Each day the Spirit of God brings us down to the death of the cross. Each day the Lord gives us to eat and drink of His flesh and blood. We live by His Life. Because He lives we also live.

Either we are living according to our life in the flesh or else we are being transformed such that the Life of Christ is becoming our life. If we are following the Holy Spirit, trusting in the Spirit's wisdom and power rather than in our own wisdom and power, confessing our sins as the Spirit directs, and obeying the Lord, then the Virtue of Christ is being formed in us. We are conquering the lustful corruption of the world by means of the Divine Substance, the body and blood of Christ being fed to us each day by the Spirit of God.

The Lord Jesus stands at the door of each Christian personality. He knocks, and speaks. If any person will open the door the Lord will come in to him and dine with him and he with the Lord.

The food on which the believer dines is the flesh of Christ. He drinks the blood of Christ. It is the Lord's Supper being repeated in each Christian personality each day.

It is not that we participate in the Communion service every day. It is that Christ gives us each day to eat of the hidden manna of His own Life's Substance and Virtue. It is an inner romance in which we are brought into fiery, incorruptible union with Him. This is how the true saint lives.

As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57)

We become the Bride of the Lamb by eating the Passover Lamb, Christ; and it is the inner Life of the body and blood of Christ that selects one to be taken and the other to be left, in the Day of Christ.

What is it that pulls us out of the world?

Flesh calls to flesh. Blood calls to blood. Life calls to life. Fire calls to fire. Love calls to love.

It is the body and blood of Christ that will raise us in the Day of Christ: first, into eternal life, and then to meet Him in the air.

If we are not living today by the body and blood of Christ we are not prepared to be taken when the trumpet of God sounds.

We will be left!

We must be filled with the "oil" of the Holy Spirit.

We must possess enough faith and determination to not look back.

We must be living by the flesh and blood of the Lamb of God.

Multitudes of professing Christians are unable to achieve victory over smoking, drinking alcohol, profanity, personal bitterness, the love of money, fear, unbelief. Yet they imagine that in the Day of Christ they will possess the faith to leave all that is familiar and pass into immortality.

But if they cannot follow Christ now they will not be able to follow Him in that dreadful hour. If the ways of God weary them now, what will they do in the "swelling of Jordan" (judgment)?

Notice that each of the three examples mentioned above (the ten virgins; the deliverance of Lot and his wife; and the two at the mill) has a joyous aspect and a tragic aspect. The ministers of today who are attempting to preach only a "positive" gospel are betraying their role as God's spokesmen.

To be continued.