Friday, November 14, 2014

The Rise, the Noon, the Sundown of a Great Church # 3

The Noon (continued)

There are things in this Letter which have divided people ever and always into three classes. There are those who have no spiritual life at all and their reaction is just to give it all up as quite beyond understanding and mysterious. Then there are the 'intellectuals' and the theologians, who have resolved the content into differing 'schools' of doctrine and interpretation. It is all so cold and dead: or it leads nowhere when the heart is breaking for some heavenly light; it is Dead Sea fruit; dust and ashes; a headache and a weariness.

But, there are those who really have "a spirit of wisdom and revelation" and 'the anointing' abiding within; who know an open Heaven because the Cross has broken the natural barriers. To them it is the nature, the essence, the heavenly light; the Divine potency, and the heart-ravishing blessing of what is revealed, rather than the ideas and concepts. The believers at Ephesus were evidently like that. At least, there were a sufficient number of such there.

There was another  factor already hinted at, which should be underlined. Those believers had suffered, and were suffering. Their condition made it absolutely essential that they had more than a nominal and ordinary resource. Yes, it was a necessity. They were hungry. They were up against the forces of evil. They consciously needed succour in the battle. The traditional religion had failed them. Spiritual food was hard to come by.

The vast deposit which God gave to people in such conditions and under such circumstances will only come to vitality again when, for some cause or reason, it again becomes a matter of life or death; of living light or we perish!

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 4 - (Sundown)

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