Dear ones, Message 4 was spoken the evening after Message 3. This time the occasion was a marvelous love feast, with “over 700 gathered around the tables”. Just like the previous evening, TAS’s speaking was very brief. It appears that the time allotted to TAS after this love feast was greater than the time alloted to him the previous evening, but TAS willingly limited his speaking. He gave another short, but very rich, word that unveiled the greatness of Christ and got down to some very practical matters.
The Scriptural basis for TAS’s speaking was the first two verses of First Corinthians, with a strong emphasis on the second half of verse 2: “...With all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their Lord and ours.”
One very interesting feature of this message is that it shows TAS's gift for allegorizing the Bible in a balanced way. Even more, this message shows that TAS definitely saw the New Jerusalem as a spiritual reality, rather than just a physical city. TAS had been clear that the New Jerusalem is a spiritual reality for many years. In the excerpt shown below (pp. 31-32), TAS continues to speak on the importance of being open to fellowship with all those who are in Christ, showing that this reality can be seen in one of the aspects of the New Jerusalem:
Quote:
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“Do you remember that there is a description of the New Jerusalem at the end of the Bible? I am afraid that the people who have written our hymns have gone astray on this. There is a hymn which says this, 'The streets, I am told, are paved with pure gold.' That is false doctrine. In the Bible, it says there is only one street. Only one street in the New Jerusalem. That one street is of gold. Dear friends, we will all get to live on the same street . . . Now I do not think we are to take that literally. I think it is symbolic, and is meant to teach us two things. (1) We are all going to be in the closest fellowship in heaven. And (2) the gold is the symbol of the love of God. We are all going to be together in the love of God.”
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How wonderful, dear ones! Our eternal destiny is to be together in the closest fellowship and together in the love of God. All of us felllowshipping together in the love of God on the "one golden street". Marvelous!
