Secret History With God
SECRET HISTORY WITH GOD
1 Samuel 17: 34-37; Judges 6: 11-14; 1 Samuel 2: 18, 26; 7: 15-17; 2 Samuel 23: 11, 12
I desire to say a word, dear brethren, as to secret history with God as underlying power in the things of God, for this is very important. The Lord is graciously opening up to us more and more of the things of God, things that can only be known in the Spirit of God, and all this calls for increasing exercise on our part as to subjective genuineness, for no amount of light will hold us. Sooner or later God tests things, and I believe to the end things will be tested and sifted, because God intends to have reality. And so the importance of secret history with God, because not only does that ensure reality, but it results in experience with God which stands us in good stead when tests arise, and may become under the Lord’s hands the means of help and salvation to others, and hence there is this matter of secret history with God—a most important matter. I have started with this incident of David because it is not recorded for us when it actually happened, but it comes to light as that which provided substance in David’s soul, so that he had confidence to go forward in a much greater test than the lion and the bear had provided. The experience he had gained in this incident, which so far as the record goes had not been made public until now, stood him in good stead and gave him confidence in God to undertake to meet the Philistine. And by that means God wrought a great deliverance for His people and brought forward David as the one whom He had in mind to lead His people.
God has His own way of bringing forward at the right time those whom He has in mind to fill any position for the good of His saints. And if God brings anyone forward, then He is ready to support that one. Now I believe this incident in David’s history is one of very simple application. It refers, I believe, to the responsibility that rests upon every one of us to take care first of all of his own soul. I have no doubt that the lamb is in that sense a picture of the soul of the individual believer. David recognised a responsibility on his part to care for and protect that which belonged to another—to his father. And each one of us must understand that we are not our own, our souls have been redeemed, and it is the responsibility of every believer to see that he himself, and he may be represented, so to speak, by his soul, is preserved from all that is contrary to God so as to be held for God’s pleasure. You might say, ‘But can we preserve our souls?’ Well, dependence on God, of course, is an essential, and so we have in Psalm 16, so well-known to us—a psalm that depicts the moral excellence in manhood of the Lord Jesus, and is intended for us to learn from—“Preserve me, O God, for I trust in Thee”. Not that the Lord needed to be preserved in the same way that we need to be preserved, but that as having entered into manhood He would set the example, and that was the attitude of His mind and the expression of His heart—“Preserve me, O God, for I trust in Thee”. On the other hand, we have the power and the responsibility, too, to keep ourselves, as it says, “He that has been begotten of God keeps himself and the wicked one does not touch him”, 1 John 5: 18. The power for that lies in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit will always hold us, if we will allow Him to, in relation to Christ, so that we derive impulse and influence from Christ, and we are held in the simple desire to cultivate what is pleasing to the Lord and to avoid what is displeasing to Him, and that becomes practically the means of our preservation. There was this lion and the bear, and they came and took a lamb from the flock. It suggests the effort of Satan to rob David’s father of just one lamb of the flock, and every lamb is precious. Every lamb belonged to the father. David recognised the responsibility to see that not one lamb was missing from that which had been entrusted to his care by his father, and each one of us, from his youngest days as a Christian, needs to recognise the responsibility to keep his own soul for the Lord’s pleasure and for the pleasure of God. Satan may bring forward his efforts to ensnare us, using doubtless men or influences that we have to encounter. At one time it may have a very intimidating form such as the lion might suggest, and another time it might have a more seductive form such as the bear might suggest. Whatever form it takes, David was determined that the lamb should not be taken away, and he says, “I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth, and when he arose against me, I seized him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him”. That is, it was a matter of close quarters, but David was triumphant: he slew both the lion and the bear. It involves, no doubt, the power that we may derive from the Lord, as it is said, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe”, Prov 18: 10. It is simply a matter of righteousness, dear brethren, to keep ourselves from what is displeasing to God; and if we seek to maintain righteousness, we have the support of God. In Matthew 5 you remember the Lord says, “Blessed they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”; and then He says, “Blessed they who are persecuted on account of righteousness”—that is, the pursuit of righteousness may involve suffering; but He says, “theirs is the kingdom of the heavens”. Think of all the power of the kingdom of heaven being available for the support of one who is prepared to maintain what is right in the sight of God. And these are practical matters that arise, you might say, day by day, and therefore there is the necessity for seeing that we move on these lines, and the advantage of moving on these lines is that we gain experience with God, so that what is abstract in the scriptures becomes concrete in our own experience, and that is of immense importance, that not only are there certain principles laid down in the scriptures, but as following them you prove God in them. And the knowledge you gain of God, and of the Lord, and of the help of the Spirit, all becomes available to you, so that as some greater test maybe arises, what you have gained in the way of experience stands you in good stead. Well now, that is a very elementary side of the matter, but, I venture to think, an important and fundamental one.
When we come to Gideon’s history what is in mind is not simply what is individual but the local position, and this is something also of great importance to remember, that the truth that belongs to the assembly, and in which we so much rejoice, and which the Lord is so much opening out to us, is in fact to be worked out in localities. And that is what makes the local position so important, and that is why the local position is so constantly the butt of the enemy’s attack, because it is in the local position that the truth of the assembly is actually worked out and comes into expression. At this time when Gideon arose, the state of the people was bad. We read earlier in the chapter that, “Because of the Midianites the children of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds. And it came to pass when Israel sowed, that Midian came up, and Amalek, and the children of the east, and came up against them. And they encamped against them, and destroyed the produce of the land, until thou come to Gazah, and they left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass”, Judg 6: 2-4. And it says in verse 6, “Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian”. There was Midian, and there was Amalek, and then at the end of the history we find that there were also Ishmaelites. There was this combination of what was contrary to God brought to bear upon the people of God, and they themselves in large measure came into bondage to them. Midian, of course, was a son of Abraham, Ishmael was a son of Abraham, Amalek was a descendant of Esau; so that these opposing elements had all had some link with the line of faith. That is a solemn matter, and the issue in this incident is really what kind of man is going to have place among the people of God. That is a very important question to face, dear brethren, though a simple thing to state; what kind of man is really going to have place among the people of God. What kind of man does God look for in the assembly? What we have been having before us in 1 Corinthians 15 goes to the root of the matter. The apostle tells us that the gospel that he had announced to the Corinthians, in which they stood, and by which they were saved, was that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that He was buried and that He was raised the third day, according to the scriptures, 1 Cor 15: 3, 4. And later on in that chapter he tells us that Christ has been raised from among the dead. Now what does it mean dear brethren? I venture to say to the brethren that what we need to do is to ponder the elements of the gospel, and to see that our souls are; established in the truth of the gospel that we have believed, what we have committed ourselves to in faith; what the import of it really is; that Christ died for our sins. That is, that death has come in, and all that the Lord Jesus has done, dear brethren, in dying and being buried and being raised again, was all for us. It was for God as well, but it was all for us and if He died, we, as committing ourselves to the gospel through faith in Him, appropriate that death as our own, and if He was buried, we, as committing ourselves to the gospel through faith, appropriate that burial as our own. And what does that mean? It means that the first man, the man that is so hateful to God that never can bring forth any fruit for the pleasure of God, has been ended in death, and has been put out of sight in burial. But then it does not remain there. God has raised up Jesus from among the dead, a selective resurrection. One has often said, and I say it again—just by way of bringing home the import of this—think of the millions of men that lay in death when Jesus lay in the grave, and among them many men who had figured largely in the history of the world and were regarded as great in the eyes of men, and every one of them God left in his grave but one, and that one was Jesus. He left all the millions of men in their graves and He raised up from among the dead Jesus, and Jesus only. There could not be a more explicit demonstration that Jesus is the man whom God approves. I know that we all admit it, but I venture to ask whether we have really taken it to heart, that God has shown His disapproval of every other man, and He has ended his history vicariously in the death of Christ and put him out of sight in his burial, and now He has raised up Jesus and has given the Holy Spirit to all of us who have believed in Jesus and, thank God, as to our status, we are before God in Christ, not a shadow remaining of the old. But then, beloved brethren, the Holy Spirit who has taken His abode in us is always faithful to Christ in heaven and to His precious death as the means by which He has reached that place. He has reached that place by way of death and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit is invariably faithful to that, but the man that God looks for in His assembly, the assembly of God, is a man that is formed after Christ, that takes character from Jesus, and the Spirit will not tolerate any rival to that man. Now Gideon was in line with that.
The Midianite, alas! was not the man that is in the mind of God; the Ishmaelite was not the man in the mind of God. The Amalekite was very far indeed from being the man in the mind of God, for God had said that he would have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Now Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress. He was not concerned for the moment with what the rest of the brethren were doing; even if only one brother or sister goes on absolutely in the truth, let him go on. It is not a question of looking round and seeing what is current among the saints or what is allowed among them. The point is to see what God’s thoughts are, and what God’s standards are, and there was one man in Israel, and that was Gideon, who was threshing wheat in the winepress. The idea of threshing is that you are exercised to get rid of all that is chaff, in order that the pure wheat in its own blessedness alone might be your food. That is to be before our hearts, dear brethren.
I am not suggesting that any of us is perfect, but I do see the importance of adhering to divine standards and keeping divine thoughts before our hearts, and if God has operated in this outstanding way in raising up Jesus from among the dead, be assured that the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from among the dead dwelling in us will bring us into accord with what God has done in thus raising Him from among the dead. And so Gideon was on these lines. The wheat is a suggestion, beloved brethren, of the man who is out of heaven. That is what wheat stands for in scripture, as I understand it, and so if we were having this afternoon that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and was buried, and was raised the third day according to the scriptures, what we come to later on in that chapter (as we were also reminded) is that the first man is of the earth earthy, and the second man is out of heaven. That is that God by means of death and resurrection is not only dealing with all that has to be set aside but by that very means is bringing in all that has been in His mind from the outset, and that is to have man before Him according to Christ.
Think of One of the Godhead becoming Man. Think of what glory in manhood is now found in the Man that is before God. The second man out of heaven, heavenly in character, heavenly in origin, entirely of heaven, whereas even before Adam failed he was never more than of the earth earthy, but now God has brought in the One out of heaven, and thank God through redemption and the gift of the Spirit we are of the heavenly One. We partake in the life of the heavenly One, and all that God works in us is according to Christ. We are heavenly, and it is good that we should take account of that, as it says, “Such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, and then it goes on to say, “as we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one”, but we are already heavenly. Now Gideon was exercised as to that. Whatever the rest of Israel were doing he was determined to have wheat, and to have wheat apart from all the chaff, and as he was thus engaged in very limited circumstances—for a winepress is a very small area in which to thresh wheat—the angel of Jehovah appeared to him and said to him, “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour”. Think of how God looks at things. God’s standards are not our standards, dear brethren. Men in the world would not regard one solitary man threshing wheat in a winepress as a mighty man of valour, but God saw that Gideon had the right standard before him, and that subsequently, as it appeared, he was in line with God’s thoughts and had a measure of faith, and so God says “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour”.
Now Gideon shows that while he was cherishing divine thoughts, he was cherishing them for all the people of God, and that is an important matter, too. I do not want to get into the truth and be formed by the truth just for myself. There is no thought of our glorying in ourselves; it is a question of being in divine things as understanding that they belong to the saints, and if we can help others on that line, all well and good. And so Gideon says, “Ah my Lord, if Jehovah be with us”. That is to say, he had all the saints, the people of God, in his heart, and that is especially important first of all in our own locality. If only one brother or sister will take up this exercise and maintain it in his own locality, what an immense influence for good he may wield. He says, “Ah my Lord, if Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where are all his miracles that our fathers told us of, saying Did not Jehovah bring us up from Egypt? And now Jehovah hath cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian. And Jehovah looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might”. It is very touching; not now the angel of Jehovah, but “Jehovah looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might”. That is to say, he was maintaining divine standards in his soul and he had the people of God in his heart, and he knew that God had proved Himself faithful in the past, and he put all these things together, and Jehovah looked upon him and said—that is an element of might—“go in this thy might”. And that is what we want to come to, beloved brethren, to see that whatever others are doing we do not surrender divine standards. I sometimes tremble—you will bear with me for saying so—as I see the kind of things that the saints go on with, not exactly outrageously bad, but things that bear the impress in greater or less degree of the world, and are out of keeping with what we are as heavenly.
And so you will remember that John in his epistle to the young men says, “Love not the world nor the things in the world”. It is the things in the world that are a greater danger to us than the world. I believe in the main we are delivered from the world, but the great danger is that we bring the things that are in the world into our own circle and way of life. And so you remember that God not only redeemed His people out of Egypt—Egypt had to be judged and overthrown, and the people brought out of it, and Egypt is the world as a system—but then as they drew near to the land they were confronted with Jericho. Jericho had to be overthrown, and I believe Jericho is not so much the system—Egypt is the system—but I believe Jericho is principles. It is the principles of the world brought in where they ought not to be, and that has to be overcome if we are to enter fully into God’s thoughts for us.
And so one would add further that as the narrative proceeds Gideon shows that his thought is to minister to the pleasure of God, so he brings his offering. And it says that he made ready a kid of the goats and an ephah of flour in unleavened cakes, the flesh he put in a basket and the broth he put in a pot. That has often been commented on and I only refer to it in passing, that Gideon, having the idea of the service of God in his soul and desiring to minister to the pleasure of God, also had in his mind the idea that things must be presented suitably in a vessel, and the vessel is the assembly. That is, in all our exercises we have the assembly in view. The individual exercises have to be gone through if we are to be any help to the saints, but in all our exercises we have in view the pleasure of God in the assembly. And so the vessel, not only what was offered to God but the vessel in which it was offered, is stressed, showing that, as I say, what is in view in all our exercises is to be the assembly, and specially the assembly in its actual expression in the place where God has set us.
Well, now I pass on to speak of Samuel. I need not say, dear brethren, that both David and Gideon, of whom I have sought to speak, became mighty in God’s hand for the help and blessing of God’s people, but I do not go into what they did subsequently. What I am concerned about is to point out that secret history with God underlies power in the things of God. And now we come to the history of Samuel, and Samuel, as we know, is brought in in a very dark day in Israel’s history, a day that corresponds with the present day in Christendom; and what is specially emphasised in connection with the surrounding circumstances when Samuel is introduced is that the priesthood was entirely corrupt, and, of course, if the priesthood is corrupt there is no service of God for His pleasure. In those conditions, in answer to the exercises of Hannah, and possibly of others, for Phinehas’s wife was at any rate a feeling woman, and no doubt there were others, but specially of Hannah, God introduces Samuel; and that is rather remarkable, because at first what was at issue was the service of God and the corrupt state of the priesthood, and yet God did not operate in one of the house of Aaron, that is, He did not take up one who was officially a priest. Samuel was indeed a Levite, but he was not of the house of Aaron, not officially a priest; but God began to operate with Samuel, and He began to operate with him very early in life, and the first thing that Samuel had to learn was to be priestly, and I urge that on the young brothers and sisters, and on all of us, that what is priestly, that is to say, that what considers for the holiness that is due to God, must underlie everything else. Samuel, as I say, did not become officially a priest, but he did become a great prophet, he did become a great judge, he did become one who had immense power with God as an intercessor. He became all that; but underlying all that he became was that he began with exercise as to being priestly. That is, he would habitually draw near to God, and that not in any formal way but as exercised to be marked by the features that are proper in those who do draw near to God; and that is a very practical matter beloved brethren, and a matter which we cannot afford to neglect if we would stand in the things of God. If we would be equal to moving forward into the higher ranges of the truth which the Lord is so graciously opening up to us, we must not neglect what is fundamental. We must see to our roots and foundations, and this lies at the very root of everything: the cultivation and maintenance of priestly conditions, that is to say, the conditions of holiness that befit those who have to do with God.
And so it says that Samuel ministered before Jehovah a boy girded with a linen ephod. A linen ephod is always brought into Scripture as suggesting the subjective conditions that are proper in those who draw near to God. And Samuel starts on those lines though he was but a boy. The surrounding conditions were the very opposite of his, but now God was beginning to operate. And yet it was only a boy—it is a question of these conditions beginning in a small way. It is not necessary to confine the idea to a literal boy or a literal girl, though there is every encouragement for those who are young to start on this line, but the point is that that which was urgently needed, conditions of spirituality and holiness in those having to do with God was there now, though as yet it was only small. But it was going to grow, and so it says in the second verse I read “the boy Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with Jehovah and also with men”, a remarkable verse that has extraordinary correspondence with what it says in the gospel of Luke of the Lord Jesus Himself in the day of His youth before He came out in public testimony; and there again one would remark, beloved brethren that we see the idea of what is secret with God pre-eminently with our Lord Jesus Christ. Thirty years of secret history with God before three and a half years of public testimony. That shows the value that God attaches to what is secret. There was the Lord, I need not say, in infinite perfection in every stage of manhood as He grew up before God, and you might have said at any rate at the age of twenty years you could regard Him as in full manhood, and yet in the ways of God He waited another ten years until He was about thirty years of age before He came out in public testimony. And there were all those thirty years of secret history with God underlying the three and a half years of powerful public testimony. And so you get the idea fully exemplified there, and it was at the end of those thirty years that the heavens were opened upon Him and the Holy Spirit as a dove descended upon Him and the Father’s voice was heard to say, “Thou art my beloved Son in thee have I found my delight”. Let no one think that secret history is of little account. Thirty years of it under the eye of God called forth that remarkable expression, “In Thee I have found my delight”. Well now I only want to point out that in Samuel’s case he became, as I have said, an outstanding judge. He became also an outstanding prophet. All Israel knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. He became an outstanding intercessor, so much so that hundreds of years afterwards God says in Jeremiah’s day, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul would not turn toward this people”, Jer 15: 1. He was such an outstanding intercessor that God could take him up alongside of Moses as the expression of one who had outstanding power with Him as an intercessor. But the state of the people was such that God said that though even Moses and Samuel stood before Him, yet His soul could not be turned toward the people. But it was a tribute to the power Samuel had in intercession, and underlying that power was what he was as considering for the holiness of God.
Well now, I read those well-known verses as to his judgeship. It says that Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life and the matter of spiritual judgment, dear brethren, is a most important matter. That is to say, it is in actual things that arise that the truth of God has to be established. Things have to be judged according to God. It is no use going on with the truth in theory and having conduct out of keeping with it. If things arise with the people of God they should be Judged according to divine principles, and Samuel did this. He went round in circuit, it says, from year to year, as though to stress that the matter is to be continued and maintained from year to year. He went round in circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpah, and judged Israel in all those places. These are well-known places, dear brethren, and one need only refer to them very briefly. Bethel, of course, is the house of God, and God is always dwelling in us by the Spirit. God Himself is dwelling in us by the Spirit all the time, both when we are gathered together and when we are not gathered together. What a sobering consideration to bring to bear upon our conduct. That is what Samuel would do—he would say to the people, ‘Are you aware what Bethel stands for? It is the house of God’. And are we aware that God Himself is dwelling in us by the Spirit? God intends that we should regulate our conduct and all that marks us by this wonderful fact that He Himself is dwelling in us by the Spirit. And then it says he judged Israel also at Gilgal. We know well what Gilgal is. We are not ignorant as to the truth, beloved brethren, but the point is whether we apply it. Judgment is the application of the truth. That is what judgment is—the application of the truth to particular matters. And so Samuel judged Israel at Gilgal, and Gilgal means “rolling away”. The children of Israel had come into the land, and God insisted that they should be circumcised, and they were circumcised, and then as they were circumcised Jehovah says, “this day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you”. That is, any taint of the world we carry with us is a reproach to us, for we are a heavenly people. And God had brought His people into the inheritance, and now He says you must be in keeping with it, and therefore circumcision had to be applied, and as it was applied the place was called Gilgal, which means “rolling away”. And then there is Mizpah, and we may get the force of Mizpah from Genesis. Mizpah means “watchtower”. You will remember that it comes in, I believe, for the first time at the point where Jacob parted from Laban, and what Laban says indicates what the force of Mizpah is, and that is that God’s eye is upon us when no one else is with us. A very important thing to bear in mind is that when we are not with the brethren God’s eye is upon us. And Samuel judged Israel at Mizpah. Things would come up for judgment and he would say, ‘Have you forgotten that God’s eye is always upon you, not simply when you are with the people of God, but that God’s eye is always upon you? Have you forgotten it?’ Samuel brought these things to bear upon the people, and he could do it in power, and authoritatively, because of what he was himself as having cultivated secret history with God on priestly lines. And then it says that his return was to Ramah, “for there was his house ... and there he built an altar to Jehovah”. That is to say he constantly came back to his own house, and he would apply the spirit of judgment there and seek to see that things in his own house were in keeping with the truth that he knew and which he sought to apply to the people of God.
Now I only want to speak briefly on the final scripture, and I read that because I wanted to come back to local conditions, and for this reason, beloved brethren, that the enemy at the present time is making a real attack on the conditions in various localities. We need to be aware of that. The enemy is always opposed to the truth and always opposed to God’s pleasure in His people, and wherever he gets an opportunity he will attack, and any opportunity that he finds in the localities he will seize with a view to robbing God of His portion as well as robbing the saints of their portion. So we have in this chapter the catalogue of David’s mighty men, and I call attention in passing to the first one, the chief, whom we do not hear of as far as I remember, save in this chapter and the corresponding chapter in Chronicles. We are told in this chapter that what he did was that he fought against eight hundred, slain by him at one time. Now what constituted that man’s power? He was the chief of David’s mighty men. I believe it was simply that he maintained self-judgment in the power of the Spirit. If we are maintaining self-judgment in the power of the Spirit the enemy can bring, so to speak, eight hundred influences to bear on us at one time and we do not succumb. That is the secret of power, dear brethren. You see it particularly exemplified in Paul: “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live I, but Christ lives in me”. That was the secret of Paul’s power: “I am crucified with Christ”. He accepted the import of the cross of Christ and brought it home to himself, and he maintained it in a remarkable degree in the power of the Holy Spirit, and that is what made him so mighty.
And then following on him is one who fights against the Philistines. The enemy in the next few incidents is the Philistines. The Philistine is a great enemy. He dogged the footsteps of Isaac, he was the great enemy in Samson’s day, and he was the great enemy in David’s day. The Philistine, that is, one who attempts to lay hold of divine things in mere mental energy without exercise as to being subjectively in correspondence with them, and a very great enemy he is, and we have to watch him in ourselves. Now there was this conflict with Eleazer the son of Dodo. It says, “He arose and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand clave to the sword”. That is to say, he simply clave to the sword—the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. That is the great thing, because the sword of the Spirit, I am safe to say, is a two-edged sword. That is to say, a sword that is first used against oneself and then can be used with power in other directions. This man’s hand clave to the sword. He would not depart from that—the power of the word. Paul says in Corinthians, “The arms of our warfare are not fleshly but powerful according to God”.
And now we come to this next incident that I read: “Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite: the Philistines were gathered into a troop, and there was there a plot of ground full of lentils, and the people had fled before the Philistines”. That is the position, a local position, a plot of ground, full of lentils—full of possibilities you might say; a plot of ground, but the people had fled before the Philistines. There was an attack on the position by the Philistines, and the Philistines often appear to be overwhelming. Two or three times we find scripture says of the Philistines that they spread themselves. They make a great show of mental ability and power, and so on, but it is a menace to the people of God. And now it says of this man that he stood. He stood in the midst of the plot. That is all, to stand in the power of what has gone before, self-judgment on the one hand in the power of the Spirit and the power of the word of God on the other hand. It is in the power of these things that we can stand. It is a question of some or someone in the locality standing in a locality as governed by the truth subjectively, and then dependence on God, recognising that the position is His, and it is a question of saving the position locally so that the enemy may not be allowed to rob God of His portion in His people.
What I have said has been connected with subjective conditions, but I venture to think with what is essential, and I may say again, as I said at the beginning, that the whole point of what I have in mind is that secret history with God underlies power in the things of God, and what we need at the present time is power, not simply light but the power that corresponds with the light. May the Lord graciously help us for His Name’s sake.
BRISTOL
20th June 1951
From the notes of meetings with Mr James McKay, entitled ‘Resurrection’
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