Gene Edwards – The Eternal Purpose – UCLA 1969

This is human life; this is the image of human life. The image of human life has a head, and, you know, there’s the presidents, brothers, I hate to tell you this, there’s the area directors, and then there are the staff directors on campus, and then there are just the staff people, you know, and then there’s the poor, miserable, God forsaken layman, down at the very bottom of the heap. This is the way of the old man throughout all history, and this is what John was speaking to you last night about. I almost came right out of my chair. Thank God that somebody has seen this thing.

I want you to look at this. I want you to look at this system, and, brother, this is, I’m not reading out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog here. The first building of man is Enosh. Then comes that system, world system, and when I spoke a moment ago, I talked of the whole world system, not of one of the systems in it. The world system is full of systems, and even one system has systems in it. And that’s the religious system. It has its system within it. And all of these are part of the world system, which is nothing in the world but taking human things and putting us in bondage with them. There’s nothing wrong with marriage; it’s the bondage of a ceremony that makes it so hideous. There’s nothing wrong with a home, the simplicity of just a roof over your head, but the bondage of all the things that have been worked up in it, and the clothing, and the transportation. All of this is the world system to keep the old man in bondage.

Then there came a day after the flood, and I want you to get this very carefully. It was the great-grandson of Noah who built Babel. Now, Noah was on the path, but it doesn’t take very long after the path to get off of it. Somebody starts off just great, and four generations later, you’ve got a system. Okay, now then, don’t misunderstand Nimrod. Nimrod built the first big human effort to reach God. This was the religious system I’ve moved out of the world system into the religious system in the world system.

Nimrod, first of all, was characterized by his greatness. He was a great hunter. I don’t know what he was hunting for, maybe free will offerings. I don’t know what he was hunting for, but he was a great hunter. And he decided to build a city, and this man knew something of God. He knew something of God, and he wanted to do something for God. He saw something of God’s building. So, Nimrod and the others began to build a city made of brick. Now, this is human, human, human, human. When God builds, he builds with stone, and God makes stone. But when man builds, he builds with brick. So, they began to build with brick, and they noticed that it tottered a little. And it tipped over, and if you go over and just push them, they’d fall over. They didn’t fit one another. They didn’t work together well. They fell out. And so, Nimrod and his crew said, We’ve got to do something. And they looked around, and although the word in Hebrew is bitumen (“chemar”), the translation is slime. It says they made some slime to hold the bricks together.

Now, this is the characteristic of man’s building. Man must fall out with himself. If you people start trying to have body life together, you’re going to split in a thousand different directions, because you’re going to do it on human life, and human life splits. And it’s going to fall over. Now, be at peace. We’ll get there in a minute.

They began to build, and they put the slime in, and the slime hardened, and the brick held. Now, what is the slime? I’ll tell you what it is. It is acceptance of the brethren. Either you fit, or you don’t feel accepted. And that is the most insidious thing there is. I belong to a group of people who had no real big creed, and they did not say that they ruled over us. They could not hire or fire me. The local church did that. But you had to go along with the brothers, or you were totally out of acceptance. Do you know what slime is? It’s rules, brother. It’s regulation, dear sister. It’s telling you that you’ve got to do this, and you can’t do that. And it’s the building of man, and you must conform, and it is a director, and a board, and then the peasants at the bottom, whether you call them pastor, and deacons, and congregation, or whether you call them president, and the people below them. It doesn’t matter what they are called. There has to be a binding together of man’s organization, or it will fall over, and you must toe the line to man, or it will not stand.

God, in his mercy, brings division because, in the human system, if there were no division, it would become so powerful that it would consume the earth. And every man on earth would be in bondage to it. And in the Middle Ages, there was a system, a religious system, that grew so great upon this earth that it was about to consume it until God brought division in the human system that was being lived by the power of human life.

Now, you’ve heard recently of some organizations that are having some problems. This is division brought on by God. God, because the system gets too powerful and too great, and God has to divide it, or it would literally consume the earth. I thank God for division when the building is built by a group of Adam lives coming together. Because there will always be somebody on top. There will always be somebody on bottom. There will always be just the ear listening, listening, listening. There will always be the orders given, given, given by man, man, man. And this doesn’t look like God’s new man. This looks like the human; this is the military chain of command, and if you want to know how to recognize it, look and see if there’s a chain of command. And if there’s a chain of command, it’s the human system.

Well, wait a minute, we’re not through with this thing. It comes again in the picture of Egypt. You remember Egypt? The children of God were captured there, and they were building Pharaoh’s cities. And the book of Exodus says that those cities were built of what? Brick. And, brother, in order for the human building to be built, there has to be slavery. And Pharaoh would not let the people of God go because he would lose his builders. And he systematized them into a building. I’m sorry, into a system that he might have them to build his building. And there is always a king at the top, enslaving men, not to build for God, but to build for man and the image of man.

Say amen.

Now then, this is the deal He made with the children of Israel. He said, Get right on the outskirts of Egypt and build the city of God. Build a tabernacle. And they said, No, we’ve got to go all the way out. And he would not let them go. And God rained ten plagues down on them. And still he would not let them go. And today God is raining ten plagues down on the system. He is. And still there is no release to let them go, but go they will. By the unction of the Spirit of God within them, by the leadership of another life, they will go.

Now then, they got out. And they left the building of man. They began to have the building of God. They had one little problem, and you’re going to face it. When they got into the wilderness, some of them said, Oh, fiddlesticks, let’s go back. There are safe spots there, that’s security. You may be enslaved, boy, but you got an income. You got food to eat and a house over your head. By the way, I want to say something to all of you people. I’ll probably be killed when I get out of here. People who have prayer letters don’t need to be prayed for. This is part of the system.