Called into the Fellowship of His Son

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 5 - The Peril of the Call

This together is a basis, a background to what I feel the Lord wants to say to us this morning in the prophecies of Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." I want to take that last fragment, "I saw the Lord." And then, in the letter of Paul to the Galatians, chapter 1 in verses 15 and 16, this clause: "It pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." And then in the book of the Acts, chapter 26, verse 19:"Wherefore, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."

"I saw the Lord... it pleased God to reveal His Son in me... and I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."

We are getting very near to the end of this time together this year in Wabanna, and those of us who have had responsibility in ministry are asking the question: I wonder what the people have seen this week? What they have really seen, and what they are taking away in them as that which they have seen with the "seeing" about which the Bible, and especially the New Testament, has to say so much; a kind of seeing.

And I am not so much concerned this morning, dear friends, with addressing you. You know the difference between being addressed and being talked to? I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you about this matter of:

Spiritual Seeing.

I am quite sure that even a small gathering like this represents different degrees of spiritual seeing. But whether it be the early beginning of seeing, or whether it be the most advanced that a company like this may represent in some cases, this matter of spiritual seeing is the most governing thing in all life.

And I think you will agree with me that although we think of our time as being perhaps more important than any other time, (that is, we think that things have advanced in our time to such a degree as they never were like this before) there have always been times (if this is a time when things have become more developed and advanced), there have always been times when this matter of spiritual seeing was the only hope of the situation.

We are in a time of unspeakable confusion in Christianity. It is in the world, of course, but we are not at the moment concerned with the world's confusion, we know about that, but in Christendom I think there never was such a degree of confusion as there is today. Bewilderment, almost countless strange, perplexing developments in Christianity; defeating and defying every attempt to either explain or cope with them and to understand what they mean.

We've found it here this week - a tremendous amount of confusion. You wouldn't believe what comes from personal conversation. The questions, the endless questions. Just full of questions from the moment you begin to speak and finish your first word, people are at you with questions. And they're questions about this and that and another thing, and all the things that are going on. And even if you haven't had their questions, you know quite well the atmosphere is full of this: things we're meeting, things we're hearing of, things we're seeing, things that are going on amongst Christians. This is true, isn't it? And the one great, the one paramount necessity is spiritual sight. Shall I use another word, a New Testament word: spiritual discernment.

It was so at the end of the apostolic age. The letters of John are just written because of this confusion and the defeat of the Christian mind to be able to comprehend, understand, define, explain what was going on. John is saying there are many antichrists - many antichrists - and many false spirits gone into the earth, and many false prophets. The situation was developing then as it has developed so much more in our time. And John made it his business in writing his letters to try and indicate to these Christians in their perplexity, the way in which they, and the only way, in which they were going to be able to get through all this perplexity, without becoming involved, defeated, and led away, led astray.

You know, multitudes of dear Christian people today are just being led away, and I think led astray, by the things that are happening, strange things.

You remember in the days of David when his treacherous son, Absalom, rose up to capture the throne and the kingdom. He sat in the gate, and he resorted to all the make-up, polled his wonderful hair and I don't know what else he did to attract attention to himself; and then put on artificial smiles and words and language, and it says that he captured, led away, the simple people - the simple, the poor simpletons of that day - with disastrous consequences. But that was the method, and even satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. And very often unless, unless you have discernment, you cannot tell the difference between these things. And in these days surely the great need of the Lord's people is spiritual discernment, spiritual perception, or what I am speaking of as spiritual sight.

Now coming back to one of the passages, or two of the passages which we have just quoted. In Acts 26, the apostle Paul is reviewing the whole of his Christian life and ministry. It only lasted thirty years - thirty years of Christian life, experience and ministry - but what a thirty years! Thirty years not exhausted in two thousand! And we haven't got to the bottom of him yet. We have not exhausted him yet, but he is reviewing those thirty years since the Lord apprehended him until the day that he was standing in the presence of the Roman governors. Reviewing the thirty years: all that he had learned, all that he had been shown and taught, all that he had come into since he came into Christ, all that the Lord had given him to give to others. How great! How full it all was - tremendous in thirty years. Why, some of us have been Christians a good bit more than that, and we haven't got a fragment of what he had. But he is reviewing it all, and he is attributing the whole thing.

What happened to him? There was a tremendous revolution that took place right there on the Damascus road, all that opened up to him at that time, began to break upon him and had been breaking on him ever since: the ever growing expansion of Divine revelation. And all the traveling and ministry, he is attributing it all to one thing - to one thing: "It pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." It does not say just "to me", it was not just the objective thing on the way to Damascus. You think about that! "I saw a light from Heaven, above the brightness of the sun," that's the objective. But when he is speaking about it in the light, in the light of what issued from it, what began then and has continued and grown and grown, he does not say it was "God revealed His Son to me," he says, "God revealed His Son in me. Something was done in me on that day, which started something, which has resulted in all this. It pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." When you think of it, what we have in the Bible throughout, is the result of the same kind of thing.

What do we have from Abraham?"The God of Glory appeared unto our father Abraham." Abraham could say that the beginning of his career, his course, his history, the beginning and going on, growing until, "his seed was as the sand of the seashore and the stars of the heavens," this immense thing had a beginning. And he could say, "I saw the Lord. You ask me how I came into this. You ask me for the explanation of my life, my history, my knowledge? Right at the beginning, I saw the Lord."

So did Moses. It says that Moses went up into the mount and "saw the God of Israel" and the glory. And under his feet it was as it were "a sapphire stone." "I saw the Lord" and that accounted for Moses. "He endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible." A tremendous life, that of Moses. The principle beneath and behind and over it all: he saw the Lord.

And so you can go on through your Old Testament. You come to the prophets. You heard last night Ezekiel begins with, "I saw visions of God, I saw visions of God." I saw! And so everything in Ezekiel, as a representative prophet, is "I saw the Lord." Isaiah, we read it: "I saw the Lord." And on you go, because the very prophets, their name was "seers." Men who saw, the seers of Israel, the men who were the eyes of Israel, seeing for Israel, and that explains all the prophets.

And so you come over into your New Testament. For some time, the greater part of three years and perhaps a little more, there were men in company with Jesus of Nazareth, physically in company with Him, at His side, hearing Him, seeing Him work, feeling His influence, that magnetic influence of His; and yet, not seeing Him. And yet not seeing Him! See how near you can get, how much there can be. You can go to Palestine today, if you like, to Israel, and see it all and not see Him (I don't mean physically). But they were with Him, and they did not see Him until after His resurrection. Then there's a new note, isn't there, a new exultant note, when you hear them after His resurrection meeting others of their company. They said: "We've seen the Lord! We have seen the Lord!" There's something here that was not there all that time before, and that accounted for everything afterward.

You come to this apostle Paul, and, as we've said, you explain and account for everything in that man as God's servant, as the greatest of His apostles, you account for everything on this one thing, as he did: "It pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." He could say, "I saw the Lord." Everything stems from that kind of seeing.

An Inward Revelation of Jesus Christ

When the apostle said this, that it pleased God to reveal His Son in him, he was implying that up to that time he was blind. Blind! Yes, he had inherited, what? Not only nature's blindness, for by nature all men are blind in this sense, do not have spiritual sight, but he had inherited the curse which Isaiah was commanded to pronounce upon his race: "Go to this people and say to them, seeing you shall not see, hearing you shall not understand, make this people's eyes closed, ears stopped." And Saul of Tarsus had inherited that. "Blindness," he later said, "has happened to Israel." He was a great Israelite - so blind. And he was contemporary with Nicodemus, when the Lord said, "Except, except, except something happens to you which gives you an entirely new constitution, with a new faculty of seeing, you shall not see - you shall not see - you cannot see the kingdom." That's where Saul of Tarsus was.

Let the force of that come to us, because we are in a conference, dear friends, where we have had a lot of Bible teaching. From day to day a lot from the Bible has been presented. A lot of doctrine - I don't know how much theology - a lot of Bible doctrine, a lot of Bible teaching, and I suppose it may be that some of you are going away with your heads fuller of Bible knowledge than when you came.

Well, you will never, never beat Saul of Tarsus on that line! You'll never catch up with him on that line, and you will never, never measure up to Nicodemus on that ground,"Art thou a teacher in Israel, a teacher in Israel?" And if you knew what it required to produce a teacher in Israel - a rabbi of training from infancy - how thorough-going that training was in the Scriptures only. In the Scriptures only, without the New Testament. If you knew what it meant to produce a teacher in Israel, you'd say, well, you had to go a long way in religious education, a long way in the knowledge of the Bible, the Scriptures! But when you've got there with Nicodemus and Saul of Tarsus, who was a rabbi, and many others of the same class and category, when you've got there, you're still blind - blind, as we say, as blind as bats.

With what I am saying, are you going to be angry with me? We must get to this business before we finish this conference, we really must face the issue. We've had Bible teaching, we're having it; a lot of it, perhaps you've had it for years. You've had a lot here of the Bible. How much of it and how much can we really say about what we have, "God has revealed His Son in me"? Not, "I have got Bible knowledge from the Bible or from the schools, or in any way what I've read or heard, but isolating me from all that and from all others, I am a man, I am a woman, in whom God has revealed by Divine act, a supernatural act, has revealed His Son".

How do I know the Lord Jesus? How do I know the Bible? How do I know at all? Can I say it is perhaps through the Bible, perhaps through a messenger, or through a book, but that is only a vehicle. Back behind that, "I know because God Himself has revealed His Son inside of me: He's done something inside. I have seen beyond - beyond the vehicle, beyond the means employed – we've seen!" "Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord; my spirit pants for Thee..." oh, not the written Word, the Living Word. This is a spiritual faculty. It is a wonderful, amazing thing, this is. It's a miracle thing, and nothing but that will have the effect that it had upon this man, Paul, and these others. Nothing but that - and the test of whether it is that, whether it is that act of God in us, the test of it is how it affects us. Nothing at all would ever have made that revolution in Saul, Paul, that was made. What a revolution! Think of him again. We have never yet sensed the immensity of that transaction.

This man, this rabid, utter, uncompromising devotee of Judaism and of the earthly Israel and all connected therewith, so devoted. It tells us that he was zealous above anyone of his own age. For it, he would persecute unto far cities; and he did not stop at men, but women and children he would hurl into prison. And he would stand by when that grand, that wonderful, young man, Stephen was being battered to death, broken by the rocks. He would stand by and say, "Go on. Go on. That's it. Finish that work. Have done with that man." He refers to it afterward. To turn that man to be just as utterly, uncompromisingly committed to the Jesus of Nazareth whom he was persecuting, and all that he would suffer for that new position afterward, I tell you nothing, nothing on earth, in heaven, or hell would bring that about, but a revelation in him of Jesus Christ. That did it! That did it!

Only such a revelation to our hearts will precipitate such tremendous issues, and make those revolutions, and bring about such an emancipation, and set us on a new, utterly new course. But it will do that. It will do that if you have really seen the Lord.

I must press, let's get nearer. There's a happy, blessed side to this, as well as the tremendous challenge of it, but we must be challenged, you see. I know what I'm talking about, I am not giving you an address this morning, I'm talking to you, and I'm talking to you out of a little bit of experience of this. It is not the doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ is His eternal Sonship, what we believe in His eternal Sonship, His incarnation, in God incarnate. Yes, we believe in it, the incarnation, in His good life, perfect life, and sinless life. Yes, we believe in it. His atoning death, He was the atonement. Yes, we believe that and so on - all the doctrine of the Person of Christ, it is not that, it is not that that I'm talking about. You can have all that, you can have all that, without a revolution. You can be the uttermost fundamentalist on the doctrine of the Person of Christ and this never having happened in you that I'm talking about. See? That's the weakness of Christianity today - it has got the doctrine, it's got the fundamentals, it's got the teaching, got it all and, they will, what they will do for it!

Well, we had a man come from your country once, to talk to the ministers in England and I was there. Yes he was a fundamentalist, (we don't call them that in England, we call them evangelicals, but it's the same thing) and I listened to him. If ever I listened to anything coming out in the flesh...! And I found that that man kept a loaded gun in the drawer of his desk in his church office because the modernists were on his track. A loaded gun! You tell me, you tell me that man had seen the Lord??? Well, we leave it there, but you see how far you can go; travel the world for fundamentalism, and keep a gun near you to save your life if anybody opposes you on that ground! Shoot your way out! Alright, well, we must, we must face this thing squarely. Did ever the apostle Paul take a gun with him on his journeys to meet those Judaisers who were on his track all the time? No. No. He let them get on with it, stone him, or anything else. He'd got the revelation of Jesus Christ in his heart, and that was his support, his confidence, his strength. That carried him on and carried him through and carried him on to us. No, dear friends, it is not the doctrine of the Person of Christ: it's the revelation of Jesus Christ inside, inside!

It is not the doctrine of the Cross. I have got to the place where I am almost heartily sick of the doctrine of the Cross, just as such. Wherever I go, I have people talking about the Cross; and they think, they think that I move about this world with the idea of teaching the doctrine of the Cross, identification with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection: that's the doctrine of the Cross and when Christ died, we died with Him. And an old man I once knew met some of that, someone who was talking about having died with Christ, and he perhaps vulgarly said, "Well, why don't you bury your stinking corpse and not bring it round here where we smell anything but Christ in you?" Now, that's strong. That's not nice, but dear friends, you can have the doctrine of the Cross, the teaching of the Cross, of identification, and still be so tremendously alive yourself, so touchy, so touchy, so ready to react to any provocation, any disagreement, any criticism. Having the doctrine of the Cross? No, it isn't the doctrine of the Cross: it's the revelation of the Cross.

And you can have all the doctrine of the church. The church, the church of Ephesians, you know, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ: very wonderful, very fascinating, captivating, marvellous! The doctrine of the church - people are talking about it in the churches. The churches, the churches - what are the churches if they are not fragments of the church? And what is the church? The Body of Christ but, the Body of Christ is a crucified Body, bearing the scars of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the church... you can have it all.

Well, you see, here we are. I had all that. As a member of Dr Campbell Morgan's Bible Teachers Association, I could take a long blackboard and I could outline any book of the Bible you like, including Ephesians. I could talk about the church, you see, and what is there about the church and outline it, analyse it, and talk for an hour on it. Dear friends, I tell you quite honestly, I had never seen the church, and I had never seen the Cross although I could analyse and present Romans so thoroughly and, to my own satisfaction, quite cleverly.

Well, till the day came... the day came. Yes, the day came and I have to say He revealed that in me. What happened? What happened? I shut myself in my room, and I said, "I am finished with the ministry, finished with preaching, finished with teaching. I am finished." I told the Lord that, and I said, "Lord, unless you do something that You've never done before, I am not going on." You see, it's something to bring a man there who formerly, well, was something in the pulpit, and in the Bible class, and in the Bible school, well, you can guess that something terrific must have happened.

What did it result in? Well, you see, I was the minister of a church, and I was paid a salary to preach and to teach, and whether I had a message from God or not, I had to get one and get one up, and make it up every so often, week by week in order to draw my salary. The crisis came: "I will never preach again. No one will ever get me to preach again for money or anything else unless I have got a word from God. I resign this professional business altogether and will never appear on a platform or in a pulpit unless there has come a word from heaven into my heart." I meant it. And I took action on that ground. And God also took action on that ground - from that day on, over forty-five years ago, I have never had to find the straw for the bricks, I've had what I call my "opened heaven." My open heaven.

Am I drawing attention to myself? Forgive me, I am trying to illustrate what I mean. There is a tremendous revolution that will be made when you "see." I saw the cross in Romans, and it slew me. I saw the church through Ephesians, not in Ephesians, but through Ephesians if you understand what I mean; I saw and my canonicals went, my ministerialism went, my playing at churches went. Well, the whole thing. It was another, other realm altogether. You see how revolutionary it is.

I have been asked here this very week by somebody, "Tell me what books you have read in order to get all that you've got. Please put me in the way of getting those books." Oh no. No. See where this leads: how far from the mark we can get? No, that is not it. "It pleased God, to reveal His Son in me." I saw the Lord and that started it, started it, it was only starting, but that started it. But it started something that is growing and growing and has been growing, and I trust will go on growing until we enter into the fullness in His Presence and know as we have been known.

Now let's quickly get to the end of this present. How searching is talking together!

What is this? What does it amount to? You know!

By New Birth

It comes by a true new birth. That's what Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You cannot see but by new birth from above. And then you will get a new constitution which has in it a new faculty of sight. A faculty of sight, by which you'll be able to see through to the back of things, through the thing, to the meaning of the thing. To the meaning of the thing. [There's] all the difference between the thing, which is the letter, and the meaning that lies behind it." And that's a marvellous realm when you see through even what is written in the Bible to what lies behind in the mind of God there. If you don't have that, you will often be in perplexity. You will. You'll get into trouble with your Bible, and you'll get into trouble with the apostle Paul.

Have you noticed how the apostle Paul uses Old Testament Scripture? Have you? Have you noticed what the theologians and the textual critics have come up against? "Why, Paul was using that. He is quoting that. He is citing that. He is applying that, and in the Old Testament it didn't mean that at all! It did not mean that: its connection in the Old Testament is altogether different, and yet Paul is using it like that. He's not a safe student of the Bible... you cannot rely upon Paul's interpretation of the Old Testament."

Now where are you? What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with Paul and Hagar in Galatians, the allegory of Hagar, "Surely he is going on his imagination. Surely he is reading something into the Old Testament. Surely he is squeezing, squeezing blood out of a stone. Did it mean that, really?" And so I could cite again and again Paul's use of the Old Testament; and if you look at it just here as the natural, in that way, by the human understanding, well, you'd stumble. You'll be in trouble with your Bible. You really will. But if you have this faculty of seeing through to a meaning that is deeper than the surface meaning, deeper than what looks like the literal meaning, you find God behind it.

I said, I think it was yesterday, the Lord Jesus never directly answered questions. Nicodemus will come with questions. See? The Lord never directly answered his questions. "We know that Thou art a prophet and teacher come from God. No man can do the things that You are doing except God is with him; and now I am going to talk to you about the kingdom, Jesus. I want you to explain the kingdom. You know we Jews are just wrapped up in this kingdom matter. We believe that we are the people of the kingdom: we really believe that we are the elect nation for the kingdom. The kingdom, the kingdom, the kingdom – that's the one thing that absorbs and captivates all our thoughts; the kingdom! Now, Jesus, can you tell me something about this kingdom?"

How does Jesus answer all this about the kingdom? Does He sit down and say, "Well, let's have a study on the kingdom, shall we?" No, He doesn't answer it that way at all, with a study of the Bible on the kingdom. He says, "You must be born again." "But," Nicodemus [says], "that's not what I was asking about! I wasn't asking about being born. I was asking about the kingdom." Well, Jesus gets deeper than that, "You can't see it. You won't enter it, unless you are born from above."

Greeks come to Him on one occasion, to see Him. They're all up in Jerusalem sight-seeing, having a look at everything that is interesting and there's some men who want to be introduced to Jesus, don't they? They want to see Jesus. They've come a long way to this city, in order to see Jesus, "Will you do something about it?" They go to Jesus, saying, "We would see Jesus." What does Jesus do? Says, "Oh, that's very nice of them to come and see Me. I will go out and shake hands with them and have a little word." Does He? "The hour is come, that the Son of man shall be glorified... Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone: if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit." No, no, no! That's no answer! That is no answer to these Greeks. That's an evasion. Is it? How are you going to see Jesus? You don't see Him crucified, buried, raised from the dead, but when this great multitude that spring up out of His grave with Him, the church - the only way to see Him. But that isn't what they wanted, what they were seeking. You see, He didn't answer questions in that direct manner. He got to the meaning, the deep meaning, the things behind.

Well, I'm putting such a lot into this, but what I was saying is this: that by new birth, by new birth the faculty is there. The faculty! It may be in baby form, baby measure, but it's there. It's a terrible tragedy, isn't it, when parents, after a little watching, have to come to the conclusion that their baby is blind. Isn't that terrible? Isn't that terrible? Never will see. But the normal, the normal child at birth has a faculty for seeing, not understanding everything, not being able to explain everything, but its got the faculty, and at least it knows when mother comes into the room. At least, as our brother said last night, it becomes, even without any teeth at all, able to say, "Abba"!

Just this is something, it's a mark of a new birth, a birth. The faculty is there, and, dear young people, don't think that you've got at once to come into all that I am talking about of the revelation of Jesus Christ; but you've got to have the faculty from the beginning, and, praise God, you can have the faculty. And how good it is when we meet a young Christian, almost a newborn Christian, who had a way of life, a way of behaviour, even a way of dress according to the world, and after very little time in the Christian life says, "The Lord has been telling me to change my way of behaviour. Now He would not have me do this and that, and He has even told me that perhaps I should change my dress a bit..." now, I mustn't go too far with that, may I? I read the other day that all the magistrates of the state of America, of all the states of America, had come to one decision, that the miniskirt is the reason for most sex crimes in America. Well, whether they're right or wrong, I leave that with you.

But I believe, I believe that this faculty, just the faculty, will begin to show things and to light up things. We shall see with other eyes what the Lord would have and what He would not have. It begins there, very simply, very simply and it goes on and it goes on. Our brother told us last night, that he has moved on with the Lord quite a bit, that there comes a time when even in your preaching, your teaching if you use something that the Lord does not agree with, you know it inside. There is a pause inside. There is something inside that says about that, "No. Oh, no - oh, no. Look again where that came from." You see what I mean? A faculty which is there at the beginning, and has got to grow and grow; and God forbid that it should ever cease growing, that we should cease to see or come to the end of our seeing. Here, the most mature, aged believer here, who has gone on with the Lord the longest, do remember this faculty is capable of bringing a far greater understanding of your Lord than ever all your years have brought to you. You come to the place where you say, "After all, after all, I am still a child, and there is so much, so much to learn."

Well, I am going to close with that.

This Faculty

Have you seen like that this week? Have you seen with your head or with your heart? With your soul, reason, and emotions, or with the spirit? How have you seen? Have you seen? How are you seeing? This conference will be a tragedy and a failure if we cannot go away in this sense, in this sense: "I have seen the Lord. I have seen; maybe only some thing, but I have seen and I can never be the same. That seeing has challenged me, and I have got to adjust."

It must be like that, but if all this is exacting, all this is testing, it might be disconcerting, let us remember that this is the normal Christian life - this is not, not really, according to the Lord, according to the Lord and according to the New Testament, this is not an extraordinary Christian life. This is how it just ought to be: as natural as a normal baby seeing, and whose sight develops and becomes co-ordinated, capable of understanding, growing, growing, growing... it's like that, governed by seeing: governing conduct, governing behaviour, governing choice; by seeing.

We know the devil captured, captured that faculty at the beginning, and it says that when the man "saw that the tree was good," that he saw wrongly, because he saw the wrong tree. The devil captured his eyes, his faculty of sight, and diverted it from the Tree of Life, from Life. The result: death by blindness. Well, that's only just a flash upon it. The devil is always trying to capture the sight faculty of God's people and divert and attract, but not always to do so by presentation of the ugly and the horrible, the satanic, but by the imitation of Jesus Christ, the imitation of the truth, the imitation of the angels of light.

And how shall we escape? How shall we be safe? Only by what John speaks of: "The Anointing that you have received... abides in you... and teaches you all things." And He is saying that alongside of this, "there are many antichrists." Many antichrists. How are you going to know which is Christ and which is antichrist in all these imitators? The Spirit in you "teacheth you." The faculty is there: you will have a sense that that thing, wonderful as it may seem, sweeping everything before it as it seems to be doing, and having so much truth in it, that thing is dangerous, that's going to lead you off to the day of disillusionment and disaster. There's a warning, a warning light within, but I will finish on a positive note.

It is a wonderful thing, a wonderful thing just to have that faculty. You may read, but your reading doesn't finish with what you read. You see beyond what you're reading: you see beyond, you see through to the beyond, and it's a wonderful thing that, to have that faculty. I can't explain it. I had hoped that this morning I would have been able to use the projector to throw on the screen a diagram of what I've been saying, but that would only be objective after all, wouldn't it? But here it is, it's so true, piercing right through every encompassing realm, every encompassing realm to our souls, and piercing through our souls into our spirits, the Light from heaven. The Light from heaven, and bringing to birth this faculty of spiritual sight so that we are not, after all, governed by these outer realms, the principalities and the powers; the mixed realm within this world, its system and its standard. And the mixed realm within our own souls, it's not governed by our own souls, our own self's reaction to proposition; it's not governed by that, the appeals to the self, right inside. Governed by not our own spirits. Be careful about that. I hear people talking about being governed by their spirit. No, no. Governed by the One who is in the spirit, the Spirit in our realm, the Holy Spirit, "the Anointing... that abideth in you" most inwardly. "It pleased God, to reveal His Son" there, in, in, in!

Well, I have said a lot. Do take it to heart and if you will just do one thing, make it your real business, if you really are in quest of God's fullest, make it your business to give the Lord no rest until that faculty is constituted in you, until He has revealed His Son maybe in or through His Word or any other means He may choose, but the ultimate thing: you have seen, not everything, but in this you have seen the Lord.

"I saw the Lord," said Isaiah. "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," said Paul. And if this is my last message to you here, I would pray that the result of this week should be either that we have seen, or do see, or go to the Lord about this - that a truly born again, normal Christian has got a faculty that is something more than the natural faculty of apprehension.

Let's pray. We want really, Lord, to be quiet in the presence of Thy interrogation, Thy exhortation, Thy presentation. Save us from noisily dissipating. Give us a solemn quietness before Thee, not only this morning as we go. And give us hearts that are altogether consumed with this seeing, knowing, and understanding of the Lord. Please do it: please, Lord, do it in us all. We ask this in the name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus. Amen.