THE PALM TREE IS PECULIAR IN ITS GROWTH
We have in the botanical world the exogenous and the endogenous tree.
The exogenous tree grows by adding to its exterior. Year after year adds
layers or rings to the outside, thus increasing its size. It is in this
way that scientists are enabled to determine the age of trees. Some of
the mammoth trees of California show an age of many hundred years. Most
of the trees with which we have to do are of the exogenous type.
The endogenous tree increases by internal growth. The palm tree is
endogenous. Its growth is internal; out from the center and out at the
top.
How exact to the analogy was the Holy Spirit when He inspired the
statement, that "the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree"! The
palm tree saint does not have his growth from the external, pushing out
along the lines of earth, and parallel to things of the world; but his
growth is internal, and upward toward God and heaven, and perpendicular
or diametrically opposed to the world, the flesh and the Devil.
When the Holy Spirit gave us a picture of the sinner, it was "spreading
himself like a green bay tree." A glance at the margin of this text will
reveal that the green bay tree indicates one that is growing in its own
soil. It has never been transplanted. It remains in the same old
conditions and environments. It spreads out on the earth and clings to
things terrestrial. Thus, the sinner, growing in the same soil, in the
same surroundings and conditions of sin year after year, having never
been transplanted nor translated from nature's darkness to the marvelous
light of God, pushes out along worldly lines and worldly pleasures,
knowing nothing of the internal developments of grace, nor upward growth
toward God and glory.
Whenever a professing Christian spreads out with worldly ambitions, is
determined to lay up his treasures upon earth, hungering more for the
adjoining quarter section of land than for the mansions beyond,
determined to have a name down here at the risk of having none in
heaven, he certainly is far from the palm tree type.
With Christ crowned inside, and all the elements of Christian growth
firmly planted within the heart, no wonder there are inward developments
unseen by mortal eye, that expand the saint's soul more and more as the
years roll on, and enable him to rise more and more above terrestrial
things to heights in the heavenlies.
With the secret of growth internal, it is not hindered by elements
external, for one's life "is hid with Christ in God." How comforting,
then, to the soul, to know that his secret growth is so far from
external things, that neither trials, tests, troubles, tribulations,
persecutions, disappointments, losses, crosses, circumstances, men, nor
devils can necessarily hinder him from pushing out and up in the divine
life.
In the earlier days of persecution of holiness professors, how often the
fighting faction has tried to snow some of God's fire-baptized saints
under, only to see them rise up through the snowdrift, with perennial
freshness and smiling face ready for the next cold blizzard of snow. Or,
perhaps it was a wet blanket suddenly thrown over them and their
testimony, but the fire within only burnt its way through and turned the
wet into steam and proved the possessor to be practically invulnerable.
It is indeed hard to cut off one's growth when it comes from within.
There may be a momentary check at times when unforeseen obstacles are
thrust in one's way, but the growth producing qualities within assert
themselves and burst out with increasing force which make the tormentors
wonder "what next?"