Go Up Into God — G.W. North

Exodus 24 and the First Written Words of Scripture

I want to come with you into the book of Exodus again, you will remember that last night we finished up where we did, because we've been reading in that sixth chapter. I want to come into the chapter 24 this morning, and in the fourth verse you will notice that Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and so far as we know that was the first writing of scripture ever put down.

When you open your Bible you start at Genesis, but Genesis was written, I am persuaded, much later, of course, during Moses' lifetime. He started not with the record of creation, but with the record of the covenant, which starts in chapter 20.

God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Hallelujah. Praise the name of the Lord.

They were the first words of inspired wit. God, Moses, wrote them down. Afterwards the revelation continued, and of course Genesis was put in the place that it should hold, speaking of creation, bearing in mind an age of skeptics that would be born in the 20th century, and of course earlier.

And it's a wonderful thing to read the revelation in sequence, but when it started God didn't tell them about creation. I sometimes get a little bit worried when I hear so many choruses on about God being the great creator, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Of course he is. Of course he is. But the greatest thing is, that he is a God who has entered into covenant with mankind, and that's the thing that Moses had to write. Amen. He wrote down the 20th chapter of Exodus, the 21st chapter of Exodus, the 22nd chapter of Exodus, the 23rd chapter of Exodus.

The Invitation to Come Up to the Lord

Amen. That's a tremendous thing. But let's start at the beginning of chapter 24, verse 1. God says to Moses, come up unto the Lord. Oh hallelujah. What an invitation. What an invitation. How about it?

Are you coming up to the Lord this morning? No? Come up unto the Lord. Glory be to his wonderful name. Amen. It's all right to come out. I've brought thee out of the land of Egypt. I have brought thee out from under the burdens.

I have brought thee out of the house of bondage. Glory be to the name of the Lord. They're all connected, burdens, the house of bondage, and the land of Egypt. If you're in Egypt, that is in the world, you will be bound by the God of the world.

It doesn't matter how you may think you are not, as surely as you are worldly in, to the degree to which you are worldly, to the degree to which you accept worldliness into your life, and into your home, to the degree, degree that you copy the fans, the stars, the great ones of this world in dress, in language, in decoration, if it be that.

I call it distortion. If as far as, then to that degree, you are worldly. You and I are to be in this world. We can't be anywhere else, and thank God we are. This is where we had to come to hear the gospel.

Amen. And remember, when the blood was shed, it was split shed in the world, in Egypt, when redemption was brought into being, it was brought in the world to bring them out of the world. That's fundamentally what it was all about.

You say, it was to bring them out of sin. Strange enough, you'll never find the word sin in Exodus 12. In Exodus 12 there's no talk about sin. Did you know that? It seems you didn't. It seems you didn't.

That is because we follow the line of popular preaching, and with a New Testament content in our thinking. But when you read through scripture, you will not find God mentions sin at all. So, it seems that God says, I have come into the world to purchase you and bring you out of it.

For as sure as you stay in the world, you're going to be in sin, to whatever degree you're in it. I'll keep that clear. You are to be in it, but not of it, to any degree. That's a tremendous thing. That's what the Lord Jesus said.

That's not my idea, at least it has become my idea. I have adopted it since Jesus said it, and it's a tremendous thing for us to understand it, and it's a wonderful thing to be out in this degree. But, beloved, you and I are to see that there are greater things even than that.

How long we stop torturingly, taking our little steps, inwardly groaning, think we're doing something wonderful. An elder comes along, of course we all need encouragement, and they stroke the knife down and say, you're doing very well, lovey, you're doing very well, and of course we're needing that.

But, beloved, to be turned wholeheartedly onto the scripture, ah, I fear this is where the lack lies. To be turned scripture into scripture loose, or to turn the scriptures loose on you, is the function of every true man of God.

It is not to temporize with your foibles or ideas, it is to declare plainly what the truth is. Hmm, wonderful. The truth is here. This is the written truth of God, and God wants us to enter into it, and God is not satisfied just to get people out of the world, and just not satisfied to do miracles for them.

Wonderful, isn't it? God did miracles upon miracles, and still he hadn't talked to them about sin. You'll find it if you read through Exodus. This is because they were so embedded in sin, and sin was so much their nature, and this is why they groaned and moaned and told lies about God to redeemed people.

Told lies about God, and they did all sorts of things. They didn't sort of willfully set out on a line of defamation of his character. It was stupid, because they lived in their circumstances, and everything got done.

Of course, they were born in sin like the rest of us, and the revelation was coming very, very gradually unto them, step by step. And God did a miracle, but oh how deep they still were in sin. You know, it's like that today.

God does miracles for people, and they can sing and dance and shout, and they're all encouraged to, and why shouldn't they? And still they find they've got this deadly thing inside. Sin. Sin. A miracle on your body doesn't get rid of your sin.

You do understand that, don't you? A miracle of deliverance, say, setting you free from, let's say, the evil of nicotine. But it is an evil, and you're destroying your body with it. Doesn't get rid of your sin, it's just broken a habit.

That's all it has done. The Lord wants us to see. And, of course, by these things, as you, if you like to think of it this way, we are guided in a sort of assigned post to a greater glory, a more wonderful demonstration of power.

And God says, oh it's got to be more than this, more than this, more than this. Amen. And so God says, you come up to me, Moses. Hallelujah. Now Moses had had a wonderful revelation at the burning bush, where the glory of the Lord came down to earth.

Do you know the story? He saw the bush flaming with the presence of God. Fire there, and how he had to come near, and God spoke to him. And all the rest that we referred to last night. But now God says, look, I've come down to you, Moses, now I want you to come up to me.

All right? I've come down to you, now I want you to come up to me for a something more wonderful that I have in mind for my people. You'll excuse me putting words into the mouth of God. I'm but a poor human being.

I gather you up into my thinking, if you will come. And here then is the glory and the wonder of the Lord. He says, come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, and Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship ye afar off.

Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they, that is Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders, they shall not come nigh. Neither shall the people go up with him. God's very clear. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments, and all the people answered with one voice, and said, all the words which the Lord has said we believe.

Did he say that? No. We will do. Amen. Just to distinguish the great gap there lies between believing and doing. That's the present. It couldn't help thinking this morning, when the requests were brought for prayer about dear old brother Love.

I know what I mean by old, that's an affectionate term. I believe he's younger than some people in the room, but there he is. I taught us him, and we're well, well away from him. I don't immediately think that I'm going to say that God's power can't work from afar.

Of course it can. We can pray for people here, and a miracle happens in Australia, or something like that. That's the great glory of God, because he encircles the earth in a flash. What a marvelous truth it all is.

Faith That Acts on Behalf of the Helpless

Now, my mind went to this, that great incident in the New Testament, you will know it, of those four men who brought their friend in a bed to the Lord, and it says that when he saw their faith, I'm jumping about in the story a bit, uh which, by the way, please don't only apply to the four that brought him.

There was a fifth there he had faith too. It's great for a man who's poorly, and really unable to do something for himself, that he has some friends who believe with him, and aren't poorly, and can do things.

Hallelujah! The impotent that can believe, and yet can't do anything, it's grand that they have friends who are potent, and full of power, and can do something. Amen! That all faith should combine, and things should be done, for this is what you read.

At the moment when the bed came down through the roof to the feet of Jesus, listen, you may say, well how in the world could they break through a roof, and drop the bed right down to the feet of Jesus?

Faith will always come to Jesus. It holds like that. True faith will reach Jesus wherever he is, even if you're breaking through in the dark. Even if you've got veils over your eyes, if you've got a roof between, or a world between, or the devil between, faith gets always on the spot.

Amen! Right down to the feet of Jesus. The next word is this, when he saw their faith. Well it was all action, it's what they'd done. They did this, they did that, they did the other. He wasn't looking for their belief.

Belief and faith aren't the same. We may think they are. I know that they are very closely joined in the truth. I know that. But this is where we get, we take a thing, and we believe, and they are furious, and they're all furious until they're put into action.

When he saw their faith, it was all work, work, work, work. They got hold of him, brought him, carried him, got up on the roof with him, saw the roof open, dropped him into the midst, and that's what Jesus calls faith.

His eyes weren't searching their hearts to see whether their motives were right, or this, which this and that, and the other, of course, his eyes do see all our hearts. He saw what they had done. That's right.

And uh, he did something then, and I thought about that this morning, that dear Burt Lowe, you know, we could just present him to Jesus, get hold of him. I wonder whether you did. Whether you got hold of his bed, or what it was, and you just brought him to Jesus.

I wonder that you did. Jesus does arrest them. You're not struggling to hang on, I wonder if he will, I wonder if it will happen, I wonder if we'll have to carry him back home again on his bed. They weren't wondering about that, there were no wrists, and there were no butts, there was no alternative but healing.

None, when they did the work. Hallelujah. You know, you can read Paul's phrase, the work of faith, the work of faith. Not works, but the work of faith. Faith which makes you do something, and not sit there or stand there and say, I believe, I believe.

That's the whole thing, and it's a great and glorious thing to do. When you see, I know that we can bury this whole talk about faith, and get many aspects of it, but this is what got hold of my heart this morning, that brings dear Burt Lowe, I say very, very, amen.

Wonderful, isn't it? All right. So, you see, Moses was called up into the presence of God, and he said, bring all these others with you, Moses, you can do that. But you, because God wanted to give another revelation to his people, it's always like this.

I want to speak to you, preachers, teachers, leaders, elders, you that stand up and give words, you have tremendous responsibility. The people will never get revelation if you don't get it first. You understand that?

The grinding repetition of the old, old thing. Now, I know that nothing gets old in eternity, and that the longest stored wine is the sweetest, or at least it has the greatest bouquet, I believe. I am not an expert in that realm.

I have never been wined and dined, and will never be, and I'll never take men out and wine and dine them in order to coerce them into my group, you know, in quotes. Here is the greatest glory of God, beloved, that we move without bribery, and we move on a line of set truth, and we don't hold faith hostage to worthiness.

We move on the realms of God, and in the end you go along. That's why I ought to be preaching to the Brethren Conference, it's going to follow this. I don't know. But here, then, is the truth. Moses had to go up and get a fuller revelation of God's part.

I say, oh God, give us men of this caliber. Oh God, give us men that would give up everything. Moses had long before the children of Israel given up their worldliness, and the world had to give them up.

He had long ago forsaken the land of Egypt. Long ago. He may not have forsaken it in honor, he may not have forsaken it in the way that we should have liked, but he did it, and he chose rather than riches, and money, and prosperity.

I hope you've all got your ears wide open. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, and he wanted none of the treasures of this world. He didn't want its gold, he didn't want its silver, he didn't want its accolades, he didn't want its position, he didn't want anything that this world could confer upon him, for he knows that everything that comes along this line comes painted by Satan, all the lot of it, and it will destroy.

It cannot help but destroy even inanimate things that are amoral, and have no power, we think. There is a power that directs them, there is a hand that gives them to you, there is an authority under which all these things function.

The powers that be are ordained of God, but the wrong people are occupying the power. That's the thing that's wrong, the very power that Satan uses was originally ordained and gifted by God, but he has prostituted his power.

He has gone wrong, and he has not so much usurped the position as carried on in that thing, and is using it to the destruction of himself and everybody else. That's what he's doing. I didn't intend to say all that.

Obedience Rather Than Religious Emotion

You see what I mean by people saying they get more from this side. Let's go on. Here in this great and glorious way that God has elected to lead his people, Moses, as you see in verse 2, as we've read, he had to go alone in the end, brave soul that he was, I point it out to you presently, and it says that Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments, and all the people answered with one voice, and probably if he would have been standing among them he'd have said, oh hallelujah, we're all at one, isn't it marvelous, thank you, thank you Lord, you see.

That's what you would have said. A tremendous emotional release, glory to God, most people I know need emotional release. It's where it goes to when it's released. That's the thing, and it says this, they answered with one voice all the words which the Lord has said we will do, and Moses wrote all the words of the Lord.

May I put in something that is not in the text, but is manifestly true. That is that the words of the Lord had spoken to him so far, for you will know that the Lord spoke many, many, many more words to him.

There's much more in the law than is contained in the 20th, and 21st, 22nd, and 23rd chapters of Exodus, as you will very well know. But he wrote it down, glory, and he did it with a purpose. I don't suppose, I don't know, I'll ask him myself when I see him.

I'm going to see him, you know, one day, or one eternity, I'm not quite sure, but here is the great thing. I'll be able to ask him a lot of things that I still want to know. I want to know more things than I know, but you may know better than the things I know.

Let's, let's, let's go right on. And it says this, he rose up, when he'd done that, when he'd done that, it says he got up early in the morning, fancy staying up all night writing that down, and then being up early in the morning.

What a man he was. You're done in, aren't you? About Wednesday, you'll say, oh dear, yeah, that's what you'll be saying, won't you? Are you a man or half a man? That's what I want to know. Praise the name of the Lord.

You can train your body which way you want to train it, did you know that? I won't give illustrations, that wouldn't be fair. And he rose up early in the morning, and built an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

What's he going to do with the other half? He put half of the blood on the altar, not all of it. Keep that clear. Not all of it. The other portion was reserved for another purpose, just as important. And we forget the importance of the other side, which in the end is the only thing that makes the blood on the altar useful to us.

Leave out this part, and the other part is no good to you, will be your condemnation. Here then, is the great and glorious truth. He took the book of the covenant, he stayed up writing it. He took it fresh, before may I say the ink was dry, you will understand what I mean, almost.

And he presented it to the people, and he read it. First he told them in their ears, then he read it to them, and confirmed what he said. Glorious! And I want you to know this, that the written word was confirmation of the spoken word.

You keep that clear. Since the word has been written, the spoken word has got to be a confirmation of the written word. Amen. That it works, and it is true. In the mouth of two witnesses, the written word and the mouth that speaks it, coming through from God.

Here then, is the truth. He read it in the audience of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do, and be obedient. And be obedient. Obedience is something that's absolutely hated in these days.

Greek, even had it deleted from the marriage service. That's why our dad says one head going like that. I won't conduct a marriage service if you want that deleted, so don't ask me. Amen. Here then, is the great and glorious truth.

For it isn't only women who should be obedient. What a tremendous truth it is. This word obedience is obnoxious in the ears of so many so-called spiritual Christians. You see, the word obedience implies that you're doing as you're told.

That's right. It implies that you have responded to a commandment, please take this into your heart, and not to a call. This magic word call. People say, well I don't feel called to do that. I asked you last night, did you feel called to watch out?

It sounds funny, doesn't it? But I mean it. I mean it. Every, you see, you elevate a person, you exhort them, if you give them a call, please will you come, would you like to come? You see, and in your majesty like that, say, oh yes, I'll respond to the call.

You love it, don't you? You're a king, you're a queen. Oh how you love it. Then you've never been reached yet. You're a do-it-yourself. Everybody, it's a magic word. Do you feel called to the mission field?

Do you feel called to this? Do you feel called to do that? That's why I like that verse, hymn. I like that hymn, you know, stand up for Jesus, you soldiers. Now there's one thing that soldiers do not get.

Calls. They get commandments. Where duty calls, or danger, I'm going to be there, I'm not going to wait for call, usually I should go there. Oh lord, oh I'm going to pray about it. Chittlesticks. You don't know what prayer is, and you don't know the grounds upon which it exists.

That's the tragedy. It might be the tragedy in every fellowship represented here. You don't feel called to clean the chairs. You don't feel called to do this. You don't feel called to work with the baby.

You don't feel called. Now, if you're not able, you're not able. That's understood. But don't hide behind this word, calls. Everybody that knows, including me, sees right through that. The art of success, I'll ask Norman, I'll ask every real man of God in this room.

The art of success in the ministry is getting up and doing things you don't feel called to do. Am I right or wrong? That's right. Oh, I'm called to wait on God, says a man, when there's so much work to do.

I'm called to get off into a quiet place. Yeah, listen, let me tell you a story. I recently, I don't know whether I'll get down to this. Recently, I was in Zimbabwe. Lovely place. I can't understand why everybody doesn't want to go and work in Zimbabwe.

Marvelous place. All right, I was called to go out to lunch one day, away from Amoeba Farm. This, sir, was a call, an invitation. Nobody commanded me to go to the lunch. There's one purpose in life, to have lunch.

No, not particularly, to talk about the law. I went. Godly people that asked me to go, they were Christians. The only Christians in Zimbabwe do not live on Amoeba Farm. You understand that? They're dear ones, and we had a nice lunch, and at lunch, the hostess said, I've got something I want to say to you.

So, I said, well, what is it? She said, I'm ashamed, really, to say it. I said, never mind. She said it was quite public, and there were about six or seven of us around the table. I didn't think it was anything that shouldn't be said, at least in semi-publicity, and she began to say, well, it's about the farm, and away she went, and again she repeated, I'm almost ashamed to tell you about it, but I feel I must.

So, I listened politely, and she said, you see, when your people, I don't know why they call them my people, but I suppose I'm sort of a reference point. She said, when your people came out here, they said the God had sent them, and they felt the call of God upon them, and she said, when we heard it, we said to one another, hmm, well, we'll wait and see.

And she said, I'm ashamed to say this, but it's true. Didn't we refer to her husband? We said yes. You see, she said, we had so many people that come out here, being sent by God to do a work in Zimbabwe, from this place to some other place, and they got started, and then when the things got hard, and when the droughts came, and when the difficulties came, they got a call somewhere else.

We admire your people, she said, unsolicited testimonial, someone who doesn't come to the farm much, but he said, if they could, they'd send all the children on their estate to be educated there. That's what they told me.

She said, we admire them, they've gone through, they stuck it, they lived down there. It's ever so easy to imagine, and conjure up a call to somewhere. These were people saying they were baptized in the Spirit, and filled with the Holy Ghost.

So they are, till the difficulty comes. That's the prejudice. You see, what a tremendous seed it is. All right, O B O B, we will do what the Lord says. We will, we will. That's right. They were spelling out their own failure from a heart that was built up on miracle upon miracle, without their spirits being changed in them.

This is the tragedy. Not that the miracles shouldn't have taken place. Hallelujah! God did them. But what's the result when something wonderful happens in your life? Isn't an explosion into a great shout of hallelujah, praise the Lord, and we're all lifted up and excited by it, and we join in this together, or is it a heart, beloved, that's saying, oh God.

I sometimes think that the mouth that says nothing is greater than the mouth that says a lot of things that they don't really mean, or things that they just speak out of momentary excitement. Bless the name of the Lord.

The Blood of the Covenant and the Reality of Trust

Amen. Even God had to do something greater than speaking. He had to make the word he spoke become flesh. He had to do it. That's God. The word had to be worked out in flesh. Glory be to God. Salvation came from that.

It won't come from anything else. Nothing. Now what a glorious thing it is. Let's go on. Here we're reading the truth. Moses, verse 8, took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant which God hath made with you, not just out of the goodness of his heart, though it was that, but concerning all these words.

That's the covenant. God's only made a covenant with you concerning all the things that he has said. That's all. Even the new covenant, God never changes on the basis of covenant making to whatever people he makes them, or in whatever form he makes them.

Glory be to the name of the Lord. We can be sure of him. Then this great word trust came up this morning. Oh, trust. What a word is trust. Trust means that you're not struggling to believe anymore. Trust means that you're not always invading God's mind with this, that and the other, but you trust and you'll know.

Hallelujah. Knowledge is beyond belief. Did you know that? It's beyond belief. Trust is beyond faith. Trust is that into which faith should bring you. Amen. Trust is rest. Trust leaves me so that I don't fret anymore.

Trust instates me in the security of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Trust, trust leaves me asking God for none of these things. Like Jesus said when he rose from the dead, or just before he went to the cross, he said, in the day that you see me, that's after the resurrection, you won't ask anything.

How about that? Have you ever read John's Gospel? You will not ask me a thing. How about that? Well, how about it? In relationship to what you call your prayer life. What a wonderful and glorious thing it is to meet a trustful person, not just someone who can be trusted in, but are full of trust in their own estate.

Don't worry, they don't get alarmed. They don't keep badgering on any of these lies that are supposed to be a testimony of faith. They trust. Amen. Trust is something that somehow holds all the promises and commandments of God in its hand.

It's wonderful. I can't explain it. If you can, stand up please and tell me, and my heart will know whether you're saying the truth or not. Trust has no worry. Trust doesn't fret. Oh, we expect a bright tomorrow, don't we?

Amen. Be the God what it is. Substance. It's an impartation from God. It's of his being, of his inspiration, of his thinking, of his attitude, who and what he is. Trust. This is how Father and Son and Holy Ghost exist together.

Where? Where is it? In the church. Now may the Lord lead us on. He says this, this is the blood of the covenant. Behold it, he says. Behold it. Where? On the altar. Some of it. On me. Look, it's sprinkled on me.

It's all over me. I've got the blood. Hear it. Amen. Personal contact. The application of the blood pillar. Amen. How can you not be? So that you don't have to plead it anymore. It's on your toes, man.

It's on your woman. How can you need to plead it? Plead it? There's one who's pleading. His name is Jesus. That isn't to say you shouldn't learn to intercede. That's another point. We may come to it before then.

I don't know. Here is the glory of the realization. Here is the confidence of prayer. Here is the confidence of intercession. Here is the knowing. Yes. Sprinkled on your man, on your woman. This will take panic out of your soul.

This will take the fretfulness out of your being. This will bring you to rest. It will shut your mouth and open your heart. That's what it will do until you can open your mouth in streams of living glory.

Moving out of men and women. Bringing them the reality of God. Not imposing a new idea on them. Not just merely to give them a new insight into scripture. So the Lord wants us to see the wonder of this thing.

I know it was only in an old covenant, if I may say that, that I want to repeat the basis of the old covenant. Of every covenant is the same, because both the old covenant and the new covenant are developments, adaptations, and applications of the eternal covenant.

In the end there's only one covenant. It may sound strange to you when you've got a book in your hand that says old covenant and new covenant. What a marvelous thing it is. Only then it was outward. I said last night it was impossible for God to show some things under the old covenant.

Amen. Can you look inside and see your inner man that never wears trousers or dresses? Can you look inside and see yourself sprinkled with that blood? Can you? Amen. Oh, it's a marvelous thing to know the purpose of God.

And when he'd done that, old Moses, verse 8, it says, he went with Aaron, Nagab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the blood of Israel, and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of a spotless gold, as it were, the body of heaven in his clearness.

You may have an inundation in the margin which gives you the very heaven. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand. Isn't that wonderful? Because you've read that no man has seen God at any time, haven't you?

Haven't you? Yeah, that's right. Well, you know, Moses did, only he saw his back part. Did you know that? Especially when you have to meet Jehovah's Witnesses on these kinds of things, all gendered up along their lives, wanting to prove that Jesus Christ is God, you see, because men could see it.

Simple as that, it is, and as banal and ignorant as that. Here is the proof. They went up, and they saw God. Now, isn't this marvellous? I don't know where you are, to which point you've come. Thank God, it lasts as according to last night, you're out of Egypt, and then the bonds have been broken, and you're not bearing the burden.

Bless God if you're out. Hallelujah, that's wonderful. But I want to say, to where are you? You see, at the bottom of the mountain you know what was happening, and there are lots of people, they get as far as this.

They build an altar, the word is written, they read the written word, there it is, or somebody reads it for them, perhaps half of them couldn't read anyway, perhaps 75%, perhaps 99 of them couldn't read.

They hadn't had the education that Moses has had. How wonderfully God prepares a man for it, and then he saw through it all, and he thought it was all a load of rubbish. He thanked God, I mean all the things in Egypt, he left those all behind.

And he could write, he could read, bless the Lord, and he had done that. It was wonderful, you've got the written word, you could have that, you see, wonderful. You could stand around the altar and say, the sacrifice, thank God for the book, thank you Lord for Calvary.

You've got it, it's all there, bless the Lord, you've come as far as that. But God says, I want you to come home. Upon the basis of the bloodshed, upon the basis of the sacrifice, that was all around the bottom, upon the basis of all your knowledge of the altar and everything that connected with it, will anybody come up higher than that?

Will they? You're expecting the elders of every group to go there, those who would be considered the nobles, and as for me, I wouldn't have anybody for an elder unless they did. Not me, you may. It's surprising to what a low standard we're prepared to move, to drop in these days.