This is from The Missing Cross to Purity:

“The knowledge of Christ is not literal, traditional, or fleshly, nor can it be received by the natural understanding; but it is spiritual, and the understanding must be given by God which receives it. “He has given us an understanding, that we may know him who is true.” 1 John 5:20. A man may read scriptures, hear sermons, etc., and thereby gather a knowledge into the old understanding: but neither this understanding into which the knowledge is gathered, nor the knowledge itself that is gathered, are spiritual, but fleshly, and so cannot save. He who comes once to receive an understanding from Christ, and to have the knowledge of Christ poured forth from Christ into his heart, knows the difference between that and the understanding into which he gathers things. The knowledge of Christ after the letter, (and a faith in him answerable to such knowledge), will not save; but a man must know him in that Spirit, life, and power in which he lived, if he is firmly established in hope to be saved by him, (2 Cor 5:16-17).

“[All things are delivered to me by my Father; and no man knows the Son but the Father, neither does any man know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Mat 11:27. The Father and the Son are only known through revelation, by the son revealing him; for the Son and the Father are one. Because what may be known of God is revealed in them; for God has shown it to them, Rom 1:19; not reading about God, not hearing someone talk about God, for God and Christ are known by only revelation in your heart, where you hear him and see him teach you about sin, righteousness, and himself.]”

–Isaac Penington

The Babylonish Church
Thumbnail Biography of Isaac Penington
Resisting and Receiving God’s Spirit, Experiencing His Teachings

Oswald Chambers, 1874-1917

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“Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more clearly by recklessness.”

–Oswald Chambers

“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.”

–Abraham Lincoln

“I shall not live ’till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.”

–John Donne

“The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.”

–Daniel Webster

“The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man’s business but build his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel.”

–Maltbie D. Babcock

“To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead as to its own. Such an one can do no deed however small but it is clothed with something of God’s power and authority.”

–Meister Eckhart

“Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon

“The wisdom of this world is precious in the eye of the world; and the wisdom of God in His poor, weak, despised earthen vessels is still foolishness with them; but the Lord so orders it, that He still justifies his despised wisdom in his despised vessels, and makes the wisdom of the world appear foolish to all the single and uprighthearted, who thirst after and wait for the revelation of His truth.”

–Isaac Penington

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

–William Shedd

“Men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God. These are of the old time religion, hung to the nails of the Cross.”

–Robert Murray McCheyne

“Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obedience, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scriptures is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”

–A.W. Tozer

“All God’s revelations are sealed until they are opened to us by obedience. You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking. Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes. Let God’s truth work in you by soaking in it, not by worrying into it. The only way you can get to know is to stop trying to find out and being born again. Obey God in the thing He shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. One reads tomes on the Holy Spirit, when one five minutes of drastic obedience would make things as clear as a sunbeam. ‘I suppose I shall understand these things some day!’ You can understand them now. It is not study that does it, but obedience. The tiniest fragment of obedience, and heaven opens and the profoundest truths of God are yours straight away. God will never reveal more truth about Himself until you have obeyed what you know already. Beware of becoming ‘wise and prudent.'”

–Oswald Chambers

“Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a living presence.”

–Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Though swordless, these soldiers of Christ fought the might of imperial Rome and won…
Unlettered they unblushingly declared the whole counsel of God and eventually staggered the intellectual Greeks.”

–Leonard Ravenhill

“The beginning of true nobility comes when a man ceases to be interested in the judgment of men and becomes interested in the judgment of God.”

–J. Gresham Machen

Some Great Quotes on Prayer
The World Is In The Church
Quote of the Day

The Power of Christ to Overcome all Sin Within You.  (Letter XII)

FRIEND,

I have had of late some deep and serious thoughts concerning you, and a sense of you, as between the Lord and my own soul, yet I have not had anything to signify or express to you, until this morning. But something this morning sprang up in my heart, sweetly and freshly, which I had pure drawings to impart to you.

There was a quick sense of you upon my heart, and in that sense this cry was in me: – Oh! that you were acquainted with the pure, eternal power of the Lord, and might feel his outstretched arm revealed in you, and witness the faith which stands in that power; and in that faith, believe and wait for what God is doing, and willing to do, in and for his children.

“If you had faith,” said Christ, “but as a grain of mustard seed, you should say to this mountain, be you cast into the midst of the sea, and it should be so.” Indeed, the true faith, the pure faith, the living faith, which stands in the power, does remove all the mountains that are in the way, and makes the crooked ways straight, and the rough ways plain. If you had lived in the days of Christ’s flesh, and wanted outward healing, and had been willing to come to him for healing, but had not come with faith that he was able and willing to heal perfectly; might  not you have missed of that cleansing and outward health and salvation, which others met with? For, did not he say, “Be it unto you according to your faith?” And is not he the Physician of the soul and is not his skill to be trusted and believed in? He that hopes, and believes, and waits, and prays, and fights the good fight of faith, which gives victory over sin, Satan, and the world – he may possibly overcome; yes, he that wars lawfully, (that is, with the spiritual weapon, which is mighty through God,) he that wars with this only, and with this constantly, shall be sure to overcome. For, greater is He that is in the true believer, than he that is in the world. O that you might have experience of these things, and witness the manner of  Christ’s love and power displayed in you, and the victories and conquests that come by these, and the safety and peace which is under it! For, of a truth, we do not boast, but are witnesses of the majesty of God’s love and power, which we testify of. The Lord to enlighten and guide you, that you may obtain the desires of your heart; for, I really believe your desire is after holiness and after communion with the Father and the Son, and with the saints in light, Oh that you may be led into the true pure light of life, that there you may enjoy what in this kind you desire! This is from one, who singly, as in the Lord’s sight, wishes well unto you.

–Isaac Penington

Reading Jail,

27th of Eighth  Month, 1679

The Letters of Isaac Penington
From the Treatise On Spiritual Perfection by Diadochus
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Prisoner for the TESTIMONY OF TRUTH, (for could I have denied TRUTH,
I might have avoided the SNARE), at Reading Jail

The Bows of the Mighty are broken; and they that stumbled are girded with Strength. 1 Sam 2:4

1672

“For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” It is a precious thing to witness this scripture fulfilled in the heart; to experience that there, which inwardly circumcises, which cuts off the foreskin of the heart, which lies over it and veils it, until it is cut off by the inward appearance of the life and power of the Lord Jesus Christ inwardly revealed. Then when this is done, I can truly and sensibly say, I am a Jew inward. How so? How can that is proved? Why, I am inwardly circumcised. I have felt that within which circumcises the heart, and have borne the inward pain and cutting thereof, and am circumcised by it. That which stood between me and the Lord is cut off, the veil has been taken away, my stiff-necked and rebellious nature to God removed, the wall of separation is inwardly broken down, and now I am in true unity of Spirit and communion with my God, even with the Father, and the Son, in that One Holy Spirit by which they are One.

The Holy Truth Defended

This is from “Babylon the Great” – The Missing Cross to Purity:

“BABYLON is the spiritual fabric of iniquity; the mystical great city of the great king of darkness; built in imitation of Zion, painted just like Zion, that it might be taken for Zion, and be worshipped there, instead of the true, eternal, ever living God, and King of Zion.”

“And here, in this there is a great difference between the vessels of Zion, and the vessels of Babylon. The vessels of Zion, they are weak, earthen, foolish, contemptible to the eye of man’s wisdom, (which cannot look for any great matter of excellency there); but the treasure, the liquor of life in them, is precious. The vessels of Babylon make a great show, appear very holy, very heavenly, very zealous for God and Christ, and for the setting up of his church and ordinances all over the world. Thus they appear outside; but they are sepulchers; there is rottenness within. Under all this there lodges an unclean, an unsanctified heart; a heart unsubdued to the spirit and power of the gospel, while it makes such a great show of subjection and obedience to the letter.”

“But their souls never knew the fire in Zion, and the furnace in Jerusalem; by which the very inwards of their spirits must be cleansed, before the pure eye of life is opened which can see Zion.”

“And it is a spiritual city, a mystical city, a city built by the working of the mystery of iniquity, 2 Thes 2:7. whereupon she is called mystery. Rev 17:5. It is not a city of plain wickedness, but a city of sin that is hidden; of sin keeping its life under a covering, under a form of godliness; of sin reigning in the heart under zeal, under devotion, under praying, believing, worshipping, hoping, waiting, etc. Where sin lies hidden within under these, there is Babylon; there is the mystery of witchcraft; there is the painted throne of Satan; there is spiritual Egypt and Sodom, where the Lord of life is daily crucified. This is the city, the mystical city, the spiritual city. Rev. 11:8.”

–Isaac Penington

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Babel–“1. The site of a tower reaching to heaven whose construction was interrupted by the confusion of tongues, according to the Old Testament. 2.a. A confusion of voices or sounds. b. Noise and confusion.”

Babble–“1. To utter meaningless, confused words or sounds.”

Babylon–“A place characterized by great luxury and often corruption.”

—Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary

Joshua 7: 20-21: “And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done: When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.”

II Timothy 2: 16: “But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.”

A Pile of Rocks—something much more alive in Christ than a Babylonish church.

Zion and Babylon Compared
The Hidden Streets of Babylon
Abram and Lot

Death in the House of the Lord

In Russia, in the Kaluga Region, a replica of the Tower of Babel was burned

Destroying the Roots of Babylon – Pastor Win Worley