THE WAY TO THE ASSEMBLY

THE WAY TO THE ASSEMBLY

Many truly desire to be in the assembly, but they have not found the only way to it.

The great work of God of late in the revival of truth has been to lead souls into a knowledge of acceptance with God - the greatness of God’s acceptance of the believer. In fact, most christians of the present day do not get beyond assurance, and they who have found acceptance see that now they must be led by the Spirit and not by man; this has caused the separation from system in this century, and many think because they are separate from system that they are in the assembly: but this is very deceptive.

The first step for those who have reached acceptance is that they seek to enjoy it, and the more they do so, the more they find that they cannot, unless they know deliverance, for it is realised in the Spirit. Now deliverance is very little known; when deliverance is known you realise that you are in the Spirit, and not ^[p. 242] in the flesh, Christ is your life and you find that He is not here, that you are in a scene where He has been refused; this discovery makes quite a new era in the soul, because as He is your life, the more you seek Him the more you discover that He is not only not here, but that He is totally rejected and refused in this world. No one can explain what it is to a soul to realise fully that he is in a scene where the One who is his life is rejected; he must shrink from the place and everything connected with it.

The whole effort of the pretentious organisation figured in the mustard tree is to give the impression that Christ is honoured here; this only makes the scene more trying to the true heart. In ordinary life the absence of one in your circle on whom you are dependent is deeply felt, but if he is violently refused a place how different the whole order of things here must become to you!

How must it affect you at every turn to see that the Lord who is your life is rejected from this world, and now you cannot make anything of yourself in a place where He is unrighteously disowned; everything opens out to you in a new and forbidding way as He who is your life - eternal life - is not only refused here but He is gone to another place, sat down at God’s right hand in heaven.

Now you begin to look for the assembly; then the assembly becomes a wonderful relief to the heart, to find He has a place here, not of the world or of its order: and being come to Him as the living Stone, you are built up as a stone in God’s assembly. You have not only found a spot in divine contrast to all the contrariety and to all the assumption here, but a spot also apart from all here, and you spiritually are across the water on the other side of death and judgment.

Now you begin to know what the assembly is, and finally you learn what is only learned in the assembly as you form part of it - that you are of it; you form ^[p. 243] a constituent part of it, as a stone from the quarry formed part of Solomon’s temple. There is no other way to the assembly.