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water of life freely” (Revelation 22: 17). Why does He bring

that in? Because He is saying;

‘Even if you say, I have got down in my soul, you can take the

water of life. You can get back to the enjoyment of these

things that you once enjoyed and knew. You can get back to

what is distinctively yours’. The Lord would give you an

impression of Himself that no one else has. Each of these men

had his own impression of Christ. Peter got his own

impression of Christ; it does not speak of it in John 1, but in

chapter 6, when many of the disciples walked no more with

Him, and Jesus said to the twelve, “Will ye also go away?”;

Peter says,

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” He does not say, ‘There is John

the baptist, and he is a great man, and there is so–and–so’.

He does not say, ‘to what’; he says, “Lord, to whom shall we

go? thou hast words of life eternal”. What does that mean? Is

he speaking about eternal life?

No. He does not mean that. It means that His words have

become life to you. The Lord speaks of them as being “The

words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life”,

John 6: 63. Well, have you proved that? Has the Lord spoken

to you in that way? Peter said that, and he says there is

something more than that. “We have believed and known that

thou art the holy one of God”. What a thing to come to! The

One here that was being rejected, the One from whom men

were turning away, Peter says, “thou art the holy one of God”.

Well, think of One who fully answers to all that God is in His

holiness. God had a holy One here, One that He found full

delight in and in whom was a full answer to all that He is.

There is no other man like that. So what an

impression Peter had of Christ!

Then I wanted to speak a word as to finding Paul. Paul was in

prison and it appears that it took some searching to find him.