The Foundations of the World – Part two

The Tree of Life

“Ye are clean ” says Jesus to his disciples, “through the word which I have spoken unto you”.

Now Bro. Thomas says : “This word, which is defined to be ‘the law and testimony’ is the great instrument of holiness and purification. It changes men’s minds ; loosens their attachment to earthly things; causes them to place their affections on things above; creates a new and right spirit within them ; defuses the love of God abroad in their hearts ; separates them from sinners ; leads them unto Christ ; and develops in their lives, fruit characteristic of that repentance which needs not to be repented of.

The Lord Jesus styles it, “the word of the kingdom” ; and Peter, “the incorruptible seed” ; and Paul, “The word of the truth of the Gospel”, and John, “God’s seed”, and by James it is termed “The word of truth”, with which the invariable and unvacillating (or unswerving) Father of lights begets His children, “that they should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”

It is by this word that an individual is renewed or renovated ; so as, in an intellectual and moral sense, to become “a new man”; as appears from what the apostle says to the brethren at Colosse: “Ye have put on the new mar, which is renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.” This renewing affects the spirit of the mind, which may be known to be renovated by a man having turned from his natural subserviency ‘to the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life’ to, ‘righteousness and true holiness’. When the mental disposition, called “the heart”, is renewed, it becomes a mirror, as it were, in which one skilled in the word of the kingdom, can discern the spirit, or behold a reflection of the Divine Nature.

The image of God in a Man’s “character can only be created by the word of truth of the Gospel of the Kingdom . . . The law and testimony are styled by Peter, “God’s knowledge” whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises : that by these i.e. by the understanding and belief of these, ” ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (Page 52. Elpis Israel).

The Separateness

It is not difficult then to see that the serpent’s seed, and the seed of the woman stand in two opposing camps. Their power is in their mouths, the venomous bite of the serpent versus the two edged sword of the Spirit. The one beguiles, making his power felt by a mental appeal to the flesh to take all that it desires. While the other draws and mentally develops a spiritual frame of mind, purifying the heart by faith, and developing the affections of the higher intellect, by opening the eyes of one’s understanding to behold and embrace those things that are above, to the end that he becomes dead to the world and all its lusts and pleasures and longs only for the day when the physical man shall be changed, even as the mental, and shall be made like to the glorious body of his master.

Let us grasp this point. The mentality, to be changed from a carnal mind to a spiritual must go through a process which takes time and must be based upon conditions which God has appointed. It is not therefore like the natural and corruptible body which is the last to be changed and whose change is accomplished in “the twinkling of an eye”. The conditions Divinely prescribed for the change of fallen man are to be seen in the punishment that Adam and Eve were compelled to bear. Gen. 3:15-19. The ground is cursed for our sakes. We toil and labour, eating our bread in the sweat of our face. Every effort of man is to throw off those shackles, to remove the curse upon the earth, to alleviate the toil and sweat, and to develop a life of ease and comfort and temporal riches. But when he becomes successful in his carnal pursuit of life and says, “I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need for nothing, he is totally unaware that he has become like the angel declares to be the state of the apostate church of the Laodiceans, spiritually wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” (Rev. 3:17-18).

We Brethren and Sisters are like Eve, bearing the seed, subject under the law to our husband, even Christ, in all reverence, honour, and humility. Bringing forth to the birth the inner man, or new creature of the Spirit. “Verily, verily I say unto you that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned to joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come : but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world.” (John 16:20-22).

“These are they which were not defiled with women : for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whither soever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and to the lamb. (Rev. 14 :4) .