Dear brothers and sisters, I always feel that when we are taking the Lord’s table, this is the climax of the conference.
It reminds us that in 1727 there was a group of God’s people gathering together for the Lord’s table. These were people who had fled from persecution. They came from different directions, and they had different emphases of faith. They differed in many things, but on that Sunday they came together to remember the Lord.
As they were breaking the bread, the Spirit of God descended upon them. They were filled with the love of Christ, and they were melded together into one. They embraced one another and confessed to one another.
Then, from that day onward, the great Moravian movement began. They became one people, and out of them they went forth to spread the gospel to the world.
For one hundred years they continued in twenty-four-hour prayer. They prayed together by turns, every hour on the hour, and this continued for one hundred years.
So oftentimes, when I come to the Lord’s table, this is the desire of my heart: that the Spirit of God and the glory of God may fill us and deliver us from all differences, joining us together into the one body of Christ.
Then we will go out to bear the testimony of Jesus.
So I always feel it is hard for me to speak after the Lord’s table. It seems to be something extra. But since it is the arrangement of the conference, I have to obey.
Will you please turn again to Matthew, Chapter 6? We will read again the so-called Lord’s Prayer, beginning with Matthew 6:9.
After this manner therefore pray ye:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Please turn to Philippians 2. We will read from Philippians 2:5-11.
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
Who, subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it an object of rapine to be on an equality with God;
But emptied Himself, taking a bondman’s form, taking His place in the likeness of men;
And having been found in figure as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross.
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and granted Him a name which is above every name,
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly and earthly and infernal beings,
And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to God the Father’s glory.
Finally, the Gospel according to John, Chapter 17. We will read John 17:5 and John 17:24.
And now glorify Thou Me, Father, along with Thyself, with the glory which I had along with Thee before the world was.
Father, as to those whom Thou hast given Me, I desire that where I am they also may be with Me, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
May we have a word of prayer?
Our heavenly Father, we want to thank Thee for bringing us to the last session of this conference. Thou hast been good to us. Thou hast been faithful to us. It is all because of Thy grace that we are able to continue until now.
We not only offer this time to Thee; we offer ourselves to Thee, and pray that by Thy Holy Spirit Thou wouldst bring us into the reality of Thy living Word, that we may be the praise of Thy glory. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Thank God for bringing us together these few days. He wants us to focus our attention on just one thing:
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
We have said again and again that this is the response of our heart to God. Our Lord Jesus has taught us how to pray, and after we pray according to the Lord’s will, it touches our heart so deeply that we cannot but cry out, “For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”
It is not just an exclamation; it is a testimony. We testify to the fact that the kingdom is His, the power is His, and the glory is His.
It is more than just an expression in words. It is the expression of our very life, because in our very life He has shown us what His kingdom is.
We belonged to the kingdom of darkness. But in His grace and mercy, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. What a change it is!
It is a change from the depths of sin and death, from the tyranny of the enemy, from a very hopeless situation, from being children of the enemy. By His grace and mercy, He has transferred us out of that kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
We remember when our Lord Jesus began to preach. He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn nigh.”
Why is it so? Why did He say that the kingdom of the heavens had drawn nigh, rather than that it had come? The reason is because the King had arrived, but He had no people and no territory.
So He called us to repent. Thank God, a number of people responded to His call.
When you come to Matthew 11, the Lord Jesus said that the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence, and the violent seize upon it.
In other words, when the King came into this world, before He had His own people, His kingdom was only drawing nigh. But after a number of people believed in Him and began to follow Him, the kingdom of the heavens was taken by violence.
In other words, the kingdom of the heavens is now given to those who are violent toward themselves. We do not like that word violent, because it has a bad connotation to us. But actually, the word is neutral. It depends upon whom and what you are violent toward.
If you are violent toward other people, then it is wrong. But if you are violent toward yourself, then you seize upon the kingdom.
So, in a sense, the kingdom of the heavens is already here, though it is still unseen by the world. We find that people who are really violent toward themselves have gained that kingdom.
It simply means those who deny themselves, take the cross, and follow the Lord. They are now living in the reality of the coming kingdom of the heavens.
When the kingdom of the heavens comes into this world in reality and in practice—when our Lord Jesus comes back the second time—He will publicly establish His kingdom upon this earth.
Then those who live in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens today will reign and rule with Christ for one thousand years. To them, “Thine is the kingdom” is a reality.
The same thing is true of power. Power belongs to God, but this is not something that we merely hear about. It is something that we truly experience in our lives.
We experience the greatness of His power in changing us from glory to glory. Again, it is something real in our life.
The same is true with glory. Glory is not something that we only hear about and talk about. Glory is something that works in our lives, transforming us from glory to glory by the Lord, the Spirit.
In other words, the reason we have this as our theme is not merely for the sake of knowing what these things are. The real purpose is that we all may, by experience, know: “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”
By the grace of God, we have already shared something on this matter of glory. But this morning, I would like to re-emphasize: How can we glorify God?
God wants to give glory to us. Our Lord Jesus is to lead many sons into glory. Glory is not something for us to grasp at. Glory is something that God gives to those who glorify Him.
Our Lord Jesus is the perfect example. In Philippians 2, we are exhorted to have the mind of Christ. What is the mind of Christ?
Philippians 2:6 says:
Who, subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it an object of rapine to be on an equality with God.
Here we find that our Lord Jesus subsisted in the form of God. The form here does not refer to outward appearance; it refers to His inward nature and quality.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before our Lord Jesus came into this world, He was on equality with God. He had the same nature and the same character as God.
That was not something to be grasped at. The reason we find this word about grasping is because, once upon a time, there was someone who tried to grasp at the glory of God. But our Lord Jesus never did that.
He had all these prerogatives. He was equal with God. But for the love of God, and for God’s plan to be fulfilled, He emptied Himself.
Brothers and sisters, this is the first step in the mind of Christ. He who was the fullness of God—the Bible says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily—emptied Himself.
We may know a little of the righteousness of God, but we do not know how righteous He is. We may know a little of the holiness of God, yet we cannot understand how holy He is. We may taste a little of the love of God, but His love exceeds our comprehension.
He is the fullness of everything. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ. In other words, He is the fullness of God; He is the expression of God’s fullness.
But for His love for us, and in order to fulfill God’s plan to deliver us, He offered Himself to His Father to come to this world as a man.
For God to become a man, He had to empty Himself. This does not mean that our Lord Jesus emptied Himself of His Godhead, because He is God. He is God for ever and ever.
But He emptied Himself of all the honor and glory surrounding His Godhead. We can talk about it and think about it, but we can never fully understand it.
This is the first step in His way to glorify God, and He is calling us to follow Him.
Brothers and sisters, we are so empty. What can we empty ourselves of? We can only empty our sins, our transgressions, and our offenses.
When our Lord Jesus called us, He said, “Deny yourself.” What does denying yourself mean? In other words, to deny yourself is to empty yourself.
The Lord wants us to empty ourselves too. But what we can empty is only that which offends God.
Unfortunately, in our Christian life, we find it very difficult to deny ourselves. There seems to be such a natural love for ourselves.
We may say to the Lord, “I love You. I am willing to die for You,” just like the apostle Peter. Yet, when we are under testing, we find that we really love ourselves more than our Lord.
We cannot deny ourselves, even though we really have nothing to deny. And what God wants us to deny—all those things that stand in the way of the will of God—we cannot see until the Spirit of God reveals them to us.
When His love constrains us, then we are willing to lay down ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.
After He emptied Himself, the next step was that He took upon Himself a bondman’s form.
The word form here is the same word as “the form of God.” It does not refer to outward appearance; it refers to His inward nature and character.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world as a man, He was a perfect man. Yet, if you could see what was inside Him, you would find that He had the form of a bondslave.
In other words, when He came into this world as a man, His inward mind was the mind of a bondslave.
This refers to what we find in the Old Testament. In Exodus 20, we find the Ten Commandments. God declared to the children of Israel the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are divided into two parts. The first part contains four commandments and tells us of the holiness of God. The second table contains six commandments and tells us of the righteousness of God. God reveals Himself as holy and righteous.
To be His people, we have to be holy and righteous. By the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel became God’s people.
But immediately after the Ten Commandments, when you come to Exodus 21, the first thing mentioned is this: if your Hebrew brother became poor and sold himself to you as your slave, he could serve you for six years. After six years, in the seventh year, he would go out free.
When he went out, the master was supposed to supply him with every need. But if that Hebrew slave said, “I love my master. I love his family. I want to stay with you forever. I do not want to go out free. I am happy with you,” then what should be done to him?
He would be taken to the judges, to prove and decide that this was real—that this was not something forced upon him, but his voluntary will. Then the master would bring him back to the door of his house and pierce his ear on the door.
From that time onward, he became a bondslave for life. He was a love slave.
Brothers and sisters, when our Lord Jesus was on earth, inwardly He had the feeling that He was a love slave.
That is the reason why, in Psalm 40, we find:
Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire;
Mine ears hast Thou opened.
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Yea, Thy law is within my heart.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world, He not only emptied Himself of all the honor and glory of His Godhead; as a man, He had the mind of a bondslave.
He considered Himself as not free. He did not live for Himself. He was a bondslave to God.
As a slave, the most important thing is the ear. That is to say, you have to hear your master’s command, then obey and do his will.
What if you had a servant who seemed to love you and wanted to serve you, yet would not hear what you said? He would do whatever he thought was what you needed. If you had such a servant, I think you would dismiss him right away.
So, brothers and sisters, as a bondslave, the first thing is the ear: hear what the Master says, and do accordingly.
Today women have their ears pierced, and now even men have them pierced. They think it is a decoration; they do not realize what it really is. If your ear is pierced, then you are obliged to listen to the Word of God and to do accordingly.
That is the inward mind of our Lord Jesus. Why is it so? Because in the very beginning, when God created man, He intended that man should listen to Him and do His will.
That is the duty of man: to glorify God and to do His will. But unfortunately, this is not the condition of man. Man has a rebellious mind. Men cannot and will not listen to God. Their ears are not pierced.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world, this is what He was. This is the second step that we must follow in order to glorify God.
As men, we need to listen to God. We need to lay down our own mind. Oftentimes, we argue with God and reason with Him. But God’s mind in creating man was to have a man who would listen to Him.
So we need to have that mind of Christ in us.
Then we find the third step: having taken His place in the likeness of men, and having been found in figure as a man, He humbled Himself.
This speaks of the life of our Lord Jesus. Inwardly, He had the mind of a bondslave to God. Outwardly, He had the figure of a man. He was a perfect man.
He had a body, just as we do. He had a soul, just as we do. In other words, He had His own thinking, His own will, and His own emotion.
But when He took the figure of man, His life was expressed by humbling Himself. Not only inwardly did He have the mind of a bondslave; outwardly, He humbled Himself to be obedient to God.
This was the whole life of our Lord Jesus. Brothers and sisters, if we are following the Lord Jesus, we need to follow in this way too. We shall humble ourselves, and we should be obedient to our God.
Finally, we find that He was obedient even unto the death of the cross. We can never fathom what happened to our Lord Jesus.
What happened in the garden? We read about it in the Gospels: how He felt grieved in His soul, how He was oppressed in His spirit. He entered into the garden to pray.
He even wanted the disciples to pray with Him, as if He needed support. When He prayed, He was so grieved that His sweat came down as blood.
We can never understand the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Unless an angel appeared and strengthened Him, He would have died in the garden.
What was the struggle behind it? Why was He, as it were, so afraid of the cross? He came for that purpose. He knew it perfectly.
The struggle was this: He was so holy, so pure, and so righteous. He had pleased His Father in all things. Throughout His life, He had the presence of His Father. He had never been disobedient to God.
Now He was to put upon Himself all the sins of the world, from the time of Adam until then, and even until the time of His return.
The Bible says that He was to be made sin for us. Remember, it was not merely that He bore some of our sins. He was to be made sin itself.
For the sinless One to be made sin was something He could not take. That was the struggle behind it. But thank God, He was obedient to the Father, even unto death—the death of the cross.
Praise God for that. The way to glory is not going up. The way to glory is going down—down, down, down. That is the way to glory.
Brothers and sisters, I think we need to learn the secret of glory. God will glorify those who are willing to empty themselves.
God will give glory to those who have the mind of a love slave. God will glorify those who humble themselves and are obedient.
God will glorify those who are willing to take up their crosses and follow the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, we are living in a day when even the gospel has changed.
When Paul went into Corinth, he determined on one thing: he was determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, because he knew that this was the only way to deliver the people there.
But today, we find that the cross is hardly preached. On the contrary, the prosperity gospel is everywhere.
If you preach the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ, you find that very few people really respond. But when you preach the prosperity gospel, you have multitudes; you have a crowd.
We do not want the cross; we want the crown. But in the sight of God, there is no such thing. Without the cross, there will not be the crown.
This is the way of Christ. If we want to follow Christ, we must be prepared for it.
Our Lord Jesus said that the hour had come that the Son of Man should be glorified.
Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;
But if it die, it beareth much fruit.
If we love our soul-life, we will lose it. If we hate and deny our soul-life, we will gain it unto eternity. This is the only way to glory.
So, brothers and sisters, we want to emphasize and re-emphasize that we need to have a fresh, new concept of the cross.
What is a cross? A cross is something that crosses you. When the will of God and your will cross each other, you have a cross.
When the cross comes to you, you can either take it up or bypass it. If you take it up, what will be the result? It will mean death to yourself, but it will mean the life of Christ to you.
If you bypass the cross and find an alternative way, it means that you lose the crown.
So we need to have a new concept of the cross. It is God’s will to deliver us. He knows how we are under the control of the self-life.
Unless the self-life is dealt with, we will never be able to be filled with the life of Christ. That is why we have to take up the cross and follow the Lord.
There is no other way to glorify God, and there is no other way to glory. I hope, brothers and sisters, that we will have a renewed mind.
When you read Romans 12, verse 1, Paul says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your reasonable service.
After we have received all the mercies of God, how should we react? How should we respond? We need to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.
Why the body? Because it is with the body that we live our lives. It means our whole being. We need to present ourselves as a living sacrifice.
It is not a dead sacrifice; it is a living sacrifice. It means that we live for Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.
This is something holy. This is something acceptable to God. This is our worship and service.
We want to worship God, but how can we worship Him? We worship Him by presenting ourselves to Him. We want to serve Him, but how do we serve Him? Present yourself to Him as a living sacrifice.
What will happen if you do that? In Romans 12:2, you find that your mind will be renewed.
What once seemed precious to you—the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life—your mind has changed. You despise these things.
What you once considered the will of God to be—hard and difficult—your mind has changed. You look upon the command and will of God as something loving and something good.
Just like Paul: after he met Christ on the way to Damascus, he presented himself to Christ. His mind was renewed. He began to count all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, this is the way to glory.
Now we would like to consider together the different ways in which we may glorify God. Number one: we may glorify God in life.
We know that Christ in you is the hope of glory. How can Christ be increased within us? How can He grow within us?
As you deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow the Lord, then Christ begins to grow in you.
You begin to behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, and you are changed from glory to glory by the Lord, the Spirit. So we may glorify God in life. This is the basic thing.
Number two: we may glorify God in deed. In other words, we may glorify God in the works of our hands.
How can we do that? We have a heart to serve, but naturally speaking, when we want to serve God, how do we serve?
I think it is a common thing: if you have the desire to serve God, unknowingly you will serve God with what you are. You use your own mind to serve God. You use your own energy. You use your own way to serve.
Brothers and sisters, when we first believed in the Lord Jesus, I think we all went through this, just like Moses. He wanted to serve God with his natural power.
But thank God that God allowed him to fail and sent him to the wilderness for forty years: to unlearn all he had learned, to undo himself, until he found that he had no utterance and no power.
Then he was sent to do the work by the power of God.
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.
So, in our way of serving the Lord, we need to be delivered from all our natural strength. We have to serve in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We can glorify God in our words. That is to say, we may praise God as a way to glorify God.
We find in the Old Testament how the children of God praised God. Psalm 50 says, “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me.”
So we need to praise Him. In Hebrews 13, we need to offer the sacrifice of praise.
David said, “I pray three times a day; I praise Thee seven times a day.” We, as God’s people, should be a people of praise. By Him, we offer up thanksgiving to Him in all things. This is the way to glorify God.
Fourthly, we may glorify Him in the church, because God’s purpose is corporate. He wants us to be the body of Christ.
How can we glorify Him in the church, instead of putting Him to shame in the church?
Number one: hold fast the Head. Every member of the body of Christ must hold fast the Head. We allow Christ as our Head. There is only one Head: it is Christ.
He may have His representatives, but He is the Head, and every member of the body of Christ must hold fast to Him.
How do we do it? It is through the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is like the nervous system of the physical body.
That system goes all over the body. It relates not only all the outward things up to the head, but it also passes on all the commands from the head.
So, dear brothers and sisters, it is very important that we have no obstruction in that communication. We must abide in Christ, and He will abide in us. Through the Holy Spirit, we will actually hold fast the Head.
This is not a theory; it is a fact.
Not only that, but we must be united together and minister one to another. We must diligently keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
In our basic faith, we are one. We have one Holy Spirit, one Christ, and one Father, our God. On that basis, we must fellowship with one another.
Do not allow differences in interpretation or experience to divide us. We need to fellowship with one another. We need to open to one another. We should not insist upon our own ideas.
If we continue fellowshipping, we will arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
In other words, unity has two ends. The unity of the Spirit is the beginning; the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God is the end.
The unity of the Spirit has already been given. That is Ephesians 4:3. The unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God is to be arrived at. That is in Ephesians 4:13.
So it is one unity with two ends. One has been given; the other is to be arrived at.
How are we going to arrive at it? We must diligently keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace, and then continue to fellowship with one another.
Not because there are differences should we refuse to fellowship. Rather, we should be willing to fellowship. We should be open to one another. We should not insist upon our own ideas.
We should be open to receive whatever is from the Lord. Gradually, we will come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son.
The faith there is the whole truth of the Bible, and the knowledge is full knowledge. It is experiential.
In other words, we experience Christ in the same way. Not only do we know the Word of God in the same way; we experience Christ in the same way. This is to be arrived at by continuing fellowship.
This is the way to keep unity, and this is the way to glorify God in the church.
Secondly, as members of the body of Christ, every one of us is given grace and gift. By the grace of God, we must exercise the gift that God has given us and minister to one another.
The universal priesthood of believers is something we must practice. We are all priests of God, and we are all kingly priests. We need to serve God by serving one another.
This is the way for the increase of God in the body. So we find there are various ways in which we can truly glorify God. If we glorify Him, He will glorify us.
There is a warning. In our Lord’s high-priestly prayer in John 17, glory is mentioned twice.
First, it is mentioned in John 17:5:
And now glorify Thou Me, Father, along with Thyself, with the glory which I had along with Thee before the world was.
Here we find the first mention of glory in our Lord’s prayer. The Lord was going back to the Father, and He said, “Glorify Me.”
With what glory? With the glory that I had with You before the foundation of the world. That is the glory of the Godhead.
The glory of the Godhead belongs exclusively to God. Only the Son can share it with the Father.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world, He laid aside this glory and became a man. But now He was going back to the Father, and He was going to take up again the glory that He had with the Father before the world was.
This is the glory that belongs exclusively to God. Nobody can partake in that glory.
But as He prayed on, we find John 17:24:
Father, as to those whom Thou hast given Me, I desire that where I am they also may be with Me, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
If you read very carefully, you find that the glory He mentioned here is different from the glory mentioned in verse 5.
In verse 5, He referred to the glory that He had with the Father before He came into this world. This is the glory of the Godhead. This is what God is. Nobody can partake in it.
In the Godhead there are only three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He alone is God. There is no one else. This glory belongs to Him exclusively.
But then we find another glory. He said, “Father, I want those whom You have given Me to be with Me, that they may behold the glory which You have given Me.”
This is the glory He wants to give to us. The glory here refers to the glory of Christ as the Son of Man.
It is because He emptied Himself. It is because He took the form of a bondman. It is because He came in the figure of a man. It is because He was obedient even unto death, even the death of the cross.
Therefore, the Father highly exalted Him, giving Him a name above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Father’s glory.
As the Son of Man, He was so obedient to the Father that He was given glory as the Son of Man. This is the glory that He will share with us.
This is the meaning of our Lord leading many sons into glory.
The reason we mention this is because, when we are really seeking for glory, it is very easy to be distracted.
For instance, in the world there are people whom we call mystics. From every century, you find people who are mystics. Generally speaking, all Christians are mystics, because we are those who seek for God.
But there are certain people who seek in such a way that they are willing to sacrifice everything. If you read their history, you find how they tried to ill-treat their bodies because they thought the body is material, and matter is evil.
So they thought they had to ill-treat the body. They would sleep on beds of iron. They would wear hair shirts. They would treat the body almost to death. Even Martin Luther did that.
By doing that, they thought they would put their body under and be able to be united with God. Eventually, they thought they would be in the Godhead.
You remember the saying by Madame Guyon. Many people admire Madame Guyon because her life was so beautiful, and she was one of the mystics.
She said that we are like a drop of water, and we gradually flow and flow and flow until we reach the ocean. When we arrive at the ocean, we become so mixed with the ocean that we become one with the ocean.
This is a very beautiful saying. But unfortunately, there is some point of heresy there.
Among the mystics, they seek union with God to such an extent that it becomes the deification of man—merged with God Himself. This kind of teaching is still here today.
The desire is good, but unfortunately the enemy tries to twist it. Instead of seeing that the glory God gives us is according to the glory of the Son of Man, people may think that they enter into glory by becoming Deity.
But we enter into glory because of the life of Christ. It is not that we become Deity.
Brothers and sisters, I think this is something to warn us. We need to seek to glorify God, that God may glorify us.
Christ, after He had glorified God in the world as a man, was glorified by God. This is the glory that God gives to all those who glorify Him.
May the Lord help us. Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we bow to worship Thee, because it is Thy will to lead many sons into glory. Teach us to glorify Thee, that we may be glorified.
We commit one another into Thy care. We pray that Thou wilt go with us to our various places, that we may testify to the world:
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.