Things Final

Christ is Son over God’s house, and it says that we are God’s house. But we are God’s house if “we hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end.” While it is always of great importance to be humble, alongside of that and going with it, too, are these two matters of being bold, and also boasting in hope. We are to “hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end.” He says we do that “to the end.” That it is “to the end,” brethren, is an encouraging thing. So I wanted to refer to that first, that it is “to the end.” If there are, for instance, divine principles being violated, or anything like that, we want to be bold about asserting them. If we are bold about asserting divine principles when they are violated, then “whose house are we” will abide until the end. It is not a question of meekly and humbly asserting divine principles – that is not the thought at all – but it is a question of boldly asserting divine principles, when they are being violated. That is a very important matter. Then it is also that we can boast in hope; that is a very blessèd thing! What other hope is there around? This world has no hope in it, but we can boast in hope, and we can be firm in it to the end. As it is so, we will find out that Christ is over God’s house, and we will find that we are God’s house, and we will find that it abides until the end.

Now, in Matthew the Lord had failed in His service here. The Lord had failed in His service! He had been unsuccessful, and He said that He had been. He made it quite clear that He had not succeeded. He said, ‘I would have gathered you, and you would not have it.’ Then the time came in Matthew’s gospel when He said, “Your house is left unto you desolate.” He was not saying any more, ‘I am going to go on with you’; He was saying, ‘It is left to you; it is over with; it is all over with you now – left to you desolate.’ That is a most solemn thing. And I am convicted that this is the indictment that needs to be brought out against this system of things that is outside there. These people, in particular this man Hales, should be told, ‘Your house is left to you desolate.’ In other words, ‘There is no hope for you. There is no recovery at all in mind for you. Your house is left to you desolate.’ That is what should be told them. That should be definitely stated.

But then, do you see what it says? “Ye shall in no wise see me henceforth until ye say, Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord.” Now, you can make an application of this: it means that they are christians. You can make that application of this scripture very clearly. Of course, even in regard to Israel, you can apply it like that, too. “Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord.” It is the name ‘Jehovah,’ I think; the name “Lord,” without an article (note h) is ‘Jehovah.’ “The name of [the] Lord”: it is really Christ Himself that comes. When He comes, Israel will be restored, but until then it is desolation. And until the rapture, it is desolation for this business outside here. Until then, it is desolation for them too; but when the rapture happens, these persons, that have gone and violated divine principle after divine principle, will then be recovered by the Lord.

I think this matter will have to be seen to, and seen to as an urgent matter – that the indictment is made.

I suppose everybody with any spiritual sensibilities would understand that we are in very serious times, and that it is of utmost importance that we are guided by the Holy Spirit in regard to what we do. The brethren will notice that what the Lord says to Laodicea is deferred, but what the Lord says in Matthew 23 is final; there is a difference. The Lord says, in regard to Laodicea, ‘I am about to do things’ – “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth”; that is what He says. But in Matthew 23, He says, “your house is left unto you desolate,” and in chapter 24, He left the temple and went away, never to return! And the disciples did not get hold of the point. The next thing was that they were saying, ‘What buildings, and what stones,’ and so on. He said, “Not a stone shall be left . . . upon a stone” (v. 2); that is what He said; ‘It is all over with that whole system of things.’

We want to see, Ian, where this matter stands. We want to see what the Lord is doing now: whether the Lord is acting according to Laodicea, or whether He is making a final indictment – a definite, final indictment of the whole system. That is what we will have to see, brethren: whether He is saying, according to Revelation, “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth” – and then, ‘I counsel you to do these things’; or whether He is saying, according to Matthew, ‘You will not see Me again until you say, Blessed be He who comes in the name of the Lord. Your house is left to you desolate.’ They are very different situations, those two, so we need to weigh them up, to see what He means.

I do not know whether we understand how strong the Lord’s feelings are, in any case. We were saying these things yesterday, you know – “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth”; I think the Lord loves the assembly; He “delivered himself up for it,” Eph. 5 : 25. There is nothing the Lord loves more than the assembly; I do not think anyone can dispute that. And yet, He says in regard to the Laodicean assembly, “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth”; that is how distasteful that whole position has become to Him. He cannot stand it in His mouth any longer; He gets rid of it through – and you have to use this language – vomiting it out of His mouth! – ‘spue it out of My mouth!’ So that position makes Him sick, and He is sick of it right now, and we had better understand that. And yet – and yet, in spite of that, He says, ‘I counsel you to do these things.’ So how is He going to counsel them to do these things? Well, we had better do something about it, then. And, “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and am grown rich, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art the wretched and the miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” – that is what Laodicea is! They cannot see what divine principles are. They have not gone by them, but that needs to be pointed out to them, that they are blind! And other things too. As we were saying in Port Elizabeth today, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold” – they lack love; that is what they lack. Gold is the divine nature, I say; that is what it is. ‘Buy gold!’ The whole thing went wrong there in 1971, because they lacked love. ‘Love does not impute evil’ (1 Cor. 13 : 5); it was the imputation of evil from beginning to end that made the whole thing go wrong; that is what it was. When they do not come back to that, then it is Matthew 23. Then it is Matthew 23; it is those steps. It seems to me that that is the way: first of all, it is Laodicea – what Laodicea means; and then I think it is Matthew 23 – “your house is left unto you desolate”; that is what I think it is. I do not think it is immediately Matthew 23; I think it is first of all Laodicea, and then Matthew 23. I will leave it to the judgment of the brethren, but that is how it appeals to me – first, there is His appeal in regard to persons in Laodicea, and then after that, a full indictment as you get it in Matthew 23.

We are thankful that it is still the day of grace, brethren, and that it will be until the moment of the rapture. At the same time, while we can say that there is salvation in the name of Jesus, there is salvation by faith in the blood – that remains absolutely so – we have also to face this very important matter, that the Lord is dealing with the assembly before the rapture. He is dealing with it before the rapture – not at the rapture, but He is dealing with it before the rapture, and He has the means to do so.

The exercise with every one of us here should be that, if there is testimony rendered, it should have this character of a “sharp two-edged sword.” That is what the character of the testimony should be – ‘out of His mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword.’ If brethren understand my language, or understand the meaning of my language – that is what it should be. In other words, what proceeds out of his mouth should cut the conscience; it should reach the conscience, and should be cutting. It should not be something that would just go over the minds and the consciences of persons, but it should cut their consciences. In another scripture it says, ‘They were pricked in heart, and they said, What must we do, brethren?’ (Acts 2 : 37). That is the idea of the thing. The Lord will act in this kind of way now; I am fully convicted of it, that He will act in this kind of way. But as I was trying to say in Uitenhage, there are two things that have to be bourne in mind: one thing is what He says to Laodicea, and the other is what He says at the end of Matthew 23.

I was looking up something that my attention has been drawn to in Volume 94 of the blue books, that the belovèd ministered in Gothenburg in Sweden (I think it was in 1924): he said that if man, natural man, takes over the local assembly, then the Lord will say, “Your house is left unto you desolate.” That does not mean to say that it is the whole position; it would mean a particular local assembly, where such a thing would happen. Finally, it is going to be that the Lord is going to say to the whole of Christendom, “Your house is left unto you desolate”; that is what is going to happen finally. But what we have to discern now is this: is it ‘Your house is left to you desolate’; or, are Laodicean conditions prevailing, where He is still speaking to them in regard to these conditions and counselling them to do certain things?

Well, that is what I leave with us. But whatever is done needs to have this character about it, of a sharp two-edged sword. It must not be weak; it must be effective. It must be direct, and it must have the stamp of the Lord’s authority on it, so that it will penetrate the consciences and the hearts of those it is addressed to.

I believe the Lord is directing us to this matter. It is a question of what the Lord’s approach is. Any brethren that have looked up the ministry will, of course, know what I am referring to. I suppose it is an important thing for us to do.

Brethren that have looked up beloved Fred Raven’s ministry on Laodicea will see that he says, ‘Maybe a few out of Laodicea will be saved.’ He says, ‘A few, maybe, if that.’ That is his judgment. Now, things are said by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God speaks from different points of view, and the things the Spirit says do not always seem to be exactly the same, but if we examine them carefully, we find out that they all agree. One thing, for instance, is that when a brother said to our belovèd, ‘Laodicea comes out of Philadelphia,’ he would not have it, but in the blue books you read that the belovèd said that Laodicea comes out of Philadelphia. So it is just a question of how the matter is viewed, because Laodicea does come out of Philadelphia from one point of view, but from another point of view, it does not. I do not think you could say that Laodicea came out of Philadelphia from a historical point of view of those churches in Asia Minor, because you do not know how they started. But in the spiritual meaning of how things develop in Revelation, Laodicea does proceed out of Philadelphia. Now, I know I said in one of these meetings over the last few days that “the gold” in “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire” is love, but beloved Fred Raven said that it is righteousness. So I bow to him, of course. Of course I do, but I think the two things are very close together, and I do not think it is wrong to say it is love either.

Think, brethren, of this verse in Corinthians: “that we might become God’s righteousness in him” – it is that the saints might become “God’s righteousness in him.” And then think of what the Lord says about Laodicea; He says, ‘You are so distasteful to Me that I want to vomit you out.’ It is because they were not marked by righteousness; what they were supposed to be was a display of God’s righteousness, but they were just the opposite. They were not marked by God’s righteousness at all. It was so distasteful to the Lord that He could not put up with it. And yet this is His last – and I mean it, too – very last counsel to them. He says, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire.” That is what He still says. I am about (and that is a serious word) to spue you out of My mouth.’ Really, what He is saying is (I suppose everyone understands this language): ‘It is about all up with you’; that is really what He is saying. He says, “you are neither cold nor hot.” That is what the Lord is really saying, ‘I have been very patient, but the clock is ticking (so to speak) and the hour is coming when everything is going to be up.’ In the meantime He is knocking at the doors of individuals. I do not think this is the whole collective position; I think it is the doors of individuals that He is knocking at, and we do not know who they are. Maybe someone will open his door; may it be so, too. We would look for that, beloved brethren; look for that to happen.

But it impresses me that the saints should be a display of God’s righteousness, and that Laodicea did not have it, and that that was nauseating to the Lord. The Laodiceans were not righteous – just the opposite was so. They should have been a display of God’s righteousness, not men’s righteousness.