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Part
6 FATHER
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven...” (Mat. 6:9).
We have known so little of the scripture. We have been so busy
arguing over it, formulating doctrines,
creeds, and dogmas about it, that we failed to hear what it was saying. Sonship
has been the theme of the scriptures from the opening scenes of Genesis to
the closing dramas of Revelation. Sonship is the heart of God’s great
and glorious purpose from the shimmering mists of
What a difference one word makes! Jesus taught us to pray that
wonderful prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer
by saying “our” rather than “my” Father. The word my implies
exclusivity, as if God could be the personal property of one group or one
individual over all others. Just the thought of “our Father,” on the
other hand, immediately recognizes God as the
Father of all! The plural pronoun reveals that no son of God is an “only
child.” This does not mean that it is wrong, in our personal communion
with God, to call Him “my Father,” for Jesus Himself certainly did.
But we must not approach Him feeling we have
some special possession or position that excludes others — we are one of
a vast family of many sons of God with this same privilege.
Our Father which art in heaven is the greatest word on mortal
tongue, and the truth of the Fatherhood of God is the greatest that ever
dawned on the intelligence of man. But did it ever dawn upon the mind of
man in such a way that other truths have done? When Peter made his great
confession, Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living
God, our Lord answered Him in joy and thankfulness, “Blessed
art thou, Simon, son of Jonah; flesh and
blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.” May we not say
that flesh and blood never revealed this truth of God’s Fatherhood? It
is God’s own direct, supreme revelation of Himself in Christ His first-begotten
Son. That which marks off the message of Christ from every other is this
teaching of the Fatherhood. It is unique in the history of man’s
troubled search for God. If we name the most barbaric of the world’s
religions, if we name the most refined of
them, we shall Find that the revelation of
Jesus quite infinitely transcends it, and
does so by reason of its revelation of God’s Fatherhood. It is the
master-idea in the revelation of Christ, that which is the seed-bed of all
that follows. It is the architectonic thought — and the whole plan of
God in Christ is the expression of it.
This thought is Christ’s own. It is native and original with Him.
In the world there had been nothing like it before. None of the world’s
religions knew of it. The Old Testament only
vaguely refers to it. But the very first
recorded words of Jesus in His earthly life and His last breath, the
Father’s name. The child is sought by His parents and found in the
temple, and He asks them, “Wist ye not
that I must be about My Father’s business?” Gethsemane
lies behind; the agony of
In each one God is addressed as Father
and in no other way. Not as Yahweh. Not as Adoni.
Not as God. Father!
The Father is addressed by Jesus no less
than sixty times in the prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter
of John. It is a remarkable thing. How
wonderful it is that our Lord, in a prayer that covers only twenty-six
verses, should make direct
appeal at least sixty times to God as Father. The thought that I desire to
impress upon your mind by this fact is how Christ glorified
the Father and presented the love of the Father to creation through all
His ministry. We should remember above all things, that He came to reveal
and glorify the Father. “These
things spake Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven,
He said. Father...”
Father! Father! Get that word Father
into your spirit. Not the
word merely, but all that lies in it! Ask
God to give you by the spirit of wisdom and revelation
increasing knowledge of its meaning. It will
take eternity to reveal
all that is in that word.
Regeneration, begotten, new birth, being born again into the
kingdom of God, becoming sons of God — these
are all principles with which every Bible student is familiar. The
beautiful ANALOGY is accepted by everyone.
But all this means to the average Christian
is that he conjures up the nice religious feeling
of thinking of himself as if he were a real
son of God, as Jesus is. The average
Christian has absolutely no idea
of the transcendental
implications of this birth into the family
of God. Most think of being a child of God as sort of an “honorary”
title conferred on them by an indulgent God who accepts them
as “little adopted human children” to
whom He plans to give as their reward for accepting His gift of eternal
life, a beautiful park, a celestial Disney
World, a spiritual playground in the sky called
“heaven”. This heaven is designed for them to enjoy for eternity,
loafing, romping, playing, shouting, visiting, rejoicing, playing harps,
and floating about doing whatever
sinless thing their hearts may desire.
But let us understand
what it really means to be born into the
very family of GOD. Let us turn that
phrase around in order to better catch its
significance. Rather than saying we are born
into the family of God, it is just as proper to say that we are born into
the GOD FAMILY! By way of illustration, I may say that I was, by natural
birth, born into the family of Luke Eby. But
this also means that I was born into the EBY
FAMILY. I am of the EBY
KIND. I AM EBY. Not only are men born into the family
of God, but they
are born into the GOD FAMILY. Not only are we birthed
into the
Before you dismiss this thought as blasphemy, let us consider a
dialog that occurred between Jesus and some
Jews. It is recorded in John 10:30-36. “I and the Father are one. Again
the Jews brought up stones
to stone Him. Jesus said to them, My Father has enabled
Me to do many good works — I have shown many acts of mercy in your presence.
For which of these do you stone Me? The Jews replied, We are not going to
stone you for a good act, but for blasphemy,
because you, a mere man, make yourself out to be God. Jesus answered,
Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are GODS (Elohim)?
So men are called gods — by the law —
men to whom God’s word came, and the scripture
cannot be set aside or canceled or broken or annulled.
If that is true do you say to Me, the One whom the Father
has consecrated and dedicated and set apart for Himself and sent into the
world, You are blaspheming, because I said,
I am the Son of God?” The quotation of
Jesus from Psalm 82:6 says simply, “I have said, Ye are gods (Elohim);
and all of you are the children of the most High.”
Oh! Let us see this thing as God sees
it! Why do parents have children? Do they beget them for the
benefit of the children that are to be
born? Not at all. There is inherently a PATERNAL DESIRE within the
heart of a husband and wife, in the union of the love they share. And
it is this paternal nature that drives them to project the
experience of the love they share into a new expression of their identity.
Children are the projection of our life, our
love, our
union, OURSELVES, into an extended and expanded reality. If you had one
son in whom you found unspeakable delight, would it not be normal to
desire another? It is exactly so with the
heavenly Father who by nature and choice has purposed to have a vast
family of human-divine sons who are just like
His first-begotten Son. God has not brought
us into His family as a hobby to play at for pastime. He
has birthed us out of His own paternal desire to extend and expand
HIMSELF! God is our Father because He has from eternity
been in the process of begetting and bringing sons to birth, sons to be
born in His image, spiritually perfect as He is perfect, ever-living as He
is ever-living, God as He is God — the purpose of all creation, the goal
of human life, the plan of God — is sonship!
The four Gospels, written in Greek, preserve for us only a few of
the Aramaic words from the everyday language spoken in
The Lord’s Prayer changes
everything.
Everything changes when our perception of reality
changes. We learn through this prayer that
God is, my Father. That changes
my perception of myself.
I’m not just an animal dressed
in clothes. I’m not a highly developed
ape. Nor am I just a “sinner saved by grace” as the
preachers are wont to say. No! I am a son of
God the Father in heaven. That makes my origin heavenly. God is more
than a Creator. God is better
than a friend. God is closer than a brother.
He’s more than just a wonderful
teacher or a great
ruler and law-giver.
He’s my Father. My very own Father!
Anybody who has that kind of close, intimate,
loving relationship with God is somebody
special.
Surely our Lord Jesus was teaching us
a transcendentally important lesson when He
told us that we should address
the mighty Creator and God of the universe
as “our Father.” There is but one God. There
are things that the
heathen called gods, ugly, repugnant, often
hideous and terrifying things, that are supposed to be gods. But there
is but ONE GOD; and with reverence and great
respect we address Him, not
as Dear God, not as Almighty
God, not as 0 Thou Great Jehovah, not as 0 Thou Unknowable,
Unapproachable, Infinite, Most Efficacious, Eternal
Sovereign, not as Yahweh, nor yet as
Precious Jesus — but in sincerity and truth as OUR FATHER. The
wonder of this was expressed
by a brother in telling of an incident that
occurred in his life. He said: “When
my daughter was about five
or six years old and passing through a certain
phase which a lot of children
pass through, she heard other people
calling my wife and me by our first names, Anne
and Jim. She thought that
sounded like a pretty good idea. So she
began to call us Anne and Jim. I thought
that she would soon pass through that phase
so I didn’t say anything about it. It was ‘Jim’ so and so, and
‘Anne’ such and such, and we let
it go for a few days, then a week, then a
couple of weeks. Finally, I thought to myself, ‘Enough is enough!’
I will never forget the day that I took her
into the living room, sat down in an easy chair, and sat her on my knees.
I said, ‘Sweetie, daddy wants to have a talk
with you.’ ‘Okay, Jim, what’s your
problem?’ I
said, It’s about you calling me
Jim. You see, there
are millions of people out there in the world who call me Jim, but none of
them can call me what you can call me. You
are the only one who can call me Daddy.’
You see, I had entered
into a closer relationship with her than even
on a First name basis. The first name basis
is the realm of friendship. But
Daddy is the realm of worship.
She was losing that and I did not want her
to lose it. That was thirteen
or fourteen years ago. Do you know what my
name is today? Daddy. That’s right! And that
is very dear.” Praise God, we have
gone beyond the first name basis! We have come into that intimacy of
relationship — OUR FATHER. How Filled with
meaning, reality and glory are those words!
Let us suppose that a man by the name
of John Smith has a son named Mike. When Mike addresses his father he doesn’t
call him John Smith! Mike doesn’t say, “John Smith, may I have a
quarter?” or “John Smith, I love you!” No. Instead he will say,
“Daddy, may I have a quarter?” or “Daddy, I love you!” Only
persons who have no sonship
relationship with John Smith will address
him as John Smith or Mr. Smith or simply John. A son does not address his
father by name, but by relationship. A son does not pray to an impersonal
“God,” nor to the Old Testament
“Yahweh,” nor to the New
Testament “Jesus.” “And because ye are sons,
God hath sent forth
the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Jesus came to reveal the
FATHER’S NAME. He came not to reveal some
other name that the Father has had — He came to reveal the name —
FATHER. To all those
blessed ones apprehended of God to sonship
there is a recognition, a conscious awareness, when we
pray, or praise, or worship, that it is to our FATHER. What that holy
name means is more than I can say in a thousand articles such as this, but
this we may well know — He who is called Father must of necessity have a
relationship with
His sons and daughters that transcends that of any father
on earth that we have ever known. Every boy
and girl in the world likes to be able
to look up to his or her father
as the most dear and exceptional
man on earth. Unfortunately some are
deprived of that love, but we will never
be disappointed with our Father
who is in heaven. Christ
taught us to pray what no one else
ever did, what
Abraham never did, what Moses never
did, what David never
did, what the prophets
and priests of Israel never did; He makes us
understand it still:
that the mission
of the Spirit is to cry, “Abba, Father!”
and help us to know Him. How wonderful
is the fact
that in teaching us to pray Christ never
taught us to pray to Himself; never
taught us to pray to the
Holy Ghost; never taught us to pray to Yahweh;
never taught us to pray to saint or angel,
Virgin, or human being. How simple
is the teaching, how simple is the
prayer, “Our Father.” Oh, that is it!
God has revealed
Himself to us in a three-fold manifestation
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He
brings us into relationship with Himself in
each of these three manifestations. All
Christians have
entered into
a relationship with God as Son, experiencing
Him as SAVIOUR in the person of Jesus
Christ. Jesus said, I am the door: by Me if
any man enter in, he shall be saved” (Jn.
10:9). In this “Saviour” relationship we
come to know Him in the joy of sins forgiven
and the blessed
reality of redemption. Jesus
as Saviour is the door, the gate
the entrance into the
“For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons
of God” (Rom.
You can usually tell the difference between
a babe in Christ and a more mature son by their
terminology.
The babe knows JESUS THE SAVIOUR, and will always be talking about Jesus,
calling on Jesus, “Jesus...Jesus...Jesus!”
This is quite natural, although unscriptural.
However, as one
grows up into Christ he receives a
revelation of the FATHER. When
a baby is born it knows nothing about its
father. This understanding comes through
growth and development,
becoming more precious and meaningful as
time goes on. The cry of a son is —
“FATHER!” Our sonship is the
extension of Christ’s
sonship, the
Spirit of sonship
within us is the Spirit of THE SON. The new
man within IS CHRIST. The Spirit of the Son,
the Christ within cries not, “Jesus!”,
because it
is the Spirit of Jesus. This Spirit causes us to cry, not Jesus, but
FATHER! A simple truth is this: If there
is a spirit within you that cries
“Father!’
then know, my beloved, that you are beginning to enter
into your sonship to God!
In His great sermon on the mount Jesus
was teaching His disciples not to worry
about the future
or the mundane things of this earthly existence.
He said, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,
or what ye shall
drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall
put on, etc.” He reminds them that our heavenly Father
takes care of even
the little
birds and feedeth them, and then He says,
“Are ye not much better than they.” He tells
them how God causes the lilies to grow, and has clothed them with such
beauty, and the grass of the Field; and then
He continues, “Shall He
not much more clothe you, O ye of little
faith...for your heavenly Father knoweth
that ye have need of all these
things.” Yes, it is our heavenly Father
that is the source of our supply; He
is the giver of every
good and perfect gift; the
supplier of every need on every level,
and Jesus wanted us to know this
and to know and trust this
mighty God as our Father. Jesus said, “It
is not I that doeth the works, but My Father
who dwelleth in Me.” So it was God the
Father who healed the sick, it was the Father
who stretched forth His hand and did signs
and wonders, who cleansed the lepers, made
the lame to walk, and raised
the dead. Jesus Himself said so. It is still
the Father who does the works today, and we know nothing
of sonship until we thoroughly understand
this principle. Though the
Son and the sons are the channel through which the
divine fullness
flows, the Son and the
sons are not the source, the Father is the
source of all. From the Father flows the
mighty river
of divine fullness.
Though two thousand years ago it flowed through
the channel of His First-begotten
Son, and today may flow through the channels
of the sons of God, it does not originate with
any of us; the Father is the
source, and all emanates from God the Father. To know Him, the only
true God, is to be joined unto Him, the
fountain of Life; to be one with Him who is
the fountainhead of all life, wisdom, love,
power and goodness, is to have eternal life,
and to be a channel through which the divine fullness can flow.
Truly, “There is but one God, the Father,
of whom are all things...”
(I Cor. 8:6).
When we look at some
of the prayers
of the early disciples, we can see how, and to whom, they prayed. “For
this cause,” wrote the apostle Paul,
“I bow my knees unto the FATHER of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the
whole family in heaven and earth
is named, that He would grant to you, according to the
riches of His glory, to be strengthened
with His might by His Spirit in the inner
man.” Again, “I cease not to give thanks
for you, making mention of you in my
prayers; that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of Him” (Eph. 1:15-17).
Every other prayer in the epistles and the
book of Acts is prayed to the Father. And
James pointed out that “Every good gift, and every perfect
gift is from above, and cometh down from the
Father of lights...” (James 1:17).
The Church world today has lost the cry, “Our Father!” Humanity
never really had it, until Christ revealed
the Father. “Have we not all one
Father?” Yes, but men do not know it, and they
do not pray to the Father. They pray to God,
to Jesus, to Yahweh, to the Holy Spirit, to
the blessed Virgin, to the saints; but few
pray to the Father. Never shall the heart of
mankind be turned, father to son, mother to daughter,
until they know God as Father. Never shall we
understand the mission of Christ, or the
true value of our lives, until we know that
He came from the Father to reveal the
Father, because we too came from the Father,
and He is the way to the Father, and will
bring us back to God. Never shall men
understand the mighty power of that word
“Father” until they know that all things
are from the Father; that all things subsist
by the mighty operation of the power of the
Father. Let
us not forget that God is our Father — not the Father of some men, but
the Father of all men. He was the
Father of Adam (Lk. 3:38) and we are all the
offspring of Adam; that is why it takes the second man, the
last Adam, to bring us back to the Father.
The propitiation which Christ made is not
for our sins only, “But also for the sins
of the whole world”
(I Jn. 2:2). The Father’s love is reaching
out to all humanity, to every prodigal son, far away from Father’s
house. The message of Christ was a message
from the Father, and when He left us He said, “I ascend unto My Father
and your Father, and My God and your God.”
Consider the scene
with me. Up the victor’s way, to the
Oh, great God! God is wonderful! God is all-powerful! He is the Imperator!
He is absolute. But God is merciful! If you but cry, “Father, Father!”
He will rein the chariots of the stars; He will reign the chariots of the
suns; He will rein the planets in their courses, and He will leap from
His heaven, and raise His child to His
heart. He is your Father; He is my Father. He is our Father — and
“like as a father pitieth his children, so
the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.”
Ray Prinzing, in his excellent little
book
“Although He was actively doing the works of His Father,
so that He was able to say, ‘Son, thy sins
be forgiven thee...’
(Mk. 2:5), yet when
it came time for Him to pour out His life at
Calvary, and He faced those who would
crucify Him, though He was well able to forgive them, still He
said, ‘Father, Forgive them;
For they know not
what they
do” (Lk. 23:24). He knew that while the
eyes of the multitude were riveted
upon Him, yet they
saw only the outward human form, and recognized Him as the ‘Son of
man,” and though it would have sounded
noble to a few,
for Him to have uttered His own words of forgiveness, yet even
in that moment He
sought to raise their
consciousness to a higher level, and thus He
directed their attention TO THE FATHER, for total
forgiveness comes
from Him. And in due time man would understand ‘that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself.
(II Cor. 5:19).
“There is a ONENESS WITH THE FATHER, a relationship
that He would
have us enjoy,
where we receive directly from Him all that
we need. Jesus also spoke of that
deeper dimension when He said, ‘In that
day ye shall ask
Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you.
Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My
Name, He will give it
you’ (Jn.
To the above Paul Mueller adds these
instructive
insights: “There is another significant
stop for us in our spiritual growth in God. It
is the maturity of our worship and devotion
to the Father. Although Jesus
accepted the worship of others,
He clearly
directed those who were more
spiritual to worship the Father. He said,
‘But the hour cometh,
and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
for the Father
seeketh such to worship Him’ (Jn.
“The hour cometh, and now is, when the
true worshippers shall worship the Father.
Yea, the hour is here
now, and a people are now worshipping
the Father in spirit and in truth. It is not that a certain
date was reached, and the
hour arrived. It is that we matured in God
to the point where we now worship the Father.
When we grew
sufficiently in the Spirit, the hour of our more
mature worship of the Father came. Now we can say we
are ‘true worshippers’. We speak
directly to the Father and relate to Him in
all things. In this higher realm of worship,
our Father reveals His secrets
and mysteries plainly to us (Jn.
“Jesus also said, ‘At that day ye
shall ask in my name: and I say not unto
you, that I will pray the Father for you:
for the Father Himself loveth you, because
ye have loved me, and have believed
that I came out from God’ (Jn.
“We have entered a new relationship
with our Father. The old form of worship is being replaced.
We are now walking with our
Father as His sons. Our sonship relation
with Him is being confirmed. We are now
privileged to ask of our Father that our joy may be full. By the Spirit,
we are believing for the heathen as our inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for our possession (Ps.
2:8). This is the purpose of the THE FATHER OF SPIRITS
The reverent
heart is made to wonder
at the unmistakable simplicity of the
ways of God. Long centuries
ago the apostle penned
these meaningful words, “We have
had fathers of our flesh which corrected
us, and we gave them reverence: shall we
not much rather be in subjection unto the FATHER OF SPIRITS, and live?”
(Heb. 12:9). This verse tells
us that just as our natural, earthly father
is the father of our flesh, so is God the
FATHER OF OUR
SPIRITS! Ah, He is not the Father of your empty religious rituals and
static creeds; He is not the
Father of your denomination; He is not the
Father of your flesh; He is not the Father
of your carnal mind, your self-will, or
your fleshly emotions.
You can never meet God in any of those realms — He is not there. God is
the God of your spirit, you must be in your
spirit to be with God and touch God. Today I am
sitting in my office in
God is both Creator and Father. There is a vast and distinct
difference between the
two. A scientist
may invent and construct a robot that walks, talks and works. Is he then the
father of
the robot? No one would impute
fatherhood to the scientist because of his invention. He is clearly
the creator, but not the father. Should another
scientist invent an egg that hatches a bird, would we then characterize
the scientist as the “father” of the
bird? Certainly not! In the beginning God said, “Let us make man in our
image, and after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). God made cattle to reproduce
“after their kind,” after the cattle kind. He made every
winged fowl to reproduce
“after his kind,” after the bird
kind. That was the standard of
parenthood in that long-ago beginning, and
still is, ONE’S OWN
Is God, then, a man? Unless we can
establish that God is a physical and corporeal
Being with a body composed of flesh and bone,
then His creation of man did not make Him a “father” any more than did
oceans full of fish, or mountains filled
with bear and elk. The book of Genesis gives two accounts of the origin of
man. As I have studied the Word of God, many things have become very evident,
one of which is that there are two distinct
creations or works of God revealed in chapters one and two of Genesis. In
Genesis 1:26-27 the first
of these creative acts, in respect to man,
is presented, and as we consider the
wonderful advent of man created “in the image and likeness of God” we
can only conclude that this is a SPIRITUAL MAN brought forth out of the
very spirit-substance of God Almighty and bearing His own divine nature,
character, and attributes. The
image of God is the nature of God
reproduced in man. The second work of God wrought upon man is related in
Genesis 2:7 where we see this significant
action taking place: “And the Lord God FORMED MAN OF THE DUST OF THE
GROUND, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
a living soul.” Reading this passage we
have the definite assurance that, as man has first been “created” in
the spiritual image of God, a further work is being carried forth and the
man is now being “formed” into another expression
“FORMED of the dust of the ground,” thus
becoming a “living soul” — manifest
in the earth realm. The First is the
created man, the second reformed
man. The first is out
of God in the spirit, the second is out
of the earth after the flesh. The first is
a spiritual man bearing God’s image, the
second a physical man resembling the
animals. The First bears the image
of the heavenly, the
second bears the image
of the earthly. The first
is known unto God in the Spirit, the second
is known by the
creatures of earth. The
very fact that the scripture states that
Adam became a living soul, reveals that there
was a process from pure
spirit existence, into a lesser realm.
The Lord Jesus in His resurrection said, “A spirit has not flesh
and bone as ye see Me have” (Lk. 24:39).
He also said that “God is a SPIRIT” (Jn.
“For this cause I bow my knees
unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
of whom the whole family in heaven and earth
is named” (Eph.
The prophet Zechariah
declared that
from the beginning
God “stretcheth forth the heavens,
and layeth the foundations
of the earth, and formeth
the spirit of man within him” (Zech.
12:1). Who can gainsay the obvious truth that
the outward physical form we recognize as man is indwelled
by a spirit? The mighty Moses declared that God is “the God of the
spirits of all flesh” (Num. 27:16). The apostle Paul said, “For what
man knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of man which is in him”? even so the things of God knoweth
no man, but the spirit of God” (I Cor.
2:11). And again, “And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes.
God is spirit. Get a Fix
on this one grand truth — God IS
Hans Christian Anderson was a
great storyteller. He could spin a yarn and tell a tale with the best of
writers. He also recognized a greater writer, the storyteller
of life. “Every man’s life is a fairy tale,” he
wrote, “written by God’s fingers.”
When do our tales begin? Many say, “Why, at birth of course,
when the cord is
cut and the child draws its first breath and sees the light of day.”
God, the storyteller
of life, tells us His “fingers” were
busy long before that. Long before your conception in a physical world,
you existed, because you are the children
of the Father in heaven. If you did not exist before your conception,
then, my friends, you have no spirit )
within you, and God, the Father of spirits, the Father in heaven, is not
the Father of the spirits of all men. The question begs an answer: From
whence came your spirit? From God? From the
devil? Did God by a special act of creation form it at the moment
of your conception or your birth? Was it pro-created in the physical union
of sperm and ovum? If you did not exist before
your conception you are merely a beast and you do not belong to the
celestial family of God, nor are you the sons of God, nor did Jesus
descend from the heavenly realms to redeem
you and bring you back to the Father, and
there is not much that I can tell you that will do you any good.
I turn to the passages of scripture which with divine certainty
relate this. In Ephesians 1:4-5 we find,
“According as He hath chosen us IN HIM
BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, that we
should be holy and without blame before
Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children (placement
as mature sons) by Jesus Christ
to Himself, according to the good pleasure
of His will.” Blessed be God! The apostle
Paul informs us that God chose and pre-destined
a company of sons before the foundation of
the world. The word “before” translates
the Greek word PRO meaning “to go before,
precede.” Hence, the Father’s act of choosing the
first-fruit sons preceded the laying of the
foundations of the world (that is another story, but I will not deal with
it here). How, I ask, could God choose you IN CHRIST and predestinate you
in that long ago eternity IF YOU DID NOT
THEN EXIST? Now, therefore, when I talk to
you, I am talking to a household of God’s sons and daughters; I am
talking to a celestial race, a divine
household; and these are the people of whom
the apostle spoke when he
wrote to the saints in Rome, saying, “For whom He did FOREKNOW, He also
did predestinate to be conformed to the
image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”
(Rom. 8:29). Yes — the Father in heaven FOREKNEW you, knew you
beforehand, my beloved brother, my precious
sister in Christ. And that can mean nothing else but that He KNEW YOU
BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD and at that time when He KNEW YOU
BEFORE He pre-destined you to enter this earth experience and thereby
be conformed into the image of the First,
unique, and preeminent Son, Jesus Christ.
We were in Christ before the ages
began. There was something in God — spirit — marked off with your
name on it, you were chosen in Him before
the garden graced the eastern slopes of
Spirit is superior to physical. Eternity
is superior to time. Non-dimensional is superior to dimensional. God, the
eternal spirit, created something that
would not last. I have no desire to detract from the material creation,
but words fail me to explain how
momentarily unimportant the natural realm is in comparison to heavenly and
eternal things. The natural creation is here for a short visit — it
began and it will end. Some fundamentalists
believe that the material creation has been in existence for only 6,000
years. Scientists believe that it is some twenty billion years old. But
even twenty billion years is but a moment, an infinitesimal
time in relation to God and eternity. It is
so insignificant in the greater scheme of things. And you were marked out
in Him, I was marked out in Him, before the
worlds began and that makes the part of me
that is spirit very, very important!
I do not hesitate to say that only that which is spirit is real.
“The things which are seen are temporal; but the
things which are not seen are eternal” (II Cor.
As poor Job sat on the ash heap in the midst of trial and suffering
the Lord commanded him to stand up like a man and respond to the questions
He, the Lord, would put to him. The Lord
then asked forty questions, none of which Job could answer.
Among the questions was this one: “Where
wast thou when
I laid the foundations of the earth...when
the morning stars sang together and all the
sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:7).
Job was speechless, for he had no idea where
he was in that time of long ago, if ever he
knew his memory had failed completely. The
truth, however, it seems
to me, was that Job was there among the
company of the sons of God, beholding with
wonder the plan of God on earth with its
sufferings and testings
and the glory that should follow. These
sons of God that shouted for joy on that
primeval morn understood the wisdom of a
plan by which they should gain the
enlightenment of perfection by experience
instead of an inherent
and innate perfection
guided only by divine instincts, and that the
sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared
to the glory that is to follow as a result
of them, and so awesome was the prospect that they shouted for joy in holy
expectation. We do not shout
unless there is something to shout about. The message
is clear — there was a time before the
foundations of the earth were laid; there
were sons of God who already existed in that ancient time;
and those young sons of God lifted their voices with the morning stars in
contemplation of the marvelous
purpose they were to fulfill. It is
precious to know that God’s first Son, our own Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, is named the Bright and Morning
Star.
Never were words more sublime
uttered by sage or prophet than
those spoken by king David when
he lifted up his heart to God in a prayer of thanksgiving and adoration
saying, “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling
place in all generations. Before
the mountains were
brought forth, or ever
Thou hadst formed
the earth
and the world, even
from everlasting to everlasting.
Thou art God” (Ps. 90:1-2). Here
the prophet
David assures us with great plainness of
speech that the Lord has been our dwelling place in all generations.
Even before the
mountains were
brought forth or God had formed the earth,
from everlasting to everlasting He
is our God and in Him we dwelt and from Him we came.
Our spirits were with Him before the creation of the earth, for the Father
was then our dwelling place.
We were sent to this earthly realm for a wise and glorious purpose
— for testing,
learning, instruction, training, discipline,
and perfection — preparation for our part in that magnificent work of
deliverance of the whole
creation from the tyranny of darkness,
decay and death. The Psalmist said, “Thou turnest
man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye
children of men” (Ps. 90:3). The Lord
turned man to destruction, which is to say,
He sent us down to this earth realm
of dust, sin and death, and then said to us, “Return! ye
children of men.” What a revelation that
is!
Far away in the depths of my spirit
today there is a chord that still vibrates
to that wondrous shout of joy before
the foundations of the earth were laid,
when, in that long forgotten past we were
there with the
Father in spirit, and there
is an inward sense of assurance that much of the truth we
now possess was known to our spirits since
that early beginning. Because the spirit is burdened
down with the earthly and visible, man has come to the
place in his experience where the
inner sanctum wherein God lives in man’s
spirit is veiled by the flesh and his spiritual consciousness is
imprisoned by this gross material realm. We remember
not the things of old — until that heaven blest day when Christ comes in
quickening power and touches the mind of
our spirit, restoring the
memory of those former things. For lack
of true understanding we call this restored
memory “revelation”. When by the eyes of spirit we
see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor, the powerful attraction kindled
in our hearts for Christ and reality is, in fact, just the
beginning of the wonderful RENEWING OF THE
From out of eternity, Before time began; In the bosom of the
Father, While the morning stars sang, I shouted for joy, While beholding
His great plan; God’s purpose on earth,
His election in man! While
meditating upon the wonder
of these things, I was struck by the Lord Jesus’ statement in Matthew
— “Call no man your father upon the
earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.” It seemed
to be asking me if I was thinking of God as
my Father or if I was instead simply
thinking of myself as the outcome of a whole network of human beings
who stretched back through time to our
proverbial ancestors Adam and Eve! In other
words, instead of thinking of ourselves
as the outcome of materiality, we can all
relate to our Father in heaven,
just as Jesus told us to. And since
God is spirit, it follows that in our true
nature we must all be spiritual because
we are His children. Looking at
ourselves from this spiritual basis can really bring about a great change
in our lives. It can set
us free from inherited
tendencies
or from a checkered past. For instance, if one’s
human family has been a bit on the shady
side of the law, or with a disproportionate
number of alcoholics, this knowledge
of our true identity and the true value of our life can help to free us
from believing we’re stuck with repeating
the same mistakes.
I saw this very clearly
during the time
when I traveled to the Alps of northern
Surely this is what Jesus
had in mind when He gave us this most
spiritual, yet practical, teaching: “Blessed are the
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the pure
in heart:
for they shall
see God. Blessed
are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God. Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break
through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth
nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
do not break through nor steal. Therefore I
say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye
shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than
meat, and the body than raiment? For after
all these things do the Gentiles seek:
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye
first the [ENTER TEXT OF WRITING / SCRIERE HERE] |
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