Well, good morning to you all.
My privilege, as already has been said, to
be here for the first time.
That is, on the platform for the first
time.
My wife and I did visit Park of
the Ponds on one occasion, visiting Charlie and
Grace Reed when they lived here before they
moved up north.
But this is the first time, and I'm
just wondering how you dug this boy out
of Canada, come down to Park of the
Ponds to speak for a week.
When I looked at the brochure with the
picture on it, I hoped nobody would recognize
me, but I recognized all the others.
I don't know how I found my place
here amongst them.
However, my privilege to be here.
I suppose for those of you who have
had the good fortune of not knowing me
in the previous times, some of you do.
A few of you do.
Some of I have met in North Carolina
in the summertime, and some of you are
from Canada, I see.
At least you'll know where Canada is.
When we first went to Cuba a number
of years ago, the Cubans thought that Canada
was a large city in the United States,
and of course we were flattered thereby.
But I should tell you some of details
so that then you won't have to ask
me afterwards.
The first thing people want to know, how
old are you?
Well, I did have my 50th birthday a
while ago, and yes, I am married.
Yes, I have two boys.
One lives in Tampa, and the other lives
in Canada.
And yes, I have a mother-in-law,
a favorite mother-in-law.
I always introduced her as my favorite mother
-in-law, and I got away with it
for three or four years, and so one
day she finally looked at me and said,
By the way, laddie, how many mothers-in
-law do you have?
And that was the end of my presentation
as my favorite mother-in-law.
But she's still with me, at least.
She lives two blocks from me, and I
wondered at times just exactly what that implies
when a man is in his 50th year
of married life and still has his mother
-in-law with him.
Do you think that could be the forerunner
of the great tribulation?
Perhaps.
My mother-in-law lives in Bethany Lodge,
just around the corner from where we live.
So, of course, we get over to see
her, but not too often.
I'm not too happy about going there too
often.
I'm afraid someday they're going to give me
a room number, and I'm not just prepared
for that yet.
My little grandson, when he was five years
old in Tampa, said to me one day
we're out walking, and I had been phoned
from the north for a funeral, an elderly
lady had died, and he looked up to
me, we're out walking, and he said to
me, you know, Abuelo, you and Abuelo have
been around here a long time now.
It'll soon be time for you to go.
And I don't know if that's the fulfillment,
you know, out of the mouth of faith
and suckings or what it was, but I
didn't feel too wanted.
My little grandson tells me it's time for
me to go.
My wife added her word the other day.
She said, do you realize we have two
grandchildren in university?
What are we doing here still?
And I said, don't push.
I have some work to do yet.
So I think that will satisfy most of
the major questions you would like to know
up until the present time, and the rest
of this will come up during the week.
Will you read one portion with me, please,
this morning from the Gospel by Matthew, Chapter
5?
I have been duly instructed, it has been
suggested to me, I have been advised, warned,
and otherwise informed that I must stop on
time, before the time.
Now, I'm not sure if the clock here
on the platform, which is just a minute
ahead of the one at the back, not
two minutes ahead, is meant for the preacher
to see this one and not that one.
Probably there's an alarm here will go off
at any rate, two minutes to twelve.
I shall endeavor to comply, or I will
never be back.
Matthew, Chapter 5, please, and I want to
read one of the Beatitudes with you, verse
8.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
Let me say to you that I propose
this week to take up two subjects with
you, one morning and one evening, and the
subject of the morning I wish to entitle,
Visions of God, and the subject of the
evening, the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now, most of you who are familiar with
your Bibles will know that both those titles
are taken from opening words of distinct books.
The first expression, Visions of God, comes from
the first verse of chapter 1 of the
prophecy of Ezekiel, and you will know that
the revelation of Jesus Christ comes to us
in the first verse of the first chapter
of the last book of our Bible.
Some time ago, this passage, this word in
Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 8, kept ringing in
my ears.
This often happens, I suppose, to most of
us.
We wake in the middle of the night,
at least we never used to, but do
now, from two o'clock till three thirty,
or wherever it may be, or whenever it
may be, and some passage of scripture will
come into your mind, or perhaps when you're
first waking in the morning, and it buzzes
there all day, and perhaps all week, and
you're turning it over and over and wondering
exactly what its meaning is.
This is a passage that did that with
me a little while ago.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
And the more I thought of it, the
more I wondered just exactly what the Lord
meant, and so did a little searching to
find out.
The pure in heart of the pure in
heart we know.
We are told that frequently from the Psalms
right on through to Peter's epistle.
We are constantly reminded that there is a
possibility of being pure in heart.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy tabernacle?
He that hath clean hands and a pure
heart.
You remember, we read.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews
tells us that we are to pursue holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord.
And our Lord put it that way here.
He said, Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God.
One of the passages, the words of the
master that have troubled me not considerably, rather
considerably, is the word of Matthew chapter 11,
later on in this book, when he said,
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly in
heart.
You shall find rest to your souls.
Most of you will know that that last
expression comes from the prophecy of Jeremiah, to
find rest to your souls.
But it's the passage, it's the words when
he said, Learn of me, for I am
meek and lowly in heart.
It's one to be meek in appearance.
It's one thing to be lowly in life.
It's another thing to be meek in heart,
and to be lowly of heart.
We can feign meekness.
We can put on an atmosphere of lowliness,
and yet the heart still be proud, self
-centered, and self-interested.
So, it's a heart matter, as our Lord
said here.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
And this expression, to see God, is the
one that kept reverberating in my mind.
What did he mean when he talked about
seeing God?
Immediately, your mind goes over to John chapter
1.
No man has seen God at any time.
The only begotten who is in the bosom
of the Father, he has displayed or declared
him.
Well, if no man has seen God at
any time, what does the Lord mean when
he said, The pure in heart shall see
God?
You remember, perhaps, in John chapter 5, the
Master said, speaking to the Jews about their
unbelief in him and in his Father, and
he's speaking of the Father, he said to
them, He that hath sent me, ye believe
not.
Ye have never heard his voice at any
time, or seen his shape, his form.
Another intriguing statement, isn't it?
He charges them with two things, not having
heard the voice of his Father, and having
never seen his shape, his form.
You go to chapter 6 in John, you
remember the Lord said, He that is from
God, none of you have seen the Father,
but save he that is from the Father,
he has seen the Father.
And so, this business of visualizing or visibly
seeing God intrigued me.
What did the Master mean when he said,
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God?
The epistle to the Hebrews starts off, as
most of you will know, that God, who
in sundry times, in a diverse manner, spake
in times past unto the Fathers by the
Prophets.
Oh, he spoke in times past, that takes
us back to the Patriarchs.
That's the word we use in our Spanish
Bible all the time.
He spoke in times past to the Patriarchs
by the Prophets.
How did he speak to the Prophets?
The Prophets were his mouthpiece, the medium by
which he spoke to the Patriarchs, the Fathers.
But how did he speak to the Prophets?
So, I went searching through the Old Testament,
in particular, and of course, later on came
into the New, and I discovered, rather intriguingly,
that there are a number of individuals who
saw God.
But then you say, it says, no man
has seen God at any time.
And you remember when Moses asked the Lord
that he would see him, show me thy
face, he said, no man can see God
and live.
And then when you go over to Numbers
chapter 12, in that problem, that family problem
between the siblings, when Miriam and Aaron got
together and spoke against Moses' wife, you remember
the Lord said to them, how is it
that you are not afraid to speak against
my servant Moses?
If I'm going to speak to a Prophet,
I'll speak to a Prophet in a dream,
or, perchance, a vision of the night.
But that's not the way I speak to
my servant Moses.
You notice he puts the emphasis on the
place that Moses occupied with himself.
Actually, the older sister and brother were talking
about their younger brother, and as far as
they were concerned, he was only their kid
brother.
When God speaks to them, he speaks to
their brother as my servant Moses.
Later on, you recall, when the cloud lifted
and Miriam was leprous as white as snow,
Aaron turns to Moses, his brother, and he
says, oh my Lord, let this not be.
He changed from being his kid brother to
his Lord, very suddenly, didn't he?
But God goes on to say, that's the
way I'll speak to a Prophet, but that's
not the way I speak to my servant
Moses, because the similitude of the Lord, he
will see.
So, how do we balance these things up?
At the close of Numbers chapter 7, we
speak about the intimacy with which God spoke
with Moses.
Moses went into the tabernacle, and he stood
before the Lord.
I judge he stood in front of the
golden altar of incense, over against the Ark
of the Covenant, behind the veil, and it
says, when Moses went in to speak with
God, he spoke with the Lord before the
propitiatory, before the mercy seat, the Ark of
the Covenant, and he heard a voice, the
voice of a man speaking to him from
beneath the cherry of Eden.
I put those two things together, and I
discovered, I think, that there are two, largely
two major ways in which God reveals himself
to his people.
To his people in olden times, to his
people in New Testament times, and to his
people today.
One was by the hearing, and the other
was by the seeing.
Now, some of you are going to be
a little skeptical about this, but I just
ask you to be patient with me until
I finish my remarks to you, because for
some of us it's very difficult to take
this verse, Matthew 5 and 8, and say,
blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God, and then take John 1
and 18, no man hath seen God at
any time, and how he is the unapproachable,
inaccessible God, the eternal Potentate, King of Kings
and Lord of Lords, and how can a
man who is made of dust stand in
the presence of Almighty God?
I like the hymn in the Believer's Hymnbook
we use in some places.
It goes like this, Eternal Light, Eternal Light,
how pure the soul must be when placed
beneath thy searching sight it shrinks not, but
with calm delight can live and look on
thee.
The spirits that surround the throne may bear
the burning bliss, but this is surely theirs
alone, because they've never, never known a fallen
world like this.
But how can I, whose native sphere is
dark, whose mind is dim, before the ineffable
appear, and on my naked spirit bear the
uncreated being?
There's a way for man to rise to
those sublime abodes, an offering and a sacrifice,
a Holy Spirit's energies, and advocate with God.
These, these prepare us for the sight of
holiness above.
The sons of ignorance and night may dwell
in the Eternal Light through the Eternal Love.
How is it possible for me, how is
it possible for us to stand in the
presence of that uncreated Light?
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
And I discovered that God is pleased to
reveal Himself to His people.
He was always pleased to reveal Himself to
His people.
Many times have I been impressed, and that's
one of the reasons why I like the
book of Genesis.
You walk through the pages of the book
of Genesis, and it seems just so many
steps of the way, or of the day,
you're listening to the voice of the Lord.
Five times over, the word is said regarding
Abraham, that the Lord appeared, He manifested Himself
to Abraham, Jehovah that is.
Twice He is spoken of as the Angel
of the Lord, speaking to Abraham from heaven.
You can go back earlier than that.
How has God been pleased to reveal Himself
to us?
What do we know personally and individually about
a person and an individual God?
Are there visions of God for His people
today?
Now, many of us are satisfied with the
fact that we have the whole canon of
Scripture.
It was by the word of the Lord
He made Himself known, often in Old Testament
times.
You recall the incident of Samuel, the youth,
the boy, when he awoke at the night
and the Lord was calling him, and he
didn't understand who it was that was calling
him.
Did you ever have an experience like that?
You wake up and you could insist that
you actually heard someone say something to you?
Let me tell you a story.
Many of you know that we spent long
years in Cuba.
In fact, we were the last of the
missionaries to leave Cuba and the first to
go back.
When we paid a visit back in 1976,
my wife and I went back to Cuba.
We were amazed at the conditions of the
country, how it had changed and the character
of the people had been changed.
But a year and a half ago, my
younger son and I went back on a
visit for a conference.
The two boys have been back several times
in this last year, even in last month,
visiting Cuba frequently now, visiting the assemblies over
the Lord's, blessing the people over there, blessing
the assemblies.
Their conversions are multiplying constantly, their baptisms are
multiplying.
There's a lot of enthusiasm.
My wife says, they're getting along so much
better now without you than they ever did
with you.
But then wives are gifted that way, you
understand.
If ever I think that I'm needed, my
wife says, well one day I went out
in my press shop and on the wall
of the press shop I saw a sign
written in handwriting I knew very well and
it said, if anyone thinks he's indispensable, tell
him to put his finger in a bowl
of water and notice the size of the
hole it leaves when he takes it out.
So I'm constantly being trained, you understand.
So at any rate, we went back, the
younger boy and I, a year and a
half ago.
We were at a conference and while we
were at this conference, an older man came
to me, a white-haired man, and he
said to me, he said, do you recognize
him?
I looked at him and I said, I
think I should, but no, I can't, I
can't place for sure.
He said, well I'm Angel Cueto.
And right away I knew who he was.
We'd start a new work away down the
west end of the island and he had
a little old car, used to pick people
up and drive them 10, 15 miles to
the meetings.
And he was a very solid, steady Christian.
We had a little assembly down there, but
we lost it after communism took so many
things over.
And he stood that day, a year and
a half ago, and he looked at me
and he said, do you know what happened
to us after you left?
And I said, no, I know something, but
I don't know everything.
Angel Cueto wasn't the man to write us
letters.
Some of the folks did.
He said, well, let me tell you a
story.
He said, you know that was prohibited for
us to have Bible readings or prayer meetings
in our homes.
And I said, yes, I knew that.
If you had an established building, the assemblies
could carry on in a registered building, providing
the government didn't need the building.
And they did on some occasions.
We lost our buildings, therefore the assembly disbanded
because we weren't allowed to meet in private
homes.
But in our assembly buildings, we were allowed
to carry on.
So he said to me, well, after we
lost the assembly down there and you folks
had gone, he said, I start having prayer
meetings just in private homes and Bible studies.
I said, I know that was against communism,
but I had it anyway.
And I went on for some time.
And then one day, two o'clock in
the morning, this is how it always happens.
Two o'clock in the morning, there's a
knock at the door.
I went to the door.
The man said, you're Angel Cueto?
And he said, yes.
He said, you're the man that's been having
these religious gatherings in private homes?
And he said, yes.
He said, well, you've So he said, they
took me away in the middle of the
night, left my wife and nine children with
nine dollars.
They confiscated my little farm.
They confiscated our house.
And I went away.
I had a court case.
They asked for 12 years prison sentence for
him for doing this.
They gave him five years of forced labor.
And he said, in that time, I never
knew what had happened to my wife or
the children.
I had no news whatsoever.
They sent them away down the island.
And he said, you might not believe this,
but every night for those for those years,
he said, I cried myself to sleep.
And he said, finally, after post on five
years, I said to the Lord one night.
You said in First Corinthians, Chapter 10, you
would not suffer any one of your children,
did not allow them to suffer more than
they were able to bear.
And he said, Lord, I can't bear this
any longer.
Can't bear it any longer.
So he said, I cried myself to sleep
as I'd always done.
Never thought that man would cry himself to
sleep every night.
You don't know what's behind a man's face.
And he said to me, I woke up
in the middle of the night and he
said, there was somebody standing at the foot
of my bed.
He put his hand out on my bare
foot and he said, Angel, it's enough.
You're not going to suffer anymore.
And he disappeared.
And I said, I don't know what you
think, but I know that was the Lord.
So I said, well, Angel, what happened?
He said, it wasn't, but a few days
after it came to me and said, you
can go home.
Now I looked at him.
He's standing there straight tall.
He said, I'm not finished yet.
I said, Angel, what did you do after
you got home?
He said, I started having prayer meetings and
Bible studies in my home and other homes.
And you know what my main ambition is?
And I said, no.
He said, my main ambition is to be
able to buy enough wood.
They can't buy wood.
That's another story for another time.
You can't buy materials, building materials.
He said, I'd like to be able to
get enough wood to build a little hall
and to start another assembly right alongside my
house.
I said, I don't know how I'm going
to be able to do it, but that's
my main ambition.
I want to start all over again, start
another assembly.
And I looked at him and I said,
Angel, how old are you?
He said, I'm 81.
I want to start all over again.
Why is my wife asking me now why
we're still here?
I said, they should have called him Caleb
and given him a mountain.
The reason I told you that story is
particularly for this.
Here is a man who is very down
to earth, very realistic, all a man.
And he put God to the test that
night on his own words.
And he said, Lord, I can't stand it
anymore.
And you said, you wouldn't make me suffer
any more than I could stand.
He said, that's what happens.
Well, I have my own thoughts about that,
you understand.
And I really believe too that God is
not beyond accommodating himself to our condition, physically,
temporally, economically and mentally.
For the Lord has done that.
And this is what my study has produced
as far as I'm concerned.
I am amazed to see the willingness of
the Almighty, the great God, the heir of
the universe, the architect of the world, accommodating
himself to the personal private needs of his
people.
And to the extent that he comes and
he speaks with them.
Have you noticed what the Lord said to
Moses in Exodus chapter three, when he's calling
on the burning bush?
And do you know who it was that
was in the burning bush?
It was the angel of the covenant.
It was the I am.
The Jews of our Lord's day knew what
that meant when he used that over 15
times in the gospel by John and said
he was the I am.
You remember their violent reaction when he said
at the close of chapter eight before Abraham
was, I am.
And Moses is looking at the I am.
He's talking with the I am as he
looks at the burning bush.
You remember what God said?
I have visited, go back into Egypt and
tell the elders of Israel that I have
visited them in the land of Egypt.
That's the first thing.
Nobody knew it, but he'd been there.
Then he said, I have seen their affliction.
I have heard their cry, and I know
their sorrows.
And they had no knowledge or consciousness whatsoever
of these things.
God had visited them, and they knew it
not.
God had seen them, and they knew it
not.
God had heard them, and they knew it
not.
God says, and come down to deliver them.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.
God, my friends, is pleased to reveal himself
to us personally, individually, collectively.
And he does it so often in a
distinct way.
He does it in these two major forms,
and one is by the hearing of his
voice, and the other is by the vision
of his person.
Now that's what I want to talk to
you about these mornings, visions of God.
The boy Samuel, let me come back to
the boy Samuel.
When the Lord spoke to him that night,
you remember what it says later on?
The Lord, the last verse of the chapter,
the Lord revealed him unto Samuel, revealed himself
unto Samuel by the word of the Lord.
Now that's the first way in which God
is pleased to reveal himself.
There are other ways, but he does it
by the word of the Lord.
He's delighted to reveal himself.
He wants to make himself known.
I know the Bible begins with the revelation
of God.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth, and I know that the Bible
closes with the revelation of God.
They shall see his face, his name shall
be in their foreheads, and his servant shall
serve him.
I know that, my friends, but all through
the context and the content of the Bible,
we have these various revelations, various visions of
God.
Tell me, when Cain and Abel brought their
offerings to the Lord, where was the Lord?
That's the first question.
And the second question is this.
Not only where was the Lord, because later
on it says Cain went out from the
presence of the Lord.
He went out from the presence of the
Lord.
The second question is this.
Why did Cain and Abel bring gift offerings
to the Lord?
Because that's what they were.
Abel has the land, the person of his
flock.
Cain has the produce of his land, the
work of his hands.
These were not burnt offerings.
These were not sin offerings.
These were not trespass offerings.
For if you look up the Hebrew word,
these were gift offerings.
Who instructed Cain and Abel to bring gift
offerings to the Lord?
Where did that knowledge come from?
How did they know that they were indebted
to God so that they could bring to
the Lord gift offerings?
And where was the presence of the Lord?
Because they brought their offerings unto the Lord,
it says.
Well, they weren't in the garden, as you
know.
They were outside the garden.
But they were where the presence of God
was.
And where was the presence of God outside
the garden?
May I suggest to you?
On the east.
It's where the light always comes from, doesn't
it?
Right through.
Where do the wise men come from?
Where does the angel of the sea of
the living God come from?
He comes from the east.
The light comes from the east.
On the east of the garden, what was
there?
Terubim.
And what are the cherubim?
They're the representatives of the presence of God,
of the God of Israel.
Though there is no Israel at this time.
That's where they brought their offerings, and that's
where the presence of the Lord was, and
that's where God revealed himself.
And how he revealed himself, you know very
well, even as far as gift offerings were
concerned, the work of Cain's hands was not
acceptable.
It had to be the first thing in
the flock.
So, God has been pleased to come near,
to reveal himself constantly, from the earliest days
to the closing days.
And today, blessed are the pure in heart,
for they, they shall see God.
And that's going to be the subject of
our consideration.
How and who and where and when did
various individuals see God?
And I close this morning by reminding you
of the opening words of the epistle to
the Hebrews.
God, who at sundry times, in diverse manners,
spake in times past unto the fathers by
the prophets, hath in these last days spoken
unto us by his Son.
He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father, and in him we have seen everything.
Shall we pray?
Our Father, we thank thee for thy word.
Give unto us an understanding by thy Spirit
of what we read.
Lead us into a fuller knowledge of thyself.
For as the Apostle could pray unto the
full knowledge of God, that we might grow.
That thy blessing be with thy people today
and all their activities be commended to thee
in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Amen.