Lesson 4 ─ The Two Dimensions

God had placed Adam in a unique position of power in His universe. “Thou madest him to have ____________ over the ________ of thy hands; thou hast ____________________ under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field: The _______ of the air, and the fish of the ______ and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas” (Psa. 8:6-8).

Here we see that the animal kingdom would be under man’s dominion. He learned to tame earth’s creatures; their flesh he used for sustenance; their skins for clothing; their strength for labor; their beauty and variety for his own pleasure and companionship. He would learn how to make the mineral kingdom bow to his inventive genius. Plutonium, iron ore, gems of varied hue and value─all would contribute to man’s glory.
But of the kingdom of God, Adam was to be a subject, obedient to God as Lord. Together Creator and created would work harmoniously to bring about the highest good, satisfying God and fulfilling man’s possibilities and all utilizing the lower kingdoms to bring about advancement and glory to God.
So we see that our fore-parents first enjoyed this universe in totality. But sin shut the kingdom of God to mankind. That capacity which man enjoyed, to understand and know God, died within him. “He hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true” (1 John 5:20). God had forewarned Adam and Eve that in the day they ate of the forbidden fruit they would die. And die they did, losing infinitely more than they gained. The cherubim and flaming sword barred the entrance to that invisible kingdom which contained the tree of life.

“So he _____________ the man; and he _________ at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a __________________ which turned every way, to _______ the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24).

Adam and Eve, infected with evil and separated from God Who alone was wisdom and righteousness, could only henceforth work havoc and mischief upon the planet they had been set to govern. For purposes of greed and vanity, they utilized the animal and mineral kingdoms. Societies for the protection of animals became a necessity. Summit talks by heads of governments periodically were convened to discuss disarmament in order to limit man’s potential for destroying the earth over which he had been given dominion. Today we grapple with problems of pollution on the fair planet which God had made.
We can see that God’s great plan for man’s redemption would envisage man cleansed from his former infection, for the Bible states: “for this ___________ the Son of God was ______________, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

Jesus came showing man the way to regain his lost estate. He came preaching the kingdom of God as did also John the Baptist. Their message was “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
Our natural world is divided into kingdoms. At the lowest end of the scale is the inorganic kingdom of minerals. These have no life. We then rise to the vegetable kingdom which includes all plant life. Higher still is the animal kingdom where we find a measure of intelligence. But excelling all these is the kingdom of man, endowed with reasoning faculties, a will with which to exercise self-control and speech with which to communicate with others.
But the highest of all is the kingdom of God─an invisible realm but none-the-less a real one─which the natural man cannot see or enter save by way of the new birth. You will remember that Adam and Eve were turned out of the garden. The tree of life which had been there for them to eat, had not to be guarded lest rebel, proud men put forth his hand and take of the tree of life and live in his sinful state forever. Cherubim and flaming sword that turned every way guarded the entrance from intrusion by man. God still guards this tree of eternal life. Unrepentant, disobedient man cannot enter except on God’s conditions. “These things saith he that is _______, he that is _______, he that hath the ______ of David, he that __________ and __________ shutteth; and ____________ and ___________________” (Rev. 3:7).

Just as no rock can be transformed into a breathing, communicating animal, and no animal can be promoted to a man possessing reason and conscience, so no degenerate son of Adam can of himself enter the Kingdom of Heaven. There is an impenetrable, insurmountable wall between each kingdom and the one above it. It is only through God’s plan of redemption that a human being may enter the Kingdom above him─the Kingdom of Heaven. Only by a creative act of God, may sinful man hope to enter that highest kingdom of grace.

The highest kingdom for the children of the highest. In the Gospel of Luke, we find a term not employed in any of the other Gospels to describe the children of God. Luke had been contrasting the conduct of the people of the world with that of the children of God. He admonished the latter to lend, hoping for nothing in return, in contrast to the family of Adam who lend hoping for a reward. If you do this, “ye shall be the ________________________________” (Luke 6:35).

Then Gabriel in the announcement to Mary concerning the coming of a new Adam says: “He shall be great and shall be called the _________________________ . . . and of his kingdom there shall be __________” (Luke 1:32-33). So we understand that God’s highest workmanship is a race born again, having sensibilities with which to enjoy this kingdom of God. The human fetus, during the nine long months before its emergence upon a world of which it is completely ignorant, is developing organs and senses which will fit it to communicate with that realm. So, the child of God is likewise endowed with spiritual sensibilities so that he may be able to communicate with God.
The saintly vicar of Madeley, John Fletcher, wrote “Six Letters on the Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God.” Hugh Bourne, reading these in a lonely farm house in Staffordshire, suddenly experienced a revelation of God to his own soul. The outcome was that he became born again through the Spirit and with quickened sensibilities apprehended spiritual things. He began preaching, and revival followed in the formation of Primitive Methodism. We would like to quote from one of Fletcher’s six letters:

“The Scriptures inform us, that Adam lost the experimental knowledge of God by the Fall. In this deplorable state Adam begat his children. We, like him, are not only void of the life of God, but alienated from it. Though we have, in common with beasts, bodily organs of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling, adapted to outward objects; though we enjoy, in common with devils, the faculty of reasoning upon natural truths and mathematical propositions, yet we do not understand supernatural and divine things. We can neither see nor taste them truly, unless we are risen with Christ, and taught of God. We may, indeed, speak and write about them as the blind may speak of colors, and the deaf dispute of sounds, but it is all guesswork, hear-say and mere conjecture.
“The things of the Spirit of God cannot be discovered, but by spiritual internal senses, which are, with regard to the spiritual world, what our bodily external senses are with regard to the natural world. They are the only medium by which an intercourse between Christ and our souls can be opened and maintained.
“The exercise of these senses is peculiar to those who are born of God. In believers, this hidden man is awakened and raised from the dead, by the power of Christ’s resurrection. Christ is his life, the Spirit of God is his spirit, prayer or praise his breath, holiness his health and love his element. We read of his hunger and thirst, food and drink, garment and habitation, armor and conflicts, pain and pleasure, fainting and reviving, growing, walking and working. All this supposes senses, and the more these senses are quickened by God, and exercised by the new-born soul, the clearer and stronger is his perception of divine things.

(From this list of Scripture references, fill in each blank below with the appropriate text. 1 Cor. 2:9, Heb. 5:14, Eph. 5:14, 1 Cor. 2:15, Eph. 2:1, 1 Cor. 2:14, Phil. 1:9, 2 Cor. 4:4, Heb. 11:27, John 8:56, Eph. 1:18, Psa. 119:18, Acts 26:18, Gal. 3:1, Matt. 13:15, Rev. 3:18, John 14:17, Luke 19:42, Matt. 5:8).

“On the other hand, in unbelievers, the inward man is deaf, blind, naked, asleep, past feeling; yea ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ ___________; and of course, as incapable of perceiving spiritual things as a dead man of discovering outward objects. St. Paul’s language to him is, ‘Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’ ___________. He calls him a natural man, one who hath no higher life than his parents conveyed to him by natural generation─one who follows the dictates of his own sensual soul, and is neither born of God, nor led by the Spirit of God. ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned’ ___________. He has no sense properly exercised for this kind of discernment, his ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into his heart the things which God hath prepared for them that love him’ ___________.
“The reverse of the natural man is the spiritual, so called because God hath revealed spiritual things to him by His Spirit, Who is now in him a principle of spiritual and eternal life. ‘The spiritual man judgeth (i.e., discerneth) all things, yet he himself is judged of no man’ ___________. The high state he is in can no more be discerned by the natural man, than the condition of the natural man can be discerned by a brute.
“St. Paul not only describes the spiritual man, but speaks particularly of his internal, moral senses. Christians, says he, of full age, ‘by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil’ ___________. He prays that the love of the Philippians ‘may abound more and more in knowledge and in all wisdom (i.e., all sense or feeling)’ ___________. The Scriptures constantly mention or allude to one or other of these spiritual senses:

1. Sight. “St. Paul prays that the eyes of his converts, being enlightened, ‘they might know what was the hope of his calling’ ___________. He reminds them that Christ had been ‘evidently set forth crucified before their eyes’ ___________. He assures them, that ‘the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not the gospel’ ___________. He declares that his commission was ‘to open the eyes and turn them from darkness to light’ ___________. ‘Abraham saw Christ’s day and was glad’ ___________. Moses persevered, as ‘seeing him who is invisible’ ___________. David prayed, ‘Open my eyes that I may see wonders out of thy law’ ___________. Our Lord complains that the heart of unbelievers is ‘waxed gross, that their ears are dull of hearing, and that they have closed their eyes lest they should see with their eyes, understand with their hearts, and be converted’ ___________. He counsels the Laodiceans to ‘anoint their eyes with eye-salve, that they might see’ ___________. He declares that ‘the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because it sees him not’ ___________; that ‘the things which belong to the peace of obstinate unbelievers are hid from their eyes’ ___________; and that ‘the pure in heart shall see God’ ___________.

(From this list of Scripture references, fill in each blank below with the appropriate text. 2 Cor. 4:18, 1 Pet. 2:2, Isa. 50:4, Acts 7:51, Psa. 34:8, Eze. 11:19, 3 John 11, Jer. 5:21, John 6:56, Psa. 40:6, Heb. 6:4, Mark 7:34, S. of S. 2:3, Psa. 63:5, Psa. 45:8, S. of S. 4:10, 2 Cor. 12:4, 1 John 2:11, John 8:47, S. of S. 4:11, John 10:27, S. of S. 1:3, Rev. 1:11, Psa. 119:103, John 6:45, Rev. 2:7, 2 Cor. 4:6, Isa. 45:22, John 5:25).

“St John testifies that he who does evil ‘hath not seen God’ ___________; and that darkness hath blinded the ‘eyes of him that loves not his brother’ ___________. The Holy Ghost informs us that believers look ‘at the things which are not seen’ ___________ and ‘behold the glory of God, shining in the face of Jesus Christ’ ___________. These are the eyes with which believers see the salvation of God. And no doubt, when Christ gave inward sight to the blind, it was chiefly to convince the world that it is He Who can say to blind sinners, ‘Look unto me and be ye saved’ ___________.

2. Hearing. “If you do not admit of a spiritual hearing, what can you make of our Lord’s repeated caution, ‘He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear’ ___________? And what can be the meaning of the following Scriptures: ‘Hear, O foolish people, who have ears and hear not’ ___________; ‘ye uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye cannot hear my words; ye are of your father the devil’ ___________; ‘he that is of God, heareth God’s words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God’ ___________?
“Can it be supposed that our Lord spake of outward hearing when He said, ‘The hour cometh, and now is, that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live’ ___________; ‘my sheep hear my voice’ ___________; ‘he that hath heard and learned of the Father, cometh unto me’ ___________?
“Do not all sinners stand spiritually in need of Christ’s powerful Ephphatha, ‘Be thou opened’ ___________? Is that man truly converted who cannot witness with Isaiah, ‘The Lord hath wakened my ear to hear as the learned’ ___________; and with the Psalmist, ‘Mine ears hast thou opened’ ___________? Had not the believers at Ephesus heard Christ and been taught of Him? When St. Paul was caught up into the third heavens, did he not hear words unspeakable ___________? And far from thinking spiritual hearing absurd or impossible, did he not question whether he was not then out of the body? And does not St. John positively declare that he was in the Spirit, when he heard Jesus say, ‘I am the first and the last’ ___________?

3. Tasting. “If believers have not a spiritual faculty of tasting divine things, what a delusion must they be under, when they say, ‘Christ’s fruit is sweet to their taste’ ___________; and ‘how sweet are thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth’ ___________? But how justly can they speak thus, if they have ‘tasted of the heavenly gift and the good word of God’ ___________ and as ‘new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word’ ___________? Surely if they ‘eat the flesh of the Son of God, and drink His blood’ ___________ and ‘taste that the Lord is good’ ___________ they also may be satisfied with His goodness and mercy as ‘with marrow and fatness’___________.

4. Smelling. “How void of meaning are the following passages, if they do not allude to that SENSE, which is calculated for the reception of what the barrenness of human language compels me to call spiritual perfumes? ‘The smell of thy ointments is better than all spices’ ___________. ‘The smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon’ ___________. ‘All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia’ ___________ and ‘because of the savor of thy good ointments, thy name is an ointment poured forth’ ___________.

5. Feeling. “If we be not perfect stoics in religion, if we have one degree more of devotion than the marble statues which adorn our churches, we should have, I think, some feeling of our unworthiness, some sense of God’s majesty. Christ’s tender heart was pierced to atone for and to move the hardness of ours. God promises to ‘take from us the heart of stone and to give us an heart of flesh’ ___________.

(From this list of Scripture references, fill in each blank below with the appropriate text. Acts 17:27, 1 Tim. 4:2, Acts. 2:37, Psa. 51:17).

“‘A broken and contrite heart God will not despise’ ___________. Good Josiah was praised, because his heart was tender. The conversion of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, began by their being ‘pricked in their heart’ ___________. We are directed to ‘feel after God, if haply we may find him’ ___________. And St. Paul intimates that the highest degree of obduracy and apostasy is to be ‘past feeling and to have our conscience seared as with a hot iron’ ___________.”

Condition of entry into that Kingdom. The law of childlikeness.

“Except ye be converted, and __________ as _________ children, ye shall _____________ into the ___________ of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall _________ himself as this _________________, the same is greatest in the ____________________ __________” (Matt. 18:3-4).
“Suffer ____________________, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the ______________________” (Matt. 19:14).
“Whosoever shall not ___________ the ___________________ as a __________ child, he shall not enter therein” (Mark 10:15).

In the kingdom of this world man may stand erect upon his pedestal of “me” and be perfectly understood: “my career,” “my happiness,” “my morals,” “my ambition,” “my achievement.” The god of this world aimed to educate man to be self-sufficient, independent, poised and self-assured. Every enticement is offered to urge him on to advancement of self and to become mature. “Be a man,” he counsels. But Christ as the second Adam says to the mature worldling, “Become a child.”
But there is no royal road into the kingdom of God. “Strait is the _______ and _________ is the ______ which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7:14). We do not enter with heads up, records of past achievement blazing, chests stuck out in pride over attainments or possessions. We must be stripped of all self-confidence. Each one of us entered this physical world at birth, naked, helpless and completely dependent upon others. The same condition holds for adult man when he wishes to see the kingdom of God. Stripped of all pretended strength, any descendant of the first Adam must go into the kingdom as a little child.
We must come down off our pedestal. “To be children, little children, to walk wherever they are led, unable to quit the hand which guides them, to depend on the divine mercy for the supply of their daily wants, to associate with the humble, to be seen in the company of little ones, to put themselves on equality with the poor in spirit─what abasement, what disgrace! Happy, however, they who have accepted that disgrace and covered themselves with it! The shame of earth is the glory of Heaven.”─Vinet.

“Ye are they which ___________ yourselves before ______; but God ___________ your _________: for that which is highly esteemed among men is ________________ in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

How are we to humble ourselves? Vinet, a Swiss minister, so clearly states that even in this we need divine assistance: “This transformation into infancy does not even belong to you. All that you can find in yourselves is the conviction that, proud and independent by nature, you must ask God to break down that haughtiness, to reduce you to the measure of little children, to give you their hearts. And it is not you, learned men, and men of genius alone, who need to ask this. Your pride does not surpass that of other men, as your talents surpass theirs. They too, in their mediocrity, are haughty and proud, for they are men; humble and modest, perhaps with relation to men, haughty and proud with reference to God. Their reason makes no less pretensions than yours; their dignity is not less exacting; it costs them as much to abase themselves, as if, like you, they had their head in the clouds.”

Aspects of the childlike character are:

1. In innocence concerning evil. “Be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men” (1 Cor. 14:20). “A man in reason, a child in heart.”

2. In teachableness. “I thank thee, O Father . . . because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25).

3. In dependence. “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30). A little child expects everything from his father. He prays. The life of a little child is a life of prayer.

4. In faith. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb. 11:6).

The new dimension or kingdom is there to be explored and this is why Jesus kept saying, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” and “he that hath eyes to see let him see.” He was exhorting Christians to the exercise of those spiritual senses that they might understand the unsearchable riches of the realm. Paul spoke of people who had by reason of use exercised their senses to a high degree of discernment. Read Heb. 5:12-14.
Permit us to illuminate a spiritual truth by a homely illustration. A steamer, carrying many travelers, docks at a foreign port. Some passengers are satisfied with a day trip, enjoying a brief glimpse of that strange continent. Others decide to remain for a week or ten days, taking planned excursions into this strange country. Still others decide to tour the continent more extensively, mingling with its peoples, studying its geographical, political and industrial highlights. A few decide to settle in this challenging country and acquaint themselves with, and adapt themselves to, this new culture.
Born again children of God must live in the material world while discovering the invisible kingdom of grace. Some have put their feet in that kingdom but have been too absorbed with accumulating riches or establishing earthly relationships to discipline their lives, and so fail to obtain a knowledge of this invisible kingdom. Faith in the unseen is not strengthened, because of the absorption with the seen. This is why we are exhorted by Jesus and the apostles to lose our lives on the lower level in order to find our lives in the higher kingdom. We are told to deny ourselves daily, and unless we do this we will remain babes in our exploration and discovery of the vast domain of grace.
Paul exhorted the Christians at Rome to avoid the tragic choice of becoming conformed in their thinking to modes of action in the seen world, and failing to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Christians who neglect prayer and Scripture reading are bound to be squeezed into this world’s mold. We cannot escape the necessity for denial of self in the present world if we are to explore the wonders of His kingdom of grace.

Testing Time

1. Read Matt. 5:1-16 and Luke 6:20-35 and pick out the verses which show Christ’s teachings on conditions for entering the kingdom.
2. Study the two prayers─those of the Pharisee and the Publican in Luke 18:9-14. Why was one justified while the other one was not?
3. Solomon in 1 Kings 3:5-13 had a dream in which he was asked what God should give him. What part of Solomon’s reply pleased God so that a kingdom of unusual wisdom was opened to him?
4. Isaiah 11:6-9 describes the time when the kingdom of God shall become visible and established upon the earth. We know this as the Millennium. There is an outstanding characteristic of those who are mentioned here who will be prominent in the kingdom. This is referred to three times. What is it?
5. Explain the chief difference between a nominal Christian and a born-again child of God.
6. What differences would you expect to find in a Christian who had their five spiritual senses quickened into life?

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