EXTRACTS

Beloved friends, God puts into heaven what has morally come out of heaven, and it goes into heaven in every way suited to Him; and we are to be translated to heaven as a company. Do not think that you are to go up alone. You are not distinguished enough for that. Paul was caught up into paradise to receive revelations. But we shall go up in a company. The apostle in writing to the Thessalonians tells them that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then that we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.

That is to say, the company is first formed upon earth, and there is not a vestige of the old left. Every particle, of the old has disappeared, and that company goes up and is entirely suited to the place. “We which are alive and remain”, he says, “shall be caught up together with them”. We are not to go before them, and we are not to go after them. We are to go with them. We are to go together. In other words, God reverts to His original thought of His assembly. It is formed upon earth intact. It is formed in the power of life, the power of resurrection, and then there is the ascent. The ascent follows that. That is privilege. What is peculiarly assembly privilege, always follows and goes beyond resurrection. Resurrection brings the sleeping ones back to earth, and the same power changes us physically; then we are placed together in assembly, as we might say, and all caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.

J. Taylor (Vol. 4, pp.196, 197)

The revelation of God is by the gospel and has its effects. “The word of God is living and powerful ...”, that is not the letter, a Bible, but the word received is living in a Christian’s soul—apart from this you cannot live ‘unto God’. The living principle in me is the revelation of God; as one has said. Whatever is presented to me as an object for my faith, becomes the principle of life in me when received—I live by it, my relations with God are formed by it.

Scripture is not history, but is intensely moral throughout; its object is to make God known.

F. E. Raven (‘Letters’, p.253)

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