In the first letter of Peter, first letter
of Peter, chapter two, verses
six and seven, it is contained in scripture,
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone,
elect, precious, and he that believeth on him
shall not be put to shame.
For you, therefore, which believe, is a preciousness.
But for such as disbelieve, the stone which
the builders rejected, the same was made the
head of the corner.
And a stone of stumbling, and a rock
of offense.
Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 22,
Ye are come to Zion.
I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone.
Ye are come to Zion.
This letter to the Hebrews, as it is
traditionally called, but as it has proved to
be, in the dispensation, this most
serious document for the Church was
written at a crisis.
It had to do, and it will again
have to do, with a crisis.
A pounding point in the dispensation.
It is not sure to our knowledge when
the letter was written.
Opinion differs, but the difference only amounts to
a matter of perhaps two or three years.
But it is very strongly believed that it
was written about the year 69 A.D.
In the year 70 A.D. the whole
Jewish system, as centered in Jerusalem, and the
temple, and the priesthood, was swept away.
That was the year when everything changed from
what it had been for many centuries.
An established system, a recognized and accepted world
system of religion, with its teaching and its
practice.
In A.D. 70, it was swept into
the vortex of that overflowing of the pagan
world, hostile to God.
And from that day till this, there has
been no temple in Jerusalem.
The nation has been scattered, and the Jewish
system has been practically inoperative as it was
before.
Anticipating that turn in the sanctuaries, in the
dispensation, the Holy Spirit led to the writing
of this letter, the producing of this document.
It read in the light of that great
historic event.
It is much better understood, appreciated.
Its significance is more clearly grasped.
Yes, a mighty age crisis is represented by
the letter to the Hebrews.
Nothing less than the passing of a system
or an economy.
If we look into that and examine it
as to what it was that was passing,
what that signified, we shall get the real
abiding message of this letter.
And we shall see that what is here
in its real significance and abiding meaning will
lie behind another crisis, which crisis we are
in our day seeing.
Dear friends, it is no exaggeration to say
that you and I have come actually to
live in a time when the whole complexion
of things in Christian tradition is changing.
I have got to try to be careful
not to be misunderstood and wrongly reported, and
I know I am taking risks in what
I am going to say.
Nevertheless, we have got to be very faithful
and look things clearly in the face.
For something over, well over a century, God
has been moving in a certain way which
has not been his ultimate and fundamental and
supreme way, but which has been in his
sovereign way, for reasons which we need not
stay to discuss or even point out.
He has been moving by means of a
system of things, realizing much of his purpose.
That method of the divine movement is completely
changing.
It is passing.
The day of organized foreign missions, organized foreign
missions, note my word, is ending.
We are seeing the close of that order
and method.
But what is foreign is now being wound
up in nations.
It does not mean that God is finishing
or has come to an end of his
work.
It is a method, a kind of means.
Now come back to this situation here, represented
by the crisis of this letter.
It was the passing of a system or
an economy which was meant by God to
achieve one thing.
It did achieve that one thing up to
a certain point and then ceased to do
it.
And from that time its days were numbered.
The thing which it was meant to achieve
in the economy of God was the securing
of spiritual men and women.
The 11th chapter of this letter or that
part of the document which has subsequently been
marked off by that number 11.
We would be well to dismiss those numbers
from our minds at the moment and view
the document as a whole.
But that point which for our convenience is
registered with number 11 shows how that by
a certain economy through the ages God secured
spiritual men and women.
A galaxy of spiritual men and women is
found in that section.
God took out from the world and attached
to heaven, attached to himself something intrinsically valuable
to him.
The men and the women of such faith
that the world was counted as nothing and
life as nearly in the light of this
relationship with God and his purpose.
The economy was sovereignly raised up and used
for that and for no other purpose than
to secure spiritual men and women out of
the nations.
Not to secure an adherence to an earthly
system of religion though there was a pattern
of things in heaven.
Not to secure adherence to a pattern but
through the pattern to secure men and women
in that of which it was the pattern
of heaven.
That is the all-governing law and principle
of the old testament.
The means was employed not to be an
end in itself.
Priesthood was no end in itself and that
is what is stated in this letter.
The tabernacle was no end in itself.
That whole system was no end in itself.
It was something used sovereignly by God or
meant by God to secure men and women
who saw through the pattern to the spiritual
reality and became attached to that.
Men and women on this earth but related
to heaven.
The things that were real.
That was the system and that was God's
meaning in it and it did do that
for so long.
The time came when it became something in
itself.
An end in itself and it was no
longer producing spiritual men and women.
It was producing religious people who were still
carrying on the forms, the ceremonies and the
whole paraphernalia of the system but they were
no longer spiritual men and women in relation
to heaven.
The thing was going on but it was
empty.
Meaningless.
It was not serving the purpose for which
it was meant and God wrote it up.
God defined its conclusion.
Letter to the Hebrew seed.
The executing of that decree.
The carrying out of that decision and if
it was written in 69 it was only
a year afterwards but all that is written
here about things which can be shaken, being
shaken and more than shaken, brought down.
Then we are told that that was done
in order that the things which cannot be
shaken should remain.
And the whole letter you see is concerned
with this.
Not with being part of a religious system
and tradition even something which God has in
the past used to his end.
But men and women who are now wholly,
not immediately but wholly and directly and immediately
related to the ultimate thing that God is
after.
That is spiritual men and women.
That system which was meant to secure that
end when it ceased to do that and
just went on perhaps on its own momentum,
by its own drive, because of its traditions,
because of its antiquity, because of a past
which was glorious under the hand of God.
All that now God simply being carried on
as something in itself stripped and erect and
empty of its real spiritual meaning so far
as God is concerned.
That past in the year AD 70, that
is the crisis of this letter, that system
though used in the sovereign purpose of God
though meant to reach that end was strictly
governed by spiritual laws.
I cannot underscore that heavily enough.
The whole thing was governed strictly by spiritual
laws.
It was not something in itself.
No movement of a priest or Levite of
old, no vessel that he used, nothing whatever
at any point in that system was something
in itself.
It had behind it a spiritual meaning, a
spiritual significance and was governed by a spiritual
law.
Nullify that spiritual law and the thing is
no longer even sacred to God.
The amazing thing is that then that thing
is in its right relationship to God.
You cannot touch it without meeting God.
Touch a vessel of the sanctuary in its
right relationship and you meet God and will
be split.
You die if you touch that also.
The thing is vibrant with the very majesty
and glory and holiness of God when it
is in its right relationship because it is
getting the end.
And get those same things whether they be
altars or any vessels or anything else.
Then the real spiritual object is no longer
being served, is not sacred to God.
You just hand it all, the whole thing
over, send it away.
There was a time when if that ark
went amongst full of spines, the full of
spines were very glad to see the back
of it.
There was a time when that ark could
be disposed of and no one felt its
impact at all.
No longer accompanied by any sign of God.
God doesn't care for the sea.
What was at the beginning a wooden chest
overlaid with gold became something which was full
of the throne of heaven.
There was a time later when it was
no more than a chest like any other
chest overlaid with gold.
You see, things that God raises up, he
does not commit himself to eternally so far
as instrumentality is concerned.
He only commits himself to anything when the
object for which he raised it up is
being reached.
And God's one all-inclusive object is to
secure men and women who are spiritual people.
Anything, anything that claims to be related to
God which is not serving that end has
no place, no sacredness with God.
And the day will come when that can
go.
Tremendous things to say but it's perfectly true.
It's true to history and it's true to
today.
You see, I have a very great regard
for the instrumentalities that God has used.
When I speak like this, don't think for
a moment that I am despising or undervaluing
those sovereignly used instrumentalities.
For God has used missions and missionary institutions
and many things like that.
He has used them and blessed them and
they have been vibrant with God.
Many of them.
So, as time has gone on, various
elements, various elements have become dominant.
And one element is foreign.
It's what is represented by the word foreign.
All, all if men only saw, realized, had
perception of discernment, spiritual sensitiveness, how they would,
they would not only have God but how
they would shrink, shrink before that name foreign
missions.
That word has spelt the doom of missionary
activity.
It's foreign.
It's important.
It's something that belongs.
Not to the place where it is operating
but to somewhere else.
You see, Christ is never a foreigner.
He is never foreign.
There is nothing foreign about Christ.
And the true church, the body of Christ
is nothing foreign.
The very element of what is foreign has
to be eliminated.
Completely eliminated.
I'm not, even meaning by trying to accommodate
yourself to native habits and dress and so
on.
But I mean becoming so, so much bound
in the spiritual concern for the spiritual interests
that it is perfectly manifest that this is
not something from the outside.
This is from heaven.
This bears the imprint of heaven.
This is Christ, who is not national or
anything like that on this earth.
This is something outside, altogether different.
It's not bearing this, this stigma of what
is foreign.
Do not break up with that, dear friends.
And it's because of that word that we
are seeing this change.
An entirely new orientation of the whole picture
and course of things is being demanded.
And so it will be that if there
is going to be a continuation of what
we call evangelization, it will be just by
men and women and not by institutions.
They may have to be business, professional men
and women, but it will be not what
they are professionally as so-called missionaries.
It will be because they are men and
women of God.
Because they bring Christ in and not some
institutional interest from somewhere else.
That is happening today.
That defines the present crisis, a tremendous changeover.
Everything that God uses is conditioned most strictly
by spiritual laws.
And when the spiritual laws are not discerned
and observed, the thing's day is fixed.
The end of that is set.
It will pass no matter what its tradition,
what its history, what its past may have
been.
It has become something in itself.
And for itself, it is wound up.
I want a lot of time, whether we
be able tomorrow, to spend more time on
this matter.
And I want a lot of time to
speak about this whole conditioning of everything by
spiritual laws.
But there's the statement.
That system which was about to pass, that
crisis of the dispensations which was imminent when
the letter to the Hebrews was written, that
system was at most only for a matter
of time.
However much we may say about Israel's past
or future, it is only a temporal thing.
Even if there is a future for Israel.
Some dispute that, but most believe that there
is.
We don't argue.
If there is, it will only be for
a time.
It will all give place to the eternal
age, a new heaven and a new earth,
in which there will not be a Jewish
nation and others, not even Jews in the
church.
It is at most for a time, and
it was at most for a time, until,
until, is a governing word, Mark you, over
the history of Israel.
Oh, until.
The time factor, Mark you, the time factor
was fixed in the eternal counsels and foreknowledge
of God.
You cannot get away from this as you
read the Bible.
Things are moving to a timetable.
Moving to a timetable.
I remember that Dr. Meyer was traveling once
in America and sitting in the compartment of
the train or in the coach.
On one knee he had his Bible open
and on the other knee he had a
timetable.
A man sitting by looked at him.
With something of a smear he said, you
don't, don't tell me that you believe in
that worn-out out-of-date book, do
you?
Pointing to the Bible.
Dr. Meyer looked up and in his quiet
wave, which some of us knew so well,
kindly smiled at the man.
My dear friends, do you see that on
my other knee I have a timetable?
And do you know why I've got that
timetable open on my knee?
I'm taking this long journey and I've seen
the timetable that we are due at a
certain time at certain points.
Now the next stop will be so and
so at such and such a time.
I'm watching to see if we're on time
at each point.
In this other book that I've got here
open, I find God's timetable.
There are time marks when certain things will
happen.
And as I look back over history, I
see that those things happened just when God
said they would happen.
Jesus came in the fullness of the times.
And so he went on.
He said, that's why I believe the Bible.
You don't want me to scrap the timetables
of your country, do you?
And say they're out of date, outworn, no
good, unreliable.
They are proved to be something of value
because here they are, they say, such and
such a time at such and such a
place, and within perhaps a few minutes we
are there.
No more can I scrap my Bible.
I see God is working to a timetable.
Dr. Meyer went further and dealt with some
of the other signs of the times.
But that's sufficient for our point.
There is a timetable.
Back of everything.
Fixed in the foreknowledge of God that things
happen when God appointed beforehand they should happen.
And are doing so.
And yet, and this is one of the
difficulties, the problems, connected with such a fact.
While the times were fixed in the foreknowledge
of God, strangely they coincided and synchronized with
certain conditions.
Those conditions were not brought about by God.
They came about, and when they came about
something happened which had been before determined.
The time synchronized with certain conditions.
I note, as to this letter, all so
much had been foretold, made known beforehand concerning
Israel and what would happen.
Lord Jesus had in a parabolic way spoken
of and acted toward the fig tree.
The fig tree withered from its roots, symbolic
of Israel being set aside.
I'm not going into all the prophecies concerning
this matter, but there it was.
But it would take place, not just willy
-nilly, but strangely enough in the knowledge of
God because of certain conditions.
And so it coincided with what?
The system and framework having become a substitute
for, or something more than, the essential purpose
for which it was raised up.
The thing had become a substitute for the
purpose of its existence.
Or it had become more than the purpose.
In some way the real purpose had shrunk
or disappeared.
And then the thing happened.
The thing that was fixed to happen in
a time synchronized with that condition.
And marvel, God works like that.
There is a time fixed when God will
sift out everything in Christianity.
Sift it all out to find out just
how far the real purpose of its existence
is being fulfilled.
And the things which can be shaken will
be shaken.
Spirituality in men and women is the thing
which governs all this and decides the crisis.
Decides the crisis.
We shall come to that crisis individually sooner
or later.
Why do you bear the name of Christian?
You call yourself a Christian?
We call ourselves Christians?
Why do we have that name of Christ?
Sooner or later it will be found out
whether we are Christ ones or not.
Whether it is Christ?
How far it is Christ?
I wonder if I dare, in a parenthesis
here, introduce something that I've read recently.
It was only the dream of a girl.
She said that she had a dream.
And in her dream she saw a glorious
angel sitting.
Sitting on the village green where her home
was.
And in his hand was a large measure
standing up being held by his hand up
beside him.
And as she looked at that measure she
saw it marked off Christ.
There was so much of Christ, an inch
of Christ, two inches of Christ, more inches
of Christ right after this large measure.
And then she heard the angel call.
The angel called the name of someone known
so well to her who was, who had
a great reputation for doing a lot of
things in Christian work.
Always running about here and there, always active
in philanthropic interests in the name of Christianity.
A very busy person in what is called
Christian work.
And she knew that person so well.
Everybody thought that person was a very wonderful
person.
That they would stand well in the great
day of reckoning.
And the name was called.
And this person came up so confidently, quite
assured that she would stand well by the
measure.
Quite assured that well she would stand well
by the measure.
And when she came up by the measure
she began to shrink in her stature.
She became smaller and smaller and smaller until
she was a little tiny person down there
at the bottom of the measure.
Everybody looked, got the surprise of their lives.
Is this miscellaneous?
Is that really all the measure of Christ
after all?
The angel gave her some strong timely words
of advice seeking to point out the difference
between all this that is outward and real
measure of Christ inward.
And she went away very crestfallen.
And so one by one people known were
called by the angel.
There was one person whose name was called,
known by the dreamer, as a very poor,
weak little soul.
No one thought a great deal of her.
She lived in a back place in very,
very uncomfortable conditions.
No one, no one made great friend of
her, left her very much alone.
They didn't think she mattered at all.
And the angel called her name.
And she came forward very tremblingly, fearfully.
Just scared of standing up by that measure.
And she came and stood by it.
And as she came into touch with it,
she began to grow and grow and grow.
Her whole stature developed and increased until she
was bigger than all the rest.
The angel didn't have much to say to
her but just a kindly, kindly word.
Yes Mary, yes Mary, I know all about
your secret battles, all your secret suffering, and
how bravely you have borne the despisings of
others, and how you've carried it all in
secret to the Lord in prayer, and drawn
your strength from Him to go on.
You can't form much in His sight.
The dreamer had her name called.
And she had it then.
She was very fond of dress, and of
worldly appearance, and all that sort of thing.
And for her, the things of this world
counted for everything.
And she, because she was popular, because people
thought so much of her, always pointing at
her and saying she was a model of
a well-dressed person, and the kind of
person that everybody would like to be, she
thought that she might stand well before the
measure.
But she found that as she came near,
she also began to dwindle and to shrink,
and to lose all her sense of feeling
of self-importance.
The angel just quoted to her a bit
of scripture from Peter's letter, not the adorning,
plaiting of hair and ornaments, but the ornament
of a meat and a quiet spirit, which
is of great price in the sight of
God.
Now, I have risked introducing that.
It seems fanciful and fantastic, but it perhaps
gives point to this whole matter.
You see, God's standard, after all, is the
spiritual measure of his Son.
That is what really is inherent in this
word from Peter, I lay in Zion, in
Zion a cheap cornerstone.
Now then, everybody measure up.
The preciousness of that is to you that
believe, but to those who disbelieve my word,
what a terrible effect that cornerstone has as
a gauge, a gauge of spirituality, the measure
of Christ.
Well, you see, God is not interested in
anything which is not productive of real spirituality.
That's the point.
And Zion, as we have been saying throughout
this conference, is the Son, the Son of
God's thoughts for his people, the Son of
the virtues and values and victories of the
Lord Jesus, to be apprehended, to be known,
to be entered into, to be enjoyed through
faith.
Zion is the great test.
It's the great test of everything and of
everyone.
Yes, Zion is like God's plumb line, to
change the metaphor, the test of everything.
There has to be an answering to God
for anything provided by him.
Yes, anything that God has provided cannot, it
cannot exist, it cannot be present as though
it did not exist.
That's a very solemn statement, a very solemn
statement, a very challenging, searching statement.
Dear friends, if God has raised up anything,
presented anything of himself as to his Son,
and brought us into the knowledge of that,
into proximity to that, into association with that,
if that has come within the orbit of
our lives, it can never be as though
it has never happened.
Sooner or later we shall have to answer
to God for that.
That is the verdict of the book of
the Revelation, which is the Son of everything.
We have so often pointed out the beginning
of God's weighing up, the presentation of the
plumb line in the first chapters of the
book of the Revelation was to the churches
which the Apostle Paul was used to bring
into existence, churches in Asia, who had received
that revelation, that wonderful revelation of Christ and
of his body, which had been given in
a particular and peculiar way to Paul.
Churches have had that ministry.
Paul had long since gone to be with
the Lord, as he was closing his life,
all they which were in Asia turned from
him, repudiated perhaps.
At any rate, let him go, passed away
from him.
Do you think that's the end?
Oh no, very well, very well, those very
churches are brought to toe the line of
what Paul had given to be judged by
what the Lord had presented.
That's the standard, that's the standard.
Sooner or later it's like that, we don't
get away from it, it will be.
Perhaps it's not necessary for me to say
that with strength, it sounds so hard, it's
like a frown, isn't it?
But what we're saying is this, you see,
that God presented something which had spiritual significance.
The thing was kept on with, was held
to, the spiritual significance was lost and eventually
God judged, not according to their continuation with
the form, but according to their departure from
its spiritual meaning.
It is like that, it is like that,
it will be like that now and at
the end.
It is just that something, that something that
is deeper and more inward than the framework
and the form.
Even though God may have used that, it
is just that something that finds us out,
it finds us out.
We are, come to Zion, behold I lay
in Zion, a chief corner stone, which of
course architecturally means that from which and to
which everything moves.
It takes its rise from that, it moves
from that upward and it all relates backward
to that, the whole structure, a chief corner
stone, a chief corner stone means that everything,
everything is related to that.
I lay in Zion, that, that, that's something
which is to be the test, the test.
Our time has gone for the afternoon, otherwise
I should have gone on to show how
Zion has been God's instrument of testing in
the past dispensation and how that which Zion
represents now of a spiritual quality and a
spiritual measure is going to be the test
of everything at the end, like that.
I think I can stop there for the
moment, we may go further, but the afternoon
has contained in the purpose of God, I
believe, this one particular emphasis.
If I am wrong, I'm misleading you and
I would not do that.
I submit it to your own inquiry, observation,
discernment with this question, are we seeing a
change, really a change in the whole confection
of things in this world so far as
Christian activity is concerned?
Are we?
Is this thing growing over the year?
See, it is so different, isn't it?
So different.
Some of us remember so well in our
younger days in Christian activity how tremendously we
were taken up with this whole scheme of
world evangelization along the accepted line.
Now, let me say again, it is not
for one moment an undervaluing of what God
has sovereignly given us, but we know.
Now, today we haven't finished our lives yet,
we may be getting on, but we have
lived to see that it's no longer possible
to do it in that way.
What is the use of appealing today for
missionaries to go to China?
And what is true in that connection?
It's growing there through, isn't it?
On the old lines, in the old way,
it's nonsense now, isn't it?
That doesn't mean that the end has already
arrived of missionaries going out into the world,
but we can see the drift of things.
There's a change.
There's a change coming.
And if there is going to be a
prolonging of this matter, and I don't assume
that worldly evangelization is at an end, if
there is going to be an extension of
time for testimony in the nations, it's going
to be in another way, on another basis.
By other means, as I have said, it's
going to be by men and women as
such, and not as, under some title and
institution and so on.
Just men and women, unprofessionally, being witnesses, perhaps
in business and in other ways in the
nations.
If it's going to be at all, that's
the way for the future.
Things changing, isn't it?
Now, why?
What is the upshot of it?
What does it mean from God's standpoint?
Oh, you see, it is just this tremendous
emphasis of God and of heaven that God,
in the consummation of the age, is going
to come to the essential and the intrinsic,
and to strip off the secondary.
To get right to the issue, without going
round it in long, drawn-out circles.
Get right to it.
Look here, you people in the nations, you
have got to know God first-hand, not
by foreign means.
You've got to know God for yourselves and
be able to stand all together without foreign
help, in any way.
First-hand, spiritual men and women, and what
is true in those nations is going to
be true in every nation, is going to
be true here.
Something is going to happen which will throw
us all back upon God.
It will, dear friends.
We here in this place are going to
be thrown upon the Lord.
In some way it's going to happen that
if we haven't got a life with God
and don't know the Lord, it doesn't matter
what the set-up is, it won't save
us, it won't help us, it won't suffice.
We're going to be pressed into this.
But we are going to be men and
women who know the Lord.
Our spiritual men and women, that is the
issue.
And God will overturn anything to get No
matter how long it's tradition, no matter how
much he may have used it in former
times, he's going, in the long run, to
just concentrate upon one thing.
Do you know the Lord?
How much do you know the Lord?
What does your knowledge of the Lord amount
to?
What can it carry you through?
What can it make you stand up to?
Those upon whom you have leaned may prove
to be broken wreaths.
You may find disappointment all round.
You may discover things that shock you and
could turn you aside and make you offended.
But you're being tested now, according to Zion,
whether you stand or whether you stumble.
A stumbling block, you see, if we are
not really men and women who know the
Lord.
Oh, do understand this.
If I said nothing more, and I could
say nothing more important than this, here, brothers
and sisters, what God is trying to do
with us, in our experiences, to make us
know him for ourselves.
We have nothing second-hand, direct, that will
not make us independent of one another, make
us perhaps the more dependent upon one another,
but it's got to be like that.
God will shake everything that can be shaken
in order to find out how much there
is of that kind, conforming to Zion.