I pray also that the eyes of your heart
may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called
you. Ephesians 1:18
It is a
seeing of the immense significance of Jesus in the eternal and universal order.
With the Apostles that seeing was subsequent to the days of physical
association. During the forty days after His resurrection it was like the
dawning of a new day. First, those intimations, as when the uncertain light
just passes over the heavens. Then more steady and certain rays, leading to the
Day of Pentecost, when the sun appeared in full glory over the horizon
dispelling the last shadow of uncertainty. On that day they saw Him as by an
opened heaven. The mystery of the past was dispelled. The Bible lay open like a
new book. They saw Him in the light of eternity. They began to see that, while
He was the glorified, personal, Son of God, He was Himself the embodiment of a
great, a vast heavenly and spiritual order and system. This seeing was
absolutely revolutionary. It was a crisis out of which a new world and a new
creation was born. True to this fundamental principle, all that vast
revelation, which has come down the centuries from and through the Apostle Paul
took its rise from that crisis described by him as "It pleased God... to
reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). "I received it... by revelation of
Jesus Christ" (vs. 12). All the implicates were in the crisis; the full
content was a progressive and ever-growing revelation.
While
there was some initial testimony, the Apostles did not formulate in conference
an enterprise, a mission, with all the related arrangements and organization.
The new Life forced off the old leaves and dressed the new organism with a new
vesture from within. The might, energy and urge of the Holy Spirit
within produced a Way and an order, un-thought-of, unintended by
them, and always to their own surprise. What was happening was really that
Christ was taking form within them, individually and corporately, by new birth
and growth. The believers and the companies were becoming an expression of
Christ.
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