Page 6 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

INTRODUCTION

IN ORDER to obtain a spiritual apprehension of the principles of divine dealings
and God‟s purposes in eternity, it is necessary for one to be completely abandoned to
the Word of God and possessed of a deep conviction that ultimate truth can only be
discovered within its pages. Neither of these reactions is found in the natural man as

we are well aware from both revelation and experience. As the Scripture has declared
that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are
foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually

discerned” (I Cor.2:14), we have found it to be invariably the case in our own
experience.

“The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be” (Rom.8:7). Sadly enough, the carnal mind frequently remains

after there has been an implantation of the divine life in the individual, just as there
was wide-spread yearning on the part of Israel for the things of Egypt after the Red
Sea experience. The very people of God‟s earthly testimony failed miserably to
comprehend His purposes in their redemption or to enter into His thought for them.

Of Caleb alone was it recorded, and of him thrice repeated, that he wholly followed
the Lord. He and Joshua were a small minority, but, as is always true in spiritual
matters, were entirely right and the majority entirely wrong.

The more we are enabled by the Holy Spirit to “put off the old man with his deeds”
and to be transformed by having our minds renewed, the more we are convinced that
God‟s thoughts and man‟s thoughts are not simply divergent but diametrically
opposed and mutually exclusive, and we gradually come to the chill realization that

the feverish activity that we had deemed extremely pious was animated by unhallowed
motives and purposes, and was actually inimical to and destructive of the good and
acceptable and perfect will of God.

When we have permitted the Holy Spirit to perform the operation of crucifixion
upon us by a release of the same power by which He offered the Lord Jesus Christ
without spot to God, we discover that what we had previously thought was zeal for the

Lord was nothing more than partisan fervor for some outward organization and what
we had thought was our Christlike forbearance was nothing more than a course of the
least resistance and a craven betrayal of the interests of the Savior.

Having been raised to newness of life by the Holy Spirit according to the working

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