“The kingdom of heaven
is like unto a man that is a merchant
seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold
all that he had, and bought it” (Matt.
13: 45). A professional pearl-diver, while at the
bottom of the sea, noticed an oyster holding a piece of printed paper between
its closed shells. The diver secured the slip, and through the goggles of his
head-dress began to read. It was a
Gospel tract, and coming to him thus strangely, so impressed his heart that
he said:- “I can hold out against God’s mercy no
longer, since it pursues me thus.” He became while at the bottom of the
sea a penitent and, as he was assured, a forgiven man.
*
* *
INDEX
601 THE HID TREASURE By Robert Govett, M. A. [PART ONE]
602 THOUGHTS FOR THE YOUNG
By Helen Ramsay.
603 ENDANGERED LOVE
By E. S. Gerig.
604 ‘IS IT I’ By Alexander Maclaren,
605 THE HID TREASURE
By Robert Govett, M. A. [PART TWO]
606 THE DUALISM OF ETERNAL LIFE By Stephen Spears Craig. (3)
[A
Study of the Greek word ‘aionios’
and its discriminative use in English translation.]
607 ‘IS IT I? By Alexander Maclaren,
608 THE DISPENSATIONS
By D. M. Panton, B. A.
609 A MINISTER ON CHURCH AMUSEMENTS By C. E. Mc C.
610 EARTH HEAVEN’S THEATRE
By D. M. Panton, B.A.
611 THE
612 ON THE MOUNTAIN
By Alexander Maclaren,
613 THE HID TREASURE
By Robert Govett, M. A. [PART THREE]
614 HUMILITY By
William Law.
615 THE CHRISTIAN AND WEALTH By D. M. Panton, B. A.
616 THE
617 THE BETTER COVENANT
By James N. Britton [PART ONE]
618 GIANTS OF FAITH
By D. M. Panton, B. A.
619 THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB
By Joseph Sladen.
620 THE BETTER COVENANT
By James N. Britton. [PART TWO]
621 THE HID TREASURE By Robert Govett, M. A. [PART FOUR]
622 A
623 THE CHURCH AND THE SYNAGOGUE By D. M. Panton, B.A.
624 THE JUSTICE OF GOD
By W. P. Clark.
625 THE POWER OF THE KEYS
By D. M. Panton, B. A.
626 VICARIOUS ATONEMENT RIGHT
AND WRONG By D.
M. Panton, B. A.
627
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
FOR TODAY By G.
H. Lang.
628
THE HID TREASURE By Robert Govett, M. A. [PART FIVE]
629
THE
630
CASTING ANXIETY ON GOD
631 THE OVERCOMERS PATHWAY TO THE THRONE
By T
632
THE
633
THE INTENSITY OF CHRIST By D. M.
Panton, B.A.
634
THE DANGERS OF DENOMINATIONALISM
By R.E.D. Clark, M.A., Ph. D.
635
CONQUERING SAINTS By D. M. Panton,
B.A.
636
THE
637
CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY
638
THE OVERCPMERS PATHWAY TO THE THRONE
By T Austin Sparks
[PART TWO]
639
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ETERNAL LIFE AND
THE
640
THE
641
DYING DEMOCRACY
642
WATCH AND PRAY By D. M. Panton, B.A.
643
644
THE
645
THE BLOOD AND THE WRATH By D. M. Panton, B.A.
646
THE JEW A WITNESS TO
CHRISTIANITY
By Bishop J. B. Lightfoot, D.D.
647 THE JEW FIRST
By C. K. Mowll.
648
THE
649
650
THE HATE OF THE JEW By William Zukerman.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
601
THE
UNEXPLAINED PARABLES OF MATTHEW
THE HID
TREASURE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
[PART
ONE]
-------
“Again the kingdom of heaven
is like unto treasure that had been hid in the field;
which a man having found hid, and for joy thereof goeth
back and selleth
all that he hath and buyeth that field.” - Matthew
13: 44.
Before entering on the interpretation of the present
parable, I would notice first the insufficiency and inapplicability of those
explanations which are ordinarily given of it. They are three in number:-
1.
The first affirms that the treasure is Christ and the field the Gospel. But is Christ hidden in the Gospel? Is it not from beginning
to end a display of his glory?
Again, when a sinner has found Christ, is he to hide him? When the lamp is lit,
is it to be put under the bushel or under the bed? Or yet further, is it
necessary for one who receives the gospel to give up all that he has? Or can a
man be said to buy the gospel? Is it not something freely offered and bestowed without merit?
2.
The second interpretation supposes the treasure to be salvation, and the Bible to be the field. But this labours under difficulties no fewer or
less considerable than the former. For is salvation [by
God’s grace]
hidden in the Scripture? And when [eternal] salvation is found, is it to be hidden by him who finds it? Is he not rather to testify of it that others may find it
also? And again, does it require him to sell all that he has in order to buy a
Bible? And if the Bible be the field, many have no need to buy it, for they
possess it long before they find the treasure.
3.
A third interpretation of the parable makes the treasure to be the
Let
us now proceed to see if there be not some interpretation which will meet all
the expressions in the parable.
I. There are three apparent difficulties in the way of its explanation,
if we assume the same principles which have guided us before. If the field be the
world, how can it be right to buy the world, when the Christian is rather
required to give it up? And the second difficulty is, how can it be right in
any to hide treasure, when
in the parable of the talents one of the
servants is represented as ‘cast into outer darkness’ because he “hid his Lord’s money?” Matt 25: 18. Or is it right to lay up “treasure on earth?” These three difficulties fix the interpretation, as
incapable of being fulfilled, except by one person.
II. I suppose then, that as in the former parable, “the field is the world,” verse 38. The
treasure is, I judge, the promised [heavenly
sphere of resurrected saints,
during the millennial]
[* Psa. 110: 1-3; Rev. 20: 5, R.V. Cf.
Luke 24: 44,
45, R.V.]
It
is also worthy of notice, that as, when God permitted kings to be set up over
the children of Israel, we read of their treasures: so,
before that time, when God reigned as king over Israel, ere the nation had, (in Samuel’s day)
rejected him, he also had a treasure: “All the silver and
gold, and vessels of brass and iron are
consecrated unto the Lord; they shall come into
the treasury
of the Lord:” Joshua
6: 19,
24.
Moreover,
as to
III. The connection between treasure and the [righteous reign* and] kingdom of God was seen in the reigns of David,
Solomon, and Hezekiah; for as these were
the most holy of the kings of Judah, so was the kingdom peculiarly glorious in
their times; and while of other kings we read of their voluntarily sending
away, or by compulsion being robbed of, the treasures of the Lord’s house or of
the king’s house, these alone are stated to have possessed and retained them.
The treasures of these kings were open, because
this was the period when the most High gave a glimpse of the [manifested] glory of the coming
Kingdom of the Messiah.
[* Isaiah 9: 6-7; 11: 3-5, R.V. Cf Luke 12: 42-48ff. with Luke 22: 28-30, R.V.]
IV. But the treasure here spoken of “had been hid”,
which was the case with regard to the
IV. But if the treasure had been hid, who hid it, and WHEN?
As
the kingdom is God’s, so did He hide it: for the proprietor of the treasure alone may
dispose of it. And it is his glory so to do; as it is written, “It is the glory of God,
to conceal a thing:” Prov.
25: 2.
And when He hides, He digs deep; as it is written, “O the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his
judgments, and his ways past finding out:” Romans 11: 33. And he has hid much wealth therein, that it
may strike the eye the more when displayed - “That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding
riches of his grace:” Eph. 2: 7. And the time of the treasure’s concealment was
the creation of the world. “Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:” Matt. 25: 34.
VI. Of the treasure thus hidden we read next, that it “had been hid in
the field.”
The intended place of the
[* Gen 3: 17, R.V. cf.
Rom. 8: 18-22, R.V.]
(To be continued.)
*
* *
SIGHT
Jesus blind me with Thy glory,
That my natural eyes may see
Nothing that shall dim the radiance
Of the light revealed in me.
Meet me in each common highway,
Touch my eyes to sudden sight;
That discovers all the wonder
Of Thine unimagined Light
Blinded by the sight of Jesus,
Gifted by the light of grace.
These new-sighted eyes shall never
See the merely commonplace.
For transmuted into splendour
Shall each trodden highway be,
And the eyes that once were blinded,
Shall in dust the diamond see:
Yea, shall see
a new creation
Out of
common clay arise,
By the mighty Power that giveth
Sight to these deluded eyes.
- WILFRED A. COOK.
*
* * *
* * *
602
THOUGHTS FOR
THE YOUNG
Dear young
friend,
In the month of
October, 1707, was enacted on board H.M.S. Association
- the flagship of Admiral Sir Cloudisley Shovell - one of
the saddest scenes in history. The crew was then assembled for the execution of
one of their number. The condemned man had made an unusual request, in
compliance with which he was permitted to read aloud to his shipmates before he
died a psalm of his own choosing. The occasion was sorrowful and solemn enough
in itself, and the passage chosen was awful in its appropriateness. Asthe verses of the 109th
psalm were read out by lips so soon to be silent in death, a shudder
must have run through the company, for the psalm (which is prophetic of Judas) speaks of those who reward evil for
good, and hatred for love - who remember not to shew mercy, but persecute the
poor and needy man, and slay the broken in heart - and such a victim of men’s
cruelty now stood before them.
This is the story:-
The
Admiral, coming home from the siege of
After
the psalm was read, the cruel sentence was carried out. But while the body of
the poor sailor was still hanging from the yard-arm, the doom of which he had
given warning overtook the ship. She struck a rock and went to pieces, and of
her 800 men one alone survived. Of the Admiral himself we read that he was
washed ashore with his life still in him, but was murdered, on account of the
emerald ring which he wore, by a woman who confessed to the crime as she lay
dying, thirty years later. Nor is the tale of disaster yet complete, for three
other ships - the Eagle, the Rmney,
and the Firebrand, following in the Association’s wake, struck another reef; and that
night more than 2,000 British seamen perished.
As we read this story we marvel, not only at the wickedness, but also at the folly, of the Admiral.
Yet is it not his power to follow the impulse of his passions - rather than the
passions themselves - which cause him to
stand out as the subject of peculiar reprobation? At the root of his crime,
surely, was the sin of pride. He resented the warning which seemed to imply
that a humble seaman knew better than himself and his officer; and pride -
stirring up rage - led him to commit a crime which one in a lowlier position
could not have committed with impunity. But God’s word teaches us that whosoever
hateth his brother is a murderer, and that Cain slew his brother because his
own works were evil and his brother’s righteous. Does not this bring our enquiry nearer
home? A humble believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ sees a godless companion treading the downward path, and -
prayerfully screwing up all his courage - ventures to utter a word of warning.
Or perhaps during a mission a worker
puts the question, ‘are you saved?’-
or it may be that a tract is offered - or, in worldly company, some young
soul by his or her very silence warns the profane. Why do such warnings, offered in faithful love, evoke resentment and
hatred? Is it the hatred of unbelief
in the reality of the judgment ahead? Is it the hatred of Cain who slew his
brother because his own work’s were evil and his brother's righteous?
If
any reader [regenerate or unregenerate] has been faithfully warned concerning
the danger of [wilful] sin* and the need of cleansing in the precious blood of
Christ, and feels anger and pride rising
in his breast against the messenger, will he not now consider the plea of
Naaman’s servants?* When Elisha’s
messenger said to that proud great soldier who yet was a leper, “‘Go wash, in Jordan seven times and thou shalt be clean,’ he was wroth, and said,
‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus
better than all the waters of Israel? May I not
wash in them and be clean?’ So he turned and
went away in a rage?” Then,
lovingly, his servants pleaded:- “‘My father, if the prophet bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much
rather, then, when he saith to thee,
Your affectionate friend,
HELEN RAMSAY.
* 2
Kings 5.
*
* *
ANTI-SEMITISM
The
death-germ of Jewish hate has invaded
* *
* * *
* *
603
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 grandstand 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 relationship, and so subtle will be the injection of
evil into 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 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 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.
*
* * *
* * *
604
‘IS IT I?’
By ALEXANDER MACLAREN D.D. LITT. D.
[PART
ONE]
“And they were exceeding
sorrowful, and began every one of them to say
unto Him,
‘Lord, is it I’? 25. Then Judas, which betrayed Him,
answered and said,
‘Master, is it I’? He said unto him,
‘Thou hast said.’ ”
- MATTHEW 26: 22, 25.
“He then lying on Jesus’
breast saith unto Him, ‘Lord,
who is it?’” - JOHN
13: 25.
THE genius of many great painters has portrayed the Lord’s
Supper, but the reality of it was very different from their imaginings. We have
to picture to ourselves some low table, probably a mere tray spread upon the
ground, round which our Lord and the twelve reclined, in such a fashion as that
the head of each guest came against the bosom of him that reclined above him;
the place of honour being at the Lord’s left hand, or higher up the table than
Himself, and the second place being at His right, or below Himself.
So
there would be no eager gesticulations of disciples starting to their feet when
our Lord uttered the sad announcement, ‘One of you shall betray Me!’ but only horror-struck amazement settled down upon
the group. These verses, which we have put together, show us three stages in
the conversation which followed the sad announcement. The three evangelists
give us two of these; John alone omits these two, and only gives us the third.
First,
we have their question, born of a glimpse into the possibilities of evil in
their hearts, ‘Lord,
is it I?’
The
form of that question in the original suggests that they expected a negative
answer, and might be reproduced in English: ‘Surely it
is not I?’ None of them could think that he was the traitor, yet none of
them could be sure that he was not.
Their Master knew better than they did; and so, from a humble knowledge of what
lay in them, coiled and slumbering, but there, they would
not meet His words with a contradiction, but with a question. His answer spares
the betrayer, and lets the dread work in their consciences for a little longer,
for their good. For many hands dipped in the dish together, to moisten their
morsels; and to say, ‘He that dippeth with Me in the dish,
the same shall betray Me,’ was to say nothing more than ‘One
of you at the table.’
Then
comes the second stage. Judas, reassured that he has escaped detection for the
moment, and perhaps doubting whether the Master had anything more than a vague
suspicion of treachery, or knew who was the traitor, shapes his lying lips with
loathsome audacity into the same question, but yet not quite the same. The
others had said, ‘Is it I, Lord?’ he falters when he comes to that name, and dare not
say ‘Lord!’ That sticks in his throat. ‘Rabbi!’ is as far as he can get. ‘Is it I, Rabbi?’ Christ’s
answer to him, ‘Thou
hast said,’ is another instance of
patient longsuffering. It was evidently a whisper that did not reach the ears
of any of the others, for he leaves the room without suspicion. Our Lord still
tries to save him from himself by
showing Judas that his purpose is known, and by still concealing his name.
Then
comes the third stage, which we owe to John’s Gospel. Here again he is true to
his task of supplementing the narrative of the three synoptic Gospels. Remembering
what I have said about the attitude of the disciples at the table, we can
understand that Peter, if he occupied the principal place at the Lord’s left,
was less favourably situated for speaking to Christ than John, who reclined in
the second seat at His right, and so he beckoned over the Master’s head to
John. The Revised Version gives the force of the original more vividly than the
Authorised does: ‘He, leaning back, as he was, on Jesus’ breast,
saith unto Him, Lord!
who is it?’
John, with a natural movement, bends back his head on his Master’s breast, so
as to ask and be answered, in a whisper. His question is not, ‘Is it I?’ He that leaned on Christ’s bosom, and was compassed
about by Christ’s love, did not need to ask that. The question now is, ‘Who is it?’ Not a question of presumption, nor of curiosity, but
of affection; and therefore answered: ‘He it is to whom I shall give the sop, when I have dipped it.’
The
morsel dipped in the dish and passed by the host’s hand to a guest, was a token
of favour, of unity and confidence. It was one more attempt to save Judas [from
apostasy],
one more token of all-forgiving patience. No wonder that that last sign of
friendship embittered his hatred and sharpened his purpose to an unalterable
decision, or, as John says: ‘After the sop, Satan entered
into him.’ For then, as ever, the heart which is not melted by Christ’s offered love is hardened by
it.
Now,
if we take these three stages of this conversation we may learn some valuable
lessons from them. I take the first form of the question as an example of that
wholesome self-distrust which a glimpse into the slumbering possibilities of
evil in our hearts ought to give us all. I take the second on the lips of
Judas, as an example of the very opposite of that self-distrust, the fixed
determination to do a wrong thing, however clearly we know it to be wrong. And
I take the last form of the question, as asked by John, as an illustration of
the peaceful confidence which comes from the consciousness of Christ’s love,
and of communion with Him. Now a word or two about each of these.
I.
First, we have an example of that wholesome self-distrust, which a glimpse into
the possibilities of evil that lie
slumbering in all our hearts ought to teach every one of us.
Every
man is a mystery to himself. In every soul there lie, coiled and dormant, like
hibernating snakes, evils that a very slight rise in the temperature will wake
up into poisonous activity. And let no man say, in foolish
self-confidence, that any form of sin which his brother has ever committed is
impossible for him. Temperament shields us from much, no doubt.
There are sins that ‘we are inclined to,’ and
there are sins that ‘we have no mind to.’ But
the identity of human nature is deeper than the diversity of temperament, and
there are two or three considerations that should abate a man’s confidence that
anything which one man has done it is impossible
that he should do. Let me enumerate them very briefly. Remember, to begin with,
that all sins are at bottom but varying forms of one root. The essence of every
evil is selfishness, and when you have that, it is exactly as with cooks who
have the ‘stock’ by the fireside. They can make any kind of soup out of it,
with the right flavouring. We have got the mother tincture
of all wickedness in each of our hearts; and therefore do
not let us be so sure that it cannot be manipulated and flavoured into any form
of sin. All sin is one at bottom, and this is the definition of it - living to myself instead of living to God.
So it may easily pass from one form of evil into another, just as light and
heat, motion and electricity, are all - they tell us - various forms and phases
of one force. Just as doctors will tell you that there are types of disease
which slip from one form of sickness into another, so if we have got the
infection about us it is a matter very much of accidental circumstances what
shape it takes. And no man with a human heart is safe in pointing to any sin,
and saying, ‘That
form of transgression I reckon alien to myself.’
And
then let me remind you, too, that the same consideration is reinforced by this
other fact, that all sin is, if I may so say, gregarious; is apt not only to slip
from one form into another, but that any evil is apt to draw another after it.
The tangled mass of sin is like one of those great fields of seaweed that you
sometimes come across upon the ocean, all hanging together by a thousand slimy
growths; which, if lifted from the wave at any point, drags up yards of it
inextricably grown together. No man commits only one kind of transgression. All
sins hunt in couples. According to the grim picture of the Old Testament, about
another matter, ‘None of them shall want his mate. The
wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wild beasts of the islands.’
One sin opens the door for another, ‘and seven other spirits worse than himself’ come and make holiday in the man’s heart.
(To be continued)
*
* *
CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINE
“In the ranks of the Christian army there must be no setting aside of discipline, else there would be too
sure a courting of disaster. Each one in the army of the living God has a
post - his own post too. He must not complain of it; he must not desert it; he
must not exchange it for another. It has been assigned to him by the Head of
the Church, and ‘it
is required that a man be found faithful.’”
-------
WAKING TOO LATE
“ ‘When saw we Thee?’ cry the startled men on the left of the King (Matt. 25: 44) when
they hear Him announce their doom. It is possible to wake in a
moment to [accountability
scriptural] facts of which
we have lived in total oblivion. Some
years ago in
*
* * *
* * *
605
THE
UNEXPLAINED PARABLES OF MATTHEW
THE HID
TREASURE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
[PART
TWO]
-------
VII. It is next stated that a “man found”
it.
In
this expression, however seemingly simple, there is much of depth. First, if by
the treasure be meant the kingdom of God, none
but a man could find it. No angel,
of whatever class he might be, could ever have attained it: for from such God
had purposely hidden it; “For unto angels hath he not
put into subjection the habitable world in its future state, whereof we are speaking. But
one in a certain place testified, saying,
What is MAN that
thou art mindful of him? or the SON OF MAN that thou visitest him?
Thou madest
him a little lower than the angels; thou
crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst
set him over the works of thy hands, thou hast
put all things in subjection under his feet:” Heb.
2: 5-8. The
treasure of the kingdom, therefore, could not be found by an angel, but only by
a son of man. For while the law was given by angels (Heb.
2: 2) and
much of the world’s government is at present ministered by them (as the books
of Daniel and the Apocalypse
show), the evil world being under the government of evil angels (Eph. 6: 12) as the saints are ministered unto by the holy
angels: so we are taught that during the
age which is to come, the world will be ruled by man. In proof
of it
The
man that finds it then is Jesus, “the Son of Man.”* As in the other parables He is the prime mover, so in
this also. Who is the sower? The Son of
* It may well be deemed surprising that two parables so greatly resembling
each other, as the Hid Treasure and the
Now
to him and to Adam is the manhood peculiarly and characteristically ascribed. “The first man (as though there never had been but two men), is of the earth, earthy; the second
man is the Lord from heaven:” 1 Cor.
15: 47.
Between these two it is easy to decide. Whatever treasure Adam might have
received in the way of dominion and rule, he lost. Therefor it can only be the
second man that found it.
And
in token of his being the finder of the treasure, no sooner is he born than
treasures are opened to him. “And when they had opened
their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh”: Matt.
2: 11.
Before him at a later period, all the treasures of the world were spread. “The devil taketh him up into
an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all
the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them”: Matt. 4: 8. But
the Saviour knew that these were not his father’s hid treasures, and he refused them.
This
man found the
treasure. Many had been looking for it, but not one before him had ever found
it. One had searched everywhere, and has given us the result of his search. He
was the wisest of men, and the best fitted by his position to discover it, had
it been possible to the fallen. “I, the preacher, was king over
And
the reason why Jesus found and Solomon did not find the treasure, was that
Solomon was a sinner, and Jesus is the Righteous One. For he who could find the
kingdom must not only be a man, but a righteous man. “He that followeth alter righteousness and mercy, FINDETH life, righteousness, and honour:” Prov.
21: 3.
And who ever, like Jesus, followed after righteousness and mercy? He therefore is the finder. He found the treasure as
being the Righteous One of David’s line, to whom the kingdom was confirmed. “Behold the days come, saith
the Lord, that I will raise unto David a Righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute
judgment and justice in the earth.
In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely”: Jer. 23:
5, 6.
Also, that he is the finder of the treasure, is shewn by the testimony of John
the Baptist, who notices, in addition, the vastness of the treasure, “The Father loveth the Son, and
hath given all things into his
hand”: John 3: 35. This passage farther confirms, the one cited
from Hebrews - for that too described the treasure as being “all things” - “Thou hast put all things under his feet.”
And,
that Jesus is the finder of the treasure, we see by several acts of his life.
For he that has found a treasure knows where to lay his hand on it when he
requires. Hence, when he: needed money for the tribute he sent Peter to procure
some, “Go thou to
the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money”: Matt. 17: 27. So when
he needed a beast of burden to enter the capital of his dominions as king, he
knows where to find that which he requires. “Go unto the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied and a colt with her”; Matt. 21: 2. To take but
one more instance: after the disciples had toiled all night on the
When
the treasure is open, he has promised some of it to the conqueror. “To him that overcometh will I
give to eat of the hidden manna:” Rev. 2: 17. Here therefore he describes himself as Lord of the hid treasures, no less than finder, and able to dispose
of it as he wills. Lastly, amidst the precious things of the treasure, and
constituting a great part of it, is redemption, which Jesus. also found. “He entered in
once into the holy place, having found ([see Greek …
‘aionian’]) eternal redemption for us”:
Heb. 9: 12. This passage again displays another glory of
the finder, that he purposes to make use of the wealth so acquired, not for
himself, but for others, “Having found eternal
redemption for us.”
VIII. But the next announcement of the parable is, “Which, when he found, he hid.”
The
verb is in the past tense, not the present, as it would seem by the English
translation. And this is of importance, because all the other verbs being in
the present, it marks the point of
time at which the occurrence related in the parable then stood. The hiding was at that time past; the rest of the
parable was then transacting or yet future.
But
who is this that hides treasure, and is blameless? None could be so but one.
None durst have done it but one. But this hiding, no less than the former
finding, was according to the mind of his Father. As soon as Jesus had found
the treasure, John the Baptist and the twelve are sent forth to proclaim - “Israel’s promised treasure
is found - the kingdom is at hand, and ready to be displayed -
repent and believe the glad tidings.”
But
The
treasure, therefore, though found, is covered up again. It must not be brought
forth before the eyes of unbelief.
(To be continued.)
*
* *
ARRESTED
DEVELOPMENT
“ ‘Beware lest ye fall from
your own steadfastness’ (2 Pet. 3: 17). The only way to
prevent falling is growth; and if you are not growing, you are certainly
falling. No weight will stand at rest on an inclined plane. If it is not being
hauled up it will be hurtling down. The student that is not advancing in his
science will forget what he has learned. Water that stagnates gathers a scum.
The talent that is wrapped in a napkin rusts; and the oxidizing diminishes its
weight, and also dims its brightness. I
feel that all our churches are full of cases of arrested development. Let
me put a plain question: Are we more
like Jesus Christ than we were a year ago?” - ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
-------
Out of the realm of the glory light
Into the far-away land of night,
Out of the bliss of worshipful song
Into the pain of hatred and wrong,
Out from the holy rapture above
Into the grief of rejected love,
Out from the life at the Father’s side
Into the death of the Crucified,
Out of the high honour and shame
The Master willingly, gladly came;
And now since He may not suffer anew,
As the Father sent Him so sendeth He you!
H. W. FROST.
*
* *
* * *
*
606
THE DUALISM OF ETERNAL LIFE
By STEPHERN
SPEARS CRAIG
[PART
THREE]
-------
Were the Corinthians and Galatians thus living on the
Life-giving Spirit of the Christ? 1 Cor. 15: 45. Only those
so living are the wheat to be gathered into the heavenly garner. Matt. 13: 30; 13: 49; Luke 3: 15-17. When
Christ revealed to John in Patmos the spiritual condition of the seven
representative churches in
The
“fathers” came out of
But
their position in this state of relative death was not that of the Egyptians,
or of other nations generally. They were still God’s people. The death in which
the nations are involved is not relative but absolute death. But to this day
the “fathers” are in this state of relative death. John 6: 49. But how different was and is the case of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? They too died as they had lived. They lived by faith
(Heb. 2: 4) in fellowship with the living God. Thus God is
only really the God of those of His people who live and die in faith. These and
these only will share, physically and spiritually, in the first resurrection. He will become ‘the
God’ of the others later on. Only those of the saved who live and die in
faith by continually eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood will attain
to eternal (age-lasting) life in the Messianic Kingdom. Heb. 11: 13. He said
to the Jews: Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have ‘eternal (age-lasting) life’
(in the Messianic Kingdom), and they are they which testify of Me (your
Messiah). John 5: 39.
But,
like Christians, instead of searching the Scriptures, they searched the
traditions of the elders and asked, “Have any of the
rulers of the Pharisees believed on Him”? John
7: 48. Their faith in man made faith
in Christ impossible.
That
the above is the correct interpretation of John 6:
49 and Matt.
22: 31, 32, is clear from John
6: 50 and 11:
26; 1 Cor. 10: 1-10. “This is the bread that came
down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die”. Now, Peter, James, John and Paul, all ate of that
bread and yet every one of them died physically. This proves that He is not talking
of physical but of spiritual death; and in the case of the saved not of
absolute but of relative death; and not of the life in the eternal state beyond
the White Throne judgment, but of age-lasting life in the
Millennial-Messianic Kingdom after the Bema Judgment, 2 Cor. 5: 10; for He
says, “he that eateth of this bread shall live for the
(millennial) age”. John
6: 51, 58;
8: 51.
Thus the “eternal
life” of John
6: 47, 54;
and the “shall
live for ever” of 6: 51, 58 are identical expressions, and should be
translated “age-lasting
life” and “shall live for the age”, respectively.
Here
we quote again from Robinson’s Lexicon
of the New Testament. In his definition of Zoe,
he says:
“In the Christian sense of eternal life, i.e., that
life of bliss and glory in the
It is significant not only that he defines “eternal life” in this way, but also that he adduces as proof text
the question of the Young Ruler. Note also his assertion that this “eternal life” is only for “the true
disciples of Christ”, and to be entered only “after the resurrection”. Thus he
distinguishes by implication between eternal life as the gift of free grace,
and eternal life as the prize; for every saved man has the former whether true
to Christ like the Thessalonians, or untrue like the Corinthians and Galatians.
But it is almost certain that Robinson
failed to see the
real eschatological significance of his own
distinction.
Let
us now turn from John to Paul:
“Howbeit that for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all long suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter
believe on Him to life everlasting”.
He
s here not talking of the ‘free gift’ as in
Rom. 6: 23, but of ‘the prize’ which
can only be secured through fellowship
with Christ in His sufferings; and says that God has appointed him (Paul)
to be a pattern to other believers, that by word and deed he might persuade
Christians to “put
off the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that ye put on the new man which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness”,
for only thus can those who have
received the new birth believe unto life age-lasting (in the Messianic
Kingdom). Alas! how few [regenerate] Christians
seek honestly to do this. With the thought of failure among the saved
he says:
“Brethren, be followers
together of me, and mark them which walk so as
ye have us for an example. For many ([regenerate] Christians)
walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction,
whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly
things.”
How pathetic the thought that for the great majority
of [these] Christians
their end is not maturity and Millennial glory, but
exclusion, destruction and age-lasting judgment. Alas! How will we
preachers and teachers of the Word stand before our judge in that terrible
day? Surely Isa. 3: 12 is appropriate here. We have tried to save our life from the offence of the Cross, but in
doing so we have lost it for the age to come with the consequence that we have
exposed ourselves to eternal (age-lasting) judgment. The Master has pictured the true and false
servants in Matt. 24:
42-51. But
thank God for Paul and Peter and James and John. Listen to Paul again:
“But refuse profane and old wives’ fables (and much of theology comes under this head), and exercise
thyself rather unto Godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and that which is to come.” 1 Tim. 4: 7, 8.
Ungodly
[unholy and disobedient
regenerate]
believers may have the life that now is and it is true life (zoe), but they
have no claim on the life of the age to come. Contrast Gal.
5: 19-21; and Matt. 19: 27, 30. The
antithetic Dualism in different classes of believers is very clearly marked
here.
Listen
to Paul further:-
“But thou, O man of God, flee these
things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight
of faith, lay hold on eternal ([i.e. in this context] ‘age-lasting’)
life whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
1 Tim. 6: 11, 12.
There
is no need of fighting for the ‘free gift’. The
hand of faith simply reaches out to the God-Man and takes it. Not so, however,
with ‘the prize’. In verse 19 Paul exhorts the rich in this world’s
goods who think that by means of their money and social position they know
something of real happiness, “to lay hold on the life that is life indeed.” R.V. With such
pictures of the Millennium as we have in Isaiah,
chapters 52-66,
Ezek. 40-48, Psa.
72, Rev. 22, the contrast between this age and that, even
on earth, will be extraordinary. But if the glory be so great on the
terrestrial side of the Kingdom, what infinite bliss will be the portion of
those on the celestial side, those who share in the first
resurrection? We can only reply: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man the things which God hath prepared for
them that love Him.” 1 Cor. 2: 9. True, indeed, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit”, but we see through a glass darkly, oh, so darkly.
And note the limitation of this coming blessedness which
God hath prepared for them that love Him. And who are they that love Him? Not
all the saved. Only the saved and
sanctified, the overcomers, the [obedient] Lord’s Jewels. Matt. 3: 16-17.
In
this connection let us look for a moment at the death of Christ: Two views
which are complimentary:
1.
Objectively and historically: We are disposed in our conception of death to emphasize
the physical element, the dissolution of soul and body; and we are in danger of
missing the essential factor in the fact. The physical death of Christ was a
fact, a necessary fact, but His death was primarily a soul-death. In the
circumference of His being He died to physical comfort, to physical pain; but
deeper than that, in His soul He died to the world, to sin, to self, and
emphatically and fundamentally, He died for and to the Law. He died unto sin
once for all and forever. Rom. 6: 10. As the
Federal Head of the new creation, and the Sin Bearer, both sin and the law had
claims on Him, for the strength of sin is the Law. But He died to both. Here we
are in Romans 5 and 6.
But when He had so died death could not hold Him. Because by dying to sin and
the Law He had overcome and abolished death, and therefore rose as Conqueror of
sin and death. The relation of the resurrection to the death therefore was that
of effect and cause. Note further, and this is vital: When Christ died on the
Cross - the consummation of a death process reaching from childhood onwards -
the whole human race, past, present and future, died in Him Judicially; and in
His resurrection rose with Him potentially. 2 Cor. 5: 14; Rom. 5: 12-21. The conception of a limited atonement is a
mental and moral monstrosity; and in this respect the Confession of Faith is
really a confession of Unbelief. But please notice carefully the modifying
power of the two adverbs, “Judicially” and “potentially”. Do not read the sentence as if I said “actually”.
Subjectively
and experimentally: The fact that Christ judicially tasted death for every man
does not necessarily compel any individual man to accept that death as endured
for him. In this case the logical result is as if Christ had not tasted death
for every man. This leads us to ask, What was the purpose of the death of
Christ considered as an objective and historical fact, and in its essential
physical and spiritual essence? It was: (1)
That God in the expression of His infinite love might impart the free gift of
eternal life to all who in their hearts believe on Christ as the Sin-Bearer of
the world. This presupposes repentance, regeneration and justification. (2) That He might bestow
the prize of eternal (age-lasting) life in the Messianic Kingdom on all who
earnestly desire to have Christ by the Holy Spirit live in them to will and to
do of God’s good pleasure. This implies separation from
the world, emancipation from its
spirit, having the seed of the word fall into the heart as into prepared soil
and bringing forth fruit 30, 60, or 100-fold. It
means actual fellowship with Christ
in His rejection by men and His acceptance with God. In other words, it means
that the very spirit of the death of Christ, the utter self-denial of Christ,
shall work in us as it did in Him and thereby secure to all who will a place
with Him in the first resurrection, and that “so an entrance shall be
ministered unto you abundantly into His everlasting (age-lasting) Kingdom. 2 Peter 1: 10-11.
Thus
to obtain the free gift and yet to despise the prize; that is, not to be
willing to pay any price and endure any pain for it, is not only to nullify, temporarily, the purpose of the atonement and
thus do despite unto the Spirit of grace, but it must also be regarded ethically
and spiritually as an abortion. Heb. 12: 6-8. “We which live are
always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of Jesus may be
made manifest in our mortal flesh”. 2 Cor. 4: 11. This
manifestation is physical, intellectual and spiritual. And this affirmation is not of all Christians, nor of the many, but of the few. Matt. 7: 13, 14. The
vast majority refuse to be delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake. John 6: 64-68; Luke 13: 24-25. Only a
few Christians can be said to be “dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God”. The converse is true of the many. Matt.
24: 12; Gal. 5: 19-21; 1 Cor. 3: 1-15. “She (a believer) that liveth
in pleasure is dead while she liveth”. 1 Tim. 5:
6. As Paul speaks of carnal and spiritual
Christians, so does he speak of dead and living Christians, and the two
expressions are synonymous. “If a man (a
believer) abide
not in Me, (the source of life) he is
(by the law of life) cast forth as a branch, and is withered (spiritually); and men gather them, and cast them into the
fire and they are burned”. John 15: 6. Be
careful not to carry the figure too far, for if you do you cannot stop short of
annihilationism. The fire here is the same as Mark
9: 49, 50;
Heb. 12: 28, 29; Matt. 3: 10-12. Every saved man must have his baptism of
fire now in this age, or in the age to come. God is not mocked. Gal. 6: 6-8. Only
thus can sin’s kingship in the soul be destroyed.
*
* *
NIGHT
“This sonnet, perhaps the
most remarkable in the language, closes with a line that is overwhelming,
and which all might ponder who are in doubt
of the unseen world and the hereafter.” -
D. M. Panton.
Mysterious night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report Divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this goodly frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet, ’neath the curtain of
translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of evening came,
And lo! Creation widen’d on
man’s view!
Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal’d
Within thy beams, O sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal’d
That to such countless hosts thou mad’st
us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not
life?
BLANCO WHITE.
*
* * *
* *
607
‘IS IT I?’
By ALEXANDER MACLAREN D.D. LITT. D.
[PART
2]
Again, any evil is possible to us, seeing that all sin
is but yielding to tendencies common to us all. The greatest transgressions
have resulted from yielding to such tendencies. Cain killed his brother from jealousy;
David besmirched his name and his reign by animal passion; Judas betrayed
Christ because he was fond of money: Many a man has murdered another one simply
because he had a hot temper. And you have got a temper, and you have got the
love of money, and you have got
animal passions, and you have got that which may stir you up into jealousy.
Your neighbour’s house has caught fire and been blown up. Your house, too, is
built of wood, and thatched with straw, and you have as much dynamite in your
cellars as he had in his. Do not be too sure that you are safe from the danger
of explosion.
And,
again, remember that this same wholesome self-distrust is needful for us all,
because all transgression is yielding to temptations that assail all men. Here
are one hundred men in a plague-stricken city; they have all got to draw their
water from the same well. If five or six of them died of cholera it would be
very foolish of the other ninety-five to say, ‘There
is no chance of our being touched.’ We all live in the same atmosphere;
and the temptations that have overcome the men that have headed the count of
crimes appeal to you. So the lesson is, ‘Be not high-minded, but fear.’
And
remember, still further, that the same solemn consideration is enforced upon us
by the thought that men will gradually drop down to the level which, before
they began the descent, seemed to be impossible to them. ‘Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?’
said Hazael when the crime of
murdering his master first floated before him. Yes, but he did it. By degrees
he came down to the level to which he thought that he would never sink. First
the imagination is inflamed, then the wish begins to draw the soul to the sin,
then conscience pulls it back, then the fatal decision is made, and the deed is
done. Sometimes all the stages are hurried quickly through, and a man spins
downhill as cheerily and fast as a diligence down the
So,
dear friends, there is nothing more
foolish than for any man to stand, self-confident that any form of evil that
has conquered his brother has no temptation for him. It may not have for
you, under present circumstances; it may not have for you to-day; but, oh! we
have all of us one human heart, and ‘he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.’ ‘Blessed is the man
that feareth always.’ Humble
self-distrust, consciousness of sleeping sin in my heart that may very quickly
be stirred into stinging and striking; rigid self-control over all these
possibilities of evil, are duties dictated by the plainest commonsense.
Do
not say, ‘I know when to stop.’ Do not say, ‘I can go so far; it will not do me any harm.’ Many a
man has said that, and many a man has been ruined by it. Do not say, ‘It is natural to me to have these inclinations and tastes,
and there can be no harm in yielding to them.’ It is perfectly natural
for a man to stoop down over the edge of a precipice to gather the flowers that
are growing in some cranny in the cliff; and it is as natural for him to topple
over, and be smashed to a mummy at the bottom. God gave you your dispositions
and your whole nature ‘under lock and key,’-
keep them so. And when you hear of, or see, great criminals and great crimes,
say to yourself, as the good old Puritan divine said, looking at a man going to
the scaffold, ‘But for the grace of God there go I!’
And in the contemplation of sins and apostasies, let us each
look humbly at our own weakness, and pray Him to keep us from our brother’s
evils which may easily become ours.
II. Secondly, we have here an example of precisely the opposite sort,
namely, of that fixed determination to do evil which is unshaken by the
clearest knowledge that it is evil.
Judas
heard his crime described in its own ugly reality. He heard his fate proclaimed
by lips of absolute love and truth; and notwithstanding both, he comes unmoved
and unshaken with his question. The dogged determination in his heart, that
dares to see his evil stripped naked and is ‘not ashamed,’ is
even more dreadful than the hypocrisy and sleek simulation of friendship in his
face.
Now
most men turn away with horror from even the sins that they are willing to do, when
they are put plainly and bluntly before them. As an old mediaeval preacher once
said, ‘There is nothing that is weaker than the devil
stripped naked.’ By which he meant exactly this - that we have to dress
wrong in some fantastic costume or other, so as to hide its native ugliness, in
order to tempt men to do it. So we have two sets of names for wrong things, one
of which we apply to our brethren’s sins, and the other to the same sins in
ourselves. What I do is ‘prudence,’ what you do
of the same sort is ‘covetousness’; what I do
is ‘sowing my wild oats,’ what you do is ‘immorality’ and ‘dissipation’;
what I do is ‘generous living,’ what you do is
‘drunkenness’ and ‘gluttony’;
what I do is ‘righteous indignation,’ what you
do is ‘passionate anger.’ And so you may go the
whole round of evil. Very bad are the men who can look at their deed, described
in its own inherent deformity, and yet say, ‘Yes; that
is it, and I am going to do it.’ ‘One of you shall betray Me’. ‘Yes; I will betray you!’
It must have taken something to look into the Master’s face, and keep the fixed
purpose steady.
Now
I ask you to think, dear friends, of this, that that obstinate condition of
dogged determination to do a wrong thing, knowing it to be a wrong thing, is a
condition to which all evil steadily tends. We may not come to it in this world
- I do not know that men ever do so wholly; but we are all getting towards it
in regard to the special wrong deeds and desires which we cherish and commit.
And when a man has once reached the point of saying to evil, ‘Be thou my good,’ then he is a ‘devil’ in the true meaning of the word; and wherever
he is, he is in hell! And the one unpardonable sin is the sin of clear
recognition that a given thing is contrary to God’s will, and unfaltering
determination, notwithstanding, to do it. That is the only sin that cannot be
pardoned, ‘either
in this world or in the world [age] to come.’
And
so, my brother, seeing that such a condition is possible, and that all the paths
of evil, however tentative and timorous they may be at first, and however much
the sin may be wrapped up with excuses and forms and masks, tend to that
condition, let us take that old prayer upon our lips, which befits both those
who distrust themselves because of slumbering sins, and those who dread being
conquered by manifest iniquity:- ‘Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep
back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins. Let
them not have dominion over me.’
III. Now, lastly, we have in the last question an example of the peaceful
confidence that comes from communion with Jesus Christ.
John
leaned on the Master’s bosom. ‘He was the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ And so compassed with that great love, and feeling
absolute security within the enclosure of that strong hand, his question is
not, ‘Is it I?’ but ‘Who is it?’ From
which I think we may fairly draw the conclusion that to feel that Christ loves me,
and that I am compassed about by Him, is the true security against my falling
into any sin.
It
was not John’s love to Christ, but Christ’s to John that made his safety. He
did not say: ‘I love Thee so much that I cannot betray
Thee.’ For all our feelings and emotions are but variable, and to build
confidence upon them is to build a heavy building upon quicksand; the very
weight of it drives out the foundations. But he thought to himself - or he felt
rather than he thought, that all about him lay the sweet, warm, rich atmosphere
of his Master’s love; and to a man who was encompassed by that, treachery was
impossible.
Sin
has no temptation so long as we actually enjoy the greater sweetness of
Christ’s felt love. Would thirty pieces of silver have been a bribe to John?
Would anything that could have terrified others have frightened him from his
Master’s side whilst he felt His love? Will a handful of imitation jewellery,
made out of coloured glass and paste, be any temptation to a man who bears a
rich diamond on his finger? And will any of earth’s sweetness be a temptation
to a man who lives in the continual consciousness of the great rich love of
Christ wrapping him round about? Brethren, not ourselves, not our faith, not
our emotion, not our religious experience; nothing that is in us, is any
security that we may not be tempted, and yield to the temptation, and deny or
betray our Lord. There is only one thing that is a security, and that is that
we be folded to the heart, and held by the hand, of that loving Lord. Then -
then we may be confident that we shall not fall; for ‘the Lord is able to make us
stand.’
Such
confidence is but the other side of our self-distrust; is the constant
accompaniment of it, must have that self-distrust for its condition and
prerequisite, and leads to a yet deeper and more blessed form of that
self-distrust. Faith in Him and ‘no confidence in the flesh’ are but the two sides of the same coin, the obverse
and the reverse. The seed, planted in the ground, sends a little rootlet down,
and a little spikelet up, by the same vital act. And
so in our hearts, as it were, the downward rootlet is self-despair, and the
upward shoot is faith in Christ. The two emotions go together - the more we
distrust ourselves the more we shall rest upon Him, and the more we rest upon
Him, and feel that all our strength comes, not from our foot, but from the Rock
on which it stands, the more we shall distrust our own ability and our own
faithfulness.
Therefore,
dear brethren, looking upon all the evil that is around us, and conscious in
some measure of the weakness of our own hearts, let us do as a man would do who
stands upon the narrow ledge of a cliff, and look sheer down into the depth
below, and feels his head begin to reel and turn giddy; let us lay hold of the
Guide’s hand, and if we cleave by Him, He will hold up our goings that our
footsteps slip not. Nothing else will. No length of obedient service is any
guarantee against treachery and rebellion. As John Bunyan saw, there was a
backdoor to hell from the gate of the
‘Now unto Him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our
Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and for ever.’ Amen.
*
* * *
* * *
613
THE HID
TREASURE
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M.A.
([PART 3] Continued from 605)
What induces men to hide treasures? The insecurity of
property and life. Thus was it when
As
then the finder was obliged to hide himself, no wonder that he hid
the treasure too. The
Father hid the treasure first, and now the Son, after having found it, hides it
again. This was a sorrowful and mysterious thing. The sin of
Jerusalem’s
glory and Messiah’s go together; Messiah’s departure therefore is a farewell, for
the present, to the earthly glory. It cannot in unbelief be the world’s
metropolis, the city whence the law and glory of the Lord were to shine forth.
No, because of unbelief, it should not be established. Yea, it must be trodden down by the
Gentiles, under the reign of the false Messiah, as it will rule over the
Gentiles under the sceptre of the true.
God will make a “covenant
of peace” with
4. “Now they are
hid,” though hereafter, through mercy, restored. This hidden purpose
of God in purchasing the world through Jesus’ redemption, and putting off the
day of their glory through their unbelief, startled and confounded them. They
looked for the fulfilment of the prophet’s words, “Arise! shine! for thy light is come!” But they rejected the Sun, and therefore Jesus tells
them, that “yet a
little while was the light to be with them,” and then darkness was to settle over them, their
souls, their prospects, their actual condition. They “trusted that it had been he
which should have redeemed
Even
at the very time that the Saviour sent forth the twelve, and afterwards the
seventy, having put into their hands some specimens of the gold of the
treasure, in the powers which he gave them against sickness and unclean
spirits, he informs us that the reason why the promised [messianic] kingdom was not manifested, lay in the unbelief and
impenitence of Israel, especially in the unbelief of the great and wise ones of
the nation. “Then
began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done,
because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee,
The
hiding of the treasure had already taken place, when Jesus began to speak in
parables. The speaking in parables was itself a proof of the treasure’s being
covered up. After the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the [promised] kingdom could
not come to that wicked generation. To the Jews and to
*
This is the time of the mystery, and
therefore of concealment, I would just direct notice to a various reading of a
passage in Colossians. “To the acknowledgment of the
mystery of God, in which are hid all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge;”
IX. The parable next specifies the feelings of the
finder; “for joy
thereof he goeth back.”
A
slight and transient flash from the glory of the treasure once gave joy both to
the seventy and to their Lord. He had sent them forth with power against demons
and diseases. “And
the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name; and he said unto them, I
beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. ... In
that
hour JESUS REJOICED IN SPIRIT and said, I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, that thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes:” Luke 10: 17, 18, 21.
But the joy is more especially that of the discoverer of the treasure. Hence
another parable describes the time of the kingdom, as the Master’s joy. “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord:”
Matt. 25:
21, 23.
In another place it is presented to us as the joy before him which urged him
on, “Looking unto Jesus the
author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame:” Heb. 12: 2. So highly did he value the treasure, that he
was not startled at the price of the field. In another place, Jesus having
spoken of the mansions of his father’s house, afterwards adds, “These things have I spoken
unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full:” (John 15: 11),
for the joy of the partakers of the
treasure is the same in character with that of the first discoverer. It is also
a critical circumstance, and worthy to be remembered, as stamping the
interpretation given with certainty; that the
time of the seventy’s return is the only instance (that I am aware of) in which Jesus is
said to have rejoiced.
X. The act that follows on the joy of the discoverer is, “He goeth back” [See Greek …]. The word in question is quite
different from that applied to the pearl merchant in the next parable [See Greek …]. That
signifies, “He went off”. But this denotes that
he was away from home and went back to his
home again. Some
examples of its signifying ‘to go back,’ are
the following. To the centurion who left his home to ask a cure for his
servant, Jesus replied, “Go back: and, as thou hast believed, so be
it done:” Matt.
8: 13.
The same expression does he make use of to the Syrophenician woman, who left
her home to beseech the cure of her demoniac daughter. “For this saying, go back; the devil is gone out of thy daughter:” Mark 7: 29.*
*
Many other examples occur, as Matt. 5: 24; 9: 6; 19: 21. Mark 2: 11; 6: 38; 10: 21. John 3: 8; 4: 16; 6: 21; 7: 3, &c.
The
word used by the [Holy] Spirit is full of emphasis and beauty, as applied to
the Lord Jesus. It notices first, that he had left
his home when he was
in the field. And yet the field, i.e., the
world, is the natural home of man. Hence, while the finder was indeed “a man,” he was more
than man. This
establishes the conclusion, I think, impregnably. It is the expression that is
used almost without exception, in describing the departure of our Lord from the
earth.*
*
The following are instances of it:- Matt. 26: 24. Mark 14: 21; John 7: 33; 8: 14, 21; 13: 3, 33, 36; 14: 4, 28; 16: 5, 10, 16, 17.
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
614
HUMILITY
By WILLIAM LAW
Humility does not consist in having a worse opinion of ourselves
than we deserve, or in abasing ourselves lower than we really are. But, as all
virtue is founded in truth, so humility is founded in a true and just sense of our
weakness, misery and sin. He that rightly feels and lives in this sense of his condition,
lives in humility. Let any man but look back upon his own life and see what use
he has made of his reason, how little he has consulted it, how less he has
followed it! What foolish passions, what vain thoughts, what needless labours,
what extravagant projects have taken up the greatest part of his life! How
foolish he has been in his words and conversation; how seldom he has done well
in judgment, and how often he has been kept from doing ill by accident; how
seldom he has been able to please himself, and how often he has changed his
counsels, hated what he loved, and loved what he hated; how often he has been
enraged and transported at trifles, pleased and displeased with the very
same things, and constantly changing
from one vanity to another! Let a man but take this view of his own life, and
he will see reason enough to confess at pride was not made for man.
Let
any man but consider that, if the world knew all of him that he knows of himself, if they saw what vanity and passions govern his inside,
and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no
more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a
rotten and deformed body to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness.
This is so true, and so known to the hearts of almost all people, that nothing
would appear more dreadful to them than to have their hearts thus fully
discovered to the eyes of all beholders. And perhaps there are few people in
the world that would not rather choose to die, than to have all their secret
follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of their minds, the
falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their vain and disorderly
passions, their uneasiness, hatred, envies, and vexations made known to the world.
And
shall pride be entertained in a heart thus conscious of its own miserable
behaviour? Shall a creature in such a condition that he could not support
himself under the shame of being known to the world in his real state - shall
such a creature, because his shame is known only to God, to holy angels, and to
his own conscience, shall he in the sight of God and holy angels dare to be
vain and proud of himself?
And
here it is to be observed that every son of Adam is in the service of pride and
self, be doing what he will, until an humility that comes only from heaven has
been his redeemer. Till then all that he doth will be done by the right hand
that the left may know it. And he that thinks it possible for the natural man
to get a better humility than this from his own “right
reason” (as it is often miscalled) refined by education shows himself
quite ignorant of this one most plain and capital truth of the gospel, namely,
that there never was, nor ever will be, but one Humility in the world, and that
is the one Humility of Christ, which
never any man, since the fall of Adam, had any degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same sense and truth as Christ is one, the
Mediator is one, Redemption is one. There are not two Lambs of God that take
away the sin of the world. But if there was any humility besides that of
Christ, there would be something else besides Him that could take away the sin
of the world (Phil. 2:
8; Heb. 9: 26). “All that came before Me,” says Christ, “were thieves and robbers.” We are used to confine this
saying to persons; but the same is true of every virtue, whether it has the
name of Humility, Charity, Piety, or anything else. If it comes before Christ,
however good it may pretend to be, it is but a cheat, a thief, and a robber,
under the name of a godly virtue.
And the reason is that pride and
self have the all of man, till man
has his all from Christ.
He
therefore only fights the good fight, whose strife is that the self-idolatrous
nature which he hath from Adam may be brought to death by the super-natural
humility of Christ, brought to life in Him. The enemies to man’s rising out of
the fall of Adam, through the Spirit and power of Christ, are many. But the one
great dragon-enemy is self-exaltation. This is his birth, his pomp, his power, and his
throne; when self-exaltation ceases, the last enemy is destroyed, and all that
came from the pride and death of Adam is swallowed up in victory.
*
* *
“I COME QUICKLY”
“This announcement of the coming of the Lord, the
ever-recurring key-note of this book (Rev. 22: 7, 12, 20), is sometimes used as a word of fear for those who are abusing the Master’s absence, wasting His goods, and
ill-treating their fellow-servants; careless and secure as those for whom no
day of reckoning should ever arrive (Matt. 24: 48-51; 2 Thess. 1: 7, 9; 1 Pet. 4, 5; cf. Jas. 5: 9; Rev. 2: 5, 16)*;
but sometimes as a word of infinite comfort of those with difficulty and
painfulness holding their ground; He that should bring the long contest at once
to an end; who should at once turn the scale, and for ever, in favour of
righteousness and truth, is even at the door (Jas. 5: 8; Phil. 4: 5; 2 Thess. 1: 20; Heb. 10: 37; 2 Pet. 3: 14.”
- ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.
* “Thus the current prophetical view that the Advent is a
crisis of pure joy to all believers, irrespective of their attitude or conduct,
is quite untrue. But the most critical disproof the Archbishop has overlooked. To
the Sardinian Angel, unwatchful, back-slidden, the Lord Himself makes His
arrival a direct threat, and therefore one
that cannot be denied as a church threat. “If
thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon [arrive over] thee” (Rev. 3: 3): the Parousia will have begun, and the un-rapt Angel will
not even know it.” - D. M.
PANTON.
*
* * *
* * *
615
THE CHRISTIAN AND WEALTH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Nothing is more disturbing or awakening than to observe the fog, the confusion, the
elusiveness with which the
Now
“to the disciples” (Luke 16: 1) - not to the covetous Scribes and Pharisees,
who merely overheard it, and were greatly incensed, but to His own of all ages
- the Lord presents the appalling brevity of our trust. A wealthy man’s
steward, having wasted his lord’s goods in an extravagant and luxurious life,
receives his dismissal; and shocked by his sudden peril, and immediately aware
of the little span left him in which to provide for his future, he instantly
faces the facts and acts with swift decision. He summons his lord’s debtors;
reduces their debts* - how far,
as steward, he had authority to do this is not shown; but that he exceeded his
authority is certain by his description as an “unrighteous steward” - so as to gain their friendship; and sees the thing
through with urgent dispatch - “Take thy bill quickly”. So our Lord pictures each of us, His disciples, as rapidly
approaching (by death or rapture) the revoking of our trust: our time is as
brief, our need for making immediate provision as overwhelmingly urgent: the
stewardship we hold from God is fast running out, and our impending bankruptcy,
which no prudence can stave off, calls for rapid and decisive action. Our
stewardship is sharply defined between the cradle and the grave.
*
“The amount of the saying in
each instance, in all probability, is much more than could be wanted for the
support of another member of a given family”
(Greswell).
Now our Saviour emphasizes the approval expressed by
the steward’s lord: “his lord commended the
unrighteous steward, because he had done wisely”.
“‘Wisely’”, as Archbishop Trench says, “is not the
happiest rendering, since wisdom is never in Scripture dissociated from moral
goodness: ‘prudently’ would best represent the original, and so in Wiclif’s Version it stood”; warily, shrewdly,
circumspectly. It is one of the startling assumptions of our Lord in this
parable, revealing incidentally the profoundest truths, that the methods of
accumulating wealth characteristic of the world
- though not invariably so - are dishonest; the Steward steps into the parable
not only already an unscrupulous man, but a type of all men: yet every fabric
of the splendid instrument thus misused is admirable. The world’s God-given
endowments - foresight, industry, ingenuity, inventiveness, devotion - are,
through sin, made abominable; yet they remain, nevertheless, of priceless
value; and how priceless is seen at once by what replaces them in their absence
- laziness, improvidence, carelessness, sloth. So our Lord says elsewhere:- “Be ye wise as serpents”; that is, imitate, not the venom, but the intuition,
of the serpent. The Parable is a composite picture of the business world as we
know it, and as it has always been; a flashlight photograph of commerce, with
all its moral lights and shadows coming out as the blacks and whites in a
finished picture.
So our Lord, in His next word, makes the moral
distinction clear, while the parable assumes an overwhelming force. “For the children of this age” - all worldlings - “are in their generation” - that is, as moving in an evil atmosphere, actuated by
wrong motives, unscrupulous because a wicked and adulterous generation - “WISER” -
more circumspect, more far-seeing, intenser, more ingenious, more concentrated
and devoted on their evil ends - “than the children of light”, on theirs. An owl sees further than an eagle in the dark (Trench). A wolf is keener, more astute,
more wide-awake .than a sheep. The
highest and holiest aims, our Lord assumes
- and supremely the laying up of a fortune in the beyond - require no less
sagacity, forethought, and travail than the fortunes of a Rothchild or a Ford: business acumen our Lord warmly
commends, if only it be a razor whetted on the right strop. The two “generations” - the generation of the flesh, and
the generation of the spirit - are opposed in origin, in nature, in aim; yet in
wise ambition the lower excels the higher - one has chosen this world and its
prosperity, the other the Saviour and the Age to Come; yet he who has chosen
the evil prosecutes it with a far intenser devotion than he who has chosen the
good. It is a revelation of extraordinary and startling import: our Lord,
looking down all the ages, declares that - habitually, in the mass, tragically
- the world is better served by its servants than God is by His. We
have but to mark the extraordinary absorption of the worldling; his fixed purpose;
his unswerving pertinacity; his economy wherever possible, and lavish
investment wherever it is safe; his sacrifice of present comfort to future wealth
- with the Christian’s too frequent listlessness, doubt, hesitation - the
complete absence of any thought of investing wealth beyond the tomb - to
recognise our Lord’s picture of us all as true to fact.*
*
“We have known
many determined to be rich in this world, but have we ever
known one so steadily setting himself
to be rich in the next?” (Govett). The present writer can say
that he has known one, with absolute certainty - the deceased author he has
just quoted.
So
now our Lord lays down the only profound and provident use of wealth: neither
hoarding, nor squandering, but carefully
investing beyond the grave. “And I say unto you”
- something closely similar to the steward’s lord: I say it, with whom the
adjudication ultimately rests - “make to yourselves friends” - that is, personal
friends: not barns, nor palaces, nor estates, nor banking-accounts, but friends - “by means of” - literally, out of; draw friends, not coins, out of
your purse - “the
mammon of unrighteousness” - the
wealth which, in the world, is attached to evil: “that, when it
shall fail” - when the grip passes
from the dying grasp - “they,” - the
beneficiaries under a divine trust - “may receive you.” - it is reception only:
heaven is not purchased, but a welcome into heaven is; for gratitude survives the grave - “into the eternal tabernacles”: so, obviously, it is fellow-pilgrims upon whom the
wealth is mainly to be conferred, or (it may be) those who may be won to Christ
by the grace-laden gift. We change our currency when we go abroad: happy are
they whose riches here are friends there! Here is a startling and profound
reverse of the parable. For our interest coincides
absolutely with God’s. In giving his
entrusted wealth so as to create friends, the steward defrauded his lord: we, in doing exactly the same thing, show
our wisdom, create deathless friendships, invest the wealth as the owner of the
wealth commands, and delight God.
Transmute your gold into love, says the Saviour, for love leaps the grave: a
wise foresight in wealth is identical with a perfect stewardship Godward: four
times fidelity is emphasized, and fidelity is
distribution. So we
stand awed before this masterpiece of Divine wisdom: Which, through an appeal
to self-interest, produces an un- selfishness so powerful as to abandon wealth;
clothes the naked, and feeds the hungry, saint; proves the selfless competence
and farsighted administration of God’s steward; creates a love that survives
death; and uses evil mammon to heighten heavens joy.
Finally,
our Lord, faced with the prospect of a universal rejection of this truth, is an
extremely instructive model to the Christian teacher. There is no “hurt” feeling - He discounts the unbelief before it comes;
there is no surprise He who knew what was in man, saw the dollar which is at
the bottom of most men’s souls; there is no anger - He simply states the facts,
and is done; there is no forcing of the truth - he that hath ears to hear, let him
hear; there is no reproach - for this is not the day of reproach, and the
bankrupting loss in that day will probably be reproach enough. All that Christ
does do is to close with the clearest warning of the fact, and a challenge. The
fact is this. “He
that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” - and so the principle applies to the least possible
wealth any of us can hold: the wise
master of a homestead would be the wise master of a kingdom; “and he that is unrighteous in
a very little is unrighteous also in much” - proved incapacity on earth
disqualifies for the larger trust in heaven. And the challenge springs out
of the fact. “If
therefore ye have not been faithful”
- and the fidelity consists in dispensing the trust with a view to eternal friendship - “in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” - of which the
Millennial [‘inheritance’
upon this restored (Matt. 5: 5. cf. Eph. 5: 5; Rom.
8: 19-22, R.V.)] earth
forms a part. Jesus implies that God will not. “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another’s”
- no earthly wealth is yet given us as an inalienable possession; we are merely
tenants at will - “who will commit to your trust that which is
your own?” - the world, forfeited by the Fall, but, in
that day, no longer foreign or loaned, but a wealth as eternal as the
Eternal Tabernacles. The principle presented, startlingly enough, only
negatively, in view of all our Saviour foresaw - is as practical as it is
momentous, and is the gravest possible: namely, that incompetence in the illusive, transient wealth forfeits the trust in
the genuine and inherent; and that if we [regenerate believers] use God’s capital, He expects His dividends
- so much so that infidelity in our
temporary trust incapacitates for the eternal [i.e., ‘aionios’ = millennial] property.
*
* *
BONDAGE
“Ye desire again to be in servitude from above” (Gal.
4: 9).
The servitude of old-time saints was appointed (Gal.
4: 2, Heb. 2: 15). But redeemed ones now “have not received the Spirit of servitude again
to fear”
(Rom. 8: 15). Hence the Galatians wished to put themselves back to another dispensation. “Days and months, and times,
and years” belonged to the period before Christ.
But if believers should wish to re-establish Jewish feasts to-day, they would
sin against God. To re-instate the seventh day, to arrange a Jewish-Christian
assembly, to erect elaborate buildings for worship, to ordain an earthly
priesthood, to introduce musical instruments in worship, to approve of
Christians taking part in warfare, to enter into vows and oaths - all these
things are un-dispensational, and thus against the mind of God. Some of His people see this as to some matters,
but hesitate in others. And when we pray for an all-round realization of
His will, in the Spirit, how we need to pray for victory over the subtle
contrast-error; for some have the swing of the pendulum, and deny the commands
and privileges connected with baptism, deny the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s
Day, which are graciously given from above, and fitted for a people viewed in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus. - PERCY W. HEWARD.
*
* * *
* * *
616
THE
“We
are now walking on a terrestrial surface, not more compact, perhaps, than the
one we shall hereafter walk upon, and are now wearing terrestrial bodies, not
firmer and more solid, perhaps, than those we shall hereafter wear. It is not
by working any change upon them that we could realise, to any extent, our future
heaven. The spirituality of our future state lies not in the kind of substance
which is to compose its framework, but in the character of those who people it.
There will be a firm earth, as we have at present, and a heaven stretched over
it, as we have at present; and it is not by the absence of these, but by the
absence of sin, that the abodes of immortality may be characterized.”
- DR. CHALMERS.
II. - A PROMISED HOME
“It
will exist as a real city, the glorious home and capital of a glorified
humanity. There are many things in the description that have their most natural
(their normal) application to such an abode, as is evident upon the bare
perusal. (1) A material
dwelling-place is as necessary for resurrected saints as was
- E. R. CRAVEN, D.D.
III. - A
“That
a real city, as well as a perfected moral system, is here to be understood, I
see not how we can otherwise conclude. All the elements of a city are
indicated. It has specific dimensions. It has foundations, walls, gates, and
streets. It has guards outside and inhabitants within, both distinct from what
characterizes it as a real construction. It is called a city - ‘the
- J. A. SEISS, D.D.
[* See Tract
number 606.]
V. - ITS COMPOSITION
“This
is ‘the
- Prof. MOSES STUART.
V. - ITS GRAVITY.
“The
sudden coming into sight, from heavenly space, of a glittering object, unknown
to astronomers, self-luminous, above the brightness of the sun, steadily
approaching, till it enters our atmosphere, and comes into close proximity to
this globe, transcends all human experience, and defies all natural philosophy.
But the epoch is an epoch of miracles; the ALMIGHTY
GOD is visibly interposing; and is not bound by natural laws which He made,
and which He can interrupt, or counteract, at His pleasure. The suspension of a
non-rotating cubic mass, fifteen hundred miles every way, in our atmosphere,
composed of gold and gems, inhabited by glorified human beings, would surely
throw out of bearing the specific gravity of the earth, so alter its relations
to the sun, moon, and other planets, as to be inconceivable. Nay, I dare not
say so. What compensations the Upholder of all things may make for the
anticipated disturbances, I cannot conjecture. My business is with His word.
Hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? I am sure He will, though I do
not know how.”
- P. H. GOSSE, F.R.S.
VI. - ITS DIMENSIONS
“This
cubic city is fifteen hundred miles in 1ength,
and fifteen hundred miles in breadth, and fifteen hundred miles in height. [It is the probable enormousness of the new earth
which reduces to its true relative proportions the immensity of its
metropolis.] This one city
would cover all the land from
- A. SIMS.
VII - ITS SITE
“The
New Jerusalem, like the old, is a mountain-city. ‘
- ROBERT GOVETT.
*
Of
VII - ITS VALUE
“You
may spiritualize that, but I do not. An amethyst is an amethyst. I have seen
the crown jewels of
- BUHLER.
IX. - ITS FOUNDATIONS.
“No
man has seen the sard, the topaz, the beryl, and the emerald blaze as the great
stones of the
- DUKE OF ARGYLL.
X. - THE VISION
In a police court some years ago, thirty men, red-eyed
and dishevelled, were brought up as drunk and disorderly. Some were old and
hardened; others hung their heads in shame. During the momentary confusion of
their entry, a strong, clear voice from below began singing:
Last night I lay a-sleeping,
There came a dream so fair.
Last
night had been for them all a nightmare and a drunken stupor. The song continued :
‘I stood in old
Beside the
The
judge made a quiet inquiry. It was a member of a famous opera company, awaiting
trial for forgery, singing in his cell. The men began to show emotion. One or
two dropped on their knees. One boy, after a desperate effort at self-control,
broke down sobbing. At length one man protested: “Judge,”
he said, “have we got to submit to this? We’re here to
take our punishment, but this - .” He, too, began to sob. It was
impossible to proceed with the business of the court; yet the judge gave no
order to stop the song. The song moved to its climax:
‘
Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna for
evermore!’
In an ecstasy of melody the song died. The judge
looked into the faces of the men. Not one was untouched. With a kind word of
advice he dismissed them all. No man was fined or sentenced that day.
“And there shall in
no wise enter into it anything unclean; but
only they
which are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (Rev. 21: 27).*
-------
*
So much is missed by spiritualizing the
City that a note may be added on its literality. The belief in a
physical abode of the risen faded with the fading belief in the resurrection of
the body. But the City is named in a list, all of which consists of
concrete realities behind the veil (Heb. 12: 22), as one
of the things “not
seen as
yet;” and, as the explanation of
a symbol which must therefore be literal, the City, visibly unveiled to
John as the concrete reality symbol in “the Lamb’s Wife”
(Rev. 21:
9), is the place our Lord has gone to prepare, many-mansioned. Nor need
its vast size be a stumbling block. Jupiter, a planet already in our solar
system, is 1,230 times the bulk of the earth, so that, if the ‘new earth’ [Rev.
21: 1,
R.V.] on
which the City settles after hovering above the old [and restored
(see Rom. 8:
19-21)] earth throughout the Millennial centuries, be no larger than Jupiter, the City’s Apocalyptic
girth would be proportionate to a city less than two miles across on our
present globe. - D. M. Panton.
*
* *
OBEDIENCE
The
Rev. J. K. Shields, in 1911, met a Scots minister who, having lived in one
of the loveliest spots in
Asked
why, he repeated this poem. - D. M. Panton.
-------
I said: “Let
me walk in the fields.”
He said: “No,
walk in the town.”
I said: “There
are no flowers there.”
He said: “No
flowers, but a crown.”
I said: “But
the skies are black;
There is nothing but noise
and din.”
And He wept
as He sent me back -
“There is more,” He said: “there is sin.”
I said: “But the air is thick,
And fogs are veiling the sun.”
He answered: “Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone!”
I said: “I shall miss the light,
And friends will miss me,
they say.”
He answered: “Choose to-night
If I am to miss you or they.”
I pleaded for time to be given.
He said: “Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem so hard in
heaven
To have followed the steps of
your Guide.”
I cast one look It the fields,
Then set my face to the town,
He said, “My child, do you yield
Will you leave the flowers
for the crown?”
Then into His hand went mine
And into my
heart came He;
And I walk, in
a light divine,
The path I had feared to see.
- GEORGE MAcDONALD.
*
* * *
* * *
617
THE BETTER COVENANT
By REV. JAMES N. BRITTON.
“He is the mediator of a better covenant
… established
upon better promises.”
Hebrews 8: 6.
-------
THE word better
which occurs twice in our text will be at once recognised, even by casual
readers of this epistle, as one of its great key-words; perhaps its greatest.
The letter opens by declaring the revelation which comes to us in Christ Jesus
to be better than that which comes to the fathers through the prophets. The general principle of progressive
revelation thus implied, Jesus is declared to be in Himself “The brightness of
His glory, and the express image of His Person.” As such He is shown to be
better than the angels, in that while they are servants, He is the Son. He is
also better than Moses, who was the mediator of the old covenant, in that He is
God’s Son while Moses is at best God’s servant. He introduces us,
also, to a better rest, of which the rest promised to the fathers is but the
prophecy. Then comes the section immediately preceding this, from
which our text is taken, extending from the 5th
chapter to the 8th , and
ending in the verse before our text, in which the priesthood of Christ is
compared with that of Aaron on the one hand, and that strange, almost mystical,
one-man priesthood of Melchizedek on the other, and declared to be better than
either.
It
is in the firm grip of the thought of the old being supplanted by the new, of
the good as passing before the better that he proceeds to write of the new
covenant: it is the constant assumption of the writer of this epistle that to
prove betterment is to
demonstrate the passing of that than which it is better. However good in
itself, having paved the way for something better, it as once ceases to be
operative. This assumption, which underlies all he has written up to this
point, is here categorically stated. If Jesus is the mediator of a better
covenant, then it follows that the old covenant has ceased to be operative; “For if that first covenant
had been faultless, then should no place have
been sought for the second.” It
was not faultless, as it passed to give place to a better which comes to us in
Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
The
questions which naturally arise when we face a statement of this kind are: (1) what exactly is a covenant? (2) in what sense was the old faulty? (3), in what sense is the new better? (4) the old having given place to a “better,” will it in turn give place to yet another; is the
better to be supplanted by a best, or is it final? Let us find, if we can, an
answer to these questions, even though it can be, in the space at our disposal,
little more than an answer in outline.
I. The word covenant is not in frequent use among us to-day. Our fathers
used to speak much of men of the covenant; even to-day we sometimes hear God
referred to in prayer as a covenant-keeping God. There is, however, one other
use of the word which perhaps throws more light upon it for us than either of
these two. I refer to its use in the marriage ceremony. Therein marriage is
always spoken of as “a sacred covenant between these
two persons,” and the contracting parties are always spoken of as having
solemnly covenanted with each other. In marriage all the essential elements of
a covenant are present. For them a covenant is an agreement to which both
subscribe, the terms of which are binding on both. Any failure on the part of
either to keep the terms of the covenant automatically disannuls it. Let it be
proved before the law of the land that either party has broken the conditions
on which any covenant is entered upon, and legal recognition is given to the
fact that the covenant has ceased to hold. A covenant is therefore always an
agreement holding between two or more persons, based upon certain conditions
equally binding upon the covenanting parties. The failure to observe these conditions on the part of any,
automatically disannuls the covenant made.
Now
the thought of any such arrangement holding between God and man at once implies
an act of condescending grace on the part of God. Here the contracting parties
are not equal. One is so infinitely greater than the other, that any agreement,
arrangement, covenant, between the two is only possible by the infinite
condescension of One of the contracting parties. When it is remembered that a
covenant is binding upon all contracting parties, the grace of God is further
seen in God’s willingness to put Himself under voluntary obligations to man for
His sake. God can only be “a covenant-keeping God” by a deliberate act of condescending grace.
But
further, God can only continue as a covenant-keeping God so long as man on his part continues to keep the terms of the covenant
entered into. A covenant by its essential nature simply can not be one-sided. No man can confidently expect God to keep any covenant
the terms of which he himself persistently ignores or fails to keep. Failure on
man’s part at once releases God from all He has promised on His part; not only
so, but, and I write quite reverently, such failure leaves God no option but to
accept that release. He cannot keep the covenant, for with man’s failure the
covenant as such has ceased to be. God may indeed continue to be gracious, but
such grace is uncovenanted. In the consideration of any covenant entered into
between God and man these two factors must always be borne in mind: (a) the condescending Grace of God in
entering into the covenant, and (b)
this power on man’s part, by failure to keep its conditions, to render it null
and void.
II. It is when you see man’s power to disannul any covenant made by God
that you know the direction in which to look for the failure of what is
referred to here as the first covenant. It is “faulty” in the sense that it did not accomplish its end, and it failed to
accomplish its end because man failed to
fulfil its conditions. The whole explanation of its failure is given in one
phrase in the 9th verse of this
chapter: “ ‘They
continued not in My covenant, and I regarded them not,’ saith the Lord.”
Dr. Scofield enumerates eight
different covenants into which God with infinite patience has entered with man,
and His unceasing effort to lift him out of his sin. Every one of them has broken
down in precisely the same place: man
has rendered them null and void by
his failure to keep their conditions. The covenant here referred to as the
first is not first in order of time, but of importance. It is obviously the
covenant entered into by God with Moses as the representative of
An
examination of the conditions laid down for man shew that this first covenant
was not a final one. Under this arrangement
sin is recognized as a persistent fact. The sin of man is assumed in
the provision laid down for sacrifices, priests, and purifications. Provided
man tried to keep God’s enactments, and provided when he failed he made use of
the provision God had appointed, God would fulfil His covenant. Now no covenant
between God and man can be regarded as final, the provisions of which
contemplate the continuance of sin. Such an arrangement represents the best
that could be done with man at his then stage of development, but if regarded
as final would imply the abandonment on God’s part of the final conquest of
sin. The arrangements made for the regularly repeated offering for sin, imply
the continuance of sin, and that in turn implies that this is not the final
arrangement. At best it could only be a provisional arrangement, belonging to
an upward stage of man’s spiritual development, and destined to pass as soon as
man had outgrown its provisions. Yet in the end it was not as a
fulfilled, outgrown covenant that it passed, but as a covenant which man had broken.
The old was not faultless in itself, yet accommodating as it was, man failed to
keep it, and as such it ceased to be. It passed because it was essentially
provisional, and because man as man failed to keep its conditions.
III. What then about the new? In what sense is it better? In the light of
man’s past failures, what hope is there of his keeping this? These are questions one is apt to ask with a sense
of sinking at heart. Man is such an inveterate covenant-breaker that one is
afraid.
A close
examination of the new covenant in the light of the old reveals several important directions in which it can claim
to be better.
For
instance, it is final in its arrangements for sin. Here is no arrangement for
repeated sacrifice. So far as sin is concerned, under this covenant there is
one sacrifice for sin and one only. His is the supreme sacrifice of which all
other sacrifice is but the pre-figuration and preparation. It is also final. He
died unto sin once, and only once. He dieth no more. That death fulfilled all
past sacrifice, and rendered futile all further sacrifice. The passover
sacrifice that followed so closely on His death was already an anachronism.
To-day He is “alive
for evermore.” Either Christ
settled the sin question once for all, or He never will settle it. Of the work
He came to do to pave the way for the new covenant, Jesus said, “It is finished”;
and it is, or He never will finish it. There is no escaping the note of
finality which runs through this
epistle. If it on the one hand shows Jesus to be “better,” on the other it as persistently shows Jesus as final. He is God’s last
Word, God’s final priest, God’s last sacrifice for sin. Men may hold the Writer
[i.e., the Holy Spirit] to be wrong;
they cannot fail to know that the writer believed he was handling final things.
He held, in the words of the parable of Jesus, that having sent His Son there
was nothing further God could do. There may have been eight covenants - there
never will be in the present order of things a ninth! To play with the enactments of this covenant is to play with destiny.
There is no escape this time if we ‘neglect so great salvation’. Readers of this epistle are familiar with the way in
which the author breaks off again and again to utter words of serious warning.
They are in order, from his point of view, for he is handling final things. The
first may pass; but not this - it is final. The problem of sacrifice for sin is
settled once for all by the death of Jesus, or so far as this writer is
concerned there is no solution.
(To be concluded).
*
* * *
* * *
618
GIANTS OF FAITH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The Holy Spirit's definition of faith is
extraordinarily illuminating. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the proving
[or, rather, the mental conviction] of things
[actual things] not seen” (Heb. 11: 1). Faith is all life squared to the facts which
we know are behind the veil. They are “things not seen as yet” (Heb. 11: 7); but as,
above and below visible light, and above and below audible sound, there are
rays and notes the human has no senses to perceive, yet rays and notes equally
actual, equally real, so faith acts on
God’s statements of the realities in the unseen; and our power in this world
depends on our vision of the other. “I would
rather be among the great believers,”
said Dr. Gordon, of
In
the very first family earth ever had, we find faith’s extreme costliness, and
the awful sundering power of conviction.
“By faith ABEL”
- the father of all the martyrs of the
world - “offered
unto God a more excellent sacrifice”
- because it was a blood-atonement - “than Cain.” “By
faith Abel faith in what? All faith (in the Bible) is faith in the Scriptures, as uttered or inscribed by Prophets, and having God for their Author.
Jehovah had said:- “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,
and it shall BRUISE his heel” (Gen. 3: 15). Abel
may, or may not, have known of Messiah’s heel crushed by hammer and nails on
wood: what any ‘believer’ must have seen in the words was the Fall undone by Messiah suffering
the rage of the Serpent in undoing it. But Faith no sooner appeared on earth
than it cost Eve’s second son his life: conviction of blood-atonement so
suddenly isolated him from all the world, that his own family murdered him. Faith broke in a dawn of blood,
because it had entered a world deeply infidel.
No
sooner is justification and its saying gift portrayed in a lightning flash,
than sanctification and its reward is on the horizon. “By faith ENOCH” - the father of
all the watchful of the world - “was translated.”
Abel is the longest dead of any man that ever was, or ever will be; Enoch has
never been dead at all: faith creates both the martyr and the immortal. Enoch’s
faith is
never named in Genesis, only his walk; but
- as the Apostle rightly argues - a God-pleasing walk can come only from
constant faith, acting; for without faith he says, “it is impossible to please God”; and what
pleased God in Enoch’s walk was its faith. In an age when evil men and seducers
waxed worse and worse, Enoch lived a LIFE
of faith and his reward - for this is what the [Holy] Spirit
emphasizes; Enoch (He says) acted on the fact that God is a Rewarder - was
bodily rapture. Please me, the Flesh says to all; please me, the World says to
all; please Me! God says to us all: and lo, the walk of sanctity ended in a
sudden heaven.
We
have had the worship of faith; and the walk of faith: now we come to the
activity of faith. “By faith NOAH” - the father of all the God-fearing souls of the
world - “moved by
godly fear, prepared an ark.” The
Next
we come to faith travelling to the ends of the earth for God. “By faith ABRAHAM” - the father of all the missionaries of the world - “when he was called, obeyed to go out.”
No poverty, no discontent, no persecution drove Abraham from
We
now reach as remarkable an example as any on record of faith in the literal
Word of God. “By faith ISAAC” - the father of all the Bible-lovers of the world - “blessed Jacob and Esau,
even concerning things to come.” Two nations contended in Jacob and Esau: the Divine
afflatus through Isaac - against Isaac’s whole soul - gave
the supreme blessing to Jacob; and the moment Isaac saw it; he cried, “I have blessed him, and he shall
be blessed.” Glorious faith! God
had spoken through his unconscious lips: as immutable, as irrevocable as God
Himself - changing the destinies of nations for thousands of years, and burying
a father’s hopes - Isaac instantly accepts the word of God against himself.
No subtler test of faith is in the Church to-day - a test in which myriads fail - than the Scriptures which warn [regenerate] believers of coming penalty on sin: passionate faith, with face in the dust,
delights even in utterances that banish hopes and ruin dreams.
We
now reach faith in the last moments of our sunset. “By faith JACOB” - the father of
all the holy death-beds of the world - “when he was a-dying, blessed
and worshipped.” Could anything be
more lovely? Amid the stern realities of the dying hour, the stumbling old
figure, leaning heavily on the staff still grasped in his pilgrim hands, passes
from the world pronouncing benedictions, and adoring God: so God passes over
all the faultful, faltering life; and gathers the whole blaze on its golden
sunset. As Spurgeon has said:- “Little faith brings the soul to heaven, but great faith
brings heaven to the soul.” And the reverse is true: the organist of a
well known minister once told me:- “My minister
preached on Genesis and for a fortnight I was in Hell.” On the deathbed the destructive critic will find no
staff on which to lean. So we pass from faith in dying to faith beyond the
grave. “By faith JOSEPH” - the father of all the Millennarians of the world - “when his end was nigh,
gave commandment concerning his bones.” I do not know any more marvellous example of belief
in resurrection. Joseph might have had the POMP
and gold of a tomb of Tutankhamen; ancient writers say that he was so buried,
until the Exodus: instead, he made this slave-people sware that they would
carry his bones across the vast wilderness, in order that those bones might be
in the
We now reach the last of the mighty convictions which,
in God’s sight, make the world’s greatest men. “By faith MOSES” - the father of all the great renunciations of the
world - “accounted
the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of
How
tremendous is our summons to faith, and how enormous, all down the ages, has
been the responding dynamic among the sons of men! Jesus walked up and down the
shores of the
I heard the call ‘Come, follow’;
That was all:
Earth’s joys grew dim -
My soul went after Him;
I rose and follow’d,
That was all:
Will you not follow if you hear His call?
*
* *
The
Bible is a corridor between two eternities down which walks the Christ of God;
His invisible steps echo through the Old Testament, but we meet Him face to
face in the throne-room of the New; and it is through that Christ alone,
crucified for me, that I have found forgiveness for sins and life eternal. “The Old Testament is summed up in the word ‘Christ’; the New Testament is
summed up in the word ‘Jesus’; and the summary of the whole Bible is that Jesus is the
Christ” (Bishop Pollock). “I can never doubt,” says Mr. Spurgeon, “the doctrine of plenary
verbal inspiration; since I so constantly see, in actual practice, how the very
words that God has been pleased to use - a plural instead of a singular - are
blessed to the souls of men.”
*
* * *
* * *
619
THE BRIDE OF THE LAMB
By JOSEPH
SLADEN
The events of the last decade of years have shown
generally to expositors of prophetic Scriptures that statements made therein should
be taken literally, where it can be done without producing absurdity - either
physical or metaphysical. Things which were, in time past, physically
impossible, are now, by the rapid progress of scientific knowledge, made
literally true.
For
example, let us remark on a statement by Sir
Isaac Newton, the great astronomer, who was also a lover of the Word of
Prophecy. He stated that the incident named in Rev.
11: 10 -
when the armies of all the nations are to be gathered against
Under
present circumstances, the incident related above can no longer be regarded as physically
absurd. So the literal interpretation of the whole of the incidents referred
to must be accepted in its plain meaning.
It
can no longer be held that the effects of the Seals and the
Trumpets are figurative of great convulsions of governments and significant of
false doctrine. Most expositors have adopted the figurative view;
the only exceptions known to the writer are Seiss and Govett. The
time is rapidly approaching when these prophetic words will be literally
fulfilled. The earthquakes and famines and pestilences of the
present epoch confirm the literalness of events recorded under the Seals and
Trumpets.
SIGNS OR FIGURES
But
there are signs (or
figures) used in the Apocalypse which
cannot be taken literally. In such cases, the explanation of the sign is
given, e.g., the woman clothed with
the sun, etc., is a figure of
Let
us apply these principles to the statements made concerning the
It
is remarkable that the statement about the
In
the second notice of the
Twice
the notice of the literalness of the
LITERAL AND EMBLEMATICAL
The
Bride of the Lamb is the symbol of the
The
figure of the Bride of the Lamb is not then, identical with the figure of the
Bride of Christ. It differs entirely from the figure of the Bride of Christ,
which represents Christ’s elect Church, the Body of which He is the Head. The
Lamb is the mystic name of the Son of God in relation to all the saved in all the dispensations. It is a name of universal significance, displaying
universal sovereignty. John the Baptist witnessed: “Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world.” In the Apocalypse, after the standing of the Church
has been set aside, and the action of the Throne of judgment has commenced in Rev. 4., this
mystic name is applied twenty-eight times to the Son of God; and at the close,
in the new earth, the Throne, of God
and of the Lamb exercises,
throughout the countless ages of eternity, universal sovereignty (Rev. 22: 3).*
*
It is remarkable that the promise to the overcomer in the Church in
That
the Bride of the Lamb is not the Church, is shown by the names of the twelve tribes
of the children of
* The Apocalypse Expounded by Scripture. Thynne & Jarvis.
*
* *
THREE CLASSES
By Rev. WILLIAM
LINCOLN.
The three
classes depicted in the Apocalypse are (a)
That mass which when tried shall fail,
and cling to the very last unto earth.
“They dwell upon the earth”; or, as another
verse expresses the charge, “they say they are Jews,
and are not.” Why they are so urgent for this doctrine is quite obvious.
For the Jews were settled by God
Himself upon the earth; though, in their case, in a land purged by judgment.
The Jews were in religion
dealt with nationally. But the
Church is, as its very name in Greek denotes, a ‘calling
out.’
(b)
A second class is of those who, though mingled
with apostate Christendom, and so dwelling at ease upon earth, and
consequently needing ‘the great tribulation,’ in
order that thereby they may be sifted from that corrupt mass, shall yet,
through God’s free and amazing mercy, be enabled to come forth heartily for
Christ in the day of persecution. Only
it had been better if they had been drawn simply by His love than thus rescued
by force. Nevertheless they are delivered.
(c)
The other class is of those who are
separated unto Christ before the predicted tribulation begins. These adhere
in an evil day and in an adulterous generation to the word of Christ’s
patience, and, therefore, it is witnessed, do
not need, and so shall be preserved from, the time of impending trial. To
these victors is vouchsafed the gracious promise that when they have fully and finally overcome, they shall be
constituted by Christ “pillars in the
*
* * *
* * *
620
THE BETTER COVENANT
By REV. JAMES N. BRITTON
(Continued [PART TWO])
“He is the Mediator of a better covenant ...
established upon better
promises.”
Hebrews 8: 6.
Let us begin by briefly reviewing the ground we have
covered. We have described a covenant as an agreement holding between two or
more persons, based upon conditions equally binding upon each of the contracting
parties. Then we noted that the old covenant which is supplanted by this better
one broke down because man failed to keep its conditions. We then passed on to
discover the directions in which the new covenant was better than the old. The
one fact we noted was that it was better because it was final. The other was
not. Apart altogether from man’s failure it would have passed. It was adjusted
to the stage of spiritual development holding among those with whom it was
made, as in the very nature of the case a covenant must be, and therefore
merely temporary. The old covenant would have given place to the new as a
measure which had fulfilled its purpose, if man had kept its provisions; as it
is, it passed as an agreement cancelled by his failure. To the writer of this
Epistle Jesus is God’s Great “Finality”; He is
God’s last word, His last Mediator, His last High Priest, and His final
solution of the sin problem. In Him everything temporary has passed and the
permanent has come.
1. Bearing well in mind this outstanding characteristic of finality in
the better covenant, we are not surprised to find that the standard of
righteousness demanded under it is much higher, or ought one to say deeper,
than that demanded, or possible, under the old.
There
is no mistaking the significance of the 10th
verse in this particular. This time the laws are to be put into their
mind and written in their heart. It was not so under the old order. The law was
an external thing, written on tables of stone, given to man for the regulation
of his conduct. It told him what to do, and perhaps more especially what not to
do, spoke to him of penalties as detriments, and rewards as encouragements, and
left him to it. “This
do” it said, “and thou shalt live.” Its primary emphasis is on conduct rather than on
character.
That it broke down as a means of salvation we know,
but what we often overlook is that from the first it was never meant to be
final. It never was in the law to produce a type of human righteousness that
was wholly acceptable to God. At its best it stood for an intermediate state,
and as such it had fulfilled its function when it paved the way for that which
was to come. It represents part of the educational process by which God led
sinful man up to that final standard of righteousness which is wholly and
finally acceptable to Him. It was never more than a schoolmaster out of whose
hands the pupil was bound to pass, On the whole the schoolmaster never had a
chance. Men generally gave little heed to the law. It broke down in the
majority of cases because its behests were utterly disregarded. But, and this
is the fact to be noted, it failed to produce that standard of righteousness
which we know to be fully acceptable to
God, in those who regarded its
dictates and, with amazing diligence, tried to obey them. This is clear if
we, to begin with, closely examine what is described as the “righteousness of the
Pharisees.” It might not be all it
ought to be, yet it cost something to attain to it; and was the direct result
of a deliberate effort to keep the law.
It
was the best the tables of law had produced in the realm of conduct. Probably
the mere observance of outward law has never at any time or in any place
produced anything better than Saul of Tarsus or the rich young man, whom, we
are told, “Jesus
loved.” Above all, it should be
noted that it stood in the estimation of men trained under the law as the
highest form of righteousness attainable: as the BEST the LAW could
produce.
But
the pity of it was that the law was never intended to produce it. The law of
God can only produce a sense of righteousness in man when he is allowed to
reduce its meaning to terms which he knows himself capable of fulfilling. Apart
from that “cutting down” of its meaning, the
direct action of God’s law is, not to give man a satisfactory sense of
righteousness, but a profound conviction that it is not in him to be or to do
as he ought. When Jesus took the law, in His Sermon on the Mount, and gave it a
meaning which was so high that it simply left men with the conviction that NO man could possibly be sufficient
for these things, He was putting the law to the primary use for which it was
intended. It was never intended that men should find satisfaction in it, but
such a profound sense of dissatisfaction as would pave the way for the better,
deeper thing that was to come with Christ. In spite of all his observance of
the law, man at the heart was not law abiding. The law could have taught him
that, had he looked within, but by steadily looking without, his external
righteousness blinded him to the fact. So that the law which should have paved
the way for Jesus, failed, and there was no more bitter opponents of Jesus than
those who had, through their observances of it, run to seed in externalism.
Under
the new covenant there is to be an end to all externalism. The law this time is
not to be written on tables of stone. It is to be written in the mind, where
men think, and in the heart, where men feel. It is no longer something for them
to do, but something for them to be. It still spells out a change of conduct,
but it proposes to work that change not by conformity to an outside standard,
but from within. Man still keeps the law, but under the new covenant he keeps
it because he himself has been made law abiding, law loving. He does not attain
to righteousness so much as grow into it. The old clash between what he did in
observance of the law and what his unchanged heart urged him to do, is gone;
his duty has become his delight. The old dealt with the conduct, but in the long run right conduct alone
cannot be satisfactory to God or to man, so long as behind it there is wrong
condition. Sooner or later God must either abandon the attempt to save man or
go to the root of his “wrongness.” That is
exactly what He does under the new covenant. “Out of the heart are the issues of life” and He proposes to write His law on man’s heart. This
inward righteousness is the end at last of all externalism; the “whited sepulchre” condition is impossible under the
new order. The standard set by the law as interpreted by Jesus has neither been
abandoned nor lowered, it remains, and God now covenants with man to fulfil it
in us, from within.
II. There remains now one other respect in which the new covenant is
better than the old, and that is in the conditions on which God fulfils it.
All
covenants, we have decided, are subject to conditions binding on each of the
contracting parties. It brings something like a clutch of fear to the heart of
a thoughtful man to remember that every covenant God has made with man up to
the present one, man has broken. Will he break this? One thing is certain, the
writer of this epistle believes this to be utterly broken apart from the
uncovenanted Grace of God. God’s last covenant, so that if he does break it, he
himself is. It is last chance, will he throw it away?
He
need not. No covenant between God and man has had easier conditions. In the old
order much depended upon the human agent. Its key-word was “This do and thou shalt live.” To keep the commandments was a necessary. condition
to abiding in the covenant. And man failed in His doing. This time God keeps
the doing in His own hands; “I will put,” “I will write,”
“I will unto them a God.” All the new covenant demands of any man is that he
will permit God to do all He stands ready and pledged to do. The old demanded
acts; the new demands an attitude, nothing more. In the old a man was urged to
fight if he would obtain the victory, in the new he is asked to stand still and
see the salvation of God. What man has so far failed to do, God proposes this
time to do for him. The condition of the first was works; that of the last is
faith. No greater benefits have been offered to man than those under the new covenant;
no easier conditions have been laid down. He has, this time, entered into a
covenant with man which is practically “fool-proof.”
He has chosen a way by which the simple faith of the weakest can succeed where
the works of the strongest failed. Here is a covenant under which the simplest
souls can reach up to a type of inward righteousness undreamt of and unreached by the pick of the nation under the covenant
which it succeeds. It is a covenant prepared for man on the light of his past
failures; it is for failures. Its results are better, its processes are
simpler, its conditions easier, and the chances of failure almost eliminated.
Short of the supreme folly of taking life altogether out of the hands of God,
God stands pledged in it to the ultimate salvation of man. Short of destroying
personality in man altogether, by the withdrawal of all choice, it seems to me
impossible to imagine a better covenant.
So God says: “This is the covenant that I will make … I will put ... I will write.” May we be willing for Him to “do what seemeth Him good”!
*
* * *
* * *
621
THE HID
TREASURE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
(Continued from No.
613)
[PART 4]
Again, before his going back, two classes of actions
are ascribed to him. First, his finding the treasure, and therefore his
uncovering it more or less: and, secondly, his covering it up again and hiding
it. He uncovered it, in fact, that
The
covering up of the treasure was the signal for Christ’s return. And at this
point his purpose changes; it is no more his longing to display the treasure:
all his further acts are directed to the purchase
of the field. We do not
read of “the church” till after the blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost, and the secret teaching by parables, which was the
avenging of that sin. The setting aside for awhile of the earthly promises,
opens the door then for the entrance of the heavenly. When
As
then the parable informs us, that the man who found the treasure went back, so
does it prompt the inquiry, Whence he came? And the same gospel answers us, and
presents us with a view of the treasure-finder in the act of leaving the field.
“When Jesus knew
that his hour was come, that he should depart
out of this world unto the Father ... Jesus knowing ... that he was come from God and went to God, riseth from
supper:” John
13: 1, 3. “I came forth from
the Father, and am come into
the world; again I leave the
world and go to the Father:” John 16: 28.
XI. The final steps are, that he “selleth all that
he hath, and buyeth that field.” Jesus
possessed much, yet he surrendered all. By his righteousness as man, he was
entitled to the reward of God. By his birth as son of Abraham, he had a right
to the
But
all that he might claim for himself, he gave up for others: his eye is bent on purchasing the world. His is the treasure by right of discovery: he will have it more securely still, by buying the field in which it lies. So the Lord Jesus has redeemed the world to himself, that
when the time comes he may assert his
claim, not to Judaea alone and to
the kingdom over
But
what was the price that he gave as purchase money? “There is one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all:” 1 Tim. 2: 5. By
this self-surrender even unto death, he bought the Church. “Feed the
Therefore
an apostle affirms even of the heretical
teachers of the last days, “They privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them:” 2 Peter 2: 1.
“He buys that field.” This sentence may present to our understandings the
thought of the smallness of the earth itself as a part of the domain of God. He
is but a small proprietor who has but a single field. But God is Lord of
thousands of worlds; the fields of his dominions are (as far as we can see)
without limit. Yet a peculiar value and worth attaches itself to the earth, as
bought especially for his own by the Son of God. “He buyeth that field.” Small
though it be, and incapable of being seen from the distant stars, yet is “that field” of vast moment in the history of the universe: for here the Son of God himself will reign, when that word shall be fulfilled at the
seventh trumpet’s blast, “The Kingdom* of the world hath become our Lord’s and his Messiah’s, and [a disjunction] he shall reign for ever and ever:”** Rev. 11: 15.
* Instead
of [see the Greek …], the best MSS. and versions with several critics’
approbation, read […Greek].
[** NOTE: The last clause, which demands the “and” must be understood as a disjunction,
and not a conjunction,
literally reads: “and He shall reign for the ages of the ases.”
Another translation reads:- “The KINGDOM of the WORLD has
become our LORD’S and his CHRIST’S” - (lit. Gk. ‘the Anointed’) - “and HE shall reign for the AGES of the AGES.”]
Here
the scene closes and Jesus departs - Lord, not only of the treasure, but of the
world; and in token of the mighty action here set forth, a comparatively small
transaction took place at
XII. Having now concluded the interpretation of the parable, let us consider the mystery
here indicated.
The
original mystery was, God’s concealed design to make earth the seat of his universal government. But the Psalms
and other places of Scripture had set forth, more or less, this Secret of God.
1.
The mystery of the kingdom [which was promised
(see Ps. 2:
8) to God’s ‘Messiah’] begins properly with the second hiding of the
treasure. The finding of the treasure and the person of the discoverer had been
revealed to the Jewish prophets. Is not a greater than the literal Cyrus
foretold in this passage? - “Thus saith the Lord to his
anointed (‘his Messiah’ Heb.) to Cyrus whose right hand have I holden ... I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and
hidden riches of secret places:” Isa. 45:
1, 3. The Jewish prophets describe the glory of the land of Judea and of the
daughter of Zion, when the Lord’s
long concealed treasure should be displayed; and many eyes
were waiting with anxiety for the coming
of the Messiah to bring it to light.
But the mystery begins with the covering
up again of the glory of the kingdom from the eye of
This
portion of God’s counsels was almost entirely kept secret from
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
622
A
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Scriptural
Christians within the Anglican Communion are now faced with an opportunity such
as comes only in the great crises of history. If and when legislation
authorising the Mass, reinforced later by measures still more baldly Roman,
pass the Church Assembly and the Imperial Parliament, and the moment of
disruption draws near, with it, fraught with destiny, there may come a
spiritual upheaval unknown since the successive earth-shaking secessions of the
Puritans, the Methodists, and the Brethren. Great Churches, like great saints,
are born in sacrifice. And the golden opportunity lies in this: that what
earlier movements, through an inexplicable oversight, missed, is now within the
grasp of those on whom rests the momentous decision - namely, a catholic
church; not a burning and splendid sect once more, but a comprehensive
communion of the redeemed. Never, therefore, was there a more pregnant call, or
a summons of more perilous brevity, to study afresh the foundations of
catholicity.
SECTS
We
are all tragically familiar with the bitter roots of sectarianism as deeply
ingrained in the “flesh” - quarrelsomeness,
party bitterness, jealousy among leaders, a proud and the domineering spirit like that of Diotrophes; for “the works of the FLESH
are manifest, which are these, sects, divisions, parties” (Gal. 5: 19). But
most sectarianism, in the beloved
THE CHURCH
Now
the Holy Ghost in his great rubric of reception lays deep and final the
bed-rock catholicity which, had it only been mastered and unswervingly adhered
to, would have made all sectionalism automatically impossible for ever. “Him that is weak in the faith
receive
ye; for GOD HATH RECEIVED
HIM” (
JURISDICTION
Now
our assumption of judgment, which is the very heart of faction, the Holy Ghost,
without a moment’s delay, assails, with annihilation power by challenging our
jurisdiction. “Who
art thou” - the thou
is emphatic - “that
judgest?” Where is your
commission, and what is your competence, to, assume the scarlet and ermine of
the Bench? Our Lord, in His earthly life, asked, “Who made me a judge?” though He will
yet be the Judge of all: so the Holy
Spirit asks us, “Who art thou that judgest?” though we shall judge angels (1 Cor. 6: 3). But more
than that. “Who
art thou that judgest the servant of another?” Who
delegated that servant’s adjudication to you? Now this double challenge holds a world of significance. It implies (1) that while our desire of judgment on
sin is right, our own assumption of judgment is wrong; (2) that while our excommunicating sins, which are solely
immoralities of the life (1 Cor.
5: 11),
judgment is granted, over our brother’s mind we have no sort of - jurisdiction whatever; (3) that, through ignorance of his
conscience, motives, temperament, upbringing, opportunities, abilities, ignorances, our incompetence to judge him is manifest; and
(4) that, in any case, his Master has
never parted with His sole control of His own servants. He is another Man’s servant.
If I have no jurisdiction over the employee of a neighbouring business firm,
much less have I any Jurisdiction over an employee of God;
still less have I jurisdiction in matters far more complex and subtle - because
relating to the soul - than ever fall to the lot of an earthly master; and
least of all have I the jurisdiction
that can inflict the shame, possible death (1 Cor. 5: 5), and exclusion from [Messiah’s] coming ‘glory’* involved in excommunication. So, therefore, all
segregating judgment, all penal separation for mental sin, is confined to the
unique jurisdiction of the Lord of us all.
[* See 1 Pet, 1: 11, ff.
Cf.
Ps. 72: 19; 85: 9; Isa. 6: 3; 35: 2; 66: 18; Eze. 39: 21; Hab. 2: 14; Matt. 25: 31; John. 17: 34; Rom. 5: 2; Heb. 2: 7; 1 Pet. 4: 13; 2 Pet. 1: 3; Jude 24, etc.]
THE BEMA
The
Holy Ghost next meets, in real sympathy but
in profound solution, the sincere and righteous indignation over mental or
practical or ritual sin in God’s Church; for He flashes a searchlight on to
the gulf of ignorance which has made
all this sincere but grievous factionalism possible. “But thou again, 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.”
Why did you imagine - how could you imagine - that God would leave all such sin
unjudged? and therefore that it was essential for you to act the judge? Now the
implications of this fresh challenge are overwhelming, and involve an
astounding revelation of error in large areas of modern teaching. Whereas all future judgment of a regenerate soul is frequently denied, and
universally ignored, the Holy Spirit’s truth is startlingly to the contrary: so far from a [regenerate] believer’s
judgment being confined to this life, it is here placed wholly beyond
the grave; and so intensely is it
a judgment of the Church that,
on the ground of it alone, present Church judgment, however guilty the parties may be, is prohibited. For the implications are
these:- (1) that a judgment of
believers is coming; (2) that no
believer will be exempt - even Paul is included; (3) that we are not to judge now because we are to be judged then; and (4)
that the real mental or practical or ritual sins, for which too often the
Church now refuses fellowship, will receive exact merited
recompense - [(see Col. 3: 24. cf. Gal. 6: 7, R.V.) - after the time of death, (Heb.
9: 27, R.V.);
and therefore in ‘Hades,’
and before ‘resurrection’
(Acts 2: 27,
34; Luke 20:
35; Phil.
3: 11; Rev. 20: 4-6, R.V.)] - at the Bema.* All
righteous desire for [divine] judgment is thus wholly and completely met, while
deliberately and definitely postponed: the full creed is to be analysed,
adjusted, and if need be penalised, at the Judgment Seat.
* Therefore the constant citing of John 5: 24, as
making judgment impossible for a child of God, is a grave misquotation; for,
that the believer will never come into judgment for eternal life which is exclusively John’s context -
is as certain as that in this passage and countless more, his discipleship must pass under the searching scrutiny of God.
SCHISM
So
now we have the root of sectionalism, even at its best, unearthed and
condemned. The attempt to expel all unsaintliness, all error, from the Church
involves a double disaster - the Bema,
withdrawn from the Pavilion of Cloud, is erected in the Upper Room, where it is
absolutely forbidden; but, graver still, as the Judgment Seat is thus already functioning in the Upper
Room in punishment, it has
disappeared totally from the Pavilion of Cloud. So inevitable
is this consequence of a dislocation of the truth, that, in experience, we find
that the Protestant groups most
exclusive and intolerant are also the groups that most explicitly deny the
Church’s coming judgment. The Bema, misplaced, disappears: schism erects
sects, creates intolerance, and denies [a yet future] judgment.
But if I have no jurisdiction over my brother, I cannot compel him to
righteousness, nor he me: the attempt, therefore, by coercion, to force a
doctrinally [so-called] flawless
church*
on pain of excommunication not only creates a new sect, but disrupts the Church,
forces schism on those who cannot conscientiously pronounce the “shibboleth” required,*
erects an incompetent tribunal, judges
where God has forbidden judgment, and breaks the supreme law of the Church -
the law of Love.
[*I once asked an ‘elder’
of a Presbyterian church the question, - ‘Do you
believe your denomination teaches all truth?’ and he replied, ‘Yes’!
May our Lord forgive us, for our gross ignorance!]
*
He who forces the schism, as Archbishop Laud said, is the
schismatic; by imposing terms of communion (we may add) which God never
imposed. “He is rather the schismatic who makes
inconvenient, unnecessary innovations, than he who disobeys them because he
cannot do otherwise without violating his conscience”(Jeremy Taylor). Nor are they schismatics
who separate from a body not technically a church; nor can their organisation -
if it consists of the regenerate, and accepts into fellowship solely on the
ground of regeneration - be schism, for that is the Church.
DEFERRED JUDGMENT
So
the Apostle, in order that the intensely practical lesson should not be lost,
next duplicates the warning, and drives home on each of us Isaiah’s (45: 23) forecast of judgment. “So then” - because of the universality of God’s oath, which
compels some kind of judgment for
every human soul - “each one of us” - with no exception of exemption, the strong brother
equally with the weak - “shall” - by the oath of God - “give account of himself” - not of
the brother he condemned - “to God.” Abandon the judgment seat, he says, and think more of
the judgment bar. Here again the revelation is explicit, dazzling, final. We
shall stand before the Judgment Seat, not to explain our standing, or to prove
our regeneration; still less to plead our exemption, or to display our glory:
we stand there to give account, not only
of our works, but ourself - “each of us shall give
account Of HIMSELF”; our doctrines, our testimony, our character, our
stewardship, our life.* How our
proud and pompous ecclesiasticisms, our acrimonious disputes, our tragic
divisions, our mutual excommunications shrink and shrivel at the thought of
that august and awful Tribunal where even John swooned! “Murmur not brethren, one against another: behold,
THE JUDGE
STANDETH BEFORE THE DOORS” (Jas. 5: 9).
*“If it only dealt with
actions, words, and thoughts, the account would be solemn enough, but we must
each one give an account of himself, of what he was as well as what he did, of
what was in his heart, as well as of that which came out of it in his deeds”
(Spurgeon).
A
So
we reach the golden, tender vision of a catholic church. “Let us not therefore judge
one another any more”: not because
there is nothing to judge; nor because we slur over evil; nor because we
countenance what is wrong; nor because we do not think a brother’s errors
exceedingly grave, or even disastrous: but because, under orders from God, where we cannot see eye to eye, we remit to the
Judgment Seat; and because, meanwhile, the wisest, safest, holiest course is to help one another to the highest.
The Church is the nursery of the saint. For
we are all in deadly peril. No man
ever sees a Christian but he sees a traveller between two eternities skirting
dangerous precipices, and walking, unconscious, past hidden lairs of man-eating
tigers. Therefore, “Judge ye this rather, that no man put a stumbling block in his brother’s way, or an occasion of
falling.” The golden dictum of
fifteen centuries ago holds good for all time:- IN ESSENTIALS, UNITY; IN NON-ESSENTIALS,
# “FUNDAMENTALS
- UNITY
OPINIONS -
ALL THINGS - CHARITY” (E. Howarth.)
*
For a somewhat fuller statement see God’s Terms of Communion (Thynne & Jarvis.).
*
* *
THE SEVEN
CHURCHES
Each sees one colour of Thy rainbow-light,
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven;
Thou art the fulness of our partial sight;
We are not perfect till we find the seven.
Thine is the mystic life great
Thine is the Parsee’s sin-destroying beam,
Thine
is the Buddhist’s rest from tossing waves,
Thine is the empire of vast
Thine
is the Roman’s strength without his pride;
Thine is the Greek’s glad word without its graves;
Thine
is
The truth that censures and the grace that saves.
Some seek a Father in the heavens above,
Some ask a human image to adore,
Some
crave a spirit vast as life and love
Within Thy mansions we have all and more.
- GEORGE
MATHIESON, D.D.
*
* * *
* * *
623
THE CHURCH
AND THE SYNAGOGUE
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
A new peril no bigger than a man’s hand is rising on
the old horizon of
* The
Friend of
CIRCUMCISION
Now
all Scripture is extraordinarily alive, with no parts unessential or obsolete;
and at the proximity of a revived error it awakes like a rousing lion. “Behold” - a sharp signal used only here by Paul, with an
abrupt and warning emphasis - “I Paul” - once a
master in the Law: now Paul an apostle not from men, neither through man (Gal. 1: 1); with full plenitude of apostolic authority - “say unto you, that, if ye receive
circumcision” - if ye be getting
yourselves circumcised: if you continue to follow that rite (Ellicott) - “Christ will” - in the great day of judgment - “profit you NOTHING” (Gal. 5: 2). It is
impossible to put the warning with more fearful force. Circumcision and Christ,
Paul says, are circles which never cut one another: they are spheres of
salvation mutually exclusive: to be ‘in Christ’ is to
be out of circumcision, and to be ‘in circumcision’
is to be out of Christ.*
*
Circumcision sinks us no deeper into
Christ, and uncircumcision lifts no iota from my shoulders of my own violated
law; “neither circumcision is anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” (Gal.
6: 15).
LAW
Paul
next reinforces the fact with the reason. “Yea, I testify again” - I have said it, and I repeat it with protestation (Lightfoot): again he clears his
conscience by recording his solemn testimony - “to every man that receiveth circumcision” - therefore the Jew equally with the Gentile - “that he is a debtor” - that he instantly incurs the obligation - “to do the WHOLE law”; and therefore is not at liberty to persuade himself
that he does not mean to erect again the Law as a whole (Lange). That is to say, circumcision is the badge, the seal, the
pledge of the Law: it is the initiatory rite that immediately draws after it
the entire Law: exactly as baptism initiates everything Christian, so
circumcision involves the Law in all its parts, moral, ceremonial, judicial.
Any severance of the moral from the ceremonial law is foreign to the text, and
is unknown to the sacred writers of the New Testament: for the Law is as
watertight a unity as a submarine, in which a single leak is fatal. So what the
ring is to the marriage contract, or the
oath to the obligation of truthfulness in
a law court, or his naturalization papers to a foreigner - that
circumcision is for contracting the whole Law. And it is of an importance
beyond all words that this is God’s view of Circumcision, on which therefore He
will act: on deliberate self-cision God holds a man -
Jew or Gentile, and whether the man holds himself so or not - responsible for
the total Law: for “whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become GUILTY OF ALL” (Jas. 2: 10). “Circumcision indeed
profiteth, if thou be a doer of the law” (Rom. 2: 25): but “not even they who receive
circumcision do themselves keep the law” (Gal. 6:
13). Christ,
circumcised, fulfilled the whole Law; and for us to be circumcised, therefore,
is to attempt what Christ accomplished once for all. For the Law is a huge and
complex machine, which, touched anywhere, catches and drags a man into its
myriad teeth: if the life exactly fits it, the revolving machinery turns out,
at the far end, a perfect product; but if the man jars or clogs it at any
point, its lightning-knives reduce him to a mass of mangled remains.* An appeal to the Law for salvation is an appeal for a
death-sentence.
* So Islamic
circumcision merely piles a violated Mosaic Law on to an already violated Law
of Conscience, in a double condemnation.
GRACE
Therefore
Paul next states the appalling consequence of getting involved in any fraction
of the Law. “Ye
are severed from Christ” - the
verb denotes the dissolution of all connection between them and Christ (Eadie) - “ye who would be justified” - either in whole or in part - “by the law” - either as a substitute for Christ, or an addition
to Christ; “ye are fallen away” for you have abandoned
what you once accepted- “from grace” -
that is, from salvation by unmerited gift: the aorists
represent the consequences as instantaneous - ye are then and there shut out from Christ (Lightfoot). God deals with men either
altogether by law or altogether by grace - either altogether by our own works,
or altogether by the works of Another: the preaching of circumcision and the
preaching of the Cross are two different modes of justification, not only poles
asunder, but radical antagonists: to embrace one is to abandon the other. Like
fire and water, to combine them is to destroy one or the other: circumcision
and the Cross cannot co-exist in the same soul, or in the same destiny. For it
is a matter of life and death. By reliance on Christ’s work for us we are
saved: by distrust for salvation is imperilled: by denial (either by word or
deed) our salvation is forfeited.*
* But does not
Paul say that Abraham “received the sign of
circumcision [as] a seal of righteousness of the
faith which he had” (Rom. 4: 11)? He does. But this is because Abraham and his
circumcised posterity stand on opposite ground in this matter. Abraham was
justified by faith before circumcision.
And God in giving Abraham circumcision
did not take him off the previous ground of justification by faith whereon he
stood. He commanded the rite, and Abraham, as the man of faith, obeyed. But all
Abraham’s posterity were to be circumcised before they had faith, at eight days old. And to them circumcision
was a token of being bound to keep the whole law as the way to justification
(Govett).
STEADFASTNESS
Paul
finally reveals the temptation which digs the pitfall. “But I, brethren, if I still preach
circumcision” - as my critics
assert, because I circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:
3) - “why am I still persecuted? then
hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done away.” Had Paul preached circumcision as well as the Cross,
the Jew, finding his Law maintained and enforced, would have tolerated
[*Keep in mind: The word ‘salvation’
must be interpreted by the context
where the word has been placed. Scripture speaks of a past, present
and future
salvation: and they are not synonymous!]
THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN
So
our Lord, inditing His Letters to John some forty years later in our last
revelation for two thousand years, stereotypes the antagonism, for this
dispensation, by a twofold (Rev. 2: 9, 3: 9)
description of the post-Temple Synagogue more awful than anything Paul has
said. “I know the
blasphemy of them which say they are Jews” -
*
So contrary to the Spirit are these
amalgamations that of some 25 different attempts made in the last hundred years
to organize Hebrew Christian brotherhoods, none has survived; the last, in
1892, with 600 members, expiring in five years.
CONDITIONAL CO-HEIRSHIP
Rom. 8: 17 should be rendered and punctuated thus:- “But if children, also heirs, heirs on the one
hand of God; but heirs together
with Christ if indeed we are suffering together, that we may also have been glorified together.” If we are children, if we have been quickened by the
Holy Spirit, there is no question about our position as heirs [of eternal ‘salvation’
and ‘life’]. This is unconditional. The contrast between
being an heir of God, and a joint-heir of Christ, is not brought out in the
Authorized Version. “And” would imply
the blessings are almost one: “but” is the word
Divinely used.*
Furthermore, the structure of the sentences rather involves this punctuation.
Thereby each of the two “if’s” of the passage has its appropriate accompaniment.
But if our position as joint-heirs of CHRIST is conditional on our suffering
together, what shall we say of those who bear the Name of the
Lord and who avoid this suffering?
2 Tim. 2: 12 adds its testimony
to this privilege. Let us earnestly seek that it may be our!- PERCY W. HEWARD.
*[So Liddell and Scott:- “… in strong
opposition; true that … but. …” The Vulgate is remarkably clear:- Heredes
quidem Dei, coheredes
autem Christi: si tamen compatimur.”
“Present my
thanks to the Emperors,” cried a Roman martyr, “for they have made me a joint-heir with Christ!”
- Ed. [D. M. Panton.]]
*
* * *
* * *
624
THE JUSTICE
OF GOD
By W. P. CLARK.
[To
the judicial mind - Mr. Clark is a Resident Magistrate in
The real reason underlying the refusal of some dear
children of God to accept belief in the punishment of unfaithful believers -
not eternal, but during the millennial reign of Christ - is an inadequate sense
of the justice of God.
God’s
justice has been described as “The dark line in God’s
face,” and this dark line cannot be left out. It is false to reason and
to revelation, and it is degrading to God’s character to erase the line. His
infinite inflexible justice declares that God has no caprice, that He will not
trifle with a wrong, nor softly indulge even His Own and His dearest. It
declares that God is unswervingly just and impartially righteous toward all
men. We can look up at that dark line and see its beauty. We can see that
justice is a nobler attribute in God than easy generosity. We can see that
Mercy and Love are not to be exercised at the cost of Justice, and we are
hushed and awed, and yet tranquil, because He is too just to do what our
sin-excusing hearts might do - “clear the guilty.”
We can trust His absolute Justice to weigh all the circumstances of each man’s
life and do what is just. His justice is actuated by His wrath at sin and His
passionate desire for holiness. “And reckonest thou, O man,” who sins, whether thou be a saved child of God, or an
unbeliever, - “that
thou shalt escape the judgment of' God?” (Rom. 2:
3).
It
is the same inadequate sense of God’s justice that refuses to admit that the
unprofitable “servant cast into the outer darkness” not Gehenna, the hell of fire, but somewhere, not revealed, outside the
bright millennial kingdom - is a [regenerate] believer,
notwithstanding the fact that he is spoken of as one of His Lord’s “own servants” (R.V.), entrusted
with His goods during His absence, and described by exactly the same term as
the faithful “servant”;
and so in the Parable of thePounds called a “servant” in contradistinction to the Lord’s “enemies, who would not that He should reign over them” (Luke 19: 27). Alas, that it should be true that [some] Christians,
as stated by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5.
and as we know by sad experience, are guilty of heinous sins. Would God’s justice be satisfied if they escaped punishment in this
life, as they undoubtedly often do, and immediately afterwards be rewarded
with a place in Christ’s [millennial] Kingdom? Acceptance
of the belief in the temporary punishment of such [disobedient
and apostate] Christians
during the Millennial Reign - [being left in ‘Hades’ (Luke 16: 23; Rev. 20: 7, 15a, R.V.) after
‘the first resurrection’ (Rev. 20: 4-6)] - safeguards
the Eternal merits of Christ’s atonement on the Cross, and, at the same
time, preserves the absolute justice
of God. A contrary belief might well turn a
Calvinist into an Arminian, to the abandonment of the truth of the final
perseverance of the saints: on the contrary, such a belief would set at rest the doubts of many a sincere Arminian in the eternal standing of
[all regenerate] believers.
*
* *
SIGNAL
SAYINGS
I
Abandon
every known sin; surrender every doubtful indulgence obey promptly every voice of
the Spirit; openly confess the Lord Jesus Christ.
II
Whatever
else you do or fail to do, force yourself to form the habit of being alone with
God ; for the first of all secrets of holy living and serving is closet prayer.
III
Right
giving is a part of right living. The living is not right when the giving is
wrong. The giving is wrong when we steal ‘God’s portion’ of our income to
hoard, or spend on ourselves.
*
* * *
* * *
625
THE POWER OF
THE KEYS
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
The ever-nearing approach of the Church of Rome wakes
back into life the dormant controversies of centuries; and it is of critical
importance that where Roman teaching seems lodged on Scripture, but is not, she should be openly
and publicly dislodged from what appears to be a Bible foundation. For if and
where she is lodged on Scripture, we agree; we fight what is pagan in
The
Old Testament Priests had no power of absolution: they sacrificed, but they
never absolved. In the primitive Church the condemnation passed on an erring
disciple, or a pardon granted him on confession, was a work of the whole
assembled church, expressed by the officer presiding. “Our
judgment,” says Tertullian, “cometh with great weight, as of men well assured that they
are under the eye of God; and it is a very grave forestalling of the judgment
to come, if any shall have so offended as to be put out of the solemn assembly.”
But by the fourth century bishops began to assume this power of excommunication
and absolution; and by the sixteenth century the Council of Trent had lodged the
whole, sole power in the Priest.* The
earlier form, Dominus absolvat
te - the Lord grants thee absolution - gave
way to the priest acting judicially as possessor of the Keys, Ego absolvo te - I grant it.
* “To the Apostles, and to
their successors in the priesthood, the power was delivered of remitting and
retaining sins.” Decrees of Trent, Session xxiii.
The
first of our Lord’s three great utterances is addressed solely to Peter, and, couched
in the future tense, is (as the Church has ever regarded it) the fundamental
passage on church discipline. Peter has the moment before been the mouthpiece
of the unborn Church, in the first great saving confession of Christ:
immediately, the Lord conjures up the Church to be; then that Church as issuing
from the grave; and between the two He erects the Church’s present collective
authority to include, or exclude, from the Coming Kingdom of God. “Upon this rock I will build [from Pentecost onward] my
church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it” - the whole Church shall come up out of the Underworld: and “I will give [fulfilled
in 18: 18] unto thee” - not as apostle, much less as priest or pope, but as the first and representative confessor
of Christ, in whom, for the moment, the whole Church is embodied - “the keys [one to lock, the other to unlock] of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth [in church
discipline] shall be bound in
heaven [at the Judgment Seat]; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16: 18). That
the power was not lodged in Apostles alone, and much less confined to Peter, is
certain, because in the typical case of excommunication, given as an example
for all time, Paul commands the Church to exclude, while absolutely identifying himself with
the act (1 Cor. 5: 4). Peter’s
hands, receiving the keys, are the hands
of the Church: for self-discipline is a function that must be conterminous with
the Church’s entire life on earth.*
*
“Belonging to
the Church depends on forgiveness of sins, forgiveness being the sign of
entrance into the Church. And since an accepted member may again become
unworthy of membership, the power of the keys has importance in reference to
those already received, including remission of sin or absolution on the one
side, or retention of sin as well as Church discipline on the other” (Dorner).
The
second passage, in which our Lord makes the actual grant of what he had
promised, extends it, explicitly, to the entire Church: word for word,
precisely that which was granted to Peter - the keys - are placed in the hands
of the whole body of disciples. For the Lord had just told them when to exclude
a sinning brother: so now He grants the Divine warrant for doing it, and His
own promised endorsement of the exclusion. “Verily I say unto you” - for this is one of the truths depending solely on
the word of Christ - “what things soever YE” - the Church, just named, and which, for obstinacy in
sin, has just put a brother back among the Gentiles and the publicans - “shall bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven” - the binding
coming first, as excommunication precedes [possible] restoration; “and what things soever” - what rather
than whom: for it is not so much a person that is bound or loosed, but a sin that is
bound or loosed upon a person: therefore it is not the admission or the exclusion of
the unsaved, whose persons are involved - “ye shall loose on earth, shall
be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18: 18). Here all precedence or exclusiveness of
Peter, or even of all the Apostles combined, disappears; and the power of
excluding from the Church on earth, with
its ratification by exclusion from the future [Messianic
and Millennial]
Kingdom,*
is vested in each, and all, of the Community of Believers. So the dominant
Protestant interpretation - namely, that it is merely the Gospel declaration of
pardon and threatening of hell - is obviously untenable: and our Lord puts
‘binding’ first, for it is only those already in the Church over whom we have (1 Cor. 5: 12) any
jurisdiction; we bind in discipline that we may yet loose in love. “An irrevocable, irredeemable ban is far from being spoken of
here: in its highest exercise of power the Church looses again precisely that which it has bound; it
bound only that it may be able again to loose when this may be possible” (Olshausen).
“These keys,” as Augustine says, “not one man, but the entire Church, receives.”
*
It is most remarkable that it is from ‘the Kingdom of the Heavens’ - our Lord’s coming Reign
over the earth [i.e., this
restored
(Rom. 8: 21, R.V.]
- that the Church, if acting on Scripture
commands, locks out; they are the keys of the Kingdom: so Paul, having
given the catalogue of sins excluding from the Church (1
Cor. 5: 11), repeats the same list (but with
additions) as a catalogue of the sins which exclude from the [future Messianic] Kingdom (1 Cor. 6: 9, 10).
The
third passage, equally comprehensive, gives the deep underlying safeguard that
hedges power so awful; and our Lord again lodges the power, not in a Peter who
dies, or in Apostles who lapse, but in
that Divine Society which never dies, and which will never lapse. In the upper room, filled with the gathered
disciples, including the women (Luke 24:
9-11, 33), Jesus “breathed on them, and saith
unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye retain” - ye hold fast, so that they may not pass away from
him to whom they attach - “they are retained”
(John 20: 23).
The use of the perfect in these two words, forgiven and retained, expresses the absolute efficacy of the power; no
interval separates the act from the issue (Westcott).
He who has a church sentence against him, and knows in his heart that it is a
sentence both Scriptural and according to fact, can already be assured exactly
of what his sentence will be at the Lord’s judgment bar. So also in the loosing:
as Paul said to the Corinthian Church - “Whom ye forgive anything, I
forgive also: I have forgiven it in
the person of Christ” (2 Cor. 2: 10).* But this final passage most
guardedly confines the power to the closest connexion with the Holy Ghost:
either we must have the miraculous ‘discernment of
spirits’ whereby Peter instantly excommunicated Ananias and Sapphira; or
else, if devoid of Apostolic and miraculous powers, we must confine
both our binding and our loosing to explicit authorizations of the [Holy] Spirit
recorded in the Scriptures. “The Church is not to be a petty tribunal of judgment for
everything” (W. Kelly);** but “the Church (that is,
the really regenerate) exercise the powers granted by the Lord, not in any way which
they themselves may think proper, but
according to the intimations of the Spirit” (Olshausen), intimations that can be found alone in the Book of God.
Beyond six named immoralities (1 Cor. 5: 11), and also personal injuries (Matt. 18: 15), and perhaps sloth (2
Thess. 3: 10), no offences - and none in any case doctrinal
or ritual - are named in Scripture as authorizations of excommunication; and
all, on repentance, can be ‘loosed,’ by the
use of the reverse key. This cuts up sectarianism by the roots. We cannot bind
on earth what Christ looses in heaven; nor loose on earth what He binds in
heaven: unscriptural excommunications, or remissions, can only
recoil, in the hereafter, on those who made them.***
*
“He absolved him
(1 Cor. 2: 10) because the congregation absolved him; not as a
plenipotentiary supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as
himself an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution,
therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the Apostle through the Church. It
was a power belonging to all Christians; to the Apostle, because he was a
Christian, not because he was an Apostle” (F. W. Robertson)
** It is tragic
that the Christian group which, of all groups, stresses most strongly that the
Church is in ‘ruins,’ is the group which most
amply exercises the full powers, and far beyond, of a Church totally
unimpaired.
*** “While
it is not said, - ‘None are forgiven but those whom you forgive’ - so, on the
other hand, it is not merely the general statement of forgiveness as applicable
to certain descriptions of persons; but it has a particular application to
particular individuals. And so great is the authority and efficacy that is made
over to disciples hereby that it is not called ‘power to forgive,’ but forgiveness” (Govett).
The
power of the Keys placed in our hands is a power from which we cannot free
ourselves, and which we can refuse only through cowardice and sin. The sainted Robert Murray MeCheyne
says:- “When I first entered upon the work of the
ministry, I was exceedingly ignorant of the vast importance of church
discipline. I thought that my great, and almost only, work was to pray and
preach. I saw souls to be so precious, and time so short, that I devoted all my
time and care and strength to labour in word and doctrine. When cases of
discipline were brought before me and the elders, I regarded them with
something like abhorrence. It was a duty I shrank from; and I may truly say it
nearly drove me from the work of the ministry altogether. But it pleased God who teaches His servants in another way than
man teaches, to bless some of the cases of discipline with manifest and
undeniable blessing; and from that hour a new light broke in upon my mind, and
I saw that if preaching be an ordinance of Christ, so is church discipline. I
now feel very deeply persuaded that both are of God: both are Christ’s gift,
and neither is to be resigned without sin.”
*
* *
AN ANSWERED PRAYER
Six weeks before his death the Rev. H. F. Lyte wrote “Abide With Me.” This hymn, which has been as the
breath of heaven to countless souls, was preceded, eight years earlier, by the
prayer which created it:-
I want not vulgar fame -
I seek not to survive in brass or stone;
Hearts may not kindle when they hear my name,
Nor tears my value own.
But might I leave behind
Some blessing for my fellows, some fair trust
To guide, to cheer, to elevate my kind
When I was in the dust.
Might verse of mine inspire
One virtuous aim, one high resolve impart;
Light in one drooping soul a hallowed fire
Or bind one broken heart.
Death would be sweeter then,
More calm my slumber ’neath
the silent sod;
Might I thus live to bless my fellow-men
Or glorify my God.
O Thou! whose touch can lend
Life to the dead, Thy quick’ning
grace supply.
And grant me, swanlike, my last breath to spend
In song that may not die.
*
* * *
* * *
626
VICARIOUS
ATONEMENT
RIGHT AND
WRONG
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
In the golden days of
Now
we confront one of the most extraordinary incidents in all history. The mighty
Levitical Priesthood, in the moment of its death-throes, and in the crisis of
its supreme rebellion against God, utters a magnificent prophecy of Calvary:
the Law, which had been throughout one crimson forecast of atonement by blood,
with its expiring breath, and speaking for the last time as God’s Priesthood
through its official head, announces Calvary as a complete expiation for sin.
Urim and Thummim, or a deeper Urim and Thummim beneath the breastplate,
functioned for the last time on the High Priest’s breast.
Now
we look at vicarious suffering first from the purely human point of view. “Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said
unto them” - to the gathered
priests, profoundly anxious lest all Israel, becoming Christian, should
acquiesce in Rome’s supremacy and empire, or at least refuse resistance- “ye know nothing at all” - you have not thought this thing out: murder was already
in his heart - “nor
do ye take account.” - you have
not probed the possibilities of the situation- “that it is expedient for you that ONE MAN” - One Man, the sole sacrifice for a nation, the
lonely expiation for a world - “should die for the people; and
that” - for the sacrifice is
vicarious; that is, one or other must perish - “the whole nation perish not” (John 11: 49). This was the official death-sentence passed
upon our Lord: all later action only registered what here, for the first time,
is stated - that Jesus is being given over officially to Expiation.
Now
we look closer at what Caiaphas meant. There is a vicarious suffering which is
wicked. ‘Vicarious’ means ‘in the stead of’; as when the Pope calls himself the
‘Vicar,’ of Christ, he means that he is in the stead of
Christ, to command and absolve. Caiaphas’s argument is this:- the Nation is in
imminent danger; the execution of Jesus will, as a matter of fact, scotch the
peril; patriotism, public welfare, national loyalty, far-sighted policy demand
that the one be
sacrificed to the many. It was, with Caiaphas, simply a question of numbers:
justly or unjustly, it is better (he argues) that one Jew should die than - as
happened in God’s judicial retribution later - several millions. It is expediency
violating justice. It is abominable wickedness - a Moloch-sacrifice - for an
innocent man to be compelled, without his consent and against his will, to
sacrifice himself for others. We shrink in horror as we see, on the overloaded
raft, the crew flinging one of their number, struggling, overboard: we shudder,
as the Siberian parent, with the sleigh flying before the wolves, casts out a
shrieking child to save the rest. Life, the life even of millions, is a trifle
compared to the immutable righteousness that is the bed-rock of the universe: “better that all should perish by a visitation of God, than
that many should be saved by one murder” (F. W. Robertson).
Nevertheless
in the words of Caiaphas is so couched the central truth of all revelation, the
profoundest of all truths, that we are far beyond the realm of mere
coincidence, or casual aptness. In Luther’s
translation of Prov.
16: 1:- “Man indeed proposeth in his heart, but
from the Lord cometh what the tongue shall speak.” We are face to face with a profound action of the
Holy Ghost. “Now
this he said not from himself”: he was not speaking as Caiaphas, but as the last High Priest that God ever recognized: “but being high priest that year, he PROPHESIED” - he functioned as prophet as well as priest, by the
deliberate decision and action of the Spirit of God.* It is a more subtle and wonderful action of the [Holy] Spirit than
in Balaam’s involuntary blessing: for Balaam knew he was a tool; but while the [Holy] Spirit spoke
such words through Caiaphas as exactly corresponded with his heart, they also corresponded with the exact
reverse of what Caiaphas meant. The
heart meant murder: the mouth spoke Atonement. Caiaphas, as all wicked men at last, simply fulfilled, involuntarily,
the purposes of God. As priest he chose the Lamb for the Day of
Atonement; as prophet he foretold - “that Jesus should die
for the nation.” A blazing
torch can be held aloft by a blind man’s hand.
*
It should never be forgotten that the Holy Spirit can fall on a wicked man,
and a wicked spirit on a holy [and
regenerate] man: of the first, Balaam, Saul, and Judas are
examples; of the second, countless
misled souls among the Montanists, Camisards,
Irvingites,
and the Tongues Movement. Certain
possessors of unchallenged Divine miracle whom our Lord foretells (Matt. 7: 22) He treats as totally unregenerate: obviously,
therefore, they belong to the former class; and they will doubtless appear (as Augustine
foresaw) during the Holy Spirit’s illapse
upon ‘all flesh’ (Joel
2: 28), in the latter-day phase of
Pentecost. “Spiritual gifts,” as Lange says on Joel
2: 28, “do not necessarily involve spiritual
regeneration.”
For
in this utterance of Caiaphas, since it came from the Holy Ghost, we have the
true vicarious sacrifice bearing the imprimatur of God. The one
all-revolutionizing fact, unbelieved by Caiaphas, unknown to Caiaphas, and
completely reversing the moral significance of
Caiaphas, devil-blinded, saw a reluctant victim,
struggling against fate, dragged helpless to a doom which, politically, would
save the nation. God saw a patient, conscious, self-offered Lamb, before whose
eyes Calvary had been from the first, whose death was the destruction of the Nation, but the Atonement of a
new nation embedded in every nation of the world,
and an actual propitiation [i.e., not just an ‘atoning
Sacrifice’ but the appeasing of God’s holy wrath] for
the entire race. And what God
saw, was the truth. The death was voluntary, spontaeous,
foreseen, deliberate, intentional: it is the only time the Lord is ever said to
have done anything of Himself (John 5: 31): with clear head, unfaltering
purpose, and a will perfectly free Jesus chose to go deeper and deeper into the
darkness; until, acting as the High Priest offering the Sacrifice, He solemnly
and deliberately “dismissed His [animating
*] spirit” (Matt. 27: 50).
[* See Luke 8: 53-55; 23, R.V. Cf.
James 2: 26,
R.V. “And crying with a loud voice, the Jesus, said: ‘O Father, into hands of Thee I
commit the breath of me.’ And these things having said, He breathed out.” [expired]” (Luke
23: 46, Lit. Greek).]
So Urim and Thummim functioned for the last time, and
emptied its Lights on
*
* *
AT LAST
These
lines, written by himself, were found under the pillow of a dead Southern soldier
in the American Civil War:-
I lay me down to rest,
With little thought or care
Whether my waking find
Me here or there.
A bowing, burden’d heart
That only asks to rest,
Unquestioning, upon
A loving breast.
My good right hand forgets
Its cunning now;
To march the weary march
I know not how.
I am not eager, hold, nor strong -
All that is past:
I’m ready not to do,
At last! at last!
My full day’s work is done,
And this is all my part;
I give a patient God
My patient heart;
And grasp His banner still
Though all its blue be dim:
These stripes no less than stars
Lead after Him.
*
* * *
* * *
627
THE SERMON
ON THE MOUNT
FOR TO-DAY
By G. H. LANG.
VI. This Sermon is in reality a full-length portrait of Christ Himself,
drawn by His own hand: He Himself was the complete embodiment of the character
delineated in the Beatitudes, and Himself practised perfectly the precepts here
enunciated. He, in divine degree, was the salt of the earth; He, in heavenly
splendour, was the light of the world. It is in His own conduct that we may
best learn how to apply the principles of life, and to obey the precepts He
laid down.
Peter
summarises His life, and very much of this Discourse, in these words: “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: Who, when He was reviled,
reviled not again: when
He suffered threatened not; but committed
Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” The Apostle declares that in all this Christ was “leaving you an example, that ye should follow His
steps” (1
Pet. 2: 21-23).
Whoever
follows Christ’s steps will thereby be a practiser of this Sermon, and whoever
refuses obedience to these precepts will not follow Christ’s steps, nor will be
like Him in character or ways.
VII. That a key was intended for a given lock may be inferred from it fitting
accurately and turning easily. That Christ intended this Discourse for
disciples all through this [evil] age may be seen in its perfect adaptation to their
needs.
To
illustrate. A Christian soldier is liable to be required to do what Christ
forbids, for example, to deceive the enemy by trickery or lying. He breaks the
law of God by obeying, or he violates his oath of obedience, taken in the name
of God, by disobeying, thus becoming liable to military penalties and to the
still more solemn sentence, “Jehovah will not hold him guiltless who taketh His name in
vain” (Exod. 20:
7: Deut. 5: 11). From
this dreadful and inevadable dilemma Christ showed the way of escape by the
injunction, “Swear
not at all” (Matt. 5: 33-37).
Or
consider how exactly suitable to the Christian are both the warnings against
anxiety and the encouragements to trust in God as Father (c. 6.). What
child of God can afford to lose this most precious passage in the interests of
a dispensational. theory?
VIII. The class of persons to whom this Discourse applies is clearly
discerned from the place in which it came in the sequence and development of
our Lord’s teaching.
His earliest recorded instruction is that a man must
be born from above ere God, and His realm and its life, can be known (John. 3.). To
the now regenerated believer Christ adds that not life simply, but life in
abundance is available; in such abundance as that of a perpetually flowing
spring, which welling up within the believer, by the indwelling [Holy] Spirit,
affords increasing satisfaction, of heavenly quality and degree (John 4.). The next discourse shows that he who is
thus filled with the [Holy] Spirit, and so weaned
from resort to worldly streams of pleasure, will be able to appreciate
Jesus as the Son of God, and to understand much of His relationship with the
Father in His co-equality in the Godhead (John 5.).
This one will be an overcomer of the world, instead of being conquered by it (1 John 5: 4, 5).
This
spiritual progress is undeniably that of the class of believer upon the Son of God
contemplated everywhere in the writings of John, that is, the Christian. Now it
is here chronologically that the Sermon on the Mount belongs. It was to
disciples already led to this point that it was addressed.
The
disciple who has been brought as far as this experimentally will feel no reluctance towards the practising of
these commands. For to one daily feeding upon Christ these precepts will be
simple and suitable: he will adopt them naturally. The Sermon on the Mount is a
description in precepts of the out-working of the indwelling Christ into the
practice of the believer.
The
desire to set aside the three first Gospels as being Jewish not Christian, in
their application, may be traced to two causes.
(1) The prophetic teachings of our Lord cannot be fitted into certain
schemes of exposition concerning the privileges of the
Again,
if it is to be held that only Paul’s Church Epistles are addressed directly to
the Church of God for its particular instruction, and that Peter, Jude, James
and John wrote their epistles and the Apocalypse to or concerning “Jewish” believers, then also it is imperative that
the three Gospels also should be “Jewish,” and
very particularly that of Matthew.
But
if it is the case - as we believe we have before proved - that the very
beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, even this principal, characteristic and germinal
Discourse, certainly is addressed to [regenerate] Christians, for their obedience, then it will be very hard (that we say not impossible)
to show that the remainder of the Lord’s instructions and parables are not for [the
same ‘born again’] Christians.
(2) The second reason for seeking to avoid the present-day application of
the Sermon is that its precepts make exacting demands, not pleasing to the
carnal or natural man in a Christian. The Discourse silently presupposes that a
disciple is a person who has resolutely determined to bear his own cross, go
outside the city, and be crucified with Christ, rather than endure the smile of
the world that scowled on his beloved Lord.
That
great saint and disciple, George Muller
of
* Capitals and italics are Mr. Muller’s. See his “Narrative,” First Part, Ed. 4 (1850, 65, 66).
The
rich fruitfulness of Mr. Muller’s life proved that he inherited the blessing of
the doer of the Lord’s words.
We conclude by observing that the commands given are
intended for the practice of the type of person sketched in the Beatitudes.
Hence the futility of setting forth the Discourse as binding upon nations. How can “wild beasts” (Dan. 7.) behave
like “sheep” (Mat. 10 16)? No unregenerate
or unspiritual heart can keep these precepts. “A pure
heart,” said Tauler,
“is one to which all that is not of God is strange and
jarring.” Let us then give good heed to the exhortation to “cleanse ourselves from all defilement
of flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor.
7: 1).
So shall we be able to sing with truth and joy,
“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 build upon the rock, and our work be approved by the Lord in that day.
*
* *
A REJECTED
CANDIDATE
The
Faculty of Konigsberg refused Stephen Schulz
(1724-1776) on his application for mission work among the Jews; whereupon he
wrote them this letter:- “I owe you obedience as
fathers. If, therefore, you command that I decline the call to missionary work
among the Jews, I can decline it with a clear conscience. However, I must say this - should God ask me on the Day of
Judgment -
(1) Have I not given thee from infancy a
desire to shew to the Jews the way of Salvation? I would have to answer, Yea,
Lord.
(2) Have I not proved three years ago, during the
trial trip, that I have given thee ability to labour? I would say, Yea, Lord.
(3) Have I not shown that the harvest among
the Jews is great, but the labourers are few? I would say again, Yea, Lord.
(4) Have I not taught thee on that trial trip
that the way was opened among the Jews for thee, and that in further travels
and with greater
experience thou couldest have still better access to them? Again I would
answer, Yea, Lord.
(5) And when at last the Lord should ask me,
Why didst thou not follow the call when it came? I would leave the answer to
the honourable Theological Faculty.”
The
Faculty sent Schulz to the Jews. How
could they do otherwise? He became a second Paul in respect of travel and
suffering, compassing thousands of miles. The call, once heard, is the call of
God; and, WHEN FORTIFIED BY SUCH
CONFIRMATIONS AS SCHULZ COULD ADDUCE, it is the irresistible summons of the
Most High.
-------
The sunset burns across the sky,
Upon the air its warning cry
The curfew tolls, from tow’r
to tow’r:
O children, ’tis the last, last hour!
The work that centuries might have done
Must crowd the hour of setting sun
And through all lands the saving Name
Ye must in fervent haste proclaim.
- CLARA
THWAITES.
*
* * *
* * *
628
THE HID
TREASURE.
By ROBERT GOVETT,
M.A.
[PART FIVE]
(Continued from 613)
The want of perceiving this emboldens even many Christians
to deny that there is any treasure in the field. It is hid, and therefore they
deny its existence. They suppose that the Son of Man’s object in his return to
earth is, to set the field on fire, not to dig up the treasure long concealed
therein. But this
parable once understood, would set them right. Christ’s kingdom is already come, in one sense, because he
is lord both of the field and of the treasure. It is not come in another, because
the treasure is still hid. The kingdom is now in mystery, as it will be hereafter in manifestation;
and the treasure dug up and brought to light will answer to the treasure now
hid. Now is the time of preaching the
hid treasure, not of enjoying it; of believing, not of seeing it. It is the
time of proclaiming the [coming] ‘glory’ of the finder, and the grace of his
disinterested purchase of the field.
Now is the time of hope, of carrying abroad everywhere the report of the glory
of the hidden treasure, that when its time of display and partition comes, they
who have believed therein may have a part of it. The kingdom in mystery gives room for the preaching of glory to come,
or as the Saviour calls it, “The word of the kingdom.” But the treasure manifested will put a period to this:
for then it will be no more in word, but in deed and in power. This preaching
of the treasure is the Gentile aspect of the parable. To the Jew, the parable
presents the treasure covered up: the kingdom once close at hand, now for an indefinite
time deferred. But the unbelief of the Jew and the deferring of the kingdom is
mercy to the Gentile. “Through their fall salvation
is come unto the Gentiles.” “Ye in times
past believed not God, but now have
obtained ntercy through their unbelief:” (Rom. 11: 11, 30.)
2. A second portion of the mystery is the departure
of the treasure finder. Had he
staid in the field, we might every moment have been looking for the bringing to
light of the treasure. But that, after he has found the treasure, and knows the
field in which it is, and the spot where it lies, he should still leave the
field entirely and for so long a time - this adds to the mystery. And thus it
is with the departure of the Lord Jesus. After his leaving the field he becomes
no longer an object of sight, but of faith; and his long delay gives occasion
to many injurious thoughts and evil speeches against him. There have been those
who have boasted of treasures found, but when such men remained poor and never
brought to light the riches they affirm themselves to have acquired, men took
it for granted that they were impostors. Similar will be the thoughts
entertained in the latter day: many will revile the Lord Jesus as a vain
boaster of treasures found. But though his long absence from the treasure is a
mystery, yet his saints will still believe and look for his return.
In
order to lighten the weight of difficulty, the Saviour goes on to explain the
reason of the abandonment of the treasure. The discoverer goes away indeed, but
it is with the wise intent of securing it as his own by a new claim, as
purchaser of the field in which it is found; and though away from it, he is
still acting wisely in order to its full manifestation at last. He went away to
make the purchase of the field, to buy it of its owner, and to carry the price
with him.
3. The third step in the mystery is the impoverishing
of the finder. We expect
that one who has come upon a treasure unexpectedly will grow suddenly rich,
rising at once even from the lowest depths of poverty to the possession of
wealth and affluence. But the scene in the parable is quite the reverse. The
finder grows poor. He had possessions of some value before, but now he strips
himself of every thing, and after the finding of the secret wealth is poorer
than before! This completes the mystery. But it falls in with the view above
given. The glorification of Jesus is the treasure
opened; for the treasure is “the
riches of the Christ,” or the Messiah so long promised to the
Jews: Eph. 3:
8. Hence a partial glimpse, a hurried flash,
indicating the greatness of the treasure and its glory, was given when Jesus
was transfigured before his disciples. Then was he seen “coming in his
kingdom,” - “with power” Matt. 16: 28. But
this was but a momentary light from the glory, and presented before the eyes of
but three disciples while even they who had
seen the treasure, were warned (as those who had been entrusted with a
great secret) not to tell.
“Jesus charged them, saying,
Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of Man be risen again from
the dead”; Matt. 17: 9. The exaltation of the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom of God, are so inseparably united that, as we see here, the one brings with it
the other; therefore the humiliation of Messiah is the mystery
of the kingdom, as his exaltation is the
kingdom manifested; and thus the events of his passion, which
presented the true king treated with scorn and ignominy, and rejected even by
his own nation, proved that the kingdom of God was indeed far off, and poured
doubts into the minds of his expectant disciples. The enriching and the glory
of the Messiah they could comprehend, but his humiliation was the mystery for
which they were not prepared. Hence we read, that as soon as Jesus, on coming
down from the Mount of Transfiguration, “said unto his disciples, let
these things sink down into your ears; for the
Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men,” “they understood not that saying, and it was hid from them, that they perceived it
not”: Luke 9: 43,45. And,again
“Then he took the
twelve, and said unto them, behold we go up to
At
that point of mystery the parable breaks off.
This
is the present state of things as offered to faith. Nothing of the treasure is
now to be seen - it lies concealed. The finder is gone - has left the field.
Every shrub, and herb, and bush in the field remains unmoved. No foot-marks, no
newly-moved earth, betoken where the treasure lies. But the finder has left in
the field some of his friends to spread the tidings of his discovery, and to
urge men to wait for his approach, when all that have believed the announcement
shall partake of the manifested spoil. Those who believe in this report must wait
with patience the finder’s return. For as there are three degrees of mystery
under which the treasure at present lies, so are there three answering steps of the finder, which will put an
end to the mystery. To his hiding the treasure, will be opposed the digging up and display of
it. To his departure from the field, which is
the second step of mystery, will answer his
return to the field, which will bring on the manifestation
of the treasure. And to his
humiliation and impoverishment, which complete the mystery, will answer his
return in glory and authority, which will be the final scattering and
dissipation of the mystery. But on these points the parable is fitly silent. It
was to present only the time of mystery, not of manifestation.
Moreover,
lest any should think that Jesus’ presence on high has caused him to forget
this lower earth and its concerns, his own words may assure us that it is not
so, but that he is only awaiting the Father’s signal to begin his return to
earth. For is not his treasure here? - here in his own purchased field? Then it
is written, “I have purchased a field
and I MUST NEEDS GO AND SEE IT:” Luke 14: 18.
And again, “WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE WILL YOUR
HEART BE ALSO:” Matt. 6: 21.
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
629
THE
The size of
*
* *
There is to be a competition for space in
The orthodox Jews of Tangier interpret God’s promise
for
*
* *
What about
- MARK KAGAN.
*
* *
Just after the disastrous earthquake in
*
* *
On the banks of the rivers of
- DR. ISAAC HERTZOG, Chief Rabbi of
*
* *
“Lo, these shall come from far:
and these from the
A colony of people descended from some Israelitish
settlers came to the Western Borderland of China several hundreds of years
before the time of Christ. The writer* for many years laboured as a missionary
in
* China’s
First Missionaries : Ancient Israelites, by Rev. T. Torrance, F.R.G.S. Thynne
& Co., Ltd., Whitefriars Street, Fleet Street,
London, E.C.4. Price 3/6.
*
* *
Is it not a grand fulfilment of prophecy to see to-day
how the
- LT. COL. G. F. POYNDER.
*
* *
The
The
Fellows of the
May
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem add new lustre to the enduring fame and
immemorial glory of the
In
fraternal comradeship with scholars and scientists throughout the world, may
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem advance the welfare of the human race, and
above all, through Knowledge, help forward the realization of the Psalmist’s
praise of all-transcending Wisdom. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Address of the
The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, inaugurated by Lord Balfour in 1925, now has over 100 academic members on the
staff, 100 technical and administrative assistants and nearly 700 undergraduate
students.
*
* *
Remember that Love must be fed;
It withers and dies in the cold:
Possess it and hold it fast,
For Love is
more precious than gold.
Love keeps the heart in its Lord;
Love is the heavenly ray;
Love will continue the song
When the music has died away.
- DORIS GOREHAM.
*
* * *
* * *
630
CASTING
ANXIETY ON GOD
Anxiety
can be one of the most powerful weapons of Satan, It clouds the mind, chills
the heart, and paralyzes the hand. To Melancthon,
harassed with anxieties over the parliament of Charles V at Augsburg, and what it might produce, Luther wrote
noble words for a great crisis:- “Thou art killing
thyself with immoderate cares; forgetting that the cause is Christ’s, and that
as He needs not thy counsels, so also He will bring it to pass without thy
anxieties.” Anxieties are pressing hard upon the Church of God; anxieties
concerning our own spiritual growth; anxieties concerning our service;
anxieties concerning the Church of God; anxieties touching national crisis;
international anxieties of universal armament and world-war. Suicides and
lunacies are mounting enormously throughout a harassed world.
Let us glance at the setting in which we master
anxiety. Behind us is a prostration under the hand of God which is ready for
anything with a view to the great exaltation that is coming - “Humble yourselves under the
mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time”: in front is tremendous
battle - “the
devil, as a roaring lion, walks”:
therefore, in between, is an utterly unloaded Christian, who has disembarked
his entire anxiety upon God - “CASTING ALL YOUR CARE UPON HIM” (1 Pet. 5: 7). We are to be unloaded, unencumbered,
confronted, as we are, with Hell. In the words of the psalm (4: 22) which
the Apostle may have had in mind:- “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never
suffer the righteous” - that is,
those who do so cast their burdens on God - “to be moved”.
But
we need to ponder for a moment exactly what it is we are to cast on God. There is a carefulness, a
prudent devotion to duty, which God has cast on us: for example, Paul says - “Be careful to maintain good works.” As Spurgeon has put it:- “There is the care
to love and serve Him better; the care to understand His word; the care to
preach it; the care to experience His fellowship; the care to walk with God.”
But the word here in the Greek is totally different: it means fretful
apprehension; a troubled and distracted mind; as the Revised translates it,
anxiety - cares grown to cancers. The French version is, “Unload your care upon God.” We have seen a coal cart unload. The man removes a
little iron pin, and the cart is so balanced on its axles that with a slight
pressure on the back of the cart, it tips up and the whole load slides on to
the ground, and the horse trots away with a light step. So are we to discharge
our black anxieties upon God.
We are to cast nothing less than all our care upon
God: not some cares, or only great cares, but all cares.* Many of our anxieties
are personal to ourselves; some relate to others; another very important group
concerns our own future, spiritually: it may be broken health, impoverished
circumstances, business anxieties; our children’s future, in a darkening world;
imminent possibilities of world war; our stand under persecution. It is not,
cast away your cares, as the worldling does, drowning them in dissipation and
sin; but cast them on God, in an immense act of glorious faith. Somebody must
carry these cares: myself they can only crush and kill: whereas, if God has
lifted off us our greatest load, fundamental sin - it was laid on Christ on the
Cross - is there any load He cannot lift off us? Dr. F. B. Meyer puts it beautifully thus:- “He can smite rocks, and open seas, and unlock the treasuries of the air,
and ransack the stores of the earth. Birds will bring meat, and fish, coins, if
He bids them. He takes up the isles as a very little thing: how easily, then,
your heaviest load.”
*
Not merely when the house is on fire, not
merely when the beloved wife is dying, not merely when our children are on the
brink of the grave, but in the smallest matters of life, bring everything
before God, the little things, the very little things, what the world calls
trifling things - everything - living in holy communion with our heavenly Father,
and with our precious Lord Jesus Christ, all day long” (GEORGE MULLER).
So
now comes the tremendous command. Its extraordinary force comes out if we
simply use another word:- “Throwing all your anxiety upon God.” The anxious believer, convinced of his Heavenly
Father’s all-power, all-wisdom, and all-love, decides to leave all that gives
him concern - and therefore all that makes him anxious - in the merciful hands
that are shaping his whole destiny. We are to forbid ourselves anxiety by
discharging ourselves on His love. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14: 27).
God never would send you the darkness
If He knew you could bear the light;
But you would not cling to His guiding hand
If the way were always bright;
And you would not learn to walk by faith,
Could you always walk by sight.
The
Apostle Paul, in a strikingly parallel passage, tells exactly how we are to
cast. “In nothing
be anxious; but everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God;
and the peace
of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard [garrison] your
hearts and your thoughts” - in which are our anxieties - “in Christ Jesus”
(Phil. 4:
6). Prayer tells God what the care is, and
faith gets up, care-free, and walks away leaving
the care on God. So Hezekiah
took the threatening letter from Sennacherib
and spread it before God in the
The
Apostle adduces one powerful argument, and one alone, to convince us of our
happy duty. “BECAUSE HE CARETH.” If God cares for us, it is manifest that, committed
to Him, our anxieties are in the best and safest hands, and infinitely safer
than they can ever be in our own. And the word beautifully changes. “Casting all your anxiety upon
him, because he” - not is anxious, for God cannot be anxious: but -
“careth”; supervises and fosters, in loving interest. In the ever recurring
crisis of the Reformation, Luther
would say to Melancthon:- “Let us sing the 46th
Psalm, and let them do their worst! ‘God is our refuge and
strength: therefore will we not fear, though the
mountains be moved into the heart of the seas’” Our faith is being plunged in fire; and, like the
goldsmith, God’s care is for the gold, not for the fire.
Moreover,
the argument to prompt us to lay our burdens on God is intensely personal, “Because he careth FOR YOU.” Our Lord uses the same argument:- “Be not anxious for your life,
what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body,
what ye shall put on; for your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (Matt. 6: 25, 32). Christ says it as much to you and to me as He
said it to any saint of all time: because God cares for me, He will unload me
of my anxiety. How exquisitely God’s individual care is revealed! “I know all the fowls
of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine” (Ps. 50: 11): “The young lions seek their
meat from God” (Ps. 104: 21): “not one sparrow
shall fall on the ground without your Father: fear
not therefore, YE ARE OF MORE VALUE THAN MANY SPARROWS” (Matt. 10: 29). Two little boys were talking of Elijah’s
ascension. One said:- “Wouldn’t you be afraid to ride
in a chariot of fire?” “No,” said the
other, “not if God drove.”
So
now we can sum it up. To-day is a slender bridge which will bear its own load,
but it will collapse if we add to-morrow’s. In every year there are 365 letters
from the King, each with its own message - “Bear this
for me.” What shall we do with the letters? Open
them a day at a time. Yesterday’s
seal is broken; lay that letter reverently away: yesterday’s cross is laid
down, never to be borne again. To-morrow’s letter lies on the table; don’t break the seal. For when to-morrow becomes to-day, there will stand beside us an unseen
Figure; and His hand will be on our brow, and His gaze will be in our eyes; as
He says, with a loving smile, “As
your days are, so shall your strength be.” The golden summary of our life is to be this: as to
the past, a record of gratitude; as to the present, a record of service; and as
to the future, a record of trust.
A
member of the church he serves once wrote to the writer:- “I shall be 28 years old next month, and I have been deaf
nearly 14 years; so for half of my life God gave me hearing, and for half He
has taken it away; but I can truly say that the latter half has been the
happiest of my whole life, for in it God has drawn me to Himself, and I have
been reconciled to Him through Christ our Saviour.” John Bunyan was once in a meeting of Christian people, and he was
full of sadness and terror, when suddenly there “brake
in” upon him, he says, with great power, and three times, these words - “My grace is sufficient for
thee.” “Oh,
methought,” he says, “that
every word was a mighty word for me; as ‘my’, and ‘grace’ and ‘sufficient’ and ‘for thee’.”
*
* * *
* * *
632
THE
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M. A.
[PART ONE]
“Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman
seeking goodly pearls, who when he had found one
pearl of great value went away and sold all the he had, and bought it:” Matt. 13: 45, 46.(Greek)
Before considering what is the real interpretation of
the parable, let us first notice the ordinary explanations; that having marked
therein they fail, the true may be more clearly seen to hold good.
1. The first is the explanation most commonly adopted. It considers the
Lord Jesus Christ as the pearl, and the true Christian as the merchantman. But
what signification is to be given to the pearl in the former part of the
parable, if Jesus be the pearl in the latter? Jesus stands alone, a something
which has neither equal nor parallel. How then can the Christian be described
as one searching for goodly pearls? Will you
say that the pearl means a Saviour? Passing by the unfitness of that which is
without life to signify a Saviour, can the true Christian be said to be seeking “goodly Saviours?” Or, if it should be said that the
merchantman is a Jew, and Jesus the pearl, still the same difficulty applies.
Was the wise Jew, or indeed any Jew, seeking for many Messiahs? Did he not
believe that there was and could be only one
true and worthy Messiah? Lastly, is it necessary, as the parable supposes,
to give up all on finding Christ? It is commonly said, that we are to be ready to
give up all for Christ. Very true - but the parable describes it as actually done, and done first and in order to acquire the
2. The second interpretation comes nearest to fulfilling the statement of
the Saviour. This supposes that by the pearl is meant the Church, and Jesus by
the merchantman. But against this I object -
[FIRST] Whatever
the pearl be in the latter part of the parable, the same must it be in the
former. If by the pearl we are to understand a church, by the “goodly pearls” sought we must understand churches also. But how does
this accord with the design of our Lord? Was he seeking many goodly churches?
The parable supposes, that deserting
all others that he had seen, he is attracted and fixed by one : how can this
find a counterpart in the great transaction of our Redeemer? Or granting that
there might be many churches, how can they be opposed
(as they are here,), to the one Church? Is
not the one church composed of the many churches? Besides is it not justly
said, that the church is a body of a peculiar kind, that never had or can have,
its fellow? If so, then, while it might be a pearl, there could be no other pearls.
[SECOND] It is
Christ’s purchase which gives worth
to the Church: but the pearl is of great value before it is bought. The Church has many flaws and spots which need removal ere it can be
presented glorious to the Purchaser: not so with this. The pearl’s perfect
beauty at once enchants the buyer. The Church is yet under the bondage of corruption till the resurrection.
3. The third opinion supposes that by pearls are meant good of any kind,
and that by the one pearl is meant the eternal and spiritual good of
Christianity: and that by the merchantman is meant any man pursuing temporal
good according to the ordinary and necessary bias of his nature. But against
this lie the fatal objections, that on this supposition the parable is no
mystery: that its aspect is then universal and not Jewish: and lastly, that in
order to obtain the eternal and
spiritual good of Christianity it is not necessary, or commanded, to part with all that we have.
At
this period the two following general remarks may be made, as furnishing tests
of the true interpretation of the
parable. - First, that whatever meaning the pearl has in the latter part of
the parable, the same it must of necessity obtain in the first part. And
secondly, as the consequence of this, that by the pearl cannot be meant
something which stands by itself and has no fellow of its kind. It must needs
be something of which there are many
examples, differing from each other in value from a low degree up to the
highest. And it appears to be intimated by the adjective joined to it, “goodly pearls,” that
in the kind to which it belongs, there are examples of deformity, no less than
of beauty of worthlessness, no less than of value.
I. The elements of the true interpretation, I believe to be, that the Jew
is the merchantman, that by pearls are intended acts of righteousness or good works,
and by the one great pearl is meant the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.
A merchantman is one who seeks by barter
or exchange to obtain his living, and to make himself rich at last. He must,
therefore, have understanding or intelligence concerning the goods in which he
deals, and be a judge of their value. This was the character and position of
the Jew and of the Jew alone. He only knew what righteousness in the sight of
God was, he only was a judge of it. “Hearken unto me ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law” Isaiah 52: 7. The Gentiles were babes beside him, almost
totally ignorant of God’ will. And thus an apostle describes the Jew. He is
addressed at the beginning of the 2nd
of Romans as the man that judged - verses 1-3. And afterwards he is thus accosted by
name, “Behold
thou art called a Jew, and believest in the law,
and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are
more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself are a guide of the blind,
a light of them that sit in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a
teacher of babes, which hast the form of
knowledge and of the truth in the law”: Rom. 2:
17-20.
The Israelite then, instructed of God, knew what righteousness was; and was
not, as the Gentile - a babe - ready to mistake a bead for a pearl.
Moreover
the law itself gave him his merchant character. The law said to him in effect:-
‘Go, get rich in good works, that thou mayest win
eternal life.’ “Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law,
that the man which doeth these things shall live
by them”: Rom. 10: 5. As then the merchant is to live by his wares,
so was the Jew to live by his
righteous acts. The law
itself commended him to seek righteousness, in order to obtain the advantages
resulting from it. “Righteousness, righteousness* shall thou follow, that thou mayest live and inherit the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee:” Deut, 16: 20. As then
the merchantman is here represented seeking pearls, so was the Jew commanded to
seek righteousness. “Seek righteousness, seek
meekness”: Zph.
2: 3.
*
In the margin - “Justice,
justice.”
3. By his obedience before God he was to obtain and earn every blessing.
Righteousness was the commodity he was to furnish; life prosperity and
happiness was to be value received from the Most High in return. The Principle
of strict barter, and exact equivalent was one of the law’s ruling principles. “Hear thou in heaven and do
and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked to
bring his way upon his head, and justifying
the righteous, to give him
according to his righteousness:” 1 Kings 8: 32. The kingdom promised to the Jew was a
kingdom of righteousness. “Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes
shall rule in judgment”: Isaiah 32: 1.
Also Psalm 72: 1,
2, and Isaiah 11:
1, 4, 5. The merchant, then, cannot be a Gentile. The
characteristic search of the Gentile, was not righteousness but knowledge. “The Greeks (or Gentiles) seek after wisdom:” 1 Cor.
1: 22.
It
is worthy to note also as confirming the all above view, that the participle
used is the present participle “seeking goodly Pearls,” for that was the attitude of the conscientious Jew up
to the time that Jesus was speaking, and beyond it. For not till after the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus was his righteousness set forth as the end of
the law. Also the verbs which follow are not in the present, but in the past.
This was necessitated by the nature of the parable. The Saviour could not in
consistency have said, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant, seeking beautiful pearls who
when he
shall have found one pearl of great value, will
go.” &c. But
the Lord Jesus evidently supposes that the rest of the parable is future: for
if the seeking were continued up to that day, the finding, and much more the
selling all must take place after it. And herein it stands contrasted with the
preceding parable of the treasure: for there the part fulfilled is described as
past: “Having
found the treasure he hid it,” and thence
forward the verbs run on the present tense, as marking what was then actually
transacting, and receiving its immediate accomplishment.
(To
be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
633
THE
INTENSITY OF CHRIST
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
Anyone who
watches closely the men and women who carry further in spiritual power, and
count most for Christ, will, I think find on them - however various otherwise
may be their temperaments and gifts - one never-failing characteristic:- intensity.
More than that; so much is this a characteristic of our Lord himself, that He
alone in the whole Bible reveals it by a very peculiar mode of address: with
that intensity the voice of God probing home to the human soul, He cries again
and again - “Simon,
Simon”; “Martha, Marana”; “Saul, Saul.” No one in
the whole Book thus habitually duplicates a name but our Lord; and what makes
it all more remarkable is, that (so far as I recollect) on the only two
occasions when anyone else in the Bible has done it, - in the one case it is
when the disciples thought they were drowning - “Master, Master, we perish” (Luke 8:
24); and in the second case it is when
certain lost souls, finding the door shut, cry - “Lord, Lord, open unto us” (Luke 13: 25).
That is, the intensity which men show in instant peril of death, and which the
lost will reveal when they know their doom, is the habitual intensity of Jesus
Christ.
FIDELITY
Let us glance at these intensities rich in instruction
and crucial for example; and the first is our Lord’s intensity of solicitude
for His friends. “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10: 41). In countless lives we know to-day, cares and
occupations and pleasures are crowding Christ out: Christ is in the
life, but He is not first in it: the duties that have to be done are allowed to
be so absorbing as to crowd out the Lord’s Table, the prayer-hour, the Bible
study, even Jesus Himself. “Martha, Martha” -
it is our Lord’s startling cry to the
woman’s inmost soul: for He yearns
that all whom He loves should rank high in the coming [promised Messianic] Glory - “thou art anxious and troubled about many
things.” It was Mr Gladstone who said - “For courage, commend me not to the man who stands up to his
enemies, but to the man who stands up to his friends”; and so our Lord,
tenderly, firmly, passionately, seeks the highest for all who show Him
hospitality, and whom He loves.
WARNING
The next is the intensity of warning. The Apostles
were gathered at the Last Supper; with extraordinary unconsciousness of the
awful tragedy at hand, they were assuming and discussing the entrance and rank
of each in the [Millennial] Kingdom of Messiah’s glory, while on the very brink of an open denial of Christ, and the
public apostasy of Peter: when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, our Lord
turns on Peter - “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to
have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that
thy faith fail not” (Luke 22: 31). The appalling peril in which the Church
of Christ stands at this moment is (I believe) second to none in her entire
history; the more so as some of our noblest evangelicals are answering with
Peter - “Lord,
I am ready to go with Thee to prison and to death,” when I observe (let me say it tenderly) that they are not ready to part with wealth, or reputation, or social caste,
or denominational prestige, much less with life - all unconscious of the
immense peril of every disciple both now and at the Judgment Seat of Christ. If ever we needed messengers of
warning, it is now: men willing to let the grave of their own reputation be a second
resurrection of Jesus Christ; men who, having
first mastered with excessive care exactly what God says, will then put their lips to the Silver
Trumpets with a blast that no man shall stay. “Simon, Simon” - it is the
rousing cry of Christ to the whole
LOVE
Our
Lord’s next intensity is the intensity of catholicity. Jesus (by the way) on
the other side of the grave is exactly the same Jesus: the passionate intensity
is as passionate as ever it was: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou Me?” (Acts 9: 4). The Lord is so
one with His Church that even but of Heaven He cries, “Saul, Saul” - as if
the prison-irons were working into
the bone in His own wrists - “why persecutest thou Me?” Now look at that little butchered band:- divided
sharply (I doubt not) on doctrine - rent with quarrels - some even carnal and
unsound: yet our Lord points to each dear regenerate soul and says - See
Me! seeMe! When I look into the eyes of a child of God, I look into the eyes
of the Mystical Christ. We are familiar with Augustine’s exquisite words: - “I take a
whole Christ for my Saviour, I take a whole Bible for my staff; I take a whole Church for my fellowship; and I take a whole world for my parish.” Paul so learned the lesson that he could say at last - “Who is made to stumble, and I burn not:” (2 Cor.
11: 29).
SELF SACRIFICE
We
next find a new and amazing intensity, and one that sets our Lore in a
startling light. The same peculiar mannerism appears in the Old Testament and
never from human lips. “Abraham, Abraham”; “Jacob, Jacob”; “Moses, Moses”; “Samuel, Samuel”; no voice but the Voice which lay in the bosom of God
ever shows so passionate an emotion. Jesus is Jehovah. “Abraham,
Abraham, lay not thine
hand upon the lad” (Gen. 22: 11). What is this intensity? Our Lord saved Isaac
at the cost of
HOLINESS
The next is the intensity of holiness. Moses found
himself one day near God : the beauty of Jehovah-Jesus blazed forth in the
burning bush, and he drew near with no shock of the holiness, the majesty:
suddenly the Voice rang out - “Moses, Moses, put off thy
shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon
thou standest is holy ground” (Ex. 3: 4). The whole mass of the Higher Criticism, in its
approach to Jehovah, and the Voice out of the Bush; the resolute and growing
refusal of all retributive justice; the familiarity with which our Lord’s name
is handled to-day - ‘the lives of Jesus,’ ‘the ethics of Jesus,’ ‘the
limitations of Jesus’: O the horror of it all, when the very ground in
the neighbourhood of Deity is holy, and to touch the Ark is instant death.
Listen to the sad confession of Dr.
Marcus Dods, one of the chief promulgators of
critical infidelity throughout the Churches of Scotland. “I am a backslider. I used to enjoy prayer, but for years I
have found myself dumb: prayer has not been in my case a proved force. The
Churches won’t know themselves fifty years hence. It is to be hoped that some
little rag of faith may be left when all is done. For my own part I am
sometimes utterly under water, and see no sky at all.”* Can we wonder at a blight falling where the sense of
God’s dreadful majesty and holiness is gone? “Moses, Moses, put off thy shoes”: remember Korah.
* Bible League Quarterly,
April, 1912.
CHILDHOOD
The
next intensity is the anxiety for the generation yet to be. “And the Lord called as at
other times, Samuel, Samuel” (1 Sam. 3: 10). No cry
over the child has ever been so urgent as our Lord’s. He does not say they are
innocent, therefore guard them; but they are perishing, therefore save them. “It is not the will of your
Father that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt. 18: 14). What
mines of undug gold await our pickaxe - a Samuel slumbering in the heart of a
little
SOUL-WINNING
The
next is the Gospel intensity. “O Jerusalem,
PRAYER
The death-hour intensity is the intensity of prayer. “My God,
my God”
- Jesus is the same in His dying moments - “why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27: 46).
Praying-time will soon be over: never for all eternity shall I be able to stand
again for a rejected Christ against an entire world: “little children, it is the last hour” - let us give ourselves to prayer. “Had I
known what I now know of the services of prayer,” said a dying saint, “I would have given three-fourths of my day to intercession.”
Nothing is effectual that is not first covered by prayer. Dr. Bachus, a former president of
The sunset burns across the sky,
Upon the air its warning cry
The curfew tolls, from tower to tower:
O children, ’tis the last, last hour!
The work that centuries might have done
Must crowd the hour of setting sun;
And through all lands the saving Name
Ye must in fervent haste proclaim.
GLORY
The
last intensity is a passion for
the Age to Come. “And God spake unto
*
* *
THE KINGDOM
Rabbi
Rabinowitz of the Cricklewood
Synagogue, one of the most learned and zealous of the younger Rabbis, says:- “We Jews tray thrice daily:- ‘we hope in Thee, O Lord our
God, that we may speedily behold the glory of Thy might, when Thou wilt remove
the abominations from the earth, and the idols will he speedily cut off, when
the world will be perfected under the Kingdom of the Almighty, and all the
children of flesh will call upon Thy name, when Thou wilt turn unto Thyself all
the wicked of the earth.’”
MARTYR TO
MARTYR
“Dearly beloved, however the
matter be, commit yourself wholly and only unto our Father and most kind Lord,
and fear not men that threat, nor trust men that speak fair; but trust Him that
is true of promise, and able to make His word good … Let not your body faint. He that endureth to the end, shall be saved. If the pain be above
your strength, remember, ‘Whatsoever ye shall
ask in my name, I
will give it you,’ and pray to your Father in
that Name, and He shall ease your pain, or shorten it. The Lord of peace, of
hope, and of faith be with you. Amen. Your wife is well content with the will
of God, and would not, for her sake, have the glory of God hindered.”
(From the last letter of the martyr William Tyndale to martyr John Fruth.)
*
* * *
* * *
634
DANGERS OF
DENOMINATIONALISM
By R. E. D. CLARK, M.A., Ph.D.
It is often taught that a man should look about for a
denomination to which his views are most nearly akin, and remain with it. He is
then told that he has a double loyalty, which can be illustrated by the
soldier, who has a primary loyalty to his king and country and a secondary
loyalty to his regiment.
Now
in practice we find that when a person is brought up in the Christian faith, he
generally remains in the denomination to which he is accustomed. This is
evidence that most people do not find it feasible to think out in a detached
sort of way which denomination suits them best. When, on the other hand, a
person adopts the Christian faith for the first time, his knowledge of
Christianity is not usually large, and he is in a quite unsuitable state of
mind to examine his own beliefs on a variety of rather minor matters, and
compare them with the beliefs of different bodies of Christians. He therefore
tends to link on with the first Christian denomination with which he comes in
contact, and after that a wrench can often only be made with considerable
anxiety and mental suffering. It appears then that the ideal of looking about
for a denomination most pleasing to us is rarely a practicable one.
Furthermore, even those who affect to believe in it are often profoundly
grieved if their children leave the denomination in which they have been
reared.
When we come to examine the usual teaching about the secondary loyalty to our section of
Christians, we soon discover that grave evils are a direct result of it. In the
first case there is a serious effect on our own minds. The very sense of
loyalty makes us want to justify our own denomination, and this often prevents
us from seeing things which would be perfectly obvious to us were we impartial
observers. This general effect upon most of us is the more dangerous, because
it is usually quite unnoticed and even strenuously denied. Nevertheless,
however unaffected we may think we are, we can always see the effect in other
people. If we are, ,n the Church of England we marvel that Salvationists can so lightly set aside the Lord’s
command - “Do
this in remembrance of Me.” If we
are Quakers we marvel that the Church can justify her militarism. We can all
see that denominationalism usually warps the mind, even if we do not like to
admit that our own is warped.
Then
again it is exceedingly difficult to keep two loyalties separate. The analogy
of the soldier applies all too accurately - for the soldier who deserts his regiment is a traitor to the Crown.
This confusion often makes faith and reason seem at variance, and in
consequence a High Churchman or a Roman Catholic will often feel that if he had
to believe that the Church had become corrupted, his very faith in Christ would
go.
In
addition to these common results there are two others which only affect special
classes of Christians. In the first case it usually happens that the man who is
determined to think things out for himself becomes unorthodox in some points,
and, if connected with a denomination, he feels that he is justified in staying
with it on general grounds, but he feels apologetic about the few points on
which he feels bound to differ. Although he may be willingly tolerated, it
often happens that he is considered somewhat heterodox, and as a result he is
never invited to take positions of leadership. The positions of leadership thus
naturally tend to become occupied by men who are deemed completely loyal to
their denomination, and it generally
happens that such people have no ability for independent thought.
This
seems to be the probable explanation why there is a tendency for second-class
minds to represent Fundamentalism in civilized countries, a state of affairs
which gives outsiders the impression that no educated man can be a
Fundamentalist. As a matter of fact there are many very able Fundamentalists,
but a general fear of ‘heresy’ among the bulk
prevents them from becoming leaders. The Modernist movement has relinquished
faith to such an extent that fear of unorthodoxy has practically gone, and as a
result its leaders tend to be the most able in the movement. This result on
leadership is a direct result of denominationalism - using the word in the
widest sense - since it is created solely by the idea that a Christian who does
not agree with other Christians in every particular is not to be trusted.
We
may now consider a further product of denominationalism. Experience shows that
not only natural leaders in thought, but any one with a highly developed
conscience, is prone to suffer agonies under the present systems. Such people
have a lurking feeling that they are traitors to their conscience, but they fear to analyze their own thoughts
lest a conviction that their present course of action was wrong should result,
and they would then have to lose the fellowship and sympathy of the
denomination.
Doubt
of this kind often comes in spasms, and when it is finally conquered the
victory is often gained by putting faith above reason - an act which is likely
to conserve an unreasonable frame of mind for the rest of the life of the
individual. These spasms of doubt often produce an agony of suspense. The
individual doubts if he believes a doctrine which he is about to assent to. Is
it right to go forward? -or to go back in spite of a general agreement?
It
is quite true that most of us take things as they come without asking too many
questions, and we never dream of the tortures of mind which these things
produce on those with sensitive consciences. Yet such people do exist, and
Church government ought to be based on the principle that those who are strong
ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. The system almost compels these
people either abandon their faith or to be dishonest with their intellects.
These
are moral questions of deep importance, and the problem is, would it not be far
better to refuse acquiescence in any denominational system, than to be loyal to
a denomination and know that we must take our share of responsibility for these
disastrous results? If we take this view, we can only become Church members
where we know that the ground of Church membership is conversion only. Churches
on this basis do exist, but when they are not near us we shall gladly worship
and communicate where we are allowed.
*
* * *
* * *
635
CONQUERING
SAINTS
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
The
Holy Spirit has photographed men lodged in the heavens far above the earth in
its last fiery tempest, and - so
critical is it - He has set that photograph before the Church for well nigh
twenty centuries. It is the opening act in the last drama. There, is a fierce
war in heaven, resulting in the casting headlong of Satan and his legions:
then, suddenly, human faces are seen for the first time in the heavenlies: then
the Holy Spirit turns a searchlight on their character - what exactly these humans
are and have done, who are now safe by the Throne of God while Satan lashes
earth with his fury far below. What makes it so extraordinarily thrilling to us
is that, almost certainly, it must shortly come to pass: we apparently stand on
the edge of it. Is it a
photograph of us?
WAR IN
HEAVEN
Before ever these people arrive on high, two wars are
waged; one physical and one spiritual; one in heaven and one on earth; one
sudden and quickly over, one lasting for centuries. The first is in the
clouds:- “And
there was war IN HEAVEN” (Rev. 12: 7). Satan,
all alive with a passionate intensity, had concentrated every faculty on a
coming birth - an issuing forth from the tombs, a ‘birth’ like our Lord’s (Acts 13:
33) out of broken graves; and flinging away all
deceit, in a moment of desperate danger to himself, he hurls himself and his
angels on the human host about to ascend. His object, we are told (ver. 4), is to ‘devour’ that
host. It is a marvellous illumination of a mysterious utterance of Jude. “Michael the archangel,
when contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses” (Jude 9). As Satan challenged the return of Moses bodily to
the Kingdom - forecast given on the Mount of Transfiguration, so now, when the
actual Kingdom is trembling to the birth, he challenges bodily removal
into heaven:* he
disputes the efficacy of Calvary to deliver any corpse from the clutch of
death; and as he resorts to force, God has no choice but counter-force. So the tremendous crisis calls in the
whole hosts of heaven. A sharp, decisive battle between the interlocked hosts
overwhelms Satan and his angels who are pitched headlong to earth, and the road
is clear.
*
Here is a striking proof that no
disembodied dead are now in heaven, or every believer’s ascension at death
would thus have to be disputed by Satan. His jealousy would thwart any
human ascent.
WAR ON EARTH
But
an earlier and a spiritual war with Satan had also first to be fought and won. These
ascended saints are bodily off the earth, and now far above Satan: for “they overcame him” -
the ‘they’ is emphatic; they had had a battle with Satan, even
as Michael’s angels: and “they overcame him” - in the past: therefore the battle is over, and they
are on high; they have exchanged places with the falling hosts of Hell. Two
fierce battles had been fought and won, both with physical results - one, a
massed overthrow downward; - the other, a stupendous flight upward; and the
rapt upward flight is as explicitly a consequence of a battle won on earth a
battle lost in heaven. The Angels overcame by physical force, these by
spiritual weapons. Both victories are the fruit of the personal struggle of the
combatants; and the rapt, who are manifestly the Man-Child* whose ascent into the heavens opens the drama, and “who is to rule all the
nations with a rod of iron,” are “caught up unto God, and unto
his throne.”
*
The prevalent view that the Man-child is
Christ is a painful revelation of how casual and cursory much study of the
Apocalypse has been. It is impossible that it is Christ. For (1) since manifestly it is not a litera1
Woman as a ‘sign’ (ver. 1)
- neither can it be a literal birth, or a literal child; (2) the Woman is not the Virgin Mary, for she has other children
born before the Man-child (ver.
17); (3)
the whole Apocalypse is defined as ‘things which must
shortly come to pass’ (Rev. 1: 1) - that is, no event in it can be prior to
A.D. 96; (4) the scene here is
patently confined to the last three and a half years of this Age - the passage
says so (ver. 6) - Whereas Christ was rapt nineteen centuries
ago; (5) nor was our Lord’s
ascension an ‘escape,’ so as to avoid intense
tribulation and followed by world-wide persecution, nor was it followed by
Satan’s casting to the earth; and (6) His birth from the tomb was far from
synonymous with His ascension, while here resurrection and rapture are
simultaneous; and (7) the Child is
described later (ver.
12) as a body of victors, in the plural, ‘tabernacling in the heavens.’ Both Mother and Son are
collective symbols representing bodies of people - an earthly and a heavenly,
the one with an earthly flight and the other with a heavenly escape. “The ancient interpreters,” says Professor Swete, “lay the chief stress on this wider sense.” Jesus is the first-born
from the
dead (Rev. 1: 5), but only the first of many thus ‘born.’ Earlier articles on the Man-child are in DAWN,
vol. 3., pp. 101, 129.
THE BLOOD
Who
then are these? In a question so critical, so incalculably important for us,
the wise child of God will exercise a profound caution; for the Holy Ghost, has Himself told its who they are; and it
will be those whom He discloses, and nobody
else. Their photograph is already set in the clouds. And the first ground
of their victory is a negative:- “and they overcame him” - for their battle also is directly with Satan - “because of” - on the ground of, by virtue of - “the blood of the Lamb.” Immediately before is stated Satan’s deadly attack,
to which this is the riposte:- “which accuseth them” - is accusing them, that is, all the time, and therefore long after
their conversion: it is the believer’s sins Satan is constantly arraigning - “before our God day and night” - in a sleepless criticism of every servant of God.
Satan is far too wise to deal in the fiction of sins before conversion, long
since obliterated: he is marking and reporting our real sins now; and the believer’s whole defence is a
constant resort to the efficacy of
THE
TESTIMONY
The
second dominant feature in the photograph which makes these saints conquerors
is a positive:- “they
overcame him because of the word of their testimony.” The appeal to the Blood is the invocation of the
merit of Another: “the word of their testimony” - an ambiguous phrase purposely covering the
confession of every dispensation - is a fearless utterance of truth from their
own lips. This touches the root of the believer’s aggressive war on the Dragon.
Our Lord says of Satan - “There is no truth in him; he
is a liar, and the father thereof” (John 8: 44): that is, the whole attack of Satan, now, is
deception: so our whole counter-attack is the statement of God’s whole truth. The one thing blocking Satan to-day and preventing his universal empire, is Truth; and not concealed
truth, but solely and only published truth. Therefore silence now - the silence of
cowardice, or indolence, or indifference, or ignorance, or error - is defeat:
our own aggressive weapon routing Satan is the word of our testimony: as Paul
could say - “I
shrank not from declaring unto you THE
WHOLE COUNSEL OF GOD” (Acts 20: 27).
*
So also, while the sinner himself is blood-cleansed, his old
sinful life - the ‘filthy rags’ of his own
righteousness (Isa.
64: 6) -
is not cleansed, but destroyed; and the Saviour’s active and passive obedience
to the Law, ‘the righteousness from God upon faith’
(Phil. 3:
9), is substituted. “The fine linen” - thus washed - “is the
righteous acts of the saints” (Rev. 19: 8). It is also possible (Rev.
3: 4) to keep the robes white.
THE LOVE OF
LIFE
The
third disclosure of this muster in the heavens is neither a negative defence,
nor an aggressive attack, but an atmosphere, a spirit - namely, an overpowering
sense of God:- “and
they loved not their life even unto death.” This verse is the most powerful of all arguments for
the future [Millennial] Kingdom belonging to martyrs alone; but, happily for
us, it is capable of a wider interpretation, which is amply sustained by other
Scriptures. “They were, in respect of the posture of
their hearts, ideal martyrs, even though real martyrdom should not have been required of
them” (Lange): “their non-attachment to life was
carried to the extent of being ready to die for their faith” (Prof. H. B. Swete):
they chose - or, if confronted with the choice, would have chosen - death
rather than apostasy. Their former victories were victories over the Devil:
this is a third victory, and the most wonderful of all, because martyrdom - or
the spirit of martyrdom - is both the world and the flesh laid as living
sacrifices on the altar of God. They were disciples who lived up to the
tremendous demand of the Lord Jesus:- “If any man cometh unto me, and
hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his
own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14: 26).
So
the lesson is overwhelming:- our battle is now; and there is no proof of our being victors then
except our being victors now: “THEY” - without exception, without defeat - “overcame him.” And a
throne is at stake. The Mother is holy, as well as the Son, but the Son only,
and not the Mother is to rule the
nations: this alone is enough to prove that not all saints
will be millennial kings.* Not once are their
resurrection and rapture attributed to their standing in Christ.
* “The Lamb’s conquest of Satan
rendered conquest possible for them, while the loosing of sins which it
effected silences Satan’s accusing voice. Yet the sacrifice of the death of
Christ does not spell victory except for
those who suffer with Him (Rom. 8: 17, 2 Tim. 2: 11). Thus a secondary
cause of the martyrs’ victory is found in their personal labour and
self-sacrifice” (H. B. Swete, D.D.) So Dean
Alford:- “The strict sense of [the Greek word…] with an accusative must
again be kept. It is because they have given a faithful testimony, even unto death, that they
are victorious.” Nevertheless the root of the victory is
All
defeated saints, all believers whose picture is not in the triple photograph,
are ruled out from membership of the Man-child, and therefore from rulership of
the nations;* and as the Christians around us are almost certainly
the generation which, Peter-like, are to be sifted as wheat, it is our infinite
privilege to help one another for the crisis. It is deeply significant that the
great chapter on Second Advent preparation, closing the supreme Second Advent
epistle, gives this very counsel:- “We exhort you, brethren,
admonish the disorderly, encourage the faint-hearted, support the
weak, be longsuffering toward all.” And a golden prayer is to be our mutual petition:- “The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul
and body be preserved entire, without blame at
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Thess. 5: 14, 23).
*
For the unrapt are actually shown us. It
is impossible to doubt, without violating the Scripture that describes them, that
they “who hold the testimony of Jesus” (ver. 17) are Christians (see Rev.
1: 9, 20: 4, etc.);
and equally impossible to deny that they are on earth, unrapt, and exposed to
Satan’s fury in his final three and a half years. “If
he can neither unseat the throned Christ nor destroy the Church, yet individual
Christians may enjoy no such immunity” (H. B. Swete, D.D.). The common
contention that in 1 Thess.
4: 17
Paul means all, though he does not say
all, vanishes, in face of the event itself, into the truth that he no more
meant it than said it. He who imagines that the photograph in the clouds fits
every believer everywhere - that all the regenerate throughout the world are
consciously resting on the Atonement and keeping cleansed by constant
confession, that bear a full and fearless testimony, and that all are possessed
of a love of Christ to the point of martyrdom - has never mastered his facts,
and still less the Scriptures: it is completely untrue of all worldly
Christians, unscriptural believers, confirmed backsliders; and even the most
consecrated Christians would shrink from the third test being applied to
themselves. It is a cruel wrong to the careless and carnal - who, before our
eyes, are crumbling under the assaults of Satan - to tell them that that is
assuredly theirs to miss which will be an awful tragedy.
*
* * *
* * *
636
THE
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M. A.
[PART 2]
(Continued from 632).
Now
righteousness is compared to a jewel or ornament in the prophet Isaiah. “He hath clothed me with the
garment of salvation, he hath covered me with
the robe
of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride
adorneth herself with her jewels”: Isaiah 61: 10.
In
exact correspondence, also, with the expressions of the parable, which speak
both of the one pearl in the singular number, and of “goodly pearls” in the plural - righteousness, though it is generally
spoken of in the singular is yet used in the plural, both in Hebrew and in
Greek, and as referring both to God and man. “There shall they rehearse the righteousnesses of the Lord”; Judges 5: 11 (margin).
“Stand still that I may reason with you before
the Lord of all the righteousnesses of
the Lord”: 1 Sam. 12: 7 (margin). The same expression is used concerning man. “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”: Isaiah 64: 6. “If he trust to his own righteousness and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered”:
Ezek. 33:
13, where the word occurs in both forms. As
also Dan. 9:
18.
The same obtains also in the New Testament. “If the uncircumcision keep
the righteousnesses
of the law”: Rom. 2: 26 (Greek). “The fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints”: Rev. 19: 8. Moreover “beautiful”
or “goodly” (… see Greek) is the word continually used concerning “works.” “That they may see your good work;” Matt. 5: 16. So Titus 2: 7, 14; 3: 8, 14, &c.
Moreover, according to the test proposed above, to the class of moral actions sins belong
no less than righteousness.
The
present parable gives us the meeting of the Law and the Gospel, or their
adaptation one to the other, the one as creating, the other as supplying the
wants of the Jew. The Law set the Israelite upon searching, the Gospel offers
that of which he is in search. The Law required righteousness, and if his eyes
were opened by strict requirements, he must behold flaws not only in all that himself
did, but in the best acts of the recorded servants and prophets of God. The Law
is the seeking of pearls, the Gospel is the one pearl of the righteousness of
Christ found.
The
parable before us is therefore of great importance as connecting the disclosures
of the epistles with the Saviour’s teaching in the Gospels. The doctrine of
justification by faith rests almost entirely upon the arguments and statements
of the Gentile Apostle Paul, while the argument and statemen
of St. James have been thought, by many, to be contradictory to his. And
therefore, some have sought to do away with the authority of Paul, with the cry
- ‘Not Paul, but Jesus.’ But the parable of the
pearl rightly interpreted, does, I believe, supply the seeming omission, and
shews that Paul’s doctrine is only an expansion and revelation of the doctrine
which Jesus covertly taught long before. If so, then it is evident at once,
that this parable is brought into immediate contact with the epistle to the Romans. Perhaps, therefore, it may
not be a thing unwelcome, to translate (so to speak) some of the doctrinal
statements of the epistle into the language of the parable.
The
Law shewed the flaws and specks of all the pearls but one: as it is written, “By the Law is the knowledge
of sin”: 3:
20. The faults of the pearls of man,
however, served but as foils to set off the glory of God’s, for “Our unrighteousness commends
the righteousness of God:” 3: 5. As then the Gospel presents us with a perfect
righteousness, Paul asks, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” The finding of the pearl and its purchase, is not contradictory to the
design of the merchant, but its completion. As the pearl is righteousness, so
is obedience the gentle and noiseless process of its formation. “Know ye not that to whom ye
yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants
ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto
death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” 6: 16. The
very shape of the pearl is glanced at in the following verse: for such as the
Law was, such must be the form of the obedience rendered, “Ye have obeyed from the heart
the form
of doctrine whereto ye were
delivered”: 6: 17. (margin.) And as the pearl springs from
the juices of the whole body of the shell-fish- so analogically, we read - “Yield ye your members as instruments
of righteousness unto God”: 6: 13. And as the apostle notes the unfruitfulness of
disobedience, as it is written - “What fruit
had ye then in those things whereof ye are now shamed?” (6: 21), So, is the pearl the fruit of perfect
obedience - “Ye
have your fruit unto holiness
and the end everlasting life”: 6: 22.
(To be continued)
*
* * *
* * *
637
CHRISTIAN
RESPONSIBILITY
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
“Slowly but surely the truth of the believer’s
responsibility, with its sequence of tangible awards favourable or
unfavourable, is permeating the ranks of the truehearted of God’s people, as
these extracts, all but one written within the last twelvemonth, prove. That
these sincere and gracious writers may not necessarily agree with each other’s
contentions is exactly what would happen with a landscape slowly emerging from
a fog, and reported on by observers standing at different angles and with
differently-powered glasses. We have no doubt at all that the spiritual anaemia
of the
-
Ed. [D.M. Panton.]
-------
[1]
There is a marked tendency among Christian workers to
discount a man’s faith if his life is not consistent with his profession.
Particularly is this true in a case where one who has professed to be a
believer falls into grievous sin. It is based on the assumption that if one is
really converted he cannot live in sin, or, as some would put it, he cannot go
into certain forms of sin. God’s Word does not teach such a doctrine as this.
On the contrary, it plainly tells us the story of the heart-breaking sin into
which David fell after a most protracted period of growing faith and most
intimate fellowship with the Lord. If this man, of whom, because of his faith,
God said that he was a man after His own heart, could fall into grievous
two-fold sin of adultery and murder, what right have we to say of others who
fall into like sins, “We cannot believe they were ever truly converted”? If it were not possible for God’s
children to fall into sin - gross, hideous sin - why does God’s Word so
constantly warn them against doing so? For the epistles, which are addressed to [regenerate] ‘believers,’ are full of such admonitions.
Is
not this teaching that man cannot really be a believer unless his faith is
evidenced in a godly life, after all, only a subtle aspect of the teaching of
salvation by works? Many who would not say “You cannot
be saved without good works,” feel quite free to say, “You cannot have
been saved if you do not maintain good works.” Let us have done with
such teaching! Let us recognize that God’s
children can and do sin, but that they
are His sons nevertheless; and when we find a [regenerate] believer who has lost his touch with the Lord and
drifted into grievous sin, let us not discount the reality of his [eternal] salvation, but let us earnestly seek to bring him back
to the Lord, to cry with David, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit.”
- Grace and Truth.
*
* *
[2]
Since all the sons and daughters of the family have
been made partakers of the divine nature, they have been made “free from sin, and become servants to God.” As
servants they must give an account of their stewardship. Those who are faithful
with their talents, are “made ruler over many things,” and those who are faithful with their pounds, must
have rule over ten, or over five cities, in the kingdom which their lord has
received during his absence. The rank of the slave is thus exchanged for the
rank of the sovereign. Service is followed by Viceroyship,
yet, in each sphere, the subject continues to serve his master. In each parable
there is a servant who refused to render any service, and in each case he was
disqualified from further possibility of service, whether of the lower order or
the higher. One was “cast into outer darkness,” the other simply discharged from possible usefulness,
as wholly unprofitable to his master. Paul imposes the divine necessity of it
in the words “We must
all appear before the judgment-seat of
Christ.” We Christians, of course;
and ‘all’ of us, without exception: “that every one may receive the
things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor.
5: 10).
It follows, therefore, that every day we live on the earth, we are formulating
for ourselves the high rank of honour, or the low rank of disapproval, awaiting
us when we meet our returning Lord.
Deeds and their controlling motives, words and their truest meanings, conduct
and its helpful or hurtful influence, loyalty and disloyalty to Christ, the
confession or shamefulness shown for Him before men, sacrifice or indolence;
all will come under His searching eye, all will feel His holy burnings within.
-
The Intercessor.
*
* *
[3]
The ‘prize’ and the ‘call above’ are one, [see Greek …] being in
the Genitive of Apposition (Phil. 3: 14). This ‘prize’ must be something other than life eternal,
which is a free gift, and for which no pressing on or striving after was needed
by the devoted Apostle. We have seen that it seems to be set before as many as
be perfect, and thus is the special [see Greek …], the ‘out-resurrection
from among the dead’, the earlier resurrection. It is a call from above,
or a call upwards, to which Paul pressed on. The special resurrection of a
unique class is indicated in Rev. 14: 1-5. Equally so in Rev.
20: 4-6, and there is nothing in Scripture to bar the
belief that the resurrection of all the saved may not happen at the same hour. There may
be intervals.
- The Christian Fundamentals Magazine.
*
* *
[4]
Now we will
boldly suggest that ‘the Rapture of the Church’
is not a Scriptural, not a justifiable expression. Unlike the term ‘Trinity,’ which, while found in no specific passage, has
many a chapter and verse to support it, the phrase, ‘Rapture
of the Church,’ implying that the Church is a whole, which must be
raptured, ‘caught
up’ as a whole, - all together and
all at once, - occurs nowhere, and is nowhere implied in the Word. The word ‘Rapture’ assumes, independently of proof, that there
is, and virtually declares that there can be, but one rapture. From the
view-point of earthly development and readiness for heavenly elevation and
serviceableness, rapture is likened by the Lord to reaping of white barley and
golden-brown wheat during ‘all the days of harvest.’ The field is the wide world, with its differences of
latitude and altitude, of soil and climate. Not all grain ripens or gets reaped
together - hence firstfruits, general harvest, and corners of the field. Surely
the parallel is in the successive mowings, serial garnerings, in each man’s own order during the ‘Parousia’ - the Presence of the waiting Husbandman. Is there
anyone bold enough to deny that the Revelation
shows us a number - some say seven, others ten - of companies of saints called
towards the throne? This brings us to the misunderstood, but clear and
definite, declaration of ‘one taken, one left.’ This ‘taking,’ as the
Greek shows, is entirely different from the ‘taking away’ by
the flood in judgment. It is a taking of favour and honour, as in the threefold
selection of Peter, James, and John. And such a rapture has already occurred. For Enoch
was taken, Methuselah was left; Elijah was taken, Elisha left. The context proves it is a matter of warning for readiness, for watchfulness against earth-stains and
earth-chains. Only disciples were addressed or concerned. If we are even
now fully prepared and fit, warning can do us no harm, and if we are holy,
humble, and cautious, we will not resent or reject it.
- The
Prophetic News.
*
* *
[5]
If we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the rapture
of the living, we should be prepared to consider, without difficulty or
prejudice, whether these are all at one time, or in groups. As to resurrection,
the answer is plain. There are successive ones. (1) The resurrection of Christ and those who rose with Him. Matt. 27: 53. (2)
The out-resurrection from among the dead of Phil.
3: 11,
which the apostle Paul desired to “attain unto” (3) The resurrection of “My two witnesses,” in Rev. 11: 11. (4) The resurrection of 1 Thess. 4: 16, which,
however, may coincide with No. 3,
and (5) the final resurrection of Rev. 20: 12 for the great white throne judgment.
So
also we have fairly definite indications that the first translation is selective, or partial. This is not a matter for pressing some peculiar theory.
The question is - “What saith the Scripture?” The definite promise given to the Philadelphian
church in Rev. 3:
10, of escape “from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth,” seems almost to necessitate translation. This agrees
remarkably with the earnest words of our Lord in Luke
21: 36, for He exhorts [regenerate] believers, “Watch ye therefore (don’t
be entangled with the world, or the apostasy of the church, like Sardis, or
Laodicea), and pray always that
ye may be accounted worthy to escape
all these things that shall come to pass
(the coming tribulation), and
to stand before the Son of man,” as the 144,000 stand with Him on mount Sion. It is
hard to reconcile this warning from the lips of the Lord Jesus with the view
that all believers do, as a matter of course, escape.
- The
Friends’ Witness.
*
* *
[6]
The foolish virgins were born-again believers. They
even believed in the doctrine of the second coming, but they were not ready. The wise, Spirit-baptized, expectant virgins will be admitted to this feast.
The believers who possess the virgin life of Christ in their hearts and are
prepared, knowing as they do the prophecies which relate to His coming - this
body of believers “shall be caught up together with
them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”
“Watch therefore.”
- The Defender.
*
* *
[7]
The dishonour of the disobedient Christian will be great
in the Day of Christ. It was the clear apprehension of both honour and shame at
the judgment-Seat of Christ that made the saints and martyrs of the first
centuries of the Christian era. While, in the notes of a popular reference
Bible, we are told that “the Day of Christ relates
wholly to the reward and blessing of saints at His coming,” there is a
startling contradiction from
- The
King’s Herald.
*
* *
[8]
The coming of the Lord becomes, through watchfulness,
both a deterrent and an incentive. It rebukes sin of every kind and inspires to
the deepest consecration and devotion. Not only is blessing promised to the
prepared but likewise loss is threatened to the unprepared. “If therefore thou shalt not
watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou
shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee” (Rev. 3: 3). Christ’s
coming will be sudden and unexpected to the watchful and unwatchful alike. But
the warning is that He will suddenly come as a thief to the careless. Though surprised, the watchful will
not be unprepared. To the unwatchful, however, His coming will be like the
visit of a thief, in its resulting loss and sorrow (Matt.
24: 42-44, 48-51; Mark 13: 32-37; Luke 21: 34-36). How dare
we deny such solemn warnings? If there is nothing for us to fear at the
coming of the Lord, if all will have the same experience, then such warnings
are not only meaningless; they are false and misleading. Some might object that
such warnings have in view the loss that will be sustained by the careless
Christian after the rapture, at the judgment-seat of Christ. It is true that
the Christian’s unfaithfulness will be judged at the judgment-seat of Christ
and that for all such failure he will suffer loss. But the important point of
many of these Scriptures is that, for the living believers at least judgment will begin at the rapture. This is clearly brought out in the parable of the
virgins. Their judgment began at the appearing of the bridegroom. As the reward
of the watchful and faithful will begin with their participation in the
rapture, so the judgment of the careless will begin with their rejection from
the number of the first raptured and their consequent participation in some of
the horrors of the tribulation.
- The
*
* *
[9]
Crowns are given
for what? In order that we might become rulers in the [coming] Kingdom
glory. Christ as Lord is competent to adjudicate matters of the world. He is
going to associate with Himself co-rulers, statesmen, who are to regulate
things in ages to come in all parts of the world. God does not want hot-house
plants to be rulers over His [messianic] kingdom. Those who have stood the test are to be
rulers in the kingdom. What kind of folks did President Hoover select as
members of his cabinet? They were picked men. He had had his eyes on those men,
probably, for months and even years, and others were consulted as to the
availability, the competence, of these men. They were tested men. God is
looking out for such men who are to be rulers with Him in the management of
kingdom affairs.
-
Christ Life.
* * *
[10]
There is a
tremendous truth of the New Testament, a truth so vitally important that a correct
understanding of the Bible is impossible without recognizing it: [eternal] salvation is
by grace, a free gift to all who trust the merits and substitutionary work of
Christ; rewards are offered by God for the faithful service of the saved. One
of these special rewards offered by Christ to His people is that of reigning
with Him during the [coming millennial] kingdom. Only those who suffer with Him will
reign with Him. Here is the passage which says so: “If we suffer (with Him), we shall
also reign with Him: if we deny Him, He also will
deny us” (2
Tim. 2: 12).
This
magnificent reward is spoken of by Paul as ‘The Prize.’
Those who attain to a certain spiritual level are to be privileged to reign
with Christ during the Kingdom.
-
The Christian Victory Magazine.
-------
THE TRIAL OF
CHRIST
A re-trial of Jesus is reported to have taken place in
In
a breathless silence the assembly listened to the defence by Dr. Reichswehr,
who stated that he was to prove that the judgment was unjust and that Jesus was
the object of a judicial murder. “No one had been able
to accuse him of any offence against law. Pilate himself declared his innocence
by washing his hands of responsibility before the people. Jesus preached a
religion of self-abnegation which the religious egoism of the time would not
recognize.” So he continued for five hours. Then the judges went aside
to confer, and when they came back declared that, with four votes to one, they
affirmed the complete innocence of the Accused. The complaint against him was
based on a regretful mistake and the
divine judgment would fall on the Jewish people until they freed themselves
from this sin.
*
* * * *
* I
638
THE OVERCOMER’S PATHWAY
TO THE THRONE
By T AUSTIN-SPARKS
[PART TWO]
The Will of God wrought in us through
Suffering.
The second thing; God’s practical dealings with us to bring
us to be governed inwardly by that will. This is the explanation of all our
temptations, all our trials, the seeming contradictions that come even from the
Lord Himself. I say “seeming contradictions.”
Very often we find ourselves in a position where it looks as though even the
Lord contradicts Himself. The Abraham trials. God promised a son, and then said
that in that son - which it has taken a miracle to bring into being -
everything in the Divine promise and covenant was bound up. Then the Lord said
go and slay him and offer him a burnt offering - a burnt offering, there is
nothing left. The Lord seems to be turning round on Himself sometimes and
contradicting Himself. The seeming contradictions, the Divine delays, the
disappointments, the set-backs; all these things find out our will. These are
not the ordinary commonplace experiences. I am talking about the spiritual
experiences of the Lord’s children who are, so far as they understand their own
hearts, sincerely devoted to the will of God, and yet we all are passed through
this course of testing where we come up against severe temptations and trials,
contradictions, delays, disappointments, set-backs, and all this sort of thing,
and they find us out.
The
Lord knows us better than we know ourselves, and “the heart is deceitful above all things.” The Lord knows we may be sincere in our own eyes, but
He knows just how much we would like that, how much that is a secret appeal to
what we would like, we would take; how there is that to
which we would not open our eyes wide,
we keep them half closed and say if only
that comes about how delightful! There is something after all that we would wish, that we would desire; just that half or
three parts element of self
gratification. We would not admit it, we hardly recognise it, and yet we find
our own soul responds to it. Beloved, you may say this is analysing very
closely and making things difficult, but we have to get right down to the truth
of things. There is something there which weakens the ground for God, and it is a tremendous triumph over the enemy
when a child of God can come to the place where the greatest hopes and most
cherished desires and ambitions are handed up to the Lord and are as dead in
the acceptance of what the Lord may desire.
If
there is any personal, fleshly - I do not mean gross, I mean natural fleshly -
ambition, preference, like, will, in any direction, if there is that, you may
settle it once and for all that that is the ground of confusion. You will not get clear guidance from the Lord if there is mixture of
the will of God with the will of the flesh. The Lord
cannot guide us clearly if we have
personal desire in the matter; if we
have a little bit of personal strength moving; if our soul comes in, whether it
be the reasoning or affectionate soul or the volitional soul, the choosing
soul; it is our soul-life. If that comes in one little bit we have no ground of
clear guidance from the Lord.
We
have to stand back and say, not as I desire, will, or think, but absolutely as
God wills. We have to get to the place where, by the grace of God, we can truly
occupy the position that it does not matter to us personally so long as the
Lord gets what He is after. Believe
me, beloved, then you have provided a ground for clear guidance; but if there
is strength of soul life as such getting into any question or issue, it brings
about confusion and we shall simply get contrary guidances and not a clear way
with the Lord. It is a ground of weakness, we cannot stand up, we cannot meet
the situation, we are weak, and, therefore it is the ground of defeat, a ground
of the power of Satan.
The Ground of Satan’s Strength.
Satan’s
power is maintained not merely by what he is in himself but by the ground that he
has in man, he must have a ground, a judicial ground of his own somewhere, upon
which to operate. The Lord Jesus was able to overcome because He could say “The prince of this world
cometh and hath nothing in Me.” We
are defeated on that ground, our defeat takes place on the ground of our own
strong will. Yes, often that which we colour and dress up as being desired for
the Lord. We never know whether our protestations that it is for the Lord are
really genuine until submitted to a severe test. We have said, “All the Lord’s will in that,” and the Lord has put us
in something pretty hot, and we come back and say “this
is exacting more than I thought it would, this is finding me out: I was a bit
rash...” You invoke the challenge of God when you take that position.
You see the Overcomer must come to the position where there is
wrought into him or her this will of God as a part of their constitution
through testing, trials, adversities; where they come to the place where
nothing is worth while but the will of God.
It
is a great thing to find yourself eventually experimentally and positionally
where you once were doctrinally, and sometimes it is a long and trying and
terrible journey from where we say, “Yes, all the will
of God,” until you get there. We are not there by saying it, we are
there by a thing wrought in us. There
must then finally be a letting-go to the Lord. The corn of wheat must fall into
the ground and die, because there is that of this creation which must be cast
off. The motive may be good, the sincerity may be all right, but there are personal things bound up with it, desires, ambitions,
things which would give us much pleasure. There is this secret mixture of
ourselves, and although the Lord is going to save something - there is something
very precious for Himself - He has to put the whole thing down into death that
in death it shall be stripped of every bit of personal, natural soul interest
and raise in resurrection a thing which is wholly of Himself - and then you get
the enlargement - the Son of Man glorified.
I
will close, reminding you of the third thing. While we stand face to face with
the severity of this thing (it is a tremendous thing when you are coming
through it and having the will of God wrought into you and all things are being
brought to death) it is blessed to remember that the will of God has already
been perfected in Christ and He has in Himself secured our perfection in the
will of God. Read again Hebrews 10: 10 “By which will we have been sanctified...” Perfected for ever by the will of God done in Christ.
“I come to do Thy
will, O God.” “By
which will we have been sanctified.”
He has done it, He has secured it, and He has secured our perfection in God in
Himself and now, on the ground that something has been done, a living, standing
reality, a fact to which nothing can be added, He has sent the Holy Spirit to enter into us who receive Him, to be in
us the energising power of the will of God. God the Holy Spirit working, energising in us both to will and to do of
His good pleasure.
It
is a blessed thing to get linked up with something that is done. Not a doctrine
but a living Person, by a mighty power, the Holy Spirit, God Himself working in
towards something He has achieved. It is not enough to take hold of that as
doctrine. We have to take hold in a practical way. On the one hand, let go to
the Lord, and on the other hand reach out strongly and take hold of the
energies of the Lord that there shall be a fulfilment in us of the words “it is God Who worketh in you
to will and to do...”
In
the hour when we are challenged, when after all, the will of God is not so easy
to accept, when we are passing through the test and when we are in our
I
leave these closing words of the Hebrew letter with you, “The God of peace Who brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in everything to do His
will, energising in you that which is well pleasing in His sight.”
* * *
NOT NOW BUT THEN
“Not now, but in the coming years,
It may be in the
We’ll read the meaning of our tears,
And there, sometime, we’ll understand.
Then trust in God through all thy days;
Fear not, for He doth hold thy hand;
Though dark the way, still sing and praise:
sometime, somewhere, we’ll understand.
We’ll catch the broken threads again,
And finish what we here began;
Heaven will the mysteries explain,
And then, ah, then we’ll understand.
We’ll know why clouds instead of sun
Were over many a cherished plan;
Why song has ceased when scarce begun:
’Tis there sometime, we’ll understand.
Why what we long for most of all
Eludes so oft our eager hand;
Why hopes are crushed and castles fall -
Up there, sometime, we’ll understand.
God knows the way, He holds the key,
He guides us with unerring hand;
Sometime with tearless eyes we’ll see:
Yes there,” - [out there, in the
Promised Land].
*
* * *
* * *
639
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ETERNAL LIFE
AND THE
By ROBERT
GOVETT, M.A.
-------
ETERNAL LIFE
AND THE
1. IN
DURATION. Eternal life is, of course,
endless.
The
[millennial] kingdom is to come to an end. 1 Cor. 15: 24; Rev. 20: 4-6.
Equivalent
expressions for ‘the [coming] kingdom’ are ‘the (first) resurrection,’ Luke 14: 14; 20: 36; ‘the Age to come,’ Luke 20: 35; Hebrews 6: 5; ‘the Rest,’ Heb. 4.
2. IN OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS THEM.
Eternal
life is already possessed by [all
regenerate] believers. John 3: 36; 5: 24, etc. The
kingdom is future. Matt.
6: 10. To
be waited for. Mark 15: 43; Luke 23: 51.
Eternal
life is the believer’s. For him to seek for it, is unbelief.
We
are to seek for the [coming
messianic] kingdom. Matt.
6: 33; Luke 12: 31. Strive for it. Matt. 11: 12. Work for it. Col. 4: 11. Suffer for it. 2 Thess.
1: 5; Luke 18: 29.
3. The GROUNDS of possessing
each are different.
Faith alone is our title to eternal life. John 3: 1: 5, 16, 36; 6: 47; 1 Tim. 1: 16; 1 John 5: 11-13; Titus 3: 7. Eternal life depends on our JUSTIFICATION.
The
[millennial] kingdom is never promised to faith only.
Partakers
of the kingdom are not said to enter as
believers, but as “righteous.” Matt. 5: 20; 6: 33; 10: 41; 13: 43, 49; 25: 37, 46; Luke 14: 14; 1 Pet. 4: 18. As “saints,” 1 Cor. 6: 2; 2 Thess. 1: 10; Rev. 20: 6, 9; Dan. 7: 18, 22, 27. (Matt. 27: 52, 53.) The
excluded are shut out, not as
unbelievers, but as “unrighteous” or “unholy.” 1 Cor. 6: 8, 9.
The
[coming] kingdom depends upon our SANCTIFICATION.
Imputed righteousness is already possessed by the [regenerate]
believer.
Active righteousness has still to be sought by the disciple,
as the way to the [promised
(Psa. 2: 8, R.V.)] kingdom. Matt. 6: 33; 2 Pet. 1: 5-11.
The following are some of the qualities required:-
Poverty
of spirit, meekness, purity, etc. Matt. 5: 1-12; 18: 3.
Righteousness
in general. 1 Cor. 6: 9, 10; Eph. 5: 5; Matt. 5: 20; 13: 43; Luke 14: 14.
Simplicity
of faith in the doctrine of the millennium. Mark 10: 14, 15; Luke 18: 17.
Love
of God. James 2: 5.
Consistency
and advance in grace. 2 Pet. 1: 5-11.
Is
obedience necessary to eternal life?
No: but it is for the [millennial] kingdom. Heb. chs. 3. & 4.; Luke 19: 11-26.
Are
good works necessary to obtain eternal life? No: but they are to [inherit] the kingdom. Matt. 7: 21; 25: 34; John 5: 29; Luke 14: 29; [Eph.
5: 5,
R.V.].
Is
[Christian] baptism
necessary to eternal life? No: but
it is to entrance into the kingdom. John 3: 5; Matt. 21: 31, 32; Rom. 6: 5.
4. CIRCUMSTANCES which hinder not eternal
life, affect our obtaining
the kingdom.
Is
the surrender of riches necessary to ETERNAL
LIFE? No: but it is to entrance
into the KINGDOM. Matt. 19: 23-29; Mark 10: 23-27; Luke 1: 53; 6: 20-26; 18: 24-27.
The kingdom is to be enjoyed by poor
disciples. Luke
1: 53; 6:
20; James 2:
5.
Marriage
does not affect eternal life. It by no means excludes from the kingdom; but it does affect station in the kingdom. Matt. 19: 10-12; 1 Cor. 7: 32-35; Rev. 14: 1-5.
Is
much tribulation necessary to
eternal life? No: but to the kingdom. Acts
14: 22; Rev
1: 9.
The kingdom is for the slain for
Christ’s sake. Matt 10: 39; 16: 25, 26; Luke 9: 24; 17: 33; John 12: 25.
5. Notice GOD’S POSITION CONCERNING -
(1) ETERNAL
LIFE. ’Tis a gift. Rom. 6: 23; John 10: 28; 17: 2.
The
result of God’s mercy. Jude 21.;
The
saved are elected to it. Acts 13: 48; 1 Thess. 5: 9; 2 Thess. 2: 13.
(2) THE KINGDOM. ’Tis a reward. Matt. 5: 12; Luke 6: 20, 23; 13: 28; Rev. 11: 15-18.
Does
God account any worthy of eternal life? No:
but He does of the kingdom. Luke 20: 35; 2 Thess. 1: 5, 11; 2 Tim. 4: 8.
6. MAN’S POSITION
Hence
the believer should be assured of ETERNAL LIFE. He is spoken of as “saved.” 1 Cor. 1: 18; Eph. 2: 5, 8; 2 Tim. 1: 9; Tit. 3: 5.
He
may well be doubtful about the KINGDOM.
1 Cor. 9: 24-27; Phil. 3: 11-14.
The
threats of God against offending
believers relate to the KINGDOM.
Matt. 5: 19, 20; 7: 21; 16: 19; 18: 3, 21-35; 19: 23-29; 25: 1-30; Mark 10: 15; Luke 6: 20-26; 12: 31-48; 19: 11-26; John 3: 5; 1 Cor. 6: 9, 10; Gal. 5: 19- 21; Eph. 5: 5; 2 Pet. 1: 5-11; Heb. 1. - 13.
7. THERE ARE DEGREES IN THE KINGDOM: -
Matt. 5: 19; 11: 11; 18: 1, 4, etc.
This is not said of eternal life.
In
conclusion, that which by God’s eternal favour is God’s gift, is mine now by
faith, and shall be mine without fail for ever, cannot be the same thing with a
future temporary reward according to works; of which I may or may not, at
Christ’s coming be accounted worthy.
*
* *
THE APOSTASY OF ENGLISH NONCONFORMITY
By the Rev. J.
Poole-Connor
This little volume contains a large amount of
instructive material for the forming of an estimate of the spiritual condition
and tendencies of denominational Nonconformity in
-------
OBEDIENCE
“For He MUST reign, till He hath put all enemies
under His feet” (1 Cor.
15: 25).
“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the
knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2
Cor. 10: 5). This obedience does not come automatically -
that is, without the full consent and co-operation of the Will, for God does
not treat His people like machines, but looks for their willing, intelligent
co-operation with His working. The
members, mind, will and heart, must be offered up to God, to take sides with
Him against all that He is against, and for the reign of Christ to become
operative. “Yield yourselves unto God … and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
Let not sin therefore reign (Rom. 6: 12, 13). How can we reign with Him, unless He first
reigns in us? It is not likely that we can subdue rebellion and sin in others,
while these things are still unsubdued in us; and just so much of our being
that is not actually brought under His Rule, is in rebellion against Him, for
there is no neutrality in the spiritual realm. “He that
is not with Me is against Me.”
*
* * *
* * *
644
THE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M. A
[PART FOUR]
(Continued from 640)
Lastly, we may remark that Jesus and his apostle in one
respect seem to oppose each other, at least on the interpretation here given. For
the Lord Jesus supposes the Jew to find and to buy the pearl. But Paul in
sorrow says of his own countrymen, that “
II. We may now consider the peculiar propriety of comparing the righteousness of the Lord Jesus to a pearl. Why was it not compared to a diamond, which is even more valuable than a pearl? Because the diamond is a thing of unknown origin, coming from the earth, and the righteousness of Jesus is a thing traceable to a known source, originating in holy love, and perfected by heavenly obedience. But especially because the diamond owes its beauty, form and lustre to the art of man, to the violence of cutting and grinding. But before God what is hewn and fashioned with tool of iron is polluted. “And if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it” Exod. 20: 25. And this would not - could not set forth the gentle grace of him whose righteousness needs not the polish, and can receive none from man. But the pearl as soon as it is brought forth from its shell is complete in beauty and lustre, and needs not the skill of man to confer on it value.
2. The pearl is the produce of an oyster - a common worthless-looking
shell-fish; and of oysters there are two kinds, those that bear pearls and
those that yield none. So the world was divided into Gentiles and Jews: those
instructed in the righteousness of God, and those ignorant of it; those who in
some instances wrought righteousness, and those who wrought only evil. The Jew,
as distinguished from the Gentile, was the pearl-bearing oyster. And this
distinction
3. Some shell-fish are remarkable for beauty of shape or colour, but the oyster has an unpromising exterior, and that which contains the goodliest pearl differs in nothing externally from the oyster that contains none. So it was with the Lord Jesus. Of him it is said, “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty, that we should desire him:” Isaiah 53: 2.
4. The pearl is an animal production, the most valuable of the animal kingdom. It is accounted by Pliny the most precious of all things. But the point especially to be noticed is, that it is produced from the juices of the fish by a natural process of formation within its shell. So the righteousness of Jesus was the production of a man - the result of his perfect obedience during the days of his humiliation, and proceeding from the constant exercise and energy of his most holy dispositions.
5. The pearl-oyster lives upon the sea-sand near the shore, in some feet
depth of water. Now by the sea-sand is represented
6. Pearls are obtained by divers, in the employ of masters on shore; they go forth in boats and sink themselves to the bottom by a weight attached to their foot, and hastily gather up the oysters into a net tied, by a rope about their throats. Thus Jesus was sought by Judas, acting not for himself but for the Chief Priests and Pharisees. The weight that sunk him was thirty pieces of silver, and like the pearl-diver, he went to his employment with a rope about his neck. “He cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.” In the net which he spread for another, were his own feet taken.
7. The oyster when caught is conveyed to land, and left to die by a lingering death in a pit dug for the purpose with sand heaped over it. Thus Jesus was left to die by a lingering death and was buried.
It is thought that the pangs of the animal’s death help to produce the beauty of the pearl. It is certain that the death of Jesus gave the finishing lustre to his perfect righteousness.
8. After death the oyster is taken up out of the pit, the shell readily opens, and the pearl is disclosed, and removed without difficulty. Herein it differs from other valuable animal productions, which need to be cut or torn from the animal after death, as ivory, musk, &c. Even thus the [out] resurrection - [out from amongst the dead in ‘Hades’ (Acts 2: 31, R.V.)] - proved and displayed the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus: and from that day forth it was to be exhibited in all its beauty to the believer for his acceptance and trust.
9. The pearl is the result of the life of the shell-fish; and accordingly the righteousness of the Lord Jesus is the product of his most holy life. The life of the oyster is but short, the duration of the pearl many times longer than the life of the fish. The flesh of the fish corrupts. The pearl is incorruptible. The life of the Lord Jesus was but three and thirty years; but his “righteousness is for ever.” The pearl is no part of the animal, though produced by it. Its perfection is seen only in its separateness from it.
10. The pearl profits not the animal itself. It dies to advantage another. Thus the righteousness of the Lord Jesus was not intended for himself but for us. “He was delivered for our offences and rose again for our justification:” Rom. 4: 25.
The pearl lies concealed in the shell till after the animal’s death. To attempt to open it before that period were dangerous and likely to injure the pearl, as during life the fish closes the shell with much force. Thus Jesus could not be taken before “his hour was come,” for not till then was the work fulfilled which the Father had given him to finish.
12. The pearl, though it comes from so mean a source is a rare thing, and though obscure in its origin, is kingly in its use; the fittest ornament of an imperial crown. The righteousness of the Lord Jesus is the only one amongst men that can be accounted perfect [impeccable], and it is in consequence of its perfection, that the Father has anointed Jesus king above his fellows: and given him a name above every name.
13. The colour of the best pearls is white; and white is the colour of righteousness and purity. Therefore of the justified it is said, that “though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow”: Isaiah 1: 18. To the righteous it is promised that they shall “walk in while raiment,” and the throne of supreme justice which is reared at last is “a great white throne.” The pretenders to righteousness on the other hand are described as possessing only an outward whiteness not natural to them and not runntng through them, but added as a coating from without. The Pharisees, therefore, were like unto “whited sepulchres,” and Paul reproved his unjust judge with “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.”
14. This account of the meaning of the pearl agrees with what we read of
it in Scripture. From Matt. 7: 6, we learn
that it is something holy,
as it is written, “Give not that which is holy unto dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”
15. Again we read
of the city of
(To be continued)
* *
* * *
* *
641
DYING
DEMOCRACY
It is puzzling to
know how far any section of the
* Sir Robertson Nicoll, a warm friend of democracy, nevertheless foresaw the
disintegration that threatens every parliament in the world. “We must not,” he says, “be
understood as saying that Demos will necessarily use his powers with wisdom and
with justice. He will do the very reverse if he breaks away from the rule of
Christ. An irreligious democracy will end in a state of society worse by far
than has ever been witnessed in a Christian civilization. Never was there a
greater need of the work and influence of the Christian Church than there is
to-day.” Dr. Chas. E. Jefferson
has truly said:- “Democracy is the most dangerous of
all forms of government. It is the
most costly of all forms. It makes greater demands. It demands intelligence and
conscience and sacrifice. It demands these in isolated individuals, but in the
masses, and if these are not widespread the nation is doomed.”
** Helpless minorities.
The
dictatorships differ in type. “No two of the
dictatorships,” says the Times
(Mar. 18, 1933), “are alike. Beyond the common
denominator of collectivism and authority each expresses its own national
spirit. Only Slavs could have invented Russian Bolshevism. Fascism is
essentially Italian in its elements of secret control and merciless authority.
Dictatorship in
For the deepest note of the dictatorships is an
implacable militarism, which turns its native land into an iron prison. “Pacificism,” says the Berlin Correspondent of the Times (April 7, 1933), “entails indefinite imprisonment without preferment of
charges in
*
It is characteristic that, before the
revolution, a Nazi preacher in reciting the Beatitudes deliberately omitted the
seventh - “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall he called sons of God” (Matt. 5: 9).
So
even the truest and greatest of the democracies of the world now stands on the
brink of a precipice. The United States of America, with their 15,000,000
unemployed, are threatened, according to President
Hoover’s Commission on ‘social trends,’
with ‘a violent revolution.’ The Commission says:- “Our observations show great cities from time to time in the
grip of organized and defiant criminals, rural districts often forlornly
governed, masses of persons losing confidence in the ballot and elections, and
regarding liberty, quality, and democracy as mocking catchwords twisted into
defences of special interests, The swift concentration of vast economic power
in a period of mergers and the inability of the Government to regulate or
control these combinations, or, in many cases, to resist their corrupting
influences, are not encouraging in their sinister implications. Many have been
led to conclude reluctantly that the emergence of some recognized and avowed
form of plutocratic dictatorship is not far away.” Col. House, the supreme advisor of President Wilson, said recently:- “A
revolutionary leader is not in sight at the moment, but he might appear
overnight. If we are to have a Dictator, our people and institutions of wealth
would like him to be of the Mussolini type. However, he is more likely to be of
the type of Lenin.” In an address last year to the American section of
the Third International, Stalin
said:- “I consider that the Communist party of the
This
characteristic of the dictatorships - their savage intolerance - differentiates
them even from a Voltaire. “I disagree,” Voltaire once wrote, “with everything you say, and yet I would fight to the death
for your right to say it.” It is now not enough to be (as the Scriptural
Christian always is) a passive supporter of the Government, as the
government: every citizen in the countries of dictatorship is expected or
compelled to be an avowed supporter, even under oath, of a party government,
made national by terror. “One by one, throughout the
world,” says the Manchester Guardian (weekly edition, Mar. 10, 1933), “the last gleams of the lamp of personal liberty seem to be going
out among the nations who once walked by its light. Compulsory membership of
the Fascist party is now to be enforced on all members of the teaching staff at
every Italian university. The decree of 1931 compelling every lecturer and
professor to take an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime was bad enough;
at least passive endurance was possible under it; having passed the required
test, a sound biochemist might then devote himself happily to biochemistry. But
under this new ordinance the same biochemist will be expected, under pain of
heavy penalties, to attend his local party meetings and otherwise show himself
a stout propagandist in the cause of the corporate State.” Nor (and this
is a point very apt to be overlooked by Christian thinkers) is splendid State
efficiency necessarily divorced from immorality or atheism. “The problem of the Borgias,”
says the Times (Dec. 2, 1932), “is unique. For their
eminence as statesmen who achieved the good government of a Province, and whose
policy pointed to the unification of
It
is most remarkable that the modern version of the God-State and the Superman, a
Babylonian idolatry revived by Alexander and the Caesars, springs not so much
from Italy as from Germany - in the persons of Hegel and Nietzsche, as
does also a third source of modem dictatorship - Karl Marx. “Hitlerism,”
says Mr. E. G. Homrighausen
(in The Christian Century), “is almost a
religion. Hitlerism believes in a mystical and
Platonic idea of the Reich. Hitler feels himself to be the chosen messiah who
will be instrumental under God in re-establishing the glory that once belonged
to the fatherland. The State is a divine entity. To become a Hitlerite is similar to experiencing a conversion to the mystical Reich, to worship it and to give
one’s life for it.” Dr. Donald
Grant writes from
Thus
the modern world is torn between two fierce fanaticisms, by both of which
democracy is smothered, liberty expiring with it. Signor Mussolini, the first and greatest of the modern dictators,
and their prototype, who has been profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, acknowledges that the struggle between Fascism and
Communism is a religious struggle.* In
sentences (the last being a quotation from Nietzsche)
which he has himself authorized as his, he says:- “When
Rome passed beneath the sway of Jesus, the dynasty of rulers, perhaps the only
great dynasty in history, fell. Christianity made
* Emil Ludwig’s Talks with
Mussolini, p. 150.
** Idid., p. 174. It
is extraordinary that Signor Mussolini
should feel it necessary to say:- “I have never had
any inclination to fancy myself a god.” Ibid., p. 219.
*
* * *
* * *
642
WATCH AND
PRAY
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Gethsemane, the concentration and epitome of peril,
opens with something all but incredible, yet constantly repeated since - a
blank denial of prophecy by a leading Apostle, and in open contradiction of
Christ; a denial endorsed by the whole Church at the moment and on the spot, in
the person of all twelve Apostles. And the denial is grounded on the invariable
reason of such denial, that what is foretold is unpalatable. Our Lord
specifically foretold that before the cock crew twice that night, Peter would
have thrice denied Him; and that the disciple who asserted that he, if
necessary, would stand alone in heroism is the disciple who would be supreme in
desertion. It was an explicit, unconditional prophecy, simple, literal,
obvious. Peter gave it, quite openly, a blank denial. And he did much more. He
said that a violent death itself would not silence his confession of his Lord.
Thus in the very dawn of the Church is unfolded the fact that foremost
believers, even Apostles, can completely disbelieve a prophecy, especially an
unpalatable prophecy, and can even live to fulfil predictions of their own
disastrous failure.
TESTING
Our
Saviour’s counsel for the crisis, therefore, stands forth supreme. He
immediately counters with a commanded attitude for every servant of God. Jesus
had just said (Luke 22: 31) that Satan had both requested and obtained
power over the Apostles, so that, exactly as wheat is threshed in order to sift
the chaff from the grain, they might be most severely handled; and He now
reveals the tremendous truth that whether permission is granted to Satan or
not, for our sore testing, is a matter largely within our own control. He
says:- “Watch and
pray, that ye ENTER NOT into temptation” (Matt. 26:
41) - into testing, sifting, abnormal and
acute trial.* The Lord
does not say, as is so constantly assumed, Deliver us under temptation
(as in 2 Pet. 2:
9); but, Lead not into temptation
(Matt. 6:
13); we must watch and not so as to survive
temptation, but in order to escape it altogether. The prayer is:- Lord, remove
us from the very region of the peril! Satan can get permission to sift; but it
is possible to ensure a refusal prior to his request.
* Our word ‘temptation’ has come to mean a trap, an inducement to
sin: rather than a sifting, a trial, a subjection to test, which, while it may
end in sin, may yet have no solicitation to sin in it. In the first sense, God
tempts no man (Jas. 1.
13); in the second sense, He tries us all (Ps. 11: 4, 5); therefore
the latter is the sense in which we are here commanded to pray. So also when
WEAKNESS
This revelation grows every hour more valuable in the ‘perilous times’ of the end. Every man has his breaking point, a
bearing limit which God allows no man to pass (1 Cor. 10: 13); but there are a thousand points short of our
breaking point where we can break, and where to break is our own sin, - where we could
stand the test, and could master the temptation, and yet do not. Such testings
are financial crisis; physical breakdown; unwise or forbidden affections;
serious accident; overpowering inducements to sin; persecution; peril to
liberty or life. All such are not improbable tests for us all, and they may be
in no wise sinful tests, but they are exceedingly dangerous tests. The Lord
Himself had just spoken of the siftings from which God had not exempted Him:-
“ye are they
which have tarried with me in my temptations” (Luke 22: 28), temptations
into which He was Divinely ‘led’ (Luke 4: 1) and
even ‘driven’ (Mark
1: 12); but He was sifted through and
through, and spared nothing, for us: and it is exactly the mistake of a Peter to level
himself with his Lord.
WATCH
Now
the vital counsel of Christ is crammed into two pregnant words; and it meets us
with the surprising fact that prayer He puts second to vigilance:- “WATCH”. If
we had to travel on the edge of a precipice on a pitch dark night, which would
God expect us to do first and foremost - watch or pray? God never does for us what we can do for ourselves; and when by
wide-awake alertness we can avoid tests palpably on the horizon, even the
prayer is rendered unnecessary. Temptation is the precincts of sin; and
watchfulness is the wide berth we give to known but invisible precipices.
PRAY
It
is most remarkable that the second counsel of our Lord is not general prayer -
prayerfulness - but (as Luke proves, who names the prayer only*) the specific petition that we may be spared the
testing:- “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Luke 22: 40). The gravity of omitting or neglecting this
petition becomes clear when we remember that when Christ gave our four
principal, and His only four, petitions for our present needs (Matt. 6: 13), this was one. Origen, seized by enemies and given the choice of bowing to idols,
or punishment, fell; and “the cause of my fall”,
he said afterwards, “was the neglect of prayer on the
morning of the fatal day”. Watchfulness and prayer can together escape the temptation.
*
In Luke the ‘watching’
is omitted, and so the escape from testing becomes the actual prayer to be
prayed. In Matt. 24:
20, Acts 8:
24, 2 Thess. 3: 1, etc., the substance of the prayer follows the
command to pray. This goes far to prove that escape from the Great Tribulation is equally a specific petition
which we are meant to offer. “Watch ye, and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape” (Luke 21: 36).
SELF
DISTRUST
Our
Lord attaches to the command a rapid analysis of the redeemed man, in order to
show how perpetual, how universal, is the need for our vigilance and prayer:- “the spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak.” Our capacity to bear at any time is measured not so much
by the weight of the load we are to carry, as by the strength we have with
which to bear it; and our flesh - Jesus says - is always weak, and weak in all of
us without exception. Here then is our perpetual reminder. The Saviour would
have us filled with so profound a self-distrust that no prayer is oftener on
our lips than the cry to escape testing.*
Napoleon is said to have ordered a
coat of mail, and when the maker brought it, ordered him into it and then shot
at him again and again; and when the armour had stood the test, richly
rewarded him. It is madness for us to rush on such a challenge in the spiritual
realm. Mr. Moody says that a life’s
observation taught him that the falls of Christians are nearly always due to
their underestimating the power of enemy:
the keen realization of our weakness is one of supreme safeguards because
it precipitates us full-length on vigilance and prayer.**
*
An Old Testament prayer (Ps. 139: 23) is thus repealed for the New Testament
believer, for a petition that springs out of salvation by works is wholly
unsuitable to salvation against works.
** It is also and blessedly true
that if God over-rules our prayer, possibly seeing that our strength is
sufficient, we are bidden to count it all joy if we fall into manifold temptations
(Jas. 1: 2), since, if we surmount the testing, they work a
perfected character. Nevertheless, both in time and in intrinsic importance our
Lord’s command ranks before that of James.
THE GREAT
TRIBULATION
Finally,
as the last shadows draw round us, we stand on threshold of the most vast and
critical application of the principle conceivable, of which
WATCH AND
PRAY
The
moral is overwhelming. The Lord slipt both the warning and the command between
the boast and the testing, yet all the disciples forsook Him and fled. Which
Peter actually relied on for victory - his standing [as justified by
faith] in
Christ, or his personal ability to overcome - was immaterial to the result; for
while our Lord had both warned of the danger and given instructions how to
escape it, Peter disbelieved the one and disobeyed the other:
exactly so do-day our standing in Christ - however exalted and irrevocable - or
practical holiness and measure of attainment - however real - will
equally fail us if the identical warning is disbelieved and the identical
instructions disobeyed.* On the other hand, we have the glorious and golden
assurance, on the pledged word of Christ that if we thus watch and pray we
shall escape the present disaster, and also see not one minute of that awful
Hour of “testing,
which is to come upon the whole world, to try” - to sift, to analyse - “them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3: 10).
*
In spite of Christ’s direct command
addressed to them all, the disciples never ‘watched’
in apprehensive self-distrust, but after their physical sleep boasted that all
would be well - even if the approaching danger cost them their life; and it is
equally obvious that, though our Lord said, “Rise nd pray”, they rose and never prayed. So, therefore,
when sifted as wheat, they all forsook Him and fled.
*
* * *
* *
*
643
By D. M.
PANTON, B.A.
The sudden, sharp, and well-nigh incredible
thunder-blast that has fallen on
THE ASSIZE
On
the only occasion He ever names Himself ‘the King,’ our
Lord appears as the Monarch of the whole earth. The clouds of the Parousia have
broken up, and the Lord is descended on Olivet; the anti-God armies He has
annihilated at Armageddon; and now, in order that earth may be purged for His
Kingdom, all nations - gathered by a compulsory muster accomplished by angel
hosts - are massed before Him; and “all the angels with him” (Matt. 25:
31) not make a background of inconceivable
majesty, but are present as court officers to enforce the decisions of the
judge. The scene is described by Joel (3: 2):- “Haste ye and some, all ye nations round about, and come up to the valley Jehoshaphat: thither cause thy mighty ones [the angels] come down, O Lord; for there will I sit to judge all nations round about:
multitudes, multitudes
in the valley of decision.” Since
the earth must be stocked with perfect purity Messiah’s Reign, and so all
mankind analyzed before it begins, no nation, no race, no colour, no tribe, no
class, is absent or exempt.
THE
ADJUDICATION
Mankind,
thus massed, mingled good and evil as it never is in heaven or hell but on
earth only, is now infallibly finally divided. “And he shall separate them one from another” - not nation from nation, but man from man* - “as the shepherd separateth the sheep” - creatures docile, profitable, harmless ** - “from the goats”
- creatures unruly, proud (Is. 24: 9),
unprofitable. Thus out of the final masses of mankind emerges a new flock of
God, His third and last: no longer Jewish, as of old (Ezek.
34: 11-13); nor Jew blended with Gentile, the Church (John 10: 3);
but a flock purely and exclusively Gentile, which stocks the Millennial earth
with its subject nations. The King says:- “Come ye blessed of my
Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world.”
*
Not [Greek
…] (neuter) but [Greek
…] (masculine).
** The King Himself is the one flawless Lamb of God, whose fleece - while
alive - creates the sinner’s ‘robe of righteousness,’
and whose blood when slaughtered provides the sinner’s atonement.
THE LEAST
BRETHREN
The
criterion of the separation of these masses of men the treatment they have
accorded to those whom our Saviour calls His ‘least brethren,’ who are actually present - “these my least brethren.” The Church, and the risen redeemed of all ages, are nowhere named in
the scene: on His right are saved Gentiles, on His left are lost Gentiles:
RESTORED
The
ground of their salvation is full of revelation. The King bases His sentence
solely on His own brotherhood of Israel, independently of the moral character
of individual Jews, since Isaac’s blessing on Jacob survives all ages:- “Cursed be every one that
curseth thee, and blessed be every one that blesseth thee”
(Gen. 27:
29). It is blood-relationship with the
Christ.* But it must also be
remembered that in the epoch ahead, out of which these masses of mankind come,
all church standing has gone; the preaching of grace has vanished before the
era of judgment; and Israel, though still to suffer her keenest agony, has
resumed her national supremacy before God. As constant monotheists the Jews
attract, and so reveal, all who heed the Angel flying in mid-heaven (Rev. 14: 6) proclaiming the eternal gospel of monotheism.
But, still more illuminating, a Jewish group, accepting Christ as Messiah, and
whom He actually addressed (prophetically) while on earth (Matt. 24: 16), are
sent through all nations to herald His Kingdom; and, because they are
miracle-gifted, as surely as Pharaoh knew that he rejected Jehovah when he
rejected Moses and Aaron, so surely the nations will (in these) reject God and know that
they reject Him. “They shall
deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues shall ye be beaten: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not
ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost” (Mark. 13: 11). So
Jews, scattered through all nations, and therefore speaking every language
under heaven, become God’s thermometer plunged in every Gentile ocean; God’s
barometer, exactly revealing every Gentile climate of thought; God’s magnet
attracting to itself all the Gentile elect; and God’s blood-test of Gentile
life or death.
*
It is manifest that there is no such
scheme of salvation in our Day of Grace; yet no less manifestly there lurks a
fearful danger in to-day’s wanton assaults on the Brethren of the Lord. The
curse on such has never been revoked. That Christ is the sole ground of the
beatitude upon the ‘sheep’ once again makes Him
the crux of salvation; and that the Kingdom was prepared for them, not from the
date of their merciful conduct, but from the foundation of the world, once
again proves an election of grace.
REVIVAL
No
vaster work of the Holy Ghost in so short a time has ever been revealed than
these massed possessors of eternal life (ver. 46)
- and therefore regenerate* - on the
right hand of the King. Their startling ignorance of our Lord - “When saw we thee?” - and their ground of salvation - “Inasmuch as ye did it” - confines them sharply to the non-Gospel age between
rapture and judgment, which must be seven years** and may be several decades. Yet their numbers cannot but be
portentous. The implication is, roughly, an equal division of Sheep and Goats: even if we assume that
half of mankind perishes in the last judgments, this leaves 1,000,000,000 out
of the present (approximate) 2,000,000,000, Or 500,000,000 thus regenerate***; nor is it conceivable that our Lord’s Kingdom should
start with a population throughout the whole world not exceeding the present
population of China. But this proves a concentration of the work of the [Holy] Spirit far
beyond the utmost human experience yet recorded. It is manifestly a fruit of
that of which Pentecost was but a sample:-“And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth
my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your
daughter, [Jews] shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens [Gentiles] in those days will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: before the day
of the Lord come” (Acts 2: 17).
*
Since the Lord Jesus makes entrance into
the Kingdom conditional on regeneration (John 3:
5), and Himself invites these to enter, it
is obvious that they are regenerate.
** The three and a half years of
the Two Prophets (Rev. 11: 3) and the
three and a half years (Rev. 13: 5) of Antichrist’s
reign after their assassination. The exact time depends on the unknown length
of the Lord’s Parousia in the heavens, during which the Church is judged above
and the dread obliteration of the very knowledge of Christ takes place below.
*** The latest figures of world
population are given (Times,
Sept. 16, 1933) as 1,956,213,801. The Christian population is estimated at
588,027,965; and since, in addition to the merely formal professors in all the
churches, more than half the 588,000,000 are Roman Catholics (not to name tens
of millions of other Sacerdotalists) who depend for regeneration on sprinkling
in infancy, a painful proportion of the total figure can hardly be regenerate;
whereas the ‘sheep’ are all stamped as
regenerate by our Lord Himself. This gives some sense of so huge a work in so
short a time.
PERSECUTION
Very awful is the revelation of the persecutor’s
doom:- “Depart
from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his
angels.” Christ is in the world;
Christ is being clothed or fed or visited - or left naked or hungry or in
prison; everywhere we touch Him - and stand revealed: our conduct is a
photograph of our heart. The persecutor of Christ’s brethren, whether brothers
in spirit or in flesh, must meet the solemn question:- “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou ME?” The ground on which these anti-Semites are adjudged
to Hell is unutterably solemn. Not one positive sin is named against them; no
active crime, no aggressive wickedness: but solely - “ye did it not” - un-regeneration proved by a negation of goodness.
What then must be the fate of the creators of the torture-chamber and the
shooting squad?* The
blood-relationship of our Lord with the Jew stands forth startlingly in its reverse
effect; for a London editor (Church of England
Newspaper, Aug. 18,
1933) reports “an almost unbelievable rumour we heard
the other day from a well-informed source that a section the Nazis is urging
Herr Hitler to wage war on Christianity on the ground that Jesus was a Jew.”
When all that emanates from Jewry becomes so fiercely obnoxious that the Old
Testament is rejected because Jewish, a like fate awaits the New; and the
refusal of the ‘salvation that is the Jews’ (John 4: 22) is
a refusal of the only salvation that saves.**
*
Our Lord’s own summary of what will
actually happen settles human destiny for ever:- “These
shall go away into eternal punishment, but the
righteous into eternal life.” He who denies the eternity of the
punishment must (unless he is playing with the subject) deny equally the
eternity of the life; and if he refuses the Saviour’s words on either
statement, he has authority for neither. The disbelief of a prophecy because it
is distasteful is one of the puerilities, even more than one of the
iniquities, of human thought. The denial of a fact in science because it is
terrible would bankrupt any scientist’s reputation. As God’s Calvary-love is
wonderful beyond all thought, so His wrath is awful beyond all conception. Both
are God.
** By the end of the Parousia the
whole Church has been removed from earth, and therefore can form no part of the
saved whom our Lord finds among the Nations. “The
flock of the parable may be, as I think, alluded to in the Saviour’s Words - ‘And other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold’” (John 10: 16) - GOVETT.
*
* * *
* * *
644
THE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M.A.
[PART FOUR]
Lastly, we may remark that Jesus and his apostle in one
respect seem to oppose each other, at least on the interpretation here given.
For the Lord Jesus supposes the Jew to find and to buy the pearl. But Paul in sorrow
says of his own countrymen, that “
II. We may now consider the peculiar propriety of comparing the righteousness of the Lord Jesus to a pearl. Why was it not compared to a diamond, which is even more valuable than a pearl? Because the diamond is a thing of unknown origin, coming from the earth, and the righteousness of Jesus is a thing traceable to a known source, originating in holy love, and perfected by heavenly obedience. But especially because the diamond owes its beauty, form and lustre to the art of man, to the violence of cutting and grinding. But before God what is hewn and fashioned with tool of iron is polluted. “And if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it” Exod. 20: 25. And this would not - could not set forth the gentle grace of him whose righteousness needs not the polish, and can receive none from man. But the pearl as soon as it is brought forth from its shell is complete in beauty and lustre, and needs not the skill of man to confer on it value.
2. The pearl is the produce of an oyster - a common worthless-looking
shell-fish; and of oysters there are two kinds, those that bear pearls and
those that yield none. So the world was divided into Gentiles and Jews: those
instructed in the righteousness of God, and those ignorant of it; those who in
some instances wrought righteousness, and those who wrought only evil. The Jew,
as distinguished from the Gentile, was the pearl-bearing oyster. And this
distinction
3. Some shell-fish are remarkable for beauty of shape or colour, but the
oyster has an unpromising exterior, and that which contains the goodliest pearl
differs in nothing externally from the oyster that contains none. So it was
with the Lord Jesus. Of him it is said, “He hath no form
nor comeliness;
and when we shall see him there is no beauty, that we should desire him:” Isaiah
53: 2.
4. The pearl is an animal
production, the most valuable of the
animal kingdom. It is accounted by Pliny the most precious of all things. But
the point especially to be noticed is, that it is produced from the juices of
the fish by a natural process of formation within its shell. So the
righteousness of Jesus was the production of a man - the result of his perfect
obedience during the days of his humiliation, and proceeding from the constant
exercise and energy of his most holy dispositions.
5. The pearl-oyster lives upon the sea-sand near the shore, in some feet
depth of water. Now by the sea-sand is represented
6. Pearls are obtained by divers, in the employ of masters on shore; they
go forth in boats and sink themselves to the bottom by a weight attached to their
foot, and hastily gather up the oysters into a net tied, by a rope about their
throats. Thus Jesus was sought by Judas, acting not for himself but for the
Chief Priests and Pharisees. The weight that sunk him was thirty pieces of
silver, and like the pearl-diver, he went to his employment with a rope about
his neck. “He
cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself.” In the net which he spread
for another, were his own feet taken.
7. The oyster when caught is conveyed to land, and left to die by a
lingering death in a pit dug for the purpose with sand heaped over it. Thus
Jesus was left to die by a lingering death and was buried.
It
is thought that the pangs of the animal’s death help to produce the beauty of
the pearl. It is certain that the death of Jesus gave the finishing lustre to
his perfect righteousness.
8. After death the oyster is taken up out of the pit, the shell readily
opens, and the pearl is disclosed, and removed without difficulty. Herein it
differs from other valuable animal productions, which need to be cut or torn
from the animal after death, as ivory, musk, &c. Even thus the [out] resurrection
- [out from amongst the dead in ‘Hades’
(Acts 2: 31,
R.V.)] - proved
and displayed the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus: and from that day
forth it was to be exhibited in all its beauty to the believer for his
acceptance and trust.
9. The pearl is the result of the life of the
shell-fish; and accordingly the righteousness of the Lord Jesus is the product
of his most holy life. The life of the oyster is but short, the duration of
the pearl many times longer than the life of the fish. The flesh of the fish
corrupts. The pearl is incorruptible. The life of the Lord Jesus was but three
and thirty years; but his “righteousness is for
ever.” The pearl
is no part of the animal, though produced by it. Its perfection is seen only in its
separateness from it.
10. The pearl profits not the animal itself. It dies to advantage another.
Thus the righteousness of the Lord Jesus was not intended for himself but for
us. “He was
delivered for our offences
and rose again for our
justification:” Rom.
4: 25.
The
pearl lies concealed in the shell till after the animal’s death. To attempt to open
it before that period were dangerous and likely to injure the pearl, as during
life the fish closes the shell with much force. Thus Jesus could not be taken
before “his hour
was come,” for not till then was
the work fulfilled which the Father had given him to finish.
12. The pearl, though it comes from so mean a source is a rare thing, and
though obscure in its origin, is kingly in its use; the fittest ornament of an
imperial crown. The righteousness of the
Lord Jesus is the only one amongst men that can be accounted perfect [i.e., impeccable], and it is in
consequence of its perfection, that the Father has anointed Jesus king above
his fellows: and given him a name above every name.
13. The colour
of the best pearls is white; and white is the colour of righteousness and purity. Therefore
of the justified it is said, that “though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be white
as snow”: Isaiah
1: 18. To the
righteous it is promised that they shall “walk in while
raiment,” and the throne of supreme
justice which is reared at last is “a great white
throne.” The pretenders to
righteousness on the other hand are described as possessing only an outward
whiteness not natural to them and not runntng through them, but added as a coating from without. The
Pharisees, therefore, were like unto “whited sepulchres,”
and Paul reproved his unjust judge with “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.”
14. This account of the meaning of the pearl agrees with what we read of
it in Scripture. From Matt. 7: 6, we learn
that it is something holy,
as it is written, “Give not that which is holy unto dogs,
neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”
15. Again we
read of the city of
(To be continued)
* *
* * *
* *
645
THE BLOOD
AND THE WRATH
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
Once for all God has given, in a gigantic parable, what
alone saves in the final crisis of the world’s history. The visitation of the
Destroying Angel at the door of every home is Jehovah’s and overwhelming blow
at
For
the whole incident is final. Nine plagues stand for the almost measureless
patience of God, every one of the nine being to persuade Pharaoh to repentance
exactly as the design of two-thirds of the Tribulation judgments are remedial,
to induce mankind to repent:* God’s last
and overwhelming blow is now about to fall, to divide finally between the saved
and the lost. Therefore the two Judgment Prophets, who “smite earth with every plague” (Rev. 11: 6), at the
end, like Moses and Aaron, disappear: final judgment belongs to God alone: “about midnight will I
go out into the midst of
*
To the Seals and the Trumpets is attached
the comment that no re-pretence follows (Rev.
9: 20);
but the sad refrain is missing from the Bowls, which are judgments pure and simple.
** The blow at the firstborn of
sacred animals would be the disgrace of the gods powerless to protect them.
Sheep were sacred to Kneph, goats to Khem, cows to Athor, cats to Pasht, dogs and jackals to Anubis,
lions to Horus, crocodiles to Set and Sabab, hippopotami to Taouris,
apes to Thoth, and frogs to Heka.
Now
there bursts upon our view the salvation of all the ages. Over every human home
- Egyptian and Israelite - hovers the palpitating wings of the Angel: “ALL the firstborn in the
Now
the picture is so plain that its meaning is stamped upon its face. The great
law of God concerning sin is this: “The soul that sinneth, it shall
die” (Ezek. 18: 4) the Angel, embodying judgment, is on the march
to execute the law: “all have sinned, and come short
of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23). But
the Angel finds death already stamped upon the house. The blow has already
fallen in that home. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23), and the wage must not only be paid, but
produced, that the Judge’s eye may see that the sentence has been executed. The
inmates of the house were the sole cause of the lamb’s slaughter; their danger
caused its death; it died to give them life; and as the lamb had no defect (Exod. 12: 5),* it had no cause of death in itself. Lo, death is upon
the door! Blood, separated from the body, is certain proof that something or
someone has died; and since justice cannot strike twice for the same offence,
and so can never repeat a punishment which has already been suffered, the Angel
passes that door. “When I see the blood,” God says, as He passes in judgment through a sinning world, “when I see the blood” - the Blood, irrespective of the characters inside
the house; the Blood, and nothing but the Blood; the Blood, with nothing in the
universe added - “I WILL PASS OVER YOU.”
* The imputed righteousness enters in the fact that it must be a flawless
lamb. Any lamb would not do: before death it must be faultless.
Now
no one needs to be told that this tremendous drama in
*
Thus both the Angel without, and the Lamb
within, are God; for all salvation, as all judgment, is God’s alone. Both are,
in fact, Christ. The Christ who reaps His saints out of earth, and shields
A
final act perfects the salvation. It was not enough that the lamb had died:
every saved Israelite had to appropriate the death for himself by eating the
lamb. The lamb’s blood is sprinkled, but the lamb itself is also consumed: the
lamb must enter the man:- “they shall eat the flesh in that night” (Exod.
12: 8). The
doctrine of substitution is made explicable and living only by the doctrine of
identity: Christ not only dies for us, but lives in us, and no creed saves which does not simultaneously
regenerate. We become
for ever one with the Lamb; and so our present and future, as well as our past,
become one with Christ’s present and future; so that while in Him we have suffered Hell on Calvary, in Him we
already share ‘the
power of an endless life.’ The blood wards off death: the flesh supplies life. “He that eateth me, he also shall live because of me” (John 6: 57).
So the gigantic parable holds to-day. The Wrath of God
draws nearer every hour, with death in a thousand forms, and beyond all the
Second Death which is the Lake of Fire; the people of God are shortly to be
withdrawn from the world, as surely as Israel from Egypt; and the sole barrier
between us and the Angel of the Second Death is a blood-marked door - a
crucified Christ. The whole picture of a soul’s salvation is in that midnight
scene. The blood is put on the door by the householder himself - personal
faith: he puts it where every passing Egyptian can see it - confession: he
abides all night behind the blood, for anywhere else he may meet the Angel -
final perseverance: so long as the blood is on the door, the Death Angel never
enters - eternal life. Our Lord therefore ascends “with the blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13: 20, R.V.),
which, as incorruptible (1 Pet. 1: 18), is
stated to be one of the tangible facts in the unseen (Heb.
12: 24) -
as it were on the Door of Heaven, the everlasting evidence of an impregnable
shelter.
*
* *
MISSIONS TO JEWS
There
are 80 Christian organizations working among Jews; more than 30 are American, 13
are English, and 5 are German. It is most impressive how prophecy, rightly
apprehended, is a dynamo of practical service. An American Baptist Home
*
* * *
* * *
646
THE JEW A
WITNESS TO CHRISTIANITY
By BISHOP J.
B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D.
You may question, if you will, every single prophecy in
the Old Testament, but the whole history of the Jews is one continuous
prophecy, more distinct and articulate than all. You may deny, if you will, every
successive miracle which is recorded therein, but again the history of the Jews
is, from first to last, one stupendous miracle, more wonderful and convincing
than all. Here (in history) you have a small, insignificant people -
stiff-necked, rebellious, worthless; there (in Scripture) you have the most
magnificent spiritual achievements, - the most signal moral victories. What
conclusion can you draw, except that which is drawn, for you in the words which
I have read:- “The Lord thy God is He that goeth before you”? - “They are Thy people and Thine
inheritance, which Thou broughtest out by Thy
mighty power and Thy stretched out arm.”
Look
first at the capacities of the people themselves. They had no remarkable gifts
which might have led us to anticipate this unique destiny. They had no
intellectual qualities of a very high order like the Greeks - vivid
imagination, subtlety of thought, aesthetic taste; no political capacity like
the Romans, no organizing power or faculty of legislation which might secure
for them the ascendancy over the nations of the world. They were, moreover, a
stubborn, exclusive, intolerant people - an unpractical people, without the
power, or at least the will, to adapt themselves to the institutions, the
feelings, and the prejudices of the people with whom they were brought in
contact. They were believed, in consequence, to cherish an universal hatred
against the rest of mankind; and they, in turn, were hated by all - hated, not
with the hatred of an admiring envy, but the hatred of a supercilious scorn. Of
all the tribes on the face of the earth the Jews, we should have said, were the
very last to ingratiate themselves with the other races of mankind, and to lay
the civilized world at their feet. And now turn from the people themselves to
the land of their abode. Certainly this does not enable us to solve the enigma.
Their national history is one continuous record of
murmuring, of rebellion, of internal feuds, of moral and spiritual defection.
This is a concise history of the race during the period from the disruption to
the captivity. Indeed, the history of
Never
has any people lived upon the earth who passed through such terrible disasters
as the Jew. Never has any people been so near to absolute extinction again and
again and yet have survived. He was rescued from the fangs of
And
these hopes - these extravagant hopes - were more than realized. A King did
rise out of Jacob to whom ail the nations of the civilized world have rendered
homage such as no sovereign received before or after - the homage of their
heart, the homage of their lives. From east to west, from the ancient
civilization of
*
* * *
* * *
647
THE JEW
FIRST
By DR. C. K.
MOWLL
The Jew first?
The downtrodden, persecuted, despised, outcast Jew first? The world says No. God says Yes. The world has tried
hard to cast down the Jew and cast him out, but in the plan and purpose of God
he has been
first and he will be first.
I
Think
first of all of The Jew first
- as the Object of God’s choice. Which was the nation upon which God set His choice, and through whom,
in Sovereign Grace, He decided to work out His plans and purposes? Was it not
the Jewish nation? Yes, the Lord chose this nation to be a peculiar people unto
Himself, above all the nations upon the earth (Deut.
7: 6, and
14: 2).
II
Then with profound thankfulness remember The Jew first - as
the Guardian of God’s Word. What a debt
we owe to the Jewish nation for the care with which they preserved and passed
on the God-given Scriptures. They were the first nation to receive them, and
how carefully they guarded them! “Unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 2: 2), and with
what blessing to the world did they fulfil their trust!
III
Look,
too, at The Jew first - as the Proof of God’s
Faithfulness. Is there
any nation in the world which can claim priority over the Jewish nation as proving
the faithfulness of God? How fully has He carried out His promises to them and
His predictions regarding them! Joshua could say at the close of his life, “Not one thing hath failed of all the good
things which the Lord your God spake concerning you, all are come to pass unto
you, and not one thing hath failed thereof” (Josh. 23: 14). Study ‘the Jew first’ if you would sec an outstanding proof of the
faithfulness of God.
IV
And
consider The Jew first - as the Solution of God’s
Pictures. What illumination
is thrown upon the record of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, the elder brother
and the prodigal, and other stories, if the firstborn is taken as a picture of
the Jews! Consider how their treatment of the Lord Jesus Christ runs parallel
with that meted out by Cain to Abel, how God has set a mark upon them, and how
in the coming of Seth ‘instead of Abel’
(Gen. 4: 25) there is a foreshadowing of the Resurrection.
Consider how, like Esau, they lost the blessing they might have had. Consider
how, like the elder brother, they rejoiced not that there was a welcome in the
Father’s Home for the returning wanderer.
V
Nor
must you forget The Jew first - as the Channel of God’s Gift. The Lord Jesus, your Saviour and mine, born as He was
of a Virgin, belonged to the Jewish race, and recognized as His earthly father
a man of the same nation. Does not this great fact alone entitle the Jewish
nation to be considered ‘first’?
VI
And
further, reflect on The Jew first
- as the Recipient of God’s Salvation. Listen
to Peter as he addresses ‘the men of Israel’
in Acts 3: 26;
“Unto you first”
he says, “God, having raisen up His Son Jesus, sent
Him to bless you, in turning away every one of
you from his iniquities.” It was
in
VII
But then there is The
Jew first - as the Clue to God’s Plans. The budding of the fig tree, the re-awakening of the Jewish nation, the
return (in unbelief) of the Jew to his own land, this is to be the sign
that the end of this dispensation is near, and that the coming of the Lord is
at hand. With this clue in front of us, what shall we say of the days in which
we live and what manner of persons ought we to be?
VIII
And
remember lastly, The Jew first
- as the Fulfilment of God’s Purposes. The Jewish nation, now in part blinded, shall yet be the head and not
the tail (Deut. 28:
13), the
first which is now the last shall yet again be the first, all Israel shall yet
be saved, and in that day, with the recognition of their Messiah and Saviour
reigning over them in Jerusalem, and in allegiance to Him as their King, they
will go out to witness for Him, and “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea.”
Yes.
The Jew first. Where are you putting him in your missionary thought, your prayer, your
evangelistic effort? First?
May
the Lord Who has redeemed us with His blood, and sent us out to witness for
Him, give to us a greater love for the Jew and a greater desire that he may be
reached with the message of the Gospel
- Trusting and Toiling.
*
* * *
* * *
648
THE
By ROBERT GOVETT, M. A.
[PART FIVE]
(Continued from 640)
16. Again, how
quietly and noiselessly the pearl is formed! There is no outward indication of
the valuable process going on within.
Even thus righteousness is a thing
not of the exterior, but of the inner man. The want of a just
perception of this, the Saviour rebuked as folly in the Pharisees. “Now do ye Pharisees make
clean the outside of
the cup and platter, but your inward part is full of
ravening and wickedness. Ye fools, did not he that made that
which is without, make that which is
within also?” Luke 11: 39, 40. And noiseless as the pearl’s formation was the
obedience of the Lord Jesus. For thirty years he patiently continued in
well-doing unnoticed, and unknown, as the carpenter’s son. Even thus was he
beheld by the prophet in his gentle career of duteous love - “He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets.”
17 We may
observe again, that those animals whose productions or whose bodies are
valuable to man generally have some means of defence. But the oyster has none.
- It perishes passively. Where it is thrown it lies till it dies. And in this
point of view it was fit to typify him “who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb
before his shearer, opened not his mouth.”
III. Of the merchantman it is said that he “found one pearl of great price.” To him who seeks it is promised that he shall find: and there is an especial promise to him that seeks righteousness. “He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness and honour:” Prov. 21: 21. The prophets testified of this righteousness as nigh at hand in their day. “I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off; and my salvation shall not tarry:” Isaiah 46: 13. “Keep ye judgment and do justice, for my [future (1 Pet. 1: 5, 9, R.V.)] salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed”: Isaiah 56: 1.
But now the pearl is not only near, but shown; not only sought, but found. The expression “found” bespeaks its rarity. Righteousness of works was not found even in Abraham, as saith the Apostle - “What shall we say then, that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works he hath whereof to glory, but not before God:” Romans 4: 1, 2. And hence the search in heaven and earth, and [in ‘Hades’ (Acts 2: 27, 34, R.V.)] under the earth, for a man worthy in the eye of God, was vain. “I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book? ... And no one in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no one was found worthy to open and to read the book:” Rev. 5: 2-4.
IV. It is noticed that he “found one pearl.” There is great emphasis and depth of meaning in the word “one” Not unfrequently several pearls are found in the same shell, but they are generally small. And thus it is with the worthies and holy men of Scripture. We can fix on certain parts of their lives, and hold them up to admiration as points of time in which they wrought righteousness. We can point to Abraham’s leaving his country, and his faith concerning the promised seed, and the sacrifice of his son. We can bring before our eyes David’s faith in the fight with Goliath, his gentleness in sparing Saul, and his desire to build a temple to the Most High. Here are more pearls than one in the same shell.
But not thus is it with our Lord. His righteousness was but one: his life was but one act of holy obedience. It was of one piece, one grand whole. No act was less than perfection, both as regarded its circumstances and in itself. The righteous deeds of the saints are detached and separate acts, here and there a grace peeping forth amidst much of evil; a ray of light shooting athwart darkness. The best works of the holiest are little seed-pearls, good in their way, but begun at detached times, soon ended, soon broken off by unbelief and disobedience. But it is the glory of the work of Jesus that in it there is no break, no failure, no falling off. The righteousness of Christ began from his birth, grew continually and unbrokenly: every word he spake, every act he did, added to its value and increased its size. Each shining particle of the pearl fell into its rightful place. No disobedience ever marred the beauty of its water, or the perfection of its shape.
A
second reason for the Saviour’s emphatic use of the word “one” is found in
this - that there is but one such pearl throughout the universe. Its fellow
there cannot be. It is the “RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD!” As then the Scripture uses
the word with emphasis where the thing spoken of is singular in its glory, so
is it here: “Having
yet therefore ONE Son, his well-beloved, he sent him
also:” Mark 12: 6. “ONE is your master,
even the Christ; and all
ye are brethren.” “ONE is your Father which
is in heaven:” Matt. 23: 8, 9.
The Jew was seeking for many pearls; for he hoped to become “rich in goods works.” He looked to be justified by a number of repeated and detached acts. But the thought of God is far above that of man. The pearls of men are many: the pearl of God is ONE. The righteousness of Christ is moreover called “one” in Rom. 5: 18. “By one righteousness the free gift came upon all men to justification of life.” (margin.) This oneness constitutes its glory and its value. It is “one pearl of great price.” In things rare and valuable, the worth increases in a rapid rate in proportion to the size. In the diamond for instance, if one of a carat weight be worth £8, a diamond of ten carats is worth, not £80, but £800: and a diamond of a hundred carats is worth, not £800, but £80,000. Thus, while the righteous acts of the saints are pearls, and not without their value, the pearl of God is of infinite value, inasmuch as its size is vast, its beauty without film or flaw, its shape perfect, and its lustre without an equal. If the commanded obedience of a day be of value, what must be the value of the voluntary, unflawed, unbroken, righteousness of a life?
History presents us with instances of some pearls for which immense sums were given. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, had one valued at £80,000: the Emperor of Persia, in modern times, possessed one for which he paid £110,400.
V. But the spiritual pearl before us is one of very “great value,” because in it are centred those qualities which God himself accounts precious. (1) Wisdom is precious in his sight. “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom. … She is more precious than rubies” Prov. 3: 13. (2). Knowledge is precious, as it is written, “The lips of knowledge are a precious jewel:” Prov. 20: 15. (3) Faith is precious, as saith the apostle - “To them that have obtained like precious faith”: 2 Peter. 1: 1. (4) Love is precious - “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment upon the head:- Psalm 133. 1, 2. (5) The revelation of the mind of God is precious, as it is written - “The word of the Lord was precious in those days: there was no open vision:” 1 Sam. 3: 1. (6) Fidelity is beautiful in the sight of God - “Showing all good fidelity that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour:” Titus 2: 10. (7) A meek and quiet spirit is in the sight of God of great value; as saith St. Peter- “Let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price;” 1 Peter. 3: 4. All these graces and beauties meet in the pearl of God. In the righteousness of Jesus are wisdom, faith, love, the lip of knowledge, fidelity, and a meek and quiet spirit. Its lustre was completed by his death. And this is most precious before God, as saith the scripture - “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints:” Psalm 116: 15. And again, “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold. But with the precious blood of Christ.” 1 Peter 1: 18, 19. And its last excellence is, that it is the ransom price of men. “The redemption of their soul is precious:” Psalm 49: 8.
In
the history of this pearl we may see the opposite valuations of God and man. In
God’s sight, Jesus was a living stone, “chosen of God, and precious,” and his righteousness a pearl of great price. But
VI. We return now to the merchantman who found the pearl. He did not pick it up by chance; it was in the hands of a possessor who knew its value, but was willing to part with it, only he must have his price for it; and the price was such that he must go and sell all that he had in order to obtain it.
(To be continued in [PART SIX], D.V.)
*
* * *
* * *
649
By WILLIAM
ZUKERMAN
Mr. Frank Meldau, in Christian Victory,
quotes this striking testimony in Harper’s Magazine
from a writer who, as entirely oblivious of prophecy, is under no
temptation to colour the facts. - Ed. [D.
M. Panton.]
Something very strange has been happening in Palestine
during the past two years; something so remarkable and so contrary to all
political expectations that it is baffling economists and confounding social
theorists. This new manifestation has, quite naturally, captured the heart and
the imagination of the whole of world-Jewry, which is following its development
with the profoundest interest. But it has attracted also the attention of the
non-Jewish world. The League of Nations, the British Parliament, the press of
Europe and of America, all are beginning to take notice of the unusual
phenomenon going on in the Holy Land, and to follow it with undisguised
interest and curiosity.
For Palestine, derelict for centuries and most
backward, industrially, of all modern countries, has suddenly emerged before
the eyes of an astonished world as the one bright spot in the present universal
depression, as the only place, perhaps, in the Western world which has escaped
the economic blizzard raging everywhere.
The
most remarkable fact about this phenomenon is that it appeared at a time when
not only was the entire world plunged into the greatest economic depression in generations, but when politically,
too, Zionism was beset by the greatest difficulties of its career and was
fighting for its very existence. It happened soon after the tragedy of 1929;
the young Jewish settlement in Palestine lay literally bleeding from its
wounds; the Arab world was up in arms against it; British official opinion was
openly antagonistic; the reports of Sir
Walter Shaw, of Sir Hope Simpson, and the White Paper
of Lord Passfield
dealt one cruel blow after another to the fondest hopes of Zionism; the
movement was plunged into the greatest despair, and it looked as if the dream of
a Jewish national home were all but shattered. Yet it was from this very depth
of failure that the National Home arose within two brief years to a position of
economic prestige and political stability which it has certainly never known
before, and to a height of success of which it has never dreamed.
No
wonder that the event is regarded almost as a miracle in the Jewish world, and
that it serves as a powerful spiritual tonic to a weary people harassed by
pogroms, driven by Hitlerism, and faced by economic
ruin through the depression. Small as
In
spite of its industrial insignificance, the Jewish settlement in
*
* * *
* * *
650
THE HATE OF
THE JEW
The
Nazi’s intense racial hate of the Jew, entirely independent of the individual
Jew’s character or conduct seen in such utterances as Herr Hitler’s (Times,
July 25, 1933):- “If the Jew, with the help of his
Marxian creed, conquers the nations of this world, his crown will be the
funeral wreath of the human race, and the planet will drive through the ether
once again empty of mankind as it did millions of years ago. By fighting
against the Jews I am doing the Lord’s work.” So the Reich Minister of
Propaganda, Herr Goebbels:
“It is the Jews who poisoned our popular morals;
incited their Chief of Police to truncheonings and
persecutions of German patriots; who by their outrageous provocative language
did much towards the weakening of our people; who blow upon the fire of our
fourteen million Germans whose feelings are national and, therefore,
anti-Semitic; whose cowardly insolence goes so far that even the gentlest
become ravening wolves. The Jews are guilty! The Jews are guilty!”
The
consequence of such a creed can only be the annihilation of
Nor
has the German nation hesitated, so far as is at present practicable, to
practise her creed. What the Jews in
It
is true that anti-Semitic fury, however irrational and even insane, has a
Divine side of righteous retribution, in which God makes the wrath of man to
serve Him. It is the nemesis of
Nor
is it possible to exempt sections of modern Jewry from attitudes deeply evil
and dangerously provocative. How far Marxism has really permeated German Jewry
it is impossible to determine; but the birth of Bolshevism uncovers a group in
But
we get a terrible revelation of the unjustified hate of the Jew if we examine
the German facts, which reveal - since the anti-Semite charges are proved
baseless - a purely racial and fanatical hatred. “Herr
Hitler’s complaint,” says the Board of Deputies of British Jews, “that (in War-time) almost every clerk was a Jew, and almost
every Jew a clerk (see Mein Kampf, 24th
edition' Munich, 1932, p. 211, ad finem) should be studied in the light of the following
statistical evidence:- According to the Statistisches Jahrbuch Prreussisches Reich, 1932, the total population of Germany,
in 1910, was 64,925,993; of these, 603,811 (0.93 per cent., be it noted) were
adherents of the Jewish faith. No fewer than 96,000 Jews served in the German
Army; 12,000 lost their lives; promotion was granted to 23,000; military
decorations were awarded to 35,000.” The White Book of the American
Jewish Committee, in reply to the alleged flooding of Germany undesirable
Eastern Jews, points out that Jewish emigration has been the same since as
before the War; and to the charge that government offices are swamped by Jews
it is replied that actually there were only 15 persons of Jewish blood among
the 500 highest Reich officials; not a single Jewish Cabinet member, Federal or
State, in the last six years; and no Jews among nearly 500 heads of provinces,
districts and circuits, nor in the administration of the Federal railways, the Reichsbank and the Prussian State Bank. In nineteen Reich
Cabinets under the
So
a mightier Zionism is being forged in the fires of anti-Semite revival. It may
prove that the German persecution - the greatest since 1492, when 300,000 Jews
had to leave
At
a mass meeting in
The
Manchester Guardian Weekly (Aug. 4, 1933) sums up the problem
thus:- “The world seems to be divided, the Jews, into
countries in which they cannot live and countries to which they cannot
immigrate. In that more tranquil free world before the Great War it was
possible for a single country to absorb in a year more than a million
immigrants. To-day no country, great or small, can absorb annually 10,000
immigrants without careful and scientific planning. On the other hand we have
seen in the last decade how international action has contrived to find a home
for 2,000,000 Greek refugees from Anatolia in European Greece, for 160,000
transferred Bulgarians from
“No country,” said Frederick the Great, “ever got good by
injuring the Jew.” “One does not defy
*
That Mussolini does not persecute the Jew
is in exact keeping with prophecy, for the Eighth Head of Rome (Rev. 17: 11), the final Emperor, first makes an actual
alliance with Israel (Dan. 9: 27) before
he decimates the Temple and before he leads the armed hosts of Man to
annihilate the Jew.
*
* *
What nation will you find, whose annals prove
So rich an interest in Almighty love?
* * *
* * *
*
Where will you find a race like theirs, endow’d
With all that man e’er wish’d, or heaven bestow’d?
They, and they only, amongst all mankind,
Received the transcript of the eternal mind;
Were trusted with His own engraven laws,
And constituted guardians of His cause;
Theirs were the prophets, theirs the priestly call,
And theirs by birth the Saviour of us all.
* * *
* * *
*
But grace abused brings forth the foulest deeds,
As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds.
Cured of the golden calves, their fathers’ sin,
They set up self, that idol god within;
View’d a
Deliverer with disdain and hate,
Who left them still a tributary state;
Seized fast His hand, held out to set them free
From a worse yoke, and nail’d
it to the tree:
There was the consummation and the crown,
The flower of
Thence date their sad declension, and their fall,
Their woes not yet repeal’d,
thence date them all.
- WILLIAM COWPER
-------
THE
In a Temple model erected this year [1933] at the
World’s Fair at Chicago, said to be the first authentic restoration of the
edifice that was so completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, it is officially
stated that the architect, Dr. J. W. Kelchner, spent over thirty-five years delving into the
reading of documents to glean the facts of the Temple structure, its
construction and the technique of its design and ornament; and years were spent
in archaeological research. Commander Deneys Reitz has just revealed that when the news of
Lord Deneys entrance into Jerusalem reached Melchett Court, Lord
Melchett:- “Alfred, at
last the time has come for there building of King Solomon’s
temple!”*
[* See ROBERT
CORNUK’S book: “
* *
* * *
* *
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To be continued from No. 651 D.V.
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