I would just like to add a word or two, first of all, in relation to the books that I brought here. We brought a number with us when we left California, and they're nearly all gone now, so I'm sorry that we don't have the variety that we had, but I do want to mention this particular book of which there are a few copies there, Peter's Epistles, as well as the book on... The Roman Epistle. This book sells for two dollars and the Roman Epistle book sells for three fifty and I know there are quite a number of young men particularly, I think, who have Bible classes and quite a number of found these books very helpful for Bible class work. of a simple reason that, well, they're very easy to read in the first place. They're not very profound or anything like that. They're not theological poems or anything of that character. They're a simple treatise, but they go through the entire epistles and take up some questions that are not usually taken up, and the same could be said of the Roman epistles. Mr. Landis, who many of you know, I'm sure... was telling me not very long ago that he uses both the Romans book, my Roman book, and my book on Peter's epistles in his classes at the Bible School in Chicago. Now, I've known that a number of them use these books, of course, but he's the only one that told me. So it leaves me a good deal. And he says that it's very helpful indeed. So I recommend them to you on that basis. They're published, well, the Romans book is a little expensive. It's not published by me, although it's written by me. But it's a little more expensive. But this book is published almost at cost. I would like to tell you that. Two dollars. Now I want to tell you I'm very happy indeed to be here. To greet you all tonight, many of you I have never seen before, and I do trust the Lord doesn't disappoint us. It won't be his fault, I'm sure, if he does. But I hope he is something that will be real refreshing to all of us tonight. I've changed my subject since I came in, so that's always good. Your hymn just upset of what I was thinking about, and all these wonderful songs. We will see Jesus, nothing but Christ, the song we tread, and how great thou art. So I'm going to talk something along that line tonight, and I would like to read to you and with you from the Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one, just a few verses in this chapter. We'll begin reading at verse nine, if you please. Ephesians chapter one, verse nine. Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself. that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might draw the together and one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ. Then we'll pass on down now to verse sixteen. Please not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that he may know what is the hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the faith. what is the exceeding greatness of his power to uswards who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come, and have put all things under his feet. He gave them to be the head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And there are few verses in chapter three, if you please. Verse ten, the tenth verse, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God. according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord then down towards the end of the chapter verse nineteen verse eighteen rather may be able to comprehend with all faith what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ for its pattern knowledge that he might be filled with all the fullness of God Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask of him. According to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Perhaps two of the most inspiring the most wonderful passages in the entire book. We have read tonight. the major portion of it being the prayers of the Apostle Paul, man who outstandingly presented the Lord in the fullness of his glory, in relation to the world that is going to take the place of this one, the world that is coming, where the Lord Jesus Christ will be established in power and great glory of head over all face, and where we will share that glory, those of us who belong to him. If there be some here in this room tonight, perhaps who are not Christians, as you do not know the happiness, the happy joy of having your sins forgiven, I hope you'll be very ended tonight, drawing the happy throng of death's time to be in the glory of Christ, and to have that as the blessed hope of this present time. We who are Christians would be delighted to share this joy with you, and it can be shared with you because it is presented to you in the Gospel. You will notice in this first chapter, in the few verses that I read before they call prayer, that you have some very outstanding words that are used in connection with God himself. And the one word that I would like to center our attention on for the moment is, something that you and I don't know too much about. It's the word Prakos. Prakos. Our God is a God of Prakos. In fact, they were so very important that we might look at them again in verse nine, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he had Prakos in himself. And then in verse eleven, towards the end of the verse, according to the purpose of him, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. I think it would be a very wonderful thing for all of us to really have in our consciousness that there is such a thing as the purpose of God. That is to say, God has determined certain things in the plan of his grace and mercy and in the plan of his government in his kingdom. and that there is nothing that man or devil will ever be able to do that will frustrate the carrying out of that purpose. That purpose has been determined by God, and he works all things after the counsel of his own will. You see, all that man does is puny and insignificant compared to what God does. We see men arise with considerable purpose in mind. We see them... fade out of significance altogether. Hitler arose some years ago, and he was a man of great purpose, albeit a mentally shaken man, but he purposed to do certain things. And he backed up that purpose with a great many acts that were very dishonorable, of course, but nevertheless they were done with virulence. But it all ended in disaster. Why? Because he neither had the power nor the glory to do it. He had the will to do it. He had the purpose to do it. But it was not backed up, shall I say, by the power that was necessary to carry it out. But you see, I'm very sure that the purpose of God is all coming to fruition because he has both the power and the authority to carry it out. And there is nothing that will ever raise its head in his universe that will be able to frustrate it. I'm very glad about that. Because all our hopes as Christians depend upon it. Now this is not something that has been drawn at a venture. God has focused all of this in the counsel of his own will. That is to say, he has taken every iota into consideration. He has seen all the difficulties along the way, and he has made a way of either circumventing those difficulties or putting them out, putting them out of the way altogether. And the world to come is established now upon the victory that has been won at Calvary's Cross. That is to say, the work is all finished. The foundation is laid. The righteousness of God is established forever. And it is just a matter of detail. In fact, it is a very striking fact. You remember in the Gospels where the wheat and the tares are spoken of. But when the day comes for gathering the chairs into bundles, you know, and burning them, it's not the Lord Jesus that will do that. His work is finished. That will be left for the angels to do. The servants will do that. Because the foundation has all been laid, everything is cleared, and there is no power now that can raise its head successfully. Even Satan himself has been annulled. Well, then you say, why does it bother me so much? Why do I have so much difficulty with the power of Satan? Because you see, the Lord is allowing Satan provisionally to go on, and his emissaries as well, to go on, because this is the day of his grace, when you and I are given the opportunity of submitting ourselves to the will of God and coming under the blessing that is attendant upon us. But the will of God... in its essential sense has only the law of Jesus and you. I want you to think about that for a moment. You know, we hear a great many times in these days, a great deal of this question. How can I know whether I'm on the path of the will of God? How can I know whether I'm doing God's will or not? How can I know whether God wants me, for instance, in California or here in Omaha or somewhere else? How can I know? We worry far too much about that. The great matter for us to get into our consciousness is that the Lord Jesus is the very center of God's will, and that's all a settled matter. And whether in Omaha or in Southern California or anywhere else, if I'm occupied in doing that which brings glory to the name of the Lord Jesus, then I'm in the will of God. You know, there are many young Christians particularly, and they're worried a great deal about, say, whether they're here or there or elsewhere. And they try this and they try that and somehow difficulties come along. And so it is a great issue with a great many. I can't say it ever has been with me. I never satisfied at all, if I may speak personally, that I'm doing the best I can or anything like that. And I seem to be doing things because there's nobody else around to do them, more or less. But still, I feel... But if we're doing that which brings glory to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, it must be in the way. Now you say, give me a scripture for that, because there are some people, since you know, that want scripture for everything, and I'm sure they're welcome to it. The Lord Jesus said, it is quoted for us in the tenth of Hebrews, lo, I come, in the volume of the book, it is written of me to do thy will. You'll never find that said concerning any other man in the Bible, as far as I know it, who'd not be. So the Lord Jesus Christ is the person who is always in view when we're thinking of the will and the thought of the God. Well, then what is he? Where does he stand in relation to the will of God? And that's exactly what you find in the first chapter of this year. There the Lord Jesus Christ is death died. to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills everything. And Paul's prayer is to the intent that you and I might come into the conscious knowledge of that being had. Of course, we come in to share his glory, but it's his glory that we share. He doesn't share our glory. He's the one, so to speak. We are those that are attendant upon us. And the will of God, according to this first chapter of Ephesians, is that in the administration of the fullness of times in the tenth birth, that the word is really administration, because it's more than dispensation. Dispensation means simply a section of time, but this is the administration of the fullness of time. That is to say what God is going to administer. When all the times are full, when you come to the climax of the ages, this is what God is going to administer. What is he going to learn? That he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance. He's going to gather together in one all things in Christ. Everything is going to be centered in him, and that will be the administration of the fullness of life. Now, this isn't exactly the fullness of time, as we have it elsewhere in the New Testament. In the fullness of time, the Lord Jesus was born, born of woman. He came into the world. That is to say, he came after all the probationary period was over, wasn't that? But here is something more than that. It is the administration of the fullness of the times. What time? Well, all the various times that have run... recurrently down through the Old Testament. Now there were many sections, shall I say, many administrations that God gave throughout the Old Testament, and I want to connect a few of them with certain of the individuals in the Old Testament. I'm sure how all things are gathered together in Christ. Now I'm sure we're all very fond of the Old Testament, but let us always keep it on its proper place. There's nothing inferior about the Old Testament to the New Testament. There we have all the sights and shadows. And in the light of the New Testament, we can learn much from the Old, that is, exceeding the test. Moreover, the Old Testament is all about the law of Peter. He's the center of everything, throughout all those books of the Old Testament. And if you go into the Old Testament and seek to find the law of Peter, you'll rejoice your own heart. And I'd like to indicate from the way Henry Churchill says. Now hear God, according to the counsel of his own will, according to that which he has purposed in himself, it's all inflexible. Nothing can change it. He's going to gather together in one, all things in one. Now Satan is going to try to do this before the Lord appears. He's going to try to gather all things together in the Antichrist. but that will be a miserable failure. But God is going to do it in our Lord Jesus' hand. Garter together all things, all things, all the model attributes that have been put on display throughout the entire realm of the science without preceding that in which to which ball is without. Now let's look at... in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to have garled together all the moral attributes from the attributes of beauty and glory that are found in every Old Testament worthy that was a type of the Lord Jesus. And you're going to have them garled together in him in perfection so that there will be neither death nor decay. That's a glorious thing to think about. Now I run through just a few of them. that we might have our heart warmed in connection with the Lord Jesus. Sometimes, you know, as we read the Old Testament, you read the story of Joseph, for instance, or the story of David, and you see David, what boy has not killed that? David killing the lot. And of course, I'm just a boy that's a little bit older, and I say, I would like to have been there to see that take place. You're going to see it in the Lord Jesus. All the moral attributes of David are going to appear in Christ in glory. And I'm going to thrill at his time. And all that color that went into David's life, the color that made the twenty-third song, the color that took a piece of the garment, the Saul's garment, the skirt of his garment off, when he had the power to slay him and march onward. The power to have all the women in the land singing about him. all going to appear in the Lord Jesus Christ. So if I had lived in all the ages, if I had seen Adam and walked with Adam and then lived in all the ages down through the entire administration of the time, and had seen all the glory that had been put on display in the pageant of the Old Testament, if I had been eyewitness to it all, and I could sit by the hour and tell you about Isaac being offered up on Mount Moriah, and shrill the heart of you as if I had been there. I'm going to see it all inside. Christ Jesus. He's going to garb together in one, all in Jesus. Both the things that are in heaven and the things that are upon you. Not the things that are under the earth now. This is heaven and earth. Garb together in the Lord Jesus. Well, let's take a look at one of these. It may make us long to see his blessed face as we have been singing. I think of Adam. We think far too little about Adam. Adam was a marvelous man set up in pristine glory in the beginning of the book of Genesis. A man who was given wonderful things in the administration of God. First of all, he was made in God's image and in God's light. And shall I say, even on the very threshold of this consideration, that that's what we're going to see in the Lord Jesus Christ when we see and face to face. Of course he is God, but I shall see him in manhood's grace. I shall see the wounds in his hand and in his side and in his feet. I shall see him not in the unknown Godhead, in the light unapproachable. I will see him as the son of man, as the son of... And I will see in him the image of God in that sense. That is to say, he will be still to us the expression of what God is. I doubt very much whether we'll ever know God in any other way. And I don't think it will do us a very good if we did. God has been fully declared in every attribute of his being and in his heart of love in and through the Lord Jesus. And I want to accompany with the Lord throughout all eternity. You get that in the rewards, you know, to the overcomers in the book of Revelation. Walk with him in flight. Never thought about that. Walk with him in... You say, how will the Lord have time to walk with me all eternity? There's no clock there, but I will walk with him in flight. He will take me through the domain of his power and his administration and all the wonders of... off his government. Take me around and show it. Oh, you say, I don't believe that. All right, don't believe it. But I do believe that. And I'm spectacular. It's good to say. So in Adam you have that administration, and you have that person who has set up a wonderful person on this planet. How long it lasted, I don't know. No one knew. But while he was an innocent, he was in the image of God and in the likeness of God. That is to say as image, he was the representation of God to the lower creation. And as the likeness of God, he was upright like God. He was like God in his moral attribute. God breathed into Adam. The breath of life, man became a living. What a marvel. And then I see him. The first thing we see in Adam is that as soon as he's set up in that pristine creation, he gives names to all the creation around. Now in order to give a name to something, you've got to know all about it, all its character, else you can't name it. How did Adam know God told him or he instructed him? God walked in the garden and he spoke to Adam. There was intimate communion between Adam and God. And so Adam gave names to everything. And so when the Lord Jesus takes up the position of exaltation, he names everything. I was going to say the first one he named. It may not be the first one. He changed his name. He changed his name. There's only one person can change your name. That's the law. And if you're here as sinner tonight, he can change your name and make it Christian, the finest name that can be born. So you have Adam in all that glory, and when we see the Lord Jesus and enter into his kingdom, this is what's going to keep us busy, and in the ultimate of enjoyment, not a dull mood. And God has determined that, and nothing will frustrate it or change. It has been determined according to the counsel of his own good. Nothing can change. But then you pass on down the line, you might take them one by one and see them. But you pass on down the line, for instance, and you come to, well, I was talking about Isaac. Luke at Isaac. Isaac is characteristically the son of his father's love. The son of his father's love. And at the point of greatest trial on behalf of Abraham. when he was taking Isaac with the servants out to Mount Moriah. You remember in the twenty second of Genesis how it is reiterated again and again and again. After they leave the young men with the ashes at the foot of the mountain, Abraham says to them, I and the lad will go yonder for what? It is reiterated again and again. They went both of them together. There was the absolute communion between Father and Son. So that in the realm that's coming, I can't go any further, you have to turn the eyes upon Jesus every time. You can't go on. And when you look upon the Lord Jesus Christ and all that he will be in the world to come, you find one who, although he is man, he is wrapped up in association with God the Father. So that whatever he does, is always according to the will of God the Father. They are in perfect communion, and you and I have been brought into that communion of that fellowship, and that's the subject of John's testimony, into fellowship with the Father and the Son. And so you see the two of them go up to Mount Moriah. And then Isaac is laid on the altar, and the symbolically slain is not actually so, but the night is raised. And then Abraham hears his name spoken by Jehovah. And the ram caught him the thicket. And Isaac is released to Abram. And they went back down the mountain. Just exactly as Abram was said. Abram told the men to wait there. And he said, I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. He said it. You know there are many people that think there's something all wrong about Abraham offering up his son. And I've even...