The Twelve Gates Into the Kingdom

The Twelve Gates Into the Kingdom

by Starr Daily

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

It’s my experience that professional singers have the music, but that when the singing becomes a witness for Christ, the music has the singer. And that makes a very great difference. That’s what I felt in the singing we just heard, and I felt that in the song leading that our Pat has been doing here.

I was rummaging through my effects, my earthly effects, this morning, and I ran on to a letter that I wrote to God down in Arkansas and forgot the name. Likely to forget anything in Arkansas. The letter went somewhat like this: Dear Father.

The mills of God grind slowly. I know that. And they grind exceeding small. I know that the honey bee has to pollinate the flower that it robs. And I know that the pack rat leaves a token for everything it carries away.

And I know that when the sky gets dark enough, the stars come up. And I know that Thy grace is sufficient for me. And that Thy strength is made perfect in weakness. And then I signed it. And turned it over and wrote what I thought God had written back in answer to my letter. I won’t read that.

But we’re all going to write a letter to God tonight. I think it will be announced later about it. And sometimes it’s quite remarkable, when we are alone with a pencil or pen in our hand and a piece of paper.

How honest we can actually get with God. There are times when we overcome the most subtle deceits of the heart, when we are alone and write a letter to God. And then we turn it over and in our divine imagination we try to figure out what He might say to us in answer to our letter. And three or four months later when we get that back, we are very often surprised.

And how we were used both in writing the letter to God, and how we were used in putting down what we thought He was saying to us. You may have an experience like that tonight when you write your letter. And when you get it back some four or five months later on. I remember writing one and putting up in the corner for a return address, the kingdom of heaven. And my wife got it before I got there. And she phoned immediately our daughter and said that, “Starr has gone off his rocker.”

So I wouldn’t put a return address on it. Let’s have a short prayer. You’ve had… You actually don’t need it, but… We’ve had some wonderful prayer in song. But let us thank the Father for the opportunities we have, and for the open doors that are always available to us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

One of the criticisms of CFO speaking leaders especially is that they don’t quote the scriptures enough. Now, of course, that doesn’t include Geraldine, because she carries her Bible right with her, and brings it up here and brings it up here, and not only quotes it, she reads it.

And some people think we don’t know anything about the scriptures. The lady said to Rufus Moseley, “Why don’t you leaders quote the Bible more? Don’t you know any scriptures at all?” Rufus said, “Yes, I know one. The way of the transgressor is hard.”

So I’m going to teach Bible class this morning. I’m going to teach Bible class on the kingdom of God, as it’s found in the book of Revelation. This not only perfectly describes the kingdom of God, but tells us exactly how to go into the kingdom of God, and after getting in, how to stay in.

And this scripture is this. Yes, I shall quote it. The kingdom of God is four square. On the east, there are three gates. On the west, there are three gates. On the south, there are three gates. And on the north, there are three gates.

This is the revelation of the kingdom of God by Saint John. The kingdom of God is four square. It isn’t a circle. That’s God Himself is a circle, with a circumference everywhere, in the center nowhere. But the kingdom of God is four square. And it has three gates on every side.

It is very much like the tabernacle in the desert in the Old Testament. In that tabernacle there is an outer court, where folks like us gather and chatter. Then there is an inner court, where there is only one piece of furniture. And that is a plain, bare table.

Then there is the Holy of Holies, in which there is absolutely nothing in the way of appointments. And so this kingdom of God has three gates entering into every side. And I want to try to analyze these gates, and try to infer or imply how we might deliberately and willfully choose to use them, and thus enter into the kingdom.

I am going to start with the outer gates. And the outer gates are the study, discipline, service, and tithing. That is what every one of us in the outer, on the external, in the outer realms of the kingdom, outside the kingdom, can do. We can study to be approved of God, a workman worthy to be approved.

And the reason why we have all of the theological seminaries is simply because we’ve got to study the Word. And of course, nearly every big church has a church. It’s not a religious department. An educational department. It’s for students of religion. And those who are entering the ministry go to a theological seminary and they study.

And little children in the Sunday schools are exposed to Sunday school classes, where they study the Bible and hear the stories of the Bible. So one of these outer gates is to study. Exercise the mind. It’s a definite spiritual or religious temperament.

But St. Paul was the great teacher of the Scriptures. His way to God was mental from beginning to end. And his great Scripture is, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” So he wants us to study. Study and get knowledge. Faith is usually the result of knowledge.

There is very little faith where there is no knowledge. And one of the greatest ways of getting knowledge is to demonstrate the promises of God and to obey in a holy way the commandments of God. Knowledge is the second great gift of the Spirit.

And it does not always come merely by sitting down passively and saying, “Oh God, tell me something.” God has filled the earth with His word and with His knowledge. He has filled it in the world of nature. He has filled it in the world of the animal, in the world of the mineral, in the world of the vegetable, in the world of the human, and in the kingdoms above. Knowledge.

So St. Paul leads us to God through the instrumentality of the mind, through knowledge. He established all the Sunday schools. He is the inspiration of every religious department and every church and every Christian church in the world. He is the founder of every theological seminary, every divinity school in the world. And he is the one who took the message of Christ to the educated classes when those of other temperaments couldn’t even begin to.

He even took it to the wisest of all people on earth, the Greeks. And when he went up on Mars Hill to talk to them, he talked from the level of the mind. And he said, “I noticed that you philosophers have made a sign down there to the unknown God. And that God whom ye ignorantly worship declare I Him unto you.” And he preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified to these philosophers. His words.

If your mind, if your way to God is mental, if that is your temperament, if you love to read sacred books, if you love to engage in meditation, if you love to engage in all kinds of spiritual mental exercises, then do it. That’s the way to knowledge, and knowledge is the way to faith. Especially read the great books. One of the great books that fell into my hands shortly after I had had my experience and was now thirsty and hungry for knowledge was The Imitation of Christ. And it’s been in my hands ever since. And it’ll never be out of my hands. One of the greatest universal classics of all times, and fits into every religion, every denomination, and appeals to every religious heart.

And I’ve read it and re-read it and read it over and over again. And so read these great things that others have discovered, from apostolic times on down, and then go on back into the ancient religions. All of the great founders of great religions have made great contributions to Christianity, the great religions of Christ. So study. And then discipline. This has to do with the will.

The will is the queen of all of our faculties, and she must discipline our other faculties. And the will, temperament, is very precise, and it is found in Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, when He prays to be released from the possibility of going to Golgotha and the cross. And He actually prays that He might escape that journey. He winds up by saying, “Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.” And He set His face to Jerusalem. Every saint has followed this path of the will.

Every saint has been a disciple because every saint has been a disciplined person. And they have gone to crucifixion, to Golgotha, with Jesus. They have put the impulses and urges and temptations and seductions and allurements of the body down.

And with every physical temptation they have said, “Get behind me, Satan.” John the Baptist was one of the greatest of the bodily disciplinarians, the exercise of his will over all of the seductions of the flesh. And the next greatest among the saints was Saint Francis of Assisi.

He would not allow one single appetite of the flesh to tempt. This is a hard way to the way, but it always gets to the way. And it always ends in crucifixion of the ego. It always ends in the banishment of vanity. Vanity, all is vanity in the world. It always puts an end to ambition. And in putting an end to ambition, it ushers in aspiration, which is God willing. And that discipline is wonderful.

I wouldn’t recommend it to you, but it’s wonderful just the same. And the next outer gate is service. Oh, my. When I think of all the missionaries, many of them who have given up everything, including the right to be mothers and have families.

When I think of where they have gone to the ends of the earth, and have tried to accustom themselves and adjust themselves to conditions and circumstances and food and living that are just utterly unfamiliar and foreign to them. When I think of all the people who are in the service working with their hands, all the little people who are doing insignificant things that no one ever sees, small chores serving the Lord, the Marthas of the world.

I know that when you go down to the bottom of the least of these, where the least of these are, when you can get down among those little children who are mongoloid types, and who have come into this world with multiple sclerotias, and have come into this world handicapped in many other ways, and you can go down and with your hands and heart and head serve them, and you’ll meet Jesus there.

You’ll always be there with them. Service is one of the outer gates leading into the kingdom. And the next one in these outer gates, the fourth, is tithing. A part of this tithing should be secret. There is a hidden life in the Spirit as well as an open life.

And some of this tithing should be in such a way that only God can see it, that no human being will ever have the possible opportunity of finding out who does it. It should be based upon that scripture, don’t let the left hand know what the right hand does.

One of the great novels of our age has been written around this theme, called Magnificent Obsession, where this principle was put into practice, and the left hand never being allowed to find out what the right hand did.

Some of our tithing should be secret, and if it is the tithing of money, it should go exactly to the person, without any intermediary, and in a secret way, and in a secret way, to the person who needs it.

And we should tithe our energies. And we should tithe our time. And we should not be concerned as to where this tithing is going. Don’t just tithe to those who are important, and tithe to those who have no importance.

Tithe to the church, and tithe to the church’s projects, for without the church, with all of our criticism of it, we would not be here in this room today. The only thing that has kept the United States from crumbling into the ruins of empire long ago is the Christian church.

If we took the churches out of the United States, if we took the churches out of the city of Chicago, or any other city in the United States, and we took them out for 18 months, that city, those cities would be under criminal rule, and no man could operate a business or a profession without paying tribute to gangsters. The only thing that is keeping this country from sinking into moral decadence is a moral force that is being exerted, especially through the young, in the Christian church. And when we are criticizing her, we’d better think of these things, because we owe whatever material fortune we have to the church.

I realize that there is great room in the Christian church for the deepening of the spiritual life. No question about that. But she is growing toward the kingdom. And we should support her, and I do not believe that anyone who doesn’t belong to a Christian church has any right or authority to speak against her, because he doesn’t know a thing about her. He doesn’t belong to one. How can he know about her? Paul here say, “There are four outer gates now.” Let’s turn to the middle gates. I may have to rush this, because I’ve got to get Alice started on time.

I wouldn’t want to cheat her out of one minute in that rhythm. I saw two students coming down the road when I was going up this morning, and they were going through all these motions walking down the road. And I knew they had been with Alice.

At least they had observed it from afar off. Now, let’s… we’ve seen how great these outer gates are, and they lead into this central group of gates, four gates. These middle gates are composed of work, play, worship, and romance.

We must learn to love our work. Or as St. Paul says, “Let all that ye do be done with love.” For if we don’t love our work, our work will not love us. It will not be creative. It will not be redemptive. And it will put us under the worst bondage of the universe, and that’s the bondage of time.

Everybody who works at a job he doesn’t love to do is perpetually watching the time clock, and at the same time he is claiming that he loves life. Yet he is perpetually wishing it away. In the morning he gets up and goes to work reluctantly. And he watches the time clock until noon.

And when he gets that half hour off for lunch, he takes it eagerly. Then reluctantly he goes back after lunch, and when the whistle blows in the afternoon he leaves eagerly. And then he is waiting for a vacation and wishing for it.

And he’s wishing for payday. It’s a perpetual process of claiming I love life and wishing it away just as fast as he can. All this work is important. I would… If I had a job that I didn’t love to do, I would force myself to love it. I’d learn to love it. I worked in a prison sweatshop making an unbelievably hard task of shirts and overalls, on Wheeler and Wilson electric machines, and when you didn’t get the task in, you went to solitary confinement and hung in the rings until midnight, without supper, and you were brought back in the morning without breakfast and told to get that task and the one you missed the day before. And that was work.

It was a place full of lint and poisonous dye. Poorly ventilated. Men struggling and striving at those machines until their sides ached. And I learned to do that work with love. I had to. I learned to do it because I made a game out of it. I said to myself, “There is no end to perfection.”

And I can make every one of these garments, no matter how many years I am here, I can make every succeeding garment better than the one before. And that was the game. It was a game of competition with myself, and when you get a thing in to play, make a game of it, it begins to work. I discovered that by loving to do this work, all wasted motion was eliminated. No lost motion. Every piece of the garment was laid out, leisurely and perfectly, right in place. On both sides and on the street.

Every move of the hand for a piece of cloth had no lost motion in it. I did it leisurely and methodically and joyfully, and I discovered that having eliminated lost motion, I was putting in my task in half the time that the others could do it. And the garments were being made more perfect. Every one.

Work. Learn to love it. If you love it, it’s creative, and it doesn’t make any difference what it is if it’s only picking a piece of string or straw up off the ground. It’s a creative act. Anything that’s creative doesn’t wear you out. Only that which you don’t love to do brings you into fatigue, unnatural weariness, and eventual exhaustion, and a breakdown.

And so in this second series here, we learn to work redemptively. And that means to learn to work creatively and lovingly. As Paul says, “Let it all be done with love.” Now isn’t that wonderful? That we can all do that when we go home? Isn’t that amazing?

I can just see you dancing around, doing rhythm with the wash on the line. I can just see that vacuum cleaner just going and buzzing and singing. My. I anticipate great things for you on that. Then play. Holy play.

The greatest playing in the world is spiritual. Holy humor. Oh, there were so many years I had no humor at all. It’s a gift of God. I certainly do feel sorry and pity people who have no sense of humor.

It really makes play out of life. It takes away the tension and the seriousness and the over soberness. I think in the end, St. Paul got humor. I think he was overly serious when he told the ladies not to wear their hats in church. I do not believe that he really meant it. It was just a custom of the Jews.

Try to get some humor. Try to get some joy. And play. Play. Play a lot. God wants us to play. He says, “Become as little children,” and say your prayers while you’re just dancing around. I never had any childhood, so it’s rather hard on me to try to do anything with children. But up in Canada, I kept avoiding the children’s prayer group there for as long as I could, to the last day, in fact.

I only had five in that group. And the oldest one, I think, was seven. The youngest was five. And it came, I had to go. And all the way, I had lost all sense of humor. I didn’t have any joy at all.

I wondered what I’d do. And I’d heard that there was one rebel in it. You couldn’t get him and steal. You couldn’t catch him or do anything. And so I was thinking of him critically. And judging him unrighteously.

And I finally got down there and there they were. And four like, rather like little angels sitting there quietly and this other one just tearing up Ned around. I said, “Now we’re going to get in a circle and pray.”

And he was just darting. And I got mad and got after him. Down in the basement and the floor was slick and… Both of my feet went out from under me. And he was just going every direction. And this elbow still sore.

And I fell on it. And I finally got him and dragged him back into that circle. And I said, “Now you take hands and pray.” And he… He said a prayer that simply astonished me. He said, “Thank you, God. Thank you, God, for nothing.” I just stood there… I just stood there… A spellbound. At wisdom like that. Coming out of the lips of a baby. My mind flashed across… 2,500 years of time. And I… Saw Socrates.

The Oracle of Delphi had said he was the wisest man in all Greece. And he just simply couldn’t believe it. And he went around and questioned all the philosophers and the scientists and the wise men. To find out if there… Weren’t some wise ones in Greece.

And they all claimed to know something. And after he had conferred and consulted with them all, he said, “I know I have to acknowledge I am the wisest man in all Greece because I know that I know nothing.” And here was this baby… Saying, “Thank you, God, for nothing.” And here… Here was Saint Paul… Echoing and confirming exactly what he said, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels… Though I have faith remove mountains… Though I have all knowledge and give my body to be burned… And have not love, I am nothing.” Wasn’t it amazing?

My, I certainly had respect for that boy after that. So… Almost reverence. So we play at this great game of the spiritual life. We have some fun in it. Don’t lose the humor. And then worship. I like to get up about four o’clock in the morning and have my worship service alone. And then… Meet my wife at five and have the work worship service with her at six.

And then at six have a work worship service over a leisurely breakfast. Worship. Worship and devotion. Begin the day that way. If I do, if I begin the day that way, everything seems to turn out right. And no matter what happens, there is a way to overcome it. By the grace of God. And then romance. The greatest love story ever told is the love story of Jesus.

That man,.. Ours, where I be, I believe. The greatest story ever told was the story of Jesus. Rise out of the little romance into the big romance. The great romance with Jesus. And in time become His bride. Talk about a romance. And in time enter into marriage with… Talk about a romantic marriage. That is really… Here is one, the bridegroom, who can never fail you. Here is the bridegroom who can never be unfaithful. Or disloyal. Who can in no way hurt you. Who can in no way criticize you, condemn you. Here is the bridegroom who is really in the total romance. And that this is the great love story of God. And so those virgins had their opportunity and so do we.

He said that He might come quickly. The bridegroom might come quickly. And that they should have their lamps filled with oil and the wicks trimmed. And some of them failed to be prepared. We ought to be prepared for the great romance. The great union with the glorified Jesus.

The great marriage. The marriage peace. Now I’ve got to hurry. Here are the great inner gates. We take these, we get all the others. And the first gate is law. L-A-W. L-A-W. And that gate is on the north of the kingdom. The second gate is love. And that gate is on the south of the kingdom. And the third gate is light. And that gate is on the east of the kingdom. And the fourth gate is life. And that gate is on the west of the kingdom.

All light, even physical light, breaks in the east and flows west as life. All the great light bringers have been from the east. The far east and the near east. The greatest of them all out of the near east, Jesus Himself. And the next greatest light bringer to be on this planet was Buddha. The far east. Light always, spiritual light always breaks in the east and flows west as life.

I don’t know of any great spiritual light that’s broken in the west. But I know of a lot of life, spiritual life, that’s been expressed in the west. But I’ve never known in the western world a light bringer. An original light bringer. But I’ve known many who have had the tremendous life of the power of God in them. One of them was Martin Luther.

Over in the western world, and especially in the United States, everything is life. Everything is activity. You can’t get still. No one can meditate. You can’t get silent. We’re so full of life, we’re just peppy. And yet we keep giving ourselves pep talks and we’ve got more pep than we can take care of.

As Stanley Jones said, the patron saint of the United States is Saint Vitus. We’ve got so much life we can’t contain it. But that’s it. You notice that all these inner gates begin with L? This kingdom is four square. And L is the symbol of the square.

Jesus used the square in His carpenter shop. If you will follow holy obedience, and that means holy obedience to the love commandments of Jesus. Those are the only commandments that anyone needs to obey. That’s the law. That’s the law of love. The law of love overcomes all karma. Does away with all theories about reincarnation.

Does away with the old law that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. The law of love brings in the power of grace. That’s on the north. In the physical world, if you’re living in the far north and you don’t obey the law, you will perish.

Every farmer and every person in the far northern countries, in the icebound countries, must obey the natural laws or they perish. And then you come to the south. And you have love. That’s all we really need. Do you realize that the word in English, the English word love has all the symbols of God in it? The L is the square. The O is the symbol of God in perfection. And the V is the symbol of God in duality. Male and female created He them, joined together at the bottom. And the E is the symbol of the Holy Trinity forever connected with the eternal I. The symbol of God in the sky. All the symbols of God in it. Wonderful thing to think about.

And light. Let your light shine. Let your eye be single and the whole body shall be full of light. And it is. There is a single eye that opens when the outer eyes are closed to the outer world. And the inner eye opens and there is nothing but blazes of light. And yet these blazes of light do not offend, do not irritate, do not disturb. It’s a super physical light. It’s an immaterial luster.

It’s the light that blinded Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. And this light comes from Jesus. The glorified Jesus as He is today. And caused Saul to look up into that light with his blind eyes and say, “Who art thou, Lord?” And the reply wasn’t, “I am the Christ.” The reply was instant, “I am Jesus.”

Whom thou persecuteth you. Thou canst not… Against the pricks, kick against the pricks. Light. It’s all within us. And life. I could expatiate upon those more, but… There is an announcement to be made, I think. So longship. To defendуш. To defend against the pricks. That’s right. We appreciate your ken here.