[The
photograph above:
DOES THE GREAT COMMISSION
EXCLUDE
TEACHING ON PROPHECY?
“The prevailing mindset of many Bible-believing pastors today
is that eschatology, or the study of future things, is not only separate from
the preaching of the Gospel but detracts from it. They maintain that our task of fulfilling the
Great Commission excludes teaching on
prophecy, which they believe only confuses believers and stirs up unwelcome
controversy.
“Is this way of thinking biblical? No, it is not. This represents a myopic [short-sighted] way of viewing both the commands and
teachings of Jesus, who highlighted ‘eternal life’ as
the result of belief in Him and commanded
His followers to watch for His return.
“Let’s
explore these things in more detail.
JESUS EMPHASIZED ETERNAL LIFE
“Jesus emphasized eternity throughout His earthly
ministry. The Gospel of John records at
least a dozen instances where Jesus promised ‘eternal life’ to those who
believe in Him.
“We are all familiar with John
3: 16, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.’ The
foundation of the Gospel is the promise of eternal life verses the fate of
everlasting punishment in Hell [i.e., in “the lake of
fire” (Rev. 20:
15)].
“Jesus did not die on the cross just so we would have a
terrific Christian life in this uncertain world filled with sorrow and
heartache. He sacrificed His life so we
could receive eternal life with physical and imperishable bodies, and
afterwards spend a glorious eternity with Him [in ‘a new heaven and a new
earth’ (Rev. 21:
1, R.V.).]
“Many Bible-based preachers love to criticize Joel Osteen for
his book, ‘Your Best Life Now,’ but then reflect that idea that emphasizes
Christians living in this life with only fleeting references to eternity. Does this preaching not leave those listening
with the singular hope of being a joyous and ‘good Christian’ in the here and
now? Where is the hope of that amidst a fallen world?
JESUS TAUGHT ABOUT PROPHECY
AFTER HIS RESURRECTION
“Jesus stressed at least two things after His
resurrection. First, He emphasized how
He fulfilled prophecy (Luke 24: 26-27, 44 - 47) and in doing so instituted His followers ‘about the
“What was the response of His disciples to His teaching during
this time? They asked Him this question
just before He ascended back into heaven; ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to
Jesus’
teaching caused the thoughts of His Apostles to race ahead to the time when
they would rule with Christ in His
kingdom. They expected Jesus to
immediately fulfil the promise He made to them earlier, ‘Truly I tell you, at the
renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matthew 19: 28). Their
timing was off, but not their ultimate hope.
“There is one instruction in the Great Commission that I
rarely hear mentioned in sermons on the Great Commission. The majority of messages on it overlook a key
instruction embedded in it, ‘… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Matthew 28: 20). Would this not
also include the command of Jesus to watch for His return [and the establishment of that Kingdom]? I
think so.”
As
we will see in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, he taught his new converts all
about Jesus’ return as well as the future ‘inheritance’
awaiting obedient and fruitful Christians, (Eph.
5: 5. cf.
Gal. 5: 21-25, R.V.):
and only
overcomers will qualify!
While
many Christians might not agree with me on everything regarding my views on
eschatology, many will no doubt agree with me in my
‘connecting the dots between Jesus’ commands’ for us to watch and pray;
and my understanding of “the Gospel of the kingdom’ (Matt. 4: 23; 9: 35; 24: 14, A.V. & R.V.). Notice what others have said relative to
these five words:
(1) “If we obey
Christ and please Him in this present age, we
shall receive the Age to come. He
will raise us up from the dead, and we shall
live and reign with Him. The saints
shall judge the world.” - POLYCARP, early in the second century.
(2) “Perilous times are upon us, and evil men and
seducers are waxing worse and worse: may it be mine to watch and pray always,
that I may be counted worthy to
escape all these things that are coming on the earth, and to stand before the Son of Man.” - JOHN WILKINSON, founder of the Mildmay Mission to the Jews.
(3) “Of this I am satisfied, that the next coming
of Christ will be a coming, not final judgment, but a coming to usher in the Millennium. I utterly despair of the universal prevalence
of Christianity as the result of a missionary process. I look for its conclusive establishment
through a widening passage of desolations and judgments, with the demolition of
our civil and ecclesiastical structures. ‘Overturn, Overturn, Overturn’, is the watchword of our coming Lord.” - THOMAS CHALMERS.
(4) “The Lord is coming! The Word testifies it; the Spirit has spoken
it; the holy men have written it; the Church has been looking for it; the
Saints to-day are longing for it; The Devil and all the evil spirits have known
it to be a fact, the Jesus is coming
again. Only the churches do not
seem to know it.” - A. ERDMAN.
Why do ‘the churches’
of God today ‘not seem to known’ about these
things? Why do they appear so ignorant
of God’s unfulfilled prophetic events? I
suppose many reasons can be given for their neglect to
study
God’s prophetic utterances!
Hence the command, - “Study to show yourself approved unto God…”
If the Lord’s redeemed people believed all of what God
said happened in the past, their behaviour and speech today would be radically
different from what we now see and hear!
If we would think and meditate more on future events - (as for example,
those mentioned in Acts 1: 3, 5, 6, 8 and 11, R.V.) - we would want to talk more often about
them! But this
is not
happening in our churches today!
This is because God’s prophetic Scriptures are being
ignored, and not being taught to the Christians in the Churches!
In the book of Hebrews
we read: “… they to whom the
good tidings were preached failed to enter in because of
disobedience” (4: 6, R.V.). Enter in to what? Into their millennial inheritance of
course; it is the same inheritance which belonged to
Esau which he bartered away to his brother Jacob who recognised its real value:
and “when he [Esau] afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for he found no place of repentance)”
- [in Isaac his father] - “though he sought it
diligently with tears.” (Gen. 27: 34, 37; Heb. 12: 17, R.V.).
The impression we get from the
behaviour and spiritual understanding of the majority of Christians today is: (1) they
are being disobedient to what the Lord Jesus has said; (2) they
continue in disbelief, as though foretold events cannot and will not affect
them; (3) they continually neglect to
examine the context of His words - (which are usually addressed to
regenerate believers) - which they are
happy to ignore; (4) they believe God does not really mean to do what He has said He will do in
the future; and (5) they think foretold events will not happen
during their lifetime!
However, when we read of past events, and how
unprepared God’s people were for Christ’s First
Advent, we should not be too surprised to find that many will
not be prepared for His Second
Advent. In the past, the way in which He
acted toward His disobedient and apostasy people, will be no different to the
way He will act toward the same Christians today! What we see
happening within the Church today;
and the hatred which now exists amongst the nations of the world; and the human
depravity of mankind as it continues to increase and permeate into the churches
of God at an alarming rate: one can only wonder why so many Christians appear
to have little or no understanding of God’s end-time ‘signs’ which He told us
to watch out for! (Matt.
24; Luke 13,
etc.) The Holy Spirit through the
Apostle Paul forewarned us of events which we now see happening inside many of
our churches!
“I know that after my
departing grevious wolves shall enter in among you,
not sparing the flock; and
FROM AMONG YOUR OWN SELVES shall men
arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20: 29-30, R.V.).
“But the Spirit saith
expressly, that in the latter times some
[disciples] shall fall away from - [‘apostatize,’ that is, they will
reject, and seek to influence others to reject truths which they themselves
initially fully understood.] - “the faith,
giving heed to
seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies,
… forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which
God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the
truth” (1 Tim. 4: 1-3, R.V.).
This is happening because of (1) disbelief
in Christ’s warnings, which are preventing His peoples’ prayers from being
answered; (2) disobedience to Christ’s commands, which
has caused the Holy Spirit to withdraw from their lives (for a season until true repentance and restoration may
be given); and (3) because of the neglect to ask for the Holy
Spirit’s help and power to overcome the world, the flesh (i.e., our
sinful nature) and the Devil!
(1) “And he” - [Samson]
- “awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times, and shake myself.
But he wist not that the Lord was
departed from him” (Judges 16: 20, R.V.);
(2) “And
we are witnesses of these things,” - [Peter
replied to the commands and bad advice from the ‘council’
and ‘High Priest’] - “and so is the HOLY
SPIRIT, whom God hath given to THEM THAT OBEY HIM” (Acts 5: 32); (3) “… and
whatsoever we ASK we receive of him,”
- [said John to ‘brethren’
facing possible persecution and death] - “because we keep his commandments, and do the things
that are pleasing in his sight.” … “And
he that keepth
his commandments abideth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us,
by the Spirit
which he gave us.” (1
John 3: 22, 24,
R.V.); (4) “If
ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit TO THEM
THAT ASK HIM” (Luke 11: 13, R.V. cf. Psa. 51:
10-12): (5) “Create in
me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit in my inward parts. Cast me not away from
thy presence; and remove not the holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy
of they salvation: establish me with thy
directing Spirit.” (Septuagint
(LXX) - the Greek translation from the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures, which was made available for all to read during the time of our
Lord’s First Advent.)
After selecting so many tests from both Testaments, it
is difficult to understand why so many fellow believers do not agree with my eschatological
beliefs! The only conclusion I
can come up with, is that they probably believe that what the majority teach is always correct! One Elder in the Presbyterian Church told me the everything his denomination taught was the truth! That belief is shown
throughout the scriptures to be flawed! G. H.
Lang put his finger on this fact when he wrote:
“Large portions of the
Word of God are neglected. The more part of the instructions by the
Lord Himself; the warnings of Paul as to being disinherited, given to three
churches (1 Cor. 6; Gal. 5; Eph. 5); the five lengthy and weighty warnings in Hebrews; the solemn words to
the seven churches (Rev. 2 and 3), are examples of these neglected passages. Under
the popular scheme such scriptures have no direct
message to the child of God, and their value is lost. Those
who would apply them are warned not to do so: it will
compel uncomfortable revision of cherished opinions: it will prick conscience;
it will provoke strife! With such as myself it is a solemn question how much longer we shall be
justified before God, in the interests of a deceptive truce, to keep back a
large part of His counsel. It seems to
border on dealing deceitfully with His Word to ignore wide tracts of it, for
the teaching prominent in the portions just mentioned permeates the whole.
God’s judgment is always focused
upon regenerate
believers:-
“I will come near to you to
judgment; and I will be a swift witness against
the sorcerers, and against the adulterers,
and against false swearers;
and against those that oppress the hireling in his
wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me,
saith the Lord of hosts. FOR I THE LORD CHANGE
NOT…” (Malachi 3: 5, R.V.).
The Apostle Paul reminds us of this:
“Servants obey in all things
them that are your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as
men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart,
fearing the Lord: whatsoever ye do,
work heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men;
knowing that
from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of THE INHERITANCE; ye serve the Lord Christ. For he that doeth wrong
shall receive again for the wrong that he hath done: and THERE IS NO RESPECT OF PERSONS!”
(Colossians 3: 22-25, R.V.).
Comparatively few Christians today are told these
truths; and few are acting upon the dire consequences of what God has said will
happen to all who disobey Him! Many
remain silent and disregard the accountability truths and conditional promises which are shown throughout Old and New Testament
Scriptures! Are their actions due to the
fear of man? This, I believe, is
the reason why “the whole counsel of God” is not
being taught to the Lord’s redeemed people today!
This was Saul’s downfall: “ I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words: because I feared the people and obeyed their voice”
(1 Sam. 15: 24, R.V.). And near the end of his life on earth said to Samuel: “…I am sore distressed; for the
Philistines make war against me, and GOD HAS DEPARTED FROM ME, and answereth me no
more … And Samuel said, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, SEEING THAT THE
LORD IS DEPARTED FROM THEE, AND IS BECOME THINE ADVERSARY? … And the LORD HATH RENT THE KINGDOM OUT OF THINE HAND,
and given it to thy neighbour, even to David. BECAUSE THOU
OBEYEST NOT THE VOICE OF THE LORD, … therefore
hath the Lord done this thing unto thee
this day”. (1 Sam. 28: 15b-18, R.V.).
Many of today’s Pastors and Bible teachers are content
to remain silent and refuse to expound many of these texts! Has the
fear of man, and the consequences of being thrust from their position,
become more important today than obeying God’s commands? Has the possible loss of the inheritance in
the Lord’s
Sometimes we may hear the proverbs, - “being fore-warned is being fore-armed” and “eaten bread is soon
forgotten.” How true, at times, they remind us of our own nature
and behaviour; and our need to be constantly reading
and studying God’s Word!
Mr. F. BAILY, the secretary of the Guild of Prayer for the return
of the Lord, wrote the following words of reassurance and hope for our troubled
times:-
“Those who do possess this hope of divine intervention
are the only happy people in the world to-day, because they see beyond its immediate turmoil the glory of the Kingdom we may
expect Christ so soon to set up.
For, assuming that victory had
been achieved, how is a bankrupt, famine-stricken,
diseased European continent to be reconstructed unless some manifested divine
power is available?”
-------
201
FEATURES OF
THE MILLENNIUM
By A. G.
TILNEY, B.A.
FROM every point of view conditions during the
Millennium will be ideal - geographical and climatic; political and economic,
physical, moral, intellectual and spiritual.
2. “There
shall be upon every high mountain ... rivers and
streams of water ... Moreover the light of the
moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the
light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the
light of seven days, in the day that the Lord
bindeth up the breach of His people” (Isa. 30:
25, 26). “They shall not hunger
nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite
them: for He that hath mercy on them shall lead
them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them” (Isa. 49: 19; Rev. 7: 16, 17).
3. There will therefore be a fulness of life and activity, stimulated but
not strained, and freed from the beasts of prey: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the
bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down
together: and the lion shall eat straw like the
ox. And
the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’
den. They
shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11: 6-9; 65: 25; Ezek. 34: 25).
4. And the physical well-being will depend upon the spiritual, for with
the return to the Lord and His Day, and the abandonment of idols, “Then shall He give the rain
of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground
withal; and bread of the increase of the earth, and it shall be fat and plenteous: in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen likewise and the young asses that ear the ground
shall eat clean provender, which bath been winnowed with the shovel and with
the fan” (Isa. 30: 23, 24). The surrounding nations, too, will be able to
trace the spiritual causes of material effects, irreligion leading to the
withholding of the showers of blessing (Zech. 14: 17-19; Isa. 66: 18-20).
5. With the curse removed,
6. Human as well as animal and vegetable life will be increased in
extraordinary longevity, for “there shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed - for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour
in vain, nor bring forth for trouble”
(Isa. 65: 20-23).
7. The political conditions will be correspondingly satisfactory, for the
Ruler and His government will be righteous, powerful, incorruptible: “Behold, a King shall reign in righteousness, and Princes shall rule in judgment” (Isa.
32: 1; Zech. 14: 9. [cf. Luke 22: 28-30; Rev. 2: 25-27, R.V.).]
8. Jerusalem - now probably a world-port as the Advent earthquake (Zech. 14: 4-8) sends its
waters east and west to the sea - will be the earthly metropolis of the
kingdom, the educational and moral as well as governmental centre: God “will teach us of His ways,
and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isa.
2: 3).
9. National sovereignty, rivalry and antagonism will cease, and peace
will preserve, amid contentment, the economic wealth of the world. “He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more” (Isa. 2: 4;
Micah 4: 3; Ps. 46: 9). Here,
then, is the end of Krupps,
10. It may be assumed that with deceit and fear and waste removed, and
with love, joy and peace prevailing in an atmosphere of righteousness and
amidst prosperity, there will be great intellectual advance and discovery -
especially with teachers informed and capable to the level of genius and
inspiration.
11. Spiritually, there will be
access to and intercourse with God almost unknown since Adam walked with God in
12. There will be no doubt or questioning about answers to prayer in those
days, for “it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and
while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. 65:
24). “I will hear the heavens,
and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil;
and they shall hear Jezreel,” almost hand-fed by God (Hos. 2: 18-23) giving
them their daily bread.
13. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are going to be in the
14. Israel is going to be the chief among the living nations, the world’s
missionaries and leaders (Rom. 11: 15), the true
Herrenvolk, turning the tables on Nazis and others as under Esther and
Mordecai, and occupying the territory extending not merely to the Jordan (as
many imagine), but to the Euphrates, with
the deserts made habitable.
15. Other nations will be for Israel, as it were, hewers of wood and
drawers of water, bringing tribute, and rejoicing in Israel’s Divine light as
should have been the case from the beginning of her history in the uniqueness
of her adoption and revelation (Deut. 76; 4: 6-8; 2 Sam. 7: 23; Ps. 147: 20; Rom. 3: 1, 2; Deut. 28: 9, 10, 12, 13; Isa. 62: 2, 3).
16. Hence it says:- “Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and
vinedressers. But ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves” (Isa. 61: 5, 6; 60: 5, 11, 16). And further:- “The nation and kingdom that will not serve
thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted” (Isa. 60: 12; Zech. 14: 17-19).
17. Not all the nations of Palestine and the Old World were exterminated -
neither Moabites nor Ammonites, Edomites nor Gibeonites: these and others were
preserved; there were subject-races, too, under Solomon who “reigned over all the kingdoms
from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt:
and they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life” (1 Kings 4: 21-24); and
our Lord does not destroy the whole human race when He returns as King of kings
and Lord of Lords.
18. Now these peoples - presumably Israel as well, dwelling “safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree” (1 Kings 4: 25) - will be flesh-and-blood mortals who will eat
and drink and work and sleep, and, indeed, carry on their ordinary everyday
avocations, interests, pursuits, in much the same way as life is lived today,
but under ideal conditions of environment and rule, with God’s power manifest
in recent memory and in present access; living long on the earth in the fear of
the Lord.
19. There would seem to be every reason to assume that the various
countries more or less sparsely populated after the slaughter of the
pre-kingdom judgments of Revelation 6: 19, the Battle of Armageddon, and the separation
of the inhumane “goats,” will have their own civilizations, industries,
agriculture, and dwell in towns and villages as now, with houses, shops, banks,
schools, factories, and means of transport, working by day and sleeping at
night, and in righteousness, peace and prosperity, life will be well worth
living there.
20. But on an altogether higher plane there will be a race of beings,
scattered at times throughout the world and occupying every position of
authority as ambassadors, consuls, mayors, directors, managers, etc., a race
largely human in appearance, with something superhuman, angelic, even Divine
about them - and immortal.
21. This “race” will be the scattered “holy nation” (1 Pet. 2: 9) the Church, at least, those parts of it accounted
worthy of that Age and the Resurrection. They will not be flesh and blood, but flesh and bones, with incorruptible, indissoluble
bodies fashioned like unto the Lord’s own wondrous Body of Glory; and there will be physical recognition, as of our
Lord, and of Moses, and Elijah; “we shall know as we are known,” and be like Him.
22. They will be the companions of Royalty, fellows and followers of the Messiah,
the Anointed, the Christ, the King, who will reign in Person.
23. Now the great function of the Church in the millennial kingdom is
government, rule - ruling the nations “with a rod of iron”
(Rev. 2: 26, 27); not
in ruthless crushing power, but in firmness of unswerving justice, informed
with fullest knowledge, endued with unchallengeable authority.
24. This will involve a double privilege - responsibility of loyalty and
devotion having long since been proved; for there will be the joy of seeing His
Face and serving Him - the inspiration of the Beatific Vision (Rev. 22: 3, 4), the
constant, instant access to the Father’s Throne; and there will be the honour
of eminence and power - as rulers over ten or five or other cities, mayors,
lords lieutenant, high commissioners.
25. Just as the twelve apostles - to whom it was the Father’s good
pleasure to give the kingdom - continued with their Master in His temptations,
and were appointed to eat and drink at His table in His Kingdom and sit on
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Luke
12: 31,
32; 22: 28-30), so to trusty and reliable devoted Christians
the Lord will say, “Well done, thou good and
faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a
few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”
(Matt. 25: 21; 24: 45-47). His proven servant - the
overcomer - He will make ruler over
all His goods, ruler over His household, to give them meat in due season, as
was the case with Joseph and David and Daniel.
* *
* * *
* *
AN OVERCOMER
On
her wedding-day my brother Henry gave his bride two rings, one smooth and the
other rough, and said, “Such will be your wedded life; but, rough or smooth, you may
be an overcomer.”
Three
months later she stood by her dying husband, and, looking up through her tears,
said, “Lord,
Thou knowest that I love Thee better than I love him.”
Four
years passed, and in a distant Chinese Mission Station she sat making a death-shirt
for her little son, who lay across her knees, and as her tears fell on the face
of the dead child, she looked up and said, “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee better than I love my
little boy.”
Two
years later she lay dying in her uncle’s house at Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, and
as her sister bent over, saying, “You are now going, and in a few moments you
will see Henry and your little boy,” she whispered, “Jesus
first,” and died. So the rough
ring became a triple crown. - GEORGE
WILLIAMS.
* *
* * *
* *
202
THE PRIZE OF
THE THRONE
‘THE OVERCOMER’
-------
HE THAT OVERCOMETH, I WILL GIVE TO HIM TO SIT DOWN WITH ME
IN MY THRONE, AS I ALSO OVERCAME, AND SAT DOWN
WITH MY FATHER IN HIS THRONE” (Rev. 3: 21).
These words were spoken directly by the Ascended
Christ, and they describe the climax reward for all who will fulfil the
conditions for obtaining it. Many may
ask why we should go forward in ceaseless conflict and warfare with the forces
of evil. It is for the PRIZE OF THE
THRONE. In His messages to the churches the Lord
clearly holds out to all the incentive of reward. Paul’s writings are full of reference to “reward”, to all who will fulfil the conditions.
Christ
is not yet seated on His own throne. At
His ascension God said to Him, “Sit Thou on MY RIGHT HAND
until ...” (Heb. 1:
13).
He is “seated
on the RIGHT HAND OF THE MAJESTY ON HIGH” (see Heb. 1: 3; 8: 1; Acts 2: 34, 35; Heb. 10: 12, and 12: 2) waiting for
the time when He will have His Throne, and those who are to share it with Him.
The
throne for the overcomers! Is it
possible? Are they to share the throne of
the Son of God? We can see now why, as
we pass through the closing days of the age, there must be such terrible
conflict, and why the prince of darkness will challenge every child of God who
wants to ‘overcome’. It is the
final testing and training of all who are to share the throne, and to rule and
reign with Christ.
Now
what is the throne which awaits our Ascended Lord? It is the millennial throne of reigning and
ruling the kingdoms of the world. After
it is given to Him, the voice from heaven said:- “The kingdoms of this world ARE become the kingdoms of our Lord and
of His Christ” (Rev. 11: 15). This
throne God promised to Him, when far back in the ages of eternity He was “appointed to be heir of all
things” (Heb.
1: 2).
This is foreshadowed in Daniel 7: 13, 14.
Then
the millennial throne of Christ is to be shared with others on certain
conditions, by the gift of Christ Himself. “I will give to him to sit with Me.” Paul refers to
this heirship in his unfolding of the work of the Holy Spirit in Rom. 8. “Joint-heirs with Christ ... if so be that we suffer with Him” (Rom. 8: 17). This is foreshadowed in Daniel 7: 22-27, where it says, “the time came that the saints possessed the
kingdom.” The fact that Christ’s coming throne is to be
shared by overcomers, who are appointed by the Father to be ‘joint-heirs’ with,
Him, who was “appointed
heir of all things,” is therefore quite clear.
Glimpses
are to be found, too, into the future time when the Christ, and those who are
to share the throne with Him, will reign.
Paul said: “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the
world?” “Know ye not that we shall
judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6: 2, 3). What
angels? Certainly not the unfallen
ones. The explanation will be found in 2 Peter 2: 4. “The angels which kept not
their first estate ... judged.” These fallen
angels - Satan and his hierarchy of evil powers - are to be judged by those who
reign with Christ on His throne. In
brief, they who are ‘overcomers’ -
those who overcome the world and Satan now will be the judges of the fallen
hosts of evil, when these overcoming ones are glorified together with Christ upon His throne.
The obtaining of the prize of this ‘high calling’ of sharing the Throne with Christ was the incentive
which urged Paul on to count all things loss to obtain it, and to be willing to
be made conformable to the death of Christ as the primary means for reaching
such an end (see Phil. 3: 10-14); for each believer who reaches the prize of
the throne, goes by way of the Cross in the path of the Ascended Lord. “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection ... being made conformable to His death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from among the dead” wrote Paul. In
Greek it means the resurrection “out from among the dead.” A little later
in this same chapter, Paul says “I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling
of God in Christ Jesus.”
Notice
the word ‘if’ which Paul uses, “IF by any means I may attain ...” ‘IF.’ Paul was perfectly sure of his eternal
salvation as a free gift from God, through the finished work of Christ.
What
is in the balance, therefore, for every believer in the present warfare with
Satan, which must intensify as the [present evil] age closes, is the millennial crown and throne. The question for each is, how to hold fast
all spiritual victory hitherto obtained, that we do not lose the crown; for we
must expect that Satan will challenge every one he sees moving on to the
throne, where, with Christ, he will ‘judge angels’. In brief, he contests the future judges of
the evil hosts of darkness when he contests and hinders those who, like Paul,
press on toward the goal.
Now
consider the qualification
for obtaining the prize of the throne.
The Ascended Lord gives it in the words, “He that overcometh will I give” - a personal gift - “to sit with Me” - a personal sharing with Him - “ON MY THRONE” - Christ’s own throne open to the overcomer - “EVEN AS I OVERCAME.” Here is the qualification, and
the path made clear.
Notice again that in qualifying for the prize, each
believer must stand alone. It is “HE that overcometh.” Each future
ruler with Christ must have
individual preparation and training, and his environment and Satan’s attacks
upon him will be specially permitted and weighed by Christ (1 Cor. 10: 13) to
bring about the required results. Each ‘heir’ to a vast estate must be carefully trained according
to his capabilities and sphere (Gal. 4: 1-2). There
may be only one placed by the Head of the Church where ‘Satan’s seat’ is, but he must ‘overcome’ or
lose his crown (Rev. 2: 13). He must not look for a second to ‘overcome’ with him, for “one receiveth the prize” (1 Cor. 9: 24). He, alone, must alone qualify for the throne,
by a faith developed by trial (1 Pet. 1: 7), and a triumph
over Satan because of the Spirit of God in him as the sufficient power.
Let
us look for a moment at Revelation 12: 1-12, and see
the last hour of the believers made ready for sharing the millennial
throne. Verse
5 depicts the overcomers prepared for the destined throne, even as
Christ overcame and sat down with His Father in His throne. Here we see the dragon’s attitude toward the
souls who have overcome, and who will share the throne with Christ, and take
part with Him in His work of judging the world, and the fallen angels. (See also Rev.
2: 26-27). We
find at the crisis hour, the ‘great red dragon’
erect and ready to devour the overcomers, as they emerge into the sphere
between earth and heaven, on the ascension road to the throne; joining their
conquering Lord, to share with Him the final carrying out of the Calvary
judgment upon him.
Notice,
too, that the conflict in heaven between the Archangel Michael and his hosts of
light, and Satan and his fallen angels, apparently is over the translation of
the throne-sharers. But it results in
the casting down of the accuser. “Satan and his angels were
cast down to the earth,” and then
the seer heard “a
great voice in heaven saying, Now is come
... the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ; for the accuser ... is cast
down ...” The part of the overcomers in the conflict is
given in Revelation 12: 11. They
are in direct personal conflict with Satan now, not only with his works, for they “overcame Him because of the
blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of
their testimony; and they loved not their life
even unto death.”
From
this point let us take one glimpse into the future, and in Revelation 17: 14
see Christ and the overcomers with Him carrying out the judgment; the Heir and the
joint-heirs. In Revelation
17 Christ is carrying out terrible things on His enemies who “war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall OVERCOME
them, for He is the Lord of lords and King of
kings; and THEY
ALSO SHALL OVERCOME WHO ARE WITH HIM, called,
and chosen, and faithful.”
The saints shall judge the world, the saints
shall share in judgment. They will appear before the judgment-seat, first - [before ‘the First Resurrection’ (Rev.
20: 5, 6, R.V.)] - to be
judged themselves (2 Cor.
5: 10 [cf. Heb. 9: 27, R.V.]); and then - [if “accounted worthy” (Luke 20: 35)]* - they who are given to share Christ’s - [Messianic and Millennial] - throne, - “the called and the chosen and the faithful,” will be with Him in His dealing with the world.
[* NOTE: This judgment (after Death, but before
Resurrection), is necessary for Christ’s selection of those “accounted worthy to attain to that AGE, and the resurrection FROM the dead (lit. Greek ‘out of dead ones’):
Luke 20: 35.
cf.
Phil 3: 11.]
You
may say: Ever since I began to testify to Satan’s defeat at
“Hold fast that which thou hast that
no man take thy crown.” For every bit of the conflict, there will be the gain. So Paul said, “The sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the GLORY that
shall be revealed in us.”
-------
NOT DESOLATE
“None of them that
trust in Thee shall be desolate.” Psalm
34: 22, A.V.
Not desolate, though friends I love may fail;
Not desolate, though ills I fear’d
prevail;
Not desolate, though all my earthly store
Hath dwindled, with no strength to gather more;
Not desolate, for by, in my ‘dwindling brook’
I, like Elijah, for deliverance look!
For hath Elijah’s God not said to me
That none who trust in Him shall desolate be
Since Thou hast promised Lord, I will not fear,
I know Thou wilt not leave me, Saviour dear;
No ill can be too great for me to bear -
No loneliness appal - which Thou wilt share;
No need so great that Thou canst meet it not;
No moment come when I shall be forgot.
Since I Thy promise have, to Thee I flee,
For none who trust in Thee
shall desolate be.
- ANNA MCCLURE.
-------
MY GRACE IS
SUFFICIENT FOR THEE
This
remarkable experience of a child of God was narrated to the writer from her own
lips. Earnestly longing and seeking for
years to know the truth of the fullness of life in Christ she came one day into
a Bible class in an interior city of this state. There as she sat eagerly drinking in the
truth, God sent to her hungry heart the message it had long needed. She learned that the Spirit whom she had been beseeching for years to
enter had already come in to abide forever.
She saw that what God wanted was not long and agonizing waiting and
petition for His incoming, but an
absolute submission of the will in all things and for all time to Him who was
already indwelling. And so one
bright Sabbath day rejoicing in the faith of His indwelling, she yielded herself a living sacrifice unto
God, in complete and trustful
submission to His will whatever it might be. No great manifestation of power followed: no
rapturous uplift: no wonderful vision of things of which it was unlawful to
speak. But her hitherto restless soul
was flooded with peace, the unspeakable peace of the God of peace Himself,
filling her soul with His conscious presence in response to the utter yielding
of the being to Him. The passing months
found that peace still abiding. Through
that absolute yielding of herself to His will, God had anchored her soul in a
haven of rest by moorings so secure that no storm seemed able to rend them. She
was established in Christ Jesus. And now
came a test that proved to her forever what God could do with a submitted will
and a trustful heart.
“I had a son,” said she, “a
youth about eighteen years of age. He
was a bright, joyous boy: a Christian, but not living as close to God as my
heart yearned to see him. But him, too,
as well as all else that I possessed, I had definitely committed to God when I
made my surrender. When the adversary
tried to break my peace, tempting me to doubt concerning my boy, I simply
lifted up my heart and said, ‘Lord, I have committed him to Thee; Thy will be
done in his life.’ One summer night,
after he had retired to his room, attracted by the sound of music in a near-by
square, he went out, unknown to me, to enjoy it. Strolling up street in company with another
lad, these two exchanged some words of boyish badinage with a man standing by,
and then passed on. As they passed the corner of an alley farther on, this man
stepped out from its shadow and shot my boy dead on the spot. At midnight my doorbell rang, and the
policeman, to whom I opened, said: ‘Madam, your
son is seriously hurt and you are wanted immediately.’ I quickly called
my husband and other son and hastened up the street, not knowing what was
coming. All I remember now of that
midnight journey was that as I sped along the silent street I found myself lifting up my heart to God and
repeating again and again: ‘Lord, I have committed him to Thee: Lord, Thy will
be done: Thy will be done.’ When I
reached the spot I kneeled by the prostrate form of my boy, touched his face,
grasped his hands, and lifted his head, only to find him weltering in a pool of
blood, already dead! When the awful fact
dawned upon us, my husband fainted, and my other son was well-nigh overcome
with grief. But there, in the dead of
night, in the awfulest hour of a mother’s life, I came to know what God could
do with a submissive will and a trustful heart.
I would never have thought it possible for God to keep a weak,
trembling, stricken soul as He kept me in that dreadful hour. As I knelt by my murdered boy the fountains
of grief seemed stayed. Underneath me
were unseen, everlasting arms. A flood-tide of unutterable peace swept into my
soul, and brooded over my stilled heart with an eternal calm that nothing in
the universe, it seemed, could ever disturb.
When the day dawned men and women flocked into my house and cried, ‘What kind of a woman are you? What do you
mean? How do you explain this strange
calm that seems to possess you?’ and I could
only answer - ‘It is not I, but Christ, CHRIST!’
”
- J. H. MCCONKEY.
*
* * *
* *
*
203
THE RACE AND THE CROWN
By
D. M. PANTON
No human effort (it is said) was both so short and so
violent as the Greek footrace. Around the stadium, or course, rose an amphitheatre
of white marble, like the terraces of a palace, seated with ‘a cloud of
witnesses,’ tier above tier;* he who ‘acted as herald,’ to use Paul’s phrase (1 Cor. 9: 27), marshalled the lists, explained the rules,
and dismissed the runners by trumpet-blast; all starting from ‘scratch,’ the athletes bent forward - “stretching forward to the things that are before” (Phil. 3: 13) - to
catch the fullest possible momentum: then followed the rush, and (in the long
race) weary lap after weary lap; until at last the ‘mark,’ or goal, was in sight, where the judges sat: then, as
the victor burst past the mark, the race was over, all other runners being ‘disapproved’; and the winner, crowned with a wreath of
pine and banqueted, received the homage of an entire nation. “Know ye not that, they which
run in a race all run, but ONE receiveth
the prize?” (1 Cor. 9: 24).
*
A stadium in
Now
the Holy Spirit, not once but many times, emphasizes this as the picture of the
short, sharp struggle of the Christian race.
“So run,” says Paul (1 Cor. 9: 24) to the whole Church of God; for runners do not
march, they race: “so run,” run in such a way that,
run as the few run, run as only the winner runs: “in order that ye may attain” -
have the prize deliberately in view: “it is not enough merely to run - all run; but as there is
only one who is victorious, so you must run, not with the slowness of the many,
but with the energy of the one” (Dean Stanley). We have no
option but to seek the highest.
Now
the Holy Spirit reveals conditions for success in the race; and the first is a careful self-preparation. “Every man
that striveth in the games” - that enters the lists - “is TEMPERATE in all things” (1 Cor. 9:
25). It is obvious that an untrained runner
has little or no chance against a disciplined athlete, hardened, schooled,
fit. Here are the actual directions from
an old Greek book for the ten months training:- “There must be orderly living, on spare food;
abstain from confections; make a point of exercising at the appointed time, in
heat and in cold; nor drink cold water, nor wine at random; give thyself to the
training master as to a physician, and then enter the contests.” The athlete
thus trains to prolong his wind, to harden his biceps, and to produce that
which the Greek so loved - a perfect human: we, to produce a perfect saint - as
developed in spirit and character, as he in muscle and frame. “The abstinence of the athletes did not relate only to
criminal enjoyments, but also to gratifications in themselves lawful; so the
Christian’s self-denial should bear, not only on guilty pleasures, but on every
habit, on every enjoyment, which, without being vicious, may involve a loss of
time or a diminution of moral force” (Godet). Even the gossamer band of silk in the
trousering above the knee (a runner in cross-country championships has told me)
he had to discard: a ‘weight’ (Heb. 12: 1) can be fatal.
Observance
of the rules is a second vital condition of success. “If a man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except he have contended LAWFULLY” (2 Tim. 2: 5) - that
is, according to the rules of the running he may run magnificently; but if
lawlessly, he is instantly disqualified.
“You may
be making great strides, but you are running outside the track.” (Augustine). The New
Testament is our racing manual:
it tells us exactly what to do, and exactly
what to avoid: we are not at liberty to invent our own rules, or construct our
own holiness: every rule is in the Book, and every rule is essential for the
prize. “Ye were running well: who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” (Gal. 5: 7); that is,
swift running is obeying the Holy Scriptures.
We seek the glory; but first, what secures the glory. “I press on toward the goal unto the prize” (Phil. 3: 14): the
mark, or goal, is perfect holiness; the prize is glory, the crown of holiness (Godet).*
*
“If it could be
proved, after the contest, that the victorious combatants had contended
unlawfully, or unfairly, they were deprived of the prize and driven with
disgrace from the games” (Dean
Alford).
But
self-mastery abides the supreme condition for success. “I therefore so run,
as not uncertainly”; that is, if I fulfil the conditions, I shall not
be supplanted (as I might be in a human footrace) by some fleeter runner; every
believer is sure of the prize if only he
fulfils the conditions: “so fight I, as not beating the air”; my fisticuffs are no feints,
but I land every blow; “but I buffet MY BODY” - bruise it black and blue, make it livid, every blow
striking home (Ellicott- “and bring it into bondage” - lead it as a slave (1 Cor. 9: 27). Here
is disclosed our most dangerous enemy, “the flesh with its affections and lusts”; my blows, says Paul, are so aimed as to cover my
adversary - and that adversary, my own body - with bruises, and so lead it
captive. He discovers, by self-examination,
his besetting sins, and he lands his blows there: we must
learn to know our weak points as well as Satan knows them. I fatigue my body, by the incessant and exhausting labours to
which I condemn it (Dean Stanley). Paul was no ascetic, no monk; but, while a
nourished body is the most effective instrument for God we shall ever have, a
pampered body, is a lost race. For the
race is no splendid spurt, it is a dogged drudgery; it is lost by either
self-confidence or self-despair: the real failures in life are those who
surrender before the sun goes down. “The only way to keep pace
with God is to run at full speed”
(General W. Booth).
Paul
now points out that, as the difficulties are incalculably greater and more
subtle in the spiritual race, so the prizes are incomparably richer, and the
losses more terrible. “Now they do it to receive a
corruptible crown” - a garland of
olive or bay or parsley or pine, that hardly faded sooner than the athlete’s
glory itself; “but we an incorruptible”; a never-fading wreath, as Peter calls
it (1 Pet. 5:
4).
So the extraordinarily potent lesson here revealed is that self-denial
is only pleasure postponed. “This,” said King
Edward to Canon Duckworth in the
disrobing room after the Coronation, “is one of the happiest days, if not the happiest, I ever
spent.” Earthly crowns are not
always even transient joys. “The only crown I have ever
worn,” said the Austrian Emperor Charles II, who died since the Great
War, “was a
crown of thorns.” No crown is ever applied to a [regenerate] believer in
Scripture except for achievement, never for inheritance - stephanos never diadema;
(diadem is applied only to Christ, (Rev. 19: 12, and
Antichrist, Rev. 13:
1); and it is curious that, exactly as five victor - wreaths were given in Greece
for five totally distinct achievements - leaping, throwing, racing, boxing and
wrestling - so five crowns, and five only, are held forth for spiritual
athleticisms - the crown of joy for soul-winning (1
Thess. 2: 19), the crown of glory for church oversight (1 Pet. 5: 4), the crown of incorruption for sanctity (1 Cor. 9: 25), the
crown of righteousness for vigilance (2 Tim.
4: 8),
and the crown of life for martyrdom (Rev. 2: 10). These will blaze when the sun has gone out
for ever.
Paul
closes with one of the supreme [Christian] warnings of Scripture. “Lest by any means after that I have acted the herald to
others, I myself” - not my works only, but myself - “should be REJECTED [as unworthy of the crown
and the prize (Ellicott)].”
As Bishop Ellicott says:- “Not reprobate: the doctrinal
deduction thus becomes, to some extent, modified; still the serious fact
remains that the Apostle had before him the possibility of losing that which he
was daily preaching to others: as yet he counted not himself to have attained (Phil. 3: 12); that blessed
assurance was for the closing period of a faithful life (2 Tim. 4: 7).” The runner
will never be disowned as a son, but he
can be deeply disapproved as a servant: a backslider may be in the race,
but he is not in the running.* Full of years, and laden with victories, Paul - the
Paul who never doubted his [eternal] salvation
after the Damascene vision, and who has couched the believer’s eternal safety
in the most Calvinistic language in the Bible - has not ceased to dread the flesh, and still trembles for his crown.
The man who misses the approbation of Christ obtains no other, not even
his own; and meanwhile, as we grow older, we find the flesh no less carnal, the
world no less subtle, and the Devil no less Satanic than they always were. “Hold fast that which thou
hast, that no one take thy crown” (Rev. 3: 2): yours
already, hypothetically; yours certainly, if
you run to a finish as you are [earnestly] running now; but
forfeitable, if you slacken to a
present inferior in the race.
*
“We cannot
consider ‘receiving the prize’ to imply [initial and eternal] salvation generally, for this is even possible where wood,
straw, and stubble have been built up; but that it intends the highest degree
of bliss, conditional upon faith and the advance in sanctification” (Olshausen).
So
we summarize some final points. (1) No criminal, no slave, only the
freeborn Greek could enter the lists: so God’s race is only for the re-born:
the race starts at the foot of the Cross, and conversion puts us in the lists. (2) The racer who fouls - or ‘bores’ - a fellow-runner is at once
disqualified. Carpenter, an American at the Olympic Games, cut out the Englishman
Hartell,
and instantly lost the race. (3) Unbelief is a strychnine which
paralyzes: if we imagine there is no race, it is certain we shall win no prize.
(4) We should never doubt our [God-given
and eternal]
salvation: we should never assume our prize.
When in 1923 Sullivan swam
the Channel on his seventh attempt, he said:- “Every beating I
got made me the more determined to do it, and I have trained hard year after
year for it.” (5) A
trainer of prize-winners may himself lose the prize. (6) The nearer we approach the goal, the lonelier the race. (7) Let us remember the Cloud of
Witnesses. The eyes of God are upon us;
the eyes of Christ know our works, and rejoice in our running, the eyes of the
holy angels are watching struggling Jobs and budding Pauls;
the eyes of the malignant Powers are always studying us; the eyes of the world
are never off us, and, at the goal, the whole Church will know exactly, how we
ran. What an amphitheatre!
So
we cheer each other on as, to panting breast and trembling limbs, the goal
rises on the horizon. Bishop Wordsworth beautifully suggests
that from the Greek word here for ‘prize,’ we
get, through the Latin and Italian, our word ‘Bravo’:
so we love to cheer each drawn, white, dusty face, and together seek the Bravo
of the returning Lord. The last lap used
to be called ‘the sob’: no cross-country winner
ever breasts the tape without bleeding feet.
Carry me over the long, last mile,
Man of
“I have finished the stadium,” Paul cries at last, when the two hundred yards had
vanished under his victorious feet; “henceforth there is laid up for me THE CROWN” (2 Tim. 4: 8); or, in
the dying words of Payson, - “The battle is fought! the
battle is fought! and the victory is won for ever!”
*
* *
* * *
*
204
SEEK YE
FIRST
By ROBERT
GOVETT
1. What Kingdom is it we are to seek? (Matt. 6: 33). The Kingdom of grace? Nay, we are
in it already, as disciples (Col. 1: 13). As vet
it is the kingdom in mystery only: it is concealed; for the King, on whose power
depends its manifestation, is away.
We
are to seek the future kingdom, the kingdom in
manifestation, the kingdom of glory. For that, Daniel, the witness of its
futurity, is waiting (Dan. 12: 13). Daniel was made witness of the
The
call by John Baptist and by Jesus in God’s appointed time referred to these
prophecies. “The kingdom of heaven hath
drawn near!” All expected
thereupon the fulfilment of Daniel 2: 44: “Now is the God of heaven about to break in pieces all other
kingdoms, setting up His own alone.” Moreover,
signs of power supernatural burst forth in the minister of Jesus. All eyes and ears were attent on the
realization of the [yet unfulfilled] promises of the prophets. But for these blessings
But
what mean the words: “Seek his righteousness?”
1. They do not mean imputed righteousness.
That was needed to present acceptance; and the hearers possessed imputed
righteousness already, as disciples of Jesus.
Nor was the Saviour exhibiting Himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, as
the righteousness of the believer. But
He was teaching those who would listen [to] the
principles which were to guide their conduct, if they would enter the
millennial kingdom. So in other passages
of Matthew it has the same active sense.
“Thus it
becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” “Except your
righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Obedience
also is directly stated as the condition of entering it. Who shall have part in it? “He that
doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven” (7: 21). So
Peter speaks of those who fear God, and “work righteousness” (Acts 10: 35). So Paul.
Through faith the worthies of old “wrought righteousness” (Heb. 11: 33). Also 2 Cor. 9: 9, 10; Phil. 3: 6).
New
principles of far greater height and depth than the old ones of the Law are in
the Sermon on the Mount disclosed by Jesus.
They were God’s words put into his mouth. While they were “sayings of mine,” as he says, they were still “the will of his Father in
heaven.” Thus obedience
to Jesus’ novel principles and precepts is the means and the way; and the [millennial] kingdom
of glory is the bright end set before us.
The precepts are so lofty and so difficult beyond those of the Law,
because the way is now opened to a higher and more glorious department of the
kingdom than was known to
Let us confirm this by a view of Paul’s attitude in Philippians 3: 8-16. The
apostle rejects the righteousness he wrought himself while under law, and
accepts with gratitude the righteousness wrought by Christ, presented by the
Father, to be the clothing of each believer.
He calls it - “the righteousness which is from God upon faith” (Greek: ver. 9). But
though he accepted this as a gift, at the outset of his Christian career, there
was yet something set before him as a prize.
He desired to know the power of Jesus’ resurrection, and to suffer with
Christ now, even to the endurance of martyrdom - “if by any means I may attain, unto the (select) resurrection from among the dead” (Greek). To
obtain a part in the resurrection of the dead after the thousand years demands
no faith at all. The wicked will
receive that. It could, therefore, be no
object of his desire. But to obtain a
place in the ‘first’ and blest resurrection, this he might well
covet. And tribulation is God’s
appointed way thereto. “Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through many tribulations (plural) enter the kingdont of God” (Acts 14: 22).
What kingdom was that?
The Gospel? Nay, the disciples
were in that already. The Church? They were there also. It can only mean, then, the future kingdom of glory which
to the select resurrection from the dead in Philippians. Paul continues: “Not
as though I had already attained, or were
already perfect; but I follow after if that may
apprehend (lay hold of) that for which also I was apprehended (laid hold of) by Christ. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended” - though all others did believe it of him - “but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching after those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high (or heavenly) calling of God in
Christ Jesus.”
In
our day, many are utterly unbelieving about any future Kingdom of miracle and
of resurrection, to be set up by Jesus at His return. And of those who retain that belief many are
provoking God, and hardening their hearts against the testimony of His
true-hearted ones. They refuse to
believe God’s threatenings against His people’s partial unbelief, and
disobedience. They get rid of any threat
levelled by God against hardness of heart and disobedience, by the cry: ‘That’s Jewish! It does not refer to us. We are the members of Christ, the bride of
Christ; we are above commands, and beyond responsibility!’ The Holy
Spirit foresaw this; and has in Hebrew 3.
&. 4. furnished the antidote thereto. By the whole tenor of the appeal, its conditionality appears. “Whose house
are if we hold fast the confidence” (Heb. 3: 6). “We became associates* of the Christ,
if we hold the
beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end” (Heb. 3: 14). Here Paul (or the inspired believer, who
wrote this epistle) places himself on the same level with those he warns. “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief. Exhort one another
... lest any of you be hardened through the
deceitfulness of sin.” Let not, then, a view of your privileges
harden you, oh [regenerate] believers! Eternal life, through grace, you cannot lose:
but your being associates of Christ in the millennial kingdom of His glory
depends on your not giving up this hope, and not provoking the Lord.
*
See Greek. A reference back to 1, 8, 9. We are
Jesus’ “fellows” of Psalm
45., under condition of
persevering in right hopes and profession.
This
is the force of the appeal in Hebrews 3: 15-19. You will say: ‘Ah! that does not apply to us.
* Verse 16 should be
read as a question, as critics generally are agreed and as the two following
verses show.
** So it should be
translated. The word is a different one
from that for unbelief.
Yes!
it was the partial unbelief of [regenerate and redeemed] believers! Twice does Moses record their faith: at
his first propounding to them their hope; and when the sea had overwhelmed
their foes. By faith they kept the Passover,
by faith they passed through the
“Let us labour, then, to enter into that
rest, lest any fall by the same example of disobedience.” All believers enjoy, or may enjoy, present
rest from their own works for justification, through the finished work of
Christ. But all ought to be seeking by the obedience of faith for the future [millennial] rest, which the apostle has set before our eyes. It is worthy [of] our highest, our most sustained, efforts. A thousand years of glory and bliss with
Christ! A thousand years to be blessed and
holy, the priests of God and the Christ, reigning jointly with the Son! For this Paul sought with his best vehemence,
with his most assiduous endeavours. Be not cast down by difficulties; but be not presumptuously confident. Where Paul could not speak confidently till
toward the close of his career, how should you?
Loud is the call to circumspection.
Beholding in the misconduct of
So then seek the [millennial]
-------
ONE HOUR
‘Quod vobis dico, omnibus dico, VIGILATE.’
Could ye not watch with me one hour? Ah, no!
Sleep lies too heavy on the tired eyes
Of Christ’s disciples.
Had the trumpet clanged
‘Gird up your loins for battle, till the foe
Be backward driven!’ be sure they had not slept.
Men weary, waiting, now as heretofore.
Yet Christ’s command, bequeathed, rings clear to-day
Across the vast division of the years;
And still that meek reproach, once spoken beneath
The gathering shadows of
Comes strangely home: ‘Could
ye not watch one hour?’
- E. H. BLAKENEY, M.A.
THE KINGDOM
Profoundly touching are the words of the Prime
Minister before the Bible Society. “Nothing but the light which comes from this Book,”
said Mr.Baldwin, “can
lighten the twilight or dispel the fog.
The Kingdom of God may be very far off; but if I did not feel that our
work is done in the faith and the hope that some day, it may be 1,000 years
hence, the Kingdom of God would spread over the whole world, I could have no
hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to
anyone who would take it.”
MODERNISM AND THE ADVENT
It
is well to realize the shifts to which doubters and the are reduced. “In regard to our Lord’s eschatology,” says Dr. W. B. Selbie
(Christian World,
July 25, 1929), “it seems quite obvious that much
of the language which is put into His mouth is rather that of the Evangelists
than of the Master Himself, though there can be very little doubt that He did
often speak in eschatological terms.”
That is, we escape pronouncing our Lord guilty of a blend of fact and
fiction only by convicting Apostles and Prophets of forgery. The Dean of St. Paul’s, characteristically,
goes further. “I find it difficult,” says Dr. Inge, “without making too sharp a separation between the moral and
intellectual sides of our nature, to reconcile the absolute sinlessness of
Christ with the deep-seated delusion about the approaching end of the world.” But Baron
Von Hiigel excels them all. “At bottom,” he says, “these
poignant difficulties of the Second Advent raise the problem, not merely of
Jesus’ Divinity, or, at least, of His Inerrancy, even with regard to matters of
directly religious import, but primarily of the soundness and sanity of His
human mind.” It is very
significant that, as the Gnostics
were the first to deny the
THE OUTLOOK
OF THE HOUR
THE
MILLENNIUM
The hope of the visible coming of Christ and of the Millennium
appears so early that it may be questioned whether it ought not to be regarded
as an essential part of the Christian religion: it was inseparably connected
with the Gospel itself. - HARNACK.
CHILIASM
It is a decisive proof of its truth that the two
epochs of the Church in which Millennarianism has most flourished are the two
purest epochs (since the Apostles) that the Church has ever known. “In all the
works of the first two centuries,” says Dr.
Gieseler, “millennarianism is so prominent that we
cannot hesitate to consider it as universal.”
Justin, writing at the time
of Papias,
says that it was the general faith of all orthodox Christians, and that only
the Gnostics did not share it (Hagenbach). Origen,
at the end of the third century - a Spiritist and a Universalist - was the
first to attack what men who had seen the Apostles universally affirmed.
*
* * *
* * *
205
MILLENNARIANISM
AND ERROR
By HORATIUS
BONAR, D.D.
Let us inquire into the connection said to subsist
between millennarianism and false doctrine.
Can it bc proved by facts? Or is it the mere inference of those who,
having a very bad opinion of the system, think that it must be, and ought to
be, connected with all forms of error?
I
state then, and am willing to prove, that those who have not only endangered,
but subverted the whole fabric of Christianity, have
not been millennarians, but
their opponents.
The gnosticism of the early ages was openly as well as essentially anti-millenarian. It was allegorical and anti-literal, a
patch-work of Christianity and pagan philosophy. It not only allegorized into a spiritual
shadow the first resurrection, but all
resurrection whatsoever, condemning as carnal all who believed in any
resurrection, just as our opposers condemn us for believing in the first
resurrection. And who upheld the truth
against these anti-Millennarian and allegorizing gnostics? Irenaeus
and Justin Martyr, two noted
millennarians. The connection between
anti-millennarianism and heresy, in the first ages, can be clearly established
by fact. The
antagonism between millennarianism and heresy can be as clearly proved. The heretic
gnostics were the
only opposers of millennarianism in these days; the thoroughly
orthodox fathers were its unanimous supporters. Gnosticism
and anti-chiliasm were friends; Gnosticism and chiliasm*
were open enemies. Yet our system is
said to be all along linked with heresy.
* The doctrine of
the Personal Reign of Christ on earth during the millennium.
The
carnal follies of Cerinthus are
sometimes exhibited as specimens of millennarianism. But Cerinthianism and chiliasm were
thoroughly and openly opposed to each other.
The millennarian fathers were the strongest condemners and confuters of Cerinthus and his abominations. There was antagonism, not alliance between
them; and it would be as correct to identify Calvinism and Socinianism, because
Priestley happened to be a predestinarian,
as to identify chiliasm and Cerinthianism; because Cerinthus spoke of the
saints reigning on the earth.
In
the second century the state of matters was the same; millennarianism and
orthodoxy still went hand in hand.
Whencesoever the danger to the fabric of Christianity might come, it did
not come from millennarians. “Chiliasm constituted
(says a German writer), in the second century, so decidedly an article of
faith, that justin held it up as a criterion of
perfect orthodoxy.”
Then
Origen came into the field, - no
friend to chiliasm, and as little to orthodoxy.
He turned the whole Bible into a riddle, he denied the doctrine of
eternal punishments. He seems to have
been thoroughly unsound even upon fundamental points. In his case, surely heresy and anti-chiliasm
were the allies. The chiliasts in these
days, instead of “endangering the whole fabric of
Christianity,” were its steadfast supporters against anti-chiliastic
heretics, who were introducing “not only a new
dispensation, but a new Christianity.”*
* Dionysius of
Then
came Jerome, one of the keenest and
most unswerving opponents that millennarianism ever had; one who never loses an
opportunity of assailing it. Was Jerome
sound in the faith? Alas! he seems to
have no idea of free justification at all.
All with him is works;- superstition and self-righteousness darken the
pages both of his Epistles and his Commentaries. Perhaps Popery owes more to Jerome than to
any of the fathers. Even in his day, the
great mass of the godly, as he tells us more than once, were
millennarians. Are chiliasm and heresy
then inseparable? or is not the reverse the truth? I know that Augustine was against us, and he was much sounder in the faith; but
his case is only a confirmation of our statements, for he is almost the only
example in that age, of orthodoxy and anti-millennarianism being in union.
Anti-chiliasm was now spreading. And how did its abettors defend it? By denying the inspiration of the
Apocalypse! “It
is worthy of remark,” says Bishop
Russell - no chiliast, “that so long as the
prophecies regarding the millennium were interpreted literally, the Apocalypse
was received as an inspired production, and as the work of the apostle John;
but no sooner did theologians find themselves compelled to view its
annunciations through the medium of allegory and metaphorical description, than
they ventured to call in question its heavenly origin, its genuineness, and its
authority.”
Dead churches have been pre-eminently
anti-chiliastic, and from the pens of
some of our coldest divines have come the strongest condemnations of our
system. In the days of the Westminster Assembly there were many
chiliasts to be found. Twisse, the prolocutor, and many members were
such. A century after, hardly a
supporter of the system was to be found in
[*
It must, however, be admitted that during
the last hundred years, in Irvingism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism in its
origins, and various Tongues sects, the Powers of Darkness have repeated their
strategy in Montanism - studiedly linking their manifestations with Advent
truth, they have sought to besmirch it hopelessly in the eyes of the sober and
the Scriptural. The Advent and the
miraculous gifts are most counterfeited the nearer they draw. But feather-brained
fanaticisms have no remotest resemblance to Millennial truth as it is presented
in the Prophets; and the true
antidote to perverted Millennarianism is not scepticism but Scripture.
Some
ancient Chiliasm was superstitious and grotesque but where it was merely gross
or carnal, the error probably arose from ignorance of the two compartments of
the Kingdom - a heavenly, for ‘the bodies celestial’
(1 Cor. 15: 40) of the
risen, in the Holy City overhanging earth, and an earthly, for ‘bodies terrestrial’ on the earth itself, where men are
still in the flesh. Paul prayed to be
preserved unto the heavenly Kingdom (2 Tim. 4: 18)* - [D. M. Panton,] -
Ed.]
* “Mr. Mauro is right in protesting, as we ourselves have done, against an
extreme dispensationalism in which, while justly repudiating the Law of Moses
in the day of grace, stretches that Law so as to cover all the New Testament
except four short Letters, thus robbing the Church of all but the entire Book
of Grace: on the other hand, the man clever enough to make the Bible coherent
without dispensational truth (the four epochs of conscience, law, grace, and
righteousness) has never been born.” - [D. M. Panton.]
*
* * *
* * *
206
LOVE AND
MARTYRDOM
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The smiting of the Shepherd was to be the signal not
only of the momentary scattering of the sheep, but of the birth of persecution
down all the Christian ages. So our Lord,
who was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and “was moved with compassion
because they were distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd” (Matt. 9: 36), quotes
the great prophecy of Zechariah (13: 7) - “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd” - on the threshold of Gethsemane;
and couples with the quotation His own absolute prophecy of the coming fall of
all the Apostles:- “All ye
shall be offended in me this night” (Matt. 26: 31).
Christian persecution was born that night.
PERSECUTION
Simultaneously,
our Lord, as recorded in Luke, discloses the deeply buried reason of all
persecution, and at once singles out the one character whose career was to be
the Church’s lesson in persecution for all time. He says:- “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have
you [apostles]” - and it has been
granted to him - “that he might SIFT YOU AS WHEAT” (Luke 22: 31.)
Persecution is deliberately sanctioned by God, in order that Satan,
acting as a winnowing-fan, may so shake the wheat in the sieve as to separate
ripe grain from chaffy grain; and our Lord puts Peter on record as for ever the
embodiment of a sifted soul. A chief
apostle; a [regenerate] believer in prophesied calamity; passionately set on distinguishing himself in the coming
crisis;* struck
by the storm; a public apostate; a glorious martyr.
[* Compare this
with that which is yet prophesied to come (Ezek.
38: 14- 39: 21-24, R.V.).]
SELF-CONFIDENCE
First,
therefore, Peter embodies for all time the colossal blunder of self-confidence,
in an extraordinary revelation for us all,
for we are all potential Peters. He replies “Even if I must die
with thee, yet will I not deny thee” (Matt. 24: 33). The Lord says:- “I
tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until
thou shalt THRICE DENY THAT THOU KNOWEST
ME” (Luke 22: 34): before this day has gone, you will publicly,
deliberately, have become a triple
apostate. Peter is without question
a sample of myriads of [regenerate] believers down the Christian centuries: no higher Apostle
existed in the morning a public, self-confessed apostate before the cock crew.
MARTYRDOM
But
LOVE
Now
we get our golden lesson. Our Lord,
embodying in Peter a concrete case for the Church
of all time, by his three piercing, probing questions not only
discloses the antidote to the threefold denial, but reveals that which alone
can carry us through martyrdom. He plugs
home this one question - “LOVEST THOU ME?” - three times to find what rank we give to His love;
for all your collapse, Peter, arose from a lack of sufficient love for your
Saviour; and it is love, and love alone, which will carry us through. “Lovest thou me?” The Lord does
not ask, “Simon, how much hast
thou wept,
or how bitterly” or, “How much hast thou fasted, or afflicted thy soul?” but, what exactly is the depth of your love for your
Lord? The lesson for us is beyond
rubies. Not mastery of theology, not a
passion for reward, not a hatred of sin, not evangelistic or missionary
fervour, not love for our fellow-believers - not in these, lovely as they are,
is the root of martyrdom: the master-anchor of the martyred soul is a deep, personal love for Christ.*
*
It is extremely valuable that our Lord
Himself has defined who it is that loves Him:- “He that
hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is
that lovest me” (John 14: 21). This discloses the gravity of the teaching
that Christ’s commandments, in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, are ‘Jewish’ and not for us at all.
SUPREME LOVE
The
first of our Lord’s three questions is acutely important. “Lovest thou me MORE
THAN THESE?” Do you so love Me that you can follow Me alone? Can you sacrifice all other love for mine? “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than
me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10: 37). Strong
men, mature believers, can tremble and grow white when confronted with a choice
between some shibboleth of their group and Scripture - that is, Christ. So Paul had exactly our Lord’s experience: of
Christ we read - “They all forsook him and fled”
(Mark 15: 50);
and of Paul, just before his martyrdom - “All forsook me”
(2 Tim. 4:
16).
There is not an ecclesiastical group in the world to-day, whether Roman
or Greek or Protestant, to break - or be broken - from which for conscience
sake is not one of the sorest trials a child of God can experience. Simon, lovest thou me more than these, the nearest and dearest you have on earth?
THE ANSWER
So
now we have the deeply sanctified character emerging out of persecution. What a profoundly different Peter we behold! Before his fall, it was a proud confidence - “If all shall be offended in
thee, I shall never be offended”: now it is a heart-cry - “Lord, thou knowest all things” - I cannot hide my heart from Thee even if I would, and I rely on Thy
omniscience rather than on my own feelings - “Thou knowest that I love thee.” He
is silent on everything now, except his love.
Christ can forgive us sins for
which we can never forgive ourselves.
The Lord is so perfectly contented with the answer, He so completely
admits the appeal to His omniscience, that, without the giving assent by a
word, He draws the veil from the only martyrdom ever revealed years, nay,
decades, beforehand;* and so
deeply has He forgiven Peter, so dearly does He love him, so thoroughly does He
now trust him, that He gives into his hands the greatest treasure God has on
earth, “the flock
of God which he purchased with his own blood”.
* Peter was
crucified in A.D. 64.
FOLLOW ME
So
now we reach the final staggering word:- “FOLLOW ME.” What a religion is ours! Christ lifts up a cross before Peter’s eyes,
and says, Follow me, and Peter
follows him. Who then is
this that gives such commands? A phrase which the Lord omitted to quote
answers:- “Awake,
O sword, against my
shepherd, and against THE MAN THAT IS MY FELLOW, saith the
Lord of hosts” (Zech. 13: 7).* Peter was
right when he said:- “Lord, thou knowest all things”: for Christ had known that before a cock crew the
apostle would deny Him thrice; and He knew, thirty years before it happened,
Peter’s martyrdom by an extremely rare death.
Follow Me for thirty years more of golden service: follow Me in the
production of letters which shall enrich the Church for nearly two thousand
years: follow Me up the Hill of Golgotha: follow Me into the only class which, as such, is distinguished in the Kingdom (Rev. 20: 4) - the martyrs. The love of
Christ triumphs over every conceivable difficulty. Samuel
Rutherford, writing from prison in
*
“Jewish
commentators themselves have admitted that the word amithi (‘my fellow’) implies equality
with God; only, since they own not Him who was God and Man, they must interpret
it of a false claim on the part of man, overlooking that it is God
Himself who thus speaks of the Shepherd of His text” (David Baron).
-------
LOVE
Camest Thou far, my Beloved,
To seek for Thine own?
From Heaven’s high wonder
and glory
I travell’d
alone.
From height that thine eye
ne’er beholdeth,
Past planet and star,
Down distances
measureless, shining:
Yea, I came far.
Didst Thou leave much, O
Beloved,
In coming for me?
My Home in the love of My
Father
I gave up for thee.
For aye through the song
and the music
My heart heard thy call:
I gave up My freedom, My
glory,
Yea, I left all.
Didst Thou bear much, my
Beloved,
That I might be free ?
The thorn-crown, the
mocking, the scourging,
The death on the tree;
The wrath of God - ah!
this sorrow
That thought cannot touch
-
I died
from the stroke of His anger:
Yea, I
bore much.
Didst Thou love long, O
Beloved,
With heart that sought me?
Long ages e’er worlds were created
My heart yearn’d for thee.
E’er ever the rapturous angels
Fill’d heaven with song,
For thee My heart panted
and thirsted
Yea, I loved long.
-------
LOVEST THOU ME MORE THAN THESE?
Late
in life John Ruskin fell deeply in love.
He wrote Sesame and Lilies, a book that has widely influenced
young womanhood, to please the girl he loved.
That girl, though loving him tenderly, refused him because of his
rejection of definite Christian truth, and it cost her her
life. She sank under it, and three years
after she lay dying. Ruskin begged to be allowed to see her. She sent to ask whether he loved God better
than he loved her; and on his answering ‘no,’
her door was closed against him for ever.
Ruskin never recovered from the blow. But one of his biographers says:-
“The work she might never have done in life was
accomplished through the strength of her sacrifice. His lost love led him at last to faith in God
and the world to come.”
*
* * *
* * *
*
207
THE SERVANTS
OF CHRIST AND
THEIR
RESPONSIBILITY
By SIEGFRIED GOEBEL*
*Translated
from the German by Prof. Banks.
-------
The narrative (Luke 19:
11-27)
itself speaks of the setting up of a kingly rule, which, however, was preceded
by a journey into a far country, and a consequent
prolonged absence of the future king, during which the fidelity of his servants
is to be proved on the one hand, and the hate of his fellow-citizens will be
revealed on the other. We may here then
assume as undoubted, that by this journey of the nobleman Jesus means to
represent His own approaching departure from the world, and by his return His own
coming again in royal power and glory; and further, that by the nobleman’s
servants left behind He would have His own disciples understood, and by his
fellow-citizens, His own fellow-countrymen, the citizens of Israel.
From
that retirement of their Lord arises for the disciples of Jesus, as for the
servants of the nobleman, an intermediate period, during which they will be
without His visible presence, and must wait for His coming. But the period is not given them for idle waiting.
It is of the most critical importance for themselves, because it is appointed them as a test-time, on the
use of which their own participation in the
“Like as (it
is with the Parousia of the Son of Man as if) a man, about to journey into another country, called his oun servants,
and delivered unto them his goods” (Matt. 25: 14). [ … This] is
not necessarily the entire property of every kind, and in every place belonging
to the householder, but is limited by the context to the property he [the
servant]
had in his possession, and under his personal management in his residence so
far. Being now about to take a journey,
he is obliged to hand over this property of his, which he is unable personally
to manage as before, to other faithful hands during the time of his
absence. He therefore calls, not strange
labourers, but his own servants, belonging to him as his servants; and as their
master, since he may expect that they will regard his interest as their own, entrusts to them and their hands the
property he leaves behind.
In the investigation on his return, the householder
first bestows his praise on the faithful servant, and then promises him his
reward, so that the words […‘maketh a reckoning with them’] belong not so much to the preceding eulogy, as to the
following promise of reward, giving its reason, therefore: “well done, thou good and faithful servant! Over a little thou wast faithful, over much will I set thee” (Matt. 25: 23). He calls him a good and faithful servant: “good” not in the general moral sense,
but in his character as servant, therefore a true servant; and since he has
especially proved himself such by his fidelity, which is the most prominent
virtue of a good servant, the specific “faithful”
is combined with the general term “good.” The promise of reward is to the effect, that
because he has been faithful over a little, he will set him over just as a servant who has proved his
fidelity, in the small is trusted with the great. Thus, the comparatively large sum delivered
to this servant was but little in comparison with the wealth of goods (money is
no longer specially thought of) over which he is now to be set, set as
controller, so that he may now deal with them just as independently, despite
the householder’s presence, as with the sum of money during the master’s
absence. But this, of course, supposes
that from the mere position of servant, which he has hitherto held, he is
raised to the position of a friend of his master, sharing his full confidence,
and taking part in his authority. Hence,
to the promise of reward, a saying is added, expressive of this elevation:- “Enter into the joy of thy
lord,” i.e., into the state of joy
accruing to him in his character as lord, and in virtue of his authority, so
that the servant will have part and lot in his master’s state.
But
great and glorious as is this reward, so heavy, on the other hand, is the punishment that will be inflicted
on those who let the word entrusted to them lie dead and useless. For not merely will the Lord leave to the
faithful the rich product of their earthly labour even in the future Kingdom of
God as their crown of rejoicing, their glory and joy (1
Thess. 2: 10), but He will also over and above reckon to
their glory what He takes from the indolent.
By exposing the false glory of the latter, as though they had done their
duty by merely preserving that which was entrusted to them, and taking that
glory from them along with the trust that was theirs, He will still further augment to the faithful
the glory and joy which is the result of their faithful labour, so that they
will become just as much richer as the others became poorer.
And
to the retribution decreed is added the positive punishment which the
householder orders to be inflicted on the profitless servant (ver. 30): “and the useless servant cast forth into the darkness without” (outside
the bright festive rooms). Although,
therefore, no festal celebration of the householder’s return was expressly
mentioned in the narrative before, since the “joy of the lord” (verses 21, 23) cannot be referred to such a feast merely,
still the thought of such a celebration so natural and common in other
parables, really floats before the narrator’s mind. And whereas the first two servants’ entrance
into the joy of their lord evidently includes participation in this festal joy,
so the idle servant is to be expelled
from the bright rooms of his master’s household. This doom, then, forms in fact the contrast
to the eulogistic word to the first two servants: “Enter into the joy of thy
lord.” Christ, in the hour of His coming, besides
depriving every idle, unfaithful servant of what was entrusted to him, will also inflict
on him the penalty of exclusion from His Kingdom: what Luke says of the
punishment of the servant already implies that he has no share in the kingdom
of his lord, and therefore that he who
is like him will have no share in the
Kingdom of Christ.
And
if the hour of Christ’s second advent will be an hour of reckoning even for His
disciples, how much more will it be an hour of judgment for His enemies! The citizens of Israel, who hated Jesus,
although He lived and worked among them as His countrymen, and who were
impelled by their hatred for Him to resistance against the counsel and will of
the most high God - what can they be to the Messiah returning from heaven but
enemies, and what other fate can the erection of the Messiah’s kingdom bring
them than that of rebels, on whom a victorious king takes righteous
vengeance? Although members of the
chosen nation to which Christ Himself belonged, who as such would have been
called in the first rank to enjoy the blessings of the Messianic Kingdom, the manifested Messiah at the setting up of
His Kingdom will call them before His tribunal as His foes, and forthwith inflict on them the
punishment due to hardened rebels against His divinely ordained eternal
kingship - the punishment of condemnation to the eternal death, of whose
pain and terrors even the slaying of the rebels in the parable is but a feeble
image. When it is said that such an
image is unlike the mind of Jesus, this is simply an a priori assertion easily
refuted by the numerous passages in which Jesus speaks of the punishment of
damnation with no less menacing solemnity, and no less terrible images. That nothing can be meant by the extreme
penalty inflicted on the rebels in the parable but the condemnation to eternal
death, ought not to have been called in question, considering the clearness and
distinctness with which the parable distinguishes the period of the second
advent as one of reckoning and judgment, from the intermediate period preceding
it as the time of the Lord’s absence in the heavenly world, designed to leave
scope to His friends and foes to manifest their love and hate.
-------
CONTACT AND
POWER
A
loaded tram, crowded to the doors in the dinner hour, moves easily, and with
enormous power; a power not in itself at all, but (it may be) miles away, in
the power-house; not merely automatically laid on, but controlled by a man who
can shut it off at any moment: nevertheless, pull down the electric pole, and
there is an instant stop: the power controls the tram; but the tram controls the contact. All
my power is from God; but all my power depends on contact with God [“and hereby we know that he
abideth in us by the Spirit which he gave us” (1 John. 3: 24, R.V.)]:
God controls the power; [but I, by keeping “his
commandments,”] -
control
the contact.*
[* See
also Acts 5: 32,
R.V. cf.
Acts 20: 30.
cf.
1 Pet. 1:
22; 2: 17; 1 John 3: 7, R.V.).]
-------
WHY I CHANGED MY VIEW
BY REV. CHAS. E. SCOTT, D.D.,
American
Presbyterian
[“In view of Dr. James Black’s strictures on Second Advent
truth in the Edinburgh Record, this frank and temperate statement from a distinguished
Presbyterian missionary will be read with interest” [D. M.
Panton] - Ed.]
I
greatly regret that all my life long I never heard any reverent, measured,
scholarly presentation of the subject of the premillennial coming of
Christ. With some chagrin I acknowledge
that I never had looked into the matter from the Biblical standpoint previous
to the war; but, interestingly enough, through my historical studies pursued in
graduate work at Princeton, Pennsylvania and Munich Universities, and privately
since then, I have been gradually coming to feel that the present dispensation
is not the kind that God can approve of, because it is not in any real sense
carrying out His law.
The
history of governments and races, both prominent and humble; the rule of might
which has everywhere prevailed; the shameful, opportunist, sub-rosa diplomacy
in the dealings of nations with each other; the unjust conditions generally
obtaining in the world, together with the inability to solve the most burning of social questions -
like the white slave and drink
traffics - all these, with many other vital considerations, have gradually been
strengthening my mind and faith to
take hold of the statements of Christ in the twenty-fourth
chapter of Matthew.
Not
the least of considerations contributing to the change of my eschatological
views has been the well-nigh universal unbiblical teaching of
the Scripture, perverting the fundamentals, by the professed and specially trained
teachers of religion in colleges and universities of the most civilized nations. It
certainly cannot be pleasing to God or characteristic of the reign of Christ
that everywhere this apostasy, of “falling
away” as Paul calls it, should be taking place; in which men of set
purpose are rejecting the deity of Christ and redemption through His atoning
blood.
In
the twenty forth chapter of Matthew, Christ answers the questions: “What shall be the end of this age and the sign of thy coming?” And this age, as Christ describes it, under
the domination of Satan, has been characterized by just what He stated would be
its earmarks - wars and internal conflicts, famines, pestilences, persecutions,
false Christs and leaders without knowledge of the Scriptures. A careful student of world history, aside
from the revelation of the Holy Spirit, would be forced, out of the unvarying
experiences of that history (which is the apotheosis of ambition, fraud and
force), to believe that there is no hope that this age will prepare itself for
the coming of Christ, though the doctrine of general preparation for Him
previous to His appearing is so commonly preached. It is like a man trying to lift himself by
his bootstraps.
The
fainting in faith of a number of dear friends over the outbreak of this war
started me on the study of the prophecies as to the “course
of this world.” Then it began to dawn on me that the only key that would
unlock Scripture and Scripture eschatology, and the key that presented the
least difficulties of my mind and that made plainer than any other the manner
of the fulfilment of the prophecies was the viewpoint and attitude toward
Scripture which is implied in the word “premillenarian.” As I now see it, the only plan whereby this
world can become a “good world,” the only way for a just rule on the earth and for righteousness to
prevail, is for Christ to come and reign, literally reign, as the prophecies assert. The New Testament makes plain that before
that reign can take place the “times of the Gentiles” must come to an end, “as a thief,” “as lightning” (Matthew 24) - in catastrophe,
cataclysmically.
*
* * *
* * *
208
REVIVAL SOON
- FOR US,
FOR
By A. G. TINLEY
REVIVAL is access
to, and accession of, new life, new power, hope and cheer. A breath of fresh air, a ray of sunshine, a
cool soft shower or dew; a tonic, a blood transfusion, electric radiation;
great leadership, good news, and love: can all revive us, give us new courage
and spirit, put new life into us; they quicken, restore us, lift us up, inspire
us.
All
these are symbols (if not samples) of the Spirit and life of God. Life is from God, its source and
fountainhead. His Throne is the spring
of the Force of the universe. With its
lightnings and thunder, its sun, wind, rain and hail, its voices - legislative
decrees for creation, control, or destruction - the Divine Throne is the
storm-centre of eternal Energy. This may
be cyclonic and cyclic, for ever whirling and returning as in the body’s
metabolism, and in external nature’s condensation and evaporation. Psalm 97
and Rev. 4
(with their marginal references) give us pictures of explosive atomic power and
hierarchies of responsive personality - seven spirits, four living creatures,
twenty-four principalities, one hundred million angels (which are holy
spirits): countless agents and agencies doing His pleasure in all places of His
dominion.
Out
of God and from God are all things (Rom. 11: 36; Col. 1: 16-17): the
host of heaven by the breath of His mouth; all atoms of matter with their
electronic origin; Divinely - inbreathed humanity - His offspring, if not yet His children and His sons - which may
be either electrified as David or electrocuted as Uzzah
by the God of the spirits of all flesh.
God’s Spirit garnishes and maintains the heavens (Job. 26: 13; Zech. 12: 1); it annually
renews the face of the earth with her flowery, finny, furred and feathered
denizens; and it partially and periodically revives mankind, as in Pentecost (Ps. 104: 30; Isa.
42: 5),
when men and women are filled with Holy Spirit.
Now
revival is shortly returning to the
Upon
And
upon veiled, confused, oppressed humanity at large God’s Spirit shall be
showered - poured out upon all flesh in a world-wide Pentecost before the great and
terrible day of the Lord (Joel 2: 28, 31). Myriads out of Jewry and the Gentiles will
undoubtedly be drawn and driven into the Church, but there will also be
blessing for the nations of mankind as such: God’s two deathless witnesses -
almost certainly Enoch and Elijah, for so the early Christians deemed (Zech. 4 : 12; Rev. 11: 2-12, 19), are to
reappear as Spirit-filled olive trees - sons of oil - to feed with light and
power, weal or woe, many now in darkness, depression and despair. They will, for 1,260 days, expose, defy and
check in
May
we, in the midst of gloom, be expectant of sunshine and blessing; if possible,
its active instruments, its effectual channels; yea, through prayer, its
precipating cause. May we stand in God’s
Presence, and be shown the path of life, and the way to fulness, of joy; till,
received up to Glory, we are “changed,”
spirit-filled, angel-equal, manifested sons of God.
-------
THE ADVENT
When
the teaching of the return of Christ (before the Millennium) began to spread,
it was the privilege of the writer to hear and accept the truth. It certainly was the message of the
hour. There was, however, a note
lacking. The lacking note was the imperative demand for holiness of heart
and life as a necessary qualification for this supreme event. Little or nothing was said upon this subject
by these first messengers. The fact of the return of Christ, imminent and
certain, was all the people were prepared for; and even this was resented by a
vast majority of those who heard it. So
unpopular was this message that it
could only be propagated through faith and self-sacrifice. Indeed, we remember instances when those who
preached it were not only ostracised, but “shamefully
entreated.” Little by little,
however, the truth prevailed, until a few outstanding ministers began to preach
it boldly. Now, for the past twenty-five
or thirty years, the evangelists and Bible teachers who specialize in this
doctrine receive large emoluments and favourable notoriety instead of abuse.
Having been taught this truth from childhood, among
people who knew nothing of sanctification, the writer naturally wondered what
would become of their unsanctities as these saints were “caught up.” We
cannot help feeling that the preaching of the Second Coming of Christ, as it
was preached fifty years ago, has lost its power of conviction, and has become
largely a matter of entertainment. We
have arrived at this definite conclusion: that it is no longer “the message of the hour,” and that the preachers who
proclaim the near coming of Christ, and fail at the same time to stress the
necessity of sanctification, are
deceiving their hearers, and rocking them to sleep in a cradle of
self-indulgence and sin. - W. T. MAcARTHUR.
*
* * *
* * *
209
FIRSTFRUITS
AND HARVEST
By G. H. LANG
The removal of the Man-child cannot be the event
foretold in 1 Thess.
4: 15-17, for those there in view will be taken up only
as far as to the air around the earth when the Lord descends thereto from heaven,
but this removal takes the Man-child to the throne of God, which is where
Christ now is, in the upper heavens, which fulfils the promise that such as
prevail to escape shall “stand before the Son of man”.
As
we have seen, the Lord does not descend from heaven till the close of the Great
Tribulation, not before Satan is cast down.
Moreover, this one child can be only a part of the whole family, not the
completed church in view in 1 Thess.
4.*
and 1 Cor. 15. The “woman” out of whom he is born remains on earth, and after
His ascent the “rest
of her seed” are persecuted by the
Beast; but his removal is before the Beast is even on the scene or Satan is
cast out of heaven. Thus those who will
form this company escape all things that will occur in the End-times, as Christ
promised; and the identification with the overcomers declares that they had
lived that watchful, prayerful, victorious life, upon which, as the Lord said,
that escape will depend.
* In 1 Thess. 4: 15, 17 the word … “that are
left”, deserves notice. It is not
found elsewhere in the New Testament, but its force may be seen in the LXX of Amos 5: 15. It means, to be left after others are gone.
In this place it seems redundant save on our view that the rapture there
in question is at the close of the Tribulation and that some saints will not have been left on earth until that event, but will
have been removed alive earlier, for to have marked the contrast with those
that had died it would have been enough to have said, “we
that are alive”, without twice repeating this unusual word.
Consequent
upon this removal of the watchful,
Satan is cast out of heaven, and presently brings up the Beast, who persecutes
the rest of the woman’s family (12: 17, 8; 13: 7-10). So
that one section of the family escapes the End-times by being rapt to heaven,
and the rest, the more numerous portion, as the term indicates, go into the
Great Tribulation. These latter are such
as “keep the
commandments of God and hold the testimony
of Jesus” (verse 17). In 14: 12, such
are termed “the
saints”, which in New Testament
times was the term regularly used by Christians of one another; and among their
number John had already included himself (1:
2, 9). It covers therefore the
The
second picture of this pre-Tribulation rapture is given in Rev. 14. In this chapter there are six scenes:-
(1) “Firstfruits” with the Lamb on the
(2) The
hour of judgment commences (6, 7).
(3) “
(4) The
Beast period is present and persecution is in progress (9-13).
(5) The Son
of Man on a white cloud reaps His “harvest” (14-16).
(6) The “vintage” of the earth is gathered, and is trodden in the winepress
on earth (17-20).
The
agricultural figure wrought into this chapter by the Holy Spirit is the key to
its teaching. In the early summer the
Jew was to gather a sheaf of corn as soon as enough was ripe, and this was to
be presented to God in the temple at
Thus
the “firstfruits” are shown as on
The
last scene is the destruction of the Beast by the Lord at His descent to
The
Firstfruits cannot be a picture
of the whole of the redeemed as they will finally appear at the end of the
drama of those days, for firstfruits
cannot be more than a
portion of the whole harvest,
neither can firstfruits describe the final ingathering. It was a contradiction to speak thus. Firstfruits must be gathered first, before
the reaping of the remainder. The number
144,000 need not be taken literally. In
the Apocalypse numbers are sometimes literal, but sometimes figurative.
As
has been noted above, these had been purchased out of the earth, which shows
that they were not then on earth, and they learn the song of the heavenly
choir. Nor can this
The
144,000 of chapter 7. are a different
company. They are the godly remnant of
Israel seen on earth after the Appearing and the gathering of the elect to the
clouds, and are sealed (comp. Ezek. 9) so as to be untouched by the wrath of the Lamb
now to be poured upon the godless (Zeph.
2: 3; Isa. 26: 20, 21).
The
identity of these Firstfruits is revealed by a similar means to that which
reveals the identity of the Man-child.
These persons are shown as connected with the Father, the Lamb, and the
Mount Zion, which also refers back to the promises to the overcomers, and shows
that the Firstfruits will be a portion of the company of the victors, who, it
is promised, will be marked as connected with the Father, the Son, and the New
Jerusalem (Rev. 3:
12).
These three marks of identification come together in these two passages
only. Now the moral features attributed to
these Firstfruits show that they had lived just that pure, faithful, Christian
life which necessarily results from watchfulness, prayerfulness, and patient obedience to the words of Christ, as inculcated in the corresponding passages
quoted.
As
the Man-child and the rest of the woman’s seed were but one family, only
removed in two portions, one before the Beast and the other after his
persecutions, so firstfruits and harvest were grown from one sowing in one
field, only they were reaped in two portions, one before the hour of judgment,
and the other after the Beast had persecuted.
We have remarked above that these latter are termed “saints”, and this
was the regular title that Christians gave to one another; that it is amplified
by the double description “they that keep the commandments
of God and the faith of Jesus”,
and that in this description John had before twice included himself; so that
the terms mean that company in which John had membership, the Church of
God. Moreover, as the Jewish remnant will
not have owned Jesus during the period in view, the terms can apply only to [regenerate] Christians.
Finally,
as between the gathering of the sheaf of firstfruits and the ingathering of the
harvest, there came the intensest summer heat, so between the removal of the
Firstfruits and the reaping of the Harvest, there is placed (verses 9-13)
the Great Tribulation, that final persecution which while, like all
persecution, it will wither the unrooted stalk (Matt.
13: 21)
ripens the matured grain. It is ripeness,
not the calendar or the clock, that determines the time of reaping (Mark 4: 29). The
Heavenly Husbandman reaps no unripe grain: hence “the hour to reap is come” when the harvest is “dried up” (Rev. 14:
1, 5),
for the dryness of the kernel in the husk is its fitness for the garner and for
use. Thus the Great Tribulation will be
a true mercy to the Lord’s people by fully developing and sanctifying them for
their heavenly destiny and glory.
It
thus appears that the foretold order of events will be:-
1. The removal of such as prevail to escape the Times of the End. These will be taken up to God and to His
throne on the
2. The Beast arises and persecutes.
3. The Lord descends to the clouds and gathers together His elect (Matt. 24: 29-31; 1 Cor. 15: 51, 52; 1 Thess. 4: 15-17; Tit. 2: 13; Rev. 14: 14-16). At
this time there will be the first resurrection.
Each who shall be accounted
worthy of the coming age will “arise into his lot at the end of the days”, not sooner, certainly not before the
End days have commenced (Dan. 12: 13). Nor may we assume of the Firstfruits that
they will have priority in the Kingdom over equally faithful saints of earlier
times.
4. After an interval the Lord descends to the
It
is therefore our wisdom to give earnest, unremitting attention to our Lord’s most
solemn exhortation “take heed to yourselves, lest
haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness (that is, fleshly indulgence), and cares of this life (that is, its burdens through either poverty or
riches), and that day come on
you suddenly as a snare : for so shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of
all the earth. But watch ye at every season, making
supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all
these things that shall come to pass, and to
stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21: 34-36).
Oh, dare and suffer all things
Yet but a stretch of road,
Then wondrous words of welcome;
And then - the FACE
OF GOD!
-------
NERO
REDIVIVUS*
By Professor
H. MAURICE RELTON
* “This extract from the ‘
Nero,
as we know, died by his own hand in an obscure house on the outskirts of
Towards
the end of the century, when it was no longer probable that Nero was alive, the
expectation of his return was from the underworld. In
Book
VIII of the Sibylline oracles, he has
become a ghostly, supernatural figure, and is described as a wild monster, leaving
behind him a dark track of blood.
So
it is suggested that in this legend of Nero redivivus we may find the explanation of the “wounded
head” of Rev. 13: 3 and of “the beast that was, and is not, and shall come”, of Rev. 13: 3. More and more as the prophecy in 13: 11
proceeds, the head with the wound and the beast himself, Nero redivivus and the Roman imperium, are
identified. In Nero redivivus the writer sees the whole power and
horror of the empire concentrated. The
priests of this Caesar-god make every effort to spread the imperial cult and to
force men to offer worship to his
image.
A
not unlikely interpretation of the number of the Beast, 666, is that which sees
in it the sum of the numbers expressed by the letters of the name and title of
Nero in Hebrew. Irenaeus records, though he rejects, a varied reading, 616. This is given by dropping the N in Neron. The whole thing would thus be a cryptogram
for the name and title of the Emperor in Hebrew letters (Neron Kesar.)
Taking, then, the interpretation as both historical and typical, we have
in Nero and in Nero redivivus that which was and is and is to
come. We have the embodiment of the
world-spirit persecuting the Church and a prophecy of its reappearance in
history.
We
look out upon the world to-day and note an assembling of a world conference at
Are
we witnessing the re-incarnation, in a modern Nero redivivus, of that spirit of secularism and
humanism which inevitably must take an anti-Christian form once its true
character is revealed? Are we in our day
and generation to witness a concentrated mobilization of the powers of secular
States against the Christian Ecclesia?
Must Christians once again hide in the catacombs and flee the cities as
a persecuted sect in a hostile world?
The problem as it presented itself to the seer on the island of Patmos
was this: What chance had the Church against this all-devouring and persecuting
world-spirit, this great beast sprawling over the earth and shedding the blood
of the saints? If Antichrist were once
embodied in a Nero or a Domitian, the future may yet witness
his incarnation in an even more hideous form.
-------
‘In the world of the soul
there are sometimes shadows when there are no clouds’ - FABER.
*
* * *
* * *
210
THE THREE
APPEARANCES
OF CHRIST
By D. M. PANTON
The whole work of the redemption of all the worlds -
for heaven is cleansed as well as earth - is compressed into three ‘appearances’ of Christ. For redemption was pictured ages earlier by
the triple action of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. Outside the
So
the climax of all history, and the crisis of the worlds, begins with the Lord’s
first appearance. “Now once for all at the end
of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin, by the sacrifice of
himself” (Heb.
9: 26). The Christian dispensation is the closing
epoch before judgment; and the blazing portal of that dispensation is
How then was sin abolished? Not by Christ’s teaching; not by His example;
but “by the sacrifice of HIMSELF; having been once for all offered to
bear the sins of many.” This alone accounts for the cessation of all sacrifice
for two thousand years. Jesus came to abolish sin:
if the ransom was not all paid at once, so that some of it remains to be paid;
if the punishment was only partially borne, so that some of the penalty yet
remains to be borne; if the sacrifice - like the High Priest’s annual offering
- was ineffective or partial, and so did not really remove the sin:- then the offering must be repeated. But, on the contrary, if a debt has been
discharged in full, fresh payment is absurd: if all sin has been
expiated, it is impossible to expiate it again;- earth can see no second
Gethsemane, no second
So
God solved the one mighty, central problem of the universe - the abolition of
sin - by Christ’s first appearance: He now applies this solution first to Heaven. The Lord’s second appearance, therefore, is
in Heaven. “Christ entered into
heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God.” The word here
used - an unveiled, face to face, reciprocal gaze - was never used, because it
could not, in the Old Testament: the High Priest was designedly veiled by the
incense, Jehovah was designedly veiled in the cloud on the Mercy Seat: so that
which satisfies the face of God in unhindered communion may surely satisfy us -
the Sacrifice for a world’s sin. God
only can represent God; man only can represent man; and both meet in the
Mediator on high. So the immense practical results of
The
function of this second appearance, as it relates to us, and covering an
intervening epoch of two thousand years, is given in one pregnant phrase:- “to appear before the face of
God FOR us” - that is, on our behalf, to stand on our side, to
take our part. Two main functions of the
High Priest are embodied here; and (1)
the first is the swinging of the golden censer of incense - that is,
intercession (Lev. 16:
12).
It is almost startling to hear the truth:- “If any [of us] sin, we
have an advocate with the Father”
(1 John 2: 1):
if I sin, the eye, the thought, the solicitude of the Lord Jesus are fixed on
me, and His overpowering influence with God is expressed in words: whether we wake
or sleep, His intercessions ascend for us, and He may even be asking for us the
contrary to what we are asking for ourselves.
The second great function of the High Priest inside the
*
For the Blood is in Heaven. Centuries earlier the prophecy was,- “Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption”
(Ps. 16: 10): no corruption therefore could, or did, touch
the Sacred Body, including the blood. Moreover,
the Lord’s blood is explicitly stated to be incorruptible, “Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, but with precious blood”
(1 Pet. 1:
18); and, as explicitly, in a list in which
every item is a concrete reality, the blood is stated to be now in the
heavenlies (Heb. 12:
24).
So the Revised Version brings out, in a direct statement, our High
Priest’s entry into the Holiest with the blood:- “who
brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with
the
blood”(Heb. 13: 20).
So
now is unfolded the third and final appearance of Messiah Christ. The High Priest, having completed the
presentment of the blood, changed his robes; and having put off his sacrificial
garments, vested himself in his ‘robes of glory and beauty,’ and issued out of the Temple to the waiting
people. “So Christ also shall appear” - be visibly seen, conspicuously manifest Himself “a second time, apart from sin, to them that
wait for him, unto salvation”: salvation wrought,
salvation presented, now [a future] salvation
accomplished and practically applied. It is only the second time that He will appear in two
thousand years: therefore the Second Advent is not like the appearance to Paul
on the way to Damascus, or to John in Patmos; but an exact repetition, in a
physical, bodily coming, of the First: thus completely overthrowing the common
contention that the Second Advent is our Lord coming to us at death or in a sudden
emergency.*
But it is a coming “apart
from sin,” not bearing its burden, but bringing its discharge;
not to bear guilt, but to judge it; and so to sweep it out of God’s righteous
universe for ever.
* Nor is it possible to miss the significance of one phrase. The constant emphasis in current teaching is
that our Lord comes “for His Church”: the
inspired statement is that “He shall appear to them
that wait for him.” That the majority of
believers are not waiting for the
Second Advent is a truism impossible of denial, for they themselves are the
first to assert it. Govett’s translation
is remarkable:- “He shall be seen by those who are
expecting him to save them.”
Ultimately every eye will see Him, but His first appearance is to the
watchful, rapt at the opening of the Parousia in the heavens.
So
therefore the function of the third appearance is remarkably expressed and
curtailed:- “to
them that wait for him, UNTO SALVATION.” It has yet to be proved that
the whole universe is fundamentally righteous; and nothing less than the
personal presence of the Lord, returned to earth, can cure the radical
disorganization caused by sin, as He returns backed with all the authority of
what He has wrought. Heaven is first
emptied of the Satanic hosts as He descends, for heaven is blood-cleansed; the cursed soil of earth, blood-cleansed, displaces the thorn by the fig-tree, the desert by the garden,
and the fury of the wild beasts disappears; nations, snarling and fighting
like so many wild beasts, are
replaced by nations completely regenerated, because blood-cleansed; Israel,
on the edge of being annihilated,
becomes, blood-cleansed, the Royal Nation; and the [previously rapt (Lk. 21: 34-36; Rev. 3: 10.)] saints who return
with the Lord, blood-cleansed both in standing and walk (Rev. 7: 14), are re-bodied, sinless,
enthroned.
For lo, the days are hast’ning
on
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the Age of Gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Her ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
*
* * *
* * *
211
THE TEARS OF
JESUS
By LETTICE KING
Those two words in
John 2: 35,
“Jesus wept,” are among the most precious in all the record of our
Saviour’s life on earth. Just why did He
weep? we sometimes ask musingly, when in reading the story we are arrested by
the brief verse. Was it the passionate
grief of the broken-hearted sisters that broke up the fountains of the great
deep of that tender heart, and made Him “groan within himself” as He approached the grave? Or,
was He unbearably oppressed by the universality of such grief - a grief ever to
be afresh endured by bereaved men and women down through all the generations?
Whether
one or both these emotions caused the burning drops to fall from the eyes of
Jesus, the very fact of our Saviour’s yielding so far to the pressure of mental
suffering as to weep is inexpressibly comforting. Passionate weeping under
stress of heavy sorrow is sometimes mistakenly supposed to mean a lack of
submission to God’s will, but it is by no means necessarily so. The flood of irrepressible tears that
relieved the heart of our blessed Lord furnishes a sweet precedent for tears
wrung from our own eyes by the inner surges of grief. “Jesus wept;” we too, then, when our beloved are torn from us by death, may freely
weep, weep as Abraham wept for Sarah, Jacob for Rachael, David for his little
son. Stoicism is not demanded of the
Christian. To be sure, to weaken one’s
frame with continuous and immoderate weeping would be wrong; the point needs no
stressing; but short of this, let us never chide, however gently, nor tease
with premature attempts at comfort, the stricken soul dissolved in tears.
The
further fact that it was not for the loss of His friend that He wept, lends
additional sweetness to our Saviour’s tears.
In a few brief minutes, the ringing command, “Lazarus, come forth!” would restore life to the dead man. No, it was the tears that streamed from the
eyes of the anguished sisters that called forth His own. Martha’s and Mary’s swollen eyes and
quivering lips were too much for their Friend.
He felt their grief in every fibre of His being. And we may be very sure of this: our ascended
Lord has not forgotten
On
another occasion on which our Lord wept, the setting of the scene is very
different. He is not now surrounded by
tearful mourners, but by a joyous multitude, accompanying Him into
Once
more we read of our Saviour weeping. We
are told, Heb. 5:
7, that He “offered up prayers and supplications with
strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.” This time the
weeping One was alone. It was that
bitter hour under the olive trees in
-------
TEMPTATION
Not
to be tempted of the Devil is the greatest temptation out of Hell. The Devil’s war is better than the Devil’s
peace. It is terrible to be carried to
Hell without any noise of feet. The
wheels of Satan’s chariot are sometimes oiled with carnal rest, and then they
go without rattling or noise. - DR. GUTHRIE.
-------
NO BURDEN
UNBEARABLE
In the days of Inquisition, one of the Christians was
confined to a cell in a dungeon, and told that unless he would recant he would
be burned at the stake the following day.
Left alone in his cell, his mind was in a turmoil. Walking the floor, with one breath he would
exclaim, “I can’t burn, I can’t burn, I can never burn,”
and with the next breath, “But I can’t deny my Lord.” After a time he said, “I will see if I can bear the burning,” and moving the
candle on the table he held his finger in the flame until it was burned to a
crisp. In agony he cried out, “Oh, I can’t burn!” and then, “But I can’t deny my Lord!”
Finally, exhausted, he sank on his cot, and sleep came, but while he
slept God wrought marvellously in his spirit.
When he awoke the sun was beaming through the prison bars. He heard the feet of the approaching soldiers
as they came to take him to his execution.
Rising, he again walked the floor of his cell, shouting, “I can bum, I can burn! By the grace of God, I can burn!”
and he went to the faggots with a hymn of praise on his lips.
*
* * *
* * *
212
NO
IMPOSSIBLE BURDEN
By D. M. PANTON
“Exceeding
great and precious promises,” the Apostle
Peter says (2 Pet. 1:
4), God has given us in order that, through
them, we “may
become partakers of the divine nature”; and one of the greatest and most precious is the impossibility of an unbearable burden. It is a promise world-wide in its
application. It has been put to the test
in every age, in every land, in every temperament, in every experience. It extends to every moment of life: it covers
every act and need: it counters and masters every possible emergency. And it is peculiarly precious to us, and of
tremendous importance, because it is given specifically to those “on whom the ends of the ages
are come” (1 Cor. 10:
11).
The
background of the promise is the clearest and fullest Old Testament type of the
New Testament Church ever given. “With most of them” - that is, Israel in the desert - “God was not well pleased,
for they were overthrown in the wilderness”: “NOW IN THESE THINGS
THEY BECAME FIGURES OF US” and
“these things
happened unto them by way of example”
- as exact types of our peril - “and they were written for our admonition,” our warning (1 Cor. 10: 5). For they had all left Egypt - the world; they had all been baptized; they were all fed daily on the manna - Christ
says that He is the bread come down from heaven; they were all God-led, under the Cloud: yet the vast majority failed of the Kingdom; and so far from being a
history inapplicable to us - the Holy
Spirit says - it is an exact picture
of the [regenerate
members of the] Church of Christ. No type of God ever fails: there is never
anything but an exact correspondence
between type and antitype: it is impossible for the [Holy] Spirit to
stress more strongly, both here and elsewhere, that what happened in the Wilderness is exactly what is happening around us
now, and that both type and
anti-type are the sole concern of [all] the redeemed. “Take heed, brethren,
lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil
heart of unbelief. For who, when they heard,
did provoke? nay,
did not all they that came out of
[*That is, enter into Christ’s / Messiah’s millennial-kingdom rest. See Num.
14: 21-23; Psa.
95: 11; Isa. 11: 10. cf.
Heb. 4: 1, 6-9, 11, R.V.]
Now
two effects are possible, springing out of this tremendous and dramatic
background; and against these two effects the [Holy] Spirit first sets a sharp warning, and then a golden
encouragement. The warning He puts
first:- “Wherefore” - because the picture is not imaginary, but actual -
“let him that thinketh he standeth” - either on the ground that the privileges
of grace make such a fall [and consequent apostasy] impossible, or that his own growth and achievements
make him immune from peril - “take heed lest he fall.” He who thinks he has nothing to fear is
the man who is most exposed to a peril. No height of progress we have reached; no
natural or spiritual abilities; no wealth of privileges peculiar to ourselves
which we have enjoyed through years of blessed experience - nothing can make us
immune: the Tempter, routed in ninety-nine contests, may be victorious in the
hundredth. “Let us therefore give
diligence to enter into that rest, that none [of us] fall
after the same example of disobedience” (Heb. 4: 11).
But
the [Holy] Spirit now counters the second peril - despair;
despair of ever reaching the tremendous standard of Caleb and Joshua. Our background is so overwhelming in its
disillusionment - namely, that the vast majority of God’s [redeemed] people lost
the Kingdom - that the Spirit devotes much greater time and care to re-assuring
us than to warning us; for the man who has mastered the historic facts is in
far greater danger of despair than of presumption. So the Apostle first lays down a universal
fact:- “There
hath no temptation” - no trial, no
test, no pressure, no seduction - “taken you but such as man can bear” - literally, ‘but such as is human’; that is,
accommodated to human strength; suited and fitted to man; such as every man may
reasonably expect, and has power, to conquer.
That is, “we
can avoid falling, inasmuch as we are not
exposed to insuperable temptations”
(Dean Stanley). Since the world was, no man has ever been compelled
to commit a single sin: all temptations have been such as men could resist, and
have resisted. For
in the nature of the case it must be so.
A temptation is an experiment, to perfect us in doing good or resisting
evil, and, it must be in our power to succeed, or it is no experiment. For we must bear in mind God’s purpose. “Temptation and trial are God’s drill and dynamite to blow up
the obstructions that choke the channels of our affections and energies until
the whole broad stream of God’s life shall course through our own and have its
own sweet will” (A. J. F. Behrends,
D.D.).
The
second reassurance which the Apostle introduces is the character of God. “But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.”
The critical fact is here revealed that all
temptation, without exception, is superintended by God; and that every test
applied to a soul - either by God Himself, or by the Evil One: “Satan obtained you by asking,
that he might sift you as wheat” (Luke 22: 31) -
is completely controlled and adjusted by God.
God is the surgeon who is never absent from a dangerous operation. The fidelity of God therefore dominates the
situation: for to allow a soul to be crushed, with no power of escape, would
defeat the very purpose for which God allows the temptation - namely, the
perfecting of the character through tested development. There is no such thing as a unique trial,
peculiar to the person on whom it falls, and never occurring before or after;
but on the holiest of all ages the same faithful God has perfected holiness
through trial.
So now we get our crowning re-assurance. “He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.” That is, He measures each assault to the exact
proportions of the person assaulted: the test is weighed before it is applied:
he so adjusts the discipline that it can quicken the heart’s action without
forcing heart-failure. Every temptation
is so weighed that it is never overweight: God will so adjust us to our surroundings,
and our surroundings to us, that we shall always be able to do what is
right. The Alpaca goat in
“My Lord in me has found a
dwelling-place
And I in Him. Oh, glorious boon to gain,
To be His temple! Gladly I would face,
In His great strength, all bitterness and
pain.”
So, under persecution, here is a letter from a Russian
prison:- “When I
found myself in prison, condemned to hard labour, strange to say, I found
myself wrapped up in a feeling of liberty and of the presence of God. Prison
for us is not the same as it is for the Bolsheviks: tragedy and suffering. We are just as happy and joyful as somewhere
else. We are happy in our prison; we are
happy on the way to it ; I am still happy here in O. I really see that all He sends is good, and
only serves to bring us nearer to each other and unite us more perfectly to
Him. These terrible outward and
unbelievable conditions are very useful for our spiritual life; they serve to
purify and enlighten the inner man.”
So,
finally, the method God uses is disclosed.
“But WITH the temptation” - it may not be a moment before it, but it is never after it - “will make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.” Experience
shows the probably double meaning of the text.
Either we are removed bodily out of the region of danger - as Paul let
down the city wall, so escaping murder; or else there is escape from its power
- as Paul’s thorn was not withdrawn, but neutralized by greater grace: the
escape is either from the temptation altogether, or else from its power. “God knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation” (2 Pet. 2: 9): whatever
the deliverance, God is pledged to make it possible for us all, without
exception, to be conquerors [or ‘overcomers’] all along the line.
So
then we reach the astounding truth that there is not one of us who may not be a
Caleb or a Joshua. If we fail of this
marvellous goal, it will not be because God over-tried us,* but because we allowed ourselves to be conquered by
circumstances over which God had made us masters. The highest
thrones are waiting. “For our light affliction,
which is for the moment, worketh for us more and
more exceedingly an eternal [Gk. ‘aionian’: i.e., in this context it should be translated ‘age-lasting’] weight of glory, while we look at the things which are not seen” (2 Cor. 4:
17).* To take our eyes off the unseen is to imperil the
glory. “Walk worthily of God, who calleth you [is calling you] into his own kingdom and glory” (1 Thess.
2: 12);
for “we must through much tribulation, enter into the
*
A pitiful breakdown of faith when faced
by an apparently impossible burden (martyrdom) occurred in 1857 in the massacre
of
[* This same word,
translated ‘eternal,’ is also found in verse 18. cf.
Gen. 3: 17, 18; Isa. 55: 12, 13; Rom. 8: 18-25, R.V.]
-------
LOVE
Through the fiery furnace
Walk, O Love, beside me;
In the provocation
From the tempter hide me.
When they come about me,
Dreams of earthly passion,
Drive, O drive them from me
Of Thy sweet compassion.
Not for might and glory
Do I ask above,
Seeking of Thee only
Love, and love, and love.
Show me not the glory
Round about Thy throne;
Show me not the flashes
Of Thy jewell’d crown.
Hide me from the pity
Of the angels’ band,
Who ever sing Thy praises,
And before Thee stand.
Hide me from St. Michael,
With his flaming sword;
Thou canst understand me
O my Human Lord!
*
* * *
* * *
213
OVERCOMING /
BEING OVERCOME*
By ARLEN L. CHITWOOD
[* From the author’s book: “Redeemed
for a Purpose,” pp. 113-126.]
“Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land,
which I sware to give unto your fathers, Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will
I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and
to his children, because he hath wholly followed
the Lord.
Also the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither. But Joshua the son of
Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither:
encourage him: for he shall cause
Moreover your little ones, which ye said shall be a prey,
and your children, which in that day had no
knowledge between good and evil, they shall go
in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.
But as for you, turn you, and take your
journey into the wilderness by the way of the
And command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass
through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir...
And when we passed by from our brethren the children of Esau, which dwelt in Seir, through the way of the plain from Elath, and from Ezion-gaber, we
turned and passed by the way of the wilderness of Moab ... the children of
Because of the
action of the people of
On
the one hand, there was the overthrow of an entire unbelieving generation,
overthrown in a manner completely in keeping with their unbelief.
Then, on the other hand, Caleb and Joshua - the ones believing that they
could go in and, under God, take the land - ultimately realized their
inheritance in a manner completely in keeping with their belief.
UNBELIEF
The
nation at large, at Kadesh-Barnea, believed the false report of the ten
spies. They envisioned falling at the
hands of the inhabitants of
Once
this had occurred, once the Israelites had expressed unbelief after
this fashion, at this particular place, the nation found itself in a position
from which there could be no return. The
accountable generation had forfeited their part in the rights of the firstborn
(rights to be realized by the nation as God’s firstborn son [cf.
Ex. 4: 22, 23; 19: 5, 6]), matters could not be reversed (cf.
Matt. 12: 31, 32), and
the only thing awaiting these Israelites was God carrying out His judgmental
decree.
Note
that the very next day, after hearing God’s judgment upon them because of their
unbelief (along with seeing the ten spies die “by the plague before the Lord”), the unbelieving Israelites changed their minds. They even went so far as to attempt to enter the land after being
warned by Moses that the Lord was no longer with them; and they were,
accordingly, driven back by the Amalekites and the Canaanites. They could no longer occupy the place from
which they, through unbelief, had fallen
(Num. 14:
28-45).
This
is what the third of the five major warnings in the Book of Hebrews is about (6:
4-6). Once a Christian falls away in the antitype
of that which occurred at
Kadesh-Barnea (Heb. 3,
4), exactly the same thing will occur to the unbelieving Christian
as occurred to the unbelieving Israelites. The Christian will have fallen away after
such a fashion that he cannot be
renewed “again unto repentance [‘unto a change of mind’]” (v. 6).
The
“change of mind” is not on the part of the Christian, as it was not on
the part of the Israelites in the type. It was/is on
the part of God. A Christian falling away after this fashion may later
change his mind, as the Israelites did after falling away. But, as in the type, God will not change His mind.
The
Christian will have forfeited his part in the rights of the firstborn (rights
to be realized by the Church following the adoption into sonship [cf.
Rom. 8: 18-23; Heb. 12: 23]), with only judgment awaiting; and God will not change His mind and bless that Christian also. The type has been set, and the antitype must
follow the previously established type.
Exactly
the same thing is seen relative to these rights and a change of mind in the
last of the five major warnings in Hebrews (12: 14-17). Esau,
after forfeiting the rights of the firstborn - selling these rights to his
younger brother, Jacob - “found no place of repentance [‘a change of mind’], though he sought it
carefully with tears” (v. 17).
Esau
changed his mind following the forfeiture. After realizing the value of that which he
had forfeited, Esau sought to get his father to
change his mind and bless
him also. But it was too late.
The birthright had been
forfeited, it was beyond Esau’s grasp forever, and all Esau could do at this point
was express grief over that which he had
allowed to
occur. Scripture reads, “And Esau lifted up his voice
and wept” (Gen. 27: 34-38).
(Note
two things: (1) The warnings in
Hebrews become self-explanatory, self-interpretive, if they are understood in
the light of the types [an interpretive method which is true, in reality,
throughout the whole of Scripture, i.e.,
types and antitypes understood in the light of one another]; and (2) very few Christians today could fall
away in the antitype of Heb. 6: 4-6, for to fall away after this fashion
requires an understanding of the Word of the Kingdom, something which very few
Christians presently possess.)
1. TURNED ABOUT
Moses,
near the end of his life and near the end of the wilderness journey, recounted
to the Israelites that which had occurred at Kadesh-Barnea and throughout the
thirty-eight succeeding years. He spoke
of the nation’s unbelief, along with Caleb and Joshua’s belief. Then he recounted God’s promise to Caleb and
Joshua, along with the account of God’s judgment falling upon the unbelieving
nation (Deut. 1:
26ff).
Caleb
and Joshua, because they believed the Lord, had been promised that they would
one day realize an inheritance in the land.
They would be allowed to go in with the second generation and, individually, have a part in the rights belonging to God’s firstborn son. The remainder of the accountable generation
though, because they did not believe the Lord, would die in the wilderness
prior to the second generation being allowed to go into the land under
Joshua. They would have no part in
realizing the rights of the firstborn (Deut.
1: 35ff).
After
Moses had recounted the Lord’s promise to Caleb and Joshua, he then turned to
the account of the Lord’s judgmental decree upon the unbelieving
generation. God’s decree from
thirty-eight years back, given through Moses, began with the words, “But as for you...” (v. 40).
Then,
the first thing which the unbelieving generation at Kadesh-Barnea heard after
that was, “turn
you” (v.
40). That
is, they were to turn from the land set before them. Through their prior act of unbelief, they had gone too far. They had expressed unbelief concerning the Lord being able to complete His work
and bring them into the land to which He had called them. They had expressed unbelief
in matters surrounding the very goal of their calling - a realm which the Lord
considered of supreme importance, important above everything else. And, through
so doing, they went beyond the point which the Lord could allow them to go and
still allow them to enter the land.
Thus,
there was only one thing left. They were
to be turned from the land toward which they had moved for the preceding
eighteen months, with a view to their being overthrown
outside this land. And the
place where they
were to be overthrown was clearly revealed at the beginning; and now,
thirty-eight years later, God’s dealings with a rebellious people after this
fashion was in the very last stages of being completed.
2. INTO THE WILDERNESS, BY THE WAY OF THE SEA
But
viewing matters from the beginning once again, the Israelites were not to be
overthrown just any place in the wilderness; nor could they be taken back to
The
Israelites were turned away
from the
The
“Sea” refers particularly to two things in Scripture. It refers to
the place of the Gentile nations and
to the place of death. In
this respect, typically, the place which God had reserved for the unbelieving
Israelites was in the sphere of death among the Gentile nations. And it was here
that they were to be
overthrown. The picture is really the
same as seen in the later experiences of
During
Moses’ day, it was only at the end of a full forty years (referring to a
complete period) that God allowed a second generation of Israelites to leave
their place in “the
wilderness by the way of the
(Or,
if the Hebrew rendering for Jesus is preferred in the antitype, it is “Joshua” [this is the reason for the incorrect
rendering, “Jesus,” rather than “Joshua,” in Heb. 4: 8,
KJV]. Joshua led the Israelites into the
land in the past, and Joshua [Jesus] will lead the Israelites into the land in
the future. Also note that a more
detailed and complete look at the overall type is seen beginning with the
departure from
3. INTO THE LANDS OF ESAU,
Note,
according to the text, that the unbelieving Israelites were not to be
overthrown just any place in “the wilderness by the way of the
A) THE
Esau,
the elder son of Isaac, “despised his birthright” and sold his rights as firstborn to his younger brother, Jacob, for a
meal consisting of “bread and pottage of lentils” (Gen. 25: 27-34). The
Septuagint (Creek version of the O.T.) uses a word for the rendering “despised” (v. 34) which means that Esau regarded his birthright as practically worthless. He
saw no real value to the birthright and sold it on a particular occasion to
satisfy his hunger.
Esau
was “a cunning
hunter, a man of the field,” contrasted with Jacob who was “a plain man, dwelling in tents”
(Gen. 25:
27).
The “field” in Scripture, as “
Thus,
Esau, in Scripture, is pictured as a man of the
world - a person interested in the things of the
world rather than the things of God. And
Esau sold his rights as firstborn at a time immediately after he had been out
in “the field” and at a time when he was “faint
[weary and hungry]” (Gen. 25: 29, 30).
There
was nothing in the field to reveal the value of the birthright to Esau. The birthright had to do with spiritual values, separate from the world; but Esau was interested in the world and that
which could bring satisfaction to the fleshly man. Spiritually, he could only have been completely
destitute, with his rights as firstborn being something which he knew
practically nothing about and, accordingly, something of little interest to
him. Thus, looking upon the birthright
from the vantage point of the world and seeing little value therein, he
considered one meal to be of more value and sold his rights as firstborn for
the meal.
And
it was into Esau’s land - the land of a person of the
world who
considered his birthright to be of little
value - that God’s firstborn son, because of the
nation’s unbelief and forfeiture of the rights of the firstborn, was taken to
be overthrown. The unbelieving
generation was to be overthrown in the land of the descendants of a person who
had looked upon the rights of the firstborn after
a similar fashion to the way
they had looked upon them.
B) THE
And
not only were the unbelieving Israelites to be overthrown in the
Abraham,
after strife had arisen between the herdsmen of
Lot
moved down into
the cities of the plain, pitched his tent toward
Those
who sat in the gate of a city in those days transacted business on behalf of
the city. Thus,
(Homosexual
activity in
And
it was into
4. CHRISTIANS IN THE ANTITYPE
The
whole matter of Christians in the antitype hardly needs to be stated for those
who have eyes to see. There is nothing -
absolutely NOTHING - more important
in the Christian life than presently moving out toward and ultimately realizing
the goal of one’s calling.
But,
what are most Christians doing relative to the matter today? Take a look around and see for yourself.
Is
this the topic of concern when Christians meet together today? Is this what is heard from the pulpit or the
classroom on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and / or other times when
Christians come together. Again, the
reader can answer from his / her own experience.
Christians
cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6: 19-24). They
cannot have the best of what this world has to offer and also expect to have
the best of what God has already offered.
Christians must, individually, choose; and that decision is left
entirely up to them (cf. Gen. 24: 58).
Christians
can go the way of Esau and Lot - having any spiritual senses and perspective
progressively dulled by the things of the world - resulting in their
progressively being overthrown in the
The
former is the easy life, and the latter is not so easy. In fact, the latter often becomes quite
difficult. But what will the end
be? That’s
what matters!
BELIEF
Note
that Caleb and Joshua, at Kadesh-Barnea, didn’t have it easy at all when giving
a true report relative to the land set before them. In fact, the unbelieving generation of
Israelites sought to stone them (Num. 14: 6-10). And they had to live with this unbelieving
generation for the next thirty-eight and one-half years, until every single one
of them had been overthrown.
And
that’s where the believing Christian is today. He is out living among
unbelieving Christians who are in
the process of being overthrown; and he, invariably, experiences similar
treatment to that which Caleb and Joshua were accorded among the unbelieving
Israelites.
Persecution,
in actuality, doesn’t come from the world.
That’s not what is found in the type, and it can’t be found after any
other fashion in the antitype. True
persecution comes from unfaithful
fellow-believers. They are the ones who find themselves in the position
of Esau,
1. NECESSARY PREPARATIONS
It
was only near the end of the forty years that God began to once again deal with
the Israelites relative to entrance into the
“This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear
of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish
because of thee” (Deut. 2: 25).
This
was the beginning of the Lord’s preparatory work relative to bringing the
second generation of Israelites, along with Caleb and Joshua, into the
land. And the remainder of Deuteronomy -
prior to the account of the entrance of the nation into the land in the first
three chapters of the Book of Joshua - concerns itself mainly with what was
stated by Moses in Deut. 4: 1:
“Now therefore hearken, O
Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments,
which I teach you, for
to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your
fathers giveth you.”
Then
Moses’ closing words to this new generation of Israelites, given immediately
before his death, near the end of the book, were almost identical to the way he
began:
“Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you
this day, which ye shall command your children
to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain
thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the
land, whither ye go over
At
the time Moses proclaimed these final words to “all
And,
with the leadership falling to Joshua, this is where the five books of Moses
close, with the Israelites ready to cross the
2. GROSSING THE
Moses,
at Kadesh-Barnea, had sent twelve spies into the land. Now, thirty-eight and one-half years later,
Joshua, from the eastern side of Jordan, sends two individuals to spy out
Jericho and the surrounding land (Joshua 2: 1ff). And upon the return of the two spies “from the mountain” (v. 23), their report was very simple and
straightforward:
“And they said unto Joshua, Truly
the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because
of us” (Joshua
2: 24).
And
this time there was no evil report by the spies or unbelief on the part of the
people. According to the record,
following the report of the two spies, the immediate matter at hand was the
passage of the people across the Jordan River and the conquest of the land,
beginning with Jericho (Joshua 3: lff).
Once
the Israelites were across and twelve stones had been taken from the midst of
Jordan as a testimony for future generations, the priests brought the ark up
from the midst of Jordan, and the Lord released the waters to their natural
flow once again (Joshua 4: 1-24). Then note the reaction of the Gentile nations
which
“And it came to pass, when all the kings of the
Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan
westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites,
which were by the sea, heard
that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of
Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither
was there spirit in them any more, because
of the children of Israel” (Joshua 5: 1; cf.
Deut. 2: 25).
Then,
following Joshua circumcising the new generation (in accord with the Lord’s
instructions) and the manna ceasing (the people were to now eat “the fruit of the
3. TAKING THE LAND, REALIZING AN INHERITANCE
Jericho
was among the cities in the land described thirty-eight and one-half years earlier
by the ten spies as being “walled up to heaven [‘to the
heavens’]” (Deut. 1: 28). But
note what the Lord did with the wall surrounding
After
the Israelites had followed the Lord’s instructions concerning taking Jericho,
the wall simply “fell down flat”; and the Israelites marched across the fallen
wall, “utterly
destroyed all that was in the city”
(save Rahab and her family), and then burned the city (Joshua
6: 2-27).
And
that’s the way it was to be as the Israelites marched through the land,
conquered the inhabitants, and possessed the land. And that’s the way it could have been
thirty-eight and one-half years earlier had the Israelites believed the true
report given by Caleb and Joshua rather than the false report given by the ten.
But
the way it was to be and the way it actually happened - even during the
conquest under Joshua - were not the same.
At the very next city which the Israelites sought to conquer - Ai - they
suffered defeat. Achan,
contrary to the Lord’s command, had kept some of the spoils of
The
matter of Achan’s sin had to be dealt with first, and the people could then
(and did) move victoriously against Ai (Joshua 7: 23-26; 8: 1ff). And beyond that the Israelites, under Joshua,
began to progressively move victoriously throughout the land, taking it “by little and little,” as the preceding generation had been instructed to do
under Moses (Joshua 9: l ff; cf. Deut.
7: 22).
Then,
after the Israelites, over time, had destroyed part of the nations in the land,
the Lord instructed Joshua to divide the land for an inheritance among the
different tribes (Joshua 13: 1ff; cf. Joshua 21: 43-45; 23: 4-13). And
it was within this division that Caleb and Joshua realized the inheritance
which had been promised to them at Kadesh-Barnea forty-five years earlier (Joshua 14: 7-14; 19: 49, 50; cf.
Num. 14: 24, 30; Deut. 1: 35-38).
4. CHRI5TIAN5 TODAY
Everything
is identical in the antitype. There is a warfare against those dwelling in the
land of the Christians’ inheritance (Satan and his angels), and the warfare can be won or it can be lost.
One
primary, simple fact though remains should Christians expect to one day realize
an inheritance in the land to which they have been called: They must engage themselves in the battle, The war
must be fought (Eph. 3: 9-11; 6: 11-18).
The
battle and its outcome can be seen in the experiences of the Israelites at
God’s
people must do
what He has told them to do. This is the
reason Moses, near the end of his life, immediately before the Israelites were
to enter the land under Joshua, spent his time reiterating the Lord’s
commandments to the people (Deut. 4: 1ff); and
this is also the reason that Joshua did exactly the same thing immediately
following the Israelites’ defeat and subsequent victory at Ai (Joshua 8: 34, 35).
Moses,
by reiterating the Lord’s commandments to the people prior to the conquest,
sought to prevent events such as those which had occurred at Ai; and
Joshua, going back over the Lord’s commandments after matters surrounding Ai
had been taken care of - something which formed a conclusion to previous
instructions left by Moses - sought to prevent a
repeat of such
events (cf. Deut. 27: 1-8; Joshua 8: 30-35).
Jesus
is “the author of
eternal salvation [‘salvation for the age’]
unto all them that obey
him” (Heb.
5: 9; cf.
Gen. 42: 55, 56; Matt. 7: 24-29; John 15: 1-15). A
Christian must follow
that which the Lord has commanded (which will result in his keeping himself unspotted
by the world [rather than following Achan’s path]) as he goes forth to battle
the inhabitants of the land.
Sin
is disobedience to that which the Lord has commanded. And though Christians - presently in a body
of flesh, housing the old sin nature - may fall, cleansing
is available. That’s why Christ is presently exercising the office
of High Priest in the heavenly sanctuary (cf. John
13: 8-10; Heb. 10: 19-22; 1 John 1: 6 - 2: 2).
Sin
must be dealt with prior to the battle (as at Ai). Then, believing that the Lord will do exactly
what He has promised, victory after victory can ensue as the person
moves forward, keeping his eyes fixed on the goal. There
can be no such thing as defeat if one moves in accord with the Lord’s instructions.
* *
* * *
* *
214
NOT
INHERITING THE KINGDOM
Did you know it is possible for a person to be saved,
have eternal life, and yet miss the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ: Recently we encountered one who tried to explain that after a person is
saved it does not make any difference what he does, how he lives, or what sins
he commits, that God will not call him into account because all his sins are
under the blood. Holiness, obedience and
faithfulness are words that have been expunged from his vocabulary and they
have no part in his Christian experience.
It
DOES make a difference how one lives. His part and
place in the thousand year reign of Christ is dependent upon it. The judgment
seat of Christ has been established in order to judge [regenerate] Christians for their good works and for their evil
works. It is there [i.e., in “Hades” (Luke 16: 23; Acts 2: 27, 34; Heb. 9: 27, R.V.);
and before
“the First Resurrection” (Rev. 20: 5, 6; 6: 9-11, R.V.)] - that the
terror of the Lord is going to be revealed against [all disobedient] Christians who have sinned and have not confessed
those sins (2 Cor 5:
10, 11).
In
Galatians 5: 17-21, we have a partial description of the conflict between
the flesh and the Spirit. Before a
person becomes a Christian he is, in the terms of Scripture, a natural
man. He has but one nature and that is a
sinful nature. He sins because he cannot
help it. Being a sinful creature he must
of necessity sin. After man is born from
above, he receives a new nature and becomes the possessor of a dual
personality; that is, he still has the old natural man and he also has the new
Spiritual man. Now the conflict
begins. The flesh strives against the
Spirit and the Spirit strives against the flesh. Paul gives a good description of this
conflict in (Rom 8: 22,
23).
The old flesh has its appetites and one can minister to that appetite or
one can starve the fleshly nature, thereby weakening it and rendering it ineffective. Our Spiritual nature has an appetite and it
can be nurtured so that it will grow in grace and knowledge, or it can be
starved and stifled and made powerless.
No wonder the Apostle Paul cried out, “O wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?”
In
Gal 5:19-21, we have a list of the works of the flesh which
ARE POSSIBLE EXPERIENCES FOR CHRISTIANS
IF THEY LET THE FLESH GAIN THE ASCENDANCY.
The Spirit of God tells us through Paul that all who indulge in these works
of the flesh SHALL NOT INHERIT, OR ENTER INTO, THE
Let
us consider briefly these sins against which God warns Christians. There are seventeen in all and they are
resolved into five classes. The first
class are sins against the body: adultery, fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness. The second group are the
sins of worship: idolatry and witchcraft.
The third group of sins are the differences between Christians in their
worship: hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions and
heresies. The fourth group are sins of
selfishness: envyings and murders. The
fifth group are sins of excessive pleasure; drunkenness, revellings, and such
like.
Let us look at these briefly:
1. Sins of the flesh.
It is well to keep in mind the fact that God never warns His people
against sins UNLESS THEY ARE CAPABLE OF
AND LIABLE, TO COMMIT SUCH SINS. When He warns His children against the sins
of adultery, fornication, uncleanness and lasciviousness, it is because they
are possible. David, a man after God’s
own heart, was guilty of adultery and murder.
There are ministers who have been guilty of these sins. There are leaders in church activities,
Sunday School teachers, youth workers and such like who have been guilty of
these sins. Is a Christian lost because
of his failure here? David said, “I shall dwell in the house of
the Lord forever”. The Lord Jesus Christ says, “Him that cometh to me,
I will in no wise cast out”.
What
is the penalty for a Christian who commits these sins and does not confess and
forsake them? He misses the [coming Millennial
and Messianic] Kingdom.
2. Sins of worship. Idolatry is
worshipping other gods rather than the one true and living God. Christians have long been guilty of
idolatry. The Lord warns against covetousness which is idolatry. There are those who make an idol out of their
family, that is, put their family ahead of God.
Some do the same with their business; others with their pleasures. Many, many things become idols to Christians
because God is relegated to the background when the two come into
conflict. The other sin of worship is witchcraft which simply is seeking by
magic, necromancy, divination, or fortune telling, to gain knowledge which God
has not revealed in His Word. Many pet
superstitions of Christians come under the heading of witchcraft. God hates it; and in the days of the Law, on
one occasion, He commanded the children of
What
happens when a Christian commits these sins of idolatry or witchcraft and does
not confess and forsake them? He misses the Kingdom.
3. Sins of worship. (a) Hatred
means to dislike or feel an aversion to: (b)
variance is deviation or discrepancy in belief and practice; (c) emulation is an endeavour to equal
or excel; (d) wrath means violent
anger or rage; (e) strife is
contention for superiority; (f)
sedition is resistance to the authority of God and His Word (in civil life this
is called treason); (g) heresy is a
promotion of a division because of doctrinal difference.
What
happens to a Christian who is guilty of these and does not confess and forsake
them? He misses the Kingdom.
4. Sins of selfishness. (a) Envying
means a disregard for another’s property or possessions; (b) murder is a disregard for another’s life. According to the Scripture, if one hates
another he is guilty of murder.
What
happens to a Christian who is guilty of these two sins and does not forsake
them? He misses the Kingdom.
5. Sins of pleasure. (a) Drunkenness is a drinking of too much intoxicant;
(b) revellings is wild, boisterous, unrestrained hilarity which marks many
entertainments given by Christians; (c) and such like. This includes all kinds
of worldly pleasures indulged in to an unrestrained excess.
What
happens to a Christian, given over to such, who does not confess and forsake
them? He misses the Kingdom.
Hear ye the Word of the Lord, “...of the which I tell you, as I
have also told you in time past, that they which
do such things shall not inherit the
[Eternally] Saved?
Yes. But all their works are
burned and they have no place in His [millennial]
Kingdom. After ‘the thousand years’* they will enter
into everlasting life; but for ‘one thousand years’ God is going
to make a difference between Christians who are faithful unto Him and those who
are not.
[* see Rev. 20: 7, 12, 13, 15a, R.V. cf. 2
Pet. 3: 10-13; Rev. 21: 1, R.V.]
-------
REJECTION
WITH CHRIST
Yet
it was well, and Thou hast said in season,
‘As is the Master
shall the servant be’:
Let
me not subtly slide into the treason,
Seeking an honour which they gave not Thee:
Nay,
but much rather let me late returning
Bruised of my brethren, wounded from within,
Stoop
with sad countenance and blushes burning,
Bitter with weariness and sick with sin, -
Straight
to Thy presence get me and reveal it,
Nothing ashamed of tears upon Thy feet;
Show
the sore wound and beg Thine hand to heal it,
Pour Thee the bitter, pray Thee for the
sweet.
Then
with a ripple and a radiance thro’ me
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star!
Flow
on my soul, thou Spirit, and renew me,
Fill with Thyself, and let the rest be far.
Give
me a voice, a cry and a complaining,-
O let my sound be stormy in their ears!
Throat
that would shout but cannot stay for straining,
Eyes that would weep but cannot wait for
tears.
Surely
He cometh, and a thousand voices
Call to the saints and to the deaf are dumb;
Surely
He cometh, and the earth rejoices
Glad in His coming who hath sworn, I come.
Yea
thro’ life, death, thro’ sorrow and thro’ sinning
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:
Christ
is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
- F. W. H. MYERS.
--------
THE
FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS
“A share in Christ’s actual sufferings was impossible
to Paul. But the sufferings of Christ were not ended‑they are prolonged
in His body, and of these the apostle desired
to know the fellowship (Phil. 3: 10).
He longed so to suffer, for such fellowship gave him assimilation to his
Lord, as he drank of His cup, and was baptized with His baptism. It brought him into communion with Christ,
purer, closer, and tenderer than simple service for Him could have
achieved. It gave Him such solace as
Christ Himself enjoyed. To suffer
together creates a dearer fellow-feeling than to labour together. Companionship in sorrow forms the most
enduring of ties, - afflicted hearts cling to each other, grow into each
other. The apostle yearned for this
likeness to his Lord, assured that to suffer with Him was to be glorified with
Him, and that the depth of His sympathies could be fully known only to such as
‘through much tribulation’ must enter the
Kingdom. In all things Paul coveted
conformity to His Lord - even in suffering and death. Assured that Christ’s, career was the noblest
which humanity had ever witnessed, or had ever passed through, he felt a strong
desire to resemble Him - as well when He suffered as when He laboured - as well
in His death as in His life. And the
aspiration is closely connected with the promise: ‘if
we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him’ (2 Tim. 2: 12). Such
participation in Christ’s sufferings so identifies the sufferer with Him, that
the power of His resurrection is necessarily experienced. Such conformity to His death secures
conformity to His resurrection.”
- J. EADIE,
D.D.
* *
* * *
* *
215
THE VIRGIN
BIRTH
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
One miracle in the Christian Faith, comprehending and
involving all others, is the Incarnation, the coming of a Divine Person into
the world as a man; and it was inevitable that the entrance of such a Person -
if He was to be the God-man - must be, like His departure from the world,
supernatural also. Thus the whole Church
held the Virgin Birth of Christ, until challenged by the Ebionites
and the Gnostics; and for another fifteen hundred years it was held by the
entire Church, until the modern denial, springing from Paine and Voltaire, was
reinforced by Strauss and Renan. Ignatius, a disciple of the Apostle
John, says:- “Stop
your ears when anyone speaks to you at variance with the truth that Jesus
Christ was conceived by the Virgin Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy
Ghost.”*
*
It is contended that ‘only’ Matthew and Luke assert the Virgin Birth. But how often has God to say a thing before
it becomes true? One utterance of the
Holy Ghost is decisive: moreover, only Matthew and Luke record anything about
our Lord’s infancy at all. It is also exactly the evidence which the
Law of God requires. “At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three
witnesses, shall a matter be established”
(Deut. 19:
15).
It is needless to add that the whole of the New Testament assumes the
Incarnation with which it begins.
THE VIRGIN-BORN
This
positive truth of which Gnosticism was the first denial is surpassingly
lovely. All requirements of Messiahship
mingled, as only God could blend them, in our Lord. For MESSIAH
HAD TO BE THE SON OF A VIRGIN. The
seed of the woman was the very first promise of God (Gen. 3: 15). But
Isaiah is more explicit. “The Lord himself shall give
you a sign” - a miracle;
a natural conception would be no miracle, and therefore Isaiah’s ‘almah’ is a virgin: “behold, a virgin shall conceive,
and bear a son, and
shall call his name IMMANUEL” (Isa.
7: 14),
which, Matthew is careful to explain (Matt. 1: 23), means ‘God with us.’ If from stones God
could raise up children to Abraham - and our Lord says that He could - miraculous
conception cannot be impossible; and, exactly stressing this fact, Gabriel, in announcing the unique
birth, assures Mary of the omnipotence of God:- “For no
word front God shall be void of power” (Luke
1: 37) - that is, every utterance of
God carries in it the dynamic of its own fulfilment. “God can form man in four ways:- from a man and a woman, as
constant custom shows; from neither man nor woman, as Adam; from a man without
a woman, as Eve; or from a woman without a man, as the Son of God” (Anselm). Jehovah’s interdict had irrevocably barred
the ancestry of Joseph from producing the Messiah (Jer. 22: 30; Matt. 1: 11): if
Jesus was Joseph’s Son, He was not
the Messiah.
THE SON OF
GOD
Another
requirement had to be met. MESSIAH ALSO HAD TO BE THE SON OF GOD. “For unto us a child is born, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God” (Isa.
9: 6). So Gabriel
says to Mary:- “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: WHEREFORE also that which is to be born shall be called (1) holy, (2) the Son of God” (Luke 1: 35): that is, both the sinlessness and the Deity of Jesus spring wholly
and exclusively front the virgin
birth*; not, shall be holy, the Son of God, for these He
always was; but, for the first time on human lips and in the human arena, “shall be called holy, the
Son of God.” The Branch of God was grafted into human
stock from without:
so, in the manner of all grafts, it bore
its own fruit, not the fruit of the stock.** Vital and momentous is the truth; for if the birth was not of the Holy
Ghost, since it was also not of Joseph, himself
being witness (Matt. 1: 19), Jesus was base-born, bastard-born: there is
but one step between belief and blasphemy.***
*
In its attempt to guard the sinlessness
of our Lord, the Roman doctrine of the ‘Immaculate
Conception’ - namely, that Mary was born sinless - only pushes the
problem a generation back, and contradicts Mary herself who declares (Luke 1: 47)
that Christ is her Saviour; and it
overlooks the revelation that the ‘body prepared’
for the sinless sacrifice (Heb. 10: 5) - and
the only body so prepared - was the
Lord’s, not His mother’s.
** The alleged heathen ‘virgin births’ are not virgin births at all; but
angelic fornications which brought the
old world to ruin (Gen. 6: 2, 4)
and which form the basis of all heathen mythology.
*** What is involved if there was no
miraculous conception it is well that we should crudely and baldly face. (1) The Angel either never appeared to
Mary at all, in which case the Gospel opens with a fable that never happened,
or else Gabriel, in his assurance to Mary (Luke 1:
31), lied
on behalf of God; (2) Joseph was
guilty of an acted lie (Matt. 1: 19), and a
lie which - if there was no miraculous conception - completely robs his
betrothed wife of her character; (3)
Mary either consciously shared the falsehood of Joseph (Luke 1: 34), or else she was
guilty of fornication meriting (in a betrothed maiden under the Law, (Deut. 22: 24) capital punishment; (4) both Joseph’s action (Matt. 1: 19) and
Mary’s testimony (Luke 1: 34) prove - if there was no miraculous conception
- that Jesus was a bastard, and the Christian creed of nineteen centuries a
gigantic imposture: and (5) our
Lord’s own oft-repeated assurances that He came directly from the Father, and
was with Him before the world was, become - if He came into existence in the
ordinary way - fantastic fictions.
Concerning the Holy Spirit Himself we prefer to say nothing. There is no depth of Hell to which unbelief
cannot sink.
A
third requirement had to be met. MESSIAH HAD TO BE THE LEGAL HEIR OF JOSEPH. Both Joseph and Mary were in unbroken descent
from David, Joseph through Solomon, Mary through Nathan; but Joseph was heir of
the elder branch: no Jew, therefore, could accept
Jesus as Messiah, unless, in the eyes of the Law, he was son of Joseph. Betrothal, under the Law, involved the legal
status of wedlock (Deut. 22: 23, 24); so, after the
espousal, and before the marriage, took place the conception by the Holy
Ghost. So also God’s angel said:- “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to
take unto thee Mary thy wife” (Matt. 1: 20); and Gabriel could say, with the Law on his
side, “the Lord
God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David” (Luke 1: 32). For Jesus was the legal Heir of the Head of
the eldest branch of the Royal House. So
all competing claims of Scripture coalesce in the Virgin Birth, with which the
Christian faith is established, without which it is destroyed.
In Joseph, the legal Heir (Luke 3: 23: ‘supposed’ -
regarded legally); in Mary,
the human Sacrifice; in the Holy Ghost, Immanuel: in Joseph, the Son of David;
in Mary, the Son of man; in the Holy Ghost, the Son of God: in Joseph, Heir of
Israel (Matt. 21:
38); in Mary, Heir of the world (Rom. 4: 13)
in the Holy Ghost, Heir of all things (Heb. 1: 2).
THE BURNT
OFFERING
But
the supreme requirement still remains. MESSIAH’S BODY HAD TO BE THE SOLE BURNT
OFFERING. The basic reason for
THE APOSTASY
The
widespread and incredible abandonment of this truth in the Churches to-day is a
change the portentousness of which, its profound prophetical significance, is
simply unknown, even (apparently) to prophetical students. For the key-fact to
the situation is that the Apostasy, the coming landslide from the Faith by
Christendom’s millions, is to be Gnostic in character (1
Tim. 4: 3),
and the denial of the virgin birth, together with belief in a later ‘incarnation,’ is
the very fountain of Gnosticism; so that to-day’s individual and private
apostasies are but the first phase of an official and mass abandonment of
Christianity later. The first known Christian teacher to deny the Virgin Birth
was Cerinthus, the
great Gnostic of
-------
The Advent During
forty years of watching prophetical literature, apart from Sir Robert Anderson
we have never known a writer to affirm, in so many words, that no soul can be
regenerate who rejects the Second Advent; yet this is not only the logical but
the actual attitude of many who shrink from its utterance. For example, a writer in an excellent
contemporary, in order to prove that none are left at rapture except
unbelievers, says:- “There is escape for those who
watch and pray always, that is, for the genuine believer: the saved one who is
walking in the light will not cease to watch.”
Watching Surely
such writers are aware that - apart from backsliders in tens of thousands, who
are not walking in the light - countless godly Churchmen,
Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, etc., are even now working with unfaltering
faith for the conversion of the world, many totally denying any bodily return of Christ [to claim His
inheritance here (Ps. 2: 8, R.V.); and to rule in the midst of His enemies,
(Ps. 110:
2): on
David’s throne (Lk.
1: 32)
over this restored earth, (Rom. 8: 19-23, R.V.)!!]. If these can be described as “men looking for their lord, when
he shall return” (Luke 12: 36), words have ceased to express their meaning:
clearly, it is the forcing of a Scripture to square with a [false prophetical] theory -
in this case, that no genuine believer can suffer the penalties foretold (Luke 12: 46)
for unwatchfulness [and bare-faced disbelief in Divine prophesies]. But the Lord
Jesus Himself says:- “If thou” - the presiding
officer of a church whom He leaves in full charge of that church - “shalt not watch” - a true [regenerate] believer, therefore, can be among the [unfaithful, disobedient
and] unwatchful -
“I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon [arrive over] thee” (Rev. 3: 3). If the
Lord speaks truth, His return, for the unwatchful disciple, is a threat, not a promise.
A
warning on anxiety is timely for us all to-day.
“In one case our Lord used the word ‘accounted worthy’ in
connection with the living who should watch and pray to escape the great
tribulation. In the other case He used
it in connection with those dead who should take part in the out-resurrection
from among the dead (Luke 20: 35).
In Luke 21: 36 Christ warns
His hidden ones of two ways in which Satan will seek to hinder their being
accounted worthy to escape the great tribulation. One is through weights, concerning which the
only remedy is to utterly rely upon Christ to lay them aside, even in the
thought realm. And the other is through
anxious cares. The remedy given for the
latter being twofold; first ‘In
nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’”
*
* * *
* * *
216
THE
CHRISTIAN AND POLITICS
By Pastor A. E. WILSON (
[PART
ONE]
The question has often been raised but seldom answered,
Just what place should a Christian occupy in politics or civil government of
the country in which he lives? What is a
politician? In the better sense of the
word a politician is one who takes considerable and constant interest in the
community in which he lives, in the affairs of that community and the people of
that community. He praises the rulers
when they do good and condemns them when they do not. He lifts up his voice against all injustices,
fraud, deception, corruption and any restraint on liberty. He resists evil as far as the law
permits. He uses every civil opportunity
to influence government, and if the opportunity is afforded he takes office for
the good of mankind. He hopes to administer
affairs of state in a just and benevolent way.
How
can one tell the part a Christian should play in politics? Our appeal can only be made to the
Bible. For the Christian the Bible is
the source of authority and doctrine.
Let us start first of all by taking the example set by our Lord. We judge that what He did was and is right
and that which He did not do is either wrong or of no consequence.
In
I Pet. 2:
21, we read that Christ left us an example
that we should follow in His steps. In John 8: 29,
Jesus says, “I do
always those things that please Him
(the Father).” In Matt. 17: 5, God the Father says, “This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” From these verses we learn: (1) that Jesus did only that which
pleased the Father; (2) the Father
was pleased with everything that He did; (3)
Jesus in our example.
Was
Jesus a politician? Did He take part at
all in the government of the Roman Empire or of the nation of
His
conduct was the exact reverse of the politician. The Jewish liberty was gone and He did
nothing to remedy that situation. His
own country and people were oppressed by the Roman emperor and He did
nothing. Slavery, war, poverty, liquor,
prostitution were rampant and He did nothing to try to correct the situation per
se. He refused to act as a politician,
as recorded in Luke 12: 13, 14, when He
refused to intervene in a financial difficulty between two brothers. In John 3:
17, He states specifically that He did not
come into the world to condemn the world!)
(How much so called gospel preaching is nothing but a condemnation of
the world and the things of the world!)
In
Matt. 14: 10-13, when
Jesus was told that Herod had beheaded John the Baptizer, there was no demonstration,
no breaking out plate glass windows and looting of stores, no lying down in
front of chariots and oxcarts, no condemnation whatever of Herod or his
government. Jesus and His disciples just
quietly slipped out and went into a desert place to get away from it all for a
while.
In
Luke 13: 1-5, our Lord has no word of condemnation for the
national outrage committed by Pilate in slaying some Galileans in the temple
amid the sacrifices which were being offered.
This pagan profanation of the temple and gross indignation perpetrated
by the pagan Pilate drew no word at all from the Lord.
Jesus
did not contend for civil rights for Himself or His followers but taught His disciples to be in obedience
to the powers that were. In Matt. 22: 15-22, our
Lord commanded them to pay taxes to
Caesar. Caesar was a murderer, a
profligate, an adulterer; he was cruel and heartless. Jesus said, “Pay your taxes to him,” even though part of the taxes went to support the
idolatrous worship of the
Let
us look at the example of the Apostle Paul.
In Acts 16:
16-34, when Paul and Silas were
unjustly arrested, indicted, convicted, beaten and imprisoned, their followers
did not have a sit-in or a lie-in at the jail, neither at the governor’s palace
nor in the public square. Paul and Silas
uttered no protest at all but prayed to God and sang praise unto Him, and God
moved in a miraculous way to deliver them.
However,
there came a time in life when Paul got involved in politics; and in his trial
before Festus, as recorded in Acts 25: 11. Paul
exercised his right an a Roman citizen and appealed unto Caesar that is, he
claimed civil protection under civil rights.
That one appeal on his part, that one moment of weakness in turning to political power and authority
instead of unto the Lord, caused him to spend the rest of his life in
prison, except for a possible reprieve between what are called his first and
second imprisonments.
In
Acts 26: 32,
Agrippa said to Festus, “This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.” Which is to say, This man might have gone free if he
had not used civil rights instead of spiritual power.
In
Acts 12, where we read of James’ having been
killed and Peter imprisoned, the Christian Leadership Conference did not appeal
to Jerusalem nor Rome, neither did they start non-violent protests, nor did
they begin to play the part of vandals in destroying property, burning and
looting. They did what all Christians should do - retired to a private home and prayed. And
the Lord heard their prayer.
Now
let us consider some of the teachings of the Bible concerning the Christian’s
relationship to the world. In Heb. 11: 13-16, we read
that the first century Christians “confessed that they were
strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” and that they were seeking a better Country. In 1 Pet. 2: 11-18,
Christians are urged to submit themselves to every ordinance of man for the
Lord’s sake, whether it be the highest court of the land or the lowest. In Rom. 13, Christians are urged to subject themselves
unto the higher governmental authorities, for there is no authority but that which comes from God. Men in positions of authority of state are
called by God, ministers of God.
Scriptures referred to already bring to our attention
the fact that civil government has been established by God and the Christian is
to be subject to the powers that be but
not to administer. When our Lord said in Matt.
7: 1-6, “Judge not,” He meant just that. The Christian is not to be a judge. We learn also in Dan.
4: 17,
that the Lord puts in office “whomsoever He will, and setteth up over it the
basest of men.” (How contrary to the
thought of many Christians, that Christians ought to run the affairs of the
country, which are under the control of Satan.)
In 2 Cor.
5: 20,
the Holy Spirit calls to our attention that Christians, whose home [after their resurrection]
is in heaven, are ambassadors to the world, beseeching the [present evil] world
to be reconciled unto God. In civil affairs,
ambassadors who meddle in the affairs of the state to which they are sent are
usually recalled at the request of the country in which they are serving.
The philosophy of too many Christians is that
Christians in politics would make the world a better place in which to
live. In 1
Sam. 2: 8,
in Hannah’s prophetic prayer the world is likened unto the dunghill, from which
Christians as beggars have been lifted.
Following that illustration, all efforts to make this sin-cursed,
condemned, … world a better place in which to live, are [doing] nothing
in the world but decorating and perfuming the dunghill.
Again, Christians passing through this world are
likened unto the children of
In Acts 15: 14, we read that God is taking out of the Gentiles
a people for His name. In 1 Tim. 4: 1, we learn that the [evil] age in which
we are living is one governed and controlled by the devil and his seducing
spirits, and that things will begin to
wax badly. In 2 Tim. 3: 1-9, we learn
that the world continually degenerates until, morally speaking, it becomes
unbearable. In 1
Thess. 5: 3, we read of sudden destruction to come upon the
world and those that are left in it.
Christians are forbidden to love the world, being told
that friendship with the world is enmity toward God. The world is evil, wicked, damned and
perishing, and one day [after ‘the thousand years are
finished’ (Rev. 20: 7, R.V.)] will be annihilated.
Then the Lord will create ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ [Rev.
21: 1] wherein dwelleth righteousness.
In Matt. 5: 39-42, the Christian is told not to resist evil; if
smitten on the right cheek, turn the other.
If a man sues you for your coat, give him your vest also. If forced to go a mile by the law, go an
extra mile for the sake of the Lord.
In
I Cor. 4: 5, the
Christian is told to judge nothing before the time (the time will be when the
Lord returns in glory and power). In 1 Cor. 6: 2, we learn
that the saints shall judge the world, but not until the Lord returns and sets up His own kingdom. In 1 John 3:
1, we learn that the world does not know,
that is, will not recognize, a man is a Christian, because they will not
recognize God as the creator, sustainer and goal of the universe.
The
Scripture shows in detail how to act in various spheres in which a Christian is
to move. Scripture shows and explains to a man how to act as a husband, how he
should act as a father in relation to his children, how his conduct should be
if he is a servant, and how he should treat the servant, if he should be a
master. Scripture continues by
explaining how missionaries and preachers and teachers should conduct
themselves. But there is not one word about how a Christian should act as a politician.
Moody expressed it in these words, “The world is a sinking ship, and I have not been called to
save the ship but to save a few off the ship before it sinks.” In Jude verse 23, the Christian’s duty is set forth
as seeking to snatch dying sinners as a brand from the burning, not trying to
put out the fire.
In
2 Cor. 6: 17,
Christians are commanded to come out from the world and “be ye separate.” (How this Scripture has been twisted and perverted to
justify Christians’ withdrawing from Christians.)
There
was a day when Christians used to sing a song:-
I am a stranger here,
Within a foreign land;
My home is far away,
Upon a golden strand;
Ambassador to be
Of realms beyond the sea,
I’m here on business
For the King.
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THE
CHRISTIAN AND POLITICS
[PART
TWO]
This being an election year, many Christians are deeply
concerned about politics. Many have
asked me concerning my pick for president; others are concerned about what part
a Christian should take in the field of government. I think the Bible is very clear in its
teachings, but like so much of the truth of the Bible, it is unpalatable to so
many of us.
One’s
views concerning the coming [millennial] kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will
determine his attitude toward world government and its politics. If one believes, contrary to the Scriptures,
that the church is to bring in the kingdom and that the kingdom cannot come
until the church has produced the Millennium, then he believes that of a
necessity the church and the Christians must play a large part in
politics. But if, as the Bible states, things are to wax worse and worse and
iniquity is to abound and there will be no peace until Jesus returns, then
Christians have little or no business in politics. Dwight
L. Moody very succinctly stated, “The world is a sinking ship.
I have not been called to save the ship but to save a few souls off of
the ship before it sinks.” “For our citizenship is in heaven
...” (Phil.
3: 20,
RV). “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ ...” (2 Cor.
5: 20).
The
truth of the matter is that Christians are a heavenly people with a heavenly
calling and with a heavenly home. Our
business in this world is that of an ambassador proclaiming to a
contrary-minded world that God is reconciled, and beseeching individuals to be
reconciled to God. As ambassadors, we
are here on business for our King. As
ambassadors from heaven, our citizenship is not OF this world though it is IN this
world (John 17: 16).
Those
whose citizenship is OF this world
as well as IN this
world, NOT being citizens of heaven,
are called throughout the Revelation “inhabiters of the earth” or “earth
dwellers,” and the rulership of
this world is in their hands until such time as the Lord shall return in power
and glory to take over the reins of world government. Even though world government is in the hands
of unregenerate men, we must recognize the fact that God rules in this kingdom
of men and puts in office at the
heads of the governments whomsoever He will.
See Daniel 4: 17, 25. Satan is the god of this age and is the
prince of the power of the air. And
though God rules in the affairs of men, He permits such men to rule under
Satan. This is not the day for
Christians to rule. This not the day for
the church to dominate. This is the day
when Jesus returns, and establishes His kingdom here over the earth, faithful
Christians will then have the privilege and
responsibility of ruling and reigning with Christ. Luke 19: 17: “... have thou authority over ten cities.” Verse 19:
“... Be thou also over five cities.” Rev. 3: 21: “To him that
overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and
am set down with my Father in his throne.”
Let
me repeat - this is not the day for
the church and Christians to rule and reign in positions of state. Our relationship to the world rather should
be that of a world citizen. We should so
live and think that we can fulfil the commission of Mark
16: 15: “And he said unto them,
Go ye into all
the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature.” We should not antagonize all the nations of
the world by proclaiming ourselves to be
for one nation, thus hindering our testimony for Christ in the other nations. We should be non-partisan in the nation where
we live rather than make ourselves members of one party, thus antagonizing all the other parties and hindering our witness to
all parties except the one with which we are affiliated.
A close study of the life of Christ and His disciples
and their relationship to local and world politics would prove most
profitable. Christ urged obedience to
the laws of the land. Christ and His
disciples paid their taxes. Christ and
His disciples devoted themselves to the God-given task which was the
proclamation of peace through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are to be in subjection to the powers that
be (
*
* *
* * *
*
217
THE DOCTRINE
OF BALAAM
By Pastor A. E. WILSON (
“But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam,
who taught Balac to cast a stumbling block before the
children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed
unto idols, and to commit fornication” (Rev. 2:14).
As
the end of this dispensation closes we learn of a religious state of affairs
coming into the forefront that grossly dishonours our Lord. Jude 11: “Woe unto them for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward,
and perished in the gainsaying of Core.”
1. Cain’s bloodless sacrifice is the first one mentioned. When God demanded a sacrifice of blood for
the atonement of sin, Cain preferred to bring a bloodless offering of the fruit
of the field. The earth was under the
curse of God and that which Cain brought would likewise be under a curse. Though the Lord gave him ample opportunity to
take back the bloodless offering and bring a blood sacrifice, he refused to do
so. God still demands atonement by
blood, and that demand was satisfied at
2. The second deviation from the plan and purpose of God was exemplified
by the error of Balaam who was prepared to compromise the principles of God for
wealth and worldly position.
He
was a priest who placed a price upon his services and would attempt any sort of
religious exercise if the pay was sufficient.
Today both the church and the minister too often place a price on the
services of the servants of the Lord.
Many are willing to teach and preach if it means worldly success and
social attainment. Many refuse the call
of God today because in many instances the remuneration seems to be very
little.
3. A third characteristic of default in Christian circles is called the
gainsaying of Korah.
He
was a priest who stood in the midst of the people of God and publicly opposed
the truth. Today in the highest places of Christendom there are religious and
denominational leaders hold enough to stand up and oppose the fundamental Truth
of the Word of God. Instead of teaching
and preaching the Word of God they are teaching and preaching the wisdom of
man.
You
will notice in the Scripture quoted - Rev. 2: 14 - that
attention is called to the doctrine of Balaam rather than the error of Balsam. Few of the commentators have distinguished
between the error of Balaam and the doctrine of Balaam. Therefore, the teaching pertaining to the
doctrine of Balaam is practically nil.
The
doctrine of Balaam was that which he taught which was contrary to the Word of
God. His error was willingness to prophesy either good or bad for money. To understand the doctrine of Balsam, which
was that to which God objected in the
Balak,
a king of
Balaam
(of whom we know practically nothing) was perfectly willing to hire out to
Balak for his ungodly scheme. However,
God warned Balaam not to accept the offer of Balak neither attempt to curse the
children of
When
he arrived in
As
far as I have been able to ascertain, as far as most students of the Word are
concerned, this is the end of Balaam.
But in Num. 25:
1-3 we
read: “And
Herein
we learn of the children of
In
Num. 31: 16 we have the answer: “Behold, these caused the children of
In
the battle against the Midianites in which
Balaam,
having failed to curse
The
children of
That
is the doctrine in the church today so hated by our Lord - the doctrine of
Balaam. As expressed in common
terminology, the doctrine of Balaam is that, since salvation is by grace, and
one, having become a Christian through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, is
eternally secure, then nothing that a Christian does can alter his relationship
with the Lord.
The
doctrine of Balaam is also expressed in these words - very artless and
seemingly guileless but filled with tragic potential - that every Christian is
going to rule and reign with the Lord, regardless of the life the Christian
lives.
There is no acceptance of the truth of
God that some Christians will reign over ten cities and other Christians will
reign over none - that some Christians will overcome and other Christians shall
be overcome - that some Christians shall inherit the birthright and other
Christians will forfeit their inheritance - that some Christians will enter
into the joy of the Lord and other Christians will suffer weeping and
gnashing of teeth.
“Behold, I come quickly:
hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev. 3: 11).
*
* * *
* * *
218
THE
By Dr. HENRY J.
HEIDT
I - THE
MILLENNIUM AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
1. - The knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill
the earth. Hab.
2: 14.
2. - He shall he king over all the earth. Zech. 14:
9.
3. - He shall he exalted and glorified. Isa. 2: 2; 2 Thess. 1: 10.
4. - There will be yearly pilgrimages to worship the king. Zech. 14: 16.
5. - He shall rule over His enemies. Psa. 18: 44; 72: 9; 110: 2; 149: 7-9; Micah 5: 8-10.
II - THE MILLENNIUM
AND THE JEW
1. - God’s promises will be literally fulfilled. Matt. 5: 18.
2. - Spiritual blindness will be removed. Rom.
11: 25, 26.
3. - They will possess the land. Gen. 12: 1-3; 13: 14-17; Jer. 23: 8.
4.
- They will rule over former oppressors. Isa. 14: 2.
5. -
6. -
7. - An order of judges after the ancient Theocratic
form of government will be established. Isa.
1: 26.
8. - The Apostles will sit on thrones judging the twelve
tribes.
Matt. 19:
28.
9. - Ungodliness shall be turned away and all
10. -
11. - One third of
12. -
III - THE
MILLENNIUM AND THE GENTILE
1. - All the nations will be judged. Joel 3: 1, 2, 12; Zeph. 3: 8; Matt. 25: 31-46.
2. - They shall learn war no more. Isa.
2: 4.
3. - World government will be theocratic. Zech.
14: 9.
4. - They will be free from Satanic deceit. Rev. 18: 22-23; 20: 8.
5. - They will be under forced restraint. Rev. 2: 27; 12: 5; 19: 15 (See also v.
5).
IV - THE
MILLENNIUM AND THE CHURCH
1. - The saints shall hold judicial position. 1 Cor. 6: 2; 4: 15; Matt. 7: 1; Rev. 20: 4.
2. - They shall judge the nations. 1 Cor. 6: 2.
3. - They shall judge angels. 1 Cor. 6: 3.
4. - They shall reign with Christ. Rev. 20: 4, 5; 5: 10.
V - THE
MILLENNIUM AND CREATION
1. - The
2. - All nature will be restored. Psa. 96: 11-13; Isa. 35: 41: 17-20; Rom. 8: 19-21.
3. - Perpetual water shall flow from
4. - Animal creation will be peaceful. Isa. 11: 6-8; 65: 25; Ez. 34: 25.
5. - Rainfall will be withheld for punishment. Zech. 14: 17.
6. - There will be great rapidity of growth. Amos 9: 13.
7. - All will be bright, moonlight will be equal to
sunlight,
sunlight will be sevenfold. Isa. 30: 26.
VI - THE
MILLENNIUM AND SATAN
1. - Satan will be bound. Rev. 20: 1-3.
2. - He will be loosed at the close and instigate an international revolt
which
will be followed by swift judgment. Rev. 20: 7-9.
VII -
MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS
1. - The age of child life shall be extended to one hundred years. Isa.
65: 20.
(It is generally thought
that
the godly shall attain antediluvian age which will average over nine hundred
years. Gen.
5).
2. - Injustice shall be overcome. Isa.
65: 21-23.
3. - Petitions will be answered immediately. Isa. 65: 24.
4. - Individual sin will be possible but will be dealt with by death
within a century. Isa.
65: 20.
5. - Physical ailments will cease. Isa.
35: 5: 10.
6. - It will be a time of joyful thanksgiving. Isa.
12: 1-6; 25: 9; 52: 9.
[All Divine Prophecy, awaiting its fulfilment in
Messiah’s
-------
DEVOTIONAL
Living Christ
We
know no more wonderful example of living Christ than this experience
of Richard Weaver. When he was a pit
worker, he inadvertently angered a fellow miner. “I have a good mind
to smack you on the face,” the man exclaimed. “Very
well,” Weaver replied, “if that will do you any
good, you may do it.” The, man
struck him. Weaver turned to him the
other cheek. The man struck again. This was repeated five times; and when Weaver
presented his cheek the sixth time, the man turned away, cursing. Weaver cried after him: “The Lord forgive thee, for I do; and the Lord save thee!”
His
assailant was the first man Weaver met next morning in the pit; and, as Weaver
approached, he burst into tears. “Oh, Richard,” he cried, “do
you really forgive me?” Together
they knelt, and he rose a saved man.
Vast resources of power lie unused because
we do not yield an obedience to Christ, which the world will instantly see
is more than human.
Enoch
The
Church of today must be the Enoch of our world.
We Christians must show the people of our time what the good life really
means: it is the reproduction of the life of Christ by the grace of the Holy
Spirit. Such an example will not be
popular, but it will please God, to whom one day we must render an
account. It may also earn Enoch’s
reward: translation to Heaven without passing through the portal of death. But we have Enoch’s testimony to give, namely
that Christ will return to this earth to set up the Golden Age. Two world wars have sharpened the interest of
many people in the truth of the Second Coming of Christ; but this interest has
been divided into two schools of thought.
One of these is linked with the name of J. N. Darby, and holds that the
Church will entirely escape the tribulations which precede the Return of
Christ. The other school of thought is
linked with the name of B. W. Newton, just as brilliant a scholar as Darby, and
these friends hold that the whole Church must endure the tribulation. May it not be that the golden mean of these
two antinomies is the truth? If we
exercise the faith of Enoch in a humble walk with God and a clear testimony to
His Word, we may prevail to escape what is coming upon the world. “Watch ye and pray that ye
may be accounted worthy to escape” (Luke
21: 36).- Frank V. Mildred.
*
* * *
* * *
219
THE PRIZE OF THE HIGH CALLING
By D.M. PANTON
Is the [millennial] Kingdom - as well as rank
in it - the Prize for which the Christians are to run, and which may be
forfeited, unless a standard of holiness be attained only known to God. It is so -
1. Because the
Types of the Old Testament, largely an unquarried mine, strikingly corroborate
it, thus confirming our understanding of the literal passages of the New
Testament, and weaving all into an exquisite mosaic of revelation.
1 Cor. 9: 24; 10:12; Exod. 12: 15; Deut. 3: 23-27; Luke 17: 32; Heb. 4: 11.
2. Because our
Lord states it in the Gospels, the Holy Spirit repeats it in nearly every
Epistle - it is the basis of the promises and threats to Seven assemblies, and
it is foretold as an actual experience in the prophecies of the book of the
Revelation.
Matt 7: 21; Luke 20: 35; Eph. 5: 5-6; Gal.
5: 19-20; Rev. Chs. 2 & 3; 11: 18; 20: 6.
3. Because the
Age to come - as distinct from the Everlasting State, which is for the ages of the
ages, and on the New earth, and based on Grace alone as a gift from God. The Age to come is related to the Old earth,
and is revealed as “one last day of a thousand years, a full and perfect aeon” in which all seed sown in the Age reaps its exactly
corresponding harvest, and to which all adverse consequences of works done
after faith are confined.
4. Because it safeguards
the infinite merits of our Lord’s imputed righteousness and divine sacrifice by
establishing the spotless and eternal STANDING of ever believer in Him; while it also safeguards
human responsibility and divine justice by making every believer accountable
for his WALK - under pain of possible forfeiture of coming glory.
Heb.
10: 14; Rom. 8: 33; Phil. 2: 12; Rev. 3: 11.
5. Because, since
God’s dealings with His people must always rest on the CHARACTER of God, and God’s
character is not mercy only, but justice also - it is inconceivable that a
disciple’s life, if unholy, should have no profounder effect on his destiny
than mere gradation in glory.
Heb. 10: 30-31; Rev. 22: 12; 1 Cor. 3: 15 & 17; Luke 20: 35.
6. Because, if we
acknowledge any judgment of a believer’s works at all, and that before a
tribunal which is a JUDGMENT
seat and not a MERCY seat,
we are thereby compelled to acknowledge, further, that the investigation must
be as it is in praise.
2 Cor. 5: 10; Rom. 14: 10-12; Col. 2: 24-25; 2 Tim. 2: 5; Eph. 6: 8.
7. Because it vindicates the holiness and justice of God
from the charge of compounding with His people’s sins, and makes the highest glory
of God to rest only on the active righteousness of the believer co-operating,
consistently and ceaselessly, with the imputed righteousness of his Lord,
obedience being the only proof of love.
1 Cor. 3: 17; 1 Thess. 4: 6; Matt. 5: 20; Rev. 20: 6.
8. Because it is the supreme reconciliation between PAUL and JAMES, that is, between justification through faith unto Eternal
Life, and justification through works unto Millennial Reward. (Faith, essential for Eternal Life, justifies
me before
the Great White Throne: Works of Obedience, essential for the
1. Before works - Rom. 4: 10; Gen. 15: 6.
2. After works - James 2: 21; Gen. 22: 16.
[* NOTE:
There must be a judgment of the ‘souls’ of the dead
presently in ‘Sheol’ / ‘Hades’. This judgment - (after the time of death,
but before
Resurrection) - will distinguish those “accounted worthy”
to rise in “the first Resurrection” (Luke 20:
35; Phil. 3: 11; Heb. 11: 35b) from all others - (regenerate and unregenerate
alike) - who are not! See Heb. 9: 27; Psalm 16: 10; Acts 2: 27, 34; 2 Timothy 2: 18,
19; Rev. 2: 25-27; Rev. 6: 9-11. cf. Rev.
20: 13-15, R.V.]
9. Because it is perhaps as near an approximation as has
yet been reached to a solution of the perennial controversy between the
Calvinist and the Arminian, for it establishes all the passages of glorious
certainty, while it leaves ample scope for all the most solemn warnings: It
takes both sets of Scripture as it finds them.
John 10: 27, 28; Jude 1; Rom. 6: 23; 11: 29; John 15: 6; Heb. 10: 26; Matt. 5: 22.
10. Because it gives the natural and unforced
interpretation to the facts of Assembly life, as it does also the simple
statements of Holy Writ, and reveals how exactly the one squares with the
other, both in present character and in just recompense.
2 Cor. 12: 20-21; James 2: 5; Matt. 18: 18; Rom. 8: 12-13.
11. Because large sections of the assembly of God are purged, and can only
be purged by seeing the drastic consequences of a carnal life; and because, for
want of a fresh, frank, and fearless statement of these profound consequences,
the majority of believers are now wrapped in slumber, and “could not care less” attitude saying what they like,
and doing what they like, and going where they like.
1 Cor. 5: 1-11; 6: 9; Matt. 24: 48-51; Luke 12: 47-48; Rev. 3: 16-21.
12. Because it purges the motive with the awful vision of
the JUDGMENT
seat of Christ, and it supplies a
lever of unsurpassed power for alienating the believer from the world and
filling him with, a passion for the
1 Peter 1: 17; Rev. 2: 21-23; Phil. 3: 11-14; Rev. 2: 26-27.
---------------------------------------
On
No 9 above - Let us remember the New Birth is all of God from first to last as John 3 plainly teaches, also Eph. 1: 4; 2 Tim. 1: 9. But Salvation and being saved, and the “saving of my soul” depends entirely on me, Matt. 10: 39; Matt. 16: 25; Matt. 8: 35; Luke 9: 24; 17: 33; John 12: 25; 1 Peter 1: 9; 1 Cor. 1: 18; Phil. 2: 12; 1 Peter 2: 2.
(Note R.V.). When we do not make the
difference between the New birth and Salvation we become confused, confer Acts 10: 2. Cornelius was not acquainted with the way of
Salvation until he seen Peter in Chp. 11: 14; so if
he was not a child of God before he saw Peter how did prayers and aims give
pleasure to God? Faith, conversion,
repentance, wait on the New birth, and the New birth waits on a sovereign act
of God. This is the Scriptural
order. Those who receive Him, Believe
Him, who are privileged to called children, are, according to verse 13 of John 1,
already born of God.
--------
QUOTES
1. In the Seven Epistles there are seven promises to the individual overcomer,
which are all to be fulfilled during the 1000 years of Christ’s reign on
earth. The one overcoming, I will give
to him to sit down with Me on my Throne
- that is not God’s throne, which
no one is ever invited to share, but our Lord’s Messianic Millennial
throne: Our Lord’s last word to an
assembly on earth is a vision of Messiah’s Throne, and the possibility of a
backslider yet sharing it, wonderful thought.
-
(D. M. PANTON M.A.).
2. Scripture speaks plainly concerning the exclusion of those who permit
the old nature to disgrace their Christianity; while they may be saved as
through fire they will forfeit all their positions in the coming Millennial
Kingdom of Christ.
-
(Dr. A.T. SCHOFIELD).
3. Has any child of God any warrant of Scripture to expect that he will
reign with the Lord during the period of Rev 20,
the 1000 years? But, on the contrary,
has not every child of God a promise of reigning with Christ in the perfect and
final state, the kingdom of the ages of the ages?
-
(R. C. CHAPMAN).
4. The covetous, the wrong-doer, the fornicator, as those in Corinthians
- 1 Cor 5. & 6. shall not INHERIT
the
-
(ROBERT GOVETT. M.A.).
5. The kingdom of heaven has no entrance fee, but its subscription is all
that a man hath. Its cost is a crucified
world. That the honour of reigning with
the Lord in His Kingdom is a privilege not guaranteed to every child of God,
though it is offered to each such in this age.
-
(G. H. LANG).
6. The greatest revelation of all revelations about the future condition
of the saints is, that they are to be identified with Christ in His Millennial
reign - that is, those who overcome, and so not all.
-
(Dr. A T PIERSON).
* *
* * *
* *
220
ANIMALS AND
THE REDEMPTION OF CHRIST
(From the Quarterly
Journal of Prophecy)
The relation of
the animals to man was originally very different from what it became, when
death, as the consequence of Adam’s transgression, entered “into the world” (Rom. 5: 12). Formed to illustrate the Divine power and
goodness, every living creature shared, according to its capacity of enjoyment,
its Creator’s beneficence, in a world in which as yet suffering and death were
unknown. Adam, on his creation, found
the waters, the air, and the land already teeming with life. He who blessed our first parents (Gen. 1: 28), had
before pronounced a separate benediction (Gen.
1: 22) on
the inferior creatures, over which they were invested with dominion.
It might be inferred that annihilation was just as
little as suffering originally contemplated by their Maker as their lot. Clearly they were in the first instance no
more made with a view to die than their human head himself. The first constitution and object of their
existence involved no sickness, pain, or dissolution. They fed, like their earthly lord, on the
productions of the earth, and lived in peaceful subjection to him, and in
harmony with each other. The idea, then,
of a perpetuity of animal life, even in its inferior development, is by no
means in itself extravagant. But for
man, the wing of a butterfly would never have been hurt, nor a sparrow have
fallen to the ground.
We are too much in the habit of looking at everything
from a utilitarian point of view; as though the beginning and the end of all we
see around us had exclusive reference to ourselves. Yet the
glory of God, not the good of
man, was certainly the grand end both of creation and redemption. Even now, in order to meet the altered
circumstances of a ruined world, that we have the Divine permission to take the
life of animals for our use, a large amount of animal life is entirely
unconnected with, and independent of, man.
Deserts, unexplored regions, the atmosphere and water, the ocean depths,
abound with living creatures of all kinds that in no wise can be supposed to
advance his comfort, and of the very existence of which but few are aware.
So,
therefore, below angels and glorified saints may not life, in endless
gradations and capacities for enjoyment, be destined to pervade the universe?
and do we know enough of the future economy of that universe to say positively
that the animals that have once lived may not again live, and, together with
fresh emanations of creative power, respond to the sacred lyrics of some
heavenly psalmist again calling upon “beasts, and all cattle;
creeping things, and
flying fowl” - to praise the name of the Lord (Psalm 148.).
Animal
life, even in its lowest forms, is, indeed, a wonderful thing. We learn that it, as well as spiritual life,
is communicated by the Holy Spirit. The
Spirit of God, at the creation, “brooded over the face of the waters,” apparently imparting to the elements the power of
communicating life to animals, plants, etc. (Gen.
1: 11, 20, 24). This universally vivifying influence is
repeatedly ascribed, in other places, to the Spirit. (See Isaiah 32: 15). “Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they [i.e. the animals] are created;
and thou renewest the face of the earth” (Psalm 104: 30). So
that “not one sparrow
shall fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt. 10: 29). This life, so easy to be taken by the most
ignorant, far transcends the power of the wisest to impart or restore. There is something solemn in its cessation;
something, to our human ideas, painful and sad in the thought of its being
extinct for ever. And when combined, as
it often is, with high degrees of sagacity, fidelity, and affection, this
feeling is yet more heightened, and the question may sometimes almost
involuntarily have arisen, Can it be that all this intelligence and excellence
(in its measure) is finally annihilated?
And may not the inquiry, not unreasonably, be raised whether there is
not a possibility that a life originated by the Spirit of God, and the object
on the part of God of so minute and careful a providence, may not be intended
to be restored at a future time, and placed for ever beyond the reach of
suffering and death; whether the nephesh chayyah, the
‘living soul’, may not be in any creature too noble and excellent
a thing to be allowed to perish for ever, and may not, in the case of the
irrational but irresponsible and innocent part of the animated creation, be
restored in a better and an everlasting state?
If
such should be the case, an amount of suffering which it would be difficult to
over-estimate, occasioned by the fall of man, and aggravated by his (alas!) too
frequent cruelty, would, indeed, as well as death itself, be richly and
abundantly compensated. So therefore we
are prepared for the fact that, under Noah, the animals were singularly
favoured by being taken, as well as Noah and his seed, into an everlasting
covenant with God (Gen. 9: 10). Remarkable pains are taken to impress us with
this fact, for it is repeated not less than five distinct times.
Again,
we are struck by the improbability that the close of an era like the
Millennium, which will witness all things subdued unto Christ (1 Cor. 15: 38), and
the Kingdom brought into a fit state to be delivered up to God even the Father
(v. 24),
will be distinguished by the sudden and eternal extinction of the numberless
tribes of living creatures, that having once fallen with man under pain and
death, and with him also shared, in their measure, in a great though partial
restoration, would, apparently, in
that case present a marked exception to the onward flow of blessing. May they not still partake of it?
The
Eighth Psalm presents the world, as it will
be, under the headship of the last Adam, the glorified Son of man (comp. Heb. 2): “All sheep and oxen, yea,
and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the
fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the seas,” are put under His feet. This is the millennial epoch, when the now
savage beasts will lose their fierceness, and ceasing to be formidable to man,
and to prey upon others, will so far exhibit a return to some of the features
of their original state. (Compare the
well-known descriptions in Isaiah 11: 6-9; 65: 25.) They will not, however, it would seem, be
exempted from death, ‘the last enemy that shall be
destroyed;’ and they will be again offered in sacrifice (Ps. 51: 18, 19; 118: 27; Ezek. 40.; 46., passim), and probably continue, as at
present, to be part of the ordinary food of mankind. Notwithstanding, these
conditions will be greatly ameliorated; and the consideration again occurs, is
it not more probable that the result of Christ’s headship will be a further
development of happiness for the brute creation after the Millennium, than that
the transition to an incomparably superior and perfect period will be
accompanied by their utter privation of existence? Which theory has more the semblance of a
complete triumph of redemption over death?
So
this frees us from what cannot, it is conceived, but be felt as an embarrassing
consideration, to wit, that animals should have been in a superior, because
undying, state at the commencement of the headship of Adam, to that they will
be in, after having been a thousand years under the feet of the Son of
man. It frees our conception of a
Paradise regained from any feature of inferiority to a
But
no passage hitherto produced seems to countenance the doctrine of a
resurrection of the brute creation so much as Romans
8: 19-22:
“For the earnest
expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was
made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [it] in hope: because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”
That
[the Greek word …] means here the created universe is admitted by many,
and this is its ordinary sense in the New Testament. Indeed some are of opinion that it is never
there used of mankind alone. From
verse 23 it is seen to be distinct from
Christians, and it cannot be understood of those who are not Christians, who in
no sense could be said to wait for the manifestation of the sons of God. Understanding it then of creation in its
simplest, broadest meaning, we learn that this was involuntarily subjected to
vanity by God (in consequence, as we know, of man’s fall), but that it is not
hopelessly ruined, but awaits, while everywhere expressing the language of pain
and suffering, a period of emancipation from its bondage. That this period will be fully reached during
the Millennium it is impossible to conceive, for reasons already stated. But in the then manifested and glorified sons of God an earnest will be afforded
to the creation, already greatly advanced in the scale of happiness, of what
its ultimate and perfect state is destined to be. And again may the former argument be
pressed. If animals, which not least of
the creation share the common travail, and not least express their sense of it,
if animals will partake of the blessings connected with the revelation of the
sons of God, and in their measure keep pace with the improved circumstances of
the ‘regeneration,’ what valid objection can be raised to their
participation in the ‘liberty of the glory’ of the redeemed? And would not
that imply their resurrection? * It is
difficult, with the bright and gladdening prospect the passage unfolds, to come
to the conclusion that living creatures, far below man indeed in dignity, yet
still raised above mere inanimate objects by their peculiar characteristics,
creatures that owe their manifold living and dying pains to a cause to which they in no wise contributed, shall finally not
only be excluded from the universal jubilee of the creation, but cease to belong
to it at all. Would not this rather look
like a triumph of the bondage of corruption than a deliverance from it? Would it not be like being borne along the
stream of progressive bliss only to be finally engulfed in the abyss of
oblivion? And does it appear altogether
in unison with the splendid anticipations inspired by this Scripture, that the
groans of the sentient, though irrational part of the creation, should
ultimately alone not be changed to the notes of joy, but cease (and that too
after a bright gleam of hope) in the silence of endless death? On the contrary, the views opened out by
geologists confirm that terrestrial arrangements are not made with exclusive regard
to man. For they display to us the
Deity, in all the sublimity of his goodness, and majesty of his power,
exercising Himself in the creation, sustenation, and blessing of countless
myriads of living creatures, amongst whom man had no interest, and exercised
over them no dominion.
*
The Scripture states it. The animal creation “itself
also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God”; and ‘the bondage
of corruption’ is not only the liability to corrupt, but the state of
death itself. It is blessed to remember
that this includes the snake. - Ed. [D. M. Panton] DAWN.
*
* * *
* * *
221
ZIONISM AND
THE MESSIAH
By THE INDIAN CHRISTIAN
ONCE while travelling in the train I had an opportunity
to witness a discussion between an Orthodox Jew and a Modernist Jew. I say ‘witnessed,’
because the argument was fought out with their hands as much as their lips,
though they did not actually come to blows.
We were travelling from the new modern city of
What
a first class Modernist he was! His
words sounded very familiar, very like the words of some to-day who profess to
be ministers of the Gospel and yet do not believe that the Bible is the Word of
God.
While
we were talking I noticed that a man, sitting next to him had put his book down
and had become very much absorbed in our conversation, and by the look in his
eye I could see he was not in agreement with the theology of his fellow
Jew. At last I said to this Jewish
modernist:- “But do you not believe that Moses was
told by God to make the tabernacle after a certain pattern and that God gave
him the ten commandments?” “O no!” he said, “We have
given up those kind of beliefs now.
Moses was a great man and a great leader and statesman, but we cannot
believe that he talked with God for forty days on mount Sinai.”
“Then,” I said, “The only
other alternative is that Moses was a great deceiver, for he tells us dozens of
times: ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ ‘as
the Lord commanded.’ If you do not believe that Moses came down from
the mount with the commandments written thereon and that he broke those same
two tablets when he saw the idolatry of Israel on the plain below, you cannot believe anything in the sacred
records. You are without God and a revelation from Him.”
When
I had said this the other Jew sitting nearby could contain himself no longer
and, turning to my
With
excited gesticulations [i.e., movements
with his hands and arms] he
broke off into Yiddish which gave him more freedom of speech than English so I
could not follow all he said, but he held the floor for a time while his
opponent soon judged it best to keep quiet.
When at last he paused for breath I saw my opportunity. “I am fully in
agreement with our friend here that in the Bible we have a revelation from God
and that the prophets of Israel were holy men of God who were inspired by the
Holy Spirit to give their messages to the people and at the same time to prophesy about things to come.” “Now,” I
said, “Do you
believe that they prophesied about a personal Messiah Who would rule over
“Then how do you account for the fact that the prophets say that the One Who is to rule
over the nations will first be despised and rejected?” “No, no, we do not
believe that.” “But,” I said, “See what Isaiah says about the Messiah in chapter
52.
There it tells that the One Who
is to rule over the NATIONS must first
have His face marred beyond recognition, and a little further down it says that
He will be rejected and be known as a
Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Does this not show that Messiah must first come and die for the sins of
the people, as it says ‘He was wounded for our transgressions’? “
He
was a little perplexed about this question and read the verses very
carefully. “We
do not believe that this chapter refers to the Messiah,” he said. “Then to whom does
it refer?” “Some of our Rabbis say it refers to Isaiah himself.” “How can that be?” “There is a
tradition that Isaiah was put to death by violence.”
“But can you say that Jehovah laid on Isaiah the iniquity of
the people? Did anyone ever say of
Isaiah that he was ‘smitten of God?’ Can you say that
with his stripes you are healed? Is
there any place in the Scriptures that says that
“The Jewish nation!” I said.
“How could the Jewish nation die for the sins of the
Jewish nation? When it says ‘he was wounded for our transgressions,’ how can
‘he’ and ‘our’ refer to the
same people. It is not ‘we died for our
sins,’ but ‘he’ died for ‘us.’ Who is the ‘he’? Who is the meek and lowly One without sin
Whom God made an offering for sin? Who
is the One who was numbered with ‘the transgressors and bare the sin of man?
You say that you believe the prophets were inspired by God to write. Then of Whom was God speaking?”
“Yes, tell us,” said the other Jew, “If you say I am an infidel because I do not believe in the
literal interpretation, tell us what this means.” That was just what his orthodox opponent
found it hard to do and the modernist took his chance to get his own back upon
him. “Tell me,”
I said, “Can you deny these prophecies have been
literally fulfilled in the One you call Jesus of Nazareth? Was not every detail of this chapter true of
Him? Was he not of the line of David? Was He not born in
Each
had taken part in silencing the other and now the Word of God left them without a reply. Both were subdued, and listened with hardly a
word as I went through scripture after scripture showing that Jesus is the Christ. Forgotten was the beautiful scenery: we had
passed the ruins of the Crusaders’ castle unnoticed. Suddenly we heard the
whistle of the train and looking out saw that we had rounded the corner of
[* And of what
God’s prophets say He is going to do here, after He returns.]
The
train stopped and we said ‘Goodbye.’ I
left them with one or two booklets to read.
They thanked me for the talk, the first of its kind they had ever had. Often I have thought of those two sons of
Jacob and prayed that one day I shall see them among those who fall at the feet
of the glorified Christ crying ‘Worthy is the Lamb that
was slain to receive the power and honour and glory.’
-------
The
Millennium
MAY
I humbly suggest that the greatest Christian hope is not the rapture, but the
glorious millennial reign of Jesus over this earth of ours. The angel told the Galilean disciples not to
be gazing into heaven, and gave as his reason that Jesus was coming back to the
earth. He will no doubt reign over the
earth from the heavenly places, and His overcomers will reign over the earth
with Him. We need to be sacredly busy
when He comes. The proper translation of “watch and
pray” is “Keep wide awake and pray.” When He comes we must be found, not gazing at
the skies, but “wide awake” in our earthly service. This is the “blessed hope” in front of
us. I feel assured that, after the
present fires of testing and cleansing, the Lord will shake the world with the
fire and the wind of
*
* * *
* * *
222
THE DRAMA OF
By D. M. PANTON
THE extraordinary manner in which Palestine - as none
of us would have thought possible in our day - fills the horizon of the world,
makes it wise for us to master Israel’s history, - past and to come, so that we
may pray aright, speak aright, and act aright concerning the only nation God
has ever taken to His heart as a nation (Amos 3:
2), and whom He addresses in the Old
Testament as His Bride yet to be.
Zionism
Zionism
is an urge of nationalism that is sweeping through the Jews of the world. In 1827 there were 500 Jews in
Godless
Jehovah
pictures the modem Jew in one of the most terrible parables in the Bible. “The valley was full of bones” - bones dry and scattered, picked clean by vultures; “and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and lo, they were very dry”
(Ezek. 37:
1): “then he said
unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of
A Forfeited
Land
The
inevitable consequence is rarely seen, even in the
A Remnant
So
a critical question at once confronts us.
Spiritually, is
Regenerate
But
the most wonderful development of all remains, God Himself laying down the
challenge. After the coming
extermination in
All
But
the physical restoration is to be followed, later, by a spiritual restoration
no less complete. The trial of the last
days will shock them into repentance. “I will being the third part through
the fire, and will refine them as silver
is refined, and will try them as gold is tried:
they shall call on my name, and I will hear
them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say,
the Lord is my God” (Zech. 13: 9). The
Holy Spirit is the oxygen of man, without which he is a walking corpse: so
Jehovah says of the dead bones, - “I will put my Spirit within
you, and cause you to walk in my statutes; and ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers” (Ezek. 36: 27). Or, as Paul Puts it, “ALL
The Greatest
Nation
It is most remarkable that the Holy Land, as a country
and a nation, is to have its prophecies and promises fulfilled as it has never
known them: Jehovah’s forecast for
A Missionary
Nation
Most wonderful of all is the coming mission of
*
* * *
* * *
223
One aspect of Second Advent teaching often lost sight of, and not often dwelt on, is the
place of the Jew in the
Apart from direct prophecy there must of necessity be a Millennium, or personal reign of Christ on
earth, to fulfil the promises made to Abraham. The promise of Canaan to
Abraham was made not only to his “seed” but to himself: “I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of Canaan” was the
promise; and we know as a fact that Abraham has never so far owned of the land “so much as to set
his foot on” [Acts 7: 5, R.V.], save the cave in which he buried his
wife. Nor has his seed ever yet
possessed “the
lands from the
[*NOTE: If this dispensational statement means, what is
believed many Christians imagine it does, - that resurrected Abraham and
all other resurrected Jews will be deprived of ‘heavenly’
privileges, when only the ‘church’ will be
ruling there during the coming kingdom!
This, in my opinion, cannot happen because we know that all resurrected
saints are then “equal unto the angels”! (Luke 20: 36,
A.V.): and ‘angels’ are presently operating in both
spheres of God’s Kingdom! See Gen. 24: 40; Heb. 13: 2. cf. 2 Thess. 1: 7; Rev. 7: 1, 11, R.V. It has actually been stated
that Abraham, after his resurrection, will have a body of “flesh and blood,” and therefore allowing him to
function only in the earthly sphere of Christ’s
millennial kingdom!]
The return of Judah and Israel re-united (Ezek. 37: 17-23), has
never yet taken place; the so-called ten ‘lost tribes’
- yet not lost to God, and certainly not found in the fantastic Anglo-Israel theory
- have never returned to Palestine as they must, if prophecy is to be
fulfilled. The Jews are to return (as
they are doing now in tens of thousands) in unbelief and in the land [will] go through
the tribulation - “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer.
30: 4-7); but they enter the Millennial Kingdom a saved
people - and [then] “all Israel shall be saved” (Rom. 11: 26) - “a nation shall be born in a
day” (Isa. 66:
8).
The temple will be rebuilt (Ezek. 40: 48), and
the sacrifices re-established; yet doubtless only as a memorial, looking back
to the Cross, as we do now in the Lord’s Supper; while under the old Covenant
the sacrifices looked forward to the Cross.
But no laver is seen, for all are cleansed; no candlesticks, for “the Glory of God shall lighten
it, and the Lamp thereof is The Lamb”; no veil, for that was rent once for all when Christ
died on the Cross; nor shall there be any ark there, “neither shall it be
remembered nor missed, neither shall it be any
more” (Jer. 3: 16).
It
is interesting to know by name some of those who shall be resurrected and share
in the Kingdom. “Ye shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the
prophets* in the Kingdom.” Daniel will
be there, according to specific promise; “thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days”: David will be there; “My servant David shall be king over them” - no doubt as regent under his great Son, through
whose mother the promise was made that He should be given the throne of His
father David. We are told too by Our
Lord Himself some of those who will not be there. Some of “the sons of the Kingdom” who have forfeited their right thereto; and it is most significant
that exactly the same words are used as to their exclusion, as are used in reference
to the exclusion of the unprofitable servant - Christ’s “own servant,” to whom He had delivered His goods while away in the
far country. “Cast forth into outer
darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth” (Cp. Matt. 8: 12, and Matt. 25: 30); not
into ‘the Gehenna
of fire,’ but somewhere known to
the Lord - outside, in each case, of the heavenly and earthly spheres of the
Kingdom.
[* This recorded statement of our Lord Jesus Christ,
must include Moses - one of His greatest prophets.]
The
Jews too, it seems, shall be missionaries of the Kingdom, and even now many
have become missionaries of the Gospel.
In
-------
It
is extraordinary how Christian commentators on the present problem of
*
* * *
* * *
224
THIS TRUTH KINDLED
ME
[PART
ONE]
GOD has more
light and truth to break forth from His Word.
The truth awaiting to be taught, and which will set God’s people on
fire, is that the Prize of our High Calling is a Share in the Millennial Reign
with the Lord Jesus. Second Coming
Teaching has already familiarized believers with the truth that we have to
appear before the judgment Seat of Christ.
The varying degrees of reward and the possibility of suffering loss have
all been dwelt upon. But who has settled
down to, the task of learning from the Scriptures what is the particular ‘prize’ that is held out which the believer can lose
whilst still retaining eternal life? And
who, seeing this, has yet girded himself to the task of making this truth clear
to any section of God’s people?
Increasingly it stares me in the face, as I read the New Testament, that
the Prize is the Reign, and that a
share in the Reign may be lost. It is this
latter phase of the truth that has not been proclaimed. Speaking for and concerning myself I can say
that for years I have seen and taught that believers will share in the
Reign. But I have not taught that [regenerate] believers
would, through unfaithfulness, be excluded from the Reign.
This
new light broke on me some years ago. I
began to preach it with both lip and pen.
But I found it was a thing that many very good people and good workers
were not prepared to hear. That the Lord
would refrain from “Well done” to
some was accepted; but that He would ever say a hard thing at the judgment seat
to a believer, or that He would exclude a believer from a share in the
Millennial glory, was something that should never be said. The opposition I encountered made me go
quietly for a time. But I have been
digging and digging into the Word, and I now know where I am, and I am praying
that never again may I allow the testimony of the Word to be quenched in
me. This truth is possessing and
kindling me, and the conviction is growing that if this is fearlessly taught it
will prove to be the truth that will stir believers out of their ease and
smugness.
We
must learn to rightly divide the Word of Truth.
One division to be kept constantly before us is: Salvation for sinners
to be received by faith; and a Place in the [Millennial] Kingdom for Believers
as a reward for faithfulness.
Those
who came out of
- Herald
of His Coming.
[PART
TWO]
THE JUDGMENT
OF BELIEVERS
By G. H.
PEMBER, M.A.
The Millennial Age will be a time, not only of reward for
those who will have overcome by the Blood of the Lamb, but also of chastisement
for such believers as will be found to have failed in their walk - through
indolence, or the minding of earthly things - and will, consequently, be sentenced to remain in abodes of the dead
until the Last Day. For it
will then appear, that, through their lack of earnestness and prayer for the [Holy] Spirit’s
help, their sanctification was not perfected during their earth-life; and it
must be so before they can dwell for ever with the Lord. They did evil in the body as well as good,
and did not judge themselves and repent with bitter crying before the Lord:
therefore, they must be judged by Him, and even as they did, so must they also receive.
Hence the judgment-seat of Christ will dispense
temporary chastisement for trespasses, as well as rewards. This is plainly
indicated in the verses under our consideration, as well as in other striking
passages of the First Gospel, which,
as we study them in due course, will increase our knowledge of a solemn but
disliked and much neglected truth. We
shall, moreover, find it revealed, with equal clearness, in other parts of the
New Testament.
For instance, what does Paul mean in the subjoined
passage? In speaking exclusively of those
who have accepted the only true foundation, he tells us, that it is possible to
build upon it either with gold, silver and costly stones, or with wood, hay and
stubble, and then continues:- “Each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the Day shall declare
it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort
it is. If
any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire” (1 Cor. 3: 13).
And again:-
“Wherefore, also, we make it our aim,
whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto Him. For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the fear of the Lord, we persuade men,
but to God we have been made manifest; and I
hope that we have been made manifest also in your consciences” (2 Cor.
5: 9).
And was not the sentiment expressed in the last verse,
the fear of the Lord’s terrible judgment
of His Own House, powerfully affecting the Apostle when
he wrote:-
“The Lord grant mercy unto the
house of Onesiphorus: for he oft refreshed me,
and was not ashamed of my chain; but, when he was in Rome, he
sought me diligently, and found me - The Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord at That Day
- and in how many things he ministered at Ephesus,
thou knowest very well.”
Surely, if Paul was moved to interpose this fervent
ejaculatory prayer on behalf of one who was not only called, but had also shown
himself faithful by fearlessly
ministering to the Lord’s servant while he was fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus,
and, subsequently, at Rome, when he was in the clutches of the most
unscrupulous and cruel of persecuting tyrants - surely, if the Apostle was
impelled to pray for such a one, that the Lord would grant him mercy in the Day
of His judgment, there can be no [regenerate] believer who
is not in need of the same mercy.
Hence
the decisions issued from the judgment-seat of Christ will have the following
results:-
Those
servants of the Lord who shall be found to have been faithful will be judged worthy of the First
Resurrection, and will immediately be made Priests of God and of His Christ,
and will reign with Him for a Thousand Years. They will thus enjoy the great Sabbath that
remains for the people of God, and will themselves rest from their works, even
as He did from His.
But
the unfaithful servants will be banished into the darkness without the pale of
the Kingdom, where they will be detained, and dealt
with according to the sentence of the Lord, until the Last Day. Then, when the time of reward has passed by,
He will raise them up to everlasting life, even as He has promised to do in the
case of all who have believed on Him.
-------
CHRIST is coming! let creation
From her groans and travail cease;
Let the glorious proclamation
Hope restore and faith increase:
Christ is coming!
Come, Thou blessed Prince of Peace.
Earth can now but tell the story
Of Thy bitter cross and pain;
She shall yet behold Thy glory,
When Thou comest back to reign:
Christ is coming!
Let each heart repeat the strain.
With that blessed hope before us,
Let our joyful songs be sung,
Let the mighty advent chorus
Onward roll from tongue to tongue:
Christ is coming!
Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!
- JOHN ROSS MACDUFF, 1818-95.
*
* * *
* * *
225
THE REIGN OF
CHRIST ON EARTH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The
sudden defection of so able and godly a
teacher as Mr. Phillip Mauro from Millenarian truth - an abandonment,
after decades of conviction, of belief in our Lord’s thousand summers on earth,
and on the grave ground that it is anti-Scriptural* - is a sharp challenge to all who hold it. For if a coming Kingdom of God breaking in
miraculously upon the present [evil and ungodly] order is a myth, and a downward plunge of the world
to Armageddon an illusion - as far the larger section of the Church, though not
Mr. Mauro, contend; and the denial of an earthly Reign and the refusal of a
physical Advent are two views which naturally and usually coalesce - the
paralysis of all political and social action which such an error must engender,
when every nerve should be strained so to Christianize the world as to make the
Church triumphant, can be nothing short of an immeasurable disaster, and an
error profoundly displeasing to God. It
is a challenge extraordinarily practical and of the first magnitude.
*
For so we understand Mr. Mauro. “As regards the period given as
‘a thousand years,’”
he says, “we should seek the spiritual and symbolical
meaning of the term” (Patmos Visions, p. 502). In the “new
dispensationalism which contradicts the Word of God,” he places, as a
leading tenet, “that all mankind will enjoy uninterrupted
peace, plenty, and every earthly gratification for a thousand years” (The Gospel of the
Kingdom, p. 215). Earth is
destroyed in the moment of the Advent (ib. p.
207). The Great Tribulation is past,
THE KINGDOM
Now
to Daniel it was given supremely to see and foretell the crumpling up of all
earthly empire in the inauguration of the
EARTHLY
EMPIRE
Now
the origin and nature of this Kingdom, as revealed by Daniel, could not be more
sharply defined. Our Lord said:- “My kingdom is not from
hence” (John 18: 36): so here, a Kingdom in the form of a
descending Stone, hewn by no earthly hands, is launched like a torpedo from an
aeroplane. It is “the revelation of the Lord
Jesus from heaven with the
angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering
vengeance” (2 Thess. 1: 7).* It is exclusively a kingdom from on high: its abrupt
collision with world-powers is no gradual permeation, but sharp military
overthrow: the vacuum it creates, it fills - therefore the Kingdom is as
literal and earthly as the kingdoms which it supplants: it is earth’s final
royalty, imperishable, unchanging, divine.
It reigns in the sense they reigned.
Mineral replaces mineral. Imagery
is a falsehood, and language is meaningless, if the Smashing Stone is not a catastrophic*
Advent, followed by a literal Empire. “Behold there came with the
clouds of heaven one like unto the son of man;
and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, THAT ALL THE PEOPLES, NATIONS, AND LANGUAGES SHOULD
SERVE HIM” (Dan. 7: 13).
* Protestant
controversialists on the Temporal Power constantly misquote our Lord. Jesus said:- “My
kingdom is not from (ek) this world”: He never
said:- “My kingdom is not of this world.” The Stone descends from heaven, but it is [this] earth
which it fills.
[* That is, the
Second Advent of Christ will instantaneously cause great damage and harm to all of
His adversaries.]
THE NATIONS
So
our Lord shows us the actual descent of the Stone:- “When the Son of Man shall
come in his glory” - that is, as
He has already once been on earth, on the Mount of Transfiguration - “and all the angels with him, then
shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and
before him shall be gathered all the nations” (Matt. 25: 31). It is
manifest from the thronging Angels that it is the descent of the Lord at the
Second Advent, which the Saviour had just indicated:- “then shall appear the sign of
the Son of Man in heaven, and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and
with great glory” (Matt. 24: 30). It is
a judgment of ‘nations’ - therefore not of the dead, among whom there are no nations;
as the final judgment is of the dead alone (Rev.
20: 11),
so this judgment is of the living alone; resurrection is never once named; and
it is pre-millennial, for the Judge says, - “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit
the kingdom” (Matt. 25: 34).
Finally conclusive are our Saviour’s word to the Apostles:- “I appoint unto you a kingdom;
and ye shall sit on thrones JUDGING THE TWELVE
TRIBES OF
RESURRECTION
So
now we arrive at the Kingdom itself as revealed in a passage the peculiar value
of which lies in its unique revelation of the Kingdom’s duration. “And I saw thrones, and they
sat upon them; and they lived” - that is, came to life, they ceased to be [in
the underworld of ‘Hades’ amongst the souls of] the dead - “and REIGNED with Christ” -
whose literal return to [this] earth has been recorded in
the preceding chapter - “A THOUSAND YEARS: this is the first resurrection” (Rev.
20: 4). It has been universally assumed, with almost
unbroken unanimity, that the dead who stand, at the close of the Thousand
Years, before the Great White Throne (20: 11) are a resurrection: the conclusion therefore
is inexorable that the first resurrection, preceding it, and ushering in the
Thousand Years, is no less literal. “The thousand years are
mentioned not less than six times: this intentional, emphatic repetition shows
that real importance is attached to the number” (Hengstenberg). The Kingdom, as Dr. Lange says, is “an aeon, and specifically the transition-aeon between this
present world and the world to come.” It is peculiarly and exclusively the Kingdom of the Messiah,
and so it is four times named in the Apocalypse as the Kingdom of “the Christ”. For “he that
overcometh,” Jesus promises,
“I will give to him to sit
down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat
down with my Father in his throne”
(Rev. 3:
21): two
distinct thrones; the Lord being now seated on His Father’s, but then on His own while the Throne of Eternity, beyond, is the joint “throne of God and the Lamb”.* And most startlingly is the
nature of the Kingdom depicted, not as a permeating leaven, or a mystical rule,
but as a smashing enforcement of righteousness; for “he that overcometh, to him will I give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are BROKEN TO SHIVERS” (Rev. 2: 26).
*
Since no man can share the present Throne of God, and equally no man can
share the eternal Throne of God and the Lamb, the Throne to which Christ invites
fellow-occupants, and which He makes dependent on overcoming grace, can only be
the Millennial.
FALSE
PROPHECY
For
the grave truth is that golden predictions of earth’s future, apart from the
physical Advent,* are not
merely a denial of God’s forecasts, but, actually constituting false prophecy,
reveal an attitude of acute danger. For
if the world is to be conquered for Christ by the Church, the spending of all
our energies on the Gospel alone when God meant those energies to reform the
world is a wrenching of Niagara from its bed in a gigantic miscarriage; but, on
the other hand, if earth’s iniquity is heading it for Armageddon, and only the
catastrophic miracle of the Advent can save the world, the situation is exactly
reversed. It must be one or the
other. For what would a cheerful
optimism in man’s future have betrayed while the
* For the
millenniums that fill the vision of the modern world see [Tract
234
“FALSE MILLENNIAMS”]
** It is of the utmost gravity that
far the major portion of the truly
regenerate are thus denying the Kingdom as revealed by the Scriptures. The believer who shares in a measure of the world’s unbelief must share
in an exactly commensurate measure of
the world’s judgment. All of
-------
THE KINGDOM
All other religions have their Golden Age in the past:
God lodges His in the future. For indeed
man’s Age began with gold, but it ends in mire (Dan.
2: 32). It is unfortunate that the
The
grace of God is free even to the vilest sinners; but the thrones of the
Millennial Age are won by sacrifice, service, and victorious achievement.” - A. B. SIMPSON, D.D.
-------
THE WHEAT
PLANT
Exquisite are the lessons of the wheat. (1)
Unlike
*
* * *
* * *
226
PROPHET -
PRIEST - KING
CHRISTMAS
AND PROPHECY
By A. E.WILSON (
In the study of Scripture pertaining to the birth of
our Lord, we have accustomed ourselves to thinking of only manger scenes and childhood
scenes with a devotional slant on the Scriptures; however, each one of the
so-called Christmas stories is deeply prophetic. For instance, in the second
chapter of Matthew we read of the
wise men coming from the east to
What
a different concept Christians would have of our Lord and His ministry if they
would but study and understand just this one passage of Scripture. Seven things are mentioned by the angel in
this prophecy and at once one has to decide whether he is going to take the
Word of the Lord literally or figuratively.
There should be no trouble at all in taking the entire Bible literally
except in those instances where it is designated by the Lord to be a parable or
a figure of speech, symbol or type. Let
us consider these seven phases of this prophecy and see if we can determine
whether it is literal or figurative.
Here
are the seven statements of the prophecy: (1)
‘Thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son’;
(2) ‘and shalt
call His name JESUS’; (3) ‘He shall be
great’; (4) ‘and shall be called the Son of the Highest’; (5) ‘and the
Lord shall give unto Him the throne of His father David’; (6) ‘and He
shall reign over the house of Jacob forever’; (7) ‘and of His kingdom there shall be no
end’.
An
elementary and fundamental rule of interpretation is consistency. If part of this prophecy is literal then all
must be literal. If part is figurative
then all must be figurative. The Lord
Himself never confused them, but always distinguished the literal and the
figurative interpretation.
Let
us consider the first phase. Was the
conception and birth of Jesus literal?
We read in Matthew 1: 18-25 that when
Joseph realised that Mary was with child before they were married, he naturally
supposed she had been untrue to him and was minded to put her away
privately. The law made provision for a
public stoning of those guilty of infidelity, but Joseph was a good man and was
not going to make a public spectacle of the one he loved. The fact is that Mary’s conception of Jesus
was known to all people. One of the many
tragedies of our Lord’s life was that often when He was in a crowd, the
Pharisees would ask the insulting question, “Who is thy father”?
insinuating that He was born out of wedlock.
The point is that Mary actually, literally and physically conceived and
brought forth a Son. In all of the
arguments presented by Satan against Christianity, we have never encountered a denial
of the existence of Mary and of the fact that she gave birth to a Son named
Jesus.
This brings us to the second point: “And shalt call His name JESUS”. Renan, the French infidel, has written
extensively on the life of Jesus.
Josephus, in his Antiquity of the Jews, speaks of him and some of his
experiences. The point we are making is
that infidels, atheists, modernists, rationalists, Mohammedans and Buddhists
all acknowledge that there was actually, literally and physically a person
named Jesus of Nazareth. Their denial pertains to his Deity, not to His
humanity. He was called Jesus because He
was to be the Saviour. God Almighty has set forth one of the most important
questions facing man, “What think ye of Jesus? Whose
Son is He”? To acknowledge that
He is the Son of the living God means eternal life. To deny it means eternal damnation.
The
third statement of the prophecy is, “He shall be great”. We were
interested a number of years ago in an article appearing in the AMERICAN MAGAZINE entitled “The Ten Greatest Men Who Ever Lived”. The author condescended to name Jesus
first. He called Him the greatest man
that ever lived. Judaism, modernism,
atheism, secularism, and all realms of thought are at one in saying that Jesus
was great - great in His life, great in His teaching, great in His
example. He is acknowledged by one and
all to be great; and the prophecy that He shall be great has been literally and
actually fulfilled.
The
fourth statement, “He shall be called the Son of the Highest”, was
actually and literally fulfilled at the time of His baptism. “And Jesus, when He was baptised, went up
straightway out of the water; and lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him.
And lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved
Son, in
whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3: 16, 17). And
again on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt.
17: 5) we
have the Lord God from heaven speaking, “This is my beloved
Son, in
whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him”. Again, here is a prophecy actually, literally
and audibly fulfilled. He was called by
the Highest the Son of the Highest.
Generally
speaking we do not encounter much opposition to these four phases of prophecy being
accepted literally, but when it comes to the remaining three there is a wide
divergence of interpretation; but if the first four are literal, these
remaining three must also be literal. If
the latter are not literal, then the former are not literal.
The
fifth phase of the prophecy is, “The Lord God shad
give unto Him the throne of His father, David”. Did David actually and
literally have a throne upon which he sat and from whence he administered the
affairs of an earthly kingdom? In 2 Sam. 5: 5, we read: “In
The
sixth phase of the prophecy is, “He shall reign over
the house of Jacob forever”. Many
today try to interpret that as meaning the church, and Christ as reigning over
the church, but Scripture never speaks of Christ as King of the church nor
reigning over the church. Christ is the
Head of the church, and the church is His body (Eph
3: 6; 4:
4) out of which He will select a “bride” to rule and reign with Him as consort Queen, in the Millennium. Rev 19: 7 shows
that the bride MAKES HERSELF READY by
providing herself a garment of good works. All Christians do not work for the Lord,
therefore, all will not be the bride. Is
there a house of Jacob? In 2 Sam 7: 14-17 we have the Lord’s prophecy through Nathan that
He is going to make a house of David, who was a descendant of Jacob, and that
over this house, designated in the Scripture as the house of Israel (Jacob’s
name after he met the Lord at the brook Jabok), the
Seed of David, which is Jesus, should reign forever. Scripture becomes absolutely meaningless
unless the Lord Jesus Christ returns and reigns over the literal house of
Jacob.
The
seventh and last phase of the prophecy has to do with the fact that “of His Kingdom there shall he no end”. The second chapter
of Daniel tells of four world-wide kingdoms
that are to exist here on the earth, and these kingdoms will be destroyed and
supplanted by the Kingdom of our Lord at the time of His return. His Kingdom, described as a rock cut out of a
mountain without hands, grows until it fills the whole earth; and having
established His reign over the earth, He shall then continue to reign over the ‘new earth’ [Rev. 21: 1], and of this Kingdom there shall be no end.
Our
Lord told us to pray, “Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven”. The Spirit of the Lord breathed this prayer
in closing the Scriptures: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”, and
we await the literal, physical return of our Lord and the establishment of His
literal, physical, [millennial,] Kingdom on the earth.
May
Christmas be a time when Christians reflect on the one who came as the “Lamb of God” to take away the sin of the world by the sacrifice of
Himself, and to look for His return, not as a Lamb, but, in power and glory as the “Lion of the tribe
of Judah”, to rule and
reign on earth in righteousness and peace. God grant His
people grace to be found watching and waiting, and that He might account us “worthy” to be with Him in the coming “age” Luke 20: 35; Phil 3: 11; Rev 3: 21; Rom 8: 17.
-------
THE PRIZE OF
OUR CALLING
So
the closer that the great event approaches, the more urgent and crucial becomes
the problem of the co-kings of the Christ.
Dr. E. R. Craven gives the
conflicting solutions of the problem that are offered:- “Some hold that they are all the saints; others that they are
only the martyrs; others still, that they are the specially faithful, including
the martyrs.” With such scholars as Lange
and Stier; such students of prophecy
as Govett and Pember; such saintly souls as Fletcher
of Madeley, and Robert Chapman; such God-used missionaries as Hudson Taylor, and evangelists as Paul Rader:- we share the profound conviction that in the third
solution all Scriptures fit as cogs into a wheel. It is extremely suggestive that the main
objections to a literal Thousand Years Dr. Barnes finds in the assumption that
all the saints reign with Christ. He
says:- (1) Every other description
of the resurrection and glory of the saints as such is catholic in its
character, while this is limited: (2) none but the wicked would remain to be judged in the last judgment, which is
inconsistent with the implication of the opening of the Book of Life: (3) to tell us that saints risen from
the dead, and reigning in glorified bodies with Christ, are holy, seems to me
very superfluous.” These difficulties die at once under the third
solution. The overwhelming predominance
of the martyrs - they compose three out of the four classes named - makes it virtually impossible to suppose that the Kingdom is shared by
all believers, irrespective of suffering or fidelity, and obviously
implies that it is the epoch of recompense for fiery trial while the beatitude
- “blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection” - carefully
individualizes the reward, and isolates the victor in a peculiar sanctity, and
devotes him to an appropriate joy.
*
* * *
* * *
227
THE
MILLENNIAL
By E. BENDOR
SAMUEL
IN chapter 37 the prophet Ezekiel predicts
That
the building of the
“Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
and set thy heart upon all that I shall show thee, for in order that it might
be shown thee art thou brought hither.
Declare thus to the house of
The
shape and size and all the particulars of the building and its furniture were
shown him and he was commanded to give all the details of them to his people,
that realizing God’s gracious purpose with them they may be ashamed of their
iniquities. He was to “show them the form of the
house and its fashion, and its goings out and
its comings in, and all the ordinances, and all its forms, and all
its laws, and write it all before them that they
may keep the whole form thereof and
all the statutes thereof and do them”
(43: 10, 11).
The
Man Who disappeared together with the cherubim from the temple that was about
to be destroyed now reappears with the Glory of the Lord in the rebuilt temple
nevermore to depart from His people.
That
the Temple of Ezekiel does not refer to that of Zerubbabel, nor of Herod, is
clear from the fact that it differed from them in its structure and
observances:-
(a) The one described by Ezekiel is
larger than the earlier ones, but its altar is smaller, for while the earlier
ones were the centre of worship for
“All that are left of all the
nations that came against
It will then be “a house of prayer for all nations.”
(b) The altar is smaller than that of
Solomon’s as the great antitypical sacrifice was already offered and those in
the future
(c) For the
same reason the Day of Atonement is not mentioned by Ezekiel as full atonement
has already been made by Christ for all who believe in Him. This is in
accordance with Heb. 10: 14, 18.
(d) It is remarkable that Ezekiel does
not mention the paschal lamb; he speaks of the Passover as the feast of seven days,
and says that the Prince shall prepare for himself and for all the people a
bullock for a sin offering. Christ
completely fulfilled, first, the command regarding it by taking part of the
meal on the Passover night with His disciples; and secondly, its type, when He
died on the cross on the very day that the paschal lamb was offered according
to the Jewish way of reckoning, that is, the day being from sunset to
sunset. The command is “From even to even shall ye
celebrate your sabbaths.”
The
Feast of Passover is to be observed as it sets forth not only
According to Zech. 14: 16, the
Feast of Tabernacles will also be kept.
It was the feast of ingathering and represents the completion of the
ingathering of the nations.
(e) The Feast of Weeks, of Pentecost, is
not mentioned as that is connected with this age of the Spirit (1 John 14: 11, 17; 15: 26; Acts 2: 23), Who is with us in a special sense during the
bodily absence of the Lord Jesus.
(f) There will also be a change in the
offering of the sacrifices suitable to the times. The burnt offering, for instance, will only
be offered in the mornings (46: 13-15), and not
in the evenings also.
(g) In harmony with Jer. 3: 16, there will be no
“And it shall be when ye are multiplied and become fruitful in
the land in those days, saith Jehovah, they shall say no more The Ark of the covenant of Jehovah; neither shall it come into the mind, nor shall they remember it, nor
shall they make it.”
And
as we have seen, the Divine Man will be in the Holy of Holies where the
The
Jewish Rabbis say that the
(h) Ezekiel does not say anything about
the Veil, or Shewbread, or Candelabra.
There is good reason for the omission.
The Veil that was rent asunder by invisible hands at the death of our Saviour
will probably never be restored, because it has opened for the saved ones the
way to the presence of God where Christ as our High Priest Himself has entered
and the way will ever remain open to us.
The Presence of our Lord will far outshine any light that all the
candelabra could give us (as will be the case in the heavenly City, Rev. 21: 23). The
house of Jacob will then walk in the light of Jehovah (Isa. 2: 5), and in their turn will shine for Him,
according to the declaration of the prophet.
“Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon
thee. For, behold, darkness shall cover
the earth and gross darkness the people, but
Jehovah will arise upon thee, and His glory
shall be seen upon thee” (ibid. 60: 1, 2).
The
Shewbread, or more literally, the Bread of the Presence, being placed before
Jehovah, set forth Christ in His human perfection together with His redeemed
people, the twelve loaves also representing the twelve tribes of Israel, but
the Lord Jesus in His human form being Himself present in the midst of the
entire nation of Israel, it will, perhaps, be one amongst other symbols no more
necessary in the Millennium.
(i) The
arrangement of the
There
is a remarkable verse in Isaiah 53 which
reads:-
“All we, like sheep, have gone astray, we have
turned every one to his own way, but Jehovah
hath caused to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.”
Hiphgia “Caused to meet,” that is the literal translation. The picture is graphic. Christ in the centre of God’s purpose of
salvation; the sins travelling from all points of the compass, North and South,
East and West, and from all points of time, before Christ and after Christ,
meeting upon Him as their focal point.
In harmony with this would be the system of sacrifices, those offered by
the ancients looking forward and those offered in the Millennium looking back
upon Christ as the centre.
This is further indicated by the fact that the centre
of the
The
When
God first chose
“The Israelites will probably set forth in all harmonious
parts the outward beauty and inward sanctity of the
To set forth this and not to invalidate the
principles of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that after Christ’s perfect sacrifice
no further propitiation is needed, is probably one object of the future Temple
liturgy. Israel’s province will be to
exhibit in the minutest details of sacrifice the essential unity of the Law and
the Gospel which now seem opposed” (A. R. Fausset).
When
the Tabernacle was erected we are told that “A cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the
Lord filled the Tabernacle” (Exod. 40: 34).
Likewise
at the completion of the
Alas!
that glory, the visible emblem of the invisible presence of God, was seen by
Ezekiel to disappear slowly and reluctantly, from the gate that looketh toward
the east. And first from the Cherub unto
the threshold of the house (Ezek. 9: 3), then
from the threshold of the house unto the door of the gate (10: 11, 19). Finally, the prophet saw it disappearing from
the midst of
“And he brought me unto the gate, and behold,
the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and His voice was like the
sound of many waters and the earth shined with His glory. ... And the glory of Jehovah came into the house by the way of
the gate whose prospect is toward the east, And
the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and behold the glory of Jehovah filled the house” (Ezek. 43: 1-5).
This
will surpass anything that took place in the Tabernacle or former temples
because the Glory will not be merely symbolic as was formerly the case, but
will be the accompaniment of the personal presence of Jehovah, for the prophet
continues -
“And I hear one speaking with me out of the house; and a man was standing by me, And
he said unto me, Son of man, This is the place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for
ever” (Ibid. 43: 6, 7).
The
Millennial age will likewise foreshadow and prepare the way for the perfect
state. In the former God’s presence will
be in the midst of
Both
in the heavenly and earthly
In
the earthly city the names of the twelve tribes are on the twelve gates; in the
heavenly city there are also twelve gates with the names of the twelve tribes
of
In
Ezekiel the configuration of the earth is to
be changed, in the Apocalyptic vision there is a new earth.
In
Ezekiel’s vision the chief part is the
In
Ezekiel’s
- The Hebrew Christian Quarterly.
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THE WORLD
EMPIRES
WHEN
Israel’s royalty had perished in Babylon, and the Jew had forfeited the
kingdom, Jehovah brought before a Gentile emperor, the first to whom He had
committed supreme world-power, the vision of a colossal Man. “Its brightness” - the glory of the world - “was excellent, and the aspect
thereof” - the raw strength of humanity - “was
terrible” (Dan. 2: 31): an
exquisitely graded vision, disclosing the successive seats of political strength,
and its deteriorating quality, in an image of awful glory and terrifying
power. For the very materials of the
Colossus are the record of its decay.
The head - absolutism; the breast - tempered imperialism; the thighs -
military monarchy; the legs - imperial rule, ultimately (in the feet) blended
with democracy: gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay - empire deteriorating in
metal, that is, in concentration and intensity, and lessening in specific
gravity, that is, in stability and momentum.
The vision disclosed that there would be four great empires of man;* that there would be four only; that
the last phase would be democratic; and that the fifth empire would be
Divine. The accurate and startling
fulfilment of all but the Apocalypse brings us to-day to the very threshold of
the End.
*Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome have been
accepted by a majority of the ‘Fathers’, by all
the expositors of the middle ages after Strabo, and by the majority of modem
evangelical commentators.
“Thou, O King Nebuchadnezzar, art the
head of gold.” “All the peoples, nations,
and languages trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew, and
whom he would he kept alive” (Dan. 5: 19). God gave the Emperor of Babylon such power
that none on earth could thwart the progress of his arms. But the experiment was quickly
disastrous. Self-deification, or
Caesar-worship, the acme of human sin, made its immediate appearance (Dan. 3: l): the first Divine discipline on an emperor,
changing an autocracy into madness, failed to warn his successor: “in that night was Belshazzar the Chaldean king slain, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom” (Dan 5: 30).
A
composite empire followed, the Persian, of inferior autocracy. “After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee.” Two arms - the Mede and the Persian - but one
breast: of silver, not gold; for the monarchy, no longer absolute, was curbed
by powerful nobles. The Empire was now
ruled by ‘the laws of the Medes and Persians,’
and not by one autocrat. Every
opportunity of sinless rule dwindled as God became less able to entrust the
monarchies of the world with supreme power.
The
Greek Empire, “the third kingdom of brass,”
follows, “which shall rule over all the earth.”
Brass, for hardness, far excels silver and gold: so, by conquest alone, Alexander
made an empire so universal that he wept for other worlds to conquer.
The
fourth Empire, the Roman, arose as iron.
Roman codes have been the basis of the world’s law: its iron administration
- hard, destructive, invincible - ran its roads to the ends of the earth. The figure parts, in the Image, into two
legs, and ultimately subdivides into ten toes.
From 800 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 A.D. - for six and a
half centuries - two emperors, in
The
final Empire descends as the Stone. The
colossal majesty of human greatness, the entire fabric of human power,
disappears as chaff: and the Stone then waxes great, and fills the whole earth. It is a universal kingdom, for it replaces
all other kingdoms; a kingdom on earth, for it is “under the whole
heaven” (Dan. 7: 27), “and it filled the whole earth”; a literal Kingdom [upon this
earth], for “all the
peoples, nations, and languages shall serve Him” (Dan.
7: 14):
it is the Fifth Monarchy of the world. “Behold there
came” - not with the swaddling-bands of the cradle, but - “with the clouds of heaven one
like unto a son of man” (Dan. 7: 13).
*
* * *
* * *
228
THE RAPTURE
IN THESSALONIANS
By ROBERT
GOVETT
It will be observed, that Paul is silent as to the
multiple rapture, or the discriminating of the saints. Can such omission then be accounted for, or
does not Paul’s omission throw discredit upon the doctrine?
To
which it must be replied - First, that if a doctrine be once made out from
Scripture, the silence of the other sacred writers, does not in the least
weaken it.
Secondly,
we may discern why the apostle omitted to notice it. For the questions treated of by him are
mainly two, and they are consolations addressed to quiet certain vain
fears. (1) The first of these was, a fear lest the dead saints
should have no part in the kingdom. (2) The second was a fear that the living saints were already in the day of the Lord, and would
have to make their way through the tempest.
(1) Now in order to answer the first it
was enough to reply, that, as death did riot hinder Jesus, the head of the
coming kingdom, from entering upon it, so neither should it prevent the saints,
who were one with Jesus, from entering it also.
He appends also further intelligence respecting the mode of the
resurrection; which proves that the living, far from being alone in the
kingdom, would not be even first in it.
Such
a mode of reply then did not require, and could hardly admit, any notice of
distinguishing rapture. Whether the rapture takes place at thrice or at once,
the same assertion holds good, that the living and dead will be jointly
partakers of the ascent.
(2) But with regard to the other fear,
the case was different. The apostle
might have treated the question so as to bring the discrimination into
view. He might have said ‘The watchful saint will escape
that day of terrors; the unwatchful will have to pass through it.’ But then it must be remembered that he had to
meet the alarm of saints, ‑who
were persuaded that, though they were watchful, the
day of dread had come upon them. To tell them, then, that some of the
saints would have to endure the perils and sorrows of that day, would hardly
have tended to allay their fears. All at
Thessalonica were not only watchful, but in full expectation; and therefore the
cautionary view would manifestly be less needed, than where the saints were
ignorant or asleep on this momentous topic.
Again,
it was not proposed to Paul, as an inquiry, whether any of the
Even
the unruly of the Thessalonians were still watchful, and would be partakers of
the first rapture, though, if they continued in their unruliness, they would be
subject to rebuke after their ascent.
For every distinct offence of the saints has its answering and distinct
recompense.
The
main subject of Paul is the Presence, and this is but one, however
many the saints’ entrances into it may be.
He takes up the raptures only as relating to, and introducing to, the
Presence ; and he treats of the Presence only as referring to the life or death
of the saints (1 Thess.
4. ), or as taking the watchful saint out of
the Day of the Lord.
Thus
we may see the reasons why our Lord brings it forward: and why his Apostle does
not. Paul viewed only the physical difficulties; and thence gives the
rapture only as seen from the point of God’s power to surmount them. These difficulties abide the same, however often
the rapture may be repeated. But Jesus
presents the moral aspect of the rapture or
God’s requirements from man. Jesus puts
forth warning to the careless; Paul, comfort, to the terrified. Thus the one wisely omits what the other had
wisely disclosed.
Paul’s
omission on this point is paralleled by another omission of a like kind. Jesus views both the Church and the Jews as
of two classes - and presents the escape of the one, the
trials and woe of the other. Paul
recognizes but one class of the Jews' and but one of the Church. The with him are wholly impenitent; the
Church wholly, watchful.
Yet, in spite of the acknowledged omission the
attentive eye may, I believe, gather hints confirmatory of the doctrine even
from the Epistles before us. For what
says the fifth chapter of the First Epistle?
The Apostle there is setting forth at one view the contrasted positions
of the Church and the world. The Church
is awake and sober, the world is sleeping and drunken; and answerably thereto,
the one is seized on by the Day as by a thief, the other escapes. But would it not follow from such a
principle, that if the believer have left the characteristic and holy position
of safety in which the Church is to stand, that he also might be overtaken by
that day as a thief? After describing
the terrors of the day of the Lord, Paul warns the saint to be unlike those on
whom that day will come; 5: 6-8. And he winds up the epistle with a prayer,
that they might be found blameless in body, soul, and spirit, in the Presence (ver. 23). He
does not assume, as it constantly is assumed by many, that all ‘the Church’ will be ready.
All the Thessalonian Christians indeed were awake to the return of the
Lord. But that is not true of all
believers now; and even to these Paul drops a word of exhortation, not to
resemble the world in its slumbers and drunkenness. Else, it is implied, if they were so
overtaken, they would be dealt with as of the world.
But he closes on a note of reassurance. “Who died for us,
in order that whether we keep awake or lie down to
sleep, we may together live with him” (1 Thess. 5: 10). Many
Christians, especially of those who despise prophecy, are spiritually asleep.* They are pursuing, with full
bent of soul, the world’s prizes. And thus they are blind to the effects of the
Saviour’s return. Here, then, we obtain
a reply to the momentous question: ‘Is it perdition for such to give themselves up to spiritual
slumber?’
And the reply, in grace, is: ‘No!’ The Saviour has died; and disobedience to
this command will not be their destruction. Those
spiritually alive in Christ shall not be for ever mixed up with the spiritually
dead.
[*
*
* * *
* * *
229
CONDITIONAL
RAPTURE
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Of
ever-deepening shadows of coming judgment around us, which - as we have several
times ventured to predict - are certain to
modify the views of multitudes of Christians on prophecy, have now been
reinforced by an ambitious and elaborate volume,*
favourably reviewed by all the leading evangelical journals to an astounding
degree, which assures us that all
Christians must pass through the Great Tribulation. So this old problem, so terrific in its
consequences, is once again upon us, whether we will or no; and every opening
of a fresh year makes the knowledge of what exactly is going to happen more
urgent - more desperately urgent - for us all.
* “The Approaching Advent of Christ, by Alexander Reese.
TWO DOMINANT
VIEWS
Now
two understandings of Scripture divide the
CONDITIONAL
RAPTURE
This startling alternative makes the victory of either
group morally impossible. For how is it
conceivable that saints of God so able and devoted as J. N. Darby and Dr. Torrey on the one hand, or else Dr. Tregelles and George
Muller on the other, could be totally wrong on a great subject of Scripture
study, totally astray in the exposition of plain and explicit Scriptures and
powerful arguments. There must be a
compromise, and there is. The gradual
removal of the Church by successive raptures, according to the ripeness of the
grain, is the golden mean between two blank contradictions, a golden mean which
accepts, on their face value, unaltered and unmodified, all the
Scriptures that bear on rapture. It is
significant to note at once that ‘the rapture of the Church’ is a phrase
unknown to Scripture, for the simple
reason that there is no such thing as a simultaneous removal of the whole
Church, either before or the Tribulation or after it.
A MORAL
DISTINCTION
Now we are
at once arrested by an outstanding fact.
Between the two dominant views on the one hand, and the
Scripture
statements concerning rapture on the other, the fundamental difference is a
moral one. The two current views throw
the entire responsibility of a coming to us upon
God; whether we escape the
Tribulation, or pass through it is the sovereign act of God: whereas the
Scripture lodges the responsibility foursquare upon the shoulders of the
believer himself. The current views
dissociate rapture completely from all sanctity in the believer himself. In the first view, the grossest backslider is
flashed into sudden glory; in the second view, the saintliest character must
undergo the coming judgments: the Scripture, on the other hand, explicitly
states the reverse of both these statements; for it establishes rapture on a moral basis. All moves - including the great Day of the
Lord - towards the perfecting of the saints.
Those rapt before the Tribulation, kept watchful by the warnings they
heeded, escape; while the terrors of the Day of the Lord, they experience, will
stab wide-awake all Christians who are now plunged in unbreakable slumber.
RAPTURE A
REWARD
Now
what the truth is can at once be determined by discovering exactly what rapture
is. If rapture is of grace, it is a
gift; if it is a reward, it is of works; and one word of our Lord is
decisive. He says:-
“Watch ye” - he is actually addressing apostles - “and pray always that ye may be ACCOUNTED WORTHY to escape all
these things that shall come to pass” (Luke 21: 36):
the escape (He says) is contingent on
the worthiness: that is, the escape
is not a gift of grace, but a reward conditional on watchfulness and prayer. It is most significant that in the great
galaxy of faith in Hebrews Eleven, the sole
hero of faith associated with reward is Enoch, the rapt; and his rapture is
explicitly stated to be the fruit of his walk, not of his standing. “He was not found, for before his translation he hath had witness borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto God”,
who “is a REWARDER
of them that diligently seek him”
(Heb. 11:
5). Thus
we learn why, as the exact date of the Advent is hidden, so the Scripture is
totally silent on the degree of sanctity demanded for rapture: the date is
concealed in order to produce perpetual watchfulness; the standard of
worthiness is concealed in order to produce, perpetual preparation.
THE DAY OF
THE LORD
Now
this discovery of what rapture is - namely, a reward - completely disarms both
the opposing camps. For what is the
central argument in both, supporting the removal of the whole Church at or in
the Tribulation? The first group denies
that any believer can incur the terrors of the Day of the Lord; the second
group denies that what all Christians will pass through is the
Day of the Lord: that is, both groups seek to avoid, at all costs, all that
conflicts with grace. But rapture occurs
in the day of justice, not in the day of grace - the day in which our Lord says
- “I know thy
works”: the withdrawal of
ambassadors is not the last act of peace, but the first act of war; and the
withdrawal of God’s ambassadors is an action of the Days of Wrath. So far as the Day of Wrath being impossible
for the child of God, wrath already occurs in principle, and can occur in
fact. For the Church is directed by the
Holy Ghost, in the case of a believer guilty of one of the excommunicating sins
(Cor. 5: 11), “TO DELIVER SUCH A ONE UNTO SATAN FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE
FLESH” - an exact summary of
the Day of Vengeance; but, not in order that he may be eternally destroyed, nor
to prove that he has never been born again, but “that the spirit [of the believer thus excommunicated] shall be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”* - when, from the Judgment Seat, our Lord opens His Reign on earth. It is exactly so in the days that are
coming. It is the descent of Satan,
occurring after the rapture of the Manchild, that creates the Great
Tribulation, and he sets out (Rev. 12: 17) to
exterminate the ‘remainder’ who “hold the testimony of Jesus”.
[*
That is, he will then have “another spirit with him” (Num. 14: 24) - one
which will enable him to realize the loss of his inheritance in
the coming millennial kingdom of his Lord. See Heb. 12: 15-17, R.V.)]
A
CONDITIONAL PROMISE
No passage is plainer or more, decisive than our
Lord’s promise to the Philadelphian Angel, and none more critically overthrows
both dominant in the Church. “Because thou” - it is no promise to the whole church in
Philadelphia, much less to the whole church throughout world, but a promise to
a selected church officer for the action he has taken - “didst keep the word of my
patience” - here is no privilege
whatever based on the new birth, but a promise to a selected believer as a
reward for a definite doctrinal action - “I also will KEEP THEE” - therefore without the ‘kept
word’ no believer will be correspondingly ‘kept’ - “from the hour of trial,
that hour which is to come upon the whole wor1d
[habitable earth,], to
try them that dwell upon the earth”
(Rev. 3: 10). Words are meaningless if a promise so
sharply conditioned is to be enjoyed by all believers, freed from all conditions whatever; and equally impossible is it to
reconcile it with being kept safely through the Tribulation. For the Angel is dead. As a matter of fact, he can never be kept through the Tribulation, for he can never be in it,
and such an exposition would only make our Lord’s promise [to
the overcomers] false: whereas, since he is to be kept out of the Trial, his death has already fulfilled the
promise; a promise which will cover all the living also who fulfil its conditions.
A CONCRETE
FACT
So now, in the Apocalypse, we see conditional rapture
in concrete fact. “I saw, standing on
*There
is no article before ‘firstfruits’, for it is
but a section - the body escort of the Lamb.
** The corn: Greek.
PRAYERLESNESS
The
practical consequence of this unfortunate dual error is that, while both
groups, it is astounding to know, accept (for the most part) our Lord’s
commanded prayer for escape as addressed to the Church, both so interpret
Scripture that that prayer is never prayed, and can never be prayed. For if we all must escape, or if we all must pass through the Trial, in either case such a prayer
is merely unbelief: therefore, on one ground or another, the prayer to escape,
the only subject en which our Lord ever commanded perpetual prayer - “PRAY ALWAYS”
- is never prayed - at Second Advent meetings, or Conventions such as Keswick,
or (with rare exceptions) in any of the Churches of God throughout the
world. But
individuals pray the prayer. The writer has prayed it daily for thirty-six years. The
prayer may not, by itself, ensure our rapture - much depends on the
watchfulness that is to accompany it; but it must enormously increase the
likelihood. Is it not safest to follow
in the counsel of our Lord?
*
* * *
* * *
230
ACCOUNTED
WORTHY TO ESCAPE
By G. H. PEMBER, M.A.
Upon the vexed
question of the translation of the Church there has been much controversy. One large party has pronounced that all her
living members will be removed from earth before the Tribulation: another, that
the whole number of them will have to remain here until the end of the same
dread season: a third, that those of the living saints who, through their walk
and behaviour after conversion, are found worthy, will escape the Tribulation;
while such as the Lord finds living in ease and carnal security will have to be
cleansed from worldly lusts while passing through the trial. This last mentioned view seems to us to be
true solution of the problem: while, at the same time, it suggests probable origin
for the others.
But
we would pray for power to remember that over-confidence and dogmatism are
altogether out of place in the discussion of subjects so profound and solemn.
With chastened and humbled hearts must we enter the Holiest, sprinkled with the Blood of our slain Lord, and leaning,
not upon our own wisdom but upon the aid of that Spirit Who Alone knows the
mind of God and Alone can reveal it. And
if these be our conditions, there will be found in us none of that vain
self-reliance, at times bordering upon arrogance, which is so often conspicuous
in discussions even of the most solemn themes.
A vital passage is Luke
21: 36, which runs as follows:-
“Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may
be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
Man.”
Now in the ten verses immediately preceding these
words, the Lord has been describing the Great Tribulation, which shall come as
a snare “upon all
them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth.” Evidently,
then, there is but one way of escaping a trouble so universal - namely, by
previous translation from the earth. And
the last clause of the verse reveals that those who are thus translated in the
presence of “the
Son of man Which is in Heaven,” we
have then to discover who these favoured ones are, and, with that purpose in
view, must carefully mark what the text tells us respecting them.
First, then, (1)
they must be sought only among those
who will be alive at the time of the
end. (2) They must belong to the same
class as the disciples whom the Lord was addressing. (3)
They must be persons who know and believe that the Tribulation is impending and
who pray ceasing for deliverance from it. (4)
They will have to win this great favour by being accounted worthy of it. Bare faith in God, or Christ, will not
procure it for them; it is not a gift, but
a prize to be won, in the strength of the Lord, by the fruits of faith, by
conduct and woks after conversion.
And (5) they, are to be translated from earth to Heaven
where the Lord Jesus is, and to remain with Him while their brethren are being
harassed and slain by the Harlot and Beast in succession.*
* The old idea,
that the title, ‘Son of man,’ indicates a Jewish
connection is untrue. The title is one
of deep humility, and therefore, with a single exception was used only of the
Lord Himself. The one other mouth that
uttered it was that of Stephen, a Christian believer. And how could we ever forget its intimate
association with ourselves? for was it not as Son of man that our Lord died,
and redeemed us from all our iniquities?
In the fourth chapter of Revelation a change of
Dispensation becomes manifest. The very
word ‘church’ is never again found, until the
prophecy has ended in chapter 21: 5. The
Sanctuary of the Lampstands has disappeared, and its place is taken by the
Throne, before which stand those heavenly things which were the patterns of the Tabernacle furniture.* Presently the Lord appears as a Jew, “the Lion of the
Tribe of
* Rev.
4: 2, 5, 6; 6: 9; 8: 3; 6: 19. ** Rev. 5: 5. *** Rev. 6: 9-11. + Rev. 7: 1-8. ++ Rev.
11: 5. +++ Rev. 4: 1.
Thus the great controversy as to whether the then living
members of the Church will be removed before or after the Tribulation appears
to have been founded upon the mistake that all of them would be removed at the
same moment.
* *
* * *
* *
231
HADES
By PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D.
Notwithstanding
the amount of distinct revelation; the whole subject
of Hades is obscured to the reader of the English Version of the Bible by the
erroneous rendering of the Hebrew term Sheol and its Greek equivalent
Hades. These words which in the original
Scriptures have a fixed and definite meaning, indicating a place in the Unseen
World distinct from both Heaven and Hell (regarded as the place of final
punishment), are constantly rendered by either grave or Hell. By this mistranslation an idea proper to the
Word of God is completely blotted out from the English Version; and, not only
So, but the texts which present that idea are distributed amongst those which
set forth two entirely distinct ideas - thus obscuring the teachings of Scripture
concerning both the grave and Hell. But the obscuring and confusing influence of this erroneous
translation does not terminate upon those who study only the English
Version. The first and most enduring
conceptions of the doctrines of Scripture are derived
from the Version we read in childhood - conceptions which, even when false,
subsequent study often fails to eradicate.
And beyond this, every Version, especially the
one in common use, is, to a certain extent, a Commentary, and as such exerts a
powerful influence over the minds of students of the original Scriptures. Had the word Hades been
reproduced in our Version, much of the confusion that now embarrasses
this subject could never have found existence.
As
to the mode of the investigation conducted in this study, all the passages in
which Hades occurs were tabulated and compared together with the view of
determining whether, consistently with the contextual requirements of each,
some uniform meaning might not be given to the
term. The experiment was successful
beyond most sanguine expectation. It
resulted in the conviction that by Hades is designated - (1) not the grave; (2)
not Hell*; (3) not the Unseen World, including
Heaven and Hell; (4) not the state
of death: (5) but - (a) a Place in the Unseen World distinct
from both Heaven and Hell; (b) having two compartments - one of
comfort, the other of misery.
[* That is, in “the lake of fire”
(Rev. 20:
15, R.V.) - the eternal place and state,
(after
resurrection from ‘Hades’), of all who
are eternally
lost. The “lake of fire” and “Hades”
are separate
localities; the former is a place after the resurrection of the dead;
the latter is a place in “the heart of the earth”
(Matt. 12:
40), where the “Son
of man” descended immediately after the time of His Death: it is the
place of disembodied souls, (Ps. 16: 10. cf.
Acts 2: 27),
awaiting
their future Resurrection: (2 Tim. 2: 18; Luke 16: 23; Rev. 6: 9-11, R.V.).
]
Hades is spoken of with
expressions of comparison utterly inconsistent with the idea of the literal
grave. Thus we read of - “The lowest Hades” (Deut. 32: 22; Ps. 86: 13); “the depths of Hades” (Prov. 9: 18); “the midst of Hades” (Ezek. 32: 21). It is
in two instances clearly distinguished from the grave. In Gen. 37: 35, where it
first appears in the Bible, Jacob
declares - “I
will go down into Hades unto my son”;
but from verse 33 we learn that the
Patriarch was under the impression that
Joseph had not, and could not have, a grave; he is there represented as
exclaiming, “An evil
beast hath devoured him.” And in Isaiah 14: 15
it is declared that Lucifer shall be “brought down to Hades,” who, verse 19, is represented as
being “cast out
of his grave.” It is used in
antithesis with Heaven under circumstances which show
that the literal grave cannot be intended.
“It is as high as Heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than Hades,
what canst thou know?” (Job 11: 8). “If I ascend
up into Heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in Hades, behold, thou art there”
(Ps. 139:
8). “Though they dig into
Hades, thence shall mine hand take them: though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down” (Amos 9: 2).
The New Testament idea of Hades as distinct from the
grave may be most clearly perceived in the declaration con cerning Dives in Luke
16: 23; and in the didactic teaching
of the Apostle Peter (Acts 2: 27-31)
concerning the soul of Jesus between
His death and His resurrection. The
Apostle, manifestly, spoke of both the body and the soul of our Lord (comp. vers. 27
and 31), asserting that the former did not
see corruption (although it was placed in a sepulchre) and that the latter was not left in Hades -
implying, of course that it went to Hades. Unless we adopt the conclusion that
the soul sleeps with the dead body in the tomb- in the face of the manifest
implications of the Apostle and the whole tenor of the Word of God - Hades must
be distinct from the tomb.
The underlying thought in the Lord’s narrative of
Dives seems to be that Hades is a world to which the spirits of all the dead
are consigned, having two compartments - one of comfort, and the other of misery - separated by an
impassable gulf or chasm, but within speaking distance of each other. That our Lord did not intend to represent
Lazarus as in Heaven seems to be evident.
The place of his abode is not styled Heaven, but
Abraham’s bosom*; he is not represented as being carried up to it (the
general form of expression when Heaven is the terminus), he is simply carried;
it is within speaking distance of Dives, being separated from him only by a
chasm - but Heaven and Hades are represented as being poles apart: “It is as high as Heaven
- deeper than Hades (Job 11: 8); its
central figure is not God, but Abraham; God is not there in His glory, nor
angels save as ministers of transportation; it is not represented as a place of
perfect bliss - Lazarus is merely comforted - a term never used in descriptions of the blessedness of Heaven. The hypothesis that Jesus contemplated Lazarus
as in Hades not only gives force and consistency to the whole narrative, but is directly in accordance with the natural
interpretation of the brief and scattered teachings of the Old Testament
concerning the abode of the righteous dead.
* The narrative
itself suggests the idea that the phrase ‘Abraham’s
Bosom’ might have been a Jewish name for the place of departed spirits;
and so Josephus asserts.
It
is a well known fact that there are two words in the
Greek Testament which in the English Version are rendered Hell - Hades
and Gehenna. Our
Lord is represented as employing the former of these only three times - in
reference to the humiliation of Capernaum (Matt.
11: 23; Luke 10: 15); to the deliverance of the Church from its power (Matt. 16: 18); and to the imprisonment of the disembodied
spirit [disembodied soul] of
Dives (Luke 16: 23). When he uttered His fearful threatenings
concerning the casting of both body and soul into Hell, into unquenchable fire,
the term employed by him was Gehenna; see Matt. 5: 22, 29, 30; 10: 28; 18: 9; 23: 15, 33; Mark 9: 43-47; Luke 12: 5.
Directly
in line with the teachings thus developed are those of the Apostles. Peter and Jude (2
Pet. 2: 4; Jude 6) agree in declaring that the angels who kept
not their first estate are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day.” Are they not in the pit of the abyss (with
the exception of those permitted for a season to come forth with their leader),
reserved for that awful day when, with Satan, they shall be cast into that “everlasting fire prepared for
the Devil and his angels?” The “everlasting destruction” threatened in 2 Thess. 1: 9, is to be inflicted after Jesus has come in
flaming fire taking vengeance - after
His advent for judgment. Until that time
also, when “the
Lord cometh with ten, thousand of His saints to
execute judgment upon all,” “is reserved the
blackness of darkness forever” -
which the Apostle Jude teaches us is reserved for the ungodly, Jude 11-15. That the ungodly are in Hades all admit, but
they are not yet in their place of final and everlasting punishment - they are
not yet in Hell [i.e., in “the lake of fire”].
The
Hades of the good is not Heaven. This is
evident from the following considerations:
(1) God, angels, Jesus Christ (save
during the time between His death and resurrection), are never represented as
abiding therein. This is scarce
explicable on the hypothesis that Hades is a general term for the Unseen
World. It may be said,
however, that the term is employed only in reference to the spirits of deceased
men. This answer, it will be observed, exceedingly
limits the hypothesis we are considering.
(2) Hades, as an entirety, is
distinguished from Heaven. This is done in two distinct modes. (a)
By being placed in antithesis therewith, as in Job 11: 8 - “It is as high as, Heaven;
what canst thou do? deeper than Hades;
what canst thou know?” See also Ps. 139: 8; Amos 9: 2. (b)
By being localized as beneath the surface of the
earth. Thus it is described by the
synonym “nether
parts of the earth”; and approach
to it is universally described as a descent - thus (Num. 16: 33) Korah
and his company are described as going “down alive into Hades” through the opening earth.
(3) Not only is the
idea of situation beneath the earth presented when the wicked are spoken
of, but also when the entrance thereinto of the righteous is described. Not only is it declared that Korah and his
company “went down alive into (the pit) Hades”; but, also, Jacob
exclaimed (Gen. 37:
35),- “I will go down into Hades unto
my son...” Not only did Saul ask the
witch of Endor “to bring
up Samuel” (1 Sam. 28: 8), thus testifying to the popular belief as to the
descent of the spirits [i.e, disembodied souls] of the good; and not only did the terrified
woman exclaim (verse 13) “I saw gods ascending out of the earth,” but
the spirit of Samuel (unquestionably his spirit, raised, not by the
incantations of the woman, but by the power of God) is represented as saying to
the King (verse 15) “Why hast thou disquieted me to bring
me up?” Of
Elijah alone of all the Old Testament saints is it said
that he ascended, and of him alone it is said that he went into
Heaven. Unquestionably
the idea of the Hades of the good presented in the Old Testament, is that of a
subterranean place distinct from Heaven.
In strict accordance with the usus loquendi of the Testament, our Lord when he
referred to His own abiding in Hades spoke of it as remaining “three days and nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12: 40); and the Apostle Paul in referring to the same
event (Eph. 4:
9) wrote of Jesus as “descending into the lower
parts of the earth” - a
well-established Old Testament synonym for Hades.
The
real grounds of the opinion that Hades is a state, and not a place,
are, as it seems to the writer, philosophical and theological, and not
exegetical. There are those whose psychological
views cause them to shrink from any localization of a pure spirit, and who,
therefore, affirm that Hades must indicate a state. The same views, it may be remarked, should
lead, and in many cases do lead, to the affirmation that the terms Heaven and
Hell are indicative, not of places, but of mere conditions of the soul. Another ground is what may be styled the
pseudo-scientific. It seems plain that
if the language of Scripture is to be interpreted
normally, the location of Hades is in the heart of the earth. There are many who shrink from this opinion
as though it must be
false. Why false? If Hades be a place, it must be somewhere;
and if somewhere, why not in the
centre of the Earth as well as elsewhere?
True Science, which confesses its ignorance concerning the internal
condition of our globe, can, on this question, neither affirm
nor deny.
* *
* * *
* *
232
SPIRITUALISM
AND THE RESURRECTION
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
On one tenet Sir
Oliver Lodge, who, as the oldest living Spiritualist and a man of deserved
scientific fame, is exercising a profound influence on the Church of God - “Sir Oliver Lodge,” in the amazing words of Dr. R. F. Horton, “has become a more intensely orthodox exponent of Christian
verity than many of our Free Church preachers” - challenges the
Christian Faith with a challenge of life or death. “The body,” Sir Oliver says, “is
a nuisance to be got rid of. If people would get over that trouble about interment and about
lying there for centuries waiting for a general resurrection - all that kind of
medieval superstition - they could begin to regard death as more like what it
is, an adventure, an episode that is bound to come, something that we may be
ready for, welcome when it comes, and not be afraid of.” Resurrection is thus always
denied in toto by
Spiritualism, as never having occurred, as undesirable, and as impossible. How far this Spiritualistic and Gnostic acid
has eaten into the vitals of the Christian Creed, and how far the modern Church
has advanced on the road of abandonment of the Faith, can be seen from words of
the Dean of St. Paul’s. “Few, if any Bishops,” says Dr. Inge
(Church of England Newspaper May 4th, 1923), “would hold a candidate [for the ministry] to the quite literal acceptance of the Descent into Hell,
the Ascension into Heaven, or the Resurrection of the Flesh.”
A COLLAPSED FOUNDATION
The
Apostle at once grapples with the consequences of a denial of
resurrection. “If there is no resurrection of
the dead” - if a resurrection of
the dead has no existence; if the springing of a corpse to life is an
impossibility; if no dead body ever rose, or ever could rise, or, as a matter
of fact, ever will rise - “neither
hath Christ” - for the denial cuts backward
as well as forward - “been raised” (1 Cor. 15: 13). You cannot (he
says) isolate Christ from humanity, so that He rose, but we do not: He is the
typical Man, and all His human experiences are the experiences of all the human: to deny our resurrection is to leave,
somewhere in the abysses of Joseph’s grave, the Sacred Dust.
Now
the first ineludable fact built on a full tomb is that the Christian Faith is
(in that case) an unsubstantial dream. “If Christ
hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain” - void, groundless, a shell without a substance, a
nut without a kernel; it would contain no substantive, no objective, truth,
nothing to which the preacher could appeal as a vera res (Ellicott), an acknowledged event, an
actual fact: “and
your faith also is vain” - all
that on which your faith fastens - atonement, pardon, heaven, bliss -
collapses; for from a closely knit history and revelation, the central fact,
the king-nut, is thus withdrawn. Christ Himself rested His claims upon the
resurrection, both before and after the event.
If Christ rose, He lifts our corpse out of the grave, as well as
delivers our soul out of Hades: if He failed to rise, He leaves our soul in
Hades, and our body in corruption. The
corrupt cannot save the uncorrupt, or themselves: or else Abraham or Moses or
David or Isaiah, one or more, would long ago have left
their graves. God’s crowning surgery is
an operation on the coffin; and an unemptied tomb can only mean an unsaved
soul. No resurrection proves no redemption.
FALSE
APOSTLES
The
second consequence fastens at once on those primarily responsible. “Yea, and we” - the fountains of the Faith - “are found” - by a cross-examining world and an incensed God - “false witnesses” - not mistaken witnesses, but false - “of God; because we witnessed of God” - empowered by the Spirit of God, and attributing the
event to God (Acts 2: 32) - “that He raised up Christ:
whom He raised not up, if so he that the dead are not raised.” Innocent fanatics, deluded enthusiasts, the Apostles could not be,
for they were witnesses before they were preachers, and they asserted as a fact
perceived by their senses what their
senses had never perceived*; and since the Apostles were unanimous (Acts 4: 33),
false testimony to a fact which they said they had seen, and which they had never seen, could only be a collective and deliberate conspiracy. Who can believe that the writer of 1 Cor. 13., the man who has more
influenced the world for good than any other man since Christ, and who laid
down his head at last on the block for his faith - was a fraud throughout,
living a life of continued and systematic falsehood? But false witnesses, false apostles, if thus
disclosed, are a death-blow of the Christian Faith.**
* If a man says
that he handled a scarred body, and watched the man risen from the dead eating
solid food, and says it repeatedly, and it never happened at all, he must be conscious
that it never happened, and so it is the deliberate invention of a false
witness; and by asserting that God authorizes his testimony, he either makes
God suborn false witness, or else commits sacrilege by using God’s name for
falsehood - a capital offence under the Law.
** The obverse truth is singularly
effective:- namely, that deniers of the Resurrection
can betray an evil morale equally convincing as an integral part of error. Mr. G.
W. Foote, famous in the nineteenth century as ‘Saladin,’ a foremost infidel, says:- “Christianity
has elected to stand or fall by a myth so monstrously improbable that it is
impossible to discuss it without insulting common sense and outraging the most
rudimentary principles of experience and reason. He who discusses the probability of the Resurrection
of Christ as if it were a grave and legitimate subject for debate is demented
and absurd as he who would gravely state it.
If you set a reasonable thesis before me, O Christian, I will reason
with you; but if you set before me a proposition so monstrously absurd that to
seriously attack it would only be a logical burlesque, a pedantic mockery, you
must not deem me disrespectful if, without noticing it, I pass by on the other
side. But if,
as in the case with the Resurrection monstrosity, you insist on thrusting your
devout imbecilities upon my attention, do not deem me discourteous if I reserve
reason and criticism for higher purposes, and treat your puerile superstitions
with ridicule and contempt. Jack and his
beanstalk was just as suitable for the nucleus of a religious system as Christ
and his cross; but the one has been taken, and the other left. Christ and his cross is the more
blood-stained and crude legend of the two, and would, therefore, receive the
readier acceptance by the barbarous mental and moral instincts of priest-manipulated
ignorance.” Amazing nonsense of this kind is a good deal more than nonsense: it is an evil heart
vitiating and falsifying the intellect, whose motions it dooms to sterile and eternal miscarriage.
A DESTROYED
FAITH
If
one link is broken, a chain is worthless: the Apostle passes to a third rotten
link. “And if” - Paul drives home, by repeating it, the cardinal
fact - “the dead” - dead persons dead men - “are not raised”
- if no grave can be emptied - “neither hath Christ been raised”: if the
thing is impossible, it has never happened: “and if Christ hath not been raised, YOUR FAITH IS VAIN” - not empty of substance, as before (ver. 14),
but fruitless in effect; that is, “ye are yet in your sins”: your faith has never delivered you from the realm of
sin, the guilt of sin, or the corruption of sin. A dead
Redeemer is no redeemer: if the Lamb is dead, so
is the atonement: if the Debtor, bearing a whole world’s
debts, is unreleased, it can only be because the debt is unpaid. Denial of the Resurrection sweeps away the
Atonement, because it strips it of any proof of validity: as the Resurrection
is the proof of the Sacrifice’s acceptance, so no Resurrection is a rejected
Sacrifice. If Christ lies in His grave,
I lie in my sins: if He lies under death, I lie under guilt: if He is in dust,
I am in Hell.
A LOST
CHURCH
The
fourth article in an unbeliever’s un-escapable creed is a lost Church. “Then they also which are
fallen asleep” - a sleep necessarily
means an awaking - “in Christ have perished”: all the saints of all the ages closed their eyes in fancied
salvation, only to open them in real damnation.
For what wrought death? Sin. And what keeps souls dead?
Sin. And therefore if Christ never rose, what keeps Him
dead? Sin. Universal death means universal sin,
unexpiated, unlifted, unforgiven. If
Christ is not raised, it is proof positive that on Calvary He was no
propitiation, but the feeble victim of an enormous wrong; and if thus Christ is
bodiless, Himself a wandering and homeless spirit, all the dead saints are
un-shriven ghosts, guilty spirits, lost souls.
In other words, if Christ never rose, all that is good and noble and
best, in the history of mankind has gone down into a
common ruin, and we wake to a universe that is a nightmare, and a God of whom
the best that can be said is that He is unknown and unknowable.
A VANISHED
HOPE
The
final consequence of our Lord’s unemptied tomb is the utter miscarriage of all
Christian experience. “If in this life only we have
hoped in Christ” - if the
Christian cannot cross the grave, or look for a world to come - “we are of all men most
pitiable”: in this world, off scouring,
in the ‘world to
come’, lost; conspicuously
mistaken, we have been conspicuously fooled.
Hope which is only hope is a cruel mirage. We have abandoned evil for good; we have
given up sin for righteousness; we have left impurity for purity; we have
renounced all that the world holds dear for no visible recompense - even for
possible martyrdom: yet the fruit of it all is - damnation. To be dying of
thirst in a wilderness and, crawling to an oasis of palm and spring, to find it
a mirage - this is worse far than dying of thirst without
a mirage.
INCREDIBLE
UNBELIEF
Now,
finally, face the facts. A minister said
some time back:- “More than
twenty years ago, just after my ordination, this question forced itself upon
me. What if after all this article of
our creed were a beautiful romance, an ancient myth or
idle dream? Solemnly and seriously I had
to face the question, and find my way back to the home of truth.” We are confronted
with an inexorable dilemma. An unrisen
Christ makes of the apostles monsters of guilt; it charges Christians with
unchanged sinfulness; it involves all the holiest in perdition; it changes
renunciation of evil into a folly. This
is a creed vastly more difficult of belief than the Christian Faith. The moral
miracle of unbelief is greater than the physical miracle of faith; the more so as the limits of the physical are unknown, but
the limits of the moral are within sharp and known boundaries. For if Christ is not risen,
He is dead: if the Gospel is not true, it is false: if my sin is not forgiven,
I am lost: if God’s word is not truth, it is falsehood. On the other hand, if but one Apostle is
true; if but one man
is delivered from his sins; if but one dead saint in the whole history of the world is saved:- CHRIST IS RISEN; and
the Gospel is the one momentous truth of the universe. No physical miracle can be any difficulty to
the Creator. Professor Virchow, the founder (as he has been called) of Modern
pathology, and the operator of probably more thousands of post-mortem
dissections than any other man living or dead, was asked, - “Do you believe in
the resurrection of the dead?” “Why shouldn’t I ?” was the prompt response.
-------
RESURGAM
I shall arise. For centuries
Upon the grey old churchyard stone
These words have stood; no more is
said,
The glorious promise stands alone,
Untouch’d while years and seasons roll
Around it; March winds come
and go,
The summer twilights fall and fade
And autumn sunsets burn and glow.
I shall arise! O wavering heart,
From this take comfort and be strong!
“I shall arise,” nor
always grope
In darkness, mingling right with wrong;
From tears and pain, from shades of doubt,
And wants within, that blindly call,
“I shall arise,” in
God’s own light
Shall see the sum and truth of all.
Like children here we lisp
and grope
And till the perfect manhood, wait
At home our time, and only dream
Of that which lies beyond the Gate:
God’s full free universe of life,
No shadowy paradise of bliss,
No realm of unsubstantial souls,
But life, deep life, more real than this.
O soul! where’er
your ward is kept,
In some still region calmly blest,
By quiet watch-fires till the dawn
And God’s reveille break your rest,
O soul! that left this record here,
I read, but scarce can read for tears,
I bless you, reach and clasp your hand,
For all these long two hundred
years.
I shall arise - O clarion call!
Time rolling onward to the end
Brings us to life that cannot die,
The life where faith and knowledge
blend.
Each after each, the cycles roll
In silence, and about us here
The shadow of the Great White Throne
Falls broader, deeper, year by year.
- The Jewish Missionary Magazine.
-------
“The Lord’s resurrection
carries with it the entail of universal resurrection as surely as
first-fruits entail harvest: … the lonely sheaf is a proof and specimen and
pledge of an entire harvest, and as God cut the sheaf,
so He will reap the field. The
resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of the race. As surely as every living
man must die, so surely every dead man must live again. … ‘For as in Adam all die’ - as
‘in Adam’ all
encounter death - ‘so in Christ’ - in the new sphere into which the Incarnation has
introduced the entire race - ‘shall all be made alive’ - restored to
the union of body and soul.”
“Resurrection (as the word
implies) is no substitution of another body for the corpse; but the ‘rising again’ of what was
buried. Dr. E. W.
Bullinger, who denied eternal punishment, still more gravely denies that
anything ever comes up out of the coffin: he assumes an annihilated body
between death and the hereafter; in the case of the saved only, he asserts the
reception at the resurrection of a body which is an entirely fresh creation;
and this theory is embodied in his Companion
Bible, which is spreading the error far and wide. Since a seed dies, says the Companion Bible, every germ, every
substance in the old body, dies also, ‘and therefore it cannot be quickened.’ The farmer would be very astonished, and
quickly bankrupt, whose seeds, in this sense, ‘died.’ Our Lord’s body, He says Himself (John 12: 24), so died: but the same
body reappeared, for death is dissolution, never annihilation.” - D. M.
Panton
*
* * *
* * *
233
A LAWYER’S
VIEW OF THE
RESURRECTION
By DAVID LEE JAMISON,
LL.B.
The most significant claim made in behalf of
Christianity is that its Founder, Jesus of Nazareth, arose from the dead after
his crucifixion. When the report spread
through
Objection
is raised on the ground that the witnesses disagree
among themselves as to some of the circumstances of the resurrection, and that
there are discrepancies in the record.
Let it be borne in mind that it is the chief function of a Court of Law
in the trial of a cause, as it should be the chief endeavour of an unbiased
mind in the investigation of an important matter, to ascertain the real truth as to the main point in issue. Judge and jury are expected
to keep the main point clearly before the mind and not allow it to be lost
sight of or obscured by irrelevant matter or minor questions. The skill and ingenuity of counsel whose side
is weak is too often exercised in befogging the issue
or transferring the attention of the jury to a false issue. In the case before us the point at issue is, Did Jesus arise from the dead in his natural body? Let not the mind be
diverted from that point.
If
the witnesses have not been discredited as mentally
incompetent or morally unreliable; if there is no disagreement of the witnesses
on the point at issue; if no collusion or improper influence has been shown;
then their testimony stands and is
credible.
Any
one who has participated in the trial of a cause in a court of law knows that
unless there is collusion no two witnesses will relate the same instances and
give the same details in telling the story of an event. If the stories of different witnesses agree
in all details suspicion of collusion or dictation is aroused at once in the
sophisticated mind. Allowance must be made for difference in eyesight, hearing, ability in
estimating time and distance, capacity for remembering details, ability in
reconstructing a scene, and skill in drawing deductions.
Taking these things into consideration when reading the different accounts of the resurrection,
the legal mind is impressed with the evident truthfulness of the witnesses and
the genuineness of the Record. While the
witnesses give many details connected with the appearances of Jesus, and relate
a variety of circumstances surrounding the event of the resurrection, they in
no case discredit themselves by inconsistencies, nor
do they contradict one another.
Moreover, the testimony given very often reflects the personality or
temperament of the witness in such manner as to give his evidence additional
weight. The devoted women have come
early to the tomb of Jesus, which they find empty. In their disappointment
they are returning to bear the news of their discovery to the disciples, when
suddenly Jesus appears to them. How
natural that they should impulsively prostrate themselves before him in true
Oriental fashion, and lay hold of his feet.
Peter
and John hurry together to the opened sepulchre. John’s timidity restrains him from entering
the tomb alone. But
Peter, coming up, boldly enters and examines the place where the body of Jesus
had lain. How characteristically these
two men act that morning on the
Far from disagreement among the witnesses, there is a
beautiful harmony, such as is produced by a skilled orchestra, composed of many
instruments, every one of which contributes its particular part to the
symphony.
No
less authorities than Huxley and John Stuart Mill affirm that there is
no scientific impossibility in miracle; that it is purely a question of
evidence (Huxley, “Controverted Questions”, pages
258, 269; Mill’s Logic, book 3, chapter
25). With this opinion
a lawyer can heartily agree. It would be
perfectly competent to come into a court of law with evidence to prove that a
living man had died. It would be equally
competent to introduce evidence to prove that a dead man had come to life. The evidence would be
received and duly considered in either case.
It
would be surprising if one who did the works which the Record
shows that he performed should enter and leave the world as an ordinary
mortal. If he was the unique,
pre-existent Son of God - as the Bible declares he was - and it was decided in the counsels of eternity that he should take
upon himself our nature for the purpose of human redemption, it would be quite
proper that his entrance into the world should be through divine, rather than
human, generation. Granting the
supernatural birth, then the sinless life and the miraculous works should
occasion no surprise. But
it would be surprising if he should die as ordinary mortals die and his
divinely conceived body should undergo corruption. The Virgin Birth, the sinless life, the
miraculous works, and the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ are
consistent and harmonious. Give up any
one of them and you will be driven finally to abandon them all, and with them
the deity of our Lord and his atonement for sin.*
*
From The Resurrection of
Jesus, by D. L. Jamison, LL.B., Sunday School Times
Co.,
-------
“Except a grain of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth by itself alone;
but if it die, it beareth much fruit:” (John 12: 14.)
“Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it,
until it receive the early and latter rain:” (James 5: 7.)
Where’er
you ripen’d fields behold
Waving to God their sheaves of gold,
Be sure some corn of wheat has died,
Some saintly soul been crucified:
Someone has suffer’d, wept,
and pray’d
And
fought Hell’s legions undismay’d.
-------
“Fear not the things
which thou art about to suffer: behold,
the devil is about to cast some
of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days.
Be thou faithful unto death,
and I
will give thee THE CROWN
OF
LIFE:” (Revelation
2: 10, R.V.).
-------
Shine on, Lone Star! I would not
dim
The light that gleams with doubtless ray;
The lonely Star of Bethlehem
Led on a bright and glorious day.
Shine on, Lone Star! In grief and tears
And sad reverses oft baptized;
Shine on amid thy sister spheres;
Lone stars in heaven are not
despised
Shine on, Lone Star! Thy day draws
near
When none shall shine more fair than thou;
Thou, born and nursed in doubt and fear,
Will glitter on Immanuel’s brow.
Shine on, Lone Star! Till earth, redeem’d,
In dust shall bid its idols fall;
And thousands, where thy radiance beam’d,
Shall crown the Saviour Lord of all.
-------
*
* * *
* * *
234
FALSE
MILLENNIUMS
By D. M.
PANTON
All counterfeit millenniums are
necessarily built on a denial of the true. An utterance of Dean Inge, though somewhat
extreme even for a Modernist, is typical of the radical rejection of all
Second Coming truth. “I do not wish,” he says, “entirely to exclude the
possibility that our Lord, in becoming man, may have been willing to share, to
some extent, the current popular illusions, both with regard to the Messianic
hope and demoniacal possession. But this must certainly not be stretched so far as to admit
that He fancied Himself filling the ro1e of Daniel’s Son of man in the near
future. Such a notion would not be
compatible with sanity, far less with those attributes which
all Christians believe Him to have possessed.
The ‘pure eschatologist’ is only to be found in a lunatic asylum, and no
one would have taken this seriously in Judea any more than in London.”* Thus, on their own confession, the Kingdom of God
must be set up by its modern creators and not by the returning Lord; and as a matter of fact we find four (four is
the earth-number) man-made millenniums offered us in the closing Age, - two
Christian and two pagan.
* The Guardian, May 13, 1910.
THE
MODERNIST MILLENNIUM
Aim The Modernist concentrates on the Christianization of
civilization and Society. “The League of Nations,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury,
at
Method The method
expected to achieve the end is the ‘social gospel’. Dr. R. F. Horton, in a lecture, quoted Dr. Bruce Glashier’s words “Socialism consists, in truth, when finally resolved, not in
getting at all, but in giving; not in being served, but in serving; not in
selfishness, but in unselfishness; not in the desire to gain a place of bliss
in this world for one’s self and one’s family (that is the individualist and
capitalist aim), but in the desire to create an earthly paradise for all.” “That,” cried
Dr. Horton passionately, “is Christianity!
Why use this word ‘Socialism’? *
* The Crusader, Mar. 12,
1920.
Sequel So
far from the Church being anywhere remotely near the goal, a Modernist, Dr. Parkes Cadman,
assures us:- “We used to think that God was going to
save the world by Methodism or Congregationalism or Presbyterianism: the world
will not be saved so in a million years.” And so little has been done in two thousand
years that
THE PAPAL
MILLENIUM
Aim In December, 1925, Pope Pius XI introduced a new Feast
into the Catholic calendar - “The Feast of Christ the
King”. Quoting more than once
God’s promise to our Lord of David’s Throne, the Papal Encyclical displays “the Catholic
Church, which is the kingdom of Christ on earth”, as “destined to be spread among all men and all nations.” “Oh, what happiness
would be ours,” exclaims the Pope, “if all men,
individuals, families, and nations, would but let themselves be governed by
Christ! ‘Then at length,’ to use the words addressed by our predecessor, Pope
Leo XIII, twenty-five years ago to the Bishops of the Universal Church, ‘then
at length will many ills be cured; then will the law regain its former
authority, peace with all its blessings be restored. Men will sheathe their swords and lay down
their arms when all freely acknowledge and obey the authority of Christ, and
every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the
Father’.”
Method The aim is to be achieved by
universal worship of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
“The whole world,”
says the Pope, is to “come together to venerate and adore
Christ the King, hidden under the Sacramental species. It is by a divine
inspiration that the people of Christ bring forth Jesus from his silent
hiding-place in the church, and carry him in triumph through the streets of the
city, so that he whom men refused to receive when he
came unto his own, may now receive in full his kingly rights.”
Sequel
THE
COMMUNIST MILLENNIUM
Aim The Communist Millennium is all society
organized as a common political, economic, and religious unit controlled by ‘the dictation of the
proletariat.’ “It is only by such external functions as the millions have in common,” says the creed, “their uniform and
simultaneous movements, that the many can be united in a higher unity: marching, keeping in step, shouting ‘hurrah’ in
unison, festal singing in chorus, united attacks on the enemy, these are the manifestations of life which are to give
birth to the new and superior type of humanity. Everything that
divides the many from each other,
that fosters the illusion of the individual importance of man, especially the
‘soul’, hinders this higher evolution, and must consequently
be destroyed. The ‘glorious external man’ is henceforward
to take the place of the inner man, organization is to
be substituted for the soul. For only
the mechanically organized has reality, strength, and permanence, mechanism
alone is reliable; only the ‘collective man’, freed from the evil of the soul,
mechanically united by external interests with all others, is strong. To him
alone belongs the empire of the future; only he will be able to reign therein
‘in the millennium’.”
Method The method is the creation of a gigantic, ruthless,
all-controlling political and industrial octopus deliberately crushing the soul
to death in its arms.
“Awe-inspiring and in mighty pre-eminence, the mass confronts
the individual, for it possesses the ‘multiple strength’ of organization. It, too, once consisted of many helpless
individuals, all seemingly abandoned to their blind ‘anarchical’ fate; but now,
united into mass, they stand forth powerful and feared; the secret of their
strength is organization; there lies hidden the new salvation by which man may
become master of life.
Only in. Russia has the final secret of this one
possible salvation been recognized, i.e., that it is not so much the
development of the soul that can lead humanity to a true re-birth, but that the
end is rather to be reached through the mechanical, external, and purely
cumulative combination of all individuals by means of organization.”
Sequel This Frankenstein, this soulless monster, can only end in
devouring its creators. On the day of
his death Danton cried:- “This time last year I had the Revolutionary Tribunal
instituted. I ask pardon for it of God
and of men.”
THE FASCIST
MILLENNIUM
The
Fascist Millennium is purely a recreation of Roman Imperial power. “Our formula,”
says Signor Mussolini, “is:- Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against
the State.”
To
Mr. Shaw Desmond, Mussolini said:-
“Within the next few years
Method The method of re-establishing the Pax Romana,
or Roman Millennium, is iron law. “What,” asks Mussolini, “constitutes the
State? The police. All your codes, all your doctrines, your
ordinances are as naught if at a given moment the police by sheer physical force
does not make felt the inescapable weight of law. Woe to him who dares impugn the National
Militia: the only answer he will get will be a charge of lead.”
Sequel The Fascist symbols are the Rods and the Axe, now
enthroned beside the Royal Arms on every official document throughout
-------
FATAL FLAWS
1. Every one of these Utopias is built over the
seething volcano of unregenerate human nature.
2. Every one is an attempt to establish the Kingdom without the King.
3. Every one is in open defiance of the known will of God as revealed in
the prophecies of God.
4. Not one has any kingdom for the dead, or can break a single grave.
5. Not one, where it has had full local power, has ever established
anything remotely like the
6. All lodge the origin of the Kingdom in this [presently evil and God-cursed (Gen.
3: 17)] world,
whereas our Saviour said:- “My Kingdom is not from hence.”
7. All unite in an explicit, deliberate, and final refusal of the one fact which can alone produce the Kingdom - the return of the
King.
“Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the
Kings of the earth! Put on the visible
robes of thy imperial majesty! Take up
that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee! For now the voice of thy Bride calls thee,
and all creation sighs to be renewed.” -
* *
* * *
* *
235
THE
SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST
AND THE
PRESENT HOUR
By T. G. MANLY,
B.A.
There is perhaps
no greater need at the present day than a more adequate realisation by the
It is the mark of a devoted Christian never willingly
to grieve the Holy Spirit, just as on the human plane a loving child would
never willingly cause his parent to suffer. We would not
sin, not in the first place, because sin is foolish, wasteful and destructive,
but because we know that sin hurts God.
In other words, the motive for a holy life
springs from a loving care to give joy and not pain to God and our Saviour, who [will] reside in us in the person of the Holy Ghost.* So the Christian motive is not spiritual gain
and pleasure, but to give joy and glory to God.
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy
Him for ever.” The glorification
comes first. Unless it does, the true
enjoyment of God cannot follow. God is always
first.
[*
Note the divine conditions and our accountability:
“… and what soever we ask we receive of him, because we keep
his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his
sight.” … “And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him,
and he in him.
And hereby we know that he abideth in us,
by the Spirit which he
gave us;” (1 John. 3: 22, 24, R.V.).
cf.
Acts 5: 32:
“And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy
Spirit, whom God hath given TO THEM THAT OBEY
HIM.” R.V.
See also Judges 17: 20; 1 Sam. 18: 12, 14; Psa.
51: 11,
R.V.]
There is another reason why we should meditate to-day on the sufferings of the Cross. Our hope is to be translated in the near
future with the members of His Body (Phil. 3: 20, 21). What if we are not? What if we are not
accounted worthy to escape all the things that are coming to pass and to
stand before the Son of Man? We shall then be living in a world where sin will
abound unrestrained, where the powers of Hell will be loosed upon us, where the
natural human heart and sin will be seen in all their unvarnished guilt and
horror. God will seem to be almost completely eclipsed and to have forsaken the
world, and the faith of believers will be tested as never before by suffering
and persecution. So awful will be the
reign of sin that God will apparently be defeated. The meaning of the Cross
will then be of vital moment and it will he asked - “How can it be true that Christ ‘spoiled principalities and powers’”? “Is it true that Satan
really was defeated?” “Why then is he
reigning on earth?” “Did Christ on the
Cross really plumb the depths of suffering?
If He did not triumph over the Devil, if He did not experience what we
are passing through now, what hope have we?” Even if we are translated
to the throne of God it may well be that we shall be called on to suffer before the glorious change as we have not suffered before; and so in either case it behoves us to
realise the meaning of the Cross in terms of suffering and victory - what the Cross meant to Christ.
Faced
by a future of apparent defeat of God, let the will turn to that scene of
apparent defeat of the Son of God on
The
physical suffering of Christ on the Cross was terrible
in the extreme, but it was as nothing to the anguish of His Soul. He did indeed pour out His Soul unto
death. When He gave His Blood, He gave
His Soul, for the life of the flesh is in the blood (Lev.
17: 11). It was the offering of a Holy Soul on behalf
of the stained souls of the human race.
Where then did His Soul go? It
went out into the engulfing presence of our Sin. What is more Holy,
more Beautiful, more Sensitive than the Soul of Jesus? What is more sinful, more
ugly, more brutal than Sin? Yet
the two had to meet. The
tender shrinking soul of the Lord Jesus must be engulfed by sin’s octopus coils. He who knew no sin was made
sin. His soul travailed. Those words “travail of Soul” reveal suffering which plumbs the depths. There can be no greater. If travail of body is awful,
what of travail of soul? Job said
(chap. 7:
15) - “my soul chooseth strangling and death rather than life”, but the soul of Christ was strangled in a way that
Job’s never was. “Is it nothing to you all ye
that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow. ...”
This
then is what sin is in its real self - a meaning we never know, though we are
the guilty ones. He who hung on the tree
bore the curse of sin for us for ever. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?” Yes, He has gone down to the depths. In the Cross all suffering, all persecution,
all defeat find their refuge. Any
suffering then that we shall be called upon to bear
will be light in comparison, for it will not clutch the soul.
The
Cross was also the Devil’s hour of apparent triumph: “This is your hour and the
power of darkness.” God rules by apparently being ruled and He
conquers by going down to death. That
which looked to be a gigantic failure was an eternal victory. Satan did with the soul of the Lord Jesus in
those three hours of darkness what he willed.
It was the purchase money that must be paid him
who was the god of this world. But he could find no taint in that Holy Soul, and so he
could not retain it. So
after he had Plunged it into darkness and had levelled his hosts of hell
against it, and torn it with all his weapons, he had to withdraw and his hour
of apparent triumph ended in an eternal defeat.
The Lamb had prevailed.
Though
the victory of Christ is not yet applied to earth, it will be in God’s own time. His victory is sure and the visible future
application certain, while Satan’s near triumph will be but the proof of his
defeat on Calvary and his visible defeat on earth to come. Come then what may, the Cross
is a Rock upon which we can stake our all. Though all things are flung into the vortex
of the first whirlpool, though the Devil even now seems about to grasp the
ruins of world empire and turn all men to his person, the Cross
remains. It cannot change. The
Lamb of God triumphs, He has defeated defeat, prevailed over all suffering.
“The
kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against
the Lord
and against His Anointed, saying
Let us break their bands asunder and cast
away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in
derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath
and vex them in his sore displeasure.
Yet have I sat my king upon my holy hill of
Zion.”
-------
THE ADVENT
Every hope lodged
in an error is a hope withdrawn from the truth; and all noble effort and
devotion based on it is a launching a boat without a bottom. How can we build Utopia on approaching
insanity? and what is to stop an insanity which
advances pari passu with science?
and who but ourselves are responsible for all waste of
devotion on the futile? Only in the
bankruptcy of human hope is born the Hope of God.
For the [coming
Second] Advent is the Morning Star in the darkness. Sir Martin Conway, in the Prayer Book debate in the House of
Commons, voiced the heart-hunger of millions:- “We are
waiting for someone who will not overthrow the old revelation, who will not
disestablish the old faith, but who will carry us into a wider field and will
give us a new vision of the [restored (Rom. 8: 19-22, R.V.)] world that is beyond, a
new vision of the unknown. … waiting for
a message of [a
future]*
salvation, waiting for a message which this world longs for, but which has not yet come.”
[* See 1
Pet. 1: 5,
9, R.V. cf. Jas.
1: 21; Heb. 10: 39, R.V.]
*
* * *
* * *
236
THE EARLY
CHURCH ON THE
TWO
WITNESSES
By J. A. SEISS, D.D.
The apocryphal Gospels, Acts, etc., which, though we go not to them for doctrine, belong
to the early literature of the Church, and hence are competent witnesses as to
the opinions current among Christians at the time they were written, are also
very positive and clear in the assertion, that Enoch, with Elijah, is to
witness again upon earth. In the history
of Joseph the carpenter, Jesus is
represented as saying:- “Enoch
and Elijah must, toward the end of time, return into the world and die, namely,
in the day of commotion, terror. perplexity, and
affliction; for Antichrist will slay them” (ch.
31.). So in the Gospel of Nicodemus, two old men are
found living in their bodies in paradise, one of whom says:- “I am Enoch, who was well-pleasing to God, and who was
translated hither by Him; and this is Elijah the Tishbite;
and we are also to live until the end of the world; and then we are to be sent
by God to withstand Antichrist, and to be slain by him, and after three days to
rise again, and to be snatched up in clouds to meet the Lord” (ch. 9).
So
also in the apocryphal Revelation of
John, a voice from heaven is represented as saying:-
“Three years shall those times be. ... And then I shall send forth Enoch and Elijah to convict him
[Antichrist]; and they shall show him to be a liar and
deceiver; and he shall kill them at the altar, as said the prophet.” So also Tertullian
(De Anima,
Ephraem, the Syrian, in quite another
section of the Church, speaking of the Antichrist and the great day of Judgment,
says: - “But, before these things, the merciful Lord
will send Efijah the Tishbite,
and with him Enoch, to teach religion to the human race; and they shall preach
boldly to all men the knowledge of God, exhorting them not to believe in the
tyrant through fear. They shall cry out and say,
‘This is a deceiver, O ye men! Let none of you in any way believe
him: for in a little while he will be utterly abolished. Behold, the Lord, the Holy One, cometh from
heaven!’” (Sermon on
Antichrist).
So
also Ambrose, who reproves Victorinus for
substituting the name of Jeremiah in the place of Enoch as the companion of
Elijah in the last years of this present world. “The Beast,”
says Ambrose, “Antichrist, ascends from the Abyss to fight against Elijah,
and Enoch, who are restored to the earth for the testimony to the Lord Jesus.” Also Hilary
the Deacon:- “Enoch and
Elijah will be apostles at the last time; for they have to be sent before
Christ, to make ready the people of God.”
The
Syriac Apocalypse of Peter says:- “The Son of Perdition shall say
to them, I am the expected Messiah. But they shall convict him of falsehood,
and he shall be enraged against them and kill them; and their bodies shall lie
four days in the streets of
Scarcely,
until after the first half of the Christian ages, do we hear of any other
testimony on the subject. Whenever we hear of the last great Antichrist and the
Witnesses who withstand him unto death, Elijah and Enoch,
Enoch and Elijah are the
names we hear from the lips of the most eminent teachers, bishops, apologists,
and martyrs, from the time of the apostles onward. I am well convinced that men will dispute and
reject all such presentations of their return till
these two Prophets themselves appear again; and even then the dupes of
Antichrist will still dispute and reject it to their everlasting
perdition. For modern
Christendom has well-nigh dropped these names from all such connections, as it
has also well-nigh dropped most of the characteristics of primitive
Christianity itself; but nothing that it has substituted in place of these
names can claim even a moiety either of the Scriptural or the traditional
evidences, which still, in spite of everything, continue to proclaim Enoch and Elijah as the Two Witnesses.
*
* * *
* * *
237
MOSES AND
CHRIST
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
The taproot of all Modernism, its bottom-most source beneath
all surface reasons, is not intellectual but moral: it is a sensitive spirit
blenching and wilting, not so much before the miracles of the Old Testament as
before the Old Covenant’s outbursts of fierce destruction. The nineteenth century, in
the lands where the Higher Criticism was born, had been for generations steeped
and drenched, beyond any other century, in Gospel teaching; and the Sermon on
the Mount had been universally presented as the quintessence of the Divine
revelation as a rule of conduct: therefore, to minds which had absorbed this
atmosphere, and which assumed that nothing else could be divine, psalms of
fearful imprecation, the command to annihilate whole nations, a judgment that
wiped out an entire world - these were moral stumbling-blocks raising the
gravest issues. Thus Criticism -
taking it on its most favourable side - felt about it, in an agony of need, for
some explanation of the documents which would lift the responsibility from God
of acts and decrees utterly irreconcilable (as the Critics believed) with New
Testament grace and love. The ‘shock’ that creates Modernism is not so much the
wonder of Jonah or the emergence of the floating axe, as a Jericho exterminated
to the last man or the children torn limb from limb by two she-bears from the
woods.
JUSTICE
Now
Augustine’s saying is wonderfully
true:- “Distinguish the
dispensations, and all difficulties vanish.” The whole of the Old Testament is based on law; and the fundamental principle of law is
righteousness; and the chosen instrument of righteousness, everywhere and
always, is justice. It
is put with Divine intensity- “JUSTICE,
JUSTICE
shalt thou follow” (Deut. 16: 20); and the exact justice which is the principle
of all law is expressed in words so important that they are repeated by Jehovah
three times:- “Thine eye
shall not pity; life shall go for life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”
(Deut. 19:
21).
All the law courts of the world, all the legal codes of all nations, are
based on this exact equipoise of crime and punishment; and Mosaic law, thus based on one of the attributes of God, burns with
the white heat of absolute righteousness.
So for two thousand years mankind was put on this footing, as a huge
dispensational experiment of God; in order that men might learn, not in
inspired writings alone, but in the hard, convincing school of bitter fact,
that righteousness for the sinner is an unscalable Matterhorn,
and justice the thing most to be dreaded in the universe.*
* So justice also
ruled private conduct. For men, put on the footing justice before
God, were therefore permitted to exact justice from their fellow-men;
and as God enforced righteousness from them at the peril of judgment, so they
might enforce righteousness from others at the peril of the sword. The State (which is but the world organized
for purposes of government) abides (
REPEALS
Now
with Christ the new era dawned in which we moderns have been so long immersed, and
of which we have drunk so deeply, as to be in the greatest peril of losing the
razor-edged sense of righteousness whereby alone justice is even
understood. For the Lord Jesus appears,
and, once again on a mount, quotes freely from Sinai, only as freely to
repeal. Again and
again He says, “Ye have
heard that it was said to them of old time,” to the ancients, the
fathers; and every quotation He makes is from Jehovah’s own utterance in the
Law; and at least twice, if not three times, He quotes bodily from the
Decalogue which Jehovah had written with His own finger: in
every case substituting another law. Sometimes it is a heightened law-
as between adultery and the mere gaze of impurity; sometimes it is a different law
- as between oaths and affirmations; sometimes it is a contrary law
- as between hate of an enemy and love: always, it is a harder law,
and another law.
For Grace (unlike some of its modern exponents) is not Antinomian: we
are taken from under law to Moses, but we are put “under law to Christ” (1 Cor. 9: 21). And our Lord
manifestly did it of set purpose. As the Decalogue, the heart of the old Law, was delivered to the
people of God on Sinai, yet (so to speak) overheard by the nations; so the
Sermon on the Mount the summary of the new law, was given to the disciples, yet
within earshot of the multitude; and as the Gentile, if a proselyte, at once
passed under the Law of Sinai, so the soul once born again passes at once “under law to Christ.”
MOSES AND
CHRIST
Now
this repealing attitude of our Lord is profoundly more startling, and more
fundamental to our conception of God’s entire revelation, than we have been
accustomed to think. Comment has divided
off sharply into two antagonistic interpretations; while in a third
interpretation lies the solution the Modernist has
missed. The Gnostics, keenly aware of
the Lord’s repealing legislation, made Him a great and powerful antagonist of
Moses, and said that Jesus came to deliver us from the savage and bloodthirsty
Jehovah: so that Marcion, deliberately
altering the Lord’s words, makes Him say:- “Think ye I
came to fulfil the law or the prophets? I came to destroy, not to fulfil.” The other and dominant school of
interpretation asserts that our Lord, purging the Law of human glosses and
traditions, reaffirms and rebinds it on the consciences of His people in its
original purity and power. “The Commandments,” says the Pulpit Commentary, “are as binding now upon the Christian conscience as when
they were first delivered amid the thunders of Sinai.” Christ and Moses antagonistic; Christ and
Moses identical:- these are the two rival theories,
one of which is the assassination of Christianity, and the other the
destruction of grace.*
*
So also “the Manicheans took exception to Matt. 5: 17; either doubting its
genuineness, or declaring that if genuine it was unintelligible. On the other side, heathens, Jews, and deists
found in it a proof that the Author of Christianity held merely Jewish
opinions, and that it was Paul who first proclaimed the peculiar doctrines of
the Christian religion” (Tholuck).
FALSE
THEORIES
Now both these theories not only are wholly
irreconcilable with the facts, but create the
difficulty which is the source of Modernism.
The Lord’s own critical words are decisive against both. Against the Gnostic view His words are final:- “Think not that I came to destroy the law
or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to FULFIL” (Matt. 5: 17). The Lord Jesus fulfilled the Law by giving it
a perfect obedience, and what is fulfilled, passes: He
also fuller-filled it by demanding a goodness in His followers exceeding, and
so discarding, the Legal. But in thus fulfilling He established the absolute authority
and final meaning of the Law and the Prophets.
Christ woke the butterfly slumbering in the chrysalis of the Law, for
the Law was Death encasing Life - the Messiah.
And against the dominant interpretation such a blank contradiction as:- “It was said, An eye for an eye, but I say Resist not” (Matt. 5: 38) -is
immediately destructive. A law is not enforced by being repealed.* It is straining casuistry
past the breaking-point to say that the command to lay up no treasure is merely
the inner meaning of Israel’s full basket and storehouse on obedience; or that
the prohibition of all swearing is only what the Law meant by ‘performing unto Jehovah’ (and therefore most
sacredly) our oaths. The fact is,
the Gnostic cleavage shatters the Gospel’s foundations; and the current
confusion confounds Law and Gospel: the goal of an antagonism between Christ
and Moses is Gnosticism; and the goal of an identification of Christ and Moses
is
*“Our Lord does not
speak against the abuse of the Law by tradition but every instance here given is, either from the Law itself, or such
traditional teaching as was in accordance with it” (Alford).
THE
DISPENSATIONS
So the
unfolding heart of the problem lies in the bosom of dispensational truth, that terra incognita of
the Church of all ages, and the only solution of a perfect and harmonious
Book. With the breakdown of salvation
through our own righteousness came the total collapse of Law: justice has
nothing for a criminal but a sword: that side of the character of God, and that
side only, which enthrones righteousness can be dominant before and after salvation. Therefore, when the Saviour comes to save, He meets the full blast
of justice in His own person, but, in consequence, He sweeps the board clear of
Legal justice; and therefore selects those points in the Law for specific and
avowed repeal which express justice, not mercy; and He creates a new code,
diviner because it embodies a higher attribute of God - namely, Love,
expressing itself in unceasing, unresisting grace.* It is not that justice is repealed, or dishonoured, or abolished,
but suspended. Law
is as everlasting as the righteousness of God, of which it is simply the
expression: but a Gospel of amnesty for every sinner is slipt
in between two eternities of Law**; and a code of mercy, tenderness, non-resistence, love - the only code possible to pardoned
felons, themselves still far from sinless - is the exquisite necklace Christ
has hung about the neck of the Church.
* Thus it needs no proof that the Church and the State are
mutually exclusive spheres. The
statesman in the House of Commons was perfectly correct who said recently:- “If we attempt to govern the country principles of the Sermon on the
Mount, we shall go by way of confusion to anarchy.” The Church, not the world, is the body “under law to Christ” (1 Cor. 9: 21), for which alone He legislates in the
Sermon. A foremost Hindu thinker express
it admirably:- “The teaching in that Sermon was not
intended for the man in the street; to him it is impracticable, impossible; it
was intended for the twice-born, the holy man, the man who has literally given
up the world, and who is living not after the flesh but after the spirit.”
** For, outside Hell, law in
eternity will be law in a sinless state, and so merely the normal habit of a
perfect life; exactly as God’s actions are all regulated by
law - the eternal laws of goodness and truth.
-------
MERCY
The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth, as the gentle
rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives,
and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings
But mercy
is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself.
- SHAKESPEARE.
*
* * *
* * *
238
THE PROPHET OF JUDGMENT
By D. M. PANTON
Elijah is incomparably the most wonderful of the
prophets of Jehovah. He is referred to more often and more directly than any other
prophet in the New Testament; and when the Lord on the Mount summons to Himself
the Law and the Prophets, while Moses stands for the Law, it is Elijah who
embodies the Prophets. His appearances
and disappearances are extraordinarily dramatic. He appears from nowhere, suddenly, in full
maturity as man and as prophet, without a single recorded word on his past: he
disappears into nowhere - an abode which to this
moment remains one of the secrets of God - in a whirlwind. He is the prophet of action, brief, summary,
compelling: far the most miracle-gifted of all the ancient prophets, his
miracles are greater even than those of Moses - for
where Moses sterilized a
Elijah
was a flaming prophet of judgment; and the nearer we approach the end, the more
valuable he will become as a beacon-light and a model. His appearance in the Northern Kingdom was at
a moment, not only of the deepest corruption, but of
nation-wide apostasy, and on the eve of
For
the Holy Ghost three times in the New Testament punctuates the life of Elijah
as advents of mercy: the ‘Tishbite’
means ‘the converter’: and so our Lord reveals
him as a missionary into the heathen dark.
Jesus says:- “Of a truth I say unto you,
There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah; and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, unto a
woman that was a widow” (Luke 4: 25). Elijah is a designed
embodiment of God’s power in the midnight of the world: in an atheistic and
idolatrous crisis when God’s physical re-assertion of Himself is (in grace)
desperately needed, miracles are abundantly granted:-miracle over the animal
creation - the feeding by ravens; miracle over food - the multiplied meal and
oil; miracle over the body - a forty days’ fast; miracle over earth - the
parted Jordan; miracle over the heavens - the rain withheld; miracle over the
other world - the raising of the dead; and even miracle of annihilation - the
fire-consumed stones on Carmel. But the spiritual kernel in it all is unhusked by our
Lord. In the desolation of nations God does not forget a widow gathering sticks. Elijah sent to Sarepta is an embodiment of
the sovereign election of God, sent out into earth’s uttermost darkness to find
the Redeemer’s jewels. There is always a
Widow of Sarepta in the heart of Jezebel’s land.
The
next selection in the life of Elijah made by the Holy Ghost is a moment of fearful
depression and wonderful revelation. “What saith the answer of God
unto him? I have left for myself seven thousand
men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (Rom. 11: 4). Elijah, in a loneliness in
no way altered by the existence of the invisible thousands, without any human
protection, companionship, or even sympathy - for he does not appear to have
known of the Jehovah worshippers - confronts two savage tyrants, eight hundred
and fifty demoniac prophets, and an entire nation acquiescing in
State-established idolatry - the most dangerous of all things to oppose. Single-handed he killed Baal-worship at a
blow. But again
the Holy Ghost reveals God’s heart of mercy in judgment. When despair is clutching at the prophet’s
throat, and he is certain the apostasy is universal, God - doing an altogether
unique thing - turns the finished side of the tapestry, and, by unveiling
omniscience in a divine census, not only shows His work to be seven thousand
times greater than Elijah knew, but that He is working to an exact
pattern. Not one soul will be missing
from the roll of the elect.
Lastly
the Holy Ghost, in selecting, out of all the Old Testament heroes, Elijah as
the model of prayer, reveals his intercession as mainly mercy. “Elijah was a man of like
passions with us, and he prayed fervently that
it might not rain” - a remarkable
proof that the gifts of even the most powerful miracle-workers cannot be
divorced from prayer, and that Deity alone (as our Lord before raising the
dead) is exempt from petition before the mightiest wonders - “and he prayed again, and the heaven
gave rain” (Jas. 5: 17). Elijah’s praying was judgment in order to
mercy: first the drought, then the showers: “he prayed again, and the earth
brought forth her fruit.” We
are told that he ‘prayed fervently’ for the
drought, but we are told that he prayed seven
times (1
Kings 18: 43) for the rain. Is it not a gigantic
parable that it is Elijah’s prayer, when he comes again, which will call down
the Latter Rain?* As Elijah came in the person of John between Law and
Grace, so he will come again in his own person between Grace and Law; and both
dawns have in them the light of both sunsets: in each case Elijah is a gigantic
twilight figure.
*It
is suggestive that Elijah obtained the promise of the showers before, but the
showers themselves after, the struggle on
Three
tremendous closing episodes in this tremendous life are each
introduced with ‘Behold,’ so marking
the great emphasis God puts upon them. “BEHOLD, there appeared a
chariot of fire, and horses of fire: and Elijah went up by a whirlwind” - in an ascent, in law not grace, startlingly unlike
the calm ascent of our Lord - “into heaven” (2
Kings 2: 11). Whither he went, the
present abode of Enoch and Elijah, is utterly unrevealed: it is not Hades, for
they ascended; it is not ‘the heaven of heavens,’ for “no man” - our
Lord states - “hath
ascended into heaven” (John 3:
13), and He Himself has alone “passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4: 14):
probably it is the third heaven - counting from the Throne, and so the lowest - to which
Paul was caught away, and where it is possible that converse with Enoch and Elijah was among the things not lawful to
utter (2 Cor. 12: 4).*
Deathless removal from earth vindicates the servant of God; establishes, by
physical proof, worlds beyond; reveals God as Lord of Death, which He holds in
abeyance at His will; breaches the dam of judgment by uplifting its keystone - “My father, my father, the chariots of
Israel and the horsemen thereof!” uncovers the sole pathway to
the Bema; and (in the case of Enoch) gives the world for five thousand years a
palpable proof of the ultimate removal of the [“accounted
worthy”]
Church down the far ages of time.
*It is remarkable that they are nowhere said to have
been taken to Paradise, which can only be accounted for on the ground that
Paradise - to which Paul, in manifestly a parallel and separate experience, was
‘caught away’ (there is no ‘up’ in the Greek) - is a department of Hades, to which
our Lord descended (Luke 23: 43), in the lower parts of the earth (Eph. 4: 9). This locality of Paradise our Lord Himself
makes certain, for after three days in it He says to Mary - “I am not yet ascended” (John 20: 17); for, as He had Himself foretold, He had been
“three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”(Matt. 12: 40).
Elijah’s
second appearance on earth gives the evangelical vital which
is the soul of his life and the heart - content of all prophesy. “BEHOLD, there talked with
him two men, which were Moses and Elijah,
who appeared in glory, and
spake of his decease” (Luke 9: 30):
Moses, fifteen centuries old, and Elijah nearly a thousand years; both in
glory, bodily witnesses of a glory-world beyond.* The great drama of the ages was about to be enacted;
and, on this elevated plateau of the world, Moses (as it were) says, “The Law was the Schoolmaster
to bring us to Christ”; and
Elijah, “The
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” For their
central theme is disclosed. They do not tell Him of a grave God-dug, with
mournful angels standing round; nor of a chariot and horses
of fire, waiting: their converse is of a cross, and a crown of thorns;
an altar, and a flame. The Lawgiver
ponders the most lawless act of all eternity; and the Prophet ponders the
burial of all hope: yet in that lawlessness the Law-giver
sees the Law finally accomplished; and in that tomb - into which he himself had
never entered - the deathless Prophet sees the death of death.
* If Elijah is
one of the two Witnesses slain by Antichrist (Rev.
11: 7),
his martyrdom proves that a servant of God, once glorified, can
die. Fixity in glory after rapture,
incorruptibility, is stated to be a special privilege by our Lord - “accounted worthy of the resurrection, they cannot die any more” (Luke 20: 35)
and thus 1 Cor. 15. covers Kingdom saints (verse
50) as incorruptible.
Probably
at now no very distant date lies Elijah’s third
appearance on earth, and his second descent to the earth. “BEHOLD, I will send you
Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come: and he shall turn the heart of
the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers” - turning the hearts of the alienated, apostate
children to the hearts of their orthodox ancestors, as they leave the Talmud
for the Scriptures, and turning the now rejoicing hearts of the patriarchs to
the broken and contrite souls of repentant Israel - “lest” - for the heart of even Elijah’s second coming, as of
the first, is still mercy - “I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4: 5). The roots of all revelation are deep in the past, and to part with
them is to part with God: so Elijah is - as our Lord alone asserts (Matt. 17: 11) - the Restorer,* both to Israel and the
world; and so his 7,000 in Israel becomes 144,000 (Rev.
7: 1),
and his heathen widow of Sarepta becomes the countless sheep on the right hand
of the King.
*
It is an apocryphal tradition (Ecclus. 48: 10) that
Elijah is to “restore the tribes of Jacob.” It has also been conjectured that, as ‘restorer,’ is he who will reawaken the miraculous
gifts of the Holy Ghost which have been dormant since the Apostolic age.
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The bread that giveth strength I want to give;
The water pure that bids the thirsty live;
I want to help the fainting day by day,
Because I shall not pass again this way.
I want to give the oil of Joy for tears;
The faith to conquer cruel doubts and fears;
Beauty for ashes may I give alway,
Because I shall not pass again this way.
I want to give good measure running o’er,
And into
angry hearts I want to pour
The answer soft that turneth wrath away,
Because I shall not pass again this way.
I want to give to others hope and faith;
I want to do all that the Master saith;
I want to live aright from day to day,
Because I shall not pass again this way.
*
* * *
* * *
239
ENOCH AND
ELIJAH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
It is one of the
certainties of prophecy that Elijah is to return before the second coming of
Christ. Most remarkably, the last verses of the Old
Testament foretell Elijah, even as the last verses of the New foretell his
Lord. “Behold, I will
send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come” (Mal. 4: 5) - not
another prophet equivalent to Elijah, but “Elijah the prophet”. Our Lord, it is true, explicitly reinforces Gabriel’s
word (Luke 1: 17)
that John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah; but when
questioned on the point, Jesus states, as explicitly - “Elijah indeed is coming,
and shall restore all things” (Matt. 17: 11); ‘shall restore’ in an age yet future - a word spoken when John [the Baptist] was already
dead.* John (as Bishop
J. C. Ryle points out) could
not have answered negatively (John 1: 21) if there is no literal fulfilment of Malachi’s
prophecy yet to come. John never “restored all things” - nor was it ever said that
he should: John did not appear “before the great and terrible day of the Lord”: John was the forerunner of the dissolution, not of
the restoration, of
* Elijah [on the one hand, in one respect] is coming
first, and shall restore all things; [on the other hand, in another respect] “I say unto you that Elijah is come already” (Govett). John filled the Elijah place, operated in the
Elijah spirit and energy, did for that occasion the Elijah work, and so far
filled the Elijah promise (Seiss). “The double
allusion,” says Dean Allord, “is only the assertion
that the Elijah (in spirit and power) who foreran our Lord’s first coming, was
a partial fulfilment of the great prophecy which announces the real Elijah, who
is to forerun His greater and second coming.” Neither Elijah nor John, though two, of the
greatest prophets, has a book to his name: both are forerunners rather than
fore-writers.
CHRISTIAN
TRADITION
Now
incalculably the foremost figures in the Apocalypse, second only to Antichrist
and the False Prophet, two colossal figures in the world’s midnight, combating
Hell’s fiercest protagonists and holding the earth for God through three
desperate years, are two unnamed Prophets.
Introduced abruptly as “the two witnesses”,
as though well known, all the ‘fathers’ of the
Early Church regard them as two individual men, not systems. The probability that one is Elijah, in view
of his certain return, is overwhelming; and early Church tradition identifies
the other as Enoch. “With almost absolute unanimity,” says Bossuet, “tradition identifies the two witnesses with Enoch and
Elijah, an assumption so prevalent in patristic lore that scarcely any other
names are mentioned.”* Luther
thus summed it up at the Reformation:- “This
identification has found place in all the books, and has spread itself through
the entire Church.” Tertullian’s words can be taken as a summary:-
“Enoch was translated, and so was Elijah; nor did they
experience death; it was deferred: they are reserved for the suffering of
death, that by their blood they may extinguish Antichrist.”**
* The Antichrist Legend, pp. 27, 203.
** “S.
John Damascene,” says Dr. Pusey, “fixed the
belief in the Eastern Church.”
SONS OF OIL
But the
Holy Spirit produces a clue manifestly designed to disclose their identity to a
careful student. The Angel says to John:- “These are the two olive-trees
and the two lampstands, standing before the Lord
of the earth” (Rev. 11: 4). It is a
direct reference to Zechariah:- “These be the two sons of oil,
that stand by the Lord of the whole earth” (Zech. 4: 14). The Angel, in the question twice addressed to
Zechariah - “Knowest
thou what these two [olive trees] be?” implies
that Zechariah might have known, and therefore that they existed at that
time; and, at the moment the Angel was speaking, were actually “standing before the Lord”. That is, as ‘standing before the Lord’, they were
at that moment in heaven, a fact true of Enoch and Elijah alone: ‘standing’, in the position of life, as ‘lying’ is the attitude of death: for only the living stand, or can
stand, in the presence of God. No clue
could be more certain. When the Angel questioned Zechariah two men, and two only, had not
seen death; two men, and two only, having been raptured into heaven, were then
standing in the presence of God; two and
two only, had already been flaming prophets of judgment in the darkest ages of
the world yet known - Enoch, before the destruction of the entire race; and
Elijah, before Israel’s tragic exile of two thousand, six hundred years.*
*
Neither Witness can be Moses, for he must have come either as a disembodied spirit, or as
risen from the dead; and in either case he could not be killed by the Wild
Beast.
THEIR
MIRACLES
But this
is not all. An
extraordinarily conclusive evidence lies in the nature of the miracles
with which, as Sons of Oil, olive-trees that are aqueducts of power,* these Prophets fill the earth. Of Enoch’s original miracles
we know nothing; but he lived in an identical epoch of apostasy as Elijah, and
under identical conditions God acts identically; and the sole word of Enoch on
record is the summary of his spirit and life. Enoch’s is the first recorded
prophecy of man: it is the only prophecy recorded before the Flood: by it Enoch lifted the beacon-light of the Second Advent before
all the dispensations: he embodied rapture by being rapt: above all, it is the fearful iniquity and fiery
judgment of the Great Tribulation which, as he foretold, so now he
initiates. Elijah’s miracles are conclusively repeated.
His abruptness was, of old, like a thunderbolt:- “As the Lord, the God of
Israel, liveth, before
whom I stand” - as
already one of the Sons of Oil - “there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word” (1 Kings 17: 1):
so, arriving as suddenly, we read:- “these have the power” - it is ‘according to their
word’ - “to shut the heaven, that it
rain not during the days of their prophecy” (Rev. 11: 6): a duplicate three and a half years’ drought
across twenty-six centuries. As
Elijah “called
down” fire on the Syrian troops,
so fire now leaps from his mouth: formerly he summoned fire, now he flashes fire; but both acts are in the ‘spirit and power of Elijah’. “Where
the carcase is, there will the eagles” -
judgment angels, and the two judgment prophets, descending from God’s eyries - “be gathered together” (Matt. 24: 28).
*
As ‘lamps’
they use oil, and as ‘olive-trees’ they give oil. If the additional oil
unpossessed by the careless Virgins is the miraculous gifts, are these the Sellers (Matt. 25: 10) to whom
they [will] go to purchase too late?
ENOCH AND ELIJAH
The
evidence, therefore, is conclusive. That
they are men, and not systems, their description as ‘prophets’ decisively proves; for not only is the word ‘prophet’ never applied in Scripture to any but persons, but it
is inconceivable that it should be. The
earlier destiny of Enoch and Elijah, so marvellously distinguished from all
others of the human race, fits them alone for the tremendous role of the
culmination of judgment in the last days, a role which none else can fill. It has been too little pondered that God must have a profound
reason, or reasons, why He has suspended the law of death for three to five
thousand years over two individuals, and two only, of the entire race; and the
Apocalypse reveals that it is a suspension only. No ‘sleep’ is ever recorded of them.
Enoch embodies the Law of Eden, Elijah the Law of Sinai, as together
they incarnate law approaching a guilty world: so Enoch is a Gentile, Elijah a
Jew, for the double testimony to universal rebellion. And as Moses came down
steeped in unconscious glory after only forty days with God, saturate with
vastly greater power do these descend after thousands of years’ sojourn with
the Most High; as from Moses’ face flashed light, from their mouth flashes
fire, both being from God: therefore they “smite earth with every plague, as often
as they shall desire”(Rev. 11: 6); and
poison-gas or sudden bomb is instantly choked in the plotter’s death: until,
possibly with a leakage of the power after forty-two months on earth, the Wild
Beast, on whom - immortal because risen from the dead - their plagues (for this
also is a possible explanation of their death) fall harmless, publicly murders
them with his own hand, in the deepest hour of midnight mystery the world will
ever know.*
* Not only can deputations (Rev. 11: 9) from all
Europe, and possibly (by then) from all Asia and
RAPTURE
So,
therefore, Enoch and Elijah (as we would expect) reveal, in the simplest
language, the profound principle of rapture; It is not conversion: it is intimacy
with God. For several centuries Enoch “walked with God” on earth, and for forty-six centuries more he has “stood before the Lord of the whole earth”; and walking with God, the Holy Spirit explains, is pleasing God
(Heb. 11:
5).
Elijah’s description of his earthly life, like the 26 centuries since,
is “standing before the Lord.” ‘Standing before the Lord’ is more than physical
proximity; and it expresses more than favour: it is the
alertness of consecration, attention, expectancy, readiness, service. Our Lord expresses it thus:-
“Let your loins
be girded about, and your lamps burning, and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their Lord” (Luke 12: 35). So in their walk and character, in the secrecy of their ascent and abode,
Enoch and Elijah are compressed miniatures of all rapture:- fidelity,
martyrdom, death-slumber, awaking, ascension, all within four days; both are
embodiments of escape - Enoch before the Flood, Elijah before the Captivity;
and both escape again - before the Great Tribulation, so once more to “stand before the Lord.” It is a marvellous forecast and summary in
actual life of our Lord’s words: “watch and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and TO STAND BEFORE THE SON OF MAN.” (Luke 21: 36).
-------
GOD REALIZED
Do you say that what you need is not to know something
but to do something? Nay, nay, to know
is all. “Be
still and KNOW that I am GOD.
I WILL BE
EXALTED IN THE EARTH.” To know
is all.
Know GOD and
the duty comes in its time, in its turn - the next
thing to do; and with the duty the [Holy Spirit’s] power. Be joined
on to the divine, the duty
divine, the power divine; and,
though the duty may appear to be a trifle, though it be dismaying in its
inadequacy, though it may be to stand still and do nothing, and still do
nothing, yet know GOD, realize GOD, and all is well. It is as
mighty as all the action that any man could take, to be doing nothing at GOD’S bidding. It may be that He will bury
you in His foundations somewhere; it may be that He will shoot you as a bolt
from one of His weapons; it may be that He will disperse you as a fragrance in
the air; it may be that He will hide you as leaven; it may be that He will set
you to toil all night and catch nothing, but in the morning [He
may] give you a glorious haul that makes
up for all the empty night. There is no knowing in what way, where, when, how GOD will use you; but in
knowing [ OBEYING GOD], you
will know that you have everything. It
is the most practical sense, the most business-like, hard counsel adapted to
the station that there can be, - to [believe, act upon, and] take GOD’S PLANS into account. What I am
doing here is standing in Aladdin’s cave, with clumsy hands grasping at random
at handfuls of rough gems from the wealth that there is. You cannot STAND in GOD’S treasure-house and ask: “Does this
mean anything?” It means everything. Get
there; get into that
*
* * *
* * *
240
JOHN THE
IMMERSER NOT ELIJAH
A Note on the Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls.
By G. H. LANG
Advocates of the pagan, Oriental teaching that after
death men pass through various reincarnations, desiring to persuade Christians to
accept this doctrine naturally seek to find support for it in Holy Scripture,
and they rely mainly on the assertion that the New Testament says that John was
Elijah. This only shows how hard pressed
they are to give even due semblance of Bible support to the doctrine.
That Eastern philosophies and manners had infected
This sufficiently explains why Jews of Christ’s time
thought He might be one of the older prophets (Matt.
16: 14),
or the semi-pagan Herod that He was John the Baptist (Matt.
14: 2),
and why others conceived that a certain man might have been born blind
because of sin of his own (John 9: 1). But this last notion
Christ’s answer set aside. Thus, we may
in no wise regard the then current Jewish conceptions as being necessarily
divine truth. They must
be shown to be grounded in divine statements in Old Testament
scripture. The passages regarding John
and Elijah are:-
1. Luke 1: 16, 17, the
angel Gabriel’s words before John’s birth: “Many of the
children of
2. Matt. 11: 13, 14, 15. Christ’s words concerning John: “All the prophets and the law
prophesied until John, and if ye are willing to
receive it, this is Elijah that is to come. He that hath ears to
hear let him hear,” i.e., the meaning of this is not on the surface, a
warning not to form a hasty opinion of the meaning.
3. Matt. 17:
10-13. As
they came down from the transfiguration “the disciples asked him, saying, Why
then say the scribes that Elijah must first come? And he answered and
said, Elijah
indeed cometh,
and shall restore all things but I say unto you that an Elijah came just now, and they knew him not, but did unto him
whatsoever they would. ... Then
understood the disciples that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.”
As
to the first passage, the angel did not say that John should be Elijah,
though that could have been stated quite simply and distinctly. He said only that John should fulfil his
appointed ministry in Elijah - like spirit and power: (of Elijah). See R.V. and
Nestle texts. If one said that a general
acted in the spirit and energy of Napoleon he would not be
saddled with meaning that the general was Napoleon. The phrase would implicitly distinguish the
two.
In
the second scripture our Lord made the fulfilment in
John of Malachi’s prophecy concerning Elijah, as the one sent before the face
of Messiah, to depend upon the willingness of
The
remaining passage is equally decisive.
1. The Lord said the scribes were correct and that “Elijah indeed cometh, and shall restore all things.” So that (a) Elijah was not yet then come, but
was yet to come; therefore, John was not he: and (b) Elijah was to do a work which John had not accomplished, “to restore all things,” so that John’s ministry was not Elijah’s ministry, even
though it was of the same order and partook of the same spirit and power.
2. Because of this last feature Christ could add: “I say unto you an Elijah came just now, and they knew him not, but did
unto him whatsoever they would. Then understood the disciples that he spake unto them of John the
Baptist.” Thus the first
statement, that Elijah indeed is to come, did not make the disciples think of
John. It was the added remark that did
this. It was (I think) Mr. Pember who
pointed out that, on account of the Greek not using an
indefinite article, the words should read in this clause as above, “an Elijah came just now.”
Thus far the actual statements of Scripture. Each of them
not only does not support the notion that John was Elijah
reincarnate, each is definitely against it. But these further
considerations are equally and fatally opposed thereto.
1. John had been already murdered, and his
corpse minus its head had been buried. Elijah, at the time of Christ’s last statement had just been seen by
the disciples in propria persona in a glorified condition. If John was Elijah then Elijah had been formerly taken to heaven (2
Kings 2.), reincarnated in John, decapitated, and directly after
glorified. In this case the
heresy would be true, for him at least, that “resurrection
is past already” (2 Tim. 2: 17, 18). The three last assertions will defy all proof
from Scripture.
2. 2 Kings
ch. 2. shows that Elijah was
taken to heaven alive, which allows without difficulty of his appearing in glory
on the mount. But
as he never had died his case is not in point as proof of the reincarnating of dead men. It is singular that advocates of this
unfounded theory seem to overlook this fatal defect in their argument. But drowning men will clutch at a straw, and theosophy
subtly perverts or boldly denies Scripture as may suit its theories.
*
* * *
* * *
241
SALVATION IN
THE
BY JOSEPH
SLADEN
The word Salvation is used in different
senses in Holy Scripture: it is well to note some of the distinctions. (1) It refers to the past time: “God who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but
according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1: 9). (2) It refers to the present time:
“The Lord is able
to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God through him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7: 25). (3) It refers to the future time:
“Christ shall
appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto
salvation” (Heb. 9: 28).
Salvation
then refers to the gift of Eternal Life, and also to
the coming
*
The Revised
Version is used
in all the quotations.
The
Lord’s teaching about the entrance into the
At
this time Jesus was going up to
It
was about a month before this incident that the question was asked - Are the
saved few? Must not we at least enter
into the
How
will this affect the regenerate of this dispensation? Those who are ‘seeking to enter the Kingdom’ according to the Lord’s command (Matt. 6: 33), are striving to enter in by the narrow door (Luke 13: 24);
for since John the Baptist’s day “the gospel of the
The
Apostle Paul writing to the Church at
What
vexation and sorrow will be theirs who refuse the Lord’s command to strive to
enter into the Kingdom of the Christ and God by the narrow door, when they realize
that they are debarred from entrance into that Kingdom
of glory through their unbelief in
the necessity of striving with all their heart to do so!
It
may arise from a conviction that all who have eternal life as a free gift of
grace will certainly be counted worthy of entrance into the Kingdom of God,
i.e., into the temporary Kingdom of a thousand years as joint-heirs with
Christ.
It
should be noticed that a wrong punctuation in Romans
8: 17 seems to lead to this
mistake. It should be rendered - “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God,
but joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we
suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified
with Him.” It is clear from this
Scripture that the heirs of God have an unconditional
promise of eternal life, and an
heritage in the City of
*
* * *
* * *
242
THE RETURN OF
ELIJAH
By MICHAEL P.
BAXTER
THE future personal coming of Elijah to herald and
proclaim the future descent of Christ upon
this earth is
understood by nearly all standard expositors to be distinctly foretold by Malachi,
in the concluding words of the Old Testament: “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet,
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the
Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers
to the children, and the heart of the children
to their fathers, lest I come and smite the
earth with a curse.”*
*
The Hebraist Kimchi renders the words in this verse, “turn
the heart of the fathers with the children, and the heart of the children with their fathers.”
The Jews, even at the present day, preserve the
expectation of Elijah’s reappearance by placing a cup of wine at their annual
Passover feast in readiness for his anticipated arrival; and it is said, that
at their marriage feasts, they leave a chair, and a vacant place similarly
waiting his return; and also if they cannot understand any passage of
Scripture, they utter an expression denoting that it will be explained to them
by Elijah, when he Comes. Ridley
Herschell, a Jew, thus describes their Passover
feast: “In the celebration of the Passover, two large
cups are filled with wine. One of these is taken by the master of the house, and a
blessing pronounced. After this blessing, the head of the family gives the cup
to all those sitting around. He then brings
forth the hidden cake, and distributes a piece to each. The second cup of wine, called Elijah’s cup, is then placed before him; the door is opened, and a
solemn pause of expectation ensues. It is at this moment that the Jews expect that the coming of Elijah
will take place, to announce the glad tidings that the Messiah is at hand. Well do I remember the interest with which
when a boy, I looked toward the door; hoping that Elijah might really enter;
for notwithstanding the disappointment year after year, his arrival is still
confidently expected.”
As
Meyer says, “As Chrysostom and Hieronymus, so all the rest of the
fathers did constantly hold that Elias should come in the body, before the day
of judgment, to convert the Jews and oppose Antichrist. A belief in the reappearing of Elijah ‘before
the great and dreadful day of the Lord’ has always been so strong among the
Jews, that it is a custom unto the present day, when a devout Jew mentions a
city or country, for him to add ‘May it stand until Elijah,’ that is, until the
coming of Elijah. That Elias the
sufferer has
come (typically in the person of John the Baptist); each corresponding
as the Lord Jesus seems to intimate, one
with His Advent in humiliation, the
other with His coming in glory.
“Our Lord, after John had been beheaded, said to Peter in the
future tense, ‘Elias truly shall first come and restore
all things.’ So that apostle when subsequently
addressing the Jews, mentions the time of the restitution, or restoring of all things, as
being immediately connected with
Messiah’s second advent. Evidently
if the time for restoring all things be not until the second coming of Christ, John the Baptist could not have restored
all things at the time of the first Advent” (Acts 3: 21;
Matt. 17:
11).
- The Prophetic News.
*
* * *
* * *
243
THE JEW AND
CHRIST
By JOTHAM GERIZIM
(In reading the following article, please
remember that a Jew is speaking to
his own people.
That accounts for the use of first person.)
EVEN as nature
abhors a vacuum, even as good abhors evil, so does
Physical
exile is the reflection of spiritual exile - the spiritual exile of all
humanity from our basic relationship to God and kindred, fundamental truths which must be acknowledged by humanity in order for the
entire world to enter into the coming Messianic age.
Of
course, throughout the long centuries of exile, there was some sweetness as
well as much bitterness. Had not exile
been experienced in the lives of our patriarchs? Abraham went into
“I shall bring thy seed from the East, and gather thee from the West; I will say to the North: ‘Give up’ and to the South: ‘Keep not
back,’ bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 43: 5, 6). “Sheemu d'var Adonai...” “Hear the word of the Lord, O ye
nations, and declare it in the isles afar off,
and say: ‘He that
scattered
We
see these promises being fulfilled in our days. From the east, from the west, from the north and
from the south, our people are being gathered. Still, there is One
of our people, One Exile, the greatest of them all, Who has not yet come home
to His people. He is the Prince of
Exile, the Prince of Peace. All
As
it is written in the Torah, Moses was not permitted to enter the promised land. Moses
died on
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” These words,
taken from Psalm 126 which speak about the return
from exile, have a special meaning.
Jesus sowed in tears many years ago in Gath Shemen,
in a garden overlooking
-------
WHEN JOSHUA
STOPPED THE SUN
By M. A. ARTHUR
ALL through the ancient writings of the different
peoples of the world there is this story of a day that
lasted twice as long as it should.
The
ancient Egyptian priests showed the Greek historian Herodotus records which
spoke of the long, long day. In the ancient writings of the Persians
it is found. Even among the Polynesian
peoples of the islands in the
If
you read the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua, you will find that as the battle progressed
between the Israelites and their foes and the day began to wear on to the
afternoon, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still until he had finished the
battle and won.
The
late Professor Charles A. L. Totten, of
Joshua’s
long day, when he won the battle, it will be recalled,
was not a complete day. It lacked forty
minutes of being twenty-four hours. In
the 20th chapter of the second Book of Kings,
you will find another stepping back of the calendar which
rounds out the time to a full day.
Hezekiah,
king of
Thus
was the full day rounded out in the Old Testament, the day that Professor Totten says with other astronomers is missing from the astronomer’s
calendar and which has never been accounted for.
*
* * *
* * *
244
THE TWO
RESURRECTIONS
By Lieut. Colonel G. F. POYNDER
John 5: 24-29
In this short passage the Lord
Jesus Christ plainly showed the Jews of His day how those born in sin may be
saved, and being saved, realize the importance of life, even life eternal; and
then proceeds to enlighten them as regards the two resurrections. In considering this most important statement
it may be divided into three parts:- 1. In verse 24 the
Lord speaks of salvation from sin and the awful consequences of sin, freely
granted to the true believer. 2. In verses 25-27 He tells them of the first resurrection, and the
reason why He as Son of God has power to give life to the dead; and, as Son of
man, to execute judgment on all. 3. In verses 28, 29
He speaks of the second or general resurrection, and of those who shall arise
at that time. 1. verse 24. Doubtless all who study this verse will agree that our Lord is here
referring only to those who are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins, who,
when they hear His Word with an attentive ear, and believe on God the Father,
will not come into condemnation, or the judgment of the Great White Throne,
because their names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and they have
passed out of the death of unbelief
into the life of faith, even life eternal.
This must of necessity refer to the spiritually dead,
and only to these, seeing it would be impossible for those physically dead to
hear His words from the lips of mortal men.
2. But with verse 25, we have a fresh
paragraph, emphasized by the Lord’s strong introductory words:-
“Verily, verily, I say unto you,” dealing with the First Resurrection only, and which,
He shows clearly., is not universal, but limited to those who shall hear the
Voice (not the words in some book,) but “the Voice of the Son of God.” “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, the hour
(or the time, Gk.) is coming,
and now is, when the
dead shall hear the Voice of the Son of God: and
they that hear shall live.” Here there is no reason for spiritualizing the words of the Lord. They can be taken
literally, and should, therefore, be
so taken, even as any ordinary statement.
The physically dead bodies that shall hear His Voice shall live, and presumably the dead bodies that do not hear His Voice shall
not live at that time. The ‘now is’ gives us the clue to a right interpretation of
the verse. ‘Now
is’ clearly shows that the time referred to was not only in the future
but had already begun, when the Lord was upon earth. Hence, we read Jairus’s
little daughter, the young man of Nain, and Lazarus, were all restored to life
by the Voice of
the Son of God, and also the company of “the saints which slept” arose when they heard His Voice give that loud cry on the Cross. In like manner, at the first resurrection, when the Lord comes,
into the air “with a
shout, with the Voice of the Archangel,” then “the dead in Christ”
as well as those who were lulled to rest through (the agency, Gk.) of Jesus, as
well as the living that hear His Voice, will arise to meet Him in the air, and “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump ... the dead (that
hear His Voice, and presumably only these,) shall be raised incorruptible,
and we (i.e. those who love, and are “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing
of the Great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”) shall be changed. This was the prize, “the out-resurrection from
amongst the dead,” for which the Apostle Paul was striving, lest
when He had preached to others, he himself should be a castaway, i.e. rejected
at the judgment seat of Christ for the prize; and calling upon us to do the
same, he writes: “Become
imitators of me, even as I (am) of Christ.” For “I subject my body to hardship,
and treat it as a slave, lest having preached to
others I myself may become disqualified (after trial).” This also was the prize for which the martyrs suffered
themselves to be tortured, “not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection,” that is, the first resurrection, and hear His Voice when He comes to call the dead. How important it is then
for us to examine ourselves, and see whether we be in the faith; and if we find
ourselves lacking in any way, from the high ideal set before us by the Apostles
and Martyrs - an ideal to which the Apostle Paul knew he had attained when he
wrote his last epistle to Timothy - may we confess our sins, and truly repent
of our short-sighted folly, pleading earnestly for grace to help in our time of
need; so running the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and
Finisher of our faith, that when “He shall appear, we may have
confidence, and not be shamed from Him in His
presence”; but may be permitted to stand before His Judgment Seat
when He comes. And
may we ever bear in mind the solemn warning contained in the judgment meted out
to the wicked and unprofitable servant - His own bond-slave, entrusted with his
Master’s goods, and which had been more or less carefully preserved - “Thou wicked and slothful
servant, thou knewest ... thou oughtest therefore ... take
the talent from him ... and cast ye the
unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Is this one, then, amongst those who are
condemned before the Great White Throne and cast into the
3. Strange as His words must have sounded to His
hearers, the Lord had yet more wonderful things to tell them, so in verses 28-29,
He immediately passes on to the account of the second or General Resurrection -
“Marvel not at
this,” He said, “for the hour (the time, Gk.) is coming in the which all that are in the graves
(whether they wish to do so or not,) shall hear His Voice, and shall come forth; (at one and the
same time, apparently)
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of
life; and they that have practised evil (Gk.) unto the resurrection of damnation or judgment.” Then will be fulfilled the
prophecy of Daniel (chap.
12: 2) “many”* [*Many not
all
as some will have risen in the first resurrection.] of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake (at one and the same time,
apparently) some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;
which the Pharisees acknowledged, affirming “there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” Here then we have our Lord’s own statement
concerning the second or General Resurrection for the good as well as the
evil. The garnering of
the wheat and the burning of the tares; the severing of the good fish from the
bad when the net is drawn to land, which the Lord distinctly affirms shall be
made by angels sent forth by the Son of man at the end of the Age, who “shall come forth and sever
the wicked from among the just, and shall cast
them into the furnace of fire: there shall be
wailing, and gnashing of teeth.” This separation and
judgment must take place when the Great White Throne is set, and “the dead, small and great, stand before God ... and were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works”; those whose names
are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be cast into the lake of fire;
whilst those whose names are in that book, but were not judged to be worthy of
the first resurrection, now enter into eternal life, so for them the Lord’s
promise as recorded in John 6: 39, 40, 44, 54 four times repeated, will be literally
fulfilled, they will have everlasting life, being raised up as promised “at the last day,” which He defines in John 12: 48 (that
there shall be no mistake); as the day in which “the word that I have spoken ... shall judge him” that “rejecteth Me, and
receiveth not My words.”
But - let it never be forgotten, - he will miss the prize, the
first or the better resurrection, the joy of entering the Marriage feast, and
living and reigning with his Lord during the Millennium.
In
conclusion, let us notice how definitely Our Lord disposes of the idea which
is, doubtless, causing much luke-warmness in the Laodicean Church, viz, that all believers, dead and living, will be translated to meet
our Lord when He comes into the air, and so they will ever be with the
Lord. Further
in the passage we have been considering, He distinctly refutes the very
erroneous idea that only the good are raised from their graves, and the wicked
are annihilated after death. “Knowing,
therefore, the terror of
the Lord,” let us persuade and
exhort one another so to watch and pray that we may be accounted worthy to
stand before the Son of man when He comes, and render a good account of our
stewardship that we may obtain the commendation, “Well done, good
and faithful servant ... enter thou into the joy
of thy Lord.”
-------
THE WALK OF
HOLINESS
By JOHN GIBBON,
B.D.
RULE I
Before
the paroxysm cometh, prepare and antidote thy soul against the lusts of the
flesh, by observing these advices:-
1. That notable counsel of Eliphaz to Job: “Acquaint
now thyself with God, and be at peace” (Job 22: 21).
2. Stir up spiritual and holy lustings in thy
soul after the love and favour, the grace and image, of thy God; and thou shalt
not fulfil the lustings, of the flesh.
RULE II
Study thoroughly the unchangeable natures, the eternal
laws and differences, of moral good and evil. The sum of this rule then is deeply possess
and dye thy soul all over with the representation of that everlasting beauty
and amiableness that are in holiness, and of that horror, and ugliness, and
deformity that eternally dwell on the forehead of all iniquity. Be under the awe and majesty of such clear
convictions all day long, and “thou shalt not fulfil
the lusts of the flesh.”
RULE III
Understand
thyself; be no stranger to thy own breast know the
frame, and temper, and constitution of thy mind. See what grace is principally
wanting in thee, which is weakest, in what instances thy greatest failure
betrays itself, in which of thy passions and affections thou art most peccable,
and what lustings of the flesh they are which give
thee the frequentest alarms, and threaten the greatest dangers.
RULE IV
Get
and keep a tender conscience. Be
sensible of the least sin. The most tender-hearted Christian - he is the stoutest and most
valiant Christian. “Happy is the man that feareth always but he that hardeneth
his heart, shall fall into mischief.”
*
* * *
* * *
245
THE REIGN OF
CHRIST
By D. A. COOK
The subduing of
all things to the Son is the supreme will of God. “Having made known unto us the mystery of His Will, that
in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one,
all things in Christ, both
which are in heaven and which are
on earth, even in Him” (Eph. 1: 9, 10). “That in the Name of Jesus
every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things in earth, and
things under the earth, and that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2: 10, 11). “And having made peace through the Blood of His Cross, by
Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Him, I say, whether they be things
in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1: 20): “that in all things HE might have the pre-eminence.”
In these passages of Scripture, this thought
predominates. There exists an enmity in
the universe, against God, which needs reconciling. The whole world is in rebellion against Him,
and is consequently going to be judged, and the
rebellion destroyed. But before the
world-dominion of Christ is set up it must first be set up in the members of
His Body - the people He has chosen to be
one with Him in His Kingdom. Therefore,
His Kingdom must be established IN them,
before it can be established BY them. “Do ye not know that the
saints shall judge the world? Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” But how can this be, if these people are themselves in
partial rebellion to His Rule? Before
the Throne is set up on earth, His reign must be set up in those who are to share
His Throne. Otherwise, there are
traitors in His Kingdom.
Is it sincere to pray “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth, as
it is in heaven,” if we are not
prepared for that Kingdom
and that will to hold full sway in the hearts and lives of us who pray? Obedience is not a collective thing, but individual, and there can only be the
carrying out of His will upon earth as each individual is
brought into subjectivity to His Rule.
“Bless the
Lord, ye His angels ... that do His Commandments, hearkening
unto the Voice of His Word.” In heaven, there is no clash of wills or
rebellion. It is this obedience we must
first claim, and then exercise, trusting the Holy Spirit to glorify and
enthrone Christ in the heart, for it is His work, not ours.
Ours is but to trust Him to fulfil it.
“God hath delivered us out of the dominion of darkness,
and translated us into the reign of His dear Son” (Col. 1: 13). He is able to
subdue all things unto Himself (Phil. 3: 21). “For He must reign, till He
hath put all enemies under His feet”
(1 Cor. 15: 25). “Casting down imaginations, and
every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing unto captivity every thought to the obedience of
Christ” (2 Cor. 10: 5).
And this
obedience does not come about automatically - that is, without the full consent
and co-operation of the Will, for God does not treat His people like machines,
but looks for their willing, intelligent co-operation with His working. The members, mind, will and heart, must be offered up to God, to take sides with Him against
all that He is against, and for the reign of Christ to
become operative. “Yield yourselves unto God ... and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” Let not sin
therefore reign (Rom. 6: 13). How can we reign with Him, unless He first reigns in
us? It is not likely that we can subdue
rebellion and sin in others, while these things are still unsubdued in us; and
just so much of our being that is not actually brought
under His Rule, is in rebellion against Him, for there is no neutrality in the
spiritual realm. “He that is not with Me is against Me.”
The
enmity that is at the root of our fallen nature, must
be dealt with; and it still exists, even in those who are born again, until the
Holy Spirit succeeds in breaking it down, and subduing all things to Christ,
who “MUST reign, till all enemies are under His feet.” And notice, that the setting up of His Throne does not mean that
all enemies are then and there subdued; but His Throne is set up, in order that
He may be in a position to assert His authority and right, to put all things
under Him, and for the subduing of all that resists Him; and He goes on
reigning UNTIL that objective is
reached, and then accomplished.
It
is clear that He does not invest us with authority, to cast out of others, that
which still reigns in us. “Thou
hypocrite, first cast out the
beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote
out of thy brother’s eye.” Rebellion is
going to be judged.
“They (the angels) shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend” (Matt. 13: 41). This
means judgment. There is judgment also
for the children of God. “If we would judge ourselves, we
should not be judged.” Self-judgment is allotted
to us now, but hereafter we shall judge the world. “Judgment must begin at the house of God”;
and it is clear that we cannot reign over Christ’s enemies, until He has
reigned over His enemies in us.
The
Son won His Kingdom by obedience. The
first Adam lost dominion through disobedience.
The last Adam gained it by obedience.
“Let the
mind be in you - which was also in
Christ Jesus; Who was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him.” The way to the
Kingdom and the Throne, for Christ, the Representative Man, and Last Adam, was
by death. And
it is so also, for every one that is “born of God.” The Lord Jesus took the old Adam to the Cross, substitutionally, for “in Him is no sin,” but we have that old Adam nature within us, and
therefore we must consent to the Cross.
The
truth that there is no glory or reigning apart from discipline and training is
clearly brought out in 1 Pet. 4: 12, 13, 17:- “Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of
Christ’s sufferings; that when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.” “For the time is come when judgment must begin at the house of
God.” So let us invest our Lord and Saviour with
His Royal robes, and put the crown upon His Head, and acknowledge
Him as KING OF KINGS and LORD OF LORDS, and then we shall be
fitted to reign with Him when He is universally acknowledged.
*
* * *
* * *
246
A FEDERATION
OF THE NATIONS
AGAINST GOD
By D. M. PANTON
Facts are slowly rising to the surface
which portend a future such as the human race has never known. A missionary recently from
Now
the Second Psalm portrays, in miniature, the
coming storm. The Psalm opens abruptly:
there is no prelude, and at once there breaks on the
ear the tramp of gathering armies, the tumult of nations, the huge throb of
universal rebellion. “Why” - cries the onlooker, in wonder and horror - “do the nations rage” - in frantic uproar*
- “and the
peoples” - in all ranks and
classes - “imagine
a vain thing” - an impossibility,
namely, the overthrow of the Throne of Jehovah?
For they are set on nothing less. “The kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord
[Jehovah] and against
His Anointed [Christ]” - for all at last identify God and Christ as
inseparable, and to be accepted, or opposed, together - “saying” - the inarticulate rage of the masses finds utterance
in the studied atheisms of the ‘intellectuals’
- “Let us break
their bands asunder, and cast away their cords
from us” (Ps.
2: 1). That is, these
assault, because they know, God and
His Christ: they are therefore “the Gentiles upon whom my name is called” (Acts 15: 17) - that is
Christendom, mainly
*
The Greek … properly refers to the rage
of an unmanageable horse (Lange):
all humanity would throw its rider, the Enthroned One.
** A medal was struck, which still
survives, bearing the inscription:- “Diocletian, for having everywhere abolished the superstition
of Christ.” The final Roman Emperor will tread in his steps.
*** Zinovieff, a Jew, a master-spirit of
The
drama next shifts in a moment to Heaven, and suddenly there speaks the Great
Opponent of the rebel nations With the Apostasy raging below, the Throne is
suddenly unveiled above. “He that
sitteth in the heavens” - remaining seated, in the awful calm of God, in the
repose of perfect power - “shall laugh: the Lord shall
have them in derision.” There is something very awful in this sudden
portraiture of God. The
mere thought that a universe founded deep on righteousness, a world stamped all
over with retributive law, a throne of Deity which called all things out of
nothing - that these can be overthrown by worms of the dust in the dust, is so
absurd as to be laughable; as though a spider sought to shift Mount Everest, or
a fly to roll earth out of her orbit: their very conscience is built on the
Decalogue they would destroy. But the sublime comedy passes swiftly into dread
tragedy. They who mock God [by defiantly refusing to recognise and proclaim the
coming Millennial reign of the Messiah] will reap the mockery of God. Detecting the plots, unmasking the motives,
measuring the atheisms on earth, Deity, serene, as the march of stars and suns,
immovable with the immovability of Godhead, and regarding the Apostasy as
simply absurd, launches the last judgments with that Word which is itself
creative. “Then” - after the patience of four thousand years - “shall He speak unto them in
His wrath” - not now with
Scriptures, but with judgments, not with His mouth, but with His arm - “and vex them” - ‘trouble’
them, in the Great Tribulation - “with His sore displeasure.” So the nations, after decreeing lawlessness, now hear the
counter-decree of God. “Yet” - despite a world in arms, and because a world is in arms: the whole soul of
the Psalm, says Luther, is in that ‘yet’ “I” - emphatic:
One against earth’s millions, the Creator against the creature - “have set my King upon my holy
hill of Zion”: literally, “as for Me,
I have set my King upon Zion, the mount of my holiness”. ‘
Into
the drama now suddenly breaks a third voice, the voice of the Son of God, the Vox Humana in God’s stupendous organ-music. “I will tell of the decree” - for He reigns, not by the will of man, but ‘by the grace of God’; not as a usurper, but as the
lawful Heir; by a decree which overrides and cancels all decrees of lower
thrones: for “in
its own times” - its appropriate
season - “He
shall show who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords”
(1 Tim. 6:
15). The Lord Jesus fastens upon His
resurrection as the seal, the proof, the initial act and all-embracing germ of
His coming kingly power. “The Lord
said” - spoke the decree once for
all - “unto me,
Thou art my Son” - Son, as no other is Son: for - “this day” -
therefore not in a dayless, dateless eternity, but in
a given moment of time, which is cut up into days - “have
I begotten thee” - out of the tomb: “ask of Me”
- for the Lord’s resurrection day was virtually, if not actually, His
coronation day and the ‘asking’ is for the
nations, in an earthly Throne not the heavenly Throne, which is His, not by
asking, but by right - “and I will give Thee the nations” - for the ultimate salvation of the Gentiles lay buried
deep in the Old Testament - “for Thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth” - for the Lord’s empire will be the first
and last to be universal in fact as well as in title - “for Thy possession.” And men must learn that it
is as impossible to overthrow God on earth as it is to storm the stars. The sceptre, which His enemies think is still
the wooden reed He held in the judgment Hall, becomes an iron staff in contact
with which all earthly militarism is as brittle as china. This at once disproves all interpretations
that apply the Psalm to the Gospel Age.
Now He breaks no bruised reed:*
then He
smashes (where wickedness compels) with blow on shattering blow. Whole nations must be destroyed rather than
that Christ shall be dethroned: when God moves, even a
*
“A bruised reed
shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He
not quench TILL He send forth
judgment unto victory” (Matt. 12: 20).
The
drama now closes in the Voice of the Holy Ghost, in that final summary of appeal which must more and more be ours, in the only divine
patriotism of the Gospel Age. “Now
therefore” - in view of the fact
that God will not allow Himself to be dethroned; in view of the hopeless
futility of [all
anti-millennial protestors and rejectors of millennial truth, who doggedly
insist that this ‘Zion’ is in heaven;
and all unregenerate]
rebellion; in view of the irresistible decree already pronounced; in view of
the empty Tomb which proves a filled Thone - “be wise, O ye kings; be instructed,
ye judges of the earth”; learn from observation and Scripture and experience,
if you are not wise enough to know it intuitively: “serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling: KISS THE SON”. The kiss upon
the hand, or upon the hem of the robe, is, to-day, as it always has been, the
act of homage to kings: He is so gracious, so easily placated, that but a kiss
will avert the coming wrath. Here we get
once more the revelation of the heart of God.
The threatening of Jehovah is neither an impatient taunt nor a
vindictive passion, but a revelation of danger in order to open up a golden
offer of safety. “Swear fealty and homage to Him,
submit to His government, take His yoke upon you, and give up yourselves to be
governed by His laws, disposed of by His providence, and entirely devoted to
His interest” (M. Henry).
So the
Psalm closes with the never-varying, never-altered, never-ceasing
alternative. One horn of the dilemma - “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way, for His wrath will soon be kindled”; the other horn of the dilemma - “Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him”. Thus everything turns upon The Son. To sin against the Son, is to sin against the
remedy, to destroy the Mediator, to cast off the bands that save as well as the
bands that irk, and to be buried [in
‘Hades’ for ‘a thousand years’ (Rev.
20: 6, 13, R.V.)]*
beneath the debris of a ruined world.
How fearful the final prayer! - “Hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne,
and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great
day of their wrath is come” (Rev. 6: 16).* To be truly wise is to know our
danger in time. “Blessed are all they that find refuge in Him” (Dean Perowne): blessed every way and
blessed always! As one of the greatest
of the judges of the Earth has said:- “I have been driven many times to my knees by the
overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go” (Abraham Lincoln).
[* Two
prominent truths (in relation to God’s nature) - shown throughout Old and New
Testaments - are: - (1) God is no
respecter of persons in judgment:- “For he that doeth
wrong shall receive again for the wrong that he hath done: and there is no respect of persons,” (Colossians 3: 25,
R.V.); and (2) “I the LORD change
not:” (Malachi 3: 6, R.V.).
What justification do regenerate believers have of entering
the Lord’s
*
‘The wrath of the
Lamb’
is an awful revelation of outraged
and enraged Love which suggests an ocean of oil on
fire. “The noblest and most daring thing,” says
Dr. F. W. Norwood, “ever said about
the Infinite is that God is love. That means that God is nothing but love. That
means that love is nothing but God.” The populations of the world, as the Day
of the Lord draws on, will not thank the Christian teachers who fed them with
such dangerous falsehoods.
-------
MASONRY AND
THE CHURCHES
DEAR SIR,
In reference to your note on Masonry and the Churches,
may I be permitted to point out that the paper which I sent you giving the
names of denominations which asked their communicants to have nothing to do
with Freemasonry consisted mostly of American denominations. The Wesleyan Methodists referred to were
those of the
I am, etc.,
D. BEATON.
SOULS AND RESURRECTION
To the Apostle the future held one great variety which
all men must face - the judgment seat; one [future] experience [Heb.
9: 27; 1 Pet. 1: 5, 9, R.V.] through which all [disembodied
souls presently in ‘Hades’ (Acts 2: 27, 34, R.V.)] must pass
the
resurrection, either to life or to condemnation; a destiny to which all
things were moving - the great eternity. To him, as he viewed the
future, every soul of man - [for
the ‘soul’ is the person, being separated
at the time of Death and distinct from its ‘body,
which Scripture has described as a ‘tent’] - working ill could meet with nothing else but “wrath and indignation, tribulation
and anguish.” As he contemplated
this he exclaimed, “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”
[Heb. 10: 31, R.V.]. In view of this he
writes elsewhere, “knowing the terror of the Lord,
we persuade men.” So vivid was the consciousness
that, as he reasoned concerning it, even men like the godless Felix were
made at times to tremble. So intense was
his zeal on this account - [see
Phil. 3: 7, 8, R.V.]
- that he was thought to be beside
himself.
To-day
the consciousness - [of
the vast majority of regenerate believers] - seems to have almost died out. The natural eye cannot see [disembodied]
souls. The ethical veil of society, the
cloak of self-righteousness, or the thin veneer of legal morals are impenetrable
to the natural sight, and when accompanied with the rosy blush of youth, the
glitter of prosperity and the joys of home social life, it is hard to realise
that in the midst of all these are lost souls.
Christians, as a whole, do not act as though they believed that anybody
was lost.
To
the Apostle the claims of the lost were personal and obligatory. Night and day he laboured and exhorted others
to be instant in season and out of season, that he might be clear ‘of the blood of all’ souls - [see Acts 20: 25-27, R.V.]. He not only pointed out that men would perish
who neglected “so great salvation” - [Heb.
2: 3,
R.V.] - for themselves, but he equally believed that men
were guilty
of soul-murder who neglected the “salvation of
souls” [1 Pet. 1: 9, R.V.]. Moreover, so
urgent was the need that lost time to him meant not only lost opportunities but lost souls. Would
this might dawn upon us today! Delay in meeting the need affects the
destiny of millions.
*
* * *
* * *
247
THE REMOVAL
OF THE CHURCH
FROM EARTH
By
D.
M. PANTON, B.A.
It is a most happy fact, solving a complex and warmly
debated problem with case and finish, that, if a
single phrase in the Apocalypse - wheat - is a symbol of the Church, a graded
removal of the Church from earth, a removal in sections, passes out of the
realm of discussion into that of certainty.
This symbol is the
FIRSTFRUITS
Now
the first key-fact of the drama is that the scene opens in heaven, and that all
the actors in it - the Lamb, the Firstfruits, the
Angels - move in and from the heavenlies.
The proofs of this are unmistakable.
(1) Christ is in the
heavenlies. “I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing” (Rev. 14: 1) the Lord
does not descend to earth until the nineteenth chapter; and even later in this
very chapter, when, as Reaper, He casts His sickle to the earth (v. 14), He is
still seated on the Parousia-cloud in the heavenlies. The Lord’s title throughout His sojourn in
the heavenlies is ‘The Lamb’: ‘the Son of Man’ is His title on descending to the earth. (2) ‘Jerusalem’
throughout the Apocalypse never means the earthly Jerusalem and Mount Zion below,
so far from being occupied by Christ - who does not descend upon it until after
the Vintage pictured at the close of this chapter - is, at this moment, in the
grip of the murderous Antichrist (Rev. 11: 8): the Mount
Zion here named is, therefore, the “mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12: 22) to which we have already in spirit come.
(3) The Firstfruit company sing “before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders” (14: 3) and the Throne of God is indisputably in
heaven.* “‘Heaven,’ from which the sound
comes (v. 2), includes the ‘
*
“
THE HARVEST
Now
the other key-fact in the drama is the inescapable identity of firstfruits with
harvest. “If the firstfruit is holy,” Paul says, “so is the lump”
(Rom. 11:
16) - the
crop from which it is cut: that is, if the Firstfruits are a heavenly
body, so also is the Harvest a heavenly body, although still on the surface of
the earth. For
it is impossible to deny that the
Firstfruits and Harvest in this chapter each relate to the other, as the
first-cut and the later-cut of one body of wheat: beyond the sharply numbered
firstfruits stretches the unnumbered and innumerable harvest. Thus all is exactly
square with all other Scriptures. For as
the fig stands for
*
“The Harvest is
the ingathering of the Good, the ingathering of the wheat into the heavenly
barn: the Vintage is the crushing of the wicked” (Bishop Wordsworth). So Bengel:- “By
means of the Harvest a great multitude of the righteous, and by means of the
Vintage a great multitude of the ungodly, is removed from the world: the
Vintage is expressive only of wrath, the Harvest is entirely of a gracious
character.”
WHEAT
So
then the sole obstacle to a divided reaping - namely, the theory that the
Firstfruits are ‘Jewish’ - collapses. For no
Jewish body is ever removed from the earth at
all. Wheat is so
characteristic of the Christian that it could not be a symbol of an earthly people: its
fragile stalk, dying to earth as it ripens heavenward, so unlike the rooted,
luscious grasp on earth of fig or vine; its annual relays moving off the field
in successive pilgrim generations; its value as the supreme food for man, even
as the Church is the supreme satisfaction of God; its lack of what, to the
world, would be pleasant fruit - fig or grape: wheat is manifestly created to
be God’s kindergarten of the Church; and the theory that this body of redeemed
on high is ‘Jewish’, under investigation, melts
as a mist in the sun, or a fog swept by a sea-wind. *
*
How clear minds could ever have
confounded the earthly First-fruits (Rev. 7: 4) with the heavenly Firstfruit is one of the mysteries of
Apocalyptic interpretation. For it would
be difficult to find two groups of the saved more radically distinguished by
explicit statements of Scripture. The one group is on the earth, the other is in heaven: the one is named
as Jews, the other is named as catholic: the one is drawn from the Twelve Tribes
of Israel, the other “from among men” - mankind in general: the one escapes
into the wilderness (Rev. 12: 14) the
other into the heavenlies: the one is stationary in the desert, with Christ as
the Jehovah Angel, the other moves freely everywhere, with the Lamb: the one is sealed
in the forehead as a miraculous safeguard against assassination (Rev. 9: 4), the other is named in the forehead in
a realm where assassination is impossible. The virginity of the Lamb’s body-escort is
also profoundly un-Jewish; and redemption from the earth, as
DIVIDED REAPING
Therefore
the stupendous fact now confronts us - not an inference, nor a doctrine, but a
photograph - that not all the Church is reaped into the heavenlies at one swing
of the scythe. Between Firstfruits and
Harvest yawns an ominous drama. Between the Firstfruits
reaped on high, and the Harvest still uncut on earth, successive judgment
Angels proclaim wrath on the threshold, the accomplished overthrow of Babylon,
and the Mark of the Beast at the doors, followed by a dirge (or elegy) of the
Spirit over a sudden burst of martyrdom - all events that are close to the
opening hours of the Great Tribulation; and the
Harvest is still uncut. The
Firstfruits, garnered we are not told when, but
earlier, are, as Dean Alford says, “choice ones among God’s people, and not the totality of
those who shall form the great multitude that no man can number.” It is a significant fact that there has never
yet been a rapture except of conspicuous saints. “Without question, there is pre-eminence in being the
firstfruits of the heavenly harvest. They are not all the saved. The very word indicates that there is much
more to follow. Nor are they the mass of the saved.
Theirs is the ‘first resurrection,’ of which we read in chapter 20. - that
resurrection of the dead which St. Paul calls ‘the
resurrection,’ and ‘the mark’ toward which he pressed, if by any means he might attain unto it (Phil. 3.).
Infinite mischief is done by the belief that all will be equally
blessed, equally honoured” (Pulpit Commentary).*
* Our Lord is in
their midst, and is also firstfruits (1 Cor. 15: 20) - thus proving that firstfruits are composed
of dead, and not only of living, saints; and, as reaped two thousand years
earlier, the Ascension divides the cutting even of first-cut: for the 144,000
are not ‘the
firstfruits’, but ‘firstfruits’ (no
article) a section of a far vaster throng:- “but each
in his own order” - group, company, flight; “Christ
the firstfruits, then they that are Christ’s in
His Presence” (1 Cor.
15: 23) -
in successive reapings during the Parousia. Resurrection
accompanies each rapture, both being embodied (Rev. 11: 11, 12) in a
single graphic example. The peculiar
nature, history, and functions of this particular group of first-cut saints lie
outside the scope of our present article.
MATURITY
The
moral lesson now stands forth (as designed) in all its penetrating power. For the grain is reaped
solely according to its ripeness.
Earth-removal depends, for the servant of God, on spiritual maturity, as
exactly and as inevitably as harvesting is dated, not
by the farmer, but by the grain. The
Lord had already warned us of this momentous principle, in His description of
the ripening Church. “First the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear: but when the fruit is RIPE,
immediately he putteth forth the
sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark 4: 29). So the identical phrasing is
used here. “Send forth thy sickle” - the sickle is ‘sent,’ for it is an intelligent scythe of falling
angels - “and
reap: for the hour to reap” - an hour which depends solely on the maturity of the
grain - “is come; for
the harvest of the earth is OVER-RIPE”
(Rev. 14: 15); rather, perfectly ripe, so that the stalk is dry (Alford). Wheat which never ripens would be a blasted field: but the
*A broad hint that the corners of the field, which
according to the type (Lev. 23: 22) must be
reaped later than harvest, are uncut until the neighbourhood of Armageddon is
contained in the characteristic Church warning, - “Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth
his garments [works: cf, Rev. 3: 4, 18], lest
he walk naked, and
they see his shame (Rev. 16: 15).
HEAVENLINESS
So now we reach the momentous
fact carefully designed to revolutionize our whole Christian life. Maturity in the spiritual realm
is grace perfected in the [regenerate
believer’s] character; and the critical alternative unfolds before
us either of maturity gained now by
grace, or a forced growth [in
the Great Tribulation] under judgment. For ‘firstfruits’ is not only a time-word,
so that if reaped simultaneously with harvest, it is not firstfruits,
but it is also a quality-word, for
firstfruits (in Scripture) are invariably the
pick of the crop (Num. 18: 12),
peculiarly holy to God, and to be carried bodily into the House of God (Neh. 10: 37). So of the Christian
Firstfruits moral excellence of the highest order is stated; “they are without blemish” (Rev. 14: 5) whereas the Harvest, although ripe at last, has
no special excellence, as wheat, stated; and its maturity, unlike that of the
Firstfruits, is a maturity not due to rapidity in reaching [the
required standard of moral] perfection,
but is produced by the slow and painful
process of burning [tribulation-persecution] heat - “the harvest of the earth is dried up.” As the Firstfruits are two baked loaves (Lev.
23: 17),
burnt edible - so ceasing to be raw grain - through an earlier suffering with Christ, so the Day of the Lord burneth as an oven (Mal. 4:
1), thus baking its Loaves: the fierce sun of the Day of [God’s] Wrath,
penetrating grain which avoided the
earlier fires, destroys earthliness in the wheat at last. The root cause of maturity is fundamentally
the same in both - made perfect through
suffering.
THE CRISIS
So the
urgency of the issue, its summons to sanctity, our practical peril - all lodge in selective rapture alone the rousing truth without which the warnings of God on unwatchfulness
fall flat and unheeded. We are exotics ripening for another soil; and sunripe
wheat, rather than forced hot-house growth, is God’s ideal: for it is not the
pressure of coming judgments, nor any inherent necessity that we should escape
the coming perils - martyrs have had as bad - which is the determining factor
compelling removal, but a principle quite other - our fitness for the heavenly
garner.*
And how solemn are the facts! In
spite of the huge cataclysm of the War, with which God shook the world, it is a
fact past all denial that the great majority of the Christian groups treat the
Saviour’s return with derision. Is this
ripeness for the sickle? Nothing, short
of Tribulation horrors will shock the main mass of the converted into maturity
at last.*
*
The blade is the green sprout of a living
profession of Christ, a proof past all doubt of vital standing in Him; but it
is not the fruitful ear, much less the full corn in the ear; and men do not
reap blades. It is a decisive
confirmation of the interpretation here given that, in the Feasts of the Law
which are a complete history in type of the redeemed under grace, wheat (as
ever) is the symbol selected for the Church, and the Feast of Harvest (Lev. 23: 9-22) reveals a
carefully graded reaping.
[* See also “Firstfruits and
Harvest,” by G. H. Lang.
- Ed.]
* *
* * *
* *
248
FAITH AND
REASON
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Faith is a far-sighted calculation based on a Divine
utterance. Faith is opposed to sight, faith is not opposed to reason: faith is reason based
on the invisible as vouched for by God.
Faith sacrifices visible evil, to win invisible good: it acts on
concrete realities in the unseen - just as actual, though not always so gross,
as the things around us - which, if really there, change the whole
world-outlook, and revolutionize life. “Faith is the ASSURANCE [R.V.] of things hoped for, the CONVICTION [Govett] of things not seen”
(Heb. 11:
1). Full faith (the faith of Hebrews Eleven)
loads all its goods on one raft; it lodges its entire fortune in a single bank;
it stakes its all on one throw - because, in the mirror of what God has said,
it sees an empty Tomb backward, and the lightnings of a descending Christ
forward, and it shapes all life on these invisible, concrete, overmastering
realities. Faith barters the
infinitely little for the infinitely great.
Faith is the highest reason functioning on actual realities
which it has never seen.*
*
It is obvious that if there be no actual,
tangible, reliable information from God on the unseen, no specific break in the
eternal silence, faith (as the infidel has always said) is a self-created
illusion which builds on a void, and ends in an abyss. “Faith
cometh by hearing,” not
seeing, “and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10: 17).
REFUSING
Now
in all the marvellous galaxy of Hebrews Eleven none more sharply defines and enforces this
reasoning element in faith - this wise, deliberate, far-sighted decision - than
Moses; and it opens with probably the greatest renunciation recorded in the
history of the world. For renunciation
is measured by the value of what a man renounces; and “by faith a whole-hearted decision reposing on
invisible facts - Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Heb. 11: 24). Moses,
if not heir to the Egyptian throne - Jewish tradition, embodied in Josephus,
says that he was - stood upon its steps, the throne of the wealthiest and most
powerful monarchy on the globe. He had
to renounce for his children also, who lost a palace, and perhaps a
throne. Why then a
renunciation so vast? Because
evil is transitory, and righteousness is permanent. To Pharaoh, dying, the pomp of the world was
a dream: to Moses, it was a dream all his life. For
God is good, and goodness is the foundation of the universe, the imperishable
substance of immortality: therefore the renunciation of evil is the highest
reason; and therefore Moses deliberately, and as a mature calculation - his
full age is therefore noted - abandons
the prosperous and the wicked, and casts in his lot with the suffering and the
holy. He lived for the future, for
the future is sure, while the present is a vapour, a vanity, and can be a most
dangerous deception.
CHOOSING
The
choice over against the refusal is also without precedent, the scales on the
other side being loaded with all from which the heart
most shrinks. “Choosing” - deliberately selecting with wide-eyed choice - “rather to be afflicted with
the people of God” - that is, he
cast in his lot with Israel, not because they were blood-relations, but because
they were God’s people - “than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.”
ACCOUNTING
A
volume of instruction is packed away into the next
logic of Moses’ balanced judgment. “Accounting” - judging, as the word is elsewhere translated:
coming to a conclusion on mature consideration - “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures of
LOOKING
So
now we reach the intensity of Moses' forward
gaze. “He looked” - gazing off into the God-revealed future - “unto the recompense” - the exactly adjusted compensation for all righteous
suffering, which God has made a law of the universe - “of reward.” Moses a gave up a crown for a crown; but the throne of an
[* See ‘FOOTNOTE’ and
S. S. Craig’s book: “The Dualism of
Eternal Life”.]
ENDURING
Finally,
the Spirit is careful to record that Moses’ choice by faith proved the
backbone, the skeleton of steel, of his life.
“For he
endured”
- the word means strength, power,
courage; he remained resolute, immovable, undaunted - “as seeing him who is
invisible.” All life thus becomes a steady waiting for a
certain glory. For it is not stupidity,
or obstinacy, or pigheadedness, or illusion: it is a vision of God based on the
[presently unfulfilled prophetic] Scriptures of God.
It is the philosophy of all martyrdom: as, in the hand of the statue to Gaspard de Coligny,
in Paris, lies an open Bible, and on the page exposed are the words - “He endured as seeing Him who
is invisible.” An identical principle ruled our Lord. “I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand” - God holding me, God teaching me, God loving me, God
bracing me - “I
shall not be moved” (Ps. 16: 8). It is a constant Godward gaze which creates immobility of character.
Moses looked through Egypt, and he saw Hell [Gk. ‘Hades’]: he looked through the palace, and he saw the “crown of righteousness which
the Lord, the righteous judge, will give in that day”: he looked through the Wilderness, and he saw the
Mount of Transfiguration: he looked through life and death, and he saw a Great White Throne, from which the
earth and the heavens flee away.
So faith can be infinite in its reach and power, for its eyes can be
full of God; and thus refusing, choosing, accounting, looking, enduring,
seeing, Moses alights, fifteen centuries later, on the Transfigured Mount.
-------
FOOTNOTE
“The word ‘eternal’ in the English text
is misleading. Those for whom Christ is
the source
of salvation ([i.e., regenerate] Christians) already possess eternal salvation; and, beyond that,
this salvation was not acquired through obedience to Christ. … Rather, it was acquired
through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (John 3: 16). … The word
from the Greek text translated ‘eternal’ above [in
2 Cor. 4: 17] is ‘aionios’. This is the adjective equivalent of the noun aion.
… Aion means ‘an aeon,’ [the word ‘aeon’ is derived from aion]
or ‘an era,’ usually understood throughout the Greek New Testament as ‘an age.’
“Aionios, the adjective equivalent of aion, is used seventy-one
times in the Greek New Testament and has been indiscriminately translated ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’ in almost every
instance in the various English translations.
This word though should be understood about thirty of these seventy-one
times in the sense of ‘age-lasting’ rather than ‘eternal’; and the occurrence
in Heb. 5: 9 forms a case in point.” (A. L.
Chitwood.)
*
* * *
* * *
249
OUR
RESURRECTION BODY
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
-------
Our Lord reveals the exact nature of the resurrection
body. He does not
quiet the Apostles’ fears by saying that there is no spirit-world; or that no
apparition can appear; or that a spirit is necessarily invisible; or that a
deceptive spirit cannot appear among Apostles in the very heart of the Church.*
What He does say is:- “Handle
Me, and see; for
a spirit hath not flesh and bones, AS YE SEE ME HAVE”
(Luke 24: 39):
that is, feel My flesh; and press it, so as to detect the bones beneath. A spirit, He says who made all spirits, is
fleshless and boneless; and it is Luke, the physician, who records this anatomy
beyond the tomb. It is exceedingly
remarkable that in Ezekiel’s detailed analysis of what resurrection is - “I will lay sinews upon you [the naked, bones], and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin” (Ezek. 37: 6) - there is no mention whatever of blood.** Our
Lord’s words are fearfully important. They establish three facts: first, that resurrection is not the
return of the dead spirit, or ghost, but a complete restoration of the [whole] man who died - spirit, soul, and body; secondly, that our
Lord Himself now possesses, and will possess for ever, a body of flesh and
bones; thirdly, that so much critically turns upon this fact that He is more
anxious than anyone else in the universe that we should know it, and understand
it, and so gave the longest recorded interview after the
resurrection to establishing this point alone. The fact is most solemn;
for it means that the body that sinned will be the
body that is judged. The eyes that
lusted, the mouth that betrayed, the hand that forged, the feet that trampled
its enemy’s face into gore - that body is coming again.
A new body will not be punished for sins it never did; nor can the old
body escape the punishment it deserves.
A mouth can be for praise that is not for food; and hands for service,
that are not for labour. The crown of thorns was no figure, no phantom, and neither will be
the many diadems.
*
To say (with the Modernist and the
Spiritualist) that resurrection is the liberating of the spirit from the body
at the moment of death, is completely disproved by the fact that Christ rose on
the third day - seventy-two hours after He had
given up the ghost.*
[*
NOTE: It was
Christ’s animating ‘spirit’ (Luke 23: 46,
R.V.) - which He surrendered into His Father’s keeping;
the same ‘spirit’ which God has given to all of
His creatures who are presently alive.
When God - the Giver of all life - recalls this ‘spirit,’ Death occurs. “… the body apart from the
spirit is dead…” (Jas. 2: 26 R.V.).]
** “Nothing would have impressed upon Jews more forcibly the
transfiguration of Christ’s body than the verbal omission of the element of blood,
which was for them the symbol and seat of corruptible life” (Westcott). So believers are united, not to His flesh and
blood, but to His flesh and bones (Eph. 5: 30). This is the key to the text
on which the Modernist supremely rests.
Flesh and bones - for that is resurrection - can enter the
II. - A
CHANGED BODY
The
Holy Spirit is a dove that flies through Scripture and through nature on two
wings. Truth is often a balance of
opposites. Our Lord’s Body in the Upper
Room - at first, in its new functions and powers, unrecognized, yet very soon,
from its surviving scars, absolutely identified - is the prophecy, though not
exactly the model (for He never corrupted) of the double entity which is
resurrection. “Who shall change this body of
our humiliation” - not exchange
it, much less annihilate it, but pass it under a profound transformation - “that it may be conformed to
the body of His glory” (Phil. 3: 21). Scylla
and Charybdis are rocks on either hand which the [Holy] Spirit avoids: one, that the risen body is the exact
corpse that was buried; and the other, that it is another body altogether: he who steers too clear of Scylla founders on Charybdis. Christ’s body is the prophecy of ours.
Now
Paul, under the guidance of the [Holy] Spirit, has seized on an analogy in nature which reveals the ground-plan of God. The seed we sow answers the question put to
the Apostle: “With
what manner of body do they come?” For what happens to the seed after
burial? It dissolves;
and its husk, its material wrappings, disappear under the action of the earth’s
moisture and heat; later on, its life-germs, which no biologist’s microscope or
scalpel has ever disclosed, and which, though buried, do not perish,
simultaneously shoot upward and downward; and lo, something breaks up forcibly
out of the earth as startlingly different as a lily is unlike its bulb. The husk never rises, the life-germ never
dies;* the husk perishes, the
life-germ comes up infinitely richer, with leaves, calyx, corolla. The giant cedar produces a seed as minute as
that of the smallest wayside weed, out of which its whole
vast structure is evolved. The lily is
the very bulb that was sown, not another; yet the ugly, black, lifeless-looking
bulb is replaced by white and gold: the new and lovely shoot is largely
composed of entirely fresh particles of matter: the breathing leaves and the
waxen petals live in the sunshine and the wind, in another world from that of
the bulb.
*
Even life-germs as we know them are among
the most indestructible of all things, flourishing in poisonous and corrosive substances,
and surviving incredible temperatures of heat and cold.
Therefore,
also, in the identity of the seed and the plant lies a truth of awful
significance. Wheat, in the tomb, does
not become barley, or barley change into wheat: there
is no change, no second chance, in the grave: wheat comes up wheat, tares come up tares: what the
seed falls, that it springs: yet how enormously different! All the winter the bulb lies dead, an unsightly root, hidden in the
earth: but they “that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake” (Dan. 12: 2), and “all* that are in the tombs shall come forth” (John
5: 28,
29) - in the case of the saints, lilies
springing out of the black earth, with a whiteness with which no fuller on
earth can whiten.**
[* NOTE: Compare
this statement with Matt. 16: 18 and Rev. 20: 13, R.V. - for “all”
are not resurrected from “Hades” at the same time (Rev. 20: 5, 6, R.V.):
therefore all will not be judged by Christ as “accounted
worthy” before “the first
resurrection” to inherit the promised Kingdom: many
will have forfeited their millennial inheritance in that coming
Kingdom! See Heb.
9: 27; Luke 20: 35; Phil. 3: 11; Rev. 20: 5, 6; Ps. 2: 8; Heb. 12: 14-17; 2 Tim. 2: 18
R.V. These texts are all pointers to the
coming resurrection of reward - for the “good and faithful
servants” after Christ returns. Luke 19: 15-17; John 14: 3; 1 Thess. 4: 16; Rev. 2: 10; 3: 25; 6: 9-11 and Rev. 22: 12, R.V.]
** “Paul
used the word kokkos - grain or berry. The grain is not the vital part
of the seed - (the sperma) - but the mere
carrier of that; while in the process of germination (as the activity of the
dormant powers of the germ are stimulated by atmospheric oxygen) the bulk of
the kokkos undergoes decomposition (it perishes)
in the presence of warmth and moisture, for its material to be used in the
metabolism of the infant plant, from the moment that that begins to send out
its ascending and descending shoots and until these nascent organs acquire the
functional power of assimilation of food material from the air and the soil” (A. Irving).
For (in 1 Cor. 15: 42) “it is sown” - for the corpse is a seed entrusted to the earth to
grow, exactly as a seed is; we sow, we do not bury - “in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour” - physical dishonour, not moral - “is raised in glory:
it is sown in
weakness” - weak even to resist
the worm - “is raised in power” - a material that will never waste, and
never wear: “it
is sown a natural body” - an animal body - “it is raised A SPIRITUAL BODY” - as
truly a body, but not as animal a body: “for there are heavenly bodies” - bodies made
for heaven like our Lord’s, and the bodies of the saints that came out of the
tombs (Matt. 27:
52, 53)* - and “there are earthly bodies” - bodies made
for the earth-life. So, for the heavenly life, since this flesh
cannot inherit the
[* NOTE:
There is nothing in Scripture to suggest that these ‘bodies’
of the saints are immortal: for God allowed a similar event to happen when Samuel
the prophet of God conversed with disobedient Saul! (1 Sam. 28: 11-20, R.V. & Septuagint (LXX). Furthermore, we know that Elijah is one of
God’s two witnesses who will return to earth: but he will be
slain at the hands of the Antichrist! (Rev.
11: 7,
R.V.).]
[**
“But not all at the first resurrection (Rev. 20: 5). Therefore in this very chapter “all”
means different things, and in verse 51
requires limiting, since it refers to a smaller company than in verse
22.” See “An Important text (2)” by G. H. LANG.]
III. - A NEW
BODY
We have seen, in the scarred Figure in the Upper Room,
that our body to come is the same body that died: we have seen, in the magic
transformation of the bulb into the lily, that it is a changed body: now, in
the fall of a tent and the substitution of a mansion, we learn the startling
truth that it is a new body. “For we know,” says Paul, “that if the earthly house” - the animal, the earthly body -
“of our tent” - the housing of the soul made of skin and hair-cloth - “be dissolved” - for dissolution only, not
destruction, awaits this mortal frame - “we have a building” - more substantial than a tent, and replacing it:
another creation altogether - “FROM GOD” (2 Cor.
5: 1) - no
more from the birth of an earthly mother, nor yet from the tomb; no fragile
collapsible tent, but a marble mansion from
God - pure from the hands of the
Most High in a fresh creation. Our present body is also from God, but
mediated through the human; the new body is not from my mother, who conceived
me in sin, and brought me forth in visible frailty; the new body is the direct,
unmarred workmanship of God, sinless, physically perfect, immortal. The new body is “in the heavens”: it is nowhere said to be made out of the dust of the earth.
Paul sits
weaving his tent-skins, so easily rent, so perishable; then he looks at the
hands that weave - themselves the fragile tent-skins of the soul; and then he
lifts his eyes and sees an indestructible mansion of the spirit [and the resurrected and immortal ‘soul’
* of our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ], not
woven with fingers, which human hands never built, and human hands can never
destroy. There will be no martyrdoms there. For it is “eternal,” and “in the heavens”: a new, immortal, incorruptible, indissoluble,
heaven-born residence of the soul. So therefore we groan, not to get rid of the body, but to get a
better; a body in which prayer will not be a weariness, sin will not be an
attraction, disease will not be a possibility, and death will not be the
goal. Literally “we are not willing to divest ourselves [of our fragile tent], but to put on [the indestructible dwelling] over it” (Alford);
it is not the stripping off in the charnel-house that
we yearn for, but the robing in the throne-room. We have no desire, with the Spiritualist, to
be a ghost; for to be simply disembodied is, for
humanity, to be unclothed before God, decomposed, incapable of the complex joys
of eternal life. The
Holy Spirit thus banishes for ever the pagan notion that the body is a
disgrace, or itself the source of evil; and the monkish idea which used to
address the living body as “this corpse”: what
we yearn for is a new body, “longing to be clothed upon with our habitation
which is from heaven”; not buried under the debris of the collapsible tent, but, like
Enoch or Elijah, transmuted at once into the holy and the heavenly.
So
Paul, in order to adjust together the many-faceted diamond of resurrection truth,
now gives us the master-key in a single gorgeous phrase:- “THAT WHAT IS MORTAL MAY BE
SWALLOWED UP OF LIFE”;
absorbed and transmuted by glowing, glorious life in an utter, final, total
abolition of death. Here we get the
junction of the two aspects of the truth.
In the germinating seed there is a life germ which survives, yet the
great bulk of the plant is new: so “what is mortal”
is not annihilated, nor dropped, but “swallowed up,”
in absorption by the new body from God.
The tomb does not give up a resuscitated mummy, as the old Egyptians
thought; but “God
giveth
it a body, and to each seed [each corpse] a body of its own.” So then the risen body is the old, and yet it is the new: it is
substantially physical, but it is [not
a ‘spirit’ but] functionally spiritual: it is not two bodies, but
an absorption of that which issues from the tomb into that which descends out
of the heavens. All science is the
advance of man’s mastery over matter, for the purposes of the soul: resurrection
is a final and miraculous mastery of the body, for the purposes of the
spirit. Deep down in the bowels of the
earth, by a process no mortal knows, and which, if it could
be discovered, would make a chemist inconceivably wealthy, charcoal
turns to diamond: the substance is the same, yet beyond conception different:
the charcoal has been swallowed up of diamond.
The softest of minerals in the bowels of the earth becomes the hardest
and most durable - as well as most valuable - metal known. So also is the resurrection of the dead.
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RESURRECTION
“I once saw on the surface of the water a tiny creature -
half fish, half snake - not an inch long, writhing as in a mortal agony. I was stretching out my hand to remove it, lest
it should sink and die and pollute the fair waters, when lo, in the twinkling
of an eye, its skin split from end to end, and there sprang out a delicate
fly. Balancing itself for an instant on
its discarded skin, it preened its gossamer wings, and then flew out to an
opened window, and I learned that on sea
as on land, God has stamped the mystery of the resurrection.” - SAMUEL COX,
D.D.
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An
egg laid by the butterfly hatches, not a miniature adult, but a larva which differs
from the adult, not only in the absence of wings, but in the shape of the body,
the structure of the mouth parts, the length of the antennae, the mode of life,
and the internal structure. In this
case, the caterpillar when full-fed becomes a passive pupa, and within the pupa
case the organs of the body break down and are
reconstructed to form those of the adult, or
imago. This is complete
metamorphosis, defined chiefly by the fact that a period of complete quiescence intervenes between the larval and adult
life. It is extraordinarily
illuminating. The
caterpillar, our earth-tethered life;
the chrysalis, the rest in Hades -
the reconstructed butterfly, the
heavenly body. So also is the resurrection of the dead. A blind martyr and a lame martyr were executed at
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No new forms can supply the place of my dead, and
there would be no relief to my insupportable sorrow unless I knew that the
precious dust committed to the earth is not all dust, that I shall see again
the very forms that I loved, wonderfully changed and transfigured indeed,
translucent with spiritual glory, but still wearing the same form and features that were so familiar to me on
earth.- HUGH MACMILLAN, D. D.
WAITING
I
was very ill. They brought me, word that my wife was dying. A thousand times I had been tempted with the thought that she, rather
frail, might sicken and die while I was across oceans and seas. Now she was
near, and 1 was not able to go to her. Why? Did not God care for my heart-break?
If I had judged by appearance, I should have said, God doesn’t
care. But I knew God did care. I got to her just as
she was passing away. I saw her slip out
of my sight through the ‘gates’.* But
as she slipped through the veil where I could not follow, it seemed as if some
of the blessing and glory into which she was entering came through. God has
never told me why He took her away, but He gave me blessing that enabled me to
bear it. If God were to say, “You may have her back
just as she was before she was stricken, but I shall have to take away the
blessing,” I should say, “Then I’ll not have
her back. “I shall wait to see my loved
one in some better ‘land’**.” Any blessing that has come to me through the trials and
bereavements of life more than outweighs any loss I may have sustained. - Commissioner S. E. BRENGLE
[* Matt. 16: 18; Luke 16: 22, 23; Acts 2: 27, 34, R.V. ** Luke 13: 28-30; 22: 28-30; Acts. 7: 4b-7;
HARVEST
In
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250
THE KINGDOM
IN MYSTERY
By D. M.
PANTON.
Perhaps there is no source of error in exposition
more frequent - so frequent as possibly to hint some chronic defect in the
human mind as it differs from the Divine - than the stubbornness with which men
will see one thing only, when God is looking at two. Duality - the out-pull and the in-pull
that balances the universe - is of the very
texture of things; and yet no great truth rides in a chariot of revelation but
some unbalanced charioteer leaps aboard to urge it over a precipice. It is a vital of exposition that apparently
conflicting Scriptures must never be made, like opposing parks of artillery, to
fire into and silence one another. “No prophecy of scripture
is of isolated interpretation” (2 Pet. 1: 20), but subserves a perfect whole.
This duality dwells richly and subtilly in the great
Scripture phrase - the
*The judgment means denominational creed. It is self-evident that the Court of Appeals
does not mean to include Mohammedans or atheists.
Thus the Kingdom in this sense is
synonymous with the Church, or the hiatus between the two Advents; what our
Lord calls “the mysteries [i.e., things
hidden from the foundation of the world (Matt.
13: 35),
or Church truth] of the kingdom
of heaven” (Matt. 13:
11), which it is given only to disciples to
understand - the mystical kingdom of grace. It is a kingdom over the heart and life, with no visible royalty and
no earthly metropolis;* its citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3: 20, R.V.), and therefore anywhere and everywhere
on earth its citizens are pilgrims, and so strangers; it is constantly at war,
but only with the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places; its weapons are not carnal, and in
consequence it is improperly linked with State establishments and temporal
power; it is so to embody the grace of its Saviour-King that its Victoria Cross
is unresisting martyrdom; its commerce is in the heavenlies, and therefore it
is forbidden to lay up treasure on earth, and takes joyfully the spoiling of
its goods and it is throneless and homeless until the hour when the Holy City
overhangs the Millennial earth.
The gates of this Kingdom stand ajar for all mankind;
and it has but one royal road into it, one exclusive path - the second birth.
Yet
it is equally certain that in the same Gospels and Epistles, and from the same
Sacred Lips, in passages more numerous, and clear beyond all dispute,
the
*
This is the deadly answer
which Mr. Simmonds
justly brought against British-Israelism in our last issue. After the Kingdom’s
only King has not only been rejected but murdered, any
physical Kingdom set up in His absence, and purporting to be His, is a
self-branded imposture. Such are the
‘fifth monarchy’ of Cromwell’s age; Dr. Dowie’s Zion City on Lake Huron; the ‘sovereign state’
of the Vatican; and (among non-Christian sects) Utah as the Kingdom of God on
earth, with the North American Indians as the lost Ten Tribes. The visible
Kingdom is impossible without the visible King.
[* 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17. cf.
Lk. 14: 14; 20: 35; 21: 34-36; Phil. 3: 11; Heb. 11: 35b; Rev. 3: 10; 6: 9-11; 20: 4-6 with John 3: 13 and Luke 22:
28-30; 2 Timothy 2: 16-19, R.V.]
So, therefore, since it is one Kingdom with two aspects
- for there is but one King - there are certain vital characteristics which,
belonging to both, are expressed in Scriptures that
belong exclusively to neither. The
Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking - in neither aspect does it consist
in banqueting, though in both there is food - but righteousness and peace and
joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom. 14: 17). Neither is in word only, but also in power (1
Cor. 4: 20). Into
both, publicans and harlots enter sooner than the wealthy or the Pharisee. Both Kingdoms come not by watching, nor by
discovery, but only by the second birth (John 3:
3) and the Kingdom must be within us ere
ever we can be within it (Luke 17: 21). John
the Baptist heralded both: Christ preached both: Paul died with both upon his
lips. Since the principle of the one is
Grace, and the principle of the other is justice, the conduct under each is
worlds asunder, exactly as is the action of the Saviour in the two epochs. The Kingdom in mystery is
the vital prelude to the Kingdom in manifestation, and the Kingdom of grace is
the training-ground for the Kingdom of glory.* So therefore the great
command, even to Apostles, is - “Seek ye FIRST the Kingdom of God”
(Matt. 6:
33), for all our regenerate life is to be the
pursuit of a glory beyond the grave; and “no man, having put his hand to
the plough, and looking back, is FIT
[ready, prepared, ripe] for the
Kingdom of God” (Luke 9: 62),
since fitness for the coming [Millennial] Kingdom springs, not from conversion only, but from
a face which, having fled from Sodom, never looks back.
* Salvation
carries with it the Eternal Kingdom, and
so of all believers we read - “They shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22: 5); but for the Age succeeding this a seven-tiered
pyramid of sanctity is unfolded, with the warning words:- “if ye do these things, ye shall never
stumble; thus shall be richly supplied unto you
the entrance” - the wealth of a millennium’s priority - “into the eternal kingdom” (2
Pet. 1: 10).
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To be continued…