Poison Gas From The Enemy

Whenever God raises up an instrument by which He intends to bring His Testimony into greater clearness and greater fullness, the object of which in His desire and thought is to reveal the nature of His Son more clearly, more perfectly, then the concentrated attention of all the powers of evil is to bring that thing under suspicion, and to put over it a great question mark in the eyes and minds of everybody. 

Why are not the Lord's people alive to that fact? 

For a fact which runs parallel with that, and which is just as mighty a fact itself, is that when you really investigate that thing you find you have no reason for question at all.

It was all an unfounded suspicion.

This is clearly the Devil's work, to cast over something which the Lord would use for a fuller revelation of His Son, and of what He desires for His people, this film of questioning, suspicions, doubts, so that it is forced into a realm where it is regarded as dangerous, suspicious.

Would to God that the Lord's people would obey the injunction to "prove all things"!

You see what the enemy is after, and how he goes to work. 

It is helpful to know sometimes what the enemy is after, and how he does operate.

We may be saved from much if only we are aware of it.

This is a message to our hearts, not only of helpfulness in an objective direction through our being informed as to the danger, the peril, the devices of the enemy, but it sheds light upon the inward experience, and shows that all the Lord's dealings with us are intended to bring us to this state of crystal clearness. 

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts (Psa. 51:6): and what the Lord desires He will get.

The dealings of the Lord with His own are purifying dealings, in order to have this crystal clearness, this pure gold, this stone most precious.

They are for the getting rid of the dross, getting rid of the film, getting rid of all those secret and secretive elements which work in the direction of deception. Those are like unto a lie, a falsehood.

The Lord wants to root all that out of us. He is against everything that is shadowy.

He is for everything that is perfectly clear, and so to get rid of the dark substances He puts His fires to work in our lives to purify them.

He does not allow such to be out of the fire for long. He is after this state of utter purity.

God is not cleansing, purging, chastening you and me, and causing His fires to work to our purifying, just for the sake of doing it, and He is not doing it just for our own sakes in as much as He wants us individually to be good and not bad. I suppose He wants that, but that is not all. 

God has a mighty, universal purpose in view, an eternal vocation, and that is what He is after, and it requires a condition.

That is one of the governing conditions of Zion, namely, the full expression of the Lord's mind. 

The Lord is always motived by things so much greater and vaster than we understand in the day when we are passing through the trial.

We bring it down to a personal matter, and ask questions: Why should the Lord deal with me like this? 

We narrow down the range of His thought, His purpose, His intention.

Because we make it so local we lose the strength and helpfulness which would come to us if we could see the great eternal vocation for which we were being prepared. 

~T. Austin Sparks~