The Rule of the Heavens # 54

The Universal Range of the Eternal Purpose

We resume our consideration of this subject by asking - What is the thing that is really upon our hearts as the burden of the Lord at this time? What is the object which we have so strongly in view?

A Primary Object of Present Divine Need

My answer is, without any hesitation or equivocation, that I believe and feel most strongly and intensely that what the Lord is after, what the Lord needs, what the Lord is seeking to possess Himself of, is a vessel in such relationship to Himself and His throne in the heavens, as will bring that throne and that heavenly dominion and authority very mightily to bear upon the whole spiritual system of His enemy, upon the principalities and upon the powers and upon the world rulers of this darkness and upon the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies, as they have control of this cosmos. What the Lord is seeking after is a vessel that is in such a relationship to Himself that it will register the throne of God upon those forces and upon the cosmos.

Now that is what is weighing with me tremendously, and that is the burden of these days. That has been the thing central to the six gatherings which we have already had as we have been dwelling largely in the Book of Daniel, and what we are going on with today is not a departure from that, it is only a following up, a continuation, for we said earlier in the conference that the Book of Daniel and the Letter to the Ephesians have very much in common. The principles are the same. And so we are perhaps more in Ephesians now than in Daniel so far as the actual Scripture is concerned, we are still dealing with the same matter. In the Book of Daniel we saw four men, and the Lord making One, in the midst of them, forming a vessel, an instrument for the registration of the rule of the heavens upon the spiritual forces operating back of world systems, and we saw the breaking in of the government of the heavens again and again as those men operated in fellowship with the throne of God. And that is where we are and everything is gathered up into that, and I do trust that with all that may be said which may be more or less helpful, illuminating or interesting or informative, we shall see that the center and heart of the whole thing is just that God shall have in us individually and collectively, wherever He may place us on this earth, vessels, an instrument in such a spiritual union with Himself in the heavenlies that the heavenly thing may be wrought out.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 55)