ECT [B]The Ultimate Intention[/B]

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The Ultimate Intention . . . . 1974 Introduction

H. J. STANLEY

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD today there is the echo and re-echo of revolution. Surely this is evidence of the crisis hour in which we live. A NEW DAY is on the horizon. We are now in the night—a time of political, social, religious and philosophical shaking. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken. We can expect shaking to increase in tempo and momentum until only that which is unshakable remains. But we need not be alarmed, for God has determined to build anew on His SURE FOUNDATION—a foundation which cannot be shaken.

For this reason I believe it is time for a revolutionary note to be sounded in the Church. You will recognize in this Book such a note. Here is a challenge to reconsider some of the basic concepts which presently hold sway in evangelical circles.

Careful observation will disclose that the philosophical appeal of our current evangelistic endeavor is essentially selfish. The Church extends an offer that consists primarily of hope of gain and fear of loss for the individual—this suggests a “get” way of life! The fundamental of our invitation is for man to come to our church and get something for himself. Even our deeper life conferences are usually promoted on a man-centered level which suggests participants may obtain Christian victory and more profound blessings for their own heart satisfaction. It has become difficult for our generation to under stand the real meaning of sacrifice, and the poured-out life is considered visionary. The rugged Pauline altar to which the great Apostle called men to come, suffer and die, has been replaced by the invitation to come to the altar and get over suffering. Our twentieth century altars are plush and comfortable. One approaches them to get and not to give.

We are past the point of revival; we have gone beyond the possibility of repair through reformation. Christianity must experience a vital revolution! The only solution to the problem of the Church today is a destruction of the philosophy that is mining it and the introduction of another theme, a true goal, the real touchstone—one that is ultimate and final in every sense. Let me ask, is there a new frontier of truth in the Bible that must be discovered to furnish the supreme challenge to lives of old and young alike? Is there a hitherto unpenetrated spiritual barrier waiting for a breakthrough in our generation? Is there an unveiling of truth with power to bring lives to a dedication to God so as to fulfill His purpose in a measure and to a depth that no existing philosophy, either religious or political, at present is able to do? Let the reader of these pages decide for himself.

This book will unfold God’s Word in a brand-new light. There are keys herein that can unlock the truth and bring divine transformation and power to the inner life. I say can, but I do not guarantee such experience. The great spiritual work in any life is God’s to do, it is His sovereign prerogative.

To the readers, I recommend slow and careful study of the entire text. Evaluate and properly apply the meaning of words newly used in connection with divine relationships. Revolution is neither cheap nor simple. You are in for the ‘‘inner battle of your life.’’ May God give His people grace to apprehend this great truth.
When Galileo’s discovery finally and authentically gave the earth a new center, it caused the greatest scientific revolution that had ever been known. The writings of centuries had to be adjusted in order for this truth to become the basis for mathematical and astronomical fact.
Thus it may be with much in our religious libraries when the facts of this book have gripped human lives.

—Pastor H. J. Stanley, Lovers Lane Church Christian and Missionary Alliance, Akron, Ohio

INTRODUCTION TO 7th PRINTING—1974

Far beyond our expectation, in the past *twelve years the Lord has caused several hundred church groups and schools to use this book as a weekly study guide. We are grateful that this message has been acclaimed by leaders from the widest diverging backgrounds, who testify that they have incorporated many of these principles into their own life and ministry.
Several years ago when the author ministered in New Zealand, it was with great joy and surprise that he discovered thousands of his books had already prepared and challenged God’s people to a God- centered viewpoint. Similarly, in many places in Europe this vital message has been both taught and caught. THE ULTIMATE INTENTION has been published in French and is now in preparation in German and Spanish.
With much praise to the Lord we send forth this new printing. It is our earnest prayer that each reader will not only be stimulated by a new perspective, but will also embrace these truths in such a living way that a chain reaction will be precipitated, thus reaching around the world and continuing until HE comes.

PUBLISHERS

*INTRODUCTION TO 7th PRINTING—1998 Far beyond our expectation, in the past forty years the Lord has caused several hundred church groups and schools to use this book as a weekly study guide. . . . . Devern Fromke, Author

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Preface

YOU WILL UNDERSTAND, if you have groaned as in travail and anguish to be delivered of a burden of prayer or message of truth, crying to the Lord for strength to bring forth, what I mean when I say this book has not been written; it has been born—born in the wee hours of the morning, and more often in the long hours of the night The truths contained herein do not represent sudden conclusions or passing fancies, but they represent long months and years of prenatal growth until they have become over-mastering and imperative. I appreciate your reading the preface for it will save you from wandering through many chapters, not clearly understanding the main thesis and burden of the author.

Without maligning or misreporting any man or any group of men, this small volume points to underlying principles which I believe to be the cause of the present spiritual climate, which supports a great deal of religious activity but little spiritual growth. It strives to open for the reader a broader view of God’s purpose to be seen from a new viewpoint.

Our burden is this! The hour is too desperate for us to continue to play with surface issues, We must turn from our selfish playthings; we must cease our man-centered attempt to make religion serve us, It is imperative that we turn from recitation of tenets and defense of doctrine to a revelation of the basic issues and principles of the faith. We must choose deliberately to be nonconformists to the present world system, not because such an attitude coincides with the bent of our personality, but because we are living by principle.

It seems modem believers have imagined they can win men by agreeing with them. This is a farce that simply means they have won us. History demonstrates the exact opposite. Dr. A. W. Tozer points out, “The man who is going in a wrong direction will never be set right by the affable religionist who falls into step beside him and goes the same way. Someone must place himself across the path and insist that the straying man turn around and go the right direction.”

NOT TRADITIONAL BUT SCRIPTURAL

It will be helpful from the very beginning, if the reader is made conscious that the message of this book does not follow the traditional, the modern evangelical, or fundamental approach. I am calling for a God-centered approach, If we observe the pattern which God has followed since the Reformation, we can see there has been a continuous recovery of Biblical and historic truths. Such restoration is imperative if the Church is to come to full maturity and bear fruit, Through Luther, God restored justification by faith; through Calvin, the importance of reasoning from God down to man; through Whitefield, Wesley and others, the emphasis of a holy, separated life; through Darby and others, glorious truths concerning the body of Christ and other Church truth. More recently, since 1900, the ministry of the Holy Spirit has been more generally recognized as an imperative need of the Church.

You may interpret this recovery of truth in your own way, but who can deny that God has used different men and movements—not to corner truth but to recover and herald truth to the upbuilding of the entire body of Christ. Every major awakening has centered in a major recovery of a truth necessary to mature and balance other aspects of truth, I believe the hour has come when God is initiating another major recovery: This time it is not just a truth, but the restoration of some thing so imperative that it will give the ultimate perspective to all truth, Is it possible the Church is unable to fully appreciate or interpret the truth she has, simply because her perspective is wrong?

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THE MAIN THEME

It is important that you immediately put on the right pair of glasses in order to see *the path to ultimate truth. It is the objective of the first chapter to move the reader from his usual viewpoint to see things from God’s viewpoint. Only then can ultimate issues be appreciated.

*Agape Road

We make no appeal for man to come to God in order to be happy, to be blessed, or to be saved. Our approach is to urge men to wake up and become adjusted to the purpose for which they were created. It is a call for man to realize God’s Ultimate Intention. The primary theme of this book, then, is not man, his welfare, his needs, or his salvation.. The primary theme purposes to reveal who God chiefly is so we can understand what He primarily desires and ultimately intends for Himself and for His universe. The first concern is not to turn our attention to man’s problems, but rather to turn our eyes to God Himself.. The primary emphasis is not the awful emergency which sin has caused, but the purpose of One who will most surely consummate His intention according to schedule, The primary motive of our writing is to bring men to really see HIM who is worthy of all honor, glory and satisfaction. Once we see Him and His purpose, we shall see all other things in their true light and perspective.

MAN-CENTERED or GOD-CENTERED

Believers may not often realize it, but even as believers we are either centered in man, or centered in God, There is no alternative. Either God is the center of our universe and we have become rightly adjusted to Him, or we have made ourselves the center and are at tempting to make all else orbit around us and for us.. When the truth dawns, we are amazed to discover how the snare of making all things to revolve around man has become the bane of most of our preaching and teaching. This is true even of the area of teaching which is considered to be of the deeper life emphasis. As long as men are victims of this wrong philosophy and approach to truth, they cannot avoid reckoning from a self-center, When the center is wrong, then everything in our reckoning is wrong. It is my prayer that in these pages the reader will discover the lost coin of truth and be prepared to take what may seem like drastic measures in accepting a new center, where the whole conception of Christian life is changed from man-consciousness to God-consciousness; from man as the center to God as the center from which all truth is seen.


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A SHOCK TREATMENT

Electric shock treatments are used in treating mental patients in order to break up old patterns of thought and prepare the way for new ones. The moral and spiritual crisis leading to surrender is a similar experience. It breaks up the old patterns of self-centeredness and shifts to a new center—GOD. Various shocks are often necessary to blast us from the pseudo-centers we have established, before the Holy Spirit can draw us to the ultimate center. Until we place ourselves in God’s hands for His treatment, we may be centered in an experience, a group, an emphasis of truth, a spiritual person, our work, or a religious cause. All of these are marginal. As false centers, they become false viewpoints, and lead to faulty understanding of truth. It often takes quite a shock to cause us to organize life around a new center. A certain measure of healing is to be found in any center of life outside oneself, but there is no ultimate healing until we find the ultimate center.

You are anticipating a shock! May the Holy Spirit place His finger on the false center around which your life revolves and make you free! We earnestly pray this vital truth might lay hold of lives so as to initiate repercussions to ignite spiritual revelation around the world. This, no doubt, seems like strong language, but we are sure that until one has *grasped the value and significance of this viewpoint, he cannot properly evaluate the necessity for its recovery by the Church in this hour.

*Imparted vision, foresight

I am convinced of the importance of this message as I have observed the impact and revolutionary effect it has produced in pastors and laymen who have been gripped by it. These lives speak louder than any appraisal I might attempt.


THE NEUROSIS OF OUR TIMES

There is a sense in which I understand how Jeremiah must have felt when he was commissioned to “root out, to pull down, to destroy and to throw down” (four negatives) before he could begin to “build and plant” (the positives). Before positive restoration can proceed, false foundations must be exposed and destroyed. In these desperate days of spiritual lethargy and confusion, we must with a prophetic voice call a halt to all this beating of the air and fumbling around with surface issues. *The present message of the Church simply does not awaken men or uncover the deepest need. There is deep-seated disillusionment amid the frenzied activity of the Church; there is a strange emptiness.

One well-known diagnostician writes: “About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of our lives, This can well be defined as the central neurosis of our times.”

The human personality simply cannot survive in an empty, meaningless *universe. It is alarming to see not only those outside, but even some inside the church who are going to pieces. Men are tired of being pushed into an empty routine labeled “Christian activity.” There is something within every man which soon revolts against doing, so he will be rewarded with crowns. No matter how perverted and self-centered he is, if there is a spark of godly desire, man will eventually react negatively to this. Because the moral tissue within has not been completely deadened, he will come to hate his own selfishness. He yearns for deliverance from the emptiness of serving self in a religious system which says,

**‘‘Find happiness and satisfaction in serving the Lord.”

* Nor can the human personality survive in an empty, meaningless religion. It will petrify.

**Church being a place where the ‘dead’ go to be happy until physical death or Jesus comes.

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ATTITUDE IS IMPORTANT

In this modern day of religion, education, science and philosophy, many have insisted there is no ultimate touchstone for reckoning; all is bound by the law of change; all is relative. Not only is there a general rejection of the idea of ultimate basis for reckoning, but there is a downright antagonism to anything absolute or ultimate in a final sense. If you have unwittingly imbibed this spirit, which has invaded even evangelical circles, we trust you will purpose in your heart to reserve judgment of the material presented here until the book has been read and evaluated as a whole.

We approach the vast and magnificent theme of GOD’S INTENTION with humility, and pray that you will join in the study with the same spirit. For who among mortal men could ever adequately deal with God’s Ultimate Intention? Yet, we believe He has designed for us to understand the ultimate principles upon which are based the unfolding of His purpose throughout the ages. We are gently restrained by the Holy Spirit from attempts to probe or press beyond that which He has revealed in His Word, or to proceed on the false assumption that everything in heaven or earth can be explained. Let this be our nile, “The meek will He guide in judgment (critical evaluation): and the meek will He teach His way” (Ps. 25:9) Be assured of His promise; He will guide!

We must also observe the careful balance between God’s part and our part in the pursuit of truth. All the while we are expectantly waiting for His sharing of truth, we must be learning to think. ‘‘Human thought has its limitations, but where there is no thinking there is not likely to be any large deposit of truth in the mind. Evangelicals at the moment appear to be divided into two camps: those who trust the human intellect to the point of sheer rationalism, and those who are shy of everything intellectual and are convinced that thinking is a waste of the Christian’s time.” (A. W. Tozer).


CAUTIOUS, BUT CURIOUS

Because there are so many things to read these days, we are concerned that God’s children develop the faculty of spiritual discernment so as to avoid error. There are so many areas of Christian thought and life where likenesses and differences are so difficult to distinguish that we avoid the snare only as God helps us to develop both a sharp eye and a proper yardstick for measuring facts.

In our travel we observe scores who are being deceived by error, misplaced emphasis, or a combination of both. This results from weakness in some aspect of the spiritual walk. But while it is right to be cautious, yet we must remain curious. God has made us to wonder, He has implanted this faculty which, when properly functioning, is ever calling out for the unfolding of truth. Spiritual hunger, then, is a genuine curiosity.

It is my settled conviction that once the reader has grasped the thesis of this book, he will find the answer to the deepest gnawing of his heart for ultimate answer. We know that in the physical realm a constitutional deficiency, or a lack in the diet, causes a person to become susceptible to the many maladies floating about. So it is in the spiritual realm. This may be manifest in individual believers or in an assembly. Because the hunger of the heart has not been satisfied, there is a constitutional weakness. This is manifest in the daily lives of the underfed flock and in their susceptibility to spiritual maladies and various kinds of wrong emphasis.

The basic lack is a central, unifying, defensive position—an ultimate viewpoint from which believers can properly understand the purpose, value and significance of all of life. Of course, the author believes such a touchstone for truth exists, but has been lost by the Church, otherwise such a book as this would be unnecessary.


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MODERN COUNTERFEITS

*Where there is no ultimate viewpoint and men relate everything to themselves and measure truth with a human yardstick, there is inevitable fragmentation and distortion of truth. Cults are evidence of this phenomenon. You will find that off-color religious groups put much emphasis on the ultimate issues of life. But because they have invaded these areas, must we continue to neglect them? God forbid! The alarming growth of false cults, especially in America, is a resounding indictment on the evangelical church. It is time to recognize that only whole truth—unbroken and undistorted—will meet the need of the whole man. While we should have been teaching people to think in order that their hunger for truth might be satisfied, we have instead prescribed what is to be received as truth. Because they have treated truth as though it were contained in rather small, easy to be grasped packages, men have inferred it could be received one package at a time, opened, and used as it best suits their needs.

*If or when, in their thinking, there is no ultimate viewpoint to be grasped. “Cessationists” came about by this lack!

Some minds sense that truth is a vast ocean, and when they do not find adequate answers in the packages handed them in the average church, they seek elsewhere. Because they have not been given an ultimate goal, nor the proper instruments for navigation on so wide an ocean, they flounder into some treacherous lagoon where they drift without chart or compass. If emphasis on proper thinking were given place in the church, such cults as Christian Science, Unity, Christ Unity Science, Religious Science, New Thought, and the rest would never have gained foothold. Those mentioned know no triune God, no incarnate Word, no vicarious sacrifice and no risen Saviour, But they have an appeal to the natural minds of men who have not found adequate answers in the average church.

*Surely this is the hour of judgment. Our country is being engulfed by a deluge of Eastern philosophy and esoteric teaching which has great appeal to those who have become sickened by the gross materialism of the West. Such illicit doctrines always seem to carry more appeal for the lustful, natural mind, Because they “loved not the truth’’ He sent “strong delusion” that they might believe a lie, But we must not answer this invasion of Satan with evasion. The human heart longs to know the ultimate of God.

* And now (2013) the islamic influence

Survey the teachings of the cults and you will discover that there are always attempts to get at ultimate issues; they are intent on bringing adherents to a new way of thinking, a new philosophy of life. They offer “peace of mind” or “healing” to those who will “sit where they sit, so as to see as they see.” *They know one is not converted to the fundamental issue around which they center until his thinking has been bent to their point of view. This reveals the weakness of too many church groups. Adherents are not expected to probe beneath the surface of truth dealt out in packages—simple as a do-it-yourself kit or a box of ready-mix.. There is no appeal for a basic change in philosophy nor is there a message which ultimately rectifies false views and produces a God-centered philosophy of life.

*If Jesus is in me, reconciling the world to Himself then His abiding in me must become paramount to my thinking. He must be my “center”.

Knowing this to be our deepest need, we can see why Paul in writing to the Corinthians unveils God’s primary objective in sending His Son: “Christ Jesus brought a philosophy from God to us, as well as righteousness, and purity and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30, Ferrar Fenton). By this divine philosophy, man’s greatest questions and problems are answered, and through obedience to it, he is utterly rectified to God. Here we should point out that the word “philosophy” means love of wisdom and has to do with the study and knowledge of the principles that cause and explain facts and events. We urge, therefore, that you not fear the term, but rather learn to distinguish between the philosophy of men and that divine philosophy which is given in God’s Son.

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