EXTRACTS

“Then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” That is what people say among themselves, what brethren sometimes say in their houses after a meeting. A young brother is prompted to say something in a ministry meeting—pardon me for being simple and practical—well, the brethren say, ‘What do you think of that, what do you think of So-and-so, he has attempted to prophesy, but what is his external conduct and is it in keeping?’ It says, “The people said one to another, What is this that has come unto the son of Kish?” It is a searching matter. I am not saying that you should not take part in ministry, but then have you given occasion for this table talk? I am not saying that the brethren should enlarge on it, I know how they do, often far beyond what should be spoken of, but here the question is asked, ‘What has happened to the son of Kish? Why, he goes out and plays cricket, and plays tennis, and goes off on the Broads in the summer-time, and other things like that, and yet he is prophesying!’

It is a solemn thing that the brethren have a judgment about you, and heaven has a judgment about you, and yet heaven wants you and heaven is doing its utmost to help you to serve as a true levite. You will understand, dear brethren, I am not here to whip you, far otherwise, but to seek to help all of us to get into accord with heaven and to become spiritual, to enter into the environment that God has placed for us here, to absorb the suggestions of the spiritual environment in which we are set, to take them on constitutionally, so that we become spiritual. Saul never did—if he had done so, we should never have had the proverb, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” This is written again after his history was well-nigh finished (1 Samuel 19: 24); the proverb, I am sure, would never have been recorded, had Saul judged himself at the outset, but alas, he did not. So the proverb remains; it says at the end of verse 12, “It became a proverb, Is Saul also among the prophets?” I would not like to be the

subject of such a proverb—Saul was, and why was he? Because he failed in this great test, he failed to take on spirituality through what was divinely presented to him; and he failed to wait at Gilgal. Had he taken in these great spiritual thoughts he would have said there, ‘I am not in keeping with them’; for it was the place of circumcision, and this accepted is the acknowledgment that the flesh is incorrigible and has to be put off. Gilgal is “the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of the Christ”, Colossians 2: 11.

J. Taylor (Vol. 42, pp.536, 537)

RSS From the fact that the only death of a Christian of which we have any detailed account in Scripture, is that of Stephen, would you not think it was a pattern death?

JT Undoubtedly. He is presented to us as an example, a man of like passions to us, so that it is not beyond any of us in that way. When persecution comes, even in the most superficial way, of the smallest kind, even among ourselves, how near at hand is the spirit of vindictiveness. Now, the idea in Christianity is to displace that, so that “if thine enemy hunger, feed him”; that is priestly. “If he thirst, give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head”. If you do that, he will come down. It is priestly acting. You are able to pray for him, if he has caused you grief. It may be a sarcastic word or an ungrateful act. Vindictiveness is always at hand in us naturally, and Christianity is to displace that. You see it perfectly presented in Stephen when the most fearful persecution was there. So the early Christians, as James puts it, were marked by that spirit—“Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you”.

J. Taylor (Vol. 5, p.441)

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