READINESS FOR TRANSLATION
W. McKillop
Hebrews 11: 5; Romans 8: 9, 10; 2 Corinthians 5: 1–3; Colossians 3: 1–4
What is on my heart, beloved brethren, is to say a word with the Lord’s help on being fitted and ready for translation. Enoch represents this thought in both Genesis and Hebrews and he is spoken about again in Jude as one who prophesies about the coming of the Lord. Hebrews tells us that by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death. Clearly faith would be basic to being fitted for translation. No one without faith will be translated when the Lord comes. Enoch, the apostle tells us, was translated by faith. Faith is a gift from God. He has dealt to each believer a measure of faith. God has taken account of what you will meet in your Christian pathway and He has dealt to you a measure of faith that will enable you to go through whatever comes up in the way of testing and discipline and to go through with a view to being ready for translation, it says of Enoch in Genesis that he walked with God so that clearly, before he was translated, his faith was active, and active in a way that led him to be more and more at home with God, for he walked with God. It says he walked with God three hundred years, a time much longer than any of us is privileged to walk with God because our life spans are much shorter. That not only represents the wisdom of God to curtail the development of wickedness in the world, but it also shows how God can compress things because the Spirit of God is here. He can work out in the lifetime of somebody here what was worked out in three hundred years in the life of Enoch. We must not think, therefore, that not living eight or nine hundred years is a disadvantage. How quickly God can effectuate what He has in view in persons!
It is remarkable that after Methuselah was born, Enoch began to walk with God. Perhaps he saw something in Methuselah that exercised him. Jude, of course, would say that Enoch was exercised about what he saw in the world, that it was full of ungodly sinners who were speaking ungodlily against God. His soul was troubled as to that and he prophesied that the Lord would come amidst His holy myriads to deal with all such persons. We need to keep that in mind, too, because the apostle tells us that the Lord Jesus will be revealed “from heaven, with the angels of his power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God, and those who do not obey the glad tidings of our Lord Jesus Christ”, 2 Thessalonians 1: 7, 8. As we take sober account, therefore, of what is about us in the world, it would lead us to see the value of walking with God, because you may be very sure that in walking with God we shall not be walking in what is spiritually Sodom and Egypt. God is not walking there. He says in 2 Corinthians 6, as Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah,” come out from the midst of them “(v.17), and “I will dwell among them, and walk among them” (2 Corinthians 6: 16).
Enoch was walking apart from the course of things here. When Methuselah was born it says Enoch walked with God. There is nothing discreditable said about Methuselah in scripture but there is nothing creditable said about him either. Enoch walked with God for one hundred and eighty-seven years after Methuselah was born. Methuselah begot a son and called his name Lemech, but there is no indication that he was interested in the walk of his father Enoch. Enoch walked with God, it would seem, one hundred and thirteen years after Methuselah begot Lemech, but there is no evidence that it promoted those features with Methuselah. What this points to, I suppose, for us is that we may be close to persons who have no interest in translation, who have no interest in walking with God out of this scene into another world. It is not said exactly where Enoch walked with God, but it must have been outside the
course of things here, because not long afterwards God brings the flood to deal with the flesh, because He saw that “all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth”, Genesis 6: 12. What I would seek to interest us in, beloved brethren, is in our being Enochs and not Methuselahs.
Mr. Taylor said of Methuselah that he lived a long featureless life, he lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years and there is not one thing said to his spiritual credit about his entire lifetime.
This, of course, does not mean that at the present time an old person cannot be affected and begin to move with the Spirit in relation to a walk out of the world into the scene where Christ is the Centre. By faith Enoch was translated so that he should not see death. It would be a wonderful thing not to see death. It would be a right desire on the part of every believer, to be alive when the Lord comes. Not that death would dismay us because it simply means that in an instant we are absent from the body and present with the Lord. But we should all like to be alive when the Lord comes. I think that would be normal Christian desire.
Then it adds, “was not found”. You might wonder who looked for him; perhaps Methuselah did. Perhaps he wondered what had become of Enoch! Where is my father? We have not seen him for days. Well, he is not in this scene any longer! Methuselah went on until the year that the flood came and then, in mercy, God took him away so he would not come into that judgment. Enoch was not found because God had translated him. God must have had peculiar pleasure in Enoch. Why should we not afford God pleasure in that sense? You hear Christians speaking about the fact that the Lord is coming, ‘Yes I am hoping or waiting for the Lord to come’. But what characterises me while I am waiting? What characterised Enoch was that he was walking with God. It says, “before his translation he has the testimony that he had pleased God”. I would ask each one of us here, Do I have any sense of the pleasure of God in me? And at some point we will be so delightful to Him that He will translate us. We may think that the translation is an arbitrary matter.
From one point of view it is, because it is the exercise of the power of God by Christ to take us up. But what a wonderful thing to have a sense in our souls that we have pleased God. It says, notice, “he has the testimony”. At what point he received this, or how it came in his soul, scripture does not say. I would judge it was early in his walking with God; “he has the testimony that he had pleased God”. I would encourage the younger brethren to begin to think about this, that early in your life you can have the testimony in your own soul that you are pleasing God. Certainly, those of us who are older ought to have this as a secret source of strength and encouragement. I would encourage you to be very concerned about pleasing God. The only way I know to please God is to be on the line of faith and righteousness.
These two verses in Romans 8 deal with righteousness. The apostle says, “But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”. It is a wonderful matter to arrive at that consciously, that the Spirit of God is dwelling in us, that He is not there conducting warfare all the time. He is not there constantly reproving us because we want to go down to Egypt, or into Sodom, or off into Babylon. He is dwelling there because He has acquired scope in persons who have been made subject by the glad tidings. They have come under the authority of Christ and by faith they have come into the kingdom of God, so the Spirit is dwelling in them. He says, “but if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of him—but if Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness”. I would connect this thought of “the Spirit life on account of righteousness” with Enoch’s walk. He walked by faith, but clearly his walk was righteous. A moral feature that helps us to be ready for translation is that we are walking in righteousness. Righteousness means we are doing what is right toward God, toward Christ, toward the Spirit, toward the brethren, the fellowship; we are doing what is right with regard to men, and with regard to our families. We cannot do what is wrong or unrighteous before God and seek to justify it on the ground we are doing something right toward our natural relatives or toward men. Righteousness means that everything is right according to the righteousness of God.
The Spirit is the power for that, for he says, “the Spirit life on account of righteousness”. This is life in the sense of power. It means that you have the power morally to deal with things because the Spirit is life on account of righteousness. Persons may say, ‘I know that is right, but I just cannot do it’. That is disregarding the fact that the Spirit is life on account of righteousness. One of the greatest advantages the believer has at the present time is that the Spirit is life on account of righteousness, life in the sense of power, power to do things according to God. That is my second point in speaking about being fitted and ready for translation. The first is faith that leads us out of the world as walking with God, and the second is righteousness fulfilled here in the wilderness by persons who have the Spirit.
I read in 2 Corinthians 5 because if we are interested in translation, if we are interested in being caught up to be with the Lord as the apostle says to the Thessalonians, we certainly ought to be interested in what that involves. He says, “For we know that if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed”. Well, that is always the possibility. The older brethren here would join with me in saying that we go from day to day counting on the mercy of God.
What He said through Moses was that “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if, by reason of strength, they be fourscore years”, Psalm 90: 10. Some of the beloved brethren here have exceeded that in the wisdom and mercy of God. We know that if the Lord does not come before, our earthly tabernacle house will be dissolved by death. But the apostle says, “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”. It is wonderful to think about that. The “tabernacle house” he speaks of is provisional; it was set up, we might say, when we were born, but it can be taken down by death at any time that the will of the Lord indicates, but we have “a building from God”. We spoke earlier today about the fact that Jehovah Elohim built the woman. This must enter into that in its final thought, that we have a building from God, something that God has prepared for us. The Lord said, I go to prepare you a place” (John 14: 2); that is a great thing to think of, that there is a great heavenly realm that He has prepared for us. The apostle says, “we have a building from God”. It is something that God Himself has prepared for us. He does not say, ‘a body’, but “a house not made with hands”. Have you thought about that, this provisional tabernacle will be replaced with a permanent dwelling? It is eternal in the heavens. It is there according to the purpose of God, but in due time we shall receive this. If we are looking for the Lord to come, and if we desire to be translated, we certainly want to think about the conditions that the translation will involve. One of them is that it is a “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”.
I would like you to think, beloved brethren, about the connection between this and what is said in Revelation where, when John sees the bride, the Lamb’s wife coming down, he sees a city. A city according to our ordinary experience is composed of houses. The holy city will involve that we shall be there suitably housed and, I might say, extremely sociable in a spiritual sense, because the whole scene will be governed by love. We all like in some degree to be sociable. What God is saying here through the apostle is, ‘I have selected your society for you. I have prepared a habitation for you and it is going to involve spiritual sociability eternally’. I would suggest the persons who are ready for translation are spiritually sociable now. We could not really think from a moral point of view of the
Lord taking up persons like the Galatians who were biting and devouring one another. That is just the activity of the flesh and would certainly not fit us for translation. The solemn truth is that the Lord died to remove that order of man so that as together in our localities we might be extremely sociable spiritually, because we are going to come into conditions that are like that in actuality. This is the great element of hope that the apostle is speaking about. Notice he says, “ardently desiring to have put on our house which is from heaven”, not, ‘ardently desiring to put it on’, but to “have put it on”. He is saying, ‘I want to really put it on, the house from heaven. I do not just want to think about putting it on some time, but I want to have put it on’. I would like to encourage us to think about “having put on our house which is from heaven”. Not just the hope of putting it on, but the actuality of having done so. That would mark persons who please God. They are not thinking about things here, they are thinking about what they are coming into and they want the actuality of it. I must say it grows on me the more I think about it. I want the actuality of it, I want to have put it on, not just to say to you to cheer you that some day we shall do it, but to stir up in all of us this ardent desire to have put it on. He says, “if indeed being also clothed we shall not be found naked”.
Translation will involve the most wonderful conditions for us, therefore the passage in Colossians challenges us as to the bent of our minds. He says, “If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ, seek the things which are above”. It is difficult for me to believe that anybody who is not thinking about the things that are above would be interested in leaving the things that are here below. He says, “have your mind on the things that are above”. That would be a feature marking the person ready for translation; his mind is on the things that are above. If you ask what these things are, I could do no better than tell you what Mr. Taylor and Mr. Raven both said, they are the things in Hebrews 12, those eight things that we have come to (Hebrews 12: 22–24). Those are the things above.
Then he adds, “not on the things that are on the earth”. A man whose mind is on the things that are on the earth would hardly be interested in translation because his whole outlook, the whole bent of his mind, is bound up with what is on the earth, whether it be recreation, or sport, or business, or family, or links with persons who are not in the truth. These are all things on the earth. He says, “have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth”. The reason for it is that ye have died.
One of the things we least realise is that we died in the death of Christ. It is just as much an item of faith that we died with Christ as that He died for us. But most believers are content to stop with the faith that Christ died for them, so they are like the two and a half tribes, they are not prepared to go over Jordan. They may speak thankfully about the Red Sea, which is Christ’s death for us, but they are not interested in laying hold of the great fact that when Christ died, we died with Him. He says, “for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God”, but he also says, “If therefore ye have been raised with the Christ”. That is another great item of faith. If we died with Christ, we also rose with Christ. Not literally, but it is an item that faith lays hold of, that when the Lord died we died with Him. That is the teaching of Jordan, but that must work out practically in our lives. As we have come to the end of this first day of meetings, is your mind, is my mind over Jordan, or is it on the things that are on the earth? Now, you will be clear that I am not suggesting in any sense that you be negligent in your ordinary affairs. What I am urging is that your mind be dwelling across Jordan. That is where Caleb’s mind was all those years that he went through the wilderness with people that wanted to go back to Egypt, and who died in the wilderness. They lost their lives in the testimony of God because their minds were not over Jordan. Let our minds be over Jordan because our life is hid with the Christ in God. That is where it is. Our life is not in the wilderness, it is certainly not in Egypt because that is under judgment, but our life is with Christ on the other side of death.
He says, “When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory”. Translation leads to manifestation. Enoch is going to come out in manifestation. He was taken up, you might say, secretly, he “was not found, because God had translated him”. Some day that will be true of us, beloved brethren; we will not be found because God will have translated us. But we shall have been translated to come out in glory with Christ and we shall be fully equal inwardly and outwardly to that manifestation. We shall have our house from heaven, which God has prepared. We shall be conformed to the image of God’s Son, and we shall be manifested with Him in glory. It is not the time of glory publicly now, it is the time of reproach. Peter says, “If ye are reproached in the name of Christ, blessed are ye; for the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you”, 1 Peter 4: 14. That is the secret matter that we can discern about ourselves. As we share the reproach of Christ, the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us. But the time of manifestation is coming.
What a time it will be when the whole assembly from Pentecost to the rapture comes out with Christ in glory. That would lead us to seek to walk with God out of this world and to seek to walk out of the wilderness across Jordan into the land. Mr. Raven said many years ago. God never asked a man to give up something without first showing him something better. What He is showing us by the Spirit is that goodly land across Jordan. The Lord is urging, through those who serve us in love, to just get into the current of the Spirit and move with Him out of the wilderness into that goodly land to explore all its heavenly and blessed features. May every one of us be more concerned about being fitted and ready for translation.
Address at Adelaide
1 April 1994