Fifth Meeting
(February 5, 1964 A.M.)
I think it is understood that in these morning hours I am not giving addresses. I am just seeking to bring you to the foundation principles of the work of God so that there will be very little at most of our meetings. It may be hard work bringing us back to the Lord Jesus. It was not very long after the apostles had gone that all those things came into Christianity with which we are familiar today. Infant baptism took the place of baptism by immersion through faith in Jesus Christ. That was instituted very soon after the apostle John had gone to the Lord.
Then Christianity
became organized into an ecclesiastical system with
"Bishops" and "Archbishops" leading
on to a Pope. The vestments and ritual of later
Christianity came in just about that time. People who
were in authority were put there, not because they were
spiritual men, but for other reasons. This tendency was
already beginning to manifest itself before the apostles
had finished their ministry. It is very important for us
to take note of this, because we have inherited a
Christianity which is not true to the beginnings.
Now take what may be the Last Letter of
the Apostle Paul, that is, the Second Letter to Timothy.
Of course, there are lots of things in that Letter that
we all like very much. We like Second Timothy two
fifteen, "Give diligence to show thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the Word of God." But we do not
always recognize that those words contain a corrective.
They may be a call back to the original position. Of
course, we very much like, "Thou therefore, my son,
endure hardship, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
But we do not always recognize that that goes with:
"Fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Tim.
6:12). The battle of the soldier of Jesus Christ is the
battle for the purity of the faith. That is, the purity
of Christianity as it was in the beginning. We have to
read Second Timothy in the light of this truth. It was
written because people were not behaving themselves
properly in the house of God. Paul said that he wrote
that Letter that men might know how to behave themselves
in the house of God. There was misbehavior in the house
of God. And you know that Timothy was, probably, an elder
in the church of Ephesus. That was a terrible thing to
say to Ephesus. Think of all that you know about Ephesus.
And then, Paul said, even at Ephesus men are not behaving
themselves properly in the house of God.
Later on
we shall touch upon some of the things that had to be
corrected. But for the moment, our point is that even so
early as that, things were beginning to deviate from
their original position. The Last Letters written in the
New Testament were the Letters by the Apostle John. He
wrote all his Letters and his Gospel after all
the other apostles had gone to the Lord. I suppose we all
like the Letters of John. And I suppose we like John's
Gospel perhaps better than most. But have you really
noticed the character of John's Letters? He begins his
First Letter with these words, "That which was from
the beginning." It takes them right back to the
beginning. And then the letters have to do with
correcting doctrine and correcting character. They are
departing from the original teaching. And they are
departing from the original standard of life. Now, note
again, John was probably writing to Ephesus.
Then, when you come to his Book of the Revelation, the Lord
begins with Ephesus. And he says to Ephesus, "Thou
hast left thy first love." You have moved away from
the original position. I think I have said enough to
prove that at the end of the New Testament writings, on
the one side, things were beginning to go away from the
original position. And on the other side, the apostles
were concerned with bringing the believers back to the
first position.
For a
long time I used to wonder why the Gospels were written
so late in New Testament time. Because Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John come first in the New Testament writing, as
we have them, because they are the First Books bound up in
the volume of the New Testament, we are inclined to have
the impression that they were the earliest writings. I
want to correct that, if that is your mistake. These four
Gospels were written after most of the Epistles were
written. I used to wonder why that was? Why should these
writers of the Gospels go right back to the earthly life
of the Lord Jesus after all this marvelous revelation
had been given? They had received the wonderful
unveiling of the risen and ascended and heavenly Lord.
They had received the wonderful revelation of the
Church, which is His Body. They had come to see something
of the eternal counsels of God. And when they had
received all that, they went right back to His earthly
life of three and a half years. Now, for a long time I used to
wonder why it was like that? It seemed to me like coming
down from heaven to earth, like coming back from eternity to
time. I did not understand that. So I went over to the
Epistles, and for many years, I was wholly occupied with
the Epistles. I was taken up with these eternal counsels
of God. I was taken up with the spiritual Body of Christ,
the Church. And I almost entirely lived in the later
writings of the New Testament. And yet the fact is there
that these men wrote those letters after the
Epistles had been written. That is, many of the epistles, not all of them. Now you see, I had a question,
and for a long time my question was not answered. I did
not understand why the Gospels were written so late. And
although they were later than some of the Epistles, the
Holy Spirit put them as the First Books of the New
Testament.
Now, for
you, here is a spiritual law. The Holy Spirit is not
always very concerned with chronology. Chronology is one
thing, spiritual order is another thing. Have you got
that? The Holy Spirit is always concerned with spiritual
order. Well, here was my question, but I have had that
question answered in my own experience. Later, the Holy
Spirit led me right back to the Gospels.
Now I
want to put in there this other thing, and this is a
very important thing. You see, when I started reading the
Bible, and especially the New Testament, I did what most
other people do. I read the Four Gospels as the story of
the earthly life, work, and teaching of Jesus. It is a
very interesting story of how He was born a little baby
in the town of Bethlehem, all about the shepherds and the
wise men and the star and all those things. That is very
interesting. And then how He grew up in the carpenter's
shop in the town of Nazareth. Then how at twelve years
old He was taken up to Jerusalem to the temple. Then how
He came to Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist. And
He went about the country healing people of their sicknesses and
helping them in their troubles. And how great crowds of
people followed Him everywhere, because of the help which
He could give them, usually in a physical way. Then how
the rulers became jealous of all this, and they took
counsel to put Him to death. It is a wonderful story of
how He was condemned and crucified, then how He rose on
the third day. All that makes up a wonderful history. Of
course, that is how I read the Gospels. I got those
standard works, books on the earthly life of the Lord
Jesus, very interesting books, and that is all it was to
me. And I thought that when Jesus died and rose again
that was the end of the Gospel.
Now we
go over to Acts. Now we live in the Epistles! I have come
to see that is all wrong. Everybody can read the Gospels
in that way. I suppose any unconverted person would be
interested in reading the story of the earthly life of
Jesus, but we have failed to recognize this: that no one can
really understand the Gospels until they have passed into
the experience of the Book of the Acts. That is the
experience of Pentecost. You know even the disciples
themselves did not understand that until after Pentecost.
They did not understand the work and the teaching of
Jesus when He was on earth until Pentecost. I could fill a
whole hour now in showing you that. They were moving, all
through the earthly life of Jesus, with a closed heaven.
That was the trouble that the Lord Jesus had with them.
He said: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet thou
hast not known Me?" And all the way along, His
trouble was that they just did not understand what He was
talking about.
And
because of that spiritual blindness, instead of seeing
that in His crucifixion all the Old Testament was
fulfilled, they were all offended. About His death, He
was always saying to them "that the Scriptures might be
fulfilled". And when it came to that, He said, 'This is
just what I had been trying to tell you all the time.'
But they did not see it, and therefore, they were all
offended. They all forsook Him; and you know the position
that they were in when you look at those two men on the way to
Emmaus. They said to Him, "We had hoped that it should be
He Who should redeem Israel. All our hopes are
disappointed. Our faith has been mistaken." See how blind
they were? It was not until He opened their eyes that
they saw. Now my point is this: No one can understand the
Gospels truly until they have received the Holy Spirit,
and have come into a true, deep, experience of death with
Christ, burial with Christ, and resurrection with Christ; because that experience, not that doctrine, that
experience brings an open heaven. When I came into a new
experience of resurrection union with Christ, and of a
new life in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit began to
lead me back to the Gospels and He began to show me the real
meaning of the Gospels. The Gospels had become alive
in a new way. Now all that is preparation for what we are
going to say.
Now we
come then to the adjustments, which our spiritual life
demands, and we are going back to the beginning. We are
going to begin in the fourth chapter of the Gospel by
John. This chapter, as you know, contains the talk which
Jesus had with the woman of Samaria. At a certain point
in that talk, the woman said these words to Him, as we
have them in verse nineteen. The important part of this
whole chapter is in verses nineteen to twenty-four.
"The woman saith unto Him, "Sir, (that is, "Lord) I perceive that Thou
art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain;
and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men
ought to worship." Jesus saith unto her,
"Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when
neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship
the Father. Ye worship ye know not we worship that which we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for such doth the Father
seek to be His worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that
worship Him must worship in spirit and in
truth." You turn to chapter five, verse twenty-five,
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh,
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son
of God: and they that hear shall live." Now I wonder
if you recognize the tremendous things that are
contained in those words. First of all, they represent a
complete change in dispensation. Up till now, it had been
Jerusalem and Samaria; that is, it had been the temple in
Jerusalem and the temple in Samaria. Those temples
represented a whole historic order of things. It was a
matter of a special place in Samaria or in Jerusalem,
according to whether you were a Samaritan or a Jew. If
you were a Jew, Jerusalem was the center of everything.
In the temple there, you would find God and no where else.
The order of things in the temple of Jerusalem was
everything, and you would never find it anywhere else.
The priests and the sacrifices and the altar and
everything, that temple was the center of all things.
So it
was for the Samaritans in the temple in Samaria. Now Jesus
says this tremendous thing. "The hour cometh and now is,
when neither in Jerusalem nor in Samaria; neither in this
special place nor in that special place." Everything is
not going to be centered and contained in some special
place. The worship of God is no longer going to be in a
certain form. Neither - nor! That is wiping out with one
stroke a whole dispensation. That is a tremendous
thing. Supposing you were to write on that blackboard and
fill the whole blackboard with all your doctrines and your
practices and how things had to be done. And you said "Now that is
Christianity". Someone came along with a wet sponge and
wiped the whole thing out and said, 'That is nonsense;
that is not it at all.' What would you do with that one?
You would crucify him. That is what Jesus did. He wiped
out a whole dispensation with one stroke of His hand.
Then He put something else in its place. What did He put
in its place? "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
All that
old system of things may be very real to you, but it may
not be the truth. It may only be a system of
symbols and types, and that is not the truth. You may
become wholly occupied with what is on the surface, and
what is seen: what you hear with your natural ears, what
you see with your natural eyes, and you may not
understand the meaning of that at all. It is the meaning
which is the truth, not the thing in itself. The very
center of everything for the Jews was the ceremony of
circumcision. That was the sign that you were a Jew and a
true Jew. You could never be a real Jew unless you had
been circumcised. Hear the Apostle Paul saying this:
"Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing."
Hear a Jew saying that! You are not surprised that they
tried to kill him. No, it is not the thing, and dear
friends, in Christianity baptism takes the place of
circumcision; but baptism as baptism is nothing. In
Ethiopia, the Coptic Christians are baptized every year. You
could be baptized every day if you like. You could be
baptized every hour of every day, and it make no
difference. If you go to the Lord's Table every week, and it
make no difference. You can take up all the forms of
Christianity, and really know nothing about it. That is
what we are going to come to in our morning studies.
My time is gone, I promised to keep faith with you to let you go to your work, so I have to break up at this point. Have you got this first thing? We will follow on with this, if the Lord wills, tomorrow morning. When
Jesus said, "Believe Me, the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and in truth"; that need not be in
Jerusalem nor Samaria nor Antioch nor anywhere else.
"Wheresoever two or three are gathered into My name,
there I am." John three and verse sixteen is the
universal word for salvation. "Whosoever
believed in Him," that includes everybody for salvation, called to
salvation. Matthew eighteen (verse 20) is another side
of things, there you come to the Church. And you have
another universal word for the Church. It is not in this
place nor in that place; it is not on this ground nor on
that ground. It is not Church ground; it is Christ
ground! Wheresoever two or three are gathered into My
name, worshiping in the spirit and in truth. The dispensation
has changed. It is the very first corrective that is
needed today. Christianity has become very largely a
legalistic system. "You must do it here! You must be here!
You must do it in this way, or you are not the Church."
The Lord Jesus has wiped all that out at the beginning. That is something that has come in afterwards. He
says the only ground that is necessary is, "in spirit and
in truth in Me." Christ has taken the place of all other
systems. CHRIST IS THE ONLY SYSTEM. But we have got to
learn Christ. I must leave it there for this morning.