THE RIVER OF LIFE by G. E. Fifield

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 8, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 32.

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THE RIVER OF LIFE

By G. E. Fifield

BY G.E. FIFIELD

THE SANCTUARY.

The Gospel in Past Ages.

"A GLORIOUS high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, . . . because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters."

"Because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary."

The living water is a symbol of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit was in the gift of the Son. This gift was made at the foundation of the world. Since then the river of spiritual life and power has been flowing from the throne. All who have been saved, have been healed by this living water; their souls have been transformed from a barren desert into a "watered garden, and a spring of water whose waters fail not." The good news of this ever-present, ever-flowing river, however it may be revealed, is the "everlasting Gospel." All this, we trust, has been made plain in past papers. We now wish to inquire how this Gospel has been proclaimed in past ages.

It is the popular conception of the present day that if the Gospel was known at all prior to the Incarnation, it was then known only in a very shadowy form, perhaps only as a prophecy of a future glory. Such teachers forget that all the preaching of Jesus was from the Old Testament Scriptures, and that He never professed to be preaching a new gospel, nor sought to organize a new church. Israel had forsaken God, the Fountain of living water, and had hewed them out a broken cistern, i. e., a leaky creed, which could hold no water. They had lost the spiritual truths of their religion, and so become formalists and self-righteous Pharisees. Jesus sought to lead them back to the Fountain. The very deepest truths He proclaimed had been proclaimed beforehand, by the Spirit of Christ, through the prophets. 1 Peter 1:11.

In speaking of these truths to Nicodemus, Jesus said, "Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?" Paul, writing in the full sunlight of the Gospel, and comparing this age with the past age, says only, "For unto us was the Gospel preached, as well as unto them." In another place, when comparing the Jewish fathers with the people of the present age, he positively asserts that they "did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ." We should expect, then, in the study of the Old Testament Scriptures, to find the same Gospel revealed as in the New Testament.

We have no complete record of God's spiritual instruction to the patriarchs. We do have, however, the promise to Adam that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This was a revelation of the spiritual power then and there to triumph over sin, and so it was a glorious proclamation of the everlasting Gospel. We know, too, that to the mind of the ancients, untrammeled by the modern conception of natural law, the whole world around them was alive and instinct with God, and all the manifestations of the power of the natural water to transform the desert into verdure, and bloom, and fruitage, were to them glorious proclamations of the power of the spiritual water to glorify their lives. All paganism, in its nature worship, is so many differentiated forms of apostasy from this original revelation of spiritual truth.

When God delivered Israel from Egypt, He said to Pharaoh, "Let My people go, that they may serve Me." We may expect, then, that to that people, newly rescued from contamination with paganism in its worst form, God would reveal anew His everlasting Gospel.

We have already seen how beautifully this was done in the smitten rock, from which the waters gushed out to gladden the desert; and it is plainly declared that this was to them an image of spiritual things; for "they drank of that spiritual Rock that went with them; and that Rock was Christ."

But most completely and most gloriously of all this Gospel was revealed to them in the sanctuary. After the divine law had been spoken to them, and they had discovered, through sad experience, their inability, with the carnal heart, to keep this spiritual law, and just when they must have most felt their need of a rescuing power, "the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they may bring Me an offering; of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take My offering. . . . And let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them." It will be seen that they must bring this offering willingly if at all, and they must bring their heart with the offering. The outward offering was only a symbol of the offered heart. The words, "that I may dwell among them," are literally, "that I may dwell in the midst of them." God desired not only to show how He would dwell in the sanctuary which they were to build, but by dwelling in this building, He wished to show them how He would dwell in the heart that willingly offered itself to Him.

A little study will show clearly the absolute identity of the Old Testament doctrine of the sanctuary and the New Testament doctrine of sanctification. In fact, we never really understand the glorious theme of sanctification until we study it in the light of the sanctuary; for sanctification is God doing in us, and through us, and with us, just what He did in, and through, and with the sanctuary.

In the inner department of the sanctuary was the ark of the testament. This was a golden box, in which were the tables of stone on which God had written the divine law. Above this box was the mercy-seat. On either end of the mercy-seat were the cherubim, with outstretched wings overshadowing the ark. Above this mercy-seat, between the cherubim, was the Shekinah, the visible manifestation of the divine glory. Inwrought into the inner curtain of the sanctuary were multitudes of angel forms, as if they hovered around, waiting to do God's bidding. All this was an image of God's throne. The prayer of David was, "O Shepherd of Israel, . . . Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth." Says the Scripture, "A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary."

In prophetic vision John saw this throne in heaven. He says, "The temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in His temple the ark of His testament." But Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." If His kingdom is within us, His throne is within us also. So this most holy place in the sanctuary not only represents the throne of God on high, the center of His government for the universe, but it was the throne of God in the center of the Jewish theocracy, and the Jewish theocracy was an image of His kingdom on earth. But God reigns in His church as king only by reigning thus in the individual hearts of the members of that church. So the most important thing of all is to see that this represents the throne God wishes to establish in every human soul. The whole of Christian experience is here. When God through Christ is enthroned in the heart as King of kings and Lord of lords, and our every prayer is, "Thy will, not mine be done," that soul is wholly His.

The meaning of the word "sanctuary" is, a sacred, a holy place, the dwelling-place of God. But God says, "I dwell in the high and holy

place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." But wherever God dwells is His sanctuary, or temple, and one place where God has His temple is in the human heart. All this Christ recognized when He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "But He spake of the temple of His body." The Jews ought to have understood Him, and they would have done so had they not lost the spiritual truth out of their own religion. There can be nothing plainer than Paul's statement of the meaning of the sanctuary or temple: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Paul would not have spoken thus unless they ought to have known this from the teachings of the past. Again he said, "Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them." That is, God promises to do in us all He did in the sanctuary,—to abide in us, and also to walk in us, or direct our movements from place to place. It is surely worth our while then to study what God did in the sanctuary.

This sanctuary was not built after human ideals. No human architect drew the plans. God showed them to Moses, and said to him, "According to all that I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it." Again, "And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was showed thee in the mount." So God wants to build His ideals, not our own, into our lives. Dear heart, if you will only let Him, it is His covenant to "make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight." And why should we not let Him? Are not His ideals better than our ideals, and His thoughts higher than our thoughts, as the heavens are high above the earth?

Christ called the disciples from the fisherman's nets to make them fishers of men, to associate their names with His as second only to His in honor, and send them thus down to the latest generations of mankind. Much more than this, He called them from those nets, that He might make them sit with Him forever upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of the redeemed Israel. How little they dreamed of so much glory! The same Christ called David from the humble shepherd life, to make him the conqueror of Goliath, musician to the king, poet to write these splendid psalms to guide the devotion of all succeeding ages, and king to carry the kingdom of Israel to the height of its glory. More than this, He made the kingdom of David the type of the future eternal kingdom of Christ, so that it is said that Christ shall sit forever upon the throne of His father David. How little the boy David could imagine this fulness of glory that God's ideal held for him!

But the Lord says: "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfeth not? harken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto Me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." God is no respecter of persons. To every one who is weary of his own works, and of his own ideals, and who will yield his heart to Him, God holds out the splendid promise to build his life into a glorious temple for His own indwelling—a temple, too, built after His own divine ideals. The pattern of the sanctuary was given to Moses in the mountain, by the Lord Himself, and so Paul says that it was "the pattern of heavenly things."

Here, too, is a sweet mystery. Every beautiful form of vegetable or animal life on this earth first existed as a thought in the mind of God, before it was materialized here in the creation. So in the spiritual creation: "In Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." There will be an infinite variety of beautiful characters there, as there are of beautiful forms here, but there will be none that God did not plan for here, and so there will be none that have escaped His notice. All will be His handiwork. In each one of us, if we will only let Him, He will realize one of these divine types of heavenly beauty that He holds now in His mind and heart.

In this sanctuary, too, there are two apartments. There is the outer, or intellectual apartment, where God wants to rule and reign in our thoughts, and the inner, or holy of holies, where He wants to be supreme in the affections of the soul. In that inner ancient sanctuary was His law written on tables of stone. His covenant with us is, "I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Above that law was the mercy-seat, where God abode in the visible glory of His presence. All this is to show that He will write His law on the tables of the stoniest heart that will yield itself to Him, that He will make that heart the seat of mercy and love, and so glorify that life by His presence that others shall see His glory. And from that sanctuary, also, the living waters shall flow out to bless the world.

Did not Jesus say, "If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him"? This is Emmanuel, God with us, God abiding in the sanctuary. Whittier well says:—

"No legend old, or mythic lore No dream of bard or seers, No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years; But warm, sweet, tender, even yet, A present help is He, And faith hath still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. The healing of His seamless dress Is by our beds of pain; We touch Him in the throng and press, And we are whole again."

Nor is the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, a thing only of the past, light when they needed light, shadow when they needed shadow, guidance all the time. Even thus to-day will the Holy Spirit abide above that soul that allows itself to be built into a sanctuary for the divine indwelling.

Where could there be a more perfect or a more beautiful revelation of the everlasting Gospel? Surely, the waters of the river of life issued out of this sanctuary, even as they do from the throne in the sanctuary on high, even also as God has promised they shall flow out from every soul that is builded into a sanctuary after His ideals.

What we see in the sanctuary, we see also in the life of Jesus. "Look on this picture, and then on that." The one is a perfect counterpart of the other. The sanctuary was a perfect revelation of the everlasting Gospel. Jesus too was a perfect revelation and a perfect manifestation of the same Gospel. And, praise be to God through Jesus Christ, as we accept of Christ, we too shall become revelations and manifestations of this same saving Gospel to others. And so still the "waters, they issue out of the sanctuary."