The Rock of Ages is preparing to show yet another facet of His multi-sided personality—that of King. Men have been governed by so great a variety of legislators that the vessel no longer knows its Maker. I am speaking of the church—the instrument of the living God—that vessel which was made to hold His very likeness. But the vessel has become so weakened that it can no longer hold the commodity, and no amount of patchwork can make it sound again. The additional strands tend only to weaken the strands to which they have been attached. They can only tearapart under the stress and lose the life entrusted to them.
God has undertaken the task of breaking up the malformed clay and remolding it into a useful instrument fitted to its purpose. Any attempt to hold together the old shape—to preserve its antiquated form—can only end in catastrophe.
Rebellion can have no place in this day and hour. Either every fragment yields itself to the hands of the potter or it is thrown out as scrap. The people of God are finding themselves in the Valley of Decision. Will they yield to the day and age that has come upon them, or will they go on in the frustrations and failures of the closing age? The old way is familiar if compar-atively fruitless; the new way is strange—untried—the way of death (to self) and resurrection (through Jesus Christ).
What will emerge as old factions go down to make way for a new and living body—a church so united in Spirit that differences in opinion can find no place to grasp and hold a victim? What will happen as the individual walks out on the old ways of fleshly effort and useless works, and begins to entrust himself to another Life living within him—seeking no way of reformation except that which springs forth from the Life that has been lying dormant within him, waiting for this opportunity? Only those willing to take what may appear to them to be a risk will every know.
The power of the resurrection is the very threshold through which the coming era is to be entered. As it goes with the individual member, so will it go with the body. As every fragment is magnetized with a power far outside of its own potential, the instrument will come forth so tightly compacted that it will be impossible for a single drop of the commodity to escape and lay wasted, as the temple of the living God is raised up for His eternal habitation. Amen!