Editor's Letters

by T. Austin-Sparks

January 1928

Beloved in our Lord,

We do not wish you a "Happy New Year," but rather a "Happy Eternity with the Lord." This has already commenced in the Spirit since our life is hid with Christ in God, and what we should pray for is that we may go straight forward into that increasing realisation of the Purpose of God in us as Life and Life by One Spirit in One Body. May the Church of the Living God greatly increase unto the consummation during this year, and unto this may you be filled with the Light of His Life that you may walk, not as in the encompassing darkness but in that Day of God that already shines upon Mount Sion whither we have arrived in the Spirit. "Ye are come." Stand to that. Stand fast in the liberty of the Divine indwelling Life. The Cross has broken all bands.

Now we cannot see far forward as to time, but we see HIM, we trust; and through Him see something of eternity. But He is more important than mere vision. Eternity with all its vistas is without Him a mere void.

Is it not significant of His coming that His Person is becoming so horizon-filling, dwarfing all else? By this we know that we are in the Spirit's school as He glorifies the Person of Jesus all the while, causing us to behold Him in the Godhead and the Godhead in Him. Modern theology is full of advices to get back to Jesus, the Jesus of history, and gladly we assent to the blessed historic facts: but the Holy Spirit sends us forward, upward, onward to Jesus in the Glory of God, and the Glory of God in Him: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost alike tabernacling in and upon Him, Who is the visible Image of the invisible God.

How puny become our enemies, how slight our uncertainties and how harmless our perils, as He looms gloriously Great before our heart's vision, and fills the heavens.

When Israel failed to enter in at Kadesh it was because their God had receded to vanishing point in their unbelieving sight, and so giants grew more gigantic, and strongholds seemed impregnable. But with those sons of faith, Caleb and Joshua, the vision was the reverse. God loomed large, and the giants became insignificant. "Let us go up at once and possess it" said faith, "for we are well able to overcome it." May this be the language of our hearts at this season.

Beloved, how is your spiritual eyesight at this beginning of the year? Does Jesus fill your prospect with the Glory of His Person? Has He come as captain of the Lord's hosts to undertake the conduct of the campaign, to carry it through to a triumphant conclusion? Is He thus nigh and Mighty? Or is the conflict itself, its problems and perils mostly filling the sight? We exhort you and call upon our own hearts also, to ask the Spirit's aid to see JESUS as He is in that Glory, the Enthroned Conquering God whose battle is won, but Who invites us to share His Victory. It is by His Victorious Life we must now live. If any man be in the Christ he is a new creation, but the new creation is in the Spirit and is in our spirit also as we are begotten out-of and abide also in Him. Ye are of that Eternal Day that has already broken upon Mount Sion. There is no need for you to enter into a mechanical man-reckoned new year, for you have entered into the "REST," the finished work of God. It is out from God that we can accelerate His processes in time, and hasten the Break of His Day upon the earth, praying in the Holy Ghost.

Yours in the Lord's Hope, which is also ours,
T. Austin-Sparks
T. Madoc Jeffreys