In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Genesis 1:1–5. The evening and the morning were one day.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Verse 8.
And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. Verse 13.
And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Verse 19.
And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Verse 23.
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Verse 31.
The mind tends to reason in certain channels; human thinking says, “day and night.” God says, “night and day.” The order of spiritual things is in reverse, as far as their coming forth is concerned. First comes the chaos and then comes the light. First comes the evening and the night; then comes the morning and the day. It is significant that, to this day, the Jewish day begins at sundown, because the night is the beginning of the day. We know that the eve of Succoth opens up the Feast of Tabernacles, the eve of Passover opens the Passover, and the eve of Tishre opens it up. Always it is in the evening that the day starts, because this is God’s way of reasoning and reckoning. This is the way things always happen.
Have there been many tests and trials in your life since you have come into a walk with God? Have there been many, many difficulties? Have you said, “I never anticipated there would be so many problems and so many difficulties.” Cheer up! The morning comes! First comes the night, and now we say, “Behold, the sunrise! The night is passing, and the sunrise is coming. That which God has brought us through has been God’s order. Always the evening comes, and then the morning. And we say, as the Psalmist said, “My soul waiteth for Thee, O Lord, more than they wait for the morning,” like the watchmen who are looking for the dawn of things to come.
Have there been many disappointments and heartaches in your life recently? Have there been times of testing which you have not been able to really rise above, until there has been little joy in your heart? “Sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” First there will be the evening, then there will be the morning.
A passage that has been most blessed to me is Psalm 105:17, which speaks of Joseph. He sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a servant: his feet they hurt with fetters: He was laid in chains of iron, until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tried him. First was the night in the life of Joseph, and then came the time when the king sent and loosed him, and made him lord of his house. It is always in that order. First the disappointment and the heartache, then after a while, comes the new day.
Perhaps you say in your heart, “I have had many disappointments, many heartaches. It has gone on for years.” First the evening, then comes the morning. The sunrise has come to the Church; the sunrise has come to many people in this walk. You will never pass through a time like you have passed through before. Even in my heart, I have to say of the times we have gone through: the times of testing, of disappointment, of trials and heartaches are also times in which God’s joy and blessing have still been there. His comforting presence has still been there. And if it has been so worthwhile, how much more glorious will it be, now that the sunrise has come to this new day?
Have there been deep dealings of the Lord upon your life? Inevitably, there will be, for the Word of God tells us that this is the course of sonship. If you have been under those deep dealings of the Lord, remember, the morning comes. Behold the sunrise! If the dealings of the Lord have been to chasten you and discipline you, and sometimes you have gone through things that are very difficult to bear, cheer up! That always has to be the prelude to great things that God must bring in your life. In the twelfth chapter of Hebrews is one of the clearest and best passages on God’s dealings with His people.
Ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons, my son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. Hebrews 12:5–13.
Have you borne the stripes? do you still feel the pain of chastening? God has a way of humbling His people so that He may bring them into His righteousness and make them partakers of all His blessings. Every time He receives a son, He begins the scourging.
It is a great mistake in the lives of parents, to feel their children must not be disciplined. Good, careful discipline at a very tender age prevents the spirit from becoming set in a rebellious pattern. My daughters were raised under good discipline. And yet, after a certain period of time, there was a very minimum of discipline; to just sit and talk with them was most adequate. But it was based upon the fact that when they were quite small and tender, the discipline was very strict—when it needed to be strict—and we taught them the meaning of discipline: not punishment—discipline. Life consists of men and women disciplining themselves, or they will probably be failures. They must discipline themselves to study in their school years. They must discipline themselves to work, to the achievement, to the endless hours that must be necessary in any creative work. Discipline is very necessary. The ability of a man to discipline himself is beyond any value that could be placed upon it, beyond gold and silver. A disciplined life is one that can be regulated in happiness and peaceful pursuits and productivity.
This being true, the discipline of children should be to teach them to discipline themselves—to understand the nature of order in their lives and principles to which they must become obedient, and the authority to which they must be subservient. This is done early in a person’s life, so he learns what to do. The life of one of our brother’s children was saved because of discipline. He learned how we disciplined our children when they were small and how well-behaved they were as a result of it, so he set himself to follow the very same pattern of discipline in his own home in the years that were to follow. One time when he was standing across a street, his daughter began to run between two cars into the street, and a car was coming, probably 55 miles an hour. That car would have hit and probably killed her, because she was coming directly into the line of it. Her father looked and shouted her name; she stopped immediately. He turned to me, white as a sheet, and said, “I am glad I taught that child to obey my voice. It saved her life today.”
Discipline is important. It is important, many times as we learn that the discipline comes to us of the Lord. Sometimes you may be under the dealings of the Lord that may come to you and you say, “I don’t understand why it is, but when I came into this walk, God began to lay the whip to me.” It is because He is trying to teach you obedience, discipline that will bring you forth as a son of God who will walk with Him in this day. So He puts you in the corner, and your temper blows up and He deals with you about it. After awhile, you are going to quit losing your temper! After awhile, you will come into a discipline that will make you a partaker of His holiness. He will deal with you, one way after another, and you will learn the value of God’s chastening. If you are in it now and the dealings of God have been deep on your life, rejoice! The morning is coming! Behold, the sunrise! You will walk as a son of God, because of the chastening of the Lord.
Is the outlook on your life one of despair and foreboding? From your viewpoint, as you look upon the things of the world, do you see tribulation and trouble? The members of a small denomination in this area sold all of their buildings and moved to another state because of dreams and visions of coming disasters.
I feel that one day doing the will of God would be worth more than a whole lifetime of running in fear from that which God set us to do. But if it was God’s will and He wanted us to leave, and He said for this church to go by the mouths of two or three witnesses, earnest prophets, we would do it. I do not believe that we should forsake the duties and responsibilities we have. I take a little different viewpoint, although there are serious things coming on the earth, and the possibility of our coast crumbling off is probably scientific. We are on a fault that has indicated that earthquakes are well overdue.
When I view all these things coming to pass, it doesn’t make much difference one way or the other. If, in the next ten years or so, the kingdom of God will be set up on the earth, suppose a great earthquake came, and we were busy serving and doing the will of God here on the coast and everything slid off into the ocean, and we were all drowned. Suppose it happened—probably within ten years the first resurrection will have taken place, the kingdom of God will have been set up, and we will be right back here, “business as usual,” doing the will of God. So what is the concern? Why worry about it?
The twenty-first chapter of Luke prophesies many calamities, but verse 28 tells the Christian what his attitude should be. When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. Don’t worry about the earthquakes; be concerned about the redemption. Don’t worry about the night because it will soon be over. The dawn is coming. The sunlight is rising upon us. It is a better day. Many of us will live and survive through all of the end-time events, and within a short time we will be standing within the kingdom of God. This generation, I believe, will see all these things. I have studied it carefully, and it is my conviction, at least I give it to you only as my opinion of it. I cannot say that this is the word of the Lord, but I look at the signs of the times, and I encourage you—don’t be discouraged. Look up. The dawn is coming, the sunrise is already breaking through. There is another day coming. And if there be a few tremors of an old age dying, this is to be expected. But the new age is coming on us, so let’s rejoice in it with all of our hearts. We are going to walk with Him, trusting in the Word as the lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts, as Peter has said. And that Daystar is rising in our hearts! It points to the sunrise of another day. It is already on us, praise the Lord!
I wonder if we understand what God has in mind for us. Would you say there is a day dawning for your heart, and this which is coming forth in the earth with the church is already a living thing in your heart? I believe that you witness that it is.
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Genesis 2:15. The Lord spoke to my heart that God is also putting us in the great garden of His planting, to dress it, to till it, to take care of it, and to prune it.
That is taking place now. Just as God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, so He is now raising up elders and putting them in the Church to take care of the planting of the Lord. They are pruning, trimming, and bringing the full fruitfulness God has for them. Whenever God does a thing, He seems to demand that there be human initiative and cooperation, human dedication linked with that which He would bring forth. He plants a Garden of Eden, but He puts an Adam in it and says, “Adam, you dress it. You till it.” So, Adam trims and prunes the trees; that is his job. People get the idea today that labor is a part of the curse, but this is not true. Man earning his bread by the sweat of his brow is so because the earth is cursed with thorns and thistles, but labor is not cursed. Labor is blessed of God. God put Adam in the Garden, and gave him the great responsibility of working, long before there was a woman, long before there was a fall. Long before anything else happened, Adam was preoccupied with labor that God had him perform: “Take care of this garden.”
That is what God is doing for us, in that which He is restoring today. He is bringing forth. He is saying to every one of our hearts, “I am putting you into my planting. You are in my heritage, and you are to go to work. You are to bless one another. You are to take care of each other.” It is very important, and God seems to be blessing that. The elders will bless you when you need it. When you go through a testing or a trial, they will counsel and help you. When the ministry begins to flow, it is God digging around your roots with the help of the ministries He has put here to accomplish it.
In order that you see the real diligence of this, read one of the great passages on the Restoration, Isaiah 61:4–7. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God: ye shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. Instead of your shame, ye shall have double; and instead of dishonour they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess double; everlasting joy shall be unto them.
This passage in Isaiah has a reality and a tender meaning for the spiritual Zion of today. The people of God are finding that this is what God is doing. Many people who come into the church are like the waste places. They are the desolation of many generations. When they come in, many things have been warring against them, and we have to help them. Maybe they were in a church where there were difficulties, and they come to us disillusioned; they come in a little bitter because they have been through experiences that have broken their hearts. They come in, and we are the ones to whom the Lord says, “I brought them in, now go ahead and work them over.”
Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, you till the soil, you prune it. You take care of it. You feed this planting of the Lord so that it comes forth fruitful. You are members one of another, edifying one another, helping one another into the perfect will of God. Each of you has a vision and a revelation, but you find you have so many hangups you cannot meet yourself. And so, we are loving each other, we are helping each other, and we are blessing one another, and the ministries of the Lord are flourishing. This is a great day, a day that has already dawned. And if it seems a little dark to you right now in your life, remember, the day is dawning, and behold, the sunrise!