Now, let's take on where we were, that
I believe, just to recap a moment back
on the Ephesian statement and the Philippian position,
that every knee has got to bow at
the name of Jesus, but that's a step,
I believe, in the whole process.
We are going to bow our whole selves,
not just bow our knees, before God.
And this marvellous revelation of Jesus Christ, who
he is.
Well, we know who he is, you say,
he's God, manifest in the flesh.
Ah, but these different names, there's something wonderful
about them.
You must read about this in the Revelation,
I don't, I want to make the connections,
I'm not talking of Revelation, at the moment.
But he talks in the messages to the
churches, that you will receive a white stone,
and a name written, which only you will
know.
Expositors have attempted all things about that, but
cling to the truth of it, whether he's
got it right, or she's got it wrong,
or something.
Don't worry about that.
This is how I have proceeded, I'm quite
a dunce, really.
You have to see, beloved, there's got to
mean something to you.
You will receive a stone with a name,
that no one knows but you.
In other words, the secret has to be
in you.
If you haven't got something which is secret,
a white stone, you haven't really got salvation.
But no one knows it.
You have to have something.
And this was in the breast of the
Lord Christ, as he lived on the earth.
He borne it from eternity.
It's all in the mystery realm, beloved, the
outworkings of it, wonderful incarnation, ministry, anointing, reliance,
healing, crucifixion, resurrection.
Hallelujah.
The net, not the gross result of it,
is that you will one day proceed into
something great and glorious, which should keep you
pressing on like a pull as I'm heading
for the mark all my life.
He couldn't express it, though he could express
much more than I can.
And do remember this, that when you read
Paul, you'll never master him, but let him
master you anyway, you will be entering into
this great realm of mystery in which John
shared, because only he and Paul were caught
up to heaven.
So far as we know, none of the
others were.
And Paul says, you know, I had to
have a messenger of Satan given to me.
So you pay a price for elevation, not
for your redemption.
You have to pay a price.
Keep that clear.
My blood?
No, not your blood.
My body?
No, not all he wants it.
There is something that I can't explain.
The most obvious thing is that you will
be greatly misunderstood.
But he who becomes of like heart, like
spirit, and like mind, with you, though they
can't have your personal experience of it, will
understand what you're talking about.
Don't expect to be a lot of people
who do.
Perhaps you'll think I am a mystic.
I don't think I am.
But I know this.
In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God.
It was God.
That's the hope of every preacher, to turn
it into human experience.
That God is with him.
And God is in him.
When he preaches the Word.
Not words particularly.
Words can be a veil.
A mystic web woven over the truth.
Unless you use them correctly.
In the multitude of words, says the old
proverbialist, there wanteth not sin.
So don't pray to be voluble, will you?
God wants us to enter into understanding.
I've already mentioned that.
How is it you do not understand?
The simplest things.
So let's come on then.
We've got through verse one.
If I only get through one verse of
the lecture, I don't know how many chapters
I shall cover.
But be of good cheer.
I hope to go further than that.
By the way, I'm on test, you know
this, don't you?
I hope Derek told you I was on
test.
I'm on test.
I don't mean acceptability, but shall I say
health-wise.
But I hope to die preaching.
I hope I die, well I won't say
here.
Now in verse two.
It was like that in the beginning with
God.
All the words is like this.
Go back, read Genesis.
Perhaps I ought to have brought my Bible.
But I'm so infrequently in the Old Testament.
I use it as sort of an illustration
book.
But here is the thing.
This.
That's how it was in the beginning with
God.
So now you can think of creation and
listen.
You will understand from a more advantageous position
than Moses was in.
That's right.
He didn't know Jesus Christ, for instance.
Each one of us, I hope, would be
able to confess that we do know him.
He didn't know the Lord Jesus Christ, although
he was with him.
He didn't know him.
That's what Jesus said about the Holy Ghost.
The Lord said to them, he's with you
about the Holy Ghost.
He shall be in you.
Think of that.
The world doesn't know me.
He didn't say this.
I said they never really saw him.
Oh, they saw his body.
They saw it hanging on a cross toward
death.
But they'd never seen Jesus.
I mean with the eyes of the heart.
But he said to them, now you see
me.
And that was spoken in the secret rendezvous.
It wasn't for the world.
It was the rendezvous that the disciples didn't
know about at all.
Being prepared for him.
He was called the good man of the
house.
I noticed it was prepared by the good
man of the house for the disciples to
go and prepare the Passover.
Do read your Bibles very intently.
So we're in the prepared position and it
was a secret rendezvous from which even ten
of the twelve disciples were excluded.
The knowledge of it.
Only two, he said to two of them
who were there.
And where he goes in, you go in.
That was it.
A secret rendezvous.
The world had never seen him.
Oh, but we see him.
We know him.
We know his mother and his father, his
brothers, his sisters.
Here's the gavel of people that don't know
anything.
You see?
You have seen me.
Very limited vision, but I'm not there yet.
Where's that?
John 14.
Alright, we've got a lot more days to
cover.
I could spend all this time I'm allotted
in the last, those three chapters, 14, 15
and 16, but Derek's very generous.
Here is the thing for us to see,
beloved.
That's how it was in the beginning.
You say, when was that?
I'm the beginning, he says.
Lord, are you deliberately tying us up in
knots?
Or at least our minds?
Oh yeah, he wants to destroy your mind.
Your mind is but a vessel, a capacity.
He wants to put in you the mind
of Christ.
Have you got it?
Oh, we have the mind of Christ.
You all say, Ghibli, we're all Christians, we've
all got it.
I wonder.
The capacity to think.
The capacity, listen to this, to imagine.
And did you know that the Bible speaks
of people with every imagination of the thought
of the heart?
How about that?
You have greater possibility, friend.
If you just turn off, like a mimic,
copying everybody's processes of thought and the statements
that they make.
If you will dare, not to be a
queer, but if you will dare to be
an independent man, that can't be independent at
all, we all belong to the one body.
If you will dare to think, Oswald James
Meyer, quote him, that studies are not for
wall-gathering.
They are to think.
You must never turn out to be nothing
more than a churn into which milk is
poured by some other person who gathers his
milk directly from...
A cow, shall we say.
Or perhaps indirectly, must be collected.
We're all part of the machinery.
But God wants us to understand these things,
beloved.
You are not you.
I'm looking at your face, and who am
I looking at?
I look at your bodies.
But what are you looking at?
May I ask you, what are you looking
for?
You.
You're wonderful.
Fearfully, wonderfully made.
That's what scripture says.
If you read one of David's psalms, you'll
wonder whatever he's talking about.
In the lower parts of the earth, you'll
say, I hope you'll say, which I said
many times, Lord, what does that mean?
Dare to let your mind go, not into
illusion or delusion, but into the word of
God and go away and sit and think.
You know one of those old English tag
sayings.
Sometimes I sit and think.
Sometimes I just sit.
But be careful.
You'll have the enemy filling your mind with
thoughts.
You've got to be steeped daily in the
precious blood.
You've got to keep walking with God.
You've got to be in all the light.
And I suppose I am a luminary to
a certain extent in this mental realm.
I hope I am light to you.
You've got to be light.
Jesus Christ, and this is the first statement
about him after we get through the, shall
I say, the very beginnings.
Light.
He came to be light in this world.
Beyond that, he could not be.
He forgave people their sins.
He did this, he did that.
But you've got to distinguish in your mind.
He forgave people their sins.
But he'd rather you didn't sin at all.
He doesn't want to have to forgive you
in that sense.
He wants to keep you from it.
This we're making God our servant.
You can't walk as a king if you're
a servant.
Not in this realm.
So, here is the truth.
In the beginning it was God and the
Word was with God and the Word was
God.
And it was always like that.
So, go back to Genesis in your thinking
and that's what you will discover.
You will find that in the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth.
Alright?
And the Spirit of God was moving upon
the waters and God said, what?
Come out of the water.
No, he didn't.
He said, let there be light.
That was the first thing.
Light, in this context of which I'm speaking,
or in that reference back to Genesis, was
to lead you into life.
And Jesus takes that up in the third
chapter a little bit.
I want to soak you thoroughly in the
mystical side of it all.
For it all came from there.
But not to leave you in a mystical
place in your spiritual experience.
You've got to be able to put mystery
into words and you'll have to be inspired
of the Holy Ghost to do that.
Not attempts at preaching, but preaching.
And nobody's preaching if what they're saying isn't
inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Now, what a terrific thing this is.
We've got to beware of saying, would you
like to give a word?
Who's got a testimony?
What are they hearing when it's said?
You see?
Keep it back and we'll continue to give
you testimony.
Don't let me put you off.
But you have to see is this.
That you have to be the word you
speak.
And that is wonderful.
You say, my, you are pushing this thing
out into a realm that we've never really
considered.
Or perhaps you have.
I don't know.
But this is what God is expecting of
your session in this Bible school.
So God wants to put the thing in
entire perspective.
All things, verse 3, were made by Him.
Without Him, or apart from Him, or independent
of Him, what you want to say there
matters not.
You can translate the Greek word in all
those things, those ways.
Without Him was not anything made that came
into being really, that was made.
But not without Him.
Just as you could not live without breath,
just as you could not live without blood,
nothing could.
Where, how did, what did God create the
world with?
I'll tell you, He got it out of
Himself.
I mean, it's very sad.
What did it mean to create?
Well, make something from nothing.
It's ridiculous.
Is God nothing?
It's ridiculous.
But you see, it's so common talk you
hear it from pulpits.
And that's just God's superiority.
That's because people are thinking absolutely materially.
You must not be a materialist.
God made it for Himself.
Out of His own beautiful self and thoughts
He created the wonderful earth and the heaven.
Out of that.
Out of His desires, out of, oh, God's
living person.
We don't have to come down to our
way of thinking.
You've probably been betrayed by your teachers, who
don't understand.
They're mere materialists, unless they're thoroughly born again.
And minister of the Spirit.
You say, well, in the classroom, in the
lecture room, I'm going back to university now,
whatever it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Above all what may be called their calling.
Your first calling is to be God-like.
Whatever your job is, made in the image
of God.
But I'm running on now in Genesis 1.
Let's go, here it is.
Without Him was not any one thing made.
Now that's a wonderful thing.
Do you think a tree came out of
Christ without Him?
That's how I know that all these prehistoric
monsters, God will never make those horrible things.
That ought to convince you, unless you're dead
keen on Jurassic Park or something.
They don't, God doesn't make ugliness.
Adam must have been a wonderful man, and
Eve twice as wonderful as him.
She had the advantage that she wasn't created
from dust, you were, but she had the,
that's why she's better than a man, looks
finer than a man.
Compliment to you ladies.
More complicated than a man, of course.
But, but, but here is the thing to
understand.
That's why a woman is beautiful and a
man is just ugly.
You see, she was refined from Adam, taken
from his bone, and that's where your life
came from.
From your bones of your father.
You keep that clear.
God has modified it, adapted it to human
existence, and how he was going to use
it, but that's where you come from.
That is on the physical side.
They won't teach you this if you go
to medical school, but what does that matter?
They don't understand.
They're materialists, they've got to deal with material
things.
When they have a game that mystifies something
that mystifies them, they don't know what to
do.
How are we going to deal with the
AIDS virus?
And that's your position.
It all came out of him.
He was in it.
Father, Son, and only Holy Ghost.
Let's make man, let's make him in our
image.
So you have to have something in you
that corresponds to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Well, we know what that means, of course.
Jesus Christ, when he appeared in the flesh,
that's the man.
He was in the utter likeness of what
he should be.
Thank God he started all over again by
the Holy Spirit.
Not in the mixture of man's seed and
woman's contributions, though he took blood from her.
By the way, the last time I spoke
to a doctor along these lines, it was
a lady doctor, actually, going right back to
my Baptist days.
All right.
She said, we're not quite sure where is
the seed of the male or the female.
That's what she told me.
You're a mixture.
A mixture.
A very mysterious mixture.
You can be like God or like the
devil as you grow.
And as you develop your mind, you can
be like either.
Not you, I trust, because you've given your
lives over to Christ, I believe.
But it's all in you, beloved.
It's all in you.
When God made the creation originally, do you
know what his intention was?
Though this isn't written, you'll find out.
He made Adam and gave him Eve.
And it was his intention.
Now you check me out when you get
to heaven about this.
You check me out.
He made Adam to be the Lord of
the Earth.
So they would have said, Adam is Lord.
That is if they could speak.
He was over all the creation.
We say, he is Lord, just because he's
the second Adam.
Don't you see?
Wonderful.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if Papa Elephant trumpeted
to the Mama Elephant, Adam is Lord, for
he was Lord of creation.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if people would sing
of you, that you have something of Lordship
about you.
Oh, I don't mean trumpet blowing or heralds
running before you.
How wonderful it is then that God has
moved this way, and wants to move in
you this way.
It was the same in the beginning, and
I want to tell you it's the same
now.
Who is, who was, who is to come.
God's never moved off that.
Do you know if you apply yourself to
God, as you should, and in the ways
I've spoken, go into your room and not
go wool gathering, and you get down before
God, this is where I got all my
knowledge.
If I have any from, I've got it
from Him.
You go along with God.
He will let you enter into within the
fold.
Oh, it says in Hebrews, boldness to enter
within the fold.
Don't assume something from a text in scripture
that tells you a fact.
Your life must not be built upon facts,
even as factually factual as they can be.
It's to be built on Christ, not facts
recorded in the Bible.
Can't we trust the Bible at all?
Yes, with all you are.
But it's to tell you what this great
restoration is about.
You say, oh well, the restoration's all in
the future.
Christ's going to come again, dear, say Amen.
But I can tell you now, as though
I was in heaven, that He's saying all
that they would enter in now.
Oh, how marvellous it is.
How wonderful.
I suppose I ought to mention the Toronto
Blessing.
I haven't been to Toronto, I haven't been
in any place like that.
But it is my constant, if people talk
to me about it, don't seek the blessing,
seek the blesser.
If you get some blessings en route, that's
fine.
God wants you to see what it's about.
Right into Himself.
Right into the thing He's revealed.
Right into Himself via the only route that
you can go.
I am the way.
Every other way will leave you far short
of the goal.
That is if you're on the way.
God wants us to move in.
You're in Him with life.
What do you think that word was, refers
to, in the past tense, was?
What do you think that was?
Do you think it refers to creation in
the beginning, or do you think that John
is looking back and in one sense is
making a statement about Him in Jesus Christ
was life.
I saw it.
Because when he writes his epistle, they're all
interlinked, he says that.
That which was from the beginning.
Alright.
Which we have heard, which we have seen,
which we have looked upon, which was with
our eyes, which we have handled.
The world of life.
If I can get you into a state
where you're at least in the mind, wanting
to enter into the mystery of things, it's
wonderful.
But that's the way you ought to read
your Bibles.
Don't for goodness sake go into the state,
well, I've read me portion for today.
Ah, when I was a child, I thought
as a child, understood as a child, and
so on.
When I became a man, I hope I
am, I put daily readings on one side,
except Oswald Chambers, I visit him occasionally.
Daily readings?
Well, it's a good way to start, yes,
yes, yes, but you've come out of the
primary class now, I hope.
If you haven't, what are you doing sitting
here?
You should read at least one chapter a
day, sorry, two chapters if you could.
In fact, there are some books you can
read in a day.
There are only five chapters in 1 John.
God wants us to understand what it's all
about, beloved, this great life into which you're
entered.
And it says, in him was life.
Aren't you all grasping after that?
Don't you say, it's him, it's this I
want.
I don't want to be called just a
Christian.
Are you here because you're hungry and thirsty?
Perhaps I may alert you to things for
which you will hunger and thirst.
And that's what I want to do.
You know, when I was a young man,
I sort of, I mustn't be too reminiscent
now, though people are always asking me to
write my autobiography.
Here's the thing, I went to a place,
I've went to several places, they all held
the same thing, they were always on the
second coming, praise God, if he comes now,
it's wonderful, I'm not turning you off that,
but they used to ask in sort of
an almost mysterious voice, now what do you
think salt does?
Salt is a preservative.
You sprinkle it on and it preserves things
and that was finale, never went further than
that.
They never taught me that salt makes you
very thirsty.
You are to make people very thirsty for
what you've got, what you are.
Try eating a spoonful of salt after lunch,
since that doesn't make you so thirsty then
you have to have coffee every five minutes.
Here is the thing for you to grasp,
beloved.
Have you ever said, I mean, people wouldn't
think along such lines, but has it ever
indicated to you that you make them thirsty?
Except for coke.
You want to drink that.
You've got to see what it's all about,
beloved.
And go on, I want to imbue you
if I never come to, when am I
due next?
Wednesday.
If I don't come Wednesday and I've gone
to be with the Lord, I want to
make you thirsty.
You make my other people thirsty.
Amen.
And if I may carry the thought through
and make it a final statement with that
one, you are to be the light of
the world.
While I am in the world, I am
the light of the world.
All right.
But he said, you are the light of
the world.
What?
You are the light of the world.
I'm quoting from Matthew.
One of the first statements he made after
the Beatitudes, in Matthew 5, you are the
light of the world.
And so I think it might be good
to start at the primary level and sing,
this little light of my Lord, I'm going
to let it shine.
Did you sing that at Sunday school?
That's right.
Somebody saw something.
How wonderful.
In Him was life.
And mark it, to someone, are you listening
carefully now, to someone, your life is a
light.
But if the light that's in you is
darkness, how great is that darkness.
That is, the life you are living is
spreading spiritual darkness.
I'm not talking about mental or intelligence or
anything like that.
What are you doing?
And where, may I ask, are you going?
For he that walketh in darkness, I'm quoting
John again from his epistle, goeth not where
he is going.
I'm going to heaven.
And you walk in darkness, you are self
-contradictory.
You don't know where you are going.
You don't want to believe about hell.
I was talking with a young man in
Germany.
He didn't see why he should go to
hell and so on and so on.
I saw it.
It was coming out of his mouth as
I listened to him.
You see, you will see immediately the only
thing I'm concerned about in this class is
you.
You.
You've got to be light.
Light.
Life.
Light.
May I ask you a question?
Has ever anybody said to you, I wish
I had what you have?
And doesn't mean money or your car or
anything like that.
Means wish I had the life that I
can see in you.
Have you ever had anybody say that?
Some have.
You see, beloved, that's the thing.
You've got to make people thirst for your
life.
You've got to make them hungry for you.
Oh, I don't mean in any just human
affection or something like that.
When something stronger than hunger sometimes carries boys
and girls and men and women into damnation.
You have to know these things.
The life is the light, beloved.
You may say about the Lord Jesus, if
you like in transcription from these things about
the future, past, eternity into the present.
Might say these same things.
He made people hungry for him.
So at one time he said, I am
the bread actually.
And listen, Moses didn't give it to you.
You have to see, beloved, that Jesus wasn't
a called man.
He was a commanded man.
I can only do the things that my
father shows me.
Was he an automaton?
No, he was a human being vividly alive.
And he knew what father was saying.
He knew what father was doing.
This is the thing we're going to discover.
This introductory thing, we shall discover it right
through this gospel.
He only did those things.
Sometimes he gave them a peep into these
great things that are transcribed into words for
us by Moses.
When he wrote, he said, let the sea
bring forth life.
Billions of fish put in the sea.
He did that by feeding 5,000.
Nothing.
He said it was marvellous.
Of course it was.
But isn't the life marvellous?
As marvellous in us according to our calling,
commanding or capacity.
Isn't it the same life as it is
in God?
If not, we're not his children.
You were born of your parents.
You had the same life in you when
you came out of your mother's womb as
your mother had in her.
This is the great and glorious thing.
This is why you should reject utterly the
evolution theory if you're holding it.
Beloved, your life is the light.
Until the Lord Jesus came into the earth,
I can't recollect now in the spur of
the moment whether ever anybody had their sight
restored to them.
Samson was made blind.
You see, it's this thing to have our
eyes open.
As soon as he could, he said, no,
I can't see, let me destroy everybody.
They were the enemies of God, of course.
And he never knew what it was to
be born again.
Because the first birth that he had, though
it was used by God, never made him
to be filled with God.
Just understand it, then you'll begin to understand
the difference between the old and the new
covenants.
These are the areas that are covered in
these great things.
In him was a light, a light that
I saw.
And I said, oh, what a light has
come.
They seem like before, that's the thing that
John turns us to in this same first
chapter.
They seem like before, a burning and a
shining light.
His name was John Baptist.
But Christ, the outshining of the glory of
God, limited down into flesh, lest we should
be blinded by it.
So they groped their way through to the
Lord Jesus Christ, those that had the sense
to do it, or the need to do
it.
For once he started healing people, all the
people that weren't whole discovered a need in
themselves.
How wonderful it is then, that these things
should be.
In him was light.
I love that.
Now then, switch over into John chapter 3.
God sent so loved in verse 16, of
course, the world, that he gave it only
begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall
not perish, but have that same everlasting life.
I've put that same in.
He wouldn't offer you a substitute so often
called Christianity in these days.
The life of God he will give you.
And it's so tremendous.
Let's read on.
God sent not his son into the world
to condemn the world, but that the world
through him might be saved.
He that believeth on him is not condemned,
but he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath made the decision that causes
him to go into condemnation.
He hath refused to believe in Jesus Christ.
Not that it was for that purpose.
God sent him.
He sent him that we should be saved.
And he's condemned already because he's not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son
of God.
The only begotten Son of God.
You keep that clear.
The only begotten.
In that unique, wonderful sense.
Hallelujah.
By this time, of course, there's been another
sense imparted to the word begotten.
When the Father begot him from the dead
as a human being.
In that sense, he became the firstborn from
the dead.
So it's linked with new birth.
And God wants us to move into this
area, beloved.
Let's go on then.
This is the condemnation that light is come
into the world.
And men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil.
Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light.
Neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the
light.
That's your first step in the way of
truth.
To move to the light.
Alright.
Your deeds may be manifest that they are
wrought in God.
And you do know, beloved, don't you?
Unless the things I do, I'll put it
on myself, are wrought in God before they
are wrought in me.
I don't belong.
So be careful about what you do.
If I do a thing by the Holy
Ghost in the name of Jesus Christ, it
was first wrought in God.
Communicated to me by the Spirit.
Urged along by that same Spirit.
Power imparted by that same Spirit to do
the thing I do.
Choose the thing I choose.
Say the thing I say.
You say, my, this is strict stuff.
Of course it's strict stuff.
But God's very gracious.
How to make this thing, which was entirely
heavenly, how to make this understandable to us,
so that, oh, I'm just going to say,
groping in my misty way, I hear his
voice and hear him say, do you?
Or perhaps you're out of the mists now.
God wants us to understand this, beloved, and
so I go back.
You see how interwoven, that's why I take
a theme out of the first chapter, and
it's right through the book.
It's right through everything.
He doesn't do one thing that's inconsistent with
the statements made about him in this first
chapter.
That's why it's such a vital chapter for
you to get into your mind.
You've got to be able to trace your
origins.
You say, well, I heard him preach.
She said this to me.
Somebody gave me a tract.
This is because we're caught in such a
web of things in this earth.
Seldom do people go in and listen to,
shall we call it a sermon, a message
in a church for the first time, never
heard it before, and get born again.
That's pretty rare.
How many of you learn like that?
You might have read of some.
This Holy Ghost has the ability to generate
in you the same power which generated Jesus
Christ as a man on the earth.
You understand that?
It's the life God wants you to have.
Not the way he produced it, though I
hope I'm giving you some light on the
way, and seeing what it's about.