The Rule of the Heavens # 38

The Abiding Message of the Book of Daniel (continued)

Mixture

A further feature was mixture in the things of God. Why, these prophecies pointing on to the captivity of Israel are just full of that, it is mountainous! You open Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the whole plaintive cry is about an awful mixture in the things of God. Take a chapter like Isaiah 66 "Thus saith the Lord, the heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: where is the house that ye build unto Me? and where is the place of My rest? For all those things hath Mine hand made, and all those thing have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at My word." But this is how things are: "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood; he that burneth incense, as if he bless an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations" (Isaiah 66:1-3). What mixture! No discrimination, no spiritual discernment, perception, sensitiveness about holy things, but mixed up, confused. Are we not truly able to say that in our day at the end of the age there is a terrible mixture in the things of God? Yes, indeed, in the things of God all sorts of things contrary to God have been brought in. Sometimes it is literally appalling. As you know, I travel through the country a good bit by road, and in the course of these many journeys we pass the doors of numerous places of worship - great blazing notices of movies, concerts, concert parties by the most outrageously worldly names and titles. These are are programs of these 'places of worship' (?) and as you take account of Christendom, you shudder sometimes and wonder where the testimony of the Lord is. Awful mixture; so that even honest and sincere people very often do not know their right hand from their left in spiritual matters; what is of God and what is not, and you find very often genuinely sincere Christian people find it possible to do things and go to places and engage in this and that without any conscience whatever as to what the Lord approves of; things are so mixed, the whole background of their life has become so confused that they have entered into an inheritance of mixture and they do not know: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). Mixture at the end as at the beginning, and much idolatry.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 39 - (God Requires Ultimate Conformity to Original Light)