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EDUCATION IN VIEW OF THE TESTIMONY

It will be clear, dear brethren, that the history of Elisha corresponds with the present time. That is, Elijah was taken up into heaven and Elisha was left here in testimony in his absence. And his history therefore represents the position of the saints here on earth, as in the charge and possession of the Holy Spirit, as in testimony to God. And therefore it has a distinct voice to us. And especially this passage we have read in chapter 2, because Elijah was passing Elisha through a period of instruction with a view to his learning how to fill the place of testimony here in a way that would be approved of God. And so the chapter opens with it saying that when Jehovah would take up Elijah into the heavens by a whirlwind Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. Elisha was already at Gilgal. That is an important starting point, for Gilgal as we know, represents the cutting off of the flesh. It is of no use our thinking of being here in testimony for God if we are not going to accept the cutting off of the flesh, which has taken place for God in the cross of Christ, and which we are intended to maintain in our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit. For as we were saying this afternoon, the Spirit of God is always faithful to Christ in heaven and to His cross. He is faithful to Christ in heaven in keeping before us the Man in whom God delights, and faithful to His cross, as that point where God has terminated judicially the history of the first man. This is not a matter, dear brethren, of mere doctrine. It is a matter of what has actually taken place. Let us not forget that, that the death of Christ on the cross has actually taken place. And that when He took His place on the cross for us,

and was made sin, God judged sin in the flesh - condemned it, in the Person of His Son. And when Christ died and was buried there was before God the actual termination in death vicariously of those who put their trust in Christ and their actual putting out of sight in His burial. The death and burial of Christ are part of the gospel which we have received, and it is important therefore that we should be ready to accept the moral import of the death and burial of Christ. We are not honest if we are not prepared to accept the moral import of the death and burial of Christ, for it is an essential part of the gospel which we have believed. And as I say, the Spirit of God is always faithful to Christ personally and to His death.

Now Elisha, so far, was at the right spot. He was at Gilgal. And Elijah, it says, went with Elisha from Gilgal. That is, Elijah would give Elisha to understand that he, Elijah, was prepared to be with Elisha. But then in the history that follows, the exercise which Elijah raised with Elisha, was whether Elisha was prepared to be with Elijah. And that is an important matter. As it says in one of the chapters of 2 Chronicles, “The Lord is with you, while ye be with him.” That is there are certain conditions necessary if the Lord is to be with us. He wants to be with us, indeed He says, “I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age.” He is prepared to be with us, but in actual fact, He can only be with us, in the sense of real power and support, if we are with Him. And that is the question which the rest of the verses which I read in chapter 2 raise, whether Elisha is prepared to be with Elijah. Elijah tests him three times over by inviting him to remain where he was while Elijah went on elsewhere, and in each case Elisha says, “As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” That is, he was determined that he would be with Elijah wherever he went. Now that is a most important matter, dear brethren, if we would be with the Lord and with God in the testimony, that we must be prepared for movement, for the Lord is always in movement. The testimony is in movement. The Lord says, “Where I am, there also shall be my servant.” And while I do not doubt that that refers, in one sense, to the future, the reward that the servant will have in being with Christ, I believe it has very definitely a present voice, that if any one would serve the Lord he must be concerned to be with the Lord where He is at the moment. And where the Lord is at the moment is to be discerned by the distinctive ministry which the Lord is giving. And so, Elijah says, “Jehovah has sent me to Bethel.” And Elisha goes with him to Bethel. I understand the force of these movements of Elijah to one place after another, is that he would have Elisha learn Elijah’s view, Elijah’s judgment, of them. And hence it is for us to inquire what these places represent, and what the Lord has to say in regard of them - what His view of the matter is. Bethel, as we know, is the house of God. And we know, from the first epistle to Timothy, that it is “the assembly of the living God.” You remember how Paul said to Timothy, “That thou mayest know how one ought to conduct oneself in God’s house, which is the assembly of the living God; the pillar and base of the truth.” And hence, the first thing the Lord would raise with us, with a view to our being fitted to be here in the testimony, is whether we have a right view of the assembly. Have we got His view of it? Elisha had to go with Elijah to Bethel, and to see what Elijah thought about Bethel. And that is an important matter that the Lord would raise, as to whether we have a right view of the assembly, because every one of us who has received the Holy Spirit, belongs to it. Each one is an essential part of it. And the first thing that is said about it, and the first thing that Bethel brings to our minds, is that it is the house of God. God is dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit, as it says, “A habitation of God in the Spirit.” And that, one might say, for the sake of any younger ones, is not merely what we are when we are convened, it is what we are always, whether we are together or not. We are always the house of God in virtue of the fact that God is dwelling in us by the Spirit. God Himself has taken up His abode in us.

Well now, what kind of behaviour befits those who compose the house of God? We cannot get away from it even if we would. God has taken up His abode in us permanently. The Spirit is never going to leave us. What kind of behaviour then befits those in whom God is dwelling? That is something for us to have always in mind. And not only that but that the assembly, which is the house of God is the pillar and base of the truth. Now that is a very wholesome matter for us to face, because the truth is in this world in testimony and the assembly is the pillar and base of it. The idea of a pillar is something that stands out prominently in order to represent the matter in question. And the assembly is the pillar of the truth. Now it may be that some have not apprehended the importance of the truth. Let me just say this that from the moment that the serpent said to the woman in the garden of Eden, “Hath God said,” and then he went further and said, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, ...ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” insinuating to her mind that God was untruthful, that He was not reliable and that He was holding back from man something that was for his advantage, from that moment the truth has been in conflict in this world. The truth has been called in question from that moment, and now God has set Himself out to bring the truth into display in this world. He desires that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, and that is the truth as to God, the answer to Satan’s lie, and the assembly is the pillar of the truth and the base of it. Hence the importance of the assembly and the responsibility attaching to it that persons are to get their right thoughts as to God from the assembly. That is the vessel to which the truth of God is committed, the divine intention is that people should get right thoughts as to God from the assembly. Hence, as I say, dear brethren, this is a very important matter to face. You can understand Elijah putting the test to Elisha. I do not suppose for a moment that Elijah hoped that Elisha would stay where he was, he simply invited him to stay where he was in order to bring out the determination that was there in Elisha not to tarry where he was but to move on with Elijah. And the first place that Elijah saw that it was necessary that he should go to, was Bethel, in order that he should get a right view of the fact that the house of God is here. And so, as you remember, the apostle Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, speaks to us individually in respect of the great fact that the Holy Spirit is here in each one of us. He says, “Do ye not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which ye have of God? “And hence the great fact of the dwelling here in believers of the Holy Spirit is to have effect on the way in which we hold our bodies, where we take them, and what we do with them, because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. How it dignifies the believer’s body - the youngest believer, how valuable his body is, how dignified it is. That God Himself has taken up His abode in that frail, human, mortal vessel, the body of the believer. So that is the first thing, that Elisha was to go to Bethel. And then the next thing is, Elijah says to him, “Abide here, I pray thee, for Jehovah has sent me to Jericho.” Now Elisha is to be at Jericho with Elijah, he is to have Elijah’s view of Jericho. Jericho, as we know, is the world. It is the world as a great system which Satan has built up and which he would use to hinder the saints of God getting into the inheritance which God has in mind for them. Later on in this chapter we find that Jericho, as a city, was pleasantly situated. They say to Elisha, “The situation of the city is good.” “But,” they say, “the water is bad, and the land is barren,” and that is exactly what the world is. It is in a favourable situation at the present moment, and has been ever since Christ went on high, because God is favourable to it. He is longsuffering, not desiring that any should perish. So it stands in a favourable position at the present time, but at the same time its water is bad and the land is barren. That is the resources of life, of life morally, that the world provides, are bad, they have no goodness in them, and there is no fruitfulness for God in the world, as such. Let not men deceive the saints by suggesting that there are features about the world that are good, and so on, we want to have God’s estimate of it. The Lord said of the Holy Spirit that having come, He would bring demonstration to the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment. “Of sin,” He says, “because they do not believe on me.” Well that holds good today. The world, as such, does not believe on Christ, and the believer should hold that in his mind, and not be deceived by anything plausible that might suggest what was good in connection with the world. “They believe not on me” is equally true now as when the Lord spoke the word. And hence we need to be with the Lord in that and have His judgment and the Spirit’s judgment about the world, in which we are, in God’s ways, as a matter of testimony. And then, not only does it not believe on Christ, but it is exposed, by the presence of the Spirit, in regard of righteousness; it is exposed as unrighteous. The world had no place for the righteous One, and it has no place for Him. He says, “Of righteousness because I go away to my Father.” That is the way the truth is presented in John’s gospel. Not that the Lord was crucified and taken by wicked hands and crucified and slain, although the fact that He was crucified is recorded in John’s gospel, but the point of view in John’s gospel is that the Lord departed from the world and went to the Father. He departed from the world because there was no room for Him in the world. “They have both seen and hated,” He says, “both me and my Father.” “They hated me without a cause.” There was no room for the righteous One in the world and therefore He left it and went to His Father, and the world stands exposed in respect of righteousness by that very fact. And then He says, “Of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.” That is, the Lord has left the world as a judged thing, and He would have us understand that the prince of the world is judged.

Well now, all that, I believe, enters into this matter of going to Jericho. We want first of all to have God’s view of the assembly and how great it is. How helpful to us to remember that we belong to the house of God - that we form it. And that the assembly is the pillar and base of the truth. How important that is. But then we are also to have the Lord’s own view of the world, and to hold it in our minds, so that we are not in any way attracted or diverted by it.

And then, at each of these places, if you will notice, the sons of the prophets come to him and say, “Dost thou know that Jehovah will take away thy master from over thy head today?” And he said, “I also know it; be silent!” I believe that is intended to convey to us that Elisha felt the fact that Elijah was going to be taken away. It becomes a test to us as to whether we really feel the absence of Christ. Elisha says, “I also know it: be silent!” as though he had deep feeling about it. The sons of the prophets could tell him the truth, the actual fact, but he says, “I also know it: be silent!” As though to say, I do not need to be reminded about that, I am very much feeling it that Elijah is going to be taken from me this day. And so it raises the question as to whether we are really feeling in regard of the absence of Christ from this scene. But now it goes on to say that Elijah said, “Abide here, I pray thee, for Jehovah has sent me to the Jordan.” And it says, “They two stood by the Jordan, and Elijah took his mantle and wrapped it together and smote the waters and they were divided hither and thither; and they two went over on dry ground.” I believe that is intended to convey to us, that in our minds and in our hearts’ affections we are to contemplate the movements of Christ into death and out of it. For Jordan, of course, represents the death of Christ. We know how triumphantly the ark moved into the Jordan when God was going to bring His people into their inheritance. We remember how they were told to keep a distance of two thousand cubits between the ark and themselves, in order that they might have their attention fixed on the ark, that they might get an impression of the power and dignity of the ark as it moved forward into the Jordan. As the feet of the priests that bore the ark touched the brim of the water the Jordan went back and there was dry ground made over Jordan. Jordan, we are told, overflowed all its banks at harvest time. It has, I understand, a succession of banks in terraces, and all these banks were overflowed at harvest time, and it was at that time that the ark went into Jordan. So it is to emphasise to us the completeness of the victory of Christ over death when He went into death. The ark went into the midst of Jordan and there it remained, until all the people had passed over. And the ark in the midst of Jordan, with no waters visible at all, bore witness to the complete victory of the ark over Jordan. For the antitype to it we have not only to take account of Christ going into death, but of His rising triumphantly from the dead, because it is there, in resurrection from the dead, that the completeness of His victory over death is seen. And how much entered into the death of Christ. The judgment of God was there. The power of Satan was there. The penalty upon man was there. All was there. All was entered into when the Lord went into death, and how complete has been His triumph! And He went into death in order that He might open up a way through death for the saints to be brought into that which is in God’s purpose for them. I wonder whether we realise that our life is really bound up with Christ? Or do we simply view it that when we can no longer live here then there is something provided for us in heaven. Which is it to be, dear brethren, that we hold on to life here as long as we can with the comfortable assurance that when we can no longer remain here there is a place for us in heaven, or do we really believe, that according to the purpose of God, our life is bound up with Christ above. The things above are our portion, because that is what is to come into view as we see Christ going into death and rising again. It is a question of Christ as the power of God to open up a way for His people to move into that which His love from the very outset has had for them. And so that would very effectively detach us from this scene, save as recognising our responsibility to be in it in faithfulness in testimony. But as regards our vital interests, they are in another scene. As it says in the epistle to Philippians, Our commonwealth is in heaven, that is where it is. It is not that it is going to be there, but it is there, and it is there because Christ is there, and because the assembly belongs to Christ, as given to Him from the very beginning. It is a great thing to get into our minds that we belong to heaven, and we belong there because we belong to Christ, and that He is there, and that He has deliberately and in majesty gone into death and risen triumphantly out of it in order to make a way through for the people of God to pass over into the inheritance that divine love has given them. And the Holy Spirit is the Earnest of our inheritance. So that while we are still here for a moment in the ways of God, and in order to serve Him and to be here in testimony, we have the power in the Holy Spirit to enter into the things that are ours. The only thing, really, that we have not got, or that we have not the Earnest of, is the glorified condition. I quite admit that our measure is small, though there is no reason why it should not be greater, and I suppose, at the very best, we only enter into spiritual things in part at the present time, as Scripture says, “Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known,” at the same time we have the Spirit as the Earnest of our inheritance. He links us up in our affections with Christ where He is, and He becomes the means by which we may enter livingly into things that belong to heaven. Well now, all that is in view in our going, so to speak, with Elijah to Jordan. And it says, “Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither; and they two went over on dry ground.” It is a question of the inherent power that there was in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was not possible that He should beholden of death. It was not possible that He should be overcome by all that He entered into. That is the glory of Christ. Who else but the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, a divine Person, could exhaust the judgment of God? Who else could go into death in absolute holiness and rise out of it? It was not possible that He should be holden of it. And Elijah wrapping his mantle together, I believe, is to convey to us the concentrated power that was there in the Person of Christ on account of who and what He was intrinsically, for it was not possible that He should be holden of death. And so with the mantle wrapped together, Elijah smote the waters and they divided hither and thither, and they two went over on dry ground.

Well now, so much for the education of Elisha, and so much, dear brethren, for our education too, as we take these things up in the spiritual import of them. But now Elijah says to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for thee before I am taken away from thee,” and Elisha said, “Let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” A double portion. I suppose that may imply that we are to be impressed with the greatness of Christianity. And when I speak of Christianity I mean what is here in this day of the Spirit. The Lord Himself said, “Greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father,” suggesting that the apostles as having the Spirit would do even greater things than He had done. This is a remarkable thing, showing how great the day of the Spirit is. Even the shadow of Peter, falling upon persons, apparently healed them, and napkins taken from the body of Paul and put upon sick persons healed them. Such is this day of the Spirit. But I believe also that Elisha’s request for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit conveys that he had a very real sense of his own smallness of measure. I think it would convey that Elisha in his own mind was comparing himself with Elijah, and saying, Well, if I’ve got to be here in your absence, in the place that you have filled, I shall need a double portion of your spirit. I believe it was a sense that Elisha had of his own smallness, his own inequality for the position. And that surely is a fitting feeling with us, for if we think of the things “which Jesus began both to do and to teach,” and the thought of being here as a continuation of Jesus, we should certainly feel, and rightly feel, that we could not possibly fill out that position save in the fulness of the power of the Spirit. And so Elisha says, “I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” And Elijah says, “Thou hast asked a hard thing.” That is to say, it is not going to be arrived at without exercise, nevertheless he says, “If thou see me when I am taken from thee it shall be so to thee, but if not, it shall not be so.” What does that mean for us? It means, surely, dear brethren, the need of constant watchfulness, the need of constant dependence. You can understand that Elisha would be saying, I dare not take my eye off Elijah now. If I take my eye off Elijah now he may be taken from me that moment, and then I shall not have the double portion of his spirit. You can understand what care, what vigilance, it would create, how much Elisha would feel the need of it, his need of watchfulness. And that is the thing that we all need, dear brethren, at this present time. Perhaps never more so than now because God is working mightily among the saints, and Satan is active also. Be assured of that, wherever God is working Satan is not far off, and he is very near to us all, and therefore constant vigilance and constant distrust of ourselves are needed if we are to be here, until the Lord comes, according to His mind. And so it says, “It came to pass as they went on, and talked, that behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire; and they parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into the heavens. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof! and he saw him no more.” The chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. Not the chariot of Elijah but the chariot of Israel. What does he mean by that? I believe he had an impression of the resources of divine power that were available now for God’s people. It was the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. As though as he saw Elijah taken up into heaven, he got a sense that there were great resources of divine power available to God’s people here. And that is exactly what the resurrection of Christ is intended to convey to us, for we are told in the first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, that we are to get an impression of the surpassingness of God’s power which He wrought in Christ in raising Him from the dead, and that power is operating towards us. We are to understand that there is divine power, according to all that is needed, available to us, so that we might fill out the position that God intends us to occupy in His testimony here. And now, what is the effect of that upon Elisha? It says, “He saw him no more,” just as we had this afternoon, the angel says to the eleven, “Why stand ye gazing up into heaven.” If a cloud had received Him out of their sight so that He was no longer visible, there was no object in gazing up into heaven. They were to accept it that a period of faith had begun, and they were to move in faith, as Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” And so it says of Elisha, “He saw him no more. Then he took hold of his own garments and rent them in two pieces.” He had gotten the impression that now the testimony is to be filled out in the life and grace of another Man, the Man whom heaven has received, and therefore he took hold of his own garments and rent them in two pieces. That is it was definite and final. He does not just tear off a little bit, he rends his garments in two pieces. He deals with the matter drastically and completely. He is now entirely discarding that which had marked him naturally, with a view to taking his place in the testimony in the power and grace of the Man who is in heaven. And so he takes up Elijah’s mantle which fell from him and moves forward in the power of that. It says, “He took the mantle of Elijah which had fallen from him, and smote the waters, and said, where is Jehovah the God of Elijah? he also smote the waters and they parted hither and thither and Elisha went over.” That is, he uses the power. The mantle is thus a picture of the Spirit of God, that which has come down from the Man in heaven and which indicates the measure of the Man in heaven. It does not say that Elisha wore Elijah’s mantle, but he took it up and used it. The mantle of Elijah would indicate the measure of the man. Just as Paul told Timothy to bring Paul’s cloak which he had left at Troas with Carpus. He was to bring it with him. That would be a constant reminder to Timothy what a man Paul had been. What a measure his was, and Timothy was to have that with him as a reminder of the measure of Christianity set out in a man like Paul. Not that Paul was perfect, of course. Christ is always our standard, but at the same time, Paul is taken up by the Spirit of God also to be a standard, to show how much a man, one like ourselves, can be brought into correspondence with Christ. So that he says, “Be my imitators, even as I also am of Christ.” We are not only to have Christ before our hearts as a standard, but we are also to have Paul before us as a model.

And so Elisha takes up his mantle. When Elisha was first taken up by Elijah, Elijah cast his mantle upon him. That is, Elisha started his history as identified with the testimony with an impression of Elijah’s mantle. Elijah gave him that impression from the very start. You remember that Elijah was told to go and anoint Elisha prophet in his stead, and he went and found Elisha ploughing with twelve yokes of oxen and himself with the twelfth, and it does not say that he anointed him, but it says that he cast his mantle upon him. He cast his mantle upon him, as though from the very start he would give Elisha an impression of the mantle, and the mantle is the measure of the man. And therefore we are to have that before us constantly, the measure of the Man, the Man whom heaven has received. The “things which Jesus began both to do and to teach,” are to be the measure, the standard of Christianity. And the power that comes down from the Man in heaven in the Holy Spirit is the only power by which these things can be realised.

Well now, in closing, I wanted to refer briefly to the sixth chapter because that brings in another feature in connection with the testimony which the Lord is stressing at the present time. The great characteristic feature of Christianity is, of course, the presence of the Holy Spirit. That is the dominating feature of Christianity. The Holy Spirit does not simply come upon men from time to time as He did in Old Testament times, but He is here abidingly. As the Lord said, “God gives not the Spirit by measure.” Christianity is characterised by the unmeasured giving of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit having come in personally to abide in each believer and to abide in the assembly, constituting it an habitation of God. But then there is also another provision for the testimony and that is that the angels of God, which, we are told, are innumerable, are all sent forth, without exception; the scripture says so, and therefore we are to believe it. Michael is active and Gabriel is active, and the innumerable company of angels, “sent forth,” it says, “to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” What a dignity it places upon us, dear brethren, that we are so provided for. What is it for? To make things easier for us. It is not. It is because we are the vessel of testimony. It is because the assembly is the pillar and base of the Truth. And God intends that whatever man, energised by Satan, may do in opposition to it, He intends that it should go through. And the Spirit is the power for it spiritually. The Spirit is irresistible; but then also the angels are there available to clear the way if need be. The Acts of the apostles abundantly illustrates that for us. We get, for instance, in chapter 5, the religious leaders in their hostility shut up Peter and John in prison. But then a prison door presents no difficulty to an angel. And so we read that an angel was sent and brought them out of the prison and told them to go and stand and speak in the temple all the words of this life. And they did. The words of this life - what life? The life that could be seen among the saints. The kind of life that Jerusalem had never seen before. A company of saints completely delivered from the principles of the world and its ways, moving together in love and contented; having all things common and testifying to Jesus. What a life it was! It was there in Jerusalem. It was indisputable. In order to stop the testimony the enemy put the apostles in prison, and one angel is sufficient to open the prison doors. There are other instances in the Acts, of course, of angelic intervention, but that is just to show us that if it is necessary to alter men’s arrangements, the Lord will use angels to do it. They are there at our disposal. And so here Elisha is at Dothan and the king of Syria is disturbed because all his plans for fighting against Israel became known to the king of Israel. And he was troubled as to what it meant, he thought there was a traitor somewhere in his camp. And one of his servants said, “Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bed-chamber.”

That is that Elisha as the vessel of testimony, typical of the saints as in the good of the Holy Spirit, can know what is going on, they can know the movements of the enemy. The Holy Spirit is God Himself. He knows all that is going on. There is not a single movement of the enemy, not a single thought even that men may conceive, that God does not know about. And therefore if we were more ready to be available to the Spirit, we can be assured of this, that anything that Satan intends to bring in to oppress or hinder the saints, the Spirit of God can make known to us. And so finding himself outwitted as regards intelligence, the king of Syria thinks that he will use force, and so he sends an army, thinking, of course, that one man and his attendant will be no match for an army. The young man, his attendant, is disturbed, but Elisha is not disturbed. He says, “They that are with us are more than they that are with them.” I suppose in the first place we may say that that is the Spirit Himself. It says, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” So far as all that is spiritual is concerned, and knowledge and understanding and so on we are infinitely better off than the best brains in the world, because we have the Spirit of God. But there is also this great fact that there is an innumerable company of angels. There is no army in the world that is innumerable. They may run to large numbers, but there is no army in the world that is innumerable. And the saints have an innumerable company of angels to support them if need be, but not necessarily to preserve them from suffering. It is not intended that the testimony is to go through without suffering, because it is in suffering that fidelity is proved, and it is in suffering, in suffering for the truth, that one feature of conformity to Christ is brought about. So we must not expect that God will intervene angelically to prevent the saints from suffering. But He will intervene angelically whenever it is necessary in order to ensure that the testimony goes through. And so we are to be encouraged to commit ourselves to it. Whatever it involves we are to go on with it. And so Elisha says, “Jehovah, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.” And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. Elisha was the vessel of testimony here. Elisha is in that sense not a type of the Spirit of God personally so much. I do not say that he may not be in certain instances, but he is not so much that, because the Spirit of God personally does not need to be protected by angels. But he is a type of the saints here in the power of the Spirit of God, possessed by the Spirit of God and here in testimony to the truth, and in that position they are surrounded by an innumerable company of angels, or rather, the innumerable company of angels are all sent forth to minister to them as occasion requires. And we are to have our eyes open to this, to this unseen world, all that there is in the Holy Spirit on the one hand, and all that there is in the presence of angels on the other, in view of the support of the truth, for the assembly is the pillar and base of the truth. There is nothing more important than the truth. It was the truth as to God that was challenged at the very outset by Satan, and it is the truth as to God that is to go through untarnished, and it is to go through by means of us. That is what we have got to take to heart. The truth is to go through by us, and with a view to its going through, God Himself in the Spirit has taken up His abode in us.

So may the Lord encourage us, dear brethren, to commit ourselves fully to these things, and to understand that only as the Holy Spirit is recognised can we fill out the place here that God intends us to occupy.

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