DEVILS VOICE 1 OF 4

"Yea, hath God said?"—Genesis 3:1

That is the voice of the devil. We are living in an hour in which we are very conscious that in this world of ours, and in the midst of all its affairs, hell is let loose. I resolutely use that phrase, and say hell is let loose, for hell can have no power, except under the government of God; just as Satan could not touch Job until he had asked permission, just as it is true that when he desired to have the disciples to sift them as wheat, he obtained them by asking. It is forever so. That is a tremendous truth, at which we may often be puzzled; but our confidence is in God, and in the assurance that when He allows the forces of hell to be loosed, there is a reason for it, and a meaning in it. It is so in the days in which we are living.

The existence of evil, spiritual principalities is granted by all those who accept the Biblical revelation. Words we have doubtless often quoted recently to ourselves, occurring in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, are true. "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood." That is to say that such conflict is not final. Behind it there is something else, "But against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wick­edness in the heavenly places." This fact of the existence of the principalities of evil is assumed and revealed throughout the Bible; and at the head of this empire of evil is one, named vari­ously, named Satan. We are very conscious of his power and of his deeds. It is an interesting thing to remark in hurried passing, when we open our Bible, we do not find him in the first two chapters. He does not appear. And it is equally arresting that we do not find him in the last two chapters. He is not there at the begin­ning or end of the Bible, though, as Browning had it, "a wide compass first be fetched."

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he said, "We are not ignorant of his devices." That is a suggestive word rightly understood, "devices," which might correctly be rendered his mental activities, his conceptions, his purpose, his think­ing. We are not ignorant, said Paul, of these things. Sometimes we are inclined to say, if Paul was not, we are. Yet it is not so. As we are men and women of faith, and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and believers in the Biblical revelation, we can say we are not ignorant of his mental activity, of the conceptions that underlie that activity, and of the purpose that inspires that activity. Paul had what we have, the Biblical history, with its revelation of this personality, and the story of Jesus, with the utmost revelation of this personality through His ministry. Paul had these things. So have we, and so we can say we are not ignorant of his devices.

On a memorable occasion, which Matthew re­cords for us, Jesus uttered something which had another application, but which I venture to sug­gest had a wider application than the Lord then made use of: "For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." That is a tremendous statement, one that would bear thinking about, and illustrating in various ways. It is true that words are the ex­pression of the inner thinking, and consequently they form the basis of judgment of the inner thinking. That is true of God. By His words He is justified, and by His words He might be condemned. Of course that is unthinkable; and that is why the Word became flesh. It was the revelation of God.

It is equally true of man, and it is equally true of the devil. When Paul wrote, "We are not ig­norant of his devices"—and I claim we stand with Paul—how shall we find out about him? That leads us to this very simple, almost childish con­clusion, the result of our knowledge of the Bible. In the process of all this literature, of the process of the story it has to tell, the voice of the devil is heard only three times. His deeds are recorded all through the record, but his voice, that which gives expression to the deepest truth concerning his personality, is heard only three times—three references to the speech of Satan in all the Bible. One is found in Genesis 3. We find him speaking again when we get to the book of Job. We never find him chronicled as speaking again until in the wilderness he con­fronted the God-man in the hour of temptation. Just three occasions through the Bible in which the voice of the devil is heard, uttering words which are the utmost revelations of his devices, and of another fact concerning him, to which Paul made reference in another letter, "the wiles of the devil." His devices, and his wiles; that is, his conceptions, his purpose; and his tricks, the methods he adopts. Paul did not say we are not ignorant of his wiles, because we never know what they will be; but we do know the revelation that is given to us of them.

So I am asking you to stay with the devil for a little while! We are in a world in which we are confronting him everywhere. I ask you to stay and listen to him. Take these three occasions. To summarize, he is first heard slandering God to man. That is our first and present subject. When we hear his speech again in Job, he is heard slander­ing man to God. When we hear him speak again, he is facing the God-man in the wilderness.

Confining ourselves to the first, in the story we know so well, we have the account of what he said upon this occasion, and the phrase of my text introduces the whole story of the fall of man, to use again, without any apology, the old theological formula. It is the story of how man fell. We are at the source of all the rivers of sin and sorrow and desolation and damnation that have blasted and cursed human history. We are right at the beginning, and the voice of Satan is heard.

To summarize on the whole story, what did Satan do? First, he questioned the goodness of God. Secondly, he denied the severity of God. Finally, he slandered the motive of God. Here is the voice of Satan, and we are confronted with evil, with hell, with Satan. Here we are at the very beginnings, and we listen to his voice.

He first questioned the goodness of God. No­tice that is only a phrase I read, "Yea, hath God said?" See what he is doing. It is an interroga­tive method of directing attention to something. That is what Satan is here doing. He is trying to direct attention to the fact that God is not good, that His action is not good, that God is unkind in withholding certain things. At the very be­ginning we are in the presence of something false. "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree?" No, God has said nothing of the kind. He had said, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat," except one. There is the suggestion that has in it the element of untruth, and that is equally so in the reply of the woman. She also was inaccurate; accurate so far, as she said, "Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat"; but inaccurate when she said, "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." God had not said, "Neither shall ye touch it." They might not eat of it, but here is an overemphasis of something God had said. So a lie that is half a truth is uttered in reply, and we are in the pres­ence of the fact that the very genesis of evil in the history of man is born of the fact that the devil suggested that God was not good, was not kind. God had said nothing of the kind. He had definitely marked the limits of human freedom by the sacramental tree in the garden.

Someone may say to me, Do you really believe the story of the tree? Yes, if I believe the story of a garden. Then they may say, Do you believe the story of a garden? With what else would you start history? A city? Every city comes out of a garden. We cannot find anything in America, nothing existing in America that has not come finally out of the earth, out of the garden of God. We must begin in a garden. What is the sacramental symbol then? Not a ledger! Oh, it may be to some of you! The sacramental symbol is a tree, necessarily so. I do not want to stop to ar­gue that. But the point is this. God had set there a sacramental symbol in a tree. I would not say an apple tree. It is wonderful how people have said it was an apple tree. How do you know it was not an orange? It was a tree that bore fruit, and it is called not an apple tree, but "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." It was a sacra­mental symbol, and God said, No, you must not take that. That marks your limitation. That in­dicates sovereignty over you; and the devil en­tered by saying, "Yea, hath God said" that?

That is where evil always begins, and that lies at the back of the objection to law, that law lim­its realization, that if we can break away from law then we shall be free. So we have the idea of escape and emancipation from all law; which by the way is the definition of lawlessnes. That is what we have here. That is what we have in the world today. Lying at the back of all devil­ishness against which we are gathered in solemn dedication and endeavor is the idea that the God of the Bible is not good, is not kind—I mean good in that sense—and the first element of Satan's word limits the goodness of God and His law.

Then, when we take the rest of the story, we see that he denies the severity of God. Yes, has God said you shall die? You will not. God does not mean that. You won't die. Instead of dying you will be as God is. You will be like God.

You will know good and evil; but without the power to do the good. He denied the severity of God. He declared that the wages of sin is not death. Again, we are in the presence of the fact that the whole of this conception is based upon an untruth. Of course it may be almost a grotesque question how far this great prince of the power of evil believed what he said himself. Oh, he does not believe it. He knows he is lying.

He knows God had not said anything that was unjust and unkind. He knew God was severe, and that His law would tolerate no breaking. But he was lying, and that is what Jesus meant when He said he was "a liar from the beginning." It is per­fectly true. Here we have it. The wages of sin is not death. Satan was degrading man by sug­gesting that death was to be treated as physical only; and the moment this fruit was taken, men would still be walking about, still thinking, still knowing. Death that is not death. What Satan strove to hide is the deeper truth of the spiritual essence of human nature, and the fact that death is not the separation of the soul from the body ultimately, but the separation of the soul from God; and in the day that man ate, he died, he lost his fellowship. That is why, when God came walking in the garden in the cool, or wind, or as I prefer to translate ruach in the spirit of the day, came walking for communion, man was afraid.

Of what was he afraid? He had lost touch with God. He had lost communion with God.

He was harboring wrong thinking about God, and consequently he became afraid of God; he died.

Yet this is always the outcome of the first fact. If we deny the goodness of God, we will inevi­tably deny His severity; and to deny the severity of God is surely to deny the ultimate goodness of God. If we could be persuaded that God can tolerate evil, with all its blighting, blasting effect, we could not believe in His goodness. We can believe in His goodness only as we believe in His severity. Yet here it is. This is the beginning of the whole process of evil. Goodness is misinter­preted as to its method, and people say, Oh, God is too good to punish, too good to be severe; and that means that God is not good at all. There is the lie on which this whole movement started.

Finally, and with equal brevity, the motive of God was challenged. A suggestion was made that the action of God had at its heart and center the selfishness of God, that man was being kept out of his kingdom by the law of God. That is the point at which man rebels against the govern­ment of God, or else he denies the fact of God altogether. All the story of the centuries is just the story of the fact that man has accepted these false views of God, has listened to the voice of the devil, as it questioned the goodness of God, denied His severity, and slandered His motive.

This is the first occasion upon which we hear the voice of Satan, and today we are facing the results of his calumny, the results of his slander upon God, which humanity listened to, took to, accepted, and rebelled against the government. And the issue has been the denial of God, or else denial of the revelation of God that has been granted to man in Christ.

To me it is of value to stop thus and think. I began by saying hell is let loose. We are face to face with the forces of evil as we never were in our lives before. We saw something of it two world wars, with Viet Nam, with Iraq, and Afghanistan, and soon Iran; but we have never seen anything quite like this. We ask, Where does this madness come from, this iniquity of the human race? We find it in this fact, that man has accepted the views of Satan, has yielded to them, and has brought about all the sorrow and trouble that re­sult from such acceptation. Let us realize that; and in these days when we are massed together as an empire against these things, let us wonder­ingly say, in spite of all our failure, God does seem in His overruling to have made us the cus­todians, for the moment, of the things of truth and righteousness and order until we buy this lawless, liar’s rendition and evaluation of God and His Word.

MY MINISTRY IS...?

MY MINISTRY IS……?

Titus 3:8 “This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men.”

Do you feel as though you have no worthwhile ministry for the Lord to help share the only message of hope this world has within its reach? Well read this.

...careful to maintain good works  The alternative reading suggested in the Revised Version, "careful to profess honest occupations," helps us to understand what was in the mind of the Apostle when he wrote these words.

The whole chapter reveals the kind of world in the midst of which these Cretan (American-Chinese-European-Asian-African-Russian etc.) Christians were living. It was characterized by insubordination to authority, by laziness, by disaffection and contention, and by every form of evil excess. Moreover, it was intellectually a world of wrangling and disputes over all sorts of things. In the midst of such conditions the Christians stood fundamentally as those who believed God. To believe God is to believe His Word, His revelation of the true order of life. Those who stood on that belief could testify to the power of it in no better way than that of good works, that is, by following a quiet and diligent life of devotion to duty, in callings which in themselves were honest. And that is always so. There is no more powerful force for rebuking all evil things, whether of conduct or of opinion, than that of the quiet, strong, persistent life of man or woman who goes on from day to day doing the duties of the day well, cheerfully, and with joy. It is not easy; and that is recognized in the very verb employed. They are "to be careful", that is, they are to make it a study, to take thought about it. It is not easy, but it is worthwhile.

A life that studies and is diligent to perform their life in this way earns great reward from God, for living as His Son revealed to them.

ADORNING IN HARD TIMES

ADORN IN HARD TIMES

Titus 2:10 “not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.”

Here are two ideas which flash with a surprising brilliance. The first is that the doctrine of God our Savior can be adorned; and the second is that those who are spoken of as able to do it are slaves. Perhaps we shall understand the first better, if we begin with the second. The word servants here are distinctly the word for slaves, and it may well be conceived that the conditions of slaves in Crete, where Titus was laboring, were of the worst. Paul had already said that the testimony of one of their own prophets was true that the Cretans were liars, evil beasts, and gluttons. Slavery in a society of such must have been a terrible thing. Among these slaves there were some who were saints, and these were declared able in the very life of slavery, to "adorn the doctrine." Moreover, the Apostle had declared how they would do it. It would be done by subjection to their masters; by seeking to be well-pleasing by not opposing; by honesty, by faithfulness; in short, by such action in difficult circumstances as to win from their very masters recognition of their goodness. Thus we see how "the doctrine of God our Savior" may "be adorned." It is adorned when its effects on life and character are expressed in conduct. To be true and gentle and faithful in circumstances that are hard and unfair, and even unjust, is only possible in the power of some great spiritual conviction, and the value of such spiritual conviction is revealed in such conduct.

WHAT ANGELS LOOKED INTO

WHAT THE ANGELS SAW

Psa. 85:10 “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

1 Pet. 1:12  “….which things the angels desire to look into.”

Through that Cross there is the reconciliation of things “in the heavens.” The angels had been taught by God concerning Himself since the first day. They have been learning and serving since then. We call to mind the picture of angels desiring to look into these things that were just announced to transpire. As they did so, they became conscious of the profoundest depth of the mystery in the hour when Jesus died; how and why? It was the mystery of that of the death of a pure and sinless, and therefore deathless, Being. Personally, I can have no doubt about the literal accuracy of the Bible story that in the hour of that death the sun was darkened. My wonder sometimes is that it ever shone again. The angels saw in the mystery a revelation. They knew the Person Whom they saw die, and recognized that the death of the Christ must have some profound significance in the economy of God. How do you kill God Who is eternal? Through the death of the Lord they beheld man reconciled to God. They saw the salvation provided for the sinner in his loosing from his sins. They saw the resultant co-operation of the saints, as, con­formed to His dying, they came to living knowledge of Himself, shared the power of His Resurrection, and entered into the fellowship of His sufferings. They saw these saints bearing through to lower reaches of God's creation the renewing forces which had remade their own lives.

What effect, do you think, had that working out into visibility of the passion and power of the love of God upon the watching angels? It was for them a new unveiling of God. In that Cross they saw Him as they had never seen Him. The essential light of Deity shone whiter, for holiness was vindicated as never before. The essential Love of Deity shone redder, for compassion was manifested more perfectly. The essential Life of Deity was realized more fully, for all its values were revealed more absolutely. I can imagine that, as the Lord Jesus Christ died, and all the issues of His dying were revealed to them, angels borrowed the song of the Psalmist, and chanted to the measure of their own perfect music:

“Mercy and truth are met together;

Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”

REALIZING YOUR CONVICTION

REALIZING YOUR CONVICTION

"Becoming conformed unto His death."—Philippians 3:10

THIS brief passage of Scripture occurs in the midst of a wonderful piece of spiritual autobiography, in which Paul revealed the bearing of past experiences and of future expectations upon his then present life.

In the first part of the passage we are presented with a picture of the days before Christ apprehended him, as the Apostle declared to the Philippian Christians that, if there were any man who considered he had the right to boast in the flesh, he, Paul, had a greater right.

He next referred to a moment in his life when his whole outlook was changed, when his conceptions of things were radically revolutionized, so that he was able to write, "What things were gain to me these have I counted loss." It was a moment when he gathered up all the things which up to that point had been most precious to him, and casting them beneath his feet, trampled on them as worthless. It was a moment of which worldly men would speak as the occasion of a great renunciation, or of a great foolhardiness. In that hour he had turned his back upon his ambitions and upon all the things he had valued most; and they were not mean things, they were not base things, they were not dishonorable things; they were the things of nationality, of blood, of morality, and of religion. Nevertheless, the vision he saw was of such nature as to make these most sacred things of his life appear in his eyes as refuse.

He then declared that from the moment when Christ apprehended him, his one ambition, an ambition which had become an all-consuming passion, and constituted the driving force of his life, was that he might apprehend Christ.

That ambition he described in brief but suggestive words, "That I may know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death."

These last words do not describe the consummation of his ambition; they rather reveal his conviction as to the only condition upon which that ambition could be realized.

"Being conformed unto His death" is not the ulti­mate experience; it is the initial condition. The Apostle did not mean to say; I desire to know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, and then finally; I desire to be conformed unto His death. He intended rather to say: I desire "to know Him, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings," by "becoming conformed unto His death."

All those who have been apprehended of Christ, who have seen the vision, and heard the voice, and known experimentally His victory over them, share the Apostle's desire to know Him, to know the power of His Resurrec­tion, to know the fellowship of His sufferings. This desire can only be fulfilled as they become "conformed unto His death." Every living experience of Christianity begins at the Cross. The experience of the Cross is not final, but it is fundamental.



IS THE OT TOO BLOODY?

GET RID OF ALL THAT BLOOD

Deut. 12:23 “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”

There are those who have taken objection to it, and have attempted to express the truth in some other way. They ask for a new terminology. I never object to new terminology—indeed, I prefer new terminology for a new thing, to the old terminology robbed of its essential heart and life and meaning. I am told we need a new terminology, and that it will be safe for us to say, "redemption through His life."

Let us think of this. It is perhaps by consideration of the suggested phrase that we shall begin to see the meaning of the great and awful and appalling words, "redemption through His blood." Is it not true that blood is life? Perfectly true. Under the Mosaic economy the requirements in this respect were direct and stringent. Either in so many words, or in other words equivalent, the declaration is repeated, "The blood is the life." (Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:22) These things were written long before science had come to illuminate them. I need hardly stay to remind you that men have only known anything concerning the circulation of the blood for about two and a half centuries; yet that discovery, in all its wonderful unfolding and explanation, does but add infinite meaning to the old Mosaic word. Scientific men tell us that in blood there are certain vital facts; resist­ance, so that the blood in healthy life maintains its temperature as against heat and cold; organization, so that if you break in upon the flesh, and close it again, the organism will be renewed by the action of the blood; fluidity, so that the blood contains in fluid form that which tends to solidity; and finally, hear the mystery of it; death, the final proof of life. "The blood is the life.”

Remember that the flesh in man is the outward symbol of the man himself. Remember that the essential in human life is the spirit. Yet the blood most perfectly sets forth the essential. "The blood is the life." It is a purely physical declaration, yet an absolutely true one.

The Bible, however, does not teach that a man is saved by that principle, but by the shedding of blood. (Heb. 9:22) Salvation is not through life lived, but through life poured out. It is not by the life of Jesus that we are redeemed; but by His life given up in the pain and suffering of a shameful death, of which death there is no sufficient symbol or method' of expression other than that of the shedding of blood. Redemption is provided, not by the richness of His life possessed, but by the suffering of His life poured out. As the blood in the physical life is the symbol of the spiritual, so in the actual outpouring of the blood of the Man of Nazareth there was symbolized that infinite mystery of essential Love bending to suffer­ing and pain and death, gathering into itself that which is against itself in inherent principle, and suffering, in order that through that suffering there might be accomplished something which cannot be accomplished without it. It is through the shedding of blood that there is remission.

The moment we destroy this outward symbolism of words, we inevitably begin to contradict the infinite mystery which lies behind them, and which they do symbolize. The moment we begin to say there is no virtue in the actual blood, the physical blood of long ago, we are on the verge of denying the lonely, separate suffering of God in Christ, through which, and through which alone, it is possible for forgiveness, which is at once freedom from the guilt and pollution and power of sin, to be pronounced upon men. I lay this emphasis here because, as I have said, the question is often asked: Why may we not get rid of the phrasing, Cleansed by blood, and say, Cleansed by life? Because when we get rid of the phrasing we get rid of the truth. It is not by the life, but by the life laid down; not by the richness and beauty of the ideal, but by the mystery of its breaking and buffeting and suffering and death that it is possible for forgiveness to be pronounced.

Heb. 9:22 “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

THE ETERNAL STATE

THE ETERNAL STATE.

Rev. 22:5 "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever." 

When the last enemy of God has been put down by our Lord acting as Mediatorial King, the purpose of His Mediatorial Kingdom will have been fulfilled. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:25). This point in the history of the government of God will have been reached when death itself comes to an end, for "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15:26). And this point is clearly indicated in Revelation 20:14 where we are told that "death" is cast into the lake of fire. With the end of this "last enemy" there can be no more any intermediate state; therefore "Hades" also is abolished. In the inspired record, the destruction of death and Hades appears as the last act of our Lord in preparation for the new and eternal world.

        As we pass from Rev. 20 into Rev. 21 of the Apocalypse, therefore, we stand at the junction point between two worlds and between two kingdoms. It is the end of the "first" or "natural" order of things, and the beginning of the final order of things. Here also the Mediatorial Kingdom of our Lord ends, not by abolition, but by its mergence into the Universal Kingdom of God. Thus it is perpetuated forever, no longer as a separate entity, but in indissoluble union with the original Kingdom of God from which it sprang. What will happen is concisely described in St. Paul's classic passage on the subject: "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. . . . And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:24, 28). This does not mean the end of our Lord's regal activity, but rather that from here onward in the unity of the Godhead He reigns with the Father as the eternal Son. There are no longer two thrones: one His Messianic throne and the other the Father's throne, as our Lord indicated in Revelation 3:21. In the final Kingdom there is but one throne, and it is "the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rev. 22:3).

        The changed conditions in this final Kingdom will be very wonderful and far-reaching. But, in general, it should be observed that there is no absolute break with the former world, as in the Platonic postulate. The Mediatorial Kingdom of our Lord will constitute the glorious consummating era of the first order of things and will serve as the divine bridge between the temporal order and the eternal order. As Lange has well said, "The Apocalypse alone sets forth the true mediation of the last metamorphosis of the old world, in the Millennial Kingdom." When in the record of Revelation 21:5 the voice from heaven announces, "Behold, I make all things new," we must not suppose that our world will then lose its identity, but rather that in its reconstituted form, it will begin to exist under new and perfect conditions. Two of these conditions may be stated as follows:

        First, of all these changed conditions, perhaps the greatest is that at last "the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God" (Rev. 21:3). Even during the glorious millennial reign of Christ with His Church on earth, their actual residence will be in heaven. But in the eternal Kingdom heaven comes down to earth; God dwells with men! At last the long history of temporary theophany’s will be done. In the face of Jesus Christ men at last will see the face of God with no hindrance of circumstance or interruption of temporality.

        Second, in this final Kingdom of God some of the most familiar things of the present life will be missing: "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev. 21:4). And in such a world, of course, there can be no sin; for sin is the cause of all tears, all pain, and all death. Thus, we read, that in this new order of things with its glorious city, there will be no place for the "unbelieving" and sinners (Rev. 21:8). "There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie" (Rev. 21:27). The description closes on a somber note: All the unsaved are shut "without" the city (Rev. 22:15), and for such there is no remedy (Rev. 22:11 ).

        As the divinely given visions of the future Kingdom come to an end in Rev. 22:5, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself speaks from heaven historically in a final word to "the churches" (Rev. 22:16). And He identifies Himself here as "the bright and morning star"; for while during the life of the churches on earth it is night, not day, the morning is always "at hand" (Rom. 13:12). In His message we note two important things:

        First, as an antidote to any possible hesitation (often unspoken) to believe all the wondrous revelation of this book of the Kingdom, we are given His own gracious assurance: "These sayings are faithful and true" (Rev. 22:6). And in the face of this divine validation, all our doubts must wither away and die. For the very name of the Speaker is "Faithful and True" (Rev. 19:11); and therefore of all He has spoken nothing can possibly fail.

        Second, to "the churches" on earth, He gives a thrice-repeated reminder of something which must never be forgotten; for it will give courage in the hour of battle, strength in the hour of weakness, and hope in the hour of despair. Let us hear Him as He speaks: "Behold, I come quickly" (Rev. 22:7) "Behold, I come quickly" (Rev. 22:12) "Surely, I come quickly" (Rev. 22:21)

        Thus, in His last historic word from heaven, our Lord writes once more over the portals of the Church that "Blessed Hope" under which she must live and labor during every moment of her existence upon the earth. And if we are wise in the simplicity of the Word of God, we shall respond in the words of the "beloved disciple," who heard and recorded the message:

        "Even so, come, Lord Jesus" (Rev. 22:20).