THE WATER OF LIFE
THE WATER OF LIFE
The living waters proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb flow out from the midst of her, and she, the bride, offers them to perishing man to the utmost bounds of the earth. “Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely”. (Revelation 22: 17.) So the saint now, believing in the glorified Christ, out of his belly flow rivers of living water. The power to cheer the heart and to be ministers of blessing depends not upon the assembly’s faithfulness, but upon our faith in Christ glorified and ascended to the right hand of God.
Thus I have attempted in a very imperfect way to present the picture of what the assembly will be as set [p. 208] forth in this vision, in order that our hearts, being attracted by our future appearance, as fully answering to the heart of Christ, may, while humbled at our present marred state, appropriate, by communion with Him, the moral features of the one, who, as the reflection of Himself, will be “all glorious within”, and fitly attired for Him; and thus may it be with us according to the words in Ezekiel 43: 10, 11, “Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern. And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them”.