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"Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the
Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged. And ye
came near unto Me every one of you and said: We will send men before us, and they
shall search out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into
what cities we shall come . . . . . Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God,
Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in; in fire
by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day" (Deut. 1: 21-23).
A reference to Ezek. 20: 5, 6 shows that at the time when the Lord delivered Israel
out of the land of Egypt, He had already "espied for them" a glorious land. Israel's
request for the spies therefore was sheer unbelief, it was a despising of the Lord, a
slighting of His loving care and provision. It has its analogy to-day.
Quite a number of those who believe the teaching of the epistles of the mystery have
expressed themselves as unsatisfied by the scantiness of the revelation there contained as
to (1) just what constitutes the glory of our inheritance, and (2) just exactly by what
way the Church shall enter into its hope. There is a looking back to the hope of an earlier
dispensation, a sort of envy at the lavish description of the millennial kingdom, or the
wonders of the heavenly city, and one senses something petulant in the request, "Where
is our hope described in the epistles of the Mystery? Why are there no details given to us
as to others?" There is also a querulous complain that whereas I Thess. 4: or I Cor. 15:
are most explicit, one cannot be sure from the prison epistles whether the Church of the
One Body will be caught up by rapture, will die off and pass through death and
resurrection, whether all will go together, whether there will be angelic accompaniments,
etc., etc. All this, which superficially sounds like earnest enquiry, is but the old unbelief
of Israel re-expressed. They wanted to know more than God had revealed about "the
land" which was their inheritance, and they wanted to know more than God had revealed
as to "what way we must go up". Both these questions were already answered by faith.
God had espied the land and had called it good. God went before them with fire and with
cloud "to shew them by what way they should go". Faith needs nothing more.
If our inheritance at the right hand of God, "far above all", is so transcendentally
above all human thought and experience, what words of human language could describe
the riches of the glory of that inheritance of the saints? If in the resurrection and
translation we need such adjusting to the new sphere of blessing "in the heavenly places",
how should we be the better if God described the process. It is enough for us that as we
receive a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of "Him", the ascended Lord,
and of "it", the mystery, we shall receive as full an answer to our quest for knowledge as
God sees fit to give. If we are assured that: "when Christ Who is our life shall be
manifested, we also shall be manifested with Him in glory", what does it matter that "the
way we must go up" is left unexplained? We shall arrive--praise God. We do not know
how--well, that is His responsibility, not ours.
Our refusal to be turned back to I Thess. 4: as the hope of the Church is to be
understood in the light of Numb. 13: and 14: We seek the spirit that enabled Caleb and
Joshua to believe God, and leave the consequences. As we pointed out when dealing
with Col. 1: 23 (see Volume XXI), the great evidence of progress in the truth, or of the
beginning of decline, are closely associated with holding steadfast to "the hope". Caleb