1868 12 It is well for us to consider what marks the spiritual man. First, a spirit of dependence, whatever may be the state of faith and the blessings we may have realized. Secondly, an entire confidence in the goodness of God; for God is love. Thirdly, Christ, the constant object of the affections of the heart (Phil. 1:21), for the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart is to fill it with the thought of Christ.
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1868 76 We must know our place with Christ glorified before we can accept the cross as our practical portion here.
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1868 78 We are brought "to God," who cannot do less than bring to heaven those who are already brought to Himself.
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1868 84 One might have thought that prophecy was not the testimony of Jesus, as it was not (like the epistles) to the Church about itself from its Head. But the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
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1868 88 The rejection of the last phase of the ecclesiastical system on earth is the starting point of the properly prophetic portion of the Revelation (Rev. 4 — 22.)
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1868 92 Where Christ is before us, there is nothing we may not be able to do through Him that strengthens us.
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1868 101 No man can ever get into liberty, blessing, and clearness of the truth, unless he is acting on what he knows.
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1868 111 Stability is in the person of Christ, first, for eternal life, and also for the ways of God on earth. If the Church was spued out of His mouth, He was the faithful witness, the beginning of the creation of God. This is the theme of John. For Paul, the Church belonged to heaven, though built for God's habitation in the Spirit on earth. John had neither Peter's place nor Paul's, but was linked with the one, and carried on the testimony among the Gentiles where the other had been a master-builder.
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The altar comes before the laver in what is presented to man, nor can the laver be without the altar.
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1868 151 Philippians 1:21 — Christ was the whole of Paul's life; for him to live was Christ, and to die gain; for he would gain Christ! It was what Paul realised.
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1868 157 In John 14 (after the opening verses) we have first Christ Himself on earth, and the Father seen in Him; then Christ in heaven, and we knowing by the Comforter sent down that we are in Him and He in us. In John 15 is our place on earth (the true place of the disciples then with Him, but still in principle our place on earth now), not in heavenly union but in responsibility, first, for fruit, then for love — both that our joy may be full, and His joy abide in us; for both were fulfilled in Him as He intimates.
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1868 157 The working of the mere will of man, under the impulse of evil, brought about the French revolution. The Bible was not there as a restraining power, nor as formative of human inquiry and thought. Superstition and a hollow state of society came down with a tremendous crash, and all reverence for God was buried in its ruins. J. N. D.
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1868 177 Airo is to lift up or take away — never to bear on oneself. Anaphero is to hear, but as a sacrifice on the altar (or spiritually), for which hypophero is never used. Prosphero is to offer to, as in Hebrews 9:14.
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1868 186 At the French revolution man emancipated himself — to have what? Uncertainty in everything, and a ruin from which he found no resource. Conscience and the Bible, under God's good hand, emancipated at the Reformation — imperfectly, but really; man's will, without the Bible, at the Revolution
To Correspondents.
1868 192 E. J. S. C. can send a copy of what he deems suitable, though of course subject to the Editor's judgment.
M. will find a discussion of the force of cheirotoneo, and especially in reference to Acts 14, in "Six Lectures on the Church of God" (Broom), pp. 216-221. The real meaning is that Paul and Barnabas chose elders for the disciples in each assembly. Acts 10:41 proves the absurdity of pressing the etymological force of ch.
J. S. (Swindon) might find help in "Notes on Daniel" (Morrish), especially pp. 195-204. The north is Syria, and the south is Egypt, whoever may hold these territories in that day. "The king," or "man of sin," is distinct from both.
Fragments Gathered Up.
1868 192 God was manifest in the flesh to fulfil a work of self-sacrifice for me. A man's sacrificing himself for me would present the highest human claim on a grateful heart; but God's doing it (that new, lovely, yet infinite fact, capable of filling the whole moral world) puts all that world in a new condition.
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Does not the nature of the effect produced as to the knowledge of God, where Christianity has existed (or even Judaism), prove that there was a revelation of God?
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The rejection of the last phase of the ecclesiastical system on earth is the starting-point of the properly prophetic portion of the Revelation (Rev. 4 — 22).
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In Ephesians 4, 5 God is in every way brought in. The new man is after God, etc., and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit of God.