[Ed.
Note – this article written among the first of this
ministry in 1988 contains the seed thoughts of
what became the more expansive 2005 article titled Concluded in Unbelief. It is
also companion to the article The Two Currents of Kingdom River
and its themes re-occur in various other articles on
politics and purified identity.]
The
Church Age will be remembered as the Age of Flesh. The
Church Age was given to prove that flesh and blood
cannot bring in (“inherit”) the Kingdom of God. The
visible activity of flesh and blood in the surface
current of Church history is given to us as a witness
of what NOT to do, how NOT to live—a negative
contrasting image against which the saints may
exercise into faith, thrust into contact with
invisible spiritual reality (It is the insufficiency
of flesh life—within ourselves and at large in the
body—that negatively testifies to us of the positive
invisible reality into which we are to press.)
All
the positive benefits that openly manifest in the
surface current of history are the result of the
cumulative spiritual efforts of those who have
abandoned their support of the surface current to
invest in the hidden undercurrent of spiritual
Reality. It is by the maturation of that undercurrent
that the Kingdom Age is ushered in. This occurs at
that point in time when spiritual development in the
Church Age reaches a critical mass whereby it
overpowers and swallows up the surface current of
flesh activity.
The
hidden spiritual current will eventually displace the
flesh as the flesh current reaches its own critical
mass of corruption unto self-destruction. The point at
which the ascending hidden current and the descending
surface current cross paths and reach co-incidental
“critical mass’ is that point at which ages change,
the Kingdom Age takes over, and Christ appears to
return in glory.)
What should be our personal
response to this reality? Answer: We should be
labouring toward that point of “critical mass” in
our own lives where our spiritual development will
swallow up our fleshly inadequacy. We should be
taking advantage of our observations of personal and
corporate fleshly inadequacy to invest in the hidden
undercurrent flow of Spiritual Reality on its way to
ascendancy, both personally and in history.
Surface current history
reflects the tension between those who opt to invest
in fleshly reality on purpose, those who do so
ignorantly—and those who have opted to move out of
the surface current (with respect to whatever level
of development they may be.) Ideally, it should not
take too many times of ignorant encounter with
investment in surface history before we make that
definitive change of direction and opt from that
point to invest toward the undercurrent of Reality.
Again, we must make no
mistake. It is the hidden undercurrent of spiritual
reality, though at present unseen, that is on the
ascendancy. What positive benefits that
appear in the surface current are accrued
cumulatively over history because of the activity of
Spirit of the hidden current—not the fleshly
current.
It is because of this
deceptive appearance that we are at first deceived
into throwing our energies into direct support of
the surface current. We naturally credit apparent
surface blessing to surface activity. But the
reverse is true. The hidden current activity of
Spirit is the cause through its silent influence in
history of all the blessings that appear in the
surface current at any given point in Church
history.
By contrast, it is the
fleshly devotion to the positive benefits of flesh
and spirit which appear in the surface current that
is responsible for the cumulating corruption of
religious idolatry in the surface current to its
descendancy and ultimate demise.
For all this, the surface
current of flesh church history is a scene of
absolute chaos and churning waters of strife,
dissension and idolatry. It is a current designed
for the separation of those who are devoted to it
from those of a good heart who learn against its
mistakes.
(Again however is the
balancing factor—Those who learn against the surface
current are still subject to it by divine ordinance
whereby they must submit to blessing that appears
through it unto their own further hidden
development—even though the ultimate source of such
blessing is itself hidden. It is by this that God
keeps hidden current people in sufficient contact
with surface current people to give them change to
repent direction and to otherwise testify against
them at the last day.)