Qualifying for Kingdom Dominion Part One
THE KINGDOM OF GOD -Part 59 - by J. Preston Eby
"Let me help, Mommy!" cries little Mary to her busy Mom. She then proceeds to mop the floor with streaks and messy wet and dry spots here and there. Having finished, she eyes it with a satisfied sigh and says, "Didn't I do good, Mommy?" Her mother stands back and with a cheerful smile replies, "Yes, sweetheart, you did a wonderful job!" Now, does that mother need Mary's help to get her house clean? Not really. In fact, Mary's childish efforts at "helping" actually create more work for her mother. As soon as Mary is out of the house Mom will quickly re-mop that floor! But she knows that Mary needs to learn how to do housework, and feel the importance of her contribution, because one day Mary will have her own house to clean!
The question follows -- Does our heavenly Father really need our puny help with the accomplishing of His great universal Kingdom work? Not really, for He is self-sufficient, omnipresent, and omnipotent! As such He is not dependent on man for the fulfillment of any of His plans or the accomplishment of any of His purposes. But -- God has purposed within Himself to expand Himself in us as His very own sons and daughters, and bring us, upon our maturity, into HIS FAMILY BUSINESS. God's love for us is utterly pure and unselfish, and His plan for us is paternal, eternal and sovereign. He bestows upon us the high honor of sharing His nature, life, wisdom, knowledge, glory, power and dominion. Our work in God's family business -- His great and eternal and inexhaustible Kingdom -- is our response to His love. We are destined to rule all things for God and therefore we must learn how to rule! Sometimes, along our journey to maturity, we may not do the job much better than little Mary, but our Father is patient and persistent and we will eventually grow up into Him in all things, praise His name!
If a young athlete wants to play major-league baseball, he usually has to play in the minors first. Major-league teams raise their players in their minor-league farm teams. Every year they hope to get a harvest that justifies what the minor-league teams cost them. The Kingdom of Heaven is similar. Jesus said that if we are faithful in little things, He will increase our responsibilities, and that if we use our gifts and resources for His purposes and only for His glory, He will give us more to use. The reward for work well done is . . . well, more work! God has great responsibilities just waiting to be entrusted to His sons. His Kingdom has major-league openings to manage, judge, lead, supervise and rule to establish His Kingdom forever. But whom will He put in those major-league slots? Those who have been faithful in the farm leagues of the Kingdom! God is, at this very moment grooming a body, a people, a company of kings and priests to bring the glory of the Kingdom of God upon earth and throughout the universe. Men and women are being selected for this awesome responsibility from among all nations, cultures, races and tongues around the earth, and are being processed and prepared in their present walk with God. We are in contact with thousands of people who are experiencing the special dealings of God for this Day! The world as a whole is not cognizant of what God is doing, but this selection and preparation process is nonetheless well underway.
Have we, in our desire to reign with Him, forgotten that "if we suffer, we shall reign, and if we deny Him, He will deny us?" Have we forgotten the words of Jesus, which He spoke, saying, "Ye that have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Do we know what it means to follow Jesus? Do we know what it means to drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism? Are we truly followers with Him from the cross to the throne, or are we merely the throng that flock about Him seeking the blessings, the loaves and the fishes, and not brethren at all?
David, Christ's kingly ancestor, is in this way himself a type of his Lord. For chosen by God to succeed the lawfully appointed but rejected king (Saul), he was yet for many years allowed to be hunted and persecuted by the doomed monarch whom he was to follow. During these wanderings over the mountains and wilds his faithful followers shared his hardships, and he and they together learned to endure and to fight; and thus when God's time of preparation was over, and their training had been completed, David and his men were found equal to the great task of freeing God's people from all bondage to their foes. And, of course, those brave men who had shared their leader's path, with its dangers and distresses, were rewarded with the chief positions of glory in his kingdom. Surely all who read these lines can see the correctness of this, and can appreciate how worthwhile it finally proved to be to have shared their king's rejection and persecution. And thus in intenser measure will it be in this Day of the Lord! There is truly a price to be paid to walk with God in the new order of this new Kingdom Day that is now dawning, and there is great heavenly reward to those who pay that price!
A brother we have heard from through the years shared this illustration in one of his communications: It is as a great king of old who had two sons. Twins they were. The sons grew together. Soon they reached an age when much correction came. The boys needed the rod and found it in full force for their errors. One day both sons still felt the pain of the rod and their tears still flowed. There came by a young orphan about their age. He said to them, "I am free to do what I want. I am not as you who must endure the force of a father. I can skip and play and do cartwheels in the streets. I can beg, lie, steal, and sleep anywhere I please. I have fun every day for I am under the king's protection as one in his realm but I need not suffer as you with his corrections. I am free! Why do you not come with me and we can be free together?"
The boys made a decision that day. The first said, "No, though I am hurting from my father's rod, I would endure it every day for I will grow and inherit all that belongs to my father. I will learn and follow him wherever he leads me." The other boy was sore tempted for the pain of correction and the harshness of restrictions laid upon him was so much to bear. Soon he decided to follow the young orphan. Oh, how they played for days and years! They skipped and jumped and did cartwheels. They lied and stole as they wanted. They begged in the streets when it pleased them. They rejected the call of the king to serve him in any way. They only thought of their great fun and so chased after it. The two children grew. One learned of, and thus loved greatly, his father and his ways. The other rejected the loving call to come back into the household. The father let him go to do what he wanted. He knew that a love that is forced upon another will only bring bondage and hatred. Thus, for the will of the rebellious child, he left him to his fun.
The hour came to inherit the kingdom. The first son received great honor. All that his father had became his. The other son wanted some of his father's riches, too, for he also grew old and the pleasure of being an orphan left him. Being of age, if he stole, he would go to prison. Skipping and playing failed to please him anymore. Begging got him little. He wanted some of the kingdom too. However, the judge of the kingdom deemed him unworthy of even a morsel from the king's table. In like manner, God has many who want all that is His. They say, "If it is of my Father's, I want it!" They want the mercy, the grace, the blessings, the benefits, the healings, the miracles, the experiences -- anything they can enjoy without coming under the disciplining hand of their Father. Oh, they want to skip and jump and do cartwheels and shout and rejoice and prosper and get rich and use God's blessings in any way they want, and to their own ends. But they have no desire to learn God's ways, to put on His mind, to be conformed to His image, to do His will and be involved in His purposes. The churches today are filled with blessing seekers who follow the Lord for the loaves and the fishes, but have no heart for His corrections, to suffer with Him, to endure the cross, to die to all the carnality of the flesh and of the fleshly religious systems, in order to qualify to share His throne. The way to sonship is not an easy way, and some find it a little too hard, and would rather choose an easier way. This reminds me of the young aspiring musician who said to an old master, "Can you tell me of an easy way to become a great musician?" The old master just looked him in the eye and said, "Son, there is no easy way." And there is no easy way to sonship and the throne of God! This is why God has chosen certain ones, who have the stamina to seek first and only His Kingdom, to endure, and persevere, submitting to His will and His dealings, come what may.
I will have you to know that the Lord, having saved the children of Israel out of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. There is a teaching that God saves, and the devil destroys. I do not believe that the devil can destroy anybody. After having saved the people out of Egypt, GOD destroyed them, not the devil! And the angels that kept not their first estate, GOD cast them down, not the devil. When Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Ghost, GOD slew them, not the devil. I could go on and on. The old idea is, you try to live for God and the devil is on your trail trying to drive you to hell. But once God has called you and you belong to Him, whatever happens to you after that is from HIM, not the devil. When Israel was in the wilderness, it was not the devil that sent fiery serpents. The Bible says, "And YAHWEH sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died" (Num. 21:6). God sent the plague that judged them. So we need not be afraid of the devil, we need the fear of God, the reverence for the disciplines of our Father, in our hearts. God is not out to kill people, for all of these things are examples written for our learning. God is after the carnal nature, the religious foolishness, the selfhood of the Adamic mind -- He is out to slay the beast in us. "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28-29). "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons" (Heb. 12:6-7).
These are the days in which God is preparing a people to reign in the Kingdom of God over all things. These will have to be those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. They will be those who have been filled with all the fullness of God. They will be those who have learned to be led only and always by the Spirit. They will be those who have kept His word and walked according to His will. This company of people will be one with God in mind, heart, and purpose. They will have put on the mind of Christ and their will shall have given way to His will in all things. The people whom God shall use to reign over the nations and the universe, bringing God's Kingdom to pass in all realms, will be a strong people. They will be those who live in the presence of God and breathe in union with Jesus Christ.
Those who reign with Christ cannot be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, nor deceived by every good sounding theory of man that poses as deep revelation. They will not be moved by smooth- tongued orators or fast-talking deceivers. They will perceive the hearts of men and understand the true nature of all things. God is not interested so much in what is going on today within the church systems of men. God does not want just anybody to go out and do miracles, signs and wonders. He is preparing an incorruptible order of people to do these things on a level never seen before. There are many miracles and good works done in the name of Jesus by men whom the Father has not sent. God is very selective in this hour of those He chooses to manifest His power in the earth. Not just anybody is suitable. God trains and chooses in many ways. Moses was in the backside of the desert for forty years. David went through many years of battles and trials and testings to be eligible for the throne to which God elevated him.
In the natural realm you can get away with a lot of things. You can break the law and get away with it. You can go 50 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone and probably not get caught. You can squander your bosses time on the job and cover it up. But you cannot get away with anything in the Kingdom of God! You can wallow in carnality, live in sin and partake of the harlot's table in the carnal religious systems of man and still go to heaven when you die. That is grace. But one does not reign in the Kingdom by grace. Oh no! Paul said, "By grace are ye saved..." He did not say, "By grace you will reign..." Of a truth I tell you that God knows all of our thoughts, He knows every motive and intent of our heart, every root of bitterness and lurking power of sin, every hidden weakness, and those unexplored tendencies and propensities that, under the right conditions, would make us traitors like Judas. He just knows everything! The very hairs of our head are numbered and He knows all of our ways.
We are talking about the Kingdom of God, not about being saved by grace. If you want a shack in the corner of glory-land, you can have it. Grace will secure it. But we are talking about the power and the glory of the Kingdom and those to whom it shall be given. To be saved there is only one prerequisite -- "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." But there are higher qualifications to rulership in the Kingdom! We cannot come to God and say, "I am eligible because I have attended church every Sunday for many years; I have brought a certain number of souls to Christ; I am eligible because I have paid tithes and given offerings to support the work of the gospel; I have taught Sunday School and worked in the programs of the church." There are many reasons that we could come to God and try to pay our entrance into the Kingdom. None of these will suffice. Not even the fact that we have come out of Babylon and believe the truth about sonship, reconciliation, and the Kingdom of God. What God wants is character -- the mind of Christ formed in us, the obedience, submission, love, purity and maturity of the life of Christ raised up in us as our very own reality, the image and likeness of God appearing in us, and the will of God done by us.
Nothing else will suffice!
God is shaping our lives with a view to the future. What is happening to each son of God today has a bearing on what his role will be in the Kingdom of God throughout the ages to come. Our present travail will be easier to bear when we understand this truth. A crown prince cannot live like other people. When the crown prince of Great Britain is born, he is a marked child from the day of his birth. He is different from other children. His education, his way of dress, what he is taught in the home, his associations, his activities, where he goes and when and how, his leisure time -- everything about his life is planned to prepare him to be a king. The man or woman called to sonship cannot be like other people or other of God's children any longer. God has a special plan for this one! The truth is that a son of God marches to a different tune than his contemporaries. He hears the band playing the march of victory. He stays in line with those enChristed ones who march with him. He keeps in step with his leader, Jesus Christ. He marches to the music of the celestials. He marches in the procession of Christ. His music is the music of the Kingdom. Because this is a different kind of marching from that of those in the church systems, he is often out of step with them. They are not all marching to the same place! Most Christians are marching to a place in the sky with golden streets, palm branches and harps, to sing and dance and play and frolic for eternity. Sons do not have time for such frivolity, for they are marching to the throne of the universe, to a position of eminence, power, authority, responsibility, and eternal glory as lords and kings and priests and creators after the likeness of their eternal Father. Their business is not dancing over the hillsides of glory, but bringing the Kingdom of God to pass throughout the infinity of God's universe.
The great artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, once painted a picture of Lord Holland, a prominent Englishman. The artist asked a large sum for his work, which he had completed in only a few hours' time. Lord Holland said to him, "You get money very quickly. It did not take you much time. How long were you in painting this picture?" Reynolds replied, "All of my life." The artist meant that the talents which had been developing all his life had entered into the picture and had made possible its production in a few hours. And he was correct. No great picture is painted in an hour. Life is back of it. And kings are not made in the day of their coronation. Oh, no! The willingness to submit to God's dealings and the work of conformation into the image of God's Christ is not reached in a moment. It is the outcome of an upward process by which we are transformed from glory to glory into the likeness of God. Kingship is the outcome of breakings, purgings, experience, growth, and development in the spirit throughout long months or years. God gives us a lifetime to build the character of a king, and that is generally how long it takes. It is the flowering out of the seed of Life which has been nurtured in our experience and testings day after day after day. It is not attained by one grand leap into a spiritual experience.
A. E. Knoch put it so well when he wrote, "Those who endure shall reign with Christ for the eons (II Tim. 2:12). It is a great pity to make this everlasting. Eonian life will, indeed, never end, because death itself shall be abolished at the consummation. Therefore it is unwise to overstress that the word eon does not denote endlessness in relation to our life in Christ, for it does involve it. But reigning is a different matter. All will be made alive eventually, but by its very nature, all cannot reign. Some must be subject. Reigning implies submission to intermediaries, and insubordination to God. When the kingdom is handed over to the Father, God cannot be All in all so long as some of His creatures reign over others. All rule, even that of Christ, shall cease when all authority is transferred into the hands of the Father. Endurance now is the proper preparation for reigning with Christ in the future. How different would rule be today if every officeholder had to undergo a thorough course of training in patient suffering! A prominent medical specialist in Europe tried to express a similar thought when he said that every physician ought to be thrown out of the window before he should be allowed to practice on a patient. He should know what suffering is, to deal with it sympathetically and successfully. So it is with governing! Only one who has felt the pains and penalties of mortality, and has endured the consequent suffering and shame, is fitted to rule. Only such a one will reign so successfully that ruling will eventually be ruled out!"
Today God is preparing the nobility of His Kingdom. Therefore, the qualifications are exceedingly stringent. The constant challenges and testings of our pilgrimage in Christ are not for the purpose of earning our salvation, rather the challenges and testings are for the purpose of preparing us to reign with Christ. The story is told of a certain bank in which there was a trust department in which four young men and one older man were employed. It was decided by the directors that they would promote the older employee and also promote one of the younger men to have charge of the trust department after the older gentleman was removed to his new position. After considering the merits of each of the men, a certain one of the four younger men was selected for the new position and a substantial increase in salary. It was decided to notify him that afternoon at four o'clock.
At the noon hour the young man went to a cafeteria for lunch. One of the directors was behind him in the line with several other customers in between them. The director saw the young man select his food including a small piece of butter. The butter he flipped on his plate and threw some food on top of it to hide it from the cashier. In this way he lied to the cashier about what was on his plate. That afternoon the directors met to notify the young man that they had intended giving him the promotion, but because of what had been seen in the cafeteria they must discharge him. They felt that they could not have one who would lie and steal as head of their trust department.
It reminds me of when Lorain and I were in Egypt. We took a cruise up the Nile to the Aswan Dam, visiting a number of ancient Egyptian temples along the way. At these temples are great, huge, colossal granite, sculptured pieces of kings and queens and gods. It was interesting to learn that these great sculptured pieces were all mined from one super granite quarry. The tremendous obelisks that the ancient Egyptians made were carved from one chunk of granite. These huge obelisks were monuments to history. They were placed at the entrance to a temple. Often an obelisk was more than a hundred feet high. Their sides were carved with hieroglyphs telling of the wonderful things their rulers had done. We saw a number of them at the temples, but in past centuries the finest pieces were dispersed all over the world by nations that controlled Egypt. There's one in Saint Peter's Square in Rome. Others are in Paris, France, London, England, and in Central Park, in New York City. But the best and biggest one of all still lies in the quarry up near Aswan. They spent decades cutting it out, chiseling it, filing it, sanding it -- and there it lies. It is fourteen feet square at the base. We were able to walk all over it. It's 142 feet long. And it's still lying there. Why? Because just before they got ready to move it, the experts looked at it, and they saw what no one else could see -- flaws in the basic quality of that granite. Flaws! And because there were flaws, they wouldn't move it. They abandoned it!
To be continued...
"Let me help, Mommy!" cries little Mary to her busy Mom. She then proceeds to mop the floor with streaks and messy wet and dry spots here and there. Having finished, she eyes it with a satisfied sigh and says, "Didn't I do good, Mommy?" Her mother stands back and with a cheerful smile replies, "Yes, sweetheart, you did a wonderful job!" Now, does that mother need Mary's help to get her house clean? Not really. In fact, Mary's childish efforts at "helping" actually create more work for her mother. As soon as Mary is out of the house Mom will quickly re-mop that floor! But she knows that Mary needs to learn how to do housework, and feel the importance of her contribution, because one day Mary will have her own house to clean!
The question follows -- Does our heavenly Father really need our puny help with the accomplishing of His great universal Kingdom work? Not really, for He is self-sufficient, omnipresent, and omnipotent! As such He is not dependent on man for the fulfillment of any of His plans or the accomplishment of any of His purposes. But -- God has purposed within Himself to expand Himself in us as His very own sons and daughters, and bring us, upon our maturity, into HIS FAMILY BUSINESS. God's love for us is utterly pure and unselfish, and His plan for us is paternal, eternal and sovereign. He bestows upon us the high honor of sharing His nature, life, wisdom, knowledge, glory, power and dominion. Our work in God's family business -- His great and eternal and inexhaustible Kingdom -- is our response to His love. We are destined to rule all things for God and therefore we must learn how to rule! Sometimes, along our journey to maturity, we may not do the job much better than little Mary, but our Father is patient and persistent and we will eventually grow up into Him in all things, praise His name!
If a young athlete wants to play major-league baseball, he usually has to play in the minors first. Major-league teams raise their players in their minor-league farm teams. Every year they hope to get a harvest that justifies what the minor-league teams cost them. The Kingdom of Heaven is similar. Jesus said that if we are faithful in little things, He will increase our responsibilities, and that if we use our gifts and resources for His purposes and only for His glory, He will give us more to use. The reward for work well done is . . . well, more work! God has great responsibilities just waiting to be entrusted to His sons. His Kingdom has major-league openings to manage, judge, lead, supervise and rule to establish His Kingdom forever. But whom will He put in those major-league slots? Those who have been faithful in the farm leagues of the Kingdom! God is, at this very moment grooming a body, a people, a company of kings and priests to bring the glory of the Kingdom of God upon earth and throughout the universe. Men and women are being selected for this awesome responsibility from among all nations, cultures, races and tongues around the earth, and are being processed and prepared in their present walk with God. We are in contact with thousands of people who are experiencing the special dealings of God for this Day! The world as a whole is not cognizant of what God is doing, but this selection and preparation process is nonetheless well underway.
Have we, in our desire to reign with Him, forgotten that "if we suffer, we shall reign, and if we deny Him, He will deny us?" Have we forgotten the words of Jesus, which He spoke, saying, "Ye that have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Do we know what it means to follow Jesus? Do we know what it means to drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism? Are we truly followers with Him from the cross to the throne, or are we merely the throng that flock about Him seeking the blessings, the loaves and the fishes, and not brethren at all?
David, Christ's kingly ancestor, is in this way himself a type of his Lord. For chosen by God to succeed the lawfully appointed but rejected king (Saul), he was yet for many years allowed to be hunted and persecuted by the doomed monarch whom he was to follow. During these wanderings over the mountains and wilds his faithful followers shared his hardships, and he and they together learned to endure and to fight; and thus when God's time of preparation was over, and their training had been completed, David and his men were found equal to the great task of freeing God's people from all bondage to their foes. And, of course, those brave men who had shared their leader's path, with its dangers and distresses, were rewarded with the chief positions of glory in his kingdom. Surely all who read these lines can see the correctness of this, and can appreciate how worthwhile it finally proved to be to have shared their king's rejection and persecution. And thus in intenser measure will it be in this Day of the Lord! There is truly a price to be paid to walk with God in the new order of this new Kingdom Day that is now dawning, and there is great heavenly reward to those who pay that price!
A brother we have heard from through the years shared this illustration in one of his communications: It is as a great king of old who had two sons. Twins they were. The sons grew together. Soon they reached an age when much correction came. The boys needed the rod and found it in full force for their errors. One day both sons still felt the pain of the rod and their tears still flowed. There came by a young orphan about their age. He said to them, "I am free to do what I want. I am not as you who must endure the force of a father. I can skip and play and do cartwheels in the streets. I can beg, lie, steal, and sleep anywhere I please. I have fun every day for I am under the king's protection as one in his realm but I need not suffer as you with his corrections. I am free! Why do you not come with me and we can be free together?"
The boys made a decision that day. The first said, "No, though I am hurting from my father's rod, I would endure it every day for I will grow and inherit all that belongs to my father. I will learn and follow him wherever he leads me." The other boy was sore tempted for the pain of correction and the harshness of restrictions laid upon him was so much to bear. Soon he decided to follow the young orphan. Oh, how they played for days and years! They skipped and jumped and did cartwheels. They lied and stole as they wanted. They begged in the streets when it pleased them. They rejected the call of the king to serve him in any way. They only thought of their great fun and so chased after it. The two children grew. One learned of, and thus loved greatly, his father and his ways. The other rejected the loving call to come back into the household. The father let him go to do what he wanted. He knew that a love that is forced upon another will only bring bondage and hatred. Thus, for the will of the rebellious child, he left him to his fun.
The hour came to inherit the kingdom. The first son received great honor. All that his father had became his. The other son wanted some of his father's riches, too, for he also grew old and the pleasure of being an orphan left him. Being of age, if he stole, he would go to prison. Skipping and playing failed to please him anymore. Begging got him little. He wanted some of the kingdom too. However, the judge of the kingdom deemed him unworthy of even a morsel from the king's table. In like manner, God has many who want all that is His. They say, "If it is of my Father's, I want it!" They want the mercy, the grace, the blessings, the benefits, the healings, the miracles, the experiences -- anything they can enjoy without coming under the disciplining hand of their Father. Oh, they want to skip and jump and do cartwheels and shout and rejoice and prosper and get rich and use God's blessings in any way they want, and to their own ends. But they have no desire to learn God's ways, to put on His mind, to be conformed to His image, to do His will and be involved in His purposes. The churches today are filled with blessing seekers who follow the Lord for the loaves and the fishes, but have no heart for His corrections, to suffer with Him, to endure the cross, to die to all the carnality of the flesh and of the fleshly religious systems, in order to qualify to share His throne. The way to sonship is not an easy way, and some find it a little too hard, and would rather choose an easier way. This reminds me of the young aspiring musician who said to an old master, "Can you tell me of an easy way to become a great musician?" The old master just looked him in the eye and said, "Son, there is no easy way." And there is no easy way to sonship and the throne of God! This is why God has chosen certain ones, who have the stamina to seek first and only His Kingdom, to endure, and persevere, submitting to His will and His dealings, come what may.
I will have you to know that the Lord, having saved the children of Israel out of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. There is a teaching that God saves, and the devil destroys. I do not believe that the devil can destroy anybody. After having saved the people out of Egypt, GOD destroyed them, not the devil! And the angels that kept not their first estate, GOD cast them down, not the devil. When Ananias and Sapphira lied to the Holy Ghost, GOD slew them, not the devil. I could go on and on. The old idea is, you try to live for God and the devil is on your trail trying to drive you to hell. But once God has called you and you belong to Him, whatever happens to you after that is from HIM, not the devil. When Israel was in the wilderness, it was not the devil that sent fiery serpents. The Bible says, "And YAHWEH sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died" (Num. 21:6). God sent the plague that judged them. So we need not be afraid of the devil, we need the fear of God, the reverence for the disciplines of our Father, in our hearts. God is not out to kill people, for all of these things are examples written for our learning. God is after the carnal nature, the religious foolishness, the selfhood of the Adamic mind -- He is out to slay the beast in us. "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12:28-29). "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons" (Heb. 12:6-7).
These are the days in which God is preparing a people to reign in the Kingdom of God over all things. These will have to be those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. They will be those who have been filled with all the fullness of God. They will be those who have learned to be led only and always by the Spirit. They will be those who have kept His word and walked according to His will. This company of people will be one with God in mind, heart, and purpose. They will have put on the mind of Christ and their will shall have given way to His will in all things. The people whom God shall use to reign over the nations and the universe, bringing God's Kingdom to pass in all realms, will be a strong people. They will be those who live in the presence of God and breathe in union with Jesus Christ.
Those who reign with Christ cannot be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, nor deceived by every good sounding theory of man that poses as deep revelation. They will not be moved by smooth- tongued orators or fast-talking deceivers. They will perceive the hearts of men and understand the true nature of all things. God is not interested so much in what is going on today within the church systems of men. God does not want just anybody to go out and do miracles, signs and wonders. He is preparing an incorruptible order of people to do these things on a level never seen before. There are many miracles and good works done in the name of Jesus by men whom the Father has not sent. God is very selective in this hour of those He chooses to manifest His power in the earth. Not just anybody is suitable. God trains and chooses in many ways. Moses was in the backside of the desert for forty years. David went through many years of battles and trials and testings to be eligible for the throne to which God elevated him.
In the natural realm you can get away with a lot of things. You can break the law and get away with it. You can go 50 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone and probably not get caught. You can squander your bosses time on the job and cover it up. But you cannot get away with anything in the Kingdom of God! You can wallow in carnality, live in sin and partake of the harlot's table in the carnal religious systems of man and still go to heaven when you die. That is grace. But one does not reign in the Kingdom by grace. Oh no! Paul said, "By grace are ye saved..." He did not say, "By grace you will reign..." Of a truth I tell you that God knows all of our thoughts, He knows every motive and intent of our heart, every root of bitterness and lurking power of sin, every hidden weakness, and those unexplored tendencies and propensities that, under the right conditions, would make us traitors like Judas. He just knows everything! The very hairs of our head are numbered and He knows all of our ways.
We are talking about the Kingdom of God, not about being saved by grace. If you want a shack in the corner of glory-land, you can have it. Grace will secure it. But we are talking about the power and the glory of the Kingdom and those to whom it shall be given. To be saved there is only one prerequisite -- "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." But there are higher qualifications to rulership in the Kingdom! We cannot come to God and say, "I am eligible because I have attended church every Sunday for many years; I have brought a certain number of souls to Christ; I am eligible because I have paid tithes and given offerings to support the work of the gospel; I have taught Sunday School and worked in the programs of the church." There are many reasons that we could come to God and try to pay our entrance into the Kingdom. None of these will suffice. Not even the fact that we have come out of Babylon and believe the truth about sonship, reconciliation, and the Kingdom of God. What God wants is character -- the mind of Christ formed in us, the obedience, submission, love, purity and maturity of the life of Christ raised up in us as our very own reality, the image and likeness of God appearing in us, and the will of God done by us.
Nothing else will suffice!
God is shaping our lives with a view to the future. What is happening to each son of God today has a bearing on what his role will be in the Kingdom of God throughout the ages to come. Our present travail will be easier to bear when we understand this truth. A crown prince cannot live like other people. When the crown prince of Great Britain is born, he is a marked child from the day of his birth. He is different from other children. His education, his way of dress, what he is taught in the home, his associations, his activities, where he goes and when and how, his leisure time -- everything about his life is planned to prepare him to be a king. The man or woman called to sonship cannot be like other people or other of God's children any longer. God has a special plan for this one! The truth is that a son of God marches to a different tune than his contemporaries. He hears the band playing the march of victory. He stays in line with those enChristed ones who march with him. He keeps in step with his leader, Jesus Christ. He marches to the music of the celestials. He marches in the procession of Christ. His music is the music of the Kingdom. Because this is a different kind of marching from that of those in the church systems, he is often out of step with them. They are not all marching to the same place! Most Christians are marching to a place in the sky with golden streets, palm branches and harps, to sing and dance and play and frolic for eternity. Sons do not have time for such frivolity, for they are marching to the throne of the universe, to a position of eminence, power, authority, responsibility, and eternal glory as lords and kings and priests and creators after the likeness of their eternal Father. Their business is not dancing over the hillsides of glory, but bringing the Kingdom of God to pass throughout the infinity of God's universe.
The great artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, once painted a picture of Lord Holland, a prominent Englishman. The artist asked a large sum for his work, which he had completed in only a few hours' time. Lord Holland said to him, "You get money very quickly. It did not take you much time. How long were you in painting this picture?" Reynolds replied, "All of my life." The artist meant that the talents which had been developing all his life had entered into the picture and had made possible its production in a few hours. And he was correct. No great picture is painted in an hour. Life is back of it. And kings are not made in the day of their coronation. Oh, no! The willingness to submit to God's dealings and the work of conformation into the image of God's Christ is not reached in a moment. It is the outcome of an upward process by which we are transformed from glory to glory into the likeness of God. Kingship is the outcome of breakings, purgings, experience, growth, and development in the spirit throughout long months or years. God gives us a lifetime to build the character of a king, and that is generally how long it takes. It is the flowering out of the seed of Life which has been nurtured in our experience and testings day after day after day. It is not attained by one grand leap into a spiritual experience.
A. E. Knoch put it so well when he wrote, "Those who endure shall reign with Christ for the eons (II Tim. 2:12). It is a great pity to make this everlasting. Eonian life will, indeed, never end, because death itself shall be abolished at the consummation. Therefore it is unwise to overstress that the word eon does not denote endlessness in relation to our life in Christ, for it does involve it. But reigning is a different matter. All will be made alive eventually, but by its very nature, all cannot reign. Some must be subject. Reigning implies submission to intermediaries, and insubordination to God. When the kingdom is handed over to the Father, God cannot be All in all so long as some of His creatures reign over others. All rule, even that of Christ, shall cease when all authority is transferred into the hands of the Father. Endurance now is the proper preparation for reigning with Christ in the future. How different would rule be today if every officeholder had to undergo a thorough course of training in patient suffering! A prominent medical specialist in Europe tried to express a similar thought when he said that every physician ought to be thrown out of the window before he should be allowed to practice on a patient. He should know what suffering is, to deal with it sympathetically and successfully. So it is with governing! Only one who has felt the pains and penalties of mortality, and has endured the consequent suffering and shame, is fitted to rule. Only such a one will reign so successfully that ruling will eventually be ruled out!"
Today God is preparing the nobility of His Kingdom. Therefore, the qualifications are exceedingly stringent. The constant challenges and testings of our pilgrimage in Christ are not for the purpose of earning our salvation, rather the challenges and testings are for the purpose of preparing us to reign with Christ. The story is told of a certain bank in which there was a trust department in which four young men and one older man were employed. It was decided by the directors that they would promote the older employee and also promote one of the younger men to have charge of the trust department after the older gentleman was removed to his new position. After considering the merits of each of the men, a certain one of the four younger men was selected for the new position and a substantial increase in salary. It was decided to notify him that afternoon at four o'clock.
At the noon hour the young man went to a cafeteria for lunch. One of the directors was behind him in the line with several other customers in between them. The director saw the young man select his food including a small piece of butter. The butter he flipped on his plate and threw some food on top of it to hide it from the cashier. In this way he lied to the cashier about what was on his plate. That afternoon the directors met to notify the young man that they had intended giving him the promotion, but because of what had been seen in the cafeteria they must discharge him. They felt that they could not have one who would lie and steal as head of their trust department.
It reminds me of when Lorain and I were in Egypt. We took a cruise up the Nile to the Aswan Dam, visiting a number of ancient Egyptian temples along the way. At these temples are great, huge, colossal granite, sculptured pieces of kings and queens and gods. It was interesting to learn that these great sculptured pieces were all mined from one super granite quarry. The tremendous obelisks that the ancient Egyptians made were carved from one chunk of granite. These huge obelisks were monuments to history. They were placed at the entrance to a temple. Often an obelisk was more than a hundred feet high. Their sides were carved with hieroglyphs telling of the wonderful things their rulers had done. We saw a number of them at the temples, but in past centuries the finest pieces were dispersed all over the world by nations that controlled Egypt. There's one in Saint Peter's Square in Rome. Others are in Paris, France, London, England, and in Central Park, in New York City. But the best and biggest one of all still lies in the quarry up near Aswan. They spent decades cutting it out, chiseling it, filing it, sanding it -- and there it lies. It is fourteen feet square at the base. We were able to walk all over it. It's 142 feet long. And it's still lying there. Why? Because just before they got ready to move it, the experts looked at it, and they saw what no one else could see -- flaws in the basic quality of that granite. Flaws! And because there were flaws, they wouldn't move it. They abandoned it!
To be continued...
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