“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There could not have been a broader, more beautiful statement. Why? In Greek “the poor in spirit,” means “bankruptcy”. Blessed—or most fortunate; or, to be envied is better—is a person who has been reduced to bankruptcy, without any potential of his own, for in his bankruptcy, all heaven is his! Why is there not more heaven in some people? The rich young ruler in Matthew 19, turned away sorrowful, because he had great possessions. Anyone who has great possessions is not going to get too far with the Lord. Most fortunate, to be envied, is a person who is reduced to bankruptcy in any self-resources. “In me dwelleth no good thing.” This is basic, because then it is possible for all heaven to be yours. Then Jesus goes on with the rest of the Beatitudes, because they are divinely arranged—in sequence. One makes it possible for the second, and we can’t get to the third until we have had the first and second. The point is; their blessedness all runs into a series sequence.”

“We are living in an age of intense activity. The very atmosphere is charged with a spirit of hurry and rush. This spirit influences our spiritual life in too great a measure and works damage to its development. Our souls are too noisy.”

“We forget, when speaking about heaven, that so many of the things which are for us in the ages yet to come, after this life has been lived, and we as a conscious entity, a spirit released from the body, and moving in the new resurrection body, in a new spiritual realm, most of the things that we have on that other shore—over there in the ages—are DETERMINED HERE. Now don’t think that we can just live a Christian life as happy as bumble bees, and, when we go to heaven, everything is going to be so wonderful. I am sorry to disillusion some people. It isn’t going to be that way! Right here and now, we are making the decisions; the choices; the surrenders; the outpourings of life. We are doing that HERE, and THAT WILL DETERMINE what we will have over there. That is not built up all of a sudden over there; not at all. We determine all that right here and now.”

“There is no getting into God without suffering. In school, there is no education without studying. Without discipline, there is no getting into God. Obedience—we never know real obedience unless we know these three: suffering, discipline, obedience. They, as the media by which we enter into God, are interrelated. In our hearts, we feel perfectly sure He is right in permitting the suffering, though we cannot answer the “why” every time. “When I came into the house of the Lord, I understood.” We will have a spiritual consciousness of reality and Truth; it does not come by natural reasoning. Where revelation ceases, speculation begins. I can give as my personal testimony that these deeper revelations of Truth, and clear understanding of the things of God, have come only through suffering.”

“In the realm of the Spirit, there is no distinction between secular and holy. Everything in God’s sight, in this new life, is holy.”

“The Holy Spirit is always the dynamic, the power for any of the things God will do. It was the Holy Spirit working in the Old Testament in every sign and miracle. God is causation; Jesus executes the will; the Holy Spirit accomplishes the work.”

“God’s first thought is not what we can do, but what we can become. Works are subservient to what we become.”

“Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled.” We have to be conditioned continually in heart and spirit for the reception of that which we hope and long for. Whence this hunger and thirst? Is it for salvation? No. It is for a fuller and fuller revelation of Jesus. God creates the appetite, and fills it from His side. The new creature needs to be fed. “He shall be filled,” completely satisfied.”

“I don’t want a God that I understand. I have a God Whom I can trust where I can’t understand. He keeps much in the background SO that “we walk by faith and not by sight.” So I won’t understand every last thing. If you would understand God perfectly, there would be no place for faith, and He wouldn’t be God.”

“We move around and that is why I think the church or Body is so feeble, because it doesn’t know how to live from the Living Head. We try to produce what the Head wants to produce. The Head wants to make the program. He only asks us to function as members, not as the Head! It takes us a long time to find that out. We are so used to directing from our own natural self; our own head directing what our body is to do, but God says, “No, not that any more. You will become just a member in My Body, for I am the Head.” All direction; all programs; anything that is worthwhile at all should originate in Him. He has to have us as a Body through whom He executes and moves. What a burden that would take off of our hearts and lives if we could ever believe it and learn it.”

“All the fields will be going into distortion—music, philosophy, literature, everything. The enemy comes in to distort it—the rhythm and beauty are gone. We see it in every field. The standards that maintained, and were good in their own fields, that all is undermined; in the nations, in government, in schools, in family life. God will let it run on that mechanism until it will run out on that. It is antichrist contrasting against Christ; against Truth; and a spirit of lowliness: May we be able to discern, and distinguish between them.”

“redemption to bring us out of the chaos of an old setup in every form, through a marvelous redeeming action. That redeeming action moves into every field of our lives and beings. It isn’t a philosophy; it is life. “I have come to bring you life.” He didn’t say, “I have come to redeem you from hell.” He has, hasn’t He? Yes, but He never allowed His teaching to move between these two points to which it has been reduced today. Our popular evangelism, and most of the popular teaching about Christ, move between these two: heaven and hell. Escape hell, and go to heaven. Jesus never taught that way. We never can find a message that he preached on heaven, or on hell. If those are the two great paramount issues, then why didn’t the Son of God ever preach about them? What are the two pivotal points, then? They are life and death. So we come quite amiss; we come quite short of what He intended us to have. “I have come to bring you life.” If we have that life, we escape hell. Don’t make issues of things He never made issues of at all.”

“What is the burden on the heart of Jesus? The redemption of the world? No. He had died for the world, He can’t do any more than that! His prayer in John 17 is, “I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine.” The Holy Spirit is praying “for the saints according to the will of God.”

“It is our attitude toward Truth, and our power to receive that classifies us. Paul mentions three classes of people: natural; spiritual; carnal man. The thing which determines the class to which we belong, is our capacity to understand: our love of Truth; our embracing the Truth, and letting it work in us. We should ask ourselves the question: “Am I actually a lover of the Truth?”

“Never approach the Word as you would approach any other literature. The Holy Spirit is needed for its revelation. Truth cometh by revelation, and that by the Spirit of God; not by our mental processes, but by the Holy Spirit, Who reveals the things of God to us. (1 Cor. 2:10)”

“Learning obedience is a cross which we will have too, if we want to follow Him. “If any man wants to follow Me (to My destiny), let him take up his own cross and follow Me.” But this is not the cross which He lays on us; it is something that we may voluntarily resist or accept. It is a cross distinct from trials and testings that He brings upon us. It does amount to great suffering, but it is a suffering in which we have the power to resist if we don’t want to take it.”

“I find in the Word a continuity, a way, or thought, or a scheme. He is a wonderful God, but a heavenly Father. Jesus is a great Redeemer, but He says, “I am your Brother.”

“People are utterly starved to death. For what? Food; not milk, but for some meat, and some strong meat. They need it; they need it badly. God can’t take a Body that is just a whimpering baby to sit on the throne with Him and share—He can’t do things like that. There will be a place for babes; I imagine heaven will have a tremendously large nursery!”

“We can’t worship in ourselves. Worship is born of the Spirit. He can worship through us. We can’t automatically worship. True worship is born of the Spirit. There is a difference between praise and worship. Praise is something we do. Worship is of the Spirit.”

“Jesus Christ, and the Word of Life run parallel. If we are studying the Word of God as Truth, we will have to have the parallel revelation of the Lord Jesus running with it. Jesus doesn’t stand over there, static, as we study something in the Word here. We have to have an inner, personal fellowship with the Lord running parallel with the Word, or there is no life or Spirit in the Word at all. We may have wonderful insight as to the letter of the Word, but there is no corresponding insight into the Lord. We do not have an inner consciousness of entity; no awakening.”