THE
GLORY OF THE LORD
The glory of the Lord will be
manifest in these last days. And what is that glory? It
is the manifestation of God's Presence in the midst
of His people. It brings with it the fullness of His
power to deliver, to cleanse, to redeem, to transform,
to fulfill all His promises to His people. And, it makes
them to be what the Lord has purposed, and it
causes them to go forth in that which He has
determined.
God's glory will return when a body
has been prepared to receive it. At the beginning of
this age, a physical body was prepared to receive the
glory in the Person of the Lord of Glory, even the very
Son of the Father (Heb. 10:5). And those who saw Him
beheld the glory of their God (Jn. 1:14). So in this
day, the Lord is preparing a spiritual body to receive
the glory which He will bring to His people (Eph. 1:22-23).
But First that Body must be set in divine order as He
has ordained, and that Body must be complete in all
of its parts. It must function at the directive of His
Spirit, and be completely subject to His headship. Then, and only
then, will He fill that Body with the fullness of His
glory.
We read of the glory of the Lord
that was manifested with the living creatures in
Ezekiel's vision (Ezek. 1:4,28). These living creatures
are a picture of the reality and perfection of that
end-time Body which the Lord will raise up to Himself. If you will
read the account of the departure of the Lord's glory
from the sanctuary, as recorded in Ezekiel 8-11, you
will notice that the glory cloud was moving with the
living creatures as they were lifted up from that
sanctuary which had become polluted by the ways and
traditions of man. God's glory cannot be associated with
anything that is not according to His divine will.
For it is written that He was driven off from His
sanctuary by the abominations that were committed there
(Ezek. 8:6}. He has also been driven away from the
churches of this day so that the fullness of His glory
is not seen among them. Why? Because they have polluted
His sanctuary by their traditions and their man-made
ways.
Know assuredly that the Lord will
not return until He finds a body of people who will be
joined together according to His ways. Then He will
cause that body to become a glorious temple to Him, and that temple will be
filled with His glory. Consider the words spoken to
Ezekiel the Prophet in the closing chapters of
Ezekiel (40-48), as a vision is given to him of the new Temple which
will be built. That which was given to Ezekiel contains
many truths which are not to be made known at this time,
for it concerns that which will transpire in future
ages. But one thing that. Temple, ordered and
measured according to God's directive, does
represent and typify, is the end-time body or temple
which the Lord will raise up to Himself and fill with His
glory. Ezekiel saw the glory of God return to this new
Temple (43:2-5, 44:4) even as he had seen it depart from
the old polluted one (10:18-19). This is a picture of
that which the Lord will do. The glory has departed
from the polluted church systems of this day, but the
glory will return to the
end-time temple.