If we were not to become rivers of life then the Christian Gospel could be considered a means of enhancing our adamic, natural life. Christians could go merrily about their own ways, being assured that God stands ready to protect them and grant them every desire. Indeed, the Gospel would be "Good News for the Natural Man."

But because we are in the Church Age, and the purpose of the Church Age is to summon the elect from the nations of the earth, to bring the elect to maturity in Christ, and to bear witness to the nations, we must suffer every kind of affliction, denial, and persecution.

We are the garbage of the world in the present hour.

Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. (I Corinthians 4:13)

The great revival that will bring the nations of the earth to God will come in the future. Before that revival can take place the Lord's people must become fit to bear His Glory, His eternal Life.

The nations will not come today to the Church as it is. But when the Church has been made one in the Father and the Son, being filled with the fullness of the Spirit of Life, then the world will come and drink of the waters of God.

And the Gentiles [nations] shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. (Isaiah 60:3)

It is not possible the world can receive the Glory of God, eternal life, until the members of the Body of Christ are willing to lay aside their own life, as the Lord Jesus did, and allow God to convert their personality from Adam to Christ, from the man of earth to the Man of Heaven, from the living soul to the life-giving spirit.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening [life-giving] spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from Heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. (I Corinthians 15:45-49)

The first man, Adam, was made a living soul.

The last Adam was made a life-giving Spirit.

We, the members of God's elect, have borne the image of the earthly. As we enter the crucifixion of Christ and His glorious resurrection we begin to bear the image of the heavenly.

We are not of the world. We have been called out of the world so we may be made rivers of living water from which the world can drink.

Israel is the royal priesthood of God. Throughout the centuries Israel, God's chosen people, has refused the role of God's priests and has determined to be like the remainder of mankind.

Whenever a member of God's elect, whether a Jew or a Christian, refuses the role of priest and chooses instead to live as part of the world community, the judgment of God will come upon him or her.

Let us, rather, choose to suffer affliction with the people of God. We are wandering in our land of promise as in a strange land. But it is a land we afterward shall receive for an inheritance.

If we will go forward in the Lord Jesus, despising the shame, keeping our eyes on the joy set before us, the day will come when the world discovers that those whom they rejected (especially the great Head of the Body, the Lord Jesus) are now their rulers, their judges, their priests, and their sources of eternal Life. (from Rivers of Life)