Brothers and sisters, do remember that God allows us to go through all sorts of distresses for this very reason, that we may know Him as the God of resurrection. He constantly leads us into death, because only in death can we experience resurrection life.

The Bible speaks of two creations, the old and the new. The divine nature does not indwell the old creation and that is why it has become old. Where God is there is always newness. The Jerusalem above is called "New Jerusalem" because it is full of God. The first creation, even though it is the creation of the living God, has no divine content; but what the God of resurrection raises from the dead has a divine as well as a human content. It combines created and uncreated life. The first creation, though brought into being by God Himself, is by God Himself suffered to pass into death that it may emerge in resurrection as a creation of dual nature, i.e., combining the natures of God and man.

This principle has to be applied to us personally and to all our relationships. It is possible for fellow-workers, who love one another and work together harmoniously, to imagine that their mutual love and their cooperation is a spiritual thing; and others too may regard it as such. Yet it may simply be a human relationship without any divine content. But one day the hand of God falls upon it, and the cooperation comes to an end. For some indefinable reason those fellow-workers can no longer get on together. They are distressed about it and pray and yearn for a restoration of their former harmony; but the more they pray, the more it evades them. Then one day, when they have really died to their old experience, they find themselves in a new relation—not just a oneness of human nature, but a oneness that is both human and divine.

Though the old creation has come into being by the mighty hand of the living God, He Himself does not reside within it. It is created by Him and it displays His might, but it does not display His presence. How can the old creation be transformed into the new? By the incoming of God. But how can His incoming be secured? This is the point at which a major difficulty arises. The old nature must be shattered to make way for Him. Brothers and sisters, everything in your life must pass the supreme test of death to make a way for the God of resurrection. If you only know the living God, your knowledge will be too objective. God will be God; you will be you. You need to know the God of resurrection; and it is only through death that He can cleave a way for Himself into your life.

Prior to my coming here, I visited a large textile factory in Manila. There I watched a process whereby certain materials were produced. But after the perfect fabric had been created I saw a second process take place. That perfect fabric was plunged into a bath of dye where it lost all its beauty. It was a sorry sight. But it was in that state that the dye permeated the fabric and a new element was added to it. So it is with the old creation. It must pass through a devastating process if it is to be permeated by the presence of God.

I was deeply impressed as I stood in that factory watching the two processes and comparing the fabrics that emerged from the first and the second. They were not different fabrics really, but some of them, passing through a state that temporarily destroyed their loveliness, had a new and permanent beauty imparted to them.