intoxicated with illusions of grandeur as we pressed our way into the kingdom and the exalted position of sitting on the throne with Jesus and ruling the world and the vastnesses of infinity forever.

          Little did we understand in those early days that the way up is down!  The carnal mind would have us believe that the way up is up.  Thus we have pressed our way into ministry, pressed our way into the kingdom, stood on the promises, demanded of God our “rights,” presuming even to command God to do this and that, and sought to seize the throne.  It is true, elect of the Lord, that God wants to take us UP — high into the realms of God — UP to the throne — but God would have us know that the way UP is always DOWN!  The one who serves the people well as a priest is the one who will also reign well as a king.  “They shall be priests…and they shall reign.”    That is the order!  Though He is calling us to be kings with authority over all, yet our inner spirit must be that of a servant, that we might freely minister out of a contrite spirit and a broken heart the compassion and love of God right down where creation is.  Do you want to know what manifest sonship is?  CONSIDER JESUS!  Jesus was the most lowly and humble of all men, and also the most powerful and authoritative.  He was not a super-duper-elite-country-club Son of God.  He didn’t bounce onto the platform under the lights with a flare of worldly showmanship and then disappear out the back door to escape contact with the people.  Oh, no!  He was the ox in the throne bearing the burden, pulling the wagon, plowing the fields, and giving His life to be meat for mankind.  That is the mystery!

          The following prophecy from the late Norene Nicholls has come into my hands at this time, and it surely speaks for this Day.  “A strange and wondrous thing is about to come, for the Lord has spoken to those that will hear, and their ears have been sharpened.  There is a gathering of the royal family, and the shepherds of Israel shall become rulers on the thrones.  They have stood in desolate places and listened to the low sound of the sheep — even a little flock in a wilderness place, but now it shall change.  The shepherds who have proven their worth in aloneness shall now come forth to be acknowledged of those who would not have Me to reign over them in times past.  Behold the thing is at the door!  Some have chosen high places for themselves, but others have allowed the Lord to choose for them, and thus have they been separated from their brethren and lost to sight.  But now shall events bring forth the deserted ones and show them before kings who are really not kings at all.  The scepter of these kings shall be righteousness and the girdle of faithfulness shall be upon their loins.  They shall be recognized, not because they are of great stature nor commanding of personality, but they shall be recognized because the Spirit of the Lord is upon them!

          Let us consider these three ingredients in intelligence.  The first is understanding.  Understanding is an ability and function of the mind.  Without mind there can be no understanding!  A man’s understanding  corresponds precisely to the condition, development, and quality of his mind.  Every created life form possesses mind and the understanding of the creature is limited by the quality of its mind.  Quality of mind is first and foremost an inherited characteristic.  For instance, a cat thinks like a cat, knows as a cat, understands as a cat, and acts like a cat because it was born a cat, therefore possessing the brain and mind of a cat.  Until recently we had a cat in our home.  This cat would come and lie in our room or curl up on my lap while I watched the evening news.  While I was very interested in the news stories, the cat had positively no interest at all!  He couldn’t care less!  It’s not that he didn’t see the pictures flashing across the screen or hear the sound from the speakers, he could see and hear just fine, but he had no understanding of them, so he just curled up and went to sleep!  It simply isn’t possible for cats to understand things human.   Humans are of a different and higher order than are cats.  Cats may see men, and observe their movements, yet there is no common ground of knowledge.  The cat has no true comprehension of what it sees.  It discerns only things pertaining to its own realm.  It has positively no understanding of the ways of man, or of the meaning of his movements, or words, or plans.  Cat minds function on the level of cat nature, while human minds function on the plane of human nature!

          With what truth did Paul write to the saints, saying, “For who could really understand a man’s inmost thoughts except the spirit of man himself?  How much less could anyone understand the thoughts of God except the very Spirit of God?  We have now received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God Himself, so that we can understand God’s generosity towards us” (I Cor. 2:11-12, Moffatt).  The spirit of man in the unregenerate individual is truly the offspring of God who is spirit, yet it does not serve the Lord, for it is in darkness, and knows not from whence it came nor who or what it is.  This is easy to understand!  If a human baby were placed in a dark room and kept there in captivity without contact with other humans or the outside world, it would grow up knowing neither from whence it came or what it is.  It  would be unable to talk, unable to understand those who do talk, unable to walk, and incapable of functioning at all in the human world.  It would be less than an animal!  But let someone discover its plight,  give it light, get it in contact with other humans, expose it to the world about it, shower it with love and attention,  and it will grow up comprehending and corresponding to the world  to which it belongs!  That has been the precise state of every man born into this world of Adamic consciousness!  Man’s spirit, truly the offspring of God, has been buried, concealed and locked up in the dark room of the dreadful deep beneath the outer shell of our soulical consciousness and the limiting confines of the mortal body.  There has been no fellowship with that spiritual world from which we came and to which we pertain!   But our Lord Jesus Christ is the One who has come to rescue us, and He is that “TRUE LIGHT which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (Jn. 1:9).  The wise man has told us that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord (Prov. 20:27).  Ah, when HE lights our candle, when our spirit is quickened by His Spirit, there is awakening, illumination, comprehension, and we begin to see into realms of spiritual life and reality to which, heretofore, we had been blind.  This involves more by far than someone informing us that we are a spirit, a spiritual being, and that we should therefore actively begin to live out of our spiritual reality and identity instead of from the intellect of our soul and the desires of the body.  That would be like someone sticking their head in through the window where the little child I described is in captivity, and saying to it, “You’re a human being, you can talk like a human being, walk like a human being, act like a human being, now get up and act like it!”  That’s not enough!  It is not by mere information or human effort that we can live out of spirit — the spiritual life!  The awakening we must receive involves the sovereign, dynamic, living, quickening, redemptive operation of God within our spirit effecting the actual standing up within us of a new creature raised up by the power of God through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost (Titus 3:5).  Regeneration is a renewal that consists of the inbreathing of God’s Spirit into our spirit, effecting union with His life.  Only man, of all God’s glorious creation, can be penetrated and lighted up within by the mind of God, to have an understanding of things unseen by the inspiration of the eternal Father, in one word, to be spirit, and have the consciousness of God, and contact and communication with the heavenly realm, being irradiated, permeated, filled, enabled, glorified by His infinite Spirit and His divine fullness.  It is indeed wonderful!

          And then after men receive of God’s Spirit, and are quickened and awakened by it, the depth of their knowledge and understanding is wholly in proportion to their growth and development in the realm of the spirit.  The mind of Christ must be “put on” and we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Upon being born again we realize that we are actual sons of God, yet babes, “babes in Christ.”  And the understanding of newborn babes is limited in the extreme!  They cannot have a deep knowledge and comprehension until they have passed through many experiences, been schooled in the wisdom of heaven, grown up into the stature of mature divine life, and been filled with the mind of God, the spiritual mind being fully developed within.

We who have received of God’s Spirit have been renewed in the spirit of our mind, that is, we have taken on a new mind originating in a newly quickened Christ-consciousness, so that we now think and act as an entirely new creation, a new man, a new creature.  As we have followed on to know the Lord, more and more we have found our darkened minds giving way to this new creation mind which is the mind of Jesus Christ.  Paul wrote, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  The mind that was in Jesus was the Father’s mind!  Because He was fully possessed of His Father’s mind, He was able to say, “I and the Father are one.”  This is the reality into which every son of God is being brought!  In every son who reigns with Christ in those glorious ages to come, it will be the mind of our heavenly Father that will rule the world and all things and all realms.  The Father has purposed that He will rule the universe by that man, the many-membered Christ,  whom He has chosen, and those sons, every one, will be possessed with the Father’s mind!

          All understanding is in the mind, therefore, the understanding of God is in the mind of Christ, which is the mind of the Spirit, which is the mind of the new creation man. We do not understand the spiritual realities of the world of our heavenly Father with our natural minds.  It is not the same mind that understands how to drive an automobile that understands the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  Oh, no!  It is the new mind, the spiritual mind that comprehends things spiritual.  When the firstborn Son of God received the seven spirits of God He received the spirit of understanding (Isa. 11:2).  This was not the understanding of the same mind that made furniture in Joseph’s carpenter shop!  This spirit of understanding is the very MIND OF GOD — to know and understand as God knows and understands!  The mind of Christ is being developed today within every son from one stage to another until we understand all things  as our heavenly Father understands!  Can you not see the mystery?  THIS IS DIVINE INTELLIGENCE, THE FACE OF A MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE!

          The second ingredient in intelligence is knowledge.  All of the Lord’s people are admonished seek after the knowledge of the Lord!  The apostle Peter exhorts, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (II Pet. 3:18).  Paul’s earnest desire for the saints was  that they might “walk worthy of the Lord, increasing in the knowledge of God” Col. 1:10).  Something of the magnitude of this knowledge of God is expressed in these words of inspiration, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!  For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counselor?  For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever!” (Rom. 11:33-36). 

          As the mighty oak lies hidden in the tiny acorn, so the knowledge of God lies concealed in the seed of Christ planted in the womb of our hearts.  As the great oak inches heavenward year after year, so the knowledge of God bursts forth from realm to realm out of the life of God in our spirits.  “Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col. 3:9-10).  Renewed in knowledge!  What a revelation that is!  And the knowledge that is being renewed in us is the knowledge we possessed when once we were in the image of God!  That is the clear meaning of those words.  The new man is being renewed in knowledge, and that knowledge restores to us the consciousness of God’s image and likeness.