Foregleams of glory

Foreword

HESE "Foregleams of Glory" are dedicated to "whom it may concern" for only as far as we have followed the Life ("the Life was the iignt" Jno. 1 :4) does the glory-light flash on the lines.

Sometimes for disciplinary purposes a soul comes to utter loss of reputation, and for a time, utter wreckage in Christian service. It was in such an hour as this God flashed on the writer some of the meaning of our relations to other Ages and other spheres of action.

In hope of comforting souls in -similar bewilderment, "Resurrection Papers" and 'Taith Reminiscences" were sent forth in fugitive form. Friends in different lands have asked for them in permanent shape. Hence this book.

The crudity with which profound truth is herein handled may perhaps be pardoned when we remember God is wont to "choose" "things which are not" for His marvelous high purposes !

And now may God add His blessing!

As a tiny joint in Christ's Fair Body, one with you all.

Elizabeth Sisson.

Contents

I. The Two Resurrections 9

II. Resurrection Glory 19

III. Resurrection Order 26

II Resurrection Glory

In First Corinthians 15:35-42 the question is sprung: ''How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" The answer shows that as in the natural realm, so in the spiritual, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." It is the law of life out of death. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain ; but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him," not arbitrarily but according to a fixed law "to every seed his own bodyr

We turn to John 12 :24 and find Jesus speaking of Himself as a grain of wheat, which, by falling into the ground, and dying, was to bring forth much fruit. Wheat, we know, is the choicest of the grains ; others are precious, as oats, barley, rye, maize, rice, etc., but inferior to wheat. Jesus sowed Himself into the death of wheat; that is, into the highest and fullest death of nature unto God. He had absolutely no life to nature, but all to God. "I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me." You and I may sow ourselves into the death of wheat, or of oats or of barley, etc., we shall rise with the resurrection glory of that body with which we went down to death. If we have sown ourselves barley — that is, with much of the death of Christ in our Christian walk and something also for self, we shall rise with the resurrection glory of that body with which we went down to death. If we have sown ourselves barley we shall not come up "bare grain" of barley, not the renewal of the beauty of our Christian life on earth, but with a glory far exceeding the bare grain, but it will be the resurrection glory of barley, and nothing can make it the resurrection glory of oats or rice or wheat. As in nature so in grace, the law is inexorable, "to every seed his own body."

From the viewpoint of resurrection our whole earthly life is an opportunity to sow ourselves to death, and we Christians are constantly electing how far we will go spiritually into the death of our Master. "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds" — varying orders of life. "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial ; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun,

Resurrection Glory

and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead.'' Varying orders in glory, and every child of God fixes his own order in glory by the measure of spiritual death he allows God to sow him into here in his earthly career.

If, like Paul, he pants to know the full fellowship of Christ's sufferings and be made conformable to His death, his desire shall be granted and he, like Paul, shall sow himself into death of wheat, in an uninterrupted "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me," having "crucified the flesh with the affections and the lusts." As he diminishes into that full death, he changes in quality as from oats to wheat, etc., etc., and comes up in the resurrection glory of the grain that fell into the ground and died.

"Conformable to His death."— Phil. 3:10. How much does it mean? Of Jesus we read not only, "Lo, I come to do Thy will," but "I delight to do Thy will."— Ps. 40 :8. There was a quality in His life that fully fulfilled the command, "giving thanks always for all things." "5y Hinif therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually." With Him there was a joy in suffering that made Him say of each event in life, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" It is written that for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame," and the Greek has been otherwise rendered, "thinking down upon the shame." — Heb. 12:2. So we see that through delight to do the will of God, He was above His death while He hung in its agonies and its cruel shame. It was this voluntariness with which He passed into His every death that made the rare quality of the sowing of the corn of wheat. In another type is hidden all the beauty of this, His death, and if we will it, our death in Him.

In the Paschal feast it was said of the lamb, **Not a bone of him shall be broken," and year by year throughout the Jewish age, most literally was the form kept, the blood was shed, the flesh was eaten, but not a bone of the lamb was broken. The type unfolded when the soldiers came to the three hanging on Calvary "to break the legs of the first and of the other that was crucified with Him, but when they came to Jesus and saw that He was dead already, they brake not His legs . . . for these things were done that the scriptures should be fulfilled, 'a bone of Him shall not be broken.' " —John 19:32-36. "Dead already." Why? As we follow the different accounts we learn the cross never took Jesus' life. "He gave up the ghost." When he saw that "all things were accomplished" and every scripture concerning Him fulfilled, like all who joyfully acquiesce

Resurrection Glory

in the will of God, in death He got ahead of those who hung on the other two crosses, and it was not necessary to break His legs, as was done to hasten their death. Natural law took their lives, but when His spirit was able to say, "It is finished," death had no more power over Him and He ''yielded up the ghost" and oh, it is so glorious that Jesus in us will carry us through our many deaths, in the ''fellowship of His suffering," "conforming us unto His death," sustaining us with the "joy set before Him" — how the martyrs of many ages have proved this ! — causing us to despise the shame, "giving thanks always for all things." Our deaths are certainly shortened as He carries us through in such a fashion.

Oh, the glory of the resurrection from the death of the wheat! In Him we see it portrayed in Rev. 1 :13-15. But is not the same glory brought forth by Rev. 19:10, where Revelator falls to worship at the feet of an angel* who is showing him great things of God? The angel checks him, telling how he is but a redeemed creature, "a fellow servant" of John "and of thy brethren." Did not John know that angels or any created beings were not for worship? You and I know that God is the object of worship. Was John less spiritually intelligent? The natural deduction is that this one looked so like Jesus that John thought

*Gr. angel or messenger.

it was Jesus, and what a commentary is this upon "we shall be like Him." The Revelator is now corrected and will not make this mistake again ! We turn into the next chapter but one and find again an angel showing him the glories of the New Jerusalem, and again John is worshipping an angel ! Again he is told "See thou do it not," *T am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren." — Rev. 22:8, 9. How strong is the inference that John could not tell the difference between Jesus and some redeemed ones from the earth. "The glory which thou gavest me, I have given them."

But who are these angels, these redeemed ones from the earth that it was impossible for John to distinguish from Jesus? They are among the Judgment Messengers of the Revelation time. The one the Revelator was forbidden to worship in chapter twenty-two is described as "one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues," and if one of these seven glorious creatures, executives of the wrath of God against unholiness, was a redeemed one from the earth, is it not possible the other six were of the same order of beings? Here is light upon Rev. 20:4, "I saw thrones and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them." "Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world," and "they lived and reigned with Christ." Also the angel of Rev. 19, who forbade John's wor-

Resurrection Glory

ship of him because he was a fellow servant and a brother from earth, if we trace back the pronoun to its noun, must be either "the mighty angel" of Rev. 18:21 or "another angel come down from heaven having great power and the earth was lighted with his glory." — Rev. 18:1.

Oh, it pays to go all the way with Jesus ! even into the full death of the corn of wheat. "If we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him." "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." "He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel." As we go forward in the school of Christ, in the transmutation from the natural to the divine, God takes us out from the children-of-Israel class into the Moses class, fitting us as a son to enter into partnership in the business of the Father. Co-operation with Him in His redemption plan of the ages, this is the glory of the first resurrection. It is something now to be an honored instrument in God's hands in this mortal life to win thousands of souls to Jesus. It is more to be reigning with Christ in His throne bringing in successive ages (Gr. aeions) of increasing blessedness. This is the glory of the first resurrection.

Ill

^AUL speaks more especially of resurrection order in I. Cor. 15 :20-28. Three epochs are here brought to view. We shall take up that part of it which particularly refers to the believers of this age and of the millennial age. ''Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits . . . but every man in his own order, Christ the first fruits (first epoch) ; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming (second epoch) ; then cometh the end." (third epoch). This will be more clearly brought to mind if we turn back to Lev. 23, the first-fruit chapter, which Paul is here opening up. The chapter is headed, "The feasts of the Lord." "These are My feasts," God says. There are seven of them: the Feast of the Sabbath, the Feast of Passover, the Feast of first first-fruits, of second first-fruits (or Pentecost), of Trumpets, of the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. In this resurrection theme Paul is concerned with but three of them, the harvest-feasts. These are types, as the apostle unfolds them, of wonderful significance ; types of dispensational epochs. Under the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit Paul shows us in that tiny sheaf of wheat waved in the temple the third day after the Passover feast, our Lord in His resurrection. "Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them when ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the first-fruit of your harvest unto the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you, on the morrow after the Sabbath (that is the third day from the Passover offering: Resurrection Day) the priest shall wave it." So indeed it was. At Jerusalem, throughout the Jewish age of temple worship, the priest who offered the slain lamb and who saw to it that "not a bone of him was broken" — the same priest on the third day after the lamb was slain, year by year, brought and waved the sheaf of first-fruits. Though they understood it not, yet in the economy of God they must typify throughout the age Christ the Paschal Offering and Christ the Resurrection.

Not only in that sheaf of wheat as it was waved do we see Christ in resurrection, but the beginning of the unfolding of His order in resurrection: He has hidden it in the types of these three harvest feasts. First feast, Sheaf of wheat, Jesus and the company that came up with Him. Second feast, Feast of Second first-fruits, or Feast of Pentecost ; "they that are Christ's at His coming." Third feast, Feast of Tabernacles, or great general harvest feast, feast of the ingathering. Here again there are wide spaces between these types which hint at even wider spaces in their fulfilment. We see there are two first-fruits with a space of at least two thousand years between them in resurrection. Christ the first-fruits : in crucifixion He is a grain of wheat falling into the ground (John 12 :24) ; in resurrection He is a waved sheaf of wheat. How many grains in a sheaf of wheat ? More no doubt than the hundred- fold. Ps. 68:18, "Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive" (Heb. a multitude of captives). These "captives" must surely refer to those of Matt. 28:52, "And the graves were opened : and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after His resurrection . . . went into the holy city . . . appeared unto many." This company came up with Christ the Head — the first installment of the "much fruit" produced by the corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died — holy ones who had prophetically seen Christ's day in its spiritual significance (Jno. 8:56) and whose suffering lives had been sown so exactly into the quality of His death that His resurrection not only in quality but in time became theirs. They have preceded us ; whatever our glory, they have gone on in front of us. Consider them.

They were of a dispensation that had not the full blaze of Gospel light, but dwelt in the glimmerings of the types and shadows. Yet this prior resurrection shows that souls absolutely reverent follow light that may lead them beyond the grace and gifts of their own dispensation, while a little observation proves that the majority of God's souls live below the privileges and provisions of their own dispensation, as did most Israelites in their day, and as have most Christians in this Gospel Age. Yes, we repeat, consider them: this "multitude of captives." How great is their gain ! While the bodies of contemporaries lie in .their graves, continuing their long wait for resurrection, these have the exquisite joy of coming up in the Sheaf of Wheat and passing on to the throne, hidden in Christ, for full overcomers of all ages are with Jesus on His throne. Rev. 3:21.

In our thoughts what questions crowd around this company! From the throne for now nearly two thousand years they have watched the formation, development, decline and now fresh quickening of the Christian Church. What co-operative part have they had with Christ through the age! We do not wish to be wise above what is written; we can well afford to stop where God stops, and reverence His silence as much as we rejoice in His revelation, but is there not deep significance in such words as these : "Take, my brethren, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example (something to be copied) of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold we count them happy which endure." Jas. 5:10, 11. Abraham saw Christ's day. Jno.

8:56. When? Doubtless when he yielded unquestioning, ready obedience to God's command, "Take thy son . . . thine only . . . and offer him" upon one of the mountains of Moriah "for a burnt offering," and Abraham rose ''early in the morning" and went his heart-rending way, all the way. To all intents and purposes "Abraham offered up Isaac." Heb. 11:17. His heart accomplished the act though his hand was stayed by divine interposition. Already he had unwittingly prophesied, "God will provide Himself an offering." Now in the crucial moment as the knife was arrested, think you not that God flashed on him the vision of His own marvelous provision to the age of the ages — the Lamb of God? Abraham had been a long time going from one deepening act of faith's obedience to another — spiritually we mature by successive acts of faith — now in this crowning step, he became grown up in God enough for God to pass him out of the children-of-Israel school, that is, of those who know God's acts only, into the Moses school of those to whom He makes known His ways. Ps. 103:7. Thus he saw Jesus the Way, and ''zvas glad." Did not the gladness then and there compensate for the agony? It always does, for God pays us as we go, in heaven's own coin for every step of obedience and faith. How much more as he came up a grain in that Sheaf of Wheat ! ! ! So we might look into the lives of many others, Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, etc., to see them traveling the same death-route and maturing thereby to belong to Jesus' own resurrection. Others there doubtless were, unmentioned in the Word, who inconspicuously journeyed the same way. Jehovah is no respecter of persons; any soul of any dispensation that wants to find the highest in God, welcomes the light, meets the tests and continues to go forward to the end; all such He will by His grace take to the very highest. All hail the grace and condescension of God !

Let us here look into the Pentecostal Feast, or the feast of the second first-fruits, which brings us to the second order in resurrection. It is named ''they that are Christ's at His coming/' Now that all signs of His appearing are so rapidly fulfilling, everything about this company most vitally concerns us. The types here are rich with instruction. Fifty days had to be numbered from the waving of the sheaf of wheat, to bring this feast. It was the feast of the fifties, fifty and Pentecost being synonomous in the Greek. In that number was hidden two time-epochs, and how much more who can tell ! Fifty days covers literally the time from Jesus' resurrection to the descent of the Holy Spirit. Fifty days covers typically the dispensation from Jesus' resurrection and ascension till His return for those who are His at His coming.

The descent of the Holy Spirit was not upon the whole company of believers — for Jesus ''was seen of above five hundred brethren at once"

after His resurrection (I. Cor. 15:6) — but upon a little inner circle of one hundred and twenty. Then as now there were two strongly differentiated companies of believers; one hundred and twenty who on the day of Pentecost touched at least the outer rim of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and three hundred and eighty saved ones outside that inner circle. Provisionally, the body of believers from the day of the descent of the Spirit have been in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit; experimentally, the larger number on that day knew nothing of the dispensation though they had the experience of being saved by Jesus. Has it not been so ever since? A large part of the host of God in each generation have not known the baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire, though they have experienced the operations of the Spirit in conviction, conversion, and something of the keeping power of salvation — lived below their dispensation; never came into its privileges and its power, and thus will never come up in its resurrection.

This type of resurrection, unlike the Sheaf of Wheat, is composed of two wave loaves; comparatively much grain in these. Why two wave loaves? Because I. Thess. 4:15-17 tells us that they that are Christ's at His coming will be in two companies, one from among the dead and one from among the living. The requirements for both are searching, "They shall be of fine flour." Jesus tells us of Himself (doubtless as the grain of wheat and the sheaf of wheat) that a corn of grain must abide alone except it die (Jno. 12:24) and Hour speaks most clearly of the crushed and death-state of the grain, while ''fine flour" with the figure drawn from the crude mills of the East, tells of "deaths oft"; repeated grindings and siftings, with a great expenditure of time and labor to make flour fine.

In India, with their hand mills, the writer has often watched the many processes a month before the holidays, to make flour fine enough for cakes and confections for Christmas. The wheat must ofttimes be remanded to the grinding of the upper and nether millstones, and sifted again and again through cloth of coarse, fine, and still finer grades. In Hebrew it is the same word we are told, for the grinding by the women at the mills and the contriting of the human heart. "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite (ground) and humble spirit, etc." Isa. 57:15. Thus "they that are Christ's at His coming" both resurrection and translation Christians, are Hne Hour. It is also said "they shall be haken.. . . they are first fruits." Baken — fire, fire, fire; this is ever the type of "they that are Christ's at His coming." Pentecostal fruits, fruits of the fifties. Fire enkindled souls ! They have availed themselves of the glorious provisions of Matt. 3:11, "He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire"

Oh do we not see the strong line of demarkation between the baptized and the unbaptized souls of the Lord? This Gospel Age in which we live is known as the Church Age. Truly it is, but not because all saved in it are of the church, but rather because the main purpose of God in this dispensation is to develop and mature for Christ the bride, the church. We are distinctly told in Acts 15 :14 that this visitation to the Gentiles is "to take out of them a people for His name." When a man goes to a house to take out one for his name he is seeking the young girl who is to be his bride — not to marry the family. Yet, many have taught all through this Gentile dispensation that God's purpose was to convert the world. No, the main purpose throughout has been to bring forth that blessed portion for Christ's Name, His bride.

Incidentally many other things may be accomplished, a large body of believers brought forth, who rejected or neglected the provision that would have matured them for first resurrection Christians, and whom death reaps and holds in the same paradise with Old Testament saints of like grade, waiting their (the second) resurrection. Rev. 20.

Every soul raised in its "own order.'' Thus we find on the day of Pentecost and ever since through the Christian age, we have had these two bodies of believers ; the Spirit-baptized and those who have lived without that baptism. Are all believers bride-souls? No. But we are told the bride is the church, and Christ is the Head of the Church as the husband is the head of the wife (Eph. 5:23-27) and the bride, the church is the body of Christ (Eph. 1 :22, 23; Eph. 5:29, 30, 32; Col. 2:17, 19, etc.). The terms are interchangeable, the bride, the church, the body. How do we get into the church, which is His body? Many believers will tell you "By the new birth." God does not say so. The new birth, He tells us, admits to the kingdom of God. Jno. 3:3, 5. How then do we get into the church, His body? We are all baptized into one body (I. Cor. 12:13) ; born into the kingdom, baptised into the body. So we see all through this age there are kingdom believers and body believers. Thus on the day of Pentecost there were one hundred and twenty baptized into the one body, the tiny nucleus of the church of God in this, the church age, and three hundred and eighty kingdom believers, who had by the new birth gotten into the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit's mission for two thousand years has been to woo the unsaved world, through the new birth, into God's kingdom, and then to woo these born-of- God-ones, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, into the church of God. "My little chil-- dren," said Paul, "for whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4:19), thus was the Holy Spirit taking possession of Paul with the Spirit's second travail. There is a double call, a double work, a double travail, a higher and a lower road on which believers journey with their differing times in resurrection; differing rewards and different position in relation to service in millennium and after ages. What we let our Lord fit us for here and now, to that position of service and increasing usefulness shall we go in those after times. As I once heard a little Salvation Army lassie say, " This is not our Christian service; we are only learning the trade now.'' To all mankind the earth-life is probation — ^the Christian-worker apprenticeship. Hallelujah! Oh the glories of the after ages with their advancing service for those who learn well their lessons here! For there are many, many grades among those who get into the "inner circle." Paul says there is a glory of the sun, of the moon, of the stars, and many varying degrees among the stars ; "so also is the resurrection."

IV Third Epoch

E come to the third type : Feast of Tabernacles, otherwise known as, feast of booths, feast of the ingathering, feast of the great general harvest. This feast took place from the fifteenth day of the seventh month, as the feast of Pentecost fifty days after the Passover feast. Observe the time element in resurrection order. Between the two parts of the first resurrection, namely, when Christ and those that rose with Him, and secondly when He returns for the company who are His "at His coming," is a time quantity of fifty days or one and a half months. Similarly from the catching away of that company till the end of the second resurrection (the beginning of which is shown in Rev. 20.) is five and a half months, or one hundred and sixty-five days. Something amazing in the plan of God is here hinted at.

We saw in our last paper that in Dispensational fulfillment the fifty days of the Pentecostal feast covers the two thousand years of this Gentile age, the time quantity between His going away and His return for His ready ones. If fifty days open the two thousand (or thereabout) year period of this dispensation, therefrom we infer the one hundred and sixty-five days from that to the feast of Tabernacles might cover more than three times two thousand — six thousand years !

The great length and glory of God's salvationplan hardly dawns upon us in our present infantile condition. Three times in the Word it is said God keepeth covenant with the people to a thousand generations. Allowing thirty-three years to a generation (although we know that the antedeluvian generations were much longer) up to the end of the millennium age, covering seven thousand years there will have been about two hundred and sixteen generations. Thus we see if these words of God ''unto a thousand generations" are considered words (and what words of God are not considered?) there is a mighty vastness in salvation's scheme. It is as if it were hardly begun at the end of the millennium age. With great emphasis God brings out the thought of His thousand generation covenant with His creatures. In I. Chron. 16:15 He speaks of it as "the word which He commanded;" in Deut. 7:9 He speaks of Himself as the faithful God which keepeth covenant and