Chapter 13 | Table of Contents | Chapter 15

Now, if this, which the Baptist said of Christ, is not our faith, if we do not receive it as the truth in which we are to firmly stand, then, be as learned as we will, we have no better a faith or higher wisdom than those blind rabbis who received not the testimony of John. A fire and Spirit from above were the news that he published to the world. This, and nothing else, was his kingdom of God that was at hand. If this fire and Spirit from above have not baptized us into a birth of the life of God in our souls, we have not found Christ or the kingdom of God John bore witness to. But if (what is still worse) we are so bewitched through the sorcery of learning as to turn writers and preachers against this inward and only redeeming heavenly fire and Spirit, we are baptized with the spirit of those to whom our Lord said, "Woe unto you scribes Pharisees hypocrites for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves neither suffer you them that are entering to go in."

For what is or can be the fall of a divine Adam under the power of sin, Satan, and hell but the extinction of that heavenly fire and Spirit that was his first union with God and all heavenly beings. Say now that he had not this heavenly fire and Spirit at the first, that nothing lived or breathed in him except that astral fire and spirit that is the life and spirit of all earthly animals. If this was so, then you have a religion as divine as that of the old Sadducees who allowed no resurrection, angel or spirit. If you deny the truth and fullness of a divine life in the first man, then his fall and redemption are equally empty sounds about nothing, for what can he be fallen from or redeemed to if he has now all that fire and spirit of life that he ever had or ought to have? Tell me why that "burning and shining light" that was in this man who was more than a prophet [John the Baptist] should come with his water and the Son of God. God would not have come with His fire-baptism if man neither wanted nor could receive a higher water and fire of life than what he has in common with the beasts of the field? Why is there this stir about religions, expiations, and atonements? Why all these priestly ordinations, consecrations, churches, sacraments and prayers? If the fire and spirit of this world are the one and highest life both of man and beasts, we have it innately and on the same terms as the beasts have it and can only lose it as they do when they lose their existence.

But if fire and Spirit from heaven can alone make heavenly creatures and children of a heavenly Father; if the Son of God took our fallen nature upon Him that the first heavenly fire and Spirit might again come to life in us; if divine life, divine light and divine goodness can only come from them and only in such degree as they are kindled in our souls, what a poverty of sense is it in those who are called to a resurrection of the first divine life, where a new creature is taught by that same unction from above where all the angels and principalities of heaven have their light and glory. What a poverty of sense in those who sit themselves down at the feet of a Master Tully and a Master Aristotle, who only differ from the lowest of all other corrupt men as the teaching serpent differed from his fellow animals by being more subtle than all the beasts of the field.

Behold then your state, you ministers that wait at Christian altars, who will have neither faith nor hope nor desire of heavenly fire kindled in your souls. You have a priesthood and an altar not fit to be named with what had a holy fire from God descending upon it in Jewish days; the same fire that made priest and sacrifice acceptable to God, though only type, and only spoke of in type of that inward celestial fire that Christ from above would kindle into a never ceasing burning in the living temples of His newborn children.

Don't complain anymore about the atheists, infidels and such open enemies to the gospel kingdom of God while you call heavenly fire and Spirit (kindled into the same essential life in us as there is in holy angels), downright frenzy and mystic madness. You do all that same infidel work within the church that they do on the outside of it. If through a learned fear of having what was done to Enoch when God took him done to your earthly reason, you will own no higher a regeneration, no more birth of God in your souls than can be had by a few cold drops of water sprinkled on the face. Any of the heathen gods of wood and stone are good enough for such an elementary priesthood. Let this be told you as a truth from God, that until the heavenly fire and Spirit have a fullness of a birth within you, you can rise no higher by your highest learning or elegant orations about scripture words.

Our Lord has said, "The kingdom of God is within you.," that is, the heavenly fire and Spirit that are the true kingdom and manifestation of God are within you. And indeed where else can it be? What learned pains are taken to remove the literal meaning from these words as too visionary a thing for learned ears? It is a truth obvious to common sense that even this outward world of stars and elements, neither does nor can belong to us or we to it but so far as it is literally speaking of a kingdom within us. For the outward kingdom or powers of this world, signify nothing to a worldly man, because he is dead and blind to what they can teach him about the eternal.

Say now out of reverence to sound literature and abhorrence of fanaticism that the kingdom of God is not really and virtually within--that its heavenly fire light and Spirit are not and ought not to be born in a sober right-minded follower of Christ? If this was true, then you would have a good disciple of Christ that is as absolutely dead to the kingdom of heaven as the corpse that has not the fire spirit and light of this world in it and is dead to all the outward world round about it.