“G. F.—Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?”
“F. E. R.—I answer it in a very simple way, he has eternal life if he has it.”
“R. S. S.—It is not a very bad way to ask those people who say they have eternal life, what they have got.”
“F. E. R.—If I came across any one who asserted it at the present time, I would be disposed to say, ‘If you have got it, let us have some account of it’. Our difficulty in England was that nobody could give any account of eternal life. … Everybody claimed to have it, but nobody could give an account of it. Another brother asked me, ‘Have you got eternal life?’ I did not know how to answer it exactly, because he simply meant resting on a statement of Scripture.”[1]
Again:—
“J. T.—Is the expression ‘heavenly’ included in the idea of eternal life?
“F. E. R.—No, I don’t think so. I think eternal life refers to earth. I don’t think we should talk about eternal life in heaven.
“J. T.—Only we have it there.
“F. E. R.—I don’t think the term will have much force there.
“J. T.—The thing will surely be there.
“F. E. R.—We shall be there.”[2]
Once more:—
“F. E. R.—In Hebrews vii., where the subject is priesthood, He is made higher than the heavens.
“J. S. A.—And that is where you are in the assembly; that is what you meant, that you touch eternal life in the assembly.
“F. E. R.—In the assembly you are risen with Christ, in association with Him, and there it is you touch what is outside of death.”[3]
We read elsewhere (p. 241), “Eternal life is realised only in the Assembly; no one touches eternal life now except in that connexion”.
- ↑ Notes of Readings and Addresses in United States and Canada, October, 1898, revised by F. E. R ., p. 107.
- ↑ P. 116.
- ↑ P. 368.
