'Moving Across the Boundaries...' Part Two ...the treasures of the kingdom...

          
       ‘TODAY, if I hear his voice... or, NEVER, if I don’t...’

     The earthly image will remain as long as it is still standing.  What do I really want? The heavenly reality of the kingdom of God, TODAY, IF I HEAR HIS VOICE; or, at some convenient time in the future? i.e. Never! The future is always future!   

     (“The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all, was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.”) 

     While as I am yet standing, I cannot see the way of entry. Because it is not made manifest to me, while as yet I am still standing; or while as yet I have any standing in this world. For of my own self I cannot see how to enter!  The entry cannot be shown me, or be made manifest to me by my “first tabernacle:” by my soul, by my old self, because it cannot be revealed by any earthly flesh: because earthly flesh opposes it! 

     The old is always in antagonism against the new: because the old is always against anything that threatens it. The first is the enemy of the second. Because the good is the enemy of the best. So of my own self I do not know how to enter in. Of my ‘old’ self I cannot learn that the passage way is only through the thick veil: because flesh cannot expose flesh. It will never go against what it supports! It does not cut away the ground beneath its own feet! And so I do not enter in, because I don’t know, how. And I don’t know, how: because the key, “the key of knowledge,” has been taken away. 

     The dense ‘veil,’ between the first and the second is my ‘flesh.’ It is my pride of life which has made me dense! It has fooled me! The pride of life has deceived me! The dense curtain, the veil of the temple, is the clouding darkness created by my own pride blinding me!  It is here, I am barred! And where, I am barred: there, there is a door. That is where the door is. Behold, “the door!” The narrow door in the door. “The eye of a needle.” Through which no man, rich in outer knowledge can pass. For not only is the door to heaven here closed to ‘self’, it is totally hidden from it! And the keyhole in the door is my insight that this is true! For the key, which fits into the keyhole, and unlocks the door, and allows me an entry IN, is that face to face flash of self knowledge which is the light; God’s light which shines in darkness showing me up to my own self, and convicting me, that my spirit may be changed, and made new; that I might live! (Without it I know not I am a sinner: and I am dead.) And, living, sup with him...where...he is...in the holiest of all!  (Where I can never go by myself; for the spirit of man – the spirit in man – my spirit – is altogether other:  different; and is in darkness wherever the light has not shined.) 

     Knowledge which exposes me not, is not light.  God’s light, is that flash of instant insight I’m given into my own condition that the darkness in my own spirit may become light: that I may live! ...God’s light is always in ‘NOW!’  ...God’s light, is always instant; even as the turning on of an electric light switch in a darkened room.  ...GOD’s light, is light.  'God IS light.' 

     'He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second:' 'for when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.' It instantly vanishes. Immediately surpassed by the perfect, which is greater. And the worth of the former is as nothing; for it is seen for what it is. And it is taken away. 

     So, now, whilesoever I am hanging on to the old, I am missing out on the new; and he doesn’t want me left behind, so he takes the old 'me' away. 

     He consumes ‘me:’ ...he comes to me as a thief: ...he “takes,” and devours ‘me;’ because, unless ‘I’ am consumed, there is no substance in me to be consumed. And, nothing consumed, nothing being consumed, there is nothing to produce fire. And it is fire, that gives light. And it is light, that gives life.  So, with no real consuming of ‘me,’ there is no real fire. And, with no real fire, there is no real light. And with no real light, there is no real life: and so in me is no testimony of JESUS come in the flesh... and I am found wanting! 

     So, that knowledge which exposes me not, and consumes me not, is NOT LIGHT! '...for light is not in the candle; nor is it in the wick; light is in the burning.' My wealth of Biblical understanding is ineffectual, and is even deceitful knowledge, if it is leaving me unconsumed: unchanged: my spirit ‘left behind’ in outer knowledge, which is that 'outer darkness' where I shall weep and gnash my teeth for that I was not entered in. 

     If what I am 'eating' is feeding my intellect without convicting my innermost being, it is only fattening ‘me;’ and not burning, and consuming ‘me.’   It is adding to my ego, that my heart to continue to 'wax gross;'  it is not 'taking away' my covering blinding layers of ‘fat’ from off my heart that I might see, and hear. What it is actually doing is successfully ‘keeping the lid down,’ so as I can’t see those things, which if they were illumined and reproved, would deliver me from my hidden secret deceit, the unconverted darkness within me, which all the time is keeping me from what I most truly want, keeping me from the light, and his life in the Spirit. 

     If what I am being given and what I am taking in is entertaining me, it is increasing me, not decreasing me. ...If it is delighting without slaying, if it is pleasing without troubling, if it is easy and not hard, all sweet with none of the bitterness that accompanies the 'taking away,' it is pandering to my flesh to the aggrandizement of ‘self’ in me.  ...It is true that all the knowledge which I am imbibing, that works not the actual working of his cross in my flesh, but only is in my mind, is deceitful knowledge: for it is working against my truest desire; it is harming me keeping me from...life;  keeping me from joy unspeakable full of his glory: his life in me. 

     All the while I am feeding on outer truth I am blinding myself to the inner truth; hindering my spiritual growth shutting out the knowledge which ‘takes the lid off:’ the truth I don’t want to know; but which if I saw, without condemnation and fear,  and actually welcomed would truly save me. I can face the most cutting truth revealed to me inside me by the Spirit of Truth, because there, there is no condemnation. There is the door to liberty! ...But which I only pass through, as I enter in at that point! At that point, is Love, himself, Jesus! And there, where I fear to go, he gives me ever increasing liberty, as I enter in! Liberty comes only through light growing within me as my darkness vanishes. 

     'Behold, I come as a thief.'  (Revelation 16: 15)  I am only able to write all this, because he has worked his life in me the only way he can, ‘the hard way.’ My beloved came to me as 'a thief in the night.'  (2 Peter 3: 10)  And it has been a very, very long night. He has worked, and does yet work, his life in me, in face to face intimate relationship. He faces me to myself in him at every point. And in every fleeting insight I am given, in which, half-unknowingly, I choose to turn from him and hide from his light exposing me to myself, there he is, himself, loving me, forgiving me, adoring me, in showing me up to myself: wanting me for himself; and I am made all his! 

     Perhaps now it would help if I told you a little of my life story. *  At the beginning of the first week of October, 2001 a particular period of 'entering in' culminated in three days and nights of utterly intense ‘questioning’ (...by the accuser of our brethren...which accuses them before our God day and night...) in the presence of God in the fullness of his light in Jesus. And I endured continuously, non-stop, every single particle of my righteousness being exposed for the sin that it actually is, in every moment of those three days and nights. And I was ‘proved,’ and found ‘true’ at every point where I found myself ‘wanting.’ (...At every point where I found myself ‘lacking:’ through having some righteousness of my own, there.) And I experienced that there was no end to it.  I experienced the truth that sin was found in man, in me, in every moment of his life, in his every thought and intent; and 'that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' I was shown (i.e. I had demonstrated to me in me, in the presence of God) that self-righteousness was sin; for it only stole; it was stealing God’s righteousness: only he is righteous: 'there is none righteous, no, not one.' 'THE LORD, OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS!' ...By the end of the third night, awake all the time questioned, the suffering was more than I could bear and in the morning I collapsed; more dead than alive; but alive from the dead! 

     While I have suffered dreadfully in Jesus, my beloved, I am extraordinarily comforted by him. He has come to me and not left me comfortless. He dwells in me and his intimate love and loving of me is utterly extraordinary; and to the mind of men, utterly unbelievable and not of this world. But his wonderful intimate loving came via a thorn in the flesh, which in overcoming, through many years of suffering, became his promise of his glory: a white stone, a pearl of great price; and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. 

     Yet, a white stone is ever a stone of offence unto men; in this world its value is effectively the opposite of the kingdom of heaven; here it will always be considered dishonour: that no flesh should glory in his presence. ‘...We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honourable, but we are despised.' 

    ’Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? ...But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence...' 

     He has chosen things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; so that life can never be by man. It is not by what I can accomplish, or say or think, that is anything; but by what his Spirit, alone, can accomplish; and honour is of God, it is not from men.  It is by inner truth and not by any outer truth that he has delivered me.  It is by ‘not-knowledge’ that he has brought me anything of him; it is by my not knowing that I know; for there, there is space in me, for his own knowing in me for me; which I can’t ‘feel’ or ‘touch’ or ‘take’ or steal for myself; and so it is foolishness to me...foolishness to the world...it does not ‘compute’ to man...it is always as nonsense to him!  God chose it to be that way that men should not find him through any human cleverness or ability. He would make their works as nothing, even as they make his nothing by their stealing it. 

     When the flowers fall and it seems like nothing’s there to take their place, there, there is space for light: there, there is room for real knowing greater than any flower which went before that was preventing it.

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 _____________________________________________________________* My full life story is told, in chronological narrative in ‘DAWNING...’ an autobiography. And told creatively, within a twelve month story-journal in, ‘THE LIGHT TREE JOURNAL; Portrait of a Lost Door:’ a memoir. 

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