Chapter 11 | Table of Contents | Chapter 13

I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. (Acts 20:29-30 RSVA)

So it is in this fallen state of the gospel church that with these proud endowments of fallen nature, the classic scholar full fraught with pagan light and skill, comes forth to play the critic and orator with the simplicity of salvation mysteries--mysteries that mean nothing else but the inward work of the triune God in the soul of man, nor any other work there but the raising up of a dead Adam into a living Christ of God.

However, to make way for parts, criticism and language-learning, to have the full management of salvation doctrines, the well-read scholar gives out that the ancient way of knowing the things of God, taught and practiced by fishermen-apostles, is obsolete. Teaching that these humble men indeed wanted to have divine knowledge from the immediate continual operation of the Holy Spirit, but this state was only for a time until genius and learning entered into the pale of the church. In this way of thinking we behold, "the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place!" For as soon as the doctrine is set up and so far as it is received that man's natural parts and acquired learning have full right and power to sit in the divinity chair and to guide men into that truth that was once the only office and power of the Holy Spirit, it may with the greatest truth be said that the kingdom of God is entirely shut up and only a kingdom of scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites can come instead of it.

For by this doctrine the whole nature and power of gospel religion is much more denied than by setting up the infallibility of the pope. Though his claim to infallibility is false, even though he claims it from and under the Holy Spirit, but the Protestant scholar has his divinity knowledge and his power in the kingdom of truth from himself, his own logic and learned reason. Christ has nowhere instituted an infallible pope and it is fully certain that He has nowhere spoken one single word or given the least power to logic learning or the natural powers of man in His kingdom. He has never said to these men, "Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," and never said to them, "go you and teach all nations," no more than He has ever said to wolves, "go you and feed my sheep."

The Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand

Christ indeed said of Himself that according to the flesh, it is expedient for you that I go away. But where has he said of Himself according to the spirit, "It is also expedient for you that I go away, that your own natural abilities and learned reason may guide you into all truth?" This is nowhere said unless logic can prove it from these words "Without me you can do nothing," and "Lo, I am with you to the end of the world."

The first and main doctrine of Christ and His apostles was to tell the Jews, "that the kingdom of God was at hand," or was come to them. Proof enough surely that the church of the Jews was not the kingdom of God even though it was established by God's appointment and under laws of His own commanding. But why not, when it was thus set up by God? It was because it had human and worldly things in it,, consisted of carnal ordinances, and had only types, figures and shadows of a kingdom of God that was to come. Of this kingdom Christ says, "My kingdom is not of this world," and as a proof of it he adds, "if it was of this world then would my servants fight for me." He was saying that His kingdom was so different in kind and so superior in nature to this world that no sort of worldly power could either help or hinder it. But of this world into which the kingdom of God was come, the holy one of God says, "In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good comfort. I have overcome the world." Now, how was it that Christ's victory was their victory? It was because He was in them and they in Him. "Because I live, you shall live also; in that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you."

This was the kingdom of God come to them, the same kingdom of God that Adam was born into. Adam began his first glorious life when the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity had an outward glory like what broke through the body of Christ when on "Mount Tabor [where] His face did shine as the sun and His raiment was white as the light." Its almighty king says to the children of this kingdom, "When they bring you before magistrates and powers, take no thought how or what you shall answer or what you shall say unto them, for the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that same hour what you ought to say. For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you."

No higher or other thing is said here than in these other words, "Take no thought what you shall eat or drink or wherewithal you shall be clothed, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." This is the truth of the kingdom of God come unto men and this is the birthright privilege of all that are living members of it--to be delivered from their own natural spirit that they had from Adam, from the spirit and wisdom of this world and through the whole course of their lives only to say and do and be what the Spirit of their Father works in them.

If this kingdom is gone away from us [as these scholars assert], are we not left comfortless if instead of this Spirit of our Father speaking doing and working everything in us and for us, we are left again to our own natural powers, to run to every "Lo here" and "Lo there." Rather, aren't we to find a share in that kingdom of God that once was and never can be anything else, but God, the wisdom and power of God, manifested in our flesh? Had it not been as well, no, even better for us to have been still under types and figures, sacrificing bulls and goats by divine appointment, than to be brought under a religion that must be spirit and life, but then left to the jarring interests of the wisdom of the Greek and the carnality of the Jew? For where the Spirit of God is not the continual immediate governor of spiritual things, nothing better can come of it. For the truth and full proof of this, no more need be appealed to than all the libraries and churches of Christendom from many ages to this very day.

The Whore, the Dragon and the Beast

What is the difference between man's own righteousness and man's own light in religion? They are strictly the same thing,. They do one and the same work, namely keep up and strengthen every evil vanity and corruption of our fallen nature. Nothing saves a man from his own righteousness, except what saves and delivers him from his own light. The Jew that was most of all set against the gospel and unable to receive it was the one that trusted in his own righteousness. This was the rich man who found it harder to enter into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. The Christian that trusts in his own light is the very Jew that trusted in his own righteousness and all that he gets by the gospel is what the Pharisee got by the Law, namely, to be further from entering into the kingdom of God than publicans and harlots.

How is it that a beast, a scarlet whore, a horned dragon and other most horrible descriptions of diabolical power have been by the Spirit of God made descriptions of the Christian church? How is it that the Spirit describes the gospel-church as driven into a wilderness and the two faithful witnesses, Moses and Jesus, as prophesying so many ages in sackcloth and slain in the streets of spiritual Sodom and Egypt? It is because man's own natural light, man's own conceited righteousness, his serpentine subtlety, his self-love, his sensual spirit and worldly power have seized the mysteries of salvation that came down from heaven and built them up into a kingdom of envious strife and contention for learned glory, spiritual merchandise, and worldly power. This is the beast, the whore and dragon that has governed and will govern in every private Christian and public church, until dead to all that is self, they turn to God--not to a God that they have only heard of with their ears and their fathers have told them about, but to a God of life, light and power found living and working within them as the essential life, light and power of their own lives. For God is only our God by a birth of His own divine nature within us.

This is our whole relation and our only fellowship with Him, our whole knowledge of Him, our whole power of having any part in the mysteries of gospel-salvation. Nothing can seek the kingdom of God or hunger and thirst after His righteousness, nothing can cry "Abba Father," nothing can pray, "Your kingdom come," nothing can say of Christ, "My Lord and my God," but what is born of God and is the divine nature itself become creaturely in us. Nothing but God in man can be a godly life in man. Thus the apostles says, "The letter kills but the spirit gives life." But you will say, "Can this be true of the spiritual divine letter of the gospel? Can it kill or give death?" It kills when it is rested in as everything, when it is taken for divine power and supposed to have goodness in itself. It is here that it kills the Spirit of God in man, quenches His holy fire within us, and is set up instead of it. It gives death when it is built into systems of strife and contention about words notions and opinions and makes the kingdom of God consist not in power but in words. When it is thus used, then of necessity it kills because it keeps us from what alone is life and can give life.

This then is the whole of the matter; all the literal truths and variety of doctrines and expressions of the written word have but one nature, one end and one errand--they all say nothing else to man, except on the one thing that Christ said in these words, "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will refresh you." As Paul said, "Jesus Christ who is of God, made unto us wisdom, righteousness and sanctification." This is the only rest from Christ that we must enter. Paul continues, "But you are washed, but you are cleansed in the Name of our Lord Jesus." This is the same as when Jesus said, "Except you abide in me and I in you, you have no life in you." Again, "By grace you are saved by faith," says neither more nor less than this, "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life," or this, "Without me you can do nothing." It is the same as when the apostle said, "Not I, but Christ that lives in me, and "Christ in us the hope of glory; if Christ be not in you, you are reprobates."

Therefore, to come to Christ, to have our heavy laden, fallen nature refreshed by Him, to be born spirit of His Spirit, to have His heavenly flesh and heavenly blood made living in us, before we put off the bestial body and blood of death that we have from Adam, is the one thing taught and meant by all that is so variously said in the scriptures of the merits and benefits of Christ to us. It is the Spirit, the Body and the Blood of Christ within us that is our whole peace with God, our whole adoption, our whole redemption, our whole justification, and our whole glorification. This is the one thing said and meant by that new birth of which Christ says, "Except a man be born again from above, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Now the reason why all that is said of Christ in such a variety of expressions has only one meaning and points only to one and the same thing: because the whole state and nature of fallen man lacks only one thing, and that one thing is a real birth of the divine nature made living again in him as at the first. Once accomplished by the power of God in him, all is done that can be done by all the mysteries of the birth and whole process of Christ for our salvation.

All the Law, the prophets and the gospel are fulfilled when there is in Christ a new creature, having life in and from Him, as really as the branch has its life in and from the vine. When all scripture is thus understood and all that either Christ says of Himself or His apostles say of Him, are all heard or read only as one and the same call; to come to Christ in hunger and thirst, to be filled and blessed with His divine nature, made living within us. Then and then only, the letter kills not, but as a sure guide leads directly to life. But grammar, logic and criticism know nothing of scripture, except words, and bring forth nothing but their own wisdom of words and a religion of wrangle, hatred, and contention about the meaning of them.