I AM the Vine
We’re told in the 40th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “The grass withers, the flower fades… but the word of God stands forever (verses 7 and 8).” The Bible is the word of God in its entirety. No matter how far it may exceed the limits of our logic, it still stands forever, and you and I will experience everything in that book. If at the moment we can’t grasp it, don’t try to change it, and leave it just as it is. It will prove itself in the most marvelous series of mystical experiences that you ever conceived. In fact, you couldn’t conceive them. So don’t even attempt to change the book, leave it just as it is. It stands forever. Everything will fade and wither, but it will stand forever.
Now we are told in the 84th Psalm, “Blessed are the men in whose heart are the highways to Zion. They go from strength to strength; the God of gods is seen in Zion (verses 5 and 7).” If you have the highway in your heart that leads to Zion, you will see God. And everyone is destined to go to Zion. Now the word Zion appears first in the 2nd Book of Samuel, the 8th chapter. I have yet to find a book written by anyone that can throw any light upon it. But you listen carefully, I am quite sure I can throw some light upon it. I’m not being arrogant: I have experienced it. So here in this book, the fifth chapter, beginning with the sixth verse, beginning with the first, for that matter, and you go through, say, ten or twelve verses of 2 Samuel. The word Zion appears for the first time. Zion was Jerusalem before occupied by Israel. The Jebusites occupied it—they were the lame and the blind—and it was impregnable, you could not take it. And they said to David, “You cannot come in here.” Then said they, “The lame and the blind will ward you off.” It would only take the lame, and the blind to keep you out of Zion. That’s how perfectly arranged it was, impervious to any attack. But David took the stronghold of Zion and named it the city of David, which is the city of God, the New Jerusalem.
Then said David, “Whoever would take the Jebusites let him go up the shaft, the water shaft.” The water shaft was a perpendicular shaft that led from the rock below to the rock above on which Zion was built. I have read unnumbered attempted interpretations of this, and they all conclude it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the script is distorted, maybe someone changed it, but it doesn’t make sense. For, said they, David is attempting to build a circular city at the same time he is building an inward city. So they conclude that no man can build in a circle and inward at one and the same time, unless of course he is attempting to construct this strange architectural feat in a spiral manner. For then you can build the circle and the inward at one and the same time if you are going to do it in a spiral manner.
Over the centuries, they have been trying to find just such a structure in the Near East, where we call Jerusalem, and it isn’t there at all. It’s all in us—the whole vast Bible takes place in man, individual man. And this is true. My entire circular world that I am building, and I am building the inner world. Here we are told, I look at it and it’s made up of the lame and the blind, and they are strong enough to stop me from getting in to take the citadel. Yet I am told I must make the effort to take the citadel. And David takes it. Then he makes the statement, “Whoever would take this citadel must go up the shaft.” From the bottom to the top, that’s how he goes up. This is a perpendicular shaft that rests below, and it goes through all the rocks, right up to the top where Zion is built.