|
|

Weare
so grateful to our Lord for He has convicted us that He has called some to
be overcomers who will qualify to rule and reign with God. The burden the
Lord has laid upon our hearts is this vision. We believe this is important
and should affect all our evangelical efforts.
· FOR
THE INDIVIDUAL
We consider
every soul saved as a candidate for sonship, heirship and throneship. The
kingdom of God is concerned with the quality, character, holiness,
righteousness and maturity (Which is revealed in Christ). But "as long as
the inheritor (heir) is a child and under age, he does not differ from a
slave although he is the master of all the estate" (Gal 4:1, Amplified
Bible). The child is temporarily under an order of discipline and
submission. He is accountable to tutors and governors. "He is under
guardians and administrators or trustees, UNTIL the date fixed by the
father" (Gal 4:2, Amplified Bible). However, when the child grows into
adult sonship he acquires a new place of authority in the household. He
receives authority from the Father and he is to wield that rod of
authority. Our vision for the individual is that God has a definite
program for mature sons in His divine economy. A true local church is the
family where these sons are developed and brought into maturity, ready
for adoption. Such local churches ought to be under the divine
governmental pattern of five fold ministries, the tutors and governors.
· FOR
THE CORPORATE
While
growing into sonship is an individual and personal matter, spiritual
adoption is a corporate matter. Our heavenly Father will not adopt us as
individuals. An individual cannot come into his inheritance as an heir
all by himself. It is only in a related way that an individual can enter
into his inheritance.
Joshua and Caleb were ready to go into the promised land to claim their
inheritance, but they could not enter in as individuals. God wanted to
bring a whole nation into Canaan and not two individuals. God is building
such a company, even the true Body of Christ. A company that shall be
brought into all the 'glory of Christ'. Here and now, in this realm of
time, a people shall manifest and reveal Christ.
There shall come a time when God has a vessel, a corporate vessel in and
through whom His glory will shine forth in this universe. We see this as
the New Jerusalem, the glorious Bride coming down from heaven having the
glory of God. The end which God has in view for a people is to be in a
spiritual sense to His universe of spiritual intelligence, what the Sun is
to this universe; that every nation may walk in the light thereof; that
there be no need of Sun or the Moon for there is no night. This is to
only say that God wills to have a people full of light - the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God.
· FOR
THIS DISPENSATION
The quality
and specialty of this dispensation is that, it is the dispensation of the
fullness of time. All previous dispensations were partial, incomplete and
unsatisfactory. They all arrived up to a point and could go no further.
They waited for another phase of God's workings. However, it is in this
dispensation that the eternal God will gather up all things in Christ, in
completion to His work. (Ephesians 1:10). The times are made full in this
dispensation. All that which did not arrive at its fullness, finality
and completion in all the other ages will be made full and complete in
this dispensation.
This dispensation refers back to all the past dispensations; it also
refers to the future dispensations. From this dispensation, the future
dispensations will take its character and nature. The past and the future
dispensations converge in this dispensation.
This dispensation is governed by the full meaning of Christ, while all the
other were in fragments and parts (Hebrews 1:1). This dispensation will
gather up in one all things in heaven and all things in the earth under
one Head, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This dispensation is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. He is the
custodian of God's eternal purpose. Whenever God has moved in to realize
any part of His comprehensive purpose, He has always done so by the agency
of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God has been the wisdom, the power, the
energy, the initiator, the sustainer and the consummator of that which God
has at any time taken in hand to bring about. We see this in the creation
of the literal universe, the Spirit of God is the agent seen initiating,
pervading, conducting and always in evidence in relation to the bringing
of this cosmic order into being. So it shall be in the bringing of the
new spiritual cosmos into being.
Man is totally incapable of realizing any part or fragment of the great
purpose of God for this dispensation without the Spirit of God. No part of
it will be realized by man. The advent of the Holy Spirit at the beginning
of this dispensation is the divine declaration that God must do His work
Himself or it will never be done!
|
|