INDEX
551 THE AMERICAN DROUGHT
552
ON THE BRINK OF APOSTASY By D. M. Panton, M.A.
553
THE DECLINE OF THE PRAYER MEETING By Arthur T.
Pierson, D.D.
554
THE PRIZE OF OUR CALLING By Robert Govett, M.A.
555
SCRIPTURE PUNCTUATION By W. P. Clark.
556
THE DAY OF THE LORD By D. M. Panton, M.A.
557
THE CHURCH I FOUND By R. H. Boll.
558
THE ROYAL LAW
559
THE JEW TO-DAY
560
GOLD ON THE FOUNDATION By C. S. Utting.
561
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN (18: 1)
By Robert Govett, M. A.
562
THE FIRST RESURRECTION By G. H. Lang. (1)
563
THE KINGDOM By W. F. Roadhouse. (2)
564
NO IMPOSSIBLE BURDEN By D. M. Panton, B.A.
565 BAPTISM AND THE FLOOD By D. M. Panton, B.A.
566 SALVATION FORTY-FIVE CENTURIES AGO By D. M. Panton, B.A.
567 THE RACE AND THE CROWN By Robert Govett. M.A.
(An Exposition of 1 Corinthians 9:
24-27.)
568 ENDANGERED LOVE By E. S. Gerig.
569 THE SEED AND THE SERPENT By D. M. Panton, B.A.
570 TO ATTAIN TO THE RESURRECTION FROM
THE DEAD By
Robert Govett, M.A.
571 THE SERPENT OF BRASS By D. M. Panton, B.A.
572 THE COMING
APOSTASY [PART 1 of 3] By Robert Govett, M.A.
573 ANIMALS AND
THE REDEMPTION OF CHRIST
574 THE CHURCH’S DANGER By D. M. Panton, B.A.
575 DIVINE
OF ESTHER By
Alexander Carson, LL.D.
576 GOD’S PLAN By
G. H. Lang.
577 LIFE AFTER THE FLESH
By Robert Govett. M.A
578 THE DAY OF THE LORD
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
579 WHY NOT JUST BE A CHRISTIAN By R. H. Boll.
580
THE COMING APOSTASY [PART 2] By Robert Govett, M.A.
581 BECOMING
AS LITTLE CHILDREN By D. M. Panton, B.A
582
CHURCH FATHERS ON THE KINGDOM
583
THE NEXT ACT IN THE DRAMA By D. M. Panton, B.A.
584
OUR REACTION TO THE WORD OF GOD By D. M. Panton, B.A.
585
ABUNDANT ENTRANCE By Robert Govett, M. A.
586
THE PARABLE OF THE SHEEP AND THE
GOATS [PART 1 OF 4] By Robert Govett, M.A.
587
THE FASCINATION OF THE SERPENT By S.E.
588
A NEARING CRISIS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
589
SOWING TO THE FLESH By Robert Govett, M.A.
590
THE DUALISM OF ETERNAL LIFE [PART
1] By Stephen Spears Craig.
591 THE PARABLE OF THE
SHEEP AND THE GOATS [PART 2] By Robert Govett, M.A.
592
THE GREAT PYRAMID By D. M. Panton, B.A.
593 THE DUALISM OF
ETERNAL LIFE [PART 2] By Stephen Spears Craig.
594 MY HOUSE
SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER
FOR ALL NATIONS By David Baron.
595
THE PARABLE OF THE SHEEP
AND THE GOATS [PART 3] By Robert Govett, M.A.
596
COMING COLLAPSE By D. M. Panton, B.A.
597
THE GOSPEL’S LAST HOUR By D. M. Panton, B.A.
598
599
THE MAN WITH THE ANGEL FACE By D. M. Panton,
B.A.
600
THE PARABLE OF THE SHEEP
AND THE GOATS [PART
4] By Robert Govett, M.A.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_
551
THE AMERICAN
DROUGHT
It is doubtful if there is anything like an adequate
knowledge in
Starting
in 1915, the cycle of droughts is highest this year, the worst recorded in
history. By the middle of July some 5,000,000 farmers had suffered exceptional
losses, and the drought had cost the
* “In Nebraska, not one of the worst States, not one of the
high plains States of which the geographers often despair in private, over
9,000,000 acres of corn has been lost. The crop is the lowest for 55 years. In
the past two years the Federal Government has spent £100,000,000 on drought
relief and prevention” (Times,
Oct. 8, 1936).
Doubtless
unthinking exhaustion of the land can be a powerfully contributing cause of
desert production. “As the population of Europe and
the
How
far the enormous droughts in China* and
America are directly, or indirectly, a judgment of God there is not sufficient
evidence before us for a sound judgment; but the withholding of
rain - which, in the era of grace, He makes to fall on the just and the unjust
(Matt. 5:
45) - remains one of the weapons of the Most
High. “Therefore the Heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon
the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon
that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon
men, and upon cattle, and upon labour of the hands” (Hag. 1: 10). And drought in its most awful conceivable form - by fire - is to be one
of the great judgments of the Day of the Lord. “And the first angel sounded
and there followed hail and fire, mingled with
blood, and they were cast upon the earth:
and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up” (Rev. 8: 7). It is
very striking that the American National Resources Committee itself speaks (Times, July 31, 1936) of
*
An official report represents
** The worship of the dollar can be
as passionate as the worship of an idol.
The earlier destruction of vast stores
of food in order to keep up prices
must have been a grave offence to the Creator.
Attempts,
doubtless legitimate, are being made to counter the ruin. By planting
3,500,000,000 trees over an area of 100,000 square miles of agricultural land,
at a cost of £15,000,000, it is hoped to attract rainfall, to conserve moisture
in soil, and to provide a screen against the hot winds which not only parch the
soil but scatter it in dust-storms reaching sometimes as far east as the Atlantic
coast. This belt of forest, 100 miles broad and 1,000 miles long, was begun in
1934band is to be finished in 1937. It is also proposed to shift population on
a scale paralleled only in the days of nomadic emigration. “Nothing,” in the
comment of the Times (Aug. 31, 1934), “could show better than these drastic expedients, by which
whole tracts of once fertile land would be allowed to revert to the original
desolation of the prairie, how powerless most alleviations are in the face of a
destructive visitation of drought.” As to any artificial
rain-production, as by shells exploded in the air, Mr. E. G. Bilham, the expert of the
British Rainfall Organization, says:- “There is no
evidence that any rain has ever fallen as the result of numerous rain-making
experiments. The causes of rain are to be found in currents of air moving in
very large tracts of the sky, and it is difficult to see how any amount of
gunfire disturbance, which must be confined to a comparatively very small area,
can produce the change in conditions necessary for rain.” *
* Alleged rain-making has been a frequent element in witchcraft all down
the ages. How far Satan’s destruction of Job’s property by storms (Job 1: 16)
establishes the claim, it would be difficult to say. The False Prophet will
call down lightnings (Rev. 13: 13), as
Satan did (by permission) to Job.
It
is extraordinarily significant that Elijah - doubtless one of the two coming
Prophets, now close at hand, who will “have the power to shut the heaven, that it rain not”
(Rev. 11:
6), and in any case due himself to return (Mal. 4: 5) - is the only man ever recorded as having
produced a drought; and a drought which was a judgment as world-wide - apart
from its opposite, the Flood - as any earth has ever known. “Elijah prayed fervently that
it might not rain; and rained not on the earth
for three years and six months” (Jas. 5: 17).* And it is
no less significant that the Apostle singles out the calling down of rain, no
less than the drought, as a supreme example of the power of prayer. “The supplication of a
righteous man availeth much. Elijah prayed again;
and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.” The cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, watched by his
servant while Elijah prayed, at last blackened the whole heavens, and gave
earth God’s ‘good
treasure’ [or ‘treasury’ R.V.] (Deut. 28: 12) the
rain. So, therefore, we are not only thoroughly justified, when need arises, in
praying against drought: more than that, it is the very same Apostle who, in
the same chapter (Jas. 5: 7), turns
our hearts to the far more marvellous downpour, the downpour of Joel (2: 28). “Behold, the husbandman waiteth
for the precious fruit of the earth, being
patient over it, until it receive the
early and latter rain. Be ye also patient stablish your hearts: “FOR THE COMING OF
THE LORD IS AT HAND.”
Therefore Zechariah (10: 1) says:- “ASK
YE OF THE LORD RAIN in the time of the latter rain.”
* The Flood is not said to have been either produced or removed by
prayer. Our Lord’s words - “In the days of Elijah the
heaven was shut up three and
a half years, and there was a great famine over all the earth” ([See Greek …]: Luke 4: 25) - seems to make it certain that the drought
was world-wide, and not confined to Palestine. The ‘heaven’
was shut up.
*
* *
PLAN NOT
He will silently plan for thee (Zeph.
3: 17)
Plan not, for all thy plans will fail,
And God looks calmly on;
He holds the helm; and, so, come storm or gale,
His Sun has shone.
Thou need’st not have a
fear; He plans:
Wait thou His way to see.
’Tis thine to pray; the issue is with Him
Who plans for thee.
Fear not, thy fears dishonour Him,
Who hitherto hath led:
Hath He not through thy pilgrimage,
With manna ever fed?
- LOUISE F. E. ABRAHAM.
*
* * *
* *
552
ON THE BRINK
OF APOSTASY
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The Christian Faith is embodied, wholly and solely, in a few vital facts; concrete facts,
which either happened, or did not happen: if they happened, the whole Christian
Faith is true; if they did not happen, the Christian Faith is a pious fraud.* These events, expressed in words, become the Christian
Creed. The facts are few but stupendous: - the Virgin Birth; the consequent
Incarnation, the Son of God embodied in flesh; the Atonement, a sacrifice on
the Cross for the sin of humanity; and the Resurrection, the spirit, soul, and
body of the Lord leaving an abandoned tomb. The facts save, not faith, which merely appropriates the facts. “If Christ hath not been
raised, YOUR
FAITH IS VAIN”; for faith in a
falsehood is worthless; “ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor.
15: 17).
The facts alone save; though the facts become effective only through our faith.
Granted the facts, and the whole Bible follows as surely as sunshine follows
sunrise.
*
The Apostle John strongly stresses this
point. “That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands
handled, declare we unto you” (1 John 1: 1).
APOSTASY
Therefore
apostasy - the abandonment of the Christian faith - is a denial of these few
basic facts; and since the facts save, and without the facts there is no
salvation, to clothe their denial in all the Christian phraseology in the world
is merely wrapping a corpse. And it is obvious what form the denial must take.
Since the facts occurred nineteen centuries ago, it is only through the records
of these facts, purposely given to us by God, that we know and believe: all
Christianity, therefore, disappears with the Gospel records. The scholar out of
whom sprang the destructive criticism of the nineteenth century embodied in his
own career its logical history. Wellhausen
exchanged a professorship of theology for a professorship of history because he
had abandoned the Christian Faith.
THE CHURCHES
Now
what we are confronting to-day, within the Churches, is a mass-denial of these
facts by an unknown proportion, but a proportion ceaselessly expanding, of
ministers and people. Professor Bethune
Baker, when Lady Margaret
Professor of Divinity at
PUBLIC
DENIAL
Now
we take but a handful out of the masses of denial of the Christian facts which
fills so-called Christian literature to-day. “The
Virgin Birth,” says Bishop Gore
(New Commentary, p. 315), “was certainly not part of the original Apostolic message.”* Dr. H. D. A.
Major, the Principal of Ridley Hall, Oxford, says (English Rationalism, p. 129):- “All those
whose conception of the moral and spiritual supremacy of Jesus is not based
upon His being Virgin-born can accept the conclusion of the critics that the
Virgin Birth a myth without being in the least affected in their hold on the
Christian Faith.” The Encyclopodia Biblica says
(art., ‘Gospels’):- “In the person of Jesus we have to
do with a completely human being, and the divine is to be sought in him only in
the form in which it is capable of being found in a man.” So Dr. Sherwood Eddy, who conducts vast
campaigns on these modern lines, says:- “Such
controversial matters as the virgin birth, blood atonement, bodily
resurrection, can be well dispensed with. They may be believed in or
discredited individually, and no difference.” It is no wonder that the Christian Register sums it up thus:- “The hundredth
anniversary in 1933 of the birth of Robert
G. Ingersoll is of interest to religious
liberals. In his rejection many specific elements of the Christian tradition
including a hell of terror, a cruel and vengeful God, the inerrancy of the
Bible as a divine revelation, and the virgin birth, Ingersoll was doing exactly the
thing that has consumed much of the time and energy of liberal ministers during
the past century.” In the nature of the case, the new doubt is only the
old infidelity: it can never be anything else.**
*
Matthew was an Apostle, was he not? (Luke 6: 15);
and he carefully records (Matt. 1: 18) the
virgin birth. It is random writing of this kind that makes so much of the ‘higher criticism’ worthless.
** The writer will never forget with what amazed bewilderment, as an
undergraduate in the hall of the Cambridge Union, he read a letter in the Times from Dr. Driver, then the doyen of the Critics, frankly acknowledging
there is no external evidence whatever on which the Higher Criticism rests, but
that it is solely a dissection of the documents as they stand. In words, it is
purely an evolution of the heart of unbelief.
A SHELL
So what we are now confronting is an enormous shell
largely emptied - though not altogether so - of its kernel; and a shell which,
under pressure, can only burst. What Dr.
Pusey said in his day is incomparably truer at this moment:- “There are afloat hundreds of ‘Christianities.’ You have
Christianity without facts, Christianity without Judaism, Christianity without
doctrines, Christianity without anything supernatural, Christianity which shall
only be an ‘idea,’ Christianity with fallible apostles, fallible prophets
(alas, that one must give utterance to the blasphemy!), a fallible Christ.”
No man will be a martyr for a fancy. But this very denial of the Bible is its
fresh and final proof. For it says: - “In the last days perilous times shall come,” for men shall have “a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3: 5) - a feeble and empty crust; and when the Day of
Terror bursts, the gigantic shell,
already crumbling, crashes under the shock of judgment.*
*
The 40,000,000
SPIRITUAL
PARALYSIS
So,
already, internal death-rot is paralyzing the Church and alienating the world. Dr. J. D. Jones sums up the situation
thus:- “The great mass of the people seem to be
drifting away from religion; the habit of worship seems to be falling into
disuse; the Sabbath is rapidly ceasing to be a day of rest, and seventy-five
per cent. of the manhood of the nation is clean outside the church.” To
take but a single example:- “in the last twenty-five
years Free Church Sunday scholars have decreased from 1,744,725 to 1,323,06,
which means a total disappearance of all Nonconformist Sunday schools in sixty
years; and the decline in church membership is such that in seventy years there
will not be a Nonconformist church in England. And despair ultimately
overwhelms those who, having known Christ, abandon Him. Renan, a Catholic priest who became an apostate, opened his
unbelief in radiant optimism. We proclaim the
right of reason,” he wrote, “to reform society
by rational science, and the theoretic knowledge of that which is. It is no
exaggeration to say that science contains the future of humanity, and that it
alone can say the last word on human destiny and teach mankind how to reach his
goal.” But thirty years after he wrote as a disillusioned man. “It seems possible that a Collapse of supernatural belief
will be followed by the collapse of moral conviction, and that the moment when
humanity sees the reality of things will mark a real moral decline. We are
living,” he concluded sadly, “on the perfume of
an empty vase.” The first apostate of the New Testament is also its
first suicide.
THE
SCRIPTURES
Therefore the harbour into which we are all driven by
the very fury of the modern storm is as inevitable as it is golden. It is
marvellously illustrated in Strindberg,
a close colleague and fellow-thinker of Nietzsche,
perhaps the most devilish mind of the nineteenth century, who died in an
asylum, either a lunatic or devil-possessed. A change passed over Strindberg in his later years, during
which he left behind the bitterness and restlessness of his early days. “I have been like a sailor,” he wrote, “who set out to discover a new spiritual home; and every time
I thought I had come to an unknown island, I found, on looking closer, that it
was our old Bible and the New Testament. There is nothing higher than the old
wisdom.” He died with the New Testament clasped between his folded
hands. In the words of Gladstone:- “If I am asked what is the remedy for the deeper sorrows of
the human heart - what a man should chiefly look to in progress through life as
the power that is to sustain him under trials, and enable him manfully to
confront his afflictions - I must point to something which in a well-known hymn
is called ‘The old, old story,’ told in an old, old Book, and taught with an old,
old teaching, which is the greatest and best gift ever given to man.”
For we can say with Isaac Watts, and
the Church of all ages:-
Proclaim salvation from the Lord
For wretched, dying men;
His hand has writ the sacred word
With an immortal pen.
Engraved as in eternal brass,
The mighty promise shines;
Nor can the powers of darkness rase
Those everlasting lines.
His every word of grace is strong
As that which builds the skies;
The Voice that rolls the stars along
Speaks all the promises.
*
* *
“A knowledge that begins not
and ends not with the glory of God is but a giddy, but a vertiginous circle,
but an elaborate and exquisite ignorance.” - JOHN DONNE.
-------
MARANATHA
“For the past thirty years or
so the discernment of the eschatological character of the Gospel of Jesus has
more and more come to the front in international Christian theology. I regard
this as one of the greatest steps forward that theological enquiry has ever
achieved. We, to-day, must lay the
strongest possible stress upon the eschatological character of that Gospel
which it is the practical business of the Church to proclaim. Namely, that
we must daily focus our minds upon the fact that the [coming messianic and millennial]
-
ADOLF DEISMANN
*
* * *
* * *
553
THE DECLINE
OF THE PRAYER MEETING
By ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D.
These are the days of change, and everything seems to
be undergoing a transformation, even what is sacred by hallowed associations.
Whether or not it be due to spiritual decline, or to a gradual accommodation to
changed conditions, the fact is that in most parts of the field in the Church
at home the prayer-meeting of a half-century ago barely survives. As a
prominent minister in a great city remarks, in most churches it has given place
to an address by the pastor, with a few set prayers by designated persons; and
in some parts there has been substituted a sort of conversazione upon some
topic more or less related to Christian ethics or forms of philanthropic work,
etc.
While
such changes are going on in the home field, it is noteworthy and significant,
and not perhaps without important bearings upon the whole matter, that in
foreign mission-fields and, most of all, where conspicuous Revivals or
spiritual awakenings have marked the progress of the work, all the leading
features of the old-time prayer-meeting not only re-appear but do so with
increased rather than diminished fervour, spontaneity, and earnestness of
supplication and intercession.
The
prayer-meeting is a sort of infallible index of church vitality - practically ‘the article of a
standing or falling church.’ It is at once to the church its
chronometer, thermometer, and barometer; for it shows the regularity and
rapidity of spiritual movement, the degree of spiritual temperature, and the
presence or absence of spiritual moisture or humidity due to the [Holy] Spirit’s
presence. Judged by such standards, it must be acknowledged that,
in most cases, the movement is very slow, the temperature very low, and the
atmosphere very dry in modern church life.
Two facts confront us, compelling recognition - one
Scriptural, and the other historical. As to the former, there are thousands of
promises in the Word of God, the greater number of which pertain to prayer. To
assure suppliant souls God uses, with lavish wealth, His universal terms -
whosoever, whatsoever, wheresoever, whensoever, all, any, every - as if He
meant to make doubt or hesitancy impossible. Among these universal promises
not, one is more conspicuous than that in Matthew
18: 20: “If two of you shall agree on
earth, as touching anything that they shall ask,
it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven;
for where two or three are gathered together in My name
there am I in the midst of them.”
Thus the smallest number that can gather - two or three - and the least number
that can agree on earth, as touching anything- two - are challenged to meet and
to pray; to seek that ‘symphony’ of agreement
which implies full accord with one another, because each is individually in
accord with God. Then such believers, meeting together and agreeing, are like
the keyboard of a musical instrument, where each is tuned to concert pitch and
all are ready for the Master Musician’s magic touch which evokes melody and
harmony. That single promise should suffice to make the prayer-meeting a Divine
institution, which can no more cease to be, or lose its power, than the Lord’s
Supper can be suffered to fall into neglect when Christ Himself made it a
perpetual ordinance - “till He come.”
The
historical fact, to which we have referred, is the commentary of events upon
the promises of the Word. The Christian Church was born in a ten-days’ prayer
meeting; in the primitive age of the Church, prayer-meetings were more
conspicuous than preaching. United supplication made the very place shake where
the disciples were gathered, unloosed the chains of Peter in prison, and
brought condign judgment upon Herod the persecutor. The Acts of the Apostles is
one continuous testimony to the fact and power of united prayer. We pass over
centuries of history, to the times, nearer by, when the blight of Deism fell on
the church, and piety was threatened with practical extinction in the
eighteenth century. Then it was that one of the godliest men of his age sounded
at
The
old prayer-meeting has been gradually invaded by innovations. At first, there
was a loss of spontaneity, the decay of the prayer-spirit, so that few, if any,
voluntarily took part, and those who did were pressed into service by being
called upon; until, instead of such prayer-meetings being a well-spring of
refreshment, they became rather assemblies where a few seem forced to work at
the pumps to keep the craft afloat. I once had an impressive lesson on the
expedience of calling on people to pray, by finding that one whom I had
oftenest asked to ‘lead’ in supplication had
been living a double life for twenty years, and actually stealing church funds
entrusted to him for distribution! No human leader is wise enough
to know who, in a meeting, is in a fit spiritual frame to be the mouthpiece of
the [Holy] Spirit
at the throne of grace. Hence such prayer should always be spontaneous; and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” - not for us to do as we
please, but for Him to do as He
pleases with us; and such liberty is the first condition of the power of a
true prayer-meeting.
Whenever
praying is crowded aside by talking to fill up the time, there is loss of
power, and the evil grows worse and worse; no
leader whose spiritual instincts fit him to guide a prayer-meeting will usurp
time by much of his own talk. In a
prayer-meeting fluency may be fatal to power; for the object is to bring
out others into prayer and testimony. What
the leader says should, therefore, be brief and suggestive, rather than
long and exhaustive; he should lead others to take part spontaneously, and not
make it needless or hard for them. He who properly conducts a prayer-meeting will study to keep himself in the
background, and avoid anything that betrays a critical spirit, all of which
tends to reduce the temperature of a
prayer-meeting to the freezing-point. He will give encouragement to the humblest and weakest disciple who seeks
to utter a prayer or a witness. In a word, he
will let the Holy Spirit preside and control, and not intrude himself into
prominence.
Beside
spontaneity, liberty, and modesty, certain other helps to a prayer-meeting are
very important; and few more so than a type of singing that suits praying.
Cumbrous hymnals, with new hymns and strange tunes - and hymns and tunes put
asunder which God has joined together, are a stumbling-block to devotion. The
ideal prayer-meeting is as opposed to formal announcement of hymns as to
reading prayers - it should move off with spontaneity in everything. Paul gives
a hint of this in writing to the Church at
In
the conduct of a prayer-meeting, the late Dr.
A. J. Gordon, of
When
I asked him if, by throwing open such large meetings to universal
participation, he ever had any serious trouble, his answer deeply impressed
me:- “I do not attempt to control a meeting; I
consider the Holy Spirit as present and presiding, and I keep my own hands off.
If any brother speaks or prays too long, or not to edification, I commit it to
the Lord; and if I think anyone should be suppressed I carry the case to Him,
and ask Him to deal with it. The result is, I have seldom anything troublesome
to worry about.”
It is the confident belief of the writer that no more
serious loss or lack can exist in church life than to have the prayer-meeting
decline, or be displaced by any other sort of service.
*
* *
JUDGING THE
SAINTS
“Set them to judge who are
least esteemed in the Church” (1 Cor. 7: 4). According to this rendering the Apostle
recommends litigants [i.e., professional lawyers] in the Corinthian church to select one or more their
number to judge between them on the ground that he is competent or lacks their
confidence. This absurdity is
avoided by Luther, Westcott and Hort who turn it into a question, and by Alford, Lightfoot, Edwards, Ellicott and Evans who
regard it as ironical.
It
is however arguable than in all these interpretations the force of the phrase ‘in the church’ is greatly underrated by making it a
mere adverbial adjunct of ‘least esteemed’ as
though [the Greek words …] meant no more
than [… See the author’s alternative Greek words.]
In
this context the competence of the judge is quite a secondary consideration, or
rather it is not a consideration at all. The Apostle is occupied exclusively
with the anxiety that his readers shall employ a Christian rather than a
non-Christian judge, and keep their quarrels within the four walls of the
Church. Rather than employ pagan judges, even of the highest judical eminence,
to adjust their differences, he asks his readers employ Christians of no eminence at all, not because of
their lack of professional qualifications, but in spite of it. The sense is: If
you have no eminent judges in the Church, then employ those that are not
eminent, provided only they be [regenerate (Holy Spirit-filled)] members of your society.
- WILFRED H.
ISAACS, M.A.
*
* * *
* * *
554
THE PRIZE OF
OUR CALLING
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
“If
by any means I might attain to the resurrection from among the dead” (Phil. 3: 11).*
*
The expression is peculiar, and may be
rendered, “the select
resurrection from among the dead.”
It is evident at
a glance, that the resurrection which the apostle so earnestly sought, was not the general resurrection.
The wicked shall partake of that, whether they desire it or no. Paul then could
not express any doubts of his attaining to that, or speak of it as an object of
hope. It remains then, that it be a peculiar resurrection: the resurrection of reward, obtained
by the just [i.e., the holy and righteous disciples of
Christ],
while the wicked remain in their graves.
Such a resurrection we see in close connection with the
[coming]
Behold then the new hope, which the knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah set before the
eyes of the enlightened apostle! The Anointed One is to have companions in the [millennial] glory: Heb. 1: 9; 3: 14. Paul’s being already righteous by faith in the Lord’s
Anointed, entitled him to be a runner for the prize. None can be admitted as a candidate for reward, but he who
is already accepted by grace in the Beloved. But faith
had brought Paul to the starting-post, and thenceforward his life was to be a
pressing on for the crown.
The expression - “If by any means I
might attain” - implies, (1) the extreme eagerness of the
apostle; (2) his sense of the need
of the end he aimed at; and (3) the
perception of the need of exertion, in order to realize the object of his
pursuit.
Suffering, and the martyr’s death, were as nothing to
this divinely-enlightened mind, might he but attain [i.e., ‘gain by effort’] “the first resurrection”, the kingdom of the thousand years: Rev.
20: 4. The hope, then, which spurred on the
great apostle through every difficulty and danger, is now before us! Believer,
seek to obtain that prize with like earnestness! It
is the hope of our calling!
The zeal and endeavours of the apostle,
conjoined with the implied possibility
of loss, prove the solemn truth, that some of the justified will not attain
to it. All the
justified [by faith] will receive eternal life, but
not all will partake of the antepast of the millennium. For if diligence, earnestness, and careful heed to our words and deeds be necessary to obtain that reward,
then the lukewarm and careless, the
worldly, covetous, pleasure-loving, inconsistent Christian will not
receive it. In the chapters which are
to follow, the reader will see further and distincter proofs of this startling
proposition.
We
have now reached a position very different to that occupied at first. Before, it was justification, as the gift of God without works,
possessed already by the simple believer in the merits of Another. Here, it is works, effort, suffering, with a view to win something not ours as
yet. Justification was Paul’s at once on faith. The work of Jesus was
perfect. He could not for a moment think of adding anything to the perfection
of Christ. The prize, then, of the text
is something quite distinct from eternal life. It is opened to faith in
Messiah; it is intimately connected with His second coming. It is His promised [millennial and messianic] kingdom. Faith brings at once eternal life. But, to one rightly
instructed, faith is only the beginning of a life-long effort to attain the
abundant entrance into the [Messiah’s promised (Ps.
2: 8)]
“It was suffering violence, and
violent ones were taking it by force.” It was not now the kingdom in its might, as discovered in the Jewish
prophets, crushing all other kingdoms before it; but it was the passive object,
the beleaguered city, whose walls he that would enter must scale. Jesus also -
the King of that future empire, presents the same twofold aspect. He is now the
passive stone, on which we may build; on which the unbeliever falls, and is broken. He will be hereafter
the active potent stone, descending from on high, which, if it
fall upon his foes, will grind them to powder.
12. “Not that I have already
received, or am already perfected; but I press forward, if
indeed I may lay hold of that, for which I was
also laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13. Brethren, I do not reckon myself to have laid hold of it; but one thing I do, forgetting,
on the one hand, the
things behind, but stretching forth (on the other) after those in
front, I press forwrd
to the goal, for the prize of the heavenly
calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
The lesson for the Christian herein is
close and solemn. So high were Paul’s ideas of the requisites demanded of those
who shall be privileged with entrance into that kingdom, that, in spite of all
he had said, written, done, and suffered for the cause of Christ, he did not
feel secure of his hope. And at what point of his course was he when he thus
wrote? He had passed through the varied labours and endurances mentioned in the
Acts of the Apostles; and was now a prisoner
at
But this uncertainty had the right effect upon his
mind and conduct. It but made him the more diligent. He represents as a racer,
before whom a goal is set, the attaining of which would secure him the prize.
But not only was this Paul’s desire, but it was the
legitimate and authentic one. It was with a view to his attaining this that
Christ had laid hold of him. He was once wandering far from God. He had opposed
himself to the knowledge of Christ. He had set himself to pluck up the faith by
the roots. But, in the full enmity and aversion of his heart and of his way,
Christ met and arrested him. Such was the fulness of divine grace!
But the Lord then set him upon running a race for a prize. Behold the new principle of reward according to works! But was this Jesus’ desire and design in
Paul’s case alone? By no means. All [regenerate] believers are
the “brethren” of the apostle in this respect, as he plainly
declares afterwards. The ‘prize’, then, which
Jesus proposes to the believer, and which He urges him to seek as the end of his conversion fully attained -
is, the
being a participator in the millennial reign of the Messiah.
The
pursuit of this grand reward was His
single object. “This
one thing I do.” Great excellence
is to be attained only by directing our entire energies to a single object.
Here we have Paul’s. We are mercifully shown the mainspring, which moved his
heart, and feet, and tongue. This one object swallowed up all others, and made
him ever zealous, ever advancing, in the knowledge and love of Christ; ever
diligent in service, ever consistent with himself. Behold the motive which led
him perpetually to brave the perils of a life devoted to preaching the Gospel! Let not then such a discovery be made to us
in vain. Let us take Paul’s object - the object designed by the Lord Jesus
to fill our hearts as [obedient] believers; and it cannot but quicken our steps in his
ways.
Instead
of falling back upon deeds of boldness, and on success already achieved, he
forgot the past. Far from reposing on his laurels, he regarded not the things
behind. He accounted nothing done, while
aught remained to be accomplished. He was pressing onward still. The eager
racer tarries not to see how much of the course is accomplished, but his eye is
on the goal before him. Till that is reached, he will not pause. Though he bore
the scars of many a well-fought field, he
would not, if released from his present imprisonment, rest himself as a
discharged veteran, from whom no more could be expected. No; he purposes
still to go on, spreading the Gospel of the grace of God, a partaker of its
afflictions then, that he
might be a partaker of the [promised
and future
(1 Pet. 1:
5, 9-11, R.V.)] glory of the Saviour hereafter. He was released; according to the hope he expresses in the
epistle before us. He exerted himself anew, and was again arrested. We hear his
last words in the second epistle to Timothy. But then he says, that he now felt sure of the prize. The goal was just won. He was about to yield up life
itself in martyrdom for Christ; and he expresses his conviction at length, that
Christ, when He should sit as the righteous
judge, would award him the object of his so constant and persevering
effort. “I am now
ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand. I have fought the good
fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith;
henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge,
shall give me in that
day,* but not to me only, but unto them also which have loved His appearing:” 2 Tim. 4: 6-8.
[* That is, in the
future
millennial ‘day’ - when the righteous
reign of our Lord Jesus - God’s coming Messiah (i.e., His world Ruler) - will return
in manifested glory. 2 Pet. 3: 8; Rev. 3: 21; 11: 15; 20; 4, R.V.]
To be partakers then in the millennial
15.
“Let us then,
as many as are adult,* be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this to you.”
* [Robert Govett was
both a Hebrew and Greek scholar: see the Greek word which he has translated ‘adult’.]
From
the above sentiment it is apparent that the hope
before us is to fill the heart of [regenerate] believers
generally. It was not Paul alone that was laid hold on by Christ in order to
pursue this end. The exhortation is addressed to every one who is spiritually
adult, to keep this hope before him.
For, by “the perfect” of our translation, are meant, “the adult in Christ.” Paul
had said just before, that he did not think himself “perfected.”
When then he here speaks of himself and others as “perfect,”
it is in another sense, and one not unfrequently found in the New Testament: Heb. 5. The
youthful believer is occupied generally with the truths that concern his own
justification and acceptance with God. But when these are seen and firmly held,
our position in regard to the [promised millennial and messianic] kingdom, and the need of diligence to obtain the prize,
ought deeply to engage our attention.
* *
*
THE FIRST
RESURRECTION
“Paul assures us (Phil. 3: 11) that he was seeking with all his spiritual energy to “attain unto the
out-resurrection out of the dead” (lit.). That
is, he says there is an elect resurrection from among the dead to which -
though he had “obtained mercy,” had been counted faithful, and had been put into the
ministry (1 Tim. 1: 12, 13); though he had received a special and unusual call from
God (Gal. 1: 15, 16); though in his
ministry he had endured unparalleled trials (2
Cor. 11: 23-33); though he had been
given divine revelations beyond the ordinary (2
Cor. 12: 1-5); though his possession
of divine gifts surpassed that of any in the church (1 Cor. 14: 18, 37) - he yet was
pressing toward that he might “attain”. If Paul thus earnestly counted this “resurrection” a goal to be
attained, the Christian, whose eyes are earthward, like the man with the
muckrake of whom Bunyan speaks, can surely not be considered as a possible of
such a prize.”
- The
-------
Dr. Chalmers believed in no gradual or ethereal Millennium. When
once the bell rang before his lecture to his students was finished, he
exclaimed:- “Depend upon it, the Millennium will come
in one day with a hammer smash.” Mr.
Thomas Waugh thus summarizes admirably:- “All
through the New Testament nearly every exhortation to purity of walk, to
fidelity in stewardship, and to sincerity in toil, is bound up with, and is
based upon, the Lord’s Coming. So far from tending to ‘cut the nerve of
effort,’ this hope - [of being ‘accounted worthy’
to reign with our Lord Jesus Christ during ‘the age to come’] - is
the grand incentive to a holy walk and watchfulness and to enthusiasm in holy
toil. So far from meaning
only a little morbid comfort, or unnecessary luxury of contemplation, this is one of the most urgently practical
truths in the Word of God. When understood and yielded to, there are no
powers that influence our present so mightily as ‘the powers of the age to come.’ [See
Heb. 6: 5, R.V. and context.] Led by
such masters in church history as Neander and Harnack, nearly all students of this subject agree that the premillennial coming of our Lord
was the hope of the Christian Church
almost to the close of the third century. It is significant, too, to find
that this hope was the brightest and
clearest when the worship and life of the church were the purest, and only
began to wane when she neared her great relapse.”
*
* * *
* * *
555
SCRIPTURE
PUNCTUATION
By W. P. CLARK
Not being
inspired, the work of the translator (including the punctuation) may not be
correct, and as a matter of fact the various translations differ materially in their
punctuation from one another. We are at liberty therefore, without presumption,
to question the punctuation of any particular verse of Scripture, and
reverently apply our own judgment. To take one verse, Romans
8: 17 as an example. Without any
punctuation it reads:- “And if children then heirs - heirs
of God - and joint heirs with Christ if so be
that we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with Him.” In he Authorized and Revised Versions a colon or
semi-colon is placed after “if children then heirs”; and a similar punctuation point after “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” This would mean that the concluding paragraph, “if so be that we suffer with
Him, that we may be also glorified with Him” qualifies both “heirship of God”
and “joint-heirship
with Christ.” If this be so, then
logically we cannot be “children of God”
unless we suffer with Christ. Suffering with Christ would then be necessary for
[our initial and eternal]
salvation; but this no evangelical reader of the Scriptures would believe or
assert. Alas! how few children of God do
suffer with Christ. The sole qualification for becoming “children of God” is belief in, and receiving or accepting, Christ
as Saviour (John 1: 12). “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou
shalt be saved” (Acts 16: 31).
This being so, manifestly “the suffering with Christ” qualifies the preceding paragraph “joint heirs with Christ,”*
and this agrees with other scripture. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also
reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2: 12). - no suffering, no crown - and again “He that overcometh” - and
only the overcomer - “I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne” (Rev. 3:
21). And again, “He that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end,
to him will I give authority over the nations and he shall rule them” (Rev. 2: 26). This is the true “joint-heirship with Christ” in His coming [Millennial] Kingdom, conditional on suffering with Him,
and overcoming and keeping His works
unto the end.
*
The Greek enforces the distinction. “Heirs of God on the one hand” ([see Gk. …]), “but on the
other hand” ([see
Gk. …]) “joint-heirs with
Christ if so be that we suffer with him.”- [D. M. Panton.] Ed.
In
this matter of punctuation we may not of course arbitrarily alter the
punctuation to suit our particular views or doctrines, such, for instance, as
the Seventh Day Adventists have, at
least in one case, done. They teach that at death the soul of the believer, as
well as his body, dies, and that they are resurrected together when Christ
appears - apparently, the dead out of Christ never rise! The Lord’s promise to
the dying thief on the cross - “Verily I say unto thee, to-day
shalt thou be with me in Paradise”
- absolutely contradicts this teaching; and our friends therefore punctuate the
sentence by shifting the comma from its place before the word “to-day” and putting it after it, so that the verse
reads - “Verily I say unto you to-day, thou shalt be with Me in Paradise,” an event which,
according to them, has not happened yet, nineteen hundred years after. Poor
consolation to a dying man!
They
do not explain how our Lord went in the spirit - [as a disembodied
‘soul into ‘Hades’ See Acts 2: 27. cf. verse
31 and 34, R.V.)] to preach to
the spirits in prison, during those three days [when His body lay] in the tomb,
while the thief lay dead in body and soul, and is still so dead. This looks
very like a “wresting
of the scriptures” (2 Peter 3: 16) and not merely a punctuation of
Scripture.
It
may be interesting to apply the same methods to other texts in the Bible; it
may clear up misunderstandings, and explain apparent contradictions in Scripture; but we should be very
careful to compare Scripture with Scripture, and not simply make more
confusion. It will be difficult probably to find many texts to test, as the
work of the translators has been so admirably done.
*
* *
JOINT-HEIRSHIP WITH CHRIST CONDITIONAL
Our
[eternal] heirship with God is unforfeitable; our co-heirship with Christ [during the time of his messianic and millennial
kingdom] is the birthright [belonging to ‘first-born’ sons] which,
while open to all [regenerate
believers],
depends on the midnight wrestle: “heirs indeed of God; but joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him” (Rom. 8: 17. Thus the millennial
birthright potentially belongs to all believers, but actually to those [only] who fulfil
the [divine] conditions.
-------
FAITH AND GOOD WORKS
“Faith unites the Christian for justification, and its work
in this respect is complete at once. In this acceptance works have no place.
All acts before this are sins, and cannot avail to justify. But faith is also
an active grace, the spring of holiness and of good works in the justified.”
- ROBERT GOVETT.
-------
“As Thou wouldst hear me calling upon Thee in my prayers, so
give me grace to hear Thee calling on me in Thy Word. Grant that I may hear it
with reverence, receive it with meekness, mingle it with faith, and that it may
accomplish in me, gracious God, the good work for which Thou hast sent it.”
-
GEORGE
WASHINGTON.
*
* * *
* * *
556
THE DAY OF
THE LORD*
By D. M. Panton,
B.A.
[* From The Dawn Magazine, November, 16th.,
1936.]
The world’s most careful thinkers, and statesmen the
most deeply versed in the working of States, are filled with dread at this
moment that civilization is about to crash. Prime Ministers of England, than
whom no better judges of statecraft could be found, have expressed the dread. Mr. Stanley Baldwin says:- “I have never disguised my own conviction that another war
will be the end of the civilization we know.” Mr. Ramsay Macdonald says:- “If the Churches of Christ throughout
Europe and America allow this to happen they had better close their doors; for
the next war, if ever it comes, will be a war on civilization itself.” Mr.Lloyd George says:- “It seems to me that the world is
heading for a very great catastrophe. If the
Now
God, who alone knows the end from the beginning, and whose own future action is
involved - future action which known only to Himself - emphasizes the same
fact. It is the near approach of the coming collapse, with its infallible
symptoms of dissolution, which makes it so evident, and evident even to men who
never consult God; but it has been pictured in God’s Word for thousands of
years. All the Scriptures are burdened with one coming Day, a day which they
place long after the First Coming of Christ, and which is a
dissolution of civilization: ‘that day’; ‘the great day’;
‘the last day’; ‘the Day
of the Lord’. As Zephaniah (1:
14) cries:- “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord.”
Now
the double secret of the Day, cause and effect combining to produce it, is
extraordinarily convincing. What the statesmen see, and dread, is such a
growing ferment of lawlessness, such a dissolution of high-principled
integrity, human passion and hate and greed and crime so rotting the very
fabric of social life, that civilization breaks down, and all ordered civil
life crashes: God sees
exactly the same thing; and as the Most High, ultimately, is alone
responsible for the order of the universe, He is at last compelled to
intervene, for He sees what is coming. Suddenly and miraculously, after a
silence and apparent absence of two thousand years, the Most High reappears to
handle a race sunk in crime, and a world plunged in open rebellion; and as the
Person responsible for order and righteousness, He has to handle the situation
exactly as would the Governors of Dartmoor if confronted with a violent revolt
of the convicts.
Therefore
there are four outstanding characteristics of the Day of the Lord; and a
supreme one is the fact that, so cumulative in its horror will that day be, as
God sees and knows it, that God Himself, again and again, counsels fear. “HOWL YE;
for the day of the Lord is at hand; as destruction from
the Almighty shall it come. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel,
with wrath and fierce anger” (Isa.
13: 6, 9). For it will be the wrath of God let loose,
after longsuffering has dammed back that wrath, with huge blocking power, for
six thousand years. So Zephaniah (1: 15) says:- “That day is a day of wrath,
a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness; and I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord, and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung.”
The
second outstanding characteristic, which ought to make a wise man fear, is that
there is no escape. The Day of the Lord, encircling the globe, will exempt no
nation, and will be absolutely universal. “Behold,” God cries through Isaiah (13:
11), “the day of the Lord cometh, and
I will punish THE WORLD for their
evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.” So our Lord says to the Philadelphian Angel (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 WORLD, to try them that
dwell upon the earth.” None can
resist the omnipotence of the Judge: none can elude His omniscient scrutiny:
none can evade the weight of His sentence. “The day of the Lord,” cries Joel (2: 11), “is great and very terrible;
and who can abide it?” So Paul says (1 Thess. 5: 3):-“They shall in no
wise escape.”
Another unique characteristic of the Day will be
its miracle. All the signal judgments with which God has ever visited nations
or individuals are but harbingers and symptoms of coming catastrophes more
intense and terrible than the world has ever seen. “And I will show wonders in
the heavens and the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke:
the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before” - even before - “the great and terrible day of the Lord come” (Joel 2: 30). The plagues of it will be so universal and
miraculous as to be inescapable; for God’s judgment Prophets “have power over the waters to
turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with
every plague” (Rev. 11: 6). The effect is shown in a photograph taken by
the Divine camera two to three thousand years beforehand. “Therefore shall all hands be
feeble, and every heart of man shall melt;
pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be faces of flame” (Isa.
13: 7).
The
last and most dangerous characteristic of the Day of the Lord is its
suddenness; a suddenness which is startlingly linked with an international
passion of the present moment. In the
So,
therefore, we learn that the forecasts of statesmen are only a dim premonition
of rapidly approaching collapse; and that God has revealed, perfectly
explicitly, much more than that - namely, that the world is not moving blindly without aim or goal, but marches
irresistibly towards a set purpose and a sudden judgment. It is a cardinal
error in life to be so upset by the emotion of a coming fact - the thought, for
example, that it is too awful to be believed - as to refuse to look the fact in
the face, and to neglect the only thing that really matters - a calm, careful, thorough preparation for
the thing that is coming. There is only one word that fits the facts - John
the Baptist’s:- “Who
hath warned YOU TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH
TO COME?”
But
we must also guard against an unintelligent fear. Since the Day of the Lord is
the broad, black belt of judgments lying between Grace and the [promised
Millennial]
Kingdom, the ‘no man’s land’ of the ‘junctions of the dispensations’ (1 Cor. 10: 11), it can
be recognized, when it arrives, by two concrete facts. It is open wrath on the
Lawless One, and on the general apostasy
from Christianity, and so is synchronous with the disclosure of Antichrist:
therefore Paul says, “be not quickly shaken from your mind as that the day of the
Lord* is now present [has set in]; for it will not be except (1) the falling away come first, and
(2) the man of sin be revealed” (2 Thess.
2: 2). So
also huge miracles must appear (Acts 2: 20) in the heavens before
the Day of the Lord can come. For
it is the dawn of judgment, and every soul is involved. Judgment begins at the
*
See Revised Version. The manuscript authorities are decisive.
*
* * *
* * *
557
THE CHURCH I
FOUND*
By R. H. BOLL
* From The Church I Found and How I Found It. 5 cents. Word and
When I became a Christian - simply a Christian - it
meant to me the surrender of the faith and teaching which was instilled in me
from infancy, in which I grew up, and which I still held when I turned my
twentieth year. It was a tremendous step for me. If to any such a change would
seem easy, with me it came hard. I never would or could have made that turn had
not the grace of God wrought wonderfully toward me. Even as it was I was a long
time in coming.
The
idea of being simply and only a Christian of the New Testament sort attracted
me greatly. I was revolving the problem in my mind; and despite my limited
understanding, I saw that I had at least the same opportunity of being a Simple
Christian as had the people of whom I read in the New Testament, and an equal
right to the Church of Christ in that original and universal sense in which the
apostles and all the earliest Christians belonged to it. I also began to
understand that such a simple Christian stood responsible to his Lord
alone for all his faith and practice; and that therefore the Word of God, all
of it, and it only, must be his guidance - no man having the right either
to limit him therein or to impose on him anything besides; that he was free
from all men and from every human yoke. With that conception more or less
clearly in my mind, and understanding little else, I confessed Christ as my
Lord and was buried with Him in baptism, April 14, 1895.
To
this day I take it that no man or set of men, however learned, venerable, and
good, can be authority to a simple Christian. If any man is so scholarly or
so deeply versed in he Scriptures, it ought to enable him to point out and set
forth much more clearly what the Scriptures say on any matter in question. If he cannot do that his reputation is vain.
It is certain that, for all his reputed
knowledge and ability we will not take his word. When he can point out
God’s Word on the matter, so that I myself can see that it is God’s Word, I accept it - not because that able brother pointed it out, but because it is
God’s Word.
By this is not meant that Christians are
to show no deference and consideration to the able and worthy teachers among
them. Far from it. There are men whose ability and long faithfulness commands
our fullest respect; whose positions on matters of faith deserve to be weighed
and examined with more than common care and thought. Yet, after all that is said, nothing is to be accepted, held, believed,
practised, simply because any man, however good or great, so taught. The simple Christian knows absolutely no
father on the earth; nor any Rabbi, Master, or Teacher, save the Lord Jesus
Christ alone (Matt. 23: 8-10).
As
I would not subscribe to a human creed that contained error, or any tenet or
article of faith contrary in my judgment to the Word of God - so neither would
I subscribe to any man’s creed even if that creed contained to the dot all I
now believe, and all I understand the Bible to teach. I can accept no human
creed, good or bad. The moment a Christian bows to a human creed he
ceases to be a simple follower of Christ. An alien authority has intruded
between him and his Lord; and his claim to be a member of the
Unity
is precious. And it is not possible for us to have unity and fellowship in the
Lord, except we be agreed in Scripture teaching of the things that make a man a
Christian - the all-inclusive confession; the gospel of Christ; the obedience
of faith. In order to worship we must be at one as to congregational practice,
and must therefore stand together upon the simplest New Testament ground. In
order to live and work together we
must all stand upon the supreme and sole authority of the Word of God. But within these limits there may be - nay, inevitably there will be,
much variation in our conception of things - differences due to stages of
growth, diligence in study, temperament, development, personal aptitudes - for
the truth of God is many-sided and inexhaustible; no man has ever taken in all
of it, and it takes all the Church to get the manifold truth. So long,
then, as a man among us stands upon the Rock foundation, holding himself
subject to the verdict of the Scriptures, and leaving his teaching
subject to each man’s individual judgment and Bible-taught conscience in the
sight of God, no line may be drawn against him. Those who do draw a line
against such a man, draw it against themselves.
Nor
could any teaching put forth by such a Christian upon these principles justly
cause division in the
As
for myself - in the fear of God, in the love of the Lord and the brethren I beg
the privilege to study and teach and as God may give me ability and
opportunity, and as faithfully as by His grace I may, the whole counsel of God.
For this is my fundamental portion and birthright as a child God in God’s
house, the one and only Church which the Lord established, the only Church of
which I am a member and to which ever I intend to belong.
*
* *
“WITH PRIVILEGE
AND RIGHTS COMES RESPONSIBILITY”*
[* The following short, but excellent and
thought-provoking article, is from Prayer for Israel,
Prayer Bulletin, September 2019.
The heading above is from the author’s writing, which
is a suitable ‘follow-up’ from R. H.
Boll’s findings above.]
-------
“Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God and said,
‘Why does your wrath burn hot against your people…
Turn from your fierce wrath and relent from this harm to your people.” Ex. 32: 11-12.
In August, it was a blessing to be in fellowship with
others at the SW Bible Week at Bicton Camp in
But
what was the justification for such an outpouring of judgment? How could God,
who called them “His
people”, do such a thing? The
crisis was clearly so great, it prompted Moses to offer himself as a substitute
for their sin. “Lord,
please forgive them but if you don’t, then blot me out of your book.” So, what was happening here?
As
soon as they entered the wilderness and became entirely dependent upon God,
their faithfulness started to wear thin. Despite God’s provision at Marah, the
people looked back to
The
Miraculous hand of God.
*
By Him, the bitter Waters at Marah were made sweet. God also promised that none
of
these diseases (judgments) experienced by the
Egyptians, would afflict them.
* Next stop at
Elim, they drink freely and have rest. Exodus 15:
22-27.
*
Next time, they complain about bread. So,
God rains “bread from heaven” upon them.
Very soon, they are sick of Manna which was provided
six days out of seven.
* They
complain again about water until Moses strikes the rock at Horeb Exodus 17.
*
Finally, Amalek - the grandson of Esau -
fights against
that
Amalek continues to manifest himself, desiring to kill
off
In
Exodus 19:
5-6 they
arrive at Horeb - the mountain where God calls the people to come near to Him
and for Moses to come even closer. It’s another awesome experience with smoke
and fire. It’s here, He reveals their purpose and destiny.
How could they deny that God was real? How could they deny His choice of them as His people
and Moses their leader? And most of all, encouraged by Aaron’s complicity in
the creation of a Golden Calf, why did they think that worshipping a Golden
calf was going to be pleasing to God? Isn’t it any wonder that Moses reacted
the way he did when Aaron had completely lost sight of his calling and purpose?
Paul picks up this theme in Romans 11: 22, “Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell severity; but
toward you goodness, if you continue in His
goodness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.”* Paul was clearly saying that The Scriptures are a
record of all that God did with
[* See below.]
Moses intercedes for
With privilege and rights - comes
responsibility.
3000
people died as the Levites “put on swords”
and went through the camp killing all the men. Delivering judgment is not a
nice job for a servant of God.
- DEREK ROUS (Director)
-------
THE MISTAKE MADE BY MOST COMMENTATORS
The apostle Paul “does not, in
these words, tell us that he feared the being cast into hell [i.e. ‘the lake of fire’ (Rev. 20: 15, R.V.).] God’s predestination of him as a [regenerate] believer, was his security against that. And in confidence of this,
he flings down the gauntlet to the universe as unable to remove him from the
love of Christ: Rom. 8. There he was
treating of the grace of God flowing from eternity. Here, he is discovering to
us the influence of his own actions upon the
future recompense of God, distributed on the principle of justice. It is
not now the question of justification by faith to the ungodly; but reward or loss in Messiah’s kingdom to the
saints. He might, though finally saved, yet be judged unworthy of a lot* in the first resurrection. Or, though a place in that were
granted, he might be undeserving of a crown.
[* That is, ‘unworthy of a’
share
in Christ’s ‘inheritance’, with those who
will be resurrected at that time! Compare Ps. 2: 8 with Ps. 110: 1-3 and Col. 3: 24-15 R.V.]
Here lies the mistake of most commentators. It is assumed, that there is no difference
between reward and a bare salvation. It is taken
for granted that ‘the
crown’ is only a figurative expression for simple salvation. It is supposed that ‘eternal
life’ and ‘the
On such assumptions, passages like the above present very great,
or, we may say, insuperable difficulties to the Christian reader. Not that even
insuperable difficulty is sufficient reason for our rejecting a doctrine made
known by the testimony of God. But a view of the difference between eternal life and the
[millennial]
*
* * *
* * *
558
THE ROYAL
LAW
It is critically important that we should guard
ourselves against fresh dangers as they arise; and the disintegration of the
Now
the rebuke of the Apostle James - “Why dost thou judge thy brother?” (Jas. 4: 12) - makes it necessary first of all to clear the
ground on judgment. God has implanted in every one of us, though in varying
degree, the critical faculty, righteous judgment, a strong reaction against
evil anywhere and in anyone: it may be our Christian duty to pronounce upon
character and conduct; and we require to judge, mentally for our own moral
guidance and blamelessness. In the case of the six excommunicating sins (1 Cor. 5: 11) we are
actually to expel. Every year deepens the need of strong language based on judgment - sound judgment, balanced judgment,
and especially judgment based carefully on the Holy Scriptures - uttered without fear or favour; and such
considerations reveal that it is not against moral duties such as these that
the rebuke of the Apostle is levelled,
Again,
we need to clear the ground further by exactly defining our own peculiar
danger. The danger we are pondering is not calumny or slander; or arrogant
censoriousness; or overweening pride. It hardly needs a Paul or a James to warn
us against these. Our danger, much more subtle, is such a growth of corrupt doctrine, such a lowering of the standard of Christian life, that, in our
passionate revolt, we shall single out individual Christians for attack,
showing them openly that they have forfeited our love. “Speak not against one another, brethren” (Jas. 4: 11): it is
personal denunciation, not denunciation in the mass, that is forbidden. James
himself says in this very chapter:- “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with
God?” but he does not name them.
Now this wonderful Book gives us the reasons why we
are not to judge one another; and the first is this:- “He that speaketh against a
brother or judgeth his brother, speaketh against
the law and judgeth the law.” What
law? The Apostle himself, in an earlier chapter (2: 8), puts it
beyond all doubt. “If ye fulfil the royal law, according to the Scripture, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself, ye do well.” The royal law,
underlying both the Mosaic law and the Gospel - that is, underlying all
revelation - is love; and if we “speak against one another” - when not compelled to do so, nor justified in doing
so - our criticism of our brother condemns the law which forbids it. We ‘judge’ the law, as though it were unrighteous in its
prohibitions; we ‘speak against it’, by our
action, as over-stringent, and forbidding us to do what we ought: whereas he
who loves his neighbour as himself takes an exactly opposite course; he will take care to inflict on him as
little pain is possible, and will put the best possible construction on acts.
We do well to concentrate on ourselves,
rather than on our brother [or sister in the Lord]. A great
runner, who had broken several of the world’s track records, said that all his
successes came because he was always
trying to get ahead of himself. “I never pay any
attention to how fast the other fellow is running,” he said; “whether he wins or loses doesn’t make any difference to me;
I always try to
beat myself.”
The
Apostle next reveals that, by such criticism of our brother, we have landed
ourselves in a false position and have assumed a forbidden role. “But if thou judgest the law,
thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge”;
and the position of a judge is a role forbidden to the child of God in this
dispensation. Our Lord says:- “Judge not, that ye be not
judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged” (Matt. 7: 1). That is,
I decide the principle on which the [Lord’s] Judgment Seat will handle me: if I act with mercy and
compassion now, mercy and compassion
will be measured to me then; if
exact rigid justice, rigid justice is what I must meet at judgment bar of God.
But
now we reach the crucial solution of the problem, the one missing fact that
restores the balance and satisfies our souls. “One only is the lawgiver and judge.” God is the judge because He is the lawgiver: He who
created all law is the perfect exponent of its meaning, the exact revealer of
its fulfilment or non-fulfilment, and the perfect apportioner of its reward or
punishment. We are apt to put their errors and faults, or the
wounds they give us, in a setting out of all proportion to the character and
life of our offenders: our glorious God can, and will, exactly adjust it all;
and for the most part He has reserved all such
judgment to the future - [i.e., for those
presently in “Hades” - the underworld of the
disembodied ‘souls’ of all the dead (See John 3: 13. cf.
Lk. 16: 23, 31; Acts 2: 27, 34; 2 Tim. 2: 18; Rev. 6: 9-11; Rev. 20: 4b, etc.) - before ‘the
First Resurrection’ (Heb. 9: 27; Rev. 20: 5, R.V.)]. “I
have a big vengeance waiting for my evil neighbours,” a man once
said to his Christian friend. “Then,” the friend replied, “you must have stolen it; for God says, ‘Vengeance is mine’.” Judgment
is to be left to God*; and under the awe
of this coming [righteous] judgment
we are to walk softly. Paul has expressed it for all time (Rom. 14: 10):- “But thou,
why dost thou judge thy brother? or thou again, why dost thou
set at nought thy brother? for we shall all
stand before the judgment-seat of God. So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not
therefore judge one another any more: but judge ye this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block in his
brother’s way, or an occasion of falling.”
[*
See 1 Cor. 6: 1, 4-9, R.V. “It is indeed then certainly a fault in you, that you
have-lawsuits with yourselves. Why not rather suffer injustice? why not rather be
defrauded?” (verse 7, Lit.
Greek.)]
A
vivid detail of the Apostle drives home the point still further and discloses
the master-key to the problem. “One only is the lawgiver and
judge, even he who is able to save and to destroy”, and so alone
able to judge to a nicety all degrees of offence, and all grades of award, between salvation and destruction. Only He
who can execute the sentences has the right to pronounce them, and He is going
to do both. This completely
satisfies our sense of justice, our passion for righteousness: what hurts us in our brother, and rightly hurts
us, we are not tolerating, or excusing, or condoning: we keep our hands off
because we are conscious, in sympathetic awe, that it must all appear at the
bar of God. Rightly understood, this
is the death-blow of sectarianism; for sectarianism, at its best, is the
exclusion of a fellow-believer from fellowship because of what we most
sincerely believe (and it may be
correctly) insufficient or incorrect doctrine, or inadequate or improper
conduct; and so sectarianism thinks to vindicate the truth, and enforce
righteousness: whereas the Apostles reveal that a real judgment is coming, which will set all wrongs in the Church
right, and our resentment is to be swallowed up in
awe, compassion, and sympathy. Paul took
shelter for himself under this truth. He says (1
Cor. 4: 3):- “With me it is a very small thing that I should be
judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea,
I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing
against myself; yet am I not hereby justified:* but he
that judgeth me is the Lord. Wherefore judge nothing before the time,
until the Lord
come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness” - the facts in
my brother’s life and character which I did not know - “and make manifest
the counsels of the hearts” - his motives [whether good or bad] which I never [by listening to half-truths and slanderous accusations
by others at the time, never fully] knew - “and then shall
each man have his praise [or righteous condemnation] from God”.
* In other words, any known sinlessness in a believer is impossible on
this side of the Judgment Seat. Even a Paul had no such knowledge.
So
the Apostle James closes with a final challenge on our capacity for judging. “But who art thou that judgest
thy brother?” Are you qualified to
be a judge of the human soul? and by whose authority do you assume the role? -
this question the Apostle presses home on every one of us, without exception. “Is there in you that blamelessness of life, that gravity of
behaviour, that purity of motive, that severe control of tongue, that freedom
from contamination from the world, that overflowing love, which would qualify
for judgment?” (A. Plummer, D. D).
A
tremendous danger lies in judging the motive when only the act is known: the
motive is the soul of an act, and the only judge of motives is God. Sir Ernest Shackleton
was once asked to tell his most terrible moment in the
*
* * *
* * *
559
THE JEW
TO-DAY*
[* From ‘The Dawn Magazine’
June 15, 1936. How much closer
are we today - 83 years later -
when God’s appointed time will have arrived, for the
fulfilment of His promise to the nation and land belonging to
Voltaire’s cynical remark is one day to receive its
complete answer:- “Who would ever believe that God
gave that little corner of the earth to the Jews for an everlasting* possession!” Jehovah’s promise to
[* NOTE: The
Greek word ‘aionios’ in this context, should
be understood as ‘age’-lasting and not
‘eternal’ as suggested here! See “The Dualism of Eternal Life” on this website.]
Meanwhile
the exodus out of all lands back into
*
Jews from nearly forty countries found
homes in
What a miracle of proof imperishable
symbol of eternity. He whom no persecution
and martyrdom of thousands of years has been able to destroy; he whom neither
fire, sword nor inquisition has been able to annihilate; he who has been the
guardian of divine prophecy and transmitted it to the rest of the world - such
a nation cannot be destroyed. Such a nation is eternal, like eternity itself.”
The Gennan persecution of an
entire race is at this moment purely unique. Mr. Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons (Times, Mar.
25, 1936):- “In a great country the Jewish race is
being subjected to the most horrible, cold, scientific, brutal persecution - a
cold pogrom - when people are being reduced from affluence to ruin, and even in
that position denied the opportunity of earning their daily bread; cut out even
from the relief grants to tide the destitute through the winter, their little
children pilloried in the schools to which they have to go, their blood and
race declared accursed and defiling; accused of every kind of human wickedness
by an overwhelming power and vile tyranny.” Yet £1,500,000 have been
raised, and £3,000,000 more are being raised by this indomitable race to
finance German Jews back to
[* NOTE: Where do, the
deniers of Scriptural truths and the false teachers of Divine prophecy stand
today? Will those who forbid prophetic truths being taught inside
the Lord’s house to believers, and who doggedly deny their Lord Jesus
Christ His millennial inheritance (Ps.
2: 8), be
treated any differently at His Judgment Seat? Will the ordained ministers or
teaching elders - who seeks to ignore “the whole counsel of
God” (Acts 20: 27ff.) - be dealt with the same approval as that
which will be given to ‘the good and faithful servant’? Will
any person - regenerate or unregenerate - who ignores and seeks to transfer
God’s conditional promises and accountability truths (which are
primarily addressed to His ‘disciples’, and
therefore to the true members of His ‘Church’ -
(See Matt. 5: 1-20; 7: 21-27; 12: 32, 36; 19: 17; 21: 43; 24: 13, 14, 48-51ff. R.V.) - be excused for saying (or
suggesting) that these words apply only to Jews or unregenerate
people? NO! “For he that doeth wrong,”
says the divinely inspired Apostle Paul, “shall receive the wrong
that he hath done:
AND THERE IS NO
RESPECT OF PERSONS” (Col. 3: 24ff.)!
God’s
character, (when dealing with disobedience and wickedness
within His redeemed family, (Num. 14: 21-23, R,V. cf. Rev.
2: 22, 23; 3: 1-3) never
changes! “For I the Lord CHANGE NOT” (Mal. 3: 6, R.V.).
Therefore, His future treatment of all Apostates,
False Prophets, and Disobedient Disciples from among His
Redeemed People today, He will meet with precisely the same response as that
experienced by those in past ages! See 1 Cor. 6: 9ff.; Gal. 5: 21,ff; Eph. 5: 5, 6,ff; Rev. 3: 21, ff. R.V.).]
It
is exceedingly remarkable that it was in
* The Congress of
American Rabbis, however, has just decided to be neutral.
As
a whole,
This
modification of attitude has developed, in some quarters, into an absorption of
Christianity into Judaism which, while welcome in measure, Scriptural believers
cannot countenance. For several years there has been in
One
tremendous fact ought to silence for ever the anti-semitism which, incredible
to relate, seems spreading among
Churches of Christ. J. F. de la Roi, a careful statistician, estimated that 224,000
Jews during the nineteenth century entered the Christian churches of Europe and
*
* *
THE GOSPEL TO THE JEW FIRST
Why give the Gospel “to the Jew first?”
(
Is
it not a reason then, why the Gospel should first be preached to the Jew? They
are ready to perish. The cloud of indignation and wrath that is even now
gathering above the lost will break first upon the head of guilty, unhappy,
unbelieving
-
ROBERT MURRAY M’CHEYNE.
-------
THE SHOCK OF PROPHECY
The voice which urges men to flee from the wrath to
come is the voice of Love. On the Cairngorm Hills in 1917 two climbers nearly
perished. With bleeding fingers they dug themselves out of the hut in which
they had sheltered, and staggered silently through the wreaths of snow that
sometimes were breast deep. They succeeded in advancing two miles in three
hours. “Then my companion,” one of them writes,
“seized my arm and said, hoarsely, and thickly, like a
drunken man, ‘what about a snooze? I’m done.’ The temptation was terrible, for
rest seemed like heaven; but it was Death himself who stood near, and I felt
his wings. I struggled with my friend, but he lay down is spite of me. There
was only one thing to do, and I did it. I struck him on the face with my iron-shod
boot.” That blow produced
its designed effect: they staggered at last into the warmth of the nearest
cottage. God sometimes smites us sorely
on the face, to rouse us from the sleep of death.
- ALEXANDER STEWART, D.D.
-------
“The outbreak of the World War found large numbers of Jewish
citizens in every region and country ready to make every sacrifice for the land
of their birth or adoption. In spite of this, the end of the War brought
greater disasters upon the Jews of Europe than upon any community or race in
the world. In the German persecution of the religious and non-religious Jew,
they included one and a half million Christians of Jewish descent, who in most
cases had forgotten that they were of the Jewish race. Thus we find that the
poor Jew can get no security whether he remains a Jew or becomes a Christian.”
- SIR LEON LEVISON.
*
* * *
* * *
560
GOLD ON THE
FOUNDATION
By C. S. UTTING
Everyone who has “obtained a like precious faith us in the Righteousness of our
God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1: 1) is an heir of salvation and is on the FOUNDATION which is Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3: 11). But upon this foundation every believer is
raising a SUPERSTRUCTURE. While all on
the foundation are guaranteed eternal life as a present possession for “He that believeth hath everlasting life” (John 6:
47), nevertheless the superstructure
reared upon that becomes to the child of God a thing of intense importance.
A
committee of the Standard Oil Company met to secure a manager for new business
to be developed in
*
* *
AN EVANGELIST CREATED
We
note the great crowds that came to hear Moody
preach in those early days. But he was depressed and often in his closet cried
out, with tears, “Oh, God, what’s wrong with me?”
Soon his congregations began to decrease, and he came to the most awful
decision a Christian minister can ever know - “The
Gospel would not draw - by itself. He’d have to resort to some kind of sacred
concerts, or get some one to lecture to get the crowds back again.” In
the fall of 1871, when speaking in
- WILBUR SMITH, D.D.
-------
GOD’S OATH EXCLUDED THE DISOBEDIENT
GENERATION
“At Kadesh, once again, Miriam - one of the murmurers of old (Num. 12: 1) is excluded
by death, and Moses and Aaron by oath (Deut. 4: 21). Kadesh, this very age of our imminent
danger, is the epoch of which embraces the Judgment Seat of Christ. ‘Let us therefore give diligence to enter
into that rest, that none [of us] fall after
the same example of disobedience’ (Heb. 4: 11).
God’s people have never been
so faithful as to make advisable a softening of His judgments which comes perilously near making His
Word of none effect through our tradition. Moses’ death was penal (Num. 27: 14), though the
mode of his burial was signal grace.
‘The sentence was
perhaps the most effective possible revelation of His exceeding holiness. Even
so the Lord will make His [manifested] glory to be known and felt through His
servants if they be faithful, but
without them if they be faithless. He will be sanctified in us to our great reward in one case, to our
shame and sorrow in the other’ (The Pulpit Commentary). The unique burial of
Moses was manifestly in view of a no less unique resurrection on the Mount of
Transfiguration, a resurrection of [‘blessed and holy’ saints] unprecedented as to be disputed by Satan (Jude 9); in order to shadow forth the [ coming
messianic and millennial] kingdom’s risen saints, as Elijah embodied the living rapt.”
*
* * *
* * *
561
AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL
OF JOHN (John 18: 1)
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M.A.
1-3.
‘When Jesus had said these things, He went out with His disciples beyond the brook Kedron, where was a garden into which He entered, and His disciples. Now Judas
also, who betrayed Him, knew the spot; for Jesus often assembled there with His disciples. Judas, therefore, having received the band (of soldiers) and
servants from the chief priests and Pharisees,
cometh thither with lanterns, and torches, and weapons.’
We are now come to the awful scene of the betrayal.
Jesus leaves the evil city behind Him to enter the Garden. But it is not the
Garden of Eden now;
how far from it! The
Roman
soldiers, and the servants of the Pharisees and the rulers of the temple, join
to seize Jesus under the conduct of a renegade disciple. They are furnished
with lamps (or lanterns) and torches, in case
Christ should seek to hide, though it was now full moon; and with weapons, in case He or others with Him should
make any attempt at resistance.
4, 5. ‘Jesus, therefore, knowing all the
things that were coming upon Him, went out and
said unto them -“Whom seek ye?” They answered Him, “Jesus, the Nazarite.” Jesus saith unto them, “I am
He.” (Now Judas
also who betrayed Him, was standing with them). When, therefore He said unto
them, “I am He,”
they went backward, and fell to the ground.’
The
scene how different from Adam’s arraigning in the Garden! God called, and His
sentence in
He
would learn from His pursuers’ own lips who it was they came for. ‘Jesus the Nazarite.’ (Greek). He was the true Nazarite of whom Samson was a
type. But they saw not in the title any more than that Jesus was a man of
Had
any illumined eyes been there, they might have in this scene discerned the
accomplishment of the incident in Samson’s history (of which we read in Judges 15.), when the Hebrew judge was living in a
cleft of the cliff Etam, after a victory achieved by his single self against
the Philistines. The Philistines come up. The men of
At
our Lord’s avowal that He was the object of their search, ‘they went backwards
and fell to the ground.’ Thus they
fulfilled unwittingly what was written in Psalm 40.
In that Psalm Jesus prays for deliverance from His foes. He anticipates a new
song therefrom, and the turning of many thereby to fear God, and to trust Him.
Then follows a passage quoted by Paul, as applying to our Lord’s sacrifice, in
its setting aside the sacrifices of the Law. ‘Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire; mine ears hast Thou opened:
burnt offerings and sin offering hast Thou not required. Then said I, “Lo, I come: in the volume of the
book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy
will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart.”’ Jesus had taught in the great congregation of
Like
this is the testimony of the twenty-seventh Psalm. Jesus there boasts of God as
His ‘salvation’;
‘of whom then should He be afraid?’ ‘When the wicked, even Mine
enemies and My foes came upon Me to eat up My flesh, they stumbled and fell.’ (Verse
2). A host was against Him, but He fears not. He has since been exalted
to the refuge of the throne of God in the temple above. He calls for
deliverance; for ‘false witnesses are risen against Him’ (ver. 12.) Thus this assembly were pointed out, as ‘the wicked.’
A
third passage, showing how much this scene was in the eye of the Spirit, is
found in Isaiah 28: 9-13. The prophet finds but few to listen. They
prefer the first principles of the Law to the deeper truths of the Gospel.
Again and again came the Lord’s message. He would send to
7-9. ‘Again, therefore, he asked them,
“Whom seek ye?” But they
said, “Jesus, the
Nazarite!” Jesus answered, “I told you, that I am He; if therefore, ye seek Me,
suffer these to go away.” In order that the saying might be fulfilled, which He spake, “Of those
whom Thou gavest Me, I lost not one.”’
Of
course, this going back and falling to the ground of some hundreds of men was a
miracle never seen before, though predicted of God by His Spirit. Very fitting
was the occasion on which it was put forth. But for that, it seems probable
that the enemy would have seized on the disciples as well as our Lord Himself. ‘But why was this
miracle recorded for us when John, in his Gospel, notices so few?’ On
purpose to refute a deadly deceit of Satan, launched against the Gospel in John’s
day; that at this time the Heavenly Spirit - ‘the
Christ’ - had fled away from ‘the man Jesus’;
and had left Him defenceless and dismayed in the midst of His foes.
Here,
on the contrary, we learn, that Jesus’ power of miracle abode with Him; a power
that, had He pleased, could have at once have cut off His foes. How little even
a miracle from God checks men, when bent on the pursuit of an evil purpose, we
see here! We do not read that one of that multitude turned back; that one
perceived the wickedness of his course, so as to change it. Not one recognized
the voice of the prophet, though read in the synagogue every Sabbath-day. Not
one said, ‘This is sin, let me flee from it!’
We often expect great results from solemn providences befalling the unconverted.
How seldom do we find them? ‘Though thou shouldst bray (pound)
a fool in a mortar with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him’ (Prov.
27: 22).
But let us who believe be stayed and led to enquire - if a decided and
unexpected check from God occurs in our course - whether we are right? God’s
providence is not indeed to be now our sole or chief guide; yet it is better - as Matthew Henry says - ‘Not to force
The
multitude when enquired of by Jesus whom they were seeking, again replies - ‘Jesus the Nazarite’ - as
before. But now the Lord Jesus puts in His claim, in arrest of their seizure of
His disciples together with Himself. For by the Law, the dam and the
young, if found by an Israelite, might not
together be seized. The right
of escape belonged to the dam, or the mother. ‘If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in
the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or
eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young,
or upon the eggs, thou shalt
not take the dam with the young,’ Deut. 22: 6. If they took the young, they must not seize the
mother; if they desired that things might go well with them, and their days be
prolonged.
This
took place, says John, in fulfilment of our Lord’s saying, that not one of the
Father’s gifts to Him should be lost. This in its immediate and most obvious
object, would refer to Jesus’ rescue of His disciples, out of the hands of His
and their foes.
Only
[the apostate] Judas, as the lost one, stands apart from His
disciples and His saved ones. He is the Son of Perdition; and
his loss is as certain as the [coming] salvation* of the others. What makes the difference between the saved and the
lost? The election of God! The gift of the Father to the Son! Else there were
no certainty that we should not, after setting out well on the road, turn back
to perdition! ‘Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.’
[* That is, when
Jesus returns, and at the time of ‘the first
resurrection’ (1 Thess. 4: 16; Rev. 20: 5ff.).
Keep
in mind: The word ‘salvation’ has more meanings
than one! and therefore it must be interpreted by the context in which it is
used. See for example, 1 Pet. 1: 5, 9 and Phil. 2: 12, R.V.]
Thus,
then, we see that the [overcoming] believer, through the
substitution of Christ, and God’s
power, shall certainly not be lost; but enjoy at last the [Messianic and Millennial] ‘glory’ destined for
Him.
*
* * *
* * *
562
THE FIRST
RESURRECTION
By G. H. LANG
[“It is a deep satisfaction to record two works by keen and
devoted authors issued within the last few months on the most tremendous of all
problems for the believer in the near approach of the Advent - our
responsibility and its consequences. The first is Mr. Lang’s Firstborn
Sons (Samuel Roberts, 14 Clerkenwell Green, E.C.4; 1/- and 1/6). Judgments, it is true, will differ on detail when new truth is
dawning. A fresh landscape, from which the fogs are slowly lifting, is scanned
by watchers across the valley; and the accuracy of the portraits taken -
differing with the size and power of the cameras and telescopes, as well as the
competence and ability of the human eyes - may be somewhat conflicting, and
some will be defective or even erroneous: nevertheless a new world has swum
into the vision of the watchers. The
pressing of the grave truths of responsibility on the Church of Christ is
the only conduct consistent, not alone with
fidelity to God and His Word, but
with love to our brother, who might well reproach us at
the Judgment Seat if we have known truths critically important to him which we
had never told him. If he rejects them, our hands
are clean.
A section from each volume will give the flavour and power of both.” - [D. M. Panton]. - Ed.]
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[PART
1]
The phrase “the out resurrection from among the dead” ([see
the Greek text …]) is an emphasized repetition of words
previously used by Christ. Asked by some concerning the resurrection He spoke
of such as should be “accounted worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection
out of (from
among) the dead” (Luke 20: 35). The expression “that age” must mean the millennial; for reaching the eternal ages is not a matter of our, but of our Saviour’s,
worthiness. And Scripture speaks of eternity as “ages” not as an “age”. Moreover, “the coming age” (Mark 10: 30; Luke 18: 30) is the period “when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of
His glory” and the apostles shall
rule over
To
be so accounted worthy was Paul’s set determination, and he knew that to attain
to such a state of fitness it was imperative that he, like his Lord, should be “dead” to the godless age which Christ has rejected, seeing
that it has rejected Him. He knew too that if such moral conformity His death
is to be attained, the sufferings that bring death must be shared. To suffer
with Christ, either by toil or need incurred in furthering His ends, or at the
hands of the world, for His sake and for righteousness, or otherwise as He may
appoint for our perfecting, is a simple and sure way of growing like Him in
holiness, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin (1 Peter 4: 1). A man cannot at once live in daily fellowship with the cross of Christ
and go on in sin for which Christ there suffered, nor easily continue
fellowship with the world that so treated his Lord.
Therefore
also Paul said to the Thessalonian saints, “To which end we also pray always for you, that our God may
count you worthy of your calling, and fulfil
every desire of goodness and every work of faith, with power; that the name of our Lord
Jesus may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1: 11, 12). He desired, as he had said in verse 5, that they
might so live and suffer “to the end that ye may be counted worthy of the
Sharing
[with our Lord Jesus Christ] the [promised millennial] kingdom, to
which we are called, is thus repeatedly declared to be the portion of those who
are “accounted
worthy”, and their worthiness
is shown to depend upon their conduct [after
receiving initial salvation] as disciples. Speaking to disciples (Matt. 10: 37, 38 and of disciples (ver. 24),
the Lord plainly said, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than
me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not
take his cross and follow after me, is not
worthy of me.” And this He said in full view of and because of the trials that must needs befall any
faithful follower of Himself. And on another occasion, and still
addressing such as were expressing not merely faith in Him, the Saviour sent by
God, but a readiness to follow Him as disciples, but who wished to give the
first place to certain natural, and in themselves proper, things, Christ
uttered these searching words: “No man, having put his hand to
the plough, and looking back, is fit for the [millennial] kingdom of God” (Luke 9: 62). He did not say that such could not be saved
from hell, or that if one who had commenced gospel service retired therefrom
because of its laborious nature, he would forfeit eternal life; but that such a one is not “fit for the kingdom”. For officers of state, whether civil or military, must be prepared to give their monarch and their high duties a place of
priority over all other persons and affairs, or they are not fit for such
posts.
[* Anti-millennialists
are teaching Christians that our Lord and Saviour has one coming ‘kingdom’ only! May the Holy Spirit give them
a deeper understanding of prophetic truths, which are awaiting a literal
fulfilment in “the age
to come” (Mark 10: 30; Luke 18: 30; cf. Heb. 6:
5, 6,ff. R.V.]
So
also Romans 8: 16,
17 - “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God : and
if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ if so be that we
suffer with him, that we may be also
glorified with him.” The latter
verse should read, “heirs indeed of
God, but joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, etc.” How clearly this establishes a condition for being glorified
with Christ let a competent scholar say who showed no leaning towards our use
of the [Greek] words. Alford
thus translates and comments: “IF AT LEAST (see above on verse 9,) provided that, not since, which would be we are suffering “with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him”: i.e. ‘if (provided that) we are found in that course of participation
in Christ’s sufferings, whose aim and end, as that of His sufferings, is to be
glorified as He was, and with Him.’ But the [Greek]
does not regard the subjective aim, q.d. ‘if at least our aim in suffering is to be glorified’
- but the fact of our being partakers of that course of
sufferings with Him, whose
aim is,
wherever it is found, to be ‘glorified with Him’” (Alford’s italics). The reader will note
the italicized words “wherever it is found,” implying that there may be those who are not found
suffering with Him. The learned Dean, adds, “The
connection of suffering with Christ, and
being
glorified with Him is elsewhere insisted on, see 2 Tim. 2: 11; 1 Pet. 4: 13; 5: 1.” Jamieson,
Faussett
and Brown implicitly reject the
rendering “since” by translating “provided we be suffering with Him”. So also Darby
(New Translation) renders - “if indeed we suffer”.
Paul
indicates (Phil. 3:
11) as plainly as language can do that the first resurrection may be missed.
His words are: “If by any
means I may arrive at the
resurrection which is out from among the dead.” “If by any means” ([Greek
…]) “I may”- “if” with the
subjunctive of the verb - cannot but declare a condition; and so on this particle in this place Alford says, “It
is used when an end is proposed, but failure
is presumed to be possible”: and so Lightfoot;
“The apostle states not a positive assurance, but a
modest hope:” and Grimm-Thayer
(Lexicon) give its meaning as, “If in way, if by any
means, if possible:” and Ellicott
to the same effect says, “the idea of an attempt
is conveyed, which may or may not be successful”. Both Alford and Lightfoot regard the passage as dealing with the resurrection of
the godly from death, and Ellicott’s
note is worth giving in full, “The resurrection from
the dead; i.e., as the context suggests, the first resurrection (Rev. 20: 5),*
when, at the Lord’s coming the dead in Him shall rise first (1 Thess. 4: 16), and the quick be caught up to meet
Him in the clouds (1 Thess. 4: 17); comp. Luke 20: 35. The first resurrection will include only true believers, and
will apparently precede the second, that non-believer, and disbelievers, in
point of time. Any reference here to a merely ethical resurrection (Cocceius)
is wholly out of the question.” With the addition that the second resurrection will include believers not accounted
worthy of the first, this note is excellent.
*
That there will be saved persons at the great white throne judgment is
obvious from the phrase used in Rev. 20: 15, “if any (man’s
name) was not found written in the book of life,
he was cast into the lake of fire.” If this indefinite, negative mode of
expression was not intended to show that the name might be found in the book of
life, it is, to say the least, singularly calculated to mislead, a fault which
may not be imputed to Holy Scripture. What would be the force of the
statement that - a great crowd was at the barrier, and if anyone was found not
to have a ticket he was not allowed to pass? Would not this imply at least that
some there had a ticket?
That
there will be degrees of honour among those share the first resurrection is
sure; one servant was appointed over ten cities, and another over but two, and
each according to his fidelity and proved capacity. But as to the heartiness of
their welcome into the joy of their Lord He made no distinction, but used the
same words of welcome to both alike saying, “Well done,
good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Matt. 25: 21-23) whilst
the unfaithful servant had no entrance at all into that joy, nor any place of
authority in his Lord’s service, albeit his life
was spared, as is clear from Luke 19: 27: “But (in
contrast to the treatment of the unfaithful servant just detailed) those Mine enemies ... slay them.”
Exactly so does the Revelation pronounce
each and all to be alike blessed and holy that hath part in the first
resurrection (20: 6),
and this whether they were of the company of the “first-fruits,”who
escape the great tribulation period (14: 1-5), or of the
multitude that come victoriously through that persecution (7: 9-17), or of the saints raised at its close (11: 18).
*
* * *
* * *
[PART
2]
563
THE KINGDOM
By W. F. ROADHOUSE
[The
second of the two volumes we have referred to is by Mr. W. F. Roadhouse, of
The Apocalypse has shown us throughout that only ‘the overcomer’ has the promise of victory and rulership ahead of him
(2: 26, 27; 3: 21). Nor is this taught only in this closing book,
but throughout the New Testament. We are, in our exposition, just
where ‘the
Kingdom’ is to be set up - are
there no Scriptures that in clearest statement, declare that “they which do such things
shall not inherit the
Paul
ever warns
regarding these things, but popular teaching has become so easy-going that
anyone can slip into God’s highest and best - because, forsooth, “It’s all of grace!” But ‘grace’ [God’s favour] leaves
no room for [wilful (Heb. 10: 26, ff.)] sin - if Paul teaches that it does, pray where? Rather
does he write, “Even so might grace
reign through righteousness (not through sin, God forbid!) unto eternal life” [in
this context ‘life age-lasting’ (lit. Gk. ‘aionios’ )]
(Rom. 5: 21 - 6.: 7.). Nor does
grace play lazy - for Paul, after affirming that “by the grace of God” he was what he was, adds, - “but I laboured more abundantly than they all” (1 Cor.
15: 10).
This is our absolute stand - grace does not make room for tolerating sin, nor
for a lackadaisical kind of Christian life. None
may presume! And one who practises those debarring
things of Galatians 5., cited above, God
says “shall not
inherit.”* Anyone may teach an easier type of life than this if
he will - but he himself shall give account for it to the judge - when he
comes. Beware of the teacher of a smooth, easy life - even under the guise of ‘the doctrines of grace’. (How glibly and with lost
reality, some use that phrase!)
*
This shows where a Christian who falls
into immorality, or other shame, ends up. How many are stranded!
And
we would also suggest that the Sermon on the Mount - Matthew
5. to 7. - be read afresh, to catch
Christ’s high standard. What about the ‘righteousness’
He will require, the forgiveness, the purity? Surely there is need for constant
display of Divine love, avoiding the lamentable so-called ‘Fundamentalist bitterness’. Or, His word about, “Lay not up treasures upon earth.” His standards are absolutely the mould for those of
Paul, and his writings affirm that only such “see God”, and “inherit
the Kingdom” (Dan. 7: 13, 14, 18). It is all the same message, whether from the
lips of our Lord, or from His Apostles. God forgive our clumsy reading
of it, so much so that we have lowered His required conditions for entrance
upon His glorious [millennial] reign.
Remembering
that the Revelation shows two historical
points where there is rapture - at the middle of the seven years and at the end - we find that here (in 20: 4) there
are two groups.
The first is already set (v. 4, first part); the second is here described in
detail. They are, of course, the ‘first-fruits’
and the ‘harvest’ as shown in chapter 14:
4, 15
where the very expressions are used. Together these two instalments make the one harvest. (1) The First-fruits Wave
Sheaf rose 1,900 years ago (Christ). Now the first-fruits Wave loaves, three
and one half years before the Kingdom. (2)
To complete those first-fruits, the harvest company is added - namely, the victors
over ‘the beast’ and his image and his mark (as we saw in chapter 13.). These
combine to make ‘the First resurrection’ (20: 4). For the type above, see Leviticus 23: 10,
17, 22.
Why
are they already seen enthroned, this first cited company? Because, as chapter 12 shows, when Satan was cast out of
heaven forty-two months before, ‘a loud voice’
was heard saying, “Now is come the salvation, and
the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of our Christ.”
With
this went the formula that John ever uses to describe “the Overcomers,” “And they overcame him (Satan) because of the
blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death” - a threefold qualification. And these Overcomers
were already, in some degree, taken up into the heavenly place of regency.
Together with their Great Overcomer, the “First-born out of the dead” (1: 5), these first-fruits were already “caught up unto God and His
throne” 1,260 days ere the Kingdom
came into world visibility.
But
as we have before intimated, those not barred by the disqualifications that
each of the Apostles and our Lord Jesus Christ clearly point. out (as Gal. 5: 19-21, etc.),
will have position and rulership in that coming [Messianic] Kingdom - those who “suffer with Him” (2 Tim. 2: 12; Rom. 8: 17); those who are counted worthy (Luke 21: 36);
those who are approved (1 Cor. 9:
27, Gr.); those who are faithful stewards
(Matt. 25:
21, 30).
All these qualifications are experimental and personal - and the whole subject needs a revised study by God’s faithful servants and
teachers. May He wake us up! And hence, how wonderful that the inspired Apostle has
left just this place here in his record of what he ‘saw’ that fits into the
whole Scripture testimony upon this vital subject. Our ‘catching away’ - granted we are so conditioned - will be to form
part of this already enthroned company. These he shows before he describes the
Overcomers from the awful ‘great tribulation’
days.
Thus,
to summarize, those who reign during the Millennial days must be (1) Overcomers
of some period (Rev.
2: 10, cf.
Jas. 1: 12); (2)
‘blessed’ as in Christ’s beatitudes, Matt.
5: 1-12; (3)
‘holy’, or saints of God, 1 Thess. 4: 3; 5: 23; and to be such, assuredly must be God-filled
and God-possessed followers of “the Lamb whithersoever He goeth”. Contrary to nearly all our favourite teaching, these only “shall reign with Christ a
thousand years”. “The rest of the dead lived not (in resurrection, of course) until the thousand years were finished” (R.V.). God’s
highest honour for redeemed lives, non-overcomers fail to receive. Each one of them might have so drawn
upon God’s offered grace, upon the Spirit’s enduement, that they too might have
attained.
*
* *
SHAKEN AWAKE
That
many earnest Christian people are thinking these thoughts and putting them into
their prayers is borne in upon me just now from what I read and hear. A few
hours ago I was conversing with an old and valued friend who rather startled me
by asking whether I did not deem it possible that the ancient Christian belief
in a reign of antichrist might be coming literally true. I
sat silent, pondering the interrogatory, and my friend continued to speak
somewhat in these terms:- “There would seem to be a
gathering up and concentration of the forces of evil in the world to-day, an
open and undisguised trial of strength between the powers of light and the
powers of darkness, between Christ and the Man of Sin, between titanic
spiritual realities in the visible and invisible worlds with humanity as the
battle ground? The wicked and
unscrupulous men of blood who keep millions upon millions of human beings in
chains, wrath, and agony may be but the puppets and emissaries of what both our
Lord and His apostles spoke of as the prince of this world and by other titles,
a tremendous and mighty spiritual power contending against God. Is the present
hour a specially critical one in human history whose outcome will either be a
new manifestation of Christ and a fresh start for civilization upon new and
better lines or a period of woe and destruction such as has never been known
since the fall of the Roman empire and attended by an influx of such miseries
as imagination staggers to contemplate?” I have a misgiving that my dear
old friend is right and that civilization is at a new parting of the ways:
victory in the balance - a set-back for all that the name of Christ stands for,
or such a revival of vital religion as mankind has never known. There will be a
final glorious advent, a complete ending of the present dispensation. Of course
there will he; the Church has never surrendered that expectation nor can she do
so and remain faithful to her divine commission.
- R. J. CAMPBELL, D.D.
*
* * *
* * *
564
NO
IMPOSSIBLE BURDEN
By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
“Exceeding
great and precious promises,” the Apostle Peter says (2
Pet. 1: 4),
God has given us in order that, through them, we “may become partakers of the divine nature”; and one of the greatest and most precious is the
impossibility of an unbearable burden. It is a promise world-wide in its
application. It has been put to the test in every age, in every land, in every
temperament, in every experience. It extends to every moment of life: it covers
every act and need: it counters and masters every possible emergency. And it is
peculiarly precious to us, and of tremendous importance, because it is given
specifically to those “on whom the ends of the ages are come” (1 Cor.
10: 11).
The background of the promise is the clearest and
fullest Old Testament type of the New Testament Church ever given. “With most of them” - that is,
Now
two effects are possible, springing out of this tremendous and dramatic
background; and against these two effects the [Holy] Spirit first
sets a sharp warning, and then a golden encouragement. The warning He puts
first:- “Wherefore” - because the picture is not imaginary, but actual - “let him that thinketh he
standeth” - either on the ground
that the privileges of grace make such a fall impossible, or that his own
growth and achievements make him immune from peril - “take heed lest he
fall.” He who thinks
he has nothing to fear is the man who is most exposed to a peril. No height of progress we have reached; no natural or
spiritual abilities; no wealth of privileges peculiar to ourselves which we
have enjoyed through years of blessed experience - nothing can make us immune:
the Tempter, routed in ninety-nine contests, may be victorious in the
hundredth. “Let
us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that none
[of us] fall after the same example of disobedience” (Heb. 4: 11).
But
the Spirit now counters the second peril - despair; despair of ever reaching
the tremendous standard of Caleb and Joshua. Our background is so overwhelming
in its disillusionment - namely, that the vast majority of God’s [redeemed] people lost the Kingdom - that the [Holy] Spirit
devotes much greater time and care to re-assuring us than to warning us; for
the man who has mastered the historic facts is in far greater danger of despair than of presumption. So the Apostle first lays down a universal fact:- “There hath no temptation” - no trial, no test, no pressure, no seduction - “taken you but such as a man can bear” - literally, but such as is human; that is, accommodated to human
strength; suited and fitted to man; such as every man may reasonably expect,
and has power, to conquer. That is, “we can avoid falling, inasmuch as are not exposed
to insuperable temptations” (Dean Stanley). Since the world was, no
man has ever been compelled to commit a single sin: all temptations have been
such as men could resist, and have resisted. For in the nature of the case it must be so.
A temptation is an experiment, to perfect us in doing good or resisting evil,
and it must be in our power to succeed, or it is no experiment. For we must
bear in mind God’s purpose. “Temptation and trial are
God’s drill and dynamite to blow up the obstructions that choke the channels of
our affections and energies until the whole broad stream of God’s life shall course through our own and have its own sweet will” - (A. J. F. Behrends,
D.D.).
The second reassurance which the Apostle introduces is
the character of God. “But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that ye are able.” The
critical fact is here revealed that all temptation, without exception, is
superintended by God; and that every test applied to a soul - either by God
Himself, or by the Evil One: “Satan obtained you by
asking, that he might sift you as wheat”
(Luke 22: 31)
- is completely controlled and adjusted by God. God is the surgeon who is
never absent from a dangerous operation. The
fidelity of God therefore dominates the situation: for to allow a soul to be
crushed, with no power of escape, would defeat the very purpose for which God
allows temptation - namely, the perfecting of the character through tested
development. There is no such thing
as a unique trial, peculiar to the person on whom it falls, and never occurring
before or after; but on the holiest of all ages the same faithful God has
perfected holiness through trial.
So
now we get our crowning re-assurance. “He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.” That is, He measures each assault to the
exact proportions of the person assaulted: the test is weighed before it is
applied: he so adjusts the discipline that it can quicken the heart’s action
without forcing heart-failure. Every temptation is so weighed it is never
overweight: God will so adjust us to our surroundings, and our surroundings to
us, that we shall always be able to do what is right. The Alpaca
goat in
“My Lord in me has found a
dwelling-place.
And I in Him. Oh, glorious boon to gain,
To be His temple! Gladly I would face,
In His great strength, all bitterness and
pain.”
So, under persecution, here is a letter from a Russian
prison:- “When I found myself in prison, condemned to
hard labour, strange to say, I found myself wrapped up in a feeling of liberty
and of the presence of God. Prison for us is not same as it is for the
Bolsheviks: tragedy and suffering. We are just as happy and joyful as somewhere
else. We are happy in our prison; we are happy on the way to it; I am still
happy here in O. I really see that all He sends is good, and only serves to
bring us nearer to each other and unite us more perfectly to Him. These
terrible outward and unbelievable conditions are very useful for our spiritual
life; they serve to purify and enlighten the inner man.”
So,
finally, the method God uses is disclosed. “But WITH the
temptation” - it may not be a
moment before it, but is never after it - “will make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.” Experience shows the probably double meaning of the text.
Either we are removed bodily out of the region of danger - as Paul let down the
city wall, so escaping murder; or else there is escape from its power - as
Paul’s thorn was not withdrawn, but neutralized by greater grace: the escape is
either from the temptation altogether, or else from its power. “God knoweth how to deliver
the godly out of temptation” (2 Pet. 2: 9): whatever the deliverance, God is pledged to
make it possible for us all, without exception, to be conquerors all along the
line.
So
then we reach the astounding truth that there is not one of us
who may not be a Caleb or a Joshua. If we fail of
this marvellous goal, it will not be because God over-tried us,* but because we allowed ourselves to be conquered by
circumstances over which God had made us masters.
The
highest thrones are waiting. “For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more
and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, while we look at the things which are not seen” (2 Cor. 4: 17).** To take
our eyes off the unseen is to imperil the [inheritance***
promised to all overcomers, during the time of Messiah’s coming Millennial
Kingdom, and His manifested] glory. “Walk worthily of God, who
calleth you [is calling you] into his own kingdom and
glory” (1 Thess. 2: 12); for “we must through much tribulation enter into the
*
A pitiful breakdown of faith when faced by an apparently impossible burden
(martyrdom) occurred in 1857 in the massacre of
[**
A more literal translation from the
Greek text is, - “The MOMENTARY LIGHTNESS of the AFFLICTION,
works out for us an excessively exceeding aionian
(i.e., in this context, ‘age-lasting’) Weight of Glory.”
*** For the overcomers’
inheritance in Messiah’s Kingdom see: - 1 Cor. 6: 9,ff.; Eph. 5: 5; Col. 3: 24; Rev. 3: 21, R.V.]
*
* *
LOVE
Through the fiery furnace
Walk, O Love, beside me
In the provocation
From the tempter hide me.
When they come about me,
Dreams of earthly passion,
Drive, O drive them from me
Of Thy sweet compassion.
Not for might and glory
Do I ask above,
Seeking of Thee only
Love, and love, and love.
Show me [now] not
the glory
Round about Thy [heavenly] throne;
Show me not the flashes
Of Thy jewell’d crown.
Hide me from the pity
Of the angels’ band,
Who ever sing Thy praises,
And before Thee [now I] stand.
Hide me from St. Michael,
With his flaming sword;
Thou canst understand me
O my Human Lord!
-------
TEMPTATION
“Not to be tempted of the
Devil is the greatest temptation out of Hell. The Devil’s war is better than
the Devil’s peace. It is terrible to be carried to Hell without any noise of
feet. The wheels of Satan’s chariot are sometimes oiled with carnal rest, and
then they go without rattling or noise.” - DR. GUTHRIE.
-------
NO BURDEN
UNBEARABLE
In
the days of Inquisition, one of the Christians was confined in a cell in a
dungeon, and told that unless he would recant he would be burned at the stake
the following day. Left alone in his cell, his mind was in a turmoil. Walking
the floor, with one breath he would exclaim, “I can’t
burn, I can’t burn, I can never burn,” and with the next breath, “But I can’t deny my Lord.” After a time he said, “I will see if I can bear the burning,” and moving the
candle on the table he held his finger in the flame until it was burned to a
crisp. In agony cried out, “Oh, I can’t burn!”
and then, “But I can’t deny my Lord!” Finally,
exhausted, he sank on his cot, and sleep came, but while he slept God wrought
marvellously in his spirit. When he awoke the sun was beaming through the
prison bars. He heard the feet of the approaching soldiers as they came to take
him to his execution. Rising, he again walked the floor of his cell, shouting,
“I can burn, I can burn! By the grace of God, I can
burn!” and he went to the fagots with a hymn of praise on his lips.
-------
PRECIOUS
FAITH
“Christ often takes the crown off His own head and puts upon the
head of Faith, as in such passages as these:- ‘Thy
faith hath saved thee,’ ‘Thy faith hath made thee whole,’
‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to
him that believeth.’ And no wonder Christ can
crown faith, for faith speedily puts the crown back again on the head of Christ
the King. Faith will pick an argument out of a repulse, and turn
discouragements into encouragements. Reason, human reason is faith’s great
enemy. It will never be well with thee whilst thou dost allow reason to be ever
crossing, ever contradicting Faith; while you rely more on the evidence given
by your five senses than that given by the joint evangelists. As the body lives
by breathing, so the soul lives by believing.” - THOMAS BROOKS.
*
* * *
* * *
565
BAPTISM AND
THE FLOOD
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Baptism is enshrined for ever in the gigantic
catastrophe of the Flood, incomparably the greatest physical disaster the world
has ever seen. The Holy Spirit selects this startlingly vivid and enormous
setting - a drowned world - in which to plant God’s ritual for ever. “Few, that is, eight souls were
saved through water, which also after a true
likeness doth now save you, EVEN BAPTISM.”
THE DELAY
A
pregnant sentence illuminates the whole background of the ritual. “The long-suffering of God WAITED” - in a hundred and twenty years’ postponement of
judgment - “in
the days Noah” (1 Pet. 3: 20). God had made a private communication to the Patriarch:-
“The end of all
flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled
with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen. 6: 13). The parallel to-day is appalling. The whole world is now under
sentence of death: entire humanity is to be engulfed: the saved are to be ‘few’- in figure, eight souls against the untold millions
of the pre-Flood world; for it is a ‘true likeness,’ that is, an exact type. Meanwhile God waits.
As before the Flood, so now, He waits for a repentance which never comes.
Longsuffering withholds judgment up to the point where further longsuffering
would itself be sin; and if the Ark is not entered, the delay is only
measuring, with omniscient accuracy, a world’s guilt to which every day adds
its damning quota. But the awful truth is balanced by another: it is a matter
of unutterable thankfulness that the blue heavens cannot over-arch for ever
such a mass of wickedness, nor the sun shine on such crimes; beyond lies the glorious
[Millennial]
SALVATION
Something almost equally sobering now opens on our
view. Only the few are saved. The salvation which God offered then and which He offers now [to the regenerate] is
embodied, in picture, in one of His great rituals. “Wherein”
- the ark - “few, that
is, eight souls, were
saved through water: which after a true likeness
doth now save you, even baptism.” The [regenerate] Christian
baptistry thus pictures the Flood; and so vivid is the picture that, had the saved not
come through the Flood, they would have been drowned; exactly as,
in baptism, if the baptized were kept under the water, and did not merely pass through it,
they would be drowned also. For the
water is the judgment of God; descending and ascending floods involved the
world in a total immersion; and all flesh was buried as incurable. “ALL FLESH DIED”
(Gen. 7: 19): so the baptized man is laid under the water
as a corpse; and he survives only because he is lifted: he lives solely because other hands come
between him and death. Those eight souls speak to us forty-five centuries
later. Since the few are saved, let us never fear being among the few: few even
of the few - our Saviour says one in ten (Luke 19:
16) - reach. the highest: isolation, ostracism can be hall-marks of
Heaven. “Prefer, if you please,” says an
old Father of the Church, “the multitude drowned by
the Flood; but allow me to enter the
THE
So now we behold the
LUSTRATION
The Apostle next carefully defines what baptism is not, and
the type fulfils the definition exquisitely. Baptism, he says, “is not the putting away of
the filth of the flesh.” Baptism,
it is true, is a pictured bath: “arise, and be baptized wash
away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22: 16).
But, since it is a pictured washing away of sins, it is no ordinary bath; nor
is it a ceremonial washing, such as the lustrations under the Law, which are
called ‘baptisms.’ (Mark
7: 4); nor is it an ablution from the
‘filth the flesh’ in a higher sense - a
baptismal regeneration of the ‘old man.’ Why?
Because the type is decisive. The deadliest enemy of those saved in the
*
Dean Alford’s contention that “the waters saved them, becoming to them a means of floating
their ark,” is overthrown as explicitly by the Scripture as by the type;
for it was the ark, and not the lifting billows, which was “the saving of his house” (Heb. 11: 7). No one can get into the
OUR
CATECHISM
So
the Apostle now discloses the only definition of baptism ever given by
inspiration. Baptism, he says, is “the answer” -
the question and reply, the catechism, the successful examination - “of a good conscience toward
God”: a good conscience Godward,
not manward; a conscience which God sees to be good, and not only the examiner
for baptism.* The Scripture leaves
us in no shadow of doubt what ‘a good conscience’
is. “How much
more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience” (Heb. 9: 13): “let us draw near, having our hearts sprinkled” - blood-sprinkled - “from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10: 22). If
there be no purged conscience, there is no baptism; for this is baptism, the [Holy] Spirit says - “Baptism is the answer
of a good conscience toward God.” Baptism
is the combination of an inner fact and an outward act, and of the two the
inner fact is the one vital: baptism saves, because it is the saved who are
baptized, and it is a completion, by outward confession (Rom. 10: 10), of an inward reality. Those to be baptized
are thus sharply defined. As Noah’s household had to be within the Ark before
they could pass through the waters, and committal to the water alone would have
been almost instant death; so the conscience of the person to be baptized must
first be blood-cleansed ; first the Blood, then the water: “he that believeth and is baptized,” as our Lord says, “shall be saved” (Mark 16: 16).**
*
The ‘answer’
([see Greek …]), the asking or questioning of conscience, which
comprises likewise its answer; for the word intends the whole correspondence of
the conscience with God. It possibly alludes to the questions and answers used
in baptism; but it further expresses the inward questioning and answering which
is transacted within, betwixt the soul and itself, and the soul and God. - ARCHIBISHOP LEIGHTON, The First Epistle of Peter, p 251.
** Christian life properly began
with baptism, for baptism was the converter’s confession before men, the
soldier’s oath which enlisted him in the service of Christ. The rite was very
simple, as described by Justin in
the second century. After more or less instruction, the candidate declared ‘his belief in our teachings, and his willingness to live
accordingly.’ He was then taken to a place ‘where there was water’. Here he made his formal
confession, and here he was baptized by immersion in the name of the Trinity.
After this he was taken to the meeting and received by the brethren. We have
decisive evidence that infant baptism is no direct institution either of the
Lord Himself or of His apostles. There is no trace of it in the New Testament.
Immersion was the rule. - H. M. GWATKIN, Professor of
Ecclesiastical History,
BURIAL
So
the type reveals that baptism is a burial in the flood of wrath: the
proportions of the
Thus
baptism, even apart from its being commanded, becomes binding on all the saved;
for in both its Divine types, salvation and baptism are pictured as one: the Ark passing through the
Flood to Ararat, and Israel, blood-cleansed before stepping into the Red Sea, “all baptized in the cloud and in sea” (1 Cor. 10: 2).* The entire People of God, in both cases are assumed as
passing through the waters; and both waters are explicitly stated, by the Holy
Spirit, to picture baptism; and both are a total immersion in dangerous,
death-dealing floods.
* That they were baptized in the cloud as well as in the sea - the cloud
- spanning from wall to wall of water - reveals baptism once again as a
gigantic coffin for the whole people of God.
Experience
exquisitely confirms baptism, so administered, as of God. Here are some
testimonies the writer has himself received. [1] “Last night I was smitten to the dust. Of course I shall obey
Him in baptism! There is nothing else to do. so gladly, humbly, thankfully,
gratefully.” - [2] “Sunday night was far more
beautiful even than I had thought: I saw no one - the Master was there.”
- [3] “I shall never forget how I
realized the preciousness of Christ after I obeyed Him.” - [4] “It has brought greater joy into my life, and it has given me
a stronger passion for service. ‘To obey is
better than sacrifice.’ The blessedness that
has been mine since my baptism is more than words can express.” - [5] “I was
just trembling in every limb - but when the time came to step into the water,
it was just as if He held my hand, and led me. Never in my whole life has He been so near: I cannot tell you all that
it meant to me, as I laid my whole life at His feet.” - [6] “Each moment of this evening last week comes to my mind
to-night; so overpoweringly, that I was forced to my knees in an ecstasy of
joy. What hath God wrought!”
*
* *
“Great differences exist among saints on many important
subjects such as baptism, the subjects and the mode of it; ministry, and the
manner of its exercise; association with others in worship and service. Yet few
would venture to deny that on all sides of such questions there are to be found
many godly persons who hold the truth of the gospel in its great fundamentals,
and whose personal character is holy and righteous. To regard these as ‘wicked persons,’ and to treat
them as such, refusing them such fellowship as we can offer in our assemblies
(with the worldling and the excommunicated) is worse than uncharitable, it is a
denial of the authority of the Lord, who claims the reception to His glory of
those whom He has received.”
-
J. R.
-------
“Of all revealed truths, not one is more clearly revealed in
the Scriptures [than the immersion of believers] - not even the doctrine of
justification by faith; and the subject has only become obscured by men not
having been willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide the point.”
- GEORGE MULLER.
-------
“Is there any truth now before you, my reader, which you are
refusing? Some turn away from the command of baptism; and the truths of which
it is the centre, and the door. They will not listen, they refuse to weigh the
evidence. Some refuse the doctrine of reward according to works, and the
seeking with zeal the prize set before us - the entry into the millennial
kingdom (Phil.
3.). Some do
not decide at all. They do not search the Scriptures, to see what they see
thereon. They are waiting. They are expecting to be taught, by some special
revelation to themselves, which never comes. Enquire of them after years of
tarrying what they think? You will find they are as decided as ever.”
- ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
-------
DUTY
Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou doest wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know we any thing so fair
As the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee in 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
*
* * *
* * *
566
SALVATION
FORTY - FIVE CENTURIES AGO
By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
It is well to
grasp thoroughly that, since God is the same God in all ages, His processes of
redemption are identical; so that one redemption is but the picture of another,
though there be forty-five centuries between; and this identity of salvation in
all ages Scripture unfolds in the Flood as a carefully planned prototype of the
Gospel. Universal destruction, the
escape of a few in the ark, is ‘A TRUE LIKENESS,’ an exact picture, the Apostle says (1 Pet. 3: 21), of what we see happening around us to-day, in
days fast closing down as the last seven days before the Flood.
One
figure, and one figure alone, dominates the entire crisis of the drowning of a
world. “Is not
this the carpenter?” (Mark 6: 3).
While doubtless Noah’s sons, and probably heathen carpenters also, helped in
the construction of the
Now
we see the structure itself. Noah had to proceed with a most careful
construction by exact measurements, and measurements given from heaven: “to a cubit,” God said, “thou shalt finish it” (Gen. 6:
16). So our Lord, “born of a woman,” was “born under the law” (Gal. 4: 4): Jesus had
no choice of principles on which to build His life, no alternative pattern of
conduct: God’s law, written in summary on tables of stone, could alone
construct human salvation. Moreover, the
No
less eloquent are the two materials of which the Ark was made - gopher wood,
and pitch; and it is wonderful both words mean to ‘cover’;
for the Ark was a shelter, a covering, from deadly judgment. “Blessed are they whose
iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are COVERED” (
The
pitch was now applied: “thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch” (Gen. 6: 14). As the
I hear the words of love,
I gaze upon the blood,
I see the mighty sacrifice,
And
I have PEACE WITH
God.
The
blood outside - salvation; for it is that pitch which kept the water out: the
blood within- assurance; for that is the only pitch they could see, and they saw it.
So the
So
now we see salvation exactly pictured. All the saved, and only the saved, are
inside the
* Representatives
of all the animal creation - the [see
Greek …] that
groans - entered the Ark, not (as the human) by invitation, but by the
compulsion of Divine grace, for the section of creation which fell
involuntarily is saved involuntarily (Rom. 8: 20).
Now
the judgment bursts; and it is appalling, as we remember the double fact - one,
that this is the wrath which fell on Calvary; and two, that this is the wrath
that is coming: and either I must accept the one, or experience the other.
Every plank and bolt is put to the severest strain ship ever knew, caught, as
the
*
* *
OVERCOMERS
The harvest is composed of those for whom Christ has
overcome, the firstfruits are those in whom and through whom He has overcome, as well as having overcome for them.
The Apostle Paul had no doubt about his place in the
main body, for his testimony is clear, - “I know Whom I
have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him against that day” (2 Tim.
1: 12).
When however, he was writing to the Philippians (3.)
he told them that there was one thing he was seeking above all else, “the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus”
- that he might by any means attain to the out-resurrection from among the
dead. He was sure of having a place in the general harvest, but not sure, as
yet, of being one of the first-fruits as an overcomer.
If
Peter, James, John, and Andrew needed the warnings given them by our Lord to “Take heed” to “watch and pray”
(Mark 13: 3,
5, 9, 23, 33), and “be ye also ready” (Matt.
24: 44),
it is clear that something more is wanted us than faith in Christ for salvation
if we would be ripe enough for the firstfruits. The teaching that everyone who
believes is ready for the Coming of the Lord is a deadly narcotic. No wonder
the Church is asleep!
If,
on the other hand, we see that, being saved, there is yet a prize to be won
which is worth the counting of all else as refuse, then we find in it a powerful
stimulant to a holy and
victorious life in union with our coming Lord.
-
A.
CHAMPION.
*
* * *
* * *
567
THE RACE AND
THE CROWN
(1 Cor.
9: 24-27.)
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
1 Cor. 9: 24. Know ye not, that they who run in a race, all
indeed run,
but one
(only) receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
Life, to the believer, rightly viewed, is to be a race.
Christians are justified before God, as soon as they believe, independently of
any good work; and their past evil deeds are blotted out by the blood of Jesus.
But from the time of their being justified, they are set to please God, and to
seek for an entrance into the coming
But
the apostle notices a remarkable difference between the games of men, and that
appointed of God. The racers knew that but one amidst their whole number could
come off successful. If two or more reached the goal equal they must contend
again, till one proved superior to the others. The rest must have spent their
toil for nought. There was one prize, and one victor. Hence each of them put forth
his utmost energy. Every competitor must be overtaken and passed, or the
superiority of fleetness over some was in vain. This the apostle applies to us.
It is not so in the race which God appoints. There is not one only, but all
that have run the race acceptably to the Most High, shall receive the crown.
How great then the encouragement!
But
though all shall be crowned who strive to the satisfaction of the Great Umpire
of the games, yet let not this make you lax. Run as those racers do, who know
that one shall be rewarded. “So run” - with
the same earnestness and perseverance. Or, the word may be connected with what
follows, - “Run so as to obtain.” But I prefer the former view. “That ye may obtain”; for the prise is open to all. There are crowns in
which all Christians will not share; the New Testament mentions five kinds of
crowns as the recompense for different kinds of service, or different
exhibitions of Christian grace: 1 Pet. 5: 1-4; 1 Thess. 2: 19; 2 Tim. 4: 7, 8; Jas. 1: 12, Rev.
2: 10. But the crown before us - that of incorruption - is open to the
striving of all believers. It is to be obtained by self-denial and victory over
the lusts of the flesh.
25.
But every one that enters the lists* is temperate
in all things.
They indeed, that they may receive a corruptible crown,
but we an incorruptible.
Instruction
is made to flow to us, not only from the actual struggle for the prize, when
the day of contest had arrived, but also from the training which preceded it.
The object in submitting to the discipline, which was required of all the
candidates, was to raise the powers of the body to their highest pitch. Now it
was known by experience, that to produce this result, many things not naturally
injurious to health must be abstained from. They must be temperate or
self-denying. It was necessary to give up their liberty in a great degree. They
were put under the control of an overseer of the combatants, who appointed for
them their times of sleeping and rising, their meals, the quantity of their
food, their times and places of exercise. By experience it was known what
things were prejudicial to the vigour of the body, and these were to be
carefully avoided. “They were temperate in all things.”
Now
the self-denial which they cheerfully exercised, the restraint under which they
placed themselves in obedience to the master-passion - the desire of human
glory - carry a lesson for us. In the hope of obtaining a corruptible crown,
they trod under their feet, and kept subdued, the animal instincts of human
nature. And shall we not for a far nobler crown, content to deny our appetites?
to repress our pursuit and enjoyment even of things lawful, not that our bodies
may be vigorous, but our souls
prepared for [the
coming ‘first resurrection’ and millennial] glory?* Can the desire for human honour prompt to such
sacrifices and exertions, and shall not the honour which cometh from God prove as
strong a motive? Temperance then and self-denial is to be a leading principle
of the Christian life. But some Christians indulge in sleep, some in the
pleasures of the table, some in the splendours of life, some in the more refined amusements of the world. Such are not racers for the crown. The
self-indulgent are no candidates for this [promised] prize.
[* See Matt. 16: 18; Acts 2: 27, 34; 1 Pet. 1: 9, R.V.]
26
I therefore so run, not as uncertainly: so box I, not as one that
scourgeth the air:
27.
But I deal blows at my body, and lead it as a slave;
lest by any means,
after having acted the herald to others, I myself should
become disapproved.* [* See the Greek.]
The
apostle, having uttered his exhortations to his brethren, now discovers to us
his own conduct, considered as himself a candidate for the prize in question.
He
ran as vigorously, and with as sustained energy, as the Grecian racers. But he
was not, as they were, under the depressing effects of uncertainty. They knew,
as the condition of their contest, that while no exertion, self-denial, or
endurance, might be wanting on their part, yet that an antagonist far less
careful than themselves of the discipline of the training, might carry off the
prize from them, by reason of his naturally more agile frame, or stouter lungs.
Not so with Paul. He knew, that in the spiritual race before him, each
candidate would be crowned who had acted in the spirit of the self-denial of
the gospel.
In
the next words he changes the figure. He is now no longer a racer, but a boxer.
“So box I,
not as one that scourgeth the air.” He refers to those blows at an imaginary antagonist,
which were delivered by way of practice in the training school; of those which
just preceded the actual conflict. Or, perhaps the reference is, to those blows
which were aimed in the time of the fight, but which, being parried or
misdirected, were struck in vain. But
Paul did not, like the combatants of
“I deal blows upon my body, and
lead it as a slave.” The word used
is a very graphic one, apparently one in use among the boxers. It signifies to
aim blows at the face, and especially to give a black eye. Paul’s blows, as the
spiritual boxer, never missed: they were never given in ostentation. His
fastings and watchings were not intended, as the fastings of the Pharisees, for
ostentation. Did boxers plant their blows on the face, where they were most
likely to tell? So did Paul. He willingly put down all the glory of the flesh:
inflicting suffering on his body in the cause of Christ by his ceaseless
labours, fastings, watchings, endurance of cold and heat, and nakedness,
stripes, and peril of life. He spared not his
body, but sought to keep it in subjection. Lest his body should become
his master, he made it his slave. The enslaving his body is still stronger, and
marks the result of the former word. The contrary to this, he tells us, was the
case with some. “For
they are such as serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly:” “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth”
But as hope
cheered him on, so fear also joined
its force in keeping him to his purpose.* Though all that run well shall be crowned, yet the
Great Judge may esteem some unworthy of the crown: some, too, who once ran
well. He feared then lest he should be found in this inglorious position. He
felt that, too, that in his case it would be still more grievous. He had
occupied a very conspicuous position in the cause of Christ. He compares
himself to the herald of the games. The duties of that officer may be easily
inferred from this passage - though hints concerning it are given in the
classics. He would have to enrol and read aloud the names of the candidates, to
place them at the starting point; to proclaim to them the condition of the
race, to give the signal for starting, and also to announce the name of the
victor in each of the games. A similar position to this was filled by the
apostle in the games proclaimed of God. Paul had invited many to the race: he
had enrolled them for Christ, had taught them the conditions of the strife, had shown them the goal and the
prize, had given them the signal to start, and exhortations to press on. How sad, then, if he were found at last
unworthy of that prize to which he had cheered on so many!
* His “lest that by any means,”
of fear, answers to his “if by any means,”
of desire in Phil. 3. The object of hope is before him in the
last, the object of fear in the
present case. Both refer to the future [millennial inheritance (Heb. 12:
16, 17. cf. Gal.
5: 21; Eph. 5: 5-6, R.V.) and] kingdom.
He
does not, in these words, tell us that he feared the
being cast into hell.* God’s predestination
of him as a believer, was his security against that. And in confidence of this,
he flings down the gauntlet to the universe as unable to remove him from the
love of Christ: Rom. 8. There, he was
treating of the grace of God flowing forth from eternity. Here, he
is discovering to us the influence of
his own actions upon the future recompense of God, distributed on the principle of [divine] justice. It is not now the question of justification by faith to the ungodly; but reward or loss in Messiah’s kingdom to the saints. He might, though finally saved, yet be judged unworthy of a lot in the
first resurrection. Or, though a place in that were granted, he might be
accounted undeserving of a crown.
[* That is, into “the lake of
fire” (Rev. 20:
15, R.V.)]
Here
lies the mistake of most commentators. It is assumed, that there is no
difference between reward and a bare salvation. It is taken for granted that “the crown” is only a figurative expression for simple salvation.
It is supposed that “eternal life”
and the “
On
such assumptions, passages like the above present very great, or, we may say, insuperable difficulties
to the Christian reader. Not that even insuperable difficulty is sufficient
reason for our rejecting a doctrine made known by the testimony of God. But a
view of the difference between [the
‘free gift’
(Rom. 6: 23, R.V.) of] eternal life and the
*
* *
MORE THAN
CONQUEROR
Frank Curtis was, physically, a wreck; blind, ulcerated, and with
an affection of his throat which caused difficulty in breathing. When he first
came to us his life’s maxim was Henley’s
Invictus: - ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the
Captain of my soul.’ As a result of the converted and changed lives he
saw in the settlement he at last decided to surrender to Christ. Here are the
closing words of his testimony:- “Most of you know me.
I can hardly see, my health is nearly gone, yet it does not worry me in the
least. Christ will see to all that. In Him I put my trust, and He is teaching
me, for I am yet a child in the knowledge of His ways. One day there will be
nothing but peace and joy - of that I am sure. The way at times seems hard, but
the little foretaste I have had of the goal fully compensates for its
roughness. Now, instead of
- DR. ROBERT COCHRANE.
-------
WATCHFULNESS
The abundant entrance is by Peter attached to the fruitful
state: by our Lord to the watchful state: Matt. 24. & 25.
Both present the same thing from different points of view. Peter is an example,
both of the fall, and of the entrance. 1.
He was one of the three chosen to behold the scene on the Mount of
Transfiguration. 2. He fell through
unwatchfulness at the hall of Caiaphas. His fall there, and subsequent
forgiveness, and future admission to the kingdom, is a powerful antidote
against despair for those believers who are conscious of having foully fallen.
It is intended so to be. Still, the entrance at last is
for those “counted
worthy” of that age of
glory and of the first resurrection: Luke 20: 35; 21: 36; 2 Thess. 1: 5; Rev. 3: 4, 11.
-
ROBERT GOVETT.
-------
THE VALUE OF
TIME
General Mitchell, the great astronomer, said to an officer who
apologized for being only a few minutes behind time: “Sir,
I have been in the habit of calculating the tenth of a minute.” Men who
have accomplished great things have learned the value of time. Large results
can often be achieved in a little while. Dr.
Cuyler says:- “The
atonement for a world of perishing sinners was accomplished between the sixth
hour and the ninth hour of darkened
-------
I WONDER?
I
wonder why the easiest thing in the
Christian life most difficult? I wonder why I work by a guttering candle when
there is an electric light switch within reach of my hand? The answer, of
course, is that I don’t. I am not so foolish - except in one direction, and
that is Godward. In our spiritual life we, many of us, seem to be content
struggling along with all the poor primitive resources of a weak human nature,
what time all the infinite power of the Godhead is at our disposal. There is no
condition of human nature, no circumstance of human life, that is not
completely provided for in the embracing love of our Father God; yet the vast
majority of His children struggle along life’s road, bearing burdens that He is
eager to carry, and has urged us to entrust to Him. I wonder why?
It
should be an easy thing, an alluring, thrilling thing to talk to God, to hold
converse with Christ. And when rewards are considered, the promises taken into
account, it is a marvel that there is time given to anything but prayer. Yet,
strange to relate, prayer is the most neglected of all the Christian
ministries. The smallest, dullest meeting in many a church’s life - when there
is such a gathering at all - is the prayer-meeting. The most perfunctory,
abbreviated and oft-times omitted exercise of many a Christian’s life is the
prayer-time. I wonder why?
Perhaps the difficulty lies in its very ease, its
utter simplicity. Just to kneel at your bedside, and with the old abandon of
childhood and the same unquestioning faith, leave all burdens and cares and
needs with the Father! How childlike, but how, difficult! How hard to relax; to
spare an hour or even half that time, out of our busy, rushing, worried lives,
and go quietly to our room, shutting the door and being still in His presence.
How hard to divest ourselves of our sophistication, of our self-consciousness
and self-centredness, and ever-present feeling that I have to face and meet
and shoulder all these cares and responsibilities! How hard just to be a child
again, and with a great, happy sigh, snuggle down care-free at His feet,
perfectly assured that He careth; the
government is upon His shoulder.*
[*
See Isa. 9: 6-9 and Isa.
40: 3-5. R.V.]
- A. STUART McNAIRN
-
*
* * *
* * *
568
ENDANGERED
LOVE
By E. S. GERIG
“Because
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24: 12). The
waning of love; the dying out of the fire of a holy passion for the Lord
Himself and for those for whom He gave His life; the loss of that holy
enthusiasm in his service and devotion - not that fleshly enthusiasm that
shouts and rejoices when the crowd is coming, or works zealously when the brass
band is playing and the grand-stand is filled with admirers - no! no! but that
enthusiasm that works with a quiet, untiring, unassuming earnestness and
steadiness when it must plod on alone unheard and unnoticed except by the Lord
- that enthusiasm that is born not of outward encouragement, nor the applause
of men, nor by what men call success, nor by the unholy desire for praise, but
that which is born of an inward urge implanted by the Holy Ghost, the overflow
of the passion of Christ; the waning of this love, said Jesus, will be one of
the ear-marks of the end-time.
The
other characteristics of the last days are easily noticeable, but this loss of
love is far more subtle and less easily detected. We may be thoroughly orthodox
and have a contempt for heresy and heterodoxy and yet be guilty of a loveless
heart. The other features have to do largely with the world and apostate
Christendom, but this one has to do with the saints of God. This is the
blighting sin which our Lord so strongly condemned in the
The
waning of this love, said our Lord, would characterize the end-time. And why? “Because iniquity shall abound.” So profuse will be the growth of evil, so completely
will the spirit of evil pervade every realm of human activity and relationship,
and so subtle will be the injection of evil into the realm of righteousness,
that many of God’s saints will become infected with this spirit of evil, and
subtle and gradual compromise will result in the “waxing cold” of the love of the heart for Christ. This condition
is self-evident to-day. There has been such a subtle satanic admixture of religion,
secularism, worldliness, and sensualism in the realm of religion, business,
commerce, stage and screen, that many a dear Christian has become entrapped and
the strength of love is being sapped from the heart and life. Even in the realm
of orthodoxy too often a carnal contention for the faith has taken the place a
passionate personal passion for Christ and His truth. A cold orthodoxy can
contend eloquently for the faith. But it is a heart passionately in love with
Christ that loves souls into His kingdom. To “contend for the faith” is a God-given command not to be disobeyed. But to “hold forth the form of sound
words in faith and LOVE” is its counterpart and complement.
Look
about you and analyze carefully the spiritual condition to-day and you stand face
to face with this sad ear-mark of the end of this [present evil and apostate] age. “The love of many shall wax
cold” is sadly true too generally.
How often have I had to bow my head in shame and confess that my love was
waning! How often have I prayed that this subtle ear-mark of the end of this
dispensation may not be true of my own heart! Let us ask God for a keen
spiritual discernment that will enable us to understand and detect the
slightest waning of His love in our hearts. Let us wait upon Him repeatedly for
a fresh in-filling of the Holy Ghost until “the fruit of the Spirit - love”
will burn and blaze in all its holy
passion in our hearts.
*
* *
“If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our
country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity
neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a
catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”
- DANIEL
WEBSTER.
-------
LOVE
“They asked me for the
secrets of holiness,” said the saintly Francis De Sales; “for myself, I know no
other secret than to love God with all my heart, and my neighbour as myself.”
“The meek, the just, the pious, the devout,”
said William Penn, “are all of one religion, and when their various liveries are
taken off, they shall meet and recognize one another in the world to come.”
“Do they profess repentance toward God,” said George Whitfield, “and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and holiness of
conversation? If so, they are my brethren.” “How
far is love, even with strong opinions,”
said John Wesley, “to be preferred
before truth itself without love. We may die without the knowledge of many truths, and yet be carried into
Abraham’s bosom [in
‘Hades’
(Luke 16: 22,
23 R.V.); but not into ‘Heaven’ before
Resurrection!] - but if we die without
love, what will [scriptural] knowledge
avail us? just as much as it avails the devil and his
angles.”
- F.W. FARRAR.
-------
THE
There is a place where thou canst touch the eyes
Of blinded men to instant perfect sight;
There is a place where thou canst say “Arise!”
To dying captives, bound in chains of night.
There is a place where thou canst reach the store
Of hoarded gold, and free it for the Lord;
There is a place here, or on a distant shore,
Where thou canst send the worker and the Word.
There is a place where Heaven’s resistless power
Responsive moves to thine insistent plea;
There is a place, a silent holy hour,
Where God Himself descends and works for thee.
Where is that secret place? - dost thou ask where?
Oh, soul! It is
the secret place of prayer.
*
* * *
* * *
569
THE SEED AND
THE SERPENT
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Embedded in the first curse that ever fell is the first
gospel word ever uttered. It is amazing to observe that even before the Curse
falls on Adam and Eve, the Saviour dawns on the horizon, and God Himself goes
forth to find the lost sheep. The fatal fact - sin - has entered the world;
yet, actually wrapped up in the curse that immediately falls on it, is the
Messiah who is to be “made a curse for us” (Gal. 3: 13). The
first time the Gospel is ever preached it is preached by God: the first time
prophecy opens its mouth it is to utter Christ: the first of all sinners hears
that she is to give birth to the Saviour of all sinners. It is most wonderful
that it is actually serpent’s malice, plunging mankind into sin, which suddenly
reveals that God is love, and immediately brings
THE SERPENT
There
is no doubt of the Person behind the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Something
moral, something implying a hidden enemy, someone in the background, the Most High addresses. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman” (Gen. 3: 15). If
demons could - and did - enter swine, Satan can enter a snake; and that the
serpent spoke proved that a spirit was in the snake; and what he
said proved it an evil spirit. The Apocalypse makes the identity certain. “And the great dragon was cast
down, the old serpent” - that is,
the serpent of Eden - “he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12: 9). And our
Lord’s words are an amazing revelation of Satan’s character. “He was a murderer from the
beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When
he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own;
for he is a liar, and
the father thereof” (John 8: 44). So
the drama reveals the original distinction between Satan and man: man fell from
evil without; Satan fell from evil within: he had no tempter.
OUR ENEMY
The
Most High begins by revealing, for the first time in the history of the world,
a saved soul. He is about to regenerate Eve. We know that this is so because,
so far from the Seed of the Serpent - evil men - being at enmity with Satan,
they are led by him (Scripture says) “captive at his will”. But here God says:- “I will put enmity between thee” - Satan - “and the woman” -
she herself, and all the redeemed for whom she stands. The deadliest of all
evils is friendship with Satan; and God now unfolds His marvellous coming work
of making heaven in human souls. God sunders the alliance between the
regenerate and the Serpent for ever. Into the regenerate heart He puts a
deathless hate of sin: He has ranged us up for ever against Hell and all its
works: He has divorced us for all eternity from the creeping, crawling
abominations of Satan: He has put within us an undying struggle against ‘the seed of the serpent’ in us. We are for ever on the side of goodness and righteousness
and truth.
THE SEED
But
the sudden outburst of enmity concentrates on a single ‘seed’ of the Woman. Paul reveals that where the word ‘seed’ is used in the singular, with no qualification to
prove it plural, there a single individual is intended, and that individual
Christ. “He saith
not, and to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, WHICH IS CHRIST” (Gal. 3: 16). “And I will put enmity between
her seed” - Christ - “and thy seed.” To a mass of men our Lord said:- “Ye are of your father the
devil”; and the enmity foretold in
Eden He here carefully marks - “They have both seen and hated both me and my Father”
(John 15: 24).
A subtle profundity makes most wonderful this first of all prophecies. It
plainly states the Incarnation, for the Woman’s seed must be “made of a woman”
(Gal. 4: 4), as Christ was; and it implies the Virgin
Birth, for it is the woman’s seed. “That which is conceived in her,” said an Angel to Joseph, “is of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 1: 20). This, and
this alone, accounts for the fact that the opposition between Hell and mankind
is lodged, not in Adam, but in Eve; for Hell is to be for ever defeated, not by
Adam’s seed but by Eve’s - which is Christ.
THE DUEL
So
the deadly duel concentrates on two alone. “It” - not the
Woman, but the Seed - “shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel” - not
the Woman’s heel, but her Seed’s heel. It is not the Woman’s heel that is to be
bruised but the heel of her seed; and both bruisings are mortal: for a snake’s
bite is fatal; and a snake’s head, which it is always most careful to guard, is
its vital point - a crushed head in a snake is fatal. The picture is that of a
man stamping on a snake; and the moment before he crushes its head, it plants
its fangs in his heel. It was Satan entering Judas which produced
THE BRUISED
HEEL
So
the words which are a marvellous forecast of
THE BRUISED
HEAD
Thus
a deadly wound was inflicted on Satan on the Cross, and from that moment our
victory over Hell is secure; but its open fulfilment is not yet.* “The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly”
(Rom. 16:
20). This
accomplishment of his doom is reserved for our Lord’s return. “And I saw an angel coming
down out of heaven, having the keys of the abyss,
and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the
devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand
years, and cast him into the abyss” (Rev. 20: 1). From
that moment, and throughout the eternal ages, Satan is “under the heel” of the redeemed of all ages; and most manifestly so
when “the devil
was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone” (Rev. 20: 10).
*
How appallingly significant is the fact
that millions of people in
THE BRUISING
So
the object of the bruising of the Head is obvious - its paralysis and ultimate
destruction; but what was the object of the bruising of the Heel? Three
thousand years later, and still seven centuries before the event itself, God’s
prophet makes the bruising as clear as it could be made. “It pleased the Lord to bruise him, when thou
shalt make his soul an offering for sin: he was wounded for our transgressions, HE WAS BRUISED FOR OUR INIQUITIES” (Isa.
53: 10).
The bruising was incurred solely on behalf of others; and it is the glory of
the Lamb of God for ever - “I saw a Lamb as it had been slain” (Rev. 5: 6).
And the torrents of His
Passion deep and fierce above Him roll;
And the rivers of transgression overwhelm His Human
Soul;
Sins unknown, sins
unimagined, sins by day, and sins by night,
Sins of blackest outer darkness press upon His purest
sight;
Sins, since o’er the
Eastern Portal first the Cherub waved his sword,
To the last that shall be written ere the coming of
the Lord.
*
* *
SIN’S VENOM
A keeper in the Zoological Gardens in 1852 - a man
named Gurling
- drank somewhat freely, returned later to the Snake House, took a MOROCCO
venom snake, and twisted it round his neck. The assistant keeper, horrified,
cried, - “For God’s sake, put it back!” But the
man only replied, - “I am inspired!” Then he
took out a cobra; warmed it in his bosom, and then held it for an instant
opposite his eyes. Like lightning the serpent struck between the eyes. The
blood streamed. When help arrived, Gurling was seated
on a chair. He said:- “I am a dead man.” First
his speech failed; then his sight; then his hearing: and in an hour he was a
corpse. Behold the sinner! “He that believeth
not” - he who averts his eyes from the Serpent of Brass - “is CONDEMMED
ALREADY” (John 3: 18) - he is, as he walks, death-doomed.
-------
FASCINATION
“Take heed,” our
Saviour warns us (Mark 4: 24), “what ye hear.” A gentleman in
-------
AN ADVENT AT
THE DOORS
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so
cometh as a thief in the night. Therefore let us not sleep as do others; but let us watch and be sober.” This watching takes for granted the
suddenness and uncertainty of the Lord’s appearing. Scripture does not say that
the Lord must come in my day;
but it says, the Lord may come in my day. This ‘may come’ is the secret of a watching spirit. Without it we cannot watch. We may
love, and hope, and wait, but we cannot watch. Our lamps are always to be
trimmed. Why? Not merely because the Bridegroom is to come, but because we know
not how soon He may come. Our loins are always to be girt up. Why? Not simply
because we know there is to be a coming, but because we know not when that
event is to be. I do not know how it may be with others, but I feel that when I
can say the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, I have got a weapon in my hand of no common edge and temper. To be
able to announce that the Lord will come is much; but to be able to say without
the reservation of an interval: The Lord is at hand, is greatly more.
- HORATIO BONAR, D.D.
-------
BLANDINA
(These lines were written the day before
their author died, October 23,
1936, and were found under his pillow
after death.
Suffering
acute heart-spasms the day before, he said he had never known greater joy. Blandina, when tossed
and
gored by bulls in her martyrdom, asked when the tortures were to begin.)
Blandina
- slave and saint - upon the sand
Of the arena all unconscious lay,
Death-gored; then woke, “I do
not understand -
I thought I was to have been gored to-day!
O what a heavenly dream!” she said - and died.
And found her
martyr-crown already won,
And joy, once dreamt of here, in heaven* begun
-
For ever in the
[* This is much better:-
‘And joy, once dreamt of
here, in ‘PARADICE,’ (Acts 2: 27, 34, R.V.
Cf. Luke 23: 42,
43; 2 Tim.
2: 17, 18, R.V.) UNTIL]
‘heaven begun’ -.]
J. A. RAMSAY.
*
* * *
* * *
570
TO ATTAIN TO
THE RESURRECTION
OUT FROM THE
DEAD (Phil.
3: 11.)
By Robert
Govett, M. A.
To the apostles the resurrection was the great
foundation of the Christian faith. It was proved by the actual resurrection of Jesus.
It was the great and startling piece of news which they were sent to proclaim,
with all its consequences, to an unbelieving world.
But
soon this truth fell out of view. In the middle ages, the intermediate state
and deliverance from it, usurped the place of resurrection. At the Reformation
the doctrine of the intermediate state fell through, together with the false
doctrine of Purgatory. The idea which Justin
Martyr stigmatizes as false - that at once on death, the soul enters on
heaven and glory - took its place. If that be true, resurrection is an impertinence. Hence resurrection
almost ceased to form a subject of Protestant discourses, and the case is not
very different now.
In
most instances it is evidenced by the hymns usually sung - death is the object
set before the believer’s view. The topic of funeral sermons is the victory
achieved at death, when anyone departs in faith. The departed faithful have
entered the land of promise; may we go to them! The body is a ‘clog,’ a ‘burden,’ a
‘prison.’ Death is emancipation from the flesh,
a sudden entry on glory. This, I suppose, is not
Scripture doctrine, but
contrary to it.
To
unbelievers, resurrection has always been one of the chief stumbling-blocks of
Christianity. 1. Of old it was
declared, that the rising of the dead and decomposed body was a something
beyond the power of God Himself. 2.
The philosophers added, that even if it were possible, it was undesirable in
the highest degree. Matter was in itself evil. To be delivered from the
appetites and importunities of the body was the great object of the
philosopher. And should he allow, that the body that had wrought so much
mischief to the soul, and was at length laid away out of sight - a putrid mass
- was anew and forever to be associated with the purified spirit? It was man’s
glory to leave it for evermore.
Celsus said of resurrection, that it was ‘a hope to be cherished by worms.’
This
erroneous view will materially affect our comprehension of the Saviour’s reply
to the Sadducees. Jesus argues from the expression used by Jehovah, “I am the God of Abraham, of
Isaac and Jacob,” that the dead were to be raised. In what condition
then, did Jesus assume these patriarchs to be? Dead? Or alive? Christians
ordinarily suppose that He assumes them to be alive. So says Wesley, “Therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not dead, but
living. Therefore the soul does not die with the body.” So
says Barnes. “God spake, then, as being their God.” “They must, therefore, be still somewhere living” “He is the God only of those who have an existence.”
But
then there is in that passage no proof of a resurrection; but only
of the separate existence of the soul, after the body is laid aside. Now
resurrection never means ‘the immortality of the soul,’
never means ‘a future state.’ Then, too, Jesus’
reply does not refute the Sadducees. Their alleged difficulty did not relate to
the intermediate state, but to the coming forth of the dead from their tombs, and the restoration of their bodies. To whom
the woman was as wife to belong, was a question applying only to the day when
the body was reunited to the soul. Neither Pharisee nor Sadducee believed in
marriage among spirits.
This
answer, then, makes Jesus evade the question, and prove the separate existence of the soul, instead of the resurrection of the body. It is, in fact, a wrong way of
stating the matter. The patriarchs were not alive, but dead. The dead, are
those human beings whose body and soul are severed. Then Jesus admits to the
Sadducees, that Abraham is dead, as much as the woman and her seven husbands.
Abraham is dead for his body is still in
the
It
is, indeed, quite true that this passage proves the separate existence
of the souls of the
patriarchs. But that was not the point. Jesus does not cite it to prove that, but
Abraham’s return to his body. The separate existence of Abraham’s body and soul
is a proof of his being then and now among the dead [in ‘Hades’]. He will not be
alive till his body and soul are reunited. In the same state in which Abraham was when God spoke to Moses at the
bush, Abraham is still. Barnes and others call him “dead” then. He is,
then, dead now. Jesus therefore is referring, not
to time present, but to the future day of
resurrection [‘out of dead
ones’ (Greek)], of which the Sadducees were speaking.
Abraham is dead. Jehovah is his God.
But Jehovah is not God of the dead. Therefore God is not now showing
Himself the God of Abraham, for the resurrection [of the dead] is not yet
come. That the resurrection was to be at a future day, the Pharisees held; and on that, allowed as a basis, the Sadducees
plead. God, then, by these words, engages
to restore by His Almighty power Abraham to become Abraham again in
resurrection. Abraham when the Lord promised him the possession of
A new and better “age”* is coming,
in which they neither die nor marry, nor are given in marriage.
[* See Luke 20: 35.]
As long, then, as marriage and death
last among believers, so long have we clear proof that the better age and this [select] resurrection from the dead are not come. But if ‘death be
resurrection,’ and the spirit-state be the eternal one, Abraham had
already risen ages before, and was either then enjoying the land of promise, or
God’s pledged word was broken. Then, too, the Sadducees should not have said, “Whose wife in the resurrection shall
she be?” For already in the spirit-state she was the wife of
one or more of them. If they were wrong in their supposition about this, Jesus
would have corrected their error. But while He affirms the reality of
resurrection, which they falsely denied, He confirms them in regard to the futurity of the resurrection. “But when they shall rise from
the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage:” (Greek) Luke 20: 34, 35.
This
then is God’s meaning, where Scripture uses the word “resurrection.” Death is not a rising up but a lying down of the
body, in which posture it abides. Death is not the mounting up of the soul, but
its going down into the under world of Hades. On this example of Christ Paul
rests the whole Gospel. This alone is God’s news. The departure of the soul
from the body at death was, and is, the ordinary course of things. God raised
Jesus not from death alone, but from among the dead, to whom
He descended when He died; and from whom He came up, when He returned to life.
How was the Saviour known to be dead? By the aspect and touch of His body. How
was He known to be buried? By His friends bearing His body to the place of dead
bodies. How was He proved to be risen? By His body being no longer to be found
in the tomb to which He was committed, but by its being seen and felt alive by
credible witnesses. The whole man had risen. His soul dwelt anew in His body.
He was the same “Son
of Man” after His death that He
was before it. As His Father at His baptism, and transfiguration saluted Him as
His “Son,” so does He after His birth from the tomb. “Thou art my Son, this day have
I begotten thee:” Acts 13: 33.
Raised [out] from the dead, He is still the Son of David, and is
to return as such: 2 Timothy 2: 8; Revelation 22:
16. As He rose, so after this manner are we to rise.
AN
ILLUSTRATION
Shall I refer to that illustration of the future
existence which has always struck men? when they made the butterfly an emblem
of resurrection? Observe, then, it is not a resurrection at the time of death which is therein
set forth: (
The
grub comes forth from the egg of the caterpillar, to feed on leaves. When it
has attained its full size, and finished its earthly life, it prepares its
coffin, and rolls itself up in its winter cerements. But when the spring opens
into summer, it comes forth from its buried existence to live its new and
ethereal life. All the winter it remains in suspended animation; its new life
is entered on by bursting forth of its coffin to enjoy its airy heritage and
pasture. So with man. Death is his entry on the state of the chrysalis. It is
not till he has burst the tomb that he comes forth to his heavenly heritage and
life.
The
doctrine then, of the Old Testament and the New, is that at death the soul goes to the place which is called
Hades.
“Marvel not at this: for the
hour is coming, in the which
all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done
good, unto the resurrection of life; and [a disjunction] they that have done evil,
unto the resurrection of damnation:” John 5: 28, 29.
That
this is no mere word of theory, devoid of reality and power, God has given us
proof in the coming forth of Lazarus from the cave of death; and in the opened
graves. out of which the companions of Jesus’ resurrection came, and exhibited
themselves as alive in soul and body.* Still more satisfactorily. Jesus has come forth
in body, soul, and spirit, as the risen man, the pattern and the proof of ours.
[*
See 1 Sam.
28: 14-18, R.V. NOTE:
There is no scriptural evidence to suggest that these resurrected saints came
from Heaven, and returned there before ‘the
first resurrection’ (Rev. 20: 5)! Compare 2 Thess. 2: 8 with 2 Tim. 2: 17, 18 and Acts 2: 27, 34. R.V.]
If the disembodied soul’s distant
vision of the Lord be glad, how much greater shall be the joy of the presence of the [resurrected
and immortal saints] risen beside the Risen Son of Man! It
is not the death of the believer that gives him the victory. It is when the
mortal has been clothed upon with immortality, and the corruptible with
incorruption, that
then
shall the saying be brought to pass, “Death
is swallowed up in victory! O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades,
where is thy victory?” This is the
cry of the rescued, as for ever they
leave the soul’s place of custody, and the elements of the tomb. The Lord
speed that day!
To the Spiritists
- [who believe the time of death is
resurrection!] - the resurrection is “past
already” as it regards the dead, who are far the largest portion of the
human family. But the Holy Spirit tells us, that such a statement is an overthrow of
the faith: 2 Timothy 2: 18. You
[who are deceived] have destroyed the very sense of resurrection. Resurrection is an act of God the Son, (1 Corinthians 15: 22) not experienced now, but to be put
forth at [the time of His return (1
Thess. 4: 16. cf. 1 Cor. 15: 23), and at] the last day, at a time unknown; but, then,
signalled by the trump of God. Jesus is “Resurrection
and Life.” On the living He will work the change which shall make them immortal. On the dead saints He
will put forth His power in resurrection.
The
error here combated sets aside both sin and redemption. According to Scripture,
death, and the decomposition of the body which follows it, were the effects of
Adam’s trespass. Life and the recomposition of the body is the consequence of
Jesus’ work of obedience and atoning. But the Spiritists’ make death to
be resurrection, and the penalty of
sin to be our deliverance!
But resurrection has been foretold by
God in His grace. Death, the penalty of sin, is not to be the end of man.
Resurrection is possible, for He who
promises [to resurrect all - sooner or later - from ‘Sheol’ =
Gk. ‘Hades’ (Rev.
20: 5, 13, R.V.)] has
Almighty power. It will be no harder to Him to reunite the separated parts
of man, than it was to mould him at first. Resurrection is certain, for He has determined on it, and His truth binds Him to perform it.
Nay, He has already effected this His counsel, in the case of His [only begotten] Son Christ Jesus.
The
time of resurrection, as stated by the apostle, is quite different from that
contemplated by the Spiritist theory. The [regenerate] righteous* are to rise before the wicked in a future day. The dead saints have to rise in order to set them on
a level with the living saints, who are expecting Christ’s return. The
resurrection is to take place on large numbers at once, not on men one by one.
Their mouldering relics are to be restored to life in an instant - at the last
day, at the last trump - the worthy signal of the Great Congregation assembly. Such a change is absolutely necessary;
for, as Paul says, believers, whether they be alive or dead, are in neither
condition fitted for the [Lord’s coming millennial] kingdom of glory: 1 Cor. 15: 50.
[* See Matt. 5: 10, 20. cf. Matt.
6: 1, 33 and 7: 21, 24, R.V.):
also compare 1 Cor.
6: 9, ff.
with Gal. 5:
21; Eph. 5: 5: and Heb. 11: 24-26, 33-40, R.V.
with Heb. 12:
14-17,
R.V.]
*
* *
DECEPTION
“This sheds amazing light on
the Scriptures which assert Satan’s power to deceive the nations (Rev. 20: 8), blinding their eyes
as ‘the god of this age’ (2 Cor. 4: 4), - [by
seeking to
prevent any understanding of ‘the gospel of the glory of Christ’
R.V.] - and imposing a mental pressure on whole
communities; on demons, emanating from Hell’s trinity, mustering the peoples
against God (Rev. 16: 14), even though invisible; and on a single spirit entrapping an
entire nation (1 Kings 22: 22).”
-
D. M. PANTON.
-------
FAITH
“It is not our iron ships, it
is not our celebrated regiments, it is not these things which have created, or
indeed really maintained our empire, it is the character of the people. Now I
want to know where that famous character of the English people will be if they
are to be influenced and guided by a Church of immense talent, opulence and
power without a destructive creed.”
- LORD
DIVINE
JUDGMENT AND IMMINANT DANGER
Even the man of the world can see judgment approaching
here and now.
*
* *
* * *
*
571
THE SERPENT
OF BRASS
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
The Serpent upon a Pole, of all the pictures of
All
salvation is put in motion by a single cry, without which it can never occur.
Snake-bitten
Therefore,
salvation can spring only through judgment. “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Make thee a fiery SERAPH’ - in all the other verses the word is nahash, not seraph - ‘and set it upon a standard’” - upon a pole which, to hold a snake, must have had a
cross-beam, and so upon a cross - a serpent made of brass, because brass - as
in the Brazen Altar and in our Lord’s judicial feet (Rev.
1: 15) -
is the metal of judgment. The hanging serpent is thus a repetition of the
sentence in Genesis (3: 14):- “CURSED ART THOU.”
The Serpent’s bite of Eve has infected the whole race, and sent a lightning
contagion through mankind, which thus carries a poisoned, and therefore a
doomed, nature; and the
twisted coil on the pole is no wilderness serpent picked up casually off the
desert sands: it is a Seraph, the Covering Cherub of Ezekiel, the Old Serpent
transfixed under the undying curse of God. For it is written (Gal 3: 13):- “CURSED is everyone that hangeth
on a tree.”
But
our Lord carefully reveals the Gospel in His presentment of the type. The
crushing of the Head is simultaneously the bruising of the Heel. “As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3: 14).
The copper snake, a close imitation in colour, shape, and structure of the
fiery serpents, had one signal difference: it had no venom: for “Him who knew NO SIN he made to be sin for us” (2 Cor.
5: 21).
That which hung on the cross - in both cases - had never suffered the serpent’s
bite, and so was itself unpoisoned. The lifted serpent, embodying - for
judgment - all poison, yet itself without poison, is our Lord “made in the LIKENESS” - the colour, shape, structure - “of sinful flesh, and an
offering for sin” (Rom. 8: 3), yet sinless. On the pole hangs a dead serpent.
The lightnings of God have smitten it: the curse of God has slain it: sin hangs
there cursed, and judgment exhausted: the
venom is killed. As the
slain Seraph, it is Hell judged; and as the slain Saviour, it is mankind saved.
For “Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law, having
become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is
every one that hangeth on a tree”
(Gal. 3: 13).
So now the application of the cure in both cases is
simplicity itself. “And it came to pass” -as God had said (verse 8) it would
- “that if a
serpent had bitten any man” - every human being is salvable - “when he LOOKED unto the serpent of brass, he
LIVED.” Our Lord explains the physical look - the easiest of
all motions of the body - by the mental look of simple belief: “EVEN SO whosoever believeth” - looks to
Most
remarkably, the type, rich in significance, discloses a miscarriage of the
lifted serpent which has been abundantly fulfilled in the history of the
Church. Seven or eight centuries later we read (2
Kings 18: 4): - “Hezekiah brake in pieces the
brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto
those days did the children of
So now every man’s supreme opportunity, and his
critical peril, are both disclosed. One class of the snake-bitten were beyond
hope - those already dead - who had never looked: no corpse stirred, no eyes
turned that had passed into the eternal world; for “after death cometh judgment” (Heb. 9: 27). But,
for us the living, our deliverance is completely in our own power; for no one
will ever be saved, or can be saved, against his will.
One word is also here for the Church of the last days.
The wandering in the Wilderness was almost over; this was the last Wilderness
miracle; and the fiery serpents attacked the [redeemed] People of God
as a consequence of deep discouragement. These serpents are a remarkable
forecast of the descent of spirit-hordes in the closing hours of our
dispensation, when we shall be assailed with unprecedented discouragement, and
temptations to any and every form of sin. “The Spirit saith expressly that in the last days some shall
depart from the faith, giving heed to
seducing spirits” (1 Tim. 4: 1). Nothing
was to prevent a serpent biting a second time. So the blessed lesson emerges. The Cross is as vital to us on the edge of rapture as
ever it was when we first saw the Passover Blood in Egypt. The flying serpents, so far as we know, never disappeared;
but on that vast level plain, with nothing between, the Brazen Serpent always
healed. The query whether the unabandoned sins of a believer will appear at the
Judgment-Seat can be answered with supreme ease and finality. The moment our
Lord returns, by a simultaneous movement we meet Him: unless, therefore, we
hold that no [regenerate] believer anywhere will then have any unabandoned sin
- that is, that there is no backslider in the whole world, as great a reductio ad absurdum as is conceivable - it is obvious that the sinning believer is
flashed into the presence of the Lord exactly as he is. “Lest coming suddenly he find
you sleeping” (Mark 13: 34). Spiritual
slumber is sin, and there are even grosser sins of which a [regenerate] believer can be
guilty, and in which therefore he can be ‘found’. But so
long as the Wilderness remains, with its serpents, so does the Cross. “IF WE
[BELIEVERS] CONFESS OUR SINS, HE IS FAITHFUL AND RIGHTEOUS TO FORGIVE US OUR SINS,
AND TO CLEANSE
US FROM ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS” (1 John 1: 9).
*
* * *
* * *
572
THE COMING
APOSTASY
By Robert
Govett, M.A.
[PART 1 OF 3]
Moses, before his people had entered into the land of
promise, was inspired to foretell their falling away from Jehovah, the God of
their fathers. And thus, the Lord Jesus, at the sending forth of his Gospel
into the world, foresaw and foretold that declension from it, and open
rejection of it, which have yet to be fulfilled. Of these intimations, none is
perhaps more plain and full than that offered to our notice in the first
Epistle of Timothy (3: 14).
“These things I write unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I
tarry long, that thou mayest know how to behave
thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And confessedly [see the Greek] great is the mystery of
Godliness. God was manifest in the flesh,
was justified in the spirit, was seen by angels, was
preached among the Gentiles, was believed on in
the world, was received up in glory.”
“But the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall apostatize from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and to doctrines of devils, speaking
lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience
seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry [and
commanding] to abstain from articles of food, which God created to be partaken of with thanks-giving, by those who believe and recognize the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be cast away, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”
“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of the faith, and of the good doctrine,
whereto thou hast attained.”
“But refuse the profane and old-womanish fables but exercise
thyself unto godliness. For bodily exercise is
profitable in some small degree; but godliness
is profitable for all things, having promise of
the life that now is, and of that which is to
come”: 1 Tim. 3: 14 - 4: 8.
This passage has been commonly supposed to be
fulfilled by Romanism, and still continues to be applied to it. Without in the least desiring to palliate the
destructive doctrines of that corrupt church, I yet feel persuaded, that an, ‑form
of evil is here presented, and would briefly offer z of the stronger proofs in
this place; reserving others tc, more
minute examination of the prophecy further on.
I.
A conclusive proof that Romanism is not the evil thus depicted by the Holy
Ghost, arises from the fact, that the Church of Rome holds every article of the faith which is mentioned by
the Apostle. It
believes that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh, that he died, rose, and
ascended, with every other point of the faith that Paul has specified as that
mystery of godliness, from which the apostates of the latter day should fall
away.
II. The abstinence from marriage and articles of food here supposed, is
essentially connected with the apostasy foretold; so that if any leave the
faith, they must abstain from both; and those only who abstain from both, leave the faith. It is the
listening to and receiving these principles of abstinence that produce the
apostasy. Wherefore if any marry
or use articles of food indifferently, they have not departed from faith. But this is true of the great body of Romanists;
therefore they have not apostatized from the Christian faith. And if now it be
said, that at least it has its fulfilment in the monks and nuns, and priests of
the Romish church, for these abstain from both marriage and meats, I
answer - First, these do not forbid marriage, but promote it in the case of
others. And secondly, as noted above, they maintain all the articles of the
faith as exhibited by Paul. Therefore theirs is not either the abstinence, or
the apostasy contemplated by the Holy Ghost.*
Much less do they forbid either marriage or meats as things evil in themselves, which is the ground of the objection
and abstinence supposed in the text.
* I would briefly throw into this note, some objections
to Mede’s interpretation of the passage. He makes “spirits”
equivalent to doctrines, and supports the views by quoting 1 John 4:
1.
But the passage is quite against him; for the trial there supposed is a personal one; a trial which cannot be made of doctrines. How could transubstantiation be asked
to confess if Jesus Christ is come in the flesh? (2) He makes (with others in the present day), “doctrines of devils,” to be “doctrines
concerning
demons,” and then
interprets the phrase of the Romish adoration of saints. Against which I object - First, that in the other instances in
which [the
Greek word …] is found in construction, it does not take the
signification he supposes. Thus “doctrines
of men,” (Col. 2: 22)
signifies “doctrines taught by men.” And in the 2nd, Epistle to
Timothy, we have “Thou hast fully known the doctrine
of me” (2. Tim. 3: 10), which
signifies, “doctrine taught by me,” not “doctrine concerning me
Secondly,
the word “demon” never in the New Testament has
a good sense; but the equivalent expression is always “evil
spirit.” And by Augustine, Clemens, Alexandrinus, Minucius, Felix, Origen, Tertullian, Julian,
Josephus, Eusebius, with others of the fathers, they are regarded as evil
beings.
Thirdly,
the personal apostasy from the faith here mentioned,
supposes previous personal profession of it, and afterwards entire abandonment
of it for sonic other faith or infidelity. But Romanists never have fallen away to any other faith; and as
to their opinions concerning fasting and celibacy, since the Christian faith
does not consist in these things, and is consistent with them, the holding them
is not apostasy.
Fourthly,
[the Greek words …] cannot be rightly translated “By
the hypocrisy of liars.” (1) The sense of … for … is uncommon, and not to be resorted to without necessity. (2) The
absence of the article shows, that the phrase … is to be taken adverbially. If it meant, “through
the hypocrisy of liars” - it would have been … (3) … being an adjective, it cannot be fairly connected with a
substantive not implied in the context, but must take as its substantive … that
has just preceded. If men were intended, … must have been expressed. (4) As to the sense,
this introduces unnecessarily a new class of deceivers: and men are made the
means of the apostates’ giving heed to evil spirits, while it is not said that
the liars themselves depart from the faith.
Can
it be supposed, that all these obliquities of construction, and syntax, and
meaning of words, must meet to give us the true sense of the passage before us?
I
would now consider the prophecy before us in its real bearing, and show the heresy
against which it is levelled. With all the early Christian writers, I interpret
it of the Gnostics. These were
persons who sought to incorporate Christianity with their false philosophy.
Hence Paul’s caution, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit:” Col.
2: 8.
They attempted to explain the origin of evil by their own understanding,
unenlightened by divine grace, and God’s Holy Word. It is not wonderful then
that they erred.
(1) They maintained that matter was
eternal, and the cause of evil, and that the Supreme God was not the Creator.
(2) From the Supreme God, who dwelt far
from matter, there flowed forth, at different times, various beings inferior to
himself, whom they denominated Aeons. This view of theirs explains Paul’s twice
repeated caution to Timothy and Titus, to give no “heed to fables and endless genealogies:” 1 Tim. 1: 4; Titus 3: 9. The
epithet “endless” shows that not the Jewish, but the
Gnostic genealogies were in question, for the Jewish genealogies were bounded,
on the one hand by the known pedigree of Abraham, and on the other by their own
times. The Gnostic genealogies of their Aeons had no limit but their fancy; and
hence some sects supposed thirty Aeons, some three hundred and sixty-five, and
others might, if they would, have made thirty thousand.* To these Aeons, they gave the names of the Word, Light, Life,
Truth, the Only-Begotten. All these names,
*
“I should
therefore conclude [because the Jewish genealogies were not subversive of the
faith of Christian converts, nor were they foolish] that what is here said of
‘endless genealogies’ may very probably relate to their successive generations
of Aeons”
(To be continued)
*
* *
GOD’S TIDE
Say not the struggle nought availeth.
The labour and the wounds are vain.
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars
It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,
Your comrades chase e’en now
the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright!
*
* * *
* * *
573
ANIMALS AND
THE
REDEMPTION
OF CHRIST
(From the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy)
The relation of
the animals to man was originally very different from what it became, when
death, as the consequence of Adam’s
transgression, entered “into the world”
(Rom. 5: 12). Formed to illustrate the Divine power and
goodness, every living creature shared, according to its capacity of enjoyment,
its Creator’s beneficence, in a world in which as yet suffering and death were
unknown. Adam, on his creation, found the waters, the air, and the land already
teeming with life. He who blessed our first parents (Gen.
1: 28),
had before pronounced a separate benediction (Gen.
1: 22) on
the inferior creatures, over which they were invested with dominion.
It
might be inferred that annihilation was just as little as suffering originally
contemplated by their Maker as their lot. Clearly they were in the first
instance no more made with a view to die than their human head himself. The
first constitution and object of their existence involved no sickness, pain, or
dissolution. They fed, like their earthly lord, on the productions of the
earth, and lived in peaceful subjection him, and in harmony with each other.
The idea, then, of a perpetuity of animal life, even in its inferior
development, is by no means in itself extravagant. But for man, the wing of a butterfly would never have
been hurt, nor a sparrow have fallen to the ground.
We
are too much in the habit of looking at everything from a utilitarian point of
view; as though the beginning and the end of all we see around us had exclusive
reference to ourselves. Yet the glory of God, not the good of man, was
certainly the grand end both of creation and redemption. Even now in order to
meet the altered circumstances of a ruined world, that we have the Divine
permission to take the life of animals for our use, a large amount of animal
life is entirely unconnected with, and independent of, man. Deserts, unexplored
regions, the atmosphere and water, the ocean depths, abound with living
creatures of all kinds that in no wise can be supposed to advance his comfort,
and of the very existence of which but few are aware.
So,
therefore, below angels and glorified saints may not life, in endless
gradations and capacities for enjoyment, be destined to pervade the universe?
and do we know enough of the future economy of that universe to say positively
that the animals that have once lived may not again live, and, together with
fresh emanations of creative power, respond to the sacred lyrics of some
heavenly psalmist again calling upon “beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying
fowl” - to praise the name of the Lord (Psalm 148.).
Animal life, even in its lowest forms, is, indeed, a
wonderful thing. We learn that it, as well as spiritual life, is communicated,
by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God, at the creation, “brooded over the face of the waters,” apparently
imparting to the elements the power of communicating life to animals, plants,
etc. (Gen. 1:
11, 20, 24). This universally vivifying influence is
repeatedly ascribed, in other places, to the Spirit. (See Isaiah 32: 15).
“Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they [i.e., the animals] are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth” (Psalm 104: 30). So that “not one
sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father” (Matt. 10: 29). This life, so easy to be taken by the most
ignorant, far transcends the power of the wisest to impart or restore. There is
something solemn in its cessation; something, to our human ideas, painful and
sad in the thought of its being extinct for ever. And when combined, as it
often is, with high degrees of sagacity, fidelity, and affection, this feeling
is yet more heightened, and the question may sometimes almost involuntarily
have arisen, Can it be that all this intelligence and excellence (in its
measure) is finally annihilated? And may not the inquiry, not unreasonably be
raised whether there is not a possibility that a life originated by the Spirit
of God, and the object on the part of God of so minute and careful a
providence, may not be intended to be restored at a future time, and placed for
ever beyond the reach of suffering and death; whether the nephesh chayyah, the
‘living soul’, may not be in any creature too
noble and excellent a thing to be allowed to perish for ever, and may not, in
the case of the irrational but irresponsible and innocent part of the animated
creation, be restored in a better and everlasting state?
If such should be the case, an amount of suffering
which it would be difficult to over-estimate, occasioned by the fall of man,
and aggravated by his (alas!) too frequent cruelty, would, indeed, as well as death itself, be richly and
abundantly compensated. So therefore we are prepared for the fact that, under
Noah, the animals were singularly favoured by being taken, as well as Noah and
his seed, into an everlasting covenant with God (Gen.
9: 10).
Remarkable pains are taken to impress us with this fact, for it is repeated not
less than five distinct times.
Again,
we are struck by the improbability that the close of an era like the
Millennium, which will witness all things subdued unto Christ (1 Cor. 15: 38), and
the Kingdom brought into a fit state to be delivered up to God even the Father
(verse 24), will be distinguished by the
sudden and eternal extinction of the numberless tribes of living creatures,
that having once fallen with man under pain and death, and with him also
shared, in their measure, in a great though partial restoration, would,
apparently, in that case present a marked exception to the onward flow of
blessing. May they not, partake of it?
The
Eighth Psalm presents the world, as it will
be, under the headship of the last Adam, the glorified Son of man (comp. Heb. 2):- “All sheep and oxen, yea,
and the beasts of field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the
sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of
the seas,” are put under His feet. This is the millennial epoch, when
the now savage beasts will lose their fierceness, and ceasing to be formidable
to man, and to prey upon others, will so far exhibit a return to some of the
features of their original state. (Compare the well-known descriptions in Isaiah 11: 6-9; 65: 25.) They will not, however, it would seem, be
exempted from death, the last enemy that shall be destroyed and they will be
again offered in sacrifice (Ps. 51: 18, 19; 118: 27; Ezek. 40.; 46.,
passim), and probably continue, as at present, to be part of the ordinary food
of mankind. Notwithstanding these conditions will be greatly ameliorated; and
the consideration again occurs, is it not more probable that the result of
Christ’s headship will be a further development of happiness for the brute
creation after the Millennium, than that the transition to an incomparably
superior and perfect period will be accompanied by their utter privation of
existence? Which theory has more the semblance of a complete triumph of
redemption over death?
So this frees us from what cannot, it is conceived,
but be felt as an embarrassing consideration, to wit, that animals should have
been in a superior, because undying, state at the commencement of the headship
of Adam, to that they will be in, after having been a thousand years under the
feet of the Son man. It frees our conception of a Paradise regained from any
feature of inferiority to a
But
no passage hitherto produced seems to countenance the doctrine of a
resurrection of the brute creation so much as Romans
8: 19-22:-
“For the earnest expectation of
the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was made
subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [it] in hope: because creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
pain together until now.”
That
[the Greek word …] here means here the created
universe is admitted by many, and this is its ordinary sense in the New
Testament. Indeed some are of opinion that it is never there used of mankind
alone. From verse 23 it is seen to be distinct from
Christians, and it cannot be understood of those who are not Christians, who in
no sense could be said to wait for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Understanding it then of creation in its simplest, broadest meaning, we learn
that this was involuntarily subjected to vanity by God (in consequence, as we
know, of man’s fall), but that it is not hopelessly ruined, but awaits, while
everywhere expressing the language of pain
and suffering, a period of emancipation from its bondage. That this period will be fully reached during
the Millennium it is impossible to conceive, for reasons already stated. But in
the then manifested and glorified sons of God an earnest will be afforded
to the creation, already greatly advanced in the scale of happiness, of what
its ultimate and perfect state is destined
to be. And again may the former argument be pressed. If animals, which not
least of the creation share the common travail, and not least express their
sense of it, if animals will partake of the blessings connected with the
revelation of the sons of God, and in their measure keep pace with the improved
circumstances of the ‘regeneration,’ what valid objection can be raised to their
participation in the ‘liberty of the glory’ of
the redeemed? And would not that imply their resurrection?* It is difficult, with the bright and gladdening
prospect the passage unfolds, to come to the conclusion that living creatures,
far below man indeed in dignity, yet still raised above mere inanimate objects
by their peculiar characteristics, creatures that owe their manifold living and
dying pains to a cause to which they in no wise contributed, shall finally not
only be excluded from the universal jubilee of the creation, but cease to
belong to it at all. Would not this rather look like a triumph of the bondage
of corruption than a deliverance from it? Would it not be like being borne
along the stream of progressive bliss only to be finally engulfed in the abyss
of oblivion? And does it appear altogether in unison with the splendid
anticipations inspired by this Scripture, that the groans of the sentient,
though irrational part of the creation, should ultimately alone not be changed
to the notes of joy, but cease (and that too after a bright gleam of hope) in
the silence of endless death? On the contrary, the views opened out by
geologists confirm that terrestrial arrangements are not made with exclusive regard
to man. For they display to us the Deity, in all the sublimity of his goodness,
and majesty of his power, exercising Himself in the creation, sustenation, and
blessing of countless myriads of living creatures, amongst whom man had no
interest, and exercised over them no dominion.
*
“The Scripture states it. The
animal creation “itself also
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory
of the children God”; and ‘the bondage of corruption’ is not only the liability to corrupt, but
the state of death itself. It is blessed to remember that this includes the
snake.” - [D. M. Panton,] Ed. DAWN.
*
* * *
* * *
574
THE CHURCH’S
DANGER
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
The
The
immediate future of the ancient
[* NOTE: A
similar situation exists within the
God
will always do precisely what He has declared, and woe betide anyone who
is adamant in teaching the contrary! His future plans and purposes for this
sin-cursed earth in the “age to come” (Gen. 3: 18; Heb. 6: 5, R.V.)
will surely take place; and He will deal severely with anyone who is determined
to undermine the Holy Spirit’s revelations and warnings, which are found
throughout the Holy Scriptures: “For I the Lord CHANGE NOT!” (Mal.
3: 6,
R.V.)]
Now
the silence of Scripture concerning Hananiah’s exact spiritual standing most
helpfully shelters very diverse optimists under his cloak. He is five times
called a ‘prophet’ by the Scripture itself; and Jeremiah’s words
concerning him certainly seem to imply that he was a genuine prophet - “The prophets that have been
before me and before thee;”
and his national acceptance as a prophet Jeremiah never challenges. It may be
that, like so many to-day, Hananiah absorbed himself exclusively in Scriptures
that seem to state limitless privilege, such as that which Balaam uttered (Num. 23: 21):- “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel.” Or, perhaps more probably, like a modern
Pentecostalist, it may have been a demonic seizure which he sincerely mistook
for a Divine inspiration, and which he had not been careful - challenged, as he
was, by the startling prophecies of Jeremiah - to sift and test. In any case,
Hananiah is the embodiment of all who “lean upon the
Lord, and say, Is
not the Lord among us? none evil can come
upon us” (Mic. 3: 11).*
* Hananiah really doubted the divine inspiration of
Jeremiah’s warnings, as the modern Hananiah doubts (or avoids) the still graver
warnings of the New Testament, surely their fundamental rightness, their
essential justice, their total independence of human wishes, ought to carry
overwhelming conviction of the divine origin of both.
So
now we face the sharp clash of prophecies over the respective
Now Jeremiah gives the answer of God that runs through
all the ages, and is our model. “Amen: the Lord do so: the Lord perform thy words which thou hast prophesied,
to bring again the vessels of the Lord’s house.” Fundamental privilege abides; and its assertion, in
main and in foundation, is right concerning both
A
symbolic action follows, in which Hananiah, instead being startled by the blank
contradiction, and bowing to Word of God, resorts to violence, so forecasting persecution.
He steps forward and snatches the Yoke Jeremiah was wearing, as a symbol of the
coming judgment, and breaking it, blankly denies the Seventy Years captivity of
the People of God:- “Thus saith the Lord, Even so
will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar within
two full years from off the neck of all the nations” (verse 11). But
the danger for the People of God of such a negativing of Divine prophecies now
leaps to light: denial of judgment only deepens it. After Jeremiah had slipped
quietly away, God says to him:- “Tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord: Thou hast
broken the bars of wood; but thou shalt make in
their stead bars of iron.”
So
also the extreme personal danger of leading others astray by contradicting
God’s Word on coming judgment on both Church and world is embodied for all time
in Hananiah. “Hear
now, Hananiah,” Jeremiah says, sent expressly by Jehovah to the
facile optimist - (Jeremiah himself had sought no vengeance whatever upon
Hananiah):- “thou makest this people to trust in a lie:
therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will send thee away
from off the face of the earth: this year thou
shalt die, because thou hast spoken rebellion
against the Lord” In two years, Hananiah said, Jehovah would deliver
them all: in two months he was dead.*
*
It is the refusal of the believer’s
judgment which gives the Arminian believer his whole standing: for if the penal
consequences with which the sinning servant of God is threatened are not (as we
believe) temporary, they are eternal: they are concrete and real in either
case, and Hananiah’s role of denial is as dangerous as it is disloyal.
This
vital disclosure is crowned for us by the fact that the chief revelation of our
own
*
* *
JUDGMENT
INEVITABLE
“Strange as it may appear, the very imperfection in the execution of justice seems to be
the strongest possible proof that, in the next world, vengeance will be
fulfilled to the uttermost. For observe, if we found that every man in this
life received just what he deserved, and every evil work always brought swift
punishment along with it, what should we naturally conclude? There is no future
punishment in store: I see nothing wanting; every man has already received the
due reward of his works; everything is already complete, and therefore, there
is nothing to be done in the next world. Or if, on the other hand, there were
no punishment visited upon sin at all in the world, we might be inclined to
say, ‘Tush, God hath forgotten;’ He never interferes
amongst us; we have no proof of His hatred of sin, or of His determination to
punish it; He is gone away far from us, and has left us to follow our own wills
and imaginations. So that if sentence were either perfectly executed upon earth, or not
executed at all, we might
have some reason for saying that there was a chance of none in a
future world. But now it is imperfectly executed just so much done, as to say, ‘You are watched - my eye is upon you; I neither
slumber nor sleep; and my vengeance slumbereth not.’ And yet there is so
little done, that a man has
to look into eternity for the accomplishment.” - WOLFE.
-------
MISSIONARY NOTES
Since the world is dead to sin,
go
ye therefore;
Since the cross has power to win,
go ye
therefore;
Since the Devil and his host,
Madly vaunt and ever boast,
Warring to the farthest coast;
go
ye therefore.
Brief the years of mortal life;
go
ye therefore.
Timeless issues end the strife;
go
ye therefore.
Men are passing, early, late,
Passing to eternal fate,
And the season will not wait,
go
ye therefore.
Christ has come, the crucified;
go
ye therefore.
To the souls for whom He died,
go
ye therefore.
All His words, His toil, His pain,
Once are given - not again;
Let them not be given in vain;
go
ye therefore.
Yours the power to do the work;
go
ye therefore.
Yours the order, do not shrink;
go
ye therefore.
Yours will be a high reward;
go
ye therefore.
Yours the “well done”
of the Lord;
go
ye therefore.
Yours the blessed, sweet renown
Of the jewels in your crown,
Yours the home in
Go
ye therefore. GO!
- AMOS
R. WELLS.
*
* * *
* * *
575
DIVINE
IN THE BOOK
OF ESTHER
By ALEXANDER CARSON, LL.D.
The Christian is warranted to refer to his God the most
trifling as well as the most momentous occurrences of everyday life. He ought
to see God in everything. Our God breathes in the air, flows in the sea, shines
in the sun, and lives in all life. “In Him we live, and move and
have our being.” It has ever been
the labour of philosophers to banish God from his works, and to carry on the
system of the universe without Him. From the Book of Esther the believer may
learn to place unbounded confidence in the care of his God in the utmost
danger; and to look to the Lord of Omnipotence for deliverance, when there is
no apparent means of escape. Jehovah has, indeed, established general laws in
the government of the world, yet in such a manner that He is the immediate
Author of every particular event.
In
the history of the deliverance of the Jews through the exaltation of Esther, we
have the whole history of the world in miniature. The Book of Esther is the
history of
The
Providence of God brings his people into danger, not because he is unable to
ward off even the appearance of it, but that he may glorify himself in their
deliverance, and exercise their graces.
The
Christian has nothing to fear in any country. If he is called to suffer, it
will be for God’s glory and his own unspeakable advantage. If God has no
purpose to serve by the sufferings of his people, he can, under the most
despotic governments, procure them rest. Jesus rules in the midst of His
enemies, and is master of the resolves of despots. He restrains their wrath or
makes it praise Him. If He chooses He can give His people power even with the
most capricious tyrants. They are as safe in the provinces of the Empire of
Ahasuerus as in the dominions of
Christians!
see here (Esther 4: 15-17; 5: 1-3) the
security of God’s people in doing duty - see the encouragement to confidence in
His protection. From this learn the importance of humbling thyself before thy
God in the hour of trial. See the duty of fasting and prayer in the time of
trouble and of danger: see the resource of God’s people in the time of their
calamity. If we weed the protection of men, let us
first ask it from God. If we
prevail with Him, the power of the most mighty and of the most wicked must
minister to our relief. How often do Christians look first to the means of
deliverance! How often do they try every resource before they go to God with a
simple and confident reliance on Him! How is their unbelief rebuked here! What
encouragement does this hold out to confidence in God in the utmost danger!
Only let us believe, and all things are possible.
Esther’s
delay in preferring her request is another providential circumstance. Had she
at that time declared her request, Haman would not have had an opportunity of
performing his part in the drama. This man of glory and of guilt must be
allowed another scene on the stage of time to exhibit his character in all its
bearings, and to show the disappointment and misery of the enemies of God. His
vanity is not yet at the highest pitch; he must be brought to the pinnacle of
vainglory. He must be made to minister to the man of God whom he sought to
destroy. Then shall he fall never more to rise at all: he must prepare a
gallows for Mordecai, but he must himself be hanged thereon. Thus it shall be
with the proud and prosperous wicked. Though they may not, like Haman, meet a
retribution in this world, their honour will be succeeded with everlasting
shame and misery. How vain is earthly glory! How irrational are the struggles
of statesmen and courtiers for the giddy height of power! While Haman’s
happiness appears to the beholder to be complete, his own bad passions make him
miserable. In all his glory he confessed himself miserable, on account of the
disrespect of an insolent few (ch. 5: 13). Man at
enmity with God cannot be happy. The curse denounced against sin has entwined
itself with all human enjoyments.
In this history of wonderful interposition, there is
nothing more wonderful than the process that led to the exaltation of Mordecai.
Why was the greatest service that could be rendered to man overlooked till it
was entirely forgotten? Are absolute monarchs wont to disregard the saviours of
their lives? shall such profusion of royal bounty be showered on the head of
Haman, while Mordecai remains unrewarded? What can account for this strange
conduct? One thing can account for it, and nothing but this can be alleged as a
sufficient cause - the thing was overruled by
At
the critical moment of the king’s enquiries about Mordecai, Haman had come into
the outer court, to solicit for his immediate execution. Mark the Lord of
Providence in every step! Had not the king been kept from sleep - had not the
book of records been called for his amusement - had not the account of the
conspiracy turned up to the reader - Mordecai would now have been given into the hand of his enemy. Mark the
Providence of God, also, in having Haman at hand, that by his mouth the honours
of Mordecai might be awarded, and that by his instrumentality they might be
conferred. Why did the king think of referring the reward of Mordecai to
another? Why did he not himself determine the dignities to be conferred on his
preserver? Or, if he refers to another, why does he not immediately leave the
matter to those now about him? Why does he ask, who is in the court? Why was
Haman there at this moment? Why was he the only one that waited so early on the
king? Why did Ahasuerus put the question in such a manner as to conceal the
object of the royal favour? Why does the king, instead of plainly naming
Mordecai, use the periphrasis “the man whom the king delights to honour”? Why did this form of the question allow Haman to
suppose that he was himself the happy man for whom the honours were intended?
At this time the king knew nothing of the designs of Haman, and had no design
to ensnare him. Every circumstance here is wonderfully providential. From this
we see that God can make the greatest enemies of his people the means of
advancing their interests. Whom then ought the Christian to fear but God?
Behold the retributive justice of God in the death of Haman! One of the
chamberlains, who probably had seen it when he called him to the feast,
mentioned the gallows that Haman had prepared in his house, to hang Mordecai.
The king said, “Hang
him thereon.”
This
history, that has been thought by some unworthy of a place among the inspired
writings, discovers when attentively considered the most surprising series of
events, brought about without a miracle, that ever was exhibited to the human
mind. Among the most admired works of genius, of all ages and countries, we
will not find that the invention of man has been able to form a story, and
connect a series of surprising events like this true history. Homer and Virgil,
and Milton, and all the writers of epic poetry, have been obliged to use
supernatural agency upon all critical occasions. To interest their readers they
must depart from the ordinary course of nature, and employ means that never
really existed. Gods and demons and muses are so necessary to the poet that
they still leave their impression on the phraseology of poetry. If you prevent
him from invoking the inspirations of his muse, from conversing familiarly with
Apollo and the Nine, from mounting to the top of
This
book, then, whose inspiration has lately been called into question by ignorance
speaking from the chair of learning, commends its claims to us in the most
convincing manner by its own internal evidence. No human pen could have
produced it. The characteristic feature which I pointed out proves it to be a
child of God. Had man been its author it would have been crowded with miracles.
I challenge the world to produce anything resembling it in this point, from the
writings of inspired men. There is another feature in this history that proves
it to be of heavenly birth. There is no
instance in which it gratifies mere curiosity. While it informs us of facts, it informs us no further
than they contribute to the design of the Holy Spirit, and are important for
instruction. In this feature it shows its resemblance to the teaching of our
Lord, and to the writings of the Apostles. So far from gratifying idle
curiosity our Lord declined compliance with respect to some points in which
human wisdom would think it important to be informed. His communications
manifest a striking reserve and even
when pressed, he could not be induced to reply to any curious questions. In the
writings of the Evangelists and the Apostles, how often do we wish that they
had been a little more communicative! And, assuredly, had they spoken from
their own wisdom, they would have made a larger Bible.
In
ascertaining whether the Book of Esther, among other books, is inspired, we
have to enquire, was it in the collection called Scripture in the days of our
Lord? If it was, its inspiration is beyond dispute. Jesus Christ recognized the
Jewish Scripture as the Word of God. As in rejecting the inspiration of this
book, some modem theologians disclaim a first principle entitled to the most
confident reception, so they admit some first principles that are mere figments
of the imagination. Why is the Book of Esther denied as a book of Scripture?
Because it has not the name of God in its whole compass. Here it is taken as a
first principle, that no book can be inspired that does not contain the name of
God. But where have they got this axiom? It is not self-evident, nor asserted
by any portion of scripture, and is therefore entitled to no respect. Whether a
book may be inspired, though the name of God is not mentioned in it, depends
not on any self-evident first principles, but on matter of fact. And matter of
fact determines in this instance, that a book may be inspired though it does
not express the name of God.
But if God is not expressly named in this book, He is
most evidently referred to by periphrasis, and the strongest confidence in Him
is manifested by Mordecai. The faith of that illustrious servant of God is
among the most distinguished examples of faith that the Scriptures afford. See ch. 4: 13, 14 - “From another place.” Can there be any doubt as to the place from which he
expected deliverance? Is not this an obvious reference to God? Is it not from
the retributive justice of God that he threatens destruction to Esther and her
father’s house, should she decline the intercession through unbelief? Esther
also manifests confidence in God, and a resolution to die for His people, if
that should be the result of her application in their favour. The power of
Jehovah and the love of his people are strongly manifested in the conduct of
these two illustrious Israelites. If God
is not mentioned by name, He
is seen in all their conduct. This book,
then, that exhibits the Providence of God, is composed in a manner suited to
its subject. God is everywhere seen in it, though He is not named; just so God
is every moment manifesting Himself in the
works of His Providence, though He works unseen to all but the eye of faith.
But
not only is the objection invalid, but every one of the same class is utterly
unworthy of respect. A book may disprove its divine origin by what it contains,
but in no case by what it does not
contain: we may as well say that God would not make the sun or the moon,
without writing His name on it, as that he could not inspire a book that did
not contain His name. And one most conspicuous advantage afforded to the
Christian by this book is, that it gives him a commentary to all the events
recorded in history, with respect to the rise and fall of empires, the
prosperity and adversity of nations, the progress and persecution of the
In the Book of Esther the Christian may see the union of
two things apparently irreconcilable - the free agency of men and the
overruling appointment of God. Philosophers have exhausted their ingenuity in
endeavouring to fathom this abyss ; but their line has proved too short. In the
Book of Esther we may see that man’s actions are his own; yet they are, in
another point of view, the appointment of God. When will Christians cease from
their own wisdom; when will they in all things submit to the testimony of God;
when will they practically admit that God may know, and therefore call upon
them to believe, what they cannot comprehend? Will man never cease to make
himself equal with God? Will the Christian never learn that he is nothing!
Disciple of Jesus, go to the Book of Esther, and acquaint yourself with the deepest
point of philosophy. There see the solution that has occupied the wise from the
very cradle of philosophy, but which philosophy has never solved - which it is
not capable of solving, on any other principle than submission to the testimony
of God.
*
* *
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
“A reader of the DAWN, who does not wish her name to be
given,
writes these tender lines in response to the poem on Love in the
July issue” - (D. M. Panton.)
I am Love, and through the furnace
I am walking by thy side;
In the midst of provocation
From the Tempter I will hide.
When the dreams of earthly passion
Come about thee to assail,
I am with thee to deliver,
Let not faith and courage fail.
Well I know that not for glory
Nor for might thou prayest Me;
And the Love thou ever seekest
Ever present is with thee.
I will show thee not the glory
Round about My Kingly Throne,
But the light of joy and gladness
Which the Father gives His own.
Shrink not from the gaze of pity
Angels pause to give to thee,
For my blood-bought child is dearer,
Nearer than the angels be.
Yea, I love thee, and will hide thee
In the shadow of My hand:
Do my will, and in the doing
Know thy Lord can understand.
- THE WRITER REMAINS
ANONYMOUS.
* *
* * *
* *
576
GOD’S PLAN
Christ’s
suffering and the Spirit’s Power
By G. H. Lang
-------
GOD’S PLAN AND OUR PLACE IN IT
In Eph. 3: 11 (R.V. mgn.) * we are taught that there is a Divine purpose
running through all the chequered and stormy ages of human history, and indeed
of the universe. The knowledge of this greatly establishes the heart, and
enables faith to wait in patience through dark days. But it is important that
we should look at the whole purpose, and especially to its end, so as to
understand the details. We cannot learn much by looking at a machine at work if
we do not first know what the finished article is to be. And, in particular, we
must know God’s Purpose if we would co-operate intelligently with Him.
* References are to the Revised Version.
The
present inhabited earth is subjected to angels, is under angelic government -
see Daniel, the Revelation,
etc. In reality “the
heavens do rule,” and earthly
monarchs are subject to God’s authority exercised through angelic agency. But
part of the angelic host is in rebellion against God; and hence arises, first, the age-long corruption of human government;
and then, that the godly being called into effective co-operation with God,
must needs war against wicked spirits in heavenly places.
But
there is coming a complete change of administration in the universe. Evil
spirits are to be deprived of authority and driven out of the heavens (Rev. 12: 7-12; Ps. 82: 5-8), and earthly governments are to be dashed to
pieces (Daniel 2: 35; etc.). The dominion of the heavens and the
earth is then to be committed to man in the person of the Man Christ Jesus, Who
will associate with Himself in that government His church. Not unto angels has
God subjected the inhabited earth to come (Ps.
8.; Heb. 2: 5-10).
It
was God’s original thought in creating
man that he should rule the earth (Gen. 1: 26), but it
was not then revealed that God purposed later to enlarge that dominion to
include the heavens also. God has hitherto punished with death any being who
tried to enter another realm of nature than that in which he was placed by the
Creator (Jude 6; Gen.
6: 1-7; Lev. 20: 6). But in
the case of those who shall be accounted
worthy to reign with Christ, God purposes to do this very thing; and “many sons,” His “firstborn” sons,
being sons of men, made of and for the earth, He purposes to take up into the
heavens, for which realm man is naturally unfitted. We are physically incapable
of living a few miles only above the earth’s surface, and how much more so in
the upper heavens. “Going to heaven” is not a
natural development. There will be saved nations who will live on the earth.
But to permit men to go up into the heavens is, the most majestic prospect God
could have given to us: it is unexampled, magnificent. It involves that there
must be and will be a change of body
[from mortal to immortal], by which we shall be made physically fit for the
heavenly regions and conditions (1 Cor. 15: 50-53). God is “bringing many sons unto glory” (Heb. 2: 10), “His own Kingdom and glory”; that is, not to a perfected earthly and human
kingdom and glory merely, but to His own, the heavenly sphere and kingship and
glory (1 Thess. 2: 12; 1 Pet. 5: 10); and thither Christ has gone as a forerunner
(Heb. 6: 19-20). God is
gathering out firstborn sons, those who shall have the pre-eminence with
Christ; and this for His glory and service.
It
costs somewhat now to follow Christ; but faithfulness always succeeds, and the
reward is super-abundant, even the sharing of our Lord’s universal authority.
We are called to be kings. Christ said to His disciples, “I appoint unto you a
kingdom” (Luke 22: 29),
and, “He that
overcometh ... shall rule the nations” (Rev. 2: 26, 27).
For this great destiny we are now receiving the
indispensable training and education. Our Lord has taken the same path,
submitting to the same temptations and experiences, in order that He might in
all things be one with us, and we with Him. Our part is:- (1) To accept cheerfully the discipline, receiving it gratefully as
part of our perfecting. (2) To make
God’s plan known to the rest of the world by evangelizing all nations (Romans 16: 25, 26). (3)
To aid in the teaching and training of believers. The apostles thought this
most important. Says Paul, “I labour,” “I toil in conflict,”
“striving,” “agonizing,”
“according to God’s energy which energizeth in me
powerfully” (Col. 1: 28, 29), in
order that the people of God may be found worthy of this calling. God can never
do anything higher for created beings, since He is proposing to exalt us to
rule with His Son in His kingdom, and He can never exalt us above His Son. Hence it is said that in this secret counsel of God are
hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col.
2: 2, 3; reading “in which [mystery]” see Alford,
and Darby’s New
Translation): He has
nothing more to reveal or offer to men. “If we endure, we shall also
reign” (2
Tim. 2: 11-13), reaching that heavenly glory by the only path
thereto, that taken by the Son of Man. It behoved the Messiah to suffer and to
enter into His glory (Luke 24: 26); and insomuch as we are partakers of His
sufferings, we may well rejoice, since at the revelation of His glory we shall
rejoice with exceeding joy (1 Pet. 4: 13).
THE
PRIVILEGE AND ADVANTAGE
OF SUFFERING
FOR CHRIST
In
Matt. 5: 10-12, we find
our Lord’s opening instructions on this subject, and in John 15: 17-20, and 16: 1, 2, 33, His closing instructions. That His first
disciples unhesitatingly and uniformly accepted, and spread His teachings may
be seen from Acts 5: 40-42; Acts 14: 21, 22; Phil.
1: 27-30 (“granted,” i.e., as a
privilege) ; Col. 1:
24; 2 Thess. 1: 3-12; 2 Tim. 2: 3, 9, 10 (“If we endure, we shall also
reign”); Heb. 12: 4-9; Jam. 1: 2-4, 12; 1 Pet. 2: 18-23 (“unto this were ye called”); 1 Pet. 3: 17; 1 Pet. 4: 1, 12-19; 1 John 3: 13; Rev. 12: 11 (“they loved not their life”). No other literature is like this. The Stoics of old
told men to be sternly philosophical and to disregard suffering. The [obedient
and faithful] Christian will feel it intensely, but will rejoice in it for Christ’s
sake. The Scripture pictures Love as guiding the Christian pilgrim by a road
rough with thorns and stones; but Love goes in advance: Christ has trodden the
path before us.
Suffering
is the normal outcome of witnessing to, and fidelity to, Christ. Our Lord laid
the first and heaviest stress on qualities which count much for righteousness,
but which count for nothing in the world (Matt.
5.). The world has little use for the poor
in spirit, and the meek; the world does not believe in mourning, and does not
count persecution as a blessing. He who
is like Christ is persecuted by the world. “Marvel not if the world hate you.” When infinite beauty, even wholly divine loveliness
of character, was revealed in Christ Jesus, the world hated it. The more distinct our conformity to Christ
the more we are likely to be hated by the world.
There
are various kinds of suffering. (1)
Some is the result of our own folly in sowing to the flesh. (2) Some is sharing the misery of
mankind as part of humanity. We are not responsible for the suffering caused by
war, but we share in it. (3) Other trial is more properly for
Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. Such fiery trial is a normal thing. The past
century was exceptional and unparalleled as a period of rest and peace; and
this God ordered principally for the sake of spreading the gospel in other
lands. He gave His church in the British Isles the chief responsibility of this
work, and for its furtherance granted a unique influence among the nations to
the
The
path of suffering affords unique advantages, and such as cannot otherwise be
attained:-
1.
Suffering exerts a potent and blessed influence in saving us from sinning. “He that hath suffered in the
flesh hath ceased from sin” (1 Pet. 4: 1) If you strive against sin you will suffer, but
in the battle you will be saved from sin. Our Father chastens us that we may be
holy (Heb. 12:
10). The imputing of righteousness should be followed by becoming partakers of His holiness. Suffering sanctifies, as fire purifies gold.
2.
Suffering brings us into the closest intimacy with our Lord Jesus Christ. He is
the Lamb that was led to the slaughter. There are few places like the burning
fiery furnace for knowing the Son of God. Jesus still treads the deserts with
us. And He can take away our fear of the furnace and the desert. Do not needlessly
incite opposition. We do well to surrender all rights of our own rather than
offend the worldly: but much more we
must not surrender the rights of our Lord by succumbing to the pressure of the
world so as to avoid persecution.
3.
Suffering is a part of the privilege of furthering the interests of Christ. All
God’s purposes are entrusted to His Son for fulfilment; and He, the Highest in
the universe, has in turn entrusted His interests on earth to us. He would
suffer if He were here; but being absent, He leaves it to us to do so in His
place, He enduring it with us. He would toil in the slums, or in travel in the
gospel, and would endure all things for His elect’s sake. This we may do for
Him, and He will be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And let us
reckon with Paul that the sufferings of this present time are insignificant
(Alford) in comparison with the glory that shall be revealed to us-ward (Rom. 8: 18).
4.
Suffering thus purifies from sin, conforms us to Christ, and furthers His
interests; and therefore it has an appreciable effect on our eternal status in
His kingdom. Rejoice; for blessed are they who have been persecuted for
righteousness, since theirs is the kingdom of the heavens. If we endure we
shall reign. The recompense for suffering for Christ is the [millennial
and]
heavenly inheritance, the glory and sovereignty that Christ has won and will
share with His faithful followers.
With
these weighty considerations impelling him Paul said: “I fill up that which is
lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh”: I go straight along His path, although I know
perfectly well that it will bring suffering. Paul chose to go to regions where
no preacher had been; and if there was greater danger, that was the place in
which to seek him. He was superior to circumstances. We all are called to this
kind of life, however varying our sphere and circumstances; and the fellowship
with our Lord to which it surely introduces the heart, provides strength of
spirit for enduring to the end.
SOME
ESSENTIAL LAWS OF POWER
For
such a life as has been outlined power is indispensable; and it is promised: “Ye shall receive power,
when the Holy Spirit is come upon you” (Acts 1: 8) Power is essential to work. Only the energy of the Holy Spirit can give the power needful for the
work of the gospel. None of the world’s resources were committed to the
disciples for the most stupendous task of missionary enterprise. Breakdown is
inevitable without the aid of the Holy Spirit. “Ye shall receive power,” said the Lord; adequate energy shall be yours,
through the Holy Spirit.
Co-operation
with the Holy Spirit involves certain laws. If we obey the laws of a power the
power will obey us. Electricity and gravity illustrate this.
1.
Each form of power can only be used for its own proper purposes. Physical energy will not solve a mental problem.
Intellectual ability will not lift a book from a table. Not the highest
development of mental or physical power will give spiritual results or moral
energy. Persons with brilliant minds, and others with highly trained muscles,
have had no power over their moral life. The Holy Spirit is here to make
the spiritual real to us; but He will not work outside His sphere. He will not
undertake to make us rich and clever; but He is here to convince of sin, to
reveal the Lord Jesus Christ, to make us like the Son of God in nature and
practice, to energize us in spreading the gospel, to make us mighty in prayer.
For these approved ends we can count implicitly upon Him.
2. As
is the work to be done so must be the power. Compressed
steam never yet lit an electric light. The force must fit the end. Of what use
are music or art, fashion or science, in the realm of the spirit of man? They
influence the soul but are useless as to the spirit, for they are not the right
kind of energy. Human logic - how can it help? The wisdom of the philosophers
and logicians was the fame of
Preaching
and teaching is not of itself enough. If it be merely intellectual effort, and
not vitalized with the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven, we may toil year in
and year out without effect. The energy
of the Holy Spirit working with the truth does the work. Do we know as
experience, not only regenerating power, but also the pervading of the whole
being by the Spirit of God, so that our words shall tell, and work effectually?
Has He not only created life within you, but “come upon you”? The latter question can be determined by answering
another - Have you power to witness for Christ, the Rejected by men? The
promised and certain effect of the Spirit coming upon a believer is power to
witness boldly. If any has not this power, let
him ask of God Who giveth liberally;
only let him ask in faith, expecting and accepting.
3. Each power requires a suitable medium of
transmission. Wires will
not carry water, nor will pipes transmit electricity. A sinner already saved is
the medium God chooses to be the means of communication between Himself and
other sinners. The people already reached are to reach out to others. Do your
neighbours come in contact with the Power of God because they are in contact
with you? “How
shall they hear without a preacher.”
God
wants the whole man: ear, heart, feet,
mouth, constitute God’s media. He wants our bodily faculties, our mind, and our
spirit. Our spirit He uses that through it He may act by His Spirit upon the
dead spirit of the sinner. Our mind, that He may fill it with light, that it
may transmit clearly the knowledge of Himself and His will. Much of our
preaching comes to naught because it is not understandable. It was said of
Finney, “The man doesn’t preach; he explains what
others preach.” And our bodies are wanted for audible and visible
ministry. The healthy condition of the spirit, however, is most essential. An unforgiving spirit, or an anxious, restless spirit, and the like, is
a blockage in the path of the Holy Spirit, a hindrance to the transmission of
His energy. Hence, submission of the inner life to the
Lord is an absolute requisite.
4.
Rest is a basis of power. Why are
certain engines so embedded in masonry? In the reach of the piston-rod there
must be points past which it cannot go. In mechanics, wobbling is weakness.
Power issues from God’s restfulness. Are we resting in the Lord? Can we wait patiently for Him to act? Anxiety reduces spiritual energy. Lack
of rest of heart is one of the most serious hindrances to Christians. Fret of soul when wronged, or fret over
financial or other concerns, is a depletion of power, a dissipation of energy.
One of the Lord’s first lessons was, “Be not anxious”
(Matt. 6).
From the rock basis of rest in Him we can put forth the whole of our energies.
Perfect peace is our promised portion (Isa. 26: 3; John 14: 27; Phil. 4: 5-7).
5. Concentration
intensifies energy. The
diffused stream of the marsh is without force, but it will drive a factory if
confined to a narrow channel. Explosives are expansive materials compressed;
and according to the compression so is the energy developed. The Devil does not
mind concentration on business, art, science, or vice, but he has a horror of a
believer concentrated on the things of Christ. At all times let Christ be our
Life and Object, let every department of
our life be subordinate to His rule. The Devil will do anything to keep us
from wholeheartedness; and our deplorable lack of concentration retards the
Holy Spirit’s work. Let our motto be “To me to live is Christ”; then we shall not lack in spiritual energy. Let us
cast all our anxiety upon Him, and live for Him alone. The promise, “Ye shall receive power,” was given to such concentrated men, men upon whom, in spite of their personal
failures, Christ knew He could depend. The secret of the apostles’ success
was given by one of themselves in these words: “(1) “We
are witnesses of these things; (2) and so is the Holy Spirit, (3)
Whom God hath given to them
that obey Him” (Acts 5: 32). Oh
that each of us may say with sincerity,
“My gracious Lord, I own Thy
right
To every service I can pay,
And count it my supreme delight
To hear Thy dictates and obey.”
So
shall we have power for serving and suffering, for the perfecting of God’s
plan.
*
* *
“It is simply impossible to
stress to the degree it needs stressing the studied deceit and diabolic
camouflage already at the doors:- ‘ALL DECEIT of unrighteousness’ (2 Thess. 2: 10). At the moment we take but two deceptions which ought
never to have deceived, and a summary of the controlled propaganda which will
be an enormous instrument in the production of the ‘all deceit’. The Pinkerton
detective agency in
- D. M. Panton.
*
* * *
* * *
577
LIFE AFTER
THE FLESH
By Robert
Govett, M. A.
Romans 8: 12. “So therefore, brethren, we are debtors,
not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.”
The present words are addressed expressly to believers.
“Brethren, we are debtors.”
We are “debtors” here the
question of our duty, not our passive privilege; and of each saint’s conduct, as under that obligation. Here too to the
difference between one individual saint and another enters. And accordingly, promise and
threat, as the
results of the performance or neglect of that duty, follow in the next verse.
We are free from debt to the law, and the apostle warns him who would make
himself a debtor to it, that he is fallen from Christ, and the benefits of
grace: Gal. 5.
We are under claims from the new nature, not from the old.
We
are under no obligation to the flesh, for, as it regards God, the flesh has
brought in judgment from him, and enmity against him. And, as it regards
ourselves, it has entailed on us death.
Besides,
as God’s design towards us is that we should be performers of the good deeds
demanded by the law, and the flesh cannot render them, it follows that whether
in view of our duty, or its rewards, the obligation lies on us not to live to
the old nature, but to the new, which alone can please God.
13.
“For if ye live
according to the flesh, ye are about to die;*
but if
ye through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.**”
[*& ** See the Greek.]
“About to die!” What! as
a consequence of conduct to believers, justified by faith, and possessing eternal life in
Jesus Christ by deed of gift? Death to those elect ones, on whose behalf the apostle, in
this very chapter, lifts up his bold and sublime defiance of every creature? DEATH because of their own conduct, to
those who have all Christ’s merits imputed, and whose spirits are already “life, because of righteousness?”
Yes! even so. “Wherefore, brethren, we are debtors.”
“If ye live after the
flesh, ye are about to die.” Is not the other part of the verse spoken of [regenerate] believers?
“If ye through
the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live.” Can this apply to any
but the regenerate? Why not, then, the first part of the verse? There is no hint of a change in the parties addressed. “We know, that what things soever the law saith, it saith to those that are under the law:” and so, whatever the epistles say, they say to
saints. But the present verse is beside expressly asserted of saints.
At
this point commentators have broken off from the obvious bearing of the words.
They have assumed that no saint can walk after the flesh - an assumption
manifestly untrue, contradicted by a thousand conspicuous facts in our own, and
every other day. Thousands of truly converted men have been and are living as
warriors, are employed in taking and giving oaths, in administering justice
instead of being the children of mercy, surrounded by every luxury, treasuring
up the riches of the world, and mixed up with the world in its traditions and
its glory.
Commentators
explain the first part of the verse as applying to the ungodly, the last as referring to saints. In consequence they take “die” in its strongest sense, as the eternal death
threatened to the sinner; and 1ife as the eternal life promised to the
believer. Of which take Haldane
and Barnes as examples. “If you live agreeably to your carnal nature, without
Christ and faith in him, and according to the corrupt principles that belong to
man in the state in which he is born, ‘ye shall die’. Ye shall suffer all the misery that throughout eternity shall be
the portion of the wicked, which is called death, as death is the greatest evil
in this world.” Haldane. “If you live to indulge your carnal
propensities, you will sink to eternal death,” chap. 7:
23. “Either your sins must die, or you must. If they are
suffered to live, you will die. If they are put to death, you will be
saved. No man can be saved in
his
sins” Barnes. That the other clause is made
to refer to believers, take Matthew
Henry and Scott as witnesses. “Ye shall live. Live and be happy to eternity.” Matthew
Henry. “Their spiritual life will abound till perfected in eternal
happiness.” Scott.
But
if so, a further difficulty arises. Either eternal life is the recompense of
mortification, or a sense is given to the word “live”
which does not belong to it, making it to intend degree of spiritual enjoyment.
But
how can the words be understood, if applied to believers? This is the very
interesting question, which I proceed to unfold.
1.
First, it does not signify the eternal death threatened to the wicked. The saint’s being a member
of Christ excludes that dread consequence. And the question at issue in this
place is not justification or condemnation. That was declared to be settled at the very first verse of
the chapter. It promised to each believer that he should be raised to life in
consequence of the Spirit’s indwelling.*
*
“There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8: 1). All that are in Christ Jesus, partakers of the
spiritual life that is in him, are not condemned. They are delivered from the
judicial arraignment and penalty of the law, as a part of Christ, and members
of his body. If under law, they had been still condemned. But this freedom from
eternal condemnation is not here made to depend upon their present holy walk.
If they be partakers of the life which is in Christ, and members of his body,
the imputation of his righteousness suffices, and will ever suffice, to deliver
them from the curse and the eternal penalties of the law.
2. Nor does it signify that the soul shall endure present spiritual death, such as is
the state of the unregenerate: verse 6. For the renewed soul is “life,
because of righteousness.” And the threat is of a future death. “Ye are about to die.”
3. Nor is it the common
death of men. For that
is endured by the saints who have walked after the Spirit as well as by those [disobedient,
regenerate believers, who have not and] who walk according to the flesh. “The body is dead, because of sin,”
in both classes of [regenerate] believers.
The
death and the life here spoken of refer to the body, as it regards the
resurrection. God shall “make alive even
your mortal bodies:” verse 11. We shall be “joint heirs of Christ if we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him: verse 17.” The glory which is
about to be revealed unto us: verse 18. “The creature also shall be
set free from the bondage of corruption into
the liberty of the glory of the sons of God:” verse 20. “We are expecting adoption,
the redemption of body:” verse 23. Both
before and after this verse, then, the resurrection, and the time of Jesus’
appearing, are before the apostle’s eye.
What
else, then, have we, than the doctrine of “the first resurrection,” as the glory to be given to some? “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first
resurrection; over such the second death hath no
power, but they shall be priests of God and of
Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand
years” Rev.
20: 6.
This at once gives its full force to the word as addressed to [regenerate] saints. “If ye live according to the
flesh, ye are about to die.” The mere falling asleep at the close of this life is
in itself nothing. That sleep will be broken, for all those accounted worthy, in an instant, at the Lord’s
descent. But if you live to the flesh, its native tendency to death will be seen in your being left under the
bondage of corruption a thousand years. “The rest of the dead lived
not till the thousand years
were finished:” verse 5. Till Jesus appears, the great difference
between sleep and
death will
not be seen. “The
body is dead:” but this is a future death,
to be felt keenly, because others will then live. “Ye are about to die.” This implies a death posterior to that assumed by the
apostle’s statement in verse 10. It is
confirmed too by the answering explanation of the close of the verse, and by
the like passage in the Epistle to the Galatians: Gal.
6: 8.
This
loss is made dependent on [our present] conduct. “If ye live according to the flesh.” Though the
believer is not in the flesh to his condemnation, the flesh is in him for his trial. He is [if
obedient (Acts 5: 32,
R.V.)]
in the Spirit, and thus able to please God. But he may not actually do so. He
may habitually give the reins to the old nature. Hence an “if,” and a
penalty, are suspended over him. God would have the regenerate fulfil the
righteous conduct required by the law. But they may, instead, act so as not to
serve God; they may even bring disgrace on the cause of Christ before the
world. And shall such conduct be
unnoticed and unpunished? It shall not! Even the new law of liberty, the edict
of the [Messiah’s millennial] kingdom forbids the entry of such. “Except YOUR
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
YE shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven:” Matt. 5: 20. “Not every one
that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that DOETH the
will of my father which is in heaven:” Matt.
7: 21.
“Ye shall
live.” Here the same reasoning
applies as to the former case. What [future] life [after
death] is promised?
1. Not eternal life. That is a gift*
through Jesus Christ.
[*
Rom. 6: 23, R.V.]
2. Not present spiritual life. That is already enjoyed. “The
mind of the Spirit is life and peace.”
3. It is, then, life in
resurrection, to be obtained at its earliest
exhibition, at “the
resurrection of the just.” In those
who walk after the Spirit, only the body is dead. It is of that, then, that the
life promised is to be understood. Life is to be granted, as the recompense of
a successful struggle against the dictates of the flesh. Now this contention
ends not but with death, or with the coming of the Lord. Thus, again, the life
spoken of is shown to be in [a future*] resurrection.
[* See first
mentioned principle in Gen. 37: 35, LXX.
and R.V. marg. Cf. Ps.16: 10; Ps. 139: 8; Acts 2: 34ff. with John 3: 13; 2 Tim. 2: 17-18; Luke 20: 35; Phil. 3: 11; Heb. 11: 35b. 39-40; Rev. 3: 21; 6: 9-11, R.V.]
In
short, while resurrection to life is a certain inheritance on grounds common to
all believers, the time of the deliverance from corruption turns on our
living, either to that part of us which is alive to God, or to that which is
judicially sentenced.
16.
“The Spirit itself witnesses together with our spirit
that we children of God. 17.
But if children, then heirs: heirs indeed of God; but joint
heirs with Christ,*
if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also glorified
with him.”
* The force of [the Greek …] is
given in the Vulgate, though omitted by the Authorised Version.
If
we be children of God, then, as earthly sons inherit the property of their
fathers, so shall we the possessions of our Heavenly Father. “If children, then heirs.” But the next words intimate two heritages, one possessed by all; the other, by some alone. All are heirs of God,
but not all joint heirs with Christ [in ‘the age to come’]. For a condition is inserted which is not fulfilled in all [the regenerate]. Not all suffer with Christ. Many die as soon as they believe. Many will not surrender what, as they see,
their duty to him requires. And Paul in another place speaks of “fellowship” with Christ in “his sufferings,”
and even “being
made like him in his death, if by any means I
might attain to the [out] resurrection from among the dead:” Phil. 3: 10, 11. So again, “I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness
Jesus and for the word of God,
and which had
not worshipped the Beast, neither his image
... and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years:” Rev. 20: 4.
Joint suffering is to be recompensed
with joint glorification, and joint reigning. As saith another passage, “If we be dead with him, we
shall also live with him. If we suffer with him, we shall
also reign with him:” 2 Tim. 2: 12.
But
a little further on in the chapter we are now considering, glorification is
spoken of as the portion of all the predestined sons of God. “For whom he did foreknow, he
did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover whom he did
predestinate, them also he called; and whom he called, them he
also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
As,
then, there is a glorification destined for all the elect, and a glorification
for some, under a
condition not fulfilled in all, it is evident that there are two times of glorification. There is (1)
the millennial glory, or the time of glorification with Jesus as the Christ: Rev. 20: 4. (2)
There is also the eternal glorification after this, designed for all the elect
members of Christ.
May
we take heed to these things, beloved!
*
* *
CHRIST MUST REIGN UNTIL
“The enemy 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 thing to Christ, who ‘MUST REIGN, till
all enemies are under His feet.’ And notice,
that the setting up of His throne does not mean that all enemies are then and
there subdued; but His throne is set up, in order that He may be in a position
to assert His position and right, to put all things under Him, and for the
subduing of all that resists Him; and he goes on reigning UNTIL that object is reached, and then it is accomplished.”
*
* * *
* * *
578
THE DAY OF
THE LORD
By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
The world’s most
careful thinkers, and statesmen the most deeply versed in the working of
States, are filled with dread at this moment that civilization is about to
crash. Three Prime Ministers of England, than whom no better judges of
statecraft could be found, have expressed the dread. Mr. Stanley Baldwin says:- “I have never
disguised my own conviction that another war will be the end of the
civilization we know.” Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald says:- “If the Churches of Christ
throughout Europe and America allow this to happen they had better close their
doors; for the next war, if ever it comes, will be a war on civilization itself.”
Mr. Lloyd George says:- “It seems to me that the world
is heading for a great catastrophe. If the
Now
God, who alone knows the end from the beginning, and whose own future action is
involved - future action which is known only to Himself - emphasizes the same
fact. It the near approach of the coming collapse, with its infallible symptoms
of dissolution, which makes it so evident, and evident even to men who never
consult God; but it has been pictured in God’s Word for thousands of years. All
the Scriptures are burdened with one coming Day, a day which they place long
after the First Coming of Christ, and which a dissolution of civilization: ‘that day’; ‘the great day’; ‘the last day’;
‘the Day of the Lord’. As Zephaniah (1: 14) cries:- “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord.”
Now
the double secret of the Day, cause and effect combining to produce it, is
extraordinarily convincing. What the statesmen see, and dread, is such a
growing ferment of lawlessness; such a dissolution of high-principled
integrity, human passion and hate and greed and crime so rotting the very
fabric of social life, that civilization breaks down, and all ordered civil
life crashes: God sees exactly
the same thing; and as the Most High, ultimately, is alone
responsible for the order of the universe, He is at last compelled to
intervene, for He sees what is coming. Suddenly and miraculously, after a
silence and apparent absence of two thousand years, the Most High reappears to
handle a race sunk in crime, and a world plunged in open [apostasy
within the Churches and] rebellion; and as the Person responsible for order
and righteousness, He has to handle the situation exactly as would the
Governors of Dartmoor if confronted with a violent revolt of the convicts.
Therefore
there are four outstanding characteristics of the Day of the Lord; and a
supreme one is the fact that, so cumulative in its horror will that day be, as
God sees and knows it, that God Himself, again and again, counsels fear. “HOWL YE; for the
day of the Lord is at hand;
as destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
Behold, the day of the
Lord cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger” (Isa.
13: 6, 9). For it will be the wrath of God let loose,
after longsuffering has dammed back that wrath, with huge blocking power, for
six thousand years. So Zephaniah (1: 15) says:- “That day is a day of wrath, a
day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness
and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess,
a day of clouds and thick darkness; and I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord, and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung.”
The
second outstanding characteristic, which ought to make a wise man fear, is that
there is no escape. The Day of the Lord, encircling the globe, will exempt no
nation, and will be absolutely universal. “Behold,” God
cries through Isaiah (13: 11), “the day of the Lord cometh, and
I will punish THE WORLD for their
evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.” So our Lord says to the Philadelphian Angel (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 WORLD, to try them that dwell
upon the earth.” None can resist
the omnipotence of the judge: none can elude His omniscient scrutiny: none can
evade the weight of His sentence. “The day of the Lord,”
cries Joel (2: 11),
“is great and
very terrible; and who can abide it?”
So Paul says (1 Thess. 5:
3):- “They”
- [‘that are left’*] - “shall in no wise escape.”
[* See 1 Thess. 4: 17, R.V.). Cf.
Luke 21: 36,
A.V. & R.V.).]
Another unique characteristic of the Day will be its
miracle. All the signal judgments with which God has ever visited nations or
individuals are but harbingers and symptoms of coming catastrophes more intense
and terrible than the world has ever seen. “And I will show wonders in the
heavens and the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke: the sun shall be
turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before” - even before - “the great and terrible day of the Lord come” (Joel 2: 30). The plagues of it will be so universal and
miraculous as to be inescapable; for God’s [two]*
judgment Prophets “have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague” (Rev. 11: 6). The
effect is shown in a photograph taken by the Divine camera two to three
thousand years beforehand. “Therefore shall all hands
be feeble, and every heart of man shall melt;
pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be faces of flame” (Isa. 13: 7).
The last and most dangerous characteristic of the Day
of the Lord is its suddenness; a suddenness which is startlingly linked with an
international passion of the present moment. In the
So,
therefore, we learn that the forecasts of statesmen are only a dim premonition
of rapidly approaching collapse and that God has revealed, perfectly
explicitly, much more than that - namely, that the world is not moving blindly
without aim or goal, but marches irresistibly towards a set purpose and a
sudden [Divine and righteous] judgment.
It is a cardinal error in life to be
so upset by the emotion of a coming fact - the thought, for example, that it is
too awful to be believed - as to refuse
to look the fact in the face, and to
neglect the only thing that really
matters - a calm, careful, thorough preparation for the thing
that is coming.* There is only one Word that fits the facts -
John the Baptist’s:- “Who hath warned YOU TO
FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME?”
[*
See God’s conditional promises for escape: “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 world,
to try them that dwell upon the earth:” Rev. 3: 10, R.V. Cf. Lk. 21: 34-36, A.V. & R.V. To ignore the context of
these texts can, and in many cases will, prove to be a fatal mistake, and a
means of leading multitudes into a misunderstanding of unfulfilled
prophet-end-time (eschatological) events.]
But
we must also guard against an unintelligent fear. Since the Day of the Lord is
the broad, black belt of judgments lying between Grace and the Kingdom, the ‘no man’s land’ of the ‘junctions
of the dispensations’ (1 Cor. 10: 11), it can
be recognized, when it arrives, by two concrete facts. It is open wrath on the
Lawless One, and on the general apostasy
from Christianity, and so is synchronous with the disclosure of Antichrist:
therefore Paul says, “be not quickly shaken from your mind as that the day of the
Lord* is now present [has set in]; “for it will not be
except” (1) the falling away [or apostasy] come first, and (2) the man of sin be revealed” (2
Thess. 2: 2). So also huge miracles must appear (Acts 2: 20) in
the heavens before the Day of the Lord can come. For it is the dawn of
judgment, and every soul is involved. Judgment begins at the Church of God (1 Pet. 4: 17): therefore “at midnight” -
that is, at the last moment of the day of grace and the first of the day of
justice - “the
Bridegroom cometh”, and the
removal, or non-removal, of saints is followed by the ultimate appearance of
all [‘accounted worthy to escape’ living, changed and rapt] believers before the Judgment-Seat on high. And since the Day of the Lord
is a junction of the dispensations of Grace and Justice, grace to some degree
survives, and the first two series of judgments invite and are planned for ‘repentance’ (Rev. 9: 20; 16: 9); but
from the last series, purely penal, the sad refrain is dropped - “And men repented not” (Rev. 19: 21). For
the ‘great
tribulation’ is God’s last effort
- a purging by fire - to make
tribulation work goodness in
both Church and world. It closes (for the armed masses found in
antagonism to the Lamb) in Armageddon, followed by the muster of the living
nations for judgment at Olivet; when the earth is finally swept clean for
Messiah’s Kingdom, and the ‘Day of the Lord’
vanishes in ‘the
Day of Christ’.
*
See Revised
Version. The manuscript authorities
are decisive.
*
* *
“But if thou shouldst say,
‘I know not this man’; know
that the Lord knows the hearts of all;
and he that formed breath for all, he knows all things, who renders to
every man
according
to his works:” Proverbs
24: 12. (Translated
from the Septuagint.)
*
* * *
* * *
579
WHY NOT BE
JUST A CHRISTIAN?
By R. H. BOLL
In these days of many sects and conflicting teachings
it is a great advantage to be simply a Christian, and nothing more than a child
of God, a follower of Jesus Christ. “But,” you
ask, “is such a thing possible under the religious
circumstances of our day? How is the average man ever to find his way where so
many paths cross one another, and each one seems as good as the rest? where so
many guides shout, ‘Come this way!’ and ‘Go that way!’ and ‘Lo here’ and ‘Lo
there!’” It does indeed seem impossible; and many who would be glad to
be on the right ground before God have despaired of the undertaking.
Some
have concluded that none are right and have settled down in indifference. Some
think that all are right, and drift on, compromising and without convictions.
Some, weary of the problem, have found a false rest in trusting in an ‘infallible church,’ or some ‘infallible’
man who settles all questions by his simple dictum. Another says, “I go to hear
them all, and when I find the right one I will accept it.” That latter way
seems fair to the average man. But what an impossible task it would be to
investigate all the creeds and doctrines! Time would fail, and head and heart
be confused and bewildered if anyone should seriously attempt it. It usually
terminates in the man’s accepting the first thing he happens to meet that seems
good and plausible. Barring the case of many who lack the interest and sense of
need to make any personal independent search after truth, it is the general
way, for a man religiously inclined, to take up the first view that strikes and
pleases him, or to fall in with any sect or denomination with which he has
happened to have been thrown in contact. Having identified himself with the said
view or sect, he considers himself thenceforth bound to loyalty to that party,
and is henceforth set for its defence, and super-sensitive to any criticism of
it.
That road leads nowhere but to ‘confusion worse confounded’. In the first place it is
an impossible task. Neither you nor I are capacitated to enter into the merits
of each creed and system, and discern the false from the true. In fact such an
undertaking would pre-suppose on our part the very thing we have not got, and for which we are searching:
the knowledge of the truth. Not until we know what the truth really is would we
be able to pass on the relative value of the creeds, etc. Nor could we trust
our inclinations or our tastes to guide us aright. There has never been an
error that has not been dressed up attractively in the garb of logic and
plausibility; nor has there ever been a falsehood propagated but it had its
point of appeal. If then we start out in our search to find among the doctrines
promulgated one that seems plausible and meets our taste and appeals to us, we
shall certainly fall victim to some error.
Instead
of trying to examine and decide upon any or all beliefs and teachings extant,
there is a shorter and better way. That way can be summed up in one word:- CHRIST. “Come unto ME
AND LEARN OF ME” (Matt. 11: 28, 29), There
is an instant relief in the very thought. We can set aside the whole
troublesome tangle of religious beliefs and go straight to Him who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14: 6). He alone is right and true, and everyone who
would be his disciple must come directly
to him and learn of him. But after the first flash of light and hope such a
thought would bring, there rises a misgiving. “Do you
suppose that I could understand, that I could find the one, true way by taking
the matter up personally with the Lord, through His word? Have not others done
so and failed? Is there not vast room for differences and misapprehensions?
Where so many good people have erred and strayed can I hope for better success?
I am not learned: where the scholars and doctors differ, how can I know I am
right?”
But
the difficulty is not so great as it appears. In the first place it is not a
matter of scholarship, or of man’s [worldly] wisdom and ability, but a question of attitude and of trust: of trust, in that
we cannot afford, like Peter, to look at the winds and waves of difficulty (Matt. 14), but
we must rely on the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord that calls us, He who
will let no true soul perish in its search of Him and His ways; and it is a
question of attitude, because it is not
to the wise and prudent that God shows His ways (Matt.
11: 25; 1 Cor. 1: 26, etc.),
but to the poor in spirit, the humble, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness; to those who will to do His will,
to the ‘sheep’ who hear His voice (Matt. 5: 3-6; John 7: 17; 10: 4, 27). It was
in the same breath in which Jesus stated this, that He invited the weary and
heavy laden to come to Him that He might give them rest; and to assume His yoke
and to learn of Him (Matt. 11: 25-39). This then is the one great step for every man
[and woman] who
would find the way: Commit your life with all its hope and prospect to the Lord
Jesus, and address yourself to learn from Him. There is a sphere in which
scholarship is helpful; and I do not say that men may not help one another; but
the only true help a man can after all render his fellow-man is to point him to the word of the Lord that
there he may find and see for himself what is the will of God in Christ Jesus
to us-ward.
So true unity would come. It has been feared all along
that if every man should go to the Word of God for himself independently,
confusion and division would result. Not so. The divisions come by departing
from the word, by adding to it, taking from it, setting up men’s one-sided
views for standards. And, above all, the divisions are kept alive because the
vast majority of professed believers blindly
follow their religious leaders, and have almost all their religious knowledge
at second hand. But those who, with open, desirous hearts come directly to
Jesus for light, obtain such a view of truth, such a mutual consideration, and
such a free scope for growth, that having become one in Christ they will tend
more and more to be one with one another.
Every
theory, every system, every sect has some truth.
But the Christian has all [available in God’s Word], has a right to all, and access to all. If any sect
in the world holds any portion of truth, the Christian has the greater right to
accept and proclaim it. He does not need to join the sect in question to get
what truth it may happen to have. He does not even need to sift through the
chaff of those human theories. In Christ
he has all beforehand. It is his good and pleasant task to explore the rich
mine of truth. Jesus Christ, “in whom are all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden” (Col. 2: 3). At the
same time he does not say, “I am right,” in the
sense that he knows all about everything; but he says, “the Bible is right: Christ is right.” He holds his mind open.
Every day he comes to the truth revealed to get juster ideas of what he learned
before and to learn more. He has no ‘axe to grind’;
no position to force: nothing to ‘harmonize’ or
to ‘explain away’; no theories to promulgate;
no human creed to defend. The truth makes him free. He calls no man ‘Rabbi’, no man ‘Father’
upon the earth. One is his Teacher and Master, even Christ; and One is his
Father: God (Matt. 23:
8-10). No
man may bring him into that bondage of human theory and creed which is to-day
so gravely affecting the religious world.
A
minister of a certain denomination once said to one of these simple Christians,
“I should like to have a talk with you - I think I
could make a -ist out of you.” “How would you go about it?” asked the Christian. “Why, I would show you where you are wrong,” answered
the preacher. “But that would not make me a -ist. It would just make me a better Christian,” he
replied. These simple children of God come to the Bible with new, fresh minds,
divested of all human preconceptions as far as they can know, with open hearts,
to drink in the teaching of the Lord. They
strive to give Him a clean tablet to write on, not one already scrawled over
with opinions of their own or other men’s.
When we commit ourselves to a human teacher and leader, we lose the
voice of the one true ‘Rabbi’ above. And the
prepossession resulting may easily be fatal. It puts coloured glasses before
the seeker’s eyes, and insinuates basic notions and opinions which ever after
he reads into the text of the Bible, and which he thinks thenceforth he sees
standing out on every page, although they exist only in his mind. It is
needless to say that a man who has any regard and desire for just pure,
unbiased truth will not allow his judgment to be affected beforehand by putting
himself under the influence and dominance of some man’s plausible theories. “And this I say lest any man
should beguile you with enticing words,” says Paul. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him; rooted and builded up
in Him and established in the faith, as ye
have been taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Beware lest any man
spoil you through philosophy or vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the world and not after Christ.
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him” (Col. 2: 4-10).
Now
if it were only a matter of preference and taste as to what a man should
religiously believe and be, no man would need to be greatly troubled over this
question. One could adopt whatever belief he liked best and follow it sincerely
and the outcome would be safe. But “there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov.
14: 12). “It is not in man that walketh
to direct his steps” (Jer. 10: 23). Most
people think that any course honestly pursued will lead to glory; which is but
another proof that man’s ideas of religious things are usually wrong. But the
Lord Jesus says:- “Whosoever heareth these sayings of
mine and doeth them,” (not what priests or doctors have commanded), “I will liken him unto a wise
man, who built his house upon a rock.”
And vice versa, ”Everyone that heareth these sayings of
mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand” (Matt. 7: 21-27) It is not by what some man said you ought to
do, nor by any human teaching or theory (no matter how correct it seem, and how
perfectly it “fits in”) that we shall be
measured “in that
day”, but by what Christ has said.
“The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge
him in the last day” (John 12: 48).
He that rejects the word of Christ to-day does so at terrible loss and infinite
peril.
So
also the book of Acts shows how and when the
message was preached, and how men accepted it and became Christians and how they
became members of God’ church. That is the teaching we want and need in the
present exigency. We shall find (as in Acts 2:
36-42; 3: 19; 8: 12 and 8: 26-39, etc.) that the gospel was preached, men heard,
believed, and were baptized (Acts 18: 8) and added by the Lord to His church. The
Epistles that follow after the book of Acts contain instructions to Christians.
As
to church-relationship - there is but one Church mentioned in the Scriptures. “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also
ye were called in one hope of your calling; one
Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through
all, and in all.” To this God will add him as He did those who were
being saved in apostolic days (Acts 2: 17). On any question the word of God will shed
true light, and as much light as is needed. So shall a man stand on a firm
rock, and be responsible directly to God alone, and deal with Him at first hand
through His word, free from all fear and bondage, except the fear of God and
the yoke of Christ, which is easy and light, and he shall find rest for his
soul. This is the exalted privilege and calling of the simple Christian.
*
* *
EMPTIED
I have no further gift, O Saviour Lord,
At Thy scarr’d feet to lay,
my love to prove;
Thou hast already commandeer’d
control
Of all the earthly functions of my love:
The earth-grave has absorbed my fairest, best,
And now my chief desire is but to be
An empty chalice by Thy love possess’d,
Perchance to win Thy smile eternally.
Oh make Thyself One Supreme, the All,
That Thou intendsdst when I
first drew breath;
And - if the prospect may my lot befall -
Live in me, till Thy life shall conquer
death.
H. H. BROWNLOW.
*
* * *
* * *
580
THE COMING
APOSTASY
By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
([PART
2]
Continued from 572)
-------
3.
The Creator (or Demiurge, as they
called him) was then an inferior and evil being. He was also the God of the
Jews, the giver of the Law and of the Old Testament.*
*
As many may not have seen the origin of
evil truly stated, and as it is deeply entwined with the present subject, I
give a brief statement of it in this note.
There
is One Being who is in every respect perfect and infinite, unchangeable,
eternal. He is the parent and author of all good: without his bestowal and
sustaining there is no good. Good then is something of a positive kind: it has a real existence,
outflowing from God and maintained by him. Of good, God is the efficient
cause. Evil, on the other hand, is negative. It is a want of excellence, and cannot flow from the Being of
perfection. As it does not come from God, it can only spring from the creature,
for there is no other source. Wherever God works there is good; wherever he
ceases to work, and leaves the creature to itself, there is evil. Hearing is
good; sight is good; they are positive excellences, and therefore from God. But deafness and blindness
are evils: they are the want of the positive excellences above-named. In a
statue, if we saw half of the face beautifully finished, and the other rough
and shapeless as it was hewn, we should say - and say rightly - ‘The beauty and positive excellence of the finished side are
owing to the skill of the artist. The roughness and shapelessness of the other
side are due to the fact that the artist has not exerted his skill on that side.’
Evil then has a deficient cause,
which lies in the creature.
This
defect of necessity belongs to
the creature. Once there was a time when nought existed but God. Then there was
nought but perfection and positive good. God might have continued this for ever,
had it pleased him. But he determined to create beings for his glory. Now, if
creatures be made, they must be dependent on their Creator: and if dependent, they must be
liable to fall, if he uphold them not. If a creature be formed, it must of necessity
be limited and changeable. God
alone is and alone can be infinitely perfect and unchangeable. An infinitely
perfect and unchangeable creature is a contradiction of ideas. It must contain
therefore within itself a reason of its liability to change from good to evil,
which is called passive power. This liability to fall does not spring
from God, and cannot be removed from a creature by any decree or power of God.
It is the glory of God, that steadfastness in goodness belongs to Him alone.
The difference arises from difference of nature, and manifests the unspeakable gulf that lies between Creator and
creature. All good in the creature springs from God’s positive will, and it may
be maintained in goodness for ever, if it please God, but the tendency
to fall away must ever remain.
Any
moral being, created finitely perfect, if God try him in equity, that is, give
him only what is required to make him accountable, and suspend the
communication of his outflowing grace - will assuredly fall. The creature’s
tendency to fall, if left free to his own will, will certainly display itself
by sinning. The germ of corruption is in every creature: if not kept back by
sovereign grace, it will show itself by open sin. But in every natural act of
sin there is something which comes from God, and is good. Thus in Adam’s eating
of the forbidden fruit, his beholding the tree, his reaching forth his hand and
taking and tasting, and swallowing it, were all, as physical acts, good:- the evil lay in the wrong manner
and motive of the acts: and
this was sin, which was entirely his own.
Thus
every moral being is equitably free to evil: sovereignly
necessitated to good. To make
God
the cause of evil is the fearful overstatement of those who discern not whence comes
evil. To make man the cause of good, arises from ignorance of the natures
of the Creator and creatures. And Manichcism or
Gnosticism errs on this very point, in not discerning the true origin of evil.
Its imagination of two Gods, the one the author of good, the other the author
of evil, is seen to be foolish, as soon as we discern that evil has no necessary existence, and therefore is not self
existent or eternal, as God (the author of good) is. Thus also we are able to
discern how everything can be foreknown and foretold by God. Everything is
either good or evil, If good it can be certainly foreknown, for it depends upon
God’s own acts of power: if evil, it springs certainly from the creature, and
has a cause which can certainly be foreknown, even his passive power or liability
of change to evil. Thus the astronomer can calculate with absolute certainty
long beforehand both the light and the darkness of an eclipse; he can tell that
wherever there is hindrance to the light, there will be darkness, and can
measure its extent: and he knows that the rest will be light.
As
matter sprang out of nothing at the pleasure of another, so if left to itself
it would again cease to be. God is, and tends to be. The creature is, but tends not to be. So is it with the
holiness of the creature. How humbly should we wait for all good from the Giver of every good and
perfect gift!
4.
Christ was the Son of the Supreme and Benevolent God, who came
to deliver men from the tyranny of the Creator, the God of the Jews.
5.
Hence it followed, that Christ, according to their theory, was neither born nor
died. For how could he, who came to deliver men from the dominion of matter,
voluntarily take upon himself that hateful thing, the cause of sin? And as he
had not a real body, he was not properly a man, and did not die; much less rise
again. The resurrection, the atonement, and the general judgment were therefore
denied.
6.
From the same principles it likewise flowed naturally, that they accounted
marriage, and wine, and animal food, evil. Denying atonement, they rejected
animal sacrifice as unworthy of a benevolent God, and refused therefore to take
away life themselves. And against marriage ‘they spoke
impiously under the pretext of continence, and blasphemed the creation and the
Demiurge, the One Almighty God, and taught that marriage was not to be
received, and that men should not introduce into the world others to be
wretched as themselves, nor supply death with food.’* The practice that resulted from such awful principles
was of different kinds.
*
Clem. Alex. Strom. Lib. iii. 6. p. 531.
Ed. Potter.
Some
lived lives of austerity and self-infliction, attempting to subdue the body and
wear it out, that the soul might be free from the chains and pollutions of
matter. Others ran to frightful lengths in licentiousness; affirming that
knowledge was everything, and that souls purified, as theirs were, by the true
knowledge of God, could not be defiled by any action, however seemingly evil it
might appear to those who were still in ignorance.
Some
have thought that the accounts given by the fathers of their lives and
practices are not to be trusted; but the New Testament describes men of just
such characters as the ecclesiastical writers of the day testify the Gnostics
to have been. Paul declares some to be magical deceivers ([see Greek …] 2 Tim. 3: 13)* as Simon of Samaria was, and as many of the Ephesians
had been: while we also find travelling exorcists there attempting to
dispossess a demoniac by the name of Jesus: Acts 19.
Titus is warned against men whose very “mind and conscience was defiled, who professed that they knew God [whence they took the title of Gnostics] but in works they denied him, being abominable, and disobedient, and to every
good work reprobate:” Titus 1: 15, 16. They were patrons of fornication and of every
evil lust (2 Peter 2.). And it seems
probable, from the apostle’s words, “by reason of whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed,” that the Gnostics really were guilty of some prodigious
acts of wickedness, which came to be imputed to the true believers (1 Peter 2: 12-15). The Lord Jesus rebukes Thyatira for doctrines
upholding uncleanness and idolatry: Rev. 2. Covetousness and hypocrisy are also imputed to
them.
*
“The seducers, … were evidently men who
dealt in magic.”
7.
From the same principles it followed that they admired and praised the
evil-doers of the Old Testament, as those who had manfully resisted the evil
Creator or God of the Jews; and Cain and Korah, and Balaam and Judas, were the
patterns they sought to follow.
8.
It was the natural consequence of the same doctrines that when Apostles came,
publishing, either by word or by their writing, the truth, that they denied the
correctness of their teaching. Paul and others were, to their eyes, Jewish teachers,
who, through prejudices of early life, had misunderstood their Master; they were the
scientific and philosophical, who were able to detect the truth, and discard
error in the mixed form in which it was presented by the half-taught. It was
against this system, rather than Romanism, that both
With
this view we shall find not only the Epistles to Timothy to be in accordance,
but the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, the Epistles to Titus, the Hebrews,
and Colossians.
But let
us examine more closely the prophecy which has been above quoted.
In
it the visible church is set forth as appointed to be “the pillar and ground of the
truth”. It was the pillar of the
truth, as supporting it, and bearing inscribed upon it, as it were, the
doctrines authorized of God. It was the ground of the truth, as staying and
steadying it against the adverse blasts of error. This testimony to the truth
it gave in two ways; first, by the sacred rites it publicly celebrated; and
secondly, by its very constitution.
In
baptism it testified the death and resurrection of the Great Founder of the
church, and the hope of the believer, as consisting in [the first]* resurrection. And in the Lord’s Supper it presented the emblems of blood shed, and
of his body bruised for sin, thus witnessing the reality of his incarnation and
death. But, moreover, it upheld, in the most solemn way, that wine is a good
creature of God, fit to be partaken of by the faithful, in direct opposition to
the Gnostic doctrines of old, revived, alas! in our own day.
[* NOTE: It
should be apparent that “the first resurrection”
(Rev. 20:
5), is both a future (John 3: 13; 2 Tim. 2: 26-18, R.V.) and SELECTIVE resurrection! It will be a resurrection of REWARD
‘out of dead
ones’ (Acts 4: 2, lit. Greek.); which will leave the ‘souls’ of the remainder of the dead, not
‘accounted worthy, to rise at that time (from
the underworld of ‘Hades’ Luke 16: 23, 30, R.V.) ‘until the thousand years is finished’ (Rev.
20: 3,
R.V.)!
See
also Matt. 16: 18; Luke 20: 35; John 20: 17ff.; Phil. 3: 1ff.; Acts 2: 27, 34. cf. Heb. 9: 27, 28; 11: 35-40; 1 Pet. 1: 5, 9; Rev. 6: 9-11, R.V.
etc.]
By
the very constitution of the church, moreover, the lawfulness of marriage was
upheld; for its elders and deacons, and widows (or deaconesses) must all either
be married or have once entered that state. Thus against deadly error, the Lord
in his mercy set a double fence, to keep his flock from the Destroyer.
*
* *
THE AGE OF
GOLD
“After the tribulation”
(Matt. 24:
29, R.V.), A reborn humanity will introduce a re-born
world. (Panton) ‘A great British statesman of the nineteenth century, John Bright, expressed it thus:- “It
may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast federation
stretching from the frozen north in unbroken line to the glowing south. I see
one people and one language, and one law and one faith, and over all that white
continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and
every clime.’
“For lo, he time is hastening on
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the ‘age’
of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Her ancients splendours fling,
And the whole earth send back a song
Which now the angels sing.”
“The kingdom of this world” - the Greek is
singular - “have become the kingdom” - the Empire, a
vast federated world under one Monarch - “of the Lord and of his Christ,
and” - [NOTE: Here the
word ‘and’ is a disjunction, which
separates the two highlighted clauses. (1)
Christ’s millennial reign upon and over this sin-cursed earth (Gen. 3: 17. cf.
Rom. 8: 19-21); from (2)
His eternal
kingdom, where]
- “he shall reign for
ever and ever” (Rev. 11: 15. [cf. Rev.
21: 1]). “The Lord shall be king over
all the earth: in that DAY” (i.e. the millennial day, 2. Pet. 3: 8, R.V. cf.
Rev. 20: 2-6, R.V.) “there shall be
one Lord and his name one” (Zech. 14: 9).
*
* * *
* * *
581
BECOMING AS
LITTLE CHILDREN
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
Childlikeness, not childishness, is our Lord’s model
for us. Paul safeguards us on the point: “When I was a child, I spake as a child” - ignorantly; “I thought as a child”
- erratically; “I understood as a child” - with small mental grasp: “now that I am become a man,
I have put away childish things” (1 Cor.
13: 11): “be not children in
mind; howbeit in malice”
- impurity - “be
ye babes, but in mind be men” (1 Cor.
14: 20).
Our
Lord always moved on a background of the infinite. He takes a lily, and unfolds
the petals of the providence of God; He sees the massive stones of the Temple,
and He depicts the last earthquakes; and he meets a little child - a lovely
little human dew-drop - and at once His thoughts are on those who will “walk with Him in white”; and He revolutionizes the thinking of the Apostles
by a revelation which is for all of us, grave, urgent, vital. “Verily I say unto you,
Except ye turn, and
become as little children, ye shall in no wise
enter into the kingdom of heaven”
(Matt. 18:
3).
For
our Lord bodily presents our model. “He called to him a little child” - old enough to be called, but young enough to be
lifted (Mark 10: 16)* - “and set him in the midst of them” (Matt. 18: 2): there - if our Lord
had never spoken another word - is the greatest: for ever, amongst us for all time,
is a mute, living symbol of the enthroned in the [millennial] Kingdom of God. “For of such,” He says, “is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19: 14). The
only record we have of Christ ever embracing anyone is His embrace of a little
child; and the child - our model - rests, happy and contented, in the
Everlasting Arms.
*
Not infants, and not children, but little
children - perhaps between the ages of three and seven - the Saviour gives as
the photograph of kingdom saints.
So
we ponder a little child. A little child is perfectly simple, without being a
simpleton: it is wide awake, and constantly learning through every sense: it is
extraordinarily open to the truth, and extraordinarily sincere: it responds
wonderfully to affection: its purity is crystalline: it is exceedingly quick to
forgive: it has not the faintest trace of worldly ambition the thought never
enters its head to doubt its father’s word: it has an awe of God, and its
conscience is singularly tender. Our Lord does not set a sinless seraph in our
midst, or a blazing angel: winsome as childhood is, and tenderly beautiful, it
has its waywardness, its tempers, its foolishness: nevertheless such are the [coming] Kingdom
saints. God wants the manlike intellect,
the childlike heart, and the godlike character and conduct.
The
Lord closes with the practical. The Apostles had been grasping for glory on the
wrong side of the grave; so He says:- “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child,
the same is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18: 4). Satan lost the highest of all created thrones
through pride: we can win the highest thrones through humility. A child is
humble; we must become humble, and this attainment, as superior to a child’s
as holiness is superior to innocence, is within our grasp. “Whosoever shall humble
himself”: self-emptied
because God-filled: it is possible not, only to become great in the
*
* *
CROWNS
No less than five crowns are offered to be won in the
Christian life-race. They are (1) The INCORRUPTIBLE
CROWN, 1 Cor. 9: 25. (2) CROWN
OF REJOICING for those who win souls, 1 Thess. 2: 19. (3)
CROWN OF GLORY, for faithful
Pastors, 1 Pet. 5:
1-4. (4) CROWN
OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 2 Tim. 4: 7, 8. (5) CROWN OF LIFE, Jas.
1: 12; Rev. 2: 10. Moreover, these Crowns betoken a
Kingdom. They are won by enduring,
obeying, witnessing and suffering - and for those who thus overcome there are
the wonderful promises of sharing the First Resurrection, Phil. 3: 10, 11;
reigning with Christ in His millennial glory and through eternity, 2 Tim. 2: 12, with Rev. 22: 3-5; also the promises to the Overcomers in the
letters to the seven Churches in Rev. 2.
and 3.
- C. S. UTTING
*
* *
* * *
*
582
CHURCH
FATHERS ON THE KINGDOM
St. Barnabas in the first century thus comments upon these words
of Moses:- “‘And God made in six days the work of his hands, and he
finished on the seventh day, and he rested in it, and sanctified it.’ This it signifies, that the Lord God will
finish all things in six thousand years. For a day with him is as a thousand
years; as he himself testifieth, saying, ‘Behold this day shall be as a thousand years.’ Therefore, children, in six days, that
is, in six thousand years, shall all things be consummated. ‘And he rested the seventh day’: this signifies, that when his Son shall
come, and shall abolish the season of the Wicked one, and shall judge the
ungodly, and shall change the sun and the moon and the stars, then he shall
rest gloriously in that seventh day” (Epist.
cap. 15).
Justin Martyr, in the second century, declared the Millennium to be
the Catholic doctrine of his time. “I, and as many as are orthodox Christians in all respects,
do acknowledge that there shall be a resurrection of the flesh [meaning the
First Resurrection] and a thousand years in Jerusalem, rebuilt,
and adorned, and enlarged [referring
to the New Jerusalem] as the prophet Ezekiel and Isaiah, and
others unanimously attest.”
Afterwards he subjoins:- “A certain man among us, whose name was John, one of the
apostles of Christ, in a revelation made to him did prophesy that the faithful
believers in Christ should live a thousand years in the New Jerusalem, and
after these, should be the General Resurrection and Judgment” (Dial. cum Tryph.,
pp. 313, 315); which is an early attestation of the genuineness and
authenticity of the Book of Revelation; for Justin was converted to
Christianity about thirty years after the death of John, at which time,
probably, many were alive who had known and remembered the Apostle.
Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, professeth
belief in the kingdom promised to the saints upon earth; their resurrection for
a thousand years; in their living in the New Jerusalem, and therein enjoying
all spiritual delights; and in the destruction of the world and the general
after the thousand years.
Lactantius, at the beginning of the fourth century, is very
copious upon this subject in the seventh book of his Divine Institutions. He says:- “Because all the works of God were finished in
six days, it is necessary that the world should remain in this state six ages;
that is, six thousand years.” And again:- “Because, having finished the works, He rested
on the seventh day, and blessed it, it is necessary that at the end of the six
thousandth year all wickedness should be abolished out of the earth, and
justice should reign for a thousand years.” He also says:- “When the Son of
God shall have destroyed injustice, and shall have restored the just to life,
he shall be conversant among men a thousand years, and shall rule them with
most just government. At the same time the Prince of devils shall be bound in
chains, and shall be in custody the thousand years of the heavenly kingdom,
while justice shall reign in the world, lest he should attempt any evil against
the people of God. When the thousand years of the kingdom, that is, seven
thousand years, shall draw to a conclusion, Satan shall be loosed again; and
when the thousand years shall be completed, then shall be the second and public
resurrection of all. This is the doctrine of the holy prophets which we
Christians follow, this is our wisdom.”
Irenaeus, A.D. 178, in his fifth book against heresies (chap. 30) says:- “When Anti-Christ, reigning three years and
months, shall have laid waste all things in this world, and have sat in the
temple of Jerusalem, then shall the Lord come from heaven in the clouds, in the
glory of his Father, casting him and all that obey him into the lake of fire;
but procuring, or bringing with him, unto the just, the times of the kingdom;
that is, a
rest, the seventh day, sanctified, and restoring to Abraham the promise of the
inheritance; in which kingdom, says the Lord, ‘many
shall come from the east and from the west, and
sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’”
Cyprian, A.D. 252, in his Exhortation to Martyrdom, Sec. II, p. 179, says:- “In the creation of the world seven days were spent, and in those seven days seven thousand years were figuratively included.”
*
* *
THE SECOND ADVENT
“How
grave, in these earth-shocking days, is
silence [within the Churches] on the Second Advent. Two ministers, long friends, met one day after being
apart for some time. They discussed their churches; then began to talk on
present day events. Said one, - ‘I don’t preach on the Lord’s return at all; my congregation doesn’t like it. I hear
you may have many against you for preaching it. I told you years ago there’s no
use setting people against you,’ ‘My
friend,’ said the other man, ‘by God’s grace, I preach
His whole word, and thereby deliver my soul; and if the Lord Jesus comes in my
lifetime on one who is left behind* will
be able to say (as many will, of some ministers) that I did not give out the truth and warn them of what’s ahead. How about
you?’”
[* NOTE: 1 Thess. 4: 17, R.V. Because the Second Advent of our Lord Jesus, cannot occur until AFTER the Great Tribulation, the words “we that are LEFT” - that is, ‘left behind’ - “unto the coming of the LORD,” can only refer to those who were alive prior to the selective rapture of those who “may prevail to escape all these things” - that is, the Great Tribulation persecutions under Antichrist - “that shall come to pass” (Luke 21: 36.ff., R.V.)! See also our Lord’s conditional element for His promised ‘escape’ in Rev. 3: 10: “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience” - that is, God’s patient endurance of human depravity and the apostasy by many within His Churches - “I also will keep thee” - those who, will have fulfilled His specified conditions for their escape - “from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come UPON THE WHOLE WORLD, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” R.V. See also Acts 20: 25-31, R.V.]
ARE WE EATING OUR MORSEL ALONE?
If I have eaten my morsel alone
The Patriarch spoke in scorn;
What would He think of the Church, were He shown
Heathendom, huge, forlorn,
Godless, Christless, with soul unfed,
While the Church’s ailment is fulness of bread,
Eating her morsel alone?
I am debtor alike to the Jew and the Greek,
The mighty Apostle cried;
Traversing continents, souls to seek,
For the love of the Crucified.
Centuries, centuries since have fled;
Millions are famishing, we have bread,
But we eat our morsel alone!
Ever of them who have largest dower
Shall He ever require the more,
Ours is affluence, knowledge, power,
Ocean from shore to shore;
And East and West in our ears have said,
Give us, give us your living Bread,
Yet we eat our morsel alone!
Freely as ye have received, so give,
He bade, Who hath given us all.
How shall the soul in us longer live,
Deaf to their starving call,
For whom the blood of the Lord was shed,
And His body broken to give them Bread
If we eat our morsel alone?
- THE BISHOP OF
*
* * *
* * *
583
THE NEXT ACT
IN THE DRAMA*
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
[* From ‘Dawn’ Vol. 13. No. 8 (No. 152) November 16th, 1936.
A remarkable forecast of what we should expect to see
happening in the near future!]
It is remarkable that even unconverted men - His words
are addressed to ‘the multitudes’ - our Lord
reproaches for their inability to read the signs of the times. “When ye see a cloud rising in
the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower: ye know
how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that ye know not how to interpret” - to analyze so as to forecast - “this time?” (Luke 12:
54) - the signals of your own epoch. A lurid
sunset, a stormy morrow: what is our horizon and the forecast our Lord thus
justifies us in making, as the sun of our age goes down?
DICTATORS
One
huge storm-cloud - probably the greatest now on the horizon - blackens the
heavens. We are confronted with a startling revolution in the great powers of
the world; a world-revolution which has produced autocrats who correspond, in a
manner never yet known in history, with the autocrats revealed in the
Apocalypse immediately before Antichrist. The Apostle describes them thus:- “Ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet but [who] receive authority as kings” (Rev. 17: 12). The Dictators who have suddenly sprung upon
the horizon exactly fit the description: no monarchs could have greater power; yet not one of them is crowned.
In 1917, Stalin; in 1922, Mussolini; in 1925, Kemal;
in 1926, Pilsudski*;
in 1933, Hitler and Schuschnigg; in 1936, Metaxas and Franco. No man is yet authorized by God to say
that these two groups of Dictators - the Apocalyptic and the modern - are one
and the same, but circumstances may prove it at any moment. Taken in
conjunction with the other portents of a rapidly dying age, it is difficult to
resist the conclusion that they are.
* Stalin’s succession to Lenin proves that the death of a modern dictator
- as Pilsudski - is not necessarily the collapse of
the dictatorship.
DESPOTS
The
Apocalyptic dictatorships are mentally
one; so also are the modern totalitarian States: “they have one mind” - one
philosophy, one mentality, one outlook.
In the words of Mr. Christopher Dawson
(Religion and the Modern State, pp. 106, 129):- “The
modern State aspires more and more to govern the life of the individual, to
mould his thought by education and propaganda, and to make him the obedient
instrument of its will. The old individualist ideal of the State as a policeman
whose business it is to clear the field for individual initiative is a thing of
the past. The State of the future will not be a policeman, but an all-powerful,
omnipotent, human god - and a very jealous god at that. We see one form of this
ideal in
* That which creates modern dictatorship can spring up like lightning. “The sudden rise of ‘Rex’ in
TYRANNY
The
Apocalypse implies that the power lodged in the Crownless Kings is pure
despotism; for when the last crisis comes, “they give” - apparently
without any authorization but their own - “their power and authority unto the beast.” This absolute despotism is a mark of all. “The fundamental resemblance of the Russian, Italian, and
German systems emerges in practice, and all three turn out to be party
dictatorships which, having invested their own authority with absolute and
unchallengeable political, moral, and religious sanction, have enormous and
unprecedented arbitrary and tyrannical power. All three are fundamentally and
implacably hostile to that individual freedom without which Western
civilization, as we understand it, is inconceivable” (Manchester Guardian, weekly ed., Aug. 14, 1936). The
Ten Autocrats act alone. Mr. O. W. Reigel (Mobilizing for
Chaos p. 167) sums it
up thus:- “The
world is moving rapidly into an era of universal obstruction of the free flow
of information and opinion. In the name of Nationalism freedom of speech and
the press has already been denied to nine-tenths of the world’s population.”
A LEAGUE
But
the Apocalypse reveals them as a league acting together. In Lord Allenby’s
words:- “Man has become a world-citizen”; and
the Apocalypse discloses exactly that League of Nations toward which the world
strains, yet the attainment of which will not be the present League’s original
ideal. “They have
one mind”: it is an international league: it is a world-unanimity which is everywhere assumed at this moment as
the only possible basis of peace. A few months ago the League of Nations
Secretariat moved into its magnificent new home at
A
WORLD-STATE
So
the Apocalyptic Kings accomplish the very solution of the world-problem which
is inevitable.* Mr. H. G. Wells (The American
Magazine, Aug., 1934) says:- “A world-state
in the making. A time is coming when we will say ‘to the devil with parties and
nations’. They do not meet the needs and aims of this new humanity, with its
preposterously enlarged powers and scope. For it becomes plainer every day that
human affairs must fall into irremediable disorder and disaster if an adequate
new modus
vivendi
is not achieved.” And if
these be the Apocalyptic Dictators, the
new world-order is to be produced by criminals committing all power to a
super-criminal. Mr. George Seldes says (Sawdust Caesar,
p. 16):- “Lenin, Kemal, Pilsudski, in fact most of the modem dictators, have a long
police record; but with Mussolini almost every year is marked by a deed of
violence.” His chief rival is
Stalin. Mr. John Gunther
writes (Inner Europe, p. 435):- “Both Hitler and Mussolini have seen the inside of jails; but
Stalin was much more real a jailbird.” Criminals endowed with colossal power, will create the new world-state.
* If the Ten Toes of Daniel
(2: 42)
are identical with the Ten Kings of the Apocalypse, the latter will probably be
within the old Roman Empire; but, qualifying this, we must remember that all
the Four Empires, including the Roman, were universal de jure. (Dan.
2: 38, 6: 25; Luke 2: 1.
etc.) though not de facto and it is
certain that the Roman Antichrist’s rule
will be universal (Rev. 13: 3). “An immense body of opinion in
COLLECTIVE
SECURITY
The
Apocalypse extraordinarily stresses the unanimity of the Dictators; three times
it is named; and since sin is usually violently disruptive, and men dissolve in
passions of hate and bloodshed, it is carefully pointed out that this unanimity
is God-created:- “for God did put into their hearts TO COME TO ONE MIND.”
Circumstances are compelling exactly that. For not only are the modern
Dictators of one mental type - absolute, merciless, godless - but their
conception of a totalitarian State must, in logic, end at last in a
totalitarian World. The ideal of all opposition stamped out, all thought
State-born and State-controlled, all religion centred in the State, is an ideal
as applicable to a World-State as to an individual community; and when it is
realized that, the world being what it is, in no other way can ‘collective security’ be produced, the Ten Autocrats,
already morally and fundamentally one, hand over their combined authority to
the Dictator in Rome, so producing the world-state at last. In a jungle of wild beasts there is no
solution of the war-problem except the enthronement of one Beast as absolute
over all.
WAR ON
CHRIST
The
moral foundations of the Dictatorships already reveal that their goal is one
with the Apocalyptic Dictators “These shall war against the Lamb.” The Times (April 3. 1936) has this remarkable
unveiling of the immoral foundations of the coming world-state:- “The tendency to exalt the State which has been so marked on
the Continent since the War, and the accompanying tendency to personify the
State in a dictator, have naturally brought back into vogue the study of Machiavelli, whose Prince is
the prototype of all such dictators. It is significant that Mussolini as a young man made a deep
study of Machiavelli’s Prince, which might be called the statesman’s vade
mecum, and that again to
quote the Duce’s words, Machiavelli’s doctrine ‘is
more living to-day than it was four centuries ago.’ ‘If all rulers were good,’
writes Machiavelli, ‘you ought to keep your word; but since they are dishonest, and do not keep faith with you, you in return need not keep faith with them.’
It is not only significant, but very ominous, that this doctrine is being so
widely preached in the
*
A Communist dictatorship in
THE ADVENT
Is
the completion of the Ten Dictators, and their joint action in re-creating the
*
* * *
* * *
584
OUR REACTION
TO THE WORD OF GOD
By D. M. Panton. B.A.
The parable of the Sower is in such exact accord with
facts of life that a Christian teacher, if he had to summarize in terms of
agriculture what he has seen throughout decades of teaching, would have to
invent the parable to express the facts. This is the very first of our Lord’s
parables; it is one of the few the literal interpretation of which is given us
by the Saviour Himself; and so simple, so obvious, so convincing is it that
Jesus says, - “Know
ye not [do ye not understand] this parable? and how shall ye know all parables?” (Mark 4: 13). And the truth of it can be put with extreme
simplicity:- motives, sown in the heart, create action; and divine motives
create a divine life.
Now the first immense truth that we get is that there
is a pre-established harmony between Scripture and the human heart. “The seed,” our Lord says, “is THE WORD OF GOD” (Luke 8: 11).* Where, in
the totally distinct parable of the Tares, the seeds are ‘the children of the Kingdom’, our Lord, as the sole regenerator, says (Matt. 13: 37):- “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;” but where it is solely the distributing of the Word
of God, and the reaction of the human mind to the Scripture, this is nowhere
stated: the sower can be an evangelist, or pastor, or teacher, or colporteur ,
or a worker in the Sunday School or on the street or in the home. “Paul planted,” he says, “and Apollos watered.” The whole and sole emphasis is on the seed. The Seed is the Word of
God, and the Word of God only: all error, therefore, which the human sower may
plant, all seed not the Word of God verbally or in substance, is here
completely ignored: the parable is solely the reaction of all minds to the Holy
Scriptures, whether those Scriptures be heard or read. “The field is the world”; and revealed truth is designed for all men, and is
to be sent and offered to all.
* The Word of God is defined in Matthew
(13: 19)
as ‘the word of the
kingdom’; for the kingdom in mystery, the Church, and the kingdom manifestation, our Lord’s Advent and [Millenial] Reign, together compose ‘the whole counsel of God,’ involving
and embodying all revelation, but especially the seed sent forth since
Pentecost.
Four groups, and four only - four is the world-number
- cover the whole of humanity; and the first is soil which rejects the seed in toto; the hard, trampled, exposed pathway on which some of
the seed falls; and since no seed germinates in it, it is all Scripture-hearers or
Scripture-readers that are lost. “Those by the wayside are they that have heard” - the Word of God has reached them: “then cometh the devil and
taketh away the word from their heart, THAT THEY MAY NOT BELIEVE AND BE SAVED” (Luke 8: 12). No revealed truth whatever enters such
hearts: therefore no saving truth: therefore all such souls are lost. So we are
left with a second tremendous truth:- that man’s heart without the Holy
Scriptures, is - Godward - perfectly barren.
The
next two groups cover a vast section of those who hear the truth and believe
it; living plants, made alive by the germinated seed; yet, in the harvest, both
these groups are found without fruit. The first reads like a photograph. “They that have been sown upon
the rocky places, when they have heard the word,
straightway receive it with joy; and they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while
then, when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, straightway THEY STUMBLE” (Mark 4: 16). The particular [accountability] truth, or
truths, has never ‘taken root’.
They have not root in themselves; that is, the defect is in them: either they never mastered the truths
they have now abandoned - there was no depth of conviction; or else their own
characters are feeble and volatile, and what they once grasped with joy they
now relax in gloom. Their root is in a
favourable environment, not in themselves; in excitement, in Christian
encouragement, in prosperity. Paul sketches similar characters:- “Tossed to and fro and carried
about with every wind of doctrine, by the
sleight of men” - the jugglery of
controversial conjurors - “in craftiness, after the wiles
of error” (Eph. 4: 14). Probably tens
of thousands of [regenerate] believers to-day (including Modernists, though by no
means Modernists alone) can say with a church member known to the writer:- “I have lost all my beliefs except belief in my Saviour”:
all the lovely early bloom, in its joyous springtime, had - as the Saviour
says- ‘withered’. * And the
reason is given. “When tribulation” - the word derives from the ‘threshing-roller,’ the ‘sifting’ of wheat (Luke 22: 31) - “or persecution ariseth
because
of the word” - the [‘word of the kingdom’ (Matt.
13: 19,
R.V.), and the]
unpopularity, or even danger, of the [accountability] truth - “straightway he
stumbleth” (Matt. 13: 21). The stumbler in the race
is the runner who loses the ‘prize’.**
Obedience is always costly, and the greater the obedience the greater the cost. So it is the warning of Hebrews (2: 1):- “Therefore we
ought give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away from them.”
* Professor William James, quoting the letter of a
correspondent, gives (in his Varieties of
Religious Experience) an
example that could be indefinitely multiplied. His correspondent describes how
a living faith which had been a tower of strength and a well of life to him,
gradually left him. “A blank was there,” he
writes, “instead of it. I couldn’t find anything. Now,
at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting into connection with it has
entirely left me; and I have to confess that a great help has gone out of my
life. Life has become curiously dead and indifferent.” All apostates fall under this heading,
whether temporary like Peter, or permanent like Judas.
[**
See 1 Cor. 9: 24, ff. Cf.
2 Tim. 2:
4-13; and
keep in mind the Greek word ‘aionian’
in verse 10 should, in this context, be
translated ‘age-lasting’! “Therefore I undergo All things on account of the
The
third group is no less intensely realistic. “They that are sown among the thorns are they that have heard
the word, and the cares of the world, and the deceitfulness riches, and
the lusts of other things entering in” - after the Word has sprung with lovely promise - “choke the word” - the old convictions survive, but become
inoperative: as Wickliffe translates
it, “strangle it”
- “and it becometh unfruitful” (Mark 4: 19). It becometh unfruitful, for in the early
stages there was fruit: absorbing anxieties, or else worldly success, or else
the passion for other things - and there are a thousand such - than the [belief in
the Divine promise of the] coming of
the King and the Kingdom, bring it about that the grain never ripens. The second group were fruitless through external
difficulties - unpopularity, ostracism,
even danger to life: the third group, through internal passions - anxiety, covetousness, and countless other lusts.* In the words of
* “The love of money is the root” - here is one thorn-root - “of all kind of evil, which
some reaching after have been led astray from the faith and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6: 10) - here are the thorns.
Whether
or not we may press the numerical proportions given in the Parable it is
impossible to say; but it is at least very suggestive that, in our Lord’s
statement, only one in every four
who hears, and only one in every three who believes, bears fruit. Christian
fruit - another enormous lesson of the parable - is simply Scripture reproduced
in life. “That in
the good ground, these are such as in an honest
and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast” - the Greek word implies so holding a thing that it does not run away
from us: truth can be slippery - “and BRING FORTH FRUIT
with patience” (Luke 8: 15). If we do not grasp the truth, and retain it, it
passes: but truth retained in unencumbered soil, infallibly fruits. “These neither
misconceive the true genius and character of the Gospel calling, as a scheme of
discipline and probation, by which virtue is to be made perfect through
suffering, like converts of the second class: nor shrink from its personal
duties, and give it a secondary place in their thoughts and affections, like
those of the third: but are ready to endure all things, even the loss of life;
and ready to sacrifice all things, even themselves, their dearest appetites and
passions” (Greswell).
So
now we see in all its clearness, the priceless facts which our Lord unfolds. (1) The reaction of the soil to the seed
is a perfect revelation of the soil: no test for analyzing character is more
subtle or more searching than our reaction to the Word of God. It is only the
burning conviction that creates the glowing life. (2) “The seed is received as each man has
ears to hear” (Alford). The
only seed is the Word of God; and each seed - that is, each Scriptural truth -
bears its own fruit, fruit which is
impossible if that particular truth is not planted in the mind. A seed may
be more, or less, vigorous, and therefore more, or less, fruitful - that is, a
truth, equally accepted by different believers, may have widely different
effects; but also, as covering the whole ground, the fewer seeds accepted, the
narrower the harvest. It is the amount
of truth we absorb, and the amount of truth we retain, that decides our harvest.
Simple, saving truth produces simple, elementary [and eternal] salvation;
but God’s Word is a vast mass of sixty-six books, and each truth produces a
fruitfulness of its own. Therefore (3)
the glorious fact stands forth that, as that life will be fullest of
fruit whose heart is fullest of Scripture - Scripture first studied, then
believed, then practised - so complete fruitfulness is made possible for every believer - a
hundredfold, not thirty-fold - by complete
obedience to
all Scripture. All of us can become ‘living epistles’.
So
we reach the vital point. What controls our reception of the seed ? The Lord
says nothing of subtlety of intellect, or depth of learning: for appropriating
divine truth the decisive qualities are
not mental at all, but moral. “Such as in AN HONEST AND GOOD HEART hold it fast”
(Luke 8: 15).
“It is a description,” says Greswell, “familiar to classical readers as the received formula among
the Greeks for moral excellence.”
The first quality, ‘honesty,’ means straight
vision, an immediate acceptance of
unpalatable truth, a refusal to have
any axe to grind, perfect openness;
our Saviour’s ‘single
eye’ which is consequently ‘full of light’. The second quality, ‘goodness’, is a heart bent on all that is right and divine. “The expression an ‘honest and good
heart’ conveys to the idea of ingenuousness,
nobleness of purpose, united goodness” (Alford). Our character and life are
ultimately the sole evidence of a good and honest heart ; and the highest holiness
is the closest incarnation of the Book. Therefore the golden words of President Woodrow Wilson to all sowers:- “Give
men the Bible unadulterated, pure, unaltered, cheapened, and then see it work
its wholesome work through the whole nature. It forms a part of the warp and
woof a man’s life.” For the soil does not change the seed, except to
develop it; but the seed [when cultivated by the Word of God] does the
miracle - it turns dust into fruit.
*
* *
SPIRITUALISM
IN
A
few weeks ago occurred the forty-fourth annual Convention of the National
Spiritualist Association, which counts 500 churches and 40,000 of the 200,000
believers in spiritism
Organized
in 1893, the Association has been the most active force in Spiritualism in the
country. Its competitor is the International General Assembly of Spiritualists,
an offshoot of the Association, which claims 200 churches.
-------
TEACH US TO
PRAY
“Lord, teach us to pray” is perhaps the best prayer any of us
can offer, for if we really know how to pray, the secret will solve every
problem and bring relief from every trying situation. God teaches us to pray by
the very trials that seem to great for us to bear. Prayer is a real spiritual
process, the birth-pangs of a new creation, the soul travail out of which comes
some great and gracious thing born out of the Holy Ghost. Our best prayers are
often inarticulate, mysterious, and only vaguely understood even by us. “We know not what to prayer for as we ought, but the Spirit himself helpeth our infirmities and maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Often when
our heart is crushed with anguish, and our case seems really lost, we are just
ready to emerge into the light of some new and glorious day. Oftentimes our
best prayer is just to yield ourselves to the burden which is depressing and
oppressing us, and cry, Lord, I do not understand, but I take all that Thou art
asking and pray in blindness and confidence “Thy will
be done.”
- A. B. SIMPSON.
*
* * *
* * *
585
ABUNDANT
ENTRANCE
By Robert Govett, M.A.
“And for this very reason, throwing into it all
diligence, add
to your faith virtue, and to
virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to
temperance patience,
and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness,
and to brotherly kindness love” (2 Pet. 1: 5).
The reason for diligence here mentioned is the gracious
preparative means which God has provided. ‘As he has
done so much, do you sympathize with his mind by holy diligence. That you may
escape the evil of the world, and grow in grace, is God’s design. With this end
also set before your view, tend towards it. You have faith, and are justified
by the righteousness of another. But faith is sanctifying as well as justifying. It is designed to introduce into the soul all other graces.’
In
the verses which follow, the sacred writer confirms the necessity of these
tempers by exhibiting their present benefit to the possessor, and their bearing
on the admission to the [Lord’s
coming] kingdom. The same truth is further sustained by a view
of the ill consequences where they are wanting.
“For if these things be in you
and abound, they constitute you neither idle nor
unfruitful under*
the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
* Literally, “unto.”
Advance
in these graces is the proof that you are not idle as servants, nor unfruitful
as land. The knowledge of Jesus is practical, and is designed so to be. In
answer to the deposit committed, a return from man is required. Thus the
faithful servants of the talents trade with what is committed, and enter at
length into the joy of their Lord. Thus Paul compares the Christian, as we have
seen, to land, from which, in answer to the heavenly gifts of rain and
sunshine, and the earthly cultivation of the husbandman, fruits are expected: Heb. 6. This
activity and fruitfulness are to be yielded to the perception of what the Lord
Jesus is, and what are his demands on us, as our Redeemer, Intercessor,
Teacher, and Lord.
“For he to whom these things
belong not is blind, short-sighted,
having forgotten the cleansing away of his
former sins.”
The
believer who abides content with the knowledge and grace which he obtained at
the first, is now compared with the advancing Christian. He who is not adding
to his knowledge and grace is dull of comprehension and vision in things
spiritual, whether in the future or the past. He is regardless of prophecy. He
has forgotten the forgiveness of sins vouchsafed at his first entrance on the
faith, of which immersion and its total cleansing is a type.
Hence,
in our day, so many are ever questioning whether they are the children of God
or no. That the person spoken of is a believer, is certain, from his having received
entire forgiveness at the commencement of his career. The progressing Christian
is a student of prophecy. His eye is on the end of these things; on the ‘crown’ and the ‘kingdom’ which
the Father has prepared. He sees that the cleansing from sin is not the end of
the Christian course, but only its starting point. Obedience has present
advantages which the careless, sensual, impatient, selfish, or worldly saint
cannot enjoy. In the state here depicted, behold the consequence of that
principle of God’s dealings, which our Saviour so often announced. “He that hath, to him shall be given; but he
that hath not, from him shall be taken away even
that which he seemeth to have.”
“Wherefore, brethren, give the more
diligence to make sure your calling and election; for
if ye do these things ye shall never stumble. For thus the entrance into the eternal
kingdom of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ shall
be richly added to you.”
The
saint is here instructed to be diligent, because his calling and election depend
on it. But how can this be true?
1. Is not the election to eternal life already fixed? Was it not decided before the
foundation of the world? Yes. Was it not of God’s sovereignty, before the doing
of aught, good or evil, on our part? Yes.
2. It is of calling and election, then, to something else that the
apostle is here speaking. What that is, has been often before made apparent. It
is expressed by the apostle himself, a little lower down. He is speaking in
reference to the
To
this [future, messianic
and millennial] kingdom [all regenerate] believers have a call. “Walk worthy of God, who calleth* you unto his
kingdom and glory:” 1 Thess. 2: 12. The
choice by Christ of some for this
kingdom, is seen in the three taken up into the Mount of Transfiguration.
This choice is “according
to works”. Believers are the more called to diligence concerning
this, by a consideration of the future results of such diligence. Our election to the kingdom
depends upon it. A sense of self-interest, then, is to quicken our steps.
* [See Greek …] Our translators
here, as in many other places, have followed the Vulgate - Qui vocavit.
Thus
their calling and election would be made “sure”.
1. It would be made sure before God. This is another view of the same point which the apostle
treated of in Hebrew 6. God will, at length,
set among the seed of Abraham, to whom he has bound himself by oath, those who
are thus diligent.
2. It would be made sure to themselves. They would, by holy conduct, at length attain to
confident assurance of admission to the [promised] kingdom.
This answers to the full assurance of hope, which the apostle in the Hebrews
also speaks of, as the result of diligence. The assurance in our breasts is,
when genuine, the reflex of the determination on God’s part. Our confidence,
then, in regard of this should be a progressive thing, increasing with our
spiritual growth.
Two
beneficial results of this diligence are then stated as motives thereto.
1. “For if ye do these things ye shall never stumble.”
Stability
in our Christian course is the promised result of advancement in grace. Not a few Christians,
and those of long standing in the faith, do stumble and fall foully. Their fall
resounds far and wide. The ungodly triumph. The cause of Christ sustains a serious
blow. Those, then, who so fall, are not the advancing Christians here spoken
of. They had been for some time declining in knowledge and grace. At length
came the temptation which tripped their feet. After some time ceasing to ply
the oar, the boat was dashed by the current against the shore.
The
believer’s every fall, though it may not exclude positively and absolutely from
the [coming millennial] kingdom,
renders his entrance uncertain. It is just the contrary to the rendering it sure. The one
who has so fallen may recover himself, and be roused to extra diligence for the
future. But repeated falls must strongly tend to exclude finally from the
promised glory. Hence Paul says of himself, “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and preserve me
unto his
heavenly kingdom.”
2. But a second benefit accrues. “For thus shall be
richly added to you the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ.” The
force of a proceeding word is missed by the English reader, in consequence of
our translators giving to the same Greek word two renderings in English. “Add to your faith virtue.” “So
the entrance shall be richly added to you.” To diligence God will furnish “the abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom” of Christ. Christ has two kingdoms; the
temporary one of the thousand years, and the eternal one. The temporary one is the porch into the eternal one. All believers will obtain an entrance into
the eternal one. But to obtain a part in the temporary, is to have the rich or abundant entrance into the eternal. Now those who never stumble - [or,
who stumble and are allowed (after repentance
and restoration) to continue] in the race
shall be chosen into the kingdom of the thousand years, and thus obtain the abundant entrance into the final kingdom. This will be
missed by those who only enter on the kingdom in its everlasting state.
“Wherefore I will always be
ready* to remind you of these things, though ye
know them,
and are established in the present truth. But I esteem it right as
long as I am in this
tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance. Knowing that the
putting off of my tabernacle is speedy, as also our Lord Jesus
Christ
manifested to me. But I give diligence, that ye may have it
(in your power) even always to make mention of
these things after my decease.”
*
For
[see the Greek text…] Tischendorf
and Lachmann adopt the more
difficult reading, which I suppose to be the true one. The [Latin] Vulgate has Incipiam.
So
important is this point, that the apostle, as long as he lived, would not cease
to insist on it. Though those to whom he addressed himself knew the truth here
enforced, and held it as of primary moment, Peter would still be careful to
repeat it. Truths known need exhortation to keep them before us. But especially is this true of the importance of good works, and their
connection with our rapture into millennial glory. Now if they required
a frequent reminding of it who were established in it, how much more do we to
whom it is a new thing? When so many
truths of deepest import have slipped away from the churches of Christ, how
should they be otherwise than feeble? How should Christians be especially holy, when God’s
spurs to holiness are forgotten?
*
* *
CATHOLICISM AND THE ADVENT
Dear
Sir,
Having just returned from a tour
through
Lectures
are being given at the Sorbonne, Paris, by Professor
Chasles, a Roman Catholic archaeologist; and a
large hall is filled an hour before the time. The Professor exhorts his
audience to bring their Bibles, so as to verify his statements; and at the
close he gives a sunnary of his lecture, with all
Scripture texts. Some of these are before me as I write, and one sheet contains
over 40 references to Scripture. He speaks of the return of the
Jews to
It
is not perhaps known that the new Catholic version, the Crampon, is a very good
one, and often word for word like the Legond; only
containing of course the Apocrypha, rejected by Jerome and the Jews. The cost
is 40 francs against the 10 francs of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Another
instance of God blessing His Word was told me. A French gentleman of my
acquaintance was travelling in an empty train in
I am, etc.
W. MARRIOTT.
*
* * *
* * *
586
THE PARABLE
OF THE
SHEEP AND
GOATS
By Robert
Govett, M.A.
[PART 1]
This
passage of our Lord’s discourse on Olivet (Matt.
25: 31)
is currently interpreted of the final judgment, in which is supposed that men
of every dispensation, the living and the dead, will receive their doom, and at
the same time the earth will be burnt up. I take the statement given by comment
of the Religious Tract Society as affording exemplification of this. “We have here a most sublime description of the judgment day.
There are some passages in it that are parabolical; but there is no similitude
carried through the discourse, therefore it is rather to be called a
delineation of the final judgment, than
a parable.” “The judgment of the great day will
be a general
judgment. All must appear
before Christ’s tribunal; all of every age of the world, from the
beginning to the end of time;- all, of every place on earth, even from the
remotest corners of the world.”
But against such a view there lie many and fatal
objections, such as the following:-
1. The subjects of this judgment are “all the nations” [See the Greek]. The word when plural is generally in St. Matthew’s
gospel (which is that for the Jews) and rightly translated, “Gentiles,” 4: 15; 6: 32; 10: 5, 18; 12: 18, 21; 20: 19, 25. And
here also it would be rightly rendered, “All the Gentiles.” As the same expression is in another place rendered -
“Praise the Lord,
all ye Gentiles:” Rom. 15: 11; Acts 15: 17.
But in every case in which the expression is used, it signifies divisions
of living men - “Ye shall be hated by all
the nations.” “This gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world, for a
witness unto all the nations:” Matt. 24: 9, 14; Acts 17: 26; Rev. 12: 5. And the reason of this is evident, for at the
resurrection the earthly and fleshly distinctions of nations cease among those
that rise. And hence in the resurrection and judgment of the dead,
there is no mention of “nations:” Rev. 20. But
here no hint of the resurrection is given, and much less of the destruction of
the earth by fire. I conclude, therefore, that this is the judgment of the living alone;
the judgment of one of the three great divisions in which the sons of men are
now regarded before God - “The Jews, the Gentiles, and the
2. It cannot be the final judgment; for that is after the
kingdom of the Son of man is past: this before it is begun - “Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom.” The kingdom here cannot be any kingdom after the
destruction of the earth; for that is no kingdom of the Son of man. When
death, the last enemy, is destroyed, Christ renders back to the Father the
power He has received; His kingdom as Son of man closes, and God
becomes all in all: 1 Cor. 15. And the final judgment is that of the dead alone, as
this is of the living only.
3. It cannot be the final judgment; for Satan is not yet cast into
eternal fire. It must, therefore, be the time when Satan is bound and cast into
the bottomless pit, just before the commencing reign of Christ: Rev. 20: 1. It cannot be any time after the thousand years; for then, Satan, having again deceived the nations
of the earth, and thereby displayed his incurable malignity and crime, is cast
into “the lake of
fire:” Rev.
20: 10.
But at the time contemplated by the parable it is only “prepared for the devil and his angels.” It cannot be any time before
the commencement of the millennium, for till then Satan is free (1 Pet. 5: 8); and therefore the kingdom of peace and glory
cannot be come.
4. That the
1.
The first resurrection is of the righteous
alone; the wicked dead not being raised at the same time: Rev. 20: 4-6. The raised
saints are therefore a body by themselves, purely consisting of [‘accounted worthy’] believers in Jesus; and therefore they do not answer
to the assembly of the parable, which, when first brought before Christ, is
composed of a confused
mixture of good and evil.
2.
The rule of judgment to them that have heard Jesus’ words and believe not, is
different. “The word
that I have spoken unto him, the same shall
judge him in the last day:” John 12: 47, 48. But
here is no question of faith, or of any word of Christ. The same standard of
judgment, as the Scripture informs us,
will not suit those that have lived under a revelation from God, and those who
have not:
3.
The time of the election of the righteous of the parable is not that of the
church. The church was chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world:” Eph. 1: 4. The kingdom prepared for these was, “from (or since) the foundation
of the world” (Greek).
4.
Another insuperable difficulty is introduced by this theory. How is it possible
that the righteous should be ignorant both
of the judge and of his principles of decision? “When saw we thee?” is their question. Then these cannot be believers; for it
is written - “The
world seeth me no more, but ye see me:” John 14: 19. None of these can be the servants of the
talents - “Lord,
I knew thee.” The question of each of these parties - “When saw we thee?” is an indirect denial that they ever had beheld the
person who addressed them. So mighty a potentate they dare not flatly
contradict - but they ask for an explanation. Now this could not be true of all believers
in Jesus. Many believed in Jesus of those who saw Him, and some could not
affirm that they had never seen His individual self hungry, and had relieved
Him. Such a denial could not be made by “Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna, the wife
of Chuza, Herod’s
steward, and Susanna, and many others, which
ministered unto him of their substance:” Luke 8: 3.
This
present judgment then, is not of those who own Jesus as Lord; nor is the plea
of the wicked the same as that given by the ungodly who have heard of Jesus and
known Him: Matt. 7:
21-23.
For the Saviour teaches that such, when desiring to enter into the kingdom,
will plead their knowledge of Jesus and their use
of His name for prophecy and miracle. Such could not be ignorant who is the personage seated on the throne of
glory, nor be unaware that He accounts as done to Himself the least kindness
shown to a believer. Even the Jew was acquainted with the principle- “He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord.” But it is said - “Glorified saints will be
filled with humble admiration to find such poor worthless services so richly
rewarded. Saints in heaven will wonder that God shall so regard them.”
This is wholly unfounded. The reply both of the righteous and the condemned
presents simple ignorance of
the person of the judge, and an implied denial of any former
connexion with him. The answer informs them of the unknown oneness between
himself, and his brethren whom he points out to them. As soon as this link of
connexion between themselves and the King is pointed out, the one party is
satisfied, and the mouth of the other is stopped.
5. Again, the judgment before us is one of works, without any reference to faith. But it is replied - “These
works are the proof of faith working by love, and that love displayed rewards Christ by kindness to His members.”
Now while this is true in general as it regards the believer in Jesus, it has
no application here. For the
righteous did not know that in relieving the poor they were relieving Christ. How then could it front love to Christ? They who did
not know Christ’s brethren - who did not know Christ - how could they have faith in
Him? Rom. 10:
14. He that knows God in Christ, must know
and love His children. But Jesus points out to them the parties benefited as
persons, known indeed personally as men, but unknown in
their relation to Himself. “Ye did it to these” - they knew them as men - but they knew them not as “my brethren,” and much less that their act would therefore be
considered as done to Himself. Evidently, therefore, they are not justified by
faith in Jesus. They are not His professed disciples but some of the heathen “that have not heard His fame
or seen His glory.” They are not one
with Jesus, but His subjects. And even those condemned stand in an entirely
different position from the enemies of the King, mentioned in me parable of the
Pounds. Those had known the King and wilfully
rejected Him. “We will not have
this man to reign over us.” That
supposed full knowledge of
the King; this, an entire
ignorance of Him.
6.
Were we to admit this as the judgment of those that know the name of the Lord
Jesus, we should bring in an entirely new gospel. Dare we believe, that every
one that has done a kindness, knowingly or ignorantly, to the people of will be
saved?
In no parable is the necessity and beauty of rightly
dividing the word of truth more apparent. For from this the Romanist argues for
the merit of good works as the ground of [eternal] salvation to the believer in Jesus; to the overthrow,
if possible, of the doctrine of justification by faith. “Works (they say) are to be
done, because on account of these eternal life will be adjudged to the sheep.
That they are the
meritorious cause of obtaining it, is clear
from the judge’s word - ‘Inherit the kingdom; FOR I was hungry and ye gave me to eat.’ The third party is the King’s brethren. They must be different
from His subjects. They are not judged with this judgment. That is, the reason assigned, or the meritorious
cause (expressed by the word ‘for’), is their good works.”
This
consequence, Parxus,
a learned Protestant commentator, denies. And how does he controvertit?
He says - “With these six works of mercy, God is well
pleased, but they must spring from faith and a true love to God, and our
neighbour, and affection to the members of Christ. If from superstition or with
a view of winning, by merit, the
And
this were true, if the case adjudged in the parable were that of the Christian
church. But when once we perceive of whom it is really spoken, the Romanist
argument falls to the ground; nor are we obliged to add to the words of the
Saviour to make them square with the elsewhere propounded principles of our
dispensation.
7
On the same supposition, an absurdity follows. If the assembly of the sheep
contains all the just that have ever lived, and the goats all the wicked that
have ever breathed, who are the brethren of whom Christ speaks? When the righteous inquire of
Jesus, how they could ever have aided Him? and the Saviour in reply says, ‘Ye have done it to these my
brethren,’ He points out the sheep to
themselves, if there is no third party. But this is manifestly absurd.
The
parties therefore described as “my brethren”
cannot be among the righteous, for they are pointed out to the righteous, and
the righteous are but one body. Nor can the brethren be among the wicked, for
the Saviour speaks of them to the goats, as some body distinct also from them. Therefore they must be some third party distinct both
from the sheep and the goats.
Or we may state the argument in another form, thus -
The Saviour presents before us, in both His judicial sentences, two parties -
the one, the sufferers; the other, the benefactors. Who then enter into the
kingdom? The benefactors who have relieved the
wants of the sufferers. But if the
sufferers were being judged and a portion of the sheep, they must be rejected as not having, done any acts of kindness themselves. But then again - How were this possible? If they were
destitute of all means of rendering a kindness, being neither possessed of
raiment, food, or a home, and deprived of liberty, how could they bestow any of
these things on others? It is clear, therefore, either that the test is not a
universal one, and fails as it regards a large class of those tried, or else they are a third party who do not come under this
trial. Either the
sufferers are shut out of the kingdom, and cast into eternal fire, though
confessedly destitute of means to meet the conditions required, and though the
Saviour acknowledges them as His
brethren, to whom every kindness rendered is esteemed an obligation to
himself; or else they do not come into this judgment; that is, they are a third
party, distinct from both the sheep and the goats. But
the parties judged are all the Gentiles; therefore the brethren of Christ, distinct from both these, are
the Jews. And in
confirmation of this we may add that they have already been mentioned in this
prophecy, as His elect gathered by angels from the four winds, or quarters of
the earth; therefore they are
found scattered abroad co-extensively with the nations or Gentiles of whom they
form the test.
These
remarks premised, we may enter directly upon the parable.
“Now when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall
he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be
gathered all the Gentiles; and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd divideth the
sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep
on his right hand, but the goats on the left” Matt. 25: 31-33.
The
whole parable takes its tone from the character in which Christ is presented.
In the Virgins He appeared as the Bridegroom; in the Talents, as the Lord of
the servants; here, as “the Son of man.” Now this
title may teach us that the judgment of the parable is not one founded on
resurrection, Jesus takes the title “Son of God” in connexion
with the rising of the dead. “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God:
and they that hear shall live:” John 5: 25. For the Father has given to Him to be
essential life, even as He himself is. But as executing judgment He is “Son of man.” “And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also,
because He is Son of man:” John 5: 27. Among the sons
of men the
brethren of “the Son
of man” must be the Jews. It m this character also that Messiah is presented to
the Jews when He comes. “I saw in the night visions, and
behold one like the Son of man came in the clouds of heaven, and came to the ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages, should serve Him:” Dan. 7: 13, 14.
He
“comes in His glory.”
This
is the King’s solemn session on His throne after the armed and banded rebels
have been cut off. One style of proceeding becomes the warrior against an army
of foes, another the judge bringing law to bear upon the more secret
evil-doers.
His
coming now is the same that had been mentioned in a former part of this
prophecy - “Then
shall appear the sign of Son of man in heaven: and
then shall all the tribes of the earth (land)
mourn, and they shall
see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory:” Matt. 24: 30. These words and the preceding appear to give
the return of the Lord Jesus as it affects the Jews; then the Saviour passes on
to consider the state of the church as affected by His coming; and lastly (in
the present parable) the consequences of His appearing to the Gentiles or
heathen nations, are drawn out.
He
came in grace before, and answerably thereto He came in humiliation. But now He
comes in glory, in power, and exaltation. He comes in glory, for a kingdom and its glory should be closely
connected; and the glory exhibited is the proof of the kingdom come.
But
Jesus has a twofold glory, earthly and heavenly. And in the heavenly glory there is a twofold division. He has angelic
glory, as the head of angels; and the glory of the Son of God, as head of the
Church. He has also a twofold earthly glory, as the Son of David or head of the Jews;
and as the Son of man, or head of
mankind in general, His
threefold glory pointed out in the following text. “He shall come in His own glory, and His Father’s, and of the holy angels:” Luke 9: 26. In
Jesus will be blended the glory of the celestial and of the terrestrial; for in
Christ heaven and earth are to be united: Eph.
1: 10.
The present is His glory as Son of man, or His earthly glory, such as it was
displayed on the Mount of Transfiguration: Luke 9:
32, and of the kind that Moses bore upon his
countenance, when he descended from Mount Sinai. 2 Cor. 3: 7.
“And his holy angels with him.”
Angels were the ministers of the Jewish dispensation;
they are now subjected to Jesus. “Thou hast put all things under His feet.” Nay,
they worship Him. “When He again bringeth in
(see Greek) the first-begotten into the habitable earth he
saith, let all the angels of God worship Him:”
Heb. 1: 6. They are the great agents in purifying His
kingdom. “The Son
of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom
all stumbling-blocks and them which do iniquity:” Matt. 13: 41.
“Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.”
Heaven
is the place of God’s throne: (Matt. 5: 34), and
earth the place of the Son of man’s Psa. 115: 16 And its immediate locality is
(To be Continued)
*
* * *
* * *
587
THE FASCINATION
OF THE SERPENT
By S. E.
Visiting the local library one bright morning in the
month of July 1932, one might have observed a young man searching very
diligently for a book, which obviously he was having some difficulty in
finding. If asked what he was looking for, he would have replied, “Oh, just a good book. I am in search of Truth.” After
much walking round and round, and in and out the high vestibules crammed with
literature, he came to a halt. Facing him were books on Theology, Ethics,
Philosophy, Christian Mysticism, Occultism, Spiritualism, etc., etc.
He
moved on, ever searching in and out the high rows of books for that which would
satisfy his thirsty soul. Ultimately he found himself back again facing a book
on Spiritualism, which he disliked. He was about to pass on, but something held
him. A voice inside him seemed to be speaking to him: “Take
up that book; why do you hesitate? It won’t bite you; take it and read it.”
“It is all rubbish and fraud,” he soliloquized,
“I don’t like the subject.” But the voice said:
“Having read much, you pride yourself on being a
broad-minded young man; you have often pooh-poohed Spiritualism; now read this
book and learn the truth. Investigate for yourself. ‘Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.’”
Again
he said to himself: “It’s all rubbish, I have read too
much like it already and wasted much valuable time. I want a good book, I want
Truth, I have had enough of lies, deceit and vanity. I am in search of
something good, something that will satisfy this craving of my soul.”
Again the voice said, “Don’t be such a coward! Take
the book home and read for yourself; why listen to others?”
Half-heartedly, and with a feeling of disappointment because he could find
nothing better that morning to suit him, he slung it under his arm and went
home.
At
this stage it is fitting to mention that this young man is myself.
I read the book, and was interested in the experiences of the Fox Sisters, but
it was not what I wanted or appreciated. I returned it for another book on
Christian Mysticism, The Higher
Education of the Soul, by
Prof. Rudolff Steiner. This book I did, indeed, more appreciate. I exchanged it
for another by the same author, The Way of
Initiation. Now I found something to grip me, a strange
fascination. I read studied book after book by all the best authors: Lodge, Doyle,: Blavatsky,
Steiner,
I
went to the Spiritualist Churches, attended Circles, all with the purpose of
finding the Truth. I started “developing”, and
did so very quickly. I developed clairvoyance; saw what they call Spirit
Lights, and the Astral Plane; had wonderful visions; saw what appeared to be a
spirit at the door of my room; strange lights flooded my room at night; and
last, but not least, I experienced physical phenomena. Raps, and taps, which at
times were heavy blows, were heard on the walls, ceiling, and windows; and
objects would move or fall over without any apparent reason.
My
alarum clock became a favourite target, and would stop mysteriously. The
mechanism of the alarum would be definitely interfered with, stopping it from
going off in the morning and making me late for work. I began to get annoyed,
which only inspired them to greater effort. Strange rumblings could be heard in
the nights, like furniture being removed or roughly handled. Sleep became
impossible; I felt as if there were an electric battery inside me, and my jaws
would work as if a spirit were trying to control my organs of speech. I
resisted with all the will power at my command.
When that failed, I would be mentally tortured with
the most evil, horrid and filthy pictures imaginable. They would appear
clairvoyantly, or with the eyes of the soul. Many hours I would lie with my
eyes open in my effort to avoid them. A sensation of being covered with cobwebs
would often come over me, accompanied by a sense of blackness or stupor. At
last I began to “sit up” and ask myself, “Is this of God? Would God do such things?” I was told
that I had a very powerful and determined “guide”
who was doing his utmost to “control” me. I
asked, “Why should he worry and torment me like this?”
They said, “You must do exactly as he tells you, and
everything will be all right, and you will be a public Clairvoyant and Healer.”
The
more I developed, the more I realized I was the “instrument”
of another, unseen, yet very powerful; some dreadful spirit of evil. I tried to
discourage him, to shake him off, but he became all the stronger; his attitude
was determined and relentless. Desperate methods entered my
mind, such as Electrification, Special Circles, etc. But
the harder I fought the weaker I became, until I was daunted. Then fear took
possession of me: I dreaded going to bed at night; I shrank from company of any
sort, and yet I dreaded being alone. I felt in the pit of despair. What would I
not give to be free from the clutches of this [evil] spirit! I was now conscious that I was in the snare
of the fowler (Psalm 91. 3), the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children
of disobedience (Eph. 2: 2). I was like a rat in a trap, I felt hopelessly lost,
and a victim of the Devil. It was a terrible dawning of the truth. I fought, I
prayed, but God heard me not: I knew not His dear Son, Who is the One Mediator
between God and man (1 Tim. 2: 5). I
appealed to various mediums to help me, but they could only say, “Shake him off.” He would not be shaken off. I had to
confess he was stronger than I, and had the advantage over me in all ways. How
could I bind this “strong man”?
Something
seemed to say to me, “Breakaway! Break away!”
After a hard struggle I did so. I
appealed to God to have mercy upon my soul. An able and willing minister
received me and pointed me the way, the only way - the Cross
And
finally, take warning. Beware of
fascination; it is of his most powerful methods to
ensnare the unwary. After finding the first few books I became powerfully
fascinated, wonder followed wonder, mystery followed mystery, phenomena were heaped upon me, until
I was swept off my feet, completely mastered. I have found and testify that Jesus Christ is
the only Saviour, “Neither is there salvation
in any other; for there is none other Name under heaven given among whereby we must be
saved.” - Living Links.
*
* * *
* * *
588
A NEARING
CRISIS IN HEAVEN
AND EARTH
By D. M. PANTON, B. A.
A tense, extraordinarily pregnant crisis, involving the
vastest issues, balances two hostile forces in the unseen. Jerusalem - a ‘woman’, in the Apocalypse, always symbolizes a city - sums
up God’s redeemed of all dispensations, for one City has been the mother of
them all, from Melchizedek to Christ: twelve stars - the Patriarchs - around
her head, the moon - the Law - under her feet, and the sun - Christ, clothing
her; and she is on the brink of giving birth. Watching her with concentrated
venom is a Serpent, a red Dragon, for he is responsible for the blood of all
the martyrs; and his passionate concentration is on the destruction of the ‘child’ about to be born. It seems exceedingly probable that
this is the exact situation at the present moment,
though no man living can tell how prolonged the period may be during which
Satan watches in intense anxiety.
THE
CHRISTIAN ESCAPE
Suddenly
the Child is born. That this ‘child’ is a body
of saints is obvious from the words in which (ver. 11)
the Angels describe it:- “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb”;* and the
birth, like our Lord’s (Heb. 1: 5), is a
birth out of the tomb. It is a rapture in which these saints
are caught up to God and His Throne. The holy angels hail with joy their
arrival in Heaven: the evil angels draw the sword for the first and last time
to prevent it. They are very definitely and sharply defined
as fellow-kings with our Lord in His coming Reign, for it is “a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron”; and
they are ‘overcomers’ - “they overcame him,” thus falling exactly under our Lord’s words to
Thyatira (Rev. 2:
26) - “He that overcometh, and he that
keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I
give authority
over the nations, and he
shall rule them with a iron.”
*
The fact that the ‘birth’ ushers in the final three and a half years of
Satan’s activity alone makes it impossible that the ‘child’
is Christ. Christ, unlike this Child, was the
first-born of His mother, nor did evil angels dispute His ascent, only His exit
from the tomb (Col. 2:
15).
THE
This sudden ascent of overcomers precipitates an
immediate war in heaven, a desperate conflict between the angelic powers. Satan disputes the ascent; his supplanters,
who will supplant him both in heavenly standing and in power over the nations on earth, he stakes all to block; and the
fierce struggle of the Satanic hosts with the holy
angels involves his final fall. But he is not yet cast
into the
THE JEWISH
ESCAPE
So
now the Great Tribulation opens, and the second great
escape, the escape into the wilderness, occurs. Satan, “having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time” - therefore he believes God’s prophecies, for in no
other way could he know the brevity of the time left him: “the demons also believe
and shudder” (Jas. 2: 19) - first concentrates on that with which the
world is already seething - the attempted extermination of the Jew. The Woman -
the godly in Jerusalem - obeying the word of Christ, “When ye see the abomination
of desolation” - Antichrist’s
image - “standing
in the holy place” - set up in the Temple precincts - “let them that are in Judea flee
unto the mountains” (Matt. 24: 15) - is in
instant flight. Any Israelite who breaks the condition
of the earthly escape - immediate flight - is
doomed; but the armies sent in pursuit of the Woman the earth - as,
millenniums before, the Red Sea - opens and engulfs; and in the desert, earth’s
only spot of safety because of its very famine of all food, God’s earthly
saints are again fed by manna or equivalent food from Heaven.
REMNANTS
After
both escapes are accomplished, so far from earth now
being emptied of the godly, the enraged Dragon concentrates on both the groups who broke the conditions of escape, and
so failed to disappear. “The dragon made war with THE
REMNANTS of her seed” - ‘remnants,’ that is, sections identical with those
escaped, but who are left; and there are two of these remnants - “(1) which keep the commandments
of God, and (2) which hold
the testimony of Jesus.” Keepers of ‘the commandments of God’, the
Law, are a definition of Israel: they who hold - that is, those in whose
keeping is ‘the
testimony of Jesus’ is a description impossible of any but a [regenerate] Christian; it has been a definition of
Christians for nineteen centuries; it is the only name given to Christians
throughout the eighteen prophetic chapters of the Apocalypse, and describes
even the Apostle John himself (Rev. 1: 9).
The Dragon impales these two groups on his Ten Horns - that is, he persecutes
them by means of the Ten Dictators who are masters of earth’s chief nations;* and as the Divine plan is a prior escape, God
withdraws protection from those that are left, who flouted His design.
Two-thirds of
*Apparently the
Ten Dictators (or the majority of them) at first collaborate with the Roman
Beast in support of the Harlot, so that she can, and does become drunk with the
blood of the saints; but on Satan’s descent, and manipulated by him, what has
happened in Spain in the last five years - the destruction of more than 1, 000
Catholic churches - becomes universal, and includes every Christian group. We can readily imagine how the great apostasy from
the Christian Faith now occurs.
HINDRANCES
TO ESCAPE
Now
since it is probable that the birth of the Child may occur at any moment, it is
wise that we should keep in our minds, as vivid as lightning, the hindrances
that block the way to escape; because, that the Israelite is
godly, or that the believer is regenerate, will deliver neither from the
consequences of disobedience. (1) The hour coming “is to come upon the
whole inhabited earth” (Rev.
3: 10),
our Lord says, and therefore the only possible earthly escape is the
Wilderness, the uninhabited earth; and the flight is to be so
instantaneous - if a Jew in the field has left his cloak in his house, he has
no time (the Lord says) to fetch it (Matt. 24: 18) - that
disobedience in rapidity forfeits escape. So to Church our Lord’s words
- for both critical commands are from the Son of God to each group - could not
be more explicit:- “Watch ye
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). The escape of God’s earthly people is physical, and therefore turns
on instantaneousness of flight; but the escape of His heavenly people is moral - passive and static: to be set
before the Son of Man - and therefore turns on prayerful vigilance:
and failure to watch and pray will be as fatal to the one as failure in instant
flight will be to the other.*
*
It is pregnant with meaning that neither
the rapt nor the left are said to be the Church: for
those who ascend are not the Church, but a
section of it; and those who remain are not the Church, for church-standing
ceases with the arrival of the Day of the Lord. Thus
it is unscriptural to say either that the Church escapes the Tribulation, or
that the Church passes through it: the Church does neither; and therefore no ‘church’ is named throughout the prophetic portion of
the Apocalypse.
CONDITIONS
OF RAPTURE
So
we are shown, by Heaven itself, the exceedingly high standard
of the upward escape. (1)
They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb: not only the fundamental
cleansing in [their
initial] salvation, but a constant
confession
and abandonment of known sin which re-invokes the Blood. “They washed their robes” - their own conduct:
Christ’s robe, the robe of imputed righteousness, needs no cleansing- “and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb: therefore are they before the
throne” (Rev.
7: 14). (2) “Because of the word of their testimony.” The [accountability] truths of God
they stand for are the platform
on which they ascend: an abandoned testimony is a collapsed platform. Or, to borrow Paul’s
figure, the ‘blood’ is the foundation, and the ‘testimony’ is the
superstructure of gold, silver,
costly stones which they erect upon it. (3) “And
they loved not their life even unto death.” It does not say that they are all
martyrs; but they were, to a man, ready to
be martyred: they never compromised, even to save their life. What a standard! Yet it is a standard perfectly possible for
every one of us to achieve.
THE UNRAPT
That
what remains on earth is a ‘remnant’ - the rest,
the remainder - from those who have gone is proof wholly decisive that it is
Christians who remain; but if any reader still doubts it, let him ponder a
recent revival scene (World Dominion, Oct., 1936) on the Congo; and let him
ask himself - Were these Christians that were ‘revived’?
and if so, how does their pre-revival condition fit
Heaven’s description (ver.
11) of the rapt? “Judgment
began at the house of God. Christians were awakened to
a deep distress for sin. Sometimes the revelation was so overwhelming that
people under conviction cried out in anguish, and trembled, or even fell to the
ground. It was the sham and secrecy of Church members in former times that
determined the early character of the revival, for it came naturally to be felt
that men who had preached and taught in Christ’s name while cluttered up with all manner of sin must make public
confession. In the eyes of the heathen, all that had veiled the face of Christ must openly be renounced. For weeks and
weeks there was a constant stream of men waiting their turn to make public
avowal of the sins that had besmirched
their lives and betrayed Christ’s cause. Time fails to tell even a
fraction of the stories that broken-hearted men and women poured into our ears
during these amazing weeks when judgment had begun at the house of God. Through
a valley of humiliation like this all our leading men passed save one.”*
*
Both ‘remnants’
are purged as is the Israelitish:- “I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them” (Zech.
13: 9).
Both were warned to remember
If Christ had come a week before the
revival, would these have been
rapt? and if so, what becomes of Heaven’s summary
of their life and character before removal? and
will anyone say that no such [regenerate] believers will be on earth when the
Lord does come? Let it be carefully pondered that this
is no mere detail of a disputed prophecy, but a fearful practical urgency for
us all; for all will agree that if rapture
turns on fidelity, he who
influences others to believe that escape is safe for an unsanctified life not
only makes a most painful blunder for himself, but, in a moment of intensest
crisis, does a grave disservice to the whole church of God.
*
* *
THE RAPTURE OF THE SAINTS
“The possibility of selective rapture,” says Mr. Tiarks,
in this excellent little paper, “has very gradually
been forced upon the mind of the writer, becoming
abundantly clear during the past eight or nine years. It was only with the
fresh study undertaken for the purpose of writing this paper that the impregnable position in Scripture of
this truth became fully realized.” He quotes Bishop J. C. Ryle on Luke 21: 36:- “It admits of some question whether these words do not point
to the possibility of some believers
being allowed to pass through the great tribulation in the last days because of
their sloth and inconsistency.”
* *
* * *
* *
589
SOWING TO
THE FLESH
By Robert
Govett, M.A.
Gal. 5: 19. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [adultery,*] fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness.
20. Idolatry,
witchcraft, enmities,
contentions, emulations,
passionateness, party-strifes, discords, parties. 21. Envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings,
and the like to these, of
which I give you warning beforehand, as I also
told you before, that they who do such things shall not inherit
the
[* This
word is omitted by some critics.]
The sons of the flesh, the unconverted and unjustified
Jews, should surely be excluded from the kingdom. But even those born
of the Spirit, might by their failure in regard of sanctification, fail of the [coming
inheritance (Gal. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 5, R.V.) and promised (Rev. 11: 15; 20: 4, R.V.)] kingdom. This warning,
then, applies to those who were right on the great question of justification:
and so refers to [all
regenerate]
believers of the present day. The
kingdom is for “the
saints”, as the
original passage in Daniel declared, 7: 18. This
assertion Jesus and his Apostles had enforced and expanded. None, without a [personal] righteousness
superior to that of the Pharisee, shall enter it. It is for the doers of the
Father’s will. Those who walk
after the Spirit enter, and those who live after the flesh are
excluded. In the list of evil
works, not all are specified - it is added, “and such like.” The flesh is doubly excluded;
first, as unjustified, and
under the curse. Secondly, as unsanctified, and unfit for the
The
justified [by faith], then, though not under the curse of the law, might be found at last so unsanctified, as to be
accounted unworthy to enter the [millennial and
messianic]
kingdom. But
some assume that none who walk after the flesh can be Christians. Let such,
then, bow to the testimony of scripture, which affirms of some [regenerate] believers, that they were “fleshly”, and “walking as men”:
1 Cor. 3: 1-4. “And I, brethren, could not speak
unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto fleshly ones, as unto babes
in Christ.” “For ye are yet fleshly; for whereas there are among
you envying and strife, and divisions, are ye not fleshly, and walk as men?” Hence warning is given, that
the actors of such deeds of the flesh shall be shut out of the kingdom.
The
deeds spoken of are distributed into four principal
heads. 1. Sins of uncleanness: 2. Then two of a different kind: 3. Sins against love in the use of the
tongue, and in action: 4. And then three of a miscellaneous character again. Those
sins, doubtless, are made prominent, against which
Galatian churches had most need to be warned. Paul had before spoken of their
biting and devouring one another; he therefore sets before them a list of
special offences, arising from a breach of love - offences of the tongue.
Emulation, strife for the pre-eminence, the desire to be equal with, or in
advance of those above us in station, and the words and actions to which these
desires give rise may be approved of men, but are
hateful to God. Our Lord assured the apostles that even they,
though chosen to be chief officers of his church, should be excluded from the
kingdom, if they continued to be guilty of them, as
they were at that time: Matt. 18: 3.
These offences would exclude from the [coming] kingdom. Will any say that [regenerate] believers cannot
be guilty of them? Will they deny that they are actually
manifested in our own day? that they sprung up
by nature, and need the taming down of the flesh to keep them under? And if believers can be guilty of them, and are actually
guilty, will any say that the warning of exclusion from the [promised
messianic]* kingdom does not refer to them? If they were not to
apply to them, what means the apostle’s solemn and repeated warning? Why did he
tell them of it at his first preaching?
and when writing, renew the caution? If it referred only to the ungodly, to what
purpose was it, so earnestly to press it on the attention of the renewed? If the caution be
universal, that all doers of the things described in this list will be excluded from the kingdom: and
if it be certain too, that some saints
are guilty of these things, then is it certain too, that some saints will be excluded from the
kingdom.
[* See Psalm 2: 8,
R.V.]
6:
7.
“Be not deceived: God is
not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
There
are various kinds of seeds, some useful, some noxious. Everyone is sowing seed.
God would have all to be assured, that our present
acts of every day are telling, with the utmost certainty and regularity, upon
our future welfare. To look upon the past as a thing with which we have no
concern, is a thing as utterly foolish as for the farmer to imagine that he has
no manner of concern with the field into which he has cast his grain. Actions are not forgotten, but only passed by; as the seed is not lost, but
only covered in. It will appear at the harvest. The results of life
await us at the day of God’s judging the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. The
Christian for his acceptance by God, rests on the
merits of Jesus. But, after he is once received of God
on that ground, he is, in an important sense, the architect of his own destiny.
He is sowing his own field. That he is an elect son of God will not prevent his
reaping as he has sown. Thus money given to God is not
lost, it is sown. What is done to Christ, Christ will
requite with good. And so as to quantity. The liberal
sower shall meet the liberal harvest; the niggardly, the poor and scant return:
2 Cor. 9.
8. “For he that soweth into his
own flesh,* shall out of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall out of the Spirit
reap life everlasting.”
* Else it might be said, that
he who gives to the bodily necessities of others, comes under this warning.
There
is a way of explaining this verse, which shall remove all its force and
pressure. You may make the first half of threat, to refer
to the unbeliever alone; and the second half of promise, to relate to the justified alone.
Just so the prophecies used to be expounded. ‘All the promises belong to the Church; all the threats to the Jews.’
Both modes of exposition are, I suppose, equally unfair. A general truth is here propounded; and as such, it affects believer and
unbeliever alike. Whoever is embraced by its terms will share in its results, whether of good or evil. The sower to the flesh or to the Spirit, whoever he may be, is the
party pointed out.
But even
if this be granted, the weight of the doctrine may be removed from off the
believer by another mode of treating the passage. Let us then proceed with a
common exposition. The meaning of the verse, it may be said, is as follows:- ‘If the believer acts to the
gratification of his fallen nature, he will receive vanity, vexation, and
disappointment. And every one is daily sowing and
daily reaping. Acts of
obedience are increasing our faith: acts of disobedience are increasing the
native force of evil within us.’ Now this is true; but it is not the
meaning of the passage before us.
This
comment does not explain the terms used by the apostle, but is obliged to pervert
them in more ways than one.
1. It
makes the term “corruption”, when used of the believer, to signify ‘vexation, disappointment’.
But the word never has that meaning. Its sense in the
present case is clear enough: “corruption” is
here spoken of as springing out of the flesh or the body. But
corruption as applied to the flesh means putridity, the decomposition of the dead body. So it is used
continually in the New Testament. “The creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage
of corruption, into the
liberty of the glory of the sons of God.” The apostle in the context is speaking of the resurrection of the body: Rom.
8: 21. So in that chapter which treats especially of the saints’
resurrection, the Holy Spirit says of the flesh- “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in
incorruption”, 1 Cor. 15: 42, 50; also, Acts 2: 27, 31; 13: 34, 35, 36, 37.
2. Again, this interpretation is faulty, as changing the tense used by
the apostle. The sowing is spoken of in the comment as
a regular and habitual thing going on now. But the
reaping is by the apostle described as future. “He that soweth [present
and habitual employment] shall reap.”
“Then shall he have rejoicing in himself.” “Each shall bear his own burden.” “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall
he also reap.” “In due season we shall reap.” While
the sowing is in this life, the reaping is in the time [of reward
yet] to come. And it is because
harvest is put off to a distance, that in the next verse we are directed not to
faint, while expecting the issue.
3. Nor does the threat accurately apply to the ungodly. The sower to the
flesh shall reap “corruption”. Some
expound it of eternal punishment and destruction. But “corruption” never has that meaning. We must not force on a word a
sense which it has not elsewhere. If it had been said that he should reap “death”, the idea would have been more plausible. But how can eternal death be threatened to the [regenerate] believer for
sowing to the flesh? For it is certain, as has already been shown, that saints do sow to the flesh. And it is also certain that no saint shall finally be lost.
Both
alternatives belong to Saints. Saints cannot only sow to the flesh
occasionally, but so continually, as
to take in the sight of God, the very name of fleshly or “carnal”, as their description: 1 Cor. 3: 1-4. But such fleshly actions must carry with
them a future recompense, just as truly as holy actions. It is a “sowing”. And the sowing will have its reaping, whether for the [obedient
or disobedient]
saint, or for the [unregenerate] sinner; whether for good, or for evil.
The
threat of God against evil sowing, is, that such shall, “out of the flesh” - the field which they have tilled - reap a fruit
they will not covet. They will reap “corruption”.
What means this? It does not refer to simple
death of the body now, for that is felt by
saints whose walk pleases God, as truly as by the most irregular and
careless of believers. It is something which must
harmonize with the previous threat contained in verses
19-21 of the former chapter. There we
were cautioned that the workers after the flesh
should, by God’s ordination, “not inherit the
Thus,
too, it falls into perfect harmony with the other part of the verse - that the sower to the Spirit shall out of the Spirit reap life [Gk. ‘aionios’
translated] eternal.* The result of a life to the Spirit is the contrary of a life to the flesh.
The issue of the fleshly life is exclusion from the [millennial] kingdom.
The result then of the spiritual life, to one who is in Christ, is the entrance
into the kingdom. But why is it not so stated here? It
is said, “shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting”. The reason of the smaller and inferior
issue not being named is, I suppose, lest it should be
imagined that a thousand years was the limit of the obedient saint’s joy. He receives, as reward according to his works, an
entrance on the life of the thousand years. But
after these are ended, there will be no break in his enjoyment, but an eternity
of life begins for him at the [commencement of the Lord’s millennial] kingdom.
“The Spirit,” says the apostle, “is life:” Rom. 8: 10. Already,
as the gracious gift of God, the soul of the believer is alive. But this is a further
and future life, the result of
our works, the
consequence of a spiritual living to God. How, then, can it be understood of any other than life of the body - life in resurrection? And, as this alternative intends life in resurrection,
so does the close of the verse speak of the reverse - the
failure of the first resurrection - the being counted unworthy to
attain the coming [messianic and millennial] age, and the resurrection [out] from amongst
the dead. As the resurrection of the just
is by Jesus promised to a holy beneficence (Luke
14: 14), so may the contrary justly be awarded to the contrary scheme of life
and expenditure.
[* See the following tract.]
“But does not this scheme of yours open the door to sin? Will
not its consequence in many be, that they will reason thus - ‘We shall have
eternal life at all events. We care little about the
kingdom of the thousand years. We shall therefore live after the flesh, and
indulge its lusts to the full.’ Will mere exclusion from the kingdom suffice to
prevent such dread consequences?” Aye, but, friend, who ever said that
there was no further punishment for the guilty believer than simple exclusion
from millennial bliss? There are different degrees of living after the flesh.
There are also different degrees of punishment. A quiet love of the world in
its decent forms, in the case of the uninstructed saint, may perhaps require at
the Lord’s hands no more than simple, rejection from that scene of joy. But a deliberate choice of the works of the flesh after the
present truth is presented and owned, a shocking and stumbling of the world by
open breaches of morality, would demand far more. There is time in a thousand years to inflict as much of wrath on the
delinquent son as the Father shall deem necessary. “I say unto you, my friends.
... I will forewarn
you whom ye shall fear. Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell
[Gk. ‘Gehenna’ R.V.], yea, I say unto you, Fear him.” “That servant
which knew his lord’s will,
and prepared
not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that
knew not, and did commit things worthy of
stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes:” Luke 12: 4, 5, 47, 48. This
doctrine brings the fear of God, in all its magnitude and awe, to bear upon the disobedient child of God. And this motive is assigned as designed to perfect holiness.
“Let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God:” 2 Cor. 7: 1.
*
* *
THE JUDGMENT
SEAT OF CHRIST
A reality for each child of God. Every work will be brought into judgment. The principle of Rev. 22: 12 has no exceptions. This is of the most
momentous importance. And when the Lord Jesus judges,
there will be righteousness. The
judgment seat of Christ is quite as exact as the Great White Throne. If
there is judgment at all, there must be consistency. Favouritism before
a judgment seat would be dishonest. The Lord will not call disobedience
obedience, nor overlook an emptiness. There must be a holy strictness, and, if works are burnt up, there must
be a real loss (1 Cor. 3: 15), and if
there has been sowing unto the flesh, there must be a reaping of corruption (Gal. 6: 8). An unfelt loss is not “suffering loss.” Nevertheless
the losses are of a different character from those of the ungodly. Are not believers often taught to be too careless about the
judgment Seat of Christ? Assured glory is not to make us regardless of the
solemn alternatives. The weight of glory is precious, but to “reap corruption” can hardly mean “the joy of the Lord.” And do we not value His joy enough to be
concerned as to this? The believer who puts aside the thought of the judgment
Seat of Christ is losing much of Divine teaching. The Coming of Christ is rich with glory, but,
let it be repeated, things that are bad will not be called good (2 Cor.
5. 10).
If this Scriptural instruction is applied by the Spirit of
God, it will not produce melancholy, but it will tend to prevent the
misuse of prayer, and “lightness” as to sin. The
love of Christ attracts His people to rejoice in His joy (Matt. 25: 21, 23). Let us live for Him with happy expectancy,
and seek His reproving now, that we may have His approving then.
- PERCY W. HEWARD.
-------
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
And so make life, death, and the vast for ever
One grand, sweet song.
- CHARLES KINGSLE
*
* * *
* * *
590
THE DUALISM OF ETERNAL LIFE
By STEPHERN SPEARS CRAIG
What is the meaning of the Greek adjective aionios? As most religious people depend largely, even
chiefly, on human authority rather than on what the word of God says, it may be
well to note a few points in this connection by way of preliminary remark and
evidence. Note the following data:
1.
2. Trench in
his work on “Greek Synonyms” admits that aionios sometimes has a limited significance.
3. Dr. Vincent
in his “Word Studies in the New Testament” is
most emphatic in his assertion that aionios never means
eternal as English readers use the word. See his valuable note on 2
Thess. 1: 9. Thus it becomes
evident that in our contention for a more exact rendering of this Greek
adjective we are not without the support of scholarship. But
we have more conclusive evidence than this.
SOME
POSITIVE FACTS
1. It is a fact that
when the A. V. was made the Latin language was far better known, and more
extensively used, than the Greek; and therefore the translators were greatly
influenced both by the extensive use of Latin and by the Latin Versions then in
use. Beza’s translation and
the Vulgate both translate aionios by aetemus,
the cognate noun being aeternitas, whence come our English “eternal” and “eternity”. This looks very suspicious. From the above it is as
clear as the light of noon-day that the King James Translators
instead of going back to the original Greek and translating the Greek aionios went to the Latin Vulgate and translated the Latin aeternus.
If they had gone to the Greek, and acted as becomes scholars,
they would have given us the same translation as
2. It is equally
a fact that the theology of the West was not that of the Greek Church, but that
of Roman Catholicism. It was Latin theology.
And just
as it is beyond doubt that the revisers, translators, and lexicographers, were
chiefly influenced by the Latin language and Latin translations; so is it
equally beyond doubt that the theologians of the Reformation were far more
influenced by Latin Theology than by the word of God. It is
admitted that the theology of Calvin
was derived from
3. It was absolutely essential to Augustinian theology with its blighting
emphasis on the doctrine of predestinarianism to mistranslate the Greek adjective aionios,
and put on it a meaning which the Greek will not for a moment allow in its
respective applications to [eternal] salvation
and [Chrst’s future] judgment. And that which was
essential to Augustinian theology was equally essential to Latin Christianity
from the days of Augustine to those
of Calvin, Luther and Zwingli. And the same necessity
exists in the Reformed Theology from then till the present. To say nothing of other words, the Calvinist simply cannot, dare not,
face an honest and truthful interpretation of the two frequently occurring
words with which we are now dealing, namely, “eternal life”.
4. It is a fact that aionios is derived from the noun aion. By means of this latter word and its compounds the Greeks expressed their conceptions of time,
past, present and future. No language can get along without some such word, or words. F. W.
Grant in his Facts and Theories as to a Future State
says aion is
sometimes used for a limited
time, and sometimes for unlimited time, namely, eternity. But Dr. Vincent in his “Word Studies”
emphatically denies the latter construction; and he is
certainly right, as we hope to demonstrate later on. The Greek aion may
designate any period of time from the duration of
human life up to the full length of an age in the history of a given nation. From the Exodus of the children of
QUERRY: How is it possible to derive an adjective expressive of unlimited time,
or duration, from a noun which always conveys the
thought of limited time?
5. Wy did the Revisers of the
A.V. insert, or rather, retain the word “world” in Matt. 28: 20? They make Christ say:
“lo, I am with you always, even
unto the end of the world”. But what He did say was: “Lo, I am with you always, unto the
end of the age.” In reply to Peter’s question, He promised to those of His followers who were faithful to Him during His absence, He would give great reward in the ‘age (not world) to come’; plainly implying that those who were unfaithful
would not share in the rewards, and, as He indicates in other passages, will
not even share the blessedness of the coming age and Kingdom. I repeat the question: Why did the Revisers translate aion by ‘world,’
instead of ‘age’? Because the Postmillennial [and the Anti-millennial] theory of interpretation stands completely condemned before the correct
rendering; and with its
fall the traditional eschatology [which is being taught in the Church today] must also fall.
FIVE FACTS
1. The Bible divides all men
into two classes - the saved and the unsaved.
2. It subdivides
the saved into two classes - the carnal
who live according to the flesh; and the spiritual
who live according to the spirit (Rom. 8: 13-14).
3. It presents the
4. The Bible
explicitly affirms that all [regenerate] believers are in the Kingdom in it’s
present phase; but [the regenerate and] carnal believers will not be able to enter the
Kingdom in glory in the age to come (Gal. 5: 19-21; Matt. 5: 20).
5. The state in which believers die
is that in which they will come before Christ to be judged. This judicial process may issue either in eternal (age-lasting) salvation, or eternal
(age-lasting) judgment, according to Heb. 5: 9; and 6: 2. Let the reader note that we are here using
the word “eternal”, not in its English sense,
but as a translation of aionios,
that is, age-lasting, or lasting while the age lasts.
Before
coming directly to our examination of aionios, permit another remark: We have seen the teaching of
the Westminster Standards and of Protestantism generally as to the future state
of believers. They say that at
death the believer passes immediately into the presence of God [in
heaven] and never can
know any future judgment or sorrow. This
is another of these flesh-pleasing fictions of the Middle
Ages devised by priestcraft.
We
may affirm, as a general and universal principal, that God, as a moral necessity inheriting in his holiness, cannot bestow any
gift, either external or internal, on man without holding him strictly
accountable for the use he makes of it. Why should the ‘free gift’ of ‘eternal life’ [Rom. 6: 23, R.V.] be an exception? But as a matter of fact it is universally assumed to be so. This is a great mistake. We
will take an example. Dr.
Schofield’s notes, in his Reference Bible, are, on the whole, excellent;
but occasionally he makes a serious slip as in his note on 2 Cor. 3: 10, where
Paul says: “Ye
(Christians) must all appear before
the judgment seat (bema) of Christ that every one may receive for the things done in
his body, according to that he has done, whether it be good or bad.”
On
this passage Dr.
Scofield comments as follows:-
“The judgment of the believer’s works, not sins, is in
question here. These (his sins) have been atoned for and are remembered no more
forever. Heb. 10: 17; but every work must
come into judgment (Matt. 10: 12; Rom. 14: 10; Gal. 6: 7; Eph. 6: 8; Col. 3: 24, 25). The result is ‘reward’ or ‘loss’ (of reward), ‘but he himself shall be saved’
(1 Cor. 3: 11-15).”
An
examination of this paragraph reveals the following. Heb. 10: 17: “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” A mere glance at the context shows that the
Holy Spirit is not here speaking of Christians, nor of this dispensation, but
to the saved remnant of
The
third proof text used by the Doctor is Matt.
10: 12
and it has no bearing on the subject
whatever. Eph. 6:
8 has reference to the Christian’s good
deeds, but says nothing of the evil; and
the other three passages affirm the very
opposite of the Doctor’s contention.
How very emphatic is Col. 3: 25: “But He that doeth wrong
(assuming that he has not made it right) shall receive for the wrong
which he hath done, and there is no
respect of persons.” Surely that is plain enough. Those who hold the theory in
question say it is the believer’s works and not his person that is to be judged. Is it conceivable that an evil work, apart from
the person who does it, can be judged, the sentence
executed and justice satisfied thereby?
How would the theory work in civil jurisprudence? Suppose society should say, “We will let the murderer go free, but we will judge and punish
the deed.” But says one of the advocates of
orthodox eschatology: “the believer’s sins were all
judged at
Was
God’ purpose in the atonement to put a premium on sinning; or was it that Christians
might not sin (1 John 2: 1)?
The theory is essentially antinomian. Paul met it in his day as when he said, “Shall we sin then because we
are not under the law but under grace?”, and meets the thought with an emphatic “God forbid.” Christ bore the believer’s sin and sins on the cross
judicially. But this will not
save the [regenerate] believer from [wilful] sinning*; nor from reaping as he sows.** Christ not only bore the sins of the believer at the
cross, but of the whole world, but this does not secure the [aionian life and] salvation
of any man apart from repentance and
faith.
[* See Heb. 10: 26, 27, 30, R.V.
** “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the
flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto
the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal (Gk, aionous) life.”
*
* * *
* * *
591
THE PARABLE
OF THE
SHEEP AND
GOATS
By Robert Govett,
M.A.
[PART 2]
Jesus is now seated on the
throne of His Father, even God. But He will
come one day to sit on the throne of His
father David. “To him that
overcometh will 1 grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am
set down with Father on His throne:” Rev. 3: 21; Heb. 8: 1; 12: 2. “The Lord God shall give unto
Him the throne of His father David:” Luke 1: 32, 33.
It
is the “throne of
glory.” And this is connected with
It
is the throne foretold in the law: Deut. 17: 18. And, as it is written concerning the King
that is to occupy it, that he is to be one chosen by the Lord, and one of the
sons of Israel, “one
from among the brethren,” therefore
does the King in the parable confess
Israel as his “brethren.” “Thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee whom the Lord
thy God shall choose; one from among THY BRETHREN shalt thou set King over
thee, thou mayest not set a stranger over thee,
which is not thy brother:” Deut. 17: 15.
“And before him shall be gathered all the Gentiles.”
This
is the judgment of the Gentiles after the time of mercy is past, when justice
comes forth unto victory, as it is written - “Behold my servant whom I uphold; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased; I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment unto the Gentiles:” Matt. 12: 18. And Matthew alone gives the parable, he alone cites the
prophecy that refers to it.
There
is another assembly of Gentiles at
But this
gathering is for calm judgment on principles of justice. The assembly is
involuntary, and is collected by angels. The nations
live far apart, but the angels will gather them together, and bring them down “into the
“And he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats.”
There are three flocks belonging to Jesus; one heavenly, and two of earth. The heavenly flock is the
church. But, beside these there are the flock of
We have a view both of the Jewish and of the Gentile
flock, as I think, in Ezek. 34. In that chapter Jehovah denounces, first the
shepherds of
The
judgment proceeds upon the same ground as of St. Matthew, viz., their behaviour
towards the flock of Christ. And what the “small cattle” of Ezekiel (34: 22) are, is
explained by the Saviour to be “sheep” and “goats.”
The
elect living Gentiles are presented as the flock of
Son of man, if I mistake not, in the hundredth
Psalm. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,
all the earth. (Marg.) ... We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture:” 1-3.
There
will in that day be two
folds* though but one flock
(see Greek …). There will be one portion of the elect in heaven, and one on earth; but they
will be but one flock, tended by the same “great Shepherd of the sheep.”
*
This may seem to contradict John 10: 16,
but it only appears to do so; for the second word rendered “fold,” signifies a company or flock of sheep; but not
the place in which they are assembled, as
[ the word …]
does.
But to
return to the flock with which we are immediately engaged. While the shepherd
is away, the flock is intermingled. As in the wheat-field, wheat and tares grow
together till the harvest; so the two flocks of sheep
and goats feed together till the Shepherd Son of man returns to sever them.
With extreme ease does he separate the two classes, as easily as a shepherd
detects the difference between a sheep and a goat, and acts upon that perception. The two companies will be
found classed according to their natures, as the seed of the woman or the seed of the serpent.
This marks the omniscience of Jesus as the judge of men. He decides not, as in
the case of the armies of Antichrist, on their attitude
and action at the time
he appears. He delivers sentence on their known difference of nature. He needs no inquiry into evidence, like other judges; but on His own
instant knowledge of their dispositions He delivers
judgment. He first makes the division, and then justifies it. This is not the
final judgment of the dead [after
the millennial reign of Messiah]: Rev. 20. There books are opened, and the dead are judged out of the
books. But here, the glance of the shepherd suffices to detect, and
separation is made between the justified and the lost.
“He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.” The division is made before
sentence is passed. In this momentous separation and judgment, the first Adam seems to
have been a type of the second. “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the
field and every fowl of the heaven; and brought
them unto Adam to see what he should call them; and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof:” Gen. 2: 19. Thus before Jesus, as second Adam, are brought a nobler flock, and
He decides at a glance, which shall be
accounted sheep, and which goats. And
whatever designation He gives to them, whether “blessed” or “cursed,” that they retain for ever.
The
right hand, as the place of honour (1 Kings 2: 19; Ps. 60: 1) is assigned to the saved. And
if this judgment takes place in the
“Then shall the King say to them on his right hand - Come ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave
me to eat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me;
I was sick, and ye
visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
II. In this second division of the parable (though
it is perhaps scarcely exact to call it by that title) it is interesting to
notice the strong confirmation given to the preceding interpretation by the
words - “Ye
blessed of my Father.” Those
justified by faith have God for “their Father.” “Then shall the righteous shine forth as
the sun in the kingdom of their Father: Matt.
13. Nor does Jesus use the expression “the Father,” for this would be unintelligible to those who had never heard of the Son, or the Holy Ghost.
But they could understand the words “my Father,” as giving the relationship in which some personage
unknown stood to the King before them. But not thus is
it with the Church - “Grace and peace from God our Father:” Rom. 1: 7, etc. As we are sons, God hath “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies” (Eph. 1: 3) and we
were “chosen in
Christ Jesus before foundation of the world:” 4.
But these are blessed with fleshly
blessings in earthly places and were
chosen “from the foundation of the world.”
It
is observable also, that Jesus does not call the kingdom into which they enter,
“the kingdom of heaven,” though that is the constant expression in St. Matthew.
Nor is it indeed to them the kingdom of heaven, in the sense in which is to the church. It is to them
the kingdom of heaven only in so far as their rulers
are dwellers in heaven, and its principles and Head are heavenly. But the kingdom which is given to them is the kingdom of earth, and dominion over its animated races. This was the dominion given to
Adam from the foundation of the world. “And God said, let us make man
in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” “And God blessed them, and God said unto them - Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have
dominion over the fish of the sea,
an over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth:” Gen. 1:
26-28.
But this
is not the “kingdom
which God hath promised to them
that love Him:” for the others are not “rich in faith:” James 2: 5. Nor is it the “inheritance of them that
are sanctified by faith that is in Christ Jesus:” Acts 20: 32. Nor is the “inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven:” 1 Pet.
1: 4. The
saint’s heirship is this, that if found victorious he “shall inherit all things.” But the earth, the heritage
of these, is burned up and utterly destroyed by fire, after the thousand years.
A
hint of this double inheritance and scene
of the [messianic and millennial] kingdom is given in the
memorable promise to David’s Son. “And it shall come to pass when thy days be
expired, thou must go to be with thy fathers,
that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons, and
I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever.”
“I will be his father and he shall be my son: and I will not take away my mercy from him, as I took it from him that was before thee; but I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom
for ever and his throne shall be established for ever:” 1 Chron. 17: 11-14. In the first part it
is “his kingdom,” in the
second it is “my kingdom,” and “his throne” is in both.
1. There are three distinct yet harmonized divisions in the
2. The second department is occupied
by the Jew, and its sphere is the
3. But
there is yet a third and loftier department of kingdom, the inheritance “reserved in heaven,” attained only by putting on immortality. This is the
kingdom of the Father, “the
The
sphere of dominion exercised by these, the risen saints, is joint heirship with
Christ in all things: Rom. 8: 17.
Jesus
addresses the sheep as “the King.” He is
“the great King,” and
The
Lord Jesus then proceeds to state the grounds on which He has assigned to His
earthly elect, a place at His right hand. It is because of natural kindness
rendered to himself, under the necessities common to man’s hunger, thirst,
strangeness in a foreign clime, nakedness, weakness, imprisonment. None of the
higher cases of aid are mentioned. No word is dropped of edification of the spirit, of conversion, of
the preaching of the Gospel [‘of the kingdom’]. On the
present interpretation this is accounted for; on any
other supposition it is not to be explained. And as earthly acts of kindness
are rendered by these elect ones, so do the earthly blessings of the kingdom
requite them; fulness of bread, plenty of corn and wine and oil, possessions in
their own land, durable clothing, health, long life, and the full enjoyment of
freedom.
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
592
THE GREAT
PYRAMID
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
As
faith dies down, credulity grows; and with painful frequency
the Christian teacher has to flash out the red danger-signal. It is impossible
to foretell who next will be entrapped by what. Within
recent months leading evangelical journals have expressed sympathy with the
most gigantic object of superstition in the world, a superstition
which alleges that, after the Bible, the most signal work of God on earth
to-day is the Great Pyramid in
THE THEORY
The
Pyramid theory can be stated with extreme simplicity:-
the measurements of the Pyramid are so marvellous (it is said) that they must
be divine. In the astounding words of Dr.
J. A. Seiss (A Miracle in Stone, p. 46): “All
the great doctrines of Revelation, and all the great characteristics of the
ages, and all the mightiest facts in human history and God’s administrations,
are found imbedded in its rocky symbolisms.” In other words, it is as
inspired a Rock as the Bible is an inspired Book. Sir Ambrose Fleming describes it thus (Life of Faith, Feb. 12, 1936):- “Broadly speaking, the
pyramid passages seem to indicate the course of divine revelation as regards
human history. The long descending passage represents man left to his own
devices as descending to destruction. The narrow ascending passage blocked at
one end by the plug, man’s inability to raise himself by his own efforts to
divine favour and continued existence. The narrow passage
beyond the plug, the Jewish dispensation under the Law. The grand
gallery represents the Christian dispensation of salvation by faith.”
PROPHETIC
CONSTRUCTION
So, therefore, not only are the measures supposed to
be such that no human mind could have created them, and the construction
therefore is miraculous, but the further enormous deduction is made that these
Pyramid figures, and - even the sinking or rising of the structure itself- a
corridor or a blocked passage - picture the entire history of man, and so
foretell, mathematically, the Second Advent and the Kingdom. To quote Dr.
Seiss again:- “We hear from out its dark and
long-hidden chambers and avenues just where we are in the great calendar of
time, what scenes are next to be expected in the affairs of our world and what
unexampled changes presently await us.”
SCRIPTURE
BASIS
First of all we observe that the entire theory is based on no
Scripture whatsoever, with the exception of one solitary text. The Pyramid is said to fulfil this word of Isaiah
(19: 19):-
“In that day
there shall be an altar to the Lord in the
* By the very
nature of the symbolism no axe might hew its stone (Ex.
20: 25),
because an altar is no building, but the imitation of a natural hill of unhewn
rock, wood-crowned, with the wrath of God descending in lightnings (1 Kings 18: 38) on the lifeless Victim.
MEASUREMENTS
Next,
we turn to the measurements. For a mind stayed on Scripture
it is unnecessary to investigate the accuracy of the figures, or their alleged
correspondence with Bible numerics*: the error
is far graver and more fundamental. The Temple(and the
Tabernacle before it) was an elaborate mass of divine symbolism, perfectly
unique, and never forestalled nor repeated, as the solitary House of God on
earth; but - and this is vital to the Pyramid claims - even the Temple never
measured periods of time, much less exactly foretold the future in inches or
cubits, as an unrolled map of prophecy. The entire
symbolism of the Temple vanished in the Christian truth which it had
symbolized; and not only was the Temple erased from the earth in the new
dispensation, not one stone being left upon another - a fatal fact for the Pyramid
- but the only other temple ever built to Jehovah outside the Holy Land, and
actually built in Egypt on the very ground of this text in Isaiah - the Temple of Onias - was itself
destroyed in the year following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem,
A.D. 71.**
* Mr. Wayman Dixon, M.I.C.E., writes (Times, May 29, 1928):- “I suppose that there is no one living who has such an
intimate acquaintance as I have with the interior passages and chambers of the
Great Pyramid. My researches were carried out in close
correspondence with Professor Piazzi Smyth, F.
R. S., who about this time first
promulgated his fanciful theory of a chronological significance in the
measures. We could, however, find no trace of any such significance, nor any prophetic
reference. Hence the whole chronological theory collapses.”
** The Jewish historian Josephus
tells us that after the murder of the Jewish High Priest (during the
persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes), Onias, his
nephew, who would have been his successor, fled for refuge to
PROPHECIES
The inevitable follows - a pathetic collapse of
Pyramid ‘prophecies’, and therefore a concrete disproof
of any spiritual significance in the measurements or construction. The Pyramid theory - which has largely been accepted
by British-Israelism which was once identified with Russell and Rutherford’s
‘revelations’, and which is warmly pressed by
the American Fascists, the ‘Silver Legion,’
under a leader (Edward Pelley who gets all his directions from ‘clairvoyants’ - has again and again collapsed in its
prophecies. Pyramid Passages, published in 1913, foretells thus:- “It will not be until A.D. 1915
that the actual end will come, not only of the Papacy but of all Christendom”
(Vol. II, p. 224). “By the year A.D.
1915 the Lord Jesus Christ shall establish his glorious
SUMMARY
It is a mystery how lovable, warm-hearted and
well-taught Christians - such men as Dr.
Seiss - can fail to see the extreme gravity of making God responsible for
the structural hieroglyphics - for no writing whatever exists in the Pyrarnid - of a heathen mausoleum and elaborating them into
a second Bible. It is as
tremendous a warning as could be conceived of the necessity of a watchfulness
that is intensely alert, passionately Scriptural, and unsleeping. For there is
but one wonder-building in the world to-day, and it is composed of living
stones, elect, precious:- a spiritual temple planned by the Divine Mind;
compacted together of stones quarried, shaped, and by God Himself; the
perpetual residence of the Holy Ghost; the one imperishable pyramid of time and
eternity.
*
* * *
* * *
593
THE DUALISM OF ETERNAL LIFE
By STEPHEN SPEARS CRAIG
[PART
2]
In the former chapter we were occupied with the words “eternal life”; and there we saw that the Scriptures
reveal a synthetic dualism - the gift and the prize, the former containing the
latter in germ, and the latter carrying to full manifestation the inherent
potentiality, worth and glory of the former.
But once the gift has been received there rests upon
the receiver a tremendous responsibility in that he must co-operate with the
Holy Spirit and with the Divine Trinity in developing the latent possibilities
of the germ, so that God may perfect through discipline the work He began in
the new birth. The Christian who resists the [Holy] Spirit’s
leading and neglects God’s provision in this matter is a greater sinner than
the Israelite who refused to overcome the difficulties of the wilderness and
thus enter Canaan; and his penalty will be more severe, for “how shall we escape if we
neglect so great salvation”? Heb. 2: 1-3; Matt. 24: 13.
In other words, THE [REGENERATE] BELIEVER IS ON
PROBATION. He has to choose between eternal
(age-lasting) salvation; or eternal (age-lasting)
judgment. The Church on earth does not so teach nor believe; but the Bible
does; and so do all the saved who have passed behind the vail. Moses said to
In
the preceding chapter our discussion turned chiefly on the Greek adjective aionios.
In this we will investigate a biblical phrase of
somewhat synonymous meaning, and doing so will find ourselves conducted to the
same conclusion and with corresponding effect on the traditional teaching of
the churches as to the future state. That
phrase is eis ton aiona,
which is usually translated in A.V. and R.V. “forever”, a meaning which it never has, and therefore
should in no case be so rendered into English. We have pointed out the fact
that the adjective aionios (translated indifferently “eternal”
or “everlasting” in A.V., and “eternal” only in R.V.) is derived from the noun aion
an age, a period
of time short or long with clearly marked beginning and end. In the
phrase eis ton aiona,
aiona is the accusative singular of aion. The word eis
is a preposition usually rendered in,
into or for. The little word ton is the accusative
singular, masculine, of the definite article.
Our
New Testament aion leads us back to the olam of the Old Testament - its
equivalent. It is impossible, as already remarked, for any language to get
along without words which mark time; and in this
respect what the aion was to the Greeks the olam was to the Hebrews. When longer
periods of time are involved the idea is expressed by
plural forms, or by duplication. The olam
is employed with or without the prepositions le
and ad,
signifying to, or into, also min, from. In both A.V. and R.V. the olam
of the Old Testament is translated “everlasting”
or “for ever” which are utterly misleading and
confusing, and wholly indefensible from the standpoint of scholarship and of
exegetical consistency, as we shall soon see.
Young invariably translates olam as he does aionios by “age-lasting”. So also Browne’s Triglott.
In
the Greek New Testament we have the noun aion (age) with its derivative
adjective aionios (age-lasting); but in the
Hebrew of the Old Testament we have the noun olam with no
corresponding adjective, so that the noun has to do double service; i.e., it
has to serve as adjective and noun. The Hebrew language is
said to be rich in nouns and verbs but deficient in modifiers.
Before
going back to investigate the use of olam in the Old Testament let us
take a few examples of mistranslations of aion in the New Testament. First, as to the use of the noun without the preposition and
article. Here the A.V. and R.V. have confounded the aion with kosmos,
owing to the fact that they usually translate both words by “world”. Now kosmos
is always properly translated “world”, but aion
ought never to be so rendered. I am not ignoring Heb. 1: 2 and 11: 3. They make Christ say “Lo! I am with always, even unto the end of the world”. Matt. 28: 20. But what He does say is, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age (aion).” The consequence is that the Church, with few
exceptions, believes that Christ will not come till
the end of the world (which, by the way, is not a biblical expression). But He says He is coming again at the end of the present [evil] age; and He spoke of the “age to come”,
after this age has run its course, when He will establish His
Millennial Kingdom in power and glory; and when He will reward the faithful and
punish the unfaithful among His people as we have seen in 2 Thess. 1: 7- 10; Heb. 5: 4-8; 10: 26-31.
In Matt. 13: 39, the
versions make Him say, “the
harvest is the end of the world”;
but He says “the
harvest is the end of the age (aion)”, meaning, this age of grace.
In verse 38 the
translation “world” is correct for it is not aion but kosmos. See margin of
R.V. In Luke 18: 30
it is aion. We have given
only three samples out of many. Were the translators and revisers really trying
to bolster up that sorry tradition of post-millennialism? Their acts would lead
one to that conclusion.
Let
us now take two samples of the false rendering of the adverbial phrase eis ton aiona. When Christ cursed the fig tree, the
type of barren but showy Judaism, they make Him say to the good olive tree (Rom. 11: 17), “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.” But the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3: 16) did not, and cannot say that. He said, “Let no fruit grow on thee
henceforward for the (this) age” - the time limit of the curse [See Gen. 3: 18. cf.
Rom. 8: 17-25, R.V.]. What a decisive exegetical difference this makes
both in process, [correct interpretation] and conclusion. But it is
only by such, shall we say, deliberate confusion of terms
that the illusion of postmillennialism [and the popular
anti-millennialism within the Church
today] can perpetuate
its fictitious existence and wield its enslaving, blighting power. And this remark is true of
the traditional eschatology as a whole. Right here it may be opportune to quote
some words of Lord Bacon as to the
process of logical reasoning. He says:-
“The syllogism consists of propositions; propositions of words, and words are tokens, or signs of notions. Now if the
very notion of the mind be improperly or over hastily abstracted from the
facts, vague and not sufficiently definite, faulty, in short, in many ways, the
whole edifice tumbles”.
Before
proceeding farther in our discussion I ask the reader to seek grace to
apprehend and, if possible, also to progressively
comprehend a great Biblical fact, in order to get the correct view point and
perspective in this study. It is this:-
The grand outlook of the Saints in both Testaments
was not on eternity and completely consummated redemption; but on the Messianic
Age and its glorious
And what
is more: The Old Testament prophets and saints, by no fault of theirs, did not
see the present dispensation. It was a mystery hid in the mind and plan of God.
Their vision was beyond, to the glorious Messianic Kingdom, the time limits of
which they did not know.
On
the contrary the Church, since the third century, has been so deeply absorbed
in the coming eternity that it refuses to see this most pernicious and fatal
heresy of post-millenarianism [and
today’s Anti-millennialism] in the
history of Christianity.
This
great truth not only affects Biblical Eschatology, but the whole range of
Biblical Theology. Historical and Systematic Theology for 1600 years have refused to see the facts from this
point of view; but have painted a picture of the future according to the carnal
fancy of Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene apostacy. And
let the fact be remembered and pondered, that Past, Present, and Future,
constitute a unity in truth or in error, in God, or in Satan. I cannot be wrong
as to the future and right as to the present and the past; and vice versa. The
unity of personality demands this. Past and future can only
be viewed through the medium of what I am. Fiction here will project and
objectify itself there. Hence the necessity of a pure heart,
a surrendered will, and a renewed mind. These, however, can only be realized by degree and in fellowship with the
Christ as rejected on earth and accepted in heaven.
We
will now cite a few passages to show the practical force and utility of this
manner of viewing the past, present and future, and specially with reference to
its bearing on Biblical Eschatology:
“[47] Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. [48] I am the bread of life. [49] Your fathers did eat manna in the
wilderness and are dead. [50] This is the bread which
cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat
thereof and not die. [51] I am the living bread
which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread,
he shall live for ever; and the bread that I
will give is my flesh, which I will give for the
life of the world. [52] The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh
to eat? [53] Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son
of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. [54] Who so eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath
eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last
day; [55] for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
[56] He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. [57] As the living hath sent me, and I live by
the Father: sohe that eateth me, even he shall live
by me. [58] This is that bread
which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are
dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live
for ever”. John 6: 47-58, A.V.
Here
we have aionios zoe (eternal life) twice, verses 47, 54;
and we have also the phrase eis ton aiona (for
the age) twice, verses 51, 58. The latter modify and complete the predicate “shall live”. Thus we see the
synonymous character of the two thoughts. Now the traditional and orthodox
method of treating these words of Christ assumes that He is here speaking and
discoursing concerning what English readers understand
by the “eternal state” which follows the
judgment of the Great White Throne. But this is all
wickedly wrong. The subject under discussion here is the same
as in Luke 18: 18-30; namely, THE
AGE TO COME; that period of time after the second advent of Messiah and
lying between the judgment of the Bema, 2 Cor. 5: 10 (where only the saved appear) and the judgment
of the Great White Throne - Rev. 20: 11-15; these time points definitely marking the
termini of the period; and John tells us that the time between them is 1000
years. Rev. 20: 1-6. Strictly speaking
there is “a
little season” between the end of
the 1000 years and the White Throne judgment. Rev.
20: 3.
Now if this be the correct interpretation it is easy
to see its tremendously significant bearing on Biblical Eschatology; and at the
same time the delusive falsity and fatality of the traditional interpretation.
We
will therefore proceed to establish the fact. In the light of Lord Bacon’s warning let
us be mercilessly severe in our definitions. Let us also remember the Jewish
expectation of their Messiah and His [Messianic] Kingdom as their one hope. They were right in “the hope” but wrong in their manner of cherishing it. They
thought that when Messiah came it would be in glory and irresistible power, and
that He would at once break the hated yoke of the Romans and set them free.
They never dreamed of a humble, rejected, crucified Messiah; and much less of their need of special moral and spiritual preparation for entering the
Messianic Kingdom when the time had come. In short, the priests and people alike were
the helpless victims of a false and delusive system of interpretation. And, let me add, this is one cause of the trouble in the
Church in the present dispensation. And who but a
blind man can fail to see the hand of the Prince of this world behind the whole
matter? 1 Cor. 2: 14; John 14: 30; 9: 39-41.
(To be continued)
* *
* * *
* *
594
“MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE
OF PRAYER FOR ALL NATIONS”
[Mark
11: 17, R.V. cf. Isa.
56: 7, R.V. & A.S.V.]
By DAVID BARON
-------
“And He shall bear the glory”,
or “regal majesty.”
The word - hod - is used in
different significations, but it is especially employed to describe the royal
majesty (Jer.
22: 18; 1 Chron. 29: 25; Dan. 11: 21). Pusey
observes: “This word is
almost always used of the special glory
of God, and then, although seldom, of the majesty of those on whom God
confers majesty, as Moses or Joshua (Num. 27: 20), or the glory of the kingdom given to Solomon”
(1 Chron. 29:
25). It is used of the glory or majesty to be laid on
the ideal King in Ps. 21: 5 - which
the Jews themselves interpreted of the Messiah.
The
pronoun is again emphatic: He Himself, and none other, shall build the
Already, as the result of His sufferings, having by
the grace of God tasted death for every man, He is “exalted and extolled, and lifted very high,” “crowned with honour and glory”; but this prophecy speaks especially of the
royal majesty which He will bear when He shall come forth again
from the presence of the Father [in the highest heaven] - and all His enemies having been made a
footstool for His feet, He shall sit down upon His own throne as the theocratic King of Israel.
Then, indeed, upon His head there shall be “many crowns”;
for, not only will God the Father invest Him with glory and majesty, but men too, especially His own nation [Israel], will glorify Him; “and He,” as the true
Son of David, the One whose right it is to reign, “shall be for a throne of
glory to His Father’s house: and
they shall hang upon Him all the glory of His Father’s house: the offspring and the issue,
every small vessel, from the vessels of cups to
the vessels of flagons” (Isa. 22: 23, 24).
We come to the next sentence of prophecy:
“And He shall
sit and rule upon His throne,”
That
is, He shall not only possess the honour and dignity of a king; He shall not be
“a constitutional” monarch, who reigns but does
not rule; but He shall Himself [visibly and
in bodily presence,] exercise
all the royal power and authority. Yes, the rule of King-Messiah will be
absolute and autocratic, but autocracy will be safe and beneficent in the
hands of the Holy One, Who is infinite in wisdom,
power, and love. The result of His blessed rule will be that -
“In His
days shall the righteous flourish;
And
abundance of peace till the moon be no more.
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,
And from the River to the ends of the
earth.
Yea, all kings shall fall
down before Him;
All nations
shall serve Him.
He shall judge the poor of the
people,
He shall save the children of
the needy,
And shall break in pieces
the oppressor;
For He
shall deliver the needy when he crieth,
And
the poor that hath no helper.
He shall redeem their soul from oppression and violence:
And precious shall their
blood be in His sight. …
And men shall be blessed in Him:
All nations shall call Him blessed.” (Psalm 72.)
The character
of His blessed [Millennial
and Messianic] rule is further explained in
the next sentence:
“And He shall be a
priest upon His throne.”
How
full of significance is this one sentence of Holy Writ! As is the manner of Zechariah, we have in these four Hebrew words a
terse summary of nearly all that the former prophets have spoken of [our Lord Jesus - the Father’s (Psa. 2: 8; 110: 1-3, R.V.) soon coming] Messiah and His work.
Here
is the true Melchizedek, Who is at the same time King
of Righteousness, King of
Now He royally
exercises His high priestly office as the Advocate with the Father,
and only Mediator between God and man, at the right hand of God in heaven. From
thence He shall come forth again to take
possession of His throne, and to commence His long-promised reign [of
“a thousand years” (Rev.
20: 4)] on the earth. But, even when as King He
exercises His sovereign rule, He will still be “a Priest upon His throne,” who will have compassion upon the ignorant and erring
(Heb. 5: 2), and cause His righteous severity
to go forth only against the wilfully froward and rebellious. For our Lord Jesus is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”; and that which will eternally constitute His chief
glory will be, not His power, but His grace, manifested once in His
laying down His life - a ransom for many - and since in His priestly
mediatorial rule, whether in heaven or on earth.
“And the counsel of
peace shall be
between
them both.”
The
expression atsath shalom, “counsel of peace,” means not merely “peace,” for if
that alone were meant, the simple idiom vehayah shalom, “there shall be peace between
them both,” would be used. The
word used here signifies a counsel planning or procuring peace for some
other than those who counsel.
But who
are “the twain” who thus devise peace for man between them?
Some
commentators consider that the offices of Priest and King are
alluded to, but the phraseology naturally constrains us to think of
persons, not of things or abstract offices. The explanation
advocated by Hengstenberg, and
adopted by Koehler, is a probable
and reasonable one - namely, that “the reference is to
the two offices of Priest and King combined in the Person of Messiah, and that
the prophecy speaks of a plan devised by Messiah in His double character,
whereby peace and salvation should be secured for the people of God,” and on
earth during His reign.” “This fact,” observes Dr. Wright, “agrees with the New Testament
statements in which the angelic choirs are represented announcing ‘Peace on earth’ as one of the results of Christ’s birth; and with our
Lord’s own words, ‘Peace I leave with you - My peace I give you,’ the full realisation of which is exhibited in the final
vision of the Book of Revelation.”
But I am personally inclined to think that another
view, which is held by many scholars, is the right one - namely, that “the two” are Jehovah
and the Messiah, or “Jesus and the Father:” (Pausey). “It is clear, no doubt, that
the pronoun ‘His’ in the expression ‘His throne’ is used twice in verse 13
in reference to the Messiah, and cannot
well be regarded as relating to Jehovah. The royal dignity of the Messiah is
specially referred to, inasmuch as the
Messiah, as King, would have power to perform the work which
He had to do. But the fact that the pronoun in the
phrase ‘His throne’ cannot refer to Jehovah, does not prove that Jehovah cannot be one
of the two persons referred to at the close of the verse. Two,
and only two, persons are referred to in the verse - namely, the Lord and the Lord’s Christ; and many eminent scholars as Vitringa, Reuss, Pusey, and
Jerome - have considered that these
are the two Persons to whom reference is made in the clause, ‘the counsel of peace shall be
between them both.’
“The prophecy indeed is closely connected with Ps. 110., where a ‘counsel’ between the Lord and His Christ is plainly referred to, and where
Messiah is predicted as King and Priest. This is the natural meaning, and the
way in which the words were no doubt interpreted by the hearers of the prophet
Zechariah:” (Dr. Wright).
“In Christ,” to
quote another writer, “all is perfect harmony. There
is a counsel of peace between Him and
the Father whose
In
all fulness, however, the blessed fruit of this “counsel of peace,” and the “thoughts of salvation” between the Father and the Son, will
only be realised by Israel and the nations of the earth during the period of
Messiah’s [millennial] reign, and by one Church of the living God through
eternity that is to follow. Then - [in
“a new
heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21: 1, R.V.)] in the limitless ages to come - “He will show the
exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto
a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to
sum up all things in Christ, the things in the
heavens, and the things upon the earth … according to
the purpose of Him who worketh all
things after the counsel of His will” (Eph.
1: 9-11, 2: 7, R.V.).
We
come now to the 14th.verse. First let me give a word
of explanation in reference to the difference of the names here as compared
with the 10th.verse. As to Helem, it is the
same as Heldai, the difference being probably occasioned by the very slight scribal error
of running two separate Hebrew letters into one. “Hen” is not a proper name at all, but an
appellative, meaning “the favour,” or “grace,” and is rightly rendered
in the margin of the R.V. and by all scholars, “and for the kindness of the son of Zephaniah.”
This
is very beautiful. The crowns were to be deposited in the
Temple of God as a memorial, not only of these three distinguished
strangers who had brought their own and their brethren’s offerings for the
House of God, but as a memorial also of “the kindness” of this true son of Abraham, who,
as stated at the beginning of this exposition, was evidently a man given to
hospitality, and received these three strangers into his house. It was apparently a small service rendered to
the cause of God, but it was very precious to Him because it was
doubtless done for His Name’s sake. And so many a
little and apparently insignificant deed done out of love for our Lord Jesus -
yea, even the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple - is treasured
up in His memory, and shall in no wise lose its reward - “For God is not unrighteous to
forget your work, and labour of love, which ye have showed toward His Name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (Heb.
4: 10).
“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them
who are of the household of faith” (Gal.
6: 10).
But while the crowns were to be deposited in the
Temple as a memorial of these four men, they were also to serve as a
pledge and earnest of the fulfilment of the prophecy, and of the realisation of the symbolical action on which it was based:
“And they that are afar off shall come and build in the Temple of the Lord.”
These words not only refer to those Jews who were
still in the far lands of the dispersion, who in Messiah’s time would be
gathered, and take their share in the building of the future Temple,* as
some have explained, but are a glorious promise, as I
have already stated at the beginning, of the conversion of the Gentiles, and of
the time when all nations would walk in the light of Jehovah. “It is probable,” as another writer suggests, “that the great Apostle to the Gentiles may have had this
prophecy in his view when he reminded his converts in Ephesus that now in
Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off have become nigh through the blood
of Christ (Eph. 2: 13).” On the other
hand, Peter probably understood the similar expression to which he gave
utterance as referring (primarily) to the dispersed of “The promise is to you and to
your children, and to all that are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2: 29).
But again,
I repeat, that whatever fulfilment of the words we may already see, the full
realisation of them will not be until Messiah sits
and reigns a “Priest upon His throne”
over
“And ye shall know that Jehovah of hosts has
sent Me unto you.” The
fulfilment, or realisation, of what had here been predicted
in symbolical and verbal prophecy would be, so to say, the Divine
authentication of the Message and Messenger, and
And
then, also - after
*
* * *
* * *
595
THE PARABLE OF THE
SHEEP AND GOATS
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M.A.
[PART
3]
“Then shall
the righteous answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we thee hungry,
and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
And when saw we thee a stranger, and
took thee in? or naked and clothed thee? Or
when saw we thee sick or in prison, and came
unto thee?’ And the king shall answer and say
unto them, ‘In as much as ye did it unto one of these my least brethren,
ye did t it unto me:’” 37-40.
Some fancy thy can see in this reply of the righteous
an indication of humility, and astonishment, that works so poor as theirs
should be rewarded so richly, But the tenor of the reply is quite different.
Not a word is said concerning the comparative merit of the works and the reward, but only surprise is expressed at the person who professes himself benefited. They never saw him before; how can they have known
kindness to him? The answer of the king confesses that they had never before
beheld him: only he graciously imputes as done to himself, what was done to those related to him in the flesh. Such
ignorance, both of the person that judges, and of the ties that knit Him to the
Jews, cannot belong to the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
But Jesus
declares that his kindness to “on of His least brethren,” He esteems as done to Himself. Now there are three
kinds of brotherhood presented in the New Testament,
and thus the superlative “least” is
accounted for. The first is that which is pronounced
by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, and oneness with Jesus in the Spirit.
The second and less relationship to Jesus is the being born of the same parent.
You have both these kinds compared together, and the pre-eminence given to the
first brotherhood in a well-known passage of the Gospels. “While He yet talked to the
people, behold His mother and His
brethren stood without,
desiring to speak with Him. Then one said unto Him, Behold
thy mother and thy brethren stand
without desiring to speak with thee. But He answered and
said unto him that told Him, Who is my mother?
and who are my brethren? And He stretched forth
His hand towards His disciples and said, Behold
my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do
the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same
is my brother, and sister, and mother:” Matt. 12: 46-50. The
third and lowest degree of brotherhood is the being one of the same nation. “And when he was full forty years old it came into his head to visit His brethren the children of
For
what is the condition of the Jews at the return of Messiah? There shall be “wrath upon this people.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword,
and be led away captive into all the nations (or ‘Gentiles’),
and
But while this will be their general treatment
in their last great captivity, the Lord will dispose the hearts of His earthly
elect to show them kindness. “He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them
captives. Save us Lord our God, and gather us from the heathen (or ‘nations’) to give thanks unto
thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise:” Psalm 106: 46, 47. Ezek. 6: 8, 9, refers
(with many other passages) to the same time; see Jer. 1: 33, 34.
From
these and many declarations of a similar character, it appears that just before
Messiah’s coming, the Jews are carried captive into all
lands, and, therefore, the present test is aptly proposed to men. As captives, all these wants and
necessities may well oppress them. And
critically accordant with this is one of the conditions which the Saviour
specifies as relieved by the just - “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” Hunger also and thirst, nakedness, sickness, and
imprisonment are just the calamities which would be
likely to overtake the plundered, and hated, and overdriven captives of
The
rule of judgment towards the heathen nations at the coming of Christ will be
the principle which God laid down at His first
choosing of
These
are also, I believe, the parties addressed in Psalm
115, immediately after the mention of
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
596
COMING
COLLAPSE
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
It is one of the mysteries of life how thoughtful
people, facing the basic facts of the world, can fail to see - what every Second
Advent student knows as a truism - that the earth, and the human race on it,
are built within sharp boundaries which draw closer every year. That is to say, apart from all prophecy, yet dovetailing into
prophecy with the startling accuracy of truth, the ground-plan of the world, as
created by God, compels a near cataclysm, a collapse so awful, so
irretrievable, as to compel the abrupt and miraculous intervention of God;
without which the world would be an express train heading straight for a precipice.
POPULATION
The
boundaries of the possible population of the globe the figures for
FOOD
As
sharp are the boundaries set to the food productivity of the globe. Prof. J. W. Gregory, F.R.S., president
of its Geographical Section, informed the British Association in Toronto
(August, 1924) that it is calculated that 6,600,000,000, is the maximum population
the world can feed; and that that limit will be reached in 120 years. Even if
the food supply - the Professor said - were indefinitely multiplied, by the
precipitation of the nitrogen of the atmosphere as a constant rain of manna, by
the year 3000 A.D. living room part from the
ENERGY
Sharp boundaries have also been set by the Creator to
the sources of energy, necessary
for civilization, stored in our planet. “For over a
century,” says the Times (Sep.
21, 1920), “the world has been dissipating its capital
of stored energy more rapidly year by year. Mechanical power has supplanted
wind-power, water-power, and the labour of men and
animals. Windmills and sailing vessels have yielded to steam engines, water-wheels have disappeared, motors serve for road
transport, and we take the lift instead of climbing stairs. The total
consumption of energy has been doubled, quadrupled,
multiplied indefinitely. The capital consists of energy captured from sunlight
by living plants, and stored chemically as coal, oil, or peat. It took
countless centuries to accumulate; its amount is limited. Already many
coalfields are exhausted, and the production of oil in the
THE RACES
Equally
grave are the boundaries within which have to be solved the problem of
conflicting races. Eight-ninths of the habitable globe are under white
dominance; but since the amazing victory of
SCIENCE
More
dreadful are the self-made boundaries of an entire race, maddened by fear,
turning brain into destruction. Science, devoted to annihilation, now menaces
the world. Machine-guns spitting forth a fan-shaped tail of
6000 bullets a minute; aeroplanes at a height of 10 to 15 miles, dropping bombs
weighing 4,300 lbs., and creating destruction over the radius of a mile; guns
with a range of 150 miles, and tanks which, concealed in their own smoke, can
out-distance the fleetest hound - all these are things that are here now. “If destructive science is to remain dominant,” says
the Manchester Guardian, “there is no salvation in store for the world. ‘Why not?’ replies the hard-head: ‘it always has been the view, and the world has
gone on.’ Quite true! But the
last few years have brought a startling change in the conditions of existence -
a change that has not yet been fully realized. Destructive science has gone
ahead out of all proportion. It is developing so fast that each irresponsible
assertion of national rights or interests must bring the world appreciably
nearer to ruin. Without any doubt whatever, the powers of destruction are
gaining fast on the powers of creation and construction.” “Give me a few millions sterling,” says M. Vogt, the Norwegian scientist, “and I will sit on Hampstead Heath and destroy
Statesmen,
soldiers, diplomatists, and men of science, the men who, unacquainted with
prophecy, controlled the world throughout the Great War, and so know the facts
as none other knows them, are the men whose warnings are the gravest and
saddest.
Viscount Grey says:- “Unless mankind learns from this War to avoid war, the
struggle will have been in vain. Over humanity will loom the menace of
destruction. If the world cannot organize
against war, if war must go on, then the nations can protect themselves
henceforth only by using whatever destructive agencies they can invent, till
the resources and inventions of science end by destroying the humanity they
were meant to serve.” Mr. Lloyd George says:
“Discoveries made almost at the end of the war, if
they had been used, would have produced horrors indescribable; and if we are to
have another war with new terrors that no man ever thought of at its
beginning, this world will be driven to something that it has never conceived
in its most imaginative moments.”
MORAL
DECADENCE
One
moral boundary - and therefore the only boundary disputable; all the rest are
beyond challenge - is the deepening iniquity which, above all else, must reach a limit compelling
the miraculous intervention of God. We take a nation high in the ethical
rank of peoples, and the nation now the wealthiest in the world. The murders in
the
“SEEING THAT THESE THINGS
ARE THUS ALL TO BE DISSOLVED, WHAT MANNER OF PERSONS OUGHT YE TO BE IN ALL HOLY LIVING AND
GODLINESS” (2 Pet. 3: 11).
*
* * *
* * *
597
THE GOSPEL’S
LAST HOUR
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
“The
situation,” says Dr. Mott, “is absolutely unique in the
history of the Christian religion, unique in opportunity, unique in danger,
unique in responsibility, and unique in duty. The Church is confronting a
rapidly-climaxing world-crisis; stupendous changes are
constituting the greatest single opportunity which has ever confronted
the Christian religion; and
it is an opportunity which will not linger.”
SHEM.
An
amazing tug is pulling, at the heart of the nations. Out of the heart of these
nations have come, in this century, three letters representing the three great
divisions of mankind, and voicing the cry of the world
to the
* Trusting
and Toiling, Nov. 1906.
HAM.
We
turn to the Hamitic nations, and the voice is from
*
Missionary Review of the
World, Dec. 1906.
JAPHETH.
We
turn to the Japhetic nations, and here is perhaps one of the most wonderful letters which a body of unbelievers ever addressed to the
* Church Missionary Intelligencer, Dec., 1906.
COMING STORMS
So the
pull of God’s hand is on the heart of the nations; but the hour will not last.
In the words of Max Muller:- “We are on the eve of a storm
which will shake the oldest convictions of the world”; or, as Principal Forsyth has expressed it, - “The Gospel is fighting for its life inside the Churches, as well as outside.”
“The opposition to Christianity,” says Sir W. Robertson Nicol,
“will become more manifest, more
fierce, and more deadly than it has ever been.” Over a vast area,
once Christian - the 160,000,000 of the
THE WAITING NATIONS
Meanwhile
there are the waiting nations, and the hour that will not last. Two African
chiefs came to Chalmers and said, -
“We want Christian teachers: will you send them?”
Chalmers had no one to send, and he said, “I have no
one: I cannot send anyone.” Two years passed away and those two chiefs
came to him again. Chalmers himself happened to be at liberty, and he travelled
over the intervening country, and arrived on a Sunday morning. To his surprise he saw the whole nation on their knees in perfect
silence. Chalmers said to one of the
chiefs, “What are you doing?” “Why,” he said, “we are
praying.” “But,” Chalmers said, “you
are not saying anything.” “White man,”
the chief answered, “we do not know what to say. For
two years every Sunday morning we have met here; and for four hours we have
been on our knees, and we have been praying like that, but we do not know what to say.” But the tug at the heart
of the nations may soon pass. When birds are migrating in
flocks to other lands, and the instinct is strong upon them - if you catch one
and imprison it in a cage, it will beat its breast against the bars, and fall
panting back: but let the migratory season pass, and you may open the cage, but
it will not fly; and you may even take it and throw it up into the air, but it
falls back limply to the ground. The tug on the little heart is gone.
For a soul, for a nation, even for a world, there comes a time when the tug of the Holy Ghost at the heart may pass for
ever, if they know not the hour of their visitation.
THE LAST
CRISIS
Therefore the hour is momentous for us all. “The crisis of the battle,” said Napoleon, “is the moment in which to throw in all your reserves.”
The supreme
urgency of the crisis is for a final proclamation of Christ. An English sportsman was in the Soudan.
He was a Christian; and he was lying in a midday siesta on the burning sand,
when he felt a touch, and he looked round and saw an old sheik of the desert.
They got into conversation. (The Mohammedan has his tradition that the prophet
Jesus, whom they put under Mohammed, is to return after the coming of the Mahdi.) The old man said to the Englishman:- “Do you know the prophet Jesus?”
The Englishman answered “Yes.” “Well,” said the old man, “is
He coming soon?” The sportsman answered “I do not know.” The old man pressed him further, and
said- “Is He coming in a few months, or is He coming next year?” The sportsman said - “God only knows, I do not; but I know that He is coming again.”
“Well,” said the old man, “I will tell you why I ask you. I want you to tell me what He
is like, that if He should pass me in the desert I may recognize His face, and
be able to welcome Him.”
Solemn hour: thus on the margin
Of that wondrous Day
When the former things have vanish’d,
Old things pass’d
away;
Nothing but Himself before us,
Every shadow pass’d:
Sound
we loud the word of witness,
For
it is the last.
One last word of solemn
warning
To the world below;
One loud shout, that all may
hear us
Hail him, ere we go:
Once more let that name be
sounded
With a trumpet tone, -
Here, amid the deep’ning
shadows,
Then - before the Throne.
*
* * *
* * *
598
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Our Lord lays down a parallel (“a sublime parallelism” Lange) fraught for both Church and world, with momentous
significance. Six times named in the Old Testament, and four
times in the New; expressed in a word - ‘an overthrow
without remedy’ - used of no other judgment in the Bible; dissimilar to
the Flood-judgment, which God is pledged never to repeat:- probably more than
any other catastrophe in the history of the world, Sodom
stands forth as a supreme example of the coming judgment of [God’s
Church and]
the world. For our Lord explicitly states that the
circumstances of
SIN AND JUDGMENT
The
first outstanding parallel is that the world itself dates the judgment. There is a limit to sin beyond which judgment is inevitable,
without a moment’s warning, and final. “Now the men of
THE DOOM OF THE WORLD
The
second outstanding parallel is the nature of the doom. “
* “Bitumen,” says Canon Tristram,
“is found in large masses floating on the surface of
the Dead Sea, especially after earthquakes; and many sulphur springs, on its
shores and in its basin, deposit sulphur largely on the rocks around.” Tacitus, the Roman historian, says:- “Not far from this place are
fields that, we are told” - for tradition preserved the fact - “were formerly fertile and occupied by large cities, but they
were burnt up by thunder and lightning, and the ruins still remain upon them.
It is also related that the very earth, scorched by heat, has lost all
productive power.” So de Saulcy, a modern Orientalist,
near the ruins of Kharbet-Gouram, a continuous mass
covering some six thousand yards, and which he believes to be
THE DELIVERANCE OF THE CHURCH
The
third outstanding parallel is God’s studied plan for the complete deliverance
of the family of faith. This is explicitly stated by the
Apostle. “If
God delivered
righteous
MINISTERING
SPIRITS
The
fourth outstanding parallel is the descent of God, and the double agency of
Angels for both escape and judgment. “And the Lord said, I will GO DOWN now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the
cry of it” (Gen. 18: 21). In huge and overwhelming catastrophes (as Archbishop Trench has said) there is nothing hasty, blind or precipitate. From
this earlier ‘parousia’ the heavenly powers
operate. The deliverance of a single family is worthy of an angel’s powers: how
much more will God stir heaven to save myriads! “The reapers,” says our Lord, “are angels” (Matt. 13: 39); and the Angels who empty bowls of fire upon
the earth (Rev. 16:
1) are the Angels that reap the saints: so
the angels that deliver Lot destroy
THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO ESCAPE
The
fifth outstanding parallel is the onus of escape which
God casts wholly upon His people. “Escape for your life; look not behind
thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape
to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Gen. 19: 17). The
escape, for
* “Be set” [by angels] - Alford.
THF FATE OF
THE UNWATCHFUL
The sixth outstanding parallel is the disaster that
overtook one of the family of the saved, a disaster on
which our Lord peculiarly fastens. “REMEMBER
*
The apocryphal Book of Wisdom (10: 7) says, - “Of whose
[the cities’] wickedness even to this day the waste
land that smoketh is a testimony; and a standing pillar of salt is a monument
of an unbelieving soul.” Dean
Alford adds:- “Josephus
relates that it was standing in his time;
and the same is asserted by Fathers
of the Church.”
[** NOTE: Heb. 9: 27, R.V.:- “And inasmuch
as it is appointed unto men once to die, and AFTER THAT cometh JUDGMENT.”
Therefore, the ‘judgment
Seat of Christ’ will take place BEFORE
RESURRECTION, and therefore AFTER the time of DEATH, and our sojourn in “HADES” - the underworld of disembodied ‘souls’
(See Matt. 16:
18; Luke 16:
23; Acts 2:
27, 34; Rev. 6: 9-11. Cf. John 3: 13; 2 Tim. 2: 18).
Never at any time before “the salvation
of souls” (1 Pet.
1: 5, 9, R.V.), has there been a Resurrection unto immortality (see Rev. 11: 7. cf. Matt. 27: 52, R.V.);
and “the FIRST resurrection,” of the ‘HOLY’
dead, is FUTURE, SELECTIVE and CONDITIONAL (Luke 20: 35; Phil. 3: 11; Heb. 20: 35b, etc.)
- it CANNOT take place BEFORE the second advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, (John 14: 3; 1 Cor. 15: 23,ff; 1 Thess. 4: 16): and “the rest of the dead
lived not until the thousand years
should be finished:” (Rev. 20: 5, 6, R.V.).]
*** Leaders in the
THE KINGDOM
The seventh outstanding parallel is the glory of
*
* * *
* * *
599
THE MAN WITH
THE ANGEL FACE
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Stephen’s death is as golden a sunset as ever made the Alpen-glow a dying splendour. His
swan-song was the first missionary message ever given by the Christian Church:
it was - in its setting aside of the Temple - a bold re-affirmation of our
Lord’s great Gentile word to the Woman by the Well, and it cleared men’s minds for ever of the thought that Christianity
could only reach the nations through Judaism: it actually opened the door into
all the earth by the persecution it created: it started the conversion of the
Apostle of the Gentiles,* who watched the tragic scene: it is the
utterance of a young man, in the
dawn of a new era, who scaled the supreme heights at a bound: it is the first
missionary message sealed, at once, with the first martyr’s blood. With
the extraordinary significance that always attaches to Scripture names, ‘Stephen’ means a ‘Crown’; for already, over the martyr brow, hovers the shadow of
God’s deathless amaranth.
It is largely a truth that what a man is can be read
in his face. The face is a
barometer of character: it is the only section of the body which obviously
reflects and registers the soul: as a bird’s claw will be stamped upon soft
rock, and remain, when the rock is hard, indelible for a thousand years, so the
face hardens, into visible destiny, under mobile character. The face of the
babe is blank, because its character is unformed; but the changes wrought by a
lifetime can be, for good or evil, a transfiguration. The drunkard’s puffy,
bloated face; the sensualist’s brutishness; the shifty craft which writes ‘hypocrite’ across the eyes:- we all start with
infancy’s white, unspotted page: we stamp it all over, as the years pass, with
our own handwriting: Cain himself will be branded with no clearer mark than we,
who carry our signature in our face.
Now
suddenly in the frightful uproar of lynch law, in the roar and the tumult of
the first Christian martyrdom, we come upon the man with the angel-face. “And all that sat in the
council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel” (Acts 6: 15). What an angel’s face is like may be judged
from the Resurrection scene:- “His appearance was as
lightning, and his raiment white as snow” (Matt. 17: 3).
Stephen’s face was a most extraordinary revelation. The whole Council sat with
awed but angry gaze on one face: in that face was the
dawn that was going to circle the globe: yet it was a dying face,
for “if a seed
remain, it abideth alone, but if it DIE, it
bringeth forth much fruit.” If an
angel came down among the sons of men, knowing all the facts of another world,
and having them always before his eyes, how noble his carriage would be, how
fearless his mien, how shining his countenance, even if his path was leading
straight to martyrdom: he would move as the consecrate of the Lord, the
commissioned of God. “They forget,” said Samuel Rutherford, when summoned at the
end of his life to what was probably martyrdom, “that
I am already dead.” How that face must have haunted the dreams of the
Sanhedrim all down the fevered years!
Now
look at the ethical marvel of it. It is
possible in the midst of angry criticism, acute personal danger, profound
misunderstanding, overwhelming obloquy, to have the
face of an angel. We have no slightest conception of the natural beauty, or
ugliness, of Stephen’s face: the negro, the Mongolian,
the Indian - each can be the man with the angel-face. A Hindu trader in
What
an epitome of a missionary! Heaven was actually opened,
but only Stephen saw into it: all they saw of Heaven was Stephen’s face. A young lady missionary in
“But for Stephen’s prayers,” says Augustine, “the Church would never have
had its Paul”; the Church all down the ages is a creation from the light
in somebody else’s face. An old saying says:- “A cloudy face strikes deeper than an angry blow”: how
blessedly true is the opposite! How profoundly more we are
often helped by what people are, than by
what they say; and it is
an unconscious glow. Moses and Stephen kept no mirrors: Moses “wist not that the skin of his face shone”; and Stephen - had he had time to think of it - would have been puzzled by the startled stare of the
Council. “Oh for the holy shining of the face and oh for the
holy ignorance of the shining!” (McCheyne).
The shine of Stephen’s was the unconscious response to “the countenance as the sun
shineth in its strength”: because
Christ filled his eyes, he won and wore the angel-face: all faces are beautiful
that look on Christ.
The look of one who bears away
Glad tidings from the hills of day.
So in
this first martyrdom we get the secret of all martyrdom and of all radiant
service. “Looking
up steadfastly into heaven, he saw JESUS.” He saw God’s Kingdom in its omnipotence, its vastness,
its repose, its sanctity; and he saw the One
who had called him, and commissioned
him, standing oil the right hand of
power. The great Chinese Statesman, Li Hung Chang, wrote in his diary, as a
curious fact for which he could not account:- “This Christianity makes poor and lowly people bold and
unafraid.” Stephen was facing certain death. A London Divine said
recently:- “A medical
announcement that in a fortnight or in three months we should be dead, would
throw everyone of us into a cold sweat of fear. Not the strongest man could
face the announcement without almost complete collapse.” Not so: for look at Stephen. All through he “SAW JESUS.” When confronted with the
angry law court, that Face shone - no passing fancy, but the passion of his
life; as the stones began to fly, the vision still held his gaze; when the film
gathered over the darkening eyes, he saw it still: the moment after, he saw it
as none of us have ever seen it - yet. The death-hour
can be the most radiant of the whole life; and if we co-operate
with God, and He sees the need, it will be.
Robert Glover, one of the ancient
martyrs, was very gracious, very holy; yet God was pleased, during his last
days in prison, to withdraw Himself from him, and leave him in great distress
of soul. A friend visited him and advised him to continue waiting upon God. He
did so; and the night before his execution he spent
much of the time in prayer; but no comfort came, no Christ. The next day he was
led forth to execution; but the moment he came in sight of the stake, he cried:- “O Austin, He is come! He is
come!”
For
heaven can be proved by the heaven in the face. In a
small township in the
And it is
an exhaustless shine. An old negro slave was once
addressed by her mistress. “Sybil,” she said, “when I heard you singing on the
house-top, I thought you fanatical; but when I saw your
shining face, I saw how different you were to me.” “Ah,
Missis,” the old woman answered, “the light you
saw in my face was not mine, but was ’flected from
the cross; and there is heaps more for every poor sinner who will come near
enough to catch de rays.” “THE BEAUTY OF THE
LORD OUR GOD BE UPON US.” (Ps. 15: 17).
*
* *
GIVE GOD A CHANCE - BY PRAYING
There are many things too difficult for you to do. But you do not hesitate to seek some one more skilful and
give him a chance to do for you. You have a precious gem to re-set. You cannot
do it. But you are quick to give the expert jeweller a
chance to do it for you. There is a dangerous mountain steep to climb. You do
not know how to find the pathway. But you give the
mountain guide a chance to lead you in it. There is a deep ford to cross. You
cannot risk it. But you give the hardy ferryman a
chance to pilot you across it.
It
is not otherwise with you and God. There are many things you
cannot do. But God says: “If ye ASK I will
do.” There are burdens you cannot bear. Give God a chance through
prayer, and, He will bear them for you. There are problems too knotty for your
solution. Give God a chance by prayer, and God will solve them for you. There
are barriers too high for you to overleap. Ask God. They are not too high for
Him. Somehow when there seems no other chance for us,
prayer gives God a chance. And behold, He does for us
what we had forever despaired of doing ourselves.
- MCCONKEY.
*
Nor is this an isolated case. An unopened
letter was found after his death in McCheyne’s desk in which his correspondent, in Broughty Ferry, told
how he had been converted not by anything McCheyne had said, but “by your look, Sir, as you
entered the pulpit.”
-------
PRAYER FOR
THE NATIONS
Great God, Who, as in days of yore,
Art Prince of Peace and Lord of war,
Come forth! the whole round
world awaits
The opening of Thy mercy-gates.
Betwixt us and our Promised Land
New shapes of danger darkly stand: '
’Tis not enough that war should cease,
Till from
ourselves we find release.
Till human wills are made Divine
No sun of righteousness can shine,
Nor any peace on earth begin
Till God
has triumph’d o’er man’s sin.
Therefore, Thou King of all, come
down
Burn up our baseness with Love’s frown:
Bid men by brothers’ blood set free
Be brothers round one
Or, if we
turn not, teach again
The nations in new schools of pain,
Till from some dark, chastising rod
Blossoms at last the Peace of God.
- BISHOP E.
A. BURROUGHS
-------
TYNDALE
It is wonderfully significant that the man who gave us
our English Bible was actually burnt, not for his opinions,
but for having made the translation, a copy of which was burnt with him. The
most exalted gift the language ever received cost such a price! As Lord Asquith has said:- “Great and incomparable as were the services rendered by the
translators in the time of James I, our Bible in its most essential and
characteristic features is not of Elizabethan, still less is it of Jacobean,
authorship. The two great men to whom, more than to anyone else, we owe our
English Bible are William Tyndale
and Miles Coverdale.
It is a singular fact that it was in the reign of Henry VIII., an otherwise relatively sterile era in our language
and literature, that these two men of genius, with their contemporary Cranmer, created the Bible’s literary form
with its matchless cadences and its sublime simplicity.”
And now
has the little one become a thousand! Since the Bible
Society was founded in 1804 versions
have been made in 735 languages, and the Society has issued 355,000,000 copies of the Scriptures.
*
* * *
* * *
600
THE PARABLE OF THE SHEEP
AND THE GOATS
[PART
4]
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M.A.
If the judgment before us be
so understood, there is in it a remarkable agreement with God’s dealings of
old. Thus Pharaoh, King of Egypt, is plagued because of his offence against
Abraham’s wife, even though ignorantly committed: Gen. 12:
17. The kings that spoil
We may also look at the principle of the judgment in a
moral point of view. Then the saved are blessed
according to a principle of the New Testament - “Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy:” Matt. 5: 7. And the lost are cursed according to another principle - “For he shall have
justice without mercy, that showed no
mercy: and mercy rejoiceth (or ‘boasteth’) against
judgment:” Jas. 2: 13.
It is a dictate even of the natural conscience to do
good to those that need it, to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty,
and clothing to the naked. But while none are justified thereby of right, these are, by
the special application of a principle of God’s revealed mercy, promised to
Abraham. Thus all the saved come in for a portion of
the unconditional grace promised to Abraham. Believers in Jesus, as his
spiritual seed; the Jew, as the descendant of the patriarch after the flesh;
and the saved of the heathen, as benefactors of the literal
But
observe the distinction between the doctrine concerning reward presented to
them, and that held forth to the Church - “Whosoever shall give you a cup of cold water to drink in my
name because ye belong to Christ, verily
I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his
reward:” Mark.
9: 41. The believer’s kindness is
accepted when it
springs from the knowledge of Christ’s oneness with His people, and love to them,
because they are His. But the kindness here
manifested was in entire
ignorance of Messiah, and of the relation in which the Jew stands to Him. For while they have faith in God, as it is written, “He that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder
of them that diligently seek Him:”
(Heb. 11:
6), of Jesus they have not heard, and so
cannot believe in Him.
“Then shall he say to those on
the left hand - ‘Depart from me ye cursed into
everlasting fire, that hath been prepared
for the devil and his angels: For I was hungry, and ye gave
me not to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was
a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not;
sick, and in prison,
and ye visited me not.’
“Then shall they also answer
him saying - ‘Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or
thirsty, or a stranger, or naked. or sick, or in prison, and did not come
unto thee?’”
“Then shall he answer them saying - ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of
these least ye did it not to me.’”
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into everlasting life,” 41-46.
The
same test is applied to the wicked of the Gentiles, and by it
they are condemned justly. And here the rule applies -
“The wages
of sin is death, but the gift of
God is everlasting life through
Jesus Christ our Lord.” The lost
perish justly, and according
to the rightful interpretation of the law of nature under which they lived. The
righteous enter into life of mercy
alone; through abounding
grace giving them beyond their desert.
They
“go away”, because the land on which they are judged is the
It
has been justly remarked that there is a very observable
difference between the words of approbation and those of rejection. Of the righteous it is said - “Come, ye blessed of my Father.” But of the perishing it is not said - “Depart, ye cursed of my Father,” for while there is election with God, and it is needful that the
energy of the Godhead should be put forth to bring any to life, there is no
putting forth of the power of God to hinder any from eternal life. “I have no pleasure in him
that dieth, saith the Lord God, wherefore turn yourselves, and
live ye:” Ezek.
18: 32. “God our Saviour, who is willing ([…
see Greek]) that
all should be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth:” 1
Tim. 2: 4.
Man’s ruin is of himself; his rising again is of the Lord.
Nor,
again, is it said, that the fire was prepared for men,
but it was for Satan. It was prepared for Satan, who
blasted the fair scene of creation by the successful temptation of man.
But we
may also observe, that it is not
said - “Enter the kingdom prepared for me
and my angels,” as it
is said, that the fire is for Satan and his angels. For it is
declared concerning the habitable earth in its future state, that it is
to be ruled, not by angels, but by men: Heb.
2.
The
curse comes upon them because they have shown no mercy, and done no kindness to
the Jew. But we know from several places of the
prophets that they will exercise cruelty towards them. Thus, Psalm 44: 10-15: “They which hate us spoil for themselves. Thou hast given us like sheep
appointed for meat; and hast scattered us among
the heathen. Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by our price. Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the peoples. My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me.”
They
are thus led away to punishment, and that punishment
eternal. For the infliction of the thousand years is no sooner over than that
of eternity begins. And the life of the justified fled
is eternal; for the only persons that are expressly described as dying during
the millennium (so far as my memory serves me, Isa.
65: 20; Jer. 31: 29-33) are those who sin.
But these are the elect and especially blessed of God,
and their life will be eternal.
The
present parable answers questions that are likely often to occur to a student
of prophecy - Who, beside the Jews, are to people the renewed earth? And how are they to be judged who never heard of the law, or
of Jesus? We have, on both questions, replies calculated to satisfy us. These are the Gentiles that are called on to rejoice with God’s
people. They are the Gentiles that glorify God for His mercy: Rom. 25. For while they are tried by a test that is
suited to those who never heard the revealed will of God, they are dealt with
in mercy for the sake of the promise to Abraham; and to Abraham’s seed, Christ
Jesus. They enter the kingdom or the ground of mercy alone. For
to feed the hungry and clothe the naked is but a part of the duties that might
justly be required, even of those who never knew of the revealed law of God.
And even
had these been greatly benevolent, on this they could have founded no claim,
for it could not put away one of their sins. But at
this point grace steps in, and Jesus, in consideration of His Father’s
election, and their kindness imputed to Himself, grants them a recompense
infinitely beyond their desert. The decision nevertheless is
not arbitrary (as men speak), that is, without any
declared ground for the good pleasure of God; but it has a foundation in reason
and justice, so that those rejected and finally lost could not complain; while
the saved must confess that infinite mercy and the election of God have
prevailed to snatch them from a like portion.
Each
of the three parties that has come in review takes a
different place in the promised kingdom. These are the elect of the Father, not
given to Jesus that they may be one with Him, as we are (John 17),
but they are predestined to be subjects of His holy and happy kingdom over
renewed creation. For that is the time for which the creation
is groaning and looking forward: (Rom. 8.) But further,
we see a distinction in the parable itself, between the brethren of
the king, and these his subjects. This gives us the place of the Jew in that day, as
compared with the Gentile. Those of the church who are
counted worthy will be in heavenly glory in the New Jerusalem, ruling,
jointly with Christ, the earth and all things. The Jew will find
his centre of glory in the earthly
Of
the judgment presented in the text we have, I judge, a
type in David’s dealings with
Let
us next notice the connection of the present parable with the Drag-net. I believe them to refer to one
and the same judgment, and not to the nominally Christian nations. And the evidence of this will, I think, be clear, if we
consider the points of resemblance.
1. Fish roaming untamed, and without even a nominal
master, answer well to the nations of the heathen who are left to themselves;
but not well to nations professedly Christian.
2.
The assembling of the parties from places distant from each other, and bringing
them together to another spot for judgment, is, however, the decisive point of
resemblance between the Drag-net, and the Sheep and Goats. This distinguishes
both parables from the judgment of the wheat-field. In the two former, a work
is going on at the same time, on both good and bad. In the wheat-field
there is a succession of actions, affecting first
the evil, and then the good. In these, the angels gather both good and evil confusedly
from out of their native countries, into the
3.
Again, the mixture and confusion at first of the good and evil fish, and of the
sheep and the goats, is a strong feature of resemblance;
while the angels appear as agents of the Son of man in both.
4.
The separation effected at length is another point of agreement; the only difference being that angels are said to effect it in the one case,
and the Son of man in the other. But the agency of the
angels of the Son of man would be virtually his agency, and the difference is
perfectly reconcilable.
5.
The place of separation is the same - the
6.
The place of punishment is the same, and its instrument eternal fire.
7.
The rule of decision is the same. The separation is produced
by an intuitive knowledge of their kinds. The good are
discerned from the bad fish by the eye; the sheep are severed from the
goats by a knowledge that enters at a glance
8.
Each of the two parables is the last
of its series of seven. For the great prophecy of Matthew 24. is divided into two parts at
verse 31. And each
of these is divided into seven other parts. The latter half contains seven
parables; of which the Sheep and Goats is the last. And
not only so, but both of them follow after the mysteries of the kingdom concerning
the
(Concluded)
(To be continued from Tract 601)