The doctrine of the new birth is not a new revelation, it belongs to the O.T., and the

Lord implied as much when He said to Nicodemus: "If I have told you earthly things,

and ye believed not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?" (John 3: 12).

Any reference to "heavenly" things should quicken the reader's interest, for such things

may belong to his own calling and sphere. It will not be out of place, therefore, if we

take a slightly wider survey than the reference of John might at first seem to warrant.

But, first, may we speak a word about the use of the concordance?

The reader knows, but he may need reminding, that a concordance is a human

invention, and should therefore be treated as such. A concordance deals simply with the

occurrences of words, and it is entirely outside its scope to deal with the meaning of

words. Further, while it is a good servant, it is a bad master. Let us show what we

means.  We turn to any concordance and open at the word ge.  We note that the

occurrences occupy several columns of print. We are assured that we have before us

every occurrence of the word ge. So far, so good. But what do we "know" about this

word? We notice that the first occurrence in the N.T. reads, "The ge of Judah"

(Matt. 2: 6), and we might (if we did not already know better) think that ge was

something particularly connected with the Jews. The next reference is more extended but

not fundamentally different, "The ge of Israel" (Matt. 2: 20). We cannot here go through

the 241 occurrences, so we omit a few lines and at Matt. 5: 5 read, "Till heaven and ge

pass" while at Matt. 13: 5 we read, of seed, that it "had no deepness of ge". We pass

over the Gospels and our eye lights on I Cor. 15: 47, "The first man is of the ge". We

glance at Hebrews, where we find that "In the beginning the Lord laid the foundations of

the ge" (Heb. 1: 10), and that this "ge drinketh in the rain" (Heb. 6: 7), that if the Lord

"were on ge He would not be a Priest" (Heb. 8: 4), and that Israel were led "out of the

ge of Egypt" (Heb. 8: 9).

The reader, however, is not misled by this assortment. He knows that the one word ge

denotes the earth as distinct from heaven, the ground into which seed may be sown, or

any particular land, whether of Judah, Egypt or elsewhere.  But the reader should

remember that he does not get this from the concordance. A spirit being, wishing to

convince other spirit beings, who had no personal acquaintance with the earth, that these

various meanings of the one word were fantastic and untrue, might impress some of his

hearers by a formidable concordance of passages. To us it would prove nothing, but to

them it might prove an end of all argument.

Now let us reverse the point of view and ask, What do we know of "heaven" by

acquaintance with it? Is it all one undivided space? Is there a top and bottom to it? Can

it be measured by miles? Is it three-dimensional space? Is there anything outside or over

heaven? If so, can anything that is over the heavens also be spoken of as in heaven?

How can we answer? If at this point another, equally ignorant by acquaintance with the

heavens, should produce a concordance of occurrences of the word "heaven", the long

list of words might impress the fearful, but it would no more "prove" anything about

"heaven" than the list of the occurrences of the word ge proved that "land" and "ground"

and "earth" were all one and the same in meaning and intention.