Some time back,  a dear and valued brother shared a very few words on the phone with me. What he shared had to do with water, pools, conduits, gutters. During the conversation he mentioned the river that watered the garden of God and went out from the garden, and in the conversation he beautifully tied and traced certain waters back to that river in the garden. When it goes out, it is divided into four heads. These are the Pison, the Gihon, the Hiddekel (Tigris) and the Euphrates. Even as I was being spoken to on the phone, certain things began to break into my mind, not unlike water that looses it’s containment, as though as always being there, it finds long awaited outlet.

 The words that started the flow, were the meanings of the names of those four heads, the four defined properties of the river that flows from the garden of God, wherein abides the tree of life, the fruit and benefits of which are the promise of Jesus Christ to every over comer. It should be noted that the location of the garden of God was described , not with a geographic location, but with a direction . That is, the garden was planted Eastward in Eden. The rise of the sun and it’s illuminating properties give meaning to that descriptive location. The apostle describes awaiting the day to dawn, and the Day Star to arise in your hearts. The river that waters the garden goes out, but is not seen to go in, giving the understanding that it has it’s origins , where we are concerned, in that garden of illumination.The meanings of the four rivers, in the order named , make a sentence. Pison is increase. Gihon means bursting forth. Hiddekel is rapid. Euphrates is fruitfulness , as in “be fruitful and multiply”.

                                    “Increase bursting forth rapid fruitfulness“.

 
Jacob, upon his death bed, blessed Joseph thus:

“Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall:The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel:) Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren”.

These meanings are taken from Strong’s Concordance:

Joseph:   1) to add, increase, do again
Fruitful:  1) to bear fruit, be fruitful, branch off
Bough:   1) son, grandson, child, member of a group a) son, male child
Branches:  1) daughter a) daughter, girl, adopted daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, granddaughters, female child, cousin

So, the entire prophetic descriptive phrase about Joseph describes a fruitful son who’s daughters break forth over the wall.

All the fruitfulness, the increase, in God are bound up in Jesus:
Jhn 15:1      “I am the true vine, and my Father is the  husbandman”.
Jhn 15:5      “I am the vine, ye are the  branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same   bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing”.

 
When you come to understand that the fruitful bough and the well are one, you see that to drink of that well, you must abide in that bough. There is no other access. The Father gave to Him the Spirit, NOT BY MEASURE. You also gain insights in the exchange between Jesus and the woman of Samaria at a hole in the ground, that she understood by tradition, to be the well of Jacob. But Jesus corrected her when He revealed Himself to be Jacob’s well. And he promised, through Himself, living waters that will make thirst a thing of the past. She left her former vessels at the hole in the ground, a hole to which she theretofore, came periodically to draw. Jesus did not relegate her to ritualistic coming to , and drawing from, a traditional hole in the ground.

 
We have a number of things to reflect upon when considering the end of a thing, the fulfillment of a thing, the summation of a thing. There is only one way of viewing the current popular doctrine of “ultimate reconciliation”. Only from one perspective does the truth, which the doctrine attempts to mask, come forth, that all things which are in Christ will be reconciled. For if any have not the Son, the wrath of God abides on him. Abides means does not wax and wane, does not come and go. It abides. You are accepted, IN THE BELOVED. (Ephesians 1:6)

 
Concerning the children of Israel after the flesh, their time was summed up in this saying:

 Isa 1:9      “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah”.

 Concerning the present age, this saying rings out:

Hebrews 12: 25,26     “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.”

Jesus, upon being asked concerning the end of our age gave two pictures:

 Mat 24:37  “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be”.

 
Luk 17:28   “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife”.

 So we see clearly, that all the Lord’s dealings with man and with dispensed ages, have an end. In the case of Noah, God’s covenant was with Noah and everything that came out of the ark with him, the number defined by everything that had entered the ark until God closed them in:

 Gen 6:17    “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female”.

 In the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we come again to the river of God. We come to the general assembly of the First Born, We come again to the Tree of Life, a pure river of life flowing from it, we come to the fulfillment of matters, a nation of Kings and Priests, Kings of the garden, Kings of the East. But , if , in the sum of the age, there is to be a manifestation of the Sons of God in the manners Jesus foretold, and in the manner Enoch the seventh, on the threshold of the things coming describes, saying, “The LORD cometh with ten thousands of His saints”, Then the river will take on a different description and function.

 Rev 16:12   “And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.”

 “Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all  workers of iniquity. “

When a door is closed, it’s closed. A thing is finished when the Lord is finished with it. To the assemblies , there is a warning. The removing of a lamp stand from his place, as the Lord speaks in Revelation 1 & 2, does not extinguish the flame. It extinguishes the Lamp Stand. The Lord’s word and Light abide eternal. In the sum of the present age, one sure sign and earmark of it, is the putting of churches from the message of Him that speaks from heaven. It is going on now. It is of note, that the great “falling away” of 2 Thes. 2:3 is the word “apostacy” which has it’s root in the word “apostasion”. An “apostasion”, being translated, is a “bill of divorcement”. It is a SENDING away, as in “depart from me”. The overcomer, overcomes as an individual. Here we have no continuing city.

 
Abide in the Vine. Drink of His River. Be Fruitful and Increase. Herod is speaking. The River will never change, but in the sum of the age, there will be two manner of people. Those who are among the nations of them that are saved, drinking the healing waters, and those who are part of The Source.