The Elder (2 John) — G.W. North

We'll turn to the scriptures then, shall we. We'll turn to the second epistle of John. To John. Just 13 lovely verses in this short letter that John wrote. I love the understanding that these men of God, these great apostles of God have.

The Elder and the Primacy of Love

I'm glad that they understood exactly their position and he starts off by saying the elder. I want you to notice he doesn't say the apostle. Perhaps he was much too full of love for that. John was one of these great men who really loved.

He had a tender heart. He had feelings for others. Lest he should give the impression to dear brother Paul, who wasn't one of the original apostles of the Lamb, to feel hurt. I don't know whether you're as considerate for other people's feelings when you make your claims to be this or that or the other.

Would God that love took our hearts over. And men stopped pushing offices and making great clans and sank back and allow themselves to be decapitated and if necessary eviscerated. Utterly crucified so that they very tenderly looked upon us and never made great boastful claims about this or that or the other.

A great need of loving one another needs to come into the church. Amen. Forgetful that all is built up from a man who just hung on a cross under a mocking title and died. Because he loved you, loved me and loved everybody else.

Loved his tormentors and loved his crucifiers and he even loved Judas who washed his feet too. He never missed him out when he washed the feet of every other apostle disciple in the room. Thank you Lord for such majestic revelation of what true eldership and love is dear elder.

I've nearly got right off my subject. That's my trouble. When I read the Bible, just two words like that, even one will do something. I don't know what it is happens, but that's what happens. A lightsome spirit that goes away with God.

Truth, Love, and Spiritual Maturity

This is what God wants, the elder. Oh praise God. Answer the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth. Not I only but also all they that have known the truth. Thank you John. I don't want to comment on the epistle really.

I want to talk to you about Christ but we'll get here sometime. I can continue tonight can't I Lord. Here you see, if you've known the truth beloved, you're a lover. If you're not a lover in this way, you may not have matured in it yet.

The perfect love of God has to be perfected in you and that will become your maturity and your growth. Your development will be measured by this, not by your knowledge of truth, not by the pressure of your understanding of the knowledge of truth upon others either.

If you're not prepared to be dead with all your knowledge and all your insistence, you're useless to the church. Get out. Hallelujah. If you're one that knows the truth, you love and you love humbly. It becomes your nature and your life.

Everybody that knows the truth loves. They've never come to truth unless they've come to love. The love and truth and light and life are all the same. There's no difference between them at all. And so God wants us to move on in this great revelation.

And he says not only I but also all they that have known the truth for the truth's sake you love. The truth's sake which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever. Have you contemplated a heaven where you're seeking always to be the lowest and not the highest.

The absolute opposite to Lucifer. It will be with us forever this spirit. Hallelujah. You can only be foundational in the church if you've got this in you. This is how Jesus did it. He became foundational of the church because this was it.

Christ’s Humiliation and the Necessity of the Cross

He said I'm the truth. They hung and they spat at him and they beat him and they hated him and they roared at him like bulls and they tore at him like unicorns with their horns. And he just hung there and said just get on with it.

They gored him and his blood ran out. He said just get on. Hallelujah. By these things the blood ran. It couldn't run except he were gored. It couldn't run except he was spiked to the cross. It has to be this way.

There's no cross without humiliation. There's no redemption without this. If love be not the author of redemption then there's no redemption. If love be not the great mighty power of salvation then there's no salvation.

It is merely a transposition from one state of hatred into another called by a different name. Hallelujah. This is that which elevates a man and a woman into God, into love, into utmost reality. And everything grows up from it.

Nor can be destroyed. Everlasting life comes from this eternal quality that cannot be corrupted nor perverted. Though men twist it into any shape and make it unrecognizable like the mess that was laid in a grave and had to be put into shape by God before he could walk out of the tomb.

Even Jesus. Men do it and think they have achieved something. But Jesus keeps loving, tender, bleeding, broken, bruised, gored, crowned with thorns. And that's how you were redeemed. That's how it all happened.

Because a spirit was willing to go down and a heart was ready to be pulverized. That's all. That's how a body was handed over for people to do as they like with. That's how it happened. It sprung, sprang from that.

The Greatness, Mystery, and Triumph of God’s Word

Oh God, unmix us, set us free from this modern parody. Let us understand it all. Now God wants us to come in to this. He wants us to understand the greatness of it, the mystery of it, the triumph of it.

This is what shall be with us forever. You see John, this great man of love, he wasn't concerned with rewards. Paul was. He, somebody has to take it up and tell us. Somebody has to say it. But John, he was just concerned with what's going to be with us forever.

Hallelujah. There was a time when he with his brother and his mother, these two Boanerges, had gone to Jesus and they'd said, now Lord, when you really come in your kingdom. They didn't put it in the same language as the man on the cross, but they were identifying himself, themselves with him.

When you come in your kingdom, please let sit one on your right hand and on the other on the left. That's all gone now. He's been truly baptized in the Spirit. He's been immersed into the life of that wondrous man and God.

He's saturate with it, imbued with it, but never drunk with it. And he moves on the great steady line of this love of God. All I want, he says, and all I want to tell you, my elect lady, choice you are, chosen and exalted.

All I want you to know, is what's going to continue with us forever. Hallelujah. You'd better let it cling to you now. How do you know you're going to have it forever if you don't have it now? How can you have forever what you don't don't have?

You must have it now. This life is a probationary period. This time is a time when God will give you things, by your use of them, or abuse of them, by your possession of them, by your neglect of them.

So shall you show yourselves worthy or unworthy of that which lies beyond death or the coming of the Lord. You and I are on probation. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Hallelujah. You do understand it don't you?

Present Love and Future Accountability

The way you treat your brother or sister will surely tell in the future. Your attitude now will not magically be changed at death. Death has no power to change attitudes. Jesus Christ mastered death. He's the one that comes to change attitudes.

He's the one that comes to do it. Glory be to his name. And so he's moving through this great apostle. The elder, that's all he says. The elder. What an elder. Do all the youngsters in your fellowship say what an elder?

He's really mature. You can't say old. Mature. An elder is a mature man. Never an old man. As I said there's no age in eternal life, only maturity. Development. What an elder. Oh hallelujah. The truth.

Can you see it? A great pillar of eternity. Something hewn out of Christ. What a marvelous thing. Hammered out in a world of unreality. You've got to stand here. I've got to stand here. God help me whatever else I ever achieve or fail to achieve.

Oh Lord let me love. Let me be that. I consider myself to have failed whenever I have not loved as I should. Whom I should. I don't know how you count everything else. I have found that unto love God adds everything in its time.

Love as the Foundation for Spiritual Power

And according to its need and the situation that arises. To be able to love is your severest test in everything. For love and market oh men, is the only basis upon which God will equip you with the power and the powers.

For powers without love, even the love of God are destructive. In the end they will destroy you. They will destroy the persons upon whom you seek to practice. Practice makes perfect. And you're perfect in your ego.

You're building up yourself. Whereas love thinks nothing of that. Nothing. Only wants itself to be called the least of all. That's all. For love teaches you that you are the least of all. Love teaches you that you're a thing hung on a cross.

Stinking, unwanted and rejected. That's what love teaches you. Has love taught you that? And when love has taught you the rejection and the loneliness and the outcastness of Christ. You'll have no more thought about being cold and lonely and unwanted and rejected in your society.

In your family. In your home. Anywhere. You'll be there beloved. Hanging in the exclusive loneliness of all the true members of the body of Christ. And you will be warm with love. And knowledge will come to you.

And the teaching of the infinite. And your understanding will be opened. And you'll pass away out of all the things that formerly have gripped you, crippled you, made you hopeless, helpless and useless.

Their useless body hanging on a cross in earth. Doing nothing save bleeding out its blood. You'll be in the company of the redeemed. And the redeeming body and blood of Jesus. For from the body the blood was shed.

And from the blood came the redemption. And in the redemption was the eternal love of God. To restore you completely under him. To reconcile you wholly in all the realm of your thoughts. Especially about him and yourself.

And the world of men. So that you can do nothing but love them. Because your own attitude so hard has been met and smashed and broken. And you've been ground down into contrition. And you understand then how God could do it.

You know he has done it. You've wondered why he did it except you were bible taught and knew the textual answers. Means nothing to God. That's only the statement of his own inward knowledge. And the life and power from which he moved.

The Mystery of Redemption and the Revelation of Christ

And you will come then into a first hand understanding. A personal introduction into that which must always be a mystery. And always be covered up. Even as it was in the old testament. Hidden behind revelation of truth.

Written in scripture. By a pen. By a man's hand. By God's hand upon two tables of stone. But they never knew. And they never understood. And they never found Jesus in the new test, in the old testament.

But he was there. But they didn't know. They never saw him. But you've been brought unto Christ. To the introduction into the person of God. You've been brought to the beginning of your eternity. It has to develop into the utmost life of him.

Other than which God considers there is no life. Whether it be in man or whether it be in angel. It hath no life of itself. And that is why you have been brought to the place that you must have life in yourself.

Not of yourself as of yourself originally. But in yourself because God has come. And he has made his eternal abode in you. Now then you are at the beginning of all things. And ready to be introduced into the mystery of God.

That how a being could have no beginning and live forever and never end. Beyond the finiteness of your mind you will understand it is because he is the embodiment of all that you've learned to be true and righteous and holy and glorious and forgiving and tender and sweet and all powerful unbroken yet bending to the needs of man going forward it seems as though he's stepping backward coming out of the past yet coming to you from the future living in the glory of the realization that he is and ever has been and ever shall be and you will be brought into that knowledge this shared secret of God that he gives unto his own and excludes from it everyone and everything else and he and she who will not come by the instrument of this that is by the cross and by the death and by the resurrection shall not have it they shall be eternally shut out they shall not enter in.

For entering into life you enter into the being of God to be taught alone by his spirit and come to the glory of his own understanding. And that is life in all its fullness isn't the healing of a body it isn't the casting out of a devil.

It isn't the speaking in another tongue. It isn't a word of wisdom or knowledge. It is greater than all for these come from it. These are but adaptations for a time for an age for needs of earth. As you're being prepared for the need of God in a new creation and the will of God the unfolding and the out working of this is God he has to fill everything everything everywhere.

The Consummation of God’s Kingdom

He has said in his word that in the end when every throne and every power and every mouth shall confess and knee should bow and principalities and enemies and friends those who may hate it and those who delight in it shall be put under the feet of Jesus Christ by the power of the blessed Holy Ghost who has come forth from God for this and even that when the kingdom of Christ shall be made known and understood in all its fullness and displayed before men he will hand all up to the father that God shall be all in all.

And it's under this you've been called then you've been brought out of your darkness out of your sin. You've been brought out of the prison houses. You've been brought out of your littleness. You've been brought out of your assumptions of this and your opinions of that.

You've been brought unto this self-revealing God who holds this distinctively and in his own power that he will make known himself unto all his own who said that for this no man can be your teacher. And for this he has eliminated everybody else that you should be taught of God God alone who will come to you in your closets.

That's why he said go to your closet and shut the door. Who will come to you when you're abroad in the public amongst men who will come to in every situation of life so that you will know that he's there.

And if he come not there it's because he's displeased with it and because he cannot have you in it. And you will thereby learn its emptiness and its uselessness. And you will begin to build your life on the positive revelations of God.

God’s Self-Revelation and the Authority of Scripture

See now read the scriptures. For in the beginning saith God I appeared unto your father Abraham and I revealed myself unto him by my own voice. I revealed myself unto him by his altars. I came unto him and showed him myself.

I taught him for he was a man of faith. And so shall the Lord teach thee when thou ready to relinquish thine ideas and come away from thy scriptural outlines and thy hide bound knowledge of this and that and the other looking at what I do and what I say I build and taking thine eye off me.

Is not the lover greater than his love. Is not the artist greater than that which he creates. Am not I greater than the world that I made. Am not I greater than the church that I established. Look then unto me saith the Lord and unto me alone.

For these things are but idols. And if thou shalt apply thyself to them thou shalt be an idol shepherd. But God calleth you to himself. He is the revelator. He alone makes known his truth. And when it is revealed it will be according to that which is written.

Thou shalt see then that it is right. But if thou seest the image of what is right and seekest only to build according to that then thou shalt miss all. For first of all oh man come unto God who is right and let him mold thee.

And then that which thou doest according to him shall be seen by comparison to be exactly what God hath written in the book. For God is truth. And how gently has he loved me. And how tenderly has he leaned over to me.

How consistently he has come and come and come again and again until thou were ready to lay down thyself thinking that thyself was the cross and take the cross. He shall teach everything everything and in thy body.

And this is the promise of God. Thou shalt bear about the killing of the Lord Jesus. Thou shall say it is right my God it is right. For it was I who killed thee a thousand thorns I drove into thy head a million nails I knocked through thy hands and feet.

Oh my hardness the barbs of my tongue the poison that was under my lips the dreadfulness of my own ideas thou shalt be taught until though thou be the holiest man on earth. Thou should say at the I am the chief of sinners.

And thou shalt be that great paradox that the holiest man on earth even thy Christ became the chief of sinners upon a cross and at the end could say I am the chief of sinners. I am the least of all saints.

And therein lies the mystery of thy redemption and thou hast not yet come to the secret of it yet the revelation is there. God will raise thee from a death and make thee to know all things. And thou shall pass into the spirit of truth.

Prayer for Redemption, Holiness, and Resurrection Life

Father blessed elder Jesus. Oh gather unto thee the children that God has given me this day. Lovely Lord Jesus thou who seekest not the advice of men for none can tell thee what to do. For thou didst learn what to do.

Oh Jesus God King of all understanding ruler in every mystery who from thyself didst bring out total redemption for mankind. Reconcile that in each one of us that this yet must be reconciled. Oh God eliminate.

We pray thee who has power from this thy weakness who has unity from this thy dichotomy bring we beseech thee total redemption unto us Lord. Redeem us in the realms of our misunderstandings. Oh blessed Lord bring us right back from these bypass.

Oh God gather us in thou shepherd who the one true shepherd that idle shepherd ideas may pass away. Teach us Lord as thou didst teach thyself. Oh teacher from heaven who hung upon a cross and was spitted upon men's hatred and it's learned there and it's come to an understanding of God.

Forsakenness. Thou God oh that from thy blood drops there may come unto us this day. Oh God these thy great deposits of life. Oh father the ash math prayed us with was a throne of grace. Royal Jesus sovereign Lord we take no heavenly flights.

We crawl along the earth to thy cross. We understand the wonder of being allowed to come here to the holiest of all where love and mercy joy justice and peace kiss each other and thy fair brow comes from darkness to light.

As the billows of wrath passed over thee. We come lord contrite savior bastion pillar of righteousness altar of God throne of justice foundations of heaven. Oh God we come to thee. Oh Lord thou elder supreme touch every one of us Lord anew anew as when thou didst raise Daniel from his knees of death and John from his prostrature of death on pet nose raises the new holy apostle he was elder of love.

Raise us up in his likeness Lord. Raise us up in this manner. Raise us up oh Lord from the death of self. Raise us up from the supreme calvary. Raise us up oh Lord from the tomb where we usurpers were laid and bring us into the glory of God.

Thou face the once new sorrow once coursed with blood. Thou lips that drank thine own sweat thou shade that lay heavy upon him. Move off us and everyone until Lord we see the glory of God in that face the change.

Oh that the reflection of it may be our light and we sweetly live at its manifestation. God of God's light of lights bread of bread drink of drink wine of wine love of love Jesus of all Jesuses. Oh Lord.

Lord let this be the hour of uttermost cleansing. Lord come fire of God burn in us purge. Let the blood come hot to us. Oh no resistance in us. Surely Lord. Yet let thine eyes search us out again and let the voice like many waters come to slake our inward thirst.

Speak. Oh God we would not have water without voice. We would not have the waters without the word. We would not have the water unless it be wine. We would not have water unless it be blood we would not have anything.

Lord accept it. Be thee thou blessed Jesus. Lord turn us from the imageries and turn us under realities. Let us live. We beseech thee. Let us live oh God as thou didst want us to live by the pain and the agony of thy dying and by the consecration of thyself out of blood who withheld not thy darling from the dogs and laid down thy majestic head in a cloth upon stone.

The Cross as the Way of Sanctification

Oh Jesus Jesus lover of our souls. We need thee Lord revitalize thy body. Oh God with the clear knowledge of the life of the infinite and every other spirit shall be held in chains of love unto thee. Oh God bind us up into wholeness and heal the wounds.

Lord until everything be finished. Finish it all. Oh God that man might live away in thy holiness. Thou holy holy God. Lord we forsake it all. Come upon us Lord and move in thy resurrection life. The cross.

He accepted the gift of man back to God. Through the cross and through the grave he accepts anything and everything. There everything can be entirely sanctified unto God. You're down sitting and you're uprising your goings forth and your comings home.

All your thoughts can be acceptable to God. Favors of your hands could be acceptable unto God. All your gifts can be acceptable unto God and yours. You're capable all of God and have come forth from eternity.

And all your future can be given to God in one moment. Purest. You won't do it again. He'll do it in a moment in the twinkling of an eye to the former life again. Seize the heart of the matter. Even newness within you and the spirit of the matter even life within you.

And you'll be able to live from a new heart from a new center from a new self. Hallelujah.