The coming days will be so filled with spiritual darkness, delusion, and terrors of every description that only the believers who are filled with God will be able to stand. As the darkness becomes increasingly intense the light of God's Presence in the true saints will become increasingly bright. God will reveal His Glory in us and we shall see Him and live by Him.

The darkness and the glory will grow in power until finally, at the time of greatest darkness, the fullness of the Lord's Glory will be revealed in His people. The saints will be as lights on the earth. Then the Lord will be revealed from Heaven and the lesser lights on the earth will be gathered up to be joined with the greater Light in the air.

The formation, reconciliation, and union stages are the internal development of the Kingdom of God. The manifestation stage is the external revelation of the Kingdom of God.

The formation, reconciliation, and union stages take place in the Spirit of God. They do not operate in the physical world but in the realm of the Spirit. This is why the woman "clothed with the sun," the Bride of the Lamb, is a great sign, not on the earth but in the heaven.

The manifestation stage is the "with" stage—not only in, but also with. The "with" stage is the emergence of the Kingdom of God from the spirit realm into the material realm. Christ Himself will be seen by every eye and the sons of God will be revealed. This is the coming of the Kingdom of God spoken of by John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus.

Today we cannot see Jesus as He is. The reason we cannot see Jesus as He is, is that we are not like Him. When we are like Him in internal spiritual life, are one with Him and the Father, and have been glorified in external appearance, we shall be able to behold Him as He is. This joy is yet ahead of us.

The inner life and nature of the Kingdom of God must be perfected before we can enter the external life and nature of the Kingdom, before we can be associated with the Lord Jesus in His glory.

The Lord Jesus yearns for His Bride, that she may be with Him. For Him to take her now would be useless. She is not like Him in internal substance, nature, or life. She is filled with soulish, fleshly death, with her old ways of sin, rebellion, and lawlessness.

Christ must come to her and hurl shafts of eternal life into her, driving out the old, dead personality and ways and causing His Divine Substance to penetrate and transform every atom of her being. The Lamb is gloriously alive and He desires that His Life fill His Bride.

What pleasure can she be to Him, what can He do with her, while she is filled with the corruption and death of the soul and flesh? She is not suitable as a completion or helper while she abides in her uncleanness, spiritual sluggishness, and immaturity.

She must be transformed in spirit, soul and body.

She must be reconciled to His thinking and ways.

She must be brought into such total, complete, restful union with Himself that the two lives become one. She must become Him —bone of His bones, and flesh of His flesh. When He sees her He must be beholding Himself.

To be continued.