Gene Edwards – The Eternal Purpose – UCLA 1969

Anyhow, when they got out into the wilderness, they began to look back on the security they had. It was great. They wanted it back again. But what was their real problem? Their real problem was this. There was a cloud in the sky in the daytime and a pillar of fire by night. And they could move toward Israel, toward the earth, toward the land, toward the real estate. When that cloud was moving, and when it set, they just had to sit. When it wouldn’t move, they couldn’t move. And then, sometimes it would completely disappear, and this was frustration. And there was that desire, once more, to have a system for man to lead, rather than God to lead, because it was so hard to get used to being led by a cloud and a pillar of fire. And that is nothing in the world but a picture of the Holy Spirit within his children.

And the first big problem you run into when you come out and you try to come into the land, into the earth, and take it is that you have never been able to live by the Lord Jesus Christ within you in Spirit. He is there in Spirit, and you have no practice; you’ve been in the system so long, getting orders from man, and getting orders from things, that there is no exercise or growth of the human spirit within. Brother, you’re going to have to go through a time of learning to look for that cloud, and follow the cloud, and follow the pillar of fire, and follow the Spirit of God within you.

And I’m not speaking individually, because that was a group of people, and you’ve got to stop thinking individually, and think collectively; when a group of brothers and sisters meet together, and they are not going to be following man. And let me tell you this, anybody who keeps on leading and keeps on leading, in the New Testament, the concept of apostleship was that the apostle would have a group of believers utterly in his hand, as Jesus did the disciples, and as Paul did in the churches he started, but the principle was different. He had it therefore a short time to instruct them, and to show them how to live by Christ, and leave, and get out there, get out, that the people of God might learn to live by the Spirit within them, and nothing else, that Christ might be the head of his church and to use a secular term, and it is secular, Jesus Christ is alive enough in you to pastor his own church. You’ve got to learn to live by him, and follow the cloud, and follow the pillar of fire, and don’t go back.

Well, wait a minute, there is another picture of the system, and that is Babylon. You remember Babel started off with Babel under Nimrod, at the big tower, and then it disappears. That very same city, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later, started off as God’s, building for God, hundreds and hundreds of years after Egypt, and after the people get back in, that same town, that same place, the very same place, raises its head up again. It’s Babylon now, not just Babel, but Babylon. And it started off as a city to reach the true and living God. And what is it by the time we see it again? Hundreds of years later. What is it? It’s the same city, started off on the same concept, it was something good, it was something to reach the true and the living God, but when it surfaces again, hundreds of years later, it has become a city for the worship of the moon. And that city is the enemy of God, and Israel, and the earth that they took and the earth that they had.

Now what am I trying to say to you?  If man builds, even though he builds for God and builds for Christ, when that thing gets old and the founder passes, you’ll have something that will be the very enemy of God and will no longer bear even the semblance of the image of Christ. Give it a few hundred years. And I tell you, it’s faster now. It can be done in forty or fifty, it looks like. And it will be the enemy of God.

And this time they come to Israel with their army, and they take it and they take the people of God and they take them back to Babylon and they enslave them. And once again, there’s the fight over the real estate. And for seventy years, the people of God have lost the earth, and God is just the God of heaven. But a little group of the Jews in Babylon is going to go back home. Some of their brothers and sisters say, Well, there’s a temple here. They say, yeah, but there’s got to be a temple in Jerusalem. It’s got to be on the ground of Jerusalem. It’s got to be in the right place.

They say, we’re going back anyway. And the others say, ‘Don’t leave; stay here and help us preach, and maybe we’ll change the system.’ Stay here. After all, the vessels of God are in that temple. I want to repeat that. The vessels of God were in the temple of Babylon. And I guess that’s what bugs us. There is a salvation there.  There is something of God there. But you open the windows, and you look back, and you know that God’s eternal purpose is that man may have the land, and you’ve got to go back. And some of your dearest friends say, Don’t go back. And brother, it’s not the great majority of the Jews that went back. The great majority of them stayed in Babylon. But it was a few who went to rebuild the city of God. And you’ve got to bid goodbye and go. And when you get there, you’ve got to do like Nehemiah. You don’t take any of the gold and silver of the governor of Babylon. And you build again with stone the city of God.

All right. One last scene of Babylon. Praise God, it’s got a last one. You go to Revelation 14,16,17, and 18. Here is Babylon once more. This is the old man, the human life. And once again, Babylon is seen, and this time, Babylon has begun to express the image that she really is. She is a woman who is a harlot. And by the way, she still has decked around her neck the gold and the silver and the precious stone, which are a symbol of God’s people. They’re just decked right out there for everyone to see. There’s a little still there. But right under it, it says that she is full of the blood of the prophets and the saints of God. And if you don’t believe that, you just go back and find out who’s killed all the prophets and saints of God. It’s the religious system.

And then Babylon is exposed for what she really is. She is called the mother of harlots. And her one great disposition is that she has had intercourse with the world. The world system started by Lamesh way, way back there. She has become the greatest single buyer of the world’s products. I was told in one city that the largest single source of income in that city was one of the religious organizations, without which the secular printing companies, advertising agencies, and things like that could not exist, because of the tremendous income in that small town of that one religious institution. She has taken over Madison Avenue’s techniques. She has taken over the image of the world, and she has had intercourse with the world, and she is the great religious system. And she has given birth to many, many children who are harlots.

Boy, that’s tough going. And as far as I am concerned, I have never spoken on this publicly before, and I shall never again speak on it again. But I ought to tell you simply this. The very last word, and this is in the book of Revelation chapter 18, the very last word of God from heaven was simply this. My people, come out from her. Come out from her.

And for all the ages, God has been calling us out of human life and out of human life system. He is calling us out of the things that man builds for God, that bears the image of man, that has the ways of the world. He is calling you, and he is calling me, and throughout this earth, his spirit calls, Come out from her. His people are in there, and he’s saying, Come out. And he doesn’t say, stay in there and convince someone else to go, and he doesn’t say, as you leave, take a Babylonian garment with you. No, he says, come out. Come out to what? Come out to God’s eternal purpose. And what is God’s eternal purpose? To have the new man, who bears the image of God, and has dominion over the enemy.

Now, just listen. I will quit and put your shoes back on. I started out by saying that God’s eternal purpose was to have a man upon this earth who had the image of Christ and who had power and dominion over the creeping things, had power over Satan, and who would subdue the earth. That’s God’s eternal purpose, and it was before redemption. And that’s God’s purpose for the new man. And Jesus Christ came upon this earth. I’m sorry. Jesus Christ came upon this earth bearing the image of God and with the life of God in Him. And then He died, and a grain fell into the earth. The grains were lost to the ground. Then the grains were crushed; my friends, it’s going to take some crushing to get what God wants. And they’re all crushed, and they’re pounded together into one loaf, which is the church. Life is the same. The Life that went into the earth is the same Life that is in the loaf. And God had his Man, the new man.