EXTRACTS

So I ventured to read in Philippians, a book that may be likened to the book of Psalms, only on a higher plane—a book that should be read even from the beginning of the believer’s pathway. It is a book of experience. The Psalms are that, too, but the epistle to the Philippians is experience on a higher plane and much more compressed. In no life have we got compression as in the life of Jesus, and this epistle touches on that life, from the moment of His decision to empty Himself, being in the form of God; from that moment until the cross, yea, the exaltation, we have the life of Jesus in a few short verses. It is infinity put into a few verses, as I might say, but enough to give us an inlet into that life. A day of that life was more in the divine account than a millennium of a life like mine. Contrast the life of Methuselah, 969 years, and the life of Jesus! The life of Jesus was, in point of time, but a very small part of the life of Methuselah; but the one was attenuated so that the Holy Spirit says nothing beyond the years.

The life of Enoch was three hundred years after he begat a son; Methuselah lived all these three hundred years, but the Holy Spirit lights on nothing as reflecting the life of his father. A long life, nearly three times that of his father, but his father’s life was “with God”—he “walked with God”; but Methuselah’s life was featureless. We do not want that; we want our lives filled with the will of God; and not the will of God in a perfunctory sort of way, but for His pleasure. Our wills enter into it, so that our lives are full, if need be compressed, for God reckons by days and by millenniums. One “day is with the Lord as a thousand years”, but that must be a day into which much enters; it cannot be a day barren of results for Him. God never intended any day to be barren of results for Him. So, if a day in His mind be like a thousand years, what a day it must be—how full! Who can write the history of such a day? No one but God. And it is of such days, beloved,

that the life of Jesus was made up; days so full of delight for God, of the maintenance of the will of God, of pleasure to Him, that every moment of every day, as well as every day of every year, was filled up thus. And what must be “the day of eternity”? The idea is of what is compassable—but compassable by whom? Who can take it in, beloved, but God? He can take it in. As He alone can take in the life of Jesus in its fulness, so He takes in eternity. He ‘inhabits’ it.

J. Taylor (Vol. 32, pp.214, 215)

Do you think that it is too much to regard God as recording the events of our lives? Not at all. He numbers the very hairs of our heads. We read of a book of remembrance written before Him for His people, Malachi 3; also that He writeth up His people, Psalm 87. We little take in, even in physical things, how minute God is in His dealings! The things that are made are said to be a testimony to “His eternal power and divinity”, Romans 1: 20, for in them the invisible things of Him are clearly seen. So that it is not at all too much to think of the divine record including the lives of the saints, for what are the lives of the saints, think you? They are but the expansion of the life of Jesus—that is what they are; and such life is always delightful to God! As it is said to the apostle Peter—“Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life”, Acts 5: 20. The life of David was very compressed. We read of “the times that passed over him”, 1 Chronicles 29: 30, all his reign and his might, and so forth. It was recorded, as one has often remarked, by three of the most spiritual men of his time, or of any time—Samuel the prophet, Nathan the prophet, and Gad the seer.

J. Taylor (Vol. 32, p.216)

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