This conference time has been focused upon the present significance of a little clause in the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews: “Ye are come.”
Various aspects of that statement have been considered, and without any review, we are proceeding to another this morning. I want you to have before you one or two other fragments of Scripture.
Firstly, in the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 34:
For Jehovah hath a day of vengeance,
A year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
And in Isaiah, chapter 31:
For thus saith Jehovah unto me,
Like as the lion and the young lion growling over his prey,
Though a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him,
Will not be dismayed at their voice,
Nor abase himself for the noise of them:
So will Jehovah of hosts come down to fight upon mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof.
In the prophecy of Jeremiah, chapter 25:
A noise shall come even to the end of the earth;
For Jehovah hath a controversy with the nations;
He will enter into judgment with all flesh:
As for the wicked, He will give them to the sword, saith Jehovah.
And in Psalm 2:
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against Jehovah, and against His anointed, saying,
Let us break their bonds asunder,
And cast away their cords from us.He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
Then will He speak unto them in His wrath,
And vex them in His sore displeasure:
Yet I have set My King
Upon My holy hill of Zion.I will tell of the decree:
Jehovah said unto me, Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten thee.
Ask of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;
Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
This morning we are to be occupied with the meaning of that little phrase: “the controversy of Zion.”
We know that, in the Word, Zion and Jerusalem are often synonymous terms. If there is a difference, Zion names the intensity and value of all that Jerusalem is supposed to represent and contain.
We recognize that difference and keep it in mind, because when we come to Zion, we are coming to the high peak—the ultimate significance—of all that Jerusalem stands for.
Speaking of Jerusalem, we know from history and from the Scriptures that Jerusalem has always been, and still remains, the storm centre of the ages.
There is a little phrase in the Old Testament used of Jerusalem: that it would be “a cup of reeling” to all nations—a cup of reeling.
Behind that phrase is a picture. It is really of intoxication. Those who come to that cup and drink of it are thrown into confusion.
Jerusalem is said, in that picturesque phrase, to be like that to the nations. Nations come against Jerusalem, and when they have come to the very threshold, they meet something that throws them into confusion, utterly upsetting all their calculations.
A cup of reeling to the nations—that is what Jerusalem has been, and still is, literally. They do not find that they can just play with Jerusalem, cope with Jerusalem, or do as they like with Jerusalem. They meet something that is more than Jerusalem.
Not only to the nations, but Jerusalem has always been a decisive point to Israel. It has been a kind of sign, a barometer, an index representing the spiritual condition of the people.
If Jerusalem was in the ascendancy, it was because the spiritual life of the people was in the ascendancy. If Jerusalem was otherwise than in the ascendancy, that represented the spiritual life of Israel in its condition.
Jerusalem was always indicating spiritual life, and Jerusalem’s security and peace were always bound up with the spiritual condition of God’s people.
So it was always a controversial matter—a spiritually controversial matter—whether for the nations or for Israel.
If these things are true, and they lie right on the face of history, if they are true in relation to the earthly and temporal Jerusalem and people of God, they are even more true in relation to that of which the earthly is but a figure after all.
Paul calls it “the Jerusalem that is above.” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, whoever he was, speaks of it when he says, “Ye are come unto Zion.”
It is that other, superior, and supreme Zion that is to hold our attention this morning.
There is undoubtedly an even greater controversy over that which is meant by the spiritual and heavenly Zion than has been over the earthly.
This is the very thing to which Paul himself referred in his letter to the Ephesians, when he spoke about our wrestling being with principalities, powers, world-rulers of this darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies. That followed straight on from his presentation of the Church, the Body of Christ.
This is only another way of saying that there is a tremendous controversy in heaven over this matter. This is the occasion of cosmic upheaval, uprising, and disturbance—something going on in the unseen of a very furious character, immediately related to this: the Church, the Jerusalem which is above, the Zion of God.
It is to this same thing that Peter refers when he says, quoting Isaiah:
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious:
And he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.
That immediately raises a conflict, throws things into conflict and dispute.
Again, it is to this same thing that John refers in the Revelation. He sees the multitude who have come out of the great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb—the victorious host over all the forces of evil.
Then he says, “I beheld, and lo, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion.” This is a presentation of the tremendous conflict—the conflict that circles around this which is called Zion.
Yes, the earthly, temporal, and historical Jerusalem is, if you will, a sign of the times. Oh, it is in the spiritual realm a sign of the times.
It is clearly understood, I believe, that the earthly Jerusalem has historically been a sign of the times, and still is.
We have come to the almost commonplace saying, “Watch Jerusalem, and you will know the time of day. Watch Jerusalem, and you will know where you are in the dispensation.”
Why? Because God is acting in this whole world in a related way. When you see the movement of nations, the movement of policy, and things shaping, forming, and moving in the whole world, God is moving and acting worldwide in a related way.
He is acting in the earth and in history in relation to Jerusalem. Very significant—the sign of the times.
So far as the world is concerned, and so far as the nations are concerned, God is moving. Some things are trends that we should take note of. When everything seems to be in the melting pot, everything seems to be in turmoil and tumult, we should remember that God is not only the God of Christians.
He is the Lord of all creation, of heaven and of earth. All the nations are as a drop in the bucket in His hand. He is manipulating the course of history. The movement of nations and all these things that are happening are not just lawless, random events in the world. They are all governed from heaven, every one of them.
No political movement is outside heaven’s government. Just now, in a related way, all the nations are being dealt with by the Lord. It is all indicative of God’s object and God’s interest.
It is a sign of the times. It is a sign of spiritual conditions, for God is not only acting in a chronological way, working to a programme or a timetable in a cold mechanical way. He is moving upon a spiritual basis, and it is all connected with spiritual conditions.
Having said that, we arrive at this: it is made clear in the Word of God—and we will not spend time dividing between the temporal and the spiritual—that Zion will be the occasion of the supreme and final conflict in the history of this world, this present world order.
Zion, if you like the phrase, will be the scene and the occasion of the final consummate conflict of the age of this world. There, everything is focused.
Now let us keep well in mind what Zion symbolizes. As we have said many times in this conference, Zion—the earthly, literal, material, temporal Zion—is, after all, at most a symbol, a representation of spiritual things.
Those spiritual things can be detected in the material, for God’s material things always contain the elements of the spiritual.
Zion, therefore, symbolizes a full heavenly and spiritual testimony to Christ: the significance of His Person, the value of His work, and finally His God-determined destiny.
Now, that is a big statement. You could break that up, and it would comprehend the whole history of the earth in Zion and Jerusalem. Understand what that is all about, and you understand the whole matter.
For when Zion is as God intended it to be, you have a full heavenly and spiritual representation, or embodiment, of God’s mind concerning His King and His Kingdom, and the basis of it always is the altar and the sacrifice.
Let us transfer that to this Zion to which we are come. What is Zion, then, for us—the Zion to which we are come, this Jerusalem which is above, this Jerusalem of which we are citizens, this Jerusalem which has no existence apart from the people of God themselves, who are the Jerusalem of God?
What is it? It is this: a full, heavenly, spiritual representation, embodiment, and expression of the significance of His Person, the full heavenly value of His work—of course, His work of redemption by His Cross—and the declaration of the place that God has eternally destined that He should occupy.
That is the testimony of Zion.
If that is true, it is no small thing, because any one of those three things could occupy the Christian for a whole lifetime and more.
The significance of the Person of Christ in God’s universe—can you fathom that? Can you exhaust that? The value of His work by His Cross—can you fathom that? The eternally destined place that He shall occupy in God’s universe—can we comprehend that?
Put those three things together, and they constitute the testimony of Zion. No wonder there is a controversy, and no wonder that the controversy is as great as it is.
This is no little campaign, no little devil, no little side issue. This is all-inclusive.
This conflict and controversy has three aspects:
Let us look at these.
The controversy has to do, in the first place, with the nations. We have already indicated that in general terms, but we will look at it more particularly.
Of course, I am keeping to the Scriptures. I am not outside of the Scriptures, although I am not giving every separate verse.
The convulsions, the upheavals, the conflict, the unrest, and the frustration in national and international affairs are all related to this testimony of Zion. That is saying a tremendous thing. They are all related, in other words, to the inheritance of God’s Christ.
How are they related? “Ask of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” That follows upon: “I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”
So all that is happening in the nations, between them and amongst them, is connected with this whole matter of Zion’s testimony as to the inheritance of Christ—and, of course, the inheritance of the saints with Him.
We have some very striking and forceful illustrations of this kind of thing in the Bible.
We are all so very familiar with the controversy in Egypt—with Pharaoh and Egypt, and with the gods of the Egyptians. What a terrific controversy that was. How long drawn out, how steadily moving, with growing momentum, working itself down ever deeper and exhausting all the opposition.
The whole cosmic realm was involved. Natural phenomena—sun, heaven, night, darkness—all nature was in convulsion. Everything was gathered into this controversy with Egypt.
What was it all about? Something that God had in the nation; something that belonged to God; something which, in the sovereignty of God, was chosen to be the basis of His testimony in the earth.
And so this nation, this mighty kingdom of Egypt, was thrown into convulsions, and all nature was thrown into convulsions, over this one thing: a people in the nation.
Babylon. True, the people had failed the Lord and had been sent away into Babylon, but the Lord had not forsaken them. The Lord had not given up. The Lord had not abandoned His testimony.
So we read in Isaiah 43:
Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer,
The Holy One of Israel:
For your sake I have sent to Babylon,
And I will bring down all of them as fugitives,
Even the Chaldeans, in the ships of their rejoicing.
I am Jehovah, your Holy One,
The Creator of Israel, your King.
“For your sake, I have sent to Babylon.” You know what happened in Babylon. It is a wonderful story, is it not? It looked like the pageantry of world empire, one following another, but God says, “I brought all this about.”
We cannot take time to go over the story of the overthrow of the Babylonian Empire: the onward march of Cyrus, the approach to the doors, and the revelry within Babylon on that night when Belshazzar fell and the next empire took over.
The Lord describes that and says, “For your sake, I have sent to Babylon.” The overthrow of empire—the Babylonian Empire, one of the greatest in the history of the world—was because of a people right in the midst.
All this is focused upon the deposit of God in the nations. The controversy is with the nations over some object, and that object is Zion.
If that is true historically and earthly, it is even more true of this spiritual and heavenly Zion. God has a deposit in the nations.
We are told that He has looked to take out of the nations a people for His name. He has a people for His name in the nations, and the things that are happening in the nations, though we may not be able to detect and follow them, are happening in a related way.
Just as the nations would vomit out the Jews and be glad to get rid of them, as Egypt did, so the nations will do with the true people of God. This earth will make things difficult for them; the world will want to get rid of them.
Yet the sovereignty of God will make their very attitude, antagonism, hatred, and oppression His own way of securing His people. He is working in the nations.
Our point is this: just as the nations have been dealt with in relation to Israel, so the world is being dealt with in relation to this Church that is in the earth.
In Matthew 24, we have some of those signs at the end of the age given to us: wars, rumours of wars, and signs in the heavens.
You say, “There have always been wars and rumours of wars. What is the difference?” To begin with, have you counted the number of wars in recent years? There have been more wars in recent years than in any previous time in the history of this world, and they never answer anything.
Whether it is hot war or cold war, they never answer anything. But I am not going to dwell upon these signs. The Lord Jesus said, “All these are the beginning of travail.”
The beginning of travail means that something has to be born. That is how the Lord views this whole situation: this upheaval in the nations, this turmoil, this unrest, this frustration.
“Distress of nations” is a word very appropriate to the situation. The Greek word gives the picture of a trade or business that has no way out—no way through, no way out.
That is the word translated “distress.” The nations have no way out. Is it not true? They are trying all the time to find a way out—out of this dilemma, this predicament, this situation—but they cannot find it. All their expedients, policies, diplomacy, and compromises do not give them a way out.
Then the Lord says, “When you see these things, lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Their way out is coming.
That is, however, by the way. It is all to emphasize this: that these are the beginning of birth pangs. Something is going to come out. That which has been locked up in the nations is coming out.
The Church is the only body that has the true way out.
Yes, convulsions—birth pangs—is the word. That is very much in keeping with what Paul says in Romans 8:19-22:
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Yes, there is travail and groaning in the creation. We can hear it with our spiritual ears.
There has to be a testimony in the nations upon which God can work, which justifies His judgment of the nations and gives significance to His government of the world and the nations.
There has to be a testimony in the nations—such a testimony as will provoke God to jealousy among the nations.
Words are often put in this connection: “I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy.” The Lord has a controversy with the nations. He is jealous over something that is there, something very precious to Him and very important to Him.
He must have a testimony like that. When He has it, His sovereignty comes into operation in all sorts of ways concerning it.
He may work with long patience, but His mills, while grinding slowly, grind very small. With patience He is working with exactness, grinding all that is related to that which is His in the earth.
There is something in this earth, in this world, which is a disturbing factor. It sets up an inflammation.
That is true wherever a true Christian is found. You get an adequate testimony, and you see the inflammation that is similar. You see what happens. There is something there.
You do not have to force it or provoke it. It is spontaneous. You may be the meekest, mildest, and quietest person on God’s earth, but if Christ is vital in you, or in a company of such people, you will find that your very presence provokes something.
That provocation takes the direction: “We must get rid of this. It is foreign to us. It does not belong to us. It is something that is not in our constitution. We must take it out of our constitution.”
That is the world’s attitude. That is the attitude of the devil and his kingdom: something provocative in this earth, something disturbing.
So much, then, for the relationship of Zion to the nations. I suppose you see more than I have said—the significance of God having an adequate testimony in this world, and what a tremendous thing it is.
We must hurry to the next matter: Zion and the testimony of Zion in relation to the realm of Christian profession.
There is a realm of Christian profession and tradition that will be found in conflict with the name of Christian, or of Christ—the natural, soulical kingdom.
It is a terrible thing to say, but it is quite true. Under the Christian title, there is actually, after all, only the kingdom of the soul of man—the natural life.
You find that there is correspondence, even there in the realm of Christian profession, to all that you have in the world in principle. All the same elements are active: commercialism, social rivalry, ambition, and personal interest.
You find them all right within circles called Christian. They do not come from God. They do not come from the Spirit of God. They do not come from heaven, but there they are.
Yes, I repeat: rivalries in Christianity, in Christian work, in Christian interests; jealousies for Christian things; personal interests to bring names into prominence, into reputation, into influence.
If you touch those things, you meet something. Christianity is a sphere of many selfish, personal, natural ambitions. Men use themselves in the realm of Christianity to get advancement, to embody their own natural desires.
I do not like to say it, but it is a fact, because we know it so well. There it is.
That is one aspect of the realm of Christian profession. The eyes as a flame of fire see straight through it. “I know all about it.”
Another aspect is zeal without knowledge. That is a terrible realm, you know—a terrible kind of thing: zeal, but not according to knowledge.
It is a kind of shadowland, where men are seen as trees walking. That is, there is something indistinct in spiritual apprehension: no power, capacity, or faculty for discriminating between soulical Christianity and spiritual Christianity.
Things are all mixed up and confused. There is so much going on that you cannot draw the line between the soul and its ambitions, activities, interests, and what is really purely of the Spirit of God.
It is all mixed up, and people do not seem to be able to discriminate or discern between the two. Therefore, many innocent people are carried away by the sentiment of things, thinking that it is something quite good and quite right.
Everything is indistinct and confused, with very limited spiritual perception.
This was the kind of thing with which Paul had to deal in Judaism. Judaism was a confusion of the old covenant and the new, the old position and the new.
They tried to mix them up and make a Jewish Christianity, thinking of Judaism and Christianity as one thing, with no clear distinction between them—Judaizing Christianity and Christianizing Judaism.
Paul was up against this. No, these two things belong to two different realms and kingdoms altogether. One belongs to the realm of the soul, and the other belongs to the realm of the Spirit.
There has to be a clean break made between them, a cutting through, a discriminating. But in the realm of Christian profession and tradition there is not the capacity for that discrimination.
Things are like men seen as trees walking: no power to define clearly what a thing is. It seems to be like this, but it is not all clear.
In such a state of things, much is believed to be truth and is being fought for, when it is, after all, only a legalistic interpretation of the truth.
There is so much failure and inability to grasp the meaning of the truth. There is such a difference, dear friends, between a true statement in Scripture and the meaning of that statement.
If you are not able to discriminate between those two things, you will be in constant confusion. Here is the letter: if you cannot discriminate, you can take that letter to support a thousand different opposing things.
You can take anything in Scripture to support something entirely in conflict with another thing based upon the same Scripture.
It needs the Holy Spirit’s interpretation, enlightenment, witness, and government to bring us to the truth of the Word. But in the realm of Christian profession there is not such a capacity or faculty.
Now God has a controversy in this whole thing. Over His true testimony, He will have a controversy with what is called Christianity, as surely as He had with Judaism.
Indeed, things will very likely rage at greater intensity in that realm than in any other.
I cannot follow that further now, but this is a matter about which the Lord has very real concern.
Zion represents, among all the other things which it represents, the transparent light of heaven:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee.
That is absolute, clear spiritual perception. That is clear seeing of issues. That is clear discrimination. That is what Paul meant when he spoke about discerning the things that differ.
He was thinking, not about the wrong and the right, but the good and the best. The good and the best.
Zion represents the best, and God will not be satisfied with anything less than His full and ultimate testimony.
I must come to the end for this morning: the third application of the controversy, as to the ministry of Zion.
This includes conflict with the nations, conflict with tradition and formal Christianity, but it becomes much more inward when it comes to the ministry of Zion.
Yes, much more inward. This controversy rests upon some things that we must seek to understand, dear friends. It was in this particular connection that I was speaking at the beginning about having understanding.
The ministry of Zion is a greatly disputed thing—something around which the battle rages more hotly, perhaps, than in any other connection. It concerns God’s full purpose.
Paul repeatedly asked that they would pray earnestly that utterance might be given to him, to open his mouth and speak the mystery; that a door might be opened to him to speak the mystery.
This is not something about which you can get up, go out willy-nilly, and begin to give utterance. If it is rightly constituted, it is fraught with the most terrible conflict.
This ministry, if it is the true ministry of Zion, is first of all constituted by a sovereign apprehending of the vessel.
That is true of historical Zion. God chose Zion. It is clear in the Scriptures, very positively, that there was a sovereign act of God that chose Zion.
But Zion is a vessel—a symbolic vessel—and a vessel for Zion, that is, for Zion’s ministry, for the fullness of the significance of Christ and His work and His place in God’s universe, is something sovereignly apprehended by God.
When I say sovereignly, there is no explanation for it other than this: you cannot account for it in any way. Somehow or other, the Lord is responsible for this. He takes you, whether collectively or individually. It is something sovereignly raised up by God.
You cannot do this by choice. You have no choice in this matter. You cannot aspire to it. You cannot walk into it. You cannot put your hand upon it. You cannot take up this thing.
It is such a searching and discriminating thing. Many people like the ideas, and they are going to take up those ideas and begin to take up this thing. So they take a test, but it just does not work out.
Either they get into confusion, or other people do, or something happens. You have a caricature, a contradiction, the absence of the vital thing.
This is something that you cannot simply take up. You are under it only if God Himself has apprehended you for that purpose. He may have apprehended you for something else, but if He has not apprehended you for that, it is no use. Keep out of it.
It is something out of the sovereignty of God. That touches a lot of things, does it not?
You see, dear friends, get an answer to this: this whole matter of such a testimony is a matter of life and death with us. Nothing less than that is involved.
It is not something we can take up and drop. It is not something we can come into and then not like, become offended with, and resign from. It is a matter of life and death.
I am there because my very life is found in my being there, and it would be committing spiritual suicide for me to go out. That is the matter.
I am not saying that sovereignty operates only in this ministry, or that the ministry of the fullness of Christ is not operating in other ways. But I am saying that, as to the testimony of Zion, first of all it is something right out of the sovereignty of God.
Man has no proprietary interest in this, no possessive place in this, no controlling place in this. It is the Lord’s—wholly and utterly the Lord’s.
If He should cease to be there, everything goes. Everything goes. You cannot just carry that on. You can carry the framework on; you can still have the tabernacle at Shiloh, but the glory has departed from it.
That is a very solemn word, very serious. Zion is constituted by a sovereign apprehending of God.
Then there is a solemn government of God behind the history of the thing.
Paul said, “He who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me.”
He traced his history from his birth: born into a Jewish family, his birth utterly and completely Jewish, his heritage, his training, his education.
All that heat of antagonism to Christ was in his blood. His hatred of the Gentiles, whom he called dogs, was in his very constitution. Yet God had separated him from birth.
To have all that hate in his blood, and then to reveal His Son in him, in order that he might preach Him among the Gentiles—what a sovereign working of God behind the man, choosing him and arranging everything.
Arranging everything in line with his ultimate calling and the purpose of his life. It is a difficult thing to believe, is it not? But it is like that.
When God has a vessel for a purpose in view, that is no afterthought. It does not just arise at some point in time. God has seen it, foreseen it, known all about it, and has worked in relation to it.
Birth, environment, and history are under His sovereignty to some good purpose in relation to the ultimate meaning. We may have to live a long time before we discover that.
Let me put it this way: we have to get right into line with God’s purpose and God’s thought before we see anything of how true it was that our temperament, constitution, environment, and all else had some relationship to the thing to which we are called.
If you cannot understand and grasp that, do not worry about it, but it is a fact: the sovereignty of God is behind our earthly experience and history in relation to the purpose that constitutes this vessel.
Then, in the third place, this ministry of Zion is constituted by a drastic and deep work in the vessel—a drastic work in the vessel, a deep work in the vessel.
This is not something that we can take up apart from something that has been done to us, that God is doing in us: the undoing of us, taking out the pieces, stripping us, emptying us, bringing us to zero, and starting from there all over again with us.
That is the sort of thing connected with Zion’s ministry. Do not make any mistake about it.
The nature of this ministry, dear friends—the ministry of which we are speaking, Zion’s ministry—is utterly different in its nature and in its value from all other ministries.
It is possible to look on and admire. It is possible to walk in and sit down, and appreciate the truth, agree with the ideas, recognize something of the value, desire the benefits, and seek to participate.
It is possible to do all that, and then for there to be a great dividing point. With all the agreement, admiration, recognition, and desire, there may be lacking the constitution—the constitution.
What is the constitution of Zion? It is that God has broken clean through all natural faculties and abilities for understanding, and by revelation planted deep down in the inward sense a knowledge of a spiritual kind which is different from the natural mind.
It is not taking up phraseology and ideas, appreciating, valuing, agreeing, and then going out and repeating them. Something has been done inside, and the thing has come by revelation of the Holy Spirit.
That is the ministry of Zion, and I say that discriminates, that divides. It is because things are like that that you have so much conflict.
You find the very conflict rising in the moment this witness arises. People agree, accept, repeat, like, and desire it, but they are not constituted. The conflict rises in that realm.
Take the matter of ministry itself—public ministry. You find it is the most controversial point in all Christianity. More trouble has arisen over ministry than over anything else.
In Zion, no one has a right to minister, and no one has a qualification for ministry, who cannot sit back and do nothing at all quite easily if the Lord wants it.
Do you understand? It ought to be just as easy for a minister of Zion to take a back seat and wait for the Lord as it is for the natural soul to want to be on the platform.
That may be speaking to a very limited company, but I focus upon this matter of ministry. The ministry of Zion is of another quality and kind—a constitution that is not studied, that is not the result of going to books and taking out of books for sermons, observing and hearing, and then reproducing.
It is something inward. Oh, how the devil rages over a ministry of that kind, because it is going to do something. It is going to touch God’s heart.
If he can destroy it and destroy the vessels of it, he will stop at nothing to bring an end to that kind of ministry.
Is this true? Here the conflict rages. It rages over the ministry of Zion.
The whole point of the controversy and conflict is its reality, its efficacy, its essential value, the very nature of it, the very power of it, the very distinctiveness of it.
If Satan focuses upon one aspect or another of such a testimony, it is to destroy distinctiveness—to get it drawn out into a generalization, to conform it to a recognized system, to take away that distinctive evidence.
It is such a vivid battle all the way along to keep the testimony clear, distinct, and unmixed.
It is, friends. You may not know all that I am saying, but it is quite true. It is something in a different realm from your mental apprehension. You can have the same truth by telling it.