Position Papers -Anthology (3 volume set)
This is a 3 volume set that is comprised of excerpts gathered, over a period of 10 years, from spiritual growth books and include many of Miles' favorite authors. These 3 volumes a re made as a complete set for study and sharing. They are dispensationally based, and therefore present the unique, heavenly position of the believer. EXCERPT: From Volume 1 (pictured) : The Divine Standard The Christian is one who is not only sheltered from judgment by the Blood of the Lamb, not only delivered from the power of all his enemies by the death of the Lord Jesus, but is also associated with Him where He now is, at the right hand of the Father; he is passed out of death in resurrection and ascension, and is blessed with all spiritual blessings, in the heavenlies, in Christ. The believer is thus a heavenly man, and, as such, is called to walk in this lost world in all the varied relationships and responsibilities in which the good hand of the Father has placed him. He is not a monk, or an ascetic, or a man who lives in the clouds, fit neither for earth or heaven. He is not one who lives in a dreamy, misty, impractical-region; but, on the contrary, one whose happy privilege it is, from day to day, to reflect, amid the scenes and circumstances of earth, the graces and virtues of the Lord Jesus, with whom, through infinite grace, and on the solid ground of accomplished redemption, he is linked in the power of the Holy Spirit. The believer is one whose sins are forgiven, who possesses eternal life and knows it; in whom the Holy Spirit dwells; who is accepted in and associated with the risen and glorified Lord Jesus Christ. He has broken with the world, has died to sin and the law, and finds his object and delight, and his spiritual sustenance, in the ONe who loved him and gave Himself for him, and for whose coming he waits every day of his life. This is the New Testament description of a Christian. How immensely it differs from the ordinary type of Christian profession around us we need not say. But let the reader measure himself by the divine standard, and see wherein he comes short; for of this he may rest assured, that there is no reason whatsoever, so fora as the love of the Father, or the work of the Son, or the testimony of the Spirit, are concerned, why he should not be in the full enjoyment of all the rich and rare spiritual blessings which appertain to the true Christian position. Dark unbelief, fed by legality, bad teaching, and spurious religiousness, rob may of the Father's dear children of their proper place and portion. And not only so, but, from want of a a thorough break with the world, many are sadly hindered from the clear perception and the full realization of their position and privileges as heavenly men. We must learn what rue Christianity is from the pages of the New Testament, and, having learned it there, judge ourselves by its heavenly light. In this way, while we shall ever have to confess and mourn our shortcomings, our hearts shall ever, more and more, be filled with praise to Him whose infinite grace has brought us into such a glorious position, in union and fellowship with His own Son - a position, blessed by God, in nowise dependent upon our personal state, but which, if really apprehended, must exert a powerful influence upon our entire course, conduct, and character. -C.H. Mackintosh The Supreme Object Man is an object of blessing, and God is the source of it; but if the blessing becomes man's object, then God, the source of it, is overlooked, and that through His own gift. Satan insisted in Job 1:9 that God'd gifts were Job's object, and not God Himself, from whom they came. This tendency in man is characteristic of the fall. It was by proposing a benefit that Satan ensnared Eve. The gain was made the prominent thing before the mind, and in order to secure it, God was overlooked and disobeyed, and sin entered. If in an innocent happy state this snare was so successful, how much more likely is it in our present fallen state, that the blessing should occupy the heart more than the Source of it? Now the thing for us to discover is, where does the decadence begin? It begins where we are in any way an object to ourselves; for when this is the case, our Father is not before us. The greatest blessings can be received, and yet the evil may have begun in the midst of them if we make ourselves the object with respect to them; and it has been where the greatest blessings have been conferred that the deepest declension has developed. It seems so natural, when one is surrounded with blessings, and thus sensible of being an object of divine favor, that one should think of oneself. But whenever it is so, the eye and heart are turned from the Father to oneself; for when His is before one, the old man gets no place, through there be the deepest consciousness of His favor. Hence it is the saint who is the object of the the greatest favor who needs most to be on his guard, that he allow not his eye to rest on himself where the favors are sent, but on God from whom they are sent. If his eye turns to himself because of the favor, then the favor has been the means of turning the heart from the Father to mere gift of His. Against this the children of Israel are ware when they come into the land. "Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therin; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied...then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage"(Deut. 8:12-14) And thus it happened. The blessings conferred did turn their hearts to themselves, as the objects of God;s favor, instead of to God Himself; and the consequence was that God was not only forgotten by rejected, and eventually a false and corrupt worship was introduced. To Israel in the land all the blessings were earthly and human, hence occupation with them, though real, had the effect of turning the eye from the Blesser. Now in the New Testament there is no room or sanction for seeking anything on earth, for, as the man in Christ is heavenly, there is no room for maintaining a place or position on earth; and when such is attempted, it is an open departure from true Christian ground. Make the Father's side your interest and concern, and your own side win be fully and perfectly ensured; but turn your eye to your own, and, with much apparent effort and work, you will look for much and bring in little. This explains the little spiritual progress in many souls in the present day, notwithstanding the amount of truth and light they have received. May the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word be more simply the object of our heart in this evil day (Col. 3:1,2). - J.B. Stoney Groans To Glory The Christian in Romans Seven might have tasted the unsatisfying pleasures of the world during his unsaved days. Now he had turned his back on the world and his face to the Father, yet never was there (he felt) so disconsolate a being. The misery increases till he burst out with "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" Thus is the case of one who has seen the Lord Jesus as the hope of his soul, who had been born of God, yet, nevertheless, had no sense of deliverance. The Father patiently lets him feel his own inward evil till he looks quite out of himself to the Lord Jesus as his Deliverer, not alone from guilt or wrath, but "from this body of death." It is not sins, it is sin, which harasses him so much the more because his conscience is awakened. The first answer to this problem is, that my Father has already in His love brought in a full deliverance for my soul; by-and-by He will bring in an equally complete deliverance for my mortal body. Thus a real present deliverance of grace comes first, and this becomes the pledge of all that follows in glory. As far as the soul is concerned, emancipation is complete; but it is only for the inner man - not yet for the outer. Accordingly, Paul states in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation," because he looks to, rests, and is in, the Lord Jesus alone. This is, in part, the answer to the soul's confession of misery and cry for a Deliverer. Awakened to feel that it not merely pardon that he wants, but deliverance from the old man, he finds that deliverance in Another. He had thought that, having found pardon in the Saviour, he must deliver himself by the inward working of the Holy Spirit; but he learned, when most wanting Him, that He did not help him; he found, somehow or other, -that the Spirit was making him miserable with himself. The reason is manifest: because he and put himself under law in the spirit of his mind, and the Spirit (just because He is the Spirit come down to glorify the Lord Jesus) will never give power, but rather make a man prove his weakness, as long as he is trying to put law in the place of the One who is Life. He came to earth from heaven to glorify the Lord, not the law. The lack of deliverance was learnt in groans; thence he is driven to turn to the Deliverer; whereon, in spite of the indwelling old man being still as bad as ever, having thanks God, he concludes, "there is therefore now no condemnation" -not for those for whom Christ died., but - "to them that are in Christ Jesus." We are now by grace positioned in Another, even the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, in order to give us our place in the very presence of our Father. Nothing could be more blessed. "Hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6) -Wm. Kelly