Rayford Strange
Where I live today, I’m reminded of many churches nowadays.
There is plenty of light. In fact there is so much light that it is almost blinding. It is absolutely dazling. There is not a cloud in the sky. The whole planet seems to be bathed in this glorious light. But it is nearly freezing cold.
The grass is dead and the trees appear to be dying having shed all of its life giving fruit and leaves. The flowers appear to be dead and the cheery melody of the song birds are hushed.
But there is plenty of light.
The church of Ephesus mentioned in Rev. 2:1-5 is like that. They had all the light of truth. They had so much light of Truth that they could spot a false teacher, a false Apostle from a mile off with one eye shut.
Yet, with all the light of truth that they had, still Jesus levied a charged against them for having left their first love. While the light of truth is compared to the light of the sun, the warmth of it is compared to the love that radiates from it. From the sun in our natural heaven, it takes both to bring forth life in our natural world It takes both, the warmth of divine love and the light of divine truth in our spiritual world to bring forth spiritual life.
But, you already knew that. Doth not even nature teach you? Many things of a spiritual nature can be taught us from nature.
So it is with the Sun of Righteousness, both warmth and light radiating into the earth doing His wonderful work in the (church) earth where the Word of God is. First the seed is planted into the ground by the husbandman. The work of the sun then causes the root from the seed to grow downward. This is the process of germination in the natural but spiritually it is the beginning of regeneration. Except that the seed falls in the ground and dies, it abieth alone. But if it dies, it will bring forth fruit.
First, the root then the stem. From the stem come the branches and twigs. The sun is warmer and the light is brighter. Thus in the spring, there comes the sweet smelling blossoms. Don’t you just love being around a christian who is spiritually sweet smelling blossom? Regeneration produced by the power of the Sun of Righteousness is at work in a life forlorn and forsaken.
Then, lo and behold, fruit begins to appear from out of the beautiful blossom, albeit a very imperfect, immature fruit of the Spirit. The process of regeneration continues as spring then gives way to a newer, brighter and warmer season of the Summer Fruit and the continued ripening of the fruit of the Spirit.
In time, when the Summer is past, harvest season is the time of gathering in of the fruit. By this time, the fruit of the Spirit has become fully mature. In the mutured fruit is the regenerative power of the well prepared seed which, if planted by a wise husbandman, it too will bring forth, not one fruit, but a TREE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS BEARING MUCH FRUIT.
By the wise design of our great creator which set all things in motion, both in nature and spiritually also, the process continues until the deep of winter comes to do its wise purpose of death that kills insects and pests of every sort. In it all, the church is preparing for a new birth as the called out of the called out to begin a new and greater harvest in the earth. A new church and a new beginning, is in the offing. The making of a new church, a new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven will be upon the earth. With good seed sown in the earth from season to season, from harvest to harvest, the whole earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord, creator of the seed, bearing fruit and fruit bearing seed.
At last, when the power of the seed wrought in good, perfected fruit has finished its righteous work from generation to generation, from season to seed, it will finally be said:
Jer 31:34-36
“And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: FOR THEY ALL SHALL KNOW ME, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
35 Thus saith the Lord, WHICH GIVETH THE SUN FOR LIGHT by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name:
36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then THE SEED OF ISRAEL also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.”
So it happened to the former church, called the church in the wilderness, but on the day of Pentecost with the coming of the Lord, the heavenly seed, the Word of God, planted into the earth, a new church was born in the earth. We know it as the church of the New Jerusalem, a heavenly city of just men made perfect.
In THAT day,
Isa 30:26 “Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days,….”
Isa 11:9, “ They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
With Love, Be blessed
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