Selections from the writings of G.W. North

Courtesy of the Bible Portal  

Baptised into Him

Viewed in the light of information supplied in verses 12 and 13, this all seems natural and quite normal. The Church is seen to be nothing less or other than the manifestation on earth of the spiritual counterpart of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At present it is being indwelt and used by Him in the same way as that past body of flesh and blood was indwelt and used by Him then. Though not in a literal, identical manner, nevertheless in the same sense as His physical body was but one and yet was a unity of many easily distinguishable members, so also is the spiritual body of the person of Christ.

Membership in His body is synchronous with our initiation into His life and takes place when we are baptised in Holy Spirit. For this reason baptism in the Spirit is absolutely necessary for each one of us. In that Spirit we are immersed by Jesus Christ into actual membership of His spiritual body, with a distinct individual function readily understood by all.

However, far more importantly than this aspect of the Baptism, at the same time we are each one individually baptised into the spiritual person of Jesus Christ. This is accomplished in us only because when baptising us, He also causes us to drink into one Spirit. Seeing that the body is His body, it follows that the Spirit we drink into can be no other than His Spirit. It certainly cannot be anyone else's, for there is only one spirit per person and body: that is why a body can only be one person's body.

As upon being baptised into the body of Christ a person becomes a member of that body, so it is also that upon being baptised into the person of Christ, a person becomes alive with the Spirit of Christ. By such means and only by them can a person become a functional, living or life-member of Christ. At our spiritual baptism we go into the person of Christ for life and into the body of Christ for function. Obviously it is at this time that a person becomes Spiritual, for all is of and in and by and for and from the Spirit. Because this is so, it must be the actual time of spiritual birth, for how can it be anything other?

From One Baptism 

A Burning and a Shining Light

In order to properly understand all this, we must grasp the fact that John was the last of a great line of Old Testament prophets who saw and spoke only in terms of the Kingdom of Heaven — the reign of God on earth — which he said was at hand. Although he prophesied of the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, and foreshadowed the introduction of the great age of grace, he never saw or understood the cross; he was the herald of the King, His forerunner and friend.

Being filled with the Spirit, John burned and shone in the cold dark to warm men and light them into the highway he was commissioned to prepare for the coming of the Son of God. It was a task of great magnitude, but he faithfully accomplished it. Immersing his converts in the tangible element of water, John symbolised to them what the King should later do to their spirits in the eternal Spirit of God.

A Chosen Generation

Reading Peter's first epistle, it becomes very evident that he had a very clear grasp of these things. In chapter 2, verse 9, he plainly states it; he further substantiates it in chapter 1, verse 2. The blood of individual and national redemption was first shed in Egypt where Israel were strangers. It was not shed at the altar of the Tabernacle. At that time it did not even exist. When at last the altar was made, the blood shed there was the blood of atonements, not redemption. Redemption took place in Egypt by national bloodshed, not in Canaan by priestly bloodshed.

When the Passover was subsequently remembered, the priesthood had been established, but even the priest, as well as people, had to shed the blood of redemption for himself and his own house just as everyone else. He could not do it for another or another's house, but only for his own. When he was elected he could shed the blood of atonement for another. Indeed he was purposely ordained to do that, but he had to shed the redeeming blood for himself and his family. This was not done at the altar, but at his own house; the Passover was as absolutely personal as God could make it.

In the New Covenant however all is one. Whatever it is that God has intended and provided for us is comprehended and included in the once shedding of the blood of Jesus, but it was not so in Israel. What a wonderful scheme God devised when He ordained multiplicity of blood-offerings for Israel. By them He set forth the things which differ that we may easily distinguish truth. Where redemption is concerned we must each know by experience that we are an individual member of the chosen generation (which was redeemed in and out from Egypt), a royal priest, a holy person, a being peculiarly precious to God, to show forth the praiseworthy virtues of Him (the Lamb whom we have eaten) who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.

From The Generation of Jesus Christ

A Consuming Fire

One of the great cries that ELIJAH the prophet of God made against Israel was 'they have digged down thine altars'. It was a terrible indictment calling for severest punishment, yet for the sake of the remnant in Israel and by the faith of the prophet, the Lord spared the people. The story of the contest on Carmel makes tremendous reading. At the crucial point we are introduced first to hundreds of the prophets of Baal building and leaping on their cold altar, mingling their own blood with the blood of their sacrifices, all to no avail. Then we behold the lone, brave prophet of the Lord, triumphant in faith, building his altar of twelve stones to the Lord.

Elijah was more than a prophet at that moment; he reigned over his circumstances like a king. Like the high priest of God he would make the sacrifice for all Israel; the altar upon which the offering would finally be laid should be the whole nation, each stone must represent a tribe. Needless to say God was entirely satisfied. Upon Elijah's altar the all-consuming fire fell; it devoured the sacrifice, the water that saturated and surrounded it and also the very stones upon which it was supported, elevating all to God.

The key to all lies here before us. Elijah was a man of great faith. The abundant rain, the revival of life, the fruitfulness of the land, the ultimate overthrow of the demonic despotism of Ahab and Jezebel, all came as a result of Elijah's faith. The prophet is a greatly admired man among us to this day, but great as he was, and however greatly we admire him and seek to emulate his faith, we shall miss the greatest lesson of all if we overlook the fact that everything sprang from his spiritual insight into the ground of truth in God. Like David and Abraham, and perhaps an unnamed host of others, he was a man who understood that the visible altar was but a symbol of a spiritual principle of God's life.

His main function that day on Carmel was to represent to the people what they were. He showed them that they were the altar people of God and drew attention to the means of their real spiritual life. The genius of the man lay in the fact that he saw and understood that to be God's people men must live as God. At the hour of national crisis the altar on Carmel was nothing other than the way into the Temple, the gate of heaven and the entrance into the house of the Lord. Saturating the sacrifice and thoroughly wetting the stones, Elijah precluded the possibility of ignition by any fanatical false prophet seeking to create false fire in an attempt to destroy the purposes of God. The water was poured in until it filled the trench; it flowed round the base of the altar until it completely isolated it. At last there it stood alone, the object of everyone's gaze and Elijah's expectation, separated from the surrounding earth by its moat like an island separated from the mainland by the sea.

Israel was for God and God was for Israel. That day, by God's grace and faithful Elijah's symbolic act, God and His people were isolated from sin and heathendom by the sea of love, joined by sacrifice and consumed together in one fire on the mountain-top of His kingdom. Israel had digged down God's altars, but Elijah built them up into one altar again, placed the sacrifice upon it and the fire fell. But they could not retain the blessing; the desires of God and the intentions of His prophets could not withhold them from their folly. Despite the unforgettable lessons, Israel did not learn the truth which Elijah knew and so singularly taught on Carmel.

A Covenant of Blood and the Fire of God

In Canaan the Lord was going to dwell among His people upon the ground of a blood covenant and upon no other. Since the days of Abraham and Isaac at Moriah not a word about sacrificial blood in connection with altars has been mentioned in holy writ, but now Moses sends young men to the altar with offerings and sacrifices to burn for acceptance and peace. The gathered people standing around the stone symbols of the nation, facing the altar, watch him as he catches half the blood of the animals in basins and sprinkles the other half upon the altar. This done, he read to the people all the words written in the book. Again receiving their affirmation of obedience, he sprinkled the book and all the people with the other half of the blood, saying to them, 'Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words'. The same blood was both God's and the people's, though neither had shed it. Moses, the man of God, the mediator between God and man, had provided it, saying, 'this is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you'.

Having accomplished his immediate task, from the ground of the blood-sealed covenant Moses again ascends into Sinai, accompanied this time by Aaron and seventy of the elders of Israel. The blood-sprinkled people standing around the smouldering altar watched them go, but did not know for what reason they went nor what the future held for them all. They knew that they were heading for the promised land, but they had yet to discover that they were to be the host nation to God — that He was planning to come and live among them.

When Moses finally reached the Lord at the top of Sinai he was given instructions to make Him a house and how to assemble and distribute the furniture. The altar of burnt offering was to be placed at His gates. It was not to be built of stone or made of earth as formerly, but of metal. It was to be different because it was to have a different function from any which preceded it; it was to be the altar of the blood of atonements. No previous altar had been built for that purpose; hitherto the idea of sin had not been introduced at any altar, but this one was deliberately ordered by God that it should be used for sacrifices for the coverage of the sins of Israel committed within the covenant. It was to be a kind of means for the continuation of the passover, the logical conclusion of it under that covenant. Obedience to the Lord in the matter of remission of sins by means of the brazen altar resulted in entire forgiveness — the Lord regarded their sins as covered by sacrifice and would pass over them because they were covered by the blood.

This altar was the seventh since Abraham' s on Moriah, but it was not to be the last one made in Israel. This may seem strange, for with the making and positioning of the brazen altar God had finalised all His demands concerning it and therefore would not accept any other. Notwithstanding this, the final altar made in Israel at that time was the one erected entirely without instruction, simply for the purpose of witness. Existing jointly with the brazen altar, this one was never used for sacrifice; it simply bore testimony to the unity of the nation and of their total acceptance by the Lord. The Lord fully accepted this uncommissioned altar. Standing there in all its unused glory, it existed solely as a symbol and confession of man's understanding of the principle of eternal life.

There is no clearer testimony to man's firm belief of this than the great altar which the two and a half tribes of Israel built upon the borders of their inheritance. The motive behind their action was completely misunderstood and misinterpreted by the many and caused so much alarm to the greater part of Israel that they were prepared to go and destroy both the altar and those who built it. However, the retributive action was averted because upon arbitration they learned that, although the altar was built, it was never to be used. Their brethren had erected it purposely to let everyone know that, although they were not living in the mainland of the inheritance of the Lord, they were still God's people.

Perhaps they may have chosen any one of a half dozen other things to set up as their particular emblem of unity, but they built an altar. There can scarcely be clearer evidence than this that they understood the significance of it, though to what measure who can say? To be cut off from God's altar was the worst punishment which could be inflicted on anybody in Israel; it meant that God had completely rejected that person and had cut him off from His inheritance and all hope of salvation.

It is significant that those men did not attempt to erect another tabernacle. If they had been guided by purely human, aesthetic desires they might have done so, but they knew that in that event both it and they would have been entirely unacceptable to God and their brethren. The altar was a different proposition however, it was theirs, it belonged to all the people, it was as necessary to their life as it was to God's. When it was erected no-one but they who built it seemed to appreciate it and perhaps even they did not understand the deepest significance of the gesture. They sought for some symbol of the unity they felt with their brethren and their God, a real testimony to the corporate life of the nation, and without division decided upon the idea of the altar. To the majority of Israel it seemed blasphemous and divisive, portending disinheritance and destruction, and who can blame them? No-one, not even Joshua, had been given any instructions about it, but the minority built it and God accepted it. The thought that had inspired their action was God-given, the expression of their desire was perfect; that small group had arrived at truth, they were right. The altar must remain.

Once again as it had been at the very beginning with Abel, without divine instructions, though not without divine aid, men had arrived at divine truth. In them also we see repeated the same kind of thing that Abraham did in his day. With united voice these all say that the first and most important thing to discover is the meaning of the altar, not the sacrifice laid upon it. They were confessing that Abraham, who left his bare and unused altars all over the land, was their father.

It was as though with this man God began all over again. Abel, who had made the original discovery, lost his life in doing so, but not in vain. The truth for which he was martyred, though lost sight of for centuries, was preserved through those years, reappearing on the purged earth following the deluge. But as time progressed and men continued to degenerate and turn from God it is lost sight of again and again; Babel is an example of this. By that time men had completely forsaken the earthly symbol of heavenly life; endeavouring to reach heaven by their own powers they started to build their own tower brick by brick. To frustrate their efforts God confounded their language and curtailed their labours; He also scattered abroad those men who tried to substitute a tower for an altar, but the judgement never cured their hearts of waywardness nor turned them back to God.

For this reason God chose Abraham, a descendant of Abel's brother Seth through Noah and Shem, and started again. By Abraham God restored the altar to the permanent place it must hold in a man's life and what it should symbolise to his heart. It is not surprising then to discover that the only blood to stain any of Abraham's altars was the lamb's which was shed on the holy mount. There is no record that the patriarch ever shed another's, though he built altar upon altar. It is remarkable how purposefully and completely God took hold. of this man. Undoubtedly He did so that through him, who was the 'father' of the Seed, He should reveal the needful truth.

As we have already seen God had something greater to show us than the doctrine of atonement for sin. This He unfolded later to the fullest detail through Noses; but by this man Abraham, the father of the race, He revealed the deeper secret of the life principle of God. Because this man refrained from offering to God that for which He had not asked, and refused to act in presumption to give the impression that he already knew what God desired, he was granted at last the revelation of what God actually wanted. How great was Abraham's patience that he never once asked God what he should offer Him, and how much greater is God's wisdom that during this whole period He never once told His chosen one what it was He wanted of him as sacrifice. So Abraham continued faithful in obedience to his inward knowledge, firm in his convictions about the altar, yet fully content to rest in his ignorance of God's mind.

A False Assumption

Upon the supposition that the above assumption is true, it is not an uncommon thing to hear people asking if someone has had an Acts 2:4 experience, the implication being that unless the answer is 'Yes', then the experience is not valid. Even if it were true, such a postulation is very confusing to say the least, for there is very little present day evidence to shew that people now have an identical experience to that which took place then. Here and there it happens that the tongue spoken is recognized by a hearer, but the occurrence is comparatively rare, and certainly, whenever it may have taken place, it has never been in such profusion and diversity as upon the day of Pentecost. However, when a person's vital experience seems to be parallel with a scriptural verse of so great importance, it is very easy to think that must be the genuine experience, and that any variation from it must be wrong.

This kind of unwarrantable thinking, once accepted, provides hasty minds with ground for the development of the initial evidence theory. From there it is an easy step to promote the error into a tenet of faith and a received doctrine. Under such misapprehensions, many a true experience of Baptism in the Spirit has been wrongly labelled 'an anointing', simply because there has been no demonstration in Tongues. What is meant by that term is not very clearly defined. In fact it is not true. On the other hand, because some kind of incomprehensible verbal demonstration has taken place at the time, many a false experience has been erroneously called the Baptism.

Again because of this false assumption, many have laboured long in states bordering upon hysteria to produce some kind of sounds which may prove acceptable to those who pray with them, hoping that someone will pronounce the demonstration to be genuine. These occasions are often accompanied by feelings of great heat, or by physical contortions or deep breathings, all of which are self-induced and sometimes encouraged and extremely dangerous. So great is the state of confusion in which many churches lie to this day.

Lest the false should displace the genuine, it must be said that the glorious experience may be received to the accompaniment of a most blessed sensation of being enveloped in warmth, or flooded with joy, or consumed in love. These, as well as speaking with tongues, are all of them absolutely valid; the thing that is wrong is the search for physical demonstrations and sensations. So surely as these be sought, stereotyped substitutes for the real baptism will become the accepted procedure.

From The True Evidence of the Baptism in the Spirit  

A Foundation of Righteousness

The Spirit of God is clear; before any attempt be made at setting right the function and order of the gifts, the body must first of all be clear about the nature and principles of eternal righteousness. The body of Christ must be right, simply because it is His body; obedience is more precious in His eyes than gift or sacrifice or miracle. We must get this matter of headship and authority right before we pass on to power and performance. Whether to past happenings or future events or present truth, in His spiritual body He must be perfectly correct in all His relationships. He was right in His body of flesh, and He must be right in His spiritual body. He is the embodiment of Truth proceeding from the Father.

This is why Paul delays dealing with the spirituals until this late point of the epistle. He has approached the subject through eleven other chapters devoted to establishing fundamental principles and values, each of far greater import than the 'modus operandi' of the spirituals. Except he had done so he would have created an entirely wrong impression about the place and function of the gifts, and would have left the Corinthian situation basically unchanged. Had he done that, except by some later gracious intervention, the gifts would not have been, nor could have functioned ever again as spiritual means among them. They would have remained entirely devoid of the life and power and meaning of God, totally ineffectual, and incapable of achieving His objectives among men. The Word of Wisdom would have become man's wisdom, which is foolishness; the Word of Knowledge a demonstration of psychic prognostication by means of Extra Sensory Perception; Discernment of spirits an exercise in clairvoyant powers; Faith a hypnotic co-operation with powers of evil; Healing and Miracles satanic deceptions; Prophecy, Tongues and Interpretation would be utterances of men and devils, human at best and devilish at worst. Instead of gatherings together unto the praise and worship of God, meetings would have been sinful demonstrations of carnal powers to the accompaniment of sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Everything would have been to the glory of man, the delight of satan and the dishonouring of God.

From Spiritual Life and Spiritual Gifts 

A Husbandly Covenant

HOSEA, another mighty prophet of similar insight and understanding, says of his people that since altars had been to Israel to sin, then altars should be to them to sin. What a dreadful state of affairs this was. That which had been revealed to them as a means of blessing had irretrievably become a means of causing the absolute opposite of God's original intention. Instead of the altar being the place where sin was forgiven by atonements, it was the place where their sin increased. They were using all kinds of self-made illegitimate altars to offer many sorts of self-chosen abominable sacrifices to a variety of different self-devised idol-gods in increasing numbers of self-built temples. All of these were expressions of self-willed sin and studied insults to God. The opening chapters of the book make it very plain that Israel were living in spiritual harlotry.

Yet God loved the people and regarded Himself as married to them. He had entered into spiritual covenant and union with them by a great oath that He would be their God and they His people, so He felt that the onus lay upon Him to act toward them as a faithful husband. Although Israel's behaviour toward Him merited punishment and He would have to administer it, He would do so in love and mercy. At the worst it would only be corrective, He could not bring Himself to be altogether destructive toward them. He would limit His anger, directing it to the elimination of the divisive abominations which had become such a barrier between them and their God.

He loved them dearly and felt jealous and hurt over their conduct as would a faithful husband over the behaviour of an unfaithful wife; He would therefore punish them, but He would not divorce them. His covenant and oath to them had been sealed with blood; He had meant every word of it. When He made His vows He did so without any desire or intention in His heart to break or deviate from them, nor would He. But on their part Israel did not see or know, nor did they seem to understand in any degree that their relationship to Jehovah was to be as a wife to a husband. Isaiah had cried it out to them in his day, but whether they had ever read or still read his prophecy is very doubtful.

Their history is one long story of almost unrelieved backsliding. it is almost certain that their forefathers had never understood the full meaning of the events recorded in Exodus 24 . Events proved that they never grasped the full implication of God's covenant. Why, even before the tables of the covenant were in their hands, they were making a golden calf and wishing they were back in Egypt. At that time, by a series of unparalleled miracles, the fathers of the nation had but lately come out of Egypt across the Red Sea and were gathered at the foot of mount Sinai. Having earlier briefly referred to this, we will consider it now more fully, for here it finds its natural place in the exposition.

At the call of God, Moses, their saviour, leader and mediator had been up and had returned from the mountain with instructions to inform the people of the covenant God wished to make with them. At this juncture the ten commandments which were to form the basis of the covenant had not been written. As recorded in chapter 20, Moses had already received them from God whilst in His presence under the power of His Spirit, but as yet God had not inscribed them. So, descending the mountain under commission from God, Moses gathered the people together and reported to them what God had said to him. The object of this was to acquaint them with God's terms so that they could voluntarily enter the covenant of love with understanding. When the people heard God's terms they unanimously promised, 'all the words which the Lord hath said we will do and be obedient'. Well pleased with them, Moses accepted their vow and in God's behalf took them at their word. Not until then did Moses commit the commandments and ordinances he had so far received to writing.

This sacred writing was the first 'Bible' ever given by God to man. We now know it was really only the first instalment of the inspired Word. Viewed in the light of all the foregoing, it is surely a most remarkable fact of great importance to us that the first thing ever to be put into writing by God should be this covenant. It is perhaps as remarkable also that around it the other great revelations should be later assembled. Just how and when the rest of the Pentateuch was received and written and ordered in its entirety we cannot be sure. Whether Genesis came last and was placed first we do not know; we can only thank and praise God that we have it.

We do know practically to the point of certainty however that the Book was commenced under the shadow of Sinai and that the first words written down by Moses were not 'In the beginning God created...' but these which now comprise chapters 20-23 of the book of Exodus . 'I am the Lord thy God .... thou shalt have no other gods before me'; what a beginning — God, just God, all God, only God. From this ultimately flowed the words of Genesis 1 — 'In the beginning God'. But let us see how Moses continues with his first great revelation from the Spirit: 'I the Lord thy God am a jealous God ... thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. God is come to prove you ... an altar ... if they will make me an altar'. Thus the writing continues, but what a surprising course to take. 'I am the Lord thy God ... if thou wilt make me an altar'; who would have expected that?

By this we can see most clearly into God's naked Spirit; by saying such things He has revealed Himself. Right from the beginning the Lord's primary insistence to Israel was that they were to be the people of God and the altar. The commandments were given to keep them from sin, and the altar was devised to reveal both the principle of life and the way they could offer themselves to God. The wording is significant, 'thou shalt not come up by steps to my altar'; note that the Lord does not go on to say 'to offer thy sacrifice'. The whole implication is that the sacrifice is the person, not something the person offers.

A Kingdom of Priests

It was pure perfection. By God's command throughout Israel's national history the annual Passover was a most individual occasion. On that day instead of the Aaronic family functioning in their substitutional capacity for all Israel, each householder became a priest unto God. Every family took and slew its own lamb and handled and sprinkled the blood for themselves. In addition to that, instead of one family of male priests exclusively eating some selected portions of the sacrifice in God's house by divine command, each member of the race took and handled and ate his or her share of the entire lamb in his or her own house. So we see with what wondrous felicity and inspired insight, as well as absolute simplicity, the Lord instituted the basic meal of His New Covenant. The Passover was conceived, inaugurated and framed for this very reason. The Lord Jesus did it all precisely in order to introduce to them the next phase of God's predetermined plan to establish His kingdom in the hearts of men.

The Passover lamb(s), whether slain initially in Egypt, or successively in the desert, and finally in Canaan, were not brought to an altar to be consumed in fire by God. Only what was left over, that is what was more than the people could eat, was burned up. Even then it was not burned upon an altar as a sacrifice, nor was it offered up by a priest. It was done by the master of the house. Israel's Passover lamb was not offered up to God; on the contrary God gave it to Israel. By eating the lamb Israel offered and gave themselves to God. As He said, Israel is my firstborn.

The Passover feast was commanded to the people by God with direct intention, the implication of the ritual was that the entire nation should consider themselves to be priests. This was the righteous ground upon which God could later say of Israel that they were a kingdom of priests unto Him. At that time the Aaronic priesthood had not been ordained, nor had the men of the tribe of Levi any more privileges than the men of every other tribe. The head of every house was the priest, he slew the lamb and sprinkled the blood according to God's commandment. Israel was God's house, His firstborn — every single one of them. They were a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people to Him, and as such needed no special priests. Only later for practical purposes was the priesthood established and men ordained to be servants in God's house.

From The Priesthood