CHAPTER XIV

HOW THE WORLD IS TO BE ENLIGHTENED AND SAVED

THE Bible reaches its climax of spiritual teaching in its closing vision of the Kingdom of God as described in the form of a city, the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven. This vision came to one of the most spiritual of the Apostles of Christ in an hour when his whole soul was filled with Christ's experience of God. Speaking of his spiritual exaltation the writer says, "I was called away in the spirit to a great high mountain." It was the highest and greatest spiritual experience of the life of the most spiritual of all the disciples of the Son of God. This great spiritual vision came out of his high spiritual experience. What he saw he beheld through the eyes of his experience of the presence of God. The fact is that this spiritual vision is so high and great that it has seemed to us who are

of little spiritual vision to be of little spiritual value, because spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Oh, if we could but see it from the great high spiritual mountain from which it was seen of the Apostle!

Remember that the New Jerusalem is the Kingdom of Heaven which is also the Kingdom of God on earth. To make us sure of this the writer tells us that the throne of God and of the Lamb is in the city. I have told you that this kingdom is the relationship of those whose God is their King. Here it is called the bride of Christ-that is, everyone who is to be united with Jesus, as a bride is joined to her husband, must be prepared for that union by sharing with Jesus his experience of God. Only in the New Jerusalem does one live with the Son of God. Only, I say, as one has Christ's spiritual personal union with the Father is it possible that one should be wedded to Jesus. "No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit." Is this not at once apparent? No one is prepared as a bride for Christ who does not share Christ's experience of God. Without that, one may follow Jesus

in some measure as a servant, but to be wedded to him, to live with him in the most spiritual of all relationships, one must dwell with him in the Kingdom of God, which is here symbolized by the New Jerusalem. This is the teaching of Jesus, and is true in the very nature of the You, my reader, know perfectly well that you are not wedded to Jesus if you do not share his spiritual experience. We cannot eat and drink with him except in the kingdom of his Father.

case.

See, now, how one must dwell in the New Jerusalem in order to dwell with Christ in God. The walls of the city exclude everything that is unholy, everything that is profane, everything that is not spiritual in its nature. The walls of the city protect its inhabitants from all that is defiling. "There shall in no wise enter into it anything that maketh abomination or worketh a lie." In union with God man is protected from the evils of the world as he could not otherwise be protected. A mighty fortress of God is the city whose walls tower as high as He is. Those who are wedded to Christ in his experience of God

have Christ's protection from the evils of the world that prey upon those who are outside that experience.

Only through the gate guarded by the angels of God is it possible that one should enter the city. That gate is such surrender of one's soul to God as Christ practiced. Until we are prepared to unite with Christ in his surrender of himself to the will of God, we cannot join him in his rich fellowship with God. Christ's consecration of himself to do the will of his Heavenly Father is the door of single pearl into the New Jerusalem.

Then we must be prepared to walk with Christ the streets of the New Jerusalemwhich are all transparent gold. We must walk in the light as he is in the light if we are to have fellowship with him and with one another. Walking the streets of the City of God means walking in truth and righteousness and love. Only so can we walk with God, and only as we walk with Him can we hope to be wedded to Christ. If we are not prepared to put into daily practice, in all the relationships of life, the principles of God, which are the

principles of love and truth, we are not prepared to be wedded to the Son of God-we are not adorned as a bride for him. I wish to impress the fact that only those who walk the golden streets of the City of God, only those who practice obedience to the principles of God, have fellowship with Christ.

And then, too, we must be prepared to walk in the light of this city which is the light of the Kingdom of God, if we are to be wedded with Christ in God. Those who dwell in the New Jerusalem are said to have no need of the light of lamp, or even of the sun, because the Lord God gives them light. They have the light of God in their own souls, that light which lighteth every man that is born into the world, so that they are not dependent upon even the brightest symbols of that light for guidance. They do not require the light of another, since they have light greater than that of all others. We cannot be wedded to Christ until we have his direct experience of the spirit of God which is the light of the spiritual world.

We must also be prepared to worship God in Christ, as we can never do until we worship