The God Who Cannot Lie

Such a loving invitation to this Ohio camp with you all. I felt the love of the welcome among you all. I've not been to many camps.

This is only the fourth, I think. Been once to Florida, once to North Carolina, once to Missouri, and here. So thank you.

Of course, with so many of you, I feel a loss and miss our loved Jim Christian and Rita. We thought we'd have with us, but I haven't found God make many mistakes in life. So I don't suppose this is.

What he does is usually perfect. So I expect this is too. So I know Jim and Rita are praising that something, this fits somewhere in God's perfect way.

And meanwhile, it's lovely to me to be given this fellowship with my dear Norman number one here. We felt ourselves bound in heart when we were together at a prayer conference in Roanoke a year or two ago. I feel the same binding here, and I am going to profit time by time when he speaks.

So we're here for the Lord meeting us in these different ways. I rather feel that so far, anyhow, Norman is giving you the glow of the top of the ladder. My calling is to take you up rung by rung from the bottom, which is much duller process, I assure you.

But my ministry has been so much in recent years among sort of helping myself and helping folks to find out what this relationship is and when you find out how to live in it. So that's climbing the ladder. What I'm hoping to say to you, of course, is based, as it is with all of us here, on God's revealed word.

That's our foundation, isn't it? I fought that battle out for myself many years ago when I was in college in England, hearing all sorts of liberal stuff that Jesus Christ had become a living savior to me. And I decided, well, if in those days all you had was the Old Testament, if the Old Testament was good enough for him, the Old Testament and the whole Bible is good enough for me. There I stood.

I just take it in stands and learn what God has to say to me from it. I've remained there ever since. In those days we had to take a stand.

It was a worthwhile stand because there was only a kind of liberal student society. We weren't giving him anything about receiving Jesus as a savior or being born again. And so we met with some of their leaders and I asked them, do you put the blood of Jesus Christ, the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, central? Ten or eleven of them, they hesitated and they said, well, we'd perhaps admit it, but not necessarily central.

We said we couldn't relate. In a working fellowship, those who don't put the blood of Jesus Christ, the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, central. And that was the birth of what had become the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

It's paid tens of thousands over the world today. Last December they had 12,000 of those students just seeking God's mind about missionary work in Urbana. That's how you would see it maybe in the papers.

And since then my calling has been related to the spread of the gospel. And I was for some ten years in the Congo with the founder of our missionary crusade called C.G. Studd. And then the calling came when the Lord took him home for someone needed to take things on.

So it fell to my wife and myself. We learned a great secret at that time. We learned great secrets through C.G. Studd.

Two great men influenced my life. One was C.G. Studd and the other was a man named Rhys Howells. We learned great secrets through Rhys Howells of how God operates by faith.

My, we learned something then. Changed the whole aspect of our whole future in our calling. That book, a few copies I see on the bookstore there.

That's the most tremendous thing I know of a person who learned what it is to live by what we call faith. How God operates by faith. That one.

So we proceeded then and God led us on by these ways of faith. In the development of getting the gospel to the world. We were about 35 strong then, 35 years ago.

And we're now about 1,200 strong all around the world. Fields all around the world and of course tens of thousands of Jesus Christ's coming to the Indian hearts and the African hearts and the Taiwanese hearts and the Latin American hearts as well as ours. And they themselves are coming out now to be missionaries themselves to the world.

But I've always had that concern therefore, a sense of responsibility to help to maintain those for whom in any sense I'm responsible. Those who are going out, hundreds of young people going out to these mission fields. Africans and Indians and Latin Americans coming to know Jesus Christ.

That they should be maintained on the faith once delivered to the saints. On the revealed gospel through the word of God. So I spent a great deal of my life to help to maintain the development of this missionary witness crusade over the world.

On the revealed lines of the word. And I've retired from that four or five years ago and the work goes on. We had four simple principles, sacrifice, faith, holiness and fellowship.

They were the four pillars of the developing crusade. And the one little thing I must say with all our faults and failings when you come nearer to the end as I am now. To be able to come a little nearer to what Paul said, I've fought a good fight.

I've finished my course, I've kept the faith. Thrilling to me to see that great crowd of folks all going forward with the one gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ.

And Christ will be formed in the people to whom they go. And they themselves may become reproducers of Christ to other people and so forth. So that's been the main line of my life.

I've had a personal line running through that. Which may have been more individual to me. May not be for everybody.

May be a continual need, desire, to have a comprehensive understanding of what it's all about. I felt I had bits and pieces of understanding but not a coordinated understanding. That word in the psalm, from everlasting to everlasting.

Now I've got that. I felt I needed areas to fill me up. What are the whole processes of God with man? What's the meaning? So I come to ask three questions.

What is life? If I know what life is, how do I live it? If I know how to live it, why do I live it? Everybody will come up with what I want to answer. And through these years answers have been coming and seeking to fit them together. And they're not new.

Now I know in a way I hesitate here. Because many of you here at the CFO are very much more taught of God and enlightened in the Spirit than many, many people I go to. So I feel as we in England would say I'm bringing a lot of coal to Newcastle.

When I come here and telling you things you know already. However that's the kind of ministry I have. So you have to put up with it.

Sleep if you may. Wish. That's up to you.

It also means that what I'm given to say these days will be in a coordination. I never have had the gift of speaking. I hate standing up.

I like to sit down and argue. I like to stand up and preach. So I just hate this.

I do it under the dreadful compulsions of the Spirit. I've been trying to run away from the Spirit for years and can't escape. Bad life.

And so it is. So I'm meaning it. I've never had the precious coin like say I'd love it if Tommy Tyson or someone like that who can really preach.

I'm a layman. Of course we're all royal priests. But I'm not what they call ordained.

And so I'm really sharing with you what has become real to me and what has fitted in to make a whole of this to me. Parts of which of course Norman's already touched on. Or as I say he started at the roof.

I'm starting down here. There's that difference. And also I like any amount of give and take.

Perhaps we're too respectable here. I haven't noticed much respectability here. But it may be so people won't sort of feel free to call out.

But I like it. I like these meetings we get down to together. So if not here, anywhere else.

I'm just so glad to raise a question and talk it over and speak together. So the authority of the answer. So there it is.

So that means I have tonight to start at the beginning. As I said before foundations aren't the most pleasant part of a building. But you can't be able to have a satisfying walls and a satisfying roof unless you've got a satisfying foundation.

To have the wholeness. So we've got to start down there. And then proceed on.

As I say I shall get very far tonight. May not be why I say tonight seems very relevant. My whole point of course is it must be relevant.

The word of God must live again to me, for me and to our generation, for our generation. It must be alive. But as I say it'll just be a first putting in a few bricks or digging, digging a few holes to put the rest on.

Now I start with one thing which is not obvious to many. But is, I know, obvious to many of you. With the very first fact which stands out.

So I understand it right. As I say, well obvious to you, there is only one person in the universe. There is only one person in the universe.

The whole universe is one person. Universe is person. Universe is person.

There's nothing but person. Our infinite privilege is to be made persons like the person. There's nothing but person.

Everything is person. All the rest is just derivatives, passing, temporary, shadows, persons. That's why incidentally we never get our, we never get our relationships right when we use abstractions.

Instead of putting them where they belong. We use abstractions of the character of God. We talk about peace, or joy, or power, or love.

They aren't abstractions, they're persons. Peace isn't a thing, it's a person. Power isn't a thing, it's a person.

God is my peace. God's my exceeding joy. Love isn't a thing, it's a person.

God is love. Jesus Christ is made of wisdom, righteousness, satisfaction, and redemption. It's been part of the consequence of the fall that we've lived by kind of abstractions.

A thing called peace, a thing called power, a thing called wisdom. Well there are not. Life is never life and never be focused on Jesus.

Only one person in the universe. And we find out where we fit with this one person. And it's all life.

It's the person, the person, and the person. That's all. The person and the person, that's all.

All the rest is just means to an end. So I'm starting with what's obvious to you, but it had to come new to me when in the beginning God, in the beginning God. If in the beginning there's God, everything that is must be some form of God.

You can't have a God and, you only have God. I got that best into focus when I found that little statement that Jesus made, and we may say he's the final authority on his father, where he said God is spirit. I hadn't seen this for a long time.

I got out those old ideas of a God here who made things here. God doesn't make things, only in the sense of them being forms of his manifestation, that's all. This separatist idea is coming to a fall, for good reasons, but we haven't got to speak of that yet.

But when I saw that, God is spirit, I began to get a little closer. I began to get a little closer because we're spirits. The Bible says we're spirits.

The Bible says in Hebrews 12, he fathered our spirits. He created our souls and bodies, he fathered our spirits. And the spirit is the biblical term used for what we're all talking about, self.

It's that part of you which is you, but you can't define it, and you can't find it, you can only be it. Try and find yourself, you have a job. Try and define yourself, you can't.

You can just be, that's all. Because self is beyond definition. So we know what spirit is because we're selves.

I beg your pardon, we're spirits. Paul, for instance, said in additional definition, he said, What man, human, knows the things of a man, says the spirit of man which is in him. So the knower in you says, I know, that's your spirit, that's your self, I know.

I desire, I will, I think, that's the spirit. And if that's the human spirit, of course, made in his image, the same with the spirit in the universe. Now the significant additional fact which begins to fit things into me, for me, is when we see ourselves.

I as I, you as you, indefinable, just yourself. You're meaningless so far as communication is concerned, unless you have a means of communication. So if you're going to be an I which expresses self, you must have attached your inner I, an outer means of communication.

So attached to our inner selves, we have our outer selves. Our outer selves are what the Bible calls soul and body. Soul is the reasons and the emotions which express the desire and the knowledge, and the body.

And so a spirit expresses himself through a form, which is one of the evidences we always have been spirits. Because when we meet each other, we don't go away and say, I met a body, I say, I met a person. Because I haven't met a body.

I've met somebody who's communicated himself through a body. I've caught a little catch of what you are. A little sense of what you are, you've caught a little sense of what I am, as we've met.

Because it's been our inner self that's communicated with the inner self, the spirit. Now I begin to see the universe. I begin to see that this one person, the universe, is meaningless to self, incommunicable, unless he has his means by which he manifests himself.

The whole universe is his manifestation. So everything that is, is a form of this one. It isn't something he made, it's something he is.

The great new secret we're learning, which of course is here these days, of course, is that we've functioned as humans when we see through, not see at. We've got into a habit through the fall, again, for certain reasons, of seeing at things. Truth is to see through things.

Actually we do it with each other. I don't see at you, I don't see a body, I see through you and catch a little who you are. See, my dear? So when we've come into a living recognition, understanding of this living person, which we only do with it because he came in the form of Jesus Christ and made the way for us, we begin to move into this new recognition of him, which is everything is he, everything is he.

It's a form he takes. I don't take the form of the person any more than I must take your funny outer self, your better inner self, I hope. So I begin there.

Maybe, because I forgot to say it earlier, I'd better say it now. I recognise already that you have some difficulty in understanding proper English. I'm sorry about that.

Whose fault is that? So, it's usually said people understand 10% first time, 20% second time and so on. So about the third time I speak, you'll get about half. So until then, you must make up best you can.

Well, um, hmm? Thank you. Can you go over again the difference between spirit and inner self? Yeah, that's a by one for the moment. It can become more popular later on.

But spirit is the inner self. As I say, I can give you a Bible proof of it. The inner self consists of knowledge and desire.

I know I want. That's what a self is. Producing I will.

Now, I can't manifest my knowledge unless I have a means of manifestation. That's my reasons. That's my soul.

My reasons express my knowledge. I can't manifest my desires unless I have an emotional channel. My soul is my emotional channel.

So on the soul level, my emotions which manifest my, express my desires, my reasons express my knowledge. And I can't get on that now. It comes later on when we talk more about Christian living.

One of the big snares of Christian living is to mistake your soul reactions for your spirit reactions. Because when you mistake your utter disturbances, the emotions get disturbed. Cold or hard or disturbed or difficult or worried or fearful.

You mistake that for your spirit. Then you get in a bondage. Or if you mistake your reasons, which vary.

So you may doubt one day and believe another day. For your inner self, faith is a fixed act. When you make a fixed act, you don't change the inner self.

But the reason may change. Then you may get out of the condemnation if you condemn yourself because you doubt your reason. You haven't doubted your central faith.

Doubt is very healthy. Unbelief is sin. Unbelief is I won't believe.

No good believer can be a good believer unless you're a good doubter. All life is doubt. Faith is built.

As one of the great writers said, you walk on 60,000 tethers of water, you can prove nothing. You can't prove God. You can't prove a thing.

Sorry, but you can't. So faith is built on doubt. We'll leave that alone perhaps now.

But that comes later on too. So doubt isn't wrong. Unbelief is wrong because unbelief is refusing to believe.

That's not a matter. Well, that was my other way. Oh, helpful.

Good. Now, I'm seeing the start of the bottom. Again, I'm saying this revelation given of the Bible.

The one person, in the beginning, one person. If there's only one person, everything must be summed for his manifestation. Or there's more than one.

And there isn't more than one. Only one. Unless I catch with his spirit, I fall into the error of interpreting, of putting on God the kind of separated outlook we humans have.

I'm here, you're there. For which there are good reasons we do need to discuss later on. But unless I understand the fact of the spirit, therefore I'll have a person up there called God and a person like you down here.

But if I've understood God's spirit, a spirit must have his means, unless he has his means of manifesting himself. A whole universe is his manifestation. His means of manifestation.

Then I begin to have my eyes open. Every single thing is a form of him. And therefore the whole universe is worship.

When you have your eyes open, of course, you've got to know him first. You can't know him as a person except through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you know him as a person. Then you can see he's a person through everything.

In everything. That includes evil, includes devil, includes everything. You've got to fit them all in there.

The other great fact, which is obvious enough to us here, and yet is fundamental, if the Bible says, and if we want, while I think of it, a final, I've not given you much biblical evidence, but a final proof of what I'm saying. The last word said in the Bible about the finality of all things is in 1 Corinthians 15, when the last enemy has been destroyed, which is death. It then says, then shall the Son render up the kingdom to the Father, that God may be all in all.

If God's all in all, what's left? Whatever was there? All in all means he who is all in all his forms of manifestation. Because he must have his forms of manifestation, all this in. So the all, he the all, manifestation of all his forms of manifestation, that's all the universe is, one person.

Manifestation of a multitudinous form, that's all there is. That's from everlasting to everlasting. The other question I said, which to me was necessary to have an answer to, was if there's only one person in the universe, what kind of person is he? If the whole universe is one person, if there's a manifestation of one person, what kind of person is he? I'd better find out.

That answer isn't hard to find, is it? That begains the glory of this revealed word. If Jesus said God is spirit, John said God is love. We know that.

He is love and has love. If he's love, he's nothing else. You've got to fit a few things in there too.

If he's love, he's nothing else. He is love. Love, of course, is total form.

I keep apologizing for saying such obvious things to you. It's total form. Love in its total form means existence for others.

If you're love, you mean you exist when other people have their needs met. Your fulfillment is when other people have their fulfillment. Love, if you're love, you exist when others may have their needs met.

You have your needs met when they have their needs met. That's all God is. He exists for others.

And because he's total love, he's unconditional love. Now this is important because this is what we are when we're back in God. Unconditional love.

Unconditional love means you don't care what happens to you as long as the other person has their needs met. Jesus, for instance, on earth, who was God in person on earth, he used the illustrations of himself. He calls it bread.

What life of its own has bread? Not much. It lives in you. It finds its fulfillment in being ground up and eaten by you.

Its fulfillment is to be the means of you living. That's bread. Jesus said, I'm bread.

The Bible says you're bread. The Bible in 1 Corinthians 10 says we are bread. We are one bread, one body.

Jesus said it's water. What's water? Water finds its existence, its fulfillment in keeping things alive, people alive. Not in floating about in rivers, but in keeping people alive.

It exists for. He says a shepherd. What does a shepherd do? Lay down his life for a sheep.

He says a door. What's a door for? A door not to go through itself, but to be a means by which the sheep can go through. See, every illustration Jesus used for himself is an illustration where his existence was and other people had their existence fulfilled.

That's all unconditional love. And of course, the revelation of Calvary is the revelation in time of unconditional love. That if to redeem us from sin, its consequences in hell, the only way is God must redeem himself by giving himself in the person of his Son.

If to redeem us, God must die, God dies. That's unconditional love. If to redeem us from eternal death, God must die in the person of his Son, and he does so, that's unconditional love.

But then what happens to him? So our needs are met. The contrast to unconditional love is given in the Bible, as so often in some of the incidental remarks in Romans 5. There's suddenly a contrast between human love and God's love. And it makes a rather choice in the King James, although I like the King James version because it's most accurate.

The others twist the translation around and make it nice for you. The King James gives the answer where he is. So I prefer that one.

But sometimes the originals are a little difficult to understand. And this one says, for instance, about human love. Scarcely for a righteous man will one die.

Well, it doesn't mean much to us. What it means is, in this sense, a righteous man is meant to be a self-sufficient man. If a person runs his own show, why should I die for him? If he runs his own show, let him run his own show.

I'm not interested in dying for him. Then there's this, hey, if it's for a good man, some would dare to die. Well, I might die for my children.

I might, in days when we had decent loyalty, die for our country. And we might die for a few things that we approve of. The difference is this.

Because human love, fallen love, has selfishness as basis. Self-interest governs its love. It'll love so far as selfishness wishes it to go.

Not farther. I love those I like. I won't love those I don't like too well.

I'll give so as long as I remain, keep pretty for myself. And that's where the world could never get right. The world could never get right where selfishness is the basis, whether it's a government, or a business, or a home, or a person.

Because at bottom, it's self-interest. It's another love. I'll give you a certain amount.

Well, maybe she's number one's well provided for. I like those worth liking. I won't stand those I can't.

God is unconditioned love. Doesn't matter what happens to God so long as his people, especially his enemies, get from these men. That's God.

And that's we in this new relationship. Now, as we take a step further, comes a very important step. How can a person, I say again, never get away from this, the heart of the universe is a living person.

Every other religion drops that. You see, philosophies and religions don't like a person, but you have to bow to a person. If he's greater than you, you've got to acknowledge he's greater than you.

You don't like to do that. So philosophies and religions, other religions, like to build... Oh, I agree with that. That's a good religion.

I've got some ideas, I've got a mind, I've got so and so. You just build yourself up. That's very nice, very nice, but it's hell.

It's death. That's why the gospel's radical, because it centers around a person. If it's a person, you'd better bow down and get your relations to that person.

That's not a matter. And the heart of the universe is a living person. Now, the question we ask you is this.

If he's the living person, how can a person express himself as a person? Except by persons. You see, a universal must have a particular to manifest by. A universal is just a universal.

You can't know it. It's everything. God is all.

You can't know everything. It's just all. You can only know everything by a particular, by something.

Oh, that's a something out of the everything. There you know, oh, that's a something out of that everything. That's a particular out of the universe.

You can only know a universe or something, or all things, by something. So if God, if God as a person is to be known, he must have persons who are like him and manifest him, are particulars of the universal one, forms of the universal one. The first God ever created, no, begat.

Was his own son in the deity. He was the first begotten, begotten of the father. The son is the exact image of the father.

So we can know who the father is through the son. That's how you only know the father through the son. The son manifests just what the father is.

He's expressed the image of his person, the son. Now, the purposes of sons are to take of the father, are to develop the father's property. That's what sons are for.

To run dad's business. And the purpose of having a son is to be the person who can take of the father's resources, and produce all sorts of things out of them. And manage what he produces.

That's the son. That's why all creation comes through the son. Take any simple illustration.

A universal wood come tables. All the trees in the world come tables. Between the universal wood and the table comes the carpenter.

That's the son. Wood doesn't just become a table. Between the wood you must have the person who takes from the wood and makes the table.

So the father has to have the son who can take from the resources of the father and let him into being. And that's what faith is. We'll talk about that later on.

All faith is is letting God through. God's an infinite pressure of love. We've got so far from God, we think he's asleep and we're awake.

We spend our time trying to wake him up. The real truth is we're asleep and he's awake. He's trying to wake us up.

To do a little believing, letting him through. That's all faith is, letting God through. Simple as ABC.

If everything isn't simple, you're off-beam. All truth is simple. And faith is simple to me.

It's letting God through. And so Jesus says, let there be light, there was light. Let there be animals, let there be so and so.

That's all faith is. Let him through. But he must have the agent, the specific agent, who'll bring him through in detail.

Who'll take out the universal and make the trees and make the animals and make the light and then make millions and millions of other things. We're to be people to whom things come into being. We're to be the faith channels to whom different forms and manifestations of God come into being in our individual lives.

That's what we're here for. That's the sun. And from the sun goes the spirit, goes out from all of us, goes out what we are, goes out.

Spirits. Went out into creation. And we're created sons.

We're created sons. We're to be recreated as sons, we're created sons. Indeed, in order to bring us up back into the sonship for which we were created and which we lost, the very sun himself became one of us.

Until he comes up again as the firstborn of my male brethren. The son of God is my brother. He's my savior, he's my brother.

He's the firstborn of my male brethren. And he brings up the sons, brings many sons up to glory into his own level. You know what that means? The Bible says that Jesus is heir of all things.

That's in Hebrews 1. He's heir of all things. Pretty big inheritance. And Romans 8 says we're co-heirs with Christ.

If you suffer with him, be glorified. Co-heirs with Christ. Therefore, we are inheritors of the universe.

An heir exists to manage his inheritance, doesn't he? If we're going to be inheritors of the universe, we better learn how to become managers. First to manage ourselves, then how to handle that which we're supposed to manage. That's our human training.

That's our human training. We lift up to the highest place in the universe to manage the universe. Co-inheritors with Jesus Christ of the whole universe.

And an heir manages his property. If you're to manage the universe, you've got to learn the two lessons about management. You don't appoint a person into business management until he's tied down in the basement hammering nails in something.

Takes him a few years to come up before he's appointed manager. He's got a few good old lessons to learn if he's going to be an efficient manager. So have you, and so have I. Our destiny is to be managers of the universe.

Wow. You've surely got a few things to learn, and you've got to suffer in learning them too. God bless you, the biggest blessing you're going to have is plenty of suffering.

I hope we'll have plenty. Suffering is fun when you've got it in focus. Suffering is fun when you've got it in focus.

It's hell where it's out of focus. It's heaven where it's in focus. Well, so this is the destiny.

And that destiny means, of course, in character, universal love. Exactly the same quality of love. Exactly the same quality of love.

So, of course, it's a tricky business. You inherit your universe to give your life for it. What you manage, you give yourself for it.

It won't be for you, it'll be you for it. That's the change that takes place. That's why Jesus said that if you're to be a disciple, you've got to hate your father and your mother, and your wife and your children and your houses and your lands, of which some of you have plenty and some have none, and your own life also.

Jesus said you can't be a disciple unless you hate. And look, 14, if any man hate not his father, his mother, his wife, his children, in other places, put his houses, his land, his own life also, he can't be a disciple. Pretty tough, Jesus is pretty tough, because he sees right through things.

We see halfway, so it looks tough. The toughness is dullness, really. We just don't see what he does, that's all.

And we come into gear where we can see as he does. Why does he say that? Because you own nothing. All you own is yourself and your grab spirit, which is part of you.

So it isn't your father, it's my father, all we have is ourselves. We've got to learn this lesson, we're inner people, not outer people. This is one of the big lessons we've got to learn, we're not outer people, we're inner people.

All you have is yourself. All you have is your reactions to things, that's all you have. Now, in my own fallen condition, I'm my father, my is the point, my father, my wife, my mother, my children, my houses, my lands, my life.

The father and the house are merely things you like to hold, it's you who like to hold them as a point, it's not the father and the mother, it's you who hold them as a point. Now that's what you hate. When the false self is revealed to you, you hate that.

You say this egocentric self is the wrong form of self. Now, when you get Jesus comes into you, what happens? You become another self, as he expresses himself through you. And he is for others, and you become for others.

Now, you are for your father, and you are for your mother. Not your mother, for you. You are for your wife, you are for children, you turn around.

Now, instead of everything being for you, you are for everything. Then you get the whole world back. Because you're for it, that's the change.

So the hate is, you hate that self-acquisitive spirit, which is ours by default. I'll talk about that later on. Which means, my, my, my, my, my.

That's what you learn to hate. And then when you come to Jesus, because that's the wrong way, you get the right way through him. And he begins his life in you.

He begins to express for you another quality of love. His love is not for himself, but for others. Now, back to get your mother, father, wife, children, and so on, because you're for them.

And your houses and lands are to be used for the blessing of the world. And your life is to be laid down for the world. So you get everything back.

So, you see, a person who's in God has everything. Because you have nothing, yet you possess all things. Because you're for them, not for them.

Everything, you can't stop people loving. And if life is, you just love, you can't stop people loving. You own everything when you love them.

That's the difference. Now, this is the new what we are in the new relationship. Not what we are, I'm going to talk about the process.

What we are in the new relationship. That's what we are. Other lovers.

Total other lovers. Let me discuss it. Total other lovers.

So the basis of our life is others have their needs met, no matter what happens to us. That's it. That's what God is.

Then the universe is in harmony. Or the universe consists of people. The universe consists of people who will be brought up to Christ if they are redeemed people.

Not all are, but those who are redeemed are brought up to Christ. And there are a vast family of other lovers. Loving one another.

Then the universe is in harmony. Everything else will fit in. Of course it did.

But love has to use a whip of times. Sure it does. And he got to the point where he had to give him a whip.

He had to tell him the truth about himself. Thank God he tells me the truth about himself. I should never have got saved.

Thank God he uses a whip. That's why God, Jesus is so clever. For instance, Jesus said, I'll speak to them in parables.

Then he went to the disciples and explained those parables. For instance, the parable of the sower. He said, I don't tell them the inner meaning.

Because it's good that their hearts be hardened. Let them be hardened. Let them get dull.

That's a tough thing to say, let people get dull. Because you've got to get dull before you need light. Jesus is pretty clever.

He didn't give them a sort of philosophy. Oh, I've got a philosophy. He gave them a little outer picture to tickle, like the parables.

Not to tickle their interest. He didn't give them the inner meaning. They couldn't take it.

He wanted to tickle them and say, there's something here. That's all. He said, they've got to get dull first and find they haven't got it before they have got it.

This is the great secret of life. You've got to find what you haven't got before you're ready to get what you have got, or ought to have. You've got to go down to go up.

And Jesus knew all about it. He said, let them go down. Get to the bottom.

When you hit your head hard enough at the bottom, you'll be ready to bounce up top if there is a top. Thank God we've come up that way, through Jesus Christ. That's the way up.

Yes, he knew all about it. He'd have saved everyone if he could. Oh, my.

Of course he would. Well... So I'm saying now... The next stage. God, through the Son, creates persons.

Us. Creates persons. Because only a person can only be manifested to a person.

That's why we're made exactly like him. That's why Norm was right. You never downgrade a human personality.

If a human personality has been made by God, it was stolen by the devil. He's just a burglar. He didn't steal, he didn't make a mess of it.

But there's purposes in that, I shall tell you. But he didn't make it. God made it.

So is it supposed to be the means of expressing him? Yes. We'll see why. Um... Sure it is.

Um... You now get... People take me on to the next part, which is good. Um... The next thing is this. What is to be a person? Now, here you've got the whole history of humanity.

The agonies and the glories. Agony and ecstasy is a good term for humanity. The agonies and the glories.

We only get to ecstasy through agonies? You only get to glory through suffering? You've got to go from bottom to top. When he ascended, what is he first? He's the first descended person in the lower parts of the earth. And the same that descended, he also ascended far above all things.

And we ascend far above all things because we touch bottom. If you haven't touched bottom, may you get there quick. Because you know we won't get a touch, we won't get top until we first touch bottom.

We won't even know you need to. So only the bottom knows the top. That's all.

That's great. Thank you. Now, so we've got the whole... You see, it's a tremendous thing to be a person.

Tremendous. Tremendous privilege. Tremendous responsibility.

Not burdensome responsibility. Fun responsibilities. Because when in God, your responsibilities, you just... You're carried through.

So your responsibilities are easy to you. Because they're God motivating you through, carrying through. So they aren't burdensome responsibilities, they are responsibilities.

You're a responsible person. But responsibilities are, oh, it's in like that. It's fun.

When it's on the right. In tune. Obedience is fun in the right tune.

Obedience is an awful word. I hate obedience. I hate to obey anybody.

Horrible word. Because we've got the idea, oh, it's effort. No.

Obedience, when it's in the spirit, you're made to obey. It's fun. It's fun.

One of the best words used about the Christian walk is, he causes you to walk in his ways. That's as it is equal. I'll pour my spirit upon you as equals.

I will cause you to walk. That's lovely. Don't, oh, get walking.

No. You've got to walk. That's the way you make me.

That's the best way to talk to him. I haven't seen you deeply enough to criticise you far enough yet. I'll avoid that one.

Well, tremendous things to learn. Now you watch. What is a person? A person is a person who's conscious of alternatives.

He's conscious. He's conscious of alternatives, varieties. Nothing less than a person is there.

That's just because you're conscious of variety. You're conscious of alternatives. Nothing else is.

And therefore nothing lower than the human is conscious of variety. Now you take the highest creation. We say lower than the human.

We take the creation of the bee or the ant. High force society. Never alternate societies.

We don't have Paris revolutions. There isn't that in which causes want things differently. They've got certain instincts and there they are.

Now a human person is a tremendous person. This is the purpose of it. The whole infinite development of the universe comes through our consciousness of variety.

Our application and investigation and production and involvement in things. It makes this wonderful world. This world always thrills me.

Because everything is a form of the development of humans. It comes out of our continual consciousness of variety. There's this or that.

There's this, everything. This or that. So we experiment and investigate.

What's the change? That's what makes development. That's why God couldn't express himself in forms of manifested development in the universe unless he had people. So he has persons.

Now that's the glory of being a human. That we can encompass everything and think it through and talk it over and examine it and change it and so on. That's the glory of humans.

So we get our wonderful civilization. I've never been downgraded to civilization. People say, sorry the automobiles, sorry they're light.

Well I prefer that to trapping on my feet anyhow. And having oil lamps or something. They're so silly.

So appreciating the better things we get, we grumble at them. However, that's a development. Now the seriousness is this.

Get down to it. What is human freedom? Human freedom is the necessity of choosing between alternatives. The necessity of choosing between alternatives.

Human freedom is not being anything. It's not being anything. It's out of alternatives in life you have to choose.

And that's your freedom. The significance of choice is what you choose chooses you and takes you over. Every free choice makes you a slave.

So everyone is a slave to what you chose. This is the meaning of life. You have to.

Now you came here today. You had to choose. Shall I stay at home? Shall I not stay at home? You had to choose.

Freedom is choice. The moment you choose, you involve yourself in something. That's faith.

Some of these biblical terms need changing. Faith is a universal human... It's our one faculty. It's our one capacity.

Our one fundamental capacity is the ability of relating our inner self to something we want or choose or relate to or can take. Something available. That's all we have.

Because the thing you take, takes you. And you become enslaved to the thing you take. But because you freely chose it, you enjoy it.

So because the choice is freedom, you enjoy what takes you over. Everybody is a slave to what they take. You're supposed to enjoy it because you took it freely.

Take it here. You chose coming here. You had to choose.

Now you had to choose. That's your freedom. Now you're no longer free.

You've got to behave yourself for five days. You see? You're in an experience. You've been taken over by an experience.

We hope you're enjoying it. You're taken over by it. Now because you freely chose it, you're supposed to enjoy it.

You see? Because you freely chose, therefore you enjoy being enslaved. Enslaved. Everybody is taken over by what they choose.

So all is life. Everything you... I mean... You choose profession. That's why you're free in a profession.

Now you choose profession in life. Now of course that's a human thing. You may be sorry you did choose it.

But we hope in the main not, you choose profession. Well... Or maybe marriage, whatever it is. Now you involve yourself in it.

Now if it's a profession like a medicine or something, it may take time. You appear to be taking something. Oh no, so he's taking you.

And why is a doctor a doctor? Because medicine's taking him over. And he knows his stuff. And he knows how to... All he has to do is apply his knowledge now.

He hasn't got to sweat it. Of course he has to have refresher courses. But I mean generally speaking, he knows how to practice his medicine.

His medicine's taking him over. And the hope is because he's a doctor, or marriage, whatever it is. And you get taken over by that which takes you, which you took.

And you become expert at it. I don't know about expert at managing the kids. That's impossible.

But you know what I mean. You become at home in it. And it's taking you over.

And your freedom is that you're happy to be enveloped, immersed in the thing which you've chosen, which chooses you. That's faith. So faith is never to choose.

It's to be chosen. Yes? No, that's the whole point. You can make a false choice and find it's wrong.

Thank God. You can make a false choice and find it's wrong. And that's the best thing you can do.

And then drugs will say, we'd better get another change. Praise God, so many of them today. Exactly.

So there are varieties and choices in this mixed up world. That's why I said, I hope we're supposed to be happy in our choices. But you added a good point.

Sometimes we're mighty unhappy, thank God. Thank God. Thank God for miseries, I say.

That's my gospel. Well, I'm stopping in a moment. Now, we get on to Mary's issue here.

You can't be a person without consciousness of variety. Between the alternatives that come up, you have to choose, that's your freedom. The choice you take, choice you make, takes you over.

You become it. That's why it so startled me to find this about God. I saw something about two years ago when I saw this.

It's about the last thing I'd be able to say this evening. About, you know, the various scriptures which say God's almighty. Well, sure he's almighty.

He's a product of God. He's almighty, isn't he? Well, it says so. Now, to trick us up, the Bible contradicts itself.

Now, on two occasions, the Bible specifically says that something God cannot do. How can you say he's almighty and can do everything? Well, you say that's something God can't do, that things don't meet. That statement is made twice over in Titus chapter 1, verse 2 and in Hebrews 6, about halfway down.

Because what it says is God cannot lie. Cannot. Cannot.

Cannot. Not didn't or hadn't or shouldn't. Why can't he lie? Because there's a profound choice here.

This hangs on the whole business. The ultimate choice a person, God or man, has to make is this. A person's a person.

As a person, you must be yourself. You must love yourself. That's why it is.

You must appreciate yourself. You must satisfy yourself. A self must be satisfied.

Must love itself. Must be itself. Now, get right down to the bottom of it.

There are two ways of self-fulfillment. One is, I might as well get everything for myself. I don't care what happens to you.

I'll be a self-getter, self-grabber, self-magnifier, self-gratifier, get the lot. To hell with you. I'll be a self-getter.

I'll satisfy myself with self-getting. The other is, I'll satisfy myself with being for other people. I'll satisfy myself.

If I can be the means by which other people have their needs met, I'm satisfied. A self-giver. Those are the two ways.

Now, what is good and evil? It says God faces good and evil because in the story of the Garden of Eden it said they become like one of us who know good and evil. You see, what is evil? Evil is only the opposite use of the self. That's all.

Again, that word needs changing. It's the opposite use of the self. Now, get down to it again.

I perhaps shouldn't put the word evil in there. I should rather say God faces necessary alternatives. A person can be a self-getter, self-seeker, self-gratifier, having their needs met, then it satisfies him.

Now, where it says God cannot lie, lies are more self-getting. If I lie, I lie to get my ends at your expense. I'm a self-getter.

God cannot be that. Isn't that a tremendous fact? So there's a great basis to the universe. God is fixed.

Your choice fixes you. You're taken over by your choice. God's taken over by love.

He cannot be anything but love. Every single thing he does and the ultimate sin we commit is to question the character of God. And the moment you question the character of God, something goes, a light goes out inside you.

That's why Jesus said, there's one sin you don't believe on me. Therefore, I'm saying, no matter how appalling things appear to be on this outer thing, tragedies and so on, the moment I say, what kind of God could it do that? You're in darkness. The moment you question the character of God there's a God who is nothing but love.

If you say, I can't the least relate God to that thing but somehow it fits in. I can't relate it but somehow it fits in. All right, God, inside the bell rings.

It's all right. It's peace. You're in tune at the base.

But I'm saying it's a tremendous thing to know that we have a God who as a person faces his alternatives and is fixed in the alternative of being the one who is self-giving love. Evil, therefore, is the necessary potential in freedom. That's all.

Evil, what we call evil, is merely the other kind of person. If the universe is fixed, and we're taking it to be so, fixed in one person and that person is nothing but love, everything which is self-love is the opposite, is misuse of the self. It's a self using itself for itself.

That's evil. That's self-giving evil. That's how it comes out of freedom.

But he's responsible for making persons and a person cannot be a person. Evil merely is the opposite choice. If the universe is based on a person who is fixed as love, then any person who is made makes the opposite choice.

He's again the law of the universe. The machine won't work. And this is what we call evil.

And all the chaos comes out of that. But because God is responsible in the sense he makes persons, of course, that's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's him coming and taking us back.

So he himself made the provision involving himself in our sufferings with him to bring us back the right way. That's God. That's God.

Pardon? Oh, suffering's a blessing. Suffering's a blessing. Suffering puts some sense into you.

Get out of it. Oh, yes. Nothing is a punishment.

It's only what had to come out of maybe your way of life or something. It's just a blessing for you, it's all. It's a blessing in reverse, it's all.

We need to talk a little more about that. I can see that. Well, we'll stop at that.

Now, there's going to be very... We'll pick it up tomorrow morning. There are very good reasons why there's a person who took the opposite course. That's the one we need to talk about.

That's why we call the devil. The good reason is this. You never know a right thing until you know a wrong thing.

And humanity has been through a very healthy period of its fallen history. Because when you've thoroughly known the wrong thing, you had a big enough dose of it, and there is a right thing, you'll quickly make the change. You won't go back again.

And we're healthy people because we've been from bottom to top. We're not fooled by the fall. No.

But we must leave that. And take it up if there's anybody here tomorrow morning.