SELECTED FROM
THE DAWN MAGAZINE
VOLUMES 4-6
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CONTENTS
1 THE LAW OF THE JUDGMENT SEAT + 4
2 THE TWO RESURRECTIONS + 4
3 THE WALK OF HOLINESS + 2
4 THE FIRST TRANSLATION + 2
5. THE PROPHET OF JUDGMENT + 2
6 THE REMOVAL OF THE CHURCH FROM EARTH + 3
7 A MOTHERS AMBITION FOR HER SONS + 2
8 THE REIGN OF CHRIST + 3
9 CHURCH DISCIPLINE BY
THE HOLY GHOST + 1
* 10 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION + 1
11 THE LAYING ON OF HANDS
12 POWER LOST AND RECOVERED + 2
13 THE FIRST RESURRECTION + 2
* 14 THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD + 3
15 THE SPIRITS IN PRISON
16 THE SONS OF GOD IN GENESIS SIX + 1
17 THE NEPHILIM + 1
18 THE SONS OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT + 2
19 THE NPHILIM AND THE FLOOD
20 YOUTH BEFORE THE ADVENT + 1
21 ANTICHRISTS EMPIRE
UNIVERSAL
22 THE KINGDOM LOST + 2
23 MANY CALLED BUT FEW
24 THE SETTING OF THE JUDGMENT THRONE + 2
* 25 THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST AND
THEIR RESPONSIBILITY + 2
26 THE UNFORGIVEN BLASPHEMY + 2
27 THE JOY SET BEFORE HIM + 1
28 WARNING THE
29 WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION + 1
30 COMING MIRACLE + 3
31 THE REBUILDING OF THE
32 JOHN THE IMMERCER NOT ELIJAH
33 THE
34 WAKING AND SLEEPING + 1
35 THE MASONIC CRAFT AND GOSPEL + 3
36 MOSES AND CHRIST + 1
37 THE CASE AGAINST THE SECOND ADVENT + 1
38 THE BEATIFIC VISION + 1
39 MILLENNARIANISM
* 40 THE DANGER OF AN EXASPERATED SPIRIT + 4
41 THE DEVOTION OF THE LORD JESUS
42 THE FIRST MAN IN HEAVEN +1
43 THE KINGDOM IN MYSTERY + 1
44 YOUTH BEFORE THE ADVENT + 3
45 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN
46 THE BEMA + 3
47 DYING CHURCHES + 1
* 48 A DIAGRAM OF THE AGES
49 THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST AND THE PRESENT
HOUR
50 WHAT WE FIND IN CHRIST + 1
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1
THE LAW OF THE JUDGMENT SEAT + 4
As
nothing is more certain than that all believers must stand before the Lords Judgment
Seat, so nothing can surpass in importance the discovery of the principle on
which that judgment will be conducted. It is the Judge Himself who, beyond all
others, states and restates, enforces and reinforces the searching, satisfying,
sublime law of the Judgment Seat. It is a principle divinely simple and
sufficient. It is the quintessence of all law - an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; yet, since it is applied in a court
embracing the holiest saints as well as the lowest graded of Gods servants, it
is made to work as a general principle covering all conduct; and so while it
carries exact retribution for wrong-doing, it equally and simultaneously carries an automatic recoil of glory.
It is a fact past all conceivable wonder that we are the arbiters of our own judgment.
Now our Lord, as He lifted up His eyes on His disciples
(Luke 6:
20) - for the
persons addressed, as Dean
Alford says, are Christians, persons justified by
faith, and waging the Christian conflict in the power of the Spirit- in
the heart of His counsels to the little flock
propounds the law of the Judgment Seat. He says:-Judge not - do not
act on the principle of justice, set not yourself up as a judge Godet) - and - as an automatic recoil- ye shall not be judged (Luke 6: 37) - the principle of justice will not
be applied to you. That our Lord refers to the judgment of God and not the
judgment of man is certain because whether we judge men or not, they will judge us; the most uncensorious of saints will
not escape the censure of the world: our very refusal to condemn can make the
uncharitable pronounce us hypocrites for speaking kindly of all.* It cannot
mean, as Augustine says, that if we judge rashly of others, God will judge rashly of
us; or, if we measure unjustly to them, it will in turn be measured unjustly to
us. Nor is it mental discrimination which our Lord forbids: for
immediately after (Matt. 7: 3) He explains how, rightly, we can analyse our brothers
faults, and how detect the human wolf masked as a child of God: what He forbids
us is to invoke law, or to sentence as a judge sentences. So the Apostle James,
defining it with inspired aptness as the law
of liberty, embodies the principle beyond misunderstanding:- So speak ye,
and so do, as men that
are to
be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment shall be without mercy - that is,
purely judicial and retributive - to him that showed no mercy - who acted, in all things, on
justice: mercy rejoiceth against judgment (Jas.
2:
13).
*It frequently happens that the children of God receive the
very worst reward, and are oppressed by many unjust slanders; and that, too,
when they have injured no mans reputation, and even spared the faults of
others Calvin).
But now our Lord, to put the meaning beyond all doubt, splits
up judgment into its two constituent elements of condemnation and acquittal,
and once again reveals that the principle of action we adopt is the principle
of action we shall experience. Condemn not, and ye
shall not he condemned - not because you have no counts of condemnation, but because they are cancelled by your
action: do not
pass sentence, and sentence will not be passed on you: refrain from all that is
judicial, and you will receive all that is merciful.* As
God is not reckoning unto the world their trespasses (2 Cor. 5: 19), His patience is to be our pattern; His kindness our
precedent; His forbearance our rule; and His love our law. And so shall we
receive back. Punishment is the recoil of crime, and
the force of the backstroke is in proportion to the force of the original blow
- (Archbishop Trench).
*
That the Epistles are woven of one web with the Gospels, is proved by identical
doctrine. So Paul equally warns of appeal to law:- Dare
any of you go to law? Brother goeth to law with
brother, and that before unbelievers: it is altogether a
defect in you, that ye have lawsuits one with another (1 Cor. 6: 1-7). Certain exceptions, however, Scripture
states. In the Church, for certain sins (1 Cor. 5: 12);
in business relations, which demand that which is just
(Col.
4:
1);
and in the rule of the home (1 Tim. 3: 4, 5), a measure of justice is permitted.
So then the Lord takes up the other half of the judicial
function:- release - acquit, absolve, discharge: it is a legal term - and ye shall
be released. The emphasis our Lord places on
forgiveness can hardly be over-stated: in the heart of His model prayer He
makes our forgiveness to
turn exactly on the degree with which we forgive; and He commands us [His followers] to tell God that
we accept and plead the principle.
Forgive us our sins as - like as, in the same manner as - we forgive
men their sins against us (Luke 11: 4). Moreover alone of the seven petitions of the Prayer He
singles it out, afterwards, for restatement and emphasis; and enforces it both
positively and negatively, so as to make misunderstanding impossible - giving one more blow to the die, so as to make the
impression sharper and deeper (Trench).
For
if ye forgive men their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also - will correspondingly- forgive you;
but if ye
forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses
(Matt.
6:
15).* It
is obvious that the pardon, or non-pardon,
must be after death, for only then does the opportunity for trespassing cease: that
is, it is an adjudication at the [Lords] Judgment Seat; and our perfect pardon will turn upon
our perfect pardoning. Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if
ye have aught against anyone; that your Father
also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses (Mark 11:
25).
* Apart from known sin, there may be
sins once conscious and unrepented, but now forgotten; or dispensational sins
(and the like) not admitted to be sins; or sins against the dead, whose
forgiveness we cannot now obtain; and other such. The
remains of sin in us require the same forgiveness through grace that we
received at first (Stier). As
the Church has seen all down the ages, this petition, put into the mouth of every
child of the Father in Heaven,
is fatal to any doctrine of sinlessness. In many
things we all stumble (Jas. 3: 2); and some degree of mercys need the most exalted saint will carry to
heavens gates.
But our Saviour, not content with these categorical commands,
nor with embedding the principle in our most sacred Prayer, has crystallized it
into one of His pregnant, exquisite Beatitudes. Blessed are the merciful:
for - apart from all loveliness of character it may produce, or
the scattering of mercys priceless boons: another fact altogether is the
Lords ground of the beatitude - they shall obtain mercy (Matt. 5: 7); for with the merciful Thou shalt show thyself merciful (Psa.
18:
25). Mercy broke from every action of our
Lord. He brought no charge against the Tempter; He wept for
Once more our Lord takes this harp of many strings but pouring
one music, and strikes the fullest chord of all. Give - manifestly wealth, first of all;
but also all else we have to give - and it shall be given unto you;
good measure, pressed
down, shaken together, running over, shall they - the judgment officers of the court
above* - give into your bosom (Luke 6:
38). The Age to Come will show that the man who hoarded was the true spendthrift,
and the ultimate bankrupt: on the other hand he who invests his all for Christ
will find his worthless scrip, one day, fabulous. In
this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich
(H. W. Beecher).
* The plural [of the Greek word ...] they will give, corresponds to the French indef. Pron. On; it denotes the instruments of
divine munificence, whoever they may be (Godet): such agents being indefinite, and the meaning thereby
rendered solemn and emphatic; if we are to find a nominative, it should be the
Angels, the ministers of the divine purpose (Alford).
Finally, the Lord sums it all up in its essential principle. With what
judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (Matt. 7: 2). Could anything be conceived more
subtle, yet more simple? Anything more intensely practical? Anything more
fearfully analytical of our own spirits? Anything more extraordinarily
pregnant, if practised, with all the graces of the Christian character? The
most merciful of us will need mercy, and the most forgiving will need pardon:
therefore do to others, the Lord says, as you would that God should do to you; and reap exactly
what you sow - love for love, mercy for mercy, or else justice for justice,
vengeance for vengeance. In the words of Chrysostom:-
God makes thee arbiter of the judgment: as thou
thyself judgest, He will judge thee.
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MERCY
The quality of mercy is not straind;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from
heaven
Upon the place beneath: it was twice
blessd;
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 fear and dread of
kings;
But mercy is above the sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of
kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself.
SHAKESPEARE
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THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS
A share in Christs 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, and that the
depth of His sympathies could be fully known only to such as through much
tribulation must
enter the [Millennial] Kingdom. In all things Paul coveted conformity to his Lord - even in
suffering and death. Assured that Christs career was the noblest which
humanity had ever witnessed, or had ever passed through, he felt a strong
desire to resemble Him - as well as when He suffered as when He laboured - as
well as 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 Christs sufferings so identifies the
sufferer with Him, that the power of His resurrection is necessarily
experiences. Such conformity to His
death secures conformity to His resurrection. - J.
EADIE, D.D.
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HIS FELLOWSHIP
To-day, what speed: with Me, what company: in
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REJECTION WITH CHRIST
Yet it was well, and Thou hast said in
season,
As 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
blushing burning,
Bitter with weariness and sick with
sin, -
Straight to Thy presence get me and
reveal it,
Nothing ashamed of tears upon Thy
feet;
Sore and slow would and beg Thy hand
to heal it,
Pour Thee the bitter, pray Thee for
the sweet.
Then with a ripple of 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 the straining,
Even 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.
* *
*
2
THE TWO RESURRECTIONS +4
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
Lambs 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 Lords 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 Jairuss 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, Glc.) 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*.
* The time: as in 1 John 2: 18; Rev. 14: 15. ** 1 Thess.
4:
13-18; + 2 Tim.
4:
8.
++ Titus 2: 13; and 2 Tim. 4: 8; * 1 Cor. 15:
52;
Phil.
3:
11
and 14.
Gk.
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.
* 1 Cor. 11: 1, Gk.; ** 1 Cor. 9: 27, Gk. *** Heb.
11:
35.
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 Masters 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.++
* Tim.
4:
7,
8. ** 1 John 2: 28. The
Bema. ++ Matt. 25: 30.
Is this one, then, amongst those who are condemned before the
Great White Throne and cast into the
[* NOTE: not Spirit
but a human spirit,
for the time and place it will be saved is after the time of Death and after ones
Judgment in Sheol / Hades. See Num. 14: 24; cf.
16:
30b
and Heb.
9:
27,
R.V.]
* 1 Cor. 5: 5. 1 Cor. 3: 15 (Gk.). ** Rev.
3:
5.
+ Comp. John 3: 3 and 5.
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* 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 Lords 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
Lambs 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 Lords 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.
*
Many not all as some will have arisen in the first resurrection. ** Acts 24: 15.
*** Matt. 13: 49, 50. *** Rev. 20:
12.
In conclusion, let us notice how definitely Our Lord disposes of
the idea which is, doubtless, causing much lukewarmness 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.
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Absolutely tender!
Absolutely true!
Understanding all things,
Understanding you;
Infinitely loving,
Infinitely near -
This is God our Father:
What have we to fear?
F. M. N.
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REVIVING TRUTH
Churches which sink into the
Unitarianism as rapidly sink out of existence; for it is a most subtle proof of
the divinity of our Faith that, when it ceases to be Christian, it ceases to
be. Exactly the reverse occurs where the Scriptures of God are taught in
revival power. In the city of
For ah! the Master is so fair,
His smile so sweet to banishd men,
That they who meet it unaware
Can never rest on earth again;
And they who see Him risn afar
At Gods right hand to welcome them,
Forgetful stand of house and land
Desiring fair
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THE SECRET OF SUCCESS
Dr. Wilbur Chapman met General Booth and asked him
what was the secret of his success. His reply is noteworthy. I will tell you the secret, said he. God has had all there is of me. There have been many men with greater brains than I, and men
with great opportunities; but from the day that I got the poor of London on my
heart, and a vision of what Christ could do for them, I made up my mind that
God should have all there was of William Booth. And if there is anything of
power in my work it is because God has all the love of my heart, all the power
of my will, and all the influence of my life. Nor did he ever relax,
until, after eighty, he sank into
death.
Let no man think that sudden in a
minute
All is accomplishd
and the work is done:
Tho with thy earliest dawn thou shouldst
begin it,
Scarce is it ended with thy setting
sun.
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RISING AGAIN
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 he
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 Lords body, He says Himself (John 12: 24), so died; but the same body
reappeared, for death is dissolution, never annihilation.
* *
*
3
THE WALK OF HOLINESS + 2
By JOHN GIBBON,
B.D.
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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.
RULE V
Keep an exact guard upon thy heart (Prov. 4: 23). Let the eyes of thy soul be open and
awake, upon all the stirrings of thy thoughts and affections.
RULE VI
Be daily training and exercising all thy graces. Have them
always in battle-array.
RULE VII
Be well skilled in the clenches of temptation. I mean,
unmasking the sophistry and mystery of iniquity, in defeating the wiles and
stratagems of the tempter, and in detecting and frustrating the cheats and
finesses of the flesh with its deceitful lusts (Eph. 4: 22; 2 Cor. 2: 11). No small part of spiritual wisdom
lies in the blessed art of discovering and refuting sins, fallacies and
impostures.
RULE VIII
Withdraw thyself, if possible, from the occasions of sin, Be
thou as the deaf adder to that great charmer: the best entertainment thou canst
give him is, Get thee behind me, Satan!
RULE IX
Bind thyself beforehand with the severest of thy resolutions, not
to trust thy judgment, when the temptation begins to get within thee. A man in
passion is not himself.
RULE X
Awe them with the authority of thy reason and understanding.
It is infinitely unbeseeming a man, that his lower should grow mutinous and
untractable, that the inferior and brutish faculties
of our soul should rebel against the sovereign
faculty of reason. How soon doth the presence of a grave magistrate
allay a popular tumult, if he comes in soon enough, in the beginning of the
riot God hath made reason the magistrate of the little world He hath given it a
commission to keep the peace in our souls.
RULE XI
If thy distempered affections and lusts slight the authority
of thy reason, as thou art a man; bid thy conscience do its office, as thou art
a Christian. Try to awe them with Gods written Word. Bring out of the register
of conscience, the laws of Him that made thee; oppose some clear text of Holy
Writ, that comes into thy mind against that very lust that is now rising.
RULE XII
If all this effect nothing, then draw the curtain, take off
the veil from before thy heart, and let it behold the God that searcheth it (Jer. 17: 10; Heb. 4: 13). Show it the majesty of the Lord;
see how that is described (Isa. 6: 1-3).
RULE XIII
If these great real arguments be slighted, try whether an
argument, ad hominem, drawn from sense, will prevail. Awe thy lusts with the bitterness
of thine own experience. Consider how often thou hast rued their disorders;
what dismal consequences have followed upon their transports, and how dearly
thou hast paid heretofore for thy connivance at them.
RULE XIV
Labour to cure thy lustings and affections in the first
beginning of their disorders, by revulsion, by drawing the stream and tide
another way. As physicians used to stop an haemorrhage, or bleeding at the
nose, by breathing the esurrec vein in the arm, or
opening the saphaena in the foot; so may we check our
carnal affections, by turning them into spiritual ones: and these either - 1.
Of the same nature. For example: catch thy worldly sorrow at the rise, and turn
thy mourning into godly sorrow. If thou must needs weep, weep for something
that deserves it. 2. Turn thy carnal
affections into spiritual ones of a contrary nature. For example: allay thy worldly
sorrow by spiritual joy. Try whether there be not enough in all-sufficiency
itself to compensate the loss of any outward enjoyment; whether there will be
any great miss or want of a broken cistern, when thou art at the fountainhead
of living waters; whether the light of the sun cannot make amends for the
expiring of a candle. Chastise thy carnal fears by hope in God. Set on work the
grace contrary to the lust that is stirring; if it be pride and vain-glory in
the applause of men, think how ridiculous it were for a criminal to please
himself in the esteem and honour his fellow-prisoners render him, forgetting
how guilty he is before his judge. If thou beginnest to be poured loosely out,
and as it were dissolved in frolic, mirth, and joviality, correct that vainness
and gaiety of spirit by the grave and sober thoughts of death and judgment and
eternity.
RULE XV
If this avail not, fall instantly to prayer.
RULE XVI
When thou hast done this, rise up, and buckle on the shield of
faith (Eph. 6: 16.). Go forth in the name and strength of the Lord, to do
battle with thy lusts. Conclusion: Let me now persuade the practice of these
holy rules. Let us resolve, in the strength of Christ, to resist these lustings
of the flesh. Let me press this with a few considerations. 1. The more thou yieldest, the more thou mayest. Sin is insatiable;
it will never say enough. 2. It is the
quarrel of the Lord of hosts in which thou fightest. A cowardly soldier is the
reproach of his commanders. Thou hast a noble General, O Christian, that hath
done and finished perfectly whatever concerns thy redemption from the powers of
darkness. 3. The lusts of the flesh
are thy greatest enemies, as well as Gods. They war against thy soul (1 Pet.
2:
11). To resist them feebly, is to do not
only the work of the Lord, but of thy soul, negligently. 4. It is easy vanquishing at first in comparison. A fire newly
kindled is soon quenched, and a young thorn or bramble easily pulled up. 5. If thou resist, the victory is thine
(James 4: 7). Temptation puts on its strength, as the will is;
cease but to love the sin, and the temptation is answered. 6. Consider what
thou doest. If thou fulfillest the lusts of the flesh, thou provokest thy
heavenly Father. Is this thy love and thanks to thy Lord, to whom thou art so
infinitely beholden? Canst thou find in thy heart to put thy spear again in His
side? Hath He not suffered yet enough? Is His bloody passion nothing? Must He
bleed again? Ah, monster of ingratitude! Ah, perfidious traitor as thou art,
thus to requite thy Master! Again, thou grievest thy Comforter; and is that
wisely done? Who shall comfort thee, if He depart?
-------
HE WENT AWAY SORROWFUL
A life so lonely, meek, and bare!
I wonder why He made a prayer
For them that mockd
and naild Him there!
Vast wealth is mine; why do I see
My golden hoard without avail?
Why turns no man with love to me?
Why did He triumph, and I fail?
Poor - and despised! How strange a
thing
That mighty hosts, with worshipping
In endless praise, His name should
sing!
Oh, tis a grievous mystery -
That mankind never looks to me
As to that spent and broken Christ
That droopd
on
The Catholic World.
-------
THE JUDGMENT SEAT
The single eye is an eye fastened on the
Judgment Seat of Christ.
ROBERT CHAPMAN.
* *
*
4
THE FIRST TRANSLATION + 2
By the Author of The Protoplast
As you have
often seen a man move through a crowd abstracted and thoughtful, only concerned
to make his way to his destination, so Enoch passed on to his eternal home,
having little to do with earth, and much to do with heaven. He walked with God. There
was no standing still with him, no settling upon the lees, no lying down in a
spirit of slumber. There was steady, positive movement in the right direction.
Every day and every hour brought him nearer to his final triumph. He did not
walk alone towards heaven,
but with God. He leant upon a strong arm; his might was the power of the Holy
One. Step by step in his path was taken, as he was led forward by the Friend
who loved him; his wisdom consisted in his distrust of himself, his child-like
clinging to his Guide. These are the distinctive features of Enochs character.
Such as he was in his day, shall be the men whom God will account worthy to escape the things which are coming upon the
earth, and to stand before the Son of man.
Again, like Enoch, they will be intimate with God; as they will need Him much, they will not be
content with that scanty intercourse with Him, which now subsists between the
liveliest Christians and their Lord; but every moment will be spent with Him;
every speech will be preceded by an upward glance to Him who has promised to
give words that shall be said before the adversary in that day; every movement
from city to city will be undertaken in obedience to His directions; every
event, as it occurs, will be made the subject ,of converse with the Ruler of
Providence, and every tear that flows then shall be shed upon the bosom of the
Beloved.
Enoch was the first who struck the solemn chords of the harp
of prophecy; the first who was sent forth to prepare the way of the Lord. And mark, he spoke not of Him, as the Man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief; as the Lamb dumb before His shearers: but as the Lion of
the tribe of
How very ancient is the doctrine of
the millennial advent! Men have called it a new thing, a Utopian theory. Enoch,
the seventh from Adam, preached it - the young world needed it - the lately
fallen human race required the warning that Christ would judge them; and is it
to be withheld from men who are just filling up the measure of iniquity, and
putting the last seals to the blasphemy which has gone up unto the heavens? Are
we not ashamed to think how we have slumbered over a truth which was so
precious to the fathers of that faith which is now delivered unto us as saints?
Just because Gods servants have ever used the present tense in speaking of the Lords appearing, men have obstinately
closed their ears and refused to give credence to their testimony. You tell us that the Lord cometh,
they say, but
He does not come How long
shall we listen to the cry? The Anabaptists
said, He cometh - they went forth into the fields to wait
for Him; the Irvingites said, He cometh - they fixed the
hour when they should see Him; but He is not here. Where is the promise of His coming? Since the fathers fell asleep, all
things continue as they were. This is the language of the Infidel, and, alas, it is the language of
many a Christian. Enoch said, Behold, He cometh. The child of God says to-day - He cometh. Yea, He cometh quickly. The tense is present, not future, and if the
worn-out, rotten world lasts out another hundred years, the cry will still be -
He cometh.
I pray you also to notice in this speech, or discourse of
Enoch, the glory of the righteous is not spoken of, but the judgment of the
rebellious. We often hear it said, Preach
Christ in His loveliness, His compassion, His grace, His fulness; hold Him up
to men as a Saviour, and the
ungodly will be far more likely to
turn to Him, than by representing Him in His character as the stern Judge, who shall rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potters vessel.
Enochs voice proclaims judgment, he does not even dwell upon the joy and blessedness, which the day
of Jesus would bring to the Bridegrooms friends;
but his soul is stirred within him, at the thought of that wine-press treading,
wherein the enemies of the Lord shall at length be crushed, and he is ready to sing Alleluia! Enoch was a stern prophet, he had nothing
to do with smooth things, his eye and his heart were fixed upon his precious
Masters visible triumph over all His foes.
Now, recollect, that in Enochs ministry, we have the pattern of that message which shall be
spoken by the last generation of the just. In the midst of the great affliction,
men of Enochs character will look up unto heaven and say:- Behold, the Lord
cometh! In all ages of the Church, certain truths have been peculiarly
prominent at different times. Just as justification by Christs righteousness
alone, was especially preached in the days of Luther, and Gods sovereignty in
the days of Romaine and Toplady; just as the glory of the Law has been brought
forward in the revivals of 59 and 60, with unusual distinctness; so shall the
doctrine of the Lords coming and Kingdom
take the first place in all preaching, as we draw
near the time of the end. So urgent will seem the need of Christ, and so
intense the desire for Him, in those days of the worlds utmost darkness, that
every subject will appear of minor importance compared to that which treats of
millennial glory, and millennial judgment. Behold, He cometh! How beautiful is
the thought, that the last act of Christs
Meanwhile, let your mission resemble that of Enoch. Think of
the responsibility of Gods last witnesses - [to an apostate Church] -
in a fallen world. You will have to bear your part in a mightier struggle than
has ever yet been known between Gods army and Satans. In a peculiar manner,
you will have to wrestle against principalities, against powers. Fear not to
prophesy that Christ cometh quickly, while the world proclaims, There is no
God. Fear not to
stand by the altars of Baal, and appeal to the fiery answer of the day of the
Lord. Fear not to tell of the judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall
devour the adversaries. When the thrones of earth are swept away and the
kingdoms of men crumble into dust, look up to heaven and see Jesus at the
right-hand of God. To Him whose right is,
shall the dominion be shortly given. Possess your souls in patience. WATCH but WAIT.
-------
ANGLO-CATHOLIC HONOUR
Incalculably the most painful element never absent from all Catholic
controversy, and a very startling proof of the Babylonish origin of the leaven
(Matt. 13: 33), is the contaminated fountain of Catholic
honour. The serious subject of the clerical
conscience, says Sir Flinders
Petrie, in a letter to the Times (Dec. 13th, 1927), must be noticed. The disturbing changes in the revised
Prayer Book are obviously made to gratify those who do not scruple to reverse
the terms on which they were ordained. We hear clergy talking of celebrating
Low Mass and High Mass, and boasts to the English Church Union of the use of
the Latin service of the Mass, so obscured as to hide the deception. Yet the
-------
THE CROSS AND THE CROWN
Christ has many lovers of His Kingdom, but few carriers of his
cross. - Thomas a Kempis.
Many crowd the Saviours Kingdom,
Few receive His Cross;
Many seek His consolations,
Few will suffer loss,
For the dear sake of the Master
Counting all but dross.
Many sit at Jesus table,
Few will fast with Him
When the sorrow-cup of anguish
Trembles to the brim:
Few watch with Him in the garden
Who have sung the hymn.
Many will confess His wisdom,
Few embrace His shame;
Many, while He smiles upon them,
Loud His praise proclaim -
Then if for a while He tries them
They desert His Name.
But the souls who love supremely,
Let woe come or bliss,
These will count their dearest hearts
blood
Not their own, but His:
Saviour, Thou Who thus hast loved me,
Give me love like this.
- The Overcomer.
* *
*
5
THE PROPHET OF JUDGMENT + 2
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
Gods power in the midnight of the world: in an atheistic and idolatrous crisis
when Gods 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
earths uttermost darkness to find the Redeemers jewels. There is always a
Widow of Sarepta in the heart of Jezebels 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 Gods heart of mercy in judgment. When despair is clutching at the
prophets throat, and he is certain the apostasy is universal, God - doing an
altogether unique thing - turns the finished side of the tapestry up, 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). Elijahs 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
Elijahs prayer, when he comes again, - [before our Lord returns] - 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).*
* 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.).
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 Church down
the far ages of time.
Elijahs 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 [appearing] 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 Law-giver 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 - [all resurrected and immortal] - Kingdom saints (verse 50) as incorruptible.
Probably at now no very distant date lies Elijahs 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 Elijahs
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:
2)
- 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 (Eccl. 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.
-------
1928
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 I,
Because I shall not pass again this
way.
I want to give good measure running
oer,
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.
-------
GET READY
I shall never forget one morning in a city where I was a pastor,
that they brought a broken man on a stretcher, laid him on his bed, and sent
for me. There were his wife and two daughters weeping and their faces strained
with suspense. And the good old physician, whom I knew and loved, was standing
by, he on one side of the bed and I on the other. And there was a hush of death
almost upon us all. They laid him down, and the doctor quietly examined him.
Then, seizing a moment when the eyes of wife and daughters were withdrawn, he
looked at me and shook his head, and I knew there was no hope. Then it was my
turn. I tenderly knelt down beside my friend and parishioner, and I said, My dear fellow, is it all right? Can you trust Him?
He looked up with a smile, and said, Oh, yes; I got
ready for this ten years ago. Then brokenly he managed to tell me how
in a revival meeting one night the preacher said, My
friend, some day you may be carried home to your wife, unable to get ready in a
hurry. Get ready to-night. And he got ready. - WILBUR CHAPMAN,
D.D.
* * *
6
THE REMOVAL OF THE CHURCH
FROM EARTH + 3
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 (verse 14), He is still seated on the
Parousia-cloud in the heavenlies. The Lords 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 (verse
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 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 Gods
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 Firstfruits 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 Lambs 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 Gods 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) section of a far vaster throng: but each in
his own order - group, company, flight; Christ
the firstfruits, then they that are Christs 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 sco pc 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 character; and the critical alternative unfolds
before us either of maturity gained now by grace, or a forced growth 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 perfection, but is
produced by the slow and painful process of burning 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 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 Gods 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 Saviours 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 regeneration alone] - 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.
-------
THE SPIRIT FOR SANCTITY
A clergyman once told me
the following story of his mother. For years past (he said) she has been wholly
confined to her bed from nervous prostration. During the early part of this
period it did seem that no one could take care of her or endure her continued
manifestations of irritability, impatience, fretfulness, and furious anger.
Right there, she became, fully convinced that through grace she could have
perfect rest, quietude, and self-control. She set her whole heart upon
attaining that state. Such was her fervency of spirit and earnestness in
prayer, that her friends thought she would become deranged, and urged her to
cease seeking and prayer. I die in the effort, was her reply, or I obtain what I
know to be in reserve for me. At length the unction of the Spirit
came gently upon her. From that hour there was not the slightest indication of
even the remains of that temper. Her quietude and assurance were absolute, and
her sweetness of spirit as ointment poured forth.
It was no trouble to anyone now, but a privilege to all, to care for her. Many
came, even from long distances, to listen to her divine discourse. Years passed
on, and again I was asked, What of your mother? Does
her faith hold out? She is gone, was
the reply. But from the hour of that experience to
that of her death that quietude and assurance remained, and the ineffable
sweetness of temper was never for a moment interrupted. I witnessed the closing
scene. She died of cholera, and in the greatest conceivable agony. Yet such patience, such serenity of hope, and
such quiet waiting for the coming of the Lord, I hardly before deemed possible. My son, she would say, Nature has a hard
struggle; but it will soon be over, and I shall enter into the rest that remains for the people of God.
- ASA MAHAN, D.D.
-------
THE SPIRIT FOR SERVICE
Charles Finney was once passing through a room where a number of girls
were employed in a manufacturing establishment. He was evidently known to them,
and they made every effort to upset his gravity. Their levity, he says, made
a peculiar impression upon me; I felt it to my very heart. I stopped short and
looked at them; I knew not how, as my whole mind was absorbed with the sense of
their guilt and danger. I observed that one of them became very much agitated.
A thread broke. She attempted to mend it; but her hands so trembled that she
could not do it. I immediately observed that the sensation was spreading. One
after another gave up, and paid no more attention to their looms. They fell on
their knees. I had not spoken a word; and the noise of the looms would have
prevented my being heard, if I had. At this moment the owner of the factory
entered. Stop the mill, he said; it is more important that souls should be
saved than that this mill should be run. A meeting of great power followed;
and in a few days most of those factory hands, and the owner also, professed to
have found salvation in Christ.
-------
HE GIVETH MORE GRACE
He giveth more grace when the burdens
grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the
labours increase,
To added affliction He addeth His
mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied
peace.
When we have exhaustd our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed
ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our
hoarded resources,
Our Fathers full giving is only
begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has
no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men,
For out of His infinite riches in
Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.
*
* *
7
A MOTHERS AMBITION
FOR HER SONS + 2
Salome, one of the holy band of women-ministrants to the Lord,
and a star in the still brighter cluster around the Cross, shared with her sons
the noble ambition that they might be Daniels to a new and holier Belshazzar,
or Josephs to a mightier Pharaohs. So crucially, however, is Kingdom glory
dependent on attainment, not on gift obtainable by prayer, that Jesus ignores
the mother throughout, and addresses Himself solely to the aspirants for
heavenly fame.
Salomes prayer had been prompted by a revelation the Lord had
just made of approaching glory. Peter, ever the questioning voice of the
Church, put a challenge to Jesus which evoked an answer laying bare approaching
recompense Lo, he says, we have left all, and followed
thee; what then shall we have? (Matt. 19: 27): we have beggared ourselves for God;
we have invested our all in the world to come: what, Lord, is the recompense for
the great renunciation? Sadducees all down the ages have answered that virtue
is its own reward, and that the inward joy of doing good is its only
recompense. Profoundly different is the reply of Christ. Verily I say
unto you, that ye which have followed me,
in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on
the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon
twelve thrones -
the first mention of plural thrones in the New Testament - Judging the
twelve tribes of
Now this critical revelation, rousing the noblest of
ambitions, and which had already evoked the petition of Salome and sons,
reappears in the last scenes of the upper room. And there arose also - in consequence: thrones had been
revealed, but no pre-eminence among the thrones - a contention
among them, which of them is accounted
greatest
- accounted so already: which is greatest to be greatest; which seems, appears before men, ranks in
official position greatest (Luke 22: 24). Having just inquired which should be the traitor, they now
inquire which should be the prince; believing the Kingdom imminent, in which
administrators would of necessity be required, they imagine to allot amongst
themselves the sovereignties of the Age to Come. It is a definite challenge to
the Lord to reveal the principles underlying the allotment of Thrones.
To James and John, therefore, absorbed with the same problem,
the Lord first unmasks their ignorance and counters with a home-thrust. Ye know not
what ye ask: they
had neither pondered their prayer, nor mastered the elements of the principles
of reward: are ye able to drink the cup that I drink - a draught of internal sorrow - and be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with- an immersion in external trouble (Mark 10: 38)?
Not sorrow, but His sorrow,
not any cup or baptism, but His: can you bear the heartbreak, and stand the
intolerable strain, involved in a full-orbed fidelity to your Lord - the tonic
cup and anointing baptism which alone consecrate to supreme rank? Can you bear
without flinching, without compromising, without bitterness, without despair? *
*
The answer of Zebedees sons - We are able -
is met by our Lords prophetic knowledge - Ye shall:
unable, but enabled: of the two, who both fled from the Cross, one took the
Gethsemane-cup at the hand of Herod, and the other his baptism in a caldron of
boiling oil. It is remarkable that they give the same answer, and rightly (Phil. 4: 13),
as that given by the two great victors in the Wilderness type - We are well able to overcome (Num. 13: 30).
So also our Lord enlightens their complete ignorance on the
principles of reward. To sit on my right hand or on my left hand is not mine to
give: but it is for them for whom it hath been
prepared. It is
true that Christ is the donor for He says, - He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne (Rev. 3: 21): but it is no capricious appointment,
or biassed favouritism, or unmerited gift, or arbitrary selection: it is not to
be had merely for the asking, but is prepared for those preparing. I cannot give,
the Lord implies; I can only adjudge: for a millennial throne is no part of
everlasting life, a gift already given to every - [redeemed and regenerate] -
child of God. They ask it as a gift: He refuses it as a gift.
So therefore Jesus addresses Himself to elucidate this crucial
revelation; and He first completely negatives all present worldly principles of
rank and power. He neither rebukes His disciples ambition, nor casts any doubt
on the coming sovereignty; but He completely revolutionizes their conception of
the path to - [His coming Kingdom and] - the Throne. The kings of
the Gentiles, He
says, present royalties, have lordship over them - that is, they have their thrones
now; and they that have authority over them are called Benefactors
* - saviours of society, or philanthropists (Luke 22: 25): not so
shall it be among you (Matt. 20: 26). That is, stars and orders and peerages and princedoms - even
the applause conferred on scientists and philanthropists and politicians and
millionaire donors of princely benefactions - are, in a Christian, proof that,
in this sphere, he has acted on non-Christian
principles.
*
The word our Lord uses - Euergetes - was actually a title given to Kings in
that age; as to Cyrus among the Persians, Antigonus among the Greeks, and
Marcus Aurelius among the Romans: and it is a curious coincidence that the
Zionists keep in their central cities, to commemorate the founders of their
Colonies, a roll called the Golden Book of Benefactors.
Having thus negatived, for the Church, all royalties in this -
[evil and apostate] - age - ye have reigned as kings is a reproach of Paul the
merchant-princes in the Church of Corinth (1 Cor. 4: 8) - there now bursts on us the
extraordinary revolution in ambition which our Lord has brought us in His
unique teaching, as He now lays bare the pathway to the imminent [Millennial] Thrones.
But
ye - for the axioms
of Gentiles can be no principles for the Church - shall not
be so; but he that is the greater among you - greater in the earthly sense: more
distinguished in birth, in station, in training, in gifts - let him become - of his own free action and choice -
as
the younger -
that is, taking the lowlier place assigned to a junior; and he that
is chief - head
and shoulders above others in attainments and achievements - as he that
doth serve (Luke 22: 26) - a servant, as Matthew (20: 27) says, not of some, but of all. So to James and John seeking,
not thrones, but supreme thrones, the Lord Jesus puts a still sharper
antithesis:- Whosoever would become great among you - attain royalty beyond the broken tombs - shall be your servant;
and whosoever
would be FIRST among you - the greatest among the great - shall be SLAVE of all - supreme now in self-abasing service
(Mark 10: 43). There is a path,
our Lord says, for holy ambition to tread, culminating in thrones; but it is no
path leading in this age to high office and official dignities and popular
applause: it is the actual reverse of the worlds ambition for more wealth,
more power, more fame. Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not (Jer.
45:
5). By achieving great things now, we
lose them hereafter; by renouncing them now, we achieve them then: and it is
remarkable that our Lord closes His first revelation of the Thrones by
exhibiting the constant crossing and re-crossing of the runners in the race - but many
shall be last that are first; and first that are
last (Matt.
19:
30).
Next, the Lord presents Himself as the embodiment, the type, the first case in the working of
the new law. For - as a sharp contrast embodied in Himself - whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he
that serveth? Is not he that sitteth at meat? - there is such a thing as rank, dignity, precedence, but - how (He asks)
do you explain this? - I - your Chief, your King, the destined
Heir to the Throne of all thrones - am in the midst of you AS HE THAT SERVETH - and so till death; crownless,
throneless, outcast. And the Lord enforced the lesson, there and then, by a
visible act which, whether we take it as instruction embodied in an
ever-recurring ritual, or as a parable in action done once for all, is
extraordinarily illuminating. To teach them the sublime and novel truth that
the world-rulers of the future must be the servants of to-day, that
self-abasement is the germ of all future greatness, Jesus took a
towel, and girded himself, and began to wash the disciples feet (John 13: 4).* That is, present service regulates
future rank; and the nearer to Christ in grace, the nearer to Christ in glory.
* If
foot-washing had been maintained as a ritual - Binghams Antiquities records the fact that some fifty per
cent. of the sub-apostolic churches practised it - it is certain that the truth
our Lord is inculcating would not have been so largely lost.
But our Lord, setting the example for a crowd of later Scriptures,
also reveals the parallel line in the double rail-track leading to the Throne. But - lest you imagine from these new
principles that future royalties are a fiction and a dream - ye are they - servants singled-out and choice - which - unlike Judas, and many another
renegade disciple all down the ages - have continued with me in my
temptations. The
Lord lays deep in sorrow and suffering the foundations of coming greatness. The
Saviours testings - not His temptations in the wilderness, for the Apostles
were not with Him then - were life-long: in His reproaches, poverties,
afflictions, persecutions they had shown unswerving loyalty: in all His afflictions they were afflicted. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him: if we deny Him, He also will deny us (2 Tim. 2: 12). As McCheyne says, must put his foot upon the thorn: we
must taste the gall if we are to taste the glory. So then we come
to the great and closing summary in answer to Peters question - Lo, we have left
all, and followed Thee: what then shall we
have? And - Jesus
says - and
as a consequence, as a reward: the inevitable and of our Lords fidelity to fidelity
- I appoint unto you a kingdom, EVEN AS - for those who deny reward to disciples, must also
deny reward to their Master: Christ and His followers are recompensed on
identical grounds - my Father appointed unto me
a Kingdom, that ye may eat and drink at my table
in my
kingdom - the Millennial therefore, not the
Eternal; the Kingdom which the Lord ultimately gives up to the Father (1 Cor. 15: 24); and ye
- Twelve Apostles, for your peculiar and personal allotment of honour: our Lord
foresaw Matthias replacing Judas - shall sit on
THRONES - thrones come at last - judging the twelve tribes of Israel.* Supreme
in service, the Apostles will be supreme in sphere. Thus, once for all, the
Lord makes manifest the conditions of Millennial Royalty, the grounds on
which I appoint unto you a Kingdom. The Kingdom is no general inheritance
of all who - [are now regenerate and] - believe, but a special appointment
to disciples tried and approved: the Lord grounds the gift not on faith but on
fidelity: even Apostles are not given it as apostles, and much less because they
are among the saved; but it is appointed them because they have loyally,
courageously, unswervingly shared the ministries and sufferings of Christ. 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).
*
Few will deny that the Apostles are part of the Church (Eph. 2: 20). Their reign over
-------
OUR BODIES
The Scriptural doctrine of the
resurrection invites this physical frame of mine with an infinite dignity and
importance. Death is its temporary dissolution, not its destruction. With what magnitude
of interest and importance does this invest these corporal frames of ours! It
confers upon them an awful indestructibility, at the thought of which even the
perpetuity of mountains, of suns and stars, become as nothing. You have a
bodily as well as a spiritual immortality. These bodies shall claim half of
your individuality to all eternity. Can you, then, make them the instruments of
sin, or defile them by unholy lusts? Must you not guard with utmost care the
imperishable temple of the soul?
J. T. DAVIDSON, D.D.
-------
DISSIMILAR FLESH
He who made dust out of nothing can
find no difficulty in remaking bodies out of dust. Many
bodies, different kinds, flesh, birds, beasts, men, are formed from the same
dust and the same food. Therefore the same dust used to create an earthly or
natural body may be used of God to create a heavenly or spiritual body. But
both the earthly, or natural, and the heavenly or spiritual, are to be bodies.
The argument (1 Cor. 15: 39) is based upon the diverse use of the same creative power,
employing the same creature substance. (J. C. MASSAE, D.D.).
* *
*
8
THE REIGN OF CHRIST + 3
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 [coming Millennial] Kingdom. Therefore, [an
understanding of] -
His Kingdom must be established IN
them, before it can be established - [after their Resurrection] -
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. 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
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: 12, 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; 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 [millennial] 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
it is 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 brothers 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
- [our Resurrection from the dead] - we shall judge the world. judgment must begin at the house of God; and it is clear that we cannot reign
over Christs 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 Christs 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.
-------
FATAL FLAWS
1. Every one of these
Utopias is built over a 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 full local power, has ever established anything remotely like the
6. All lodge the
origen of the Kingdom in this - [evil, apostate, and satanic] - world, whereas our Saviour said:- My Kingdom is
not from thence.
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.
-------
ARRESTED INFLUENCE
Paul suddenly stumbles on a painful
difficulty in getting a truth home, and his difficulty at once reveals the
peril of a mutilated creed. When by reason of the time - the lapse of years since conversion
- Ye ought - for you might - to be teachers - so grounded, so passionately
convinced, so masters of the truth as to be imparting it to others - ye have need
again that some teach you the rudiments of the
first principles of the oracles of God (Heb. 5: 12). It is startling to learn that all [regenerate] believers ought, in time, if not to be
actual teachers, at least to be capable of teaching. The Hebrews pitiable
condition of importance can be the miscarriage of a lifetime. An aged minister,
pacing his room in profound agitation, exclaimed:- Would
to God I might have once again the years that are gone! Needing their
alphabet afresh - how pitiable! Years of possible helpfulness to others
irretrievable gone - how tragic! Not to grow in mastery of the Oracles of God
is to be in peril of losing their very rudiments. All truth is so inter-locked,
and elementary truth is so dependant on its far vaster setting, that they who
preach the Gospel [good news] only will soon have no gospel to preach. Possibly
thousands unblessed through us, who might have been, is a heavy price to pay
for a meagre creed and a halting life.
D. M. PANTON.
-------
LOST AUTHORITY
All authority in religion vanishes
with the Bible. Even the Papacy collapses with the historical veracity of the
Gospels. It is hard to estimate, says Dr. R. F. Horton, in his vitiation - [i.e.
his official inspection visit] -to the Oxford Conference on
Authority in July, the weakness and hesitation which
have resulted from an apparent shifting of the ground of Authority, or the
strength and confidence which would come into our work if we were all clear and
united in our answer to the question: by what authority we do these things. it will be sad to watch the basing of authority
on conflicting consciences, or on an indwelling but wholly inarticulate Christ,
or on an imaginary spirit of God in pure
reason, or on Scriptures an indistinguishable blend of fact and fiction, or on
Science changing like a chameleon-efforts as painful as gaining a footing on an
iceberg. The saddest sight in this generation, Dr. H. E.
Fosdick has just said, is
of the men and women who have run away from their old-fashioned faith and have
ended up with no faith at all. Blindness must surely have fallen on
critics who so completely fail to recognize their own handiwork.
-------
9
CHURCH DISCIPLINE BY
THE HOLY GHOST + 2
Problems many and grave were solved
once for all on the threshold of the
For Ananias and Sapphira, as among the
souls added to the Church, because saved, and added not by man, but by the Lord (Acts 2: 47), had a conversion that is
unchallengeable. That the Apostles (like ourselves) had no jurisdiction over unbelievers,
the punishment of whose sins must be left solely to God - for what have
I to do with judging them that are without? Do ye not judge them that are within? (1. Cor. 5: 12) - further establishes their regeneration and explains
why, where an Elymas gets a transient blindness and a Simon Magus goes
unscathed, an Ananias - for covetousness,
one of the excommunicating sins: for it was covetousness that prompted his lie - gets
instantaneous destruction of the flesh (1 Cor.
5:
5). The penalty wielded by the Holy Ghost is the penalty
commanded for this very sin occurring inside the Church. Never once does the Apostle raise the question of
their [eternal] salvation, or cast a shadow of doubt, on their standing in Christ. Ananias was a member of the Christian Church; he had, in all
probability, with the rest received the Holy Ghost; and hence he was in the enjoyment of
greater privileges, and under heavier responsibilities,* than either Simon or
Elymas. (P.
J. Gloag,
D.D.). Nor was his sin a foundation sin at all. Ananias,
with Sapphira his wife, sold
a possession, and kept back part of the price (Acts 5:
1). In a great flood-tide of revival,
when everyone naturally wishes to appear on the crest of the wave, there is an
inevitable temptation to a profession of devotion more apparent than real: so
Ananias merely keeps back a part of the sum which he said was the whole.
The poor of the Church, gazing at the gift laid before the Apostles, would
marvel at his munificence and would regard the donors as trophies of grace, and
splendid, proofs of what the Holy Spirit can do in human character and life.
[* NOTE: To assume all
regenerate believers, irrespective of their behaviour, are continually indwelt
by the Holy Spirit, is to assume He can never leave them because of their disobedience!
See Acts 5:
32;
cf.
1 Sam. 16: 14, LXX.
and I Sam.
18:
12,
R.V.]
Now the Apostle, gifted with the discerning of
spirits, at once
unveils the Church as the stage of a constant drama of the other world: his questions
rip open the supernatural struggle going on in every assembly of believers. Ananias,
why hath Satan - no sooner is
the Paradise of the Church created, than the Serpent is found in it - filled thy
heart - filled
it, that is, not with himself, but with an evil conspiracy - to lie to the
Holy Ghost? Two
great protagonists stand out on the floor of the Church, one descended from
Heaven, one risen from Hell - the Holy Ghost and Satan; and Satan, inside the
Church, can lure a [regenerate] believer to his death. The Apostle
puts a parallel question to Sapphira:- How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt
the Spirit of the Lord? - how dared you
experiment, to see whether the [Holy] Spirit
knows all things, and so your secret? Or whether He would care; or whether He
would act? How ghastly the blunder events quickly proved. The [Holy] Spirit knew the market price; He knew
the exact sum retained; He had - far more wonderfully - overheard Satan
whispering at the door of the mans heart; He was present at the family
conclave; He so cared that He did what Christ never did in the whole of His
ministry on earth; and He acts without a moments warning.
Peters remonstrance is exceedingly illuminating. While it
remained, did it not remain thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power? - that is to
say, both the estate itself, and the proceeds of the sale, were exclusively
Ananiass: the Lords word to sell all, and give to the poor (Luke 12: 33), is a counsel of perfection, not a
requirement of obligation: therefore Ananias was a perfectly free agent, and so
a perfectly responsible agent. And
even after the estate had been sold, with the object of giving all, God still
allows a change of mind; after it was sold, was
it not in thy power? for any part of our
property may be retained, until faith is strong enough to give up all; or all
may be kept, without penal consequences. There was no physical necessity, no
church necessity, no moral necessity, no necessity whatever - only the exquisite efflorescence of Christian love, or
the wise investment of earthly funds in heavenly stock - why Ananias should
part with anything at all.
Now instantly falls the Divine excommunication. And Ananias
hearing these words - Gods mere statement of a sin can be a death-warrant - fell down and gave up the ghost [i.e. his animating spirit]. It was
well that men should be taught once for all, by sudden death treading swiftly on
the heels of detected sin, that the Gospel, which discovers Gods boundless
mercy, has not wiped out the sterner attributes of the judge (Oswald Dykes, D.D.). The reason why
this first and sharpest of all Church discipline for two thousand years has never
again been so dramatically repeated is most significant. If
there were no such case of instant and condign punishment among the saved, we
must have concluded that, for believers, Gods justice is shackled and
sheathed; on the other hand, if every such sin met with instant judgment, we
must have concluded that this is no dispensation of grace, nor ours a
mercy-seat: there is one, as a sample of
judgment coming; but only one, for the Mercy Seat defers
infliction, almost invariably, to a future - [after the time of death (Heb. 9: 27, R.V.)] - Judgment Seat.
God sometimes slays now, lest we doubt His justice: He often defers judgment,
lest we doubt His patience. Divine judgment knows no
respect of persons, but calls believers as well as unbelievers before its bar;
yea, steps even more quickly among the former, as the servants who know the
Lords will: judgment must begin at the house of God (Lange). The perplexing rarity, yet
coupled with the astounding fact, is expounded in one, pregnant word of Paul. Some mens
sins are evident
- are instantly exposed - going before unto
judgment -
provoking judgment at once; and some men also - cloaked hypocrisies to the last - they follow
after, into the other world, and into the Age beyond (1 Tim. 5: 24). The Spirit, who never slew an enemy
for the life of the Church, slays two of her own [redeemed] children for her purity. It is immoral
and impossible that Ananias should be struck dead, and all other Ananiass of
the Church die in their beds, for ever unjudged. It
is only a demonstration of the invisible judgment which, without any such open
manifestation, rests upon every previous or subsequent Ananias (Stier).
So vital is this truth for the whole Church that the [Holy] Spirit doubles the witness, as well
as records its history. Behold the feet of them which have buried thy husband shall
carry thee out.
The second death, following so sharply and so exactly in the track of the
first, like a swiftly doubled peal of thunder, must have caused tenfold terror.
So high were the privileges of Ananias and Sapphira, so magnificent their
opportunities in the heart of the miracle-gifted Church of the Apostles, that
they are given no warning; no time for reflection; no call to repentance; no
pardon: in a moment Peter has used the Keys, and locked the Kingdom - whose soever
sins ye retain, they are retained (John 20: 23): be not deceived; neither
thieves, nor covetous, nor extortioners shall inherit the
kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6: 10)
Thus the doctrine that the [regenerate] believers person is immune
from the judgment of God, and that the Judgment Seat takes cognizance of his works only, is here
proved untrue; and the assumption, not rarely made, at least subconsciously,
that the backslider is necessarily restored before death the case of Ananias
also proves to be false.* How profound
the awe of this initial lesson on the threshold of the Church! Great fear
came upon all them that heard these things: noteworthy words, which
clearly show that the possibility that any one of them might become an Ananias
was present to the minds of all the disciples, full of grace as they were (Stier). It is overwhelmingly solemn that modem exponents of
privilege seem to have passed into almost total blindness on responsibility. An
ambitious mountain climber, thrilled with excitement, stood erect at last upon
an Alpine peak in an ecstasy of enjoyment, when his guide shouted, - On your knees, Sir! You are not safe here except on your
knees!
*.Nevertheless the death-penalty, either
here (1 Cor. 11: 30) or hereafter (Matt. 24: 51), cannot alter the believers
standing, nor forfeit his eternal life. Peter
utters no warning to Ananias of eternal death, nor perdition, as he does to
Simon Magus (Acts
8:
20): nay, on the contrary, excommunication, whether enforced by the [Holy] Spirit
or the Church, is a destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus
(1 Cor. 5: 5).
-------
CHRIST
Not merely in the words you say,
Not only in your deeds confessd
But in the most unconscious way
In Christ expressd.
Is it a beatific smile?
A holy light upon your brow?
Oh, no: I felt His presence while
You laught
just now.
For me twas not the truth you taught,
To you so clear, to me still dim,
But when you came you brought
A sense of Him.
And from your eyes He beckons me,
And from your heart His love is shed,
Till I lost sight of you - and see
The Christ instead.
The Lightbearer.
-------
THE SERF
Ye rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are
coming upon you!
Bowd by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the
world.
O masters, lords and rulers in all
lands,
How will the future reckon with this
man?
How answer this brute question in that
hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the
world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with
kings -
With those who shaped him to the thing
he is -
When this dumb Terror shall reply to
God
After the silence of the centuries?
- EDWIN MARKHAM.
* *
*
10
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION + 1
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Drawing
closer every year, the great Sacerdotal Churches, as they bear down on us like
enormous steam-rollers threatening to crush out all opposition, compel us - whether
we will or no - to master the problem which is central to their claim. That
claim is that all bishops in the true succession down the ages act in the place, and with the authority, of
the original Apostles; and it is a claim which can be brought home on the
conscience with a pressure as powerful as the pressure of the Inquisition on
the body. BISHOPS,
says the Council of Trent (Session
xxiii.), HAVE
SUCCEEDED UNTO THE PLACE OF THE APOSTLES. It is very remarkable
that the Episcopal Churches have never claimed that their Bishops are Apostles:*
what they claim is that, Apostles having lapsed, and bishops having replaced apostles in the government of
the Church as a matter of historical fact, the Bishops have succeeded to the spiritual authority
and power of the Apostles; that the government of the Church has descended to
them from the Apostles; and that so the authority of the Apostolate is now
vested in the Episcopate.
* So the
Apostolic Fathers, says Bishop
Lightfoot, look upon themselves as distinct from the Apostles. 1 Cor. 12: 28.
THE ORDER OF APOSTLES
It is one of the mysteries in the history of the Church of God
how completely the Church has ignored, forgotten, disregarded the miraculous
constitution with which God started His Church on earth, with the Apostles as
the keystone in the Church. God hath set - as limbs in the joints, so orders in the Church - in the Church - for miracles and miraculous
wonders, so far from being in Corinth only, were as wide as the Church, and
existed wherever the Church was - first APOSTLES*:- first in order, for the apostolate
was the first office the Lord created in His Church; and first in authority,
for apostles appear to have possessed the plenitude of miraculous endowment.
The Apostles, like the Prophets, were thus, an order in the Church, not an arbitrary selection of a unique
group, but (in Gods design) essential and dominant limbs in the Body of
Christ:** whose functions were (1) the witness of personal knowledge of
the Risen Lord; ***
(2) dispensers, by the laying on of
their hands, of the Holy Ghost; and (3)
the exercise of final authority in the Church, as the principal channels of
immediate inspiration from its Invisible Head. There is no authority, as Bishop Lightfoot has said, that the order afterwards called bishops were formerly called
apostles. Miracle entered into the very warp
and woof of the New Testament Church; and the Apostolate combines the two
sides of gift and office, both raised to their highest power (Godet).
* 1 Cor. 12: 28.
** Twenty-two are named in the New Testament, with
implications of at least two more. Eusebius
speaks of numberless apostles beside the
Twelve: so the Didache treats the
Apostles, equally with the Prophets, as an Order.
*** The name expresses
the character of those who had either been immediately sent forth by Christ
Himself, or who had been raised to a level with the Twelve by direct
revelations from Him (Dean
Stanley). So Paul saw Christ before he became an apostle, and probably in order to become one. Among the properties belonging to an apostle, says Bengel, it
was one, that he should have seen the
Lord Jesus Christ: so that false apostles were persons who not only
preached false doctrine, but also set it forth with an apostolical air as if they had seen Christ, or perhaps falsely pretended to have done so.
1 Cor. 9: 1.
PROOFS OF AN APOSTLE
Now for powers so absolute, and for claims so lofty, there must be evidences as decisive and unique;
and the more so because in all ages of the Church persons have appeared who have
claimed apostolic authority (Lange). Therefore, when critics challenged
his apostleship, Paul reveals its indispensable evidence and its
unchallengeable foundation. Truly, he says, the SIGNS
of an apostle - the proofs, the evidences, the
identifying seals of apostleship: of the Apostle - that is, of him who is invested with the
apostolical mission (Dean
Stanley) - were wrought
among you by SIGNS and WONDERS and MIGHTY WORKS (2 Cor. 12: 12):
signs as God-derived power, legitimating his mission; wonders, as awesome proofs to all mankind of a
supernatural message; and powers, as actual accomplishments outside the range of all merely
natural devotion or gift. This fulness of [divine] miracle is never stated of any but Apostles - except
Christ, and Antichrist (2 Thess.
2:
8). So all real Apostles God
authenticates, and His main authentication is miracle-working powers; no one,
therefore, unsupported by the powers of the age to come, can be an apostle: for an office so unique, the evidence
must always be as unique. Others might possess some powers: apostles must possess all.
FALSE APOSTLES
Our problem, therefore, rapidly approaches solution. It is
obvious at a glance that apostleship, while creatable at any time by God, is
incapable of mere official and formal transmission to successors. For Paul
reveals that false apostles would be liable to crop up throughout the Christian
ages. Such men are false apostles,
fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ (2 Cor. 11: 13): they appear to be apostles of Christ
only by a concealment of their own true nature (Dean Stanley). Profession, pretension, language, possibly doctrine - were all correct,
yet the man was false.*
The probing of the reality
behind the name, therefore, is commended by our Lord in language remarkably strong, and He
selects it (so important is it) as the one signal service of the Ephesian
Angel. I know that thou didst try - sift, thoroughly examine (Moses Stuart) - them which call themselves apostles,
and they are not, and
didst find them false (Rev. 2: 2). Exactly how the Ephesian Angel unmasked these false
claimants to apostleship we are not told; but the easiest of all tests of an
apostle is ready to our hand in the challenge put into the hands of his enemies
by Paul to test his own: the simple challenge to produce the plenitude of [divine] miracle which constitutes [true] apostleship.
* Trust nothing to appearances, even though angelic: they who fear no danger never try the
spirits (Lange).
APOSTOLIC CLAIMS
Now, therefore, we have reached an impregnable position for
confronting the double modern peril. For we are threatened at this moment with
two claimants to apostolic jurisdiction; and the double-edged sword of
Scripture flashes right and left, mortally. We are confronted by Tongues apostles, claiming miracles; and by claimants
to apostolic succession, claiming no miracles. The first we dismiss for
childish insufficiency of miracle. No Mormon
or Irvingite apostle of eighty years ago, no Tongues apostle of to-day, no secret apostles now concealed in various parts of the
world and attended by esoteric circles, no Theosophic apostles of Krishnamurti - have ever produced a
single power beyond the trivial tongues and healings already
perfectly familiar to the Spiritualistic sιance. Every office, as Dr. Hodge says, necessarily supposes the corresponding gift. No man could be an
apostle without the gift of infallibility; nor a prophet without the gift of inspiration; nor a healer of diseases without the gift of healing. Men may appoint
to offices for which they have not the necessary gifts, but God never. If any man
therefore claims to be an apostle without the gift, he is a pretender. The second claim is demolished with still
greater speed. Apostles alone can exercise apostolic authority: successors of apostles without the signs of an apostle are not apostles: apostles with signs but not apostolic signs, are false apostles. Apostles have
lapsed - so infallibility (and therefore autocracy) have lapsed also, exactly
as in the old forecast and studied type, the Theocracy lapsed with Urim and
Thummim. The substitution of successors for apostles, the ungifted for the miracle-gifted, is
merely for stags to pose as lions, or bows and arrows to claim the authority of
cannon. The sole ground for apostolic
authority is apostolic
power.
OUR SEAT OF AUTHORITY
What then is our seat of authority? Apostles
are gone and to submit to successors wholly devoid of apostolic powers as
though they were apostles is so dangerous, so obviously unscriptural, and so
impossible because of mutually excommunicated episcopates, that some other seat
of authority is imperative. The answer is transparent. We have the Apostles
doctrine (Acts
2: 42)
we have the revelations of His holy Apostles and Prophets (Eph.
3:
5) we have the
commandments of the Apostles (2 Pet. 3: 2 ) and we have the words of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ
(Jude 17).
We might have more words,
but could not have conflicting words - a larger body of truth, but not a different body of truth - if living Apostles
were speaking amongst us.* The seat of
authority remains what it always was - the Holy Spirit speaking through
apostles and prophets; and in the Holy Scriptures, surviving intact from the
age of inspiration, we are built, and are building, on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2: 20). It follows as a truism that all who
do so are, ipso facto, the sole
* If I read our Lords mind aright, apostles must - [in the near future] - be restored. Luke 11, Matt. 23: 34; Luke 12: 41-46; Matt. 24: 41-51 (Govett).
-------
AN APOSTLES WITNESS
Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me
Through the midnight lands;
Mine the mighty ordination
Of the pierced Hands.
Mine the message, grand and glorious,
Strange, unseald
surprise,-
That the goal is Gods Beloved,
Christ in
Hear me, weary men and women,
Sinners dead in sin,-
I am come from heaven to tell you
Of the love within:
Not alone of Gods great pathway
Leading up to Heaven;
Not alone that you may enter
Stainless and forgiven;
Not alone of rest and gladness
Tears and sighing fled;
Not alone of life eternal
Breathed into the dead:-
But I tell you I have seen Him,
Gods beloved Son,
From His lips have learnt the mystery
He and His are one.
There, as knit into the body
Every joint and limb,
We, His ransomd,
His beloved,
We are one with Him;
All in marvellous completeness
Added to the Lord,
There to be His crown of glory,
His supreme reward.
Wondrous prize of our high calling
Speed we on to this,
Past the cities of the angels
Further into bliss;
On into the depths eternal
Of the love and song,
Where in God the Fathers glory
Christ has waited long:
He who in His hour of sorrow
Bore the curse alone
I who through the lonely desert
Trod where He had gone:
He and I, in that bright glory,
One deep joy to share
Mine, to be for ever with Him;
His, that I am there.
- TER STEEGEN.
* *
*
11
THE LAYING ON OF HANDS
The
laying on of hands - that is, bodily contact - has been from the dawn of the
world a means of transmission of powers or gifts from God to man, or from one
man to another. The Hand of the Lord was upon David as he played, upon Elisha and Isaiah as they
prophesied, and upon Ezekiel as he saw his visions by Chebar. It might be for the imparting of physical strength. And the hand of
the Lord was on Elijah; and he girded up his
loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel (1 Kings 18:
46):- an exhausted man could outrun a
chariot if touched by God. Or the hands might
impart gifts of wisdom for office. At Gods command Moses laid his hands on
Joshua; and we read:- Joshua was full of the spirit
of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him (Dent. 34: 9). Moreover, just as contagion - that is, infection by
contact - is a constant transmitter of disease, so contact by physical touch,
from those empowered of the Holy Ghost, was the normal means of miraculous
cure. All they that had any sick brought them unto Him; and He laid his hands on every one of them,
and healed them (Luke 4: 40).
Now in the plan of God, after the Holy Ghost had been poured
forth - on the Jew in
* So
much so that the shadow of Peter cured (Acts 5: 15), and handkerchiefs from the
person of Paul dispossessed (Acts 19: 12).
** The order of the Greek is this:- baptisms (1)
of teaching, or
instruction, and (2) of laying on of hands: the
baptism of water, and the baptism of Spirit.
Now we arrive at a point so crucial, so solving countless
modem problems, so devastating to
ecclesiastical pretensions or inflated personal claims, that its importance can hardly be exaggerated. In what lay the proof that the Holy Ghost was transmitted?
An assertion so stupendous - that a Person of the Godhead has been conferred by
one man on another - how is it proved fact, and not fancy? The answer is patent
at
*Although
Simon had seen the miracles performed by Philip, yet this was the first time he
had seen miraculous influences communicated from one person to another: Simon saw
it; the effects of the communication, therefore, were visible, probably in the
inspired utterances of the recipients. Simon would have no
desire to purchase the sanctifying effects of the Spirit (P. J. Cloag, D.D.).
** The sole example (so far as we know)
of the laying on of hands without either the intention or the effect of miracle
was the designation of Paul and Barnabas to missionary labours (Acts 13: 3);
and here the Church, not the
Apostles, laid hands on them: an example that may make such imposition of
hands, meant merely to designate, innocuous in an age of non-inspiration.
Now we are confronted with the
exceedingly grave historical fact that imposition of hands, in various
ceremonies and functions all down the ages, has maintained the claim without the power. By the fourth century we find the complete absence of miracle combined
with the assumption that the Holy Ghost had been transmitted by laid on hands.
Augustine says:- At the present time is it expected of any one of these on
whom the hand is laid, that they may receive the Holy Ghost, that they should
speak with tongues? Or, when we laid our hands on yonder candidates, did you
each look to see whether they spoke with tongues? And was there any one of you
so perverse as to say, when you saw they did not speak with tongues: These
have not received the Holy Ghost, for if they had received Him, they would
speak with tongues, as was the case in those days.? Augustines almost
scornful questions, betraying his own uneasiness, are manifestly a rhetorical
device for concealing a flaw inevitably present to a scriptural onlooker; and
all through the fifteen centuries that follow, the position, unrelieved by any appearance of substantiating miracle, has only
hardened. Dr. Moberly, in
his Bampton Lectures, says:- Our
Confirmation so differs from that of the Apostolic age that we do not look for
the extraordinary gifts which the confirmed of that time enjoyed.
Now this complete absence of the very proof which the Holy
Ghost Himself commanded and gave, this absolute silence of the [Holy] Spirit
supposed to be transferred, this entire disappearance of the very thing that
was to be conferred - namely, the Holy Ghost working in manifested power - is
fatal to the claim. If the gifts are
absent, the gift cannot have been conferred:
the technical catalogue of the Gifts (1 Cor. 12: 8-10) reveal them as miraculous,* and therefore if there be no miracle, there
has been no miraculous Unction. Moreover, the absence of ocular
proof has made possible rival claims to an imagined transmission which, by
being mutually destructive, cancel out each others claims. For it is obvious
that all competing formalisms must silence and destroy each others
pretensions: rival ecclesiasticisms, all claiming ordaining
powers by imposition of hands, and each doubting, or wholly denying, the
transmission of the [Holy] Spirit by any but themselves, cannot possibly be the
channels of the Holy Ghost.** Without
miracle there is no miraculous Unction.
* The wisdom of a Solomon, the knowledge
of a Paul, the faith that transplants a mountain, are miracles, not graces; and
few will care to deny the miraculous contents of gifts
of healings, workings of miracles, prophecy, discernings of
spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. It has been the tragedy of
exposition (in this sphere) that the terms have been watered down, against all
Scripture use, in order to hide our poverty. It was a manifestation
of
the Spirit (1 Cor. 12: 7) - a making
visible (Liddell & Scott) - by which the Spirit made
Himself audible (Acts 13: 2), and, at least at Pentecost, visible (Acts 2:
3),
in supernatural actions always unmistakable to the senses and (often) an
immediate conviction to the infidel (1 Cor. 14: 25).
George Muller said correctly that he
had the grace of faith, but not the gift of faith.
So, therefore, we have no alternative but
to reject all ceremonies and experiences emanating from any quarter which claim
to transmit the [Holy] Spirit without the Power. This manikin, this lay
figure without life, is the very citadel of ecclesiastical pretension and
usurped authority.
* In
the eyes of the
** That the Most High is not dependent on
a mechanical succession, nor
has appointed it, and that a God-created ministry can be wholly
independent of historicity and ordination, is established by one exceedingly
remarkable Scripture. The house of
Stephanas have set themselves to the ministry: I beseech you that
ye be in subjection unto SUCH
(1 Cor. 16: 15): for Paul only confirms the ordination,
but lifts it into a general principle. Dean
Sranleys
translation runs thus - They appointed themselves to
the ministry of the saints; and I exhort you
that ye also appoint yourselves to be under such.
-------
Perhaps the closest approach to an on-fall of the Spirit in
modern times lies in the experience of Charles Finney. I found myself, he
says, endued with such power from on high that a few
words, dropped here and there to individuals, were the means of their immediate
conversion. My words seemed to fasten like barbed arrows in the souls of men.
They broke the heart like a hammer. Multitudes can attest this. Sometimes I
would find myself, in a great measure, empty of this power. I would go out and
visit, and find that I made no saving impression. 1
would exhort and pray, with the same result. I would then set apart a day for
private fasting and prayer, fearing that this power had departed from me, and
would inquire anxiously after the reason of this apparent emptiness. After
humbling myself, and crying out for help, the power would return upon me with
all its freshness. This has been the experience of my life. But such an experience is rare, if not unique; its effect,
unlike that of the Scriptural gifts, was purely evangelistic; it is entirely
personal, and unconnected with any kind of conferred favour; and it was devoid of all miracle. It is no
more than the present mixed and secret agency of the Spirit raised to its
maximum.
* *
*
12
POWER LOST AND RECOVERED + 2
A constant phase of to-day is the going down of leader after leader
into a bankruptcy of power, or even into complete spiritual extinction:
something hidden happens, of which none knows the secret but God, and there is
a sudden fading of the old splendid glow. So
Samson is perhaps the most vivid example in the Bible of giant power,
accompanied by an utter unconsciousness of danger - always the greatest danger
of all - sinking in a moment into total moral bankruptcy. Samson is an example
etched in lightnings of what all of us may become: at first a spiritual giant; a
doer of exploits vivid, dashing, marvellous; a solitary hero dominating a
nation; a lonely warrior of God in his race and generation: then, a secret
passion; a fearful public collapse; and only in the far sunset, a going out in
a sudden burst of the old splendid power, after years of lost vision (the eyes
put out) and a manacled life.
Samson is the summary of power resting on consecration; and
his huge muscular strength is the Old Testament counterpart of spiritual
dynamic in the New. For Samson was not born strong: apart from the Spirit of God his stature was no
more colossal, nor his muscle iron, than any other mans; but with him the
on-fall of the Spirit was such, such was the clothing of the human with the
naked power of the Holy Ghost, that one man - and that man unarmed - could rout three thousand.
And the symbolism is extraordinarily striking. Unshorn locks falling down him
picture the descent of the Spirit, drenching him as the sacred Oil did Aaron; seven locks (Judges 16: 19), the plenitude of power; and locks untouchable, as the
God-given symbol of his Nazarite consecration and the sole secret of his
strength. The Nazarite who put a razor to his head knew that he had lost his
consecration. Nazarite means separated, separated to God, a man whose power
dwells solely in his separation; and the power remains so long as (contact with
a corpse being forbidden) he is out of touch
with a dead world. And the name Samson means the sun, or strength - the sun
as it shineth in its strength; the chief receptacle and transmitter of the
Light of the World.* So Samson was
no mere prodigy of brute force, but, as a unique example of Holy Ghost power,
the very choice of his weapons, ridiculously inadequate, designedly revealed a
power purely of God.
* Our Lords sevenfold unction (Isa.
11:
2)
in the perfect antitype of Gods deposited Light.
Now Delilah appears upon the scene. Delilah
- meaning languishing, seductive - is the
embodiment and summary of all that is fair covering all that is false. The Lion
which Samson encountered and slew had nothing like the peril for him that
Delilah had: it is safer to face open martyrdom than concealed lust: Delilah
and Samson are always seen alone. A secret passion mastered and threw him.
Delilah comes in many shapes:- impurity; drunkenness; notoriety; reputation;
popularity; power; money: and where drink or fornication slays its hundreds,
money or popularity slays its tens of thousands. Delilah is most dangerous when
she is most concealed. Already, earlier, this fatal self-indulgence had been
foreshadowed when Samson, a Nazarite, had eaten honey out of the carcase of a
dead world he had overcome. Now another stage has been reached when, instead of
using his power in routing Gods enemies, he begins displaying it at the
bidding of a harlot world. On behalf of the Powers of Darkness behind her, who
bribed her with about £620, Delilah now plies him, again and again, with the
question of the source of his strength - wherein his strength was great not
that she might share it, but that she might steal it. No prayer; no alarm; no
self-examination; no self-distrust; no self-denial: resting on a blind
presumption of privilege, Samson confronts Delilah.
Now we get a parallel that could not be closer to the sapping
seductions that bring down the loftiest spiritual characters with a crash.
Three times Samson eludes the questioning of Delilah: three times she probes
his secret, each time getting closer to its heart: yet all the time the power continues. God never
leaves His worker at a first sin; but interposes delays, warnings, and
opportunities of repentance; and may even continue to use him mightily.* Broken withes, snapt cords, a dragged
frame prove that nothing is yet irrevocably gone. But each time, unheeding the
red signals, Samson drew nearer betraying his trust, and each time drew nearer
with a lie - ever skating on thin ice, as when he wound his hair about the beam
that might, if sharp-edged, have severed it. All indulgence in sin is like
feeding a tiger - each sop thrown has to be succeeded by a bigger. And all the
time, beneath the mighty iceberg the warm waters of temptation, dallied with
and encouraged, are eating away the foundations of the glittering pinnacles,
until suddenly - without a moments warning - the huge berg gives one mighty
heave, and is gone.
* It
is a striking proof that the baptism of power (Acts 1: 8) is not primarily in intent,
nor necessarily in effect, a transmission of sanctity. The idea, therefore,
that the baptism of the Spirit produces an eradication of sin is a pure
illusion.
For now that moment has arrived for Samson. What must never
leave our memory is that, in exercising power, we are dealing with a Person,
who will act as He chooses, and when He chooses, and may stop the power at
any moment: and we must also remember that the Spirit in power (as distinct
from the Spirit in regeneration) is granted to Samson, not on the ground that
he is an Israelite, but that he is a Nazarite; and therefore that the power was
not his inalienable possession, whether he used it or abused it, but was only
lent to him for combating Gods enemies. The power seized him only when he was
fighting the battles of God: rest, and we rust. But how solemn Samsons
ignorance of the Spirits departure! The machinery may still run for a little
after the dynamo has ceased throbbing. God can come in earthquake, but He can
leave in shoes of silk. Samson wist not that the Lord had departed from him. Faculties that get numbed to sin get
numbed also to sensing the Spirit. No outward
event announced it; no great convulsion, no ringing alarum: while he was asleep the power departed.
A Christian worker can flatter himself, in the midst of his lusts, that his
power is as it was in his consecration; but in the agony of the supreme need of
the power, with everything at stake, in full view of a lifeworks ruin, on the
edge of a scandal to the world of the first magnitude, Samson shakes himself-
and the power is gone. For alas, how keen is the worlds razor on the locks of
consecration! Samson never shaved his locks; he allowed himself in company
where, falling into profound slumber, they were shaved for him: he had power to
keep out of Delilahs company; but we can trifle once too often; we can
sin-away our freedom; the tide may have ebbed beyond recall while we slept.
Lock after lock falls, power ebbs with every slash, and Samson awakes to agony.
A picture follows of almost intolerable pathos. Gods mighty judge, the supreme
leader of the only people of God in the world at that moment, is filling the
office of a public buffoon, and dancing, in blundering blindness, to make sport
for a hating, scorning, laughing mob. Oh, the tragedy to which a backslider can
come! And Samson made sport before them (Judges 16: 25).
But now there rises before us as
supreme a beacon-light against despair in the child of God as perhaps the whole
Bible contains. God preaches hope where
the devil preaches despair. Howbeit the hair of his head began
to grow again after he was
shaven: the thick
shaggy locks - sign-manual of the Nazarite - slowly reappeared in the long
agony of the lonely vigil in the prison in
* A
razor could have slit Samsons throat as easily as his locks: it is solemn to
remember that a Spirit-forsaken backslider can be more valuable to Satan than a
dead saint.
So we arrive at last at one of the most wonderful sunsets in
Scripture. In the thrilling words of Napoleon:
There
is time to win a victory before the sun goes down. As soon as Samson can pray, he is the
hero again; the strength he lost by sin he regains by prayer; and lo, the
Spirit of God falls once more upon the wrecked life! And he bowed
himself with all his might - it is the servant of God once more pouring
his whole soul and strength into the work of God, using the weapons
of our warfare which are mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds
(2 Cor. 10: 4): AND THE HOUSE FELL. How marvellously Gods grace can retrieve the fearful
error of a lifetime! The roof and galleries, crowded with their thousands,
crash down upon the masses below: princes and priests, with the idol-cups to
their lips, and the mockery of Jehovah in their songs, are snowed under by an
avalanche of falling stone: a terrific crash, a fearful cry, and the temple is
one vast sepulchre. His last heroism cost Samson his life, but he instantly
takes his place in the Gallery of Gods Immortals (Heb. 11: 32): he stands once more, and
for the last time, a giant among the enemies of God. For the dead which he slew at his death were MORE than they which he
slew in his life. The fearfully overcome can become the mighty overcomer:
Samson gains the supreme victory of his life after his great fall: the last evidence of
strength was the greatest he ever displayed: the [Holy] Spirit was never more with him than in his final fight
for God: he leapt into the Glory from the tragic spectacle of a public shame. A troop shall
overcome him: BUT HE SHALL OVERCOME AT THE LAST (Gen. 49: 19).
-------
BURIED SEED
Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days (Eccles.
11:
1).
Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth by itseld alone; but if it die, it beareth much
fruit (John 12: 24).
Behold, the husbandman
waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it
receive the early and latter rain (Jas. 5: 7).
The
Baptist mission in Teluga,
Shine on, Lone Star! I would not dim
The light that gleams with dubious 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! Who lifts his hand
To dash the earth so bright a gem,
A new lost Pleiad
from the band
That sparks in nights diadem?
Shine on, Lost Star! Thy day draws near
When none shall shine more fair than thou;
Thou, born and nursed in doubt and fear,
Wilt glitter on Immanuels brow.
Shine on, Lost Star! Till earths redeemd
In dust shall bid the idols fall;
And thousands, where thy radiance beamd,
Shall crown the Saviour Lord of All.
At
breakfast his host, Judge Ira Harris,
a Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of
-------
THE LOST LEADER
Brownings
poem, though ment purely for the literary sphere, has an application most
painful and accurate to the astounding bankruptcies in Christian leadership
that are forcing themselves on our reluctant vision on every hand. We can but
hope, with Browning, that, like Samson, some sunsets may yet prove more golden
than their dawns.
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat -
Found the one gift of which Fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver:
So much was theirs who so little allowed;
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags - were they purple, his heart had been proud.
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die.
Shakespeare was of us,
were with us - they watch from their graves;
He alone breaks from the van and the freeman,
He alone sinks to the rear of the slaves!
We shall march prospering - not thro his presence:
Songs may impart us, - not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done - while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire.
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devils triumph and sorrow for angels,
One more wrong to man, one more insult to God.
Lifes night begins: let him never come back to us;
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain;
Forced praise on our part - the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again.
Best fight on well, for we taught him - strike
gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own;
Then let him receive the now knowledge, and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, and first by the throne!*
* After his sharp
controversy with George Whitefield , John Wesley said to a friend, - I do not expect to see Mr Whitefield in heaven, Oh, Mr. Wesley, his friend exclaimed, deeply
shocked, you do not expect to see him in heaven?
No, replied Wesley, hell
be too near the throne! -
Ed.
*
* *
13
THE FIRST RESURRECTION + 1
I
There is a general impression that the belief in the First
Resurrection at a different time from that of the general resurrection rests
solely on Revelation 20: 6. But this is a great mistake.
Omitting the passages from the Old Testament Scriptures, sustained by the
promises of which the ancient worthies suffered and served God in hope of a better resurrection
(Heb.
11:
35), our Lord makes a distinction between
the resurrection which some shall be accounted worthy to obtain, and some not (Luke 20: 35).
J. A.
SEISS, D.D.
II
The second resurrection will be general, universal, comprising both the righteous
and the wicked; while the first will comprehend, - [know fully] - as the writers language seems to intimate, only saints and martyrs who have been specially faithful unto death.
This distinction the writer has made prominent. He expressly assures us that
the other dead would not
be raised when the thousand years should commence, but only at the end of the
world when all will be raised. The express contrast
here made between the partial and
the general resurrection, and the
manner in which this contrast is presented, shew that the design is not to compare
a spiritual with a physical resurrection,
but to contrast the partial extent of the latter at the beginning of the
Millennium, with its general or universal extent at the end of the world.
It is asked, Whether all true Christians, and
indeed all truly pious men of every age, who lived before the
commencement of the Millennium will be raised from the dead at that at that
period, or whether the Apocalypse affirms this only of Christian martyrs? To this I answer briefly, that
those who are
beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, are clearly placed in high relief by the writer of the
Apocalypse; but possibly he does not limit the promises merely to these. He may
mean to include all who amid
sufferings have been faithful and true to the doctrines and duties of a divine
religion, in times of pressure.
We cannot well doubt that he has specially in view the persecuted Christians of
his day; but still may he be regarded as designating two classes of persons? Can
he mean to be understood as confining his views only to literal and actual
martyrs? And if faithful Christians in general we described by his language,
then what forbids that all of these
before the Millennium who have cherished the same spirit as the actual martyrs,
served the same God, and possessed the same sympathies in respect to the
prosperity and welfare of the church, should be included in the promises which
he here holds out?
Is there not a distinction made by John between those who have
periled their lives and suffered for their steadfast adherence to religion, and
those who have been distinguished neither by active piety nor by suffering? Who will venture to answer with
confident assurance, that there is not? The
special object, in view of which the Apocalypse was written seems to point us
to the class of martyrs and faithful
confessors, as being the only ones intended to be included by the writer.
In times of distressing and bloody persecution was the book written. Christians
were to be consoled and fortified so as to meet the shock. Was it not to hold
out high and peculiar rewards to those
who endured to the end? It is difficult not to think this probable. And what is
the peculiar reward of unshaken constancy and fidelity? A Part in the first
resurrection. This is the natural and obvious solution of the case.
And does not Paul himself seem to say,
that although he might possibly be a Christian, and attain to final happiness,
yet he should lose a part in the first resurrection, if
he should become slothful and remiss? He tells us that he had suffered the
loss of all things, and counted them but dung, that he might know - [more
intimately] - Christ and the power of His
resurrection; if by any means he might attain to the resurrection of the dead (Phil. 3: 8-11). Did Paul, then, consider it a matter of doubt whether he
should have a part in the final resurrection?
This same apostle, who has so expressly taught us the resurrection of all,
both of the righteous and of the wicked - did he doubt whether he could attain to this same resurrection? Surely not.
Consequently his declaration, then and only then, seems to possess a full and
energetic meaning, when we view him as declaring that a high and holy
and vigorous contest with the powers of darkness must be carried on,
in order to obtain a part in the first resurrection.
So interpreted, the meaning of the passage stands out in bold relief.
All this seems rather to guide us to the
conclusion that a distinction will be made among the pious themselves, at the -
[time of their] - first resurrection. This is only carrying out the principle that those who
possess five talents and improve them diligently, will be made rulers over five
cities; and those who have two, over only two cities. Si quomodo occurram ad resurrectionem, quae est ex mortuis
If St. Paul had been looking only to the general resurrection, he need not
have given himself any trouble, or made any sacrifice to attain to that; for to
it, all, even Judas and Nero, must come; but to attain to the First
Resurrection he had need to press forward for the prize of that calling.
MOSES STUART, D.D.
-------
THE LAST LAP
Carry me over the long last mile
Man of
Weary I wait by Deaths dark stile,
In the wild and the waste, were the
wind blows free;
And the shadows and sorrows come out
of my past,
Look keen through my heart,
And will not depart,
Now that my poor world has come out of
my past,
Lord, is it long that my spirit must
wait?
Man of
Deep is the stream, and the night is
late,
And grief blinds my soul, that I
cannot see,
Speak to me, out of the silences,
Lord,
That my spirit may know,
As forward I go,
Thy pierced hands are lifting me over
the ford!
* *
*
14
THE RESURRECTION FROM
AMONG THE DEAD +3
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
We are
now 1930 years nearer than the Church has ever been to the breaking of tombs, and
the emergence of saints; and if the problems that cluster round that enormous
event were always acute and urgent, ten times more acute and urgent are they
now - [in 2024]. Since the Wilderness is symbolic of our pilgrimage, and Canaan of the
Holy Land, the passage of Jordan is a kindergarten of resurrection and rapture;
and after three days - the Lord rose after three days -
the Ark (always a symbol of the Incarnate Christ) crossed Jordan; such of
Israel as did enter the Land were to follow at a commanded distance of about two
thousand cubits -
the dispensations two thousand years are fast slipping out; and the urgent
direction of Joshua [Jesus], is SANCTIFY yourselves,
for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you
(Joshua 3:
5) - the era of miracle returns. Martin Ansteys computation, the best yet made, closes the 2,000
Christian years in 1958; * and when the
unknown length of the intervening Parousia is allowed for - probably not less
than seven years, and possibly many more* - the command comes home with tremendous force, SANCTIFY YOURSELVES.
* Publishing in 1913 he concludes thus:-
Yet 45 years, and the millennium of the worlds
history will be fulfilled, and the seventh millennium, ushered in the
Sabbatic Millennium of Heb. 4: 9. into which (says the inspired writer) we must labour to enter.
[* NOTE: After
two days - that is, after two thousand years {2 Peter 3:
8}
- he will
revive us {i.e.
the nation of
UNCERTAINTY
For the first certainty on which we
plant our feet as on rock is that Paul, when he speaks of the [see
Greek word ...] is not sure of sharing the resurrection of which he speaks, whatever that
resurrection may be. The phrase he selects puts it beyond all dispute or doubt.
If BY ANY MEANS if possibly (H. A. W.
Meyer); if somehow (Moule); if anyhow (Eadie); si forte (Lange); if in
any way (Bengel) - I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3: 11); is used
when an end is proposed, but failure is presumed to be possible (Alford).* So
Bishop Ellicott comments:- The idea of an attempt is conveyed, which may
or may not be successful. And Bishop
Lightfoot:- The Apostle states not a positive
assurance, but a modest hope. For Paul crams the words with studied
difficulty: if it is hypothetical; by any means - it is precarious; I attain - it is a golden possibility.
* An instructive parallel occurs in Acts 27: 12:- If
by any means they might attain to Phenice; which, in the sequel, they
did not
reach.
SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION
The next certainty on which we can rest negatively excludes a
mistaken interpretation. Resurrection is sometimes use spiritually, to picture a rising out of the death of
sin, and from a world of the dead: but this cannot be the meaning of
Paul here; for spiritual resurrection, symbolized by baptism, which therefore
occurs after the spiritual rising
has occurred, Paul, and those to whom he wrote, had already experienced. Having been
buried with Christ in baptism, wherein ye were also
RAISED with Him (Col. 2: 12). He who is unrisen out of the grave of
sin is no child of God at all. For Paul, now on his last lap, to hope that some
day he might succeed in escaping from among the spiritually dead, or, from the deathly sleep of backsliding, were
absurd. Any reference here to a merely ethical
resurrection, as Bishop Ellicott
says, is wholly out of the question.
GENERAL RESURRECTION
The next certainty on which we plant our feet as on rock: is a
negative no less important and obvious. Pauls uncertainty of sharing in this resurrection
necessarily excludes resurrection in general; since the most wicked man,
without his choice and against his will, must rise from the dead. ALL that are in the tombs, says our Lord, shall come
forth (John 5: 28): they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan.
12:
2).
As in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall ALL be made
alive (1 Cor. 15: 22). Much more is it inevitable that every
believer must leave his [grave or] tomb. This is the will of him
that sent me, that of ALL that which he hath given me, I
should raise it up at the last
day (John
6: 39).
For Paul, the past-master - [by his divine given understanding] - of resurrection truth, and the chief protagonist of resurrections universality, to doubt
his rising from the grave, or to leave it open to question, would be an
overthrow of the Faith, and a denial of his Lord.*
SELECT RESURRECTION
But Paul defines so exactly what he means as to place the
truth, finally, beyond all doubt. If by any means, he says, I may attain
unto the out-resurrection, that which is from among the dead: an
out-resurrection, not out of the earth
(Lange), but out from
among dead ones:
that is, as the context suggests, the first
resurrection (Ellicott). It
was exactly this which puzzled the first disciples when Christ foretold His
rising out of (ek) the dead, for - like Martha (John 11: 24) - they had never conceived of any emergence from the grave
except the general rising of the mass of mankind: questioning
among themselves what the rising again from the dead should mean (Mark 9: 10). The first resurrection is of necessity
a resurrection from among the dead (Govett): it is a prior emergence from the tombs: it necessitates a later resurrection of those left; and the rest
of the dead LIVED NOT until the
thousand years should be finished (Rev. 20: 5). Thus all difficulty attending Pauls - [present-day
assumed] - uncertainty vanishes the moment we
realize that the ... [out-resurrection] is one of the golden prizes for which God summons us
to compete. As Dr. J.
Hutchison says:- The allusion is undoubtedly not
to the general resurrection of the dead. All must attain unto that. No striving
is needed thereto. It stands fast in the decrees of heaven, and none can fall
short of it or frustrate it. What is referred to here is that which is attained
after danger and toil, and attained as a blissful reward. It is what is
elsewhere called a better
resurrection
(Heb. 11: 35); the resurrection of the just (Luke 14: 14; Acts 4: 2); the first resurrection (Rev. 20: 5). It is the resurrection par eminence.
A PRIZE
So we reach a revelation of extraordinary importance for every
one of us, strangely overlooked, or even denied, in our evangelical and
prophetical theology. The doctrine here taught is
that the blessedness of the saints at the resurrection is so great that we
should be content to use any means and run any hazards to attain it (T.
Manton, D.D.). Pauls eagerness to emphasize his own uncertainty is almost
passionate. Not that I have already attained - attained, that is, the title to the first
resurrection* for no one
would imagine that he had attained it in the Roman prison - or am already made perfect: brethren, I count not myself - whatever others may think of me, or of themselves -to have apprehended. ** If
by these words Paul means that he, and with him all [regenerate] believers,
are sure of the resurrection of which he speaks, then words are chosen to conceal their meaning, and to express the opposite of what they say: on the contrary, Paul, guided by the [Holy] Spirit, solves the problem for us all by
lodging it exclusively in himself;
for it needs no arguing that if not Paul, then none of us. Paul the aged, Paul the
Apostle, Paul (we had almost said) the matchless, not only thought he had not attained, but says by inspiration
that he had not - I AM NOT already made
perfect: not until the executioners block was actually in
sight, on which he was to be poured out as a drink offering (2 Tim. 4: 6), did he know, as a [Christian] martyr, his crown secure. Therefore, until then, all converges on a
resolve of passionate intensity, in which for all saints, and for all time, the
Apostle blazes the trail. ONE THING I
DO, FORGETTING
THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND, AND STRETCHING FORWARD TO THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEFORE,
I PRESS ON
TOWARD THE GOAL UNTO THE PRIZE OF THE HIGE CALLING OF GOD IN CHRIST
JESUS.***
* Jus ad resurrectionem beatam (Grotius).
** I, emphatic: he evidently alludes to
some whom he wishes to warn by his example (Alford). So Bishop Wordsworth:- The divine Apostle himself, even at this late period of his
Apostolic career, does not feel absolutely confident that he himself will
attain to the glory of the Resurrection of the just; and he disavows the notion
of being supposed to have already apprehended. Cf. 1 Cor. 9: 27. It was not until on the eve of his martyrdom for Christ
that he could exclaim, as he then did, Henceforth
there is laid up for me the Crown. For homiletical purposes Dr. J. Lyth
puts it thus:- The [see Greek word ...] is distinguished from the resurrection of the wicked (1) by its glory (Dan. 12: 2); (2) its
precedence (1 Cor. 15: 23); (3) its results (John 5: 29). It is an object of Christian ambition - requiring (1) faith, (2) consecration, (3)
effort. It will amply repay every sacrifice of (1) self-gratification, (2)
earthly advantage, (3) life.
***
The call heavenward (Lightfoot); the up-call; come up hither (Rev. 4: 1) out of an empty tomb. John when thus
called, had fallen as one dead, and had been set back upon his feet by
the voice of the Son of God. Believers who deny that there is any such
conditional sanctity have a startling disillusionment ahead; nor is it harsh to believe that many prophetical teachers have a grave
report to give to their Lord for a denial so dogmatic in its certitude as to
mislead countless saints. False confidence is a sweetsmelling
flower which holds the worm of an unguarded walk.
THE FIRST RESURRECTION
But the truth is not made to rest on this single Scripture. By
two or three witnesses, the Most High has said, shall every word be
established; and our Lord and John are joined with Paul in a consentient
testimony that for the first resurrection, which is a state, rather than an
act, personal sanctity is our bridge also across
A POSTSCRIPT
The [Holy] Spirit, foreseeing a general lapse from the Churchs
creed of this unpalatable but sharply tonic
truth, closes with a gentle remonstrance and counsel. Let us
therefore as many as be perfect be
thus minded; and if in anything y are otherwise minded - believing that there is no such prize in the Gospel, or that any particular believer has
already won it, or that it has been received in the gift
of Eternal Life, or that it is won with ease and without undying effort, or
that, by becoming sinless, we can be assured of it, or that our session with
Christ in the heavenlies involves priority of rising* - even this shall God reveal unto you: ONLY - as a vital condition of a fuller revelation - whereunto we have already
attained, by that same rule let us walk. Never falter from following the highest light that you have.
* The First Resurrection is a reward for obedience rendered
after the acceptance of [initial] salvation, and Paul knew not
the standard which God had fixed in His own purpose (G. H. Pember).
Tertullian tells us that the Church
of his age prayed for a share in the First Resurrection.
Many, even of the ancients, have admitted this first resurrection. Within an
age of a thousand years, says Tertullian, is
concluded the resurrection of the saints, who rise again at an earlier or a
later period, according to their merits (Bengel)
SUMMARY
Bishop Lightfoot, that master of paraphrase, thus
summarizes the passage:- Do not mistake me, I hold the language of hope, not of
assurance. I have not yet reached the goal: I am not yet made perfect. But I
press forward in the race eager to grasp the prize, forasmuch as Christ also
has grasped me. My brothers, let other men vaunt their security. Such is not my
language. I do not consider that I have the prize already in my grasp. This,
and this only, is my rule. Forgetting the land-marks already passed, and
straining every nerve and muscle in the onward race, I press forward ever
towards the goal that I may win the prize. Paul - [Gods inspired APOSTLE] - could say, There is laid
up for me the crown only when he could say:- I have finished the [race] course. So Dr. A. B.
Simpsons word becomes very
suggestive:- In the public arena where men contended in the race it was at
the home stretch, when the goal was in full view, that the greatest efforts
were made both by the competitors, and those that encouraged them from the
galleries, and there was special signal set up at the point where the races
turned into the home stretch, on which the letters were emblazoned, Make
Speed.
-------
THE RESURRECTION
To me, the central point is the
Resurrection of Christ, which I believe. Firstly, because it is testified by men
who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing and whose veracity - [i.e.,
ones truthfulness and accuracy] - was tested by the most tremendous
trials, both of energy and endurance, during long lives. Secondly, because of
the marvellous effort it had upon the world. As a moral phenomenon, the spread
and mastery of Christianity is without a parallel. I can no more believe that
colossal moral effects lasting for 2000 years can be without a cause than I can
believe that the various motions of the magnet are without a cause, though I
cannot wholly explain them. To anyone who believes the Resurrection of Christ,
the rest presents little difficulty. No one who has that belief will doubt that
those who were commissioned by Him to speak - Paul. Peter, Mark, John - carried
a divine message.
The MARQUESS OF SAILSBURY
-------
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.
MODERN MILLENNARIANISM
The Reformation restored the truth. That the Thousand Years were to be reckoned from the birth
of Christ, says Hengstenberg,
a hostile but a truthful witness, was the view which,
through the authority of Augustine,
was the prevailing one during the whole of the Middle Ages; but since Bengel, Chiliasm (the doctrine
of our Lords reign on earth for 1,000 years) obtained
an almost universal diffusion throughout the Church. Since the
Reformation Dr. Whitby (two
centuries ago) - he himself calling it a new
hypothesis - was the first to deny the Millennial Reign, and to preach
the worlds conversion by the Church; and Dr. Whitby died an Arian, having
abandoned belief in any millennium whatsoever.
THE
The Second Advent is still the
official creed of the Greek Church. Its Larger Catechism says: Will Jesus Christ soon come to judgment? We know not.
Therefore we should live so as to be always ready. Are there not, however,
revealed to us some signs of the nearer approach of Christs coming? In the
word of God certain signs are revealed, as the decrease of faith and love among
men, the abandoning of iniquity and calamities, the preaching of the Gospel to
all nations, and the coming of Antichrist.
THE ROMAN CHURCH
The Church of Rome, which rose on the
ruins of Millennial truth, and the temporal power of which is its supplanting counterfeit,
naturally burkes it, as the Universe
(July 12, 1920) has just said. The Church [of
MODERNISM AND THE ADVENT
It is well to realize that shifts to
which doubters are reached. In regard to our Lords
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 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 Apostle and Prophets of forgery. The Dean
of
SCIENCE AND THE ADVENT
Yet men of the utmost distinction in
Science and in the judiciary have held this faith; as Lord Kelvin, and Lord
Cairns, one of the ablest minds that have occupied the woolsack. The objection
of Science qua science is obvious. If the world,
says Mr. Charles Singer, which had been created was to come to an end, a conception
of the destruction of the elements themselves must be adopted. The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens
shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat, the earth also
and the works that are therein shall be burned up (2 Pet. 3: 10). So long as that
idea was prominent in mens minds there could be no serious attention paid to
phenomena. The day of the Lord rang the death-knell to science.
THE ALTERNATIVE
The only alternative
possible to a Christian is embodied in a manifesto issued during the general
election by Mr. A. D. Belden, Dr. Herbert Gray, Dr. W. E. Orchard, and Mr. Rhondda Williams:- As Christians, we believe in the regeneration of Society as
well as the regeneration of individuals, and Labour seems to us to be the only
party - [in 1929 / 1930] - which
shares this ideal with us. But Church leaders who are thus pledging the Churches to the wholly
impossible task of the social and political regeneration of the world forget
that the world, with roused expectations, will press for the redemption of the
pledge, and the Church, facing at last an exasperated humanity, will find
herself in a worse plight than when, in her unworldliness, she was merely an
object of contempt. In a symposium of Labour leaders throughout the world, Mr. J. M. Mawser says:- Once the Churchs social creed
is announced, little is done to make it effective. If the workers had the same
faith in the Church that they have in the Bible, there would not be half enough
Churches in the country to hold them. In organized labours efforts to have
humane legislation enacted, may I ask where the Church was?
ANARCHY
It requires great credulity, a faith
far more difficult than Second Advent faith, to suppose that the anarchic
ferment now raging in huge races of the earth, such as the Mongol and the Slav,
will allow - what a milder past never allowed - the permeation of the world by
the teaching of the Nazarene. People in
ever-increasing numbers, says Mr.
J. P. Thompson, national
organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World, refuse
to believe fairy-tales of Gods and devils at war - one sitting on a throne in
heaven, the other on a throne in hell. Most members of the ruling classes
pretend to believe for social and business reasons. They are still savage
enough to try to change mans hope of immortality into an instrument of
plunder, and they will continue to try as long as it pays. You ask what we of
Labour think of you? We are horrified - horrified at the unnecessary poverty
and misery and slavery in the world, horrified at you and your savage Gods -
and we are determined to drive all of you from your thrones.
THE KINGDOM
All other religions have their Golden
Age in the past: God lodges His in the
future. For indeed mans 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.
-------
Lead us, brother, where the light is;
Cast no shadow on the way:
Know we too well where the night is -
Lead us to the open day!
Not to grope, or guess thy mission;
Not to falter in thy speech;
Thing the supra-sensual vision,
Thine the more than mental reach!
We, who face through toil and sorrow,
come with hearts od
sin and care;
We would know about the morrow -
Is there satisfaction there?
Lead us brother, bravely daring
Thou thyself the narrow road;
Thou diurnal trials sharing -
Show us how to trust thy God!
* *
*
15
THE SPIRITS IN PRISON
There
have been some marvellous preachings in a supernatural setting. It must have been
a strange sight when Noah, with warning on his lips and fear in his heart, laid
plank on gopher plank, while the gazing crowd, among whom mingled the Nephilim, laughed and jeered, and no
ripple yet ruffled the ocean. It must have been still stranger to see Elijah,
in the midst of prophets slashed and bleeding in demonic frenzies, making the
great appeal, and the sudden lightning fall. Still more strange, though less
externally dramatic, must have been Paul, clanking chains, as he preached a
full gospel to the Antichrist (Nero) himself, with the Lord invisibly
standing - so awful was the power of darkness beside him in the dock. But far
exceeding all in wonder is the Lord Jesus Himself, descending into the
Underworld and traversing the gulf impassable to all else, as He brings the
glad news of
For the Son of God, becoming
incarnate, descended as heavens missionary to a lower world; and He was no
sooner dead than He descends, again as heavens missionary, to a world still
lower. Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; quickened, for the holy dead are
normally quiescent (1 Sam. 28: 15);
in which also - that is, disembodied - he went - left the cross, and travelled across
the gulf of the worlds - and preached unto the spirits in prison (1 Pet.
3:
19). Now we know where our Lord went at
death. The Son of man shall be three days and three nights IN THE HEART OF THE
EARTH (Matt. 12: 40): He descended, Paul says, into the
lower parts of the earth (Eph.
4:
9); and He himself says in the Psalm:- MY life draweth nigh unto Sheol: thou hast laid me in the LOWEST Pit (Ps. 88: 6). And it is
exactly in the lowest plateau of Hades - known
in the Classics as Tartarus- that the Apostle,
actually
naming the place, locates the
Noahic Angels. God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to TARTARUS
(2 Pet.
2:
4). So also Solomon says:- The Rephaim
are in the depths of Sheol
(Prov. 9: 18).*
* This passage of mystery may
illuminate a passage of still greater mystery. Of Antichrist descending to the underworld (like Christ) after
assassination we read:- Sheol
from beneath [Tartarus] is
moved to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up
the
Rephaim for thee, even all the chief ones [satyrs] of the earth; it hath raised
up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall answer and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as us? art thou become like unto us? (Isa. 14: 9).
Their greeting seems to imply that the
Seventh Emperor is one of themselves - born of the latter-day Nephilim.
Therefore our Lord, possessed of the
keys both of Abaddon and Sheol (Rev.
1:
18),
and so free * among the dead (Ps. 88: 5), with a passport of entrance everywhere
arrives among a group of captive angels. He preached unto the imprisoned
spirits;
that is, spirits put in a prison, not in a park (paradise), after death: for,
as the Apostle says later:- God cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment (2 Pet. 2: 4).** Their imprisonment in dungeons
differentiates this class of spirits from the hosts of wickedness in
the heavenly places (Eph. 6: 12) against whom we wrestle. Even demons on earth, so far from
being in chains, or in the Abyss, emit to Christ the one cry not to send them thither (Luke 8: 31); nor does He: nor was their liberty in any way hampered or curtailed, save, for the
dispossession. Judes words are still more explicit:- And
angels which kept not their principality - the Satanic angels have
never renounced their principality - but left their proper habitation*** -
none of Satans hosts have abandoned their heavenly habitat as powers of the air - he hath kept in everlasting
bonds - so far
from being in chains, it is not till the Second Advent that Satan is manacled (Rev. 20: 3)
- under darkness unto the judgment of the great day (Jude 6). These angels fell through the lust of
the eyes, whereas the earlier angels fell through the pride of life (1 Tim. 3: 6).
* Septuagint, [see Greek word ...]
** The term selected for the darkness, occurring only
here and in verse 17, and in Jude 6 and 13, means the densest,
blackest darkness, and is used in Homer of the nether world (Prof. S. D. F.
Salmond, D.D.). One reading chains of darkness - implies that the blinding
blackness is the chain, a fireless dark: whereas, in the very next verse
(Jude 7),
human Sodomites are suffering fire; nor is
darkness stated of Dives, whose flame enlightens as well as torments. Jude, however, makes it clear that they
are also manacled. It is probable that it is in these isolated dungeons of
Tartarus that Satan himself, later (Rev. 20: 3), is enchained.
*** A descent to
a different sphere of being is intended indicated (Salmond): obscurely indicated in Genesis 6: 2 (Alford).
But the imprisoned spirits to whom our Lord preaches - the
article before spirits implies that the Saviour proclaimed the message to all
of that class (Govett) - are
confined exclusively to Noahs day: spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient when the longsuffering of
God waited in the days of Noah; for God spared
not angels when they sinned, but preserved Noah
(2 Pet. 2: 4). The Apostle Jude locks together the
facts with rivets of steel:- even as Sodom and Gomorrah in like manner with these [angels] gave themselves over to
fornication, having gone after STRANGE
FLESH (Jude 7). So Paul also summarizes (1 Tim. 3: 16) the mystery of godliness in the marvellous drama between Bethlehem and Olivet
thus:- God manifested in the flesh - from Bethlehem to Calvary; justified in
the spirit -
accounted righteous, while disembodied, because the sin-Substitute exhausted
the sin-penalty, yet remained spotless; SEEN OF ANGELS - in Tartarus, where the post-Pentecostal gospel was first
announced by an Evangelist who so enlightened the darkness that they saw Him;* preached
among the nations - starting with the many-tongued evangel of Pentecost; believed on
in the world -
from the cohort of Roman soldiers (Matt. 28: 54) outward; received up in glory - from Olivet.
* It
was no mystery for the Saviour to be seen by the
angel-guards of Sheol, or the shining attendants at the Tomb.
So now the reason of the visit, steeped in mystery, but still
more steeped in grace, discloses itself. For unto this end was the gospel
preached even unto the dead - this, the sole group of the dead to
whom the Gospel has ever been preached, for reasons as peculiar as the occasion
was unique - that they might be judged AS MEN in
the flesh (1 Pet. 4: 6). Only the Dead can preach to the dead; and these who had drawn
on mans doom with his flesh, a merciful Incarnation necessarily brings within
reach of
*
Satans spirit-forces have no gospel preached to them: the demons also believe, and SHUDDER (Jas. 2:
19).
Nor are we left in doubt of the fruits of the glorious embassage.
For
unto this end was the gospel preached even unto the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,
BUT LIVE
ACCORDING TO GOD IN THE SPIRIT (1 Pet. 4: 6). For it was the Gospel that was preached. It cannot be
that the most merciful Saviour would have visited souls irretrievably lost
merely to upbraid them and to enhance their misery (B. C. Caffin). Nor
is the issue left in any doubt. Where the Lord is the Evangelist, and the
Gospel is the message, the purpose at once becomes the issue. As Dean Alford phrases it:- that they might be judged [or be in the state of the
completed sentence on sin, which is death after the flesh] according to [as] man as
regards flesh, but [notwithstanding] might live [pres.; of a state continue] according to God [a life with God, and divine] as regards the spirit.*
* It
is probable that these are the Angels saints will judge (1 Cor.
6:
3).
The gigantic proportions of Nephilim races are given in Deuteronomy 2: 10, 11
and 3:
11. But they appear to have been no less gigantic
in achievement. The roots of the Greek ... have,
however, no reference to great stature, but point to something very different,
the word is merely another form of [see Greek...] earth-born, the Titans, sons of Coelus and
Terra (G. Pember). On the
mystery of their pro-creation we must remember that we know nothing whatever
about Angels except what Scripture tells us, and Scripture tells us this.
It was a golden answer that Mr. Spurgeon gave to a student bringing
Bible difficulties:- Young
man, you must be content to allow God to say some things that you cannot
understand.
Thus the solitary Scripture stronghold, the apparently
impregnable fortress of the Second Chance, is blown up, and its foundation left
razed and desert. Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine - together with countless moderns - regard this as a
post-mortem opportunity of which some of the unholy dead, to whom Christ
preached, availed themselves. It is the tragic mirage of an ocean where there
is no water. The deep major chord of Holy Scripture responds in the note of
eternal doom:- It is appointed unto men once to die, and after
this cometh JUDGMENT (Heb. 9: 27).*
* It is equally manifest that, since the
evangel is to angels only, the whole edifice of Purgatory as built on this
Scripture tumbles into dust. It is amazing that even Calvin imagines that the Lord preached to the saved dead, as well
as the unsaved.
* *
*
16
THE SONS OF GOD IN GENESIS SIX + 1
Who were
these sons of God? Commentators in general reply, the children of the race of
Seth, who were eminently holy. And who were the daughters of men? They answer again, the apostate race
of Cain. But who told them the race of Cain was apostate, and the race of Seth holy? It is mere hypothesis, to get
rid of a difficulty. Have we ground from Scripture for believing that children
of a father must be pious, much more that a whole race should be so? Or have we any warrant from the sacred
oracles for believing that the children of an ungodly parent must needs be all
wicked, much more an entire race?
Again, how is it discovered, that the race of Cain and that of
Seth kept themselves entirely distinct? A hypothetic basis again! And why were
the children of Seth called the sons of God? Commentators return for answer, that
it is the general term for professors of the true religion; and that it is used
in opposition to those who are men of a fallen and depraved nature. But was not
Seth also of a corrupt and fallen nature? The Scripture affirms it directly of
him. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son, in
his own likeness, after his own image;
and called his name Seth (Gen. 5: 3). How, then, is it said to be here used
as a term of contradistinction, if both the sons of God and sons of men were partakers alike
of the fallen and corrupt nature? Was not Seth a son of man or of Adam, as well
as Cain? But the term sons of God signifies the professors of a true faith in opposition to
those who do not. This requires proof. Shall we say that at so early an age,
ere yet even the promise to Abraham was granted, and his seed were taken into
covenant with God, the glorious title of sons of God was bestowed on the professors of true religion? This is the last
term of blessedness that the Gospel has bestowed on the Christian. Behold,
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us,
that we should be called the sons of God! are the words of
But further, how does the assumption, that sons of God signifies the whole race of Seth,
agree with the declaration of the Most High? He assures us positively that Noah
was the only holy man. Where, then, is
the holy race? Where the sons of God?
Again, how can it be said that the term sons of God is used in opposition to the phrase daughters of
men, for the sake
of contradistinction, when the Lord declares, that there was positively no
difference at all? The children of Cain, you say, were born with an evil
nature. True; so were the sons of Seth. But the sons of Cain were positively
wicked, violent, ungodly, reprobate. So were all the sons of Seth, except Noah
alone, as God himself bears witness.
Again, how self-contradictory, as well as gratuitous, the
hypothesis! It represents the race of Seth as so pre-eminently holy, as to be
worthy to be called sons of God, and the daughters of the race of Cain to be so eminently
wicked, as justly to be called daughters of men, because of their extreme opposition
of character; and yet that these supremely holy men, all,
without exception, drew near the vortex of their, notoriously ungodly
beauty, were all capable of being charmed by it, and all perished thereby! Must
we suppose also, that they all married in one month or one year? If not, would
not the unmarried son of God pause when he saw the fatal effect of their fatal smiles on
his once holy brethren, and not pause alone, but turn away with terror and
disgust?
Or must we suppose that there were no females of the family of
Seth? So far from it, that we read of the
daughters of Seth, while it is hypothesis to
assert that Cain had any daughters at all, for it is not mentioned that he had
any ! The supposition before us, pushed truly to its fair conclusions, is that
Cains family were only daughters! For we read only of the sons of God, and only of the daughters of
men; and if the
one term be coextensive with the race of Seth, the other must be also
coextensive with that of Cain!
Or, granting for probabilitys sake, that Cain and his is a
posterity had both sons and daughters; then all that is affirmed respecting the
two races on this hypothesis is, that all the men of Seths race were good, and all the women of Cains race
evil. Whoever will assert, then, that the men of Cains race were evil, does it without any shadow of proof even on his own assumption. It
is only the females of Cains race who were so notoriously wicked as to receive a
contradistinguishing name. And he who affirms that the men of Cains family were also equally
wicked, has not even his own assumed principle to support him!
But in proof of the position that the men of Seths were holy,
is it not said immediately after the birth of Enos, Seths son, that then began
men to call upon the name the Lord? True; but until it can be shown that
the word men in this place excludes those of the
family of Cain, whom alone, it
is supposed to include a little farther on,
argument is not worth anything.
Further, is it probable that a whole race were holy in those
days, with but one faint promise to support and cheer them; while in these
times of meridian light, the sons of God are scattered and few? Shall we think that the stream
of the faithful was wider at its commencement than at its close? Analogy,
again, forbids the untenable hypothesis. Or shall we hold the idea, that none
were to be holy on the part of Cains race, while all of the family of Seth were
to be saved? This were contrary to the ordinary tenor of the election of
grace, and would
have given currency to the notion, that Seth was not born in Adams image, nor
his children partakers of the fall; while to be born of Cains posterity, would
be to be evidently given up to reprobation and despair; and men would have
begun to believe that the good works of their father Seth had won them eternal
life. But be it observed, all this is ex abundanti. It has been shown before, on the
authority of God, that this race of sons of God of the family of Seth is a visionary
creation of the commentators brains; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
To Noah alone, said God, Thee have I
seen righteous before me in this generation (chap.
7: 1), while it was granted to him to save his wife, his sons, and
their wives, because of his righteousness, as unto Paul were granted those who
sailed with him.
If we once fearlessly apply the conclusion that the phrase sons of God signifies angels, how do all
inconsistencies vanish! A chaos of contradictory suppositions is reduced to
clearness and order, and a clue supplied to unravel some of the most difficult
passages of Holy Writ.
ROBERT GOVETT
-------
SEVEN SPIRITS MORE WICKED
(From The
We had for quite a time realized that we were wrestling with
unseen Powers of Darkness which were very real and very unnerving to us, and one
night the whole thing culminated in such a terrible consciousness of the Powers
of Darkness trying to overcome us, that we were held speechless and powerless
in our bedroom. There was a light lit at the time but it seemed to make little
difference and we could not at first shout to Mr. Malcolm; after a time we
managed to do so and he came to us and said he thought we were just tired and
overwrought: he cheered us and left us. Within two minutes we were shouting for
him again, and he was also attacked before he could reach us and felt himself
chased through the house. Needless to say we spent the night together and
fought in prayer practically the whole time. However we were determined not to
be driven out so easily and tried to remain another night. All through dinner
we had a terrible fight each within ourselves and as soon as I started evening
prayers we were literally driven out of the place and took refuge in another
house.
In case some may feel that our experience was to a great
extent nerves, I would add that since coming out this time one of our workers
whom I took to Seistan had the same sort of experience as we had in a lesser
degree, though quite unconscious of what we had been through. The hosts of evil
are especially active here and can be definitely felt around one even by those
who are not what one might call psychic. One only mentions these things in full
for prayer partners.
- H. R. WARD.
* *
*
17
THE NEPHILIM + 1
By D.
M. PANTON, B.A.
There
are certain great outstanding mysteries in the Word of God which we hesitate to
handle: absorbingly interested ourselves, and finding in them buttresses to our
own faith, we yet fear to shock, or stumble, or divide, or provoke profitless
discussion. Nevertheless in the long run we shall find it a mistake to attempt
to be wiser than God. Difficulties are deliberately planted in Scripture as
tests of faith, and our characters reveal themselves in their reaction to the
Divine revelations; nor can we save others from their reactions. The
foolishness of God is wiser than man. Moreover, a supreme reason for grappling
with these tremendous mysteries is that, where the truth is suppressed, error
fastens luxuriously on the boycotted passage, in which it entrenches itself as
in an unassaulted stronghold; and so in the mystery
of the Noachic Spirits to whom Christ preached (disembodied) the Roman doctrine
of Purgatory, as also the doctrine of a Second Chance, lodge themselves (as
they imagine) on solid Scripture foundations. The whole Word of God is needed
for the whole elucidation of God.
THE SONS OF GOD
That the sons of God in Genesis 6 are angels was all but the exclusive
belief both of the Synagogue and of the Apostolic Church; nearly all the
pre-Pentecostal Rabbis, and practically the whole of the Church of the first
three centuries, so understood the Scripture.* The Septuagint, the Bible in
our Lords hands which was read every Sabbath in His hearing, actually has,
instead of sons of God, angels of God.** Now
it is so acutely difficult as to be impossible to conceive how, in the ages of
inspiration - the epoch - of Israels Prophets, and the later age of the Churchs
miraculous gifts - an error so gigantic - if an error - could pass uncorrected
and uncontradicted by the Holy Ghost; nor there a single instance (so far as we
know) of a doctrine or exposition held in common by the Synagogue and the
Church (in their inspired ages) which is not the truth of God. If carefully
thought out, this consideration is extraordinarily impressive, and most
difficult to refute.
*
The modern Jewish interpretation appears for the first time in the Targurn of
Onkelos in the first Christian century; and the Sethite view appeared first in
the Church in Julius Africanus in the third century. Among modern theologians
who hold the view of the
** Augustine admits
that even in his day the majority of copies read angels
of God.
ANGELIC SONS
Now we look a little closer. The phrase used ha Bene Elohim - occurs four times only in the Old Testament,
every time it is used of angels; and it is set, in this in studied contrast to
the human - When MEN began to
multiply on the face of the ground, the sons
of God saw the daughters of MEN (Gen. 6: 1). There were at that time no human sons
of God, in the spiritual sense, for ALL FLESH had corrupted its
way upon the earth (Gen. 6: 12); and even Noah, who alone is declared righteous by God, is
never called a son of God.
Of all the Patriarchs Adam (already dead) and Adam only, is, in the New
Testament genealogy of the race (Luke 3: 38), named a son of God - manifestly because, as in the case of every angel,
he came fresh from the Hand of God in creation. The gloss making the sons of
God Sethites and the daughters of men Cainites is a pure invention of the expositor,
a guess not only with no justification whatever in the text, but manifestly in
conflict with the entire context. No one would ever have dreamed the phrase
meant anything but angels had it not been for the extremely startling nature of
the event.
THE NEW TESTAMENT
But an event so enormous, and so closely connected human
corruption, must, if true, find confirmation in Gods later revelations, and
the Apostle Jude - in an epistle significantly a preface to the Apocalypse -
sets on it the imprimatur of God. And angels - no article:
certain angels - which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation - a statement never made of the
Satanic hosts - he hath kept in bonds - the Satanic legions, on the contrary, range heaven and
earth in perfect liberty - even as Sodom and Gomorrah, having in like manner WITH THESE given
themselves over to fornication, and gone after
strange flesh (Jude 6).* Judes revelation is like a flash of
lightning. So abominable in Gods sight, says the Apostle, is the horrible
misuse of sex in all adultery of species that it drew down the lightnings of
* In like manner
with these angels just referred to (Professor S. D. F.
Salmond, D.D.). The manner
was similar, because the angels committed fornication with another race than
themselves (Dean Alford). If we bear in mind that there is
something mysterious about the love and connection of the sexes, and that in
all who are not wholly sunken, the animal aspect of it - which sin isolates -
is pervaded by a more elevated and noble principle; when we further think of
its importance in the history of the world, and of salvation, we may perhaps
regard it as not quite impossible that angels should have desired to share it
(J. H. Kurtz, D.D.).
For a shrewd comment on the verse in Jude see the one excellent and exhaustive work
on the whole subject, The Fallen Angels,
by J. Fleming (Dublin. 1879), pp. 169 -177.
** Womans shorn head to-day, accompanied
as it begins to be by the uncovered head in worship, is a peculiarly sinister
symptom of the age, in the tacit invitation it offers to the unseen world in
direct disobedience to the Holy Ghost. Depicting the destiny of the Rephaim, another name for the obnoxious strain, Proverb 9: 18
casts a tragic light on some at least of the daughters
of men. For the Rephaim, see Dent. 2: 20, 21.
THE NEPHILIM
The products of the monstrous marriage, as definitely stated
by the Holy Ghost, lift the union out of all possible natural explanations. The Nephilim - the giants or fallen ones - were in the earth in those days - that is, as a signal exception in
human history - and also after that, when the
sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and
they bare children to them - that is, the offspring were the Nephilim, or giants. That
physical frames were produced by the marriage huge, portentous, is proof
positive that the Sons of God were superhumans incarnated; and therefore
immediately after they are named Jehovah says:- My Spirit shall not strive
with man for ever, for that he ALSO is flesh. The
gigantic dimensions are not human: it is not the Adamic image, created
after the Divine type, which shows itself in such colossal corporeal
development (Nagelstach).
THE FLOOD
A very powerful subsidiary proof lies in the close
relationship stated by the Spirit of God between this abhorrent irruption and
the Deluge. No sooner is the fact stated than the doom falls (verses 2-3); and as soon as the Nephilim, the giant
descendants,* are named, so
soon is it stated that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man - the Nephilim are included in the
human: man also is flesh - was great in
the earth. Apart
from general corruption, and the implied refusal of the Word of God through
Noah, the sole fact named in the context of the Flood, the solitary outstanding
provocation of God drawing down the extermination of the world, is a marriage
as abhorrent to heaven as it was portentous to earth.
* The Nephilim were in the earth in those [pre-diluvian]
days, and alao after that (Gen. 6: 4),
in a post-diluvian epoch. And so in Numbers 13: 33 we read:- There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of
Anak, which come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. Their gigantic
proportions are given in Deuteronomy 3: 11, and because of this
obnoxious strain
HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY
Remarkable further confirmation lies in the complete exposure the
facts afford, an elucidation of astonishing completeness, of all heathen
mythology. We stand here, as Delitzsch says, at the fountain of heathen mythology with its legends; but this primitive golden age is divested
of all its apotheosizing glory. Greek
mythology weaved itself around a race half-human, half divine, actually named giants, Titans, heroes,
gods terrible and strong, says Hesiod, the race of heroes called demigods; and it is
exceedingly impressive that the very word Peter uses to describe the present
prison of these fallen angels, Tartarus, is also named in mythology as the
prison of Cronos
and the rebel Titans. The same, says the Scripture, were the mighty men - Gibborim: the fabulous giants of
*
They appear to have introduced astrology, sorcery, armour, and medicine; the Book of Enoch attributes to
them the introduction of a flesh diet, mentioned by Jehovah only after the
Flood (Gen. 9: 3),
beauty culture (the beautifying of the eyebrows,
etc.), and cannibalism. The narrative self hints polygamy. The [end of this] age is heading
for abominations that peculiarly rouse the wrath of the Creator (Lev. 18: 23).
The scientific lectures of Professor Voronoff have
been forbidden in
MODERN RECURRENCE
It is obvious that if the thing is a fact, not only
ought the Scriptures to have recorded it, but it ought now to be made known for
such warning as may be possible in an utterly incredulous age. For our Lords
words are inexpressibly solemn:- AS IT WAS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH, so shall be the Presence - the Lords sojourn in the heavens -
of
the Son of man (Matt. 24: 37). Since the solitary outstanding Noachic event recorded by
inspiration, the sole world-filling fact, is the hybrid race, it is difficult
to avoid the conclusion that the later world-judgment will have an identical
cause. No Spiritualist would find any insuperable difficulty either in the
narrative or in the prophecy, nor needs to be told that Incubi and Succubi have a basis in fact. It was a Corsican tradition
that Madame Mere asserted a like
birth of her son, Napoleon; and the latest life of Mrs. Eddy (E.
F. Dakins Mrs.
Eddy) openly states of
her rival Mrs. Stetson that she produced a child by
immaculate conception, a rumour among Christian Scientists by no means
confined to Mrs. Stetson. Gibbor
is a term which Scripture applies both to Nimrod
(Gen. 10: 8) and to the Antichrist (Hab. 2: 5). Sooner than we know, the world may
awake to find itself in pre-Diluvian horrors, and among pseudo-Christs, demi-gods, working miracles so great (Matt. 24: 24) as to imperil
even the faith of the elect.*
*
Our Lords statement (Matt. 22: 30) no more makes it impossible for angels to marry than impossible for
the risen: all He says is that in heaven marriage is as unpractised among the
risen as among the angels. The capability of neither is touched upon. The denial of the possibility assumes
a knowledge that we do not possess. There are bodies
CELESTIAL as well bodies terrestrial (1 Cor.
15:
40).
Credible or incredible to mans wisdom - whether
congenial or foreign to his conceptions of things in which a pretence to
knowledge is mere folly - whether apparently possible or impossible - the fact
is stated in the Bible, and that so plainly that the wisest commentators have
been reduced to childish absurdities in attempting to evade it (S.
R. Maitland, D.D.).
-------
I DO ALWAYS THE THINGS WHICH PLEASE HIM
In the Saviour there was the perfect
intelligence of the Fathers will, a perfect sympathy therewith, and a perfect
obedience to it. Now this could not be said of any mere fallen man. It was not
true of the greatest and best of Gods servants. ...
We are told of Hezekiah that God was in general well pleased with him, but once He left him to show him the
evil that was in his heart (2 Chron. 32: 31).
This perfect obedience of our Lord,
and perfect conformity to the Fathers will, arose out of oneness of nature
with His Father. This was the source of the constant difference, the
never-failing superiority of the Redeemer of men over all others. All mere men,
all fallen men have discovered, under the pressure of circumstances, their
fallen nature. Jesus was the exception. Why? Angels have fallen
through disobedience. All created natures certainly
fell when left to themselves. But here is One who always
pleased the Father.
This is written to instruct us
concerning the true motive and guide of life. Mans constant tendency is to
make himself independent of God, and to use all he has to please, and to glorify
himself. But the true principle and compass of life is to seek to please God
This goes beyond an obedience to the exterior of Gods commands. What will please God? is the loftiest of principles
(1 Thess.
2:
4;
4:
1).
It is true of us as of the Lord, that
God does not leave those whom He has called. Men may leave us, and that in
consequence of our saying and doing the
very things which please God.
- ROBERT GOVETT
* *
*
18
THE SONS OF GOD IN THE
OLD TESTAMENT+ 2
By Lieut. Col. G.
F. POYNDER
In the
Old Testament Sons of God are only referred to in the Book of Genesis (6:
2), and in the Book of Job the reference to the Sons of the living God in Hosea 1: 10, is evidently to
First note the distinction between Sons of God - males - and daughters of men - females - with result of union, Giants;
or rather, as it ought to be, Nephilim,* i.e., fallen ones, yet Men of renown; these were in the earth
in those days and also after that (see Num. 13: 33). Sequel, the wickedness of man was great in the earth; and this brought about the destruction of created men, animals, birds,
and creeping things, by means of the flood; but Noah, and those with him in the
ark, were preserved through it.
* From Naphal
to fall.
Turning to the Book of Job (chaps. 1: 6 and 2: 1), there can be no doubt that the Sons of God referred to are Angelic beings; like
those referred to in Psalm 103: 20, as Angels that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto
the Voice of His Word.
Again in Job 38: 7 we read the morning stars sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy, when the foundations of the earth, and the
corner-stone thereof were laid.
And lastly; the same expression is found in the Book of Daniel,* but in the singular number, and with
the necessary difference that bar
is the word used for son, instead of ben, the singular of the latter being
unknown in the Chaldee. Nebuchadnezzar exclaims that he sees four men walking
in the midst of the fire, and that the form of the fourth is like a son of God, by which he evidently means a
supernatural or angelic being, distinct as such from the others. ** Evidently then the term Sons of God and Son of God in Job and Daniel refer to Angelic beings, and there is no valid reason for
supposing that the words in Genesis refers to some different order of
beings, but are angelic beings who fell from high estate. It has been urged
however that in Matthew 22: 30, we are told by our Lord that Angels of God in
heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage; i.e. of course, in their normal state; but Jude, doubtless referring to these
angelic beings, tells us they kept not their principality, but left their own habitation; and, being on the earth, attracted by the daughters of men, they intermarried with them, and in consequence are reserved in
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day (ver.
6). Peter also tells us of angels that
sinned, and
connects the statement by the word and with the destruction of the old world, and salvation of Noah through the
flood *** proving most assuredly that the Sons of
God were not the Church of the
Old Testament, but were angelic beings. And surely the lesson we need to
learn is that it is a great sin in Gods sight to be unequally
yoked together with inbelievers; to permit the gendering of cattle
with a diverse kind; the sowing of a field with mingled seed; or the wearing of
a garment mingled of linen and wool: taking to heart also the solemn words
addressed to the Church of the Laodiceans.+ Rather may we
strive to he whole-heartedly on our Lords side, and like Him go about doing
good.
* Daniel 3: 25. ** Earths Earliest Ages, p. 206, by G. H. Pember. *** 2 Peter 2: 4. + Revelation 3: 15, 16.
-------
THE SCHOOLS
The revolt of modern youth, which so alarms the Orthodox,
makes easier the formation of a antireligious groups in high schools and
colleges. With the elimination of religious instruction and the introduction of
the teaching of modern science, particularly Evolution, one may with truth say
that the Schools in their cources fight for Atheism.
- Report of the American Association the
Advancement of Atheism.
-------
OUR LORDS WORDS
Whichever alternative be chosen, how
shall such believers (for Dr. Winnington-Ingram
professes faith in Christ) confront God? and do our readers not see that one
truth for which this magazine - [i.e, D. M. Pantons Dawn] - stands - namely, that the Lord will judge His people (Heb.
10:
30) - is as certain and inevitable as is
utterly solemn? Our Lords words have always roused the fierce wrath of the wicked;
but they have turned more millions into heaven than can be counted. It is one
of the most pitiful tragedies in the
modern world, and probably the fact most closely related to falling
conversions, that, as the dread
reality dawns nearer every year, so every year its very existence is more
openly derided by the representatives (all but a few) of God on earth. So
- MELVILLE GROVE KYLE, D.D.
* *
*
19
THE NEPHILIM AND THE FLOOD + 2
By JOHN FLEMING,
B.A.
No one
who reads the first twelve or thirteen verses Genesis 6. can avoid coming to the conclusion
that Moses* designed to
represent the age immediately preceding Deluge as surpassing in point of moral corruption,
social wrong, and outrageous crimes any that had gone before it and also, that,
between this unprecedented evil and the alliances of the Sons of God with
daughters of men, recorded in verse 2, a close connection subsisted -
indeed, that the former was, in a great degree, the consequence of the latter.
All interpreters recognize this connection, and are agreed that the necessity
for a judgment such as that of the Deluge arose out of these alliances.
[* NOTE: It is
believed by Christians, that Moses -
rather than Enoch - are chosen by
God to accompany Elijah during the
Great Tribulation. (Rev. 11: 3, 4.)]
Allusions to the spirit-world, or its
events, are made sparingly in the Bible, and only when the occasion
imperatively demands it. Such an occasion presented itself in connection with
the history of the Deluge, the Holy Spirit designing to show the causes which
led to the infliction of that tremendous judgment, and thus to vindicate the
ways of God. If the angelic intercourse and its result, the production of a new
race, together with. the violence and corruption with which the world was
filled by their means, constituted the chief and special causes which rendered
such a visitation indispensable - then it was not only within the scope of the
sacred narrative, but on many grounds expedient that these causes should be
revealed; and if Moses has not expressly told us that the Bne-ha-Elohim
were angels, it is only because the meaning of the term was, when he wrote,
established and well known.
We look upon it, indeed, as an argument of no small weight, in
favour of the angel-interpretation, that on such a ground does there appear a
necessity for the almost total destruction of the human race. If the great men
of the time‑the rulers, judges, chiefs - chose to form alliances with
women of inferior rank - if the elder descendants of Adam formed unions with
the women of a later generation - or if Sethite men, conspicuous for piety,
united themselves with godless Cainite women - these unions might be incongruous
and productive of unhappiness enough to the parties themselves: but they could
not be the means of producing the great and general corruption of manners and
forgetfulness of God which characterized the age preceding the Deluge, nor do
they afford any sufficient explanation of the cause which drew down upon the
world a judgment so terrific. But if the Sons of God were not men, but angels, who about
the period indicated left their proper habitation, and came to earth for the purpose of
gratifying unlawful and unnatural desires, we have, in this, a cause at once
adequate and likely to produce the unparalleled evil, which led to the ruin of
the old world.
Were not fallen spirits, dwelling amongst mankind, and
intimately associated with them, very capable of producing the gross and widely
spread depravity of conduct and morals which prevailed in those times? And was
not this depravity a natural result of the abode on earth, not only of these
fallen but powerful beings, but also of another mighty and lawless race, who
owed their origin to them? When we reflect on the evil which fallen spirits
have wrought in this world of the untold miseries which one successful act of
an evil angel has caused to our race - of the power exercised by such spirits,
and the ills which they inflicted on individuals, at the time of the sojourn on
earth of Him who will eventually bruise the serpents head - we discern in the
character and degree of the evil prevalent in the antediluvian age the
strongest reason for believing that fallen angels, and their offspring, were
the prime cause and authors of it.
It would have been, as we have already described it, a race of
monstrous beings, outside the limits of creation prescribed by the Creator: and,
therefore, to put a period to the existence of such a race, and to preserve, in
its purity, that which had been originally created in Adam, the greater portion
of which had probably become contaminated by means of connection with the
mongrel brood, no way, perhaps, remained except the extermination of the whole
race then in the world, one family only being preserved in the ark.
An improvement was naturally to be looked
for after the terrible
visitation of the Flood: and, accordingly, an improvement appears in the fact,
that those who had not alone disturbed the limits of creation, but who also had
been instrumental in producing a state of lawless behaviour and moral depravity
to which no other age presents a parallel, were now no longer in the world. The Nephilim
were in the earth in the antediluvian period, and also the fallen Sons of God - and only in that period - and the
condition of the world, socially and morally, was in consequence, as we infer
from the language of the historian, worse then than in the times succeeding the
Deluge. No such unnatural angel-tragedy has since been enacted in this world,
and, probably, never again will be: and this fact, evident to the Divine foreknowledge,
was the ground and reason of the Divine resolve that the judgment of the Flood
should never be repeated.*
* But a worse judgment, by fire, may have, among its causes, an
identical transgression. Evil angels can deliberately repeat that into which
good angels, under temptation, once fell; and it is probable that Nietzsches nightmare philosophy of the superman
is a demonic preparation for the fact. - Ed. [D. M. Panton.]
I do not comprehend, Kurtz writes, how
the espousal of some pious Sethites with fair women for the sake of their
beauty, could have caused a disturbance in the development of human history, so
terrible and so irreparable that the evil could be remedied in no way but by
the extirpation of the human race. Espousals of that kind have often, and to a
large extent, taken place; and if, on every such occasion, a deluge must have
followed, the world would have numbered as many deluges as years. That the fair
daughters of men, spoken of in Genesis 6., were also
godless is only assumed: but, admitting that they were, however blameworthy we
may believe such marriages to be, that they should, of necessity, draw after
them the judgment of the Deluge is inconceivable.
The real cause of that judgment he explains in a way which to
us at least, appears to be completely satisfactory. We
may easily conceive that the commingling of two classes of creatures, so widely
separated from each other, and so different in their nature and destination, as
are angels and human beings, must be an act by which the limits of creation,
ordained by God, would be displaced - a displacement which must, of course, be
the more hurtful in its consequences, the higher and more important, in the
scale of being, the transgressors on either side. We will see that if such
coming were universal - that is, if the unnatural influence had then pervaded
the entire human race - the Divine plan would thereby be thrown into disorder,
and, in fact, destroyed: and that, in such case, no resource would remain, but
either to allow things to take their course, to the absolute and irretrievable
ruin of the parties, or else, in order to save the earth and the germ of the
race for a new development of human history, to exterminate the whole infected
generation, with the exception of eight souls. The evil to be met, in the striking remark of Hofniann, was not an excess of
ordinary sinning - not simply a depraved condition of things within the established limits of creation -
but it was, that humanity was no longer propagated from itself, as God had
ordained, and that the power of the beings who were brought into existence in a
preternatural way, surpassed the limits allowed to human kind: hence, the
essential conditions of the existence of mankind as a distinct race being thus
unsettled and endangered, there was no way open for the counteraction of the
evil, but that of terminating abruptly the history, in the course of which the
race was being divested of its humanity.
In the practice of Angel Worship, which had been making
progress in the Church from, at least, the second century, we can discern a
cause amply sufficient to account for the substitution of a new interpretation.
The development of angel-worship, says Dr. Kurtz, progressing
imperceptibly, but, for that reason, all the more irresistibly, could not
continue without exerting a transforming influence on the historic-dogmatic
opinions respecting angels. It could not continue without gradually, but
surely, removing everything that might tend to shake the confidence in the
holiness of angels, or mar the gratification which their worship afforded: all
those angels (it was therefore assumed, in opposition to the views of the
earlier Fathers), who had not suffered themselves to be involved in Satans sin,
had become confirmed in their state of holiness, so that apostasy from it
became, from that time, impossible.
-------
DEVOTIONAL
There are
voices in the darkness - calling, calling,
While Old
Year guards her dead:
Longing calls
for loves lost treasure;
Jests, and
clamant cries for pleasure;
But glad
hearts, that love their Friend
Are singing, Yea
! He cometh, as He said,
And we may greet the
joy-year without end
Ere this New Year hath fled.
Shall we
see another springtime, New Year, New Year,
With
earths fair blossoms sown?
Grain
up-sprung for autumns reaping,
Fountains
waked from winters sleeping;
All the
wealth of woodland bowers?
Or have enterd fairer lands unknown,
Where they gather ever-fragrant
flowers
To lay before the Throne?
Will there be a harvest gatherd, New Year, New Year?
Ere we behold Gods Face ?
Ripend grain for winters needing
And the coming years fresh seeding -
Shall we see the crimsoning leaves?
Or with saints of every nation, every
race,
Be gatherd
as the first-ripe harvest sheaves
In the Kingdom of His grace?
- MARIAN H. ROWE
A NEW YEAR
One night in my church, just as we
were turning out the lights we discovered a bundle of rags, and in them was, I
think, the worst looking man I ever saw; he was fast asleep in one of the
seats. Two of the young men held him up while he prayed; and ever since that
night, that man has been one of the most earnest, consecrated men in Christian
work that I ever knew.
- A. J. GORDON, D.D.
* *
*
20
YOUTH BEFORE THE ADVENT + 1
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
The reign
of Solomon, prince of peace - magnificent, warless - is a divine forecast of
Messiahs glorious Reign: David, hunted, battling for the Throne, but laying up
enormous hidden wealth for the Temple and the Palace, is the Gospel era: the
intermediate generation between the two, appearing at the close of Davids
epoch, is Absalom, the youthful generation on the threshold of Advent. This
striking type explains the curious prominence of Absalom as the embodiment and
photograph of an - [evil and apostate] - age. For before Absalom there opened a golden vision
of limitless possibilities. The son of a praying father, and brought up in a
godly home, he possessed all the culture of his day, combined with great
natural beauty, a rare gift of winning others to himself, and the immediate
succession to the most glorious Kingdom and Temple earth has ever seen. It is
the generation inheriting the Christian ages and standing on the threshold of
the Advent. Yet the golden vision proved a gigantic mirage. Absalom - meaning the father
or predecessor of peace
- pre-deceased the peace he never saw; he sought a throne, and found a grave;
and the peculiar manner of his death affixed on him the direct Curse of God.
GIFTED YOUTH
An emphasis is laid on the physical perfection of Absalom
unique in the Bible. In all
* Thus a recent writers praise of the
youth of to-day need not conflict with prophecy. He says:- I like them for their frankness and humour, their loyal comradeship,
their passionate sincerity, their driving energy, and their freshness of
outlook. They have no evasions or repressions, they do not dodge difficulties;
and are for the most part fearless, honest and adventurous. They are gloriously
free from snobbishness. It is curious that the two girls chosen this
year for supreme beauty - Miss Universe (Miss Goldarbeiter)
and Miss Europe (Miss Simon) - are both Jewesses, that is, actually of Absaloms
blood.
UNREGENERATE YOUTH
Now in the roots of Absaloms life will be found all the
tragedy of modern youth. Absalom had a David for a father, but a heathen
princess for his mother; and under the fatal shadow of this spiritual disunion
in the home we search the sacred record in vain for his conversion; and without
conversion in every one of us is a slumbering volcano of hell. The only time
Absalom is ever recorded (2 Sam. 15: 7) as seeking Jehovah it was as a cloak for seizing his
fathers throne. Eighty per cent. of the scholars in our Sunday Schools leave
them unconverted. A year ago a youth named Hickman, on the gallows for the foul
murder of a girl, revealed the enormity that modern education can produce.
Before execution he made this confession:- During
high school I took interest in evolution and atheism and denied the Christian
faith. Therefore I became susceptible to worse errors and finally took up crime
and murder. I dont want any young man to study my crime, for all can see where
it has led to. My mind was so warped by over-education that I became a fiend
incarnate, living without consideration of mercy toward mankind. I decided to
kill a human being as a supreme experiment, to test my limitations. I even
planned to lead the career of a super-criminal, masking my activities under the
guise of a Christian minister. If I had not been caught when I was, I
undoubtedly would have committed even greater atrocities than the murder of
Marion Parker.
CHIVALRY
Now Absaloms first recorded act, the germ and embryo of his career,
and the kernel of modern youth, is both youths point of approach and its point
of departure. Stung by the intolerable wrong done by his brother Amnon to his
sister Tamar, and by the callous lethargy of the King, who ought to have been
not alone the fountain of honour but the executor of justice, Absalom murders
Amnon. The chivalry is altogether lovable: the lawlessness - for what in David
would have been an execution (Lev. 20: 17) is in Absalom a murder - is deadly.
To redress lawlessness by lawlessness is only to breed lawlessness. Modern
youth thinks itself emancipated from convention when what it emancipates itself
from is the moral law. Last year the Senior Class oration in the Commemoration
at Harvard expressed youths revolt:- A new and different
generation represents a fundamental change since the War. It has freed itself
from old dogma, or, better still, the old cant; even from cant, with the
apostrophe. It essentially accepts no faith (in the old meaning of the word)
and has little, save in the inevitability of progress, and is in no danger of
using outworn creeds and methods to cure the evils it has inherited
(Literary Digest, July 14th,
1928).* It is very solemn that the whole hope
of the world lies in - Absalom.
* The lawlessness of youth, of all
symptoms the most ominous, and inevitable when the restraints of religious
faith are cast off, is far more characteristic of our day than any of us has
yet realized. American figures - the only ones available - show that more than
8o per cent. of all crimes, from murder down to petty misdemeanours, are
committed by persons less than 22 years old; that the average age of burglars
has decreased in ten years from 29 to only 21 years; that 51 per cent. of
automobile thefts are committed by persons under 18; and that 42 per cent. of
the unmarried mothers are schoolgirls averaging 16 years of age. Absaloms
public and shameless immorality (2 Sam. 16: 22), lawless even in a lawless age, forecasts
the sharp moral decadence of an age to close as
REBELLION
In Absalom there opens a deep and
deadly breach between the generation closing and the generation rising. His
character, from the moment that he takes the wrong turn, develops with amazing
rapidity. A fast youth - Absalom prepared
him a chariot and horses, and fifty men to run before him (2 Sam.
15:
1) - he plots his fathers overthrow,
and his dream of world-power in his own hands is the epitome of youths mirage
to-day. Oh, that I were made judge in
the land, that any man which hath any suit or
cause might come unto me, and I would do him
justice (2 Sam. 15: 4) - the undying dream of the lawless that they are ideal
administers of law. Lawlessness logically culminates in apostasy. Absalom knew
perfectly that he struck at the Lords Anointed when the counsel to murder
David pleased Absalom well. The Christ must be dethroned before coronation of the
Antichrist. In
DOOM
Very moving, unutterably solemn, truly awful is the going down
of the sun. The climax is altogether of God. Splendidly built, magnificently
moulded, hangs a twisting convulsive figure, with head jammed, and javelins
sticking through the heart, his magnificent hair the rope of his own scaffold,
on a gallows man never made. By what lawyers call an act
of God, that is, a providence that has behind it Deity, the generation
is executed, in type - for cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree
(Gal. 3: 13); and divinely gifted youth, proxime accessit
to the Kingdom, its very beauty its halter, summoned (as youth is) for war -
like the ten million dead on the plains of Europe - goes down at Armageddon in
a slaughter man never made.*
* Russia
has nearly 5,000,000 men trained as soldiers under thirty, part it may be of the hordes to
descend on the Holy Land (Ezek. 38); Indias 50,000 university graduates are almost solid for revolt, says the Secretary of the Indian
Council of Y.M.C.A.s; and Chinas youth is seething
to pour across the Euphrates one day behind the Yellow Kings (Rev.
16:
12).
Exquisitely does the type present our duty in the modern age.
And David went
up the ascent of the
* Of
Bathshebas child, dying in infancy and so covered by Calvary, David says:- I will go to him (2 Sam. 12: 23); but in spite of his frantic
grief he says no such word of Absalom, a lost soul on the other side of the golf.*
[* See Luke 16: 23-26, R.V.]
-------
In Him we dwell, Beloved,
Then let us rest:
By changes all unmoved,
In Him so blest.
Nor Heavens throne-near host
Can nearer be
Than we, who from the lost
Are saved, are free.
In Him we dwell, not aught
Can blot this truth:
We, who have been Blood-bought,
Are His Blood-worth.
So precious in His sight,
And loved, and known;
Come day or cometh night,
We are His own.
- GILBERT INGRAM.
*
* *
21
ANTICHRISTS EMPIRE UNIVERSAL
By G.
H. LANG
What power or union of powers can be supposed as strong enough
to refuse to recognize Antichrists overlordship? But it appears that the element
of compulsion will not be required at the climax of his career, for we read
that the whole earth wondered after the beast, and they worshipped the dragon because he gave his authority
unto the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, who is like unto the
beast? and who is able to war with him? (Rev. 13:
3, 4).
It is declared of the Beast that the Dragon gave him his power and his throne, and great authority (Rev. 13: 2), and therefore if Satans power is universal
so will be that of the Beast. Can we, conceive of Satan being contented with a
portion only of the earth, especially when he shall just have been ousted of
his nobler heavenly sphere? Did he not
show to our Lord all the
kingdoms of the world ([Greek
...]), the inhabited earth), and
say:- To Thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them; for it
hath been delivered unto me: and to whomsoever I
will give it? (Luke 4: 6). Is it not written concerning Satan that the whole
world lieth in the evil one?
(1 John 5: 19), and is not this a strictly universal
fact? It is the same expression as in chap. 2: 2 ; He [Christ Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,
but also for the whole world. Three times Christ termed Satan the prince of the world, not of the Roman world or the prophetic earth.
A the fourth Beast it is declared that it shall
devour the earth (Dan. 7: 23). There seems no reason why this should not be strictly
fulfilled in due time. It is urged that the corresponding term in the New
Testament (the inhabited earth),
does not always imply universality, but that fact cannot affect the force of an
expression as used in Hebrew and Chaldee six hundred years before Christ,
before Roman and Greek usage had given a sometimes restricted meaning to a
Greek word which properly denotes universality. The force of the term in Dawn must be learned from the Old Testament,
nor have we to go beyond the writings of Daniel
himself to see the sense in which he uses it. In chap. 2: 35, it is said of the stone cut without
hands, that is, Messiahs kingdom, that it became a great mountain and filled
the whole earth. This certainly means universality. The word is thus translated
in the Old Testament some twenty-five times, and seems regularly to imply
universality. Jehovah is the Lord of the whole earth (Psa. 108: 5: Isa. 54: 5; Zech. 4: 14); His glory does or shall fill the
whole earth (Isa. 6: 3; Psa. 72: 19); the waters of the flood covered the
face of the whole earth (Gen. 8: 9); the whole earth was repeopled from the sons of Noah (Gen. 9: 19); before Babel the whole earth spoke
one language (Gen. 11: 1); Jerusalem is to be the joy of the
whole earth (Psa. 48: 2); Gods watchful eyes run to and fro throughout the whole
earth (Zech. 4: 10); His purposes of judgment affect the
whole earth (Isa. 14: 26 28: 22); Jeremiah groaned that as a prophet he had been made a man
of contention to the whole earth (Jer. 15: 10), which was because he had been
charged (25: 15-33) with messages of doom (ver. 26) to all the kingdoms of the world (the usual word for earth, as in the expression the whole
earth), which are upon the face of
the earth (ground, as in Gen.
2: 5).
In view of this uniform sense we see no reason for limiting
the force of the word when applied to the fourth Beast, or when used of the
Babylon which is to be, when it, as the capital of Antichrist, is spoken of as the hammer of
the whole earth (Jer. 1: 23), the period being that when God shall
pardon and deliver the Remnant of Israel (vers. 19, 20). And so of the third kingdom the
first will be fulfilled in that it shall bear rule over all the earth
(Dan.
2: 39), which will be fulfilled in that the last
emperor, Antichrist, will arise out of one of the four regions into which
Alexanders empire was divided at his death (Dan. 8: 8-12). So again, when the super-human king
of
These universal terms dating from five to seven centuries
cannot be restricted by a political usage of a word in another language by
other peoples in a later age. The Greek word [...] means properly the whole habitable earth, and therefore expresses universality
(Luke 4: 5;
The secondary and restricted sense of
any word ought not to be introduced where the primary and usual meaning creates
no difficulty, and especially not where [the Greek word ...] is joined to words, or is used as the equivalent of
terms, which have unlimited force, as in Matthew 24: 14; this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the
whole world, for a testimony unto all
the nations. Here the expression all the nations, is obviously without limit, and does
not mean some of the nations, that is, those
in the area of the Roman earth of Christs day. It is a future day that is in
question, the times of the end: then shall the end come; and very certainly the gospel is
intended for all mankind, and the people for Gods name (Acts 15: 14)
are to be gathered out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation
(Rev. 5: 9).
In Rev. 12: 9, we read that, the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is
called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the
whole inhabited earth. This reference to Satan as the ancient serpent plainly refers back to
Nor can any sound plea be urged for limiting its force in Rev.
3:
10:
Because thou didst keep the word of my patience,
I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole inhabited earth, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
The expression to be kept from, out of, a trial by no means allows
of the sense to be enabled to endure a trial, but evidently means not
to be called upon to meet it.* Then also, we have
already seen from a wealth of passages that the Day of the Lord is most
assuredly to affect the whole (earth) world without limit, so that to be kept from
that hour of trial cannot mean to escape from a so-called prophetic
earth into outside regions, for there will be no regions unaffected by
the Day of the Lord. Nor can the hour of trial be the Day of the Lord which is to
follow the Tribulation, for that Day is not one of trial but of judgment. The
terms tempt (or try) and temptation (or trial) do not appear to be applied
thereto, for the sufficient reason that the period of testing and proving man
is then over, and the time for judgment resulting from that previous testing is
then come. Moreover, that is the Day of the Lord, whereas it has
just before been intimated that Satan, not the Lord, is the agent of temptation
(trial): the Devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried (2: 10). Thus the hour of trial will be the Tribulation, and it will
be as universal as is the earth, for the whole inhabited earth is obviously
equal to those dwelling upon the earth, and since a limit cannot rightly be
attached here to the term the earth nor can attach to [the Greek word...] as here used,
* John 17: 15 is quoted to the
contrary: I pray not that thou shouldest take them out
of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them
out of the evil one. Here the the world
is the sphere in which men have their bodily existence and the evil one is the sphere in which they have their
moral existence: the whole world lieth in
the evil one (1 John 5: 19). To be taken out of the world means bodily
removal from the earth, not to be strengthened to endure its bodily
afflictions: to be kept out of the evil one means similarly that the inner, the
true man, moves no more in the evil one as the sphere of moral life, not merely
that the believer is strengthened to endure temptation. His inner man is
translated out of one kingdom into another (Col. 1: 13).
The idea of of location is in all these passages.
That the edict of
persecution will be more strictly enforced at the centre than at the
circumference of the Beasts dominions, may well prove the case, and therefore
it may be that the sheep (Matt. 25: 33-40), who favoured the avowed followers of Christ (My brethren)
during the Tribulation, will come mainly from those northern and eastern
countries whose kings by that time will be disaffected against the Beast. But if this prove so it will further
show that even in their areas the edict of the Beast will have authority, and
that not even there will the godly escape all those things that shall
come to pass (Luke 21: 36).
Finally, the application to the rule of the Beast of terms necessarily
having universal force, requires that the same force be given to all
expressions concerning his rule. The following phrases from only one section of
the Apocalypse (chaps.
12.
& 13.)
should be considered as being a connected series, and therefore to be construed
together.
(1) Chap. 12:
9:
The old serpent ... the
Devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole inhabited earth.
(2) 12: 12:
Woe for the earth and
for the sea: because the Devil is gone down unto
you.
(3) 13: 3: The Dragon gave him (the Beast) his power and his throne, and great authority.
(4)
13: 3: The whole earth
wondered after the Beast.
(5) 13: 7 There was given to him (the Beast) authority over every tribe and people and tongue and
nation.
(6) 13: 8 :
And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him
(the Beast), everyone
whose name hath not been written in the book of life of the Lamb.
(7) 13: 12 :
He (the second beast) maketh the earth and them that dwell thereon to
worship the Beast.
(8) 13: 14:
He deceiveth them that dwell on the earth.
Now Nos. 1 and 2 show that the [the
Greek word ...] and the earth are
co-extensive each with the other and with the influence of Satan, which is the
whole world as we know from 1 John 5: 19.
Earth here is in contrast with the heavens and the sea,
thus meaning all the land surface of the globe. No. 3 shows that the
Beast will rule this same sphere. Since then the term earth
is universal, plainly the whole earth must be
the strengthened term in No. 4, the whole
earth must be universal. The expression in No. 5 every tribe and people and tongue and nation is used
in chap. 5: 9,
of the redeemed heavenly people : in 11: 9,
again of the subjects of the Beast and again in chap. 14: 6, of all who ought to fear
God, give Him glory, and worship Him because He is the Creator. In he first and
last instances this distributive formula cannot be limited to a supposed Roman
or prophetic earth, for the heavenly Church
will not be drawn from such an area only, and that men should worship the
Creator is a duty incumbent upon all mankind.
In No. 6, all that
dwell on the earth are all those whose names are not in the book of
life, and in No. 7 and 8 there seems no reason for taking
earth to mean anything less than it meaning in No. 2, that is, the
whole world.
It is therefore not allowable to take the word [...],when used of the rule of the Beast,
in its limited sense. His sphere will be that of Satan, the whole earth; he will
have authority over every tribe, people, tongue and nation; in his time will
convey its natural, primary, full meaning of all that
dwell on the earth.
Thus world movements are preparing for one world authority:
Satans sphere already is the whole world: the Beast will sit on his throne and
rule for him: that Satan and the Beast will aim at less than universal dominion
cannot be supposed, nor would any scheme but that of one central world
authority promise cessation from world strife, the need and longing of the
race. Thus the numerous and various Biblical terms which describe the Beasts
kingdom combine to describe worldwide rule.
* *
*
22
THE KINGDOM LOST + 2
*
The supposed derivation of Hebrew.
[** NOTE:
It is this inheritance which the Holy
Spirit and the Apostle Paul, warns us, which we, through wilful sin
and disobedience, can lose! ( See Rev. 2: 25-27;
cf.
Psa. 2: 8; Gal. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 5, 6; Heb. 12: 17, 25,
R.V.)]
There are decisive moments in every life, moments when
character, bitten into as by a mordant acid, takes an indelible writing determining
a life-destiny. Such a moment came to the young pilgrim as, fresh from his
wonderful escape from
Now the Scripture, with deep wisdom, makes no comment whatever,
but allows the after-history of
The second consequence for
The third consequence of Lots choice ought to make many a
disciple of Christ pause ere choosing
A fourth consequence of
The final consequence of Lots choice is extraordinarily
dramatic:- lingering and reluctant, he is forced out of the
*
Their successful flight from
** It is exactly these stupendous losses which make the current
evangelical theology burke, where it
does not bitterly oppose, the
fundamental regeneration of such a soul. C. H. Mackintosh, so gentle and gracious a
writer though he is, is a typical example. It seems plain, he says, that
Now the whole setting of
[* See Acts 7: 4b, 5,
R.V: God removed him - {Abraham (verse
2)} - into this land, wherein ye now dwell: 5 and he gave him NON INHERITANCE in it,
no, not so much as to set his foot on: and he promised that he would give
it to him... See Gen 17: 1-8. & Gen.
26:
3-5,
R.V.]
*
Even a benighted soul can see the folly of a worldly choice. Mohammed, viewing rich
-------
SALVATION THROUGH FIRE
A man is only as big as his average deed - not an inch taller,
not an ounce better - when it comes to assigning him his place among his
fellows, or to rewarding him in the presence of the judgment angels, before the
throne of God; but a man is as big as his faith or his intention, thanks to
Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice, when it comes to saving the soul of a
dying thief on the cross, or, for that matter, the soul of you and me. The
reward for deeds done in the body is one thing; Salvation by faith in Jesus
Christ is another thing. There shall be millions of people saved so as by fire.
They wont take anything with them, not a bond, not a brick in a mansion,
nothing. Everything but their little soul shall be consumed, and it so as by
fire, as Lot was out of
- The Sermon Commentary.
-------
SIN
The non- Christian world has no more understanding of sin than
it has of smallpox. One of the hardest things that missionaries have had to do
is to convey a true conception of it. No word in any non-Christian language
expresses the idea of sin in the sense of moral evil, and missionaries have to
do what the disciples of the first century did - take some word or phrase and
fill it with a new meaning. Non-Christian religions have never succeeded in
establishing a causal connection between religion and conduct. Some of them
have theorized about it; but no one of them has effected it. A man may meet all
the requirements of modern Buddhist opinion and yet openly violate the most
elementary laws of right living. It is considered no moral wrong for a Japanese
to visit a brothel, their names registered just as if they were attending an
ordinary public function. I myself have seen Buddhist priests coming out of
brothels in
- A. JUDSON BROWN. D.D.
* *
*
23
MANY CALLED, FEW
By WILLIAM ARNOT
The exposition suggested by Bengel * is simple,
consistent, and clean; and it is, I think, correct. Taking term called as signifying
not all to whom the call of the Gospel is addressed, but those only who are
effectually called - not those who only hear, but those who also obey the call
- taking the term in this sense, which is a sober and Scriptural view, he finds
that this is not a distinction between saved and lost, but between two classes
of the saved.** The called and
the chosen are both true disciples of Christ, and heirs of eternal life, and
yet there is some distinction between them. Chosen must here therefore mean, what
it did sometimes mean in ancient times, and does often mean still, the best of
their kind. We constantly speak of choice or
select articles, meaning the most excellent.
The phrase, whether used proverbially before Christs time or not, is in nature
and structure proverbial. He either found it a proverb and used it, or he made
it a proverb there and then, for such it essentially is. It seems to have been
employed by the Lord on more than one occasion, and differently applied at
different times. As we might say among a great number of manufactured articles,
all true and genuine few are first-rate so, among a great number of real
disciples, few stand out unselfish, unworldly, and Christ-like, honouring their
Lord, and making the world wonder. Most, even of those who are disciples
indeed, and shall inherit eternal life, are so marred by self-righteous
admixtures, and unsanctified temper, and conformity to the world, that their
light is dim and their witness inarticulate. In the transaction with the young
man from which this parable remotely springs, an analogous expression is
employed to indicate a chosen or choice disciple:- Jesus said
unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell
that thou hast, etc. (19: 21). The term perfect in that text seems to be entirely parallel with chosen. The meaning of both is determined by
the main drift of the parable; and the meaning thus given accords with the
analogy of faith. The contrast, as Olshausen says, refers to the different relationships which believers themselves
hold to the
*[The Greek word ...] seems, in this passage, where (Matt. 20: 16) it first occurs, to denote not all the saved, but the excellent among them. The Revised
Version retains it only in Matthew 22: 14.
** So Archbishop Trench:- Many are called to
work in Gods vineyard, but few retain that temper of spirit, humility, and
submission to God, which will allow them at last to be partakers of His reward.
Another remarkable confirmation of this exposition is found in
the use of the same term - [the same Greek word ...] - in Revelation
2: 14. The word in that passage must have
the same meaning that we have attributed to it in the parable. Two reasons, a supreme
and subordinate, are given to account for the victory of the Lamb - His own
omnipotence, and the trustworthy character of the instruments whom he employs. The Lamb
shall overcome them: for He is Lord of Lords and
King of Kings; and they that are with Him are
called, and chosen, and faithful. If you understand here by [...] chosen by God in the eternal covenant, the logical
arrangement becomes obscure. It would be strange if, in enumerating the
qualifications of soldiers, one should represent first that they were summoned
to the warfare, next that they were chosen for that purpose before, and last
they were staunch in the battle-field. If this had been the meaning of [...] it
must have stood first in order. The fact that it stands second suggests another
explanation. Take it, in the sense which it readily assumes and frequently
bears, and the order of the series becomes at once transparent. The soldiers
were called, and choice, and faithful. They were enlisted in the cause,
excellent in character, and found unflinching when the fight began.*
* The three words seem designed to
tell us that elect ones out of the three preceding dispensations - the
Patriarchal, the Mosaic, the Christian - compose the legions of Christ. Not all
the saved compose the army: it is the election from the elect of all
dispensations (Govett).
So we lift our eyes and see in the heavenlies the most
perfectly equipped battalions the world will ever see. Called - summoned to the
war; chosen - choice in combat; faithful - staunch in battle: called - singled
out by name; chosen - from among others; faithful - by a proved life: called -
God-born; chosen - God-filled; faithful - God-crowned. A soldier is said to be
faithful who lives up to all the engagements of his commission, who remains
true to his commanding officer, and who never sheathes his sword until
demobilized by his colonel. It is lovely to know that men and women who have
fought and wept alone, ostracized and boycotted and killed for the Word of God,
come back in the crowded battalions of the skies, wheeling and advancing in
serried formations as no aeroplane squadron ever wheeled, the immortal cavalry
of heaven. Martyrs beaten in bleeding driblets return as massed conquerors. -
Ed. [D.M.P.]
-------
THE EXACTED EYE
(My right eye, the better of a rather
weak pair, was destroyed by a painful inflammation.)
For threescore years and ten, Gods
gift of sight-
Not perfect, but for use and for
delight,
Of fullest service - unto me was
given,
And through two eyes the golden light
of Heaven
Made glory in the earth as in the sky
-
The two made one creation through the
eye.
The blue ineffable of heavenly birth,
Which, undefiled, oercanopied the
earth,
Brought heaven to earth, raised earth
to heaven again,
Till earth and heaven became one holy
fane.
Of sky and land and sea the varied
lines
And forms artistic, all the vast
designs
Of a Creator infinitely great,
Voiceless proclaimed His Godhead and
His State.
The atmospheres amazing wizardry,
Whereby the hill, the plain, the
field, the tree,
Were in a moment dressed in colours
new -
Fresh harmonies of light and shade and
hue,
Displayed to me Gods thrilling colour
schemes,
Transcending artists brush and poets
dreams.
Yet to be seen in their perfection
high,
Asking the trained and consecrated
eye.
All nature moved the soul with joyful
thrills,
The flashing amber of the pebbly
rills,
The purple glory of the heather hills,
The living verdure of the fields and
trees
The iridescence of the summer seas,
The changing panoramas of the skies,
The sacred crimson of the still
sunrise,
The golden sunsets and the rainbow
cloud -
All, through the eyes, Gods presence
voiced aloud.
But as the colour-sense of eye and
brain
Completes the hues of mountain and of
plain,
So to the consecrated heart alone
Is God in presence personal made
known;
And, as the consecrated eye doth trace
The unseen God within His
dwelling-place,
The gift of sight becomes a means of
grace.
Alas! the human heart may basely rest,
Contented with Gods blessings to the
blest,
Pleased with the lesser things of time
and sense -
With God in the remote circumference!
My Heavenly Father! was it so with me
?
Nay, earth was desert if I saw not
Thee;
Her sunniest hours were desolate and
drear,
Vacant and homeless, if Thou wert not
near
Yet, Father, in Thy love and wisdom
dire,
Thou hast dropped down the purgatorial
fire.
Two eyes I had for things beneath the
sun -
Oh! how I thank Thee, blessed God, for
one!
Pluck out thy
right eye if it cause offence,
The Saviour said. In stern beneficence
Thou surely hast, O Father, plucked
out mine!
But grant me now the wisdom to divine
Thy purposes and will, and realize
My gain in having one, and not two
eyes!
Which, a Priori, it must surely be,
Since Thou art Love, and this has come
from Thee,
Although Thou didst exact for
sacrifice
The better one of my poor pair of
eyes!
The answer came - Thy will, Thy will
be done -
Henceforward, while I dwell beneath
the sun,
Not on the beautiful, but the
supernal,
Not on the temporal, but the eternal,
My eye shall gaze, my blinded eye
shall gaze
Beyond the now unseen terrestrial
rays,
And - marvellous beneficence divine -
The beatific vision may be mine
My loss is gain, rich gain indeed to
me,
Farewell ye magic lights of land and
sea!
Blind to creations glories flung
abroad,
With this blind eye I see the face of
God
- J. A. RAMSAY.
* *
*
24
THE SETTING OF THE JUDGMENT
THRONE + 2
By
D. M. PANTON, B.A.
It is of
extraordinary interest to know exactly what the first-rapt will see in their
sudden ascension, when earth will in a moment be dead, and their whole life be
transferred to another world. This is exactly the information given us by John.
After
these things -
the moment the Church dispensation, as such, is over - I saw, and behold
- as, passive, he matches
a sudden action of God - a door opened - not a door opening, but a door
already ajar - in heaven (Rev. 4: 1), the door of the ascension of saints, which leaves the rest
of heaven closed to earth. As it was with the Apostle, so will it be with the faithful
at the end: the door of missionary travel had been shut on John; the door also
of ministry; the door even of personal liberty: and now a strong up-draught
from an impossible world opens a door into the Throne-room of God, the Holy of
holies of the universe. And the first voice which I heard - the voice which I heard at first,
the Lords voice - a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me - the trumpet-voice which produces
rapture (1 Thess. 4: 16)
- Come up hither.
THE THRONE
The instantaneous, central, superlative vision the rapt will
see, the heart of the whole Book, at once stands forth - BEHOLD, A THRONE. John, now inside Heaven, says:- Straightway I
was in the Spirit - whether in the body, or out of the body, apparently he knew no more than
Paul when caught away into the third
heaven (2 Cor. 12: 2); seized by the Spirit, as we shall one day be seized by
angels: and behold there was a throne set - being set - in heaven: not long since fixed and settled in
this locality and form, but just as it was taking up its rest in this place (Seiss,) and out of the throne proceed - proceed constantly, are issuing in
flashes - lightnings and voices and thunders. The silent uprush of saints suddenly in
Heaven is the signal for the vanishing of the Throne of Grace; and
simultaneously a new Throne, already seething and erupting takes charge of the
universe. Daniel also foresaw it. I beheld till thrones were placed,
and One that was Ancient of Days did sit: His throne was fiery flames, and
the wheels thereof burning fire (Dan. 7: 9). The epoch of the Churches, the long travail of grace, is
over: the Throne - named seventeen times in these two short chapters alone -
forms the central Tribunal from which issues at last the descent in flaming
fire, rendering vengeance (2 Thess.
1:
8).
THE GODHEAD
Exactly as we should expect in a real heaven described as it
ought to be described - thus utterly unlike all fairy fabrications - the Godhead
is indicated, not defined, in loftiest and exquisite mystery. And [I saw] One sitting upon the throne; and He that
sat was to look upon like a jasper stone and a sardius. The sardius and the jasper are the
first and last stones upon the High Priests breastplate (Ex. 28: 17, 20): the First and the Last - He who has
neither predecessor nor successor - is one of the titles of Deity (Rev. 22: 13). Orange-hued
(perhaps) above, blood-red below - glory and wrath: or, as one has put it - Below, toward the earth the Person on the Throne appears in
the glowing of His function as judge and avenger; above, in the pure splendour
of His calm, untroubled, heavenly majesty (Zullig). Both stones are
sometimes blood-red: it is shadowing the unutterably solemn delineation of God
in His judgment aspect:- Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:
29)
* or, as He Himself says - MY fury shall come up
in my face (Ezek. 38: 18).
* Sardius is on all hands
acknowledged to be fiery red (Alford).
THE RAINBOW
But one phenomenon of overmastering significance at once
modifies the judgment scene. And there was a rainbow round about the throne - enclosing the supreme tribunal in
one stupendous arch - like an emerald to look upon. The danger of the Throne is
indescribable; its power is so enormous that even its attendant nobles are
enthroned therefore the rainbow - Gods perpetual symbol of remembered mercy -
circumscribes the coming judgments sharply within boundaries. The cool green of
the rainbow - it is the colour of an undrowned earth - is complementary to the fiery reds and yellows on the
Throne, a softening antithesis in the God of 1ove: it is hope seen through
storm; it is grace returning after wrath. The rainbow is the answer to the cry
of Habakkuk (3: 2):- I have heard the report of Thee,
and am afraid: in wrath remember mercy. Grace thus
encompasses the God of Wrath; and while the Throne is a throne of judgment, it
is not a throne of extermination. Around the Throne that annihilates the universe
there is no bow. Moreover, no rainbow is visible (to an observer) until after a
storm is past: in the heart of a raging tempest there is no iris: the rapt have
THE TORCHES
Now we touch again upon the mystery of Godhead. And there
were seven torches - the [Holy] Spirits aspect completely changes
from the easily extinguished indoor lamps of the churches to the unprotected
torches of the Holy Ghosts relationship to mankind in general - of fire
burning - the
Spirit of judgment, the Spirit of burning (Isa. 4:
4); not light, but flame - before the
throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; and the next chapter (5: 6) adds:- the seven
Spirits of God - the
Holy Ghost is four times so described in the Apocalypse - sent forth into all
the earth.* Apparently, therefore (it is of intense interest to
observe) Joels illapse as occurred before rapture. The Spirit is shadowed
forth as torches ** :- outdoor flares,
fires dangerous to everything flammable, flames to withstand rude blasts; the
Spirit in huge revivals, vast plagues and pestilences, sudden lightnings death.
Into
all the earth:
for the plagues are world-wide (Rev. 11: 6); the descent of the Spirit is upon all flesh (Joel 2: 28); the graves are
everywhere of which it is written - The Spirit shall quicken your mortal bodies
(Rom. 8: 11); and the earthquakes - the tread of
the Spirit - affect all cities of the world (Rev. 16: 19). Thus the Torches of God go flaming through the midnight of
Antichrists world.
* The Seven Spirits are frequently mentioned, but
this is the only passage where such an embassage is ascribed to them (Bengel): busied in His world-wide energy,
the very word [see Greek word ...] reminding us of the apostolic
work and Church (Alford). It
hints Apostles in the last days (Luke 11: 49).
** Seven torches of fire: in
this Book does not mean a lamp (see 8: 10), but a torch (cp.
John
18: 3)
- Wordsworth.
THE ELDERS
Around the Throne now appear the highest of the angelic ranks,
the patriarchs of the elder world:- and round about the throne were four
and twenty thrones. We read of the principalities - princedoms - and the
powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3: 10); and, in one passage, THRONES and dominions and
principalities and powers (Col. 1: 16). Here these Thrones are revealed. So, among principalities, one powerful angel is Prince of
Persia, another Prince of Greece (Dan. 10: 13, 20); and among powers, certain angels have power over the winds (Rev. 7: 1), and an angel has power over fire (Rev. 14: 18): thus dominions over human nations, or over the
elements and forces of nature. But these four and twenty Elder-Angels,
patriarchal spirits, are supreme in rank. Even the Presence-angels, like
Gabriel, stand in the presence
of God: so exalted are these Hierarchs as to sit crowned in the presence of
Deity, heading the ranks and leading the worship of ten thousand
times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,
(Rev. 5: 11).* Both
crowned and vested, as kings and priests in one, the Melchizedeks of heaven,
they head the priestly courses of the Temple on high, and share, subordinately,
in the government of the universe.
* Throned
before the Lord returns, and thus long before the coronation saints, they have
been enthroned for untold ages: instead of being crowned at the Advent (as they
would be, if human victors) they vanish altogether when the [Millennial] Kingdom
comes: it is nowhere stated that their robes are made white by blood: they explain who the saints are (Rev.
7:
14),
but never point to themselves: if these are not the heads of the angelic
hierarchies there are none such visible (strange to say) when heaven is laid
bare. If the living ones - and their very name
defines life - are the Cherubim, their fellow-worshippers, the Elders, cannot
be rhetorical symbols. Even when the Great Multitude suddenly appears on high (Rev.
7: 9),
after this scene - the first appearance of
men in heaven - palms are in their hands, but no crowns are upon their heads.
It is impossible that saints should be enthroned when our Lord Himself has not
yet received His own [millennial] throne (as distinct from His
Fathers); and He does not receive it until Rev. 20: 4, when His fellow-heirs at
once appear. The leaders of the worship of the heavenly hosts (Rev.
5:
11)
must be of those hosts. (It is curious that the Great War cast down twenty-four thrones.)
THE CHERUBIM
So now we reach the most mysterious, indescribable, and
significant of all the inmates of heaven under Deity. And in the
midst of the throne - in the vacant centre of its circle - and round about the throne, four living beings full of eyes before and behind. The Cherubim of Ezekiel, the Seraphirn
of Isaiah
- beings distinguished from all angels (Rev.
7:
11), and never fulfilling ordinary
angelic functions - sum up in their own persons - lion, calf, man and eagle -
earths animate tribes: all of human shape (Ezek. 1: 5), each face presents to God a diverse section of the living:
apparently with fluid forms, faces and wings differing at different moments,
and (as fire is form varying within limits, shifting and yet remaining its own
peculiar flame) a variable embodiment of life, possessed of neither stillness
nor rest nor sleep: standing under, or moving about, or hovering over the
Throne, the closest attendants of the Godhead: full of eyes, before and behind,
their constant vigilance keeps watch and ward, the whole sentient creation,
through their eyes, for ever beholding God. They who once guarded
THE WORSHIP
One vital disclosure closes all in a priceless lesson for
to-day. Earth is about to be a drama of passionate worship, and organized and
universal idolatry: heaven opened reveals the sole ground on which worship can
ever be offered.* Worthy art
thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power; for thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they were - ceased their nothingness - and were
created - sprang
forth from nothing. The sole Being ever to be worshipped is the Creator. The gods that
have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth, and from under the heavens (Jer.
10:
11).
WORSHIP GOD
(Rev.
19:
10).
* How extremely remarkable it is that
in the most wondrous disclosure of Heaven ever granted to mortal gaze, in which
all prostrate themselves before the Throne, the Seven Spirits never worship,
nor even bend: the Holy Ghost is God. That the Seven Spirits are the Divine Spirit is manifest from Rev.
1:
4:-
Grace to you and peace from the
Seven Spirits which are before His throne.
-------
HE CARES
What can it mean? Is it aught to Him,
That the nights are long and the days
are dim!
Can He be touchd
by the griefs I bear,
Which sadden the heart and whiten the
hair?
Around His throne are eternal calms,
And strong glad music of happy psalms,
And bliss unruffled by any strife:-
How can He care for my little life?
And yet I want Him to care for me
While I live in this world where
sorrows be.
When the lights die down from the path
I take,
When strength is feeble and friends
forsake,
When love and music, that once did
bless,
Have left me to silence and
loneliness,
And my life-song changes to sobbing
prayers, -
Then my heart cries out for a God who
cares.
When shadows hang oer me the whole
day long,
And my spirit is bowd
with shame and wrong;
When I am not good, and the deeper
shade
Of conscious sin makes my heart
afraid,
And the busy world has too much to do
To stay in its course to help me through,
And I long for a Saviour - can it be
That the God of the universe cares for
me?
Oh, wonderful story of deathless love!
His child is dear to that Heart above.
He fights for me when I cannot fight,
He comforts me in the gloom of night;
He lifts the burden, for He is strong,
He stills the sigh and awakens the
song:
The sorrows that bowd
me down He bears,
And loves and pardons because He
cares.
Let all who are sad take heart again;
We are not alone in our hours of pain:
Our Father stoops from His throne
above
To soothe and quiet us with His love.
He leaves us not when the storm is
high
And we have safety, for He is nigh.
Can it be trouble which He doth share?
Oh, rest in peace, for the Lord does
care.
-------
FOUR WOMEN AND THEIR SONS
[1] Augustine, perhaps the most renowned saint
since Paul, was the son of a heathen father, and Monica, one of the noblest women in the
history of Christianity; of an intellectual and spiritual cast, of fervent piety,
tender affection, and a deep longing and yearning towards God: a young man of
carnal mind, he was brought to God by the Epistles of Paul, and the
life-long prayers and tears of his mother. Earlier he had said to his mother: -
Mother, I must be converted some day, for God cannot withstand those tears you
have shed for me.
[2] John Chrysostom,
patriarch of
[3] Gregory, a spiritual giant of his age, was
the son of Nonna, who by her believing prayers and
holy life - converted her husband and furnished to the world an illustrious
son. It is said of her:- she was seldom seen, except to attend worship, to carry baskets of food and clothing to
the poor, attend the sick, and she was far from visiting the theatre.
[4] Bernard of Clairvaux,
of whom Luther said, Bernard loves Jesus as much as any
one can, was born in
* *
*
25
THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST AND
THEIR RESPONSIBILITY + 2
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 noblemans 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 own servants, [see
the Greek words ...] and delivered unto them his goods (Matt. 25: 14). [the Greek words here ...] is not necessarily the entire property of every kind, and in every place
elonging to the householder, but is limited by the
context to the property he had in his possession, and under his personal
management in his residence so far. Being now about take a journey, he is
obliged to hand over this property of which he is unable personally to manage
as before, to other faithful hands during the time of his absence. He there:
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 [Greek words...] 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 much,
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 householders presence,
as with the sum of money during the masters 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
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
masters 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: 19), 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 householders 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 narrators 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 masters 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 Christs second advent will be an hour of
reckoning even for His disciples, how much more will it he 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 Messiahs 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 Lords absence in the heavenly world,
designed to leave scope to His friends and foes to manifest their love and
hate.
-------
ALIVE UNTO GOD
To one who asked him the secret of his
service, George Muller said:- There was a day when I died, utterly died; and as he spoke he bent lower, until he almost
touched the floor; died to George Muller, his
opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval and
censure, died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends; and
since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.
-------
CHASTISEMENT
How fierce the furnace of Thy love, my
God!
Where is Thy mercy - Where my Fathers
love?
In fear and trembling I embrace the
rod,
The sweetness of a Fathers care to
prove!
Spirit of burning! Surely Thou hast
come
With Thy refining fire and healing
pain
To cleanse Thy temple, make my heart
Thy home,
That not for me shall Christ have died
in vain.
O love of God that smitest but to
heal,
O burning love that scorchest but to
bless,
Say do I murmur at these strokes I
feel -
Or are these tears of joy for Thy
cross?
O blessed pain that brings my God so
near,
O blessed love that makes the rod so
sweet:
If this be God when God would be
severe,
What shall it be when Love with love
shall meet?
There is a land where God wipes all
our tears:
Ah! leave us there our sorrow for our
sin,
Our sorrows for our Saviours
suffering years,
Our tears that well from deep deep joy within.
JAMES A. RAMSAY.
* *
*
26
THE UNFORGIVABLE BLASPHEMY + 2
Our Lord
sets the unforgivable blasphemy in the heart of an all but boundless assurance
of mercy as comprehensive as the mind of man can conceive, or even the lips of God
can express. Verily I say unto you - He who alone has power on earth to
forgive sins - All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men,
and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall
blaspheme (Mark 3: 28). It is the largest statement of pardon ever given and the most
explicit. And then, in the midst of mercys shoreless ocean, the Lord plants
one black rock on which a soul can suddenly founder for ever. But whosoever
shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness. The dread utterance is all the more startling for its setting: and so
constant has been Satans use of it, with which to bludgeon souls; so countless
the souls driven by a misunderstanding of it to suicide or into the madhouse;
and so real the danger that our own souls may sometime be invaded by this
nameless terror that it becomes of capital importance to ascertain what exactly
is this solitary exception to the law of mercy.
Now the first outstanding fact is that the sin beyond pardon
is a sin of a sharply defined and limited class. All their sins shall be
forgiven unto the sons of men, and their
blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall BLASPHEME
against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness (Mark 3:
28). Blasphemy here forms, the climax of
sin, but of sin which can still be forgiven: it is a blasphemy that cannot.
Blasphemy - which either degrades God from Deity, or else elevates man to Deity
- is, in a created being, obviously a sin of enormous magnitude. As the word ([see
Greek ...]) means, it is a sin of the mouth, and
so in Matthew (12: 32) the Lord says:- Whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall
not be forgiven him. Thus the unforgivable offence is blasphemy; but not all blasphemy, nor any blasphemy, but a single, solitary
blasphemy. How awful the tribute to the power of the tongue, that the only sin
which hath never forgiveness the tongue alone can commit!
Now a second fact of inexpressible importance is that the unforgivable
offence is not a grade of sin, but a specific sin; not a prolonged revolt against the Spirit, but an act of
final rebellion suddenly flung into words. Our Lord first catalogues all sins, and even then all
blasphemies, as
forgivable, irrespective of their maturity or their immaturity, their degree of
guilt or ripeness in wickedness; but - He adds - there is one sin catalogued
alone, which shall never know pardon.*
Thus it is a specific sin, all to itself: it can be committed in a moment, and
therefore is not capable of greater or less: before the blasphemy is uttered,
the sin is non-existent; and after the words are uttered, it is unforgivable and eternal [aionios]. This is the complete overthrow of
the current view** so dangerous in
its paralysing effect. The sin is commonly supposed to be a resistance to the
Spirit carried so far that, at last, the heart is too hard to turn. But obvious
facts overthrow the view. (1) Resistance to the [Holy] Spirit is not blasphemy of the [Holy] Spirit; (2)
thousands of men have resisted the [Holy] Spirit all their life, and been converted at the last;
(3) if prolonged sin is the
unpardonable blasphemy, all the lost have committed the blasphemy - which is
absurd; and (4) if it be a degree of
sin, since that degree has never been revealed, no soul could ever know whether
he had Committed the sin or not. The Lord sharply differentiates it from all
other sins. All sin ultimately reaches a point, beyond which it cannot be
forgiven; but that point, our Saviour
says, never falls in this life: but one sin - not a grade of sin, but a
specific sin - is excepted at once, here and now.
* Dean Alford, rarely tripping, trips here:- Not a particular act of sin but a state of wilful,
determined opposition to the Holy Spirit, is meant. But blasphemy is
utterance, and utterance is not state but action.
** For example, Tyndale:-
Sin against the Holy Ghost is despising of the Gospel
and His working: where that bideth is no remedy for sin. The comfort commonly
given to souls in distress - namely, that the very distress disproves any
irreclaimable hardness - is true; but it is also the further true that total
insensibility, the absence of all concern, is no proof whatever that the soul
has done the one unpardonable thing.
Now, therefore, we arrive at the sin itself. It is a peculiar
sin: it is not a sin of thought, or of act, but a sin of words: it is
blasphemy, but by no means any blasphemy. All
their blasphemies wherewith so ever they
shall blaspheme shall be forgiven unto the sons of men. Paul says that he had been a blasphemer
(1 Tim. 1: 13), yet he became not a whit behind the
chiefest apostles. Concerning those who, by taunting the dying Saviour upon the
Cross, could hardly have been guilty of blacker blasphemy, the Lord Jesus says,
Father,
forgive them. It is not a blasphemous heart, nor a
blasphemous mind, nor a blasphemous thought - though all these necessarily
precede the sin - but a blasphemous mouth. If the blasphemy has not been uttered, it has not been committed.* It is one single, isolated, peculiar
blasphemy which stands beyond repentance and beyond pardon.
*
Involuntary utterance (if such ever occurs) under mania or delirium, since it is
free of all moral guilt, manifestly neither commits the blasphemy, nor can
incur its penalty.
Our Lords revelation evidently sprang out of the incident
which drew it forth; for the revelation was never repeated, nor did the
incident ever occur again. Therefore, as we should expect, the record itself
defines and exhibits the sin once for all. Whosoever shall blaspheme against the
Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness: BECAUSE they said, He hath an unclean spirit (Mark 3: 29). It is not sin against the Spirit, but
blasphemy against the
Spirit: it is not grieving the Spirit, or resisting the Spirit, or quenching the Spirit, but BLASPHEMING the
Spirit; and what the Pharisees had just done is the sin. They said, He hath an unclean spirit. To say that Christ worked His miracles by Satanic power is -
for reasons, in their entirety, known only to God - unpardonable for ever. The
Lord had just said, I by the Spirit of God cast out demons; this man, the Pharisees retorted, doth not cast
out demons, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons: THEREFORE - Jesus now says - I say unto you, the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven
(Matt. 12:
24-32).*
The effect is instantaneous. In the very next chapter
the Lord withdraws sternly into parables, LEST they turn and I
should heal them (Matt. 13: 15): the door they banged,
God locks: faces were moving before
the Lord in that crowd that could never be whitened.
* So
John Wesley:- Nothing is more clear in the Bible than that the sin is ascribing those miracles to the
power of the Devil which Christ wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost.
So Godet:- The
impious audacity of putting the holiness
of His works to the account of the
spirit of evil - this is what He calls blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
So also Athanasius:- They who sin thus
refer the work of God to the Devil; they judge God to be the Devil; and the true God to have nothing more in
His works than the Evil Spirit.
Probably the bottom reasons why this is a sin past all cure
lie buried in Omniscience, in a region where mortal foot has never trod. No
great truth is without, attached to it somewhere, an insoluble problem. But one
reason (though only removing the problem one step further back) is given in a
pregnant fragment recorded by Mark. Whosoever blaspheme against the Holy
Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an
eternal sin. He will never, for all eternity be anything but a blasphemer: he has forged
a chain which can never be broken: he can never be freed from the virulent
activity of the blasphemy, and therefore can never be absolved from its penal
fires. The man has become a Satan. So, therefore, it shall not
be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come (Matt. 12: 32): for there is no statement, anywhere, of forgiveness in the ages to come; and
pardon in the Millennial Age - either at the Bema, or among the Millennial
nations - closes all pardon for ever. No word could more plainly annihilate
Universalism, establish eternal punishment, demonstrate the Godhead of the Holy
Ghost, or prove the overwhelming necessity of Christ.
Now, therefore, there stretches before us the boundless shore
of infinite mercy, the solitary black rock having sunk beneath the horizon. The
relief to an anxious soul cannot be put into words. Satan triumphs absolutely
the moment he convinces a man he has committed a sin which can never be
pardoned; whereas the very despair of a soul - its unpardonableness, as it
thinks - can be the first stage in salvation. In the only case known to us in all
history of souls that could not be forgiven, they did not know it, did not
believe it when told, and never displayed the remotest anxiety.* It is unreasonable, it is wicked, to
hold oneself unpardonable for any sin which Christ says is pardonable; and He says all is pardonable except a sin which I
have not committed:
therefore my sin - absolutely irrespective a what it is - can vanish in a
moment in the Blood of Christ. God never says that He pardons because there is
little sin to parson; or because the sin has not gone too far; or because the
sin is not too foul: ALL their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of mem, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall
blaspheme.**
* The monstrous malice which, with the spotless
perfection and the overwhelming miracles of the Son of God actually before its
eyes, and the voice of the Holy Ghost in unique plentitude calling loudly in
the heart on the spot, could deliberately and studiedly Satanize
Christ is a malice which - though the future tense our Lord uses (Mark 3:
29)
may imply repetition - it would be very hard to repeat. It is a sin of which
not even a Celsus,
or a Julian, or a Voltaire, or an Ingersoll was ever guilty.
Moreover, that it may be impossible to renew a soul to repentance (Heb.
6:
6)
is not to say that his sin would not be forgiven, if he repented; and it is
only loose, unjustified, erroneous exposition which making that unpardonable
which Christ never made unpardonable, has driven many souls insane. The
tragedies of sin are sufficiently awful without our creating, through
carelessness, fresh artificial horrors.
** The single phrase - eternal
sin - is decisive of the eternal duration of at last some punishment;
for if punishment on crime is right at all, the punishment must last as long as
the crime lasts. The textual authority is decisive. Griesbach
favours the reading, Lachman
and Tischendorf adopt it in their
entire editions, and Alford and Meyer unhesitatingly accept it. Of the
five oldest manuscripts, four, comprising the very oldest and best of all, read
sin, supported
by nearly all other versions. Tregelles
coincides with Lachmann and Tischendorf (Samuel C. Bartlett, D.D.). The Revised Version gives it with no alternative.
-------
RETURNING MEDIEVALISM
Recent
investigations by the Howard League of Penal Reform into prison conditions in
various parts of
·
The
-------
CHURCH WEALTH
From many years experience I have
learned that sanctified wealth will
always prove a blessing to the
Look at the needless, not to say sinful, expenditure in our
older cities and country districts; the unnecessary thousands expended, not in
building needful and decent churches, for this is right, but ornamental
churches, to make a vain show and gratify pampered pride. Look at the
ornamental pulpits, pewed and cushioned seats,
organs, and almost all kinds of - [modern devices and] - instruments, with
salaried choirs, - [and organists] - and as proud and graceless -
[in christian behaviour] - as a fallen ghost, while millions upon millions of
our fallen race are dying* daily, and peopling the regions of eternal [and millennial] woe for the want of
the [complete] Gospel of Jesus Christ; and scarce as - [well-informed, and Holy Spirit indwelt (Acts 5:
32;
1 John 3:
24ff.,
R.V.)] - ministers are in some places in our own happy
country, yet there are thousands that are ready and willing to go to the utmost
verge of this green earth, and carry the glad tidings of mercy to those dying
millions, if they had the means
of support.
[*
See Revelation
3: 1-3:-
And by the MESSENGER
of the CONGREGATION in
Would it not the better comport with the obligations of our holy
Christianity to refrain from these superfluous expenditures, and with a liberal
hand and devoted heart apply, or furnish the means to carry the glad tidings of
salvation - [both
present
(Acts 4:
11,
12), and also future (1 Peter 1: 5, 9,
R.V.)] - to those that sit in the region and
shadow of moral death, than to apply them, as is done in many directions in
this Christian land? Say, ye professed
lovers of Jesus Christ, are not your responsibilities
tremendously fearful? There is wealth enough in the Churches, and
among the friends of the different Christian denominations, if rightly
husbanded and liberally bestowed, to carry the Bible and a living ministry - [with
all
the truth, which the Holy Book teaches] - to every nation on the face of the whole earth.
- PETER CARTWRIGHT.
* *
*
27
THE JOY SET BEFORE HIM + 1
By W. P. CLARK
Many books
have been written, and many addresses delivered at Conferences on the subject
of the Second Advent, which dwell on the joy of the Redeemed, when they see
their Lord face to face and shall reign with Him; but few dwell on His joy,
which must be infinitely greater than ours, inasmuch as He has infinitely
greater capacity for joy. How great will be His joy may be measured by what He
had to endure to obtain it. For the joy set before
Him He endured the Cross despising the shame (Heb. 12: 2); but none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were waters crossed, nor how dark was the night
the Lord passed through, ere He found that Joy.
See Him as He goes up Calvary Hill so marred
from the form of man in His aspect, that His appearance
was not that of a Son of man.* With bruised back from the terrible
scourging, with blood-stained face from the Cross of thorns, with bent form
from the weight of the Cross, He endured the Cross. A beautiful legend tells us that the woman,
had been bowed together, and could in
no wise lift up herself until He laid His hands upon her and she was made straight, came up to Him, as He staggered under
the load of the Cross, and wiped with her handkerchief the blood and sweat from
His face. She knew what it was to suffer with a bent back, and to be jeered at
by a multitude!
* Isa. 52:
14.
See Scofield Bible and R.V. margin.
And how can the agony of the Crucifixion be possibly pictured
or even imagined? Intense as must have been the physical suffering, to which
were added the jeers and taunts of the Chief Priests and the multitude, in
which no doubt the invisible powers of darkness joined, how much more must have
been the appalling, unimaginable suffering carried by the absolutely sinless,
spotless Son of God, being made sin for us, and as such, forsaken of His Father, a fact
wringing from His lips that heart-rending cry,- My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken
Me?
But He also despised the shame. When King David sent
messengers to condole with Hanun, King of Ammon, on
the death of his father, we read that he shaved off half their beards and cut
off their garments in the middle, and the men were greatly ashamed
(1 Chron.
19:
5): how much greater must have been the
shame of hanging on a cross exposed to the gaze of the crowd! He endured
the shame.
The other side of the picture - the joy set before Him - still
lies in the future. John in the lonely isle of
Paul looked forward to meeting his comparatively few converts,
at the coming of the Lord Jesus, as his joy and crown - how much greater will be
the joy of his Lord when He meets His blood-bought converts, in multitude more
than man can number! Then shall He see of the travail of His soul and be
satisfied. But the consummation of His Joy will no doubt be when He shall reign
for a thousand years with those counted worthy to reign with Him. Who then will
enter
into the joy of
their Lord? and who will hear Him say, Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things? Thank God, this wonderful joy rests
not on great achievements, nor special genius, but on faithfulness; so the
weakest and poorest disciple has a chance to achieve it. Alas, for those
servants - servants still, but found unfaithful - who shall be cast into the
outer-darkness,
outside the bright
A dramatic incident occurred at a wedding in
[* NOTE: The Church is
composed of all the redeemed; but the Bride
of Christ are taken out from amongst His redeemed Body or family. (Gen 24; Rev. 19: 7, 8., R.V.): a selection from amongst a
previous selection. ]
-------
THE DURATION OF THE
PAROUSIA
The second coming, like the first, is complex and distributive,
extending through a variety of successive and diverse scenes, stages, events,
and manifestations, requiring as many, if not still more, years. Just what
length of time will intervene between the first and sudden catching away of the
watching and ready saints, and the final overthrow of
[* NOTE: This tract was published during on March
15th 1930.
Many Christians believe today (2024), that prophetic calculations should
begin from the date of our Lords Death, instead of from His Birth
and Incarnation. This fact alone should be a great encouragement for all
prophetic Bible students today, to better understand Hoseas prophecy: After two days (i.e., after two thousand years
(2 Pet. 3;
8, 9, R.V.) - will he revive us: - {i.e., Jews and the nation of Israel} - on the third day he will raise us up,
and we shall live before
him. And let us know,
led us follow on
to know the LORD; his going forth is sure as the morning: and he shall come unto
us as the rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth (Hos. 6: 2, 3,
R.V.)]
* *
*
28
WARNING THE
By WILLIAM LEASK,
D.D.
Instead of the apostasy of
Christendom, characterized by daring impiety and atheism, under the leadership
of the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, popular teaching represents the
gradual triumph of the Gospel over every nation and tribe, until all mankind shall
become Christian, and the Church be co-extensive with the human race. This is
the picture which the pulpit delights to exhibit, and a very beautiful picture
it is. In skilful hands it is sometimes executed with such ingenuity that the
moral landscape of the nations seems to laugh before us under the sunlight of
spiritual beauty. For imagination, poetry, graphic detail, and bursts of
enthusiastic eloquence, it offers an exceedingly fruitful theme. But there is this drawback - it is not true! The
Holy Ghost speaketh expressly against it. It is not only not the predicted issue of
Christian testimony, so far as the nominal Church and the world are concerned,
but that issue is directly the reverse - apostasy, direful wickedness, impiety,
blasphemy, atheism, doom! For mercy spurned, and grace refused, the end of the
age is terrible judgment! For disobedience to the
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the close of the dispensation is characterized
by unprecedented wickedness culminating in unparalleled judgments. The day of
long-suffering is ended by the wrath of the Lamb.
Responsibility! Merciful
Saviour, look upon Thy ministers! What will the deceived people say of them,
and to them, when the story of Peace, peace, is interrupted by the uprising of the
Man of Sin, and the imperious demand that all shall worship him, and deny the
Father and the Son? Sir, you deceived me! You taught me to laugh at the
millenarian doctrine. You said that Christ would not come until the end of the
world; that the Gospel would convert the
nations, and that the idea of a personal Antichrist was a dream, and an
absurdity. You deceived me; and now I must either worship this blasphemer or die!
Can one imagine such a speech as this without horror?
But is it really a matter of
revelation that Christians who are looking for the coming of the Lord shall escape the predicted horrors of the atheistic
domination? Our Lord, speaking of the day that shall come as a snare on all
them that dwell on the face of the whole earth, says:- 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 (Luke 21: 36). This intimation that His - [chosen, selected, and] -
watchful disciples shall escape the terrors of the closing scene, when the
times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (for it is to that period, and not to the destruction of
* In these Scriptures it is [see the Greek...], to take as a
companion, not [Greek ...], to seize (for
judgment) as in Matthew 25: 39, etc.
The Vials of wrath will not be poured
forth until those who wait for the Lord are taken to safety. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee
from he hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth (Rev. 3: 10). Most remarkable is
this verse, [see the Greek clause...] - the word of my patience; what a
revelation there is here of the dispensation of grace, and of the certainty
that, in consequence of grace rejected, it will end in judgment; and what a
proof that to look and wait for the patient, long-suffering Saviour is the duty
and privilege of the - [repentant
and obedient] - believer - an attitude which
is to be rewarded by removal from the scene of trial before the Apocalyptic
judgments descend upon the earth.
Now if these two momentous truths- namely, that Christendom
ends in apostasy, and that those who wait for the Lord will be gathered
lovingly to Himself before the judgment due to that apostasy descends upon the
world - were presented to our congregations, it is impossible to avoid the
conclusion that the indifference to the sublime realities of the Gospel, the
sleep, the deadness of which the complaint is so lamentably general, would, to
a great extent, disappear. The law of Heaven is - Gods blessing on His own truth. A faithful exhibition of that truth,
therefore, is the bounden duty of all
ambassadors of Christ. The great realities of the Gospel should be presented to men as things
wonderfully near,
not as things afar off, or cold
abstractions concerning which curiosity may speculate. And if the day of grace,
the era of divine long-suffering, is rapidly coming to a close; if the Gospel
dispensation, like its Edenic, patriarchal, and Aaronic predecessors, is to end
in apostasy ; and if the new epoch of royal rule by the manifested Messiah,
with the Church of the first-born ones as His co-assessors, converted Israel as
His ministers of salvation to the nations, and the entire world as His empire,
is just about to begin, the necessity of fidelity to Gods revelation, always
pressing, is now vehemently imperative.
The great crisis to which all generations and all the purposes
of God have been tending is near at hand. To talk now about the respective merits of ecclesiastical systems is a waste of
precious time, for they are all doomed to dissolution that the sons of God may
be manifested in glory with Him who is at once their Redeemer, their life,
their Elder Brother, and their Head. To insist now upon form, and ceremony, and ritual is perfect madness, for the Bridegroom
cometh; those who are ready will go in with Him to the marriage, and the door
will be shut. We have had trifling enough; let us now be in earnest, and give
Christ such a place in our hearts as He never. had before, so that the prospect
of His coming may fill us with hope and joy!
-------
THE SECOND COMING
Some day the last lone man will lie
and stare
At death, and know that in him ends
the scheme
Of life on earth, that thought itself
supreme;
And he will die no one left to care.
All forms of life that once swarmd anywhere
Will vanish as the memories of a
dream,
And the great winds of silence then
will stream
Through the vast hollows of the darkend air.
And after this quick life we once calld ours
Has passd
will the world travail in some storm
Of restless element and fill the crust
With breathing earth again: wild
beasts and flowers?
And will some curious life in some
strange form
Dig down and read this story of our
dust?
PAUL ENGLE.
-------
AN EPISCOPAL MANIFESTO
(By the Bishops of the Southern
The first and essential mission of the
Church of Jesus Christ is to proclaim the message of the love of God for lost,
sinful men and women. If the world is not lost, the Church has no mission. If the
world is not lost, Jesus Christ is not the Divine Saviour. If the world is not
lost, Christs declarations of search and sacrifice for the lost are
meaningless and futile. There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby
we must be saved.
This is the one, the vital word to
bring to-day to all our people, ministers and laymen. Every other matter
however important must give precedence to the earnest, sincere, vigorous,
churchwide proclamation of this old-fashioned, unchangeable, uncompromising,
loving, saving gospel:- Sin, conviction of sin; repentance with godly sorrow,
and forsaking of sin; acceptance of Christ - The Lamb of God as the only, the all-suffcient Saviour from the guilt and power of sin, eternal
life, over-coming, victorious, triumphant as the privilege and joy of the child
of God, who has come back from the far country and is once more in the Fathers
House.
* *
*
29
WORKING OUT OUR SALVATION + 1
One mighty text is a shining example of the double-edged Sword
of the Spirit. For Inspiration is a single blade which can cut in completely
opposite directions; and so two schools of thought shelter under this texts
balanced clauses: two schools of thought that are sharply opposed; and each
seems to imagine that the clause on which it fastens has annihilated the clause
which it opposes. But this is not so. The two clauses are twin pillars on the
threshold of the
But first we need to define carefully what Scripture means by
salvation. Salvation is a term which, as used in the New Testament, is
immensely more comprehensive than our common use of it, and it covers mans
total redemption. Salvation, as Calvin says, is taken to mean the entire course of our calling, and
includes all things by which God accomplishes our perfection. Scripture
says ye are saved (Eph.
3:
8);
we are [being]
saved (Rom. 8: 24); and we shall be saved (Rom. 5: 9) in a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet. 1: 5). For it is obvious that Gods
complete work covers (1) a past
pardon and recreation; (2) a present
deliverance from the dominion of sin; and (3)
a future redemption of body and environment: or, as we may summarize them -
justification, sanctification, and resurrection.
Now it is obvious, by the terms he uses, that Paul assumes the
first, or fundamental, salvation as already past. For he addresses his words to
all
the saints in Christ Jesus (Phil. 1: 1), who have been made saints by being
saved; and it is to them that he says - work out - carry through,
completely finish - your own salvation - the
salvation which you already possess, and which you must work out for
yourselves; for it is God who worketh IN YOU - as souls indwelt of the Holy Ghost.
God works from without the unbeliever, never from within: therefore Paul,
speaking to the whole
So now, with a cleared platform, we confront JACHIN. Work out - as though the solitary worker was
yourself - your own
salvation - the present
and the future deliverance which turn upon your own action - with fear - towards God - and trembling - towards yourself. The words speak of holy anxiety,
overmastering conscientiousness, all-absorbing sense of responsibility
(J. Hutchison, D.D.). That is, mere passivity is never a doctrine of
God. Even our original [and eternal] salvation, a work absolutely finished before we touch
it, has to be actively - sometimes urgently or even passionately - seized; I never knew a lazy man saved in my life, says Mr. Moody and it ushers us at once into an activity that is to cease only with death. The kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence,
and MEN OF
VIOLENCE take it by force (Matt. 11: 12). So Paul, once again embodying all Christian experience in himself,
says:- All run, but one receiveth the prize:
even SO RUN, that ye may attain. I
therefore so run, as not uncertainly: I buffet my body, and bring
it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be disapproved (1 Cor. 9: 24). All the self-effort, all the self-mastery are locked up in
one breast - my own, born of a great fear; for the runner who has lost the
tremor has probably lost the race. And yet the current laid along the trembling wire is God.
For now we confront BOAZ; and the revelation is overwhelming.
For it is God
which worketh in you;
energizes, works mightily, works
effectually; and He works inside your personality. The Greek, by dropping the article
and putting the word God first, casts the whole emphasis on the Godhead: it is DEITY which
worketh in you: over against the sore difficulties which rightly make us
tremble - our discouragements, our depressions, our slothfulness, our falls,
our despair - Paul draws the veil from the far more gigantic power latent
within. The engine that throbs within, like the huge electric drill used to
break up concrete blocks as it quivers with the enormousness of its own power,
is God: the intelligent force within us that unshackles our will, so that we
may will good, and energizes our hand, so that we may do good, is God. This revelation, which we take as a commonplace of our theology, is
simply overwhelming in its immensity for
it means that, within the limits of our personality and destiny, nothing is impossible to us that is
possible to God.
Once more, and finally, Paul sinks still deeper in the
fathomless revelation. It is God which worketh in us both to will and to do - both the resolution and the
performance: to will, the whole realm of the soul; to do, the whole realm of
the life - of His good pleasure - the good pleasure that is pure goodness. This meets
the profundities of our psychological need. A patient in a hospital ward is
ordered to do a thing, and the thing is not done: the nurse says He wont; the patient says, I cant: the doctor comes in and says something quite different
from either - He cannot will. God not only
empowers the act, but inspires the resolution behind the act. All resolve to do
good is from God, and; all ability to do good is from God: therefore both the
vision of the ideal, and the ability to achieve it, are actually in us, in the person of God resident in the soul. God is where
thought starts, and where the will resolves, and where love is born, and where
Christ is formed in the fountains of life. An epitaph on a Christian workers
grave runs thus:- She hath done what she couldnt.
So then in this double-barrelled truth we get an extraordinary
example of the balance of opposed truths making Truth, and a revelation, in
itself, of incalculable power. For the very text which isolates the
all-absorbing energy of God as our sole dynamic is also the text in which
salvation is made contingent on our own effort; and conversely, the text of all
texts which most categorically asserts that we must work out our own salvation
is the text which also reveals that our hidden and only dynamo is God. Our
effort without God is an electric wire empty of the electric fluid: God working
without us is a power-house with a disconnected wire.*
* The Church in general seems to hold neither truth
absorbingly, but half-behaves, half- doubts, both: that is, we must work out
our salvation, but nothing of the first importance is lost if we do not, and
God is the great In-worker, but choked channels are of no great consequence.
Paul finally unveils the golden possible goal of this conjoint
working of God and the soul. Do all things - live all your life - without
murmurings -
constant complaint, constant criticism, constant dissatisfaction - and disputings: disputing with oneself, that is,
intellectual indecisions, indecisive convictions, puzzling doubts; that ye may become * blameless and harmless, children of
God WITHOUT BLEMISH. Children of God you already are [by
regeneration]; but become
such children of God as have nothing with which fault can be found (H.
A. W. Meyer). You can work out your salvation, says the Apostle, for it is God that worketh in you; for He is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set
you before the presence of His glory WITHOUT
BLEMISH in exceeding joy (Jude 24).
* Lange:- [The Greek word ...] marks the end, - [and the other Greek word ...] - the way, which is a
becoming, a process of development.
-------
THE APPROACHING TRIBULATION
The power to foretell the future - that is, pure, undiluted
prophecy - inheres in God alone, and in those to whom, in ages of inspiration,
He grants it. For this is the challenge with which Jehovah meets all demon
forces:- Declare the things that are to come
hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods
(Isa. 41: 23). For this reason all prophecies by
demons are, in themselves, worthless. Nevertheless it is also true that owing to
their wide range of vision, the mass of data they possess for intelligent
anticipation, and their vast experience of cause and effect, the predictions of
evil spirits, while valueless in themselves, carry weight when accompanied by
signals revealed in the Word of God; and the evil watchers in the unseen now
make no secret of the coming night. The announcement of a great world cataclysm at hand, Sir A. Conan Doyle
says reaches him from more than a hundred independent sources
in the unseen world, all over the
earth.
* *
*
30
COMING MIRACLE + 3
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
It is an
extraordinary fortification of the
heart, in days of upheaval and dark foreboding, to realize Gods enormous resources
foretold as stored up against the day of battle and storm. The coming irruption
of Divine miracle is one such. A deepening necessity is creating the vacuum
into which miracle must rush back at last. The steady growth
of the Satanic miraculous, to culminate in great signs and wonders (Matt. 24: 24), requiring
corresponding counter-miracle (2 Tim. 3: 8, 9);
the growing inadequacy of the old natural apparatus to meet modern supernormal
conditions; the explicit prophecies of supernatural ambassadors of Heaven at
the End, especially prophets (Joel 2: 28);
persecutions yet to come so involving bombing and gassing as to be met at last
only miraculously (Rev. 11: 5), unless Divine testimony
is to be absolutely quenched:- all will compel what Scripture has foretold.
Gods resources are equal to all coming emergencies; and whether the Church (in
whole or in part) will then have been removed, though a question of absorbing
interest in itself, need not and ought not to deflect our minds from the
splendid vision of returning miracle. What the Most High has done already, He
will do again:- By a prophet the Lord
brought
CHRIST
Now in a type more informative (perhaps) than any other in the
Bible, we have the master-clue to it, given by the Holy Ghost Himself. These things
happened unto them by way of figure - that is, the Wilderness experiences were a kindergarten
forecast of us; and they drank of a spiritual* rock, and the ROCK was CHRIST (1 Cor. 10: 4, 11). Jehovah stood on the rock, thus
identifying Himself with it; apparently visibly, and so it must have
been Christ, the Jehovah Angel: and as Moses, the embodiment of the Law, took
the rod of judgment - the rod wherewith thou smotest the river (Ex. 17: 5) - and struck the rock in sight of the
Elders of Israel, so on the Cross the curse of the Law its whole judgment, fell
upon the Lord, again in sight of tile Elders of Israel; and from the gash of
the falling rod came the gush of the living waters. Jesus, Paul says, was made a curse, that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit (Gal. 3: 13). The Cross was the Rod which changed
the river to dead blood (Ex. 7: 20), and so released the Spirit from the rock: One of the
soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and straightway there
came out blood and water (John 19: 34). Therefore Peter, at Pentecost, says, This is that which
hath been spoken by Joel, I will pour
forth of my Spirit: He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear
(Acts 2: 16, 33).
* For the sense of - [the Greek word ...] - for typical- seen in the light of the Spirit - see Rev. 11: 8
(Dean Stanley).
PENTECOST
So therefore, the Lord Jesus Himself explicitly unfolds the
type. Jesus stood and cried, If any
man thirst, let him come unto me and drink:
but this spake He of the Spirit, which they that
believed on Him were to receive: for no spirit was yet -
there was, as yet, no miraculous gift* because Jesus
was not yet glorified (John 7: 37). That is, after Pentecost, the believer, like His Lord, would
become a rock out of which would rush rivers of inspiration and power. For two
post-Calvary actions of the Holy Ghost are revealed: - (1) an inrush, or drinking - an internal draught; the water conveyed
the rock to the drinking soul: and (2) an out-rush, an impetuous gush of
miracle; the Spirit made visible. The one corresponds to the entering in of the Spirit, to dwell:
the gushing out of the Spirit,
after imbibing, is - naturally - the manifestation of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12: 1) in miraculous gift and power. All the desert water was locked
up in the rock: no drop of the Holy Ghost is in unregenerate man. It would seem as if the Psalmist makes separate references to the
two ruptures of the Rock, for only in the first does he name the smiting:- Behold, he smote the rock, that waters gushed out, and streams overflowed (Ps. 78: 20) then later, - He opened the rock, and waters gushed out they ran in the dry places like a river (Ps. 105: 41).**
* No gift
of the Spirit, no charisma: so Paul says, - Ye are
zealous of spirits (1 Cor. 14: 12),
where manifestly he means impartations of the one Spirit, the miraculous gifts
of the context; and again,- the spirits of the
prophets - their miraculous urge to utterance - are subject to the prophets (1 Cor. 14:
32).
** As the body knows no death more awful
than the death by thirst, and as no agony on the Cross drew a cry from the Lord
but thirst, so vital, so overpowering by the very nature of its constitution,
is the human souls need of the Holy Spirit, the living water.
LAPSE OF MIRACLE
Now we come to an element in the Wilderness type only less
remarkable than the Church experience it foreshadows. Silence in a type - the
deliberate suppression of certain facts - is an integral part of the type, the
Spirit selecting only the resemblances; and the omissions can be as significant
and informative as the insertions. The outstanding example is Melchizedek as
bodying forth the timeless Christ. Without father, without mother - that is, with no recorded
father or mother - without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like - by the omissions from his record - unto the Son
of God (Heb.
7:
3). So for
*The imperfect, [...] were drinking was
intended to denote their continuous drinking all through the entire march in
the wilderness: in the previous sentence we have the aorist [...], signifying the simple fact of drinking (Lange).
** The region of Sinai is very
elevated, and not only are the mountain ridges immensely higher than the south
of Palestine, but the ground slopes from the base to a considerable distance
all round, so that the water would naturally flow with the Israelites (P.
Fairbairn, D.D.). So also Moses says: -I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount (Dent.
9: 21).
RESTORATION OF MIRACLE
Now there bursts upon us, who also are
standing on the threshold of our Promised Land, the extraordinary conclusion of
the Type, which closes in
* It
is difficult to foresee just what Moses violent disobedience (anti-typically)
portends. Can it mean that apostate Church authorities, by crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh (Heb.
6:
5),
and laying the whole murmuring, mutinous, despairing Church under anathema,
compel Gods resort again to miracle to save His entire people from perishing?
POWERS OF THE AGE TO COME
Moreover, the last outpour is to be fuller, more wonderful;
for only of the second output of the Rock is it said,- and the water came forth abundantly (Num.
20:
11)-
in cataracts. Thus in another type - the rush of the living waters from
Ezekiels
THE DATE
It is of intense and legitimate interest to learn exactly when
(if God has revealed it) the second outrush occurs. All seems to converge on
one approximate date. The first outrush was apart from the people, in the
presence of the Elders alone: at the second, all the People of God are gathered
together - an explicit forecast of the muster in the heavens. The Kingdom was
on the threshold; the Presence-cloud, containing the Shekinah, had come, the
Shekinah always accompanying the local descent and presence of Jehovah (Num.
20: 6) - that is, the Parousia has begun;
and the rod evoking the flood was Aarons sole rod of all the rods of
* It can scarcely be doubted that her death in the unlovely
wilderness was a punishment like the death of her brothers (Dean Spence).
**Two enter from the living (Caleb and
Joshua), and two from the dead (Jacob and Joseph: Gen. 47: 30, Ex. 13: 19), making up the world-number
of the Kingdom on earth.
*** Both in the Old Testament and the New, the last outpouring is
quoted together with the last judgments, and as inextricably mixed up with
them. Our Montanist, Irvingite and Tongues brethren
have all overlooked this fatal overthrow of their claims - claims themselves
mutually destructive to have experienced the latter
rain. As Habakkuk (3: 2) says:- Revive thy work in the midst of
the years; in wrath remember mercy.
-------
HEALING NATURE
The healing that can lie in a closer knowledge of Gods
exquisite world awoke the pulse of joy in Sir Roland Ross, on the eve of his great
discovery that the mosquito is a transmitter of malaria.
This day relenting God
Has placed within my hand
A wonderous thing: and God
Be praised. At His command,
Seeking His secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds
O million-murdering!
I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.
O Death where is thy sting,
Thy victory, O grave?
-------
THE GREAT PYRAMID
The instability, the credulity of many Christians t0-day, a credulity
based on a painful ignorance of the Word of God, is one of the very saddest
elements in the modern situation. To take but one example, an age which shows
an ever-relaxing grip on the veracity of Holy Scripture beholds a section of
Church accepting the numerical inerrancy and exact foreknowledge of a great
heathen mausoleum. At a British-Israelite mass meeting in the Albert Hall it
was announced - regardless of a jagged coast black with wrecks - that the
measurements of the Great Pyramid prove that the - [soon coming select Rapture (see Rev.
3: 10, 11,
R.V.) and] - Tribulation falls between May 28th,
1928 and September 15th 1936. The fixing of an Advent date is a funeral of that hope. McCheyne
once said to a group of friends, gathered for evening converse;- Do you think Christ will come back to-night? One
after another they replied:- I think not.
McCheyne then said very solemnly:- Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye THINK NOT the Son of Man cometh.
-------
Was Jesus poor? Ah me! Ah me!
How could such query ever be
Concerning one who staked his claim
With no boundary but his Fathers
name?
He, with one wide statement, made
Inventory of all he had:
Of wealth, no limit; lack, no sign;
All that the Father hath is mine.
* *
*
31
THE REBUILDING OF THE
[* After reading this writing see:-
(1)
THE
(2)
-------
A shaft
sunk 60 feet to 125 feet in the ground, says Dr. Edersheim, through
the accumulated debris of ages,
reached ancient
Prophecy is not silent on the
reconstruction of the
A rough estimate of the cost - [presumably when first published on
August 15th. 1927] - of the original construction has been drawn up in collaboration with Dr.
Gaster, Mr.
Schor and
other experts. King Solomon set 30,000 men to cut timber; 80,000 men to quarry
stone; 70,000 wood and stone carriers; and over all, 3,300 foremen. The timber
cutters worked in shifts; ten thousand worked in
* Imitation of Ezekiels
** These figures must be received with caution, owing to the
uncertainty of the exact value of the talent; but the most conservative
estimates run into hundreds of millions sterling. The utterly unparalleled
magnificence of Solomons structure, dwarfing any palace or temple ever made,
is shown by the next costliest building in the world - St. Peters, in
*** Mr. Henry Fords wealth reaches
£260,000,000. David gave approximately £10,000,000; but a single modern Jew -
Julius Rosenwald, of
+ A recent inquiry at one of the great
Banks elicited the conjecture that the Rothschilds
perhaps control £1,000,000,000, and that the aggregate of Jewish controlled
wealth may equal £50,000,000.
That the
Doubtless new
* Of
Herods
The Divine prevention by miraculous means of a premature
* History of the Jews, vol. II. p.
608.
* *
*
32
JOHN THE IMMERSER NOT ELIJAH
A Note on the Doctrine of the Transmigration
of Souls.*
By G.
H. LANG
* The fruit of a conversation with a wealthy Copt in
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
Christs 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 Christs 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 Gabriels words before Johns birth: Many of the children of
2. Matt. 11: 13, 14, 15. Christs words concerning John: All the
prophets and the law prophesied until John, and
if ye 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. [See Greek clause ...] 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 Malachis 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 Johns ministry was not
Elijahs 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. [See Greek clause ... ]
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 Christs 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.
* *
*
33
THE
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
So impenetrable have the closing chapters of Ezekiel been supposed to be - Gregory the Great, starting on their exposition,
said, We pursue a midnight journey - that the
Rabbis, who forbid (or did forbid) any Jew under thirty to read them, say:- When Elijah comes, he will expound them. But the
context, to the prophetical student, makes at least the general outline
transparently clear. For Ezekiel opens his book with an apostate Israel in
exile, a polluted and abandoned Temple, and a Holy City in ruins: then, as the
Advent draws on, Israels vast valley of dry bones heave in resurrection (Ezek. 37.), and hordes from Rosh pour down on
the Holy Land (38., 39.), to be extinguished in Armageddon:
now, finally, the horizon fills - in nine detailed and amazing chapters - with
the superb Metropolis of the Millennial
earth. So Ezekiel opens with all lost: he closes with all restored, in
earths new, splendid dawn. From the stark ruin of
THE
The new Citv,
covering 144 square miles,* with a huge
belt of isolating suburbs, a garden-city, will be pitched on the north of the
vast valley split by the earthquake (Zech. 14: 4); and the new Temple, not built on the site of the old, and
now outside the Holy City, is of enormous
proportions and most complicated structure.**
Pitched on the plateau of a very high mountain (Ezek. 11: 2) which was thrown up by the Advent
earthquake, by which the whole Land is lifted up (Zech. 14: 10), the Temple is pyramidal- an ascending climax, and the Holy
of Holies is the apex of the pyramid. For the base of the mountain is a square, a mile each way;
the Outer Court, higher up the mountain, 1,000 feet on each face of it; the
Inner Court, still higher, 600 feet square near the summit, the Court of the
Priests, 200 feet by 200 and on the final platform, 100 feet by 100, is the
Holiest in the centre of which - and thus of the whole earth - are the Altar
and the Throne, for the solitary royal priesthood after the Order of
Melchisedek.
* I
take these figures, unchecked, from The Students Commentary. The area of
** Voltaire declared that he could not
remember in all antiquity a national temple so small as Solomons. If it be
reeds and not cubits (Ezek. 42: 17). Ezekiels
THE CONSTRUCTION
Thus the
THE SACRIFICES
The restoration of the Sacrifices, which has been a stumbling
block to thousands, nevertheless is a certainty, and seems based on two facts:-
(1) for ceremonial cleanliness of the
flesh, for men in the flesh;* and (2) for a memorial backward - exactly
such as the Lords Supper is - of Calvary. Like the Mosaic sacrifices (and unlike Transubstantiation)
these sacrifices are no more identical with
*
Even decades after
** Wine is not forbidden to the priests,
except when on
THE LAND
All
* The Most Holy, into which Ezekiel himself is not invited, is
sacrosanct: even the Prince can approach no further than the Inner Gate of the
Sanctuary.
** Thus
THE GLORY
But the crowning glory still is
wanting, without which all this amazing preparation were unconvincing and
incomplete. No sooner had the Inner Sanctuary been marked off than the Wonder
that had abandoned the foul premises of the polluted
* The Shekinah never entered Ezras
** Only wood
and hewn stone (40: 42; 41: 16, 22) are named. We are indebted
to Mr. G. H. Ramsay for a reproduction of Dr. Delitschs Map of the land in the coming Age.
-------
HEROISM FOR GOD
An English college was once visited by a minister seeking volunteers
for a mission-field in
-------
WAITING AND WATCHING
To look for His coming is to prepare for Him. If I were asked
to visit you to-morrow evening, I am sure you would make some preparation for
my call - even for one so common-place as myself. You would prepare, because
you would welcome me. If you expected the King to call how excited you would
be! What preparation good housewives make for a royal visitor! When we expect
our Lord to come, we shall be concerned to have everything ready for Him. I
sometimes see the great gates open in front of the larger houses in the
suburbs: and it means that they are expecting company. Keep the great gates of
your souls always open, expecting your Lord to come. It is idle to talk about
looking for His coming if we never set our house in order and never put
ourselves in readiness for His reception. Looking for Him means that you stand
in a waiting attitude as a servant who expects his master to be at the door
presently. If you look for His appearing you will be found in an attitude of
one who waits and watches, that when his Lord cometh he may meet Him with joy.
Christ is coming, I must not sin: Christ is coming, I must not be rooted to the
world.
As to watching, this is rarer than waiting. The fact is, even
the better sort of believers who wait for His coming, as all the ten virgins
did, nevertheless do not watch. Even the best sort of the waiters slumber and
sleep. You are waiting but you are sleeping! This is a mournful business. A man
who is asleep cannot be said to look; and yet it is unto them that look for
Him that the Lord comes with salvation. We must be wide-awake to look. We
ought to go up to the watch-tower every morning, and look toward the sun-rising
to see whether He is coming. Surely our last act at night should be to look out
for His star, and say:- Is He coming? It
ought to be a daily disappointment when our Lord does not come; instead of
being, as I fear it is, a kind of foregone conclusion that He will not come
just yet.
- C. H. SPURGEON
-------
Finish thy
work, the time is short,
The sun is
in the west;
The night is coming down, till then
Think not of rest.
Yes, finish all thy work - then rest;
Till then, till then, rest never:
The rest prepared for thee by GOD
Is rest for ever.
* *
*
34
WAKING AND SLEEPING + 1
By ADELPHUS
Much interest
attaches to the fact, that two words for sleep are used in First Thessalonians. One is found in chapter four, and occurs there three times. The
other is employed only in chapter five,
and occurs there four times. Thus the three and the four together make up
the sacred seven. In cases where
the three begin and the four follow, we pass
from what is Gods, to what which
belongs to man.
The three occurrences in chapter four are -
1. I would not
have you ignorant concerning the fallen asleep: verse 13.
2. Those put
to sleep by Jesus will God bring:
verse 14.
3. We who are alive shall not get the
start of those fallen asleep: verse 15.
The occurrences of the Second Word in chapter five are as follow -
1. So then let us not lie
down to sleep, as do the rest verse 6.
2, 3. They that lie
down to sleep, lie down to sleep by night:
verse 7.
4. Whether we keep awake, or lie
down to sleep verse 10.
This Second Word is a compound; the verb by itself signifying
to sleep: the preposition signifying down, and calling attention to the
voluntary change of posture, the lying down of those wishing, for
repose.
The choice of these two words is beautifully adapted to the
different aspects of the subject.
1. The Greek word occurring in chapter four presents to us the being lulled to sleep by a
superior,
without consultation whether the patient desires it or not; even as a mother or a nurse puts a child
to sleep for its benefit, before it is able to decide for itself. Hence we have
those
put
to sleep by Jesus. They are passive in the hands of Christ, as the infant
in the mothers arms. And as the Saviour puts them to sleep, so He will awaken
them at the fitting time. Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep;
but I am going that I may awaken
him out of sleep: John 11.
2. The Greek word in chapter five
signifies sleep as it is a matter of choice and of preparation, for it, by those older, and able to decide for themselves. Hence it is
connected, in the four occurrences there, with exhortation. Let us not sleep as the rest; but let us keep
awake, and keep sober. For they that lie down to sleep, lie
down to sleep by night. Here the sleep is evil, because of
the mischief following on it, and it is a matter of responsibility on the part
of those that give way to it. Awake, thou that art lying
asleep: and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light: Eph. 5.
But there is one apparent exception, on which I will say a few
words, as it is really a beautiful confirmation of the distinction here stated.
The Saviour, in the
He comes to them again, and again finds them lying asleep. He leaves them.
On coming the third time, He says: Are you lying
asleep for the rest of the
time, and taking repose? It is enough;
the hour is come, behold
the Son of man is being betrayed into the hands of the sinful.
These points are all in favour of the view given; but there is
a passage in Luke 22: 45, 46, which contains both the first (or passive word) for sleep,
and also the second (or the word of choice and activity). He came to
the disciples, and found them sleeping
from sorrow, and saith unto them: Why lie
ye asleep? stand up and pray, in order that
ye enter not into temptation.
So this example gives us sleep as a matter of choice on the
disciples part, and the call to throw it off as evil. But it is not obscurely
hinted, that there was a superior at work upon their passivity, and for their
harm.
1. He findeth them lying asleep; for their eyes had been made heavy; neither knew they what answer to make Him Mark 14: 40.
2. He found
them (the first and
passive word) sleeping from sorrow (something not of their own will). And lastly He says
to the armed foes: This is your hour, and the
power of darkness: Luke 22: 53. The spirit
indeed is willing; but the flesh is weak.
Both classes, the sleepers and the wakeful are referred to
Jesus.
1. Those put
to sleep by Jesus. The dead in Christ shall rise. Those only who are in Him and put to sleep by Him, find the
sleep of death a benefit. They are alive in Him, and death cannot break the
bond.
2. But of the
living saints we read also: We who are alive and remain to the Presence of the Lord. Then both
parties are caught up together into air to meet the Lord.
-------
MASONRY AND THE CHURCHES
The Free Presbyterian
Magazine (Inverness) kindly
sends us the information - of which we were unaware - that not only has the
Salvation Army separated itself from Masonry, but also the Free Presbyterian
Church, the United Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the
Wesleyan Methodists, the Free Methodists, the Christian Reformed (Dutch)
Church, German Baptist Brethren, and some of the Lutheran Synods. The Society
of Friends also falls into line with these. General Bramwell Booth says:- No language of mine could be too strong in condemning any
officers affiliation with any Society which shuts Him [Jesus Christ] outside its temples, and which in its religious ceremonies
gives neither Him nor His name any place.
* *
*
35
THE MASONIC CRAFT
AND THE GOSPEL + 3
By Rev. C. PENNEY HUNT, B.A.
Three
aspects of the Gospel are vital for every Christian (1) Christs Objective Sacrifice on the Cross; (2) Salvation by faith only; and (3) The Sacraments, interpreted spiritually and apart from all
notions of pagan magic.
One of the most prolific masonic writers, Mr. W. A. Waite. from whose pen has issued volume after volume for a
generation, manifests an amazing lust for these things. He is a great
archaeological student and a great admirer of the Kabbalists.
There are 1,400, degrees known to Masonry of various ages and lands. 1,200 have
entirely ceased to be worked, but, Waite has taken the remaining 200 and has
minutely studied the rest. If he is not an authority, who is? In his Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry he tells us that
the masonic ritual is as sacramental as anything practised in the Churches.
Like other writers quoted - Vishnu, Osiris and Christ are re-incarnations of
the same deity. In his latest work, published 1925, under the title Emblematic Masonry,
p. 286, he writes: We are the officiating priests, alone ordained truly, by a
succession that is more than Apostolic Note the words: masons are alone truly ordained. They are a succession more than Apostolic. Again we read, p.
284, The pupil of the great master Eckehart so grew in the grades of the Divine Love that in
the hypothesis concerning her attainment it was possible and valid for her to
make the amazing affirmation I am God. Again, p. 286, But we are the Sacred Host that is poured into the chalice,
and the wine ... is that of our own being, on the understanding that it is God
within us.
But of course masons who are Church Leaders would repudiate
this sort of thing? Let us see.
The masons of Dundee, to raise money, have issued a volume,
the proceeds from which are to be devoted to the erection of a new
Does Masonry repudiate this book? Nay, a new masonic lodge is
being erected out of the profits. And a recent reference in the masonic press
tells us the book is being read the world over. Do masonic Ministers repudiate
it? Why, the preface to this volume is written by the Rev. W. Paxton, F.R.S., at the time a Congregational
Minister of Dundee. Previously he was President of the Bradford Free Church
Council. He is now [July, 1927] pastor of
But the classical passage illustrating the Christian.
Interpretation of Masonry, is Wilnshursts description of the mystic experiences
of the candidate passing through the final stages of these degrees, as set
forth in 50 pages (146-182 of the Masonic Initiation. The writer represents him lying in his
coffin in a condition of Hypnosis (and
compares his experiences with the hallucinations effected by inhaling nitrous
oxide gas). The candidate seems to be led by a guide into the Celestial Lodge
above. Here celestial workmen are busy designing plans for use below - social
systems, national constitutions and plans for the use of modern Masonry. They
have given up, states the writer, designing ecclesiastical constitutions - God
has no further use for the Church. Thus all things on earth are in accordance with the pattern shown in the Mount. His guide then takes him into still higher
regions and coming to the Pillars of the Royal Arch, leaves him to proceed into
the darkness beyond and alone. This is the Day of Atonement. Each must tread
the winepress alone. The candidate hears his guide in the rear, praying Father, into Thy hands I commend his spirit. The
candidate finds himself divested of all clothing save his masonic apron. Blood
and sweat drip from his brow. He cries for help to the other sons of the widow (i.e. Hiram Abiff
and the rest). The remainder I give in the authors own words. I felt myself lifted up above the earth ... my frame into vertical erectness and rigidity, extending my
arms horizontally, making taut and tense under its strain every fibre of my
being. In mid air, my head held towards heights I could not reach, my feet
pointing to the earth they no longer touched, my arms wide-flung traversely
into void space, I hung suspended upon that invisible impalpable Life-Tree;
myself a cross; myself the crucified upon the cross. ... As I hung, my thorny crown stabbed its spikes, more deeply,
more insistently into my brow. ... It was the zero-point of negative
consciousness ... where nothing is and God is not. Eloi,
Eloi; Lama Sabachthami!
... I revived ... I
rejoined my former brother and guide ... at the
pillars ... my presence dazzled him with the
light it now radiated . ... Then ... as we embraced he exclaimed: The Master
is Risen! and to him I replied - He is risen indeed. Ward and Waite draw similar pictures.
So does Powell. Here is one sentence. Before
the soul rises again in its glory, there must be Gethsemane and
So the Christian Interpretation
of Masonry is this - just as Christ atoned for his own sins and for nobody
elses, so must each individual make atonement for himself, unaided by any
other individual.
-------
FREE-MASONRY GNOSTIC
The Masonic mixture of Faiths - we
masons, says Dr.
Fort Newton, late minister of the City Temple, pursue the Universal
Religion - can only end in a Gnosticism which was exactly such a compound,
both being definite apostasy-creators. It is well for
a man, says Mr. W.
L. Wilmshurst,
President of the Installed Masters
Association of
-------
THE
Some years ago the Freemasons of
Boston applied for the incorporation of a company for the
-------
THE
The two Temples, the spiritual and the
literal, overlapped by 40 years, the 40 years of the final probation of the
Jew: for the final pro bation of the
Gentile (Rom
11: 22) they may overlap again.
How soon we may be in the land where money is little worth, and only goodness
counts! I have so much to do, John Calvin wrote, that many a night is spent without an offering of sleep
being brought to Nature; and so he laid the foundations of early
disease and premature death. When his friends expostulated, he replied:- Would you wish that the Lord should find me idle when He
comes?
* *
*
36
MOSES AND CHRIST + 1
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 Covenants
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 Augustines 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
purpose 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 Jehovahs 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 Gods 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 Lords 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 Lords 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 Lords 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 Israels 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 Gospels
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-resistance, 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 by the 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 straind;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from
heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice
blessd;
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.
* *
*
37
THE CASE AGAINST THE
SECOND ADVENT +1
How
strongly Second Advent truth is telling is proved by the elaborate attempts now
being made to refute it, the latest being advanced (Christian
World, Feb. 10th
and 17th 1927) by Dr. Charles
E. Jefferson, begins by giving away a good deal more than he can afford. After
dilating on the watchword of the
We do not say to one another Maranatha. We seldom think of His coming. That
will account in large measure for the difference in spirit between the first
century Church and our own. Their belief in the early coming of Christ gave an intensity
to their life which ours does not possess. We are intense about certain things
but not about our religion. There was an other-worldliness in the Church of the
Apostles which has vanished. The early Christians kept their thoughts upon the
other world, the world into whi.ch Christ had vanished and from which He was
soon to emerge again. We do not think much about the other world. The present
world is amazingly attractive and it absorbs all our strength and time. It is a
difficult world to manage and we have no time for any other. The
Now this encomium - a perfectly true
one - is exceedingly dangerous to Dr. Jeffersons case. Do men gather
grapes of thorns? Does it not go far towards overthrowing the very foundations of morality
to paint in glowing colours the heavenly mind and unearthly conduct which
sprang, and spring, out of what is later described as a
deadly superstition, It is a fundamental law of the universe that like
alone produces like. If the life radiant to which (as Dr. Jefferson says) the
modern Church without the Advent is a stranger, is the fruit of a travesty and a caricature
of the Gospel (again the Doctors
words), morality is at an end, and truth has committed suicide.
But why does the Doctor admit so much? For one very simple
reason. He thinks he has a deadly torpedo which he can launch at any moment
into the flank of the Advent, sinking it hopelessly. Here it is:-
Let us see what Paul believed. We have his belief recorded in 1 Thess. 4: 16-18:
For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice
of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that
are left, shall together with them be caught up
in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. That is very clear and very positive.
The Lord is coming out of the sky with a shout. An archangel is going to speak.
The trumpet of God is going to blow. All the Christians then alive, and Paul
will be among the number, will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in
the air. That was Pauls joyful belief. Of that he had no doubt. That is the
doctrine which he taught his converts. But Paul was mistaken, so were all the
Apostles. Every one of them was mistaken. Their mistake is recorded in our New
Testament. That mistake cannot be got rid of. It was a huge mistake, and it
forms a part of the New Testament for ever.
Alas, the huge
mistake is Dr. Jeffersons! It is always an error to attack a citadel
with such contempt as not first to have mastered its ground plan. Cannon
emptied at out-works which do not exist waste their shot. A not very recondite
study of the Scripture documents reveals that the attitude and not the date was the one constant factor inculcated, combining
unwavering readiness with the possibility of indefinite postponement. We to-day
use exactly the language of the Apostle,
with an identical meaning:- we that are alive, that remain, shall be
caught up: whether
we shall be alive, and remain, is one of the
secrets of God. Dr. Jefferson confounds expectation with prediction. The Apostle John carefully guards (John 21:
23)
against any dating of the Advent, even
within the last Apostles
lifetime, while equally carefully leaving open its possibility, hope, or even
expectation. An identical attitude runs
through the entire substructure of all Advent prophecies. Pauls huge mistake simply does not exist; and with it
collapses the solitary argument, the lonely foundation, from which Dr.
Jefferson, with a curiously uninformed assurance, jettisons the Second Coming
as a deadly superstition. Nor is the Doctors
knowledge of Advent literature any more accurate than his knowledge of Advent
prophecies.
They say He is coming soon. They used to name the date. They
missed it so many times they dare not do it any more. Only a fanatic of unusual
stature ventures, any longer, to specify the day on which the Lord will bring
the world to an end. They now use ambiguous adverbs. They declare He is coming
soon.
Had Dr. Jefferson any knowledge at all of Advent literature -
he seems acquainted only with the date-fixing vaticinations of non-Christian sects
such as Russellism, or Mormonism, or the Order of the Star in the East - he
would know that we could range through the thirty volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, or the entire output of the Rainbow
- probably the most remarkable periodical on prophecy ever issued - or the
pages of any foremost exponent of the Coming, and cross-examine hundreds of
thousands of prophetic students of every grade of gift and grace, and not only
find no date, but the strongest possible enforcements of our Lords prohibition
of all date-affixing to an event the very soul of which is its inviolable
secrecy.
Nor is Dr. Jeffersons one practical criticism a mistake less huge.
He imagines because Christs Gospel finds so obstinate a refusal as to shift
the centre of gravity for world-reform across the grave, rendering all present
political and social effort a constant Sisyphus miscarriage, that the Advent
attitude is, therefore, folded hands and a slumbering heart.
A reading of the Bible which cuts the nerve of action is
certainly a deadly superstition which all open-eyed lovers of the truth must
resist and overcome.
As a matter of fact, the mass of work accomplished in the
world, and for the world, by watchers for the Lord during the worlds latest
century is out of all proportion to their rank or number. Missionaries like
Hudson Taylor, philanthropists like Lord Shaftsbury, evangelists like Moody,
preachers like Spurgeon, expositors like Govett, authors like Pember, scholars
like Tregelles, founders of institutions for Christian rescue like George
Muller: - all these giants in their several spheres, Whose labours were
colossal, not only could say, but most have said, that so far from cutting
the nerve of action, it was the
nerve. We have space for but a single witness. Mr. Moody, beyond challenge the
greatest evangelist of the modern age, and from his earliest years an
exhaustive worker, says: - I have felt like working
three times as hard since I came to understand that my Lord is coming again.
Dr. Jeffersons own view of the Coming is a coming so
ineffectual that it never ceases, and never arrives.
The proper expression is the continuous
coming of Christ. He has already come many times. He is coming many times. In
the present hour He will come and keep on coming.
It seems a light matter to critics of this kind that such a
view contradicts point-blank the Son of God, who says:- they shall
see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory
(Matt.
24: 30). If the Apostles erred, the Lord
erred much more deeply, for His assertions of His bodily return are the most
drastic and constant in the whole range of Scripture.
It is deeply pathetic that the very faith
in the future which the Church often so loyally, so bravely, exercises is
itself a tragic unbelief - in the Scriptures
- doomed to bitter disenchantment. Israel stressed the crown and forgot the
cross - the Church stresses the cross and forgets the crown; and critics of the
Advent, coming perilously near to filling the role of the mockers foretold (2 Pet. 3: 3), may well be cautious lest they duplicate Israels blunder,
who, because they knew not the voice of the prophets, fulfilled them by condemning Him (Acts. 13: 27).*
* The only Christian date-affixers (so
far as we know) are found among advocates of the year-day
theory, nor would even they (we imagine) attempt to forecast the exact day of
rapture, or the hour of our Lords arrival on earth.
-------
RECANTING CRITICISM
The real worthlessness of much Biblical Criticism has just been astonishingly proved by no less a
critic than Professor von Harnack. Fifty-seven years ago, he says, when I began my theological studies, it was generally admitted
that the only reliable critics were those who did not regard more than four of
the epistles of Paul as authentic. Since then things have changed. Besides 1 and 2 Corinthians,
Galatians
and Romans, 1 Thessalonians, Colossians, Philippians
and Philemon are accepted
as authentic. The collection of Epistles is so ancient that to regard any one
as the work of a forger would raise serious objections. It is more than likely
that the primitive collection of the ten epistles contains only authentic
writings. What then becomes of the learned disquisitions on these very
Epistles, tabulating assured results which we
were told that we must face, which shook the
faith and disembowelled the preaching of countless ministries? Criticism can
thus write its own epitaph, but - infinitely more tragic - it first writes the
epitaph on pulpit tombstones and a myriad of vacant pews.
* *
*
38
THE BEATIFIC VISION + 1
By D.
M. PANTON, B.A.
The circumstances
of our eternal state, the other wonders of other worlds which God is preparing
for them that love Him, often absorb our thoughts; but there is another destiny
ahead of Gods children incalculably profounder and more entrancing. Important
as are the many mansions, the services to which He may appoint us, the honours with
which He may crown us, incomparably more satisfying, inexpressibly more
wonderful, is a deeper revelation of God. Beloved, now are we children of God, and
it is not yet made manifest what we
shall be ;
but we know
that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be LIKE HIM, for we shall see him even as he is (1 John 3: 2). No man is ever converted but there is the germ of a
perfect image of Christ. What I am must always be infinitely more vital than where I am, and what I
am than what I have. While it is conceivable - though it can never happen -
that our honours might be stripped from us, our mansions forfeited, our service
ended, our characters are our own for
ever; and the butterfly already slumbers in the chrysalis. We are far more than
royalties travelling incognito.
THE PLAN
Now this profound plan of God lies embedded in a past eternity
of which we have no knowledge. Whom he foreknew, he
also FOREORDAINED to be conformed to
the
image of his Son? (Rom.
8: 29). All that we are as reborn children of
God has its background, its draft-plans, in a past eternity; and we do not read
that God foreordained us to pardon, or to
THE TRANSFORMATION
The next passage is peculiarly valuable for showing that the
transformation is not physical only in resurrection, but a transfiguration of
character that has already begun in the regenerate. We all,
with unveiled face, beholding
as in a glass -
or, reflecting as in a mirror - the glory of the Lord are [being] transformed
into the same image from glory
to glory as from the Lord the Spirit (2 Cor. 3: 18). The veil, that concealed Christ, has,
for as, been removed, and the new man in us, a creation of like substance with Him, and so
mouldable and capable of complete likeness, is being renewed after the image of him that
created him (Col. 3: 10). If we look at a person, the pupil of our eye reflects his
complete image: so, as we habitually contemplate the Lord, the image at which
we look - like a photographic negative exposed to an object in the light -
reproduces itself in us: and as conversion itself is a fundamental, structural
change toward ultimate glory, so, as the process continues under the fingers of the
indwelling [Holy] Spirit, the change - not of thought, or even conduct,
only, but of being - mounts from glory to glory. By continually beholding, we are
continually transfiguring. It is not great talents
God blesses, says McCheyne,
so much as great likeness to Christ. Thus
future glory is not so much something added from without, as goodness emerging
from within: it is the butterfly springing from the chrysalis: it is manifestation of sons of God.*
* This passage also settles the critical
point of the date. Just when the change takes place is partly determined by the
thoroughness of the prior work of the Spirit; even as in a back-slider,
deepening in a backsliding life, the process actually and manifestly
retrogrades. The vision will be effective in all, but not simultaneously in all. Moreover, as it is by the Lord the Spirit, the final moment must be His
decision alone, and does not depend solely on the physical vision: we read of no change in Moses or Elijah, though
they watched the transfiguring Christ; nor in Mary when she beheld the risen
Lord in the Garden, or the Apostles witnessing the Ascension. The vision did
not change John in Patmos any more than it will change all believers at the
Judgment Seat of which the
THE VISION
But a far fuller, and therefore a far more potent, vision
awaits us in resurrection bodies; for if the vision of the Lord in the mirror
only - the Scriptures - so changes us, what must the reality? We shall be like him, for - because: it is philologically
certain that the proposition introduced by [see Greek word ...] contains the real and essential cause and ground of
that which it follows (Alford) - we shall see him even as He is - that is, no longer as weary by Sychars well, or convulsed in agony on Calvary. All
through it is a transforming vision. The first vision is - Behold the
Lamb of God; and
the susceptible negative created by this second birth, touched and retouched by
the transfiguring [Holy] Spirit during life, has the process
sharply completed by the direct vision of the Lord. Exceptional servants of God
have betrayed gleams of the coming Glory. After Moses had been forty days, and
no more, in the presence of God his countenance was so transfigured that people
were afraid to approach him (Ex. 34: 29); and
Stephens face awed his murderers, Looking up steadfastly into heaven,
he saw Jesus; and all saw his face as it
had been the face of an angel (Acts 7:
55). For the rest of us the transcript is written
in faint, though indelible, ink, which will steal out, one day, in letters of
fire.
THE LIKENESS
The Apostle is keenly conscious of the necessarily limited
grasp of our imagination. We know not - we are in the ark - what we shall be, but we shall be like him. The word [see Greek ...] - as Dr. Lange says - means resembling, similar not
equal to [the Greek word ...]: it is only of Christ Paul says
that He is equal to
God (Phil.
2:
6). Christ is the Image of God (Heb. 1: 3) in a sense in which we cannot even be an image of
Christ. All that separates the creature from the Creator - omnipotence,
omniscience, omnipresence - is a gulf we can never bridge; but the human Christ, in moral
and physical perfection, is the model to which God is working: we shall be
replicas of Christ; and it includes the physical - who shall
fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that
it may be conformed to the body of his
glory (Phil. 3: 21). It is one thing to know that we shall be sinless; it is
another and altogether more wonderful thing to know that we shall be like Christ. Earth would be
heaven if all men were duplicates of Christ. We know not what - it is not defined closer than a
resemblance. Our Lord sums up the perfect Man, of all types; so each of us will
resemble Him in the type in which we were created. No profounder criticism of
the missionary body has been offered than the question of a Japanese woman:- Missionary, when was it that Christians stopped being like
Jesus?
THE GOAL
So in eternity we reach the goal to which God is steadily
working, a goal of indescribable wonder. It is the felt discord with our own
ideal which produces all the misery that is in the Christian life: the hour hastens
when our nature, through and through and to its innermost core, will be
transformed into exact accord with a heavenly environment. For they shall SEE His face: and His name
shall be on their foreheads (Rev. 22: 4):- hall-marked, for Gods name
can be stamped on that only which is in Gods nature. The all-devastating
vision, so dread as to cause instant death - for man shall not see Me and live
(Ex.
33:
20), before Whose face earth and heaven
dissolve - is, reversed, the same enormous power, unimaginably potent, which
changes what it smites into the image of itself. We shall have the mind of Christ, the outlook of Christ, the tastes of
Christ, the unselfishness of Christ, the affections of Christ, the angers of
Christ, the compassions of Christ, the purity of Christ, the habits of Christ,
the devotion of Christ, the heavenliness of Christ. And the change is final.
The presence
of God made the skin of Moses to shine; the vision of God will make the
substance of the soul glorious: but the presence-glory decayed and died; while
the glory from the vision, saturating all the extent of our being in all its
depth, passes into the imperishable substance of the soul. The whole world must
one day acknowledge in us the very beauty which they now acclaim in Christ.
SECOND BIRTH
So we see the fearful necessity of the initial act. In the day
that God created man, in the image
of God made he him; but Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image (Gen. 5: 1, 3): the image of God was lost. Only God can
recreate it, and He does so in a second birth - that Christ may be the firstborn among many brothers, fellow-images in the likeness of God.
Now are we - [who are regenerate] - children
of God: unless born again - [at the time of our resurrection
or translation
(Luke 20: 35; Rev. 3: 10; 2 Tim. 2: 18)] - in the nature of God, it is obviously impossible - [during
this life and evil age] - to grow into the image of God. And the
proof is in the likeness. As an image plants itself upon a mirror so that
the image now reaches the eye, not from the image only, but from the reflection
in the mirror, so the godly man is the ungodly mans mirror of Christ. Renan [the apostate] says:- Francis, of Assisi has always been one of my strongest
reasons for believing that Jesus was very nearly such as the synoptic Gospels
describe Him. When Voltaire
visited
-------
DUTY
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godheads most benignant grace;
Nor know we any thing so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their
beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from
wrong
And the most ancient heavens, through thee,
are fresh and strong.
- WORDSWORTH.
-------
TWO GATES
A minister went hurrying out of the
church to catch the train. Upon arrival at the gate he found he had just three
minutes. A man who had heard him speak rushed up and said, I am very anxious about my soul. The minister
replied, I have only two minutes to catch my train.
It is the last one to-night. I request you to read Isaiah 53: 6. Go in at the first all, and come out at the last all.
The man went home, thinking over that strange instruction. He got out his Bible
and read: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. The anxious sinner, after reading the
passage said: I am included in that first all; after
reflection he suddenly recalled that he was also included in the last all. He immediately fell on his knees and accepted
pardon and cleansing.*
[* NOTE: For further instruction, for the ELECT,
of a salvation ready
to be revealed in the LAST
time ... though now ye see him {Jesus Christ} not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly
with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving
the END of your faith,
even the salvation of your SOULS. Concerning
which {future} salvation the prophets sought and
searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace
that should come unto you: searching what time or
what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which
was in them did point unto, when it {the Holy Spirit} testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow
them: (1 Pet. 1: 1, 5b, 8-10,
R.V.)]
* *
*
39
MILLENNARIANISM AND ERROR
By HORATIUS BONAR, D.D.
Let us
inquire into the connection said to subsist between millennarianism and false
doctrine. Can it be proved by acts? 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-millennarian. 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 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 millermarians. 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.*
* Dionysins 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) *- Ed. {D.M.P.}]
* Mr. Mauro is
right in protesting, as we ourselves have done, against an extreme
dispensationalism 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.
* *
*
40
THE DANGER OF AN
EXASPERATED SPIRIT + 4
Kadesh
is the Spirits portrait of our modern age. In all the history of the Theocracy
there is no such entire blank as
* Denial of the [Millennial] Kingdom is self -exclusion. Whosoever
shall not receive the
For if there was one man in those wandering tribes whose
conspicuous office, holy character, faithful record, and constant devotion
lifted him head and shoulders above the faithless crowd, and seemed to make
entrance into the Reward absolutely secure, it was Moses. Here
is a man of whom the Divine record is that he was faithful in all his house (Heb. 3: 5); a man whose renunciation on the
threshold of discipleship was so great that he is chosen by the Holy Spirit as
its eternal [aionios]*
model; in spite of extreme age,
a man with none of the crippling and lowering disabilities of years; the
meekest man on earth (Num. 12: 3), and so armed in
triple brass against outbursts of temper; with a devotion such that he alone of
mankind ever asked to be blotted out of the Book of Life for others sake; a
worker of miracles on a scale, and of a quality unparalleled save by our Lord;
and the author of more Scripture than any man who ever lived. Yet this
is the mighty servant of God who trips and falls in the last lap of his race. The warning could not be more pregnant and rousing. Nothing
wins the Prize (Phil. 3: 14), but a clean race run to a clean finish.
[* NOTE: See Heb. 5: 8, 9,
R.V. :
...though he - {i.e., Jesus, our High Priest} - having been heard for his godly fear, though he was a Son, yet
learned OBEDIENCE by the things
which he suffered; [9] and having been made
perfect, he
became unto
all them that OBEY him the author of eternal {Greek aionios}
salvation...
Here the word aionios is the same
word shown in John
3: 16,
and translated eternal in most English Bibles:
but in Hebrews
5:
9 it is used in an entirely different context!
That is, in the sense of age-lasting, not eternal! Eternal
salvation has nothing whatsoever to do with a regenerate persons OBEDIENCE! (Rom.
8: 23; cf. Gal. 2: 16, R.V.). But,
on the other hand, our life with Christ during the Age
yet
to come, and after the time of our Resurrection
most certainly has! (Gal. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 5; Heb. 10: 35, 36; 12: 17ff., R.V.)]
For the very heart of the warning lies in the absolute
justification of Moses exasperation. It is only necessary to recite the sacred
narrative. And the people strove with Moses - casting off, with scorn, the
faithful leadership, and undying intercession, of nearly four decades - and spake,
saying, Would God that
we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! and why have ye brought the assembly of the Lord into this
wilderness? (Num. 20: 3). The whole modern situation lies embedded in Kadesh. First, all - [presently
unfulfilled divine] - prophecy - [relative to their promised inheritance]* - comes to be totally denied;
then follows the inevitable reaction and
revolt against a leadership - for Moses had never faltered as to the
goal - which had fastened the entire gaze of Gods people on Canaan, a future
state; and finally, under an awful realization of
Wilderness horrors - the sole - [and future] - destiny of Gods people left - faith
in the very call of God is shaken to its foundations, and Gods Word becomes a dead letter, the pilgrimage a funeral,
and the Wilderness a cemetery.
Now we see the danger. Jehovah had been rightly consulted: the
dangerous Shekinah fires had shown themselves in the heavens in response: Gods
mercy was to be unlocked from the rock. Moses and Aaron approach the rock. Before
the vast assemblage Moses cries:- Hear now, ye rebels; shall we bring you forth water out of this rock? The comment of the Psalm
(106: 32) lodges the sin in the exasperated
utterance rather than in the double blow, his passionate action being only a
symptom: it
went ill with Moses for their sakes [on their account] and he spake unadvisedly with his lips. God
had proposed a greater miracle - a fountain gushing from the rock without a gash:
Moses curtly disobeys, striking the rock much as he might have desired strike the people. They provoked his spirit, says, the
Psalmist: once he reproached them as rebellious (Deut. 3: 24) without offence, but now, in passion, he loses all command of
himself, and by that fearful word - ye rebels - plumbs the depths of denunciation and excommunicates, in one sweeping sarcasm, the entire -[regenerate and redeemed] - People of God.*
* It is too like Moreh (M. Henry),
For a believer, in a fit of passion, to brand another believer as a rebel from God, an apostate, a limb of Satan, is an
offence (Matt.
5:
22)
on which the Most High is extraordinarily sensitive.
The sentence of God falls like lightning. And the Lord
said unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed
not in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the
children of
A valuable lesson on the graded nature of sin springs from the
severity of the sentence. The aged saint himself felt keenly the dreadful
disaster. And I besought the Lord, saying,
O Lord God, let me go
over, I pray thee; but the Lord was wroth with me, and hearkened not unto
me and the Lord said unto me, Let it suffice
thee; speak
no more unto me of this matter (Deut. 3: 24). The guilt of a sin turns on the
standing of the sinner as well as on the enormity of the act. The supremest
saintly achievement spells the greatest largesse of a grace which makes a man
more responsible, not less (Amos 3:
2).
Similar impatiences and angers, only incomparably greater, in the ignorant
and unstable people which He had overlooked again and again God could not pass
over in him who was His very mouth-piece to the people.* Nor could He revoke the sentence. The reversal of a sentence announced in public and sealed by oath would have shaken the very foundations of Gods throne; and
so he who had saved millions by his intercession, cannot save himself. Moses
and Aaron had lost the race that Joshua and Caleb won.**
* It
is also a comfort to recollect the aggravations of the offence which place it
beyond mere exasperation. It was public; it occurred just after Gods
miraculous action (Num. 20: 6), and immediately before fresh miracle, as
Moses well knew; it was accompanied by violence - the double rupture of the
rock; and it was lawlessness in the supreme lawgiver of all time.
**Actually, Moses lost
Therefore Jehovah Himself finally lays bare the profound
principle underlying the judgment of His people. Because ye believed not in me,
TO SANCTIFY ME in the eyes of the
children of
Some one said to George
Muller in his lifes eventide:- When God calls you
home, Mr. Muller, you will be like a ship entering harbour in full sail.
Oh no, he replied; it
will be only poor George Muller, who needs daily to pray - Hold Thou me up in my goings, that my
footsteps slip not.
* Moses and Aaron among his priests:
... thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of
their doings (Ps. 99: 6, 8). It is sad to see how otherwise godly
evangelicals can soften, if not obliterate, the sorely needed and most blessed
judicial warnings of God. It was better for Moses,
says C. H. Mackintosh, to see the
[* NOTE: Many
prophetic Bible students believe Moses
will accompany Elijah during the
Great Tribulation as Gods two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred
and three score days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth ... These have the power to shut
the heaven, that it rain not during the days of their prophecy: and they have
the power over the waters to turn
them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they shall desire: (Rev. 11: 3b-4, 6, R.V. Cf. Exod. 6: 6; 7; 17; 9: 14-17; Zech. 4: 3, 11, 14ff., R.V.). Both of these great men of God - Elijah the PROPHET and Moses Gods LAW-giver - both blew it says Dr. Chuck Missler! That is, they were not used by God (in their God-given service) after
that time. This fact is one of several reasons why I believe MOSES - (instead of ENOCH) - will testify before the
Antichrist during the Great Tribulation: - which, I believe, will
develop quickly after the introduction of digital currency world-wide.]
-------
THE BURIAL OF MOSES
By Nebos lonely mountain,
On this side Jordans wave,
In a vale in the
There lies a lonely grave;
And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it eer,
For the angels of God upturnd the sod
And laid the dead man there.
That was the grandest funeral
That ever passd
on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth -
Noiselessly as the daylight
Comes back when night is done,
And the crimson streak on oceans
cheek
Grows into the great sun;
Noiselessly as the springtime
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves:
So, without sound of music,
Or voice of them that wept,
Silently down from the mountains
crown
The great procession swept.
Perchance the bald old eagle,
On grey Beth-peors
height,
Out of his lonely eyrie
Lookd on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion, stalking,
Still shuns that hallowd
spot,
For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.
But when the warrior dieth,
His comrades in the war,
With arms reversed and muffled drum,
Follow the funeral car;
They show the banners taken,
They tell his battles won,
And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.
Amid the noblest of the land
Men lay the sage to rest,
And give the bard an honourd place,
With costly marble dressd,
In the great minster transept,
Where lights like glories fall,
And the organ rings, and the sweet
choir sings,
Along the emblazond
wall.
This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earths philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page truths half so
sage
As he wrote down for men.
And had he not high honour,
The hillside for a pall,
To lie in state, while angels wait,
With stars for tapers tall,
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing
plumes
Over his bier to wave,
And Gods own hand in that lonely land
To lay him in the grave?
O lonely grave in
O dark Beth-peors
hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,
And teach them to be still:
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell;
He hides them deep, like the hidden
sleep
Of him He loved so well.
- M. S.
ALEXANDER.
-------
BECOME AS LITTLE CHILDREN*
[* NOTE: Addressing His Disciples Jesus said: Except ye turn, and become as little children,
ye
shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven: (Matthew 18: 3, 4). And
again, - Whosoever shall not receive the
Last night my little boy confessd to me
Some childish wrong;
And kneeling at my knee
He prayd
with tears:-
Dear God, make me a man,
Like Daddy - wise and strong;
I know You can.
Then while he slept
I knelt beside his bed,
Confessd my sins,
And prayd
with low-bowd head
O God, make me a child,
Like my child here -
Pure, guileless, trusting Thee
With faith sincere.
The Expositor.
The fly on a pillar in
-------
CHURCH DRAMA
For the first time since the Reformation, Canterbury Cathedral
has been given over, this year [1929] and
last, to a week of Medieval Drama, embracing the Father as an old man appearing
above a parapet. Art in religion spells [apostasy in the Churches and]
* *
*
41
THE DEVOTION OF THE LORD JESUS
It has
been said that he who could expound Leviticus in its fulness would give a fifth
Gospel to the world. For the five great offerings of the Law are so many mirrors
set round the central Christ, giving five portraits of our Lord from different
angles, The Burnt Offering is the life of
Christ; the Meal Offering is the character of Christ; the Peace Offering is the work of Christ; and the Sin Offerings are
the death of Christ. This
fivefold ritual is the first portrait of Messiah ever given.
The five great offerings were divided into two classes - the
Sweet-savour offerings, for acceptance, an expression never used of the sin-offerings; and the
Sin-offerings, to make atonement, an expression almost exclusively confined to them: the one
class arose as a sweet aroma; the other disappeared in a burning consumption.
Characteristically, separate words sunder their significance in the fire: in
the Sweet-savour offerings the word means to burn as incense, to burn for deliciousness; in the
Sin-offerings, the word means to consume, to destroy in wrath.
Now the Burnt Offering, the oldest and greatest of the
Offerings, dating back to Abraham and Noah, and probably to
So the first portrait of Christ in the Bible is the sudden
picture of a sinless life. He shall offer it a male, without blemish (Lev. 1: 10). The Rabbis reckoned fifty possible
blemishes, any one of which would disqualify a sacrifice; five in the ear,
three in the eyelid, eight in the eye, and so on. But the Burnt Offering went further.
In order to ascertain the internal perfection, as well as the outward symmetry,
the animal was flayed - he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into its
pieces - so that it might be scrutinized through and through. The plucking and tearing off of the
skin made naked the inner life and the deepest secrets of the soul. So the Lord
Jesus was not only of that external moral beauty - a Lamb without
blemish and without
spot (1 Pet. 1: 19)
- which has made Him the
admiration of the world; but sifted by man, sifted by Satan, sifted by God, His
thoughts, emotions, will - all torn open - all bore the test. Scripture records
the flayed Sacrifice. His Judge says:- I find no fault in him: His Betrayer says:- I have
betrayed innocent blood: His Tempter cometh and hath nothing in Him. But incalculably the most important is the
flaying by God. Thou hast proved mine heart, Thou
hast visited me in the night season; Thou hast
tried me, and findest nothing (Ps. 17:
3).
Now the Burnt Offering is life offered to God,
as the Sin Offering is a death offered to God; and therefore the Burnt Offering (
Now the consuming of the sacrifice by fire is its absorption
by God: our God is a consuming fire, which absorbs the sinless life, but
destroys the sinful: and so critical, so vital to the whole offering, was the
fire that it shall not be put out; it shall ever be burning; IT SHALL NEVER GO
OUT. So, in
the Sin Offering, not one moment did the wrath of God lift from the hanging
Christ. The priest shall offer whole, and
BURN it upon the altar. The fire, searching the whole,
produces, in this sweet-savour offering, nothing but delicious aroma: utterly
analyzed - for there was no avenue to pain unopened, in the dissected and
vivisected Lord - Jesus (as it was said of the Burnt Offering by God) - is my
oblation, my food (Num. 28: 2):it is the Lord Jesus as the
satisfaction of the heart of God. The Lord remember all thy offerings, and accept - literally,
turn to ashes - thy burnt sacrifice (Ps. 20: 3). A total devotion, a vindicated Law, a
glorified God, a perfect substitution - all lay in the little heap of holy ash.
So the fire never ceases to consume, nor the aroma to delight. The burnt
offering shall be upon the altar all night unto the morning - all through the midnight ages, until Eternity dawns: fire shall be
kept burning on the altar CONTINUALLY;
it shall not go out (Lev. 6: 9, 13) day or night - so burning for all
eternity. The extinction of the Fire would be the ruin of salvation, and the
damnation of the saved. Gods eye and heart are feasted perpetually by the
Perfect Man, and through the long night and through all the Eternity beyond His
perpetual joy is CHRIST.
Now we encounter a forecast of the actual historical fulfilment
beyond all coincidence. Two wholly sundered actions the Priest performed over
the Ashes. And the priest, robed in his sacrificial linen, shall take up
the ashes - the body
when the fire has finished with it; is all that the fire has left; God has
absorbed the sacrifice - and he shall put them beside the altar
(Lev. 6: 10); and there the ashes are
poured
out (Lev. 4: 12). Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden
and in the garden a new tomb; there then (for the
tomb was nigh at hand) they laid Jesus
(John 19: 42). But now, after the ash had thus been
deposited near the Cross, or altar, the priest shall put off his garments,
and shall put on other garments - a sudden change of extraordinary
significance. Leaving his discarded garments where he had sprinkled the blood -
the linen clothes in which the Lord had been swathed, now left in the tomb -
the ashes which he had deposited beside the Altar the priest now removes, but
not before he has divested himself of the simple white ephod, and has assumed
his robes of glory and beauty. He shall carry forth the ashes without the camp - Jesus leaves Jerusalem in the
moment of resurrection - into a clean place (Lev. 6: 11): so, the Holy Spirit using the exact
word, our Lord is borne upward, in new robes of resurrection glory and beauty,
into the clean courts above. While He
blessed them, he was parted from them, and was CARRIED up
into heaven
(Luke 24: 51).
So now we arrive at the critical, the saving point of the
Burnt Offering. Almost alone among the offerings, the skin - the only part of
the sacrifice that had not been given to God upon the Altar - was handed over
to the priest for his personal possession as wearing apparel. And the
priest that offereth any mans burnt offering, even
the priest shall have to himself THE
SKIN of the burnt offering which he hath offered (Lev. 7: 8). The skin had been taken off before the animal was
burnt: it is the product of the animals life, not of its death: it is all that
the world sees of the living creature - its character and conduct. It is the
active righteousness of Christ, the imputed obedience: it is that of which He
cried - It is finished! before blood-atonement had even begun - the skin detached whole, before the carcase was
fired. The Skin had been the clothing of the sacrifice, so that, after death,
it can become the clothing of the priest: all that was visible of the life of
Christ - clothing that is part of Him, and that exactly expresses His person -
becomes my clothing; His
righteous conduct becomes my righteous conduct: I put on the Skin, and I am
clothed with Christ. He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness
(Isa. 61: 10).
So, then, in the Burnt Offering the righteousness of the
living Substitute is transferred to the guilty offerer: in the Sin Offering the
guilt of the doomed offerer is transferred to the slaughtered Sacrifice. Him who knew
no sin He made to be sin on our behalf [the Sin Offering], that we might become [not righteous, but] the righteousness of God [the Burnt Offering] in Him (2 Cor. 5: 21). The moment after the sinner laid his hand on the Sin
Offering, it was put to death -
instantly it incurred the knife ; but before the Burnt Offering was killed it was pronounced an atonement, that is, a covering! - the skin,
which, since the offerer is the sinner ‑ J the priest is the believer, is
given to the priest.* It is the very Skin with which (symbolically) God
clothed the fallen race in the dawn of the world. His
blood it is which removes all curse; but it is His obedience which merits all
glory (Dean Law). The
intrinsic value of a cloak depends in no way whatever on the character of its
wearer, its entire value turns both on its own exquisiteness - some sables and
sealskins, for example, being enormously costly - and also (as with the silver
fox) on the rarity of the animal from which it is taken; and a cloak is entirely
valueless unless worn. Thus Paul has defined saving action for all ages. I count all things to be
loss, that I may
gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that [righteousness, that active obedience to the Law,
that perfect life] which is
[obtained] through faith in Christ, THE RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH - like a woven
cloak - is FROM
GOD UPON - let fall upon the shoulders of - FAITH
(Phil.
3:
8).
* Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness
(Ps.
132:
9).
-------
OUR WHOLE BURNT OFFERING
When I looked into his face and saw him brush back his hair
from his brow, heard him speak of the trials and conflicts and the victories, I
said:- General Booth, tell me what has been the
secret of your success. He hesitated a second, and I saw the tears come
into his eyes and steal down his cheeks, and then he said:- I will tell you the secret. God has had all there was
of me to have. There have been men with
greater opportunities; but from the day I got the poor of
* *
* *
42
THE FIRST MEN IN HEAVEN + 1
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The
crash of earthquake and portents of terror in the heavens, ushering in
judgments so unmistakable that men hide themselves in the rocks, have hardly
subsided, when, for the first time in the history of the world, a body of men
are seen in heaven. The Church period is over (Revelation
2. & 3.): the Judgment Throne has actually
been set in the heavens (chapter 4.): the Lamb of God has moved forward
to begin the great drama, authorized by the Throne (chapter 5.): and now, with a terrified humanity
calling upon the rocks below, with shifting constellations under their feet,
and broken tombs on earths surface, suddenly a vast human multitude is in
heaven. Hitherto, as Dr. Swete observes, only the Elders, the Seraphim, and the Angels have had
places assigned to them in the presence of God and the Lamb; but in this
prospective vision the presence-chamber is crowded with a vast assemblage of
men, drawn from every nation upon the earth and by some unexplained process
transported to heaven.
THE IDENTITY
The curious emphasis that is cast by
the question which the Elder, puts to John on the identity of this huge
concourse has been justified by the chaos of attempted answers. On all the prevalent systems of interpretation, says
Dr. Seiss, the question of the Elder - Who are they, and whence came they? - is still the great
question to be decided: there is scarcely one point with reference to these
palm-bearers upon which expositors are agreed. What race? how here? why holy? out of what world?
travelling to what destiny? John himself disavows all knowledge, and throws the
question back on his august questioner:- My lord - the address is one of deep
reverence, as to a heavenly being (Alford)
- Thou knowest, (Rev. 7: 14). The secret (says John)
is locked in the breasts of the Angels.
AN EMERGENT HOST
So the Heavenly Hierarch discloses the secret. These are
they which come -
these are the ones coming (Lange),
such as come (Swete)
- out of the great tribulation: not did come, as though all tribulation were historically over;
or will come, as though they were men still on the earth; but are coming, these
are they coming (Alford) in a train
of constantly augmenting masses (Lange),
the first human host ever seen before the Throne. Down below, the Lord has just
sealed in the forehead Israels elect, the nucleus of all Gods work and
witness in the Day of Terror: these, broken up out of the tombs as His heavenly
elect, have left tribulation beneath their feet for ever; the choice of this earth, the chief in spiritual contests,
the agonized, the disparaged, the flower of the Churchs chivalry (T.
T. Lynch).*
*That
these are not all the redeemed is
obvious from the reply given (Rev. 6: 11) to the souls under the Altar, themselves
still unraised, that fresh martyr groups have yet to be enrolled - martyrs
under the Church of Rome (Rev. 17: 6), and under the Lawless One (Rev.
15:
2),
who is not yet arisen.
THE GREAT TRIBULATION
But now we arrive at a widely
discussed problem of critical importance. What is the great
tribulation out
of which they emerge? A key to the Apocalypse, which profoundly modifies even
its style and language, and which is brought vividly forward in the present
chapter, is the duality of the people of God -
* In Revelation tribulation is only spoken
of in relation to the churches: Rev. 1: 9; 2: 9, 10, 13. In the world ye shall have tribulation (John 16: 33) is the abiding motto of the saints of the Church (Govett).
** Ignorance of the fact that there are
two convulsions of the heavenly bodies, one before the Great Tribulation (Acts 2: 20)
and one after (Matt. 24: 29),
is an ignorance for which the world pays dearly: for the first convulsion
throws mankind into wild panic (Rev. 6: 15), in expectance of final judgment; while
the second finds them lulled, by the passing of the first, into the false
conviction that stellar revolutions presage no judgment at all.
The path of sorrow and that path alone
Leads to the land where sorrow is
unknown.
Bruised and beaten, they have come, not only out of
affliction, but out of great affliction; and they stand -
roused from the recumbency of death - before the Throne, the apex of safety, as
well as the acme of danger*
* To suppose, as some do, that they
emerge from the Day of Jacobs Trouble does not bear investigation. A mass of
saved so enormous as to be innumerable, while natural as the outcome of twenty
(perhaps sixty) centuries, would be startling indeed as the fruit of three and
a half years; and when it is remembered that they are altogether distinct from
the massed nations on the right of the King on Olivet (Matt. 25: 33), the fruits of Tribulation
evangelism, it is seen to be impossible.
THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES
The Old Testament Type, which this scene accomplishes, is a
final and decisive proof that the tribulation from which the countless multitude
comes is the age-long travail of the Church. The
palms, as Hengstenberg says,
are beyond doubt those of the Feast of Tabernacles;
and He shall Spread His tabernacle over them (ver. 15) is also an
allusion to that Feast. God shall be their tent. The Feasts, beginning with Passover, or conversion at
* The whole chapter is stamped with selectiveness. The
day of recompense having dawned, the faithful of Israel (a selection only) are
kept through the Tribulation, while the faithful of
the Church (a selection only) are kept from the Tribulation; in exact
accordance with the promise to the Advent watcher - Because
thou didst keep the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that
hour which is to come upon the whole world, to
try them that dwell upon the earth (Rev. 3: 10).
REDEMPTION
Appropriately, therefore, with Angels rejoicing around them en masse,
even as they had rejoiced in single conversions (Luke 15: 10), their cry is the Hosanna of the multitudes at the Feast,
bearing palms, and spreading palms, before the Lord (John 12: 13). And they cry - are crying, for John hears the
multitudinous chant as a solo - Salvation unto - salvation is peculiarly the
creation and the gift, salvation exclusively belongs unto - God and the
Lamb. All are
lost souls but for Christ. So also the Elder gives Heavens reason for their
presence. Why are men, so diverse - out of every tribe and nation and people
and tongue - yet so one? why are men, so drastically distinct in blood and gift
and tradition and race, all merged into an indistinguishable throng? why is
such a sinful mass in heaven at all? They washed their robes - the aorist [tense] looks
back to the moment on earth when, at conversion, the cleansing was wrought - and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb: THEREFORE,
are they before the Throne.* All Heaven knows no salvation but the
blood-theology of a sacrificed Lamb: so that believers who deny it either are not in the throng, or else have left this clause of
their creed in the Tribulation. There is no Lamb in the Angels song; for they neither
need, nor could share, our human
* But it seems to mean more than simply
conversion. The doctrine the imputation of Christs
righteousness to the believer is a blessed truth; but it is not the one taught
here. Christs robe is one: here robes are spoken of in the plural. These
were not spotless; but they owned their faults, and removed them by Jesus
blood (Govett). So also Alford:- The
act was a life-long one, - the continued purification of the man, body, soul,
and spirit, by the application of the blood of Christ in its cleansing power.
These are sanctified as well as justified; not only bathed, but foot-cleansed (John 13:
10).
The robe is always symbolic of the conduct and not of the person.
BLISS
The final description of their bliss the poet Burns used to say he could never read
without tears. How profoundly touching: so moving, to us, is the vision of the
-------
THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT
For all the saints who from their
labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world
confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesu,
be for ever blessed.
Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress,
and their Might:
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the
well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one
true Light.
Alleluia!
Oh! may Thy soldiers, faithful, true
and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought
of old,
And win, with them, the victors crown
of gold.
Alleluia !
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare
long,
Steals on the ear the distant
triumph-song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms
are strong
Alleluia !
The golden evening brightens in the
west:
Soon, soon, to faithful warriors
cometh rest;
Sweet is the calm of
Alleluia !
But lo! there breaks a yet more
glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright
array;
The King of Glory passes on His way.
Alleluia !
From earths wide bounds, from oceans
farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the
countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, -
Alleluia!
BISHOP WALSHAM HOW.
* *
*
43
THE KINGDOM IN MYSTERY + 1
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.
* This is the deadly answer
which Mr. Simmonds justly brought against
British-Israelism in our last issue. After the Kingdoms 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 Cromwells age; Dr. Dowles 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 - [the manifested bodily presence of the] - visible King.
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
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
* Salvation carries with it the Eternal Kingdom, and so of all [regenerate] 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; for thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance
- the wealth of a millenniums priority - into
the eternal kingdom (2 Pet. 1: 10).
-------
LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE KING
Quiet, Lord, my froward heart,
Make me teachable and mild,
Upright, simple, free from art,
Make me as a weaned child:
From distrust and envy free,
Pleased with all that pleases Thee.
What Thou shalt to-day provide
Let me as a child receive;
What to-morrow may betide
Calmly to Thy wisdom leave:
Tis enough that Thou wilt care,
Why should I the burden bear?
As a little child relies
On a care beyond its own
Knows hes neither strong nor wise -
Fears to stir a step alone -
Let me thus with Thee abide,
As My Father, Guard, and Guide.
Thus preserved from Satans wiles,
Safe from dangers, free from fears,
May I live upon Thy smiles,
Till the promised hour appears
When the sons of God shall prove
All their Fathers boundless love.
- JOHN NEWTON.
* *
*
44
YOUTH BEFORE THE ADVENT + 3
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The
reign of Solomon, prince of peace - magnificent, warless - is a divine forecast
of Messiahs glorious Reign: David, hunted, battling for the Throne, but laying
up enormous hidden wealth for the Temple and the Palace, is the Gospel era: the
intermediate generation between the two, appearing at the close of Davids
epoch, is Absalom, the youthful generation on the threshold of Advent. This
striking type explains the curious prominence of Absalom as the embodiment and
photograph of an age. For before Absalom there opened a golden vision of
limitless possibilities. The son of a praying father, and brought up in a godly
home, he possessed all the culture of his day, combined with great natural
beauty, a rare gift of winning others to himself, and the immediate succession
to the most glorious Kingdom and Temple earth has ever seen. It is the
generation inheriting the Christian ages and standing on the threshold of the
Advent. Yet the golden vision proved a gigantic mirage. Absalom - meaning the father or predecessor
of peace - predeceased the peace he never
saw; he sought a throne, and found a grave; and the peculiar manner of his
death affixed on him the direct Curse of God.
GIFTED YOUTH
An emphasis is laid on the physical
perfection of Absalom unique in the Bible. In all
* Thus a recent writers praise of the youth of to-day need not
conflict with prophecy. He says: - I like them for their
frankness and humour, their loyal comradeship, their passionate sincerity,
their driving energy, and their freshness of outlook. They have no evasions or
repressions, they do not dodge difficulties; and are for the most part
fearless, honest and adventurous. They are gloriously free from snobbishness.
It is curious that the two girls chosen this year for supreme beauty - Miss Universe (Miss Goldarbeiter)
and Miss Europe (Miss Simon) - are both
Jewesses, that is, actually of Absaloms blood.
UNREGENERATE YOUTH
Now in the roots of Absaloms life
will be found all the tragedy of modern youth. Absalom had a David for a
father, but a heathen princess for his mother; and under the fatal shadow of
this spiritual disunion in the home we search the sacred record in vain for his
conversion; and without conversion in every one of us is a slumbering volcano
of hell. The only time Absalom is ever recorded (2 Sam. 15: 7) as seeking Jehovah it was as a cloak for seizing his fathers
throne. Eighty per cent. of the scholars in our Sunday Schools leave them
unconverted. A year ago a youth named Hickman, on the gallows for the foul
murder of a girl, revealed the enormity that modern education can produce.
Before execution he made this confession:- During
high school I took interest in evolution and atheism and denied the Christian
faith. Therefore I became susceptible to worse errors and finally took up crime
and murder. I dont want any young man to study my crime, for all can see where
it has led to. My mind was so warped by over-education that I became a fiend
incarnate, living without consideration of mercy toward mankind. I decided to
kill a human being as a supreme experiment, to test my limitations. I even
planned to lead the career of a super-criminal, masking my activities under the
guise of a Christian minister. If I had not been caught when I was, I
undoubtedly would have committed even greater atrocities than the murder of
Marion Parker.
CHIVALRY
Now Absaloms first recorded act, the germ and embryo of his
career, and the kernel of modern youth, is both youths point of approach and
its point of departure. Stung by the intolerable wrong done by his brother
Amnon to his sister Tamar, and by the callous lethargy of the King, who ought
to have been not alone the fountain of honour but the executor of justice,
Absalom murders Ammon. The chivalry is altogether lovable: the lawlessness -
for what in David would have been an execution (Lev. 20: 17) is in Absalom a murder
- is deadly. To redress lawlessness by lawlessness is only to breed lawlessness. Modern youth
thinks itself emancipated from convention when what it emancipates itself from
is the moral law. Last year the Senior Class oration in the Commemoration at
Harvard expressed youths revolt:- A new and
different generation represents a fundamental change since the War. It has
freed itself from old dogma, or, better still, the old cant; even from cant,
with the apostrophe. It essentially accepts no faith (in the old meaning of the
word) and has little, save in the inevitability of progress, and is in no
danger of using outworn creeds and methods to cure the evils it has inherited
(Literary Digest, July 14th,
1928).* It is very solemn that the whole hope
of the world lies in - Absalom.
* The lawlessness of youth, of all
symptoms the most ominous, and inevitable when the restraints of religious
faith are cast off, is far more characteristic of our day than any of us has
yet realized. American figures - the only ones available - show that more than
80 per cent. of all crimes, from murder down to petty misdemeanours, are
committed by persons less than 22 years old; that the average age of burglars
has decreased in ten years from 29 to only 21 years; that 51 per cent. of
automobile thefts are committed by persons under 18; and that 42 per cent. of
the unmarried mothers are schoolgirls averaging 16 years of age. Absaloms
public and shameless immorality (2 Sam. 16: 22), lawless even in a lawless
age, forecasts the sharp moral decadence of an age [yet] to close as
REBELLION
In Absalom there opens a deep and deadly breach between the
generation closing and the generation rising. His character, from the moment
that he takes the wrong turn, develops with amazing rapidity. A fast youth - Absalom prepared him a chariot and
horses, and fifty men to run before him (2 Sam. 15: 1) - he plots his fathers overthrow, and his dream of
world-power in his own hands is the epitome of Youths mirage to-day. Oh, that I were
made judge in the land, that any man which hath
any suit or cause might come unto me, and I
would do him justice (2 Sam. 15: 4) - the undying dream of the lawless that they are the ideal
administers of law. Lawlessness logically culminates in apostasy. Absalom knew
perfectly that he struck at Lords Anointed when the counsel to murder David pleased
Absalom well. The
Christ must be dethroned before coronation of the Antichrist. In
DOOM
Very moving, unutterably solemn, truly awful is the going down
of the sun. The climax is altogether of God. Splendidly built, magnificently moulded, hangs a
twisting convulsive figure, with head jammed, and javelins sticking through the
heart, his magnificent hair the rope of his own scaffold, on a gallows man
never made, By what lawyers call an act of God,
that is, a providence that has behind it Deity, the generation is executed. in
type - for cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree (Gal. 3: 13); and divinely gifted youth, proxime accessit to the
Kingdom, its very beauty its halter, summoned (as youth is) for war - like the
ten million dead on the plains of Europe - goes down at Armageddon in a
slaughter man never made.*
* Russia has nearly 5,000,000 men
trained as soldiers under thirty, part [typically] it may be of
the hordes to descend on the Holy Land (Ezek. 38); India:s 50,000 university graduates are almost solid for revolt, says the Secretary of the
Indian, Council of Y.M.C.A.s; and Chinas youth is
seething to pour across the Euphrates one day behind the Yellow Kings (Rev. 16: 12).
Exquisitely does the type present our duty in the modern age. And David
went up the ascent of the
* Of Bathshebas child, dying in infancy and so covered by
Calvary, David says:- I will go to him (2 Sam. 12: 23);
but in spite of his frantic grief he
says no such word of Absalom, a lost soul on the other side of the gulf. - [See Luke 16: 23, 25-26, R.V.)]
-------
In Him we dwell, Beloved,
Then let us rest:
By changes all unmoved,
In Him so blest.
Nor Heavens throne-near host
Can nearer be
Than we, who from the lost
Are saved, are free.
In Him we dwell, not aught
Can blot this truth:
We, who have been Blood-bought,
Are His Blood-worth.
So precious in His sight,
And loved, and known;
Come day or cometh night,
We are His own.
- GILBERT INGRAM.
-------
OMNIS VANITAS
The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of
Power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth eer gave
Await alike the inevitable hour
The paths of glory lead but to the
grave.
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the
fault,
If Memory oer their tomb no trophies
raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and
fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of
praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting
breath?
Can Honours voice provoke the silent
dust,
Or Flattry
soothe the dull cold ear of Death ?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with
celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might
have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
But knowledge to their eyes her ample
page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did
neer unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble
rage,
And froze the genial current of the
soul.
Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean
bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush
unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert
air.
Far from the madding crowds ignoble
strife
Their sober wishes never learned to
stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of
life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their
way.
Their names, their years, spelt by th unlettered Muse,
The place of Fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she
strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being eer resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the
cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingring look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul
relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye
requires
Evn from the tomb the voice of Nature
cries,
Evn in our ashes live their wonted fires.
- GRAYS ELEGY.
-------
HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY
During twenty years of my life in
- J. N. FARQUHAR, M.A., D.Litt.
* *
*
45
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
AN
By PAUL HUTCHINSON,
D.D.
Dr.
Hutchinson, managing editor of the American Christian
Century, in this
article in the Christian World tells how he finds Russia fiercely
militant, and unless I have been utterly fooled,
deliberately precipitating a European catastrophe. It is doubtful if an
I have
been in
From the beginning
The Soviets began their attack on religion in
Coupled with this atheism of the ruling party has gone a
ceaseless attempt to undermine the strength of the old Orthodox Church, and
particularly of its priesthood. To be sure, the Orthodox Church stands in a
peculiarly exposed position, for the record of its intimate relations with Tsarism is too long to be denied or forgotten. It has been
easy for the Communists in their papers, in their speeches, and particularly in
their anti-religious museums, to picture the churches as the abode of reaction,
and the complete loss of civil rights which has been visited on a priesthood
widely accused of social parasitism has had a large measure of public approval.
The third step in Communisms programme to destroy religion in
Another important feature of the anti-religious movement has been
the success of the Communists in breaking up reform movements within the
Orthodox Church. There was a time when it seemed possible that these reform
movements, such as led to the formation of the
In thus eliminating reform movements within the Orthodox
Church, the Soviets have placed that institution in a position where its own
eventual mummification will come to pass. For that reason there seems to be
little active persecution of old-time churches at present. The authorities are
content to allow the priests to go along, chanting their services in a dead
language, and acting as despised but tolerated chaplains to the constantly
dwindling groups of old people who still attend the services. So long as there
is no attempt to introduce any new and vigorous elements into the life of these
churches the Communists seem to take it for granted that they will ultimately
eliminate themselves.
With atheism established as the faith of
Communisms drive against the Evangelicals was ushered in last
May with the issuing of a decree, published in the Press of the world, which
restricted rigidly the work of Evangelical churches and ministers. By the terms
of this decree, no minister could preach in more than one church. This brought
to a stop the work of the travelling evangelists who had been so successful in
arousing religious interest. Neither could a minister or church conduct
organized classes for the teaching of religion, even when those classes met
within the church building. Neither could they engage in any form of social
work. And the young peoples societies, which had been growing at an
astonishing rate, were summarily suppressed.
These regulations would have proved enough in themselves to
make further expansion of the Evangelical movement exceedingly difficult, if
not impossible. But the Soviet authorities had no intention of stopping with
these merely negative acts. They went ahead to close churches. In Moscow, for
instance, the number of Evangelical churches or Orthodox churches in which the
reform movement has established an evangelical type of worship, has been
reduced until there were, I believe, only three left functioning by the middle
of August [1929]. The chances are that these three are closed by this time. Five hundred
churches were closed last year, before the present storm burst. The figures for
this year will, when totalled, run well into the thousands.
Along with this closing of churches there has gone a closing
of schools for the training of ministers. In the case of the Baptist Seminary
in
Yet even with this the force of the Soviet attack has not
spent itself. Although churches and schools are being closed and publications
suspended, the authorities are going ahead to rid the country of the men and
women who, by their preaching and personal devotion, might keep the flame of a
vital religion alight. Ministers and laity alike are being arrested, often on
the flimsiest of charges, and exile is being pronounced on hundreds. This
persecution is still largely confined to Great Russia, but it is making its way
steadily toward the
The worst part of the situation is its secrecy. There has been
a return to secret police control within
In a sense this new persecution can be taken as a Communist tribute
to the power of the religion of these Evangelical groups. It has been their
success that has brought this avalanche down on them. It is a tremendous
experience to come into contact with some of these people who have made their
choice and are going quietly on to whatever fate may befall. Many of them
approve the social policies of the Soviets to the full. They accept the
revolution. Their only serious difference with the Soviet regime is their
religious constancy. Even concerning the persecution they do not complain. They
take it as something that has come, and that is therefore to be endured. But they have no doubt that,
out of the hardship which this persecution entails, there will finally come a
religion in
* *
*
46
THE BEMA + 2
By GEORGE GOODMAN
This is one of a cluster of pithy, lucid, simple statements of
Scripture truth such as we should expect from either brother of an honoured
name: Great Truths Simply Stated (Pickering and Inglis, 2/6). - Ed. [D.M.P.]
(1) We are justified
freely by grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. So complete is that justification that we are said to
have died, and he that died is justified (
Yet it is abundantly clear that we must all appear before the
Bema - a word used 12 times in the New Testament, and, with two unimportant
exceptions, always translate Judgment Seat. How shall we reconcile this fact with the great
verities before named?
1. It is clear that a distinction must
be drawn between the tribunals - the BEMA and the GREAT WHITE THRONE. Before the one we (that is, all [regenerate] Christians)
must appear and be manifested; before the other, all the world. These two tribunals
are probably separated by at least a thousand years. The one is for the
justified [by faith]; the other is for the condemned.
2. We must distinguish between the NATURE OF THE JUDGMENTS taking place at these tribunals. There is a judgment unto condemnation. There is a judgment unto victory. In the one the sinner is condemned. In
the other the saint comes through saved - a victory of grace. In some cases
with honour, in others saved so as by fire. The statement of John 5: 24 that the [regenerate] believer shall not come into judgment clearly means condemnation. This is confirmed by Romans 8: 1.
There is therefore now no condemnation, etc, and Romans 8:
34, Who shall
condemn ... etc.
Whatever the Bema shall mean, it cannot mean final condemnation.
3. A distinction of the utmost
importance - a distinction of a fearful and tremendous character - little, I
fear, grasped or understood, is the 'distinction between forgiveness and the governmental dealings of God. In other
words, Forgiveness, Mercy, Justification cover much, but not all the sanctions against sin. Thus
forgiveness does not exempt from some forms of judgment. Righteousness must be
done though the sinner is spared. Mercy must be extended to the guilty, yet
justice must be done to the injured, and Gods holy name vindicated. The Cross
allowed God to extend mercy to the guilty on righteous ground, but righteous
Government has other demands as well.
Have we any justification for believing that the solemn
message addressed to saints, Whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, is limited to this life? Does not character survive the grave? Is the result of careless walk, of forgotten duty, of dishonourable
behaviour, all wiped out by death? The whole trend of Scripture teaches the
contrary. Is the reward of patient continuance in well-doing, the steady growth
in grace, the knowledge and wisdom acquired by the obedience of faith of no
avail? Is there no distinction between the man of sterling worth and character,
and the wretch saved so as by fire? [Yes.] There
is.
The language used of the Judgment Seat and the Coming of the
Lord is very significant in this relation. We are told (1) We shall all be manifested - revealed in our true character there. Everything hidden will be openly
shown. The real truth will come out. (2) We shall receive the things done in the body - whether good or bad. (3) We shall give an account of ourselves, and, Christ adds, of every evil and idle word spoken. (4) We may suffer loss, though saved, our works being burnt up. (5) We may be ashamed before Him at His Coming. (6) We may lose our crown. (7) We may have no treasure laid up in Heaven.
2
Corinthians 5: 10 has the review of our PERSONAL CONDUCT
in view. We must all be made manifest (R.V.) before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that every
one may receive the things done in his body, whether
it be good or bad. Manifest means appear in our true light. Receive is the common word for being paid
wages. In his body is by means of the body -
the body used as an instrument. Good or bad makes it quite clear that it is not
only rewards but also righteous retribution that is intended. Colossians 3: 25 confirms this:- He that doeth wrong shall receive for
the wrong that he hath done, and - [in Judgment] - there no respect of
persons. I
suppose the quarrels and difference among saints will form a large part of the
Judgment Seat inquiry. What evils have they wrought, what appalling havoc -
yes, what destruction! Tens of thousands - [of enthusiastic believers have lost
heart, and] - have fallen under the burden that
might have lived and served Christ happily but for the pride, anger, cruelty, and malice of fellow-believers.
Grace must never be so used as to lose the sense of
responsibility. We are responsible to our Lord. He who sits on the Bema is our
Divine Lord, Whose perfect love has cast out all fear. Whatever be His Word,
His love to us will not change. We can never forget that He redeemed us by His
own Blood. We shall welcome His judgments, shall realise their truth and grace,
whatever they are. Moreover, none will be present but our fellow saints, with
whom we shall spend eternity. This will prevent us falling into a slavish fear
of that Day. We can never forget that He has promised we shall be with Him and
see His glory and be conformed to His image. Nevertheless, it will be a great
loss in that day to know that we have not merited His Well done, good and faithful servant.
Moreover, we can anticipate the day. If we would
judge ourselves, we should not be judged
(1 Cor. 11: 31). The Apostle Paul, after stating that we must all be
manifested before the Bema, says, But we are made manifest (using the same word) and I trust also are made
manifest in your consciences (2 Cor. 5: 11). Thus by self-judgment and walking in a good conscience he
anticipated the Bema, and could even say with confidence later, Henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give me at that Day, and not to me only, but unto all them also
that have loved His appearing (epiphaneia): His manifestation. May
we be among such!
-------
GUIDANCE
Lead us, O Father, in the paths of peace
Without thy guiding hand we go astray,
And doubts appal, and sorrows still
increase
Lead us, through Christ, the true and
living way.
Lead us, O Father, in the paths of
truth;
Unhelpd by Thee, in errors maze we grope,
While passion stains, and folly dims
our youth,
And age comes on uncheerd
by faith and hope.
Lead us, O Father, in the paths of
right;
Blindly we stumble when we walk alone;
Involved in shadows of a darksome
night,
Only with Thee we journey safely on.
Lead us, O Father, to Thy heavenly
rest,
However rough and steep the path may
be,
Through joy or sorrow, as Thou deemest best,
Until our lives are perfected in Thee.
- W.
H. BURLEIGH.
-------
THE
But once I pass this way,
And then - no more.
But once - and then, the silent Door
Swings on its hinges, -
Opens - closes, -
And no more
I pass this way.
So while I may,
With all my might,
I will essay
Sweet comfort and delight
To all I meet upon the
For no man travels twice
The
That climbs through Darkness up to
Light,
Through Night to Day.
- JOHN OXENHAM.
-------
IF ONLY WE UNDERSTOOD
Sir John Barnsley tells the following incident. An
American train was speeding through the night, and the occupants of one of the
sleeping-cars were disturbed by the constant crying of a baby in one of the
births. When the sleepless passengers could stand it no longer, a mans angry
voice shouted up the corridor: Cant you keep that
child quiet? If I were its mother Id keep it from disturbing everybody.
Then from the birth where the crying came from, a mans tired voice answered
(it was the father of the infant): Im sorry, Im
dong my best, but the childs mother cant quiet it for shes in her coffin in
the baggage-van at the end of the train.
A few moments pause, and the man who had protested was heard walking up the
corridor to the bereaved father. If only Id
understood! I wouldnt have said what I did for a thousand pounds. You must be
worn out. Let me take the baby and you
get some rest. The child was soon nursed to sleep and quiet was restored.
- The Church of England
Newspaper.
* *
*
47
DYING CHURCHES + 1
No boast
of Modernism is more insistent or persistent than the claim, by a more reasonable
presentment of the Christian Faith, to fill the churches. Yet as a matter of fact the one thing it is experiencing is
emptying pews. In inquiries extending over many
counties, says the Anglo-Catholic and Modernist, Commonwealth
(May, 1929), we have found that all churches
are equally empty: we believe that a most
serious crisis is coming in the history of the Church in this land.
No less insistent is the claim of Modernism to multiply
candidates for the ministry by making it possible for the youthful mind to
believe. The reverse is the fact. We have got to face
the fact, says the Church of England
Newspaper (NOV. 29, 1929), that the
pick of
The mission field drifts to an
identical bankruptcy. The number of students deciding
to devote their lives as missionaries, says Professor Latourette, in the Yale Review, has fallen more than half in the past six
or seven years. Agreement no longer exists as to what constitutes the
missionarys message. In many circles we are witnessing the passing of
religious convictions which some of us still in early middle life can remember
as the fruit of the movement led by Moody and his great predecessors. The
rapidly growing Protestant liberalism often gives out an uncertain sound - and
men and women do not stake their lives in an alien land on an attempt to
propagate a question. It is quite the most alarming situation with which
missions have had to deal in the century and a quarter since they became
important.
Modernists must really settle among themselves what actually is the value of the Bible after they are done with it. The soothing view usually advanced is expressed by the Modern Churchman (April, 1929):- For Modernism the Bible
is born again and is starting on a new, illimitable life. But other Modernists think otherwise, and so does the man in
the street, who has plenty of shrewd common sense. The
higher-critical view of the Bible, says Mr. Arnold Stephens (Christian World, Nov. 21, 1929), as taught (say) in all the
Free Church theological colleges sweeps away the whole history of the people of
Modernists themselves are not altogether deaf to the roar of
the veiled
Modernist churches are self-doomed. Dr. Stolee,
in the Lutheran Church Herald (Dec. 25, 1925) relates how Professor Lyder Brun, of the
And it also
means the death of the individual soul. Benjamin Fay Mills, not long before he
abandoned the Christian Faith for Unitarianism, wandered into Newell Dwight Hilliss study in
-------
GOD
This delicately wrought
poem, which we have received fron a girl of twenty,
strikes the note modern youth
needs. - Ed. [D. M. P.]
In the dawn and sacred worth
Of the quiet that pervades
Over all His earth,
In the glens and the glades,
Who is there - but GOD?
In the waking birds that sing,
In their song that resounds,
In the sweetness of its ring
And the dawns own sounds,
Who is heard
- but
GOD?
In the fragrance of the flower,
In the velvet to behold,
In the presence of its bower
And the beauty of its mould,
Who is seen - but GOD?
In the murmur of the surf,
In the azure of the sky,
In the greenness of the turf
Where its
quiet breathes a sigh,
A sigh for what - but GOD?
In the shading of the trees,
In the strength of the hills,
Where blue mists, one sees,
And their peace, which stills,
Is all - of GOD.
In the sunset and its
merging
Into shade of wonder hue,
As it meets the twilight verging .
And gives place to it anew,
Comes the hush - of GOD.
In the grandeur of the night
Torm by wrath of thunders roar,
In the heavens lit by light,
That reveals its separate law,
Whose law - but GODS?
As the sky, and its glow,
Green and foliage of tree,
And all nature lives to show
That the Maker is :
- is
He Unrecognized by thee?
- HAZEL POTTER.
* *
*
48
A DIAGRAM OF THE AGES
It is extraordinarily beautiful and wonderful that the Most
High, in the kindergarten of
given, with rich
distinctness, the ground-plan of the ages Figures of us (1 Cor. 10: 6), and shadows of things to come (Col. 2: 16), the Feasts are an exquisite cameo,
designed as such, of the Churchs path from her re-birth to the Eternal City: -
the Sabbath - redemption; Passover - conversion; Unleavened Bread -
sanctification; Harvest - resurrection and rapture; Trumpets - war; Day of
Atonement - judgment; and Tabernacles - final joy. For the divisions of the Feasts
remarkably corroborate this simple and decisive clue. They are divided into
three groups: (1) redemption,
conversion, and sanctification, a yet uncompleted group which all occur in the first month; (2) resurrection and rapture, a group
not yet begun, by itself, after arrival in the land; and then war, judgment, and joy, grouped together in
the seventh (or last) month, close all with a
rapid rush.
1 - THE SABBATH - REDEMPTION
The Sabbath was the foundation of all the festivals, so as to be before all, through all, and after all. The
first of the seven feasts was the Sabbath; all through the following feasts,
the Sabbath continued, in sabbatic days, sabbatic months, and sabbatic years;
and Gods whole scheme of time closes, first with the sabbatic month - the
millennial age, and then with the sabbatic jubilee, seven sevens of years - the
vast eternity beyond. So that the Sabbath begins all, permeates all, and closes
all, because it is the
picture of redemption. For before a single soul is saved, redemption is ready;
throughout every vicissitude of the Church or the believer, redemption never
leaves, never forsakes; and after the last soul has been brought in, redemption
remains our foundation for ever. All that preceded our epoch went to produce
redemption - creation, conscience, law, incarnation, sacrifice, resurgence from the tomb - all are
Gods laborious work ending in the conversion of the human soul.
For the Sabbath was the first blessing God ever
gave to man; for Gods seventh day was mans first; and God called man
at once to share, having done no work himself, in the restful enjoyment of all that He had made. So when our Lord sat down on high, His rest began: the work
was over, for everything possible for the salvation of a universe had been
done: He then rested from His works, even as
God did [at the
creation] from
His (Heb.
4: 10). And exactly
the same invitation is once again given to man. Man, with no
works of his own, is now invited to share in the Rest of an ended work; as
surely as man had no hand, and could have no hand, in the creation of the
universe, and yet was invited to share its benefits, exactly so we who have had
no hand, and could have had no hand, in the salvation of the universe, are yet
invited to share its benefits to the full.
2. - THE PASSOVER - CONVERSION
The first essential, after a provided redemption, is the new
birth: all things begin afresh from the moment of Gods descent into the
individual soul. In the first month - although it was the seventh in Israels old calendar; for this shall be
the beginning
of months to you (Exod. 12: 2) conversion instantly makes the past
obsolete, and starts all life afresh - at the fourteenth day of the month - the exact date of Calvary - is the Lords
passover (Lev. 23: 5). The Holy Spirit has made the meaning
absolutely sure: Our
passover hath been sacrificed for us, even
Christ (1 Cor. 5: 7): so, from the moment of
regenerating faith, when the lintels of the conscience became blood-sprinkled,
I have been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2: 20): now sheltering for ever behind
the Blood, the old life has been blotted out as though it had never existed; it
is the birthday of the new calendar. The Church starts on her path home
to God. So therefore none unsheltered by the Blood by
his own act can escape the Destroying Angel.*
* The reader who wishes a fuller
exposition of sections 2, 3, and 4, will find them in the authors (1) Expiation By Blood,
(2) The Judgment Seat of Christ,
and (3) Rapture.
3. - UNLEAVENED BREAD - SANCTIFICATION
The next feast is that in which, antitypically, we are now
living. And on the fifteenth day of the same month - that is, immediately after crucifixion with Christ on the
fourteenth - is the feast of unleavened bread (Lev. 23: 6). The Holy Spirit again leaves us in no
manner of doubt. Our passover hath been sacrificed for us, even Christ; wherefore - since expulsion
of all leaven is immediately to follow the sprinkling with blood upon the
lintels (Exod.
12: 15)
- let us keep the feast - a seven-day
purgation covering our whole dispensational era - with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor.
5:
8). It is the
sacred festival of a consecrated life, which should follow upon our union to Christ in His death
(Lange). Appropriately, therefore, to this section the Holy Spirit attaches
excommunication for leaven retained (1 Cor. 5: 11),
and a cutting off (Exod.
12:
19)
from the Kingdom of the believer guilty at the Bema of unexpelled
leaven (1 Cor. 6: 9). Sanctification is the
process through which we are now supremely passing.
4. - HARVEST - RESURRECTION AND RAPTURE
The next feast is not celebrated in
the wilderness at all; for it is ascension into heaven. When ye come into
the land, ye shall reap the
harvest thereof (Lev. 23: 10). The seed are the sons of
the kingdom (Matt. 13: 38, [R.V.]), planted in ever-recurring relays: the Saviour
is both Sower (Matt. 13: 7),
and Reaper (Rev. 14: 15);
so that the wheat is the crop sown between the two Advents; and the harvest is
the garnering out of the field - from off the plains, and from out the bowels the
earth, in a reaping accomplished after the wilderness journey is over, in
successive flights of resurrection and rapture. The reapers, our Lord says, are angels (Matt. 13: 39). The harvest is
exactly and minutely graded. The first Sheaf - which
is Christ (1 Cor. 15: 20); or, since a sheaf is a plurality
of ears, the group that ascended after the resurrection, including Christ (Matt. 27: 53) - is garnered while
the feast of unleavened bread is still going on : then, when seven sabbaths shall be
complete - the enormous lapse of a whole dispensational era -
two first-fruit loaves, leavened, for they are types of rapt saints, not
of Christ (Lev. 23: 17); these are followed, two or three
weeks later, by the main harvest; and finally the batch is gleaned of unreaped ears in the corners of the field - for even
towards the close of the Day of the Lord (Rev. 16: 15)
the characteristic Church warning for watchfulness goes forth.*
* The type makes it as clear as anything
can be that the field, which is the world (Matt. 13: 38), is reaped by a plurality of cuttings,
and not by one swing of the scythe. The enormous gap separating the Solitary
Sheaf, with which no sin-offering is offered, from the Two Loaves, which are
accompanied by sin-offerings, makes the guess that the Loaves are Pentecost
manifestly impossible; for in that case the Loaves must have come immediately
after Passover - Calvary, and before Leavenless Bread
- the Church in her age-long walk of commanded separation. The Lords own
ruling of the type (Matt. 13: 39) shuts up the reaping to resurrection: the
cutting of Firstfruits and Harvest is the same as the cutting of the Lonely
Sheaf - ascension off the Field altogether.
5. - ATONEMENT - JUDGMENT
Atonement, or covering, follows; for
the Day of Atonement, the awful crisis of the wrath of God, so covers sin
finally as to finish transgression, and to make
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness (Dan. 9: 24). In absolute loneliness the High Priest does
it all; he confronts the wrath of God with the covering incense and the blood
of the slain goat - Christ lifts Himself between
the saved and the wrath of God; while the temple was filled with the smoke from the glory of God, and from His power; and none
was able to enter into the Temple
till the seven plagues should be finished (Rev. 15: 8). It is Christ
alone before the tribunal of Deity, sheltering His redeemed in the great day
when God rises up to judgment; it is the inrush of the Blood between the saved
and the outrush of the Divine wrath. Then follows the dismissal of the sin-laden goat into the
wilderness - the living nations (the goats on the left hand), and later, the
mustered dead before the Great White Throne, all adjudicated to Hell; and at
last the High Priest puts off his sacrificial robes, all sin having been
finally dealt with, and comes forth, clothed in his gar ments of beauty and
glory, for His millennial and eternal reign.
6. - TRUMPETS - WAR
Trumpets muster for war, and open actual battle against a foe;
for the trumpet is a war-weapon; and so we read as Gods final judgments fall, And I saw the
seven angels which stand before God; and there
were given unto them seven trumpets (Rev. 8: 2). These trumpet-blasts proclaim war
against an earth in conscious rebellion against God: each trumpeting is
followed by a judgment: six blasts still hope for repentance; the seventh,
covering all the closing disasters, are pure, unadulterated,
awful war. And as the peculiarity of the feast of
trumpets was that the trumpets were blown all day, from dawn to sunset, so,
throughout the Day of the Lord, trumpet-blast follows trumpet-blast till its
sun has set. The great day of the Lord is near: the mighty man crieth there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day
the trumpet, and of alarm (Zeph. 1:
14). Gods appalling thunders break the
silence of two thousand years, rouse the world, wake the dead, and usher in the
tremendous events that cluster at the end. Finally, the loud
trumpet ushered
in Jubilee (Lev.
25: 9):
so the seventh angel sounded; and the kingdom of
the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of
his Christ (Rev. 11: 15). That seventh trumpet-blast covers a vast epoch: the last judgments
descend; the millennial era - itself wholly judicial -
runs its course; the great Judgment takes place before the Great White Throne;
and the final jubilee of the ages is ushered in.
7. - TABERNACLES - JOY
The Feast of Tabernacles is the final mustering of the whole
people of God, first for investigation and reward, and then for eternal bliss. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, holy assembling; and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest: that is, before the millennial age,
and again before the eternal state, there will be mustering of Gods people;
solemn gatherings, first for millennial, and then for eternal, joy. In the
words of Jehovah: Thou shalt be altogether joyful [literally, Thou shalt only rejoice] (Deut. 16: 15). In every sabbatic year the Law was
read to all
The supreme characteristic of the Feast
of Tabernacles - its lavish burnt offerings - reveals a humanity thoroughly
redeemed and devoted to God. Its only sin-offering was the single
slaughtered goat, daily offered: whereas the burnt offerings were twice as many
as on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and five times as many as during Passover
Week: so our devotion in that day will be twice as much as in our utmost
sanctification now, for our body will then be redeemed as well as our spirit;
and it will be five times as much as in the moment of our conversion, for then the ordinance of the
law, [five is
the number of law] will be fulfilied in us (Rom. 8: 4): and all the
sacrifices are a multiple of seven, because it will be the revelation of
Calvary perfectly understood and fully appropriated at last.
So Gods wonderful kindergarten of the
Churchs history closes in the folding up of the pilgrim tent and the final
entry into the city whose foundations are immovable and eternal. The long
pilgrimage is over. Grounded on the Sabbath of redemption,
which precedes, interpenetrates, and winds up all; born from above at the touch
of the Passover blood; battling for holiness against a thousand forms of leaven
an enormous dispensational interlude of seven weeks then divides the first
three feasts from the last four - three in
the wilderness, four in the land; the first three in the first month, and
the last three in the last month: so resurrection and rapture resume Gods work
in harvest; war on a rebellious world is ushered in by trumpets; universal judgment
blots out sin in the day of covering or atonement; and now, after tent life on
earth and in heaven is over, on the last day, the
great day of the Feast (John 7: 37) - for it is a symbol
of eternity - is the final convocation of the redeemed. On the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. The main distinction of this eighth
day was the abandonment of the booths, which were broken up, and the return of
all the people into solid houses: it is a final passing of the pilgrim life,
and the entry into the many mansions in the House of the Father. This eighth
day is sometimes regarded as in the Feast, sometimes
not: the old calendar, strictly speaking, is over: the morning of the eighth
day is the final Sabbath - Gods eternal Rest, never to be broken again by sin.
And
His servants shall do Him [liturgical] service [as priests],
and they shall
see His face; and they shall reign for ever and ever
(Rev. 22: 3).
* *
*
49
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 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. Mans 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 condition:
(Acts 5:
32; 1 John 3: 24, 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 - [the
regenerate, but left! (1 Thess 4: 15,ff.)] - 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 be 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
sins 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 Jobs 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 Devils 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 - [Sheol
/ Hades (Acts 2: 31; cf. Matt. 12: 40, R.V.) the place of] - 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 Gods own time.
His victory is sure and the visible future application certain, while Satans
near triumph will be but the proof of his defeat on Calvary and his visible
defeat on earth [soon] 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 -[will eventually (Rev. 13: 4-8, R.V.] - 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.
* *
*
50
WHAT WE FIND IN CHRIST + 1
By Rev.
R. L. LACEY
And they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba
(the same is
KEDESH - SHECHEM - KIRIATH-ARBA - BEZER - RAMOTH - GOLAN
Only a string - did you say - of outlandish names! Not since the
War! Indeed they are words with wonderful meanings and
beautiful messages - albeit promises and prophesies ultimately fulfilled in
Christ alone - the Solitary City of Refuge for all Souls.
What then do these names of the Cities of Refuge mean?
Kedesh means Sanctuary; Shechem - Strength;
And so, translated into the language of our
people our verse reads:
Sanctuary, Strength,
Fellowship, Fidelity, Elevation and Joy stood for their Cities of Refuge.
If only we could persuade people that Christianity stood for
precisely these things, how it would help! I am sure it does.
2
And they set apart Kedesh in
Kedesh for Sanctuary. Sanctuary is, as you may remember,
one of the sweet and sacred words of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Lord
answer thee in the day of trouble,
The name of the God of Jacob
set thee up on high;
Send thee help from the Sanctuary,
And strengthen thee out of
Used often of the dwelling-place of the Most High, Sanctuary came also to be
applied to God Himself. He shall be for a Sanctuary, declares Isaiah, and He shall
deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. Out of Him the soul of any of us may be slain any day, and our character
destroyed. In the exposure, the besetment, the fury, the fire, the riot of hell
of the late War, thousands forsook their Sanctuary in Christ, and fell. But
this madness had its reaction, and Christ was called as never before to
reprieve, and help and hold. God be praised for all who withstood the Gates of Hell.
Thou wast their Rock, their
Fortress, and their Might,
Thou, Lord, their Captain
in the well-fought Fight
Thou in the darkness drear
their One True Light -
Hallelujah.
3
And Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim.
Shechem for Strength and Ability. Fear thou
not, for I
am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness, says God to
each of us by the mouth of Isaiah once more, and Christ is alike the Strength and Righteousness of God. I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me, writes the Apostle to the Gentiles, and we can do the
same if we trust Christ as Paul did.
Stretch forth thy hand, said our Lord to the Paralytic. How
absurd! That was the one thing he couldnt do. And he was asked to do it! Christ named his great incapacity, insists Dr. Jowett, and demanded the impossible. For years and years the shrunken,
shrivelled thing had hung helplessly at his side, a poor mockery of a hand. Stretch
forth thy hand. Impossible! But he
did it! And his hand was made whole like unto the other. I very much like, adds the great
preacher, an epitaph which is found upon a womans
grave in
Faith laughs at impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done. Abiding in Shechem our weakness is converted
into power.
4
And Kiriath-arba
(the same is
Prayer is the Christians vital breath,
The Christians native air;
His watchword at the gates
of death:
He enters heaven with
prayer.
Yet often and often it makes a little heaven here below, too.
A little while ago, writes
an American preacher, I was with a group of preachers
as they discussed the perils and problems of the preacher. This man and that
suggested this, peril and that, concerning which the preacher needs ever to, be
on his guard. When it came to my turn to speak, I made the inquiry, How much do you pray? As we searched our hearts, every man
of us felt guilty. We saw that we were busy here and there, finding texts,
making sermons, arranging for funerals, for committees, for visits, for
interviews, for exacting and endless tasks, but not a man of us had made enough of prayer.
It is not a preachers peril only, but a peril common to all.
In truth we are all preachers - people in pews and
pulpits alike - and our only safety is to abide in Kiriath-arba.
And now we are leaving the Cities of Refuge in the hill-country of
Judea to cross the
5
And beyond the
Bezer for Fidelity and Firmness. In the plain. The level stretches of our every-day life offer fine
facilities for fidelity and firmness. Daniel will never be out of date because
he abode in Bezer in B.C., as we are
called to do in A.D. Mr. Spurgeon says the lions did not eat Daniel
because there was so much grit in him. It is not easy to be a Daniel, but if
you are in quest of adventurous religion, or
wish to play the man, try and follow in his footsteps.
In a very Churchy little parish in Hampshire (so I heard from a native in those
parts) a poor peasant occupied a little cottage of which the landlord was a
wealthy but Churchy Squire. One day it came to the Squires ears that this old
disciple did not worship as-by-law- established in the
O! the
poor-wealthy of our country, and the wealthy-poor! Without Christ, how poor the
richest are: with
Christ how rich the poorest.
6
And Ramoth in
Ramoth for Elevation. When the Outlook is dark, try the UPLOOK. Only as we abide in Christ are we able to learn to think Gods thoughts after Him, and as a man
thinketh in his heart, so is he.
I say the
acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Accepted by the reason,
solves for thee
All questions in the earth
and out of it.
So only do our thoughts about our
Father in heaven, and the world in which we live, and the world - [Age the better translation!] - which is to come, and
countless perplexities, become clarified.
7
And Golan in
Golan for Completeness and joy. And your joy no man taketh from you under any circumstances if you abide in Christ.
In this most attractive and strongly fortified City, death
itself loses its terrors for John Bunyan,
and he cries, Let me die! Now was I got on high; he writes, I saw myself safe in the arms of grace and mercy: and though
I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now I cried, Let me die! Now death was downright lovely and beautiful in my eyes; for now I saw that we shall never live indeed till we be
translated to the other world. All this time I saw more in
these words HEIRS OF GOD than ever I
shall be able to express while I live in this world. HEIRS OF GOD! God
Himself the portion of His. saints! This I saw,
and wondered at, but cannot tell you the half of what I saw.
8
In the plenitude of Gods Mercy the
Cities of Refuge were provided for the MANSLAYER.
OUR SINS SLEW OUR
SAVIOUR. YET
At the Cross, AT THE
CROSS I first saw the Light!
And the burden of my heart rolled away;
It was THERE by faith I received
my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.
Why? Because SLAIN - BY and FOR our sins - the Lamb of God offered THERE the one, true, pure, immortal and
acceptable Sacrifice in Gods eyes whereby our sins are
cleansed.
-------
ONCE FOR ALL
It is a solemn fact darkening a horizon already dark enough
that the Greek Church, and not the Roman only,
worships the Elements with latria - that is,
with the worship appropriated solely to God; thus erecting an impassable barrier
to communion. If the Bread and Wine are a sacrifice, and the identical
sacrifice that was offered on Calvary, it is unescapable that the same worship
is due to the Elements as was due to the hanging Saviour. But
no error is more impossible of reconciliation with the Scriptures than a
perpetual sacrifice; for the key-word of the inspired exposition of Calvary
rings in a lonely and constantly repeated once for all, in the entrancing and
unquenchable chimes of heaven (Rom. 6: 10; Heb. 7: 27; 9: 12, 26, 28; 10: 10, 22; 1 Pet. 3: 18, in the Greek). There is an exceeding grandeur - approaching to awe - about
everything which can be done only once. This is a great part of the grandeur of
death and of the judgment, in their nature, that they can be only once. And the Atonement is the more grand because it is of the
same character. The Cross is magnificently fearful in
its perfect isolation. Everything in religious truth, which went before it in
ages past, looked on to it. Everything in religious truth
which has ever followed, and in ages yet to come, looks back to it. It
is the bud of all, the beginning of all, the sum of all (Dean Vaughan).
THE END