After the law, the rule of God's government on earth, the prophets showed the coming Messiah, His sufferings and glories; but it was as seeing it afar off, and recalling to the law, not announcing the kingdom as then coming. The law and the prophets were not until John. By him the kingdom is preached. He goes before the face of Jehovah to prepare His ways. He receives from above his testimony and place; but his testimony was of the earth, repentance, judgment, the kingdom-Messiah coming amongst them. Then Christ comes, yet does not receive from heaven, but comes from heaven, and can tell directly what He has seen and has heard and knows. He is in the bosom of the Father, and can declare God; and He does so. “No man receiveth his testimony.” Man wills not what is heavenly.
But what an infinite blessing is this of which these rationalists would deprive us—the positive revelation of what is heavenly; the blessed communication of what is above! To talk here of life and religious life is all simply nonsense. Can religious life reveal what it has never seen, the blessedness in which it has never yet been? True religious Christian life is formed by this revelation: and think of reducing men to mere conscience, and rejecting the revelation even of what is heavenly to conscience! What a lowering thing it is! No; the Son speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen. It is the very essence of Christianity, and sole source of blessing. But, man being so evil as to reject it, God is not frustrated in His love: the need of it as above all is made manifest. Redemption is accomplished, and thereon man takes his seat on high on the throne of God, and the Holy Ghost is sent down the witness and proof of it, and testifies of the glory he (man) is in, his relationship with God his Father, all the wisdom and glory of the counsels and work by which he is brought there; the church's place with Christ, founding a perfected and purged conscience on the work of Christ, so that holiness is righteously connected with the entrance of a sinner into the glory he had come utterly short of. This links the heart to what is heavenly; while the testimony of the Holy Ghost is the sure foundation on which the soul can rest for the certainty of it as truthful, and thus a living enjoyment. God's will and counsel; Christ's accomplished work; the Holy Ghost's testimony (Heb. 10): such is what gives liberty and boldness to enter into the presence of God. The scriptures are the recorded testimony for all times. Ministry does not cease, but revelation does, when all is revealed. The word of God is completed.