EXTRACTS

What I want to bring before you is the importance of having a commanding interest. It is necessary to man, because of how he is constituted. People who have no commanding interest are apathetic and listless. In the world people are commanded by different interests; one by business, another by politics, and another by science. A man with a commanding interest has an aim in life. It is important that we should be here as having an aim. I see people who lack energy because they have no definite object to pursue. It would greatly affect people if they had a commanding interest. I want to bring that out of this chapter (John 16). But to go back for a moment—the basis of chapter 14 is the coming of the Comforter. The relation of the Comforter with the saints down here is unfolded in chapter 14. The point in chapter 15 is our relation to the Father and the Father’s relation to us. We begin with the Spirit, and then we learn the relation in which we stand to Christ, and from that we are led on to our relation to the Father. It is in connection with the Father that we find our commanding interest, and we want to know what that interest is, and to be regulated and commanded by it. Take the Israelite of old. When the tabernacle was set up, what would then be his supreme interest?

The tabernacle! Now the tabernacle was the truth. As to their practical state, they were perverse and lawless, and that was not the truth, but the tabernacle was figuratively the truth, and that was to be the Israelites’ supreme interest. So now the truth is to be our commanding interest. The Lord says of the Spirit, “He will guide you into all truth”, and the truth is to be our commanding interest. I shall try and make plain to you what the truth is, and then press upon you that every energy that you have should be bent on promoting the truth”.

F. E. Raven (Vol. 16, pp.65, 66)

As already remarked, if you admit an Egyptian element it becomes gradually a dominating principle, and if it is not judged you legalise it. In the addresses to the churches you get the “Nicolaitanes”. Their works were hated at Ephesus, but they gradually got a place among the saints, and so in Pergamos their doctrine was accredited; Revelation 2: 15. When worldly principles are doctrinised (if I may use this word) they become legalised to those who accept them. I believe that is how Christendom has developed, hence you get “the doctrine of Balaam”. There is nothing said about his prophecies. They were not being treasured alongside his doctrines! They are of great account to the spiritual mind. But his doctrine was what he taught Balak. It was something that Balak should do against the people of God; how he should withstand them; that principle became legalised in the church. Jezebel too taught the Lord’s servants to commit fornication and to eat of idol sacrifices. That kind of practice becomes legalised amongst the saints. All that is on the maternal side, and so the end of the professing church is apostasy. It is seen in Jezebel whose children are killed with death. The Lord says, “I will kill her children with death”; this was to the end that all the churches might know that He judges. In this way one sees how things that seem trifling at the outset may soon become dominant and legalised, so that they give character to those who receive them.

J. Taylor (Vol. 9, p.368)

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