Dublin, July, 1868.
(Words in Season, Vol. 3, 1889, page 80.)
Here we get the glorified Man gone up. He fills the eye of the apostle. Therein is the true power and energy of work.
When faith is working no circumstances ever dim the heart.
It is no sacrifice giving up things which you esteem as dross and dung, especially if you have the eye fixed on Christ.
If I am thinking only of the race, I throw off the cloak as a hindrance.
What we should look to continually is the judgment of self, and complete conformity to Christ desired.
The exhortations here are simply to what Christ was.
The failure of man is uniform and immediate, however something better is brought in.
Man fell in Eden.
Man made the golden calf.
Man crucified Christ.
And all men seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.
But if I get man in ruins, I get the Second Man in perfection and glory. If I get the law broken, I get the law written in the heart. If I get the Church in ruins, the Church will yet be glorious.
No failure can break the link of faith in the power of God.
The candle shines brightest in the darkest night, so should our faith shine when all is dark around.
Christ's path from glory was all a descent, humbling Himself even to the death of the cross. Where was self to be found in that path? Nowhere. And now the Holy Ghost says by Paul, "Let this mind be in you."
In Christ, self found no place; in us, it is to be reckoned dead. Where there is not the judgment of self in the power of the Holy Ghost, there is sure to be the working of self in the energy of the flesh.
Christ's path was a divine path, going through this world in the grace and love of God, and we have a divine path through this world - viz., to be like Christ.
Nothing can ever stop the sufficiency of Christ, no matter what the circumstances may be.
Christ could not take a place in this world.
Which would you like best? a place in this world, or Christ's place?
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John Nelson Darby (1800 - 1882)
was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism and Futurism ("the Rapture" in the English vernacular). Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.He produced a translation of the Bible based on the Hebrew and Greek texts called The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby. Darby traveled widely in Europe and Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, and established many Brethren assemblies. He gave 11 significant lectures in Geneva in 1840 on the hope of the church (L'attente actuelle de l'église). These established his reputation as a leading interpreter of biblical prophecy.
John Nelson Darby was an Anglo-Irish evangelist, and an influential figure among the original Plymouth Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism. He produced a translation of the Bible based on the Hebrew and Greek texts called The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby.
John Nelson Darby graduated Trinity College, Dublin, in 1819 and was called to the Irish bar about 1825; but soon gave up law practice, took orders, and served a curacy in Wicklow until, in 1827, doubts as to the Scriptural authority for church establishments led him to leave the institutional church altogether and meet with a company of like-minded persons in Dublin.
Darby traveled widely in Europe and Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, and established many Brethren assemblies. These established his reputation as a leading interpreter of biblical prophecy. He was also a Bible Commentator. He declined however to contribute to the compilation of the Revised Version of the King James Bible.