THE VANGUARD REPRINTS
Introduction to the “Vanguard
Reprints”
by Roel Velema
David
Morrieson Panton (1870-1955), the author of the Vanguard Reprints, ministered
at Surrey Chapel,
He
succeeded Robert Govett (1813-1901) in that pulpit. Panton was the founder and editor of Dawn
magazine, a strong voice for deep Scriptural and prophetical truth from 1924
until his death in 1955. He was known as “The Prince of Prophecy.”
David
Panton was born in
DMP
(as he was affectionately known), came to
DMP
wrote numerous tracts and books, including Rapture
and The Judgment Seat of Christ.
In
later years, because of his health, he preached only once a month at Surrey
Chapel, eventually retiring in 1941.
Mrs. Margaret Barber (1866-1930), a British missionary in
This
indicates that the Vanguard Reprints have been written during the first part of
Panton’s ministry and probably before or soon after he started to edit the Dawn
Magazine in 1924. …
“We
should also be aware that the Vanguard Reprints are often outdated, due to the
time they were written. Nevertheless,
the need was felt to make these 109 concise rich Bible studies called the
Vanguard Reprints completely available again, just as they were published
almost a century ago. In fact the
Vanguard Reprints contain 108 articles.
Article no. 109 on The Revelation was included in the original copy of
the Vanguard Reprints, but not labelled as such. Nevertheless it has been
added.
The
old English text has been retained. Only
some minor typographical corrections have been made.
Roel Velema Hattem, The Netherlands, July 2005 email: rjvelema@xs4all.nl
website: www.xs4all.nl/~rjvelema
* *
*
Appendix: List of subjects of the Vanguard Reprints:
1
Seven Steps to Glory
55 Did Christ Rise as a Spirit?
2
Son or Lord - Which?
56 Excommunication and
Exclusion
3
The End of the Age
57 Christ
4
The Angel in the Fire
58
Emperor-Worship
Our
Crown in Jeopardy
59 Brotherhood
6
The Fall of Man and the Love of God
60
Catholicity
7
The Lamb of God
61 The Miracles of Christ
8
The Disciple’s Use of Money
62
Seducing Spirits
9
63
Readiness
for Rapture
64
Baptism
11
The Cross and the Kingdom
65 Expiation by Blood
12
Miraculous Gifts
66
The Church and the Kingdom
13
The Bread of God
67 Paul’s Autobiography
14
Burial to the Law
68
Why
I believe the Whole Bible
69 The Ascension
16
Works Tested by Fire
70 The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day
17
The Place of the Dead
71 Probation after Death
18
Facts Every Man Ought to Know
72 Civil War
19
73 Laying Hands in the Sacrifice
20
A Board in the Tabernacle
74 Under Law to Christ
21
Exclusion from the Kingdom
75
False Christs
22
The Glories of
76 The Two Justifications
23
The Trial of Jesus
77
The City and the Salt
24
A Sacrificial Priesthood
78
25
The Higher Criticism
79 Counsel for Young Workers
26
Adam and Christ
80 Gethsemane and
27
The Judgment Seat of Christ
81 Rapture
28
The New Birth
82 The Ethics of Atonement
29
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
83 Prayer
30
An Empty Tomb
84 The Servant of Jehovah
31
A Dying World
85 The Two Overcomings
32
An Unknown God
86 Witnesses to Christ
33
Ten Pounds
87 Watch
34
The Indestructible Jew
88 The Use of Firearms
35
Living Letters
89 The Sinless Christ
36
Schism
90 The Prophecy on Olivet
37
The Blood and the Soul
91 To Each His Work
38
The Prize of the Kingdom
92
The Seed and the Soil
39
Jehovah our Righteousness
93 Purgatory
40
Soul-Winning
94
The Image of the Invisible God
41
Onesimus
95 One Shall be Left
42
The Great Escape
96
Strangers and Pilgrims
43
A Cancelled Bond
97 The Creator Christ
44
The Blood and the Leaven
98
The Last Watch
45
The Vision of God
99 Latent Romanism
46
The Kingdom
100
Garning the Wheat
47
The Theology of Heaven
101 Lo, I am Come
48
Burial to Sin
102 The Coming Gnosticism
49
Heirs Wanted
103 Oaths
50
An Urgent Danger
104 Armageddon
51
Man and his Destiny
105 Fasting
52
The Parousia of Christ
106 Our Prize
53
The Greatness of Jesus
107 A Change of Dress
54
Social Reform
108 My Debt
109 The Revelation
* *
*
“THE VANGUARD”
REPRINTS
1
Seven Steps to Glory
Which
way do the steps to Glory slope?
Downward. Every step in the life
of our Lord was a step downward. Let us trace them.
The
first was a MENTAL RENUNCIATION. “Being originally in the form of God, [He] counted it not a thing to be grasped” - a treasure
impossible to be renounced - “to be on an equality with
God” (Phil. 2: 6). Christ was once in
the full Form of God. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His
train filled the temple. ... And one
[seraph] cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts” (Isa.
6: 1). Who is this? “These things said Isaiah, because
he saw [Christ’s] glory; and he spake of Him” (John
12: 41). All
Christ’s
second step downward was into resignation of the Glory. He “EMPTIED HIMSELF.” He resigned, not the Godhead, but equality
with the Godhead: He divested Himself of the garments of Deity: He put from Him
the blazing splendours, and the consuming fires, of the Throne. He might have come as Jehovah to Sinai. “There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled, ...
because the Lord descended upon it in fire” (Ex. 19: 16).
But our Lord came otherwise. Matt. 12: 19. A touch from Sinai was death: a touch from
Christ was life: for He had laid aside the terrors, but not the powers, of the
Godhead. “For your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8: 9).
Christ’s
third step downward was into creation. He took “the
form of A SERVANT.” He might have merely disrobed: He might have
appeared as God did to Manoah. “Wherefore askest thou
after my name, seeing it is wonderful?
... When the flame went up toward heaven from off the
altar, the angel of the Lord ascended in the
flame ... And Manoah said, We have seen God” (Jud.
13: 18). But Christ came as a
creature. “Behold,
I will bring forth my servant the Branch” (Zech. 3: 8).
The Root of David is David’s Maker: the Branch is a created Servant. Isa. 11: 1, 10; Rev. 22: 16.
Christ’s
fourth step downward was into humanity. He was “made IN THE LIKENESS OF MEN.” He might have come - a servant indeed, a
creature - yet as one of the Princes in the Throne-room of Deity. So Gabriel came. “An angel of the Lord
[stood] on the right side of the altar of incense,
... and said, I am
Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God”
(Luke 1: 19). But the Word became flesh. John 1: 14; Gal. 4: 4. Only the shoulders of the God-man could bear
the sins of the world: the Infinite entered the finite infinitely to atone. Heb. 10: 4-7.
The Pharisees said: “Thou, being a man, makest thyself
God”: the reverse was the truth, - Thou, being God, makest thyself a
man. Heb. 2: 16-17; 1 Tim. 2: 5, 6.
Christ’s
fifth step downward was into human renunciation. “Found
in fashion as a man, HE HUMBLED HIMSELF.” He might have come as Solomon. “So King Solomon
exceeded all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. And all the earth
sought the presence of Solomon” (1 Kings 10:
23). The sceptre of Alexander,
the ingots of Solomon, the legions of Caesar, the bays of Shakespeare, the
sword of Napoleon: - “the devil showeth Him all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. ... Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence,
Satan” (Matt. 4: 8). Born in a borrowed manger, and buried in a
borrowed tomb, the Maker of the worlds had not where to lay His head.
Christ’s
sixth step downward was into death. He
became “obedient even unto DEATH.” He might have
been rapt as Enoch. “Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because
God translated him: for before his translation
he hath had witness borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto God”
(Heb. 11: 5). So had Christ. John 8: 29; Prov.
12: 28. But He chose to die: He
chose not the chariot and horses of fire. “I lay down
My life for the sheep. ... No one taketh it away
from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John. 10: 15, 18).
The Hireling flees: the Good Shepherd dies. The good pleasure of God saved Enoch: the
supreme pleasure of the Father slew the Son.
Rom. 8: 32. For “apart from
shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb.
9: 22).
Christ’s
seventh step downward was into crucifixion. “Yea, the
death of THE CROSS.” He might have died as Moses. “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the
Behold
the seven steps! The consequence? “Wherefore also”
- for glory is measured by renunciation - “God highly
exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is
above every name.”
Brother,
mark the tremendous command. Downward is
to be our every step which is to lead upward to Glory. Matt.
10: 25. Luke 14: 10, 11, 33. “HAVE THIS MIND IN
YOU, WHICH
WAS ALSO IN CHRIST JESUS.”
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2
Son or Lord - Which?
“What think ye of the Christ? Whose
Son is He?” Our Lord states a
problem by presenting an enigma. “The son of David,” the Pharisees answered (Matt. 22: 42). “How then,”
Jesus replied, “doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord?
... If David calleth Him Lord, how is He is son?” Certain facts acutely intensify the
problem.
(1)
Without doubt Messiah was to be of David’s seed. “There shall come
forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a
branch out of his roots: ... unto Him shall the
nations seek” (Isa. 11: 1). 2 Sam. 7: 13.
“I will raise unto David a righteous Branch: ...
and this is His name whereby He shall be called,
The Lord our righteousness” (Jer. 23: 5). Luke 1:
32, 69. The Rabbis, no less than
the Scriptures, agreed, with one consent, that Christ was to be of David’s
seed: so also the multitudes. Matt. 12: 23.
(2)
David called the Christ his Lord when moved by the Holy Ghost. “David himself said
[it] in the Holy Spirit” (Mark 12: 36). 2 Sam.
23: 2. It was neither error, nor
falsehood, nor exaggeration, nor self-deception: David called Christ his Lord
by the infallible impulse of the Holy Ghost. 1 Cor.
12: 3.
(3)
The Lordship spoken of by David involves the Godhead. For the Psalm continues: “The Lord at thy right hand” - David’s Lord just named,
elevated to the throne of Deity - “shall strike through
kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the nations” (Ps. 110: 5).
David’s Lord is the world’s final Judge: He is God. Rom. 2: 16.
Here
then is the enigma. If the Christ is
from eternity God, how can He be David’s Son: if He is born of David, how can
He be the eternal God? The silence of
the Pharisees is extraordinarily significant.
Three
answers only were possible, and unbelief is confounded by all.
(1)
“Since David called Messiah Lord, Messiah could not be his Son.” This reply is the overthrow of the Word of
God, and therefore of God. Messiah was to be born in the city of
(2)
“Since Messiah was David’s Son, He could not be David’s Lord.” Then why did David call Him Lord? Nay more: why did the Spirit of God move
David to call him, Lord? “He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar”: if
Christ is refused as David’s Lord, we charge sin to the Holy Ghost.
(3)
“Since Messiah was both Son and Lord of David, He must be both man and God.” This would at once have established the
Messiah-ship of Jesus. Luke 2: 11. David’s God and David’s Child: “For unto us a child is born, and
His name shall be called ... the Mighty God”
(Isa. 9: 6).
Then why do ye not believe Him?
Every mouth is stopped that all unbelief may be brought in guilty before
God: it was the silence of the confounded intellect, but the unconverted heart.
These
Pharisees had been dead for a score of years.
That
is the Root. Before Jesse was, He is:
long after Jesse is dead, He is born. “Born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the son of God with power ... by the resurrection [out] of the dead” (
All
silence before the enigma is a guilty silence.
“What think ye of the Christ?” God said
to God: “Sit Thou on My right hand,” enthrone
Thyself: you have never said that to Christ. GOD HAS. David called Him
Lord; will you? The Holy Spirit in David
calls Him Lord; do you? The man after
God’s own heart said, My Lord; the woman at, the tomb said, My Lord; the
apostle wrestling with doubt said, My Lord; the worn apostle of the Gentiles
said, My Lord; the millions of the sanctified have said, My Lord. If your lips are locked, they may be locked
in the silence of the lost. Jesus was
born, as man, that He might obtain what now He dispenses, as God: He became
partaker of the human that we might become partakers of the Divine. The Son of
God became the Son of man, that the sons of men might become the sons of God. “When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son” - the eternal God - “born of a woman”- the human Christ - “THAT WE MIGHT
RECEIVE THE ADOPTION OF SONS” - (Gal. 4:
4).
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3
The End of the Age
How
will this present evil Age end? “Not by the crash of revolution,” says Mr. F. B. Meyer, “but by the spiral staircase of evolution, shall the world
pass to perfect order and beauty. The
coral island of the golden age is by this time not very far from emerging above
the surface of the stormy waters.”
Or, as Mr. R. J. Campbell
puts it: “I wish we could reach the Christian ideal of
destroying the Church by enabling the whole world to become a Church.” What saith the Scripture? For “we have the word
of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well
that ye take heed, as UNTO A LAMP shining in a dark place, until the day dawn” (2 Pet. 1: 19).
Our
Lord decides once and for ever. “The field is the world;
... the harvest is the end of the age”: “LET BOTH
[wheat and tares] GROW TOGETHER UNTIL THE HARVEST” (Matt. 13: 30, 38).
This is the overthrow of Mr. Meyer.
(1)
For the world in Harvest will be a piebald world: yellow grain and blackish
darnel, in blotches of sharply contrasted colour: not a globe rolled into
light. The moment of the advent will be
the discovery of earth’s dense darkness. “Behold,
darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples” (Isa. 60: 2). Luke 18:
8.
(2)
“By the spiral staircase of evolution”: - this
supposes all tares to evolve at last into wheat. But the silent growth of wheat and tares
evolves fruit, not an interchange of nature: the poisonous darnel ripens for
fire; the wheat ripens for the barn. Dan. 12: 10. “Bind
[the tares] in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into My barn” Rev. 14: 14-20.
(3)
“Not by the crash of revolution”: that is, by
no outside force, but by inside goodness, the world is to be saved. But the Son of man, seated on the clouds,
lets fall a rapid succession of reaping angels, sweeping earth as with a mighty
scythe: not evolution, but revolution, wielded by perfect holiness, controlled
by perfect justice, and informed with perfect discrimination, will alone
dislodge iniquity from its empire of the world. “For
the upright shall dwell in the earth, and they
that deal treacherously shall be rooted out of it” (Prov. 2: 21). Matt.
15: 13.
To
extinguish the lamp of prophecy is to plunge the Church into darkness. It is a cruel wrong to the world, for it
lulls the tares into expecting salvation without a miraculous change of nature
(Matt. 12: 33): it paralyzes missionary
effort, by proclaiming God’s Fatherhood to be universal, when Christ here
reveals that our only hope is a change of fatherhood: it corrupts church life
by the frantic methods it induces to convert tares into wheat in excess of
God’s election of grace: at last it endangers belief by making the Apocalyptic
judgments so startling a disillusionment as to rock all faith to its
foundations. For all who extinguish
God’s lamp the path is involved in the most dangerous darkness. Solemn are the
lessons of the TARES.
(1)
“Between the wheat and the darnel,” says Jerome, “so
long as it is in the blade, and is not come into ear, there is a great
resemblance, and it is either impossible, or very difficult, to discriminate
between the one and the other.”
All attempt (as by the Inquisition) to uproot the tares is forbidden: -
“lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up
the wheat with them.” No less than
Divine omniscience is needed for the eternal severance of human souls. 2 Tim. 2: 19. 1 Cor. 4: 5.
(2)
God will at last unmask all hypocrisy, and expose its perfect iniquity. “When the grain is ‘headed
out’” says Dr. Thompson, “a child cannot mistake
tares for wheat”: the day will arrive when sepulchres will be no longer
whited. (The Parable probably bears
especially upon the destiny of nominal and real disciples in Christendom.) Rom. 2: 16.
(3)
Punishment will be graded. “Bind [the tares] in bundles”: the wicked are filed off in companies,
each in his own order. Matt. 10: 15. Rom. 2: 5. But all suffer the vengeance of eternal fire.
Rev. 21: 8.
Exquisite
are the lessons of the WHEAT.
(1)
No forest tree, deep-rooted in earth, but a fragile annual, for ever passing in
successive harvests; - the Church’s garner is a better world. Heb. 13: 14.
(2)
Wheat dies downward, as it ripens upward; the stalk and roots are dead, as the
grain is ripe: so the soul that dies to earth is the soul that ripens to the
Throne of God. It is the sanctity of the
relaxing grasp.
(3)
A ripe wheat-field is a field of bowed heads: the heavier our load of grace,
the lowlier will be our faces. Jas. 4: 5, 6.
(4)
Sun after sun smites burning into the grain, and turns it to sweetness: trial,
for God’s child, is the burning of His Father’s sunshine. 1 Pet. 4: 12-14.
(5)
Wheat ripens by absorbing light: to abide in our Light is to bear much fruit:
abiding means ripening.
(6)
Wheat is cut in its order of maturity: the rapture of Firstfruits is prior to
the rapture of Harvest. Rev. 14: 4, 15.
Unripe wheat remains for the violent heats of the Tribulation. Luke 21: 36.
Rev. 3: 3.
(7)
The Husband-man delays till the crop ripens: “when the
fruit is ripe, immediately he putteth forth the
sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark 4: 29).
The Kingdom waits for the holiness of the sons of the Kingdom.
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4
The Angel in the Fire
On
every high hill in the Old Testament a telescope is planted: from every ancient
mount of God we catch sight of
Who
is the Angel of the Lord? A Divine Person.*
“The angel of the Lord appeared unto [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; ...
[and] said, I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid
to look upon God” (Ex. 3: 2, 6). So when Jacob had wrestled with the Angel, he
found he had prevailed with God. So here: - “Then
Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord, [and said], We shall surely die, because
we have seen God” (Jud. 13: 21). Still we ask, with Manoah, “What is thy name?” Who is the Divine Being that revealed
God to the Patriarchs; the Angel of the Covenant, the Angel of the Presence,
the Jehovah-Angel, the Man that wrestled, the Man that was the Lord? An apostle answers. “No man hath seen God
at any time; the only-begotten SON, which
is in the bosom of the Father. He hath declared Him” (John
1: 18). Here also the Angel hints
His identity. “Wherefore askest thou after my name,
seeing it is Wonderful?” Name with God are not so much names, as
realities: Wonderful is a title of Christ linked especially with the wonder of
wonders, the Incarnation. “Unto us a child is born, ... and
His name shall be called Wonderful” (Isa. 9:
6). Nor is the Atonement less a
wonder. “The
Angel [in the fire] did wondrously”:
already our Lord’s thoughts and affections circle around the place that is
called
* See Gen. 48: 16; Ex. 23: 20; Jud 2: 1. But in Hag. 1: 13
it is applied to a prophet, and in Mal. 2: 7
to a priest.
The
action now begins. Manoah offers the
Angel meat and drink: the Angel bids him make of the kid a burnt-offering. The disciples said to Jesus, “Rabbi, eat”; but He
answered; “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent
Me, and to accomplish His work” (John 4: 34): “sacrifice
and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body”
- as an incarnate burnt-offering - “didst Thou prepare
for Me; ... then said I, Lo, I am come to do Thy will”
(Heb. 3. 5).
Then the Angel stept into the fire.
Christ replaced all burnt-offerings: He is the Angel in the Fire.
(1)
The altar was a bare, natural rock, unchiseled of man. Ex.
20: 25. No tool but God’s shaped
the mound of
(2)
The Angel stept on to the rock, and then into the fire. An altar is that which presents to God the
sin bearing sacrifice: its fire is the answering wrath revealed from God
against all unrighteousness. The altar
goes up: the fire comes down: the substitute perishes between. Christ stept on to the altar, bearing sin: He
stept into the fire, suffering wrath.
(3)
The Angel “caused a wonder to take place” (Lange).
What was the wonder? That He
survived the fire. The sacrifice was wrapt in fire: so was Christ. The sacrifice was consumed in the fire: so
was not Christ. Solitary among all sacrifices, He rose out of death whither no
fire can follow. Why? Because, as fire feeds on fuel, so wrath
consumes sin; but here was a Lamb, without spot, without blemish, THE LAMB OF GOD.
(4)
The Angel remained unknown until the sacrifice had been offered. “Thou must offer it
unto the Lord. For Manoah knew not that he was the angel of the Lord”
John 1: 10.
Not until He had passed through the fire was Jesus “declared to be the Son of God with power ... by the resurrection of the dead” (
Terror
falls upon Manoah. God has been in the
Fire. “All the
multitudes, ... when they beheld the things that
were done, returned smiting their breasts”
(Luke 23: 48): His murderers, realising whom
they had crucified, cry, “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts
2: 37). To see God is, for a
sinner, to die: to have slain, with all mankind, the Son of God is to die
eternally. But the sacrifice removes the
terror. “If the
Lord were pleased to kill us, He would not have
received a burnt-offering.” The
climax of human sin is also the climax of Divine love. The Angel of the Lord - here is an infinite
Sacrifice: the Angel steps on to the altar - here is a Bearer of guilt: the
Angel enters the fire - here is an absorption of wrath: the Angel ascends out
of the flame - behold God’s reception of a perfect atonement. Heb. 9: 12. God would never have made
What
still remains? Our choice between the
Angel and the Fire. God’s wrath must
rest on sin: if in the Angel, we are out of the fire; out of the Angel, we must
abide in the fire, Rev. 21: 8.
Will
you ask God to place you at once in Christ? Rom. 8:
1. “By
which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all” (Heb. 10: 10).
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5
Our Crown in Jeopardy
The
inspired record exists to prove the parallel: God so wrought, that we might
know His character; He so wrote, that we might know it for ever. Moreover the parallel points specifically to
the acts of judgment. “They were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things”
- the repeated overthrows - “were our examples.” The judgments are embedded in the Word as in
rock for ever, that the Wilderness should become the kindergarten of the
Church. To deny the parallel is to
overthrow inspiration: to ignore the parallel is to silence the Scripture: to
admit the parallel is to disclose a momentous peril to the believer in Christ.
The
apostle lays down, in figure, the ample bedrock of our own spiritual
standing. “Our
fathers were all under the cloud” - redeemed by the blood of the Lamb -
“and all passed through the sea” - separated
from a godless world - “and were all baptised unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea” - a people buried to sin - “and did all eat the same spiritual meat” - at the
Lord’s Table - “and did all drink the same spiritual
drink” - the Spirit from the smitten Lord - “for
they drank of a spiritual rock; that followed them: and the rock was Christ.” Standing in grace could hardly be stated, in
so few words, more exhaustively: if privilege could render immune,
God’s
sharp dilemma impales us on its one horn or on the other. Overthrown
“Know ye not that they which run in a race all run, but one receiveth THE
PRIZE? Even so run, that ye may attain. … For* I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, how that
our fathers,” so privileged, “were overthrown.” God never put us under the Blood to withdraw
us from its blessed efficacy (
*
See R.V. and Critical Editions
Nevertheless
the command abides: Matt. 6: 33. “Take heed” - never presume: “God
is faithful” - never despair. Every escape out of temptation is a
straight path into the coming Glory. “God is faithful, who will not
suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.” God offers prizes in order that we may win
them: His heart yearns for our entry into the Kingdom. “Walk worthily of God,
who is calling you into His own kingdom and glory”
(1 Thess. 2: 12). The entrance lies in the worthy walk. Matt. 7: 21.
If our hearts linger in
“NOW THESE THINGS HAPPENED UNTO THEM BY WAY OF EXAMPLE;
AND THEY WERE
WRITTEN FOR OUR ADMONITION, UPON WHOM THE ENDS OF THE AGES ARE COME.”
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6
The Fall of Man and the Love of God
Out
of two attributes dominant in the character of the Most High flow all the
dealings of God with man: -Justice and Mercy.
Mercy is first in the field. How
so? Creation was a sovereign act of the
love of God. Called out of nothingness, in which he had no claim on God to be
created, into a sphere where every sense found a world for its enjoyment, and
every desire had God for its satisfaction, CREATION
was an act of pure and undiluted grace.
Grace spoke God’s first word to man - “And God
blessed them” (Gen. 1: 22). Justice stept almost as promptly into the
field. A law is enacted, - “Thou shalt not eat of it”; a penalty is attached, - “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” What does this mean? Mercy says, - “I have
given you life”: Justice says, - “Keep it holy.” Mercy says, - “I have
made you upright”: Justice says, - “Keep
yourself as upright as you were made.”
Mark one fact of supreme importance.
The command implies that man can fall. God cannot fall (Jas. 1: 17): any one not God, can, and, of
necessity, may: on no other condition could God make worlds at all. Unchangeableness, like eternity or infinity,
belongs to God alone, an attribute which He can no more transmit to the
creature than eternity or infinity; and liability to change necessarily
involves liability to fall. I may fall,
because I am not God. So Love said, - “I have given you life”: Righteousness said, - “Keep it holy.”
Now
arises the first dreadful check to the love of God: - the FALL. Eccl. 7: 29. The Tempter came: they listened: they
fell. God never decreed their fall: He
never even decreed to permit it: He simply left them alone. God made man
upright: man had no claim on God to keep him upright. His liability to fall arose from his being a
creature; his actual fall was his own choice.
Instantly the penalty of the law flashed down like the blade of a
guillotine. Guilt, is imputed (Rom. 5: 12): the stock is ruined (Ps. 51: 5): sin becomes the law of my members (Rom. 7: 14, 23).
The deadly virus of sin enters the one blood of which God has made all
nations. One star alone rose on the tragic gloom. Probably by the Fall alone could the creature
learn that Jehovah alone changes not: by no means less awful could he read the
impassable gulf between himself and the dreadful perfections of his Maker.
Mercy
now re-enters the field. What claim has
man, fallen, on God? None whatever. Innocent, he had no claim on God to uphold: a
rebel, far less has he any claim to be restored. Sovereign Mercy now alone can save. REDEMPTION must deliver from the
outside, for a stone bounding down a hillside can be saved by no inherent
force: yet also from the inside, for man must be justified as man, or not at
all. Behold the Incarnation! I Cor. xv. 21, 47.
But
the Incarnation cannot save. Justice
cries, - “Hold! Mercy, you
are free to grant favours only where Justice is not outraged: I said, ‘If thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die’: plunge not the bosom of God
into a suicidal war of fratricidal attributes.” Mercy replies: - “That has been in my heart
from the first. Therefore behold a lamb for a man - Abel: a lamb for a family -
Noah; a lamb for a household -
A
last check to the love of God now confronts us more dreadful even than the
fall. What is it? Left alone not one human soul would ever have
accepted the Gospel of Christ. A bowl
that has a twist in it will always swerve with its bias: cast it a million
times, and a million times it will swerve: so a fallen nature carries in it a
perpetually evil will. We may love
Christ if we will: left to ourselves we never will. Once again steps in tireless, patient,
infinite Grace. Creation - pure mercy;
Redemption - pure mercy; both are now made effectual for good by the amazing
mercy of ELECTION. Eph. 1: 3-5.
The truth lodge the whole glory in God.
Election is the love of God removing the scales from our eyes, to behold
the precipice at our feet, and to leap back, with trembling joy, into the Arms
that save. Election inclines the will to
will to be saved: when man’s will (Rev. 22: 17)
coincides with God’s will (1 Tim. 2: 4),
salvation is instantaneous. Yet Justice
has not left the field. The non-elect are hurrying themselves to death with all
their might; they harden themselves; they love sin with their whole soul:
Justice merely lets them alone. Christ’s death can save all the world if they
believe: it will save all those ordained to eternal life. Acts. 13: 48.
The names of the elect are in the Lamb’s Book of Life; but this offers
no obstacle to the salvation of anyone else: not “he
that is elected not,” but “he that believeth not,”
is condemned. Mark 16: 16. God never decreed the death of him that dieth
(Ezek. 18: 32; 1 Tim. 2: 4; 2 Pet. 3: 9):
neither did He see aught in me which deserved anything but death. God says again and again that nothing in us
prompted Him to choose us. Rom. 9: 11. The reasons of that choice lie in a region
human foot has never travelled.
“Oh, the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how
unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways
past finding out!” (Rom. 11: 33).
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7
The Lamb of God
1. - LAMB OF THE PASSOVER HAD TO
BE TAKEN UP ON THE TENTH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH. “In the tenth day of the [first] month they shall take to them every man a lamb” (Ex. 12: 3).
In that month Jesus was crucified; and John tells us the day on which He
entered
2.
- THE LAMB WAS TO BE BROUGHT ON THE DAY
THAT IT WAS TETHERED. Every householder was to “take” a lamb, by purchase, if not already possessed. 2 Kings 12: 16. Mark 11: 15. As soon as the supper at
3. - THE LAMB WAS TO BE KEPT
TETHERED FOR FOUR DAYS WITHIN REACH OF THE PLACE OF SLAUGHTER. “Ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same
month” (Ex. 12: 6). From the tenth to
the fourteenth Judas kept watch over the bought Lamb, with a view to its
sacrifice: “they weighed unto him thirty pieces of
silver. And
from that time he sought opportunity to deliver Him unto them.” Each day
(which seems to have included a Sabbath) was spent in
4. - THE LAMB MUST BE OF SPECIAL
BIRTH, CHARACTER, AND BEHAVIOR. (1) It must be a firstborn (Ex. 13: 2): Jesus could not have been the Lamb did
we not read - “she brought forth her firstborn son”
(Luke 2: 7).
(2) It must be without any evil-favoredness (Deut.
17: 1); “your lamb shall be without blemish”
(Ex. 12: 5): so Pilate pronounced, “I find no fault in Him at all” (John 18: 38); and Caiaphas, the priestly examiner
of lambs, pronounced the witnesses against him false. Matt.
26: 60. 1 Pet. 1: 19. (3) The
prophets foretold Messiah as standing on His death-day as a dumb lamb (Isa. 53: 7): “and He gave
him no answer, not even to one word” (Matt. 27: 14).
5.
- THE LAMB MUST BE KILLED ON A SPECIFIC
DATE. “They killed” -
not ate - “the passover on the fourteenth day of the
first month” (2 Chron. 35: 1): “the whole congregation of
6.
- NO BONE OF THE LAMB MIGHT BE BROKEN. “Neither shall ye break a bone thereof” (Ex. 12: 46). The Samaritans, whose sacrifices
to-day are living survivals of Jewish ritual, pierce each lamb by a wooden
spit, with a cross-bar near the extremity; that is, they transfix the lamb with
a cross, they crucify it.
7.
- THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB ALONE COULD
GUARD THE HOUSEHOLD FROM THE ANGEL OF DEATH. Ex.
12: 23. Blood on the overarching
lintels - for none can mount to Heaven save through blood: blood on the right
post, blood on the left post - for none can pass into salvation except through
blood: but no blood on the threshold - for woe be to the soul that treads under
foot the blood of the Son of God. Heb. 10: 29.
Will you pass through and under God’s blood-stained archway now? “Behold, the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world.” “Being now
justified by His blood, we shall be saved from
the wrath of God through Him” (Rom. 5: 9).
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8
The Disciple’s Use of Money
A STEWARD is one who handles another person’s goods, and such
is every Christian: all money in our hands is a TRUST FUND. Why? Because “the silver
is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Hag.
2: 8). The expenditure of the
fund will be examined by the Lord of the steward. “After a long time
the lord of those servants cometh, and maketh a
reckoning with them” (Matt. 25: 19):
“so then each one of us shall give account of himself
to God” (Rom. 14: 12). Therefore “trade ye
herewith till I come” (Luke 19: 13).
Two
sharply defined characteristics stand out in the STEWARD our Lord pictures (Luke 16:
1-13): a wise foresight, and a deliberate unscrupulousness. As a child of this evil generation, he
defrauds his master, and so is called by Christ a steward of unrighteousness:
but - and on this the whole parable turns - his foresight is so wise as to be
our example forever. Here is the
parallel. He is a steward: so am I. For his evil generation he acts with great
wisdom: for my holy generation I must be no less wise. He fears poverty in old age: I am to fear
poverty in eternity. His stewardship was
drawing rapidly to a close: so is mine.
The wealth slipping from his grasp had to be used immediately: so must
mine. He strains every nerve to mould
the future through the present: so ought I.
Wise foresight that uses money with a view to the future his lord
commends: so will mine. Yet - this is
the startling summary of our Lord - so few, so rare, so solitary are the
Christians who are thus wise that our Lord has practically to condemn us
all. “The sons
of this age are wiser than the sons of the light.”
“One great purpose of this life is to form friendships for
the next”: Christ tells us how to do it. “I say
unto you, Make to yourselves FRIENDS by means of the mammon of
unrighteousness [the wealth of a fallen world]; that,
when it shall fail, they
may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” Do righteously what the Steward did
unrighteously: by bringing joy into the sorrowing face now prepare for yourself
a royal welcome then. A small gift can
purchase an eternal gratitude. So money
is wisely invested only when it is spent on others: for what we keep we lose,
and what we give we retain: and investment for eternity can be made only by
expenditure in time. Nor does this apply
to the wealthy only. “He that is faithful in a very little”- the poorest
disciple - “is faithful also in much”. Mark 12: 43, 44. It is “according as a
man hath, not according as he hath not” (2 Cor. 8: 12): for every disciple, his handling of
what he has daily reveals to God what he is; and day by day it decides his
eternal investments. All needs are thus
met: - God’s requirement of His own (1 Chron. 29:
14); the distress of the needy (1 John 3: 17);
and the development of unselfishness (Acts 20: 35)
by perhaps the most searching test to which character can be put. Who but God could have conceived so daring,
so unearthly, so divine a method of investment?
Prov. 11: 24. Luke 6: 38. The Christian steers by a star invisible from
earth.
Our
Lord’s next point is of vast importance.
Character so tested in time is the ground of God’s promotion to wealth
in eternity. “If
therefore ye have been unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the TRUE RICHES?” Not God: for He says, - “It is required in stewards, that
a man be found faithful” (I Cor. iv. 2). Christ assumes that the true riches lie in
the eternal tabernacles. John 14: 2. Matt. 6: 20. Riches in this ye are a phantom wealth, a
ghost of possession, in which one of two things always happens, - either it
flees from us, or we flee from it. Ps. 39: 6. Prov. 23: 5. 1 John 2: 17. “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. ... But God said unto him, Thou
fool, this night is thy soul required of thee;
and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?” (Luke
12: 20). Riches in the age to
come are unsoiled, uncorrupting, unforfeited; the true riches, the mammon of
righteousness. Here is revealed the true value of money. He who is faithful in a cottage will be
faithful in a palace; he who is righteous in a field will be righteous in a
province: God is shaping, and training, and, above all, searching for hands
that can be trusted with the true riches.
In whom does He find them? In the
faithful stewards of to-day. “Well done, good and faithful
servant: thou hast been faithful over a few
things, I will set thee over many things:
enter thou into the
joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25: 21).
A
lovely point remains. Faithful
stewardship on earth culminates in personal ownership in heaven. “And if ye have not
been faithful in that which is another’s, who
will give you that which is YOUR OWN?” Riches in heaven are not a stewardship, but a
possession; an irrevocable gift, and therefore of incomparable value. We amass in heaven by expending on earth: we
grasp the true riches by a wise expenditure of the false. Who stands security? God Himself.
“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto
the Lord, and his good deed will He pay him
again” (Prov. 19: 17). What percentage is promised? Ten thousand. “Every
one that hath left houses, ... or lands, for My name’s sake, shall
receive a hundred-fold”(Matt. 19: 29),
- i.e., of the capital so invested. What
is the stewardship? “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Tim. 6: 7), - a stewardship sharply defined by
cradle and grave.
What
is the ownership? “Sell that ye have, and give
alms; make for yourselves purses which wax not
old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not”
(Luke 12: 33), the eternal wealth, our
own. Solemn is our Lord’s summary. Two master-methods of handling money exist in
the world to-day, and two only, - hoarding for self, and spending for God: two
tempers so irreconcilable, that their simultaneous adoption is impossible. “No servant can serve
two masters. YE CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON.”
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9
The
heart of all sacerdotalism is THE MASS. If there be a priesthood, there must be a
sacrifice. Heb. 8: 3. “The body and blood of Christ,” says the Creed of the
Council of Trent, “together with His soul and
divinity, are daily sacrificed on the altar by priests.” Or, as Dr. Moberly of Oxford puts it, the
church “in her eucharistic worship on earth is
identified with Christ’s sacrificial self-oblation to the Father.” Here is the keystone on which rests the entire
arch of sacerdotalism: if it be removed, the archway falls in ruins. What saith God?
2. -
Why
(1) did he offer many? Because no
sacrifice under the Law covered every sin.
The fivefold offerings (Heb. x. 8);
sacrifices for the priests, sacrifices for the people (Heb.
7: 27); a lamb for a man, or a lamb for the nation: - every sacrifice
was partial and limited. But this
Priest’s offering covers all sin. “He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down.” 1 John 2: 2.
Why
(2) did the priest offer often? Because no sacrifice under the Law atoned for
ever. This year’s lamb was no atonement for last year’s sin: much less could
any sacrifice atone forward. But “He, when He had offered one
sacrifice ... for ever, sat down.”
Why
(3) did the priest offer the same
sacrifices? Because no sacrifice
under the Law cured the sin. Heb. x. 1-4.
The same sins, repeated, called for the same sacrifices: “the which can never take away sins.” But “He was
manifested to take away sins” (1 John 3: 5),
both removing their guilt, and breaking their power: “for
by one offering He hath perfected for ever” - the removal of the guilt -
“them who are being sanctified” (Alford) - the breaking of the
power. Christ’s blood cures, as well as
atones. Thus the Levitical sacrifices
were numerous, because partial; frequent, because temporary; and repeated,
because ineffectual; whereas
3. - THE SACRIFICE AVAILS BECAUSE IT IS
ENDED. “Now, where remission [of sins] is,
there is no more offering for sin.” Why?
Because God never demands a victim twice. One offering having been made for all sin,
all sin-offering ceases: the world-penalty has been borne by a world-sacrifice:
God is satisfied with the work of the seated Priest: there is no more sacrifice
for sins. “Christ
also, having been once for all offered to bear
the sins of many” (Heb. 9: 28), “through His own blood entered in once for all” (Heb. 9: 12): so that “we
have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for
all” (Heb. 10: 10): and He therefore
“needeth not daily ... to
offer up sacrifices: ... for this He did once
for all, when He offered up Himself” (Heb. 7: 27).
To repeat Christ’s sacrifice is to charge it with failure: to renounce
the forgiveness of sins: to offer what none but He can offer without daring
impiety (Heb. 9: 14): and to subject Him
daily (which is impossible) to the agonies of
4. - THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS IS BLOOD
MORE COSTLY THAN A THOUSAND WORLDS. Then think not
lightly of forgiveness. Accept it. The
Priest is seated - therefore the work is done: He is seated with God -
therefore you may be as satisfied as God: He has offered for the sins of the
whole world - therefore for yours: He has offered for every sin - therefore for
your worst: He has offered it for ever - therefore it is an everlasting pardon:
He has offered it as God’s cure for sin - therefore it alone can cure your sin:
He has offered it once for all - therefore eternity holds no second salvation.
Accept it.
“THE BLOOD OF JESUS
CHRIST HIS SON CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SIN” (1
John 1: 7).
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10
Readiness for Rapture
“Pray always, that ye may be
accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21: 36).
God has not revealed the date of the advent in order that we may always
be watchful: nor has He revealed the standard of holiness for rapture in order
that we may be always pressing on to perfection. What is required?
1. - THE GIRT LOIN: “Let your loins be girded
about” (Luke 12: 35). Flowing Oriental garments, if loosed, check
work, and impede flight. “Thus shall ye eat it; with
your loins girded, your shoes on your feet,
and your staff in your hand: and ye shall eat it in haste: it
is the Lord’s passover. For I will go through
2. - THE BURNING LAMP: “Let your lamps be burning.” Lamps are kept burning at night only: and all
night, unless we sleep. “Now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far
spent, and the day is at hand” (Rom. 13: 11).
“The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord”
(Prov. 20: 27): every disciple is a lit
lamp: and right through the moral midnight Christ expects a burning flame. Of
John He said: “He was the lamp” holding the
Light, “that burneth and shineth” (John 5: 35): “from evening
to morning before the Lord” the lamp is “to burn
continually” (Ex. 27: 20). Burning without shining - zeal without
knowledge: shining without burning - light without love: God demands both:
burning with heat to God, shining with light to men. Matt.
5: 16.
3. - THE FIXT GAZE: “Be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their lord.” Christ said: “It is
expedient that I go away”; He never said, It is expedient that I stay
away: He commands conscious acceptance of the truth of the second coming. A visionary is one who sees visions that have
no correspondence with reality: the looking disciple beholds the march of God’s
purposes from eternity to eternity, crystallising into fact as they precipitate
into time; so that every prophetic word is an inevitable fact. “Watch for ye know
not the hour”: “Pray that ye may be accounted
worthy”: perpetual watchfulness; perpetual prayer; these are the mind
and heart that come from God. So, “blessed are those servants.” Not, blessed are all servants; but, “blessed are those servants, whom
the Lord when He cometh shall find watching.” Heb. 9: 28; Tit.
2: 13; 2 Tim. 4: 8; Rev. 3: 10.
The carnal disciple forfeits the beatitude. Matt. 24: 48-51;
Luke 21: 34; Rev. 3: 3. The
deeper the midnight, the more urgent the vigil.
The first watch has yesterday’s wakefulness in it; the fourth watch has
to-morrow’s wakefulness in it: but, “if He shall come
in the second watch, and if in the third,
and find them so, blessed
are those servants.” Christ returns
later than the early church thought - not in the first watch; but earlier than
the last churches will dream - not in the fourth watch: not so early as
impatience desires, nor so late as carelessness assumes. The unknown hour of the burglary compels that
the householder sit up all night: watching, in
The
fruit of the vigil is such as to make the loss of a thousand worlds as dust in
the balance. “He
cometh” - inquisition, approval, promotion; “He maketh
them sit down” - rest, glory, enthronement; “HE SERVES THEM” - the King of kings
girding Himself once again with a towel, at the side of His watchful
child. This is a verse beyond all human
comment. Does Christ speak the truth? He does.
Does He always speak the truth? He does.
Then is this an absolute fact? It
is. Then build all life upon this fact,
for to build on aught else is faithlessness to Him, and folly for eternity, “Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he
busies himself.” The girt loin -
incessant service: the burning lamp - incessant holiness: the fixt gaze -
incessant vigil: finally,
4. - THE PREPARED LIFE: incessant
readiness. “Be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son of Man cometh.” Death can be sudden, but it nearly always
throws out warning symptoms: there will be no warning symptoms here. 1 Thess. 5: 2. Sudden as an avalanche, swift as the
lightning, irrevocable as death - one flash, and the watchful will be gone, and
the last judgments will be here. Matt. 24: 40-42. 1 Cor. 15: 52. One fact is supreme. Christ might have returned at any moment
these eighteen hundred years: He may return at any moment now. Much unfulfilled prophecy remains before He
comes with His saints: none, before He comes for them. Therefore “become”
- so the Greek - “ye also ready.” One known sin undropt, one known command
unobeyed, one known truth unbelieved, one part of the life knowingly unyielded,
and we stand in jeopardy. Unbeliever, the last shadows are falling across the
world, and therefore across your life: yet you are still not ready. But “there is time”
- as Napoleon said, on the news of a great defeat - “to
win a victory before the sun goes down.”
Your coming Judge is your present Saviour: “BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND THOU SHALT BE
SAVED.”
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11
The Cross and the Kingdom
Upon
a mountain Moses received the Decalogue: upon a mountain Elijah confounded
Baal’s prophets: upon a mountain Jesus, with Moses and Elijah, reveals
Himself. The mountains are the
beacon-lights God kindles down the ages.
But all culminate in
“There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the
The
Kingdom will be on [this] EARTH. The Transfiguration was an earthly scene: no angels
appear throughout: Elijah is type of rapt saints, Moses of risen saints, and
the disciples of nations in the flesh: and even after the handing over of the
kingdom to God (1 Cor. 15: 24), mankind is
planted afresh upon a new earth. Rev. xxi. 1.
On the eve of the Advent the Elder-angels in heaven cry: - “Thou didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every
tribe; ... and they reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5: 9). Matt. 5: 5. For the gates of Hades - as our Lord has just
said - prevail not to imprison buried Moses: rapt Elijah returns to earth, as
do the armies of heaven with Christ. Rev. 19: 14.
Jude 14. The City in the heavens,
overhanging earth, will be the metropolis from which the Millennial rulers will reign. Rev. 19:
7; 21: 2.
Selections
from the redeemed of all ages are in the Kingdom: all who are “ACCOUNTED WORTHY to attain to that age, and
the resurrection from [among] the dead” (Luke 20: 35).
From the patriarchs and prophets - as Elijah: from the Law - as Moses:
from the Church - as Peter, John, and James, the only three disciples whom
Jesus re-named. “To him that overcometh, to him will I give ... a white
stone, and upon the stone a new name written”
(Rev. 2: 17). The Kingdom is the reward of the holy (Eph. 5: 3-6),
the sufferer (Matt. 5: 10), the
obedient (Matt. 7: 21), the martyr (Matt.
10: 39). “Thou hast a few names in
Yet
the bed-rock beneath the Kingdom is the CROSS. It is the absorbing theme of the Glory. Eph. 2: 7.
The ‘going out’ of the Camp, to atone; the ‘going out’ of life, laid
down; the ‘going out’ of the tomb, left empty; the ‘going out’ of a world,
redeemed: no plant will ever bloom in our Paradise, no note will ever thrill in
our songs, no jewel will ever gleam in our crown, that is not the fruit of the
exodus of Jesus. For good works are but
the foam on a wave which started at the cross.
“Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to work, for His good pleasure”
(Phil. 2: 12). 1
Cor. 15: 10. Gal. 2: 20. So we
seek the Kingdom on our knees. “And as He was praying, the
fashion of His countenance was altered, and His
raiment became white and dazzling.”
So pray! “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may
be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21: 36).
Behold
the Man! “Jesus was found alone?” God had
appeared visibly to Moses: He had responded with lightnings to Elijah: but the
servants disappear in the revealing of the Son. “This
is My SON, My chosen: hear ye Him.” The moon of the Law and the stars of the
Prophets die out of the sky in the glory of the dawn: the cross itself takes
its value only from the Person who was on it.
Moses tarried with God till, saturated with glory from without, his face
shone: Jesus, not in face only, but even in raiment, blazed forth at will with
the glory of the Godhead, from within. A
heathen ruler, on his deathbed, ordered his servants to make a large cross, and
place it in his bedchamber. “Now,” he said, “lay me on it”: and as he thus lay dying, looking by
faith to the blood of Christ, he cried, - “It lifts
me! it lifts me! Jesus saves me!”
Beneath all redemption, and all glory, lies the cross.
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12
Miraculous Gifts
1.
- Is it not a fact that miraculous orders were inherent in the church as it
left the hands of God? “God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly
prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of
healings, helps, governments,
divers kinds of tongues”(1 Cor 12: 28). “He gave some to be apostles; and
some, prophets; and
some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto
the building up of the body of Christ: till we
all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4: 11).
1 Tim. 1: 18. Acts 8: 18.
2.
- Is it not a fact that gifts of miracle spring essentially out of
justification by faith? “This only would I learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? ... He therefore that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal.
3: 2). “These signs shall follow them that
believe: in My name shall they cast out devils;
they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no
wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover” (Mark 16: 17). John 7: 38, 39.
3.
- Is it not a fact that God’s gifts, which are never revoked, deepen holiness, enlarge
knowledge, and constitute the true wealth of the church? “The gifts and the
calling of God are without repentance”(Rom.
xi. 29). “I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established”(Rom. i. 11).
“He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself”
(1 Cor. 14: 4). “Ye
have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know
all things; and ye need not that any one teach
you” (1 John 2: 20, 27). John 16: 13. 1 Cor. 2: 15. 1 Cor. 14: 3. “In everything ye
were enriched in Him, in all utterance and all
knowledge; so that ye come behind in no gift;
waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Cor. 1: 5).
4.
- Is it not a fact that miraculous gifts, lapsing with the fall of the church
into worldliness and justification by works, nevertheless God still bids us
seek? “Verily,
verily, I say unto you,
He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater works than these shall he do; because I
go unto the Father” (John 14: 12). “I would have you all
speak with tongues”: “but desire earnestly the
greater gifts”: “follow after love; yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy”: “desire earnestly to prophesy, and
forbid not to speak with tongues” (1 Cor.
14: 5; 12: 31; 14: 1, 39). “For to you is the
promise [of the gift of the Holy Ghost], and to
your children, and to all that are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him”
(Acts 2: 39).
5.
- Is it not a fact that the divine tests imply the possibility of either spirit
manifesting itself at any moment, while ensuring the perfect safety of all
tested intercourse? “Beloved, believe not every
spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God: because
many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the
Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God”
(1 John 4: 1). “Wherefore I give you
to understand, that no man speaking in the
Spirit of God” - i.e., no inspired man - ”saith,
Jesus is anathema; and
no man”- i.e., inspired - “can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy
Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 3). Matt. 7: 15-20. Gal. 1: 8. 2 John 7. “Quench not the Spirit;
despise not prophesyings; prove all things; hold fast
that which is good; abstain from every form of
evil” (1 Thess. 5: 19). Rev. 2: 2.
6.
- Is it not a fact that miraculous evangelising powers were never more needed
than at the present moment amongst the increased masses of mankind? “Christ wrought through me, for
the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed,
in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 15: 18). “God also
hearing witness with them, both by signs and
wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will” (Heb.
2: 4). “They
went forth everywhere, the Lord working with
them, and confirming the word by the signs that
followed” (Mark 16: 20). “And now, Lord, ... grant unto Thy
servants to speak Thy word with all boldness, while
Thou stretchest forth Thy hand to heal; and that
signs and wonders may be done through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus”
(Acts 4: 29).
7.
- Is it not a fact that prophecy indicates the restored activity of inspiration
and miracle in the neighbourhood of the second advent? “And the gospel must
first be preached unto all the nations.
And when they lead you to judgment, ... whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not
ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost”(Mark xiii. 10).
“And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth
of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2: 17,
20). “Behold,
the husbandman [God:
John 15: 1] waiteth
for the precious fruit of the earth, being
patient over it, until it receive the early and
the latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the
coming of the Lord is at hand” (Jas. 5: 7).
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13
The Bread of God
“I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he
shall live for ever” (John 6: 51).
1.
- See the preparation of the Bread.
Bread passes through three processes before it can be eaten. (1) “Bread corn is
bruised” (Isa. 28: 28), or ground, or
crushed into flour - an emblem of the deepest suffering. Peter said to the Lord, Spare Thyself; the
Lord said to Peter, Deny thyself: and none but God has ever known the sore and
wounded spirit carried by the Son of God.
“Reproach,” He says, “has broken My heart” (Ps.
69: 20). The Bread of Life was “wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities” (Isa. 53: 5).
(2) The flour must pass under the fire.
Man could crush Him, and did: only God could inflict on Him the fires of
divine wrath, and He did. Jesus, as the
Lamb, became identified with the loathsome iniquities of mankind: what a
horrible thing to God! What a horror to
Christ! “My God,
My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me? O My God, I cry in the daytime,
but Thou answerest not”(Ps.
22: 1). The fire of the
judgment-furnace drove its heat through and through the Bread of Life. (3) The loaf must be broken before it is
eaten. Had our Lord stopped at a bruised
life, or come down, alive, from a wrath-carrying cross, we could not have been
saved. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink His blood” - so severed in judicial
death – “ye have no life:” that is, I must die
that you may live; I must take the place of your forfeited life. Not, I have become flesh for the life of the
world; but, “The bread which I will give is My flesh,
for the life of the world:” and “this is My body, which is
broken for you,” bruised in life, burnt in suffering, broken in death.
2.
- See an ingredient absent from this Bread.
“No meal offering ... shall be made with leaven: for
ye shall burn no leaven, as an offering made by
fire unto the Lord” (Lev. 2: 11). Behold the sinlessness of Jesus. Leaven is ferment, or corruption, the least
crumb of which, dropt into the dough, permeates the loaf: the least sin, so
contagious is it, so all-devouring, would have made of Christ, Bread of
death. “He who
knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5: 21); “He who did no sin” (1 Pet.
2: 22); He who was “without sin” (Heb. 4: 15); in whom “is
no sin”(1 John 3: 5); - “He whom the Father sanctified” - as consecrated Bread
- “and sent into the world” - as Bread of God -
was “holy, guileless,
undefiled, separated
from sinners” (Heb. 7: 26).
3.
- See the qualities of the Bread. (1) It
is Bread from heaven,
4.
- See the distribution of the Bread. How
much did our Lord charge for the bread which He made for the five
thousand? God’s Bread is free, because
(1) It is made for the hunger. As Christ
created the barley for a hungry crowd, so God has sent Christ as bread for a
starving world. “It giveth life unto the world”: “My flesh
for the life of the world”: if Christ, with five loaves, could satisfy
five thousand, He could feed five million; He is sent as food for a world God wants
to save. “If any
man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.” (2) It exceeds the hunger. “Not sufficient,”
says Philip: “Twelve baskets full over,” is
Christ’s reply. The more we consume, the
more remains: a world may feed, and yet the Bread is for ever in a blessed
surplus. (3) It satisfies the hunger. As
all heat of the sun, all the moisture of the shower, all the fruitfulness of
the field, met, as it were, in the hands of Christ, and the barley multiplied:
so this Bread, taken into the soul, grows and expands and multiplies, until
every desire in the soul that God planted, God satisfies. “I am the Bread of Life; he
that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he that
believeth on Me shall never thirst.”
5.
- Only one thing remains: the Bread must be eaten, or there can be no life. “Except ye eat, ... ye have no
life.” Christ is life, and if He
is outside us, life is outside us. No
corpse eats: if we are not feeding on Christ it is because we are dead: and so
long as we don’t eat, we remain dead.
The richest nutriment in the world is starvation diet so long as it is
outside our mouths. No man can eat for
me, nor can I eat for another man. What
do we do with food? We look at it, we
see it is not poison, we observe how others flourish on it, we desire it; we
put it to our mouth, we eat it, we digest it, so that it becomes bone of our
bone, blood of our blood: consequently we are alive. So it is with Christ. Unless we eat of Him, we cannot be
saved. What is the eating? “He that BELIEVETH hath
eternal life. I am the Bread of Life.” “HE THAT COMETH TO ME SHALL NOT HUNGER, AND HE THAT
BELIEVETH ON ME SHALL NEVER THIRST.”
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14
Burial to Law
A
Jew might object against a Christian: LAW
is Jehovah’s mind as to what a man ought to do; man was created to do that Law;
that is, the soul of man and the law of God are wedded together for ever:
therefore your desertion of the law of Moses for the worship of Christ is
spiritual adultery. It is an objection
forcible and profound.
Paul,
in reply, first aggravates the difficulty.
For he asserts that the failure of a marriage does not dissolve the
union. Wrath in the husband, revolt in
the wife, utter incompatibility of temper in both, - nothing can dissolve what
God united: “Are ye ignorant, brethren, how that the law
hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth?” (Rom. 7: 1).
What God says man should be, he must be; what God says he should do, he
must do: there is no option. Now the
marriage is a failure. The wife is in
constant revolt: the soul is in chronic DISOBEDIENCE. What did the Law: itself say for such
cases? The husband could divorce the
wife, or obtain sentence against her in the courts for unfaithfulness; but
under no circumstances could a wife free herself from the law of her husband, Rom. 7: 2.
She is bound for life. So all the
Law, being a holy law, can do is to prosecute the Soul, being a sinning soul,
in the courts of God: and the issue of the trial is known. “The soul that
sinneth it shall die”: “the wages of sin is
death”: the wife is doomed.
So
only God can solve the problem: how does He solve it? He shuts us up to one startling, yet obvious,
conclusion. Without the soul’s death
there can be no life: the only escape out of marriage is through death. “If the husband die,
she is discharged from the law of the husband:
... if the husband die, she
is free from the law.” So the Christian begins to answer: - You charge
me with spiritual adultery; but the wife of whom you are speaking is dead. For observe a change in the apostle’s figure:
he does not say, the Law dies; he says, the soul dies. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye” - the
wife - “were MADE
DEAD” - put to death - “to the law.” The Law remains in all its dread obligations
and power: how else should God judge the world? but as earthly law runs no
longer against a corpse, - as no officer of the Crown can deliver a writ on a
dead body - so the soul dies to law: out of death to law arises life to God.
At
this point the Gospel reveals its exquisite message. “Ye were put to death
through the body of Christ.” Ye -
through Christ’s body: Law slew you in the person of Christ. Law, in capital punishment, takes effect on
the body of the criminal: CHRIST’S BODY came between me and the
mortal blow of the Law. Faith makes one
with Christ. 1 Cor. 6: 17. Law slew Him - Law slew me: Law was done with
Him in His death - Law was done with me in His death: Christ is divorced from
law - I am divorced from law, absolutely and forever. “Christ is the end of
the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth” (
So
vital is this truth that God has enshrined it in a rite of perpetual
obligation. Here is a watery trench, a
grave, into which a man who is to be baptised steps down. What of his spirit? It died with Christ upon the cross. Gal. 2: 20.
But what of his body? It must be
put to death also. He must be buried
alive: he must go down into death: so actual is the picture that, if kept under
the water, he would die. The Law does
not so keep him under only because it kept Christ under until He died. “Are ye ignorant that
all we who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were buried
therefore with Him through BAPTISM
into death” (Rom. 6: 3). Baptism is our ritual answer to the
circumcised Jew. It shows the Christian
not guilty of adultery against the Law: for the Law loses its last grip of the
man in the water: it has no power over a buried man: baptism is a funeral rite
over one dead to law. So all who are in
living union with Christ are commanded to proclaim, by this startling rite of
God, their release, their discharge, their divorce from the Law. “Repent ye, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”
(Acts 2: 38); for “by
Him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”
(Acts 13: 39).
Salvation
closes, however, not in a funeral, but in a RE-MARRIAGE. Gal. 2: 19. “Ye were made dead to the law, ... that ye should be joined to another, even to Him who was
raised from the dead.” Death to
law takes place on faith: burial to law takes place in the ritual grave, -
thenceforth to walk together “in newness of life”
(Rom. 6: 4). Col.
2: 12. “I espoused you to one husband” -
re-marriage with a divorced husband Law itself forbids (Deut. 24: 3, 4) - “that 1 might present
you as a pure virgin to Christ”(2 Cor. 11: 2):
“not being without law to God, but under law to Christ” (I
Cor. 9: 21). Earth knows no union
so close, so tender, so miraculous: “this mystery is
great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of
the church” (Eph. 5: 32) Without it we cannot be saved. The flesh is under law, yet antagonistic to
law, and is at last slain by law. To lay
hold of law - that is, morality, good works, inherent goodness - for salvation,
is to grasp a live electric wire, to clutch a naked blade, to leap into; a
burning caldron. But to lay hold of
Christ is to die to law, and to be lifted into union with the Son of God. “For I through law
died unto law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified
with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but
CHRIST; LIVETH
IN ME” (Gal. 2: 19).
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15
Why I Believe the Whole Bible
“O FOOLISH men, and slow of heart to believe in ALL that the prophets have spoken” (Luke
24: 25). Here is a startling
fact. Infidels charge Christians with
folly for believing so much of the Bible: Christ charges Christians with folly
for believing so little. “O fools and slow of heart to believe all.” It is no light matter to be called a fool by
the Son of God. It is easier to
insinuate a doubt than to create a faith; it is easier to abandon the Bible
than to obey it; it is easier to ruin a soul than to save one. Infidels are doing the easy work: Christ is
doing the hard.
Christ,
risen from the dead, does not rebuke the disciples for not believing the women,
nor even for not believing the angels, but for not believing the PROPHETS. It is probable that not a book of the Bible
has been written except by a prophet.
Moses was a prophet (and tradition says he was the author of ‘Job’); the historical books were written by seers,
or prophets (2 Chron. 9: 29); David and
Solomon were prophets; Isaiah to Malachi are one block of prophets; and none
but apostles - still higher than prophets - wrote the New Testament, except
Mark and Luke. Prophecy, the function of
a prophet, is, as a rule, foretelling, but is always inspired utterance. One passage is decisive. “No prophecy ever came by the will of man”: it is no
mental resolve of a human brain: “but men spake from
God, being moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1: 21).
God said to Moses, - “Aaron thy brother shall be
thy prophet” (Ex. 7: 1), i.e., thy
mouthpiece: so “the Word of the Lord” came “by the mouth of Jeremiah” (2
Chron. 36: 21). “Thou testifiedst against them by Thy Spirit through Thy
prophets” (Neh. 9: 30). The prophets were thus flutes through which
God blew the music of His words; scripture, therefore, is the crystallised
breath of the Holy Ghost, and the Bible a telephone down the ages, at the other
end of which is the Voice of God.
Our
Lord thus makes Himself responsible for all that the Prophets have spoken. He never accommodates the scriptures to
unbelief: He commands unbelief to accommodate itself to the scriptures. This is a challenge of the gravest import,
because no mouth uttered sayings so hard as the mouth of the Son of God. Who so presents His DEITY as to say that all men are to honour the Son even as they
honour the Father? John 5: 23.
Who
affirms and underscores the Atonement - the eating of the broken Body, and the
drinking of the shed Blood - as that without which there is no life? John 6: 53.
Who states verbal inspiration as drastically as it can be stated - to
the jot, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and the tittle, the tiny
turns of a stroke by which one letter differs from another? Matt. 5: 18.
Who gathers up the most startling miracles of the Old Testament - the
Flood (Matt. 24: 39),
The
awful question underlying all others is this, - not, “Are
these doctrines true?” - but, “Is Christ true?” Those mighty shoulders have taken upon
themselves the burden of the whole Word of God: now, as ever, all faith and all
doubt rage around one lonely Form. I
believe the whole Bible because I believe Christ. “Lord,
to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words
of eternal life. And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of
God” (John 6: 68).
I
also believe the WHOLE BIBLE because
(1) no hard saying of Christ is half so hard as the mystery of a world without
Christ; and all the hard sayings of Christ put together are not so hard as the
creed which accepts some and rejects others.
Partial faith creates greater difficulties for itself than faith ever
has to meet. (2) A revelation from God
which is not deeper than my comprehension is to me no revelation at all. A Book which comes out of eternity must have
the depths of eternity in it. Isa. 55: 8, 9. (3) Half the doubts in the heart spring from
sin in the life; and the very truth which is doubted is the truth which would
cure the sin. John 15: 3. A disciple’s grace is measured by his
acceptance of the truths that hit him: therefore accept the whole Bible: it is
a wounding that heals. (4) The whole
scripture is necessary to feed my soul. Matt 4: 4. As silkworms fed on different leaves produce
silks of varied colours - vine leaves producing a bright red, and lettuce an
emerald green - so the soul’s life is lovely according to the fulness of its
Scripture diet. (5) Scripture
difficulties are a test of faith. “O fools and slow of heart” - not, to reconcile, nor,
to understand but, - “to believe.” For “all scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness; that the man of
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works” (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17).
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16
Works Tested by Fire
1. - A FOUNDATION: “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid,
which is Jesus Christ” or, that Jesus is the
Christ. I Cor. 3: 11. God laid the foundation in fact: every wise
master-builder lays it in doctrine. “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious
corner stone of sure foundation”(Isa. 28: 16). Every regenerate soul is planted upon that
Rock as upon adamant. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of
God” (1 John 5: 1). “Jesus Christ” - the personal Rock; “Jesus is the Christ” - the doctrinal rock; upon this
foundation rests all revelation, all regeneration, and all the millions of the
saved. Matt. 16: 18.
2. - A WARNING: “But let each [disciple] take heed
how he buildeth thereon.” Works
emerge into God’s sight only after the foundation of faith is laid: works
before faith are sins to be repented of. Heb. 6: 1. “But” implies
one foundation, but many superstructures: “take heed”
implies that grave consequences attach to how a disciple builds after
conversion. Slowly, surely,
imperceptibly a house of works - and, for the Christian teacher, a house of
doctrine - is rising round each disciple’s life: costly granite and marble,
silver columns, and cornices of gold; or else wooden doorways, hay mixed with
mud for the walls, and straw thatching for the roof. The supreme fact is this:
one set of materials stands fire, the other feeds fire; and, since the fire is
coming, “let each take heed how he buildeth thereon.”
Tit. 3: 8.
3. - A CHOICE: “If any buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble.” Every
disciple has absolute control over the materials with which he builds: he
selects which he chooses. Contending
motives sway the choice: popularity, social prestige, wealth, pleasure; love to
Christ, fidelity, a sense of truth, the fear of God. What is the precious stonework? Material that matches the foundation. There are a thousand voices in the world
to-day: to the wise man there is but One.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away [in
fire: 2 Pet. 3: 7], but
My words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24: 35):
that is, the divine Word will survive the judgment fires. Every thought, every word, every act is to be
built out of the quarries of Scripture. 2 Cor. 10:
5; Matt. 28: 20; Matt. 4: 4. No
higher level is possible to a Christian teacher than to frame a not altogether
inadequate setting for the jewels of revelation; no higher level is possible to
a Christian disciple than to translate into life the mind of God as revealed in
the Word of God: the one transmits the Book into the soul, the other translates
the Book into the life. Gal. 6: 4.
4.
- AN EXPOSURE: “Each [disciple’s] work shall be made manifest: for
the day shall declare it, because it is revealed
in fire.” The believer’s life is
a palimpsest, the invisible lines of which steal forth into sight as it nears
God’s fires. The foundation is not
tested; it is, as Isaiah says, already a tried Stone: it is the superstructure
which the fire searches. No believer
will be put on trial for his standing, but for his walk; not for his faith, but
for his works; not for his life, but for his living; not for his foundation,
but for his superstructure. “For we [disciples] must all be
made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body,
according to what he hath done” (2 Cor. 5: 10); “in the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ” (Rom. 2: 16). Rom. 14:
12.
5.
- A TEST: “The fire itself shall prove
each [disciple’s] work of what sort it is.” The kind of material is infallibly revealed
by the fire: it is searched through and through by the eyes of Christ. Rev. 1: 14. Mal. 3: 2. The fire does not cleanse,
it tries: and, if trying the inflammable, it destroys: Christ does not purge
our works, but searches them judicially.
“These things saith the Son of God, who hath His eyes like a flame” - here is the fire “I know thy works” - the fire plays into the heart of the
material; “and thy love and faith and ministry and
patience” - the fire tests the quality, and finds gold; “and that thy last works are more than the first” - the
fire tests the quantity, and finds much fine gold. Rev.
2: 19. The fire proves.
6.
- A REWARD: “If any [disciple’s] work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward.” Salvation
stands upon the foundation, reward rests upon the superstructure. “If the work shall abide - reward”:
reward is utterly conditional on works.
“Behold, I come
quickly; and My reward is with Me, to render to each [disciple] according
as his work is” (Rev. 22: 12): and “each shall receive his own reward according to his own labour”
(1 Cor. 2: 8). Eph
6: 8.
7.
- A LOSS: “If any [disciple’s] work shall be burned, he shall
suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved;
yet as through fire.” Himself saved - for no [redeemed] soul can ever
be swept off the foundation of Christ: his work burned - for a discipleship may
end in piteous conflagration. As fire-balls
descend upon a laboriously-constructed dwelling, and the inmate within,
overwhelmed by a sudden burst of flame, escapes for his life through a blazing
corridor of fire - “he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.” THEREFORE
“LET EACH
[DISCIPLE] PROVE
HIS OWN WORK” NOW (Gal. 6: 4).
“O could I always live for eternity, preach for
eternity, pray for eternity, and speak for eternity! I want to see only God.”
- Whitfield.
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17
The Place of the Dead
No
dead soul stands in the presence of God in heaven. The Type, first of all, forbids it. Aaron shall bring the blood “within the veil, ... and make
atonement for the holy place. ... And there
shall be NO MAN in the tent of
meeting when he goeth in to make atonement, until
he come out” (Lev. 16: 17).
This
is exactly the high priestly work on which our Lord is now engaged. “Through His own
blood [He] entered in once for all into the holy
place, ... [to cleanse] the heavenly things with
better sacrifices,” that is, His own (Heb.
9: 12, 23). So long as our High
Priest tarries within the
The
Law of God also forbids it. To touch a
corpse, or even a grave, was to be unclean.
“Whosoever in the open field toucheth ...
a dead body, or a bone
of a man, or a grave, shall be UNCLEAN
seven days” (Num. 19: 16). Nor was it a corpse only which defiled: a far
deeper defilement sprang from contact with a departed spirit. “There shall not be found with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer” - i.e., one who holds
intercourse with the dead – “for whosoever doeth these
things is an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut.
18: 11). Death, in all its parts,
is Legal uncleanness: it is the visible Curse of God, the holy, resting on man,
the sinner; it is the foul rotting of the leprosy of sin. None such can stand in the
One
crucial example is given that the dead are still unascended. David had said: - “Thou
wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt
Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption.” David, says the apostle, could not have
spoken this of his own soul. Why
not? Because, Peter says, “this Jesus did God raise up”; whereas “David is NOT ASCENDED into
the heavens” (Acts 2: 34), and
therefore he could not have spoken it of himself. This assumes that no disembodied human
spirit [soul] is ascended to God.
For if not David, who is? “He died and was
buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day.” Death is an unclothing (2 Cor. 5: 4): God’s kings and priests may not
appear before Him unclothed. Ex. 28: 42, 43.
“No man hath ascended into heaven” (John 3: 13).
Affirmative
revelation also establishes the truth. THE RESURRECTION of the body is a fact
absolutely cardinal to the Christian faith.
“If the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet
in your sins” (1 Cor. 15: 16): -
Atonement has never been made, Death still reigns, the Curse clings to the dead
or ever. But Christ is risen: and “if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that
dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). John 5: 28.
For a naked spirit, [i.e a disembodied soul] judicially disembodied, to enter the presence of God
on high would be to approach Him in the shrouds of the Curse.
[* NOTE. The “spirit” which returns to God at the time of Death, is
His animating spirit (Luke 8: 55, R.V.)]
For
THE BODY has [not
yet] been
redeemed [Rom. 8: 23]. Glorified human spirits are unknown to the
Word of God: glorified human persons - body, soul, and spirit - are to be the
perfect fruit of redemption. “How long, O Lord, holy and true?” (Rev. vi.
10), cry the naked souls
under the Altar, waiting to be clothed upon: so “ourselves
also ... groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to
wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8: 23); for “we wait
for a Saviour ... who shall fashion the body of
our humiliation, that it be conformed to the
body of His glory” (Phil. 3: 21). Earth is one vast field sown with the dead:
out of it, like the rising Lord, will soon burst the waving harvests of
resurrection. I Cor. 15: 20-26. This cannot be until our High Priest issues
from the
*
The actual locality of Sheol, or Hades,
is indicated by such scriptures as these: - Matt.
12: 40; Num 16: 30, 33; 1 Sam. 28: 13, 14; Job 26: 5, 6; Amos 9: 2; Eph. 4: 9;
and Ps. 63: 9. So scripture
speaks of descending into it (Prov. 1: 12; Isa. 5:
14; Ezek. 31: 15, 16), and of rising up out of it (I Sam. 2: 6; Ps. 30: 3; Prov. 15: 24; Rom. 10: 7).
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18.
Facts Every Man Ought to Know
1.
- ALL men have got to meet God as a
Judge. “God now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because
He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world” (Acts 17: 30): for “all the
world [shall] be brought under the judgment of
God” (Rom. 3: 19). This judgment will be conducted by strict
process of law, based on the acts of every soul, acts recorded with unerring
precision in the books of God. “I saw the dead, the great and
the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened; ... and
the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their
works” (Rev. 20: 12). Nor can any man avoid this judgment. “Reckonest thou this,
O man, ... that thou
shall escape the judgment of God” (
2.
- The Judge will adjudicate exactly according to the evidence. It is impossible for a just judge to clear a
guilty man, or to condemn a man who has obeyed the law. “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the righteous, both
of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov.
17: 15). Of this abomination God,
of all judges, will not be guilty: and He says so. “The
Lord [is] a God ... that will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34: 7): “He will not
at all acquit the wicked” (Nah. 1: 3). He is a Judge of absolute righteousness. “Shall not the Judge
of all the earth do right”(Gen. 18: 25):
“for He cometh to judge the earth; He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth” (Ps. 96: 13): “at the
revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who
will render unto every man according to His works” (
3.
- A man must be able to present to the Judge a perfect righteousness. “Not the hearers of a
law are accounted righteous before God, but the
doers of a law shall be justified” (Rom. 2:
13). What does this mean? That it
is not enough to be forgiven for having broken the Law: if I am to be
saved. I must be proved to have kept it:
the soul must be proved, not only innocent, but righteous. “Cursed is every one
which continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law,
to do them” (Gal. 3:
10). The only righteousness which
any judge - much more the Righteous Judge - can accept is a complete, flawless,
life-long obedience to the whole Law: less than this involves the Curse of a
broken Law. One sin snaps the chain, one
disobedience shatters the vase that holds eternal life. “For whosoever shall
keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one
point, he is become guilty of all” (Jas. 2:
10). Law can justify only those
who have kept it in its entirety.
4.
- No man has such a righteousness to present.
With the Searcher of all hearts as Judge, my conscience as accuser, my
life as evidence, and the secrets of my heart as witnesses, what is the finding
of the just Judge? “All under sin; as it is written, There is
none righteous, no not one” (
5.
- A perfect righteousness has been provided.
What is it? “The righteousness of our God and
Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1: 1). Christ obeyed the whole Law. Matt. 5: 17. John 8: 29. His righteousness is the righteousness of a
Man: it is a righteousness according to Law: it is the righteousness whereby
alone the Law’s prisoner is justified. “A man is not justified by works of law, except through faith in Jesus Christ; ... because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified”
(Gal. 2: 16). Here is a paradox. A man is not justified by works of law,
except: He is, and he is not: what does it mean? This.
I am not justified by works of law wrought by myself: I am justified by
works of law wrought by Christ. What I
did not do, He did: what I was not, He was: and if “in
Christ,” I am “found” - not guilty, but,
“in Him, not having a
righteousness of mine own, even that which is of
the law, but that which is through faith in
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by
faith” (Phil. 3: 9). In Christ, His righteousness is mine: for “through the obedience of the One shall the many be made
righteous”(Rom. 5: 19), “unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works”
(Rom. 4: 6).
6.
- This perfect righteousness may become any man’s. “The
righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus [is] unto all” (Rom. 3: 22). To refuse it is to be lost: even as
7.
- This righteousness becomes any man’s simply on faith. Christ wove; I wear: Christ obeyed; I
believe: Christ gives; I take. “The righteousness which is through faith in Christ,” –
“the righteousness which is from God [as a gift]
upon [the shoulders of] faith”
(Phil. 3: 9): “the
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them
that believe” (Rom. 3: 22). Christ wove the flawless robe: He bore it up
from the wardrobe of His grave (John. 16: 10):
He clothes me in it the moment I believe: - the Law is vindicated, the Judge is
satisfied, the angels rejoice, and one more soul passes into everlasting life. Isa. 61: 10. Rom. 3: 26, 31.
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19.
This
decade appears to be, for
For
the awakening has come. Eleven years ago
Ponder
the peril that this implies. The Great
Wall is now all too narrow to restrain her overflowing millions. Two-and-a-half
millions have poured into
Nor
is it less wonderful how the winds of God are sweeping over the plains of
This
decade appears to be
“THEY THAT BE WISE
SHALL SHINE AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT; AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS AS THE
STARS FOR EVER AND EVER” (Dan. 12: 3).
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20.
A Board in the Tabernacle
1. - THE BOARD. Ex. 26: 15-30.
Cut from shittim or acacia, a tree which grew in the desert, a cheap and
common timber, each board was worth about half-a-crown. It is a figure of our common humanity. The sinless human nature our Lord took, is so
described. “He
grew up as a tender plant, and as a root out of
a dry ground” - the shittim is a wilderness tree - “He hath no form nor comeliness” (Isa. 53: 2).
Half-a-crown is all our worth: the extraordinary value of a human soul
lies in the value God puts upon it, not in its intrinsic worth. The tree is
felled: its root in earth is absolutely severed: no longer “flourishing as a bay tree,” it lies a prostrate log,
passive in the hands of the Carpenter of Nazareth, until planed and grooved and
shaped into a board for the House of God.
2. - ITS STANDING. In the
wilderness it was felled; in the wilderness it now stands for God: where a soul
is saved, there it must shine. But now
founded on what? The tree’s roots are
replaced by silver sockets, cast from the ransom-money. “The rich shall not
give more, and the poor shall not give less,
than the half-shekel” - a silver coin - “to make atonement for your souls” (Ex. 30: 15).
The whole Tabernacle stood upon the atonement-money, and the whole of
the atonement-money was used for supporting the structure. “For other foundation
can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3: 11).
I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand;
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.
The
soul’s worth, 2s. 6d.; each socket, £250: what God founds the saved soul on is
of vastly greater value than the soul itself: “who gave
Himself a ransom” (1 Tim. 2: 6). 1 Pet. 1: 18. Matt. 20: 28.
3. - ITS SOCKETS. “Two sockets under one board”:
why? Because Christ had to do a double
work for my soul. His life obeyed the law in perfect righteousness; His death
satisfied the law in perfect atonement: so in Him I have obeyed all the Law
required, and have satisfied all the Law demanded.
Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die;
Another’s life, Another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.
4. - ITS COVERING. “Overlay the boards with gold.” I rest upon Christ, but I also dwell in
Christ: my standing is on what He did, but my life is in Him: my resting-place
is of silver, but my dwelling-place is gold.
All grains and knots and stains in the wood are now invisible: the dead
board is lost in the life and glory of Another. Isa.
61: 10. “In Christ”: - that is an address
which will always find a saint. Rom. 16: 7. Gal. 1:
22. (The baptised disciple has
put on Christ in spirit, soul, and body: Gal. 3: 27.) The soul, half-a-crown; the sockets, £500;
the gold plating, £250: salvation is six thousand times the value of the thing
saved, or £36,000 for the forty-eight boards.
God’s salvation is more costly than we shall ever know.
5. - ITS ERECTION. The Board is
not erected in the wilderness by itself: its loneliness - “hateful, hating one another”
(Tit. 3: 3) - belonged to the old life of
the Tree. A board is sawn and planed and
shaped for building; so that many boards, dovetailed, compacted, and mutually
supporting, may form a house. So in
Christ “ye also are builded together for a habitation
of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2: 22): “for we are a sanctuary of God; even as God said, I will dwell in them”
(2 Cor. 6: 16). Forty-eight boards: - four, the number of
earth, twelve, the number of perfection: the perfection of earthly worship is
impossible without the association of all.
6. - ITS LINKS. Four visible
and one invisible bound the house together: so it was in the first of God’s
churches. Acts 2: 37-47. “Pricked in their
heart” - the tree felled; “they received his
word” - the silver sockets; “were baptised”
- visible absorption into the gold; “added together”
- the boards compacted; “the apostles’ teaching”
- bar one; “and fellowship” - bar two; “the breaking of bread” - bar three; “the prayers” - bar four: one faith, one love, one
communion, one worship. The invisible
bar was in all, and ran through all, the only unity for ever impossible of
rupture: for “in one Spirit were we all baptised into
one body” (1 Cor. 12: 13). Eph. 2: 18. Phil. 1: 27. Eph. 4: 3. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost, without
which discipleship does not exist (Rom. 8: 9),
is the one visible unity which can never be broken.
7. - ITS DESTINY. The Tree rots
where it grows - no motion, no progress: its cradle is its grave. But the Board ever advances, as part of ‘a moving tent,’ each day pitched “a day’s march nearer home.” The Tabernacle, of boards, crossing the
wilderness, is the Church on earth; the
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21.
Exclusion from the Kingdom
1.
- Godly servants of Christ have understood the Scriptures to teach the
possibility of a believer’s exclusion. So Mr.
Robert Chapman: “Has any child of God any warrant
of Scripture to expect that he will reign with the Lord during the period of Rev. 20.? But, on the contrary, has not every child of
God a promise of reigning with Christ in the perfect and final state?”* So Mr. G. H.
Pember: “To those who believe on Him, but go no
further, the Lord does, indeed, give eternal life; but the fruition of it will
not begin until the Last Day, until the thousand years of the Millennial reign
are ended. Such persons will not, therefore, be permitted to enter the Kingdom
of the Heavens.” So Dr, A. T. Pierson: “The greatest of all the revelations about the future
condition of the saints is, that they are to be identified with Jesus Christ in
His reign, - that is, those who ‘overcome.’ Not all saints are to be elevated to this position; this
is for victorious saints.” So Mr. Robert Govett: “The native magnitude of this truth must speedily redeem it
from all obscurity. Those who have the single eye will perceive its amplitude
of evidence, and embrace it, in spite of the solemn awe of God which it
produces, and the depth of our own responsibility which it discloses.Ӥ
* Morning Star, Oct, 1902. .. The Church, the Churches,
and the Mysteries, p. 46. .. Life of Faith, Sept. 14, 1904.
§ Preface to Entrance Into the Kingdom.
2.
- It is certain that all crowns are conditional on works done after faith. 2 Tim. 2: 5. (1) The crown of incorruption. “In a race all run,
but one receiveth the prize. Even so run, that ye may attain.
And every man that striveth in the games is
temperate in all things. Now they do it to
receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible” (1 Cor. 9: 24, 25).
Can that racer be crowned who failed in the running? Paul dreaded the loss of the crown for
himself: “lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.” (2) The crown of
rejoicing. “What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye,
before our Lord Jesus at His coming?” (1 Thess. 2: 19).
Dan 12: 3. Can he be crowned for turning many to
righteousness who never turned one? (3)
The crown of glory. “The elders therefore among you I
exhort, Tend the flock of God, … and when the chief Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5: 1-4).
Can a disciple be rewarded for shepherding the flock of God who never
did it? (4) The crown of righteousness. “I have kept
the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me
the crown of righteousness, ... and not only to
me, but also to all them that have loved His
appearing” (2 Tim. 4: 7, 8). Can the crown for watchfulness be given to
one who never watched? (5) The crown of life. “Blessed
is the man that endureth temptation: for when he
hath been approved, he shall receive the crown
of life” (Jas. 1: 12). Rev. 2: 10.
Can he be crowned for resisting temptation who succumbed to it? That a crown may be lost to a believer is as
certain as any truth in Holy Scripture.
“Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take
thy crown” (Rev. 3: 11). Matt. 7: 21.
3.
- Scripture states that the Kingdom is offered to all believers as the
master-prize for service and suffering. “He that
overcometh, and he that keepeth My works unto
the end, to him will I give authority over the
nations” (Rev. 2: 26). 2 Tim. 2: 12. It was a supreme desire of Paul. He abandoned all, he says, and suffered all,
“if by any means I may attain unto the [select] resurrection from the dead. Not that I have
already obtained, ... but one thing I do,
forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching
forward to the things which are before, I press
on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore,
as many as be perfect, be
thus minded” (Phil. 3: 11-15). For the fall of
4.
- Scripture also explicitly asserts the exclusion of certain believers. Proud (Matt. 18:
3, 5: 3); unfaithful (Matt. 24: 48-51);
disobedient (Luke 12: 47, 48); covetous (Eph. 5: 5); effeminate (1
Cor. 6: 9); slothful (Matt. 11: 12);
strife-loving (Gal. 5: 20); unbaptised (John 3: 5); erroneous (1
Cor. 3: 15); or luxurious (Luke 6: 24)
disciples are unripe for the duties and harmony of Messiah’s Reign. Most rigorously also will all unclean
disciples be excluded. Eph. 5: 3-8; 1 Thess. 4: 3-7.
The
Holy Ghost has given a summary of exclusion. “Now the
works of the flesh are manifest, which are
these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I forewarn you,
even as I did forewarn you, that they which practise such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God”(Gal. 5:
19-21). 1 Cor. 6: 9, 10. For it is the Kingdom of the holy, who are
holy, not by imputation only, but also by active righteousness. Heb. 12: 14; 2 Thess. 1: 5.
“BLESSED AND HOLY IS HE THAT HATH PART IN THE FIRST
RESURRECTION: THEY SHALL BE PRIESTS OF GOD AND
OF CHRIST, AND SHALL REIGN WITH HIM A THOUSAND YEARS” (Rev. 20: 6).
“O God, I have lost this world: grant that I lose not
that which is to come!” (
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22
The Glories of
“It is not easy,” says McCheyne, writing on Mount
Carmel, “to pray really for
1. - ISRAELITES. Not Jacobites,
but Israelites: not men’s supplanters, but wrestlers on their behalf with God;
princes by conquest in intercession. “Thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen.
32: 28). It was
2. - THE ADOPTION. Ex.4: 22, Jer. 31: 9. The Church receives an adoption as sons (Gal. 4: 5);
3. - THE GLORY. God’s Shekinah
Fires never dwelt in the midst of any nation except Israel. “He made thee to see His great fire; and thou heardest His
words out of the midst of the fire” (Deut.
4: 36). From a burning Bush
4. - THE COVENANTS. Apart from
Noah, God has never entered into a covenant with any man but a Jew. Eight covenants were made with Abraham; one
with Moses; at least two with Israel; and the New Covenant, the blood of which
has been shed (Luke 22: 20), and the
ministers of which have been appointed (2 Cor. 3: 6),
has yet to be made with the Houses of Israel and Judah (Heb. 8: 8). Covenants
between God and man belong only to the blood of Abraham.
5. - THE LAW. Jehovah’s
descent in person on Sinai, with a Decalogue written by the fingers of Deity,
is an unique glory of
6. - THE WORSHIP. ‘Jew’ means ‘praise’: and God’s liturgy, the sole mode of ritual
access into His presence under the Law, was revealed to the Jew only. “If thou bearest the name of a Jew, [thou] restest upon the law, and gloriest in God, and knowest His will ... being
instructed out of the law” (Rom. 2: 17). God planned every knob and tent-pin in
Tabernacle and
7. - THE PROMISES. All
promises are held in germ in one promise to Abraham; - “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22: 18).
‘Thy seed’ is a Jew: whether, therefore,
by way of circumcision, or through faith, salvation is of the Jews, because
salvation is from a Jew. So also the
promise of the Spirit was first given to the Jew. Gal. 3: 14. Acts
2: 39.
8. - THE FATHERS. God’s
providence never leaves the Jew because His love never leaves their fathers. “Because He loved thy fathers, therefore
He chose their seed after them” (Deut. 4: 37). No man ever gave God a name but a Jew: He is
not known as the God of Adam, or the God of Noah; but, - “I am the God of thy father, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex.
3: 6). No nation ever had divine
priests but
9. - THE CHRIST. In
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23
The Trial of Jesus
The
Sanhedrim, a court regularly constituted of
(1)
Our Lord was arrested and tried at night: which, on a capital charge, was
illegal. (2) The trial was conducted,
not in the Hall of Purchase, where the Sanhedrim was regularly convened, but in
the private house of the High Priest. This, if not actually unlawful, was
highly irregular: it obviously savoured of conspiracy. Mark
14: 1, 2. (3) The Prisoner was
pronounced guilty on the day of the trial: whereas, according to the law of the
Sanhedrim, although a prisoner might be acquitted on the same day, he could
never be condemned. (4) The Sanhedrim,
in appealing to Pilate, dropt the charge of blasphemy, and substituted the
charge of treason (Luke 23: 2): quashing
their own proceedings, they carried an appeal to a higher court on a new and
unsubstantiated charge. The trial was
thick with illegalities. But these are
technicalities: although establishing a grave presumption against the equity of
the Sanhedrim, they are not fatal; it is conceivable that, in spite of
technicalities violated, substantial justice might yet be done to a prisoner.
We
turn therefore to the Trial. Two charges were brought against Christ: the first
sedition, the second blasphemy. The charge of sedition was based on an alleged
statement threatening the destruction of the
(l)
Everything, on such a charge, obviously turns on who the Prisoner is: yet the
Court never examines the point at all.
If Jesus was the Son of God, it was no blasphemy to say so: if He was
not, it was. The action of the Sanhedrim
would make it impossible for the Messiah ever to come at all without being
liable to immediate arrest and destruction for blasphemy.
(2)
The Law of Moses expressly forbad condemnation, on a capital charge, on the
evidence of less than two witnesses (Deut. 17: 6):
Jesus was condemned to death on none. He
was then spit upon and smitten. Matt. 26: 67. So, hundreds of years before, Isaiah had
said, - “By oppression and judgment He was taken away”
(Isa. 53: 8): Micah also, - “They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the
cheek” (Mic. 5: 1). The Roman Law has been the foundation of the
soundest jurisprudence of the world: yet here again the air is thick with
illegalities. Not one of the essentials
of Roman law was observed in the trial of Jesus. There was no notice of the trial; no
definition of the charge; no invoking of the law whose breach was alleged; no
examination of witnesses; no hearing of counsel; no proof of a criminal act; no
sentence formally pronounced. Still more amazing, the judge actually acquits
the Prisoner whom he delivers to execution.
Three times Pilate pronounces the Prisoner not ‘guilty’
(Luke 23: 4, 15, 22), yet each time re-tries
Him: whereas under Roman law a prisoner might not be tried twice for the same
offence. Three times Pilate pronounces
the Prisoner ‘not guilty’: yet over the cross,
as the law required, Pilate wrote the charge, and he wrote - treason. Three times Pilate pronounces the Prisoner ‘not guilty’: yet he orders his soldiers to execute the
sentence of ‘guilty.’ “Jesus
of Nazareth,” says a member of the New York Bar, “was not condemned; he was lynched. The martyrdom of
The
People had not yet officially condemned Jesus.
Pilate, conscious of Christ’s innocence, resorts to the last expedient
open to him under Roman law, short of acquittal. A judge might stop a trial at the demand of
the prosecutors, if it appeared to him that that demand was prompted by just
motives, and not actuated by any unlawful object. Pilate presents the pitiful object of the
Saviour bleeding after the flogging, crying, “Behold
the Man!” and tries the pulse of the crowd by suggesting His release in
place of Barabbas. A hoarse cry warned
him off: the prosecutors refuse to drop the charge. Pilate then publicly reveals what is
happening. It was a Jewish custom, in
order to attest one’s innocence of murder, to wash the hands: Pilate therefore,
to ensure being understood in that deafening uproar, and amid a crowd of so
many diverse languages, symbolises silently that which all will understand - he
washes his hands. The judge pronounces
the whole transaction to be murder.
The
World, alas, now shares the verdict. The
issue is as momentous as ever. “Nineteen centuries,”
says a member of the Italian Bar, “will not again go
by before either the cross of
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24
A Sacrificial Priesthood
“We venerate the Eucharist,” says Pope Pius X,
addressing the Eucharistic Congress (1908), “as the
sacrifice of the New Testament, ... a tribute
of thanksgiving and praise, of atonement, and propitiation, ... a sacrifice foreshadowed by the offerings of the Fathers of
the Old Law, notably by that of the High Priest Melchizedek.” Now into
the hands of two priestly Orders only has the knife of sacrifice been
committed, the order of Aaron, and the order of Melchizedek; since Moses God
has received atoning sacrifices from no other hands: and Pius X claims for the
Roman Priesthood succession to the Order of Melchizedek.
For
it is universally agreed that the Order of Aaron is gone:
1. - Without descent: “without father, without mother.” God suppressed certain details in
Melchizedek’s life that, as recorded, it might be made like unto the Son of
God’s: he is not like unto the Son of God, but is made like by, the silences of
the Scripture. Without recorded father
or mother, he types Him who, as Son of Man, had no father, and, as Son of God,
no mother. Why? Because this Priest had to offer a superhuman
Sacrifice. “Sacrifice and offering [of the
Aaronic Order] Thou wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepared for me” (Heb. 10: 5).
The Priest must be divine who is to offer the Son of man: and the Priest
must be human who is to be Himself the Sacrifice: He must be Son of God, and
Son of man.
2. - “Without
genealogy.” Genealogy was a requisite for Aaron’s
Order. On the return from
3. - Without origin or end: “having neither beginning of
days nor end of life.” Neither
birthday nor deathday is recorded of Melchizedek: so our Lord was not born to
the priesthood, for He was never born, and thus required no genealogy; and His
priesthood is not forfeited by death, for He never dies; birth and death, to
Him, were but incidents in an eternal existence. Behind His birth lies the eternity of the
Godhead: beyond His resurrection lies the eternity of His Priesthood, - “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” Here is the final overthrow of the Roman
claim. The Order of Melchizedek stopped
with Christ. Without successor, as
without predecessor, He never lays down this priesthood, and so no other ever
takes it up. “He,
because He abideth for ever, hath a priesthood that doth not pass to another” (Heb. 7: 24, marg.), - an irrevocable, inviolable,
un-transmittable priesthood.
Most
solemn is God’s attitude to the claim of sacrificial powers. It is the sin of Korah. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram - Levites, not
priests* - for offering animal
sacrifice - how much more daring the impiety of offering human sacrifice, nay,
a divine - met instant wrath. “The ground clave asunder ... and
swallowed them up”; and upon their adherents “fire
came forth from the Lord and devoured them” (Num.
16: 32). Judgment on priestless
sacrifice now tarries only for the expiration of the day of grace. “Depart, I pray you” - ours becomes the sorrowful invocation of
Moses - “from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest
ye be consumed in all their sins.”
*
So we, though priests. have no power to
offer atoning sacrifices, but spiritual only. 1
Pet. 2: 5. Heb. 13: 15.
Behold
the supreme glory of the Son of God. As
Aaron soared above
(1) He is the human Priest. The Order of
Melchizedek arose long ere God had chosen the Jew: humanity was one, and
Melchizedek was its priest, Not once does Jesus call Himself ‘Son of Judah’; but sixty-three times ‘Son of man.’
(2) He is the royal Priest. Royalty and
priesthood were kept distinct in
(3) He is the solitary Priest. Melchizedek
himself, already half vanished into the night, was but a type: so tremendous is
a world’s atonement, that no Priest was sufficient but One - the Son of God;
and no Sacrifice was sufficient but One - the Son of man: for ever “the Priest upon His Throne.”
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25
The Higher Criticism
The
Higher Criticism. - Advanced Criticism has arrived, in some quarters, at a goal
which challenges the attention of the whole
Results:
Old Testament. “The
legends first taught by word of mouth,” says the Dean of Westminster, “you may read in the Book of Genesis. These stories, which fathers used to tell
their children about their national heroes, contain only that amount of history
which such stories contain in the case of other peoples.” “Abraham’s real existence,” says the Encyclopoedia
Biblica, edited by an Anglican Canon, “is as doubtful
as that of other [legendary] heroes”:
the Book of Jonah is to be classed with Tobit and Susannah as “imaginary religious stories”: the Red Sea was crossed
by a natural wind: the setting up of the Tabernacle in the wilderness “must be pronounced utterly impossible”: Jehovah was “a wilderness deity, who had his abode in Sinai or Horeb.”
“Ezekiel,” says Prof. Peake, “seems to set on the
throne of the universe a self-centered egoist who bends the whole course of
history to glorify his holy name.” “Critical
research,” says Prof. Krüger, “has annihilated
the Old Testament Canon. There is no longer any theologian who can conceal from
himself the final outcome of Old Testament criticism. The century just dawned
will in all probability consign the New Testament also to the same fate.”
Results:
New Testament. “The connexion of sin and death in
Scripture,” says Prof. Denney, “is no piece of
supernaturally revealed history, to be accepted on the authority of Him who has
revealed it. In such revelations no one believes any longer.” “The picture of Jesus,” says Prof. Bousset, “is drawn from the standpoint of the miraculous. The historian can scarcely do otherwise than
admit that legends, and not history, are before us.” “So far as the reported miracles of Jesus [were to
establish His Messiahship],” says Dr. Abbott, “they
are no longer to be taken to be credible; either they never happened at all, or
(at least), if historical, they were not miraculous.” “For modern criticism,” says Dr. Abbott, “the story [of
Results:
Jesus Christ. All storms close at last
around one lonely Brow. “The Messiah,” says
Prof. Harnach, “is a conception to which we can no
longer attach a meaning or validity.” “Jesus,”
says Prof. Schmidt, “never assumed the title ‘Son of God’: it was a
bestowal upon him of a title he did not claim, and probably could not have
understood. When he was lifted up from the earth, and made a god, he drew all
men unto himself.” “It ceases to be a matter of
fundamental importance,” says Prof. Schmeidel, “whether
Jesus rose again on the third day. The belief of the disciples [that
they had seen the risen Lord] does not prove that what
they saw was objectively real: it can equally well have been merely an image
begotten of their own mental condition. The accounts of the empty tomb are none
of them admissible.” “There is no use,” says Prof. Burkitt, “in shirking the plain fact. The old infallible Bible has
been taken away. It has been given into the hands of the Critics, and what they
have given back is shorn of its old authority. We no longer believe because the
Bible tells us to do so.”
Consequences.
“The Higher Criticism” says Prof. Peake, “has drawn the fangs of the Secularist”: only - we
sorrowfully add - by removing them to the mouth of the theological professor. The
sale of Bibles in
did the Holy Ghost pass in the revival of 1904.”
Nemesis
is at the doors. In Liverpool - the second city of the Empire, a sample city -
in 1881, 40 seats out of every 100 were filled in morning worship in the Free
Churches; in 1891, 31; in 1902, 25; in 1908, 12. So also evening attendance has fallen from 57
in every 100 seats in 1881, to 28 in 1908.
The average morning attendance in 1881 was 274; in 1891, 212; in 1902,
170; in 1908, 85. So also the average
evening attendance has fallen from 392 in 1881 to 190 in 1908. These are appalling figures.
When
doubt speaks in the pulpit, infidelity sits in the pew, and at last empties it;
diluted doses of infidel criticism are killing the churches, undermining public
confidence in the Bible, and laying the foundations of approaching apostasy. “But thou, O man of God, flee these things!”
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26
Adam and Christ
1. - SIN. “Through one man sin entered
into the world” (Rom. 5: 12). How so?
Because God “made of one blood [or stock]
all nations of men” (Acts
17: 26). Made of one stock,
sprung from one source, pollution at the fountain-head necessarily fouled the
whole stream; as a severing blow at the root of a tree levels all the branches
also. An angel might sin, and
conceivably - if isolated, as a small-pox case is isolated - the sin might not
spread; for angels “neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Mark
12: 25): the sin could be isolated to the angel. But humanity increases by procreation;
through one man therefore - because he was the first - sin infected a world:
nothing short of arrested increase - i.e., the total annihilation of the race -
could cut the entail of inherited corruption. Behold our helplessness. “Sin entered”:
it is a done thing.
2. - DEATH. “So death passed [travelled] unto
all men.” Death is not essential
to true humanity: God could have garnered the whole race, as Enoch or Elijah,
without death. Why then did death
come? Because, with sin, rottenness
entered into the bones; and now, though a man may doubt universal sin, who
doubts universal death? And universal
death proves universal sin. “Sin bringeth forth death” (Jas.
1: 15); “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23); “the soul
that sinneth, it shall die” (Ez. 18: 4); “in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. ii. 17): - death is a consequence of sin. Only he may say, - ‘I
am no sinner,’ - who can immediately add, - ‘Because
death will never cross my threshold.’
A doctor’s utmost achievement is to postpone his final failure. What helplessness! “Death passed”:
it is a done thing.
3. - IMPUTED GUILT. But the gravest fact of all is one which it
would never have entered the human mind to conceive. “So” - through
one man - “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned.” That is, in Adam all died, for
in Adam all sinned. Human solidarity is
a profound mystery comprehensible only to Deity; but so real is it, so actual,
that death seals in every man what every man did in the first man. Imputation of guilt is as real as the
imputation of righteousness. Could
helplessness sink lower? “All sinned”: it is a done thing.
4. - RUIN. So look at the
facts. (1) A man is lost thousands of
years before he is born: even could he atone for his own sins, he is powerless
to wipe out his share in Adam’s: sin entered, death came, the tragedy was over,
the race was ruined thousands of years before we were born. Moreover (2) every man himself enters the
world a sinner. Ps. 51: 5. The stock is ruined: so, while I commit
corruption, I also am corruption: I carry in me from birth the seedbed of all
sin. But also (3) we are helpless, not
so as to be irresponsible, but so as, by ourselves, to be unsavable. Why? Because since birth we have made sin our
own by the delight with which we have sinned.
Where in all the world is a sinner who does not love sin? But if a man catches the plague, and dies, he
dies, not of the other man’s plague, but of his own. “Death reigned”:
it is a done thing. The ruin is
complete.
5. - IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS. God’s antidote
now exactly fits the poison: as by a solitary sin came death, so by a solitary
righteousness came life. “So then” - for, as the fall, so the redemption - “as through one trespass the judgment came, ... even so through one righteousness the free gift came.” As Adam involved us in Hell before our birth,
so, before our birth also, Christ secured to us a right to Heaven. But how?
“As through the one man’s disobedience the many
were made sinners, through the obedience of the
one shall the many be made righteous.”
Adam’s sin imputed made sinners; Christ’s righteousness imputed makes
saints: and, as the imputed guilt begot actual sin, so the imputed
righteousness produces active goodness.
But for whom was Christ’s obedience wrought? “As through one
trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one righteousness the free gift came unto all
men to justification of life.”
The obedience of Christ for redemption is coextensive with the
disobedience of Adam for ruin: the All that fell is the All that is
redeemed. “The
free gift came”: it is a done thing.
6. - LIFE. The salvation
also travels back in effect over the road of ruin. Life springs from righteousness exactly as
death springs from sin. Prov. 12: 28. “So as through one
trespass the judgment came ... to condemnation;
even so the free gift came ... to justification of life.” Adam gave us his death: Christ gives us His
life. We are one with Adam by birth, and
that is our ruin: we are one with Christ by second birth, and that is our
salvation. So that all shall be saved?
no, but that all may be saved. For as we
have sinned wilfully, so we must be saved willingly. “For if, by the trespass of the one, death
reigned through the one; much more shall they
that receive [take] the abundance of grace
... reign in life.” The righteousness bringing life has been
wrought: the thing is done.
7. - SALVATION. So God has
mercifully made salvation as helpless a thing as the ruin in which we were
born. We were passive recipients of Adam’s sin: we are passive recipients of
Christ’s righteousness. Thousands of
years before I was born, I was lost: thousands of years (nearly) before I was
born, I was redeemed. Salvation, equally
with the Fall, is a done thing: I can no more alter it, or add to it, or take
from it, than I can alter, or add to, or take from Adam’s guilt: I can reach
neither, across a gulf of thousands of years, any more than I can gather up
last winter’s snows. I can only suffer
the one: I can only take the other. All
that I can do, all that I ought to do, all that I need do, is to take it; that
is, to believe it, to accept it. “Whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22: 17): “the free
gift came,” and the moment I take it, it is mine for ever.
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27
The Judgment Seat of Christ
1. - THE WILL OF GOD. The ideal
manhood - “A man after My heart, who shall do all My will”(Acts
13: 22): its aim - “I am come to do Thy will,
O God” (Heb. 10: 7):
its business - “My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent Me” (John 4: 34): its fellowship
- “whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in
heaven, he is My brother” (Matt. 12: 50): its education - “Teach me to do Thy will; for
Thou art my God” (Ps. 143: 10): its
pleasure - “I delight to do Thy will, O My God” (Ps. 40: 8). So God’s ideal for a disciple is obedience to
His will; and God’s ideals are not optional, but obligatory. “We labour”(A.V.) - “we strive”
(Alford) - “we are eager” (
2. - THE TRIBUNAL. (1) The tribunal is a Bema, not a
Throne; a Judgment Seat for the investigation of disciples, not a Throne for
the arraignment of rebels: for the Judge (2 Tim. 4:
8) is “a certain king, which would make a reckoning with his servants” (Matt. 18: 23).
It is the first of our Lord’s three judgments (Rom.
14: 12; Matt. 25: 31; Rev. 20: 12) on His return; and judgment begins “at the house of God” (1
Pet. 4: 17). (2) Thus those examined are Christians only. “We all” - i.e., “them that
are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints, with all that call upon the name of our
Lord in every place” (1 Cor. 1: 2):
it is a final investigation of the whole
3. - A JUDICAL PROCEDURE: “that each one may receive
the things done.” Not, that each
may receive something from God, but “that each may
receive the things” he himself has “done”:
it is not a general granting of glory, irrespective of service; but an exercise
of the Divine Law, - “as he hath done, so shall it be done to him” (Lev.
24: 19). “Be not deceived” - is a word to
disciples - “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap” (Gal. 6: 7). Paul puts it with exquisite clearness, and
two-fold emphasis. “Whatsoever good thing” - for
a judge approves - “each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether he be bond or free” (Eph.
6: 8): on the other hand - “Ye serve the Lord
Christ. For
he that doeth wrong” - for a judge censures - “shall
receive again for the wrong that he hath done: and
there is no respect of persons” (Col. 3: 25).
4. - THE EVIDENCE: “things done by means of the
body.” We must all “appear in our true light” (Alford): as the fossil
imprint of a bird’s claw, made ages earlier by a momentary alighting when the
stone was soft, now records that act in solid rock, so our actions are the
unerring imprint of our characters; the things done reveal what the body
was. Like a palimpsest, when the heat of
fire (1 Cor. 3: 13) passes over it, so our
life silently steals forth in lines every one of which we ourselves wrote: so
that what our eyes looked on, what ours ears listened to, what our hearts
loved, what our minds believed, what our lips said, what our hands wrought,
where our feet walked: - these are the unimpeachable evidences of the Judgment
Seat. Rev. 22: 12. Secrets (1 Cor.
4: 5), motives (Matt. 6: 1),
soul-attitudes (Luke 6: 36-38), and just
church decisions (Matt. 18: 18), also sway
the adjudication.
5. - THE AWARDS: “whether it [the
award] be good or bad.” The Greek points to the award: “that each may receive according to the things done, whether it” - i.e.,
what he receives - “be good or bad.” Reward (as distinct from salvation, which is
through faith, against deserts) is strictly defined by works. So minutely do actions tell, that “whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a
cup of cold water only, in the name of a
disciple [it is true only of Christians], shall
in no wise lose his reward” (Matt. 10: 42);
how much more, greater benefactions! Matt. 19: 29. Conversely, as judicial, the Bema, inevitably
taking cognizance of a disciple’s unrepented offences, may inflict loss, or
even penal (but temporary: Matt. 5: 26)
consequences. I Cor. 3: 15. “That servant,
which knew his lord’s will, and made not ready, nor did
according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12: 47). Matt. 18: 35. (Nevertheless, eternal
1ife cannot be forfeited by a disciple: John 3: 16;
10: 27, 28.)
So
somewhere there exists a draft by the hand of God of what our life might have
been, and still can be: some have lived wonderfully near God’s thought for
them: let us find and follow that Divine original. Eph.
2: 10.
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28
The New Birth
Nicodemus
- sincere, moral, upright, needing no reformation - meets Jesus: Jesus says, -
You need to be remade. How much more an
open sinner! For “verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the
He
is (2) lifeless: “except a man be begotten.” Begetting is the imparting of life; and life
is imparted to the dead, not to the living.
Who ever saw a man who was not born? no more has anyone even seen a
Christian who was not born again. Man
enters no world except by birth: and we must be born into heaven if we are ever
to enter it.
He
is (3) fatherless: “ye must be born again.” A second birth implies another fatherhood: “begotten of the Spirit”- it is the second birth which
produces sonship of God. Even Nicodemus
- sincere, moral, upright, needing no reformation - is a sightless, lifeless,
fatherless soul, who can be saved only by being remade.
“Ye must be born afresh”:
“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old
things are passed away; behold, they are become new” (2
Cor. 5: 17). Many a sinner,
bitter and broken, cries: “Oh, that I could begin life
afresh!” That is exactly what
Christ offers: “ye must be born afresh.” “Ye must” - therefore ye may: ye may - therefore “ye must.”
Regeneration is not so much an organic change, creating or extinguishing
human powers, as a functional change, whereby our old powers take a new
direction, move by a totally new life, and expand to the fullness of their
created capacities. Man redeemed fulfils
all, and more, than God planned in man created.
But Nicodemus interposes. “How can” this
be? Jesus now introduces baptism the
more fully to unfold His meaning. “Except a man be born out of water” - not a second time
of his mother - “he cannot enter into the
The
new begetting is regeneration: the new birth is baptism. Secret, viewless, mysterious is the begetting
of the soul: open, visible, natural is the birth out of water which manifests
life already begun. As an infant is
alive before it is born, so within the water is a living soul, and out of the
water issues a new birth. It is a new
man that issues out of the water: not made new by the water, but by the Spirit
before the birth. Therefore only the regenerate may be baptised. Regeneration is a renewal (Tit. 3: 5); a translation (Col. 1: 13); a quickening (Col. 2:
13); a creation (Eph. 4: 24); a cure
(1 Pet. 2: 24); an emancipation (Gal. 5: 1); a resurrection (Eph. 2: 6).
Our
Lord now probes deeper: “that which is born of the
flesh is flesh”: i.e., a second fleshly birth would be useless. A thousand re-births from the flesh would be
- flesh: a new start indeed, but the millionth would be a start as polluted as
the first. “It
is not the children of the flesh that are children of God” (
But
the crowning marvel of regeneration remains.
It is a re-birth: but with whose life? “The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh,
and whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Animal paternity gives animal life; human
paternity gives human life; divine paternity gives divine life: it is possible
to start life afresh with the life of God.
As the flesh is the seed-bed of all vices, so the new creation is a
seed-bed of all the virtues of Him who begat it: we are indeed put back into
the cradle, but out of that cradle spring the mighty limbs, and the soaring
soul, of a son of God. Children are sometimes born crippled, or with limbs
missing: there are no cripples from the second birth.
The
divine power has entered in a divine birth to produce on earth a divine life:
it is a birth from above: and Heaven’s gates swing back to the born again,
because their life, their nature, their creation belong to Heaven. O Nicodemus, have you learnt the lesson
yet? But mark: how shall the wind blow
our way? We can no more control that
Wind than we can handle the hurricanes.
Listen to the Gospel which our Lord immediately adds. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.” The price of the new life is the old: the
renunciation of sin is the birth-travail: but the moment of faith is the moment
of regeneration. Accept Christ’s work for you, and instantly begins the
Spirit’s work in you.
“Whosoever BELIEVETH that
Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God” (1
John 5: 1).
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29
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Powerful
and tempting arguments are now being used for the union of all disciples on a
basis of the spiritual divorced from the external. Possessing the realities for which the rites
stand - it is asked - why maintain the forms, so creating, and perpetuating,
division? Our Lord, in principle, has graciously revealed a profound answer. “Why do thy disciples fast not?” (Mark 2: 18): why, as a Teacher come from God, -
for this is the underlying question to which our Lord addresses His answer -
dost Thou add no ritual to Moses’ Law?
The Lord’s reply is the great RUBRIC
OF RITUAL.
Jesus,
having guarded Himself from any condemnation of fasting, of which He approves
in His absence (Matt. 6: 16), answers: - “No man rendeth a piece from a new garment and putteth it upon
an old garment” (Luke 5: 36). The ritual of Moses for two thousand years draped
the Law of Jehovah: as an outward vesture, it clothed and expressed that which
God Himself now calls “the old covenant” (2 Cor. 3: 14), “the
oldness of the letter” (Rom. vii. 6),
the Covenant grown “old” (Heb. 8: 13). No man - Jesus says it is a truism -
patches an old garment: the reasons are obvious.
(1) It is useless: “else he will rend the new.” The patch will be stiffer and stronger than
the garment: the old worn, vesture, too threadbare to stand the strain, will
rend: and “that which should fill it up taketh from it,
and a worse rent is made” (Mark 2: 21).
Both patch and garment perish.
Moreover (2) it is unsightly:
“also the piece from the new will not agree with the
old.” It does not match: the ‘patch of unbleached rag’ - unwhitened by sunlight or
chemicals - is not only a badge of poverty, but a positive ugliness. God rejects it.
Profound
ritual principles here stand revealed.
The Son of God refuses to add a single rite to the ritual of the
Law. He removes the robe, to replace it
with a better: but patchwork is abhorrent to His eye: so long as God preserves
the vesture, no human hand may tamper with its handiwork. This is the condemnation of all man-made
rituals, such as the ‘Seven Sacraments’ of
Ritual
principles deeper still are now revealed.
“No man putteth new wine into old wineskins;
else the new wine will burst the skins.” As the skin yields to the pressure of the
wine, and yet the wine is exactly delimited by the skin, so a rite enshrines
and expresses a doctrine, and the doctrine is exactly defined by the rite. Christ therefore had to make new rites. The old skins had become rigid: new wine,
poured in and fermenting, would have expanded the skins, till they burst: the
strong, seething, expansive spirit of the Gospel would have ruined the old
rituals. The modern Jew instinctively
realizes this peril to the Law. “If ever there was a converted Jew,” says a worker,
concerning a recent convert, “he is one”. And yet, whilst his religious conviction is
well known to the Jews, and even to his employer, he cannot accept
baptism. While not baptized, it is
little matter to the Jews what his religious opinions may be: they still
consider him as one of their own. Once
he submits to baptism, however, he becomes an outcast, and is regarded as worse
than a heathen. For the Jew prefers the
doctrine which sets the flesh on its trial - as in Circumcision - to the
doctrine which buries it as incurable - as in Baptism: “for he saith, The old is better” (Luke 5: 39), - that is, is milder. The Decalogue from the Mount is an easier
rule of life than the Sermon from the Mount.
Our
Lord now establishes His Ritual Rubric.
Doctrine must be enshrined in rite: “new wine
must be put into fresh wineskins.” Why?
“They put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matt.
9: 17): for if the skins are rent, “the wine
itself will be spilled, and the skins will
perish” (Luke 5: 37). Says Dr. Marcus Dods:- “We are in possession of descriptions of proselyte baptism
which make it impossible to doubt that the rite was performed by immersion. And
it is probable that unbiased interpreters of the Pauline Epistles will continue
to believe that his allusions to baptism are intelligible only on the
supposition that he had in view baptism by immersion. Of course it is also the fact that owing to
the inconvenience and frequent impossibility of performing the rite in the
ideal manner, another and also significant mode was commonly adopted. But if the meaning of baptism is understood,
why fuss about the mode?” Because
to rend the skin is to lose the wine: the meaning evaporates with the
mode. Burial and resurrection disappear
from a baptistry that is no more a grave: a priest, standing before an altar,
swathing a water with incense, and offering a sacrifice of masses - what of truth
lingers when the Feast of Communion is visibly gone? “New
wine must be put into fresh wineskins.”
So
long as our Saviour’s sacrificial death for sin is to be kept before the eyes
of the world, so long are the wounded Bread and the shed Wine to be kept before
the eyes of the Church, showing forth “the Lord’s death
till He come” (1 Cor. 11: 26): so
long as the flesh is to be buried as incurable, and saved souls are to rise to newness
of life, so long is baptism to be the funeral service and the resurrection rite
of the Church of God - “baptising them ... even unto the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 19, 20). “So both
[doctrine and rite] ARE PRESERVED.”
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30.
An Empty Tomb
1. - THE SEPULCHRE. “Came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre”
(Matt. 28: 1). What did they see? (1)
A new tomb, “wherein never man lay”: therefore,
if a resurrection took place, it was not, as in Elisha’s case (2 Kings 13: 21), a resurrection from contact with
a holy body: it was a new tomb. (2) A tomb “hewn
out in the rock”: therefore there was no subterranean passage by which a
body could be withdrawn; by the door the corpse entered, it issued. (3)
An open, empty tomb. What did this
prove? That what had been buried, that
had been raised; namely, a crucified corpse.
The resurrection could not have been the rising of the spirit of Christ,
because the spirit of Christ had never been in the tomb at all. The
world had waited thousands of years to see a tomb that would never be refilled:
it saw it now.
2. - THE EARTHQUAKE. “And behold, there was a great
earthquake.” The Prison-house into which our Lord descended was a
Prison-house erected by sin. “Through sin came death”: the place of the dead is the
place of sinners. Now shaking by God is
preparatory to destruction. “Whose voice then shook the earth,” signifying “the removing of those things that are shaken, ... that those things which are not shaken may remain” (Heb. 12: 26).
The realms of death have been twice violently shaken: the third shock (Rev. 20: 14) will be a final paralysis. When Jesus entered Hades, it trembled “Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold ...
the earth did quake; and
the rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened”
(Matt. 27: 50). So, at the resurrection, “there was a great earthquake”: Hades shook beneath the
rising tread of the Son of God, and faint tremors reached the surface of the
world. The Resurrection was the death of
Death, and the first instalment (for the redeemed) of the obliteration of
Sin. Hos.
13: 14. Rev. 20: 14.
3. - THE ANGEL. “An angel of the Lord descended from heaven”; “his appearance was as lightning, and his raiment white as snow.” The presence of the Angel was of incalculable
importance. That Figure - bringing with
him part of the shining of Heaven - proves that Christ did not ‘break prison,’ but issued with a free and legal
discharge, authorised by God. Christ’s
body needed no rolling away of the stone: the Angel did not raise Him: the
supreme function of God’s officer, in flinging open the gates of death, was to
show to the universe that the great Burnt-offering had been accepted for a
guilty world. The Angel brought the
legal authorisation of God. Rom. 6: 4.
4. - THE WATCHERS. “The watchers did quake, and
became as dead men.” Our Lord’s
resurrection had two immediate and opposite effects: - dead saints became
living, and living sinners became as the dead.
Roman soldiers, the hardiest of the world’s sons, able to meet death in
battle with a smile, are cowed by the lightnings from an angel’s face. It is the terror of another world. Earth’s bravest become white to the lips when
they see through the open grave into the dread world beyond: but to the weak
and defenceless women Jesus says, - “Fear not ye.”
It is a presage of the dual effect of the Last Assize.
5. - THE NEWS. “He is not here; for He is
risen, even as He said.” “Give me the
resurrection as a fact, and I will shatter in pieces the modern view of the
world.” It casts lightnings backward.
Again and again our Lord had foretold His resurrection, “By His death all that had gone before seemed disproved; by
His rising, it was proved that nothing had been disproved; nay, that everything
had been proved.” The sinlessness
of Jesus (John 8: 46); the miracles of Jesus
(John 14: 11); the prophecies of Jesus (Luke 22: 69); the salvation offered by Jesus (Matt. 11: 28); the judgment foretold by Jesus (Luke 19: 27); the Heaven and Hell (Matt. 5: 12, 22) Jesus revealed: the resurrection
is the last link that shows the whole chain, backward, as solid gold. “He is risen, even as He said.”
6. - THE BRIBE. - “They gave large money unto
the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples
... stole Him away while we slept.” This last session of the Sanhedrim recorded
in Scripture seems an incredible fail: yet
7. - THE COMMISSION. “Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations.” An
empty tomb means that there is a gospel to preach. The sweep of the Commission has been verified
by history; the Resurrection is the cause of the Church, but the Church is also
the proof of the Resurrection, The Commission Christ bases on ‘all power’: He clothes it in the Triune Name: He
assumes myriads of unborn witnesses: He foresees the homage of nations: He
flings its arches sheer across two thousand years of Christian experience and
Christian love. History has verified it.
And what for the individual soul?
All God asks for salvation is the acceptance of the Resurrection, and
action upon it. “FOR
IF THOU SHALT CONFESS WITH THY MOUTH JESUS
AS LORD, AND SHALT BELIEVE IN THY HEART THAT
GOD RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD,
THOU SHALT BE SAVED” (
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31
A Dying World
The
shock of earthquake at
God
reveals no fact (I suppose) without implying a moral consequence: all inspired
doctrine is a verbal statement of fact leading to practical goodness. God reveals eternity - that I may become a
child of eternity; He informs me of the Second Coming - that I may be prepared
to meet my God. So here. “Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved,
what manner of persons ought ye to be.” The big things of eternity dwarf the
seductions of time. How can I live for a
world which will soon be dust and ashes?
Science must dissolve with the dissolution of that which it examines:
all gold will melt in the last fires: the pleasures of sin are dissolving views
which depart with the world that bred them: - wisdom does not allow the heart
to settle on that which can suffer dissolution.
1 Cor. 7: 29-31. These tremendous facts are designed and
revealed to have an effect no less tremendous on our life.
“What manner of persons.” All things are dissolving: personality
abides. What manner of persons can rise
above what a ruin of worlds! 1 John 2: 17. Some insects are born, grow old, and die
within twenty-four hours: when we confront personality we confront the
imperishable. What manner? “In all holiness.” Holiness is a growing recoil from the horror
of sin: “righteousness is conformity to the law of
God, but holiness is approximation to His character”: holiness beholds
ten thousand burning worlds, and sins not.
Holiness in doctrine is good, but holiness in life is better; for it
necessarily presupposes the possession of holy doctrine: “in all holy living.”
Our life is long? Not so wise
Angels say Who watch us waste it, trembling while they weigh Against eternity
one squandered day.
What
manner? “In all godliness.” Godliness is the life of Heaven lived on
earth: it is the activity of God reproduced through a human soul: it is the air
of eternity always blowing through a human life. The world may rock in the last earthquakes,
but God remains: therefore, “as the hart panteth after
the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!” (Ps. 42: 1).
Heb. 1: 10-12. Godliness is, in me, the activities and aims
and joys and griefs of God: - “furnished completely
unto every good work” (2 Tim. 3: 17):
“prepared unto every good work” (2 Tim. 2: 21): “in every
good word and work” (2 Thess. 2: 17). This is the calling of the child of
eternity.
The
attitude - “Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose
again this morning, and is coming back to-morrow”: the atmosphere - “The closet is an excellent place in which to practise
meeting Christ in the air”: and the aim - “That
ye may be found in peace, without spot and
blameless in His sight” (2 Pet. 3: 14). How deep the Church’s slumber! “It is possible, and even probable, that the world will last
hundreds of thousands, or a million, or even millions of years, before the
coming of Christ” (Church Quarterly Review, 1901). “Was
“SURELY I COME QUICKLY.
AMEN.
EVEN SO
COME, LORD JESUS” (Rev. 22: 20).
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32
An Unknown God
1. - ONE BLOOD: “God made of one blood all
nations of men.” Acts 17: 26. The solidarity of the human race is one of
the awful and mysterious facts of life.
That solidarity is the basis both of the Fall and of the Redemption. One
blood - so, if poison enters anywhere, it enters everywhere: one blood - so, if
Christ died for one man, He died for every man.
If there has been one sinner since Adam, all are sinners: if one has
been saved, all can be saved: if one is lost, all are lost: if one has become
radiantly Christ-like, so can all. One
blood circulates through the whole human race.
2. - ONE AIM: God made all nations “that
they should seek God.” God made
the human soul for God: the soul is a great emptiness which only the Divine can
fill: God made every man for Heaven.
When He moulded the human soul, He gave it a bias Godward. Creation - our birth - our present
heart-throbs - the world in which we live, all have come into being simply that
we might seek God. Nor is He far to
seek. “He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move,
and have our being.” If a veil has dropt between God and man, it
is a veil God never made. The world is
full of God: every word we speak is spoken into the ear of God: every motion we
make is made in Him: the difficulty is not to find God, but to escape Him. God
made your soul for that research to which all science is a toy - the search for
God; therefore - Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can
meet, Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
3. - ONE LIKENESS: “for we are also His
offspring.” This is an immense
advance on earlier statements: it means that when we find God, we can know Him.
Gen. 1: 27.
Man has lost the moral likeness of God (Gen.
5: 3), but the rational likeness remains. God can see and feel and hear - so can we:
God can reason - so can we: God can love and yearn and sorrow - so can we: that
is, God and man can understand one another when they meet. Herein is the deadly
insult of idolatry. To make God wooden, or even golden, is not only an almost
incredible degradation of the human intellect in worship; but also, instead of
a seeking after God, it is a blotting out of the image of God, by the
substitution of a caricature. Nevertheless
our rational affinity with the Divine remains. It is the inalienable dignity of
the human spirit that it can communicate with God. Jer.
9: 23-24.
4. - ONE COMMAND: God “now commandeth men that
they should all every where repent.”
Repentance is a change of mind about sin: it is a sinner taking sides
with God against himself: it is a lost soul retracing its steps back to God.
God commands this. To whom? “All men - everywhere.” The poison is in the one blood: - in cottage
and palace, in young and old, in moral and immoral, - wherever God is God, and
man is man, “God commandeth all men everywhere to
repent.” When? “Now.” Now - that the days of ignorance are past;
now - that
5. - ONE APPOINTMENT: “because He hath appointed a
day.” God’s wishes are made as
clear as light. Who? - all men. Where? - everywhere. When? - now.
Why? - “because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world.” To-day is a merciful interlude, a last
opportunity, a golden moment, a supreme crisis, before one Day arrives, to
which God is converging all events, and in which He has fixed all judgment. God’s cry is urgent because there is no hope
in judgment. God never breaks His
appointments: He will be there, and the world will be there: and mercy will be
swallowed up in doom. Heb. 9: 27.
6. - ONE MAN: “He will judge the world in
righteousness by the man whom He hath ordained.” Men will be judged by a Man; and He only
among men who tasted death for every man has the right to pass eternal sentence
upon any man. The man who judged the
leper (Lev. 13.) was the priest who atoned
for him; and the priest who atoned for him was the one who judged him. God is very slow to pronounce any man a
sinner: every scrutiny is resorted to, every delay is made, every opportunity
for amendment is given: and even when the case is hopeless, then atonement is
made. Lev. 13; 14. But judgment comes at last. The greatest friend the leper ever had exiles
the un-purged leper from the Camp for ever. Lev.
13: 44, 46; Rev. 22: 15. Jesus
examines, Jesus atones, Jesus absolves, Jesus condemns: no element in the
destiny of the lost is more hopeless than the fact that the Priest who atones
is at the last the Judge who dooms. It
is the wrath of the Lamb. Rev. 6: 16, 17.
7. - ONE PROOF: “whereof He hath given
assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised
Him from the dead.” All things
tell of coming judgment. Every star that
obeys its orbit; every human state founded on the administration of law; every
career that tells of the triumph of virtue, or the ruin of vice; every warning
in the soul of sins that go before us into the other world:- all things speak
loudly of coming judgment. But one fact
proves it. There is only one Judge: the
Father “hath given all judgment unto the Son” (John 5: 22): and the Judge is alive. God has lodged all judgment in the Son: if
Christ be dead, so is all judgment; if Christ be risen, judgment is risen from
the dead. O man, be warned of approaching judgment.
“If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and
He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2: 1). Claim the
advocacy now. A lady wrote to her lawyer
to undertake a case. “Madam” he replied, “I am sorry I cannot undertake your case: I am no longer an
advocate; I have been made a judge.”
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33
Ten Pounds
1. - THE PARABLE. Luke 19. 11-27.
The Parable is two-fold throughout: two reasons for its utterance (1) “because He was nigh to Jerusalem” at the close of an
all but royal progress, and (2) “because they supposed that the kingdom was
immediately to appear” in consequence; two classes - citizens and
servants; two judgments - a compulsory muster of citizens and a willing
assembly of servants; and two adjudications - slaughter and reward exactly
measured by service. (With the Citizens
- unbelievers, who are taken and destroyed - we are not now concerned: nor are
we concerned with the differences in ability (Matt.
25: 15) among the Servants, which is the ground of the distribution of
the Talents).
2. - THE KINGDOM. Our Lord’s
words at once postpone the Kingdom. “A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for
himself a kingdom, and to return,” Israel - and even the apostles after the
resurrection (Acts 1: 6) - expected the
kingdom immediately: the Church since the second century has supposed, for the
most part, that it has been established: Jesus reveals that, until He had died,
risen, ascended, and returned, the kingdom is impossible. The Nobleman must go “into a far country, to receive for himself
a kingdom and to return.” 1 Cor. 15: 50.
3. - OFFICERS. The supreme
principle of the Parable is now laid bare.
Officers are required for the administration of a kingdom: so God
deliberately interposed a prolonged period between the two advents, that our
Lord might be enabled so to test His servants, in His absence, as to discover
which are fitted for positions of responsibility and trust on His return. A silent period of profound mystery is slipped
in, for the servants to reveal their character, for the citizens to reveal
their enmity, for God to reveal His justice upon both, and for the Nobleman to
reveal the Kingdom he has gone to obtain. Rev. 10:
7; 11: 15-18.
4. - SERVANTS. Ten servants are
chosen (ten is the number of responsibility; Ex.
34: 28; Luke 17: 17; Matt. 25: 1; etc.): “of his”-
all are the Nobleman’s property (1 Cor. 6: 19):
each is entrusted with a sovereign: all are commanded to trade: and, on the Nobleman’s
return, all are assembled for judgment, Matt. 25:
19; 2 Cor. 5: 10. The court is
full: the ‘bystanders’ (ver.
24) - doubtless Angels - keenly watch the adjudication, and carry out
the sentences (Matt. 5: 25): and each
servant steps forth, isolated and alone, to report to his Lord. Rom. 14: 12.
5. - Faithful Servants. The first
servant’s report is brief and pregnant - “Lord, thy
pound hath made ten pounds more.” (1)
Not, “I have made,” but, “Thy pound hath made”: the utmost we can do for God is
what God shall do through us. Phil. 2: 13. 1 Cor.
4: 7. God’s gifts in us push
through into fruit and flower: our responsibility is to give grace free scope
by which to multiply itself. John 15. The servant trades, and the pound
multiplies. (2) No servant had more than one pound: no servant was without one
pound: every servant had an equal opportunity of making ten pounds: yet only
one so (far as we know) did so. 1 Cor. 9: 24. (3)
The recompense exactly corresponds to the trade done: for every pound a city. “Well done, thou good servant:
because thou was found faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.” The servant receives the ‘well done’ for one reason only - because he has done
well. Eph. 6: 8. So the second servant: - “be thou also over five cities.” God works through us: but He rewards us
exactly according to the measure in which we have allowed Him to do it. “Unto every one that
hath shall be given; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away from him.”
6. - An Unfaithful Servant. The First -
Commendation and reward: The Second - Reward; but no commendation: the third
Servant, neither commendation nor reward, but reproof and loss. “Lord,” this
servant says, “here is thy pound, which I have kept.”
But the Lord had told him to circulate it, not to keep it: “trade ye herewith till I come.” To bank money is the easiest way to reap
returns: this servant’s refusal even to bank it revealed, not only how little
he had his master’s interests at heart, but that, while willing to take money
from his Lord, he was unwilling to spend it for his Lord. But worse lies behind. Sadducean denial of a believer’s judgment
according to works, flowers at last into open criticism of Christ when that
judgment is found to be a fact. “Thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not
down, and reapest that thou didst not sow”:
that is, I object on principle to the servants of God coming unto any judgment
for their works. (“Just as the Legalist resents the
doctrine that good works can have no part in effecting our forgiveness, so the
Evangelical recoils from the idea that they can constitute any ground for our
recompense.” - Dr. A. J. Gordon.)
The Judge answers: - Your very consciousness of the severity of the
principle ought to have made you more careful, not less, to meet its
requirements Rev. 2: 23; Heb. 12: 28, 29; 1 Pet. 1:
17. “Take
away from him the pound, and give it unto him
that hath these pounds:” - for the capacities and opportunities of service,
out of which spring the emoluments and dignities of coming glory, if despised
by one, will be reaped by another. Rev. 3: 11.
7. - OUR CRISIS. Do we realise
the tremendous nature of the crisis through which we are passing? Before the Nobleman departed, He laid plans
for the selection of officers to aid Him in the administration of the Kingdom:
He devised a plan for bringing to light who these officers are on His return:
this plan is in operation at the present moment, purposely so contrived as to
reveal individual capacity for office, and personal fitness for trust; and -
most impressive of all - the Long Journey is now nearly over, and at any moment
the investigation may begin. “Make haste about cultivating a Christlike character. The harvest is great: the toil is heavy; the
sun is drawing to the west; the reckoning is at hand. There is no time to lose; set about it as you
have never done before, and say. ‘This one thing
I do’ ” (A. Maclaren).
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34
The Indestructible Jew
“The preservation of the Jew during so many centuries of
complete dispersion is a fact standing nearly, if not absolutely, alone in the
history of the world. It is at variance with all other experience of the laws
which govern the amalgamation with each other of different families of the
human race.” (Late Duke of Argyll).
There is no land without a Jew; and so fecund and virile is the race
that in fifty years it has leapt up from four millions to twelve, and now
exceeds by five millions the Jewish census of the time of King David. Between
Nor
is the racial type altered. Other races
have suffered dispersion, but dispersion in colonies; the Jew alone has been a
race in solution among other races: yet what he was on the
We
are now confronted with a startling fact.
The ineradicable instinct of the Jew has been to seek absorption among
the nations. Even in the golden age of Israel the Psalmist had to say, - “They mingled themselves with the nations and learned their
works” (Psa. 106: 35); and it was the
unceasing grief of Jehovah that Israel, His Bride, was never weary of breaking
wedlock. So eagerly did Israel absorb a
Babylonian atmosphere that, after seventy years, Nehemiah had to translate the
Law into Hebrew (Neh. 8: 8), and a thousand
years later the language of Palestine was still a compound manufactured in
Babylon. Yet every instinct of
absorption has been defied by an invisible barrier of mysterious destiny. Intermarriages with Gentiles have but one
third to one fourth the fertility of pure Jewish marriages. A ring of fire has kept the Jew lonely,
isolated, and indestructible. “Experience shows that this conservation is due in a great
degree to the very hatred which they have incurred” (Spinoza).
It
was the persecutions of a Pharaoh which first isolated the Jew into a national
consciousness, and made him a nation. It was the whips of Philistia, and the
scorpions of
The
indestructibility of the Jew is a fact of unsurpassable significance. There could be no more startling proof as to
Who it was that hung upon the Cross than these nineteen centuries of
un-exhausted expiation. “For our SINS” - the
Jews have confessed every year since the burning of the
Nor
could it be the transgression of the Mosaic Law alone; for Jehovah had
explicitly promised, that, on repentance,
“the Lord thy God will TURN THY CAPTIVITY, and have
compassion upon thee” (Deut. 30: 3). No people has fasted longer, or prayed more
fervently; no nation has so studied the Law, or sought more earnestly to obey
its precepts: yet not a single [spiritual] blessing, that was to follow obedience, has been
procured, and not a single curse, which was to follow disobedience, has been
averted. What immediately preceded this
tremendous catastrophe.
The
survival of the Jew is an equally arresting proof of the love of God. The worlds that roll around our earth are no
more indestructible than the people of God’s choice. “Thus saith the Lord,
which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light
by night: If these ordinances depart from before
me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation
before me for ever” (Jer. 31: 35). All blessing for the world God has lodged in
the Jew. “In
thee shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed”: with the absorption of the Jew among the nations,
therefore, would disappear, as a river that sinks out of sight, the hope of the
world, and his survival is essential to the salvation of the race. The indestructible Jew carries in ‘the wandering feet and weary breast’ the irrefutable
proof of the crucifixion of the Son of God, and the perpetual witness of Jehovah’s
un-exhausted love.
Take
the Jew from the world, and what becomes of the Bible? Take the Bible from the world, and how do you
explain the Jew? Interpret one by the
other and the proof is overwhelming that God has sent His Son into the world, that
through Him the world might have life.
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35.
Living Letters
Not
a line written by our Lord’s hand has come down to us. Once, and once only, He
wrote (John viii. 6): and that word vanished with the dust in which it was
written. Nevertheless, for nearly two thousand years Jesus has been writing
millions of letters: what are these?
1. - THE RAW MATERIAL. What is
Christ’s paper? “Ye are an epistle of Christ, written, not
in tables of stone, but in tables that are
hearts” (2 Cor. 3: 3). God might write on the mind - yet, knowing
what is right, I might refuse it; God might write on the conscience - yet,
feeling what is right, I might neglect it; but when He writes on my heart, He
grips the centre of my being, and masters my life. “I will put my laws
on their heart, and upon their mind also will I
write them” (Heb. 10: 16).
2. - THE PARCHMENT. All writing
material - whether reeds, or leaves, or skin, or rag - is utterly unfit to be
written on until worked up: the reeds and leaves have to be dried, the skin to
be dressed, the rags to be pulped; even stone must be polished before it can
take the engraver’s tool. The raw
material is the heart: what is the parchment ready for inscription? “Written in tables
[or tablets] that are hearts of flesh.” A heart which refuses to absorb the ink,
which takes no saving impression from the Gospel, is a ‘hard’ heart, which has no part nor lot in salvation. “I will take away the
stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give
you an heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36: 26). But all rags can make good paper. A manufacturer cares nothing concerning the
original state of the rags: - foul, or clean, all he asks is that it should go
through the indispensable process: so the cleanest sinner will not enter Heaven
because of his cleanness, and the foulest sinner need not keep out of Heaven
because of his foulness. Joel 2: 13.
3. - THE PEN. Christ writes
no letter with the pen of an angel, or an audible voice from Heaven: what then
is His pen? “An
epistle of Christ, ministered by us.” The sun takes the photograph, but human hands
set the camera: so the penmanship is Christ’s, but the amanuensis is any one who can write God’s truth on other hearts. “My tongue is the pen
of a ready writer” (Ps. 45: 1), and
that Writer is Christ. 2 Cor. 4: 13.
4. - THE INK. What is the
invisible and mysterious fluid, which, traced by the finger of Christ, engraves
God upon the heart? “Written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.” The Tablets are alive: the Pen is alive: so
must the Fluid be living too: the Holy Ghost is God’s great Agent of life
without Whom salvation is impossible. “If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (
5. - THE WRITER. How can we be
sure that the Writer is Christ? The
author of a letter is revealed, not alone by the penmanship, or the signature -
these can be forged, - but supremely by what he says, and how he says it: that
is, by the contents, and the style. “An epistle of Christ” must give “a savour of Christ.” “I saw
a terrible object” says a traveller - “propped
against the wall. He had lost all
semblance of humanity, eyes and face eaten away: he could neither move nor
speak, but could hear a little. Near him
stood a handsome young Chinaman. ‘Do you see
that young man?’ said the doctor. ‘When he came to us he was intensely proud, and bitterly
opposed to the Gospel. He was converted. His first thought was, What can I do
for Jesus? He constituted himself the nurse
of this melancholy object, sleeping by his side, feeding him before touching
his own food, and lifting him hither and thither.’ ” As a violet will
fall out of an opened letter, or some word of love in it suddenly set all our
pulses beating, whose is the aroma of this subtle and exquisite perfume? Whose is the image and superscription? It is ‘a sweet savour
of Christ.’
6. - THE CORRESPONDENT. No letter was
ever written except to convey thoughts to others: to whom are these letters
addressed? “An
epistle known and read of all men:” that is, read and re-read; the
handwriting recognised, and the contents studied; read within and read
without. “The
godly man is the ungodly man’s Bible.”
Everybody knew what the Corinthians had been: everybody knew what they
now were: in every one of them, therefore, all
7.
- THE
CONTENTS. What do these letters declare? And who may become living letters? (1)
“Ye” - the whole church - “are an epistle.”
As there are many copies of the Bible, but only one Bible, so there are
many Christians, but only one epistle; and as a copy of the Bible may be
mutilated or defective, yet the Bible is perfect, so, however defective a
Christian, all the grace in the world to-day is lodged in the Church of Jesus
Christ. One Christian is a living
document overthrowing all infidel argument: how much more the entire
Church! It spells a divine Christ. (2)
If Christ has written one such letter, He can write a thousand, and He can
write a million: and if your neighbour has become God’s love-letter to the
world, so can you. (3) Life can hold no higher possibility for a man than to become
God’s living letter: for it is Christianity in its most convincing form - the
godlike life; in its most persuasive form - a loving voice; in its most
enduring form - an immortal heart; and in its divinest form - an autograph of
God.
Christ
will soon close His correspondence for ever.
He will soon have written the last letter. Will you be one? God’s Church is a letter addressed to you: He
who wrote it is waiting for an answer.
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36.
Schism
1. - THE CHURCH. Countless
problems are solved the moment the word ‘church’
is correctly defined. What is the
Church? It is - as the word indicates - an
assembly called out of the world [by the Holy Spirit]; a body of
men, women, and children who believe in Jesus as the Christ (1 John 5: 1), and who confess Him as the Son of
God (1 John 4: 15). Seven times the Scriptures describe the
Church as that body of people which is vitally one with Christ. It is (1) a Vine; “I
am the Vine, ye are the branches” (John 15: 5): (2)
a Flock; “other sheep [Gentiles] I have, which are not of this
fold: ... they shall become one flock, one shepherd” (John 10: 16):
(3) a Temple; “unto Whom coming, a living
stone, ye also, as
living stones, are built up” (1 Pet. 2: 4): (4)
a Bride; “that He might present it unto Himself a
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing” (Eph. 5: 27): (5) a Family; “that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren”(Rom.
8: 29): (6) a Body; “God gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body” (Eph.
1: 22): (7) a Spirit; “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6: 17).
The sole fact which constitutes membership of the Church is vital union
with our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. - RECEPTION. The moment the
Church is defined correctly, the terms of communion become inevitable and
obvious. If the Church is the assembly
of all vitally united to Christ, all so vitally united constitute the Church,
and must therefore be acknowledged as the Church. We do not make a Christian, the utmost we can
do is to receive him: we do not manufacture fellowship, we can only acknowledge
it: we do not make the unity of the Spirit, we can only keep it: and we are
bound by the very construction of the Church to receive into our fellowship all
whom God has received into His, - for they are the Church.
3. - SCHISM. We are now in
a position to define the sin of Schism.
God is compacting His saints into unity: Schism tears them asunder. “God tempered the
body together, ... that there should be no
schism in the body” (1 Cor. 12: 24). God tempers together: Schism, which means a
split, or rending, pulls apart; it is party spirit in the Body, alienating
hearts that still profess the same fellowship. 1
Cor. 1: 10-13. Whence does it
come? “Now the
works of the flesh” - that is, permanent tendencies in us all, springing
from the old nature - “are manifest, which are these, faction,
divisions, parties”
(Gal 5: 20). Jude
19.
4. - HERESY. But there is a
worse sin, - the sin of Schism grown hard and old: this Scripture calls Heresy.
Schism is heart-separation in the Body: Heresy is an undisguised faction (often
involving a separate Table, and an organisation hedged by separatist terms or
communion) which ultimately develops into a split from the Body. Both sins are named in one passage. “I praise you not, ... for I
hear that schisms [heart-separations] exist
among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies
[factions] among you” (1
Cor. 11: 17). It is crucial to
observe that Heresy - which never bears in Scripture its modern moaning of
false doctrine - is a faction which divides the people of God either on a truth
or on an error. Its sinfulness lies, not
in that which divides, but in the division.
The forcing of any doctrine or ritual or practice - whether true or
false - as a term of communion compels division, and is the sin of Heresy: and
the heretic, or party-maker, is to be avoided. Tit.
3: 10; Rom. 16: 17.
5. – EXCOMMUNICATION. The only
commanded excommunications are those for implacable injury (Matt. xviii. 17), certain stated immoralities (1 Cor. 5: 11), and perhaps also for persistent
sloth (2 Thess. 3: 11, 14). All other exclusion is unscriptural and
evil. “Neither
doth he himself receive the brethren” - the grounds of Diotrophes’
excommunication of others are not stated, for they are immaterial: it is the
excommunication which is the sin - “and them that would
he forbiddeth, and casteth them out of the
church. Beloved,
imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good” (3
John 10, 11). Schism and Heresy
will exclude disciples from the millennial
6. - THE SCHISMATIC. A fact of
supreme practical importance remains.
Who is the Schismatic? The
Schismatic is the one who raises barriers to communion with his brethren which
God never raised. If an individual, or a
church, or a group imposes as a condition of fellowship any doctrine or ritual
or practise which God has not imposed - that is, any doctrine except that which
makes a Christian (Rom. 10: 9) - the guilt
of schism lies with the imposing body, and not with the conscientious objector
who is thereby debarred from fellowship.
God has founded His Church on life: he who, ignoring a disciple’s life
in Christ, and his entire innocence of the immoralities of 1 Cor. 5: 11, insists on a doctrine or a ritual or
a practice as a term of communion, - he is the Schismatic: on the other hand,
the individual or the church which, loving all God’s children, receives them on
the sole ground of regeneration, nor exalts un-sectionalism as the fresh
rallying-cry of a sect, no excommunication can bring in guilty of Schism at the
bar of God.
7. - CATHOLICITY. Here lies the
true Catholicity. “I take a whole Christ for my Saviour; I take the whole Bible
for my staff; I take the whole Church for my fellowship; and I take the whole
world for my parish” (Augustine).
In spite of the deep disorder and tragic sin at
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37
The Blood and the Soul
1. - SACRIFICE. A custom that
is universal, dating back through all ages, and spread through all nations, is
bloodshed in Sacrifice. The most ancient
writers, as Pythagoras and Plato, complain that so strange a practise - one so
abhorrent (as it is) to reason, and opposed to all the dictates of natural
religion - had even then spread through the whole world: modern travellers
affirm that it is still as wide-spread as the human race. How could the blood of a dead animal please
God? Imagine the first sacrifice. No animal had yet been killed by man. No creatures were yet slaughtered for
food. No holy human instinct demanded
bloodshed for worship. Yet Abel
deliberately cuts his lamb’s throat, and its blood welters on the ground; when
the last quiver of the heart has ceased, he places the carcase in the flames;
and the fire consumes it into silent ash.
Blood, hot with life, poured out is a tragic and awful thing: could it
please God? Ezek.
18: 32.
2. - GUILT. Abel’s only
possible motive is that which has been the motive of all Sacrifice since. The dreadful accents of an offended God still
rang in the ears of the disobedient family.
Abel, profoundly moved, must have felt thus: - “I
can come before God no more in the glow of child-like innocence and gratitude:
the purpose for which He made me, I have destroyed: I have sinned, and now I am
sin; even as this sacrifice is burnt to ashes, so I deserve nothing but death.” But the moment God’s lightnings fell on the
lamb, and not on him, imagine Abel’s joy.
“God is pleased, somehow; the philosophy of it
I do not understand: how an innocent animal can replace my guilty soul, I do
not know: all I know is that I have escaped the fire.” It was life for life.
3. - FAITH. But was God
pleased? “By
faith Abel offered” his lamb: and, since “faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of
God” (Rom. 10: 17), God must have
told Abel to do it. How else could Abel
know he was not to offer the animal alive?
How could he tell which animal was sacrificial? How could he know God would not be angry with
the slaughter of His lovely living thing?
Moreover, God had already done it.
The first animal ever slain was slain by God (Gen.
3: 21): not for human food, but to cover man: life was taken, that life
might be preserved. It was life for
life.
4. - BLOOD. The meaning of
the bloodshed now begins to appear.
Death is no pleasure to God: it is a tragic and horrible necessity. “For the soul of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it” - the blood, containing the soul
- “to you upon the altar to make atonement” -
that is, a covering - “for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement; by reason of the soul” that is in it (Lev. 17: 11).
It is soul for soul. There is no
magic in blood, but there is a soul in it: and only when the blood is poured
away with the soul in it is death assured, and soul has been given for
soul. Therefore God, for mercy’s sake,
reserved all the blood for sacrifice alone.
“No soul of you shall eat blood: ... I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement.” It is soul for soul.
5. -
6. - JUDGMENT. Therefore all
Sacrifice - and
7. - CONFUSION. How then, and
when, is atonement - God’s mercy-gift - made mine? The Law of Moses - the most organized and
wonderful sacrificial system the world has ever seen - first made plain, by its
ritual, the identity of the sacrifice and the sinner. “Aaron shall lay his
hands upon the head of the live goat, and
confess all the iniquities of the children of
“And he shall lay his hand
upon the head of the burnt offering; and it
shall be accepted for him [by God] to make
atonement” (Lev. 1: 4).
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38.
The Prize of the Kingdom
Is
the
1.
Because our Lord states it in the Gospels, - the Holy Spirit repeats it in
nearly every Epistle, - it is the basis of the promises and threats to the
Seven Churches, - and it is foretold as an actual experience in the prophecies
of the Apocalypse.
[1]
Matt. 7: 21; Luke 20: 35, etc.
[2]
Eph. 5: 5, 6; Gal. 5: 19-21.
[3]
Rev. chs. 2. & 3.
[4]
Rev. 11: 18, 20: 6.
2.
Because the Types of the Old Testament, largely an unquarried mine, strikingly
corroborate it, thus confirming our understanding of the literal passages of the
New Testament, and weaving all into an exquisite mosaic of revelation. 1 Cor. 9: 24 –
10: 12: Ex. 12: 15; Luke 17: 32; Heb. 4: 11.
3.
Because the Age to Come - as distinct from the Eternal State, which is based (Rev. 20: 15) on grace alone - is revealed as “one last day of a thousand years, a full and perfect
judicial aeon,” in which all seed sown in this Age reaps its exactly
corresponding harvest, and to which the consequences of works done after faith
are confined.
4.
Because it safeguards the infinite merits of our Lord’s imputed righteousness
and divine sacrifice by establishing the spotless and eternal standing of every
believer in Him; while it also safeguards human responsibility and divine
justice by making every believer accountable for his walk, under pain of a
possible forfeiture of coming glory.
[1]
Heb. 10: 14, Rom. 8: 33;
[2]
Phil. 2: 12, Rev. 3: 11.
5.
Because - since God’s dealings with His people must always rest on the
character of God, and God’s character is not mercy only, but justice also - it
is inconceivable that a disciple’s life, if unholy, should have no profounder
effect on his destiny than mere gradation in glory. Heb.
10: 30, 31; Rev. 22: 12; 1 Cor. 3: 15; Luke 20: 35.
6.
Because, if we acknowledge any judgment of a believer’s works at all, and that
before a tribunal which is a judgment seat and not a mercy seat, we are thereby
compelled to acknowledge, further, that the investigation must be strictly
judicial, and that it will therefore be as exactly graded in censure as it is
in praise. 2
Cor. 5: 10; Rom. 14: 10-12;
7.
Because it vindicates the holiness and justice of God from the charge of
compounding with His people’s sins, and makes the highest glory of God to rest
only on the active righteousness of the disciple co-operating, consistently and
ceaselessly, with the imputed righteousness of his Lord, - obedience being the
only proof of love. 1 Cor. 3: 17; 1 Thes. 4: 6; Matt. 5: 20; Rev. 20: 6.
8.
Because it is the supreme reconciliation between Paul and James, - that is,
between justification through faith unto Eternal Life and justification through
works unto Millennial Reward.
[1]
Before works - Rom. 4: 10, Gen. 15: 6;
[2]
After works - Jas. 2: 21, Gen. 22: 16.
9.
Because it is perhaps as near an approximation as has yet been reached to a
solution of the perennial controversy between the Calvinist and the Arminian: for
it establishes all the passages of glorious certainty, while it leaves ample
scope for the most solemn warnings: it takes both sets of Scripture as it finds
them. John
10: 27, 28; Rom. 6: 23; Rom. 11: 29; John 15: 6; Heb. 10: 26; Matt. 5: 22.
10. Because it gives the natural and unforced interpretation to the facts
of Church life, as it does also to the simple statements of Holy Writ, and
reveals how exactly the one squares with the other, both in present character
and in just recompense. 2 Cor. 12: 20, 21; Jas. 2: 5; Matt. 18: 18; Rom. 8: 12,
13.
11. Because large sections of the Church of God are purged, and can only
be purged, by seeing the drastic consequences of a carnal life: and because,
for want of a frank and fearless statement of these consequences, multitudes of
disciples are now wrapt in a profound slumber.
1 Cor. 5: 5, 11, 6: 9; Matt. 24: 48-51; Luke
12: 47, 48; Rev. 3: 16, 21.
12. Because it purges every motive with the awful vision of the Judgment
Seat of Christ, and supplies a lever of unsurpassed power for alienating the
disciple from the world and filling him with a passion for the
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39.
Jehovah Our Righteousness
TRANSGRESSION. “By works of the law shall no
flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3: 20). What is the Law? “Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind; and
thy neighbour as thyself” (Luke 10: 27):
“on these two commandments hangeth the whole law,
and the prophets” (Matt.
22: 40). Love from cradle to
grave; love to God from every part of one’s being; love to every act, to every
truth, to every attribute, of God; love that has so controlled us as to
prevent, under all circumstances, and at all times, injury to God or man; love
to every neighbour without exception, with a love no less than love to self;
love that has never ceased, and that has never slipped: - this is the Law of
God. The soul that imagines that flesh
can be justified before God by works of law has no conception whatever of the
true nature of the Law of God.
REPENTANCE. Nor can Repentance ever be Justification. “For through the law cometh the knowledge” - or
consciousness - “of sin,” or guilt, and not its
removal. No law court in the world ever
justified an offender because he repented: for law has to do, not with the
feelings of the guilty, but with his deeds: it has never said, Repent and live,
but always, Do this, and live (Ezek. 18: 19).
“The doers of a law shall be justified,” that
is, pronounced righteous (Rom. 2: 13). For law to acquit the guilty on the ground of
repentance, or on any ground whatever but that of obedience, is to dissolve the
very foundations of righteousness. Prov. 17: 15.
Gal. 3: 10.
RIGHTEOUSNESS. But listen. “Now” - since the Gospel came - “apart from law a righteousness of God hath been manifested.” A righteousness now manifested, - now, for
the first time: and it is God’s: what is this righteousness? God was never manifested anything but
righteous: and so far from the Gospel revealing a righteous God, it is the Law
which supremely did this (Ps. 119: 142):
what then is this righteousness now revealed?
Look again. “A righteousness of God”: but righteousness before law
is the Law pronouncing righteous one who stands before it: when did God ever so
stand? Look again. This must be a human righteousness; for it is
human conduct which the Law regulates: what then is it? Christ.
PAUL ANSWERS. “Christ Jesus, whom God set
forth ... to show His righteousness: ... for the showing, I say,
of His righteousness at this present season.” “Whom God brought
forward”: God brought Jesus out of the veiled eternities, led Him under
human gaze for three-and-thirty years, lifted Him on the cross to the eyes of
all men and all ages, and then drew Him back to God. Behold the Righteousness! It is the “righteousness
of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet.
1: 1); “for as through the one man’s disobedience
the many were made sinners, so through the
obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous” (Rom. 5: 19).
It is a Man’s obedience, for Christ was “born of
a woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4: 4): yet it is God’s righteousness, for it
was “God manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3: 16) who gave that obedience its infinite
value and reach. It is “Jehovah our righteousness” (Jere.
23: 6). Phil. 3: 9.
JUSTIFICATION. So
justification before law - though “apart from law”
so far as the sinner is concerned - becomes both possible and a fact. Gal. 2: 16.
“For the showing, I say, of His righteousness at this present
season; He might Himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.” On what ground? Because, since the Law has been perfectly
obeyed in a living righteousness, and perfectly obeyed also in a death under
judgment, the Law itself now justifies him who is in Christ. If I have faith, I am in Christ: not only,
therefore, may God justify me, but - by His own gracious provision - He must;
once justice is satisfied, it were injustice to ask for more: the just Judge
can now justify the unjust without losing his character, - nay, while
gloriously vindicating His holiness. Is. 61: 10.
BOASTING. “Where then is the glorying? It is excluded.” Three things must follow if I had a finger in
my own salvation: - (1) the Divine
holiness would be irretrievably damaged in my eyes, for God would have slurred
over, and accepted, an imperfect goodness; (2)
my eternity would be uneasy, for how should I know what fresh guilt the Law
might not uncover in my earthly life?
And (3) for all eternity I
could boast in the face of Heaven that “salvation
belongeth unto God” and myself. Rev. 7: 10. But now the righteousness that saves is not
mine at all, but God’s; nor is it God’s righteousness eking out mine, but
substituted for mine: the meriting cause lies wholly outside my conduct, and
wholly inside Christ’s; and the Law, “Thou shalt love”
- the highest law that man could hear, or God could give - has been so divinely
fulfilled from Bethlehem to Calvary that now “Christ is
the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believeth,” Rom. 10: 4.
LAW. “Do we
then make the law of none effect through faith? God
forbid: nay, we
establish law.” “The law is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7: 12): its enforcement is holy and righteous
and good: and the joy of eternity is a salvation that rests, not on a pardon
granted against law, but on a righteousness founded on the vindication of
law. God is pleased to impute Christ’s
righteousness to the soul on faith as surely and effectually as He imputes the
soul’s sin to Christ. “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become” - not righteous, but - “the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5: 21).
“There is such dignity in the Godhead that all it does is
infinite in its merit, and when He stooped to suffer, the Law received greater
honour than if a whole universe had become a sacrifice” (Spurgeon).
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40.
Soul-winning
1. – IT IS A COMMAND. “To save” (John 12: 47)
- that was our Lord’s mission; “I must work” (John 9: 4) - that was His motto: and “as He is, even so are we in
this world” (1 John 4: 17). “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers” (Matt.
4: 18): every follower is to be a fisher: and our witness, like a pebble
dropped in a pool, is to widen out to the utmost frontiers of mankind. “Ye shall be My
witnesses both in
2. – IT IS A RESPONSIBILITY. 1 Cor. 1: 27, 28. It was labouring men out of whom our Lord
made the greatest Fishers. All the
college that is needed is a heart set on souls; all the learning, an
experimental knowledge of saving truth; all the training, actual experience in
soul-winning; and all the ordination, the impulse of the Holy Spirit. 2 Cor. 4: 13.
The very consciousness of our sinfulness is the best warrant for our
pointing others to the Saviour.
Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me
Through the midnight lands;
Mine the mighty ordination
Of the pierced Hands.
3. – IT IS A RESOLVE. “I determined that as I loved Christ, and as Christ loved
souls, I would press Christ on the individual soul, so that none who were in
the proper sphere of my individual responsibility or influence should lack the
opportunity of meeting the question whether or not they would individually
trust and follow Christ. The resolve I made was, that when ever I was in such
intimacy with a soul as to be justified in choosing my subject of conversation,
the theme of themes should have prominence between us, so that I might learn
his need, and, if possible, meet it” (Dr. Trumbull). Prov. 11: 30.
4. – IT IS A GREAT CHALLENGE. For every ten
men competent and desirous to address a meeting, there is not one competent and
desirous to deal with individual souls; for winning the individual is
incomparably the hardest work that God has given us to do. “From nearly half a
century of such practice, I can say I have spoken with thousands upon thousands
on the subject of their spiritual welfare; yet I find it as difficult to speak
about it at the end of these years as at the beginning. If there is one thing Satan is sensitive
about, it is the danger of a Christian’s harming the cause he loves by speaking
of Christ to a needy soul” (Dr. Trumbull). It is a challenge to the highest manhood in
the soul. Luke 14: 23.
5. – IT IS A GREAT BLESSING. The
first recorded soul-winners in the world - save Noah - were angels fresh from
the throne of God (Gen. 19: 15): our work is
the work they dropped: and we too must live in Heaven if we would do personal
work on earth. We must win men to us if
we would win them to the Lord: the effort, the self-watchfulness, the
unselfishness evoke all that is loveliest in the soul. In dealing with souls, “Be especially careful of the hand, the voice, and the smile”
(Evan Roberts). Mr. Muller’s five
principles of intercession produce the highest type of character. (1).
“I have no shadow of doubt in praying for their
salvation: 1 Tim. 2: 4 and 1 John 5: 6.
(2). I
never plead for their salvation in my own name, but in the all-worthy name of
my precious Lord Jesus: John 14: 14. (3).
I always believe in the willingness and ability of God
to answer my prayers: Mark 11: 24. (4).
I have not allowed myself in known sin: Ps. 66: 18.
(5). I
have continued in believing prayer for over fifty-two years, and shall so
continue until the answer is given.”
Nor need the highest talents lie unused.
“Every one out of Christ I look upon as a
fortress that I must storm and win; and when I look back upon the thousands of
youths whose hearts have opened under my influence, I can only say, ‘The Lord hath done it.’ In working to save souls, my life has been
one of joy, rather than of toil.” (Dr. Tholuck). Jas. 5: 20.
6. – IT IS A GREAT RESPONSIBILITY. “In the great eternity which is beyond, among the many
marvels that will burst upon the soul, this surely will be one of the greatest,
that the Son of God came to redeem the world, that certain individuals were
chosen from among mankind to be the first-fruits of the new creation, that to
them was committed the inconceivable honour of proclaiming the glad tidings to
their fellow-creatures still in the darkness, and they did not do it”
(Dr. Eugene Stock). Matt. 21: 30.
7. – IT IS A GREAT NEED. Isa. 60: 2. The need is greater by many millions of souls
than when our Lord gave the command nineteen hundred years ago. “Thirty millions of
souls go to no place of worship in
8. – IT IS A GREAT
“Do something, oh do something! By the hell on earth these poor creatures suffer
to-day; by the destruction on the verge of which they hover; by the abundant
mercy provided for them; by the deliverance we have proved so possible; by the
agony of the Cross under which I make this appeal, I plead for a united,
desperate, persistent effort to save the lost” (Gen. Booth).
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41.
Onesimus
1. - A RUNAWAY SLAVE. Onesimus had
fled from the mountains of
2.
- A LETTER. Philemon, wealthy, loving, wronged, hurt;
Onesimus, a runaway, a thief, an outcast, a criminal: - now there appears one
between, - Paul, a sufferer, a sympathiser, an intercessor, a surety. What does Paul do? “Whom
I have sent back to thee in his own person.” The first thing Christ does with a soul is to
send it back to God. Sinner or saint,
pure or foul, saved or unsaved, we must all get back to God. But how?
With a covering letter only. No
excuses, no denials, no vows, no promises; no offers to pay our debt, or to
work out our own liability: Onesimus, silently pointing to the letter in his
hand, stakes everything on Paul’s influence with Philemon. “If any man sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1
John 1: 2).
3. - VITAL
4. - A NEW BIRTH. ‘But,’ Philemon may say, ‘how
can I take back one so false and untrustworthy? a second time he may ruin me
utterly.’ Therefore Paul gives
back another man. “My child, whom I have begotten
in my bonds: [who] perhaps was parted from thee
for a season, that shouldest have him for ever.” Paul gives back one born over again; one
re-created in his own likeness; the new nature, one with the Holy Father. The child of God is begotten in the bonds of
5. - THE DEBT. But Onesimus
is a bankrupt slave and the debt remains.
‘If my slave,’ Philemon may say, ‘can rob me with impunity, and I merely cancel his debt, how
can this be just to my other slaves?’
Paul answers: “If he hath wronged thee at all,
or oweth thee aught, put
that to mine account, ... I will repay it.” Paul had not robbed Philemon: but the
liability for the debt, by this offer, now passes from Onesimus to Paul: after
this, Onesimus is no more in debt.
Crucifixion, the extreme penalty of a runaway slave, has been paid in
full: “having blotted out the bond written in
ordinances that was against us, nailing it to
the cross” (Col. 2: 14). The redeemed soul is in debt to God no more:
the bond is cancelled, because the debt is paid.
6. - A BROTHER BELOVED. So Paul takes
the whole liability: Onesimus takes a full discharge: and what is he to
Philemon now? “No longer as a slave, but more than a slave” - that is, a slave still, but
much more – “a brother beloved.” He was Philemon’s in body before: now, in
body and soul. Why? Because the soul has
now understood its God; that our God is love, essential, originating,
all-comprehensive love: and it has found salvation in simply letting God love
it. The state of salvation is the state
of love between God and the soul. “Every one that
loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God”
(1 John 4: 7). Nothing, in heaven or earth, is nearer the
heart of God than His redeemed child.
7. - COMING HOME. In one point -
perhaps the loveliest - the picture fails.
Paul had to work on the sympathies of Philemon, to win back his love to
Onesimus: in the Gospel it is Philemon who sent Paul after his runaway slave.
And none of the ransom’d ever knew
How deep were the waters cross’d;
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord pass’d
through,
Ere He found His sheep that was lost:
Out in the desert He heard its cry,
Sick, and helpless, and ready to die.
O
Onesimus, will you present Christ’s letter, on your behalf, to God? God will be certain to hear that plea: none
ever came to Him through Christ in vain, “Are you
there, Mary?” a blind girl, dying, said to her attendant. “Yes.” “Have you got a Bible?”
“Yes.” “Turn to
Heb. 7: 25.” “I have got it.”
“Read it.” “He is able
to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by Him.” “Yes, that is it. Now take hold of my hand, and put my finger
on that verse. Is it there?” “Yes.” “Now, my God, I die on that verse.”
“I AM THE DOOR: BY ME IF ANY MAN ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED” (John 10: 9).
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42.
The Great Escape
THE PERIL. “All these things that shall come to pass” (Luke 21: 36): what things? Crowding and disastrous miracles: - terrors
from heaven (ver. 11); signs in sun and moon
and stars (ver. 25); the powers of the heaven
shaken (ver. 26): for these will be the days
of vengeance (ver. 22), of persecution (ver. 17), of distress of nations, men fainting for
fear (ver. 25). Jer.
25: 32. “Then
shall be great tribulation, such as hath not
been from the beginning of the world until now, no,
nor ever shall be” (Matt.
24: 21). No peril so awful has
ever demanded an escape so great.
A HEAVENLY ESCAPE. Escape
is possible: “to escape all these things.” Gen. 19: 22.
Now since the distress is universal it can only be an escape into the
heavens: “for it shall come upon all them that dwell on
the face of all the earth.” No
foothold of safety will exist in the whole inhabited world. It is an escape to
“the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great
glory”: for “He bowed the heavens also, and came down; ... He made
darkness His hiding place, thick clouds of the
skies :.. He sent from on high, He took me” (Ps. 18: 9).
1 Thess. 4: 17.
A MORAL ESCAPE. Nor can this
be the deliverance of the elect Jewish remnant: for (1) the escape of the Jew is into the wilderness, never into the
heavens. Rev. 12: 6. The earthly escape was typed by Noah passing
through the Flood, the heavenly by Enoch who escaped it altogether; and this is
an escape which sets “before the Son of Man.” Matt. xxiv. 26.
(2) The Jewish escape is
active: this escape is passive. The
faithful Jew is to “flee to the mountains” (Matt. 24: 16): the faithful disciple here is to
pray to be removed - “to be set [‘by angels,’ Alford] before
the Son of Man.” (3) The Jewish escape is on purely
physical grounds, - if he instantly sets his face to the mountains whatever his
exact moral condition, he escapes: this deliverance turns crucially on moral
acceptability - “accounted worthy to escape.”
A CHRISTIAN ESCAPE. Other
Scriptures are conclusive that this escape is Christian. (1)
To the head of a Christian church is our Lord’s promise: - “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon whole world” (Rev. 3: 10). 1 Thess.
5: 9; Heb. 9: 28. (2) To the head of a Christian church
is also our Lord’s warning: - “If therefore thou shalt
not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will arrive over
[see Greek] thee” (Rev.
3: 3). Matt. 5: 13; Rev. 12: 17. (3)
The Type exquisitely confirms it. The
Field is the world; the Wheat is the church; the Reapers are angels (Matt 13: 39): - the Reapers first of all gather
the Firstfruits, then garner the Harvest, and finally glean the Corners of the
Field which had been deliberately left unreaped. Lev.
23: 10-22. So firstfruits are
found in the Heavenlies before the harvest (Rev.
14: 4): and after the harvest (Rev. 14: 15)
the warning to watchfulness still goes forth (Rev.
16: 15). “Only those who are devoutly looking and waiting for the Saviour’s return
shall be taken at first” (Dr. Seiss).
A CONDITIONAL ESCAPE. The moral
crisis of the escape lies in the condition: “watch and
pray that ye may be accounted worthy to escape.” These Divine words, if they have any meaning
at all, must mean that without the prayerful vigil the worthiness is
impossible: “watch and pray always.” Heb. 11: 5.
“No command is more frequent, none more
solemnly impressed” (Dean Alford): for the escape is no privilege
attached to faith, but a reward attached to a standard of holiness known only
to God. “Then
shall two men be in the field; one is taken,
and one is left; two
women shall be grinding in the mill; one is
taken, and one is left. Watch therefore,
for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh” (Matt. 24: 40).
“Our Lord assumes that some of His beloved
Church will continue to be cared for as His sheep upon earth, until He destroy
‘that wicked’ with the breath of His mouth” (Dr. Tregelles).
THE WAY OF ESCAPE. ‘Watch’ is one of the great comprehensive words of the
Bible. Watch oneself: watch the advances
of the world-crisis: watch for the King; watch for the highest interests of
Christ: watch for flying opportunities: watch for dying souls: watch Satan:
watch God. Watchfulness is acute
alertness exercising every faculty for God.
But it must be accompanied by specific prayer: - “pray that ye may be accounted worthy”; “that ye may prevail [with God] to escape.” Watchfulness
invokes all our powers for God, - prayer invokes all God’s powers for us; but
more than that, - watchfulness devotes our works to God, - prayer devotes
ourselves. 2
Tim. 4: 8.
THE CRISIS. The cry of
urgency should now ring through the whole
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43.
A Cancelled Bond
THE BOND. No judge can
liberate accused man without first disposing of the indictment which holds the
prisoner in an iron grip. That
indictment is absolute master of the situation.
Now such a bond, Paul says (Col. 2: 14)
- a document that binds - exists between the soul and God. The contract in the bond is obedience in all
points to the Law of God: man is a debtor to do the whole law (Gal. 5: 3).
The advantage named in the bond is Eternal Life - “he that doeth [the works of the law] shall live” (Gal. 3: 12):
the penalty named is a Curse - “Cursed is every one
which continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law,
to do them” (Gal. 3:
10). The great Creditor now holds
the Bond: drawn originally in His actual handwriting (Ex.
31: 18), it is deposited with Him, and therefore there can be no evasion
of its obligations. As all-knowing, no
detail of the debt can escape Him; as almighty, the payment can be enforced; as
all-just, the indebtedness must be exacted; as all-holy, He cannot tear up His
own bond. The indictment flutters over
the whole human race.
BROKEN. No honourable
and solvent man need fear a bond: he can not only meet its obligations, but it
guarantees his own claim. The Bond binds
me to obedience, but it also binds God to grant me life, on obedience. But the exactness and comprehension of the
contract allows of no flaw in the fulfilment. “Whosoever
shalt keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one
point, he is become guilty of all” (Jas. 2: 10). One sin, therefore, releases God from
the Bond: one sin renders me powerless to enforce my claim upon Him. But God’s
claim upon me does not lapse: on the contrary, the penalty agreed upon the
Creditor, as a just judge, has now no option but to enforce. And my sin is not one, but a multitude (Jas. 5: 20): the list of the Law’s enactments has
become, approximately, the catalogue of my sins.
HOSTILE. Thus a bond,
which is broken, becomes actively hostile: it becomes virtually a writ for my
arrest. I can be proceeded against in a
court of law, and the broken bond is the fatal document. “Which was [secretly] hostile
to us, and [also openly] contrary to us.”
Secretly: for myriads, resting on obedience for salvation, thus actually
appeal to the Bond for justification; which is as though a thief, caught
red-handed, pointed to his indictment to clear him. Slowly it dawns on the debtor that he is “dead through his trespasses”; and, if a Gentile,
doubly dead, for his signature - circumcision - has never been affixed to the
bond at all - “dead [also] through the uncircumcision of your flesh.” Even if he has kept the Law, he is powerless
to enforce his claim on an unsigned bond.
EXPUNGED. Now God,
anxious for the salvation of all, deals, not with the debtor, but with the
indictment; for the cancelling of the indictment is the only hope of the
accused. First, therefore, “having blotted out the bond”: He has expunged the
charges of the broken Law. How? In the only way open to a judge in a true
indictment. The debt has been paid. 1 Pet. 2: 24.
The penal consequences having been endured, the obligations are
discharged: justice never strikes twice for the same sin: every sting for every
sin, emptied into Christ, is a spent sting: therefore the handwriting of the
Bond fades and disappears, Jesus having undergone my capital punishment, the
writ against me no longer runs: His death is the death of my sins: and the only
condition is my acceptance of the discharge.
“Repent ye therefore, and turn again,
that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts. 3: 19).
REMOVED.
But God has done more: He has
bodily removed the indictment, “taking it out of the
way.” The Law rose up as the
great barrier between God and man; it blocked the road to life; it was
powerless - through the weakness of the flesh - either for justification, or
for sanctification: God has therefore removed the Flaming Sword from the way to
the Tree of Life. Who has removed it?
THE CREDITOR. The document
on which all His claims rest, - by which alone He can enforce those claims, -
in which lies the only record of my debts - He has taken it away; and the Judge
Himself is powerless against me without the indictment. The indictment is withdrawn because all the
charges have been met.
PUNCTURED. Our merciful
God has finally turned the Bond into a receipt: He has “nailed it to the cross.” Who
was nailed to the cross? Christ. What was nailed to the cross? The Law.
Then the two were identified, and both were crucified. The nails which pierced the Lord, pierced the
Law: the moment a debt is paid, a bill becomes inoperative: it becomes a
receipt. A man once entered an American
bank, and presented a cheque of considerable value. The cashier, after examining it, asked him
where he obtained it. “I do not see,” the
customer replied, “that that is any business of yours:
is it not made payable to bearer?”
“Certainly,” the cashier replied. “Is it not a genuine cheque?” “Yes,” said the cashier. “Then why won’t
you cash it?” “Look here,” said the
cashier, “I don’t want to exceed my official duty; nor
do I question that you came by this cheque honourably. But here, in the middle
of the cheque, is a peculiarly-shaped and clear-cut little hole. It corresponds
to the die of this little instrument, with which we bankers puncture cheques
that have been paid. That cheque has been cashed. Once punctured, it has no
power or authority over the bank.” Exactly so it is with the Law. The
Law has no fraction of authority over me any more: it is a cashed cheque: it is
a cancelled bond: and God now hands it to every soul, for the taking, as a
receipted bill.
“For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every
one that believeth” (
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44.
The Blood and the Leaven
THE TYPE. Ex. 12. A
zoologist, it is said, if he be given but a single bone of an animal, can
reconstruct the entire anatomy to which the bone belongs: so one sure clue is
sufficient to explain a type: and, in the Blood and the Leaven, three explicit
clues are given by the Holy Spirit, so as to put all beyond doubt. “Our passover also
hath been sacrificed, even Christ” -
therefore the lamb’s blood typifies Christ’s blood: “wherefore
let us keep the feast” - therefore the Church age, the Seven Days
between Advent and Advent, is the antitype of the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “not with old leaven, neither
with the leaven of malice and wickedness” - the leaven, therefore, is
sin - “but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth” (1 Cor. 5: 8). No type could be clearer or surer. 1 Cor. 10: 11.
THE BLOOD. Jehovah’s
first command was putting of the Blood upon the House. “They shall take of
the blood, and put it on the two side posts and
on the lintel, upon the houses wherein they
shall eat” the lamb (Ex. 12: 7). The Destroying Angel sought out every house,
for every house held sinners; but he lowered his sword, and passed, wherever he
saw the blood. “When
I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Why?
Because death had already crossed the threshold: the lamb had perished
in the place of the firstborn. But into
every other house the Angel entered. The
moment Christ’s blood rises up between my soul and Jehovah, it is “the beginning of months” to my soul: it is
regeneration, the begetting of a new and divine life: in that moment, when I
have consciously appropriated
THE LEAVEN. Jehovah’s
second command was the putting forth of the Leaven from the House. “Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day” - that is, from the moment of
conversion - “ye shall put away leaven out of your
houses.”
JUSTIFICATION. Here then is
God’s dual truth exquisitely revealed.
The Blood - Justification; the Leaven - Sanctification: the Blood -
Christ’s work for us; the Leaven - the Spirit’s work in us. Now observe.
There is no command to put out the Leaven before putting on the
Blood. The Lamb, it is true, must be
eaten with unleavened bread (ver. 8); the
heart must turn from all sin in the act of appropriating Christ: but we are not
to attempt to cleanse the House from Leaven before it is presented to God for
the Blood.
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.
“Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him” (Rom. 5: 9).
SANCTIFICATION. But the
completed work of Justification immediately introduces the complementary work
of Sanctification: and only when the Blood is on the door have we power to put
forth the Leaven. “Work out your own salvation” - the Leaven put forth -
“with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you” (Phil. 2: 12) - the Holy Spirit is now in the
House. Jehovah does not say that the
presence of Leaven in the House proves that there is no Blood on the door: on
the contrary, the constant peril of known or discoverable, but un-expelled,
leaven is assumed as the peril of every house. We cannot be too passive under
the Blood: we cannot be too active in purging out the Leaven. “My sins slew my Saviour: now I must slay my sins.” Mark 9: 43-50.
DISOBEDIENCE. Both these
Divine commands involve grave consequences.
The Israelite or Egyptian who refused or neglected to apply the Blood, perished:
he perished at the hand of God: he perished in
OBEDIENCE. Put on the
Blood: O my soul, purge out the Leaven!
A traveller once watched a carpenter in
“LET US CLEANSE OURSELVES FROM
ALL DEFILEMENT OF FLESH AND SPIRIT, PERFECTING HOLINESS IN THE FEAR OF GOD” (2 Cor. 7: 1).
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45.
The Vision of God
Some
twelve visions of God are revealed in Scripture: all (since Adam) granted to
fallen mankind: and all (with one exception) granted to redeemed souls of
conspicuous holiness and utmost fidelity.
What was the effect?
JOB. Job is one of the very few men
whom God has called perfect. “Hast thou considered my servant, Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man” (Job 1: 8). So Job
himself says: “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go”: “I am
clean, without transgression” (Job. 27: 6; 33: 6). But what happened when he saw
the Lord? “Then
the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind”: and Job said, “Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”
(Job. 38: 1; 42: 5-6).
Behold
the perfect man when face to face with God.
MOSES. Moses was ‘fair unto God’ in the
cradle; though fiery-spirited, his lowliness of heart made him the meekest man
on earth (Num. 12: 3); Jehovah revealed the
whole body of the Law through him; and he accomplished the mightiest
administrative work for God ever achieved by human hands. But what followed on a vision of God? “God called unto him
out of the midst of the bush, Draw not nigh
hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. And Moses hid his face,
for he was afraid to look upon God” (Ex. 3: 4).
Sin-cursed earth near which was Deity was too holy for Moses.
ELIJAH. Elijah has been called “the grandest and most romantic character that
ISAIAH. No Old Testament prophet had
sublimer revelations than Isaiah: none caught so full a Gospel light from the
still unrisen Sun. But what followed on
a vision of God? “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His
train filled the temple. One seraph cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:
1). The mouth through which some
of Heaven sublimest revelations were poured was a mouth of unclean lips.
DANIEL. Daniel is the only man in the
whole Bible in whom his enemies could find no fault except that he prayed too
much: he is the only man to whom God has sent an angel from Heaven to tell him
that he was loved. But what followed on
a vision of God? “His body was like the beryl, and
his face as the appearance of lightning, and His
eyes as lamps of fire. I saw this great vision, and
there remained no strength in me: for my
comeliness was turned in me into corruption” (Dan.
10: 6). The most faultless saint
of Scripture could not face God without being turned into corruption.
PAUL. Paul came nearer to
justification. Paul works [more] than
any man that ever lived. By birth, the
purest Hebrew; by education, the straitest Pharisee; by conviction, a burning
flame; by conduct, blamelessly righteous… But what followed on a vision of God?
“Suddenly there shone round about him a light from
heaven: and he fell upon the earth. And when his eyes
were opened, he saw nothing” (Acts 9: 3).
Even Paul’s eyes were so sinful that he could not look on the Glory
without blindness.
JOHN. John’s, perhaps, is the
supreme case. The man whom Jesus
specially loved, - the disciple who alone was faithful in the judgment hall, -
the apostle selected for the authorship of the divinest of the Gospels, and the
most stupendous of all Revelations: - in the ripeness of perfected maturity the
old saint sees his Lord. What followed
on his vision of God? “His head and His hair were white as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes
were as a flame of fire. And when I saw Him, I fell at
His feet as one dead” (Rev. 1: 14). Earth’s ripest and loveliest saint, who had
lain in the bosom of his Lord, falls as lifeless when he meets God.
This
is not only the overthrow of ‘sinless perfection’
in any believer: it is much more. These
overwhelming issues were all to saints: what will the vision be to
sinners? Sinless Adam had no such experience
in the Garden. “PREPARE
TO MEET THY GOD!” We may
disown Him as Father; we may reject Him as Lord; we may dethrone Him as King;
we may refuse Him as Saviour: - but we must meet Him AS GOD. See now the only
Vision that saves. “It was a human body that writhed, pale and racked, upon the
accursed tree; they were human hands that were pierced so rudely by the nails;
it was human flesh that bore that deadly gash upon the side; the soul that
yearned over His mother was a human soul. But every wound was a mouth to speak of the
grace and the love of God: every drop of blood that fell came as a messenger of
love from His heart, to tell the love of the fountain” (McCheyne).
“HE THAT HATH SEEN ME HATH SEEN THE FATHER: THE BREAD WHICH I
WILL GIVE IS MY FLESH, FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD”
(John 6: 51; 14: 9).
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46.
The Kingdom
THE KINGDOM DENIED. In certain
present-day influential Christian circles the
“IN THE LAST OF THE DAYS MOCKERS SHALL COME WITH MOCKERY,
WALKIKG AFTER THEIR OWN LUSTS, AND SAYING, WHERE IS THE
PROMISE OF HIS COMING? FOR, FROM THE DAY THAT THE FATHERS FELL ASLEEP, ALL THINGS CONTINUE AS THEY WERE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE
CREATION” (2 Pet. 3: 3). Num. 14: 6-10.
THE KINGDOM AFFIRMED. The return of
our Lord in person to establish a Kingdom over the whole earth was the
universal faith of the Church in its purest dawn. “The assurance
[of that return and reign] was carefully inculcated by
men who had conversed with the immediate disciples of the apostles, and appears
to have been the reigning sentiment of orthodox believers”
(Gibbon). “This
prevailing opinion met with no opposition previous to the time of Origen”
(Mosheim): until Origen no Christian writer can be found who denied it. “No one can hesitate to consider this doctrine as universal
in the church of the first two centuries” (Giesler). “The doctrine was believed and taught by the most eminent
fathers in the age next after the apostles, and by none of that age opposed or
condemned: it was the catholic doctrine of those times” (Archbishop
Chillingworth).
“FOR THE LORD HIMSELF SHALL DESCEND FROM HEAVEN, WITH A SHOUT, WITH THE VOICE
OF THE ARCHANGEL, AND WITH THE TRUMP OF GOD”
(I Thess. 4: 16): “AND
HE THAT OVERCOMETH, AND HE THAT KEEPETH MY WORKS
UNTO THE END, TO HIM WILL I GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS; AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON” (Rev. 2: 26).
THE KINGDOM RE-AFFIRMED. The world-wide
revival of the Gospel of the Kingdom before the End is certain. Matt. 24: 14.
“In our Lord’s teaching the conception of the
Kingdom is supreme. Yet it is safe to
say that there is no subject upon which there exists a greater amount of
division among expositors. For some the Kingdom is definitely the historical
Church; for others it is altogether in the future, a great Divine supramundane
order of things which is suddenly to overwhelm the temporal order; for others
again it is simply the ideal social order to be realised on earth; for a fourth
class the Kingdom is the rule of God in the heart of the individual. Among recent critics the tendency is more and
more to lay stress on the eschatological interpretation, and to hold that, in our Lord’s teaching, the Kingdom is
essentially the great future and heavenly order of things which will be
revealed at His coming. The Kingdom in its fulness is yet to come. It is always
to be prayed for. It is the great end
which is ever before us” (Bishop D’Arcy, University Sermon at
Oxford, 1910).
“FOR FLESH AND BLOOD
CANNOT INHERIT THE
THE KINGDOM A PRIZE. Slowly the
further truth is emerging that the Kingdom, ushered by the First Resurrection,
is the supreme prize of the Christian hope and calling. I Thess. 2: 12 (R.V.). Heb. 3: 12, 15, 4: 1, 2. “It is most evident
that Paul had some special resurrection in view (Phil. 3: 11) even the first: and to
share in that he was straining every nerve” (J. MacNeil). The opinion that the Millennial Reign was
confined to the martyrs “prevailed, as is known, to a
great extent in the early Church, and not only proved a support under
martyrdom, but rendered many ambitious of that distinction” (De Burgh). Heb. 11: 35.
“Scripture speaks plainly concerning the
exclusion of those who permit the old nature to disgrace their Christianity:
while they may be saved as by fire for Heaven, they will forfeit all their
position in the coming Millennial Kingdom of Christ” (Dr. A. T.
Schofield). 1 Cor. 6: 8-10. Gal. 5: 19-21. Eph. 5:
5. For “in
this exclusion from the Kingdom, which is the dominion of the good made visible
at the return of our Lord, we are not to see the loss of eternal salvation: an
entrance into the Kingdom is rendered impossible [in certain cases], but not by any means does it follow that salvation can be
thereby prevented” (Olshausen). “Oh for a noble ambition to obtain one of the first seats in
glory! Oh for a constant, evangelical
striving to have the most ‘abundant’ entrance ministered unto you into the
“NOT EVERY ONE THAT SAITH UNTO ME, LORD, LORD, SHAL ENTER THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, BUT HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF MY FATHER, WHICH IS IN HEAVEN”
(Matt. 7: 21): FOR “BLESSED AND HOLY IS
HE THAT HATH PART IN THE FIRST RESURRECTION: THEY LIVED, AND REIGNED WITH CHRIST
A THOUSAND YEARS” (Rev. 20: 6).
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47.
The Theology of Heaven
“Could not an all-powerful God,” wrote an unbeliever
recently, “especially at this time when criticism is
raising so many honest doubts in many minds, send an angel to the earth to tell
us really what to believe? This would be
proof for ever and ever.” From
angels has come the most tremendous testimony to the Lamb of God the created
universe has ever known.
THE CHALLENGE. With the
scales of infinite justice, as it were, in his hand, and a cry flung into the
furthest recesses of the universe, a strong Angel challenges all creation for a
soul of spotless holiness and infinite worth.
“Who is worthy?” On the palm of Deity, in the secret blaze of
the Godhead, there lies a little Book: who is so holy as to see it, so
meritorious as to take it, and so powerful as to open it? A hush falls on the assembled multitudes of
Heaven, broken only by the sobbing of John. “I wept
much, because no one was found worthy” (Rev. 5: 4).
Not one with a vicarious merit; not one with a communicable holiness;
not one with a Divine fidelity: - creation has no holiness in itself with which
to deliver a fallen world.
A MAN. One Figure now draws all
eyes. In the midst of the Elders, -
closer still, in the midst of the Cherubim, - closer still, in the midst of the
Throne, a Man stands: “and He came, and He taketh it out of the right hand of Him that sat on the
throne.” In His eyes before whom
all character is as transparent glass, here is the face that never knew a
shadow, the heart that never knew an unfaithful throb, the only stainless,
radiant, infinitely worthy life. Jesus of Nazareth is in the midst of
the Throne. (There are no arguments for
the Resurrection in Heaven: for “the Lamb is standing
in the midst of the throne”). The
silence is suddenly broken by a rush of hallelujahs. The Lamb draws all hearts: He enlightens all
eyes: He governs all angels: He blesses all creation: He is the theme of all
Heaven’s song. Heaven has no potentate too
mighty to fall before the Lamb: it is only on earth that men are too great to
worship Him.
A LAMB. John heard - “the Lion”; but when he turned he saw “a Lamb:” - a Lamb with the might of a Lion, and a Lion
with the heart of a Lamb. But why is the
Lamb upon the Throne? Why are the faces
of all creation turned towards a Lamb?
Because the wounds are there: they flush forth in the heart of the
glory: it is “a lamb, as
though it had been slain.” The
crowning worthiness Heaven puts upon Christ is due to
THE GOSPEL. The testimony
of all God’s Angels now reveals what is the theology of Heaven. “I heard a voice of many angels, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying
with a great voice, Worthy art Thou to take the
book, for Thou wast slain.” Heaven is not ashamed of the cross on which
Christ was slain. What a slaughter! And what a song! Christ was slain prospectively from the
foundation of the world; He was slain typically in a thousand sacrifices under
the Law; He was slain judicially by the pre-determinate counsel of God; He was
slain actually by Jew and Gentile; He is slain retrospectively by every
trampler upon the Blood. “Thou didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every
tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.” The Blood alone purchases the sinner to God:
the Father comes into His inheritance of human souls only by the blood of the
Son.
Therefore
what do all angels yield to the Lamb? “The power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and
blessing.” What a song! All crowns meet upon that Brow: all power are
in those pierced Hands: all love flows from that rent Side: all the Godhead
shines in that human Face: and this is the Theology of all the angels of God. “The blood of Christ, it binds all heaven, with its many
mansions and throngs without number, in holy and indissoluble security. My soul, seek no other stream in which to
drown thy leprosy! My lips, speak no
other song with which to charge your music!
My hands, seek no other task with which to prove your energy! I would be swallowed up in Christ. I would be
nailed to His cross. O my Jesus! My Saviour! Thine heart did burst for me, and
all its sacred blood flowed for the cleansing of my sin. I need it all. I need
it every day. I need it more and more. I search out the inmost recesses of my
poor wild heart, and let Thy blood remove every stain of evil.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
Mighty Saviour! Repeat all
Thy miracles by taking away the guilt and torment of my infinite sin” (Dr. Parker).
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48.
Burial to Sin
A GRAVE. So urgent is
God on our separation from the world that He has taken two of the mightiest
events of all history - the drowning of the old world in the Flood, and the
drowning of the Egyptians in the
A BURIAL. So baptism is the sole God-given ritual of
consecration. For the Rite next reveals
a new and wonderful aspect. The believer
is judicially dead with Christ, but he is not actually dead to sin: baptism,
therefore, enters as a self-inflicted death, by which he drowns the old life,
and smothers and suffocates the past. The waters of death and judgment fill the
grave; the living man steps down, and plunges beneath them; and so real is the
ritual that, left but for a few minutes, he would die. “Very soon,”
said a Bechuana convert, a shepherd, “I shall be dead,
and they will bury me in my field. My
sheep will come and pasture above me.
But I shall no more go to them, or they come to me: we shall be
strangers. So am I in the midst of the
world from the time that I believed in Christ.” This is the meaning of baptism. Crucified with Christ - this is the order of
the prepositions in the passage - baptised into Christ, buried unto sin like
Christ, we are now alive in Christ. Gal. 3: 27.
A CONSECRATION. Alas, how
little we baptised have lived the exquisite ritual! It ought to be - in God’s design it is - as
unnatural, as monstrous, for a believer to live in sin as for a dead man to
cross his grave back into life. The whole man and the whole life are baptised
into Christ. A heathen tribe in the
middle ages, about to be immersed, asked that their right arms might remain out
of the water, that they might still slay their enemies! Baptism buries all the
man into all the holiness of God. “There was a day,” says George Muller, “when I died, died utterly; died to George Muller, his
opinions, preferences, tastes, and will - died to the world, its approval or
censure - died to approval or censure even of my brethren and friends - and
since then I have studied to show myself approved unto God.” Baptism not
only buries our past, but ourselves. “Even so reckon ye
also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive
unto God in Jesus Christ.”
A RESURRECTION. But baptism
has a still lovelier side: it is not only immersion,
but also emersion: “that like as Christ was raised from the dead, so we.” Passive
as a corpse under redemption, we are at once to pass into intensest activity: “alive” - not to a creed, or a church, or a
philanthropy, but - “unto God.” On one half of us we are dead: the calls to
wealth, to fame, to pleasure, to sin, are to reach us on our dead side, all the
avenues of which, into our souls, are blocked.
So it was with Jesus. “Who is blind, but my servant? Or deaf,
as my messenger that I send? Who is blind as he that is at peace with me, and blind as the Lord’s servant?” (Is. 42: 19).
The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them appealed to a dead man
in Christ. But on one half of us we are
to be all a-quiver with life: the calls to God, to heavenliness, to service -
these are to find us as responsive as the harp to the wind, or the sunflower to
the sun. So also was it with Jesus. “He wakeneth morning
by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they
that are taught” (Is. 50: 4). Our bodies are to be a living sacrifice (
A LIFE. ‘Hebrew’ means a man
who lives on the other side of the water: so we, beyond the ritual grave, are ‘to walk’ - dead men do not walk - not in a new life so
much as “in newness of life.” The deep, dark grave of Christ lies between
us and the world that cast Him out; with Him we are to walk on the further
shore: on which side, therefore, are the theatre, the whist-drive, the
novel? On which side is that love of
money which is ruining untold multitudes of disciples? Are these things ‘Hebrew’? Are they newness of life? So, naturally, the newness of life ends in “the life which is really life” (1 Tim. 6: 19). Rom. 8:
13. “For
if we have become united with Him [fellow-plants] by the likeness of His death [baptism], we shall be also [fellow-plants] of His resurrection.”
Sown together in the seed-bed of the baptismal grave, we shall spring
together - heavenly snowdrops, the first to break up from under a frozen
ground. Rev. 3: 4; 20: 6. Baptism is the ritual act; sanctification is
the truth it enshrines: when crystallised together into an actual experience,
together they will lead into the Select Resurrection (Phil.
3: 11, Greek) from the dead.
Brother,
have you been entombed (both spiritually and ritually) since you were
crucified? “WHY CALL YE ME LORD, LORD, AND DO NOT THE THINGS
WHICH I SAY?” (Luke 6: 46): “HE THAT HATH MY COMMANDMENTS AND KEEPETH THEM, HE IT IS THAT LOVETH ME” (John
14: 21).
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49.
Heirs Wanted
THE HEIRS. The law
regards a child as the continuation of the personality of his father, and so as
the legal possessor of his property after his death: therefore, “if children, then heirs”
(Rom. 8: 17). So it is with God. Not, if men, then heirs;
nor, if Jews, then heirs; nor, if moral and upright, then heirs: we must become
partakers of the Divine nature before we can become heirs of the Divine
inheritance: “if children, then heirs.”
Property descends because father and son are of one stock, one life: so
“as many as received Christ, to them gave He the right to become children of God: which were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God” (John 1: 12). But the Birth carries with it the
Inheritance. All are not apostles or
prophets; all are not shining or eminent; all are not even spiritual or
separated: but all are heirs; - “if children, then heirs.”
THE WILL. A
son does not inherit his father’s life - he already has that; he inherits his
father’s property: here then is an inventory of the Will. “All things are yours;
whether Paul, or Apollos,
or Cephas, or the world,
or life, or death,
or things present, or
things to come; all are yours” (1 Cor. 3: 21).
Have you yet seen all things? The cattle on a thousand hills; the gold
in all mines, the pearls in all oceans; the wealth and beauty of the Father’s
home: “all are yours.” Moreover the Will bequeaths, not on
leasehold, but in perpetuity; and this for two reasons. Heirs on earth often outlive, or squander,
their inheritance: inheritances constantly outlive their heirs: but an
inheritance “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth
not away” (1 Pet. 1: 4) must be in
perpetuity for heirs who never die. “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another’s”
- all present wealth is a stewardship only - “who will
give you that which is your own?” (Luke 16:
12): the true riches are personal and held for ever. So the Will bequeathes ‘all things’: it bequeathes it to all children: and it
bequeathes it to them for ever.
A CODICAL. The Will is
unconditioned: in it is a Codicil, however, to which a condition is attached. “Heirs of God indeed” (men) - no condition, save
regeneration: “but (de)
joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer” - ‘in case we
suffer as He did’ (Olshausen); ‘provided that
we suffer’ (Alford) - “with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.” (Si autem filii, et heredes: heredes quidem
Dei, coheredes autem Christi: si tamen compatimur, ut et conglorificemur:
Vulgate).
Both
heirships involve eternal life: but the Codicil, which bequeathes
joint-heirship with Messiah in His Millennial Reign, and bequeathes it on the
same condition on which our Lord receives it (Phil.
2: 9; Heb. 1: 9; Isa. 53: 12), antedates the Will by a thousand years:
it is “the reward of the inheritance” (Col. 3: 24), a legacy which entitles to an ‘abundant entrance’ into the Eternal Kingdom (2 Pet. 1: 11).
Both
heirships are in the Will: both heirships are offered to all: both Will and
Codicil depend for their validity on the death of the Testator: but without the
fulfilment of its condition, the Codicil is inoperative. “The suffering with
Him must imply a pain due to our union” (Moule): “if we suffer,
we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2: 12): the Will is the unconditional
bequest of free grace, the Codicil is a glory conditioned on identity of
experience with Christ.
THE TESTATOR. A legal
proverb says, - “Living men have no heirs”: the
State requires proof of death before an estate can be inherited under a
will. “For where
a testament is, there must also of necessity be
the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all” - it is not
valid - “while the testator liveth” (Heb. 9: 16).
But this is God’s last will and testament: when, then, did that death
occur? The inheritance had become alienated
from man by sin: a ‘fugitive and a wanderer’
from the gate of
THE ADVERTISEMENT. But the most
amazing fact of all remains. Something
like forty million sterling lies to-day in Chancery, unclaimed, for want of
heirs: and ‘heirs wanted’ is a commonplace advertisement
for these vast inheritances. The Gospel
is such an advertisement. Through all
the world God is sending the amazing cry of ‘heirs of
all things’ wanted; it is the offer of untold wealth (1 Cor. 2: 9); and in the advertisement is to be
found a careful description of the missing heirs. What is that identifying description? “Their throat is an
open sepulchre; with their tongues they have
used deceit: the poison of asps is under their
lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood”
(Rom. 3: 13). The heir of the Tichborne estates was known
to have been careless, slovenly, ill-educated; and to prove his inheritance the
claimant established his own carelessness, slovenliness, and ignorance. So only could he hope to obtain the
inheritance. Is your name in God’s
Will? If you are a sinner, it is. We are not saved although we are sinners: we
are saved because we are sinners. My sin
is my sole identifying plea for a sin-bearing Saviour’s merit, and the life which
that merit brings: if you are a sinner, rejoice! Your name is in the Will.
“I came not to call the
righteous, BUT SINNERS” (Mark 2:
17): “The Son of man came to seek and to save
that which was LOST” (Luke 19: 10).
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50.
An Urgent Danger
COVETOUSNESS - not only the desire of what we have not got, but the
refusal to part with what we have - God ranks among the blackest of sins. It is one of the supreme Prohibitions of
Jehovah (Ex. 20: 17); it is defined by God
as ‘idolatry’ (Col.
3: 5), a sin, under the Law, reserved for capital punishment; it renders
a believer so unholy that he is to be excommunicated from the Church on earth (1 Cor. 5: 11); and twice (1
Cor. 6: 10; Eph. 5: 5) it is stated as involving a disciple in the loss
of the Millennial Kingdom. “The peril of the Church is not so much an unorthodox creed
as an orthodox greed” (Dr. A. J. Gordon). Love of money brought us the
first awful discipline of the Holy Ghost (Acts. 5:
5): love of money is the absorbing passion of the last Church named in
the Word of God -
THE MONEY CHEST. It is
extraordinarily significant that last thing on which our Lord’s eyes rested in
the
GOD’S AUDIT. “Verily I say unto you”
- our Lord pledges Himself to the most startling of all revelations on money -
“this poor widow cast in more than all”: that
is, more than any other donor, or else, more than all put together. Those who give most often gives least, and
those that give least often give most.
Why? Because God judges what we
give by what we keep. “For they all did cast in of their superfluity; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.”
The widow had given all she had to live on for that day; and was so walking
with God that she could trust Him for tomorrow’s meal. I
Kings 17: 15; Heb. 13: 5. God’s
scales, in weighing gifts, also weigh what is not given: so, quite literally,
the poorest can give more than the wealthiest, and all can give immense gifts:
for the amount withheld exactly determines the value of the amount given.
OUR DANGER. We now arrive
at the peril. “The
love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (I
Tim. 6: 10). It can estrange
friends, divide families, and harden hearts; nurse extravagance, pamper
appetite, and foster pride; ‘sweat’ labour,
freeze up charity, and indulge every lust - “foolish
and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in
destruction and perdition.” Every
year increases our peril. “In the last days men shall be lovers of money” (2 Tim. 3: 2): “ye have
laid up treasure in the last days” (Jas. 5:
3): “because thou sayest, I am rich, ... thou art
miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev.
3: 17): “thus shall
INDESTRUCTIBLE PURSES. How is the
peril met? “Sell that ye have, and give alms; make for
yourselves purses which wax not old, a treasure
in the heavens that faileth not” (Luke 12:
33). No warnings on wealth are
severer than Christ’s: so there is no greater tribute to the power of money
over the human heart than the startling silence of the Church on these warnings
of her Lord. “With
such words [as 1 Tim. 6: 6-10] before him, one would think that any Christian man who is
laying up money, or is planning to do so, would at once abandon his project.
But how many such cases have ever been heard of? I cannot remember one”
(Dr. J. P. Gledstone). O beloved, the
indestructible purses must be manufactured now! “Hearken,
my beloved brethren; did
not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to them that love
Him?” (Jas. 2: 5). “The most sensitive
part of the civilised man is his pocket” (Sir W. Ramsay): so grace is
supreme when it is the biggest jewel in the purse. Heaven’s purses are filled by emptying those
on earth.
“But thou, O man of God,
flee these things!” What things? “They that desire to be rich” - fly even the desire!
The man who has nothing to gain is the man who can never be bought: so if you
would be the man of God - a man who belongs to God, who is devoted to God,
whose wealth is in God, who lives for God - then flee these things. “I make no purse. What
I have I give away. ‘Poor, yet making many rich’ shall be my motto still” (Whitefield). Prov. 11: 24. The costliness of the gift is the measure of
the love behind it: God did not keep back His Son when He loved the world: what
God did not keep back was the measure of the love that He felt. So we! One of
the Lord’s people, who had once been rich, was asked how he bore his poverty so
happily. “When I was rich,” he replied, “I had God in all my wealth: now, I have all my wealth in God.” How much more he who has deliberately lodged
it there!
“Lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven. FOR WHERE THY
TREASURE IS, THERE WILL THY HEART BE ALSO”
(Matt. 6: 20).
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51
Man and His Destiny
MAN. What exactly is ‘man’? Scripture
regards both the body and the soul as ‘man.’ “The Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his [still lifeless] nostrils the breath of life” (Gen.
2: 7): “they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths; - there then they laid Jesus” (John
19: 40): Dorcas “fell sick and died; and they laid her in an upper chamber” (Acts 9: 37): in each case the body is the
man. So also, only more emphatically, is
the soul or spirit. “I will go down to Hades to my son
mourning” (Gen. 37: 35): “this day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23: 43): “the
garments which Dorcas made, while she was with
them” (Acts 9: 39): - in each case
the spirit is the man, Thus both body and soul (in this context I am using ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ as
one) are essential elements in man: humanity is “body,
soul, and spirit”
(1 Thess. 5: 23). Death, therefore, we had almost said,
dehumanises: it is a decomposition, a disintegration, a dissolution, of ‘man’: it is a violent rending asunder of his
constituent elements, consequent on sin: and, to speak exactly, though body and
spirit are each ‘man’, neither is man
alone. The body rots; the spirit departs
to Hades: the man is dead.
CHRIST. Thus, when God
deals finally with man He deals, not with a corpse, nor with a disembodied
spirit, but with a man: man, for all eternity, can never cease to be ‘man’: his eternal destiny, whatever it be, must be the
destiny of a man. Now our Lord, as the
typical Man, is the One who, alone hitherto, has passed through all the processes
of man. First, He was truly man: - “they took the body of Jesus” (John
19: 40); “my soul is exceeding sorrowful”
(Matt. 26: 38); “into
Thy hands I commend My spirit” (Luke 23: 46). Violent dissolution took place on the Cross:
“being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in
which He went and preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3: 19).
After three days and three nights, the angels said: - “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here”
- His corpse is not in the graveyard, His soul is not left in Hades (Acts 2: 31) - “but is
risen” (Luke 24: 5); that is, the
recumbent body stands again upon its feet, and the spirit is ‘returned’ into it (Luke 8:
55). Christ, born of a woman, was
born full man: He died as a man dies: and He rose with body, soul, and spirit
re-knit in everlasting resurrection. “I am the Living
One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for
evermore” (Rev. 1: 18).
RESURRECTION. A passage now arises
before us than which perhaps the whole Bible itself contains none more solemn.
“For since by [a] man
came death” - dissolution, decomposition, disintegration - “by [a] man came also the
resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15: 21)
- the re-knitting, in individual re-composition, of the whole man: and this,
for the entire race.
“I AM RESURRECTION AND
LIFE” (John 11: 25): since Christ
was made man, and is resurrection, resurrection has become an essential part of
human nature. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” - not
regenerated, but made alive physically: for as physical death poured itself
through Adam into all the race, so physical resurrection becomes integral to
humanity from the second federal Head of mankind. Because Christ was a Man, and
rose, all rise; for all partake of the same flesh with Christ: but believers
are “one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6: 17): so, while unbelief severs from all
benefits of the Passion, no man can escape the consequent resurrection. The Incarnation empties every grave.
THE SECOND DEATH. The eternal
destiny of our race now stands revealed. “The last
enemy that shall be destroyed”- for all mankind - “is death”: man, after entering on resurrection, never
suffers dissolution again: “it is appointed unto men
once to die” (Heb. 9: 27): full
manhood follows for ever. Thus the
redeemed are wholly redeemed: redeemed in spirit, and also in body (Rom. 8: 23), the man, as man, is redeemed utterly
and eternally. What then of the
lost? “Be not afraid
of them which kill the body, but are not able to
kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able
to destroy both soul and body in Hell” (Matt.
10: 28). The wicked equally abide
as men for ever: “they twain were cast alive” -
that is, body, soul, and spirit - “into the lake of
fire, which is the second death” (Rev. 19: 20; 21: 8). The Second Death is not decomposition, the
splitting up of the personality, as was the First: much less is it
annihilation: it is the final and eternal abode of the undivided man. “This is the second
death, even the lake of fire. And if any was not
found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20: 14).
Unbeliever,
what a destiny! And what a Christ! “I am a substance nobler than the stars”: they must
perish, but, for better or worse, we endure: none can escape the momentous
consequences of the Incarnation. It
twists its roots under and about all that is human, and lifts the entire race
into resurrection from death. And what a
Christ! Christ is so truly man that He
actually died as a man dies: He is so truly God that He not only raised
Himself, but the whole of humanity, in His rising. The resurrection of one is the peculiar
prerogative of the Godhead: who but the Son of God, by the mere fact of
association in the flesh, could raise all?
Then confess Him as the Son of God!
“I AM RESURRECTION AND LIFE” (John 11: 25): “whosoever
shall confess that JESUS is the SON OF GOD, God abideth in him, and he in
God” (1 John 4: 15).
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52
The Parousia of Christ
‘PAROUSIA’
- a word which is the cardinal pivot of all Second Advent truth, and the
keystone in the arch of unfulfilled prophecy - in itself states merely a
stationary presence, and is a ‘coming’ only when
linked with words implying motion.
The
‘Parousia of Christ,’ used by the Holy Spirit as
a technical expression, the Psalmist exquisitely unfolds. “He bowed the heavens also, and
came down; and thick darkness was under His feet
... He made darkness His hiding place, His pavilion round about Him; darkness
of waters, thick clouds of the skies” (Ps. 18: 11). Christ’s downward motion stops: His
people’s upward motion stops: the Lord silently forms His
The
Parousia serves purposes of vital import to the Church. It is thither saints are to be rapt,
encompassed, as our Lord was, with clouds: “we that are
alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up [‘a sudden and irrestible seizure by a power beyond us’:
Dr. Eadie] in the clouds to meet the Lord”; a
reunion, not on earth, nor in the heaven of heavens, but “in the air” (1 Thess. 4:
17); as homing doves flock to their airy dovecotes (Is. 60: 8).
The Parousia is our ark of refuge.
“In the covert of Thy presence Thou shalt hide
them from the plottings of man: Thou shalt keep
them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Ps. 31: 20).
It is the heavenly Tabernacle against which Antichrist, enraged by the
loss of his prey, hurls impotent blasphemies.
“And he opened his mouth for blasphemies against
God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, even them
that tabernacle in the heaven” (Rev. 13: 6). Thus the ‘epiphany’
or manifestation to the Church (1 John 3: 2; 2 Tim.
4: 8) occurs in the ‘parousia’: the
epiphany to the world (2 Thess. 2: 8) is
delayed until the ‘apocalypse’ (2 Thess. 1: 7).
The
Parousia is also the judgment court of the Church. Judgment begins at the House of God (1 Pet. 4: 17): for “after
a long time the lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them”
(Matt. 25: 19). Within the Parousia are enacted the Virgins,
the Talents, the Pounds: here converts are presented by the evangelist (1 Thess. 2: 19): here the disciple’s heart and
life are examined (1 Thess. 3: 13), and
blamelessness (1 Thess. 5: 23) or shame (1 John 2: 28) revealed. For the Household is examined in camera: the
Bema is set up in the Throne-room: and the approval of the Judgment Seat is the
supreme reward of the disciple, and an incorruptible motive of holiness. “We make it our aim
to be well-pleasing unto Him. For we [disciples] must all be
made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body,
according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2
Cor. 5: 10).
The
Parousia of Christ runs simultaneously with the Parousia (2 Thess. 2: 9) of Antichrist: the heavenly
Parousia is the advanced outpost whither God recalls His ambassadors, on the
outbreak of war against the world and the last judgments of God. “The Lord also
thundered in the heavens, and the Most High
uttered His voice; hailstones and coals of fire. And He sent out His
arrows and scattered them; yea, lightnings manifold, and
discomfited them” (Ps. 18: 13; Rev. 8: 5;
10: 3; 11: 19; 16: 10). But
Antediluvian and Sodomic wickedness recur, and remain obdurate, during the
Parousia. Matt. 24: 37. At length ripeness of iniquity below, and the
close of the judgment scene above, together produce the break-up of the
Parousia; scattering clouds on a sudden reveal to every eye the triple glory (Luke 9: 26) burning in the heart of the
Pavilion. “For
as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and
is seen even unto the west; so shall be the
presence [see Revised Margin throughout] of the
Son of Man” (Matt. 24: 27); who shall
paralyse Antichrist by the manifestation, or outburst, of His Parousia (2 Thess. 2: 8); and “then
shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father”
(Matt. 13: 43). Our Lord’s feet alight upon Olivet. Zech. 14: 4.
So
the Presence is to be the lode-star of the Church: for its Bema is the
criterion for all regenerate life and conduct.
Unfulfilled prophecy all lies after the Rapture: nothing stands between
us and the summons of God. No premonitions, no warnings, no signals, no
prophecies: “know this, that
if the master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming”
- silently, secretly, suddenly, as a thief comes - “he
would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore be ye also
ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son
of Man cometh” (Matt. 24: 43). Holiness is the supreme passport into the
Presence. Luke
21: 36; 1 John 3: 3. “The miller’s apron, the baker’s cap, the labourer’s coat,
the housewife’s gown, are all suitable material for ascension robes”:
every day, every hour, puts in a stitch, or drops one, in the garment of our
coming glory. Rev. 19: 8. “What I say unto you I say unto all, WATCH” (Mark 13: 37).
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53.
The Greatness of Jesus
“What think ye of Christ?” No question is
more fundamental, more critical, or more persistent: none could be asked more
fraught with irrevocable destiny. What
do men think? The Atheist thinks nothing about Him at all; for, as there is no God,
there can be no Son of God. The Worldling, given over to pleasure and
the love of money, is careful not to think about Him: for to think about
Christ, is to think about holiness. The Unitarian thinks that He is the noblest
of all men, a revealer - or the revealer - of God, but a man only. The Swedenborgian
thinks He is God, the only Person in the Godhead, and now not man at all. The Arian
(such as the Millennial Dawnist [i.e.,
today’s ‘Jehovah Witnesses’]) thinks He is
a created god, a powerful and Divine archangel, come into the world. The Gnostic
(such as the New Theologian, the Christian Scientist, and the Theosophist)
thinks of Jesus as a son of Joseph, but peculiarly and mystically indwelt by
the Christ. The Mohammedan thinks that He is a real prophet, but inferior to
Mohammed. The Jews thought that He was a carpenter’s son; and the Pharisees thought Him a demoniac. The CHRISTIAN
- and the Christian only - sees in Him “the MAN Christ Jesus, - born of a woman; who is over
all, GOD blessed for ever.”
ABRAHAM. None in
Christ’s lifetime ever doubted that He was a man; those who saw, and heard, and
even handled Him (Luke 24: 39; 1 John 1: 1)
never doubted, and could not doubt, the Manhood; - that was left to the
invention of a later age. But what rank
did He take among men? This was the
inquiry, and it began with Abraham.
Abraham loomed up incomparably the greatest figure on the horizon of
JACOB. “Art thou greater” - again Jesus is
challenged - “than our father Jacob?” (John 4: 12).
Jacob, the wrestler with the Jehovah-Angel, was ‘a prince with God’ - what a title!
Jesus answers: - “If thou knewest the gift of
God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou
wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have
given thee living water.” Jacob
dug the well, and gave the earthly water: Jesus says He gives water straight
from the hand of God to the lips of the soul.
How much greater therefore? As
much greater as the living water is than the earthly, so much greater is the
Giver of the one than the giver of the other.
SOLOMON. Solomon, in
outward splendour, was incomparably the greatest of
JONAH. We pass to the Prophets. Perhaps no greater miracle (apart from the
Flood) stands forth in the Old Testament than Jonah’s descent into Sheol (Jon. 2: 2), - a man who literally came back from
the dead. Art thou greater, O Lord, than
Jonah? Jesus answers: - “The men of
THE
THE ANGELS. Rank over rank
rise the hierarchies of Heaven, - thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. Art Thou greater, O Lord, there? Listen to the testimony of the Most
High. “By so
much better than the angels, as He hath
inherited a more excellent name than they. For”
- now hear the voice of God - “of the angels He saith,
Who maketh His angels” - angels are made - “winds, and His ministers a
flame of fire: but of the Son He saith, Thy throne, O GOD” -
un-create, from everlasting - “is for ever and ever”
(Heb. 1: 4).
How much greater therefore? As
much greater as the Creator is than the creature, so much greater is Christ
than all the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers that circle
the throne of God. “Of the SON He
saith, O
GOD!”
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54
Social Reform
The
ADMINISTRATION. Social Reform insists
on judicial equity and administrative purity: the
ENVIRONMENT. Social Reform
lays an immense emphasis on Environment.
“The doctrine of environment” as Dr.
Campbell Morgan says, “had its death-blow in the
garden of Eden”: man is made or unmade from inside, not outside (Mark 7: 15): nevertheless a changed environment -
in a lifted curse, vanished disease, and an imprisoned Hell - is essential for
human bliss.
(1) Men of science say that the tiger’s fangs and claws are not original,
but acquired: certain it is that a restoration of the conditions of Paradise
will rob the lion and the bear of their rage, and substitute the fir-tree for
the thorn (Is. 55: 13); the little child
shall play by the crevice in which once lurked the deadliest serpents, and the
evil passions of the Fall be exorcised by almighty Power. (2)
So also “the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick” (Isa. 33: 24):
disease - except where supernaturally inflicted (Zech.
14: 18) - vanishes: life - except in the case of capital punishment for
sin (Is. 65: 20) - is prolonged throughout
the Thousand Years (Rev. 20: 4): the ages of
the Patriarchs return. (3) Best of all, Hell is incarcerated
in the Pit. “It
shall come to pass in that day,
saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the
land” (Zech. 13: 2): for the Abyss is
sealed over Satan, “that he should deceive the nations
no more, until the thousand years should be
finished” (Rev. 20: 3). Is. 24: 21.
What but the miraculous intervention of God could create a threefold
change of environment so drastic and sufficing?
EDUCATION. Social Reform
works for universal education: but the education of God begins with the heart:
so “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord” - that is, saving knowledge - as completely as the ocean covers
the sea-basin; “and He will destroy the veil that is
spread over all nations” (Is. 25: 7).
2 Cor. 4: 3, 4. Thus the Kingdom starts wholly regenerate:
its kings - the co-heirs of Christ, saints of tried ability and tested
holiness; its viceroys -
DISARMAMENT. Social reform agitates
for disarmament with profound conviction: nor need we wonder. Of the total revenue of the leading nations,
something like one half, or £600,000,000 goes for war: what could this not
alleviate, poured through the poverty of the world! But no ‘league of peace’ can banish war: the controversy
between God and the nations over the crucifixion of the Son of God has never
been settled: “there is no peace to the wicked, saith my God” (Is. 57: 21).
Rev. 6: 4; Jer. 25: 27, 28. Regeneration is the sole secret of
disarmament. For “whence come wars and whence come fightings among you? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain:
ye fight and war” (Jas.
4: 1). The sword is first forged
in an evil heart: wrench it out of the hand, and the heart only forges
another. But, in the Regeneration, “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Is. 2: 4): for “of the
increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of
David, and upon his kingdom. THE ZEAL OF THE LORD OF HOSTS SHALL PERFORM THIS”
(Is. 9: 7).
Who
shall create this? The creation of a
perfect age is as utterly beyond our powers as the creation of a perfect
character. Before Christ came neither a
perfect age nor a perfect character had appeared: now one has: and the perfect
character is the pledge of the perfect age.
Because Christ has been, the
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55
Did Christ Rise as a Spirit?
“Even men who were considered stalwart in orthodoxy a few
years ago have now ceased to insist upon the physical resurrection of Jesus:
this is a gain: Christianity no longer rests upon an alleged physical fact. ... THE CRUDE BELIEF OF THE GALILEANS THAT THE
PHYSICAL BODY OF JESUS WAS TAKEN UP TO A HEAVEN BEYOND THE SKY AND THEREFORE
GLORIFIED IS NOW IMPOSSIBLE” (Christian
Commonwealth, April 2, 1911). By such
statements the League of Liberal Christianity and its president, Mr. R. J.
Campbell, deny, totally and without reservation, the supreme factor which the
THE PANIC. A panic like that
which overtook Eliphaz (Job 4: 15) suddenly
seized the Apostles in the upper room. “The disciples were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they beheld a spirit” (Luke 24: 37).
It was an ideal environment in which to prove resurrection. For even had the disciples expected our
Lord’s body to rise, that expectation was now shattered - they did not,
therefore, imagine it: His entering through locked doors made them suppose He
was a Spirit - therefore they were ignorant of the nature of a resurrection
body, and were thus unbiased witnesses: nor were they sure it was the Lord at
all - “a spirit” - therefore it was no
self-induced hallucination of Christ. No
better test conditions could be imagined.
THE SCARS. A startling
fact at once confronts us. The person
most anxious to prove His bodily resurrection is our Lord Himself: it must be
of the gravest moment. He presses the
evidences upon them. “See My hands and My feet, that it is I myself:” “handle
Me and see,” (or, as in John), “feel the nail
prints:” “and He showed them His hands and His
feet.” All law courts accept a
scar as a sufficient proof of identity; for a scar, after the wound is healed,
can be so shaped and placed as to be unique and decisive. So it was here. Not only did the prints in the palms and the
soles confine the body examined to one of the three crucified; but the scar
under the ribs identified it as the only Body that had the spear-thrust. It was therefore no reincarnation: the Body
was His own. As a wound inflicted in
childbirth, or in infancy, can bear a scar which survives all the physical
changes of a lifetime, so the body of Jesus, passing under the mighty change of
resurrection, nevertheless carried the death-wounds. “It
is I myself.”
THE BODY. A decisive
proof remains. The Apostles witness to a
kind of resurrection so puzzling as to have been, among themselves, long
disbelieved. The apparition of a spirit [i.e., a
disembodied soul], like Samuel’s, they understood: the resurrection of a body, like
Lazarus’s, they had seen: what the Old Testament had never unfolded, and what
no man had ever guessed, is what the apostles end by asserting as a fact again
and again - a spiritual body; combining the properties of body and spirit [and
soul] in
a way never hitherto conceived by the human mind. It was the same Body, for there was no body
in the tomb, and the body they handled was identically scarred: yet it was
another fashion of body, not always recognizable, passing through matter, and
ultimately into heaven, without difficulty.
Nothing but actual experience, tested and re-tested, could have
convinced them of so puzzling, so unique, a fact. So also our Lord’s resurrection is the model
of ours. 1
Thess. 4: 14. The bodies of the
saints arose (Matt. 27: 52): our bodies are
to be quickened (Rom. 8: 11): our body is to
be made like His body (Phil. 3: 21): and,
while it will be a spiritual body, it will also be a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15: 44).
The change that passes over the rapt, who do not leave their bodies on
earth, is exactly equivalent to resurrection.
1 Cor. 15: 52.
THE RESURRECTION. Our Lord
Himself is the finally decisive witness.
He says: - “Handle Me, and see; for a
spirit hath not flesh and bones, AS YE SEE ME HAVE.” If the body did not rise from the grave, what
did? - for the spirit had never been in the grave at all; and if it had, it
would have needed no rolling away of the stone, to free it: a spirit is already
free as air. An apparition, a phantom -
our Lord says - though it can be seen and heard, (as He assumes), cannot be
felt: it is too imponderable, too immaterial, to be handled: it has no flesh
and bones. “Who
maketh His angels winds, and His ministers a
flame of fire” (Heb. 1: 7). Nor was it only solid flesh and bone: it was
wounded flesh. A spirit is not scarred
by a physical incision: if, as Gnostics taught and teach, our Lord’s body on
the cross was a phantom, no scars would or could have remained. Palpable to the touch; visible or invisible
at will; scarred with the earthly experience; eating or not, as He chose: - “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have”: He says He is not a spirit. If Jesus came back as a spirit, He came back
as a lying spirit. 1 Cor. 15: 14, 15.
The
gravity of the issue it is impossible to exaggerate. For the Lord’s resurrection in flesh is the
criterion both of demons and of antichrists.
“That Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,”
(the perfect denoting a past act continuing to the present: Lange), is the
truth which no demon, when challenged, will ever confess (1 John 4: 2, 3): ‘Christ
come’- the Divine Being arrived; and ‘in the
flesh’- not into flesh, to disappear out of it again, but - a Man for
ever. So it is the criterion of the
antichrists. “Many
deceivers are gone forth into the world, even
they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh” - in the Second Advent -
“IN THE FLESH. This is the deceiver
and the antichrist” (2 John 7). A deliberate and systematic denial of the
resurrection is more than an overthrow of Christ: it is the revelation of an
antichrist.
“LITTLE CHILDREN, IT IS THE
LAST HOUR: AND AS YE HEARD THAT ANTICHRIST
COMETH, EVEN NOW HAVE THERE ARISEN MANY
ANTICHRISTS;
WHEREBY WE KNOW THAT IT IS THE
LAST HOUR” (1
John 2: 18).
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56.
Excommunication and Exclusion
THE CHURCH. As, in the
regenerate, the current of being sets towards good, and evil is a backwater;
so, in the unregenerate, the current of being sets towards evil, and effort
after good is a backwater: and this is always the criterion of regeneration. 1 John 3: 7, 8.
Yet it is also certain that the regenerate can sin deeply, and die in
such sin. For - as an example - three
facts decisively establish the regenerate nature of the incestuous brother whom
the Holy Ghost has made a perpetual and conclusive proof.
(1) Excommunication was to deliver his flesh, but not his spirit, to
Satan: Satan might touch his body, like Job’s, but not his soul: “that the spirit may be SAVED
in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5: 5). Now the destruction, like Ananias’s, might be
immediate (for aught we read to the contrary) and yet his salvation was
assured: therefore he was regenerate before excommunication. 1 Cor. 11: 30, 32.
(2) Paul sharply limits the jurisdiction of the Church to believers: “do not ye judge them that are within, whereas them that are without God judgeth? Put away the wicked
man” - pass sentence, for he is within - “from
among yourselves.” The right to
judge unbelievers, Paul says, belongs solely to God: therefore the incestuous
brother, judged by the Church at Paul’s command, was a believer.
(3) This brother, if excommunicated at all, was promptly restored: for in
his second Epistle Paul says, - “forgive him and
comfort him; confirm your love toward him”
(2 Cor. 2: 7). This is absolutely decisive. The sharp discipline had severed him from his
sin: acting under an inspired command the Church restored him to full
fellowship, as a living member of Christ.
Therefore a believer can so sin, and has: and - since there may be
destruction of the flesh - can also die in it.
EXCOMMUNICATION. But a fact of
overwhelming decisiveness still remains.
Paul states that the identical sin might permeate the whole assembly. “Know ye not that a
little leaven leaveneth the WHOLE LUMP?” Was the ‘whole lump’
all good dough, or half bad? Was the
assembly regenerate throughout or not? “Purge out the old leaven, that
ye may be a new lump” - fresh, pure dough throughout - “even as ye ARE
unleavened.” Those whom Paul is
alone addressing (1 Cor. 1: 2) had all left
the hands of God as pure, sweet dough on conversion: all were regenerate: “ye are unleavened”: now keep so, Paul says, and if any
leaven returns, purge it out, to keep the lump new. For fornication - as also the other
immoralities named - might spread through the entire Church: “know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” So far from Paul regarding the incestuous
brother as no believer, because of his fornication, he asserts exactly the
reverse - that, unless drastic measures purge the Body, immoralities may
contaminate the whole, 1 Cor. 10: 12. No disciple is immune from peril.
THE KINGDOM. Thus it is
certain that believers can commit such sins: it is certain that some in Corinth
did: it is certain that all such are to be excommunicated: Paul now unfolds the
tremendous revelation that disciples so unclean as to be shut out of the
Church, must also be shut out of the Kingdom; that the excommunicated will be
the excluded. For what is the catalogue
of excommunication? Fornicators,
idolators, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. 1 Cor. 5: 11. And what
is the catalogue of exclusion? “Ye yourselves do wrong”: at what peril? “Know ye not that wrong-doers
[the same word, with no article] shall not inherit the
*
“The
EXCLUSION. Paul closes
with words finally conclusive. “Such were some of you; but ye
were washed” - through blood and water - “but ye
were sanctified” - set apart for God as hallowed - “but ye were justified” - through the accepted
righteousness of Christ: these are the souls Paul is threatening with
exclusion: “defiled, ye were cleansed; profane, ye
were hallowed; unrighteous, ye were justified.” Dare any of you become foul again? Paul asks.
If unbelievers only are excluded, Paul’s warning is not only pointless,
but unjust. Believers are sinning;
unbelievers are to be excluded: “ye do wrong”;
therefore the world will be punished: does God reveal the sins of one set of
men, to threaten punishment to another? “I fear lest I
should find YOU not such as I would,”
because of “uncleanness and fornication and
lasciviousness which they COMMITTED”
(2 Cor. 12: 20). It is the washed, the sanctified, the
justified that are in peril. Are [unregenerate] hypocrites -
empty professors, false brethren, who have slipped past the Church examiners -
washed, sanctified, justified? Hear what
the Spirit is saying to the churches: - “HE THAT DOETH
WRONG SHALL RECEIVE FOR THE WRONG THAT HE HATH DONE; AND THERE IS NO
RESPECT OF PERSONS” (Col. 3: 25).
“Thou hast a few names in
THEY ARE WORTHY” (Rev. 3: 4).
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57
Christ
RECOGNITION. “For a long time” a madman (Luke
8: 27) - probably years - the Gadarean, dwelling apart “in the tombs,” could have known nothing of Christ: yet
he instantly names Jesus. Such knowledge
could only be supernatural. “Jesus I know,” cried a demon far off in
IDENTIFICATION. Thee demons
recognised Jesus: did they, then, hail Him as one of themselves? Or as a malignant power? Or as an angel? Or as son of Joseph? “What have we to do with thee, Jesus,
THOU SON OF THE
MOST HIGH GOD?” Hell
instantly declared that it has nothing in common with Jesus Christ; and as
instantly it identified Him as the Messiah.
“The Son” was a title of Messiah (Ps. 2: 2, 12) for appropriating which Jesus
incurred the charge of blasphemy (Mark 14: 64):
it is the title of the Judge (Ps. 2: 9),
before whom, as such, the demons recoil in terror. “Rebuking them,
He suffered them not to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ” (Luke 4: 41).
AUTHORITY. The Jews were
deeply startled by the instant obedience of the unseen world to Christ. “They were all amazed, saying,
What is this? With
authority He commandeth the unclean spirits, and
they obey Him” (Mark 1: 27). The obedience of unseen principalities and
powers, of keen malignancy, vast experience, and great power is an astounding
tribute to the inherent authority of Christ: and yet more to His holiness. For attempting exorcism without holiness the
Sons of Sceva fled naked and wounded from a single demon (Acts 19: 16): yet our Lord controls at least two
thousand (for all the swine were entered), and when He says, “Get thee behind Me, Satan,”
even Satan himself obeys.
SOVEREIGNTY. Facts compelled
an extraordinary confession from the demons.
“Art Thou come hither to torment us before the
time?” (Matt. 8: 29): “and they intreated Him that He would not command them to
depart into the abyss” (Luke 8: 31). The Abyss, into which our Lord Himself
descended (Rom. 10: 7), and out of which
evil spirits will swarm in the last judgments, (Rev.
9: 2), is the strong prison of Satan at last (Rev.
20: 3). Thus the demons confess
that Christ can control the legions of Hell; that He can send them anywhere He
chooses; that He can compel the Abyss to receive whom He will; and that He can
command souls of angels or men into the Eternal Torments. What a Christ! Devils would make us doubt Christ, but they
never doubt Him themselves: they would have us doubt Hell, but they never doubt
it themselves: “the demons also believe, and shudder” (Jas. 2: 19).
MAJESTY. So also Christ
had the manner of God. “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor hath taught Him?” (Is. 40: 13).
God acts - famine or plague sweeps away millions - and He offers no
explanation. It has been said that the
owners of the swine were Jews, and justly suffered as transgressors of the Law;
that the loss was meant to startle concerning the peril of the soul; that the
deliverance of one man is worth the destruction of many swine: Jesus gives no
explanation. “What
things soever the Father doeth, these the Son
also doeth in like manner” (John 5: 19):
it is the un-challengeable majesty of the Godhead, acting as God, and consulting
none. “Declare
how great things GOD hath done”:
“and he published abroad how great things JESUS had done” (Luke 8: 39).
WISDOM. Three prayers
are offered: the prayers of enemies are answered, - the prayer of the friend is
refused: what man would have done that?
The demons are not commanded to the Abyss - for even devils will not
suffer more than their due: Jesus departs - because He never forces the human
soul: the disciple is left - because, if Gadera has abandoned Christ, Christ
has not abandoned Gadera. The greatest
demoniac of the New Testament becomes a preacher of salvation to ten
cities. “O the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”
(Rom. 11: 33).
POWER. One power quells the storm,
exiles the demons, cures the maniac: what a power! Evil spirits, even through human wrists, can
snap fetters like thread: yet one word from Jesus binds them with links of
adamant. What follows? That no madness
is incurable; no sin (save one) unpurgeable; no devil invincible; no habit
unconquerable; no outcast beyond reach: - that all power is gathered into those
glorious Hands.
“ALL POWER IS GIVEN UNTO ME IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH”
(Matt. 28: l8): “THE
SON OF MAN HATH POWER ON EARTH TO
FORGIVE SINS” (Mark 2: 10).
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58.
Emperor-worship
ANCIENT. The acceptance
of the King as the Saviour is older than history; and no sooner had God
deposited all earthly power in the hands of a single monarch than the worship
of the emperor, or of his image, broke forth. “To you
it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages,
that ye fall down and worship” (Dan. 3: 4).
God smote Nebuchadnezzar, thus intoxicated with universal (Dan. 5: 19) power, with madness - “till thou know that THE
MOST HIGH ruleth in the kingdom of men, and
giveth it to whomsoever He will” (Dan. 4: 32). But the lesson was never learnt. Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, Cyrus the
Persian, Alexander the Greek, Caesar the Roman - every one of the
empire-dynasties have claimed divine honours: emperor-worship became an
ineradicable sin in the controlling dynasties of the world.
ROMAN. The worship of the King as
Saviour rose to its height in that Empire the revival of which we await (Rev. 13: 1; 17: 9, 10) - the Roman; and it reached
its climax under Marcus Aurelius. Says a Roman historian: - “Every stage of life, both men and women, every rank and
condition, rendered the Emperor divine honours; a temple was erected to him,
with priests and high priests, and all those other institutes which antiquity
has decreed for worship.” A
tablet to Marcus Aurelius is inscribed thus: - “From
one most devoted to his Godhead.”
Multitudes of Christians lost their lives for refusing emperor-worship:
of others, in
MODERN. It is very
startling to discover that, since
ANTICHRIST. Thus
the world-conditions are rapidly approximating to the culmination of all
emperor-worship: - “all that dwell on the earth shall WORSHIP him” (Rev. 13: 8).
In one of the deadliest of magazines, steeped in Theosophy and
Gnosticism, we read: - “Behind this universal empire
rises a still more majestic idea, the notion of a world-Saviour. A mighty world-ruler must come, who will at
the same time be a Saviour of the world” (The Quest, April, 1911). So
also a leading Theosophist: - “We await the coming of
One to whom none may say, Go, but who ever breathes, I come; the supreme
Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, the blessed Buddha yet-to-be; who shall shape the
religions of the world into one vast synthesis.” Emperors hitherto have never been able to
wield miracle: crushing power alone has compelled worship: but “he whose coming is according to the working of Satan”
will seduce to worship “with all power and signs and
wonders of falsehood” (2 Thess. 2: 9). To receive his sacramental sign will be
certain damnation. Rev. 14: 10. The magazine which heralds the Messianic
Emperor also studies magic and the return of the dead: it emanates from circles
saturated with Spiritualistic miracles; the miracles in which Antichrist is to
be cradled are already in the group which is raising the cry of a Messianic
Emperor. “WATCH YE
THEREFORE, AND PRAY ALWAYS, that YE may be ACCOUNTED WORTHY TO ESCAPE all these
things that shall come to pass, and to stand
before the Son of Man” (Luke 21: 36).
CHRIST. How glorious a
light it sheds on the Redeemer! How does
a forger start to forge a coin? Whereas
the material is bad - it may be chalk, that immediately snaps on the counter -
the appearance of the coin is a copy as exact as he can make it. When Satan launches his supreme counterfeit
Christ, what does he forge, so that the world may mistake him for the
original? A man who is also God: an
emperor who is also a saviour: one who is gifted with all miraculous power, yet
human, whose are the uttermost parts of the earth, and to whom incense is
offered by all nations. That is what
Satan knows Christ to be: that is the original Coin which he counterfeits: he
forges a world-saviour, because he knows a Divine Empire is imminent, and a
Divine Emperor. For the angelic cry is
near: - “The kingdoms of THIS WORLD are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of HIS CHRIST;
and He shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11: 15).
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59.
Brotherhood
The
Brotherhood of Man, as springing from the alleged universal Fatherhood of God,
is incomparably the most popular doctrine in the modern world. It is (for example) a bedrock doctrine of the
Gnostic groups, such as Theosophy and the New Theology; of Bahaism, which aims
to unite the religions of the world; of all Socialism, so far as it is
religious; and of the Brotherhood Movement - a movement growing with such
enormous rapidity that its societies in 1906 numbered nine, but in 1911, 1,543,
with 600,000 members. “All classes and all creeds” are embraced, officially
and of set purpose, in this ‘brotherhood’ of
mankind, as they were also embraced in the motto of the French Revolution - “liberty, equality, brotherhood.”
EXCLUSIVE SONSHIP. The first
arresting fact which confronts us is that four revealed sonships, by their very
terms, deny universality. (1) Our Lord,
as Son of God, is “the only-begotten of the Father”
(John 1: 18); that is, His is a Sonship so
unique, so Divine, as to exclude all others: no other man is the Son of God in
this sense. (2) Angels, as sons of God (Job 38: 7),
are sons as His direct agents (John 10: 35):
it needs no proof that, as we are not angels, all men are excluded from this
sonship. (3) Again we read, - “the son of Enos, the son of
Seth, the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke
3: 38). As son by direct
creation, and alone so of all mankind, the genealogy itself excludes all but
Adam from this sonship. (4) Of
SATANIC SONSHIP. Of these four
sonships but one now remains on earth: if, therefore, any one in the flesh is a
son of God, it is the Jew: does our Lord so regard him? If not, much less all others.
* The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:
1, 2, 11), exactly expounded, reveals
DIVINE SONSHIP. Where then and
what, is the true Brotherhood? For it
must be discoverable amongst mankind, and yet it must be sharply severed: for
we read - “Honour all men. Love THE BROTHERHOOD” (1 Pet. 2: 17).
God’s Word declares that the Brotherhood stands revealed by its place,
its spirit, its character, and its conduct.
(1) Its place: “come ye out from among them,
and be ye separate, and
ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6: 17).
The brotherhood of all men is exactly the place where it is impossible
to find the Divine Brotherhood. (2) Its spirit: “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 8: 14).
Antagonism to the Spirit in the Word and in the Church betrays Satanic sonship:
it is only the indwelt of the Holy Ghost that have become sons of the
Father. (3) Its character: “that ye may be
blameless and harmless, children of God without
blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2: 15).
The sonship is not in the crooked generation: only where we see the
character of God, do we see the sons of God: for sonship is not so much a
title, or a privilege, or even a relationship, as a transmitted life. (4)
Its conduct: “he that doeth righteousness is righteous:
in this the children of God are manifest” (1 John 3: 7, 10).
The sons of God are those into whom the Spirit has so entered that, as
temples of the Holy Ghost, they work the works of God.
The
Gospel now throws wide open its golden gates.
Before we can be a son, we must be born: before we can be sons of God,
we must be born of God: and - here is the unique revelation of our Faith - all
men, of all classes and all creeds, are invited, and are able, to become sons
of God, and thus to enter the holy brotherhood of the regenerate. Human birth no man can obtain for himself, or
control: his parents, his birthplace, his epoch are utterly beyond his choice:
the marvel of revelation is that all men can now choose to become sons of God.
“For ye [disciples] are
all sons of God through faith” (Gal. 3: 26):
and “AS MANY AS
RECEIVED HIM, to them gave He the right to
become CHILDREN OF GOD, even to them that BELIEVE
on His name: which were BORN, not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but OF GOD” (John 1: 12).
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60.
Catholicity
No
corporate restoration of the Church is to be expected before the Lord returns (Matt. 5: 13, 13: 33): nevertheless, for individual
purity, and for confronting an ever-growing and spurious catholicism, the
catholicity laid down by the Holy Ghost is one of the urgent needs of a growing
crisis. What is that catholicity?
IN FACT. Fellowship in
His Church our Lord has thrown open to all believers. John
13: 35. Separation is commanded:
but it is separation from the world (2 Cor. 6:
14-18), not from fellow-disciples; unless they be guilty of the sins
named in 1 Cor. 5: 11 - “with such a one no, not to eat.” Only as severed from the world is the Church
a party or sect. Acts 28: 22. For him whom God has received the Church must
receive (Rom. 14: 3): Christ’s acceptance of
us is the imperative reason, without option, for our acceptance of our brother.
“Wherefore RECEIVE
ye one another, even as Christ also received you,
to the glory of God” (
IN NAME. “I wish all names among the saints of God were swallowed up
in that one name of Christian. Are you
Christ’s? If so, I love you with all my
heart” (Whitefield). No other
proper name is ever applied to disciples by the Holy Ghost. “If a man suffers as a CHRISTIAN,
let him glorify God in this name” (1 Pet. 4: 16): “the
disciples were called Christians” - i.e.,
by God: the word here for ‘called’ is used for
the response of an oracle - “first in
IN HEART. Thus
catholicity is not inter-denominationalism, or a conglomerate of factions: it
is the casting down of all barriers to full communion for every disciple of
Christ. For fellowship with a brother in
error is not fellowship with his sin, but with his regeneration: we do not hold
communion with his weakness, but with his faith: “him
that is weak in the faith RECEIVE,
for God hath received him” (
There
will be no divisions around the Throne: daily let us recollect how rapidly we
are nearing “that all-reconciling world where Luther
and Zwingle are well agreed.” As
two drops of water become one at a touch, so should redeemed hearts: “receive ye one another, TO THE GLORY OF GOD.” True catholicity is a great sorrow, not an
angry scorn, over a mutilated Church: it is no attitude of impatient protest or
impotent un-charity: on the contrary, it is the love that “beareth all things,” and gathers all disciples into
its bosom, even as God does. “But thou, why dost thou judge
thy brother? Or thou again, why dost thou set at nought thy brother? For we shall all
stand before the judgment Seat of God.
LET US
NOT THEREFORE JUDGE ONE ANOTHER ANY MORE: but
judge ye this rather, that no man put a
stumbling-block in his brother’s way, or an
occasion of falling” (Rom. 14: 10).
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61
The Miracles of Christ
THE CONSECRATION. Miracle which
has behind it efficient cause and sufficient purpose becomes utterly credible
the moment it is established as historic fact.
Now the miracles of Christ have behind them precisely that efficient
cause and sufficient purpose. For “whom the Father sanctified”*
- set apart for a specific use - He “sent into the
world” as the Son of God (John 10: 36):
that is, Jesus entered the world charged with the power of God - an efficient
cause; and consecrated as the world’s Messiah - a sufficient purpose. Miracles in Christ, so far from being idle
and incredible wonders, are so inevitable that if they do not occur, He is not
the Messiah.
* This word for “sanctify”
means “to set apart for God”; if the person is
unholy, it involves a change of nature; if holy, as Christ was, it is simply consecration
to a divine purpose.
THE FACT. We now turn to
the fact. Did our Lord work
miracles? We may be told that the
narratives of miracle are subsequent legends; that He worked no miracles, but
that myth-makers said He did. But “John did no miracle” (John
10: 41), and no one ever said that he did. John was a contemporary of our Lord, and
probably as famous as Christ in his lifetime: yet the Jews never said that he
worked miracles; the Bible never says it; tradition since has never said it:
not a single miracle has gathered round his name. Neither, therefore, need miracles have been
invented of Christ. But the proof that
Jesus, as a matter of fact, did work miracles it is impossible to resist. Many were wrought on public men - as Jairus,
a synagogue ruler; Lazarus, a man well known to the Jewish authorities; and
Malchus, an officer of the High Priest: and some were permanent miracles - that
is, the cured leper, the blind whose eyes had been opened, the man raised from
the dead, could be handled and cross-examined years after. So real were the miracles, so indisputable,
so palpable, that no refuting evidence was ever produced, no denial of them was
ever made, no contemporary doubt of their occurrence was ever expressed. The men who were looking at Christ, both
friend and foe, never doubted that He worked miracles: but His foes said that
they were Satanic: an explanation which at once establishes, out of the mouth
of the keenest hostile critics on the spot, that they were actual occurrences. The Talmud, hundreds of years after, still
puts them down to magic.
THE KIND. This brings us
a step further. Of what nature were our
Lord miracles? Were they Satanic?
Apocryphal literature asserts that, as a child, He made clay birds to fly,
turned children into goats for refusing to play with Him, and cursed a boy with
death for running against Him; exactly the kind of miracle which our Lord did
not work, but which miracle-mongers invent.
Had the Gospels been apocryphal, such miracles would cram their pages;
but not one such miracle can be found.
Two characteristics are so supreme in our Lord’s miracles as to isolate
them from all others, and to establish their Divine character.
First,
goodness: “many good works” - fair, beautiful,
comely - “have I showed you from the Father” (John 10: 32).
Moses slew an entire army in the
Secondly,
power: “many good works have I showed you out of the
Father;” works therefore omniscient and omnipotent. Moses was constantly at a loss what to do -
at the
THE CHALLENGE. Thus our
Lord’s miracles are a grave and un-escapable challenge to every soul. “If I do not the
works of my Father, believe Me not”; “though ye believe not Me, believe
the works”; “believe Me for the very word’s sake”
(John 14: 11). The miracles are fundamental to our
salvation. Why? Because forgiveness is so invisible a
transaction, so purely spiritual, that it requires to be proved by supernatural
credentials direct from God. To say, “Thy sins are
forgiven thee,” is a knocking off of invisible shackles, a healing of an
invisible soul, a cancelling of a debt in invisible books: but to say, “Arise and walk,” is a removal of visible shackles, the
restoring from a physical paralysis, such that the fact can be seen to
correspond immediately and exactly with the word. If Christ’s word is instantly operative in
the physical sphere, it is equally instantly operative in the spiritual
sphere. “THAT YE MAY KNOW THAT THE SON OF MAN HATH POWER
ON EARTH TO FORGIVE SINS, He saith unto him
that was palsied, I say unto thee, Arise” (Luke 5: 24). The outward sign of power instantly
guaranteed the inward gift of grace. Are
the miracles real? So is the
pardon. Are the miracles un-bought and
unearned? So is the pardon. Does the
miracle perfectly cure? so does the pardon.
Reader,
have you sought and got the pardon? How
sad, if Jesus can forgive sins, and you are never forgiven! Seek it and you
will find it. “THE
SON OF MAN HATH POWER ON EARTH TO FORGIVE SINS.”
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62.
Seducing Spirits
“The Spirit saith expressly”- so momentous is the announcement,
that for once the Holy Ghost italicises His own utterance - “that in later times” - that is, on the threshold of
the Second Advent (2 Thess. 2: 3) - “some shall fall away from the faith” - become apostate
- “giving heed to seducing spirits” (1 Tim. 4: 1) - spirits, that is, who masquerade in
a personality or a holiness not their own, for the seduction of Christian
souls. THE GREAT APOSTASY IS TO SPRING OUT OF [regenerate] CHRISTIANS GIVING HEED TO UNTESTED SPIRITS. It is a fact
of incalculable gravity that Christian leaders, at this moment and before our
eyes, are giving ever deeper and closer heed to spirits miraculously present,
and advancing the most monstrous claims.
AS OUR LORD. Seductive
spirits sometimes masquerade as the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is Mr. R. J. Campbell’s startling
confession. “I
am conscious of someone’s presence in the mysterious unseen at this
moment. Who is it? I have always believed it to be Jesus; it is
no vague abstraction, but a definite, living, personal being. I work under his
orders. Am I wrong [in supposing
it to be Jesus]?
If so, I have been deluded into doing a good many things which otherwise
I would never have attempted. Someone is
directing me from the spirit world: it not Jesus, who is it? To me it is a thing incredible, impossible of
acceptance, it should be anyone else” (Christian Commonwealth, Nov. 30,
1910). No more awful lightning-flash
could reveal, not only how a local apostasy originates, but also the origin and
methods of the world-wide Apostasy yet to come.
AS THE DEAD. Again,
these seductive spirits masquerade as the Dead.
“I pray to my wife,” said Dr. Joseph
Parker, “every day. I never come to the work without
asking her to come with me: and she does come.
I never come to this place without her coming with me” (Review of
Reviews, Jan. 1902). In a book of
messages from the dead, endorsed by prefaces from Mr. R. J. Campbell and Dr. F.
B. Meyer, Mr. Meyer says: “We are evidently passing
into a new realm. The veil is getting
thinner, and the day is at hand when we shall see face to face. What may lie immediately before us is known
only in Heaven: but it is sweet to think that the Departed may not only be a
great cloud of witnesses, but a great body of helpers!” This is
Spiritualism: and Spiritualism is either the work of the dead, that is,
Necromancy (Deut. 18: 11), and therefore of
the wicked dead; or it is the work of personating demons, that is, Sorcery:
either was forbidden by the law of Jehovah under pain of death. On Mr. Meyer’s words Mr. W. T. Stead comments
thus: - “The work is important because it has received
the imprimatur of the Rev. F. B. Meyer, who may be regarded as an exponent of
the average belief of Nonconformists on this matter. When so competent an authority tells us that
he is convinced that the spirits of our departed friends may return and visit
us, is it not the duty of all Christians to take up the study of Spirit Return
and Ministry as a religious duty?”
AS MAHATMAS. Apostate
spirits also seduce through false messiahs, alleged reincarnations, and
world-teachers. The Theosophical Society, founded to “lead
an open warfare against dogma,” by Madame Blavatsky, who asserts that “the Serpent of Eden was actually the Lord God Himself,”
whereas “Jehovah is Cain,” - now foretells,
through Mrs. Besant, the imminent coming of “the
blessed Buddha yet to be, who shall shape the religions of the world into one
vast synthesis. He loves all faiths,
blesses them all alike, sends his messengers to every one of them and is the
heart and life of each. And ever the
World-Teacher is connected with what are called the mysteries, that which
Origen called Gnosticism; and in those mysteries the teaching of the
World-Teacher was ever the same. He is
waiting till his messengers have proclaimed his advent, and to some extent have
prepared the nations for his coming.”
Here
is the Satanic groundwork preparatory to the Advent of Antichrist. Yet it is Dr. R. F. Horton who writes: - “It would almost seem from these addresses that Mrs. Besant
has been brought back to Christ by the road of Theosophy. It is to such a heart, determined to find the
truth and to speak it when found, that we could well imagine the communication
should be given of the coming of the Lord: it is an appeal which, I trust, will
come home to us all. The anxiety of the
lecturer was lest, through our unfitness and blindness, we should not be able
to recognise the great World-Teacher when He comes, lest we should treat Him again
as He was treated when He came before; lest if He should come again as a poor
man, or if He should come with the skin of the black man or the yellow man, we
should not receive Him.” What a conception of the Advent! “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here
is the Christ, or, there: believe it not.
For as the lightning cometh forth from the east,
and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man” (Matt. 24: 23, 27).
Ignorance or refusal of prophecy is as grave a danger as is now possible
to a human soul.
As
the Holy Ghost. Nor do these
conscienceless spirits - having “consciences cauterised
as with a hot iron” - shrink from masquerading as the Holy Ghost. “We state the grave
fact,” says a collective utterance of German pastors (1908), “that in the late Tongues movement in
It
was by a spirit personating the Holy Ghost that Mr. Prince, of the Agapemone,
was led at last to exclaim: - “In me you see Christ in
the flesh; by me, and in me, God has redeemed all flesh from death.”
May
God help us! The Advent cannot be far. “IF THOU PUT THE
BRETHREN IN MIND OF THESE THINGS” - the Apostasy, seducing spirits, and the doctrines of the Apostasy - “THOU SHALT BE A GOOD
MINISTER OF JESUS CHRIST” (1 Tim. 4: 6).
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63.
THE CHURCH. The creation
of the Korean is one of the modern marvels of God. In 1885 there were 10 missionaries and no
converts; in 1886 there were two baptized Koreans; in 1888 there were 125; in
1903 there were 15,000; and in 1910, 250,000: a strong, living, fruitful
church, probably second to none in intensity, created, within quarter of a
century, out of nothing. The Korean receptivity
to the gospel has been rarely equalled.
The same amount of evangelistic work (Bishop Montgomery estimates)
results, in
THE LAND. The background
of this mighty work of the Holy Ghost is one of the oldest of the nations. The rectangular streets in Pyeng Yang, its
oldest city - only recently altered - were laid down 3,000 years ago: the text-books
used (until lately) in the schools date back a thousand years: and so dark was
the nation spiritually, that the word for God (as we understand it) had to be
created. Until 1885 no Korean could
become a Christian under pain of death; and as lately as 1902 proclamations
were placarded on the roadsides, “If you see a
foreigner kill him: if you see a native reading the Bible, kill him.”
THE REVIVAL. A revival
swept over the infant church from 1903 to 1907.
Prayer and Scripture were the two dominant characteristics of the
revival. A passion of prayer fell upon
the people. Whole days and nights were
spent in prayer; they would kneel for hours on the frozen ground on the
mountain sides; there are churches which have had prayer meetings every night
since they were founded; and the largest prayer meeting in the world - with an
average attendance of eleven hundred, frequently with an overflow meeting - is
in Pyeng Yang. “Prayer is like some vast deposit of
precious ore: time must be taken to sink deep the shaft to reach the richer
veins; and this the Korean does.”
So also Bible conferences sprang up everywhere; there are now more than
a thousand such throughout
THE FRUIT. Here are a
handful of Korean fruits. A blind
sorcerer walked five hundred miles to find a blind man’s Bible. One man saved five slices of bread, and lived
on one a day, that he might attend a Bible conference. One assembly - and Korea is reputed the
poorest land in the Far East - gave £2,500 for the erection of its own church,
an assembly only ten years out of heathenism.
Whole days and weeks are set aside by church members for personal work
in winning the unsaved: in one young Korean’s diary a missionary saw a record
of 3,400 such personal interviews in one year.
In a village where there was no money to build the church, a
farmer-evangelist sold his ox, a valuable one, and finished the erection of the
church; and when the missionary arrived, he saw this man and his brother yoked
together in the plow, while their aged father held the handles, and followed
the furrow. What must be the mighty
undercurrent of grace which can throw up such living marvels on the crest of
its wave!
THE LESSON. The lesson is exquisite
and solemn and I beseech any unsaved reader to mark it.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will
abundantly pardon” (Is. 55: 7).
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64
Baptism
The
Testimony of History. It will be
accepted without challenge that Mr. Gwatkin, professor of ecclesiastical
history in the
“Christian life [in the early church] properly began with baptism, for baptism was the convert’s
confession before men, the soldier’s oath which enlisted him in the service of
Christ. The rite was very simple, as
described by Justin in the 2nd
century. After more or less instruction,
the candidate declared ‘his belief in our
teachings, and his willingness to live accordingly.’ Then he might be
directed to fast a short time, in way of preparation. He was then taken to a place ‘where there was water.’ Here he made his formal confession, and here
he was baptized by immersion in the name of the Trinity. After this he was taken to the meeting and
received by the brethren. We have
decisive evidence that infant baptism is no direct institution either of the
Lord Himself or of His apostles. There
is no trace of it in the New Testament.
Immersion was the rule: the whole symbolism of baptism requires
immersion, and so
The
Testimony of the Old Testament. The Holy
Ghost has selected the two mightiest catastrophes by water in all history to
picture baptism, and thus to reveal its significance and its mode. These two catastrophes were judgments in
which, in the one case thousands, and in the other millions, were drowned;
while, in both cases, the people of God, though in the water, and overwhelmed
by the water, nevertheless came through it dryshod.
(I)
God “waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved
through water: which also after a true likeness”
- no fancied analogy, but a real type - “doth now save
you, even baptism” (1 Pet. 3: 20).
Sin provoked the Flood, which turned the world into one vast watery
grave: all mankind perished: but the household of faith, passing through
judgment unscathed, arose on Ararat out of the grave of the world.
(2)
At the Red Sea both church and world are again plunged into a common grave: the
mountainous walls of water roll down on the Egyptians, wiping them out of
existence: while God’s people, threatened on every hand with a watery death -
for they “were all baptized in the cloud and in the sea”
(1 Cor. 10: 2), the two forming together a
stupendous coffin - nevertheless emerge alive on the further shore. Thus baptism, as foreshadowed in the Old
Testament, pictures death overwhelming all - all flesh drowned in the judgments
of God: but, while one group perishes irremediably, the other - because God is
with them in the
The
Testimony of the New Testament. It is
with exquisite appropriateness, therefore, that one of the first allusions to
baptism in the New Testament runs thus: “Jesus baptized. And John also was
baptizing in Aenon, because there was much water
there” (John 3: 23). A tumble-full could have sprinkled a thousand
converts: not so immersion: nor without the destruction of the symbolism. For “we were buried therefore with Him through
baptism into death” (Rom. 6: 4); “having been buried with
Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him” (Col. 2: 12).
Burial is total immersion in earth; and when it is ocean-burial, it is
no less total. “For
as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ” (Gal. 3: 27) - clothed with Christ in
“Of all revealed truths, not one is more clearly revealed in
the Scriptures [than believer’s baptism] - not
even the doctrine of justification by faith; and the subject has only become
obscured by men not having been willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide
the point” (George Muller).
Judgment passed over the believer on
The
Testimony of Experience. Experience
exquisitely confirms baptism, so administered, as of God. Here are some testimonies the writer has
himself received. “Last night I was smitten to the dust. Of course I shall obey Him in baptism! There is nothing else to do. I do so gladly, humbly, thankfully,
gratefully.” - “Sunday night was far more
beautiful even than I had thought: I saw no one - the Master was there.”
- “I shall never forget how I realized the
preciousness of Christ after I obeyed Him in baptism.” - “I have been thinking over the matter for 25 years: I only
wish now it had taken place years ago.” - “It
has brought greater joy into my life, and it has given me a stronger passion
for service. ‘To obey is better than sacrifice.’ The blessedness
that has been mine since my baptism is more than words can express.” - “I was just trembling in every limb, - but when the time come
to step into the water, it was just as if He held my hand, and led me. Never in my whole life has He been so near: I
cannot tell you all that it meant to me, as I laid my whole life at His feet.”
- “Each moment of this evening last week comes to my
mind to night; so overpoweringly, that I was forced to my knees in an ecstasy
of joy. What hath God wrought!”
Is it likely that such experiences flow from an illusion, an error, a
misunderstanding, or a falsity disapproved by the Holy host? Then obey!
“He that hath My commandments,
AND KEEPETH THEM,
He it is that loveth Me” (John 14: 21): “why call ye
me, Lord, Lord,
AND DO NOT THE
THINGS WHICH I SAY?” (Luke 6: 46).
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Expiation by Blood
HUMAN SACRIFICE. The sacrifice
of a substitute is one of the oldest instincts of the world. Here is a cuneiform text from the Accadian,
the most ancient of all civilizations. “The lamb, the substitute for a man, the lamb he [the
offerer] gives for his life: the head of the lamb he
gives for the head of the man, the back of the lamb he gives for the back of
the man, the breast of the lamb he gives for the breast of the man,”
etc. But substitution, groping after the
actual redemption desired, inevitably became human. At
EXPIATION. What
lay in the heart of humanity in this awful holocaust? An Egyptian inscription tenderly and profoundly
replies. An ox, about to be sacrificed,
was stamped with a seal bearing the image of a man: on this seal the man’s
hands were bound behind him, and a sword-point was at his throat. The ox perished in the place of the doomed
man. A Babylonian treatise on astrology,
speaking of children offered by their parents to the Moon-god, says: - “The son who lifts up his head among men, the son for his own
life must he [the father] give; the head of the
child must he give for the head of the man, and the neck of the child for the
neck of the man.” It was
substitution with a view to expiation.
In
IDENTIFICATION. Thus
animal sacrifice, felt to be inadequate, became human: moreover, in some cases
sacrifices were selected, the dearest to the offerer that could be found. Deeply pathetic was the sacrifice of
children. These were selected on two grounds: - (1) as the most innocent, they could stand for the guilty; and (2) they were the sacrifices dearest
and costliest to the offerer’s heart.
The parents stopped their cries by fondling and kissing them, for the
victim had to be mute: the sacrifice must be so wholly voluntary that if either
child or parent wept, the expiation was forfeited. Blind instinct of
CHRIST. Now what has
God to say to these human sacrifices? “They have built the high places of Topheth, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded not, neither
came it into my mind” (Jer. 7: 31). Jehovah’s rejection of Isaac, and His
substitution of the ram, reveals once for all His refusal of all human
sacrifices: when He said: - “In the day thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die.” He knew that He passed sentence of death upon
Himself. The reason of God’s rejection
of human sacrifice is clear: no sinner can be a propitiation for another
sinner. “Shall I
give my firstborn for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”(Mic.
6: 7); when “none can by any means redeem his
brother, nor give to God a ransom for him”:
that “must be LET
ALONE FOR EVER” (Ps. 49: 7). To offer up a sinner for a sinner is to add
murder to a futile sacrifice.
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The Church and the Kingdom
THE CHURCH. No ‘church,’ properly defined as such, existed before our
Lord appeared: “upon this rock I will build my church”
(Matt. 16: 18): un-built in His lifetime, He
nevertheless here foretells it as we know it.
He also legislated for it: - “if he refuse to
hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican”
(Matt. 18: 17). For the stones our Lord quarried became the
foundation stones of the Church (Eph. 2: 20);
and all disciples, made and baptized between the two advents, are to be taught
“to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”
(Matt. 28: 20). The next occurrences of the word, immediately
after Pentecost, assume the Church as by this time actually existing in the
world. “Great
fear came upon the whole church” (Acts 5: 11):
“they were gathered together with the church” (11: 26); “when they had
appointed for them elders in every church” (14:
23); “when they had gathered the church together”
(14: 27); “it seemed
good to the apostles, with the whole church”
(15: 22).
The Book of the Acts refers throughout to the church as a body actually
in the world: it is the book of the propagation of the church: it refers to Jew
and Gentile, - gathered out to Christ, and compacted together, - as the church:
and it does so from the moment of the Holy Ghost’s descent, - the birth-moment,
therefore, of the church. The Epistles
follow, as church documents: and, in the Apocalypse, churches are addressed for
the last time by our Lord - “Hold fast till I come”
(Rev. 2: 25): that is, the church is to
continue until He comes.
THE KINGDOM. The
essentially church documents, the Epistles, refer constantly to ‘the Kingdom,’ and - with the exception of Col. 1: 13 - invariably refer to it as
future. So did our Lord. When “they supposed
that the
THE KINGDOM IN MYSTERY. In one aspect,
however, the kingdom is now present: for in parables the kingdom is the church:
in literal passages, it is the literal kingdom; in figurative, it is the
mystical. The reason seems clear. Our
Lord, when personally present, spoke of the kingdom as present also, for it was
present in the person of the King: “if I by the Spirit
of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of
God come upon you” (Matt. 12: 28). When the King withdrew from the world, so did
the kingdom. But the Lord is mystically
present with His Church: there is, therefore, a mystical kingdom: “who translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love”
(Col. 1: 13).
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM. Scripture
finally unfolds the right attitude of the Church to the Kingdom. The Church is to preach the Kingdom, to pray
for it, and to seek to enter it. (1) Paul, peculiarly the ‘Church’ apostle, “reasoned and
persuaded as to the things concerning the
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67
Paul’s Autobiography
LIFE. “I was
alive,” Paul says, in the most wonderful of all revelations of
conversion, “apart from the law once” (
LAW.
“But
when the commandment came,” Paul continues, “sin
revived.” What commandment? One he has just named, the tenth in the
Decalogue, - “Thou shalt not covet,” or lust, or
have an evil desire; the solitary command in the Decalogue that deals solely,
not with outward actions, but with internal emotions. Coveting, or lusting, or evil desire is a
motion of the soul which may, or may not, flow out into action: our neighbour
may never know that we covet ‘anything that is his’:
nevertheless the mere desire the Law forbids.
A sinless soul, not only would never indulge an evil desire, but would
never have one: God has no evil motion of the soul. “The commandment came”
home to the conscience: it found the heart lustful, and, after it has come, the
heart remains so: the Law reveals sin, it does not create it. But instantly, in Paul’s eyes, “sin revived”- sprang back into life; the dormant,
latent sin deep down in his heart sprang up like a serpent in his face. Paul had run his finger down the Decalogue,
the great summary of the Law. He is no
idolator - no blasphemer - no sabbath-breaker - no dishonourer of parents - no
murderer - no adulterer - no thief - no false witness: he is a righteous
man. But suddenly his finger stops: his
eye is riveted by a command that blazes at him as if he had never seen it
before, - “Thou shalt not covet.” He had
controlled all his outward actions; but how can he control the motions of his
soul? But if the motions of his soul are
sinful, how can he be without sin? And
if he is sinful, a law-breaker, how can the Law grant him freedom*? If evil desire is sin, who in all the world
is not a sinner?
DEATH. What then was the effect of
this awful discovery upon Paul? “I died”: I saw myself a dead man, I fell back
dead. Why so? Because the Law says, - “whosoever shall keep the whole law” - Paul had kept
nine commands - “and yet stumble in one point” -
Paul had broken the tenth - “he is become guilty of all”
(Jas. 2: 10). The only possible condition on which law can
grant life is a perfect obedience: for the Law is an entirety, covering all
righteousness; and less than the whole Law is not the Law. The man who is to win eternal life by perfect
righteousness must possess a righteousness that is perfect. But Paul’s failure was not only negative: it
was positive. “The soul that sinneth” - to break
a single commandment is sin - “it shall die” (Ezek. 38: 4): “the wages
of sin” - whether little sin or much sin - “is
death” (Rom. 6: 23). So long as God remains God, and sin remains
sin, not murder only, or adultery, but evil desire also, damns. Internal haemorrhage kills as surely as
external; a man can bleed to death inside, without a drop of blood ever
becoming visible on his skin: so a man externally righteous can become hellish,
and sink into Hell, while ‘found blameless’ - so
far as human eyes can reach.
Moreover
the Tenth Commandment is the root command of all. Idolatry, a lust after other gods; murder, a
lust of hate; slander, a lust to wound; adultery and theft, lust after that
which is another’s: coveting, or lust, carries the germ of every sin. In it, it is not the man’s life that stands
out black, but the man; and whereas a vile hand can be cut off, and a foul eye
can be plucked out, what is a man to do with an evil heart? The heart is the man. So Paul fell back
dead. For it was as though a sleeper
rested in a pitch-dark room, in perfect security and peace. He is sure, as he lies in the dark, that all
is well. But as the first light creeps
through the window, he suddenly realises that the room is full of wild beasts,
and the door is locked. From the
chandelier hangs, half uncurled, a serpent, poised with lolling fangs and
constant hiss; beneath the window a tiger, with eyes glaring full upon him,
crouches in the act to spring. “I was alive [in my own eyes] apart
from the law once: but when the commandment came
[home to my conscience], sin revived
[sprang back into life], and I died [saw myself
a dead man].”
CHRIST. So the Law had
done its glorious work, preparatory to salvation: the Spirit had wrought
conviction of sin, before He displayed saving righteousness. It is ever so. The pangs of the sinner are the blessed
footsteps of the Holy Ghost. For who
immediately confronts Paul? He who said,
- “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2: 17):
“for the Son of man came to seek and to save that which
was lost” (Luke 19: 10): and on the
way to
Yea,
through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He shall suffice me,
for He hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ
the beginning, for the end is Christ.
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68
WORLDWIDE BLOODSHED BY THE CHURCH OF
ROME IS FORETOLD BY THE HOLY SPIRIT BEFORE THE END. “I will show thee the judgment” - not the history, or
the mediaeval corruption, but the judgment - “of the
great harlot”: “these shall burn her utterly
with fire” (Rev. 17: 1, 16). It is a judgment which is on the immediate
threshold of the Advent; for the Woman is seen actually riding on the
Antichrist after he has come up out of the Abyss.
EXTERMINATION.
TOLERANCE. Now a most
startling fact confronts us. For four
centuries we have lived in an era altogether exceptional, before which was
blood, and after which will be blood again; and this era will not last. The acceptance of Protestantism by half the
governments of Europe robbed
neither age, sex, nor condition; I will hang, burn, waste, boil,
flay, strangle, and bury alive; and when the same cannot be done openly, I will
use the poison-cup, or the bullet, or steel.” Nevertheless, it is also true that a gracious
respite granted to us by God has withheld
BLOODSHED. Consequently
no intellect in the world to-day is less intoxicated or more wary than that of
In
the twentieth century
“The day is not far distant, and may be very near, when we
shall have to fight the battle of the Reformation over again” (Sir
Robert Peel). “I
do not pretend to be a prophet; but though not a prophet, I can see a very dark
cloud on our horizon, and that cloud is coming from
Be
it so: the blood of the martyrs has always been the seed of the Church. “Thirty attempts,” says Mr. Chiniquy, “have been made to kill me; but I have ever remarked that the
very day after I have been bruised and wounded, the number of converts has
invariably increased.” John 12: 24.
O for grace to say, with an old-time martyr, - “Can
I die for Christ but once?”
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The Ascension
ASCENSION. That we saw
him go, that we have heard from him since, and that he has been seen in that
other land, is the sole evidence we ever have of a friend’s existence on
another continent. Such is the evidence
we have of Christ. The crucifixion was
public, the burial was public, the appearances after the resurrection were
public, and as public as all the rest was the ascension: “as they were looking, He was
taken up” (Acts 1: 9). While all eyes
were calmly, attentively, lovingly turned towards Him as He speaks, He was
slowly carried up into Heaven. No eyes
had seen Enoch go: Elijah went up in a flash - seen but by one: the calm, quiet
convincing gaze of eleven sober men watched the Lord upward. They saw Him go. No fact could be more simple or sober or
real. As the Body had been physically
handled in the upper room, so it went up, physically visible, until a cloud
came between; as literal as the cloud, so literal was the body; and up to the
moment that He disappeared behind the cloud, it was the actual Jesus who had
talked and walked and eaten with them.
He had shown His power over the sea by walking on it, over the earth by
raising the dead out of it, over Hades by leaving His own grave, and now over the
air by rising up to God through it. “Who maketh the
clouds His chariot; who walketh upon the wings
of the wind” (Ps. 104: 3).
DEPARTURE. If the
ascension did not happen, what did? The
Lord had risen; the tomb was empty; He had talked and eaten with more than five
hundred people; He had been handled by reverent unbelief: - how then did He
leave the earth? If He left it by death,
- the whole resurrection thus becoming meaningless, - if He wasted away with
disease, fell once again into the grave, and was laid to rest by those who have
since died for love of Him, how is it that there is not even the whisper of a
tradition how and where He died? We have
the tomb of Abraham, in
FORETOLD. The ascension,
moreover, is a section of a coherent whole.
Our Lord had plainly foretold it. “What then if
ye should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before?” (John 6: 62).
“Yet a little while am I with you, and I go unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me”
- as the prophet’s disciples sought Elijah - “and shall
not find Me: and where I am, ye cannot come” – [i.e., until the
time of your resurrection] (John 7: 33).
Why not? Peter answers: “Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration
of all things” (Acts 3: 21). Why ‘must’? Because
it needs be that Scriptures be fulfilled.
“Thou hast ascended on high” - so runs a
passage which the Holy Spirit applies to Christ (Eph.
4: 7); “Thou hast received gifts for men”
(Ps. 68: 18): for “He
that descended,” Paul says, “is the same also
that ascended far above all the heavens” (Eph.
4: 10); “who is on the right hand of God,
having gone into heaven” (1 Pet. 3: 22); “a great
high priest, who hath passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God” (Heb.
4: 14). Christ has moved up from
off this earthly globe, and passed into the real, sure, abiding portion of the
universe; we are divided from that great world only by a cloud; up to the edge
of the cloud human eyes followed the Lord, now as literally and as actually on
the other side as ever He was on this; and how thin that cloud wears at times,
and how quickly and suddenly we too may step behind it!
THE BLOOD. What then is
the deep significance of the ascension?
The High Priest, on entering the Holy of holies, was required to enter
with blood, and to deposit it in the Sanctuary, so covering
“If any man sin, we have an ADVOCATE with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, BUT ALSO FOR THE WHOLE WORLD”
(1 John 2: 1).
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70
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day
THE SABBATH. The Sabbath
was a Jewish ordinance founded on (l) God’s after-creation rest, and on (2) the
deliverance of
For
the sabbath was a specifically Jewish ordinance. “Thou shalt remember
that thou wast a servant in the
* It was a three days’ journey to the wilderness of the
Red Sea (Ex. 3: 18), by which
We
now turn to the Lord’s Day. The word ‘sabbath’ is never used in Scripture for the first day
of the week; nor is there any hint of a change of days - one newly hallowed,
and one now made unhallowed. God is
nowhere stated to have done this: no church has the power. “The seventh day is a
sabbath unto the Lord thy God” (Ex. 20: 10). BUT
THE LORD’S DAY IS HONOURED FOR REASONS TOTALLY DISTINCT FROM THE SABBATIC.
REDEMPTION. As Jehovah
rested on the first day after creation, so He rested on the first day after
redemption. “He that is entered into [God’s] rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His” (Heb.
4: 10): God now rests in the finished work of Christ; and as the ark
rested on Ararat, after its strenuous salvation, on the seventeenth day of the
seventh month, so the Lamb, slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the same
month, rested on the seventeenth, redemption completed. God had carried the redeemed beyond their
RESURRECTION. The ‘firstfruits,’ and also ‘the
Resurrection, first of the firstfruits,’
were offered on ‘the morrow after the sabbath’ (Lev. 23: 11): so Christ, ‘the
first of the firstfruits,’ and the body of already risen saints (Matt. 27: 53), were both offered to the Lord on
the Lord’s Day. As eight resurrections
are recorded in Scripture, so the eighth day, the day after the sabbath, is the
day of resurrection, our Lord’s first day as the first-begotten from the dead.
PENTECOST. Pentecost
(meaning ‘fifty’) always fell fifty days after
the Sunday preceding the Passover feast, that is, on the Lord’s Day. Thus the Holy Ghost descended on the Lord’s
Day: for “when the day of Pentecost was now come,
suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a rushing
mighty wind” (Acts 2: 1). The Church, by the descent of the Spirit, was
born on the earth on the Lord’s Day; and John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s
Day: for whereas the day of the Letter was the Seventh, the day of the Spirit
is the First.
LIFE. The First Day is supremely the
day of the resurrection of dead souls.
On the eighth day
Thus
the honouring of the Lord’s Day - its observance is nowhere commanded in the
Scripture - is a practise (not a precept) sanctioned by the Holy Ghost: for “upon the first day of the week” the disciples “gathered together to break bread” (Acts 20: 7), and offered their substance to God (1 Cor. 16: 2).
Although all days are now fundamentally alike to the robust believer (
The
Sermon on the Mount is our Decalogue, the Gospels and Epistles our Law, and the
Apocalypse our Prophets; “for ye are not under law”
- the Decalogue was the summary and quintessence of the Law - “but under grace” (Rom. 6:
14): “let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of
a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: which
are a shadow” - for sabbaths are part of the
vanished Law - “of the things to come” (Col. 2: 16).
For we are “under law TO CHRIST” (1 Cor. 9: 21).
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71
Probation after Death
GOD’S CHARACTER. ‘God is almighty’ - so runs one plea for probation
after death: ‘He abhors sin, and He must triumph;
therefore He will empty Hell, some time, by swinging open the door of mercy to
all mankind - or else His character of goodness and love is destroyed.’ But a fatal objection lies against this
plea. The perfections of God have not
prevented sin entering into the world, and remaining in it for sixty centuries;
therefore a God of love can co-exist with a world of sin, for He has. If God’s perfection allowed sin to enter the
universe at all, why cannot His perfection allow it to stay, and why not allow
it to stay for ever? God’s absolute
goodness does co-exist with a sinning world: there is no reason, therefore, why
it should not co-exist with a sinning Hell.
‘But’ - it may be said - ‘there are good reasons why sin should be permitted to exist
now’: but that at once admits that God may allow, nay, does allow sin to
exist for good and sufficient reasons.
But who knows what those reasons are?
Who can say that they are not eternal reasons? But as long as the reasons persist, so will
the sin. If evil may wisely be permitted
now, it may wisely be permitted for ever: if an eternal Hell is the ruin of
God’s character, that character - I speak as a man - is already ruined. But “God is light,
AND IN HIM IS NO
DARKNESS AT ALL” (1 John 1: 5).
MAN’S CHARACTER. ‘But another opportunity,’ - so runs a second plea - ‘would save many souls who did not, or could not, choose the
right in this life’; that is, it is assumed that God has but to offer
mercy, in order to empty Hell. But how
is it to be done? It can only be by the
appeals of the old Gospel, the exhibition of the old love; for God has no new
pity to disclose, no new saving power to display: all that can be brought to
bear on lost souls is that which has already been pressed to its utmost limit,
and has failed. The Gospel has used all
its arguments and appeals, and it is a spent Gospel: the Spirit has used all
the agencies at His command to move the heart, and He is a rejected Spirit:
what can now change man’s hate to love?
Death works no magic: what is to make men love that which, by their very
nature, they abhorred, and still abhor?
For there would be the same demand for righteousness, the same commanded
renunciation of the world, the same stern prohibition of sin, the same offer of
a salvation by mercy alone. All that is
abhorrent in the Gospel now would be abhorrent then. If men can reject God for
forty years, they can reject Him for forty aeons, or for 40 millions of aeons;
if they can trample on the blood of the cross for a generation, they can
trample on it for a hundred generations: if all the love and wisdom and miracle
of Jesus Christ, God incarnate preaching in person, could not open deaf ears,
what could, on the other side of the grave?
But if probation is useless, God will not offer it: even now, “if they hear not Moses and the prophets, NEITHER WILL THEY
BE PERSUADED, IF ONE RISE FROM THE DEAD” (Luke
16: 31).
PUNISHMENT. ‘But punishment,’ - so may run the final plea - ‘will make men wise: an experience of Hell, short or long,
will open the heart for appeals to which, here and now, it was deaf.’ Is this so?
The facts are against it. Every
conviction in the law courts makes a convict’s ultimate cure less likely. It is said that for every adult criminal
reformed by prison discipline, at least fifty go from bad to worse. The successive judgments of God never subdued
the heart of Cain - Pharoah - Ahab -
FINAL CHOICE. The bed-rock
fact lies deeply embedded in the nature of things. Growth that is continuous tends to become
permanent: for one man who changes, a thousand never change. If a soul goes on rejecting the good, that
rejection will shape a permanence of character which will at last for ever
choose the evil. And - most solemn fact
of all - it is a law of nature that permanence is attained but once. The ship rolls, and the roll makes the expert
seaman; but let the lurch glide a few inches too far, and the vessel sinks
never to rise again. Slash a gum-tree, and the gums go out as commerce into all
lands; but let the gash sink a shade too far, and the tree withers never to
bloom again. A thousand years after - a
million years - the ship does not float, nor the tree spring. So it is also in the spiritual kingdom. The moment came when Satan himself passed the
irrevocable line: the occasional choice of evil had hardened into the habitual:
the habitual had passed the line where character becomes adamant: and the
permanent is attained but once. “How shall ye escape the judgment of [that consists of]
hell?” (Matt. xxiii.
33); that is, if dying unrepentant, how avoid it? And if once in it, how escape out of it? For “it is appointed
unto men once to die, and after this cometh”
- not probation, but - “JUDGMENT” (Heb. 9: 27);
therefore “now is the acceptable time” - the
time in which sinners can be accepted; “behold, now is the day of salvation” (2
Cor. 6: 2).
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72
Civil War
GOVERNMENT. Civil war of
necessity begins in a revolt against authority: whereas a perpetual command to
Christian teachers is this, - “Put them in mind to be
in subjection to rulers, to authorities”
(Tit. 3: 1).
For in the background of all government rises the awful majesty of
God. “The powers
that be are ordained of God” (
evil:
nor is the worst government as bad as pure anarchy. But thus to police the world is a duty committed,
not to the Church, but solely to the Gentile power, from whose hands God has
never withdrawn it since it was granted to Babylon. Dan.
2: 37. The sword is given to
Nebuchadnezzar, not to Paul: we are to submit to it, not to wield it; until, at
the Advent, “the greatness of the kingdoms under the
whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High”
(Dan. 7: 27).
REBELLION. A
grave fact thus reveals itself. “Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God.” These instructions were issued with the
crimes and cruelties of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius fresh in memory, and
with the monster Nero upon the throne: to no age of the Church could the
command have been more startling, or obedience to it a more signal triumph of
grace. For rebellion is rebellion
against God. Political resistance passes at once into spiritual: the power is
God’s power, the sword is God’s sword, the wrath is God’s wrath (though it may
reach us through the magistrate); for “he that
resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance
of God.”*
*
There is one exception to the rule. The State may, and must, be disobeyed when it commands something God has
forbidden, or forbids something God has commanded. If a Nebuchadnezzar orders image-worship, or
a Darius forbids prayer, or a Sanhedrim prohibits the Gospel “we must obey God
rather than men” (Acts 5: 29):
but, even so, refusal to submit must never be with firearms. 2 Cor. 10: 4; John 18: 36.
Neither
ancestry, nor sword, nor ballot-box is the real source of political power; “there is no power but of God”: the power is God’s, the
abuse of the power is man’s; and God does not ask the Church to interfere
between Him and His administrative officer.
For a bad ruler may be - like Saul - His judgment on a nation; or - like
Pharaoh - a monument for wrath (Ex. 9: 16);
or - like Nero - a fulfiller of the martyr-roll; or - like Napoleon - a scourge
for anarchy. The Most High “will strike through kings in the day of His wrath” (Ps. 110: 5); but throughout the day of His grace “they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.”
CONSCIENCE. So then
obedience is essential to the will of God.
“Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection,
not only because of the wrath” - as fine or
prison - “but also for conscience sake.” Militant disciples, whether Crusader or
Inquisitor or Covenanter or Ironside, have always pleaded ‘conscience’; but it is a perverted conscience; for God
says we are not to resist for conscience sake.
An uninstructed conscience can fall into colossal blunders. John 16: 2; Acts 26: 9. An act of parliament is to be obeyed, not for
the act’s sake, but for the Lord’s sake: obedience is a spiritual duty to God,
irrespective of the goodness or badness of act or government. Thus a Christian has no ‘right of rebellion’: he may always emigrate (Matt. 10: 23); but so long as he uses the coin of
the realm, and therefore draws its attendant advantages, he must render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. “Render to all
their dues”- for submission is not a gift, but a debt: “taxation to whom taxation; custom
to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.” Conversely, also, the disciple who pays all
taxes, submits to all ordinances, and prays for all rulers, may legitimately
accept in return the privileges of passive citizenship - police protection,
pensions for the aged, general order and liberty - as from “ministers of God’s service, attending continually upon this
very thing.”
PILGRIMS. Our Lord has
summarised His will for us in a little parable of arresting beauty. Peter, challenged by the taxation
authorities, at once acknowledges our Lord’s habit of yielding to the civil
requirements. “What
thinkest thou, Simon?” - Jesus then
suddenly turns upon Peter - “the kings of the earth,
from whom do they receive toll or tribute? From their sons”
- the princes of the blood royal - “or from strangers?”
- all outside the palace. “From strangers,” Peter answers, “Therefore the sons are free,” the Lord replies: the
sons of God inherently are lifted far above all earthly taxation; as heirs of
the world and called to the thrones of the Advent, they are as exempt as
princes of the blood royal. “But, lest we cause them to
stumble, give unto them for Me and thee”
(Matt. 17: 24). Lowly pilgrims, blameless and harmless, and
winning their way by love, must yield to all civil exactions and state
ordinances a winsome and Christ-like obedience.
“BE SUBJECT TO EVERY ORDINANCE OF MAN FOR THE LORD’S SAKE:
for so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of
foolish men” (1 Pet. 2: 13).
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73
Laying Hands on the Sacrifice
FORGIVENESS. “I the Lord change not” (Mal.
3: 6): as God forgave sin three thousand years ago, exactly so, in
principle, He forgives sin to-day. An
Israelite, guilty of a sin, had to bring a bullock or a lamb - neither spotted
in colour, nor defective in shape or limb; perfect, that is, of its kind - to
the priest: the guilty man then put his hand on the animal’s head (Lev. 1: 4): the priest drew a knife across its
throat, and burnt it to ashes: then the Israelite went home forgiven. What had become of his sin? It had been consumed with the sacrifice: as
annihilated, the man could never be charged with it again. So only did God ever forgive: Abel - and a
sacrifice; Noah - and a sacrifice; Job - and a sacrifice; Moses - and a
sacrifice: no sin for four thousand years was ever forgiven except under cover
of sacrifice.
THE HAND ON. Now one act
was absolutely vital, without which there was no forgiveness: one act which
alone set the whole machinery of pardon in motion. “He shall LAY HIS
HAND UPON the head of the burnt offering; and it
shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev. 1: 4).
What did the laid-on hand mean?
It
meant (1) confession. As Aaron, laying his hands on the head of the
Scape Goat, confessed over it “all their transgressions,
even all their sins” (Lev.
16: 21), so the Israelite bowed his heart as a sinner before God, laying
his hand in token on the lamb. What was
a sacrifice there for, if there was no sinner?
And if this man was not the sinner, why had he brought the sacrifice?
It
meant (2) acceptance. How should the priest know whose sacrifice it
was? The hand which grasped the lamb
said, as it were, ‘Regard this as myself, its life as
my life, its death as my death’: and the moment the man had thus laid on
his hand, God said, “it shall be accepted for him”
- i.e., on his behalf, in his place,
standing in his room, his sacrifice.
And
it meant (3) transference. The sin of the man passed to the sacrifice
through the laid-on hand: the spotless innocence of the lamb passed to the man
through the laid-on hand. As the sudden
junction of two wires immediately transmits the electric shock, so the moment
the man touched the sacrifice his atonement was accepted: “it shall be accepted, to make
atonement for him”; “and the priest shall make atonement
for him as concerning his sin, AND HE SHALL BE FORGIVEN” (Lev. 4: 26).
THE HAND OFF. So the reverse
also is true: refusal to lay the hand on the sacrifice means a refusal of the
sacrifice and therefore of the pardon. (1) Here is a man to whom the priest
says, ‘Put your hand on the lamb, in token of your sin’;
but the man draws back, saying, ‘That this is
Jehovah’s method of forgiveness I do not question; but I cannot, and will not,
confess myself a common sinner before all the tribes of
(2) Another man approaches the priest, deeply moved, and crying, “O my sins, my sins! Tell me how I can be forgiven?” The priest replies, ‘Most
gladly will I explain all I know, and remove, if I can, every difficulty you
may feel: but look! The sacrifice is actually here, and all you need for
instant pardon is to grasp it: put your hand on this lamb.’ But the man turns sadly away, putting his
hands behind his back, and crying, ‘O my sins, my
sins! I do not think I shall ever be saved.’ Would that man have gone home forgiven? Matt. 18: 24, 26, 27, 32.
(3) The priest approaches a third man. ‘Is that
your sacrifice?’ he asks. The man answers, ‘Yes.’ The priest then says, ‘Will you put your hand on it?’ ‘No,’ he replies, ‘I don’t
believe in sins being forgiven like that; I used to, but I don’t now; each of
us ought to bear his own sin like a man: after all, it is not much wrong that I
have ever done.’ Would that man
have gone home forgiven? Mark 2: 17. THE
HAND ON THE LAMB IS VITAL TO ALL SALVATION.
The
whole machinery of pardon is ready. “Him who knew no
sin God made to be sin on our behalf,” - therefore sin by transference -
“that we might become the righteousness of God”
- therefore righteousness by transference - “in Him”
(2 Cor. 5: 21). How quickly can it be done? As quickly as a hand can be laid on a
lamb. “Forty
years ago,” said an old saint to me, “I was
alone in my bedroom, when I suddenly saw Jesus, and instantly my burden was gone;
and for forty years, under the blood, I have never felt that burden again.”
Mark 5: 30, 34. But it is possible to see a lamb without
touching it: it is possible to believe that the Gospel facts are all true
without being saved.
If
a rope is thrown to a drowning man, and he sees it but refuses to grasp it, can
that rope save him? If carbolic acid has
been swallowed by mistake, and a powerful emetic is handed to the patient but [did] not drunk,
can that emetic save him? When a miner
examines the rope that lets down the basket into the mine, and exclaims, ‘It is a sound rope and perfectly safe,’ - that is
believing in the rope; but when he enters the basket, and trusts his life to it
- that is believing on the rope. Accept
the Saviour as yours, and tell God you do so.
“BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND THOU SHALT BE
SAVED” (Acts 16: 31): for “if I touch but His garments, I
shall be MADE WHOLE “ (Mark 5: 28; Luke 6: 19).
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74
Under Law to Christ
All
utterances of our Lord - including the Sermon on the Mount, and excepting only
instructions issued to the Jews as Jews (e.g., Matt.
23: 3), and illustrations drawn from Legal customs now superseded (e.g. Matt. 5: 24), are binding upon the Church of God
for reasons exceedingly weighty, and involving issues of the utmost
gravity. No less is at stake than the
authority of the Son of God, and His control of His own Church.
THE LAWGIVER. For one
solitary Teacher fills the horizon of the Gospels; a new Lawgiver has arrived,
who, as God manifest in the flesh, not only claims our utter allegiance, but
can never be superseded. “One is your Teacher” (Matt.
23: 8), so solitary, so unique that twice from Heaven a voice fell,
saying, - “Hear ye Him”
(Mark 9: 7).
So the Epistles pronounce us ‘under law to
Christ’ (1 Cor. 9: 21); - which can
only mean that what Christ has said is to be law to us, to whom the Epistles
are addressed.
GRACE. Consequently Scripture knows
but one sharp antithesis: “the law was given by Moses”
- i.e., the Old Testament - but “grace and truth” - the New Testament - “came by Jesus Christ” (John
1: 17). For our Lord has Himself
decided the exact watershed between Law and Grace. “The
law and the prophets” - the Legal prophets, as distinct from the
Christian - “were until John” (Luke 16: 16): Himself, and all that follows until
the Second Advent, is grace and truth, under which we live. So every utterance of Christ - except perhaps
His words to the Pharisees - is crammed with grace; no judgment miracle did He
ever work on man; it is gentle, unresisting love from cradle to grave; and this
grace is nowhere more intense or characteristic than in the Sermon on the
Mount. For the Sermon, so far from being Jewish, is an antithesis of the Law:
whole decrees of Sinai are revoked, and their actual opposites substituted
(e.g., Matt. 5: 33, 38, 43): it is grace
superseding justice; for it is not possible that a higher standard should be
given to a lower people. “For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every
one that believeth” (
THE SPIRIT. For the Second
Comforter has not come to disenthrone the First. “If I
go I will send Him unto you: and He shall guide
you into all the truth: for He shall not speak
from Himself” - He will not set up a new and independent doctrinal
system: “for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you” (John 16: 7).
The Spirit, speaking through apostles and prophets, has established no
new, much less no conflicting, revelation of doctrine, or standard of conduct;
but, by “bringing to your remembrance all that I said
unto you” (John 14: 26), He expands
more fully what Christ had sown in germ and embryo. So the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse are but
an organic outgrowth of the Gospels. For
Christ instituted the Rites; ordained the Ministry (Matt.
10: 9; 1 Cor. 9: 14); foretold the call of the Gentiles (John 10: 16); revealed ‘the
Body’ as actually existing before Paul’s conversion (Acts 9: 4); outlined the whole history of the
Church (Matt. 13.); legislated for it (Matt. 18: 17); predicted its apostasy (Matt. 5: 13); and, on Olivet, foreshadowed in germ
the entire Apocalypse. So also, as a
peculiarly decisive example, the Epistles duplicate seven leading
characteristics of the Sermon on the Mount:
(1) prohibition of oaths - Jas.
5: 12;
(2) non-resistance - 1
Cor. 6: 7;
(3) love towards enemies - Rom.
12: 20;
(4) fasting - 2 Cor. 6: 5;
(5) the peril of unforgiveness - Jas. 2: 13;
(6) renunciation of wealth - Jas.
5: 1; and
(7) the command to seek the Kingdom - 1 Thess. 2: 12, R.V.
For
all that Christ utters, the Spirit utters, and re-utters, and expands: so much so
that what our Lord dictated to John is seven times described as what “the Spirit saith to the churches”: for it is one God,
one utterance, one dispensational revelation - through gospels, acts, epistles,
and apocalypse - “grace and truth by Jesus Christ.”
THE CHURCH. So those to
whom Jesus is Lawgiver are always a heavenly people - which excludes the Jew:
yet also a suffering people - which excludes the Millennial Age. If persecuted, “great
is your reward in heaven” (Matt. v. 12);
if wise, they would “lay up treasures in heaven”
(Matt. 6: 20); if justly excommunicated, it
would be ratified “in heaven” (Matt. 18: 18); if escaping the Tribulation, it is
a heavenly escape - “to stand before the Son of man”
(Luke 21: 36) returning on the clouds of
heaven; if in the Kingdom, in its heavenly compartment (2 Tim. 4: 18): a Kingdom taken away from the Jew (Matt. 21: 43), and the heavenly compartment of
which he has lost for ever. But our
Lord’s utterances are also for sufferers.
The smitten cheek, the fasting, the abandoned treasure, the anxiety for
food and clothing, the peril of false prophets - it is legislation for here and
now: it is no remote ideal, to be fulfilled in a Millennial Age. Twice the Gospels name the ‘church’: the first (Matt.
16: 18) is manifestly Christ’s Church of the Epistles, still un-built in
the days of His flesh; therefore the second (Matt.
18: 17), for which He legislates, is the Church of the Epistles also:
for Scripture knows nothing of two ‘churches’,
and the first mention rules the definition of the second. So our Lord’s own words, dwelling in us for
ever, are vital to prayer (John 15: 7),
essential to love (John 14: 23), and
inseparable from reward (Mark 8: 38), - an
inextinguishable Word, never abrogated, never superseded, and never destroyed.
How
long then shall ‘grace and truth’ thus reign? “Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them,
and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
commanded you: and lo, I am with you all the days, even
unto THE END OF THE AGE” (Matt. 28: 19): i.e.,
as long as Gospel converts are to be made, and baptized, so long are they to be
told all that our Lord said, AND BIDDEN
TO OBSERVE ALL THAT HE COMMANDED: until, at the End of the Age, ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’ makes way for ‘the day of vengeance of our God.’
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75
False Christs
“IF ANY MAN SHALL
SAY UNTO YOU, LO, HERE IS THE CHRIST; OR LO, THERE; BELIEVE IT NOT” (Mark. 13: 21).
“Second advent” doctrine can come from Hell
as well as Heaven: beneath the Satanic religious of the world (as well as
Judaism) there rolls a deep undercurrent of Messianic expectation. The Moslems await the Mahdi, the Buddhists
the fifth Buddha, the Zoroastrians Shah Bahram, the Hindus the reincarnation of
1. THE HEALING MOVEMENT. “The healing movement is ever growing apace. Wherever I go,
it is wanted. It is one of the sure things of this new day of the Son of Man.
Yes, Christ is coming; that is my testimony to your readers. Only let us find
this Christ so nigh unto us that he becomes I and I become he” (Mr.
Macbeth Bain).
2. THE WOMAN MOVEMENT. “The great need of the
present day, and every day, is the coming of Christ into the communal and
individual life of man kind. A
manifestation of the renewed coming of the Lord of Life is eagerly awaited by
the angels who watch this earth. A sign
of this visitation will be the reinstatement of woman” (Mrs. Pethick
Lawrence).
3. THE NEW THEOLOGY. “Many workers and thinkers
are making ready the way for the second Advent - a reincarnation of the Logos
in the hearts of all men; the heralds are already attuning their songs for a
reign of brotherly love; already there are ‘signs
of his coming and sounds of his feet’; and upon
our terrestrial activity the date of this Advent depends” (Sir Oliver
Lodge).
4. JUDAISM. “I believe with perfect
faith in the coming of the Messiah, and, though he tarry, I will wait daily for
his coming” (Authorised Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations
of the
5. BAHAISM. “At the First Coming Christ came from heaven, though
apparently from the womb; so at his Second Coming he will come from heaven,
though apparently from the womb. That
which is meant in the prophecies by ‘the Lord of
hosts’ and the ‘Promised
Christ’ is the Blessed Perfection [Baha
Ullah, the Persian Messiah] and His Highness the
Supreme [the Bah, his forerunner]. The faith of everyone must gather round this
clear saying” (Baha Ullah). It is
astounding - and ought to be known, for the terror of it - that Abdul Baha, the
worldwide herald of this false Christ, has been officially received in England
by the Society of Friends; publicly recommended by (among others) Prof.
Margoliouth, of Oxford, and Drs. Whyte and Kelman of Edinburgh - Dr. Kelman
declaring, with Abdul Baha on the platform, that Bahaism “is part of the great hope and promise of the Kingdom of God
upon earth”; is referred to as ‘the Master’
in Christian Commonwealth circles; and (in Sep., 1911) was placed on the
bishop’s throne to give the benediction to the kneeling congregation of St.
Margaret’s, Westminster. The ignorance of prophecy in the general
6.
THEOSOPHY. “We
await again the coming of the supreme Teacher, the Lord Maitraya, the blessed
Buddha yet to be; who shall shape the religions of the world into one vast
synthesis. He is waiting till his
Messengers have proclaimed his advent, and to some extent have prepared the
nations for his coming” (Mrs. Besant).
We have already had the worship of a False Christ in the twentieth
century in
“For there shall arise false
Christs and false prophets, and shall show signs
and wonders,
that they may lead astray, if possible, the elect. But take ye heed: BEHOLD,
I HAVE
TOLD YOU ALL THINGS BEFOREHAND” (Mark 13: 22).
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The Two Justifications
ABRAHAM’S FAITH. One man Gods
has chosen to be the supreme model of all justification; and one apostle the
Holy Spirit has specially selected to express justification by faith. For to Abraham, a repentant heathen idolator
with his face set towards the Holy Land, God said: “He
that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir” (Gen. 15: 4): then, leading him out under the
countless stars, God said again: “So shall thy seed be.” Then we read, “Abraham
believed in the Lord” - that is, as Paul puts it, he believed God (
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. Now the
apostle asks the critical question, “We say, To Abraham his faith was reckoned for righteousness. How then was it
reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in
uncircumcision?” (Rom. 4: 9). Had Abraham earned his justification? Or obtained it by ‘sacraments?’ Or won it by long obedience and a holy life
supplementing the mercy of God? Or was
it by faith alone? So vital is the reply
that it is couched both negatively and positively, - “not
in circumcision, but in uncircumcision: that he might be the father” - the progenitor, the
pattern - “of all them that believe.” The reply of the Holy Ghost is thus perfectly
explicit. Abraham was justified before he brought forth any works at all, or
submitted to any ritual: therefore he must have been justified by faith: before
ever he worked for God he believed God: and until he believed, Abraham was a
Chaldean idolator, a lost soul. Behold,
therefore, the perfect model and the unchanging example of how God saves: “the father of all them that believe.”
ABRAHAM’S WORKS. But there is a
reverse side to the Shield of Faith.
Abraham had reached the end of a radiantly holy life; God had asked of
him his last great renunciation, and he had yielded it: now upon the aged
patriarch, tested again and again, a second great justification falls. The moment Isaac had been (in intent)
offered, the Angel of the Lord said, “Because thou hast done this thing” - that is,
works - “and hast not withheld thy son, in blessing I will bless thee” (Gen. 22: 16).
Here was no regeneration, silent, mysterious, internal: it was
coronation, an open and solemn approval of God unto reward. Paul is the New Testament parallel. “I have fought the good fight, I
have finished the course, I have kept the faith”
- all works; “henceforth there is laid up for me the
crown” - a special revelation made to Paul, as to Abraham, at the close
of life - “of righteousness” - the crown
consequent on righteousness - “which the righteous
Judge” - awarding a second justification - “shall
give to me at that day” (2 Tim. 4: 7). From that moment Paul knew that of which he
had been ignorant (1 Cor. 9: 27; Phil. 3: 11-14)
before.
JUSTIFICATION BY WORKS. The Holy
Spirit has selected a second apostle through whom to reveal the second
justification with startling emphasis. “Was not Abraham
our father justified by works, in that he
offered up Isaac upon the altar? By works was faith made perfect: by works a man is justified, and
not only by faith” (Jas. 2: 21). James is not speaking of works before faith,
that is, works of law: for “faith wrought with his
works, and by works was faith made perfect”:
faith was already there. The
justification of James, therefore, is not justification unto eternal life. Scripture strenuously denies that works
before faith could ever justify: “by the works of the
law shall no flesh be justified” (Rom. 3: 20). But works done after faith, works done in
faith, the ‘work of faith’ (2 Thess. 1: 11) does justify for reward. “If any [disciple’s]
work shall abide, he
shall receive a reward. If any [disciple’s] work shall
be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved” (1 Cor. 3: 14) - as already possessed of the
justification unto life. “I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified” - with the second justification:
even a conscience void of offence in a regenerate apostle cannot ensure that:
nothing can (apart from a special revelation) but the Judge upon the Bema - “but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Wherefore judge
nothing before the time” (1 Cor. 4: 4). Therefore the Spirit bids us, - “So speak ye, and so do, as
men that are to be judged by a law of liberty” (Jas.
2: 12) - the law, not of Moses, but of Christ.
God
called Abraham, and he believed; God proved Abraham, and he endured: the two
justifications were then complete. For
his justification by faith Paul points to the moment of his regeneration: for
his justification by works James points to his final act of accomplished
obedience. Both justifications are
demanded from every human soul. First,
justification by blood, then justification by obedience; first, justification
by faith, then justification by works; first, justification for [eternal] life, then
justification for reward [in the “Age” to come]; first, the
escape of Israel out of Egypt, then the escape of Caleb and Joshua out of the
wilderness: the one is an adjudication of a transferred righteousness through the obedience of Another, the
other is an adjudication of an active
righteousness through obedience of our
own.
For
blessed is “the man unto whom God reckoneth
righteousness apart from works” (
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77.
The City and the Salt
THE CITY. “The situation of this city,”
certain citizens said to Elisha, “is pleasant, as my
lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the land miscarrieth” (2 Kings 2: 19).
The growth of the Christless every year is greater by many millions than
the growth of the saved: the cities of the world were never so full of the lost
as they are to-day.
THE SALT. Elisha
said, “Bring me a new cruse and put salt therein.” The waters are the multitudes of mankind (Rev. 17: 16): disciples are the salt, - “ye are the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5: 13). God
reaches souls through souls; the impact of life flashes to the unsaved through
the saved; it is God’s Salt which heals the world. Even the worldly statesman can see the wisdom
of the method. “The
hardest task for the reformer,” says M. Clemenceau, the French
statesman, “is not that of creating the future city,
but of making the men who will make the city.” “I
am trying to build up new countries.” Cecil Rhodes said to General
Booth, “you and your father are trying to build up new
men; and you have chosen the better part.” In a ripe maturity of political experience
second to none, Mr. Gladstone said: - “The welfare of
mankind does not now depend on the State, or on the world of politics: the real
battle is being fought out in the world of thought; and we politicians are
children playing with toys in comparison to that great work of restoring belief.” For conversion is the marvel of the ages. “There is no
medicine, no act of parliament, no moral treatise, and no invention of
philanthropy which can transform a man radically bad into a man radically good:
science despairs of these; politicians are at the end of their resources; the
law speaks of ‘criminal classes’: conversion is the only means by which a
radically bad person can be changed into a radically good person.” An ounce of regeneration is worth a ton of
political or social effort: therefore let us concentrate on regeneration.
THE SALT IN THE CITY. Elisha “cast salt therein.”
The wealth of a city, in the eyes of Salt in the City. God, is according
to the number of the righteous in it: every new soul regenerated, so long as it
abides in a city, is a fresh guarantee against the judgments of God. “If I find in
THE CITY WITHOUT THE SALT. But the Salt
will not always be in the city. “Now ye know” - Paul says, after foretelling the
removal of the Church out of the world - “that which
restraineth” (2 Thess. 2: 6). Salt checks corruption and arrests
rottenness: we salt that which is dead, not that which is living: the Church,
by its mere presence, arrests the decay and ruin of the world. Wherever the Gospel has flourished,
unconscious but mighty in its effect on the entire community, law and order
have appeared as a reflex effect. A
public opinion has been created which has supported law, and shamed
lawlessness; in a limited measure, an atmosphere of discipline and duty has
been formed; above all, GOD has been
unveiled, as a God of law and order, to whom all account must ultimately be
rendered by every human soul. Thus ripe
lawlessness will mean the imminent revelation of the Lawless One. “For the mystery of
lawlessness doth already work: only there is One
that restraineth” - the Holy Ghost, dwelling in ‘that which restraineth,’ the Salt, until both depart together - “until he be taken out of the way. And then shall be
revealed the Lawless One” (2 Thess. 2: 7). The removal of the still salted Salt - the
savourless Salt is left to be trampled underfoot of men (Matt. 5: 13) - will be the breaking of a vast dam;
the loosening of a rock that blocks the rush of a cataract; the lifting of its
preservative out of the world’s corruptible flesh.
THE WATERS. But the world
is to be healed at last. “Thus saith the Lord, I have
healed these waters; there shall not be from
thence any more death or miscarrying.”
Secularism and Socialism is rooted in the unconscious ignorance of a
Saviour who is coming back to reform the world.
“Sir,” said a Crimean soldier many years
ago to the secretary of a Secularist Society in
For
“the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that
cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity:
THEN SHALL THE
RIGHTEOUS SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN IN THE KINGDOM OF THEIR FATHER” (Matt. 13: 41).
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78
THE BODY. Christ took a
body, and that body is part of Him for ever; His discourses were often
concerning the body, and His miracles were chiefly upon the body; His rituals are
spiritual truths brought into contact with the body; and He has founded the
whole faith of God on the resurrection of His body. Dr. Timothy Richard asked a thoughtful
Chinese philanthropist, a heathen, what had impressed him most in the Bible. “I have read the New Testament three times” he
replied, “and the most wonderful thing to me in the
whole book is that it is possible for men’s bodies to become temples of the
Holy Ghost.”
THE HOLY GHOST. How is this
stupendous thing made possible? “Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost, which ye have from
God” (1 Cor. 6: 19): from God, not
from your mother at birth. Here is no
dream of a pantheist, to whom every man is a fragment of Deity; nor of a
mystic, whose aim is to get so absorbed in God as to become God: a ‘temple’ is the house of an indwelling god, a god who
has entered; so no man is a temple of the Holy Ghost until he has the Spirit
from God. “If
any man hath not the Spirit of Christ” - the Apostle assumes the
possibility; if the Holy Ghost has never entered - “he
is none of His” (
A
CONSECRATION. The
potentiality of this truth is utterly incalculable. We so indwelt lose heart, but we can never
lose power - the power to be and to do the impossible, with no limits but the
will of God; dormant the power maybe, but latent it is there: for power is a
Person, and that Person resides within.
“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His
train filled the
DEDICATION. Is my reader
unsaved? Here lies the solution of all
your problems. “Would’st
thou pray in a temple? Then pray within thyself: but first become a temple”
(Augustine). Pompey, curious to know
what lay behind the curtains in God’s House, drew them aside, only to find a
dark and empty shrine: if the curtains of your heart were drawn apart, within
your Holy of holies men could find no God.
A heart un-possessed of the Spirit is a temple without a deity. But will He come in? “The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to His temple;” for “Jesus stood and cried,
saying, If any man
thirst” - any man can become a temple of the Holy Ghost: He is willing
to enter into any man - “let him come unto Me and drink. This spake He of the
Spirit” (John 7: 37). The thirsty soul that comes to Christ, can
drink in the Spirit of God. But mark
well: - no invitation, no entrance; no entrance, no temple; no temple, no God:
“the Lord, whom ye seek,
shall suddenly come to His temple” (Mal. 3: 1).
“How much more shall your heavenly Father give
the Holy Spirit TO THEM THAT ASK HIM?”
(Luke 11: 13). Ask, and ye shall receive.
In
Carlisle, in
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79
Counsels for Young Workers
I. READ: THINK: PRAY. “Sow an act, and reap a habit; sow a habit, and reap a
character; sow a character, and reap a destiny”: - therefore read hard,
think hard, pray hard. Habit is
tyrannous: make it tyrannous for good. “Give heed to reading, to
exhortation, to teaching. Be diligent in these
things, give thyself wholly to them; that thy progress may be manifest unto all” (1 Tim. 4: 13, 15). Phil.
4: 8. Read much in Christian
literature, but live within the covers of the Book. Jas. 1: 25. Read, that you may know the mind of God;
think, that you may assimilate it; pray, that you may fulfil it. 2 Tim. 2: 15; 3:
14-17. No backslider can ever be
created except outside the prayer meeting.
Heb. 10: 25, 26.
2. KEEP ALERT: KEEP AT WORK: KEEP
PROGRESSING. The moment we begin resting on our oars, that
moment we begin drifting downstream: Satan finds a prompt use for those who
leave the employment of Christ. Mark 13: 34-36. “The only way to be
kept from falling” says McCheyne, “is to grow.”
Luke 8: 18. Grow in faith (2 Thess. 1: 3); in works (Rev.
2: 19); in fruitfulness (Phil. 4: 17);
in love (1 Thess. 3: 12); in Christlikeness
(Eph. 4: 15): - “we
exhort you, brethren, that ye abound more and more.”
Learn
the grace of patience.
3. NEVER DO LESS THAN YOUR BEST. “Nothing is done,” said Napoleon, “if anything is left undone”: thoroughness won him his
battles. Tax heart and brain and muscle
to the utmost for God: every life-drop counts in the coming Glory, every
heart-throb tells in the struggle now. “Whatsoever ye do, do it from
the soul, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that
from the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col.
3: 23). Rom.
13: 11. Ezra 7: 23. John 9: 4. Concentrate all time, focus every energy, on
the irreducible ultimate of things: - for the believer, the Judgment Seat of
Christ; for the unbeliever, the great White Throne, and Him who sits thereon. The single eye (to cite Robert Chapman) is
the eye that is fixed on the Judgment Seat of Christ. 2
Cor. 5: 9, 10.
4. STEADILY FACE THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. Luke 14: 33.
Youth is never stronger than when it is strong over itself. Prov. 16: 32.
Renounce the world, and you conquer it: love it, and it conquers you: it
is a feud to the death. Jas. 4: 4. What ruined
5. GIVE ALL TO GOD: LIVE IN ALL
WITH GOD: USE ALL FOR GOD. Be
acutely sensible to sin (Jude 23): never let
sin lie on your conscience (1 John 1: 9):
indulge in no pleasure which wounds a conscience, your own or another’s (Rom. 14: 13): choose companions - especially the
life-companion - only in the Lord (2 Cor. 6: 14):
dwell in purity (1 Tim. 5: 22): abide in
God. Take care to be most Christ-like at
home. Holiness is a life-long
struggle. Matt.
11: 12. Some of you will fall back
into a ruined discipleship: see, brother that it is not you. Some, last converted, will be first
crowned. Therefore “I charge [you] in the sight of
God, who quickeneth all things, and of Christ Jesus, who
before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession; that [you] keep the
commandment, without spot, without reproach, until the
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim.
6: 13).
Younger
brethren tenderly beloved, I set before you a most difficult standard: the
Church expects that you will fulfil it.
The higher our ideal, the more men will flog us with it if we fail: yet
life gone is gone for ever, and any ideal short of the highest is folly. God is able to produce in us that which He
commands. 2 Cor. 9: 8. Our Lord has told us the secret.
“Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be
opened unto you. FOR EVERY ONE THAT
ASKETH RECEIVETH; AND HE THAT SEEKETH FINDETH; AND TO HIM THAT
KNOCKETH IT SHALL BE OPENED” (Luke 11: 9).
Yet it is well, and Thou hast said in season
‘As is the Master shall the
servant be’:
Let me not subtly slide into the treason,
Seeking an honour which they gave not Thee.
Nay but much rather let me late returning
Bruised of my brethren, wounded from within,
Stoop with sad countenance and blushes burning,
Bitter with weariness and sick with sin.
Let no man think that sudden in a minute
All is accomplished and the work is done;
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it
Scarce were it ended with thy setting sun.
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80
Gethsemane and
THE CUP. What then was
it that struck Jesus like a sudden tornado, producing a palpitation so fearful
as to force the blood through the brow? (1) It was not a guilty conscience: for
of this hour He had said, “I go unto the Father. I will no more speak
much with you for the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in me” (John
14: 30). (2) It was not the impotence of weakness: “Thinkest
thou that I cannot beseech My Father, and He
shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26: 53).
(3) It was not dread of
death: for Jesus had confronted death again and again - on the brow of the
cliff, on the lake, in the temple - with no trace of fear; and He who had raised
others from the dead, and constantly foretold His own resurrection, would not
have sweated blood because of dying. Nor
(4) was it the grief of human
rejection: for “blessed” - He Himself had said -
“are ye when men shall reproach you; rejoice, and be exceeding glad”
(Matt. 5: 11). But He has Himself told us what it was. On entering the Garden He quotes His Father’s
words, saying: “I will smite the Shepherd” (Matt. 26: 31); in Gethsemane the Lord began to lay
on Him the iniquity of us all; “Thy wrath lieth hard
upon me; Thy fierce wrath is gone over me”
(Ps. 88: 7, 16). As Christ suddenly realizes that communion
with His Father is gone - as He stands forth charged as the supreme criminal of
the race - as He recoils from the sin-load with the fearful sensitiveness of
perfect innocence, struck with shock and almost frantic with grief, He implores
that this cup - “the cup of the wine of the fierceness
of His wrath” (Rev. 16: 19) - may be
taken from Him. Atonement had begun.
* “Such rupture is usually
attended with immediate death, and with an effusion into the pericardium (the
capsule containing the heart) of the blood circulating through that organ;
which when thus extravasated, although in scarcely another case, separates into
constituent parts; namely, a pale, watery liquid called serum, and a soft
clotted substance of a deep red colour termed crassamentum; the crassamentum,
or red clotted portion, containing nearly all the more essential ingredients of
the blood, and the serum, or pale yellow liquid, consisting chiefly of water”
(W. Stroud, M.D.).
Two
unique periods of concentrated agony - one of an hour’s duration, another of
three hours, both forcing appalling physical symptoms - constitute the Divine
Atonement, and perfected for ever the bearing and the consuming of sin.
“BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD, WHICH TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD!”
(John 1: 29).
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81
Rapture
1.
- All Rapture is one in principle, and must ultimately embrace all believers (2 Cor. 5: 10), and so Scripture does not speak of
raptures, in the plural: nevertheless plurality of rapture is a provable fact;
for isolated acts of rapture have already occurred (as our Lord’s, and
presumably the saints of Matt. 27: 52), and
will occur again, as distinct from the Church, (e.g., martyrs under Antichrist,
who are on high with Christ, Rev. 15: 2);
for Rapture, though one in principle and comprehension, is effected in separate
and graded instalments.
2.
- The phrase ‘rapture of the Church’ (whether
before the Great Tribulation or after) occurs nowhere in the Scripture, and
deviation from Scripture phraseology always betrays a deviation from Scripture
truth.
3.
- The Epistles which most exhaustively state Church privileges (Ephesians and
Colossians) are silent on rapture, from which it is a legitimate inference that
rapture is not a privilege attached to simple faith: nor can Rapture occur in
the dispensation of Grace at all, since it is the recall of God’s ambassadors
for war, - the Judgment Throne is set before the cry goes forth, “Come up hither!” (Rev. 4:
1), - and it is the extinction of Church standing on the earth.
4.
- The only passage that appears to state a solitary rapture embracing all
believers is addressed to disciples described as abounding in goodness and love
(1 Thess. 1: 3), and, as Scriptural
sufferers, ready to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom (2 Thess. 1: 5) - that is, to believers already qualified for
instant rapture; and it expressly implies that it is only the premature dread
of being overtaken by the Day of the Lord which is forbidden. *
*
“That ye be not QUICKLY shaken from your mind” -
prematurely terrified - “as that the day of the Lord is
now present” (2 Thess. 2: 2): believers
actually caught by that Day may well be panic stricken; for the judgments
throughout the Tribulation are punitive (Rom. 2: 5),
though, for the child of God, also remedial.
Paul, like his Lord, warns in this very passage against spiritual
slumber (1 Thess. 5: 6).
5.
- For all the passages dealing, technically and expressly, with requisites for
rapture,* - and which therefore must
be decisive of the question, - assert personal watchfulness and worthiness as
essential; the ready virgin alone enters (Matt. 25:
10), the ready householder alone is un-robbed (Matt.
25: 44), the ready disciple alone is rapt (Luke
17: 34) - “therefore be ye also READY.”
*
“Each in his own company” implies distinction in
rapture “in His Presence,” i.e., during the Parousia (1 Cor. 15:
23): so 1 Cor. 15: 52 speaks of
universal change, not simultaneous rapture.
Luke 21: 36; Matt. 24: 42; Heb. 11: 5; Rev.
3: 3; Rev. 3: 10.
6.
- Thus the two current views, basing themselves on two apparently antagonistic
sets of Scripture namely (1) that
all believers will escape the Tribulation, and (2) that all will pass through it - both avoid personal
responsibility by casting upon God the deliverance, or the non-deliverance, as
(in either case) part of the economy of Grace; whereas God places the
responsibility of escape upon His people: the whole Word of God taken together,
here as ever, is a just balance between two sharp extremes; and so to a
watchful church (Rev. 3: 10) a conditional
promise is given, and to an unwatchful (Rev. 3: 3)
a conditional threat.
7.
- Former precedent also rules in favour of exclusiveness in priority of
rapture: for not all the redeemed accompanied Enoch, or Elijah, or Christ: even
among prophets, Enoch is taken, Lamech is left - Elijah is taken, Elisha is
left: (though for Elisha and the Apostles no dishonour was involved, since God
was not then about to flood the earth with His judgments).
8.
- The Type revealed expressly for this point is wholly decisive: for the Wheat
is the Seed the Son of Man has sown, and is sowing (Matt.
13: 38); and the garnering (according to the Type) is accomplished in a
first sheaf (Christ), then in first-fruits, then in harvest, and finally in “corners of he field” thus reaped according to ripeness
(Lev. 13: 10, 17, 22); for all immature
grain ripens, sooner or later, in the violent heats (Rev.
14: 15, margin R.V.) of the Tribulation.
9. - Our Lord Himself asserts (Matt. 5: 13)
that while His disciples, as the salt of the earth, cannot change their nature,
they can lose their savour, and that all such salt will be cast out and trodden
under foot of men; and He therefore commands (Luke
21: 36) a perpetual prayer for escape.
10. - The Judgment Seat will redress the balance between all saints, both
dead and living, so that the unwatchful dead will gain no advantage by death
over the unwatchful living, nor the watchful living gain at the expense of the
watchful dead: for our deserts are not all reaped at the same moment; - “some men’s sins are evident, going
before unto judgment; and some men also they
follow after” (1 Tim. 5: 24).
11. - Our Lord, from the view-point of the Revelation and of His Advent,
divides the Church throughout this dispensation (“the
things which are,” Rev. 1: 19) into seven
divisions: so the Apocalypse reveals seven raptures* extending over the period
of the Parousia; or at least refers seven times to raptures, the majority of
which (e.g., Rev. 11: 12; 12: 5; 15: 2) are
provably distinct resurrections and ascensions.
* Rev. 4: 1; 7: 9: 11: 12; 12: 5; 14: 1;
14: 16; 15: 2.
12. - Thus there are two essentials for rapture - faith and works; or, as
our Lord implies (Luke 21: 36), discipleship
reinforced by unceasing vigilance and prayer: (1) “BY
FAITH Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because
God translated him: for (2) before his
translation he hath had witness borne to him THAT HE HAD BEEN WELLPLEASING UNTO
GOD” (Heb. 11: 5).
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82
The Ethics of Atonement
FORGIVENESS. The germ of
all forgiveness, and therefore a latent principle of all atonement, lies in the
fact that whosoever forgives deliberately sustains the consequences of the
wrong done in order that the forgiven may be exempt. If I cancel a debt, I lose the amount; if I
forgive a blow, I acquiesce in the injury with which it bruised my body; if I
pardon an insult, I endure without complaint the laceration it caused my
soul. Forgiveness cancels all in jury at
its own expense: that is, the innocent must suffer in the place of the guilty
if, after wrong done, there is to be atonement.
For forgiveness not only foregoes the penalty which could legally be
exacted from the offender, and which, in the eyes of justice, is an exact
equivalent of the offence; but it also consents to suffer, in person and
without a murmur, any injuries - to feeling or reputation or property or limb -
which the wrong has caused. So if a
murderer were forgiven, beyond the grave, the murdered man would in effect
consent to his own death, un-avenged, that the murderer might be exempt from
punishment - that is, that his death should go in place of the murderer’s; - an
extreme case which brings us within actual sight of the Atonement. Every act of forgiveness is an act of
substitution, whereby he who is sinned against, being innocent, substitutes
himself as a bearer of the consequences of the sin, from which, by doing so, he
relieves the guilty person.
THE ATONEMENT. Now we apply
this to the Atonement. God the wronged,
man the wronger: no third, differing in nature from either, can effect
atonement, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3: 4): i.e.,
it is supremely and always an affront levelled at the lawgiver, at God as
God. Thus it is not bulk of suffering
that justice demands for the expiation of sin; for atonement is a readjustment
of jarred relations between two persons or parties: all that justice requires
is an adequate expiation of the offence; and the only person who can give this
expiation, if the penalty is not to fall on the wrongdoer, is the one
aggrieved. “Shall
I come before the Lord with thousands of rams, or
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I” - resorting even to human
sacrifice - “give my firstborn for my transgressions,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Mic. 6: 6).
No: for all such suffering, however great, however intense, falls
outside the two concerned, God the wronged, and myself the wronger. Either the
law must take its course, and I must suffer the full penalty of my sins - which
is justice, or the dread consequences must fall on God - which is mercy,
effecting a means of forgiveness. For
forgiveness is not justice, but mercy, and therefore has no exact parallel in
earthly courts of law; but it is mercy which has first satisfied the principles
of justice.
CHRIST. We now arrive
at God’s plan of salvation. If Christ is
God, the atonement is just; and conversely, if the atonement is just, Christ is
God: the atonement is based absolutely on the Godhead of Christ. For Christ, being God, is the Person wronged,
and can thus, by bearing the dreadful consequences of the guilt, acquire power
to remit. But the Manhood of Christ is
equally essential to the atonement. For
what is the penalty of the wrong? “The law is unto life”
(Rom. 7: 10), - that is, keeping it tends to
life: therefore transgression of it bears the natural and inevitable
consequence of death: “the wages of sin is death”
(Rom. 6: 23). It is not suffering for suffering’s sake that
justice requires, but suffering that falls as a natural, righteous, and
inevitable consequence of sin. But God
is immortal; “who only hath immortality” or
deathlessness (1 Tim. 6: 16): of the two,
then it is only man that can die.
Therefore the Incarnation is essential to the Atonement. Thus Christ, the God-man, in virtue of His
Godhead is the One sinned against, and therefore can forgive, after satisfying
the principles of Justice in bearing the consequences of the guilt; and in
virtue of His manhood, and therefore ability to die, He could and did bear in
His own person the natural and legitimate consequences of the guilt, and thus
now is free to forgive.
PARDON. Thus human
forgiveness, however broken a light, illuminates the grace and marvel of Divine
pardon, if it is morally wrong for the innocent to suffer, voluntarily, in the
place of the guilty, then all forgiveness is for ever impossible, and all
forgiveness now being exercised is morally wrong, for it is the innocent
choosing to suffer the consequences that should legally, fall on the guilty. But who will affirm that it is wrong to
forgive who has once known what it is to be forgiven? Is it wise or safe, on the plea of justice,
to repudiate all forgiveness, human or Divine?
Bur if not, we have already accepted the principle of the Atonement. For punishment to fall on the innocent in the
place of the guilty against his own will is iniquity: for the innocent to
suffer in the place of the guilty (as Christ did) of his own accord at once
exhausts the penalty, vindicates the law, delivers the transgressor, and
glorifies God. God is both just and the
justifier of the ungodly through the exhaustive penalty borne by Christ in the
sinner’s stead: He is free to forgive because He has Himself borne the full
consequences of the sin.
“Feed the
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83
Prayer
1.
- THE FOUNDATION OF PRAYER. The promises are colossal, and as sure as God
Himself. Plead His own Word, and how
shall God say nay? Answers can be evoked
by two. “If two
of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father” (Matt. 18: 19).
Answers are as wide as the will of God. “If we
ask anything according to His will, He heareth
us: and if we know that He heareth us whatsoever
we ask, we know that we have the petitions which
we have asked of Him” (1 John 5: 14).
Answers
are only limited by faith. “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9: 23).
God is the sole manufacturer of opportunities; the only rescuer of the
lost; the One alone inexhaustibly wealthy; the solitary occupant, in all the
universe, of a throne of grace; not a standing reservoir, but a flowing river
of blessing, “rich unto all that call” (Rom. 10: 12):- therefore pray.
2.
- THE POWER OF PRAYER. It is a Person. “Whatsoever
ye shall ask in My name, that will I do”;
“if ye shall ask Me anything in My name, that will I do” (John 14:
13, 14). Prayer that reaches God
through Christ reaches Him as from Christ.
“All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth. Go
ye therefore” (Matt. 28: 18); and
therefore come. “Nothing shall be impossible to you” (Matt.
17: 20): - what a trumpet-blast from the lips of the Son of God! O
Beloved, pray!
3.
- THE PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. “Prepare your prayers,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “by preparing yourselves.” 1
John 3: 22. We carry into the
assembly the atmosphere we have made at home: we betray our lives when we open
our mouths. Therefore, come from the
Throne of Grace, ere you go to the Throne of Grace. Pray with holy hands; or God refuses His ear.
Ps. 66: 18.
Pray without wrath; for God is silenced by injury to a brother. Mark 11: 25.
Haunt the prayer meeting. Be much
with God and God will be much with you.
4.
- THE FORM OF PRAYER. Pray briefly. Eccl.
5: 2. One stone flung hard is
better than a handful of loose gravel.
Pray humbly. Luke 18: 13. “Pride” says McCheyne, “is
Satan’s wedge for splitting prayer-meetings to pieces.” Pray pointedly. Phil.
4: 6. Every prayer should be full
of pointed phrase and definite petition.
Pray Scripturally. Luke 11: 1. To pray Scripture is a safe way to pray
according to the will of God. Take pains
to avoid a self-made liturgy. Prayers
cease to leave the earth when they get caught in ruts. Pray believingly and gratefully. Jas. 1: 7.
Faith and thankfulness (1 Thess. 5: 18)
are the wings of prayer, which lift it readily to the Throne. Pray together. 1
Cor. 14: 16. If the prayer of a
righteous man avails much, shall not the prayer of a righteous host avail
more? The work of a church is done at
the Throne: all other work is mere detail.
“Apart from Me ye can do nothing” (John 15: 5).
Pray intensely. Deut. 4: 29. It has been said that Satan can build walls
round us, but no roof overhead; but we may add that lethargy builds a ceiling
to its own prayers. The whole man ought
to become one burning prayer.
5.
- THE HEART IN PRAYER. “Let us lift up our
heart with our hands unto God” (Lam. 3: 41). As a doctor will lay his ear against the
heart, to judge its beating, so does God; He inclines His ear, not to the lips,
but to the heart. Matt. 15: 8. Keep praying throughout the meeting. Forget all others; cultivate a deep
consciousness of the presence of God.
Importunity is of the essence of prevailing prayer: never stop
praying. Luke
18: 1-7. At dawn, with David; at noon, with Daniel; at midnight, with
Silas: in sorrow, as Hannah; in sickness, as Job; in joy, as Christ: in
childhood, like Samuel; in youth, like Timothy; in manhood, like Paul; in hoar [grey] hairs, like Simeon; in dying, like Stephen. “As the hart panteth
after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after
Thee, O God” (Ps.
42: 1).
6.
- THE OBJECTS OF PRAYER. Be catholic in your prayers: praying for all
men (1 Tim. 2: 1); for all saints (Eph. 6: 18); for the unity of all believers (John 17: 21); for all things (Rom. 8: 32).
Pray for
7.
- THE FRUITS OF PRAYER. We must get answers; for the silence of God
is one of the dreadful things of the world. Gen.
32: 26. Prayer is a field which is
thrice reaped. (1) It sanctifies the suppliant.
As God saves by a Lamb, so He preserves by a cry; and “praying will either make a man leave off sinning, or else
sinning will make him leave off praying.” (2) It enriches the suppliant.
Our Lord wants us to overflow with joy because of answers received. “Ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be fulfilled” (John 16: 24).
(3) It will glorify the suppliant. “Pray to thy Father
which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth
in secret shall reward thee openly” (Matt.
6: 6). Therefore pray more.
(i.) “I prevented the DAWNING of the morning, and cried”
(Ps. 119: 147).
(ii.) “My voice shalt thou
hear in the MORNING, O Lord” (Ps. 5: 3).
(iii.) “At NOON will I pray, and cry aloud”
(Ps. 55: 17).
(iv.) “Let my prayer be set
before Thee as incense; the lifting up of my
hands as the EVENING
sacrifice”
(Ps. 141 2).
(v.) “At MIDNIGHT I will rise
to give thanks unto Thee” (Ps. 119: 62).
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84
The Servant of Jehovah
TRADITION.
THE HOLY SPIRIT. But God has
left us in no manner of doubt. The
portrait consists of fifteen verses divided into five sections of three verses
each: every one of these five sections is directly applied to Christ by the
Holy Spirit.
In
section one (Isa. 52: 13-15) Paul identifies
the message of the Servant sent to ignorant nations as the good news concerning
Christ delivered to the Gentiles (Rom 15: 21):
in section two (Isa. 53: 1-3) John finds in
Israel’s refusal of Jesus the direct fulfilment of the Prophet’s heart-broken
cry concerning unbelief (John 12: 38): in
section three (Isa. 53: 4-6) Matthew
recognises in Christ’s healing miracles the Servant who was to carry our
sicknesses, and to exhaust Himself with our healing (Matt.
8: 17): in section four (Isa. 53: 7-9)
Philip, full of the Holy Ghost, and speaking under His direct command, answers
the Eunuch’s question on the identity of the Servant by preaching to him Jesus
(Acts 8: 32): and in section five (Isa. 53: 10-12) Mark discloses in the two robbers
the transgressors with whom Jehovah’s Servant was to be catalogued (Mark 15: 28).
In
every section our Lord’s degradation is named, thus puncturing the photograph,
so to speak, with the five wounds of the cross.
So peculiar is the Prophecy that, if it was not fulfilled in Jesus
Christ, it will require another Calvary, and another ascension to the Seat of
Deity, to fulfil it: so that in no case can we escape the vicarious suffering
and the blood-atonement predicted: nor, even so, can it be thus fulfilled, for
five times the Holy Ghost has already riveted the portrait upon Jesus.
CHRIST. Our Lord
Himself has cut away the last foothold of doubt. He who, on the way to Emmaus, unfolded “in all the Scriptures” - the Old Testament - “the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24: 27), on the way to Calvary numbered
Isaiah Fifty-three among them, fastening, if not the most grievous, (as Isa. 53: 10), certainly the most galling, clause
upon Himself. “For
I say unto you, that this which is written must
be fulfilled IN ME, And He was reckoned with transgressors; for that which
concerneth Me hath an end” (Luke 22: 37):
all Old Testament types and prophecies are rivers which empty themselves in the
ocean of Christ. Thus our Lord expected
nothing less than the fulfilment of Isaiah word for word: He identifies Himself
as the suffering Servant of Jehovah: He in Whom are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge, Whose words are ‘spirit’
and ‘life,’ Who is the Truth, God manifest in
the flesh, says that Isaiah spake of Him.
THE SUFFERER. Now it is
critical to the whole Gospel that, in this “most
central, deepest and loftiest utterance that the Old Testament, outstripping
itself, ever achieved,” Messiah appears, not as Lawgiver, Teacher,
Conqueror, or King, but as the supreme, lonely and awful Sufferer of
eternity. Immediately after the vision
of enthroned Deity - “exalted, lifted up, and very high”:
expressions confined by Isaiah to the Godhead (Isa.
vi. 1; lvii. 15) - we are confronted with a ring of shocked and
horrified spectators (cf. Luke 23: 48).
For “His visage was so marred more than any man”
(Isa. 52: 14); sweating blood in the face,
lacerated by the thorns in the face, struck on the face (Luke 22: 64), spat upon in the face (Matt. 26: 67), with hair plucked from the face (Isa. 50: 6), and convulsed in the face with
death-agonies until God’s gracious darkness veiled it all, - no form was ever
so mean and abject, no visage so fearfully marred. But why?
An inexorable dilemma impales us.
Either His sinlessness must be denied, or the vicarious nature of His
suffering must be acknowledged: either we must esteem Him justly smitten of
God, as Cain; or else behold in Him One Who “had done
no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.” But God has decided the point. Twelve times His sufferings are here declared
solely vicarious and expiatory.
(1) “He hath borne our griefs”;
(2) “He hath carried our
sorrows”;
(3) “He was wounded for our
transgressions”;
(4) “He was bruised for our iniquities”;
(5) “the chastisement of our
peace was upon Him”;
(6) “with His stripes we are
healed”;
(7) “the Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity of us all”;
(8) “for the transgression of
my people was He stricken”;
(9) “Thou shalt make His soul
an offering for sin”;
(10) “He shall bear their
iniquities”;
(11) “He bare the sin of many”;
(12) “He made intercession for
the transgressors.”
For
He was wounded not by our transgressions, but for them: it was not that our
iniquities bruised Him, but that He was braised because of our iniquities: “for by His stripes” - not the lashes, but the livid
weals left by the Roman thongs - “we were healed”;
for “He bare our sins in His body upon the tree”
(1 Pet. 2: 24).
So
is revealed the great saying antithesis of all time. “ALL WE LIKE SHEEP HAVE GONE ASTRAY”: all have lost
the way to God; all have created sin, which has come back on all as a damning
load; all, without distinction, without exception: “AND THE LORD HATH LAID ON HIM THE INIQUITY OF US ALL”;
all the multitude of sin, all the consequent mass of guilt, all the therefore
inevitable load of punishment - God gathered all the hell-storm, and broke it
upon the brow of Christ: that all may be saved, except such as exclude
themselves, by Him who is “the propitiation for THE WHOLE WORLD” (1 John 2: 2).
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85.
The Two Overcomings
THE FIRST OVERCOMING. The first of
the two great overcomings named in Scripture is our Lord’s. “Be of good cheer; I have
overcome the world” (John 16: 33). The ‘world’ is
all the mass of temptation, allurements to sin, ungodly habits, unholy life,
which make up our present environment: by steadily, unceasingly, and completely
resisting its pressure, Jesus overcame.
The term is most expressive, an ‘overcomer’;
it implies pressure, resistance, battle, victory, over that which calls for
beating down and subduing; it is constant effort carried through to a
victorious issue. Never to sin, in spite
of fierce and unceasing temptation, is to be an absolute overcomer; and One only
ever so overcame - Jesus Christ.
Faith. Now this conquest of our Lord is the victory
of all His saints. “God giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”
(1 Cor. 15: 57): for “this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:
4). Not ‘will’
overcome, but ‘hath’ overcome (R.V.); yet not ‘Christ,’ but ‘we’:
for faith transfers Christ’s conquest to me: I have overcome in Christ; for He
and I are one. “The
conflict and suffering which we now have is not the real battle, but only the
celebration of the victory” (Luther).
From the first moment of faith the victory of every disciple is an
assured fact: “whatsoever is begotten of God” -
the whole mass of the regenerate - “overcometh the
world: and this is the victory that hath
overcome the world, even our faith.” Our Lord inflicted a deadly wound upon the
world of evil; the head of the Serpent is bruised, and its writhings are but
symptoms of a mortal agony; and sin in the flesh (indwelling sin) was executed
once for all upon the cross: and all this perfect and eternal victory is mine
by simple faith.
THE SECOND OVERCOMING. But another
great overcoming is named in Scripture; not past, but present and future; and not for salvation, but for reward. Seven times our Lord invokes every member of
His Churches to become an overcomer; attaching peculiar reward to each believer
who achieves it, and warnings of tangible displeasure to all who fail. For every believer has against him evil men,
the whole mass of worldly atmosphere and tradition, his own flesh, dragging him
down, evil spirits, incessantly active; and, as only dead fish swim with the
stream, so a living soul has against it the pressure of an entire world. Intensely true is that word of Mr. Moody: - “The reason why so many Christians fail all through life is
just this - they underestimate the strength of the enemy.” Therefore our Lord’s invocation, in substance
seven times repeated, is this: - “He that overcometh,
I will give to him to sit down with Me in my throne,
as I also overcame, and
sat down with my Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith to the churches” (Rev. 3:
21).
WORKS. We thus arrive at God’s duplex
truth. Compared with the world, all
believers are overcomers; compared with one another, some are overcomers, and
some are not: for the first overcoming is by simple faith, whereas the second
is by unswerving obedience. The second
overcoming, no more than the first, is a sudden act, or the victory of a moment,
or a rush of holy emotion; it is a confirmed habit of goodness, - the long
wind, the hard biceps, the iron muscle of the unwavering, unswerving runner; it
is not a victorious battle, but a victorious campaign. It is on this ground that our Lord is rewarded,
and certain selected believers with Him. “Therefore
[in consequence of suffering] I will divide Him a
portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with
the strong; because He poured out His soul
unto death” (Isa. 53: 12): “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee
with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows” (Heb.
1: 9).
Responsibility
fulfilled, and not privilege possessed, is the ground of all reward. Without a holy violence, blessedly aggressive
until the end, there can be no entrance on the Millennial Reign of reward; unless we storm it, we shall never
enter it: for “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence,
and men of violence take it by force” (Matt. 11: 12).
By His sufferings and His death, and not by the glory He had before the
world was - and as the Servant of Jehovah, not as the Son of God - our Lord
acquires the vast heritage (Ps. 2: 8) which
other conquerors have won by the cannon and the dreadnought: so also, for the
disciple, power and glory and thrones lie open; the world is to be the ‘spoil’ that shall be divided: but the path to Olivet
is the hard, rugged, narrow road that lies across Calvary. “He that overcometh,
and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations” (Rev. 2: 26).
ASSURANCE. Now the
practical import of it all is tremendous.
All discipleship is a battle; it is a battle that can be won; it is a
battle which can issue in a victory the greatest that can now be won in the
universe; and it is a battle that every disciple can win. For we start with ‘the
full assurance of faith.’ “Haring therefore
boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near in full assurance of FAITH” (Heb. 10: 19). Our
eternal life, based on the covering blood of the Atonement, is as sure as
God.
But
a vast vista opens up beyond. “Show the same diligence unto the full assurance of HOPE even to the end: that ye be not sluggish, but
imitators of them who through faith and patience [i.e., perseverance]
inherit the promises” (Heb. 6: 11).
I am not to hope that I am saved, but to believe it: on the contrary, I
am not to believe I have won the ‘prize,’ but to
hope that I shall win it. For only ‘the end’ can reveal how I have run. But the more battles won, and the more
mileage covered, the more we can mature to the full assurance of hope.
“WE ARE WELL ABLE TO OVERCOME” (Num. 13: 30).
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86
Witnesses to Christ
Rousseau. “Is it possible that the
Sacred Personage, whose history the Scripture contains, should be Himself a
mere man? What sweetness, what purity of manner! What sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom in His discourses! What presence of mind, what subtilty, what
truth in His replies! Where is the man,
where the philosopher, who could so live and so die?”
Napoleon. “I tell you that Jesus
Christ is not a man. His spirit overawes
me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world there
is no possible term of comparison. He is
a Being by Himself. His gospel, His
appearance, His empire, His march across the ages, everything is for me a
prodigy, a mystery insoluble, a mystery which I can neither deny nor
explain. Here I see nothing human.”
Goethe. “I look upon the Gospels as thoroughly
genuine; for there is in them a reflection of the greatness and the benevolence
of Jesus, which was as divine in kind as ever was seen upon the earth. I bow before Him as the divine manifestation
of the highest principle of morality and fraternity.”
Renan. “A thousand times more alive, a thousand
times more beloved since Thy death, Thou shalt become the cornerstone of
humanity, so entirely, that to tear Thy name from this world would be to rend it
to its foundations. Between Thee and God
there will no longer be any distinction: all ages will proclaim that among the
sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.”
Mill. “The Prophet of Nazareth is in the very
first rank of the men of sublime genius, of whom our species can boast:
probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr who ever existed upon earth;
nor would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of
the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to
live, that Christ would approve our life.”
Lecky. “Through all the changes of eighteen
centuries, one ideal character has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned
love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments,
and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the
highest incentive to its practise, and has exerted so deep an influence, that
it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life
has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of
philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.”
Ingersoll. “I place Him with the
great, the generous, the self-denying of this earth, and for the man Christ I feel
only admiration and respect. Let me say,
once for all, that to that giant and serene Man I gladly pay the homage of my
admiration and my tears.”
1. Who then is Christ? ‘Gigantic
intellects’ standing on the very pinnacles of human fame; - biased against the Christian Faith; -
some, like Renan, apostates -
others, like Ingersoll, aggressive infidels; - yet exhausting
the powers of language in praise of Jesus, and voicing a universal homage so
peculiar, so unique, that no man has approached it within the remotest
distance: - who then is Christ? What was
He, and whence? “His beneficent commands,” says
Huxley, “were
of incalculable value”: “higher human thought
has not yet reached,” says Carlyle,
“than Jesus of Nazareth.”
2. Christ Himself reveals who He was, and
is. He says that He is (1) the Son of God, on an equality with
the Father (John 10: 30), sharing the Divine
glory before the world was (John 17: 5); (2) the Messiah, of whom all the
Scriptures spoken (Luke 24: 27); (3) the Redeemer, whose flesh was given
“for the life of the world” (John 6: 51); (4) the universal Judge, before whose
throne of glory all nations are to be brought (Matt.
25: 32), and who shall come [to rule and reign in
righteousness and peace upon this earth]* in the last day upon the clouds of heaven (Mark 14: 62).
Now
the dilemma is inexorable. The
assertions of Christ are fatal to His moral character, if He is only a man; on
the other hand, if His moral character is what men have universally believed
it, He is more than a man: either His goodness establishes His assertions, or
else His assertions destroy his goodness.
His personality, His utterances, and His life are woven without seam
throughout.
3. For our Lord was without any consciousness of
sin. He rebuked self-righteousness in
others, and commanded repentance to all, yet never once betrayed that He needed
repentance Himself. He who was so
sensitive to human sin as to have become the moral conscience of mankind, challenged
any man to convict Him of sin. Nor has
any one ever succeeded in doing so.
Therefore His assertions are true: He says - “I
am the Truth” (John 14: 6): He is
perfect Man, because He is perfect God.
4. Thus follows a fearful consequence. Admiration of Jesus is utterly valueless for
salvation. God demands faith in, and
worship of, Him. Rousseau, whose teachings ultimately drenched Europe in blood - Napoleon, the slaughterer of eight
millions of mankind - Goethe, as
alien as Shakespeare from the
Christian Faith - Renan, an apostate
- Mill, in the front rank of English
infidels - Lecky, a determined
opponent of Christianity - Ingersoll,
its bitter enemy: - admiration of Christ
can never save. “YE MUST BE BORN
AGAIN” (John 3: 7).
[* NOTE. We sometimes hear of
Messiah’s coming; but seldom do we hear what He is coming for, and what He is
coming to do! To silence or misinterpret
the numerous prophetical statements throughout both Old and New Testaments, is
to reveal the deplorable and sickening spiritual condition of Christ’s Church
today!]
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87
Watch
THE PAROUSIA. The ark of the
Parousia, invisible, and silently moored in the heavens; a world so absorbed in
the things of sense as to prove it wholly incredulous of a coming judgment; a
sudden closing of the ark on certain rapt persons, followed by a judgment-flood
so universal that this rapture out of the inhabited earth is the sole heavenly
escape: - “As were the days of Noah, so shall be the Parousia of the Son of man: one is taken, and one is left. Watch therefore”
(Matt. 24: 37). It is a rapture of heavenly escape.
THE TAKEN. A woman
mill-hand in Scripture stands for the extreme social contrast to royalty (Ex. 11: 5): the rapt will be amongst the humble of
the earth; and all who would now rise in the social scale are proving
themselves fools in the sight of God (Is. 2: 12;
Luke 16: 15). Shut in above the
storms of wrath until the seventh (the millennial) month, and liberated on the
17th of Nisan, the resurrection day, they issue forth at last to rule a world
washed clean by the storms of judgment.
THE LEFT. Who then are
the un-rapt? * Of these two closely associated souls - “one is taken, and one is left”
- is the one left an unbeliever? This is
impossible; because - (1) It is the
natural inference from our Lord’s words that it is the unwatchfulness of the
one left, and his unwatchfulness only, that has prevented his rapture. “One is taken,
and one is left.
Watch therefore.” For watchfulness implies a heart already
awakened by grace: we do not tell the dead to watch. “Watch therefore:
for ye know not on what day your Lord” - the
Lord of both the taken and the left - “cometh.”
*
With the view that the taken are taken to
judgment, and the left are left to glory, it is needless to say more than that
it is built on a single (not unnatural) misconception. For the word ‘took,’
in the case of the Antediluvians - “took them all away”
- means ‘to arrest,’ ‘to
take to destruction’; whereas when “one is taken
and one is left,” the word means ‘to take as a
companion.’ It is a rapture of
honour: it is the word used when our Lord selects three only out of the Twelve
for watchfulness against the great tribulation of
(2) None but disciples were present; and in Luke
17: 22, 34 our Lord says - “I say unto you,
Watch ye”; so Paul, after the warning - “let us watch and be sober” - adds - “whether we wake [keep awake, are alert, wakeful,
watchful: the word is so used throughout the context] or
sleep, we shall” - as all being believers
- “live together with Him” (1 Thess. 5. 10).
The sole distinction stated by Jesus is a distinction of watchfulness;
therefore both are believers; for between the believer and the unbeliever yawns
an infinitely wider gulf.
(3) Our Lord directly forbids the unbeliever to watch. To unregenerate Pharisees, inquiring the date
of the Advent, He says: - “The Kingdom of God cometh
not with observation [with watching]; for lo,
the Kingdom of God” - so far as you,
unregenerate souls, are concerned - “is within you”
(Luke 17: 20) - it is an internal matter;
for “except a man be begotten from above, he cannot see the
Kingdom of God” (John 3: 3). For the unbeliever to watch for the Advent is
to watch for his own fearful judgment.
(4) Would an unbeliever watch for Christ’s return, if told to do so? To be caught away to Him would be, even more
than death, a disgust and a terror, far it would be an immediate transition to
the throne of judgment. No soul can
watch for Christ until it loves Christ; and even of those who love Him, few love
His appearing.
(5) Three passages are here (Matt. 24: 37-51)
knit closely together - the unwatchful disciple, the robbed householder, and
the unfaithful steward: obviously they are all warnings pointed at one target:
if, then, they are warnings for worldlings, for hypocrites, for empty professors,
why does our Lord not say so? He drops
no hint to that effect: none but true disciples, so far as can be seen in the
narrative, fill His vision. If the left
disciple, the robbed householder, and the unfaithful steward are all
unregenerate souls, then these commands are not for Christ’s disciples at
all. Why, then, does our Lord speak them
to disciples only, and why does He not tell them to pass them on to the world,
whom alone they concern?
(6) Had these warnings been for the world, Christ’s words to His own must
have been profoundly different: instead of rousing His disciples by
exhortations to watchfulness, He would have comforted them with explicit
assurances that, since rapture rests on sovereign, electing grace alone,
whatever their conduct at the moment of the Advent, their rapture is sure - an
utterance that never falls from His lips.
(7) An overwhelming proof still remains.
Can a believer be unwatchful? If
so, he instantly falls under the penalty involved, and if unwatchful at the moment
of the Advent, he must be left. Were the
Apostles watchful at
The
matter is infinitely grave for us, now in the last hour. For precisely as, in the actual moment of
rapture, Satan will physically dispute the ascent of his supplanters (Rev. xii. 5, 7); so now, spiritually, his supreme aim
is so to dissipate watchfulness as to prevent rapture through un-ripeness: and
all teaching that thus lulls the Church assists his aim - however sincere its
motive, or pardonable its error.
Therefore let us heed our Lord’s solemn call to all His own all down the
ages, a call never more urgent than now: - “What I say
unto you [apostles] I say unto all
[apostles [and regenerate disciples]], WATCH” (Mark 13: 37).
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The Use of Firearms
No
one would ever have dreamed that war is Christian had it not been for the grave
consequences, public and private, of a refusal to fight. “Men of the most eminent abilities and extensive erudition,”
in the words of the late Bishop Ryle, “have never yet,
nor ever will, produce arguments sufficient to prove that the profession of a
soldier is consistent with the profession of Christianity.”
FORCE. It is not that force is no
remedy; force is an inferior remedy, but it is a remedy: but the force which is
yet to establish righteousness is not ours. “If my kingdom
were of this world” - out of this world, its source and origin here - “then would my servants fight” - compel submission by
armed revolution, to which alone Gentile Powers yield: “but now is my kingdom not from hence” (John
18: 36).
Angels
of irresistible might will subdue iniquity, “at the
revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power in
flaming fire, rendering vengeance” (2 Thess. 1: 7); who “shall
gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity” (Matt.
13: 41). The swords which alone
are to enforce righteousness are not human swords at all; and meanwhile all men
are left free to reveal their hearts, with no compulsion more severe than the
moral persuasions of grace.
THE HAZARDS OF WAR. Even the Sacred
Person of our Lord was not to be so defended; and He has Himself adjudicated on
an actual case. To Peter, with a sword
drawn and blooded in his hand, Jesus says, “Put up
again thy sword into its place: for” -
here is the first reason for refusing the sword - “all
they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matt. 26: 52).
God has withdrawn, as the God of grace, from behind the man or the
movement that appeals to the sword, and remains only as the God of providence:
soldiers are left to the hazards of war.
“The Reformation,” says D’Aubigne, “grasped the sword; and that very sword pierced its heart.” It was not always so: war, which is not in
itself wrong, was again and again commanded, under the Law of, Moses, by ‘the God of battles,’ ‘Jehovah
of hosts’; and Jehovah then guaranteed His obedient servants military
victory, - “If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, your
enemies shall fall before you by the sword” (Lev.
26: 3, 8). But now all fighters
are left to the hazards of war: “if any man is for
captivity, into captivity he goeth: if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword must he be killed. Here is the patience
and the faith of the saints” (Rev. 13: 10).
The
Hugenots gave no quarter in battle, and God let them be wiped off the face of
the earth; as, for example, Virens, one of their pastors, who, discovered in a
cave, shot two soldiers with his own hand, and was immediately shot dead
himself. Zwingle perished as a young man
on the battle field. General Gordon,
after writing, - “I go to the Soudan sure of success,”
fell under a rain of spears on the steps of Government House at
GRACE. It is not that we are
powerless. “Thinkest
thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and He
shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26: 53): if a single angel breathed into
unwaking sleep the whole Assyrian host (2 Kings 19:
35), what power could the armed millions of
THE LAMB AND THE DOVE. For our
supreme Example, and our gracious Indweller, are the Lamb and the Dove. “There ought to be
no question that the spirit of meekness, which will not meet violence by
violence, is the Christian spirit; and in this day of a recrudescence of
militarism, we need more than ever to insist that the highest type is ‘the Lamb of God,’ ‘as a sheep before her shearers’
” (A. MacLaren).
What
else do these Scriptures mean? “Be ye harmless as doves” (Matt.
10: 16); “resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt.
5: 39): “the Lord’s servant must not strive,
but be gentle towards all” (2 Tim. 2: 24): “avenge not
yourselves, beloved, for it is written, Vengeance
belongeth unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord.
BUT IF
THINE ENEMY HUNGER, FEED HIM; IF HE THIRST, GIVE HIM TO DRINK” (Rom.
12: 19).
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The Sinless Christ
Consciousness
of Sin. Our Lord was without any
consciousness of sin. He grew in wisdom
and stature, it is never written that He grew in holiness. When thousands were baptized in
Proof
of sin. The facts, moreover, exactly
square with consciousness. “Which of you” - so
He challenged those who watched Him daily, anxious to see Him trip - “convicteth Me” - not supposes or assumes or imagines,
but can prove - “of sin?” (John 8: 46).
The Jew accused Jesus of blasphemy, and the Gentile of treason: but if
He was the Son of God, it was not blasphemy to say so; and if He was the Heir
of David, it was not treason to say so: and these were the sole charges on
which He was ever convicted. The Talmud
refers to Christ with intense bitterness, but finds no crime with which to
charge Him: nor have any of his critics since.
Those who knew Him best have
placed Him highest. Peter - “who did no sin” (1 Pet. 2:
22); John - “in Him is no sin” (1 John 3: 5); Paul - “who
knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5: 21); and even
Judas, in spite of the agony of his need to justify his act, says, - “I betrayed innocent blood” (Matt.
27: 4). What His own conscience
never did, no outside critic has ever done: even the keenest detective eyes in
the universe, with four thousand years’ experience in probing human deceit,
found nothing (John 14: 30) in Him. In nothing is our Lord so unique, or more
lonely - so ‘separated from sinners,’ in a
catalogue by Himself - than in His total sinlessness: if sin, after all, is
there, the very claim is His fearful ruin; for it would reveal no ordinary
sinner, but a hypocritical impostor of utterly unsurpassed magnitude and deceit;
and “the hope of the world were a lie.”
Deity. Now the implication is as isolated and
stupendous as the fact. Here is One who,
while carrying goodness to its utmost limit, and teaching not less than perfection,
is not conscious that He has done, or can do, anything wrong Himself. Now this can be explained in only one way: -
not that Jesus was a good Man, for goodness only makes us more sensitive to our
sin; but that He was a perfect Man, for perfection banishes consciousness of
sin altogether. And it is vital to
salvation. “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he
is become guilty of all” (Jas. 2: 10):
a Saviour in any degree sinful would be no saviour at all. One leak would have sunk the Ark of Noah: one
sin would have ruined that saving righteousness of which the
But
the implication is still more stupendous: it is not only the sacrifice that is
perfect, but the Person. “Why callest thou Me ‘good’? none is good” -
in the absolute sense; that is, perfect - “save one,
even God” (Mark 10:
18): DO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I AM
GOD? Perfection reveals the Godhead:
it was God who purchased the Church with His own blood (Acts 20: 28): so the glad cry goes up from the Church of all
ages, - “Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord; Thou
only, O Christ, with
the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of
God the Father.” For “we are in Him that is true, even
in His Son Jesus Christ. THIS IS THE TRUE GOD,
and eternal life” (1
John 5: 20).
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The Prophecy on Olivet
Our
Lord’s great prophecy, evoked by questions that embraced the world, covers, as
we should therefore expect, the totality of mankind: it unfolds, in three
deeply serrated sections, the destiny of the three inspired divisions of
mankind - “THE JEWS, THE
GENTILES, AND THE CHURCH OF GOD” (1 Cor. 10: 32), all of whom remain in the world up
to the end of the Age. Four is the
world-number (Dan. 7: 2, 3; Rev. 7: 1, 9, etc.):
so four apostles are selected to receive and transmit this world-utterance; and
the revelation is fourfold, revealing, in answer to the disciples’ first
question (1) the destiny of the
Temple, and then, in answer to their two further questions, the destiny of (2) the Jew; (3) the Church; and (4)
the Gentile.
THREE SECTIONS. Thus
each main section, radically distinct from the rest, is peculiarly
characteristic of the group of mankind whose destiny it reveals. In the Jewish and Gentile sections all is
literal - in the Church section all is figurative: words of sight, not faith,
occur in the Jewish and Gentile sections, and their ‘signs’
are signs obvious to the senses, for they walk by sight, not faith; whereas the
‘signs’ presented to the Church are, as
throughout Scripture, moral: in the Jewish and Gentile sections no reference is
made to ‘servants,’ for God’s servants in this
Age are Christian: and lessons are drawn for the Apostles in the Church section
only, for it alone concerns them and us.
All three sections are radically distinct in phraseology and theological
import.
THE JEW. Matt. 24:7-31. Thus, after the first question of
the apostles has been met by the announcement of the Roman destruction (Matt. 24: 1-6), and separated by a great gulf from
the rest - “But the End [concerning which the
disciples asked, the consummation of the Age] is not
yet,” the Jewish section - uttered for “them
that are in Judea” (24: 16) - at once
deals with a literal ‘holy place,’ or rebuilt
temple; ‘salvation’ is used in the sense of
physical deliverance; the Gospel named is the Gospel of the Kingdom; escape is
by physical flight to the mountains; prayer is to be offered that the sabbath
be not violated by the flight falling on that day; false Christs are especially
emphasised, for the Jew is still in danger from messiahs in ‘inner chambers’; and the tribes of the land, beholding
Messiah’s descent in glory, and penitent, are gathered as God’s earthly elect,
not from Heaven, but from the four winds.
All is Jewish throughout.
THE CHURCH. Matt. 24: 32, 33; 25: 30. The Church section is wholly diverse. Parables immediately begin, and compose the
whole section; for to us it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom. Thus the first section is local, and directed
to
THE GENTILE. Matt. 25: 31-46. The Gentile section gives the last act of the
old Age before the actual establishment of the Kingdom, and covers the last
remaining portion of mankind at the End.
It is wholly silent on the Church, and its reference to the Jew - the ‘least brethren’ - is veiled: in it ‘all the nations’ - the mass of Gentiles - are gathered
before Christ. In all three sections
Christ appears in His universal title as Son of Man; and, in the Jewish
section, as Son of Man only; but in the Christian as Lord of the Household, and
also as Bridegroom; and in the Gentile, as King, and as a King unknown (25: 37) to the Gentile world. So for the Gentile alive at the Advent, saved
in a later epoch, and elect ‘from the foundation of the
world’ (25: 34), unlike the Church
elect ‘before’(Eph.
1: 4), judgment is not by faith, but by a law of works - “inasmuch as ye did it”; but is neither the Law of
Moses, nor works done after faith in Christ; but a law of works peculiar to the
Gentile world immediately before the Advent, and based upon Christ as the
Jehovah of the Jews. All is Gentile
throughout.
Thus
our Lord, as Universal Prophet, unfolds the destiny of all mankind; the
faithful Israelite finding safety in the wilderness, the watchful believer
finding safety in rapture, and the redeemed Gentile finding safety through his
kindness to the Jew. To each group our
Lord portrays its peculiar peril, and reveals its sole avenue of escape:
(1) for the Jew, instantaneous flight, on a given
signal;
(2) for the Christian, perpetual watchfulness and prayer
for ripeness to be reaped; and
(3) for the Gentile, grace shown to the miraculously
gifted (Mark 13: 11) ambassadors of
which Christ will accept as grace shown to Himself.
Worldwide
questions, covering the time of the End, our Lord thus answers by revealing the
destiny of the world at the consummation of the Age.
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91
To Each His Work
WORK. Our Lord’s motto for every
disciple is - “TO
EACH HIS WORK” (Mark 13: 34): and
so ample and complex is that work that it is called ministering service (Matt. 23: 11), household service (Rom. 14: 4), responsible service (John 18: 36), worshipping service (
OUR WORK. When our Lord laid down His Divine task, He entrusted
it - not to angels, nor to kingdoms, nor to apostles only, but - to you and
me. “It is as
when a man, sojourning in another country,
having left his house, and
given authority to his servants”: - authority for what? - “to each his work.”
Millions of souls have to be saved, and myriads to be sanctified:
countless truths, popular and unpopular, are to be sown over the world: whole
continents must receive the light: - and each of us is a designed cog or
flywheel in this mighty mechanism of God.
Before our creation in Christ - it may be in the eternal ages - God
chose us for it: “created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God afore prepared that we should
walk in them” (Eph. 2: 10).
OUR SHARE. Christ reveals
an individual allotment. Not, to each
some work, or, to each a work, but, “to each his work.” This is an exquisite revelation. Each can give a glory to God which no other
being in the universe can: each can do a work for God which from eternity has
been allotted to him alone. How this
ennobles and dignifies the saved soul!
God has allotted the toil of the whole Church so as to rest in wise
distribution upon each.
OUR TASK. The size of
the task is not stated. It may be a
great work, or a small work: the supreme point is that it is my work; and as
such I can do it, I ought to do it, and at the Judgment Seat I will be asked if
I did do it. Luke 19: 15; 2 Cor. 5: 10. Christ would have us do a small work which He
commanded, rather than a large work which He did not; for all planned work is
necessary to the building, and planned work only. “A man’s character
is what he is in the dark”; a man’s work is what he does in the dark:
and if I do what God tells me, and how He tells me, I am doing the supremest
thing possible to my soul: and a soul’s utmost is always magnificent. Mark 14: 8, 9.
We are weaving our own glory-robes. Rev. 19:
8; 2 Cor. 5: 3. “Behold, I come quickly;
and my reward is with me, to render to each according as his work is” (Rev. 22: 12).
OUR VINEYARD. The work
waits. Matt. 20: 3. (1)
It is possible to find it. Our Lord
would hold no soul responsible for a work unless with the work was granted the
power to discover it: but He alone can tell us what it is. His foundations were laid in eternity; His
plans for the superstructure were drawn up in eternity also; in eternity each
task He allotted by name: - “Lord, what wilt Thou have me
to do?” Gal. 6: 4. (2)
It is possible to do it. Christ has not
planned work outside our abilities, or beyond our opportunities: He knows what
He made us for, and what we can do best, and He has planned that we should do
that. He made us in nature with a view
to what we should become in grace: He chose our cradle, and He will choose our
grave, and He chooses all the Christian work we are to do between. (3)
It is possible (I think) to know that we are doing it. How? God will open the way by circumstances:
He will satisfy our conscience that it is right work: He will convince our
judgment that it is the right work for us: He will confirm it by the approval
of mature Christian friends: and He will establish it with definite
blessing. Then (4) having found it, we must persist in it until He tells us to
drop or change it. One kind of firefly,
in the tropics, glows only so long as it flies, - the moment it rests, it
darkens. Wesley’s motto - “All at it, and always at it” - is the secret of the
luminous life. Matt. 5: 16.
OUR MASTER. “To each [Christ gave] his work”:
therefore I am doing it for Him. “Our conversation,” says Tertullian, of the early
Christians, “is that of men who are conscious that the
Lord hears them.” When the world puts its ear to our work, it should
hear in it all - like the ocean in the shell - the great Eternity to which we
hasten. “The
love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:
14): how this transmutes the daily toil, and the household drudgery,
into the golden labour of a better world!
“For years,” Mr. Moody said, before he died,
“my prayer has been that God will let me die when the
spirit of revival dies out of my heart.”
OUR INCREASE. Are any of us
shirking our allotted task? “The shirking of the man who prays, and the praying of the
man who shirks, is equally an abomination to God.” So soon we shall have to lay all work
down. “We must
work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is
day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John
9: 4). Task every faculty; strain
every power; break new ground; put no limit to your toil save that which God
put when He made you: be it said of each of us - “I
know that thy last works are more than the first” (Rev. 2: 19).
2 Cor. 9: 8. Let us fling open every compartment of our being
to the in-draught of God: let us fling ourselves into the mid-current of His
all-gracious, all-glorious purposes.
“He that overcometh, and he that keepeth My
WORKS unto the end, to him will I give AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS: and I will give him the morning star” (Rev. 2: 26).
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The Seed and the Soil
HARD SOIL. For three
times our Lord is recorded as carefully explaining that all our fruitfulness
depends on our doctrinal receptivity.
Let us ponder so practical a truth.
Much Seed poured upon the ground - “the seed is
the Word of God” (Luke 8: 11) - never
germinates. How is this? “The evil one snatcheth away that which hath been sown in his
heart” (Matt. 13: 19): “the words indicate that the ‘catching away’ takes place
almost during the act of hearing” (Lange). A momentous principle emerges. Fruit in the fruitful - all that is good in a
man’s life - lies in the seed, not in the soil: therefore to reject the seed
reduces the character to perpetual barrenness. Where no softness, no hunger, of
spirit absorbs the Word, Satan “immediately” (Mark 4: 15) removes the truth as it lies on the
surface of the heart; the life is seedless, rootless, treeless, fruitless. Luke 8: 12.
SHALLOW SOIL. Other
Seed-springs with exquisite promise. Soon,
however, the face darkens, the life shrivels; the whole Christian service (sooner or later) wilts and withers. How is this? “These
straightway receive the word with joy, ... but,
when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the
word [i.e., “the word of the Kingdom” (Matt. 13: 19)], straightway they stumble”
(Mark 4: 16). A principle hardly less momentous emerges
here. Our Lord assumes the perpetual
union of truth and tribulation, of service and sorrow, of cross with crown: he
therefore who flinches from the sorrow forfeits the fruit. Deep roots require deep soil. The Shallow Soil retains that Seed only which
involves no risk, or is not distasteful.
But Truth in a world of falsehood is necessarily a severe sufferer. So the [spiritual] life begins to wilt from the moment there is a picking
and choosing of doctrines. It is a grave
error to imagine that we may believe what we choose in the Word of God. Each
Divine doctrine is a seed: each seed can alone produce its peculiar fruit: so
the rejection of any one seed makes its fruit for ever impossible to us. For each revealed truth God designed and gave
in order to have a specific effect on character, and result in life: refusal,
or choking, of the seed defeats the design.
WEEDY SOIL. Still other
Soil compels the conviction of a great harvest: yet the fields of waving green
never ripen into gold. How is this? “Thorns ... choke the word,
and he becometh unfruitful” (Matt. 13: 22).
Four are the kinds of the soul’s thornbush:- (1) cares of this age; (2)
deceitfulness of riches; (3) lusts of other things; (4) pleasures of this
life. “They sit
before thee as my people, and they hear thy
words, but do them not: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their gain” (Ezek. 33: 31[R.V.]). A secret
blight attacks the bloom, stunts the young fruitage, and, though the Seed is
retained, none ever comes to perfection: it is a barren orthodoxy.
BARRENNESS. All three
Soils are unploughed: it is the un-harrowed heart that bears no fruit to
God. The enemies are three: - the Birds
- Satan; the Rock - the flesh; the Thorns - the world. Of four seeds one fell, but never sprang; one
sprang, but never grew; one grew, but never fruited; only one bore fruit. How solemn!
In the first soil, no moisture - no
wish to learn, no receptivity of
soul; in the second, no depth - no love
of the truth, no resolution of
character; in the third, no
cleanness - no singleness of heart,
no real consecration: the fourth
soil – soft, deep, clean. Our present character and our future destiny
are shaped solely by our treatment of the Word of God.
GOOD SOIL. “These bear the word”
- search the Scripture - “accept it” - believe
it - “and bear fruit” - obey it: “having heard the word” - attention - “they
hold it fast” - meditation -
“and bring forth fruit” (Luke 8: 15) - obedience. By hearing the soil opens: by meditation the
seed germinates: by obedience the doctrine becomes life. Whether it be fundamental, dispensational,
prophetic, or devotional; whether it touches salvation, or character, or
conduct, or reward; whether for teaching, or reproof, or correction, or
instruction in righteousness: - the doctrinal is the seed-bed of the practical;
truth is the root, out of which springs life, the fruit. Jas. 1: 21-25.
The
wise hearer consults the Oracle in his lap, unwrestingly (2 Pet. 3: 16), unrebelliously (Is. 66: 2), undeceitfully (2 Cor. 4: 2), unwearying (Deut. 6:
7). So let us (1) hear. The soil, of itself, is empty; we must take
in seed if we are to give out fruit; and the amount of fruit given out will be
exactly regulated by the amount of seed taken in. Every [false] doctrine rejected is a fresh impossibility of a
hundredfold yield: every new truth, received and obeyed, lades a new branch with
fruit. Let us (2) hold it fast. Seed, once
absorbed, can be expelled: the fruit peculiar to that seed can then never be
borne. Every abandoned truth is a
crippling of character, a damage to testimony, a mutilation of life: whereas
seed absorbed, and kept buried in AN
HONEST AND GOOD HEART, itself does the rest; with the lovely
unconsciousness of a springing flower, it fruits in a faithful life. Let us (3)
bear much fruit. John 15: 8. How immense the chasm between thirty fold and
a hundredfold! We are nearing the last
cataracts: let us make our hearts a seed-bed for the whole Book of God, for
only so can our characters grow to the full-orbed character of the Divine
Author.
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Purgatory
PURGING. It is a
supreme peculiarity of our Lord’s love to His own that it can never stop short
of the perfection of the person loved. “As many as I love, I chasten”
(Rev. 3: 19). “He chastens us for
our profit, that we may become partakers of His
holiness” (Heb. 12: 10). His holiness is perfection; so that our
discipline, however drastic or prolonged, is never a proof of His enmity, but
of His love; and is never a sign - either now, or at the Judgment Seat - of a
disciple’s ultimate destruction, but of his ultimate perfection. Where others show their love by indulgence,
Christ shows His by chastisement. “Every branch that
beareth fruit, He PURGETH it” (John 15: 2).
PURGATORY. The Roman
doctrine of Purgatory would have been impossible had the Church always held and
taught the full Scripture truth of a believer’s purging. Only twice has the Roman doctrine been
officially defined. “If such as be truly penitent die in God’s favour before they
have satisfied for their sins of commission and omission by worthy fruits of
penance” - i.e., assisted
their own atonement - “their souls are purged after
death with purgatorial punishments” (Council of Ferrara); “and the souls delivered there are assisted by the suffrages
[prayers and devotions] of the Faithful, and especially
by the most acceptable sacrifice of the Mass” (Council of Trent).
ERRORS OF PURGATORY. The manifest
errors here - apart from such fearful accretions as the sale of indulgences, or
the efficacy of the Mass - are mainly three.
(1) The doctrine of Purgatory
locates the purging in Hades: Scripture locates it in this life, and at the
Judgment Seat after resurrection, but never in Hades.
PURGING BY BLOOD. Now we turn
to the Scripture discipline: and the purging by blood must precede the purging
by discipline. “According
to the law, all things are purged by blood”
(Heb. 9: 22): “how
much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works”
- the deadly efforts of self-righteousness - “to serve
the living God” (Heb. 9: 14). For Christ has affected the essential and
fundamental purging once for all: “who when He had
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of
the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1: 3): and
this purging is the sole basis, and predisposing cause, of all subsequent
purging. For only a saved soul can be
purged by chastisement. No amount or
degree of suffering can improve into life a soul dead in trespasses and sins,
any more than dead wood can be made to grow fruit by pruning: chastisement
cannot purge him: he can be purged, but not by chastisement: and God is not
habitually chastening the wicked at all.
For “if ye are without chastening, whereby all [believers] have
been made partakers, then are ye bastards,
and not sons” (Heb.
12: 8). Corrective sufferings are
only granted and effective to those already purged by the sacrificial
sufferings of
PURGING BY DISCIPLINE. The second
purging is discipline. “Every branch that beareth fruit”
- i.e., living wood, set in the
living Vine - “He purgeth it” (John 15: 2).
A soul which is born again, yet still having ‘the
flesh’ in him, can have his still fallible character corrected and
elevated and cleansed by chastisement.
Nor need this purging end with life.
“Some of the oldest Roman divines taught that
all the remains of sin in God’s children are quite abolished by final grace at
the very instant of their dissolution; so that the stain of the least sin is
not left behind to be carried into the other world” (Archbishop Usher’s
Answer to a Jesuit, p. 165). This
ancient Roman doctrine is as unscriptural as the later Roman doctrine of
Purgatory. For the believer who falls
asleep unwatchful, wakes unwatchful - the servant who dies slothful, appears before
the Judgment Seat slothful: their last look on this world is, morally, their
first look on the next: they will be purged, but they are not purged: there is
no magic in death, and no opportunity in Hades to correct a faulty
discipleship: and the coming millennial day of justice, dominated by the
Judgment Seat, has for its essential characteristic the recoil of works in
judicial retribution.
“For he that doeth wrong” - the context is addressed
solely to believers - “SHALL RECEIVE AGAIN FOR THE WRONG THAT HE HATH DONE:
and there is no respect of persons” (Col. 3: 25).
But it is Divine Love that will not rest until all we who believe are “become partakers of His holiness”: no disciple ever
involves our destruction; it effects, sooner or later, our perfection.
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94.
The Image of the Invisible God
THE BEGINNING. No word could
be altered in the first five verses of the Gospel of John - so wrought are they
with extremest care - without opening the door to the gravest errors; and the
first two verses are one of the exceedingly rare photographic negatives, so to
speak, exposed to the void eternity of God.
Now, as the curtain is thus drawn from Eternity, in the background of
all worlds, the first object which strikes our eyes is Christ; the first orb
shining in the primal dawn, already there, is the Logos. “In the beginning”
- not, in the beginning of the world; but in the dawn behind the worlds - “was” - as a luminary already shining in meridian
splendour - “the Word” (John
1: 1): men are born, worlds are made,
Christ is. The world was from the
beginning; Christ was in the beginning: He was in the beginning, for He never
had a beginning. Christ is the Thought
or Word of God; and, as there could never be a time when God had no thought or
word, so Christ must be as eternal as God.
He who is before all worlds must be God.
“Out of thee, Bethlehem Ephrahah” - out
of the manger in the inn - “shall One come forth whose
goings forth are from of old, FROM EVERLASTING” (Micah.
5: 2). The Morning Star in the
great Void backward is the eternal Christ.
No one could tell us this but God; for no one then existed but God; and
God says that, in the primal dawn, Christ was already there.
THE COMPANIONSHIP. But is He the
solitary Orb? Is He the only Godhead, so
that when emptied of Deity? is there no God but the Word? Another Orb of Deity co-equally fills the
void, exposed on this sensitive plate set to Eternity. “And the Word was
with” - literally, stood over against, yet for ever moved towards - “God”; two Thrones of Deity confronting one another,
face to face in a co-equal blessedness, and a perpetual communion. The same
responsive companionship is betrayed in a later preposition, - “The only begotten Son, who is
into the bosom of the Father” (John 1: 18):
the eternal motion of Christ is Godward, and the eternal response of God is
Christward; “whose goings forth are from everlasting”
(Micah 5: 2). So the Psalm, with extraordinary clearness, -
“Of the Son He [God] saith,
Thy throne, O God”-
two Divine Persons, each addressing the other as God - “is for ever and ever” (Heb. 1: 8);
and our Lord recalls the companionship, - “And now,
O Father, glorify Me
with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17: 5).
God is love, and this proves it; for love is a relationship between
persons, and is impossible without plurality: so our Lord says, - “Thou lovest ME
before the foundation of the world” (John
17: 24). The eternal Christ was
enthroned in communion with God from everlasting.
THE DEITY. Now we arrive
at a definite declaration of Godhead. “And the Word was God”: not a god, but God; not a lower
kind of God, but God: and the word ‘God’ is put
in the Greek in the place of emphasis.
Christ not the only Godhead, but He is essential Godhead: “I am in the Father and the Father [reciprocally] in Me” (John 14: 10);
“I and the Father are” - here are two Persons -
“one” (John 10: 30)
- for there is but one God, in nature, in essence, in kind. The oneness of the Godhead is as vital as the
plurality of the Persons. Ever blessed
Trinity in unity! “It is rashness to search too far into it; it is piety to
believe it; it is life eternal to know it” (Bernard). But this simple, profound utterance, ringing
out like a sharp, pungent oracle, forever defines the Christ of God. “In the beginning was
the Word” - an eternal Christ; “and the Word was
with God” - a coequal Christ; “and the Word was
God” - a Divine Christ: “in the beginning was
the Word” - the eternity of Jesus; “and the Word
was with God” - the separate personality of Jesus; “and the Word was God” - the Godhead of Jesus.
THE IMAGE. So we arrive
at the exact position of our Lord in the Deity.
“Who is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1: 15).
In the background is God invisible, “dwelling in
light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor
can see” (1 Tim. 6: 16): the
invisible God - how dreadful is this impenetrable vail! how fathomless the
mystery! For He dwells “in light unapproachable”: that is, all approach, all
revelation of Deity, must come from that side; and it has. “No man hath seen God
at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, HE HATH DECLARED
HIM” (John 1: 18). As on the depthless darkness of midnight
skies the sun, coming forth out of the bosom of the heavens, reveals the
burning light buried deep in the darkness, so Christ is “the effulgence” - the apocalypse - “of His glory, the very image
of His substance” (Heb. 1: 3): He is
the outburst of God. For He was God
manifest, long ere He was God manifest in the flesh; His were the
manifestations, visible and tangible, of the Jehovah Angel; and from all
eternity He images forth that in God which is invisible. All the holiness that is in God, is also in
Christ; all the power that is in God, is also in Christ; all the love that is
in God, is also in Christ, - “who is the effulgence of
His glory, and the very image of His substance”;
the Image, not of the Father only, but of God.
“He that hath seen Me HATH SEEN THE
FATHER” (John 14: 9).
THE GOSPEL. What then is
the inconceivably important consequence of the God head of Christ? That the Gospel is true, and that no man
rejects it except at his own infinite peril.
For what Christ was before all worlds alone reveals how He was able, and
He only, to carry the vast burden of a world’s guilt, and to undertake the
stupendous enterprise of a world’s salvation.
As infinite as the Person, so infinite is the merit and the work: for “unto us a child is born, and
his name shall be called the Mighty God” (Is.
9: 6); “of whom is Christ concerning the flesh,
who is, GOD OVER ALL, blessed for
ever” (Rom. 9: 5); and the Church,
has thus been bought with the blood of the infinite - “the
church of God, which he purchased with His own
blood”(Acts 20: 28). So also we wait for the Image of the
invisible God. For the Father never ‘appears’ to men in the flesh - “whom no man hath seen, nor can
see” (1 Tim, 6: 16); but we “look for the appearing of our GREAT GOD and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2: 13).
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95
One Shall Be Left
THE JEWISH ESCAPE. A Woman, in parabolic prophecy, is a
city (Gal. 4. 25; Rev. 18: 18; 21: 9, 10,
etc.):
THE CHRISTIAN ESCAPE. A second, and
heavenly, deliverance immediately precedes: “her child
was caught up unto God, and unto His throne.” This child is not Christ: because (1) Christ was Mary’s firstborn - this
mother has already had other seed (ver. 17);
(2) Christ has already been rapt
nearly 1900 years before this prophecy, which, as all the Apocalypse after chapter 3., is still unfulfilled; (3) like mother, like child - as the
mother is obviously figurative, and therefore is not Mary, so is her child also
figurative, and therefore is not Christ; and (4) Bethlehem, not Jerusalem, gave birth to Jesus. It is “a manchild,
who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron”:
therefore it is that group of saints named by our Lord, - “He that overcometh, and he
that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will
I give authority over the nations; and he shall
rule them with a rod of iron” (Rev. 2: 26). Here, without question, there is a rapture -
“unto God, and unto His
throne”; and a rapture which totally delivers from the Great
Tribulation, for that the Dragon creates after the Child is gone. It is an escape in accordance with another
command of Christ, - “Watch ye, and pray always that ye
may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21: 36).
It is the heavenly escape of the heavenly people.
DISOBEDIENCE. Now we reach
a crucial point of incalculable importance.
To the Jew Jesus says - ‘Fly’; To the
Christian He says - ‘Watch and pray’: but what
if they do not? Are Christ’s commands,
as a matter of fact, or of Scripture record, always and constantly obeyed by
all His people? No command did God ever
give to His people but some of them disobeyed it. But here the decision of the point, as a
matter of prophetic fact, is swift and sure.
If the whole of saved
ONE SHALL BE LEFT. For the
Scripture references put the matter beyond doubt. “They” [are] Paul’s
testimony concerning Jesus (Acts 22: 18) -
that is, the Christian gospel: “I am a fellow servant
with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 19: 10) - manifestly John’s fellow-Christians
“I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the
testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 20: 4) -
Christian martyrs: one Remnant harried by Satan is the uncut, unripe wheat of
the Church of God. It was the peril that
beset the Sardian Angel. “If thou shalt not watch”-
obviously a rebuke, a threat; a failure on his part to keep the essential
condition of the rapture-promise (Rev. 3: 10)
- “I will come [Greek: arrive], 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, to the
total ignorance of the un-rapt Angel.
Thus also is our Lord’s other word fulfilled. “Ye are the salt of
the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour”
- not change its nature, which is possible neither to salt nor to a disciple;
but lose its peculiar flavour, like the ‘dead’
Sardian Angel - “it is thenceforth good for noting,
but to be cast out and trodden under foot of would not
receive men” (Matt. 5: 13) - exposed
to the hot persecutions of the Day of the Lord.
Ripened by persecution, many such will enrich the martyrs’ roll: “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord [Christians
therefore] from henceforth” (Rev. 14: 13) - that is, in the Tribulation epoch. Total entanglement is as possible to a
believer as total deliverance.
WATCH. “Then shall two men be in the field; one is taken, and one is left:
two women shall be grinding at the mill; one is taken,
and one is left.
WATCH
THEREFORE” (Matt. 24: 40).
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96
Strangers and Pilgrims
THE HOLY NATION. Rarely, if
ever, has the
All
nations (including
FOREINNERS. What then is our
exact relationship to all other peoples of the earth through whom we are
scattered? “Beloved,
I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims.” The word here rendered ‘sojourners,’ means ‘foreign
settlers,’ ‘dwellers in a foreign land’;
and the word rendered ‘pilgrims’ means ‘transient settlers,’ almost ‘tourists,’
travellers passing through: the one word means that we are not at home, the
other that we are not among our own folk.
“For they that say such things” - namely
that they are ‘strangers and pilgrims upon the earth’
- “make it manifest that they are seeking after a
country of their own” (Heb. 11: 14).
So,
then, “if we are naturalized as citizens there, we
cannot help being aliens here” (Dr. A. Maclaren): no man can be a
naturalized citizen of two countries at once.
Thus we are not ‘nationals’; for God has
called us “out of” - and so outside of - “all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues”: nor ‘internationals,’ or cosmopolitan - citizens of the
world; for “I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15: 19): we are foreigners in every land;
everywhere we are missionaries in a foreign land; we speak every language of
earth with a foreign accent.
Now
our peril is that we may think that all such language is simply poetry, instead
of language that expresses God’s holy and profound principles, on which we are
to build our conduct. When we say ‘we,’ what ought we to mean? The Holy Nation: not
A CRUCIFIED WORLD. What then is
the practical issue? “Come ye out, and be ye
separate” (2 Cor. 6: 17). The Church and the World are two circles
which intersect nowhere: two divisions of mankind, without a third, mutually
exclusive each of each. In which circle,
as a matter of fact, lies the State? The
Army and Navy? Politics? Wars and duels
and rifles? The theatre, the
betting-ring, the racecourse? “Love not the world, neither
the things that are in the world: for all that
is in the world is not of the Father” (1
John 2: 15). The world was buried
for us in the baptismal grave. As Israel,
separated from all nations, plunged into the Red Sea, and rose to walk, a
lonely nation, with God in the wilderness; so the Church, composed of all
tribes and peoples and nations and tongues, goes down into baptism many
nations, but rises up one nation, with all national, racial, fleshly
distractions obliterated for ever, drowned: for “through
the cross” - set forth in the ritual death - “the
world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto
the world” (Gal. 6: 14).
And
now shall we go back? “And if indeed they”- God’s sublimest heroes of the Old
Testament - “had been mindful of that country, from which they went out, they
would have had opportunity to return: but now
they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore”
- for it is the pilgrim - whom God supremely loves - “God
is not ashamed” “of them, to be called their God, and He
hath prepared for them a city”: - He will see to it that we are not
pilgrims for ever.
BIRTH. So what is the Holy Nation? “An elect race”- or generated thing; one stock out of
one birth: as
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97
The Creator Christ
CREATION. The first view
we ever get of Christ is as God: “in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was God”: and when
Eternity passes into Time, at the exact junction of the crossing where all
worlds were made, it is in the full panoply of the creating Godhead that we
behold our Lord. For “all things were made by Him; and
without Him was not anything made that hath been made” (John 1: 3): “in Him were
all things created: all things have been created
through Him” (Col. 1: 16). Our Lord not only is God, but He has acted as
God: for creation is the challenging proof of Godhead, and the whole creative
power of the Godhead centres in Christ: “He that built
all things is God” (Heb. 3: 4). No materials lay at hand for the construction
of a universe: “the worlds have been framed by the word
of God, so that what is seen hath not been made
out of things which do appear”(Heb. 11: 3):
“whether thrones” - the crowned heads of the
Angels - “or dominions” - angelic satrapies - “or principalities” - subordinate chiefs - “or powers” - controlling winds and lightnings; “all things have been created through Him.” As no creature is too minute, so none is too
gigantic; as none is too simple, so none is too complex; as none is too humble,
so none is too sublime: through whom “He made the
worlds” (Heb. 1: 2) - the heavenly
world, and the earthly world; the external world, and the internal world of the
soul; this world, and all other worlds.
Our Lord emerges into Time exercising the full functions and
prerogatives of Godhead.
REDEMPTION. But a
revelation still more astounding remains.
“All things have been created unto Him” (Col. 1: 16): the universe came forth from Him, but
it also sweeps back to Him, in a gigantic circle: He is Alpha, but also Omega;
He is the Beginning, but also the End.
Christ made the universe Himself; He made it by Himself; but most
wonderful of all, He made it for Himself.
It is not only a palace of His erection, but a palace for His ultimate
occupation: a fact that carries with it the redemption of the universe, when
one dark cesspool shall have drawn off and hidden for ever the filth of the
worlds. “I am
the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last,
the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22: 13).
ANNIHILATION. Yet another,
and an awful, function of Godhead is exercised by Christ. “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the works of Thy hands: they shall perish; but Thou continuest”
(Heb. 1: 10). Of whom is this said? “Of the Son He saith.”
And who causes the perishing? “As a mantle shalt Thou roll them up.”
Creation
and annihilation are but two aspects of one Divine power; and both reside in
Christ. Christ created, Christ
annihilates: “Thou hast laid the foundation” - “Thou shalt roll them up”: Christ begins the creation,
and Christ ends it. It was the creator
Christ who said in Genesis (7: 4), - “Every living
thing that I have made I will destroy”; and it is the Son, into whose
hands all judgment is given, “before whose face the
earth and the heaven fled away; and there was
found no place for them” (Rev. 20: 11). The worlds lapse back into the Void, out of
which He called them, at the will of Christ, to make way for new worlds (2 Pet. 3: 13) of His creation.
WORSHIP. So righteous,
therefore, and so founded on fact, is the decree of God; - “When He again” - at the Second Advent - “bringeth in the firstborn into the world, He saith, And let all the
angels of God worship Him” (Heb. 1: 6). Had the Angels not been most exalted beings,
the Apostle would never have compared them to Christ; yet God says, - “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” Angels never created a world, - Christ
created all worlds; angels, under permission, handle lightnings and wield
hurricanes, - Christ arrests the universe from lapsing into nothingness; angels
are immortals only as drawing life from God, - Christ hath “life in Himself” (John 5:
26).
So
then our duty is plain. If angels need to worship, so do we: if angels on the
spot and in the heart of Heaven, knowing the exact truth concerning Christ,
worship Him, so ought we: if angels of the highest rank - ‘all angels’ without exception - worship Christ, not
one of us can be too exalted to worship Him: if sinless angels worship Christ,
how much more ought sinful mortals: if God commands all angels to worship
Christ, can He command us less? And if
angels, for whom Christ never died, worship Him, shall the redeemed
refuse? “And
they WORSHIPPED Him” (Luke 24: 52).
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98
The Last Watch
SECRET RAPTURE. Again and
again our Lord asserts His coming as a thief, with the consequent need of our
unceasing alertness. “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that
watcheth” (Rev. 16: 15). Now a thief-like approach - for which, in our
Lord’s case, there is no reproach, since He takes only that which is His own -
is pregnant with meaning. It implies a
hidden Saviour, ambushed in a secret Parousia, from which He accomplishes His
thefts: it implies that the stolen goods disappear invisibly, and are
discovered as stolen only by having vanished: it implies that, thief-like, only
the costliest goods are removed: and it implies that constant watchfulness, an
unbroken vigil throughout the night, is the sole preventive of the burglary,
since no thief gives warning of his coming.
“But know this, that
if the master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming,
he would have watched, and
would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore be ye also ready” (Matt.
24: 43).
LOOKING FOR RAPTURE. So, in all
ages, the Church is to be watchful; for even our Lord, though fully conscious
of coming death, had His mind set, not on death, but on rapture. “When the days were well nigh come that He should be received
up” - rapt - “He stedfastly set His face to go
to Jerusalem” (Luke 9: 51). Death for all the watchful is only an
incident on the way to rapture as Dean Alford selected as the epitaph for his
own tombstone, - “The inn of a traveller on his way to
Jerusalem”: and for rapture itself, even the Son of God had to summon
all His energies, and to concentrate all His faculties: “He stedfastly set His face to go.” A thousand solicitations and subtle dangers
lie, for us all, on every hand: as his soldiers used to say of Cromwell, before
a fight, - “See, he has his battle-face,” so
our Lord’s tense, set, white face was fixed for rapture. For Rapture finds us exactly what we
are. Throughout his last day on earth,
Elijah was full of the occupations of a holy life: there was no shrinking, but
a joyful, heart-whole concentration; no clinging to earth, or to earthly
things; no fear of the unseen world; no reluctance to drop the now finished
task: in the evening, when the chariot came, he was ready.
A LOST RAPTURE. For
unwatchfulness is most perilous. Christ
applies the fearful catastrophe of
AFTER RAPTURE. For the world
will be no place for the saint at the End.
Hooligans (not little children: it is the word used of young men in Gen. 37: 2, 1 Kings 3: 7, and Jer. 1: 6, 7) are accustomed to mock at rapture,
of which they will then be perfectly aware.
“Go up, thou bald
head; go up, thou
bald head” (2 Kings 2: 23); ascend,
where your Master has gone; why are you left?
Begone! This occurs at
SELECTIVE RAPTURE. So we seek to
watch and pray. “There are some Bible scholars, and among them names that are held in
universal esteem, who say it is only the Virgins whose lamps are burning that
are qualified to go in; that there is a just suspicion in Luke 21: 36 that those
Christians who do not watch will not escape all these things. In view of this bare but awful possibility,
there is but one position - habitual expectation” (J. MacNeil). “Those who are
translated will have to be accounted worthy of it: it is not a gift, but a
prize to be won, in the strength of the Lord, by the fruits of faith, conduct
and works after conversion” (G. H. Pember). “In
the FOURTH WATCH of the night”-
“Jesus came unto them” (Matt.
14: 25).
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99
Latent Romanism
CHURCH AND THE WORLD.
CHURCH AND STATE.
Rome
was the first to shape all ecclesiastical organization on the model of the
Roman Empire, - so completely, that if all histories were lost, the Imperial
outline could still be reconstructed from the Episcopal Churches; the Church
and the State became closely and vitally associated; and then of necessity such
commands of Christ as clashed with national law had to be silently abrogated.
The
Early Church, for example, strictly enforced Christ’s prohibition of Oaths; but
- and we take as witness a foremost Roman Catholic historian - “When the Church had opened her gates to whole nations and populations,
and had established definite relations with the civil power, she was obliged to
allow political and judicial oaths” (Dr. Dollinger’s First Age of Christianity, p. 390).
No
blunder in Church conduct can be more cardinal than to imagine that God has
placed the Church and the State - the State is merely the World organized for
purposes of government - under identical rules, and conducts them on identical
principles. No unbeliever is under the
dispensational laws of Christ at all; - laws under which no State could
possibly be conducted, - and laws never given by Christ to the State, but to a
pilgrim body scattered through all nations.
The confounding of these two radically distinct spheres can only end in
the prostitution of that Virgin Bride whose chastity lies in a wholly separated
devotion to Christ.
LAW AND GRACE.
But
So
the appalling spectacle is presented of Russian Greek Catholics, German
Lutherans, French Protestants, Austrian Roman Catholics, and British Anglicans
and Nonconformists bayoneting one another, and beseeching the same God to bless
their rival arms to the horror of the whole heathen world. It is the acme of ‘babel.’
ADULTERY. Thus it has
now been made certain by events that God’s people do not understand the gravity
of this Babylonian and Roman sin, with which the atmosphere of the Churches
grows more and more laden. No saint can
grow in holiness without growing also in a profound horror of the world: in
Scripture it is a word charged with midnight darkness. For what fornication is in the physical
realm, so foul, so loathsome (in God’s sight) is the mixture of the Church and
the World in the spiritual sphere, and so certain of His coming judgments; and
as adultery is possible only to the truly wedded, so it is the regenerate only
who can commit (not spiritual fornication, but) spiritual adultery. (
“Whence come wars and whence come fightings among you?
[In the world, the magistrate rightly wields the sword: the unbeliever, so long
as he is an unbeliever, is under no dispensational prohibition of Christ]. Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight
and war. Ye ADULTERERS
and ADULTERESSES, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with
God? WHOSOEVER
THEREFORE WOULD BE A FRIEND OF THE WORLD MAKETH HIMSELF AN ENEMY OF GOD.”
(Jas. 4: 1).
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100
Garnering the Wheat
RIPENESS. The vital
principle of all harvesting has been laid down by our Lord once for all: - “When the fruit is RIPE,
immediately he putteth in the sickle” (Mark
4: 29). No farmer reaps his field
because a fixed date is come, but because his corn is ripe; the reaping of
unripe corn is utterly unknown; and the farmer cuts only those sections of his
field which are ripe. So it is in the
spiritual sphere: study nature, and learn grace; for they are from the hand of
one Maker. Wheat, our Lord reveals - for
He defines the wheat-plants as the children of the Kingdom, growing, without
intermission, between the first sowing by the Son of Man and the End of the Age
(Matt. 13: 38, 39) - is the Church: ‘wheat’ is a type of Christian, not Jewish,
experience. Thus our Lord unfolds a
momentous principle. It is not wheat
that the Angels (Matt. 13: 41) reap, but
ripe wheat: neither the individual believer, nor the Church as a whole, is ripe
simply because they are wheat: (our Lord’s words indicate a delay between the
springing of the wheat and its maturity): and it is not Christ’s return that
rules the ripeness of the wheat, but the ripeness of the wheat that rules the
date of Christ’s return.
THE SHEAF. The spiritual
Harvest is inaugurated by the reaping of a solitary Sheaf. “When ye shall reap
the harvest, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the
first fruits” - one selected from among the earliest ripe ears - “and the priest shall wave the sheaf before the Lord” (Lev. 23: 10).
Paul
gives us the clue to the type. “Now hath Christ been raised from the dead”;
(resurrection involves rapture, as God does not leave the risen to dwell on
earth): and so our Lord was ‘carried up into heaven,’
to be waved before God in the upper
THE FIRST-FRUITS. So this
illuminating clue, furnished by the Holy Spirit, establishes the whole Type;
and reveals at once that, even among the First-fruits, there is more than one
rapture. For seven Sabbaths after, on
the fiftieth day - an immense period, an era of dispensational completeness,
when the Jubilee Sabatismos (Heb. 4: 9)
arises - the next removal of wheat occurs, and it is still First-fruits. “Seven Sabbaths shall there be complete, and ye shall offer a new meal offering unto the Lord, two wave loaves baken with leaven, for first-fruits unto the Lord” (Lev. 23: 15).
That this ‘fine flour’ was to be baken ‘with leaven’ at once proves that it is not Christ, for
no offering that stands for Christ was ever offered with leaven, which was
strictly forbidden (Lev. 2: 11): besides,
the Sheaf of Christ had gone long before: here is a holy group - two loaves,
Jew and Gentile, consecrated ‘for Jehovah’; yet
with the leaven of indwelling sin up to the very moment of rapture - a part of
whom is unveiled to us on the heavenly Mount.
“These were purchased from among men to be the
first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb: they
are without blemish” (Rev. 14: 4). So here is a second rapture.
THE HARVEST. Now we arrive
at Harvest. “Ye shall reap the harvest of your land”
(Lev. 23: 22); usually some three weeks
after First-fruits; for these are wholly severed: if first-fruits are gathered
simultaneously with harvest, they are not first-fruits; it is a time-word, and
implies fruit cut (like our Lord) earlier than the general crop. So the Apocalypse also reveals both the
maturity which is the determining factor in the date of rapture, and also the consequent
plurality of reaping. For, after
First-fruits have already appeared on high, the message reaches the Son of Man
in the Parousia-cloud, - “Send forth [for the
sickle is a reaping band of angels] thy sickle, and reap: for the hour to reap
is come: FOR
the harvest of the earth is over-ripe”
(Rev. 14: 15). Here therefore is a fresh rapture. As grain ripens in the hottest season, so the
fierce heats of the Tribulation will dry up roots which once clung tenaciously to
earth, and which, had they but sheltered in warmer valleys and rooted
themselves in richer soil, would never have been left so long un-garnered. “When the fruit
yields itself” - yields itself to its gracious Sun, spontaneously
unfolding into full-orbed ripeness - “straightway he
putteth in the sickle” (Mark 4: 29). Christ is responsible for the sowing of the
Wheat, but not for the date of its maturity.
So here is a fresh clue to the Type - the ‘harvest’
is Christian rapture: for Christian believers only (and not Jews, nor Gentiles)
are bodily removed by descending angels.
THE CORNERS OF THE FIELD. But even so
the reapening is not yet exhausted: the Harvest itself does not remove all the
grain from the Field. “When ye reap the harvest of your land, ye shall not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou reap the gleaning of thy harvest” (Lev. 23: 22).
Here, then, is yet another rapture. “For we must
all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5: 10), sometime during the Parousia,
throughout which the Bema remains set up: the whole Field must ultimately be
reaped: and, in wonderful accordance thereto, at the very close of Antichrist’s
reign, sandwiched in between two descriptions of Armageddon, and couched in
terms always addressed to the Church, a warning cry goes forth to the
un-gleaned Corners of the Field.
“Behold, I come
as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and
keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked,
and they see his shame” (Rev. 16: 15).
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101
Lo, I am Come
IMPOTENT SACRIFICE. Paul gives a
bed-rock reason why the Sacrifices of the Law are gone; - “It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats
[the animals offered on the Day of Atonement] should
take away sins” (Heb. 10: 4). But why is all sacrifice, pagan or Jewish,
thus worthless for removing sins? Mainly
for two reasons.
(1) It is obvious that only a man can atone for a man: an animal can stand
in the stead of an animal, but not of a man: the substitute must be in the
nature that sinned. The punishment must
not fall on a being of another race: that must be offered up to the fire which
has incurred the just wrath of the fire.
And (2) bulls and goats do
not offer themselves: they are dragged, unwilling and resisting victims, to the
slaughter and the altar. Now this is
fatal to sacrifice. If the Law seizes on
me, and put me to death for another man’s sin, all would feel it a monstrous
injustice; but if, plunging after a drowning man, I saved his life but lost my
own, all would say it was a heroic deed.
So, since the Law is pursuing men that have sinned, not animals, and
brute nature is incapable of spiritual suffering and human substitution; and
since an involuntary sacrifice does not satisfy Justice, but only outrages it:
- “it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats
should take away sins.”
REJECTED SACRIFICE. But a second
reason for the cessation animal sacrifice lies in this, - that a sacrifice, to
be effective, must be accepted by the God of the Law which has been
transgressed; for the Law is God’s law, and the insult of disobedience is thus
offered to God. Now the Most High says:
- “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices
unto Me? I delight not in the blood of bullocks
or of lambs or of he-goats [the three animals offered under the Law]: your appointed feasts My soul hateth; they are a trouble unto Me; I
am weary to bear them” (Isa. 1: 11).
But
did not Jehovah Himself institute the sacrifices? He did: but not to take away sin; for they
never did, and never could; but as a perpetual shadow of the coming substance;
- “the Law having a shadow of the good things to come,
not the very image of the things” (Heb. 10: 1).
So the Jew, seeing the Lamb through a thousand lambs, had faith unto
eternal life; and offering - as David did in one day - a thousand rams, whilst
he abandoned the sin thus atoned for, God accepted both offerer and offering on
the ground of the Substance beyond. But
such offerings ceased in
UNIQUE SACRIFICE. Nevertheless
in the very moment of sweeping away the sacrifices, Jehovah reaffirms
sacrifice: “Come let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” But how, if all sacrifice, which alone can
turn the scarlet of guilt into the whiteness of pardon, is abolished? Paul answers: - “He
taketh away the first” - the sacrifices of the Law - “that He may establish the second”- the one supreme,
crowning Sacrifice of the Gospel; “which are a shadow
of the things to come, but the body [which
casts the shadow backwards] is CHRIST’S” (Col. 2: 17).
It is not sacrifice that had gone, but only animal sacrifice: God has
withdrawn the shadow, to put in its place the substance.
Then
what is the Substance? “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepare for Me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin [the
four categories of sacrifice] Thou hadst no pleasure:
then said I, Lo, I” - the one great Burnt Offering of the world - “AM COME,
to do Thy will, O God.” The first - bodies of bulls and goats; the
second - the body of Jesus: “He taketh away the first”
- all animal sacrifices - “that He may establish the
second” - the one substitutionary offering of Christ. The earlier bodies bled for sin, but never
took it away: God never forgot the sin; it haunted man’s conscience - “my sin,” David cried, “is ever
before me” (Ps. 51: 3) - as it haunted
God’s memory; and the constant repetition of the sin-offerings proved their
complete failure to remove the sin: whereas “we have
been sanctified” - cleansed from sin - “through
the offering of the body of JESUS CHRIST once for all.” None of the former objections lie against
this Offering. Man has sinned - a Man has atoned: a voluntary sacrifice is
essential - “Lo I am come to do Thy will, O God”: and the sacrifice must be an accepted
sacrifice - “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.” And this Offering
removes even the memory of the sin; “and their sins and
iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb.
10: 17): when a man is saved by Christ, he can perfectly safely forget
his old sins, for God has forgotten them.
REMISSION. One enormous
lesson the vanished sacrifices taught the world for four thousand years. “APART FROM SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION”
(Heb. 9: 22). Law is summed up in this, - “An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth”: therefore life must go for life, blood for blood, soul for
soul; “the soul that sinneth it shall die,” - “the wages of sin is death”: therefore there can be no
escape for a sinner save through the death of a sacrifice. Hell must either fall upon myself or upon my
Substitute; and it has fallen upon Him; “who His own
self bare our sins IN HIS OWN BODY
upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might LIVE unto righteousness” (1 Pet. 2: 24).
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102
The Coming Gnosticism
APOSTASY. “The Spirit saith expressly that in latter times” - as
the Age closes - “some shall fall away from the faith”
- apostatize - “giving heed to seducing spirits”
- an apostasy therefore that will be frankly Spiritualistic - “and doctrines of demons” - who will mould its dogma -
“FORBIDDING TO
MARRY AND COMMANDING TO ABSTAIN FROM MEATS” (1 Tim. 4: 1, 3) - ‘articles of diet,’
either food or drink. Already the footfalls of this fearful Gnosticism can be
heard on the threshold of the modern world.
MARRIAGE. The assault on marriage
began early in the Nineteenth Century, and has grown steadily in volume
since. “A
system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human
happiness than Marriage” (Shelley, Notes
to his Poems). “Marriage is the chief cause of all the vice and misery that
exists in the world” (Robert Dale Owen, the Spiritualist). “Reasonable consciousness, when awakened in man, demands
complete abstinence, complete chastity” (Tolstoy, Christian Teaching, p. 75: Tolstoy also forbad flesh and wine). The earlier editions of Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and Health”
contain prohibitions of marriage which have since been withdrawn.
“Those who have read the proceedings of the Divorce Court
Commission know how startling, how revolutionary, how abominable, were some of
the proposals laid before that body. It
is an ominous and fearful fact that the very worst of these proposals were made
by organised bodies of women. Those who
keep up with current literature are aware that in the most popular and widely
read of the new novels there is an undercurrent - and not always an
undercurrent - of fierce revolt against the teaching of the Christian Church on
marriage. Proposals of the seven years’ lease and the ten years’ lease are
quite common and seem to excite no surprise.
In any gathering of the ‘intellectuals’ of both sexes, it is, to say the
least, very common to deride Christian marriage” (Sir Robertson Nicoll, British Weekly, Jan. 19, 1911). “We - and with us, in this, at all events, most Socialists -
contend that chastity is unhealthy and unholy.
If the coming society regards it as right for man to have mistresses as
well as wife, we may be certain that the like freedom will be extended to women”
(Edward Aveling, The Woman Question,
p. 15).
DIET. All Gnostic (and, earlier,
heathen) dietetic prohibition has invariably centred in flesh and wine, and now
lifts its head afresh. All disease and
crime, says Shelley, and all fierce passions, spring solely from the
consumption of flesh and wine: “Omnipotence itself could
not save men from the consequences of this original universal sin.” “Abstinence from
intoxicating liquors and from flesh food has an unmistakably uplifting effect
upon the intellectual and spiritual potentialities of the personality” (Witley’s Ministry of the Unseen, p. 104,
a Spiritualist). “Let the Archbishop not take any animal food or alcohol for
at least three days before the Coronation” (a Theosophic message from
spirits, Review of Reviews, June, 1911).
The second most widely circulated Anglican weekly journal is now devoted
to Vegetarianism. “It used to be thought that alcoholic drinks were necessary
to health. This is no longer tenable;
and the time is rapidly approaching when the same truth will be universally
recognised with regard to flesh foods: their impure stimulating elements will
be classed with the once glorified, but now discredited, alcohol” (Church Family Newspaper April 3,
1912). “Part of
the discipline of life for the practical study of Yoga [Indian
mediumship] is the entire putting aside of every
spirituous liquor: another demand is the dropping of all forms of flesh food”
(Mrs. Besant, Christian Commonwealth,
Mar. 13, 1912). Drunkenness, a frequent
sin in the Church age (1 Cor. 5: 11),
disappears from the catalogue of Apocalyptic sins (Rev.
9: 21). Over wide areas of the
wine is being prohibited by law: in
Immense
issues are at stake: as the Fall sprang from a food-question, so will the
Apostasy. For if flesh-eating be evil,
the Jehovah who said - “EVERY MOVING THING THAT LIVETH SHALL BE FOOD FOR YOU”
(Gen. 9: 3) - is an evil Being, as the
Gnostics said: and if animal slaughter is evil, the whole sacrificial system of
the Law was immoral, and Calvary is overthrown from its foundations; and His
character who created flesh and wine for food (Matt.
14: 19; John 2: 9), consumed flesh and wine (Luke
24: 42; Matt. 11: 19), and gave flesh and wine to others to consume (John 21: 6, 12; Luke 22: 17), is hopelessly
overthrown. Gnosticism will be once again what it was of old, the grave of the
Christian faith. “WHICH [both marriage and meats] GOD CREATED TO BE
RECEIVED WITH THANKSGIVING” (1 Tim. 4: 3).
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Oaths
AN OATH. Our Lord
quotes from Jehovah’s Law, which said: - “Thou shalt
not forswear thyself” - i.e.,
break an oath - “but shalt perform unto the Lord thine
oaths” (Matt. 5: 33); an utterance of
Jehovah wholly sufficient, under the Law, to authorize and sanctify oaths. An oath is a self-imprecation, binding the
swearer before God to declare the truth, or to render absolute obedience, at
the peril of the Divine judgments: as Matthew Henry expresses it, - “By oaths, by the consent of nations, men have cursed
themselves, not doubting that God would curse them if they lied against the
truth.” It is in the phrase - “SO HELP ME, GOD” -
that the essence of an oath lies; or, as the Scotch oath puts it, - “As I shall answer to God at the great Day of Judgment”:
for “whatever be the form of an oath,” says
Paley, “it is invoking God’s vengeance, or renouncing
His favour, if what we say be false.”
PROHIBITION. Now
it is possible for an act to be right in itself, yet wrong at a given time; an
act appropriate to the Law may be vitally inconsistent with the Gospel; and an
act commanded to one (a Jew) may be forbidden to another (a Christian): so the
sword and the oath may be perfectly legitimate to an unbeliever, while
definitely forbidden to one who has set himself as a disciple under the commands
of Christ. So our Lord says: - “But I say unto you, SWEAR NOT AT ALL.” The principle of the Law - justification by
works - allowed an Israelite to stake his eternal salvation on his
truthfulness: as set by Law to work out his own salvation, he could
consistently imperil his life on any part of his conduct. But Grace makes this wholly impossible.
Salvation by works has proved a total and disastrous failure, and God has swept
it utterly aside. Our standing is mercy
alone. The essential peculiarity of an
oath - that which differentiates it from a solemn affirmation - is the invoking
of God as an avenger: it is a challenge to God to deal with us on the ground of
our works; it is a definite abandonment of our standing in grace; it is
courting the thunders of Sinai. God has
sworn (Heb. 4: 3), and the Jehovah Angel
will swear again (Rev. 10: 6), but He has
never sworn in the dispensation of Grace.
GRACE. The new Lawgiver, superseding
Moses, thus wholly rescinds the Mosaic legislation on Oaths. He throws the two legislative enactments into
sharp and studied contrast: - “It was said to them of
old time [by Jehovah: Num. 30: 1, 2],
Thou shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths; but I say unto you, Swear not.” All vain and rash oaths, all profanity, was already
forbidden by the Law of Moses; - “Ye shall not swear by
My name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the
name of thy God” (Lev. 19: 12): it
was solemn and judicial oaths which the Law enforced in the quotation made by
our Lord, and it is these which Christ forbids.
Thus, so far from the Sermon on the Mount being ‘Jewish,’ it actually forbids what the Law commanded; it forbids it
on the ground that it is inconsistent with Grace, that is, on Christian ground;
and the Sermon has never been accepted, and never will be, by any Jew except
such as become Christians: it is characterically and fundamentally Christian.
TOTAL PROHIBITION. Nor does our
Lord allow any exception or exemption. “Swear not” - would be sufficient: “swear not at all” - excludes every possible or
conceivable oath, under any circumstances or in any form. Moreover, He says: -
“Let your speech be Yea, yea; Nay, nay;
and whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” An oath is profoundly more than Yes or No, or
it would not be an oath: therefore, for one ‘under law
to Christ,’ it is evil: and it entered only when the world entered the
Church. “When the Church,” says Dr. Döllinger,
“had opened her gates to whole nations and
populations, and had established relations with the civil power, she was
obliged to allow political and judicial oaths” (First Age of
Christianity, p. 390).
The
oath is the crux of allegiance to world-powers; it shackles Christian liberty,
and, in oaths of obedience, the believer unlawfully abdicates his
responsibility; it is alien, together with all vows, from simple dependence on
the Holy Spirit; it binds the evil conscience, but it is superfluous to the
cleansed and truth-loving soul. The Holy
Spirit, endorsing Christ, prohibits oaths in words impossible of exception,
misunderstanding, or evasion. “Above all things, brethren,
SWEAR NOT,
neither by the heaven, nor
the earth, NOR BY ANY OTHER OATH: but
let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; that ye fall not under
judgment” (Jas. 5: 12). When the State enforces anything which God
has forbidden, the principle laid down by our Lord in Matthew
10: 23 comes into operation: flight, if it gives relief, is both
authorized and commanded.
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104
Armageddon
THE DIPLOMATISTS. The
instigators of Armageddon are in the dark background of every evil modern
movement: it is Spiritualism which creates Armageddon. “Three unclean
spirits go forth unto the kings of the whole world, to gather them together unto the war of the great day of God,
the Almighty” (Rev.
16: 14). The ground is already
thoroughly prepared. Napoleon consulted
a clairvoyant, Elizabeth Poulyne, before the Russian invasion, who said: - “Sire, fire, cold, and hunger will drive you back”; a
prediction which so impressed Napoleon by its accomplishment that he consulted
her again a few days before
D.
D. Home, in the palace of the Tuilleries, producing supernatural manifestations
in which the Empress Eugenie, within the last few months, has expressed her
perfect faith. Four or five years ago
the Kaiser was receiving messages from the unseen world during prolonged
sittings with Spiritualistic circles in
THE MUSTER. The actual
words of the imperial proclamation, in which all nations are called to the
colours, appear to be revealed. “PROCLAIM ye this among
the nations; prepare war [Heb., sanctify
war - i.e., proclaim a holy war, a
crusade: it is awful to see how the word ‘holy’
will be used at the End]; stir up the mighty men;
let all the men of war” - in army corps, or
battleships - “draw near, let them come up.
Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears” - so desperate is
the emergency that not only will every factory be set to manufacture munitions
of war, but agricultural implements will be melted or re-forged into weapons: “let the weak say, I am strong”
- in a conscription then universal no physical disability will be allowed as a
ground of exemption: “haste ye, and come, all ye nations”
(Joel 3: 9).
THE STRATEGY. Incredible
though it may seem, it will be an organization of world-forces in conscious and
deliberate attack upon God and His Christ.
“And I saw the beast [Antichrist], and the kings of the earth, and
their armies, gathered together to make war
against Him that sat upon the horse [Christ], and
against His army” (Rev. 19: 19). Men, only hardening under the judgments of
the Great Tribulation (Rev. 9: 21), and
enthralled by the miraculous fascinations (2 Thess.
2: 9) of the Antichrist, are devoted to him body and soul; and having
received his ‘mark,’ his sacramental sign, upon
their person, they know that they are lost (Rev.
14: 11). The strategy of the
gigantic Council of War also appears to be revealed. “They have said,
Come, and let us cut off
[
THE BATTLEFIELD. The shock of
battle occurs on an entrenched line dug across the uplands of
THE VICTORY. But suddenly
the doom falls, and the world’s sun goes down in blood. “Come all ye nations,
round about, and gather
yourselves together: thither cause thy mighty
ones to COME
DOWN, O Lord” (Joel iii. 11).
“These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, FOR HE IS LORD OF LORDS, AND KING OF KINGS”
(Rev. 17: 14); “and
there came out blood from the winepress, even
unto the bridles of the horses” (Rev. 14: 20:
cf. Hab.
3: 3-6). So sure is the result of
the shock of the opposing forces that a living sepulchre is prepared
before-hand. “An
angel cried with a loud voice, saying to all the
birds that fly in mid-heaven” - birds of powerful flight, as the eagle
and vulture: “buzzards over the battlefield,”
said a telegram from Mexico in 1912, “presented the
appearance of low-lying, black clouds” - “Come
and be gathered together unto the great supper of God, that ye may eat the flesh of all men” (Rev. 19: 17).
And what is the warning drawn by God from Armageddon, sandwiched into
the very heart of the prophecy? It is
the peril of unwatchfulness landing the believer in the Day of Terror.
“BEHOLD, I COME AS A THIEF. BLESSED IS HE THAT WATCHETH, AND KEEPETH HIS
GARMENTS, LEST HE WALK NAKED, AND THEY SEE HIS SHAME” (Rev. 16: 15).
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Fasting
In
order that the work of self-humbling may go deeper than it has yet gone, let us
ponder - as a symptom, though a symptom only, of lowly heart-contrition - God’s
truth about Fasting. Our unutterable
longing should be for a humility that we have never known: we have to pray over
our prayers, and weep for our tears: oh, that our sorrow might be lifted into
God’s, that where He has to grieve over us, we might grieve too! “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet.
5: 6).
Christian
Fasting. Fasting is a practice of the
Gospel rather than of the Law. By the ‘afflicted soul’ the Jews have always understood the
fasting soul (Lev. 23: 27); nevertheless the
works of law, by which man was to win life, commanded abstinence, not from
food, but from sin. “Is not this the fast,” Jehovah said, “that I have chosen? To loose
the bonds of wickedness” (Isa. 58: 6).
Fasting
for salvation is not only unmeritorious, since it was not commanded; it is also
wicked, for to go back to law is to fall from grace. Gal.
5: 4. Fasting does not produce life
in a soul: it nourishes humility in a soul already alive. Nevertheless, even an Ahab, if prostrate
before God in humiliation and fasting, can obtain a respite of judgment. “Because he humbleth
himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in
his days” (I Kings 21: 29).
OUR LORD. No Author of
Scripture speaks of Fasting so often as our Lord. (1)
Christ practised it. Matt. 4: 2. “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; when I wept, and chastened my
soul with fasting, that was to my reproach”
(Ps. 69: 10). (2)
Christ prophesied it. “The days will come, when the
bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and
then will they fast in that day” (Mark 2: 20). So also Apostles fulfilled Christ’s word. “In everything commending ourselves, as ministers of God, in
fastings” (2 Cor. 6: 5). Thus so far from fasting being confined to
any other dispensation, it is peculiarly for the epoch of the absent Lord; and
if we never last, have we ever yet mourned as we ought for the Bridegroom of
our souls? (3) Christ enjoins it as an act of righteousness. “Do not your
righteousness before men. When thou fastest, anoint thy
head” (Matt. 6: 1, 17). (4) Christ promises to reward it. “Thou fastest;
and thy Father, which
seeth in secret, shall recompence thee” (Matt. 6: 18).
The
three most prolonged tasters in all history, Elijah, Moses, and our Lord, were
the three transfigured upon the Mount: it is the bruised body that carries the
crowned brow. “My
knees,” the Psalmist says, “are weak through
fasting” (Ps. 109: 24).
METHOD. Christ tells
us how to fast. (1) Its times are optional: - “when ye fast.” Set seasons - feast days, new moons, Sabbaths
- are of the Law (
OCCASION. God’s people
have ever profited by true fasting. In
temptation (Matt. 4: 2); in conflict with
Evil Powers (Mark 9: 29); in appointment of
Church officers (Acts 14: 23); in
dispatching missionaries (Acts 13: 3); in peril
(2 Cor. 11: 27); after serious disasters (Jud. 20: 26); alter great sins (1 Sam. 7: 6); to turn away judgment (2 Chron. 20: 2, 4): the wise church is the church
which, on the summons of circumstances or conscience, prostrates itself before
God in this most powerful of all prayer attitudes. God’s servants expect answers to a prayerful
fast (Isa. 58: 3): if He is silent, it is
for sin (Jer. 14: 10-12). Ahab, fasting, was reprieved (1 Kings 21: 29); Jehoshaphat, fasting, was
victorious (2 Chron. 20: 3, 15, 22); Ezra,
fasting, was delivered (Ezra 8: 21, 31);
Esther, fasting, averted massacre (Esther 4: 16);
to Daniel, fasting, Heaven opened (Dan. 9: 3, 21);
Fasting,
partial (Dan. 10: 3), or complete (Esther 4: 16), Jesus enjoins; God owns it in the
Church, as He did among Israel’s Prophets; in a host of Scriptural lives - as
Brainerd, Whitefield, McCheyne, Muller, Govett, Hsi - the Holy Spirit has
revived this sacred self-humiliation; and Revivals have taught multitudes to
fast unto God who never dreamed of the privilege before. He who flinches from being thought peculiar,
will never be thought peculiarly Christ-like: to become like the Man of
Sorrows, we must become acquainted with grief.
“Because thine heart was
tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God,
and hast rent thy clothes and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith
the Lord. Behold, thou shalt be gathered to thy grave
in peace, neither shall thine eyes see the evil”
(2 Chron. 34: 27).
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106.
Our Prize
“LET NO MAN ROB YOU
OF YOUR PRIZE” (Col. 2: 18).
But what is our prize? The
Rapture. “There are some Bible scholars, and among them
names that are held in universal esteem, who say it is only the Virgins whose
lamps are burning that are qualified to go in; that there is a just suspicion
in Luke 21: 36 that those Christians who do not watch will not escape all
these things. In view of that bare but
awful possibility, there is but one position - habitual expectation” (J.
MacNeil). “To
those of God’s saints in this Age who are counted worthy a complete escape is
to be granted: escape from the awful period of earth-judgments is possible, but
it is conditional” (Samuel H. Wilkinson). “Like Enoch, those
Christians with the traits of Philadelphian grace and fidelity are taken before
the judgment of the Tribulation. Such as
share the Laodicean spirit will be left behind, to awake, repent, and witness
for their Lord through that awful time of woe; and, whether by martyrdom or
translation of the Harvest, be among the saved at last” (G. D.
Hooper). “The
teaching of first-fruits translation is said to be a legal doctrine, doing
despite to grace. How can this be, when
apart from grace it is impossible to live such a life as alone can entitle to
the privilege set forth? Nothing can
more show one his dependence on grace, or more animate to believing prayer for
grace, than a conviction that apart from its constant and abundant reception,
we must fail to be ready to meet our Lord with joy” (Fuller Gooch). “The burden on my
spirit day and night is the imminent appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray God to make you ready and to keep you
ready. May your portion be amongst this
number that shall be caught up to heaven” (Evan Roberts). “WATCH ye, and PRAY ALWAYS,
that ye may be ACCOUNTED
WORTHY to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21: 36).
THE FIRST RESURRECTION. “When Paul says ‘resurrection’ [in Phil. 3: 11], it has the preposition ‘out’ before it, the ‘out-resurrection’ - the special resurrection, the specific resurrection, the
one that is singled out from every other: ‘if by
any means I might attain unto the out-resurrection, the one from among the dead.’ Paul is looking
for a resurrection ‘out’ from among Christians, else he would not have to strive so
strenuously: he is striving to attain something that ordinary Christians will
not attain. A ‘prize’ is something to win:
there is a special blessing and reward for those who will go the whole way with
God” (C. H. Pridgeon). “Of his resurrection at the end of the world, when all
without exception will surely be raised, he could have no possible doubt. What sense then can this passage have, if it
represents him so labouring and suffering merely in order to attain a
resurrection, and as holding this up to view as unattainable unless he should
arrive at a high degree of Christian perfection? On the other hand, let us suppose a first
resurrection to be appointed as a special reward of high attainments in
Christian virtue, and all seems to be plain and easy. Of a resurrection in a figurative sense, i.e. of regeneration, Paul cannot be
speaking; for he had already attained to that on the plain of Damascus”
(Dr. Moses Stuart). “It is most evident that Paul had some special resurrection
in view, even the first: and to share in that he was straining every nerve”
(J. MacNeil). “BLESSED and HOLY is he that hath part in the first
resurrection” (Rev. 20: 6): “if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the
dead. Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but
I press on toward the goal unto the PRIZE”
(Phil. 3: 11).
THE KINGDOM. “To those who believe on Him, but go no further, the Lord
does, indeed, give eternal life; but the fruition of it will not begin until
the Last Day, until the thousand years of the millennial reign are ended. Such persons will not, therefore, be
permitted to enter the Kingdom of the Heavens” (G. H. Pember). “Into that glorious company of the First Resurrection it is probable
that only those who have been partakers of Christ’s humiliation and suffering
(either personally or throughout the present aeon) shall be received - a select
portion of the redeemed, including the martyrs” (Dr. E. R. Craven). “In this exclusion from
the Kingdom, which is the dominion of the good made visible at the return of
our Lord, we are not to see the loss of eternal salvation: an entrance into the
Kingdom is rendered impossible [in certain cases], but not by any means does it
follow that salvation can be thereby prevented” (Olshausen). “There may be positive and entire forfeiture
of the Kingdom, and only the lowest position in Eternal Life after it. The
native magnitude of this truth must speedily redeem it from all obscurity.
Those who have the single eye will perceive its amplitude of evidence, and
embrace it, in spite of the solemn awe of God which it produces, and the depth
of our own responsibility which it discloses” (Govett).
“Let us LABOUR
therefore to enter into that rest” - the sabbatismos, the seventh
millennium (Heb. 4: 11): for “not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that DOETH THE
WILL of My Father” (Matt. 7: 21).
“Know ye not that they which run in a race all run,
but one receiveth the prize? EVEN SO RUN, THAT YE MAY ATTAIN” (1
Cor. 9: 24).
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107.
A Change of Dress
AN EXCHANGE. God pictures
salvation as a change of dress.
Concerning the High Priest, who stood before God for sinful
OUR EXCHANGE. Now we behold
God’s wardrobe, and our exchange of dress.
Joshua appears as God sees him: not in high priestly robes of glory and
beauty, but in the ‘filthy garments’ - garments
smeared with filth - of a sin-stained life.
For “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses” - that is, the best
things in our life, our richest garments - “are as
filthy rags” (Isa. 64: 6), a soiled,
stained, polluted garment. So Joshua
appears as God sees him, as he is in fact, and as the awakened sinner sees
himself. “I
acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is
ever before me” (Ps. 51: 3). To whom then does Jehovah immediately point
the awakened sinner? “Behold. I will bring forward my servant THE BRANCH; and I will remove the
iniquity in one day” (Zech. 3: 8). Jesus Christ, Messiah, is the Branch. Now the exchange is presented. “Him who knew no sin”
- here is the rich apparel of a spotless person, a holy life, a perfect
obedience - “He made to be sin”; that is, God
did not make Christ sinful, but He laid our filthy garments upon Him: “that we might become” - not righteous, any more than
Christ became sinful; but - “the righteousness of God
in Him” (2 Cor. 5: 21); that is, God
lays on us the rich apparel of Christ.
Christ was treated as if He were a sinner, that we might be treated as
if we were righteous: both appear before God in a dress not their own. Ours is a raiment which, as typed by
OUR APPARAL. So how does
the reconciled sinner now stand before God?
“Not having righteousness of mine own” -
my polluted garment is gone; for “as far as the east is
from the west, so far hath He removed our
transgressions from us” (Ps. 103: 12):
“but [having] a
righteousness” - for I am not unclothed; I have a righteousness; but it
is a righteousness - “which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which is from God”- a dress
woven by the fingers of God, through the obedience of Jesus - “upon faith” (Phil. 3: 9)
- a rich apparel fallen out of heaven upon my now bare shoulders, a dress I put
on by faith. God loathed the filthiness
of Joshua’s garments, yet He did not put him away, but the garments; and as
surely as He laid them on Christ, there to receive their awful expiation, so
surely He “clothes thee with rich apparel,” the
wrought righteousness of ‘the Lord our righteousness’
(Jer. 33: 6). “Thou hast clothed me
with the garments of salvation, Thou hast
covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isa.
61: 10). So Satan, standing on
the right of Joshua - where the prosecutor and adverse witnesses stood - to
charge and to mock, suddenly sees the filthy priest arrayed richly by God, with
the filthy dress vanished for ever.
I hear the Accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more: —
Jehovah findeth none.
THE DISROBING. So,
for him who would be saved, the first thing is to disrobe. “Take the filthy
garments from off him”; this implies that Satan’s accusations, and the
accusations of conscience, are true; and that there must be frank confession to
God of the hideous moral stains that have polluted the whole life. “Satan, is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” It is so close a thing that every saved soul
has the smell of fire upon him. But immediately on confession falls
forgiveness: “See, I
have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee”: the muddy garments fall
away for ever. But, for perfection of
standing before God, it is not enough to be forgiven: none may come before Him
simply unclothed: not to have sinned - the position of the pardoned - is not
that active obedience to the whole law which alone justifies before a
judge. So we next ‘put on’ Christ, and His righteousness; for “as through the disobedience of the one the many were made
sinners, so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be made righteous” (Rom. 5:
19). In Him I have obeyed.
Repentance
puts off the old dress, faith puts on the new; and God clothes the moment we
disrobe. Here then is the only ground of
perfect peace without pride. For saving
righteousness is ‘imputed’ to us, not imparted;
(although God also begins to impart righteousness from the first moment that He
imputes it, in the separate work of sanctification, regeneration having changed
the whole bias of the being at the moment of justification). So that, exactly
as the imputing of sin to Christ never made Him cease to be holy, so the
imputing of His righteousness to us does not, by itself, lessen or change our
natural depravity, but causes us to be reckoned as righteous, in Him. IT IS
A SALVATION TOTALLY APART FROM OURSELVES: IT IS A CHANGE OF DRESS.
Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die,
Another’s life, another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.
-------
108
My Debt
THE DEBT. Paul says, “I am a debtor” (Rom. 1: 14):
not, My neighbour is a debtor, or, my church is a debtor; or even, The
missionary is a debtor. Ponder it. Not a whit behind the chiefest apostles, yet
a debtor; the amplest writer of inspired literature except Moses, yet a debtor;
a more signal worker of miracles than any man who ever lived, yet a debtor:
therefore it must be a debt that he owes simply as a Christian. It is the debt of every child of God. What then is it? It is the debt of an entrusted Gospel. If I am given a sovereign to pass on to
another man, until it is actually in his hands, I am in debt; by accepting the
commission, I incur the obligation: exactly so, by accepting the Gospel for
ourselves, we have incurred the obligation of transmitting it to everyone
else. God has given the Gospel to each,
for all. There is not a soul in all the
world to preach the Gospel except the man who has received it.
THE CREDITORS. We now see the
creditors. “I am
debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to
the wise and to the foolish.” All
the world is named in this context: Greeks and barbarians, the two halves of
the Gentile world; Jews and Greeks, the two halves of all humanity; and in
addition to these racial distinctions, another division that cuts across all -
the thinking and the unthinking. Paul
made no distinctions; wherever he saw a man, he saw his debt: “Christ died for him” - he saw blazoned on every human
brow; and for his conscience sake, as well as for the man’s sake, he started
paying his debt. How marvellous is the
catholicity of the missionary call! God
chose a Hebrew of the Hebrews to be the apostle to the Gentiles: He sent a
Polish Jew (Shereschewsky) to give their Mandarin Bible to the Chinese: He
raised up a German (Müller) to teach the English faith: He selected a Gipsy to
evangelize Anglo-Saxondom. God has made
of one blood all the nations of men, and has redeemed them with the one Blood
of the Cross; so that every soul that is redeemed is a debtor to every soul
that is lost.
THE DISCHARGE. What then is
the discharge of the debt? “I am a debtor: I am ready.” ‘I’ - all that
I am, by nature and grace; all that I have, in possessions; all that I am able
for, in ability: the only legal tender for payment is personal service, at home
or abroad: somehow, somewhere I must discharge the debt in person. So, “as much as in me,
I am ready to preach the gospel.” The heathen cannot pay the debt for one
another. What would we think of a man
who, being in debt, took advantage of the fact that his creditors, poor and
ignorant folk, did not know of the money due to them, and let them perish by
non-payment? One of the best governors
of the
THE COST. The payment
may be costly. Paul says, - “I am ready”: ready for what?
THE TIME-LIMIT. The debt must be liquidated now, or we must
in some measure appear before our Lord insolvent; and the time is short. We have reached a stupendous crisis in the
world’s history, the issue of which must either be the salvation of nations or
the death of true religion in the world.
The debt is enormous - it is to all nations; the debt is vital - it is a
matter of life or death; the debt is urgent - so far as we can liquidate it, it
must be liquidated now, or never.
Solemn hour: thus on the margin
Of the wondrous Day
When the former things have vanish’d,
Old things pass’d away;
Nothing but Himself before us,
Every shadow pass’d:
Sound we loud our word of witness,
For it is the last
One last word of solemn warning
To the world below;
One loud shout, that all may hear us
Hail Him, ere we go:
Once more let that Name be sounded
With a trumpet-tone, —
Here, amid the deep’ning shadows,
Then - before the Throne.
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109.
The Revelation
AN APOCALYPSE. The title of
the Revelation at once reveals it as literal and supernatural. For it is an apocalypse - i.e., an ‘unveiling’
- of Jesus Christ: “a cloud received Him out of their
sight,” and the Apocalypse is the gradual melting of that cloud, first
in vision, and then in fact. As a ‘revealing’ of what is behind the breaking veil, it is
a literal transcript of facts and events actually seen by John. So of some forty symbols in the Book, twenty
are explained, and thus cease to be symbols: an average of less than one
undeciphered symbol to a chapter does not make a book symbolic. Literal miracles - resurrection, rapture,
advent - confessedly close the Book: all earlier alleged miracles are therefore
literal also: for it is a coherent and consistent whole. Moreover this Book is a ‘prophecy’ (Rev. 1: 3);
and all prophecies, which God has declared fulfilled, have been fulfilled
literally - the virgin birth, Bethlehem, the call from Egypt, the entry on a
colt, thirty pieces of silver, the parted garments. If the Apocalypse is supernatural throughout,
it is literal: if it is literal throughout, it is supernatural.
A JUNCTION OF DISPOSITIONS. Miracle always
appears at the junctions of dispensations.
For under identical circumstances God acts identically: His action, in a
recurring crisis, cannot deviate from its original perfection. So our Lord carefully identifies our closing
age with former miraculous epochs. “As it came to pass in the days of Noah” - with
supernatural deliverances, as Enoch’s and Noah’s, and supernatural judgments,
as the Flood - “even so shall it be also in the days of
the Son of man: the flood came, and destroyed
them all. Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of
A FULFILMENT OF FORETOLD MIRACLE. Scripture
states again and again that miracles will be a supreme characteristic of the
last days. “And
it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” -
prophets will be abroad in the earth once more: “and I
will show WONDERS in the heaven
above, and SIGNS
on the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke”
(Acts 2: 17). Direct inspiration will have returned (Mark 13: 11): Legal prophets will wield miraculous
plagues (Rev. 11: 6): “and there shall be great earthquakes, and in divers places famines and pestilences; and there shall be terrors and GREAT SIGNS from heaven” (Luke
21: 11). The Apocalypse is the unfolding
of this miraculous drama.
A COVENANT OF MARVELS. The Covenant
of Marvels has never yet been fulfilled.
It runs thus: - “Behold, I make a covenant: before all
thy people I will do MARVELS,
such as have not been wrought in all the earth”
- and therefore greater than the miracles of Moses in Egypt - “nor in any nation: and all the
people among which thou art” - i.e.,
all nations, for among all nations is Israel scattered, and the marvels will
thus be worldwide - “shall see the work of the Lord,
for it is A
TERRIBLE THING that I do with thee” (Ex.
34: 10).
A CLIMAX OF NIQUITY. Abnormal
wickedness always provokes God to abnormal retribution. Gen. 6: 5; 13: 13; Num. 16: 29, 30; Luke 23: 28-31. As Grace follows the line of least
resistance, and wins the yielding heart, so Judgment follows the line of
maximum resistance, and smashes with appalling power. “Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel,
with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy the sinners out of it: and I
will punish THE WORLD for their EVIL” (Is.
13: 6). With man’s sin come to
the full, God’s wrath is come to the full also, in miraculous intervention: “Thy wrath came; and the time
to destroy them that destroy the earth” (Rev.
11: 18). It is unique sin which
provokes the unique judgments of the Apocalypse.
A STRUGGLE WITH SATANIC MIRACLE. Satanic
miracles abounding at the last will compel Divine miracle. “There shall arise
false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show GREAT
SIGNS and WONDERS; so as to lead astray, if
possible, ever the elect” (Matt. 24: 24).
Now “like as Jannes and Jambres, withstood Moses” - i.e.,
miraculously - “so do these also withstand the truth:
but they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be evident unto all men as”- i.e., by the counterworking of mightier
miracle - “theirs also [Jannes and Jambres] came to be” (2 Tim. 3: 8). Boils which Satan cannot cure; worldwide
earthquakes from which Satan cannot deliver; vast resurrections and raptures
which Satan cannot prevent; at last a chain which Satan cannot wrench from off
his own wrists: - the Apocalypse is the record of miracles incomparably mightier
than the miracles of Hell.
A VINDICATION OF THE GODHEAD. Miracle will
at last be essential to the vindication of the Godhead. For in the final crisis it will not only be a
clash of rival Christs - for there will be many false Christs: it will be an
awful collision between rival Gods. “He sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth AS
GOD” (2 Thess. 2: 4); and “all that dwell on the earth shall WORSHIP him” (Rev. 13: 8):
here is an anti-God in full blast and full power, “whose
coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and
wonders of falsehood” (2 Thess. 2: 9). So direct a challenge to sole deity, backed
by blinding miracle, forces the hand of Omnipotence for the vindication of the
Godhead, and sets in motion the tremendous drama of the Apocalypse. Thus the Revelation is a rending of the veil
between this and the unseen world, and a literal record of the miraculous
interventions of God.
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PART 2
BLUE ONLY
THE VANGUARD REPRINTS
Introduction to the “Vanguard
Reprints”
by Roel Velema
David Morrieson Panton (1870-1955), the author of the Vanguard
Reprints, ministered at Surrey Chapel,
He succeeded Robert Govett (1813-1901) in that pulpit. Panton was the founder and editor of Dawn
magazine, a strong voice for deep Scriptural and prophetical truth from 1924
until his death in 1955. He was known as “The Prince of Prophecy.”
David Panton was born in
DMP (as he was affectionately known), came to
DMP wrote numerous tracts and books, including Rapture and The Judgment
Seat of Christ.
In later years, because of his health, he preached only once a
month at Surrey Chapel, eventually retiring in 1941.
Mrs. Margaret Barber (1866-1930), a British missionary in
This indicates that the Vanguard Reprints have been written during
the first part of Panton’s ministry and probably before or soon after he
started to edit the Dawn Magazine in 1924. …
“We should also be aware that the Vanguard Reprints are often
outdated, due to the time they were written.
Nevertheless, the need was felt to make these 109 concise rich Bible
studies called the Vanguard Reprints completely available again, just as they
were published almost a century ago. In
fact the Vanguard Reprints contain 108 articles. Article no. 109 on The Revelation was
included in the original copy of the Vanguard Reprints, but not labelled as
such. Nevertheless it has been added.
The old English text has been retained. Only some minor typographical corrections
have been made.
Roel Velema Hattem, The Netherlands, July 2005 email: rjvelema@xs4all.nl website:
www.xs4all.nl/~rjvelema
* *
*
Appendix: List of subjects of the Vanguard
Reprints:
1 Seven Steps to Glory
55 Did Christ Rise as a Spirit?
2 Son or Lord - Which?
56 Excommunication and
Exclusion
3 The End of the Age
57 Christ
4 The Angel in the Fire
58
Emperor-Worship
Our Crown in Jeopardy
59 Brotherhood
6 The Fall of Man and the Love of God
60
Catholicity
7 The Lamb of God
61 The Miracles of Christ
8 The Disciple’s Use of Money
62
Seducing Spirits
9
63
Readiness for Rapture
64
Baptism
11 The Cross and the Kingdom
65 Expiation by Blood
12 Miraculous Gifts
66
The Church and the Kingdom
13 The Bread of God
67 Paul’s Autobiography
14 Burial to the Law
68
Why I believe the Whole Bible
69 The Ascension
16 Works Tested by Fire
70 The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day
17 The Place of the Dead
71 Probation after Death
18 Facts Every Man Ought to Know
72 Civil War
19
73 Laying Hands in the Sacrifice
20 A Board in the Tabernacle
74 Under Law to Christ
21 Exclusion from the Kingdom
75
False Christs
22 The Glories of
76 The Two Justifications
23 The Trial of Jesus
77
The City and the Salt
24 A Sacrificial Priesthood
78
25 The Higher Criticism
79 Counsel for Young Workers
26 Adam and Christ
80 Gethsemane and
27 The Judgment Seat of Christ
81 Rapture
28 The New Birth
82 The Ethics of Atonement
29 Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
83 Prayer
30 An Empty Tomb
84 The Servant of Jehovah
31 A Dying World
85 The Two Overcomings
32 An Unknown God
86 Witnesses to Christ
33 Ten Pounds
87 Watch
34 The Indestructible Jew
88 The Use of Firearms
35 Living Letters
89 The Sinless Christ
36 Schism
90 The Prophecy on Olivet
37 The Blood and the Soul
91 To Each His Work
38 The Prize of the Kingdom
92
The Seed and the Soil
39 Jehovah our Righteousness
93 Purgatory
40 Soul-Winning
94
The Image of the Invisible God
41 Onesimus
95 One Shall be Left
42 The Great Escape
96
Strangers and Pilgrims
43 A Cancelled Bond
97 The Creator Christ
44 The Blood and the Leaven
98
The Last Watch
45 The Vision of God
99 Latent Romanism
46 The Kingdom
100
Garning the Wheat
47 The Theology of Heaven
101 Lo, I am Come
48 Burial to Sin
102 The Coming Gnosticism
49 Heirs Wanted
103 Oaths
50 An Urgent Danger
104 Armageddon
51 Man and his Destiny
105 Fasting
52 The Parousia of Christ
106 Our Prize
53 The Greatness of Jesus
107 A Change of Dress
54 Social Reform
108 My Debt
109 The Revelation
* *
*
“THE VANGUARD” REPRINTS
1
Seven Steps to Glory
Which way do the steps to Glory slope? Downward.
Every step in the life of our Lord was a step downward. Let us trace
them.
The first was a MENTAL
RENUNCIATION. “Being originally in the form of God, [He] counted it not a
thing to be grasped” - a treasure impossible to be renounced - “to be on an
equality with God” (Phil. 2: 6). Christ was once in the full Form of God. “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high
and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. ... And one [seraph] cried unto
another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6: 1). Who is this? “These things said Isaiah, because
he saw [Christ’s] glory; and he spake of Him” (John 12: 41). All
Christ’s second step downward was into resignation of the Glory. He
“EMPTIED HIMSELF.” He resigned, not the Godhead, but equality
with the Godhead: He divested Himself of the garments of Deity: He put from Him
the blazing splendours, and the consuming fires, of the Throne. He might have come as Jehovah to Sinai. “There
were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice
of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled,
... because the Lord descended upon it in fire” (Ex. 19: 16). But our Lord came otherwise. Matt. 12: 19. A touch from Sinai was death: a touch from
Christ was life: for He had laid aside the terrors, but not the powers, of the
Godhead. “For your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might
become rich” (2 Cor. 8: 9).
Christ’s third step downward was into creation. He took “the form
of A SERVANT.” He might have merely disrobed: He might have
appeared as God did to Manoah. “Wherefore askest thou after my name, seeing it
is wonderful? ... When the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, the
angel of the Lord ascended in the flame ... And Manoah said, We have seen God”
(Jud. 13: 18). But Christ came as a
creature. “Behold, I will bring forth my
servant the Branch” (Zech. 3: 8). The
Root of David is David’s Maker: the Branch is a created Servant. Isa. 11: 1,
10; Rev. 22: 16.
Christ’s fourth step downward was into humanity. He was “made IN THE LIKENESS OF MEN.” He might have come - a servant indeed, a
creature - yet as one of the Princes in the Throne-room of Deity. So Gabriel came. “An angel of the Lord [stood] on the right
side of the altar of incense, ... and said, I am Gabriel, that stand in the
presence of God” (Luke 1: 19). But the
Word became flesh. John 1: 14; Gal. 4: 4.
Only the shoulders of the God-man could bear the sins of the world: the
Infinite entered the finite infinitely to atone. Heb. 10: 4-7. The Pharisees said: “Thou, being a man, makest
thyself God”: the reverse was the truth, - Thou, being God, makest thyself a
man. Heb. 2: 16-17; 1 Tim. 2: 5, 6.
Christ’s fifth step downward was into human renunciation. “Found in
fashion as a man, HE HUMBLED HIMSELF.” He might have come as Solomon. “So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of
the earth in riches and in wisdom. And
all the earth sought the presence of Solomon” (1 Kings 10: 23). The sceptre of Alexander, the ingots of
Solomon, the legions of Caesar, the bays of Shakespeare, the sword of Napoleon:
- “the devil showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.
... Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan” (Matt. 4: 8). Born in a borrowed manger, and buried in a
borrowed tomb, the Maker of the worlds had not where to lay His head.
Christ’s sixth step downward was into death. He became “obedient even unto DEATH.”
He might have been rapt as Enoch.
“Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found,
because God translated him: for before his translation he hath had witness
borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto God” (Heb. 11: 5). So had Christ. John 8: 29; Prov. 12: 28. But He chose to die: He chose not the chariot
and horses of fire. “I lay down My life for the sheep. ... No one taketh it
away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John. 10: 15, 18). The Hireling flees: the Good Shepherd
dies. The good pleasure of God saved
Enoch: the supreme pleasure of the Father slew the Son. Rom. 8: 32.
For “apart from shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9: 22).
Christ’s seventh step downward was into crucifixion. “Yea, the
death of THE CROSS.” He might have died as Moses. “So Moses the
servant of the Lord died there in the
Behold the seven steps! The
consequence? “Wherefore also” - for
glory is measured by renunciation - “God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him
the name which is above every name.”
Brother, mark the tremendous command. Downward is to be our every step which is to
lead upward to Glory. Matt. 10: 25. Luke 14: 10, 11, 33. “HAVE
THIS MIND IN YOU, WHICH WAS ALSO IN
CHRIST JESUS.”
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2
Son or Lord - Which?
“What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is He?” Our Lord states a problem by presenting an
enigma. “The son of David,” the
Pharisees answered (Matt. 22: 42). “How then,” Jesus replied, “doth David in
the Spirit call Him Lord? ... If David calleth Him Lord, how is He is son?”
Certain facts acutely intensify the problem.
(1) Without doubt Messiah was to be of David’s seed. “There shall come forth a shoot out of the
stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots: ... unto Him shall the nations
seek” (Isa. 11: 1). 2 Sam. 7: 13. “I
will raise unto David a righteous Branch: ... and this is His name whereby He
shall be called, The Lord our righteousness” (Jer. 23: 5). Luke 1: 32, 69. The Rabbis, no less than the Scriptures,
agreed, with one consent, that Christ was to be of David’s seed: so also the
multitudes. Matt. 12: 23.
(2) David called the Christ his Lord when moved by the Holy
Ghost. “David himself said [it] in the
Holy Spirit” (Mark 12: 36). 2 Sam. 23: 2.
It was neither error, nor falsehood, nor exaggeration, nor
self-deception: David called Christ his Lord by the infallible impulse of the
Holy Ghost. 1 Cor. 12: 3.
(3) The Lordship spoken of by David involves the Godhead. For the Psalm continues: “The Lord at thy
right hand” - David’s Lord just named, elevated to the throne of Deity - “shall
strike through kings in the day of His wrath.
He shall judge among the nations” (Ps. 110: 5). David’s Lord is the world’s final Judge: He
is God. Rom. 2: 16.
Here then is the enigma. If
the Christ is from eternity God, how can He be David’s Son: if He is born of
David, how can He be the eternal God?
The silence of the Pharisees is extraordinarily significant.
Three answers only were possible, and unbelief is confounded by
all.
(1) “Since David called Messiah Lord, Messiah could not be his Son.” This reply is the overthrow of the Word of
God, and therefore of God. Messiah was to be born in the city of
(2) “Since Messiah was David’s Son, He could not be David’s Lord.” Then why did David call Him Lord? Nay more: why did the Spirit of God move
David to call him, Lord? “He that
believeth not God hath made Him a liar”: if Christ is refused as David’s Lord,
we charge sin to the Holy Ghost.
(3) “Since Messiah was both Son and Lord of David, He must be both
man and God.” This would at once have
established the Messiah-ship of Jesus. Luke 2: 11. David’s God and David’s Child: “For unto us a
child is born, and His name shall be called ... the Mighty God” (Isa. 9: 6). Then why do ye not believe Him? Every mouth is stopped that all unbelief may
be brought in guilty before God: it was the silence of the confounded
intellect, but the unconverted heart.
These Pharisees had been dead for a score of years.
That is the Root. Before
Jesse was, He is: long after Jesse is dead, He is born. “Born of the seed of David according to the
flesh, who was declared to be the son of God with power ... by the resurrection
[out] of the dead” (
All silence before the enigma is a guilty silence. “What think ye of the Christ?” God said to
God: “Sit Thou on My right hand,” enthrone Thyself: you have never said that to
Christ. GOD HAS. David called Him Lord; will you? The Holy Spirit in David calls Him Lord; do
you? The man after God’s own heart said,
My Lord; the woman at, the tomb said, My Lord; the apostle wrestling with doubt
said, My Lord; the worn apostle of the Gentiles said, My Lord; the millions of
the sanctified have said, My Lord. If
your lips are locked, they may be locked in the silence of the lost. Jesus was born, as man, that He might obtain
what now He dispenses, as God: He became partaker of the human that we might
become partakers of the Divine. The Son of God became the Son of man, that the
sons of men might become the sons of God. “When the fullness of the time came, God
sent forth His Son” - the eternal God - “born of a woman”- the human Christ - “THAT WE MIGHT RECEIVE THE ADOPTION OF SONS”
- (Gal. 4: 4).
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3
The End of the Age
How will this present evil Age end?
“Not by the crash of revolution,” says Mr. F. B. Meyer, “but by the spiral staircase of evolution, shall
the world pass to perfect order and beauty.
The coral island of the golden age is by this time not very far from
emerging above the surface of the stormy waters.” Or, as Mr.
R. J. Campbell puts it: “I wish we could reach the Christian ideal of
destroying the Church by enabling the whole world to become a Church.” What saith the Scripture? For “we have the word of prophecy made more
sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as UNTO A LAMP shining in a dark place, until the day dawn” (2 Pet. 1: 19).
Our Lord decides once and for ever. “The field is the world; ... the
harvest is the end of the age”: “LET
BOTH [wheat and tares] GROW TOGETHER
UNTIL THE HARVEST” (Matt. 13: 30, 38).
This is the overthrow of Mr. Meyer.
(1) For the world in Harvest will be a piebald world: yellow grain
and blackish darnel, in blotches of sharply contrasted colour: not a globe
rolled into light. The moment of the
advent will be the discovery of earth’s dense darkness. “Behold, darkness shall
cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples” (Isa. 60: 2). Luke 18: 8.
(2) “By the spiral staircase of evolution”: - this supposes all
tares to evolve at last into wheat. But
the silent growth of wheat and tares evolves fruit, not an interchange of
nature: the poisonous darnel ripens for fire; the wheat ripens for the
barn. Dan. 12: 10. “Bind [the tares] in
bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into My barn” Rev. 14: 14-20.
(3) “Not by the crash of revolution”: that is, by no outside force,
but by inside goodness, the world is to be saved. But the Son of man, seated on the clouds,
lets fall a rapid succession of reaping angels, sweeping earth as with a mighty
scythe: not evolution, but revolution, wielded by perfect holiness, controlled
by perfect justice, and informed with perfect discrimination, will alone
dislodge iniquity from its empire of the world. “For the upright shall dwell in
the earth, and they that deal treacherously shall be rooted out of it” (Prov.
2: 21). Matt. 15: 13.
To extinguish the lamp of prophecy is to plunge the Church into
darkness. It is a cruel wrong to the
world, for it lulls the tares into expecting salvation without a miraculous
change of nature (Matt. 12: 33): it paralyzes missionary effort, by proclaiming
God’s Fatherhood to be universal, when Christ here reveals that our only hope
is a change of fatherhood: it corrupts church life by the frantic methods it
induces to convert tares into wheat in excess of God’s election of grace: at
last it endangers belief by making the Apocalyptic judgments so startling a
disillusionment as to rock all faith to its foundations. For all who extinguish God’s lamp the path is
involved in the most dangerous darkness. Solemn are the lessons of the TARES.
(1) “Between the wheat and the darnel,” says Jerome, “so long as it is in the blade, and is not come into ear,
there is a great resemblance, and it is either impossible, or very difficult,
to discriminate between the one and the other.”
All attempt (as by the Inquisition) to uproot the tares is forbidden: -
“lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them.” No less than Divine omniscience is needed for
the eternal severance of human souls. 2
Tim. 2: 19. 1 Cor. 4: 5.
(2) God will at last unmask all hypocrisy, and expose its perfect
iniquity. “When the grain is ‘headed out’” says Dr. Thompson, “a child cannot mistake tares for wheat”: the day
will arrive when sepulchres will be no longer whited. (The Parable probably bears especially upon
the destiny of nominal and real disciples in Christendom.) Rom. 2: 16.
(3) Punishment will be graded. “Bind [the tares] in bundles”: the
wicked are filed off in companies, each in his own order. Matt. 10: 15.
Rom. 2: 5. But all suffer the
vengeance of eternal fire. Rev. 21: 8.
Exquisite are the lessons of the WHEAT.
(1) No forest tree, deep-rooted in earth, but a fragile annual, for
ever passing in successive harvests; - the Church’s garner is a better
world. Heb. 13: 14.
(2) Wheat dies downward, as it ripens upward; the stalk and roots
are dead, as the grain is ripe: so the soul that dies to earth is the soul that
ripens to the Throne of God. It is the
sanctity of the relaxing grasp.
(3) A ripe wheat-field is a field of bowed heads: the heavier our
load of grace, the lowlier will be our faces.
Jas. 4: 5, 6.
(4) Sun after sun smites burning into the grain, and turns it to
sweetness: trial, for God’s child, is the burning of His Father’s
sunshine. 1 Pet. 4: 12-14.
(5) Wheat ripens by absorbing light: to abide in our Light is to
bear much fruit: abiding means ripening.
(6) Wheat is cut in its order of maturity: the rapture of
Firstfruits is prior to the rapture of Harvest.
Rev. 14: 4, 15. Unripe wheat
remains for the violent heats of the Tribulation. Luke 21: 36. Rev. 3: 3.
(7) The Husband-man delays till the crop ripens: “when the fruit is
ripe, immediately he putteth forth the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark
4: 29). The Kingdom waits for the
holiness of the sons of the Kingdom.
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4
The Angel in the Fire
On every high hill in the Old Testament a telescope is planted:
from every ancient mount of God we catch sight of
Who is the Angel of the Lord? A Divine Person.* “The angel of the Lord appeared unto
[Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; ... [and] said, I am the
God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to
look upon God” (Ex. 3: 2, 6). So when
Jacob had wrestled with the Angel, he found he had prevailed with God. So here:
- “Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord, [and said], We shall
surely die, because we have seen God” (Jud. 13: 21). Still we ask, with Manoah, “What is thy name?”
Who is the Divine Being that revealed God to the Patriarchs; the Angel of the
Covenant, the Angel of the Presence, the Jehovah-Angel, the Man that wrestled,
the Man that was the Lord? An apostle
answers. “No man hath seen God at any
time; the only-begotten SON, which
is in the bosom of the Father. He hath
declared Him” (John 1: 18). Here also
the Angel hints His identity. “Wherefore askest thou after my name, seeing it
is Wonderful?” Name with God are not so
much names, as realities: Wonderful is a title of Christ linked especially with
the wonder of wonders, the Incarnation.
“Unto us a child is born, ... and His name shall be called Wonderful” (Isa.
9: 6). Nor is the Atonement less a
wonder. “The Angel [in the fire] did
wondrously”: already our Lord’s thoughts and affections circle around the place
that is called
* See Gen. 48: 16; Ex. 23: 20; Jud 2: 1. But in Hag. 1: 13 it is applied to a prophet,
and in Mal. 2: 7 to a priest.
The action now begins.
Manoah offers the Angel meat and drink: the Angel bids him make of the
kid a burnt-offering. The disciples said
to Jesus, “Rabbi, eat”; but He answered; “My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent Me, and to accomplish His work” (John 4: 34): “sacrifice and offering Thou
wouldest not, but a body” - as an incarnate burnt-offering - “didst Thou
prepare for Me; ... then said I, Lo, I am come to do Thy will” (Heb. 3. 5). Then the Angel stept into the fire. Christ replaced all burnt-offerings: He is
the Angel in the Fire.
(1) The altar was a bare, natural rock, unchiseled of man. Ex. 20:
25. No tool but God’s shaped the mound
of
(2) The Angel stept on to the rock, and then into the fire. An altar is that which presents to God the
sin bearing sacrifice: its fire is the answering wrath revealed from God
against all unrighteousness. The altar
goes up: the fire comes down: the substitute perishes between. Christ stept on to the altar, bearing sin: He
stept into the fire, suffering wrath.
(3) The Angel “caused a wonder to take place” (Lange). What was the
wonder? That He survived the fire. The
sacrifice was wrapt in fire: so was Christ.
The sacrifice was consumed in the fire: so was not Christ. Solitary
among all sacrifices, He rose out of death whither no fire can follow. Why?
Because, as fire feeds on fuel, so wrath consumes sin; but here was a
Lamb, without spot, without blemish, THE
LAMB OF GOD.
(4) The Angel remained unknown until the sacrifice had been
offered. “Thou must offer it unto the
Lord. For Manoah knew not that he was
the angel of the Lord” John 1: 10. Not
until He had passed through the fire was Jesus “declared to be the Son of God
with power ... by the resurrection of the dead” (
Terror falls upon Manoah.
God has been in the Fire. “All
the multitudes, ... when they beheld the things that were done, returned
smiting their breasts” (Luke 23: 48): His murderers, realising whom they had
crucified, cry, “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2: 37). To see God is, for a sinner, to die: to have
slain, with all mankind, the Son of God is to die eternally. But the sacrifice removes the terror. “If the Lord were pleased to kill us, He
would not have received a burnt-offering.”
The climax of human sin is also the climax of Divine love. The Angel of the Lord - here is an infinite
Sacrifice: the Angel steps on to the altar - here is a Bearer of guilt: the
Angel enters the fire - here is an absorption of wrath: the Angel ascends out
of the flame - behold God’s reception of a perfect atonement. Heb. 9: 12.
God would never have made
What still remains? Our
choice between the Angel and the Fire.
God’s wrath must rest on sin: if in the Angel, we are out of the fire;
out of the Angel, we must abide in the fire, Rev. 21: 8.
Will you ask God to place you at once in Christ? Rom. 8: 1. “By which will we have been sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10: 10).
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5
Our Crown in Jeopardy
The inspired record exists to prove the parallel: God so wrought,
that we might know His character; He so wrote, that we might know it for
ever. Moreover the parallel points
specifically to the acts of judgment. “They
were overthrown in the wilderness. Now
these things” - the repeated overthrows - “were our examples.” The judgments are embedded in the Word as in
rock for ever, that the Wilderness should become the kindergarten of the
Church. To deny the parallel is to
overthrow inspiration: to ignore the parallel is to silence the Scripture: to
admit the parallel is to disclose a momentous peril to the believer in Christ.
The apostle lays down, in figure, the ample bedrock of our own
spiritual standing. “Our fathers were
all under the cloud” - redeemed by the blood of the Lamb - “and all passed
through the sea” - separated from a godless world - “and were all baptised unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea” - a people buried to sin - “and did all eat
the same spiritual meat” - at the Lord’s Table - “and did all drink the same
spiritual drink” - the Spirit from the smitten Lord - “for they drank of a
spiritual rock; that followed them: and the rock was Christ.” Standing in grace could hardly be stated, in
so few words, more exhaustively: if privilege could render immune,
God’s sharp dilemma impales us on its one horn or on the
other. Overthrown
“Know ye not that they which run in a race all run, but one
receiveth THE PRIZE? Even so run, that ye may attain. … For* I would not, brethren, have you ignorant, how
that our fathers,” so privileged, “were overthrown.” God never put us under the Blood to withdraw
us from its blessed efficacy (Rom. 8: 1; John 10: 27-29; Rom. 11: 29; Heb. 9:
12): neither has He ever presented the Prize
as an irrevocable gift. What is the
imperilled prize? “They do it to receive
a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
I therefore ... buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any
means, after that I have preached to others, I myself” - even Paul - “should be
rejected [for the crown].” As fivefold
was the privilege and fivefold the overthrow, so even the best saints need
cautioning against the worst sins. 1 Cor. 6: 9. Heb. 4: 11. “He is not crowned, except he have contended
lawfully” (2 Tim. 2: 5). Jas 1: 12. Rev. 3: 11.
The badge, the title, the proof of possession for the
* See R.V. and Critical Editions
Nevertheless the command abides: Matt. 6: 33. “Take heed” - never
presume: “God is faithful” - never despair. Every escape out of temptation is a
straight path into the coming Glory. “God
is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but
will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure
it.” God offers prizes in order that we
may win them: His heart yearns for our entry into the Kingdom. “Walk worthily of God, who is calling you
into His own kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2: 12). The entrance lies in the worthy walk. Matt.
7: 21. If our hearts linger in
“NOW THESE THINGS HAPPENED UNTO
THEM BY WAY OF EXAMPLE; AND THEY WERE WRITTEN FOR OUR ADMONITION, UPON WHOM THE ENDS OF THE AGES ARE COME.”
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6
The Fall of Man and the Love
of God
Out of two attributes dominant in the character of the Most High
flow all the dealings of God with man: -Justice and Mercy. Mercy is first in the field. How so?
Creation was a sovereign act of the love of God. Called out of
nothingness, in which he had no claim on God to be created, into a sphere where
every sense found a world for its enjoyment, and every desire had God for its
satisfaction, CREATION was an act of
pure and undiluted grace. Grace spoke
God’s first word to man - “And God blessed them” (Gen. 1: 22). Justice stept almost as promptly into the
field. A law is enacted, - “Thou shalt
not eat of it”; a penalty is attached, - “In the day thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.” What does this
mean? Mercy says, - “I have given you
life”: Justice says, - “Keep it holy.”
Mercy says, - “I have made you upright”: Justice says, - “Keep yourself
as upright as you were made.” Mark one
fact of supreme importance. The command
implies that man can fall. God cannot fall (Jas. 1: 17): any one not God, can,
and, of necessity, may: on no other condition could God make worlds at
all. Unchangeableness, like eternity or
infinity, belongs to God alone, an attribute which He can no more transmit to
the creature than eternity or infinity; and liability to change necessarily
involves liability to fall. I may fall,
because I am not God. So Love said, - “I
have given you life”: Righteousness said, - “Keep it holy.”
Now arises the first dreadful check to the love of God: - the FALL. Eccl. 7: 29. The Tempter came: they listened: they
fell. God never decreed their fall: He
never even decreed to permit it: He simply left them alone. God made man
upright: man had no claim on God to keep him upright. His liability to fall arose from his being a
creature; his actual fall was his own choice.
Instantly the penalty of the law flashed down like the blade of a
guillotine. Guilt, is imputed (Rom. 5:
12): the stock is ruined (Ps. 51: 5): sin becomes the law of my members (Rom.
7: 14, 23). The deadly virus of sin
enters the one blood of which God has made all nations. One star alone rose on
the tragic gloom. Probably by the Fall
alone could the creature learn that Jehovah alone changes not: by no means less
awful could he read the impassable gulf between himself and the dreadful
perfections of his Maker.
Mercy now re-enters the field.
What claim has man, fallen, on God?
None whatever. Innocent, he had
no claim on God to uphold: a rebel, far less has he any claim to be
restored. Sovereign Mercy now alone can
save. REDEMPTION must deliver from
the outside, for a stone bounding down a hillside can be saved by no inherent
force: yet also from the inside, for man must be justified as man, or not at
all. Behold the Incarnation! I Cor. xv.
21, 47.
But the Incarnation cannot save.
Justice cries, - “Hold! Mercy, you are free to grant favours only where
Justice is not outraged: I said, ‘If thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die’:
plunge not the bosom of God into a suicidal war of fratricidal attributes.” Mercy replies: - “That has been in my heart
from the first. Therefore behold a lamb for a man - Abel: a lamb for a family -
Noah; a lamb for a household -
A last check to the love of God now confronts us more dreadful even
than the fall. What is it? Left alone not one human soul would ever have
accepted the Gospel of Christ. A bowl
that has a twist in it will always swerve with its bias: cast it a million
times, and a million times it will swerve: so a fallen nature carries in it a
perpetually evil will. We may love
Christ if we will: left to ourselves we never will. Once again steps in tireless, patient,
infinite Grace. Creation - pure mercy;
Redemption - pure mercy; both are now made effectual for good by the amazing
mercy of ELECTION. Eph. 1: 3-5. The truth lodge the whole glory in God. Election is the love of God removing the
scales from our eyes, to behold the precipice at our feet, and to leap back,
with trembling joy, into the Arms that save.
Election inclines the will to will to be saved: when man’s will (Rev.
22: 17) coincides with God’s will (1 Tim. 2: 4), salvation is
instantaneous. Yet Justice has not left
the field. The non-elect are hurrying themselves to death with all their might;
they harden themselves; they love sin with their whole soul: Justice merely
lets them alone. Christ’s death can save all the world if they believe: it will
save all those ordained to eternal life. Acts. 13: 48. The names of the elect are in the Lamb’s Book
of Life; but this offers no obstacle to the salvation of anyone else: not “he
that is elected not,” but “he that believeth not,” is condemned. Mark 16: 16. God never decreed the death of him that dieth
(Ezek. 18: 32; 1 Tim. 2: 4; 2 Pet. 3: 9): neither did He see aught in me which
deserved anything but death. God says
again and again that nothing in us prompted Him to choose us. Rom. 9: 11. The reasons of that choice lie in a region
human foot has never travelled.
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Rom.
11: 33).
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7
The Lamb of God
1. - LAMB
OF THE PASSOVER HAD TO BE TAKEN UP ON THE TENTH DAY OF THE FIRST MONTH. “In
the tenth day of the [first] month they shall take to them every man a lamb” (Ex.
12: 3). In that month Jesus was
crucified; and John tells us the day on which He entered
2. - THE
LAMB WAS TO BE BROUGHT ON THE DAY THAT IT WAS TETHERED.
Every householder was to “take” a lamb, by purchase, if not already
possessed. 2 Kings 12: 16. Mark 11: 15.
As soon as the supper at
3. - THE
LAMB WAS TO BE KEPT TETHERED FOR FOUR DAYS WITHIN REACH OF THE PLACE OF
SLAUGHTER. “Ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day
of the same month” (Ex. 12: 6). From the tenth to the fourteenth Judas kept
watch over the bought Lamb, with a view to its sacrifice: “they weighed unto
him thirty pieces of silver. And from
that time he sought opportunity to deliver Him unto them.” Each day (which
seems to have included a Sabbath) was spent in
4. - THE
LAMB MUST BE OF SPECIAL BIRTH, CHARACTER, AND BEHAVIOR. (1)
It must be a firstborn (Ex. 13: 2): Jesus could not have been the Lamb did we
not read - “she brought forth her firstborn son” (Luke 2: 7). (2) It must be without any evil-favoredness (Deut.
17: 1); “your lamb shall be without blemish” (Ex. 12: 5): so Pilate pronounced,
“I find no fault in Him at all” (John 18: 38); and Caiaphas, the priestly
examiner of lambs, pronounced the witnesses against him false. Matt. 26: 60. 1
Pet. 1: 19. (3) The prophets foretold
Messiah as standing on His death-day as a dumb lamb (Isa. 53: 7): “and He gave
him no answer, not even to one word” (Matt. 27: 14).
5. - THE
LAMB MUST BE KILLED ON A SPECIFIC DATE. “They killed” - not ate - “the
passover on the fourteenth day of the first month” (2 Chron. 35: 1): “the whole
congregation of
6. - NO
BONE OF THE LAMB MIGHT BE BROKEN. “Neither shall ye break a
bone thereof” (Ex. 12: 46). The Samaritans, whose sacrifices to-day are living
survivals of Jewish ritual, pierce each lamb by a wooden spit, with a cross-bar
near the extremity; that is, they transfix the lamb with a cross, they crucify
it.
7. - THE
BLOOD OF THE LAMB ALONE COULD GUARD THE HOUSEHOLD FROM THE ANGEL OF DEATH. Ex.
12: 23. Blood on the overarching lintels
- for none can mount to Heaven save through blood: blood on the right post,
blood on the left post - for none can pass into salvation except through blood:
but no blood on the threshold - for woe be to the soul that treads under foot
the blood of the Son of God. Heb. 10: 29. Will you pass through and under God’s
blood-stained archway now? “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world.” “Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the
wrath of God through Him” (Rom. 5: 9).
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8
The Disciple’s Use of Money
A STEWARD is one who handles another person’s goods,
and such is every Christian: all money in our hands is a TRUST FUND. Why? Because “the silver is Mine, and the gold is
Mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2: 8).
The expenditure of the fund will be examined by the Lord of the
steward. “After a long time the lord of
those servants cometh, and maketh a reckoning with them” (Matt. 25: 19): “so
then each one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14: 12). Therefore “trade ye herewith till I come” (Luke
19: 13).
Two sharply defined characteristics stand out in the STEWARD our Lord pictures (Luke 16:
1-13): a wise foresight, and a deliberate unscrupulousness. As a child of this evil generation, he
defrauds his master, and so is called by Christ a steward of unrighteousness:
but - and on this the whole parable turns - his foresight is so wise as to be
our example forever. Here is the
parallel. He is a steward: so am I. For his evil generation he acts with great
wisdom: for my holy generation I must be no less wise. He fears poverty in old age: I am to fear
poverty in eternity. His stewardship was
drawing rapidly to a close: so is mine.
The wealth slipping from his grasp had to be used immediately: so must
mine. He strains every nerve to mould
the future through the present: so ought I.
Wise foresight that uses money with a view to the future his lord
commends: so will mine. Yet - this is
the startling summary of our Lord - so few, so rare, so solitary are the
Christians who are thus wise that our Lord has practically to condemn us
all. “The sons of this age are wiser
than the sons of the light.”
“One great purpose of this life is to form friendships for the next”:
Christ tells us how to do it. “I say unto you, Make to yourselves FRIENDS by means of the mammon of
unrighteousness [the wealth of a fallen world]; that, when it shall fail, they
may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.”
Do righteously what the Steward did unrighteously: by bringing joy into
the sorrowing face now prepare for yourself a royal welcome then. A small gift can purchase an eternal
gratitude. So money is wisely invested
only when it is spent on others: for what we keep we lose, and what we give we
retain: and investment for eternity can be made only by expenditure in
time. Nor does this apply to the wealthy
only. “He that is faithful in a very
little”- the poorest disciple - “is faithful also in much”. Mark 12: 43, 44. It is “according as a man hath, not according
as he hath not” (2 Cor. 8: 12): for every disciple, his handling of what he has
daily reveals to God what he is; and day by day it decides his eternal
investments. All needs are thus met: -
God’s requirement of His own (1 Chron. 29: 14); the distress of the needy (1
John 3: 17); and the development of unselfishness (Acts 20: 35) by perhaps the
most searching test to which character can be put. Who but God could have conceived so daring,
so unearthly, so divine a method of investment?
Prov. 11: 24. Luke 6: 38. The Christian steers by a star invisible from
earth.
Our Lord’s next point is of vast importance. Character so tested in time is the ground of
God’s promotion to wealth in eternity. “If
therefore ye have been unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to
your trust the TRUE RICHES?” Not
God: for He says, - “It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful”
(I Cor. iv. 2). Christ assumes that the
true riches lie in the eternal tabernacles.
John 14: 2. Matt. 6: 20. Riches
in this ye are a phantom wealth, a ghost of possession, in which one of two
things always happens, - either it flees from us, or we flee from it. Ps. 39: 6. Prov. 23: 5. 1 John 2: 17. “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many
years. ... But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night is thy soul required of
thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?” (Luke 12:
20). Riches in the age to come are
unsoiled, uncorrupting, unforfeited; the true riches, the mammon of
righteousness. Here is revealed the true value of money. He who is faithful in a cottage will be
faithful in a palace; he who is righteous in a field will be righteous in a
province: God is shaping, and training, and, above all, searching for hands
that can be trusted with the true riches.
In whom does He find them? In the
faithful stewards of to-day. “Well done,
good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
set thee over many things: enter thou into the
joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25: 21).
A lovely point remains.
Faithful stewardship on earth culminates in personal ownership in
heaven. “And if ye have not been
faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is YOUR OWN?” Riches in heaven are not a stewardship, but a
possession; an irrevocable gift, and therefore of incomparable value. We amass in heaven by expending on earth: we
grasp the true riches by a wise expenditure of the false. Who stands security? God Himself.
“He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and his good
deed will He pay him again” (Prov. 19: 17).
What percentage is promised? Ten
thousand. “Every one that hath left houses, ... or lands, for My name’s sake, shall
receive a hundred-fold”(Matt. 19: 29), - i.e., of the capital so invested. What is the stewardship? “We brought nothing into this world, and it
is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Tim. 6: 7), - a stewardship sharply
defined by cradle and grave.
What is the ownership? “Sell
that ye have, and give alms; make for yourselves purses which wax not old, a
treasure in the heavens that faileth not” (Luke 12: 33), the eternal wealth,
our own. Solemn is our Lord’s
summary. Two master-methods of handling
money exist in the world to-day, and two only, - hoarding for self, and
spending for God: two tempers so irreconcilable, that their simultaneous
adoption is impossible. “No servant can
serve two masters. YE CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON.”
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9
The heart of all sacerdotalism is THE MASS. If there be a
priesthood, there must be a sacrifice. Heb. 8: 3. “The body and blood of Christ,”
says the Creed of the Council of Trent, “together with His soul and divinity,
are daily sacrificed on the altar by priests.” Or, as Dr. Moberly of Oxford puts it, the church “in her eucharistic
worship on earth is identified with Christ’s sacrificial self-oblation to the
Father.” Here is the keystone on which
rests the entire arch of sacerdotalism: if it be removed, the archway falls in
ruins. What saith God?
2. -
Why (1) did he offer many?
Because no sacrifice under the Law covered every sin. The fivefold offerings (Heb. x. 8);
sacrifices for the priests, sacrifices for the people (Heb. 7: 27); a lamb for
a man, or a lamb for the nation: - every sacrifice was partial and
limited. But this Priest’s offering
covers all sin. “He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down.” 1
John 2: 2.
Why (2) did the priest offer
often? Because no sacrifice under
the Law atoned for ever. This year’s lamb was no atonement for last year’s sin:
much less could any sacrifice atone forward.
But “He, when He had offered one sacrifice ... for ever, sat down.”
Why (3) did the priest offer
the same sacrifices? Because no
sacrifice under the Law cured the sin. Heb.
x. 1-4. The same sins, repeated, called
for the same sacrifices: “the which can never take away sins.” But “He was manifested to take away sins” (1
John 3: 5), both removing their guilt, and breaking their power: “for by one
offering He hath perfected for ever” - the removal of the guilt - “them who are
being sanctified” (Alford) - the
breaking of the power. Christ’s blood
cures, as well as atones. Thus the Levitical
sacrifices were numerous, because partial; frequent, because temporary; and
repeated, because ineffectual; whereas
3. - THE SACRIFICE AVAILS BECAUSE
IT IS ENDED. “Now, where remission [of sins] is, there is
no more offering for sin.” Why? Because God never demands a victim
twice. One offering having been made for
all sin, all sin-offering ceases: the world-penalty has been borne by a
world-sacrifice: God is satisfied with the work of the seated Priest: there is
no more sacrifice for sins. “Christ also,
having been once for all offered to bear the sins of many” (Heb. 9: 28), “through
His own blood entered in once for all” (Heb. 9: 12): so that “we have been
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb.
10: 10): and He therefore “needeth not daily ... to offer up sacrifices: ... for
this He did once for all, when He offered up Himself” (Heb. 7: 27). To repeat Christ’s sacrifice is to charge it
with failure: to renounce the forgiveness of sins: to offer what none but He
can offer without daring impiety (Heb. 9: 14): and to subject Him daily (which
is impossible) to the agonies of
4. - THE PRICE OF FORGIVENESS
IS BLOOD MORE COSTLY THAN A THOUSAND WORLDS. Then think not lightly of forgiveness. Accept it. The Priest is seated - therefore
the work is done: He is seated with God - therefore you may be as satisfied as
God: He has offered for the sins of the whole world - therefore for yours: He
has offered for every sin - therefore for your worst: He has offered it for
ever - therefore it is an everlasting pardon: He has offered it as God’s cure
for sin - therefore it alone can cure your sin: He has offered it once for all
- therefore eternity holds no second salvation. Accept it.
“THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST
HIS SON CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SIN” (1 John 1: 7).
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10
Readiness for Rapture
“Pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these
things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:
36). God has not revealed the date of
the advent in order that we may always be watchful: nor has He revealed the
standard of holiness for rapture in order that we may be always pressing on to
perfection. What is required?
1. -
THE GIRT LOIN: “Let your
loins be girded about” (Luke 12: 35).
Flowing Oriental garments, if loosed, check work, and impede
flight. “Thus shall ye eat it; with your
loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand: and ye
shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s passover. For I will go through
2. - THE BURNING LAMP: “Let your lamps be burning.”
Lamps are kept burning at night only: and all night, unless we
sleep. “Now it is high time for you to
awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first
believed. The night is far spent, and
the day is at hand” (Rom. 13: 11). “The
spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord” (Prov. 20: 27): every disciple is a
lit lamp: and right through the moral midnight Christ expects a burning flame.
Of John He said: “He was the lamp” holding the Light, “that burneth and shineth”
(John 5: 35): “from evening to morning before the Lord” the lamp is “to burn
continually” (Ex. 27: 20). Burning
without shining - zeal without knowledge: shining without burning - light
without love: God demands both: burning with heat to God, shining with light to
men. Matt. 5: 16.
3. - THE FIXT GAZE: “Be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their lord.” Christ said: “It is expedient that I go away”;
He never said, It is expedient that I stay away: He commands conscious
acceptance of the truth of the second coming.
A visionary is one who sees visions that have no correspondence with
reality: the looking disciple beholds the march of God’s purposes from eternity
to eternity, crystallising into fact as they precipitate into time; so that
every prophetic word is an inevitable fact.
“Watch for ye know not the hour”: “Pray that ye may be accounted worthy”:
perpetual watchfulness; perpetual prayer; these are the mind and heart that
come from God. So, “blessed are those
servants.” Not, blessed are all
servants; but, “blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when He cometh shall
find watching.” Heb. 9: 28; Tit. 2: 13;
2 Tim. 4: 8; Rev. 3: 10. The carnal
disciple forfeits the beatitude. Matt.
24: 48-51; Luke 21: 34; Rev. 3: 3. The
deeper the midnight, the more urgent the vigil.
The first watch has yesterday’s wakefulness in it; the fourth watch has
to-morrow’s wakefulness in it: but, “if He shall come in the second watch, and
if in the third, and find them so, blessed are those servants.” Christ returns later than the early church
thought - not in the first watch; but earlier than the last churches will dream
- not in the fourth watch: not so early as impatience desires, nor so late as
carelessness assumes. The unknown hour
of the burglary compels that the householder sit up all night: watching, in
The fruit of the vigil is such as to make the loss of a thousand
worlds as dust in the balance. “He
cometh” - inquisition, approval, promotion; “He maketh them sit down” - rest,
glory, enthronement; “HE SERVES THEM”
- the King of kings girding Himself once again with a towel, at the side of His
watchful child. This is a verse beyond
all human comment. Does Christ speak the
truth? He does. Does He always speak the truth? He does. Then is this an absolute fact? It is.
Then build all life upon this fact, for to build on aught else is faithlessness
to Him, and folly for eternity, “Every man is worth just so much as the things
about which he busies himself.” The girt
loin - incessant service: the burning lamp - incessant holiness: the fixt gaze
- incessant vigil: finally,
4. - THE PREPARED LIFE: incessant readiness. “Be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye
think not the Son of Man cometh.” Death
can be sudden, but it nearly always throws out warning symptoms: there will be
no warning symptoms here. 1 Thess. 5: 2. Sudden as an avalanche, swift as the
lightning, irrevocable as death - one flash, and the watchful will be gone, and
the last judgments will be here. Matt.
24: 40-42. 1 Cor. 15: 52. One fact is
supreme. Christ might have returned at
any moment these eighteen hundred years: He may return at any moment now. Much unfulfilled prophecy remains before He
comes with His saints: none, before He comes for them. Therefore “become” - so the Greek - “ye also
ready.” One known sin undropt, one known
command unobeyed, one known truth unbelieved, one part of the life knowingly
unyielded, and we stand in jeopardy. Unbeliever, the last shadows are falling
across the world, and therefore across your life: yet you are still not
ready. But “there is time” - as Napoleon
said, on the news of a great defeat - “to win a victory before the sun goes
down.” Your coming Judge is your present
Saviour: “BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND THOU SHALT BE SAVED.”
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11
The Cross and the Kingdom
Upon a mountain Moses received the Decalogue: upon a mountain
Elijah confounded Baal’s prophets: upon a mountain Jesus, with Moses and
Elijah, reveals Himself. The mountains
are the beacon-lights God kindles down the ages. But all culminate in
“There be some of them that stand here, which shall in no wise
taste of death, till they see the
The Kingdom will be on [this] EARTH.
The Transfiguration was an earthly scene: no angels appear throughout:
Elijah is type of rapt saints, Moses of risen saints, and the disciples of
nations in the flesh: and even after the handing over of the kingdom to God (1
Cor. 15: 24), mankind is planted afresh upon a new earth. Rev. xxi. 1. On the
eve of the Advent the Elder-angels in heaven cry: - “Thou didst purchase unto
God with Thy blood men of every tribe; ... and
they reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5: 9). Matt. 5: 5. For the gates of Hades - as our Lord has just
said - prevail not to imprison buried Moses: rapt Elijah returns to earth, as
do the armies of heaven with Christ. Rev. 19: 14. Jude 14. The City in the heavens, overhanging earth,
will be the metropolis from which the Millennial
rulers will reign. Rev. 19: 7; 21: 2.
Selections from the redeemed of all ages are in the Kingdom: all
who are “ACCOUNTED WORTHY to attain
to that age, and the resurrection from [among] the dead” (Luke 20: 35). From the patriarchs and prophets - as Elijah:
from the Law - as Moses: from the Church - as Peter, John, and James, the only
three disciples whom Jesus re-named. “To him that overcometh, to him will I
give ... a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written” (Rev. 2: 17). The Kingdom is the reward of the holy (Eph. 5: 3-6), the sufferer (Matt. 5: 10), the
obedient (Matt. 7: 21), the martyr
(Matt. 10: 39). “Thou hast a few names in
Yet the bed-rock beneath the Kingdom is the CROSS. It is the absorbing
theme of the Glory. Eph. 2: 7. The
‘going out’ of the Camp, to atone; the ‘going out’ of life, laid down; the
‘going out’ of the tomb, left empty; the ‘going out’ of a world, redeemed: no
plant will ever bloom in our Paradise, no note will ever thrill in our songs,
no jewel will ever gleam in our crown, that is not the fruit of the exodus of
Jesus. For good works are but the foam
on a wave which started at the cross. “Work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in
you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2: 12). 1 Cor. 15:
10. Gal. 2: 20. So we seek the Kingdom
on our knees. “And as He was praying, the
fashion of His countenance was altered, and His raiment became white and
dazzling.” So pray! “Watch ye therefore,
and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things
that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21: 36).
Behold the Man! “Jesus was found alone?” God had appeared visibly
to Moses: He had responded with lightnings to Elijah: but the servants
disappear in the revealing of the Son. “This is My SON, My chosen: hear ye Him.”
The moon of the Law and the stars of the Prophets die out of the sky in
the glory of the dawn: the cross itself takes its value only from the Person
who was on it. Moses tarried with God
till, saturated with glory from without, his face shone: Jesus, not in face
only, but even in raiment, blazed forth at will with the glory of the Godhead,
from within. A heathen ruler, on his
deathbed, ordered his servants to make a large cross, and place it in his
bedchamber. “Now,” he said, “lay me on it”: and as he thus lay dying, looking
by faith to the blood of Christ, he cried, - “It lifts me! it lifts me! Jesus
saves me!” Beneath all redemption, and
all glory, lies the cross.
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12
Miraculous Gifts
1. - Is it not a fact that miraculous orders
were inherent in the church as it left the hands of God? “God hath set some in the church, first
apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of
healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues”(1 Cor 12: 28). “He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets;
and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of
Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of
the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4: 11). 1 Tim. 1: 18. Acts 8: 18.
2. - Is it not a fact that gifts of miracle
spring essentially out of justification by faith? “This only would I learn from you, Received
ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? ... He
therefore that supplieth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth
he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3: 2). “These
signs shall follow them that believe: in My name shall they cast out devils; they
shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink
any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the
sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16: 17). John 7: 38, 39.
3. - Is it not a fact that God’s gifts,
which are never revoked, deepen holiness, enlarge knowledge, and constitute the
true wealth of the church? “The gifts
and the calling of God are without repentance”(Rom. xi. 29). “I long to see you,
that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be
established”(Rom. i. 11). “He that
speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself” (1 Cor. 14: 4). “Ye have an anointing
from the Holy One, and ye know all things; and ye need not that any one teach
you” (1 John 2: 20, 27). John 16: 13. 1 Cor. 2: 15. 1 Cor. 14: 3. “In everything ye were enriched in Him, in
all utterance and all knowledge; so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for
the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1: 5).
4. - Is it not a fact that miraculous gifts,
lapsing with the fall of the church into worldliness and justification by
works, nevertheless God still bids us seek?
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that
I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go
unto the Father” (John 14: 12). “I would
have you all speak with tongues”: “but desire earnestly the greater gifts”: “follow
after love; yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may
prophesy”: “desire earnestly to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues”
(1 Cor. 14: 5; 12: 31; 14: 1, 39). “For to you is the promise [of the gift of
the Holy Ghost], and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as
many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him” (Acts 2: 39).
5. - Is it not a fact that the divine tests
imply the possibility of either spirit manifesting itself at any moment, while
ensuring the perfect safety of all tested intercourse? “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove
the spirits, whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out
into the world. Hereby know ye the
Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God: every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God” (1 John
4: 1). “Wherefore I give you to
understand, that no man speaking in the Spirit of God” - i.e., no inspired man
- ”saith, Jesus is anathema; and no man”- i.e., inspired - “can say, Jesus is
Lord, but in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 3). Matt. 7: 15-20. Gal. 1: 8. 2 John
7. “Quench not the Spirit; despise not
prophesyings; prove all things; hold fast that which is good; abstain from
every form of evil” (1 Thess. 5: 19). Rev. 2: 2.
6. - Is it not a fact that miraculous
evangelising powers were never more needed than at the present moment amongst
the increased masses of mankind? “Christ wrought through me, for the obedience
of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the
power of the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 15: 18). “God also hearing witness with them, both
by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Ghost, according
to His own will” (Heb. 2: 4). “They went
forth everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the
signs that followed” (Mark 16: 20). “And
now, Lord, ... grant unto Thy servants to speak Thy word with all boldness, while
Thou stretchest forth Thy hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done
through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus” (Acts 4: 29).
7. - Is it not a fact that prophecy
indicates the restored activity of inspiration and miracle in the neighbourhood
of the second advent? “And the gospel
must first be preached unto all the nations.
And when they lead you to judgment, ... whatsoever shall be given you in
that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost”(Mark
xiii. 10). “And it shall be in the last
days, saith God, I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons
and your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2: 17, 20). “Behold, the husbandman [God: John 15: 1] waiteth
for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receive
the early and the latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for
the coming of the Lord is at hand” (Jas. 5: 7).
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13
The Bread of God
“I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if any man
eat of this bread, he shall live for ever” (John 6: 51).
1. - See the preparation of the Bread. Bread passes through three processes before
it can be eaten. (1) “Bread corn is
bruised” (Isa. 28: 28), or ground, or crushed into flour - an emblem of the
deepest suffering. Peter said to the
Lord, Spare Thyself; the Lord said to Peter, Deny thyself: and none but God has
ever known the sore and wounded spirit carried by the Son of God. “Reproach,” He says, “has broken My heart” (Ps.
69: 20). The Bread of Life was “wounded
for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities” (Isa. 53: 5). (2) The flour must pass under the fire. Man could crush Him, and did: only God could
inflict on Him the fires of divine wrath, and He did. Jesus, as the Lamb, became identified with
the loathsome iniquities of mankind: what a horrible thing to God! What a horror to Christ! “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou
answerest not”(Ps. 22: 1). The fire of
the judgment-furnace drove its heat through and through the Bread of Life. (3) The loaf must be broken before it is
eaten. Had our Lord stopped at a bruised
life, or come down, alive, from a wrath-carrying cross, we could not have been
saved. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood” - so
severed in judicial death – “ye have no life:” that is, I must die that you may
live; I must take the place of your forfeited life. Not, I have become flesh for the life of the
world; but, “The bread which I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world:”
and “this is My body, which is broken for you,” bruised in life, burnt in
suffering, broken in death.
2. - See an ingredient absent from this
Bread. “No meal offering ... shall be
made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, as an offering made by fire unto
the Lord” (Lev. 2: 11). Behold the
sinlessness of Jesus. Leaven is ferment,
or corruption, the least crumb of which, dropt into the dough, permeates the
loaf: the least sin, so contagious is it, so all-devouring, would have made of
Christ, Bread of death. “He who knew no
sin” (2 Cor. 5: 21); “He who did no sin” (1 Pet. 2: 22); He who was “without
sin” (Heb. 4: 15); in whom “is no sin”(1 John 3: 5); - “He whom the Father
sanctified” - as consecrated Bread - “and sent into the world” - as Bread of
God - was “holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners” (Heb. 7: 26).
3. - See the qualities of the Bread. (1) It is Bread from heaven,
4. - See the distribution of the Bread. How much did our Lord charge for the bread
which He made for the five thousand?
God’s Bread is free, because (1) It is made for the hunger. As Christ created the barley for a hungry
crowd, so God has sent Christ as bread for a starving world. “It giveth life unto the world”: “My flesh
for the life of the world”: if Christ, with five loaves, could satisfy five
thousand, He could feed five million; He is sent as food for a world God wants
to save. “If any man eat of this bread, he
shall live for ever.” (2) It exceeds the
hunger. “Not sufficient,” says Philip: “Twelve
baskets full over,” is Christ’s reply.
The more we consume, the more remains: a world may feed, and yet the
Bread is for ever in a blessed surplus.
(3) It satisfies the hunger. As all heat of the sun, all the moisture of
the shower, all the fruitfulness of the field, met, as it were, in the hands of
Christ, and the barley multiplied: so this Bread, taken into the soul, grows
and expands and multiplies, until every desire in the soul that God planted,
God satisfies. “I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and
he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.”
5. - Only one thing remains: the Bread must
be eaten, or there can be no life. “Except ye eat, ... ye have no life.” Christ is life, and if He is outside us, life
is outside us. No corpse eats: if we are
not feeding on Christ it is because we are dead: and so long as we don’t eat,
we remain dead. The richest nutriment in
the world is starvation diet so long as it is outside our mouths. No man can eat for me, nor can I eat for
another man. What do we do with
food? We look at it, we see it is not
poison, we observe how others flourish on it, we desire it; we put it to our
mouth, we eat it, we digest it, so that it becomes bone of our bone, blood of
our blood: consequently we are alive. So
it is with Christ. Unless we eat of Him,
we cannot be saved. What is the
eating? “He that BELIEVETH hath
eternal life. I am the Bread of Life.” “HE
THAT COMETH TO ME SHALL NOT HUNGER, AND
HE THAT BELIEVETH ON ME SHALL NEVER THIRST.”
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14
Burial to Law
A Jew might object against a Christian: LAW is Jehovah’s mind as to what a man ought to do; man was created
to do that Law; that is, the soul of man and the law of God are wedded together
for ever: therefore your desertion of the law of Moses for the worship of
Christ is spiritual adultery. It is an
objection forcible and profound.
Paul, in reply, first aggravates the difficulty. For he asserts that the failure of a marriage
does not dissolve the union. Wrath in
the husband, revolt in the wife, utter incompatibility of temper in both, -
nothing can dissolve what God united: “Are ye ignorant, brethren, how that the
law hath dominion over a man for so long time as he liveth?” (Rom. 7: 1). What God says man should be, he must be; what
God says he should do, he must do: there is no option. Now the marriage is a failure. The wife is in constant revolt: the soul is
in chronic DISOBEDIENCE. What did the Law: itself say for such
cases? The husband could divorce the
wife, or obtain sentence against her in the courts for unfaithfulness; but
under no circumstances could a wife free herself from the law of her husband, Rom.
7: 2. She is bound for life. So all the Law, being a holy law, can do is
to prosecute the Soul, being a sinning soul, in the courts of God: and the
issue of the trial is known. “The soul
that sinneth it shall die”: “the wages of sin is death”: the wife is doomed.
So only God can solve the problem: how does He solve it? He shuts us up to one startling, yet obvious,
conclusion. Without the soul’s death
there can be no life: the only escape out of marriage is through death. “If the husband die, she is discharged from
the law of the husband: ... if the husband die, she is free from the law.” So
the Christian begins to answer: - You charge me with spiritual adultery; but
the wife of whom you are speaking is dead.
For observe a change in the apostle’s figure: he does not say, the Law
dies; he says, the soul dies. “Wherefore,
my brethren, ye” - the wife - “were MADE
DEAD” - put to death - “to the law.”
The Law remains in all its dread obligations and power: how else should
God judge the world? but as earthly law runs no longer against a corpse, - as
no officer of the Crown can deliver a writ on a dead body - so the soul dies to
law: out of death to law arises life to God.
At this point the Gospel reveals its exquisite message. “Ye were put to death through the body of
Christ.” Ye - through Christ’s body: Law
slew you in the person of Christ. Law,
in capital punishment, takes effect on the body of the criminal: CHRIST’S
BODY came between me and the mortal blow of the Law. Faith makes one with Christ. 1 Cor. 6: 17. Law slew Him - Law slew me: Law was done with
Him in His death - Law was done with me in His death: Christ is divorced from
law - I am divorced from law, absolutely and forever. “Christ is the end of the law unto
righteousness to every one that believeth” (
So vital is this truth that God has enshrined it in a rite of
perpetual obligation. Here is a watery
trench, a grave, into which a man who is to be baptised steps down. What of his spirit? It died with Christ upon the cross. Gal. 2:
20. But what of his body? It must be put to death also. He must be buried alive: he must go down into
death: so actual is the picture that, if kept under the water, he would
die. The Law does not so keep him under
only because it kept Christ under until He died. “Are ye ignorant that all we who were
baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were buried therefore with Him through BAPTISM into death” (Rom. 6: 3). Baptism is our ritual answer to the
circumcised Jew. It shows the Christian
not guilty of adultery against the Law: for the Law loses its last grip of the
man in the water: it has no power over a buried man: baptism is a funeral rite
over one dead to law. So all who are in
living union with Christ are commanded to proclaim, by this startling rite of
God, their release, their discharge, their divorce from the Law. “Repent ye, and be baptised every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2: 38); for “by Him every one that believeth
is justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law
of Moses” (Acts 13: 39).
Salvation closes, however, not in a funeral, but in a RE-MARRIAGE. Gal. 2: 19. “Ye were made
dead to the law, ... that ye should be joined to another, even to Him who was
raised from the dead.” Death to law
takes place on faith: burial to law takes place in the ritual grave, -
thenceforth to walk together “in newness of life” (Rom. 6: 4). Col. 2: 12. “I
espoused you to one husband” - re-marriage with a divorced husband Law itself
forbids (Deut. 24: 3, 4) - “that 1 might present you as a pure virgin to Christ”(2
Cor. 11: 2): “not being without law to God, but under law to Christ” (I Cor. 9:
21). Earth knows no union so close, so
tender, so miraculous: “this mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ
and of the church” (Eph. 5: 32) Without
it we cannot be saved. The flesh is
under law, yet antagonistic to law, and is at last slain by law. To lay hold of law - that is, morality, good
works, inherent goodness - for salvation, is to grasp a live electric wire, to
clutch a naked blade, to leap into; a burning caldron. But to lay hold of Christ is to die to law,
and to be lifted into union with the Son of God. “For I through law died unto law, that I
might live unto God. I have been
crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but CHRIST; LIVETH IN ME” (Gal. 2: 19).
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15
Why I Believe the Whole Bible
“O FOOLISH men, and slow
of heart to believe in ALL that the
prophets have spoken” (Luke 24: 25).
Here is a startling fact.
Infidels charge Christians with folly for believing so much of the
Bible: Christ charges Christians with folly for believing so little. “O fools and slow of heart to believe all.” It is no light matter to be called a fool by
the Son of God. It is easier to
insinuate a doubt than to create a faith; it is easier to abandon the Bible
than to obey it; it is easier to ruin a soul than to save one. Infidels are doing the easy work: Christ is
doing the hard.
Christ, risen from the dead, does not rebuke the disciples for not
believing the women, nor even for not believing the angels, but for not
believing the PROPHETS. It is probable that not a book of the Bible
has been written except by a prophet.
Moses was a prophet (and tradition says he was the author of ‘Job’); the
historical books were written by seers, or prophets (2 Chron. 9: 29); David and
Solomon were prophets; Isaiah to Malachi are one block of prophets; and none
but apostles - still higher than prophets - wrote the New Testament, except
Mark and Luke. Prophecy, the function of
a prophet, is, as a rule, foretelling, but is always inspired utterance. One passage is decisive. “No prophecy ever
came by the will of man”: it is no mental resolve of a human brain: “but men
spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1: 21). God said to Moses, - “Aaron thy brother shall
be thy prophet” (Ex. 7: 1), i.e., thy mouthpiece: so “the Word of the Lord”
came “by the mouth of Jeremiah” (2 Chron. 36: 21). “Thou testifiedst against them by Thy Spirit
through Thy prophets” (Neh. 9: 30). The
prophets were thus flutes through which God blew the music of His words; scripture,
therefore, is the crystallised breath of the Holy Ghost, and the Bible a
telephone down the ages, at the other end of which is the Voice of God.
Our Lord thus makes Himself responsible for all that the Prophets
have spoken. He never accommodates the
scriptures to unbelief: He commands unbelief to accommodate itself to the
scriptures. This is a challenge of the
gravest import, because no mouth uttered sayings so hard as the mouth of the
Son of God. Who so presents His DEITY as to say that all men are to
honour the Son even as they honour the Father? John 5: 23.
Who affirms and underscores the Atonement - the eating of the
broken Body, and the drinking of the shed Blood - as that without which there
is no life? John 6: 53. Who states
verbal inspiration as drastically as it can be stated - to the jot, the
smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and the tittle, the tiny turns of a
stroke by which one letter differs from another? Matt. 5: 18. Who gathers up the most startling miracles of
the Old Testament - the Flood (Matt. 24: 39),
The awful question underlying all others is this, - not, “Are these
doctrines true?” - but, “Is Christ true?”
Those mighty shoulders have taken upon themselves the burden of the whole
Word of God: now, as ever, all faith and all doubt rage around one lonely
Form. I believe the whole Bible because
I believe Christ. “Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God” (John
6: 68).
I also believe the WHOLE
BIBLE because (1) no hard saying of Christ is half so hard as the mystery
of a world without Christ; and all the hard sayings of Christ put together are
not so hard as the creed which accepts some and rejects others. Partial faith creates greater difficulties
for itself than faith ever has to meet.
(2) A revelation from God which is not deeper than my comprehension is
to me no revelation at all. A Book which
comes out of eternity must have the depths of eternity in it. Isa. 55: 8, 9. (3) Half the doubts in the heart spring from
sin in the life; and the very truth which is doubted is the truth which would
cure the sin. John 15: 3. A disciple’s
grace is measured by his acceptance of the truths that hit him: therefore
accept the whole Bible: it is a wounding that heals. (4) The whole scripture is necessary to feed
my soul. Matt 4: 4. As silkworms fed on
different leaves produce silks of varied colours - vine leaves producing a
bright red, and lettuce an emerald green - so the soul’s life is lovely
according to the fulness of its Scripture diet.
(5) Scripture difficulties are a test of faith. “O fools and slow of heart” - not, to
reconcile, nor, to understand but, - “to believe.” For “all scripture is given by inspiration of
God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17).
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16
Works Tested by Fire
1. - A FOUNDATION: “Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is
Jesus Christ” or, that Jesus is the Christ. I Cor. 3: 11. God laid the foundation in fact: every wise
master-builder lays it in doctrine. “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a
stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone of sure foundation”(Isa. 28: 16). Every regenerate soul is planted upon that
Rock as upon adamant. “Whosoever
believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God” (1 John 5: 1). “Jesus
Christ” - the personal Rock; “Jesus is the Christ” - the doctrinal rock; upon
this foundation rests all revelation, all regeneration, and all the millions of
the saved. Matt. 16: 18.
2. - A WARNING: “But let each [disciple] take heed how he buildeth thereon.” Works emerge into God’s sight only after the
foundation of faith is laid: works before faith are sins to be repented of. Heb.
6: 1. “But” implies one foundation, but
many superstructures: “take heed” implies that grave consequences attach to how
a disciple builds after conversion.
Slowly, surely, imperceptibly a house of works - and, for the Christian
teacher, a house of doctrine - is rising round each disciple’s life: costly
granite and marble, silver columns, and cornices of gold; or else wooden
doorways, hay mixed with mud for the walls, and straw thatching for the roof.
The supreme fact is this: one set of materials stands fire, the other feeds
fire; and, since the fire is coming, “let each take heed how he buildeth thereon.”
Tit. 3: 8.
3. - A CHOICE: “If any buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood,
hay, stubble.” Every disciple has
absolute control over the materials with which he builds: he selects which he
chooses. Contending motives sway the choice:
popularity, social prestige, wealth, pleasure; love to Christ, fidelity, a
sense of truth, the fear of God. What is
the precious stonework? Material that
matches the foundation. There are a
thousand voices in the world to-day: to the wise man there is but One. “Heaven and earth shall pass away [in fire: 2
Pet. 3: 7], but My words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24: 35): that is, the
divine Word will survive the judgment fires.
Every thought, every word, every act is to be built out of the quarries of
Scripture. 2 Cor. 10: 5; Matt. 28: 20; Matt. 4: 4. No higher level is possible to a Christian
teacher than to frame a not altogether inadequate setting for the jewels of
revelation; no higher level is possible to a Christian disciple than to
translate into life the mind of God as revealed in the Word of God: the one
transmits the Book into the soul, the other translates the Book into the life. Gal.
6: 4.
4. - AN
EXPOSURE: “Each
[disciple’s] work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because
it is revealed in fire.” The believer’s
life is a palimpsest, the invisible lines of which steal forth into sight as it
nears God’s fires. The foundation is not
tested; it is, as Isaiah says, already a tried Stone: it is the superstructure
which the fire searches. No believer
will be put on trial for his standing, but for his walk; not for his faith, but
for his works; not for his life, but for his living; not for his foundation,
but for his superstructure. “For we
[disciples] must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that
each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath
done” (2 Cor. 5: 10); “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by
Jesus Christ” (Rom. 2: 16). Rom. 14: 12.
5. - A
TEST: “The fire itself
shall prove each [disciple’s] work of what sort it is.” The kind of material is infallibly revealed
by the fire: it is searched through and through by the eyes of Christ. Rev. 1:
14. Mal. 3: 2. The fire does not cleanse, it tries: and, if trying the
inflammable, it destroys: Christ does not purge our works, but searches them
judicially. “These things saith the Son
of God, who hath His eyes like a flame” - here is the fire “I know thy works” -
the fire plays into the heart of the material; “and thy love and faith and
ministry and patience” - the fire tests the quality, and finds gold; “and that
thy last works are more than the first” - the fire tests the quantity, and
finds much fine gold. Rev. 2: 19. The
fire proves.
6. - A
REWARD: “If any
[disciple’s] work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward.” Salvation
stands upon the foundation, reward rests upon the superstructure. “If the
work shall abide - reward”: reward is utterly conditional on works. “Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is
with Me, to render to each [disciple] according as his work is” (Rev. 22: 12):
and “each shall receive his own reward according to his own labour” (1 Cor. 2:
8). Eph 6: 8.
7. - A
LOSS: “If any [disciple’s]
work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet
as through fire.” Himself saved - for no
[redeemed] soul can ever be swept off the foundation
of Christ: his work burned - for a discipleship may end in piteous
conflagration. As fire-balls descend
upon a laboriously-constructed dwelling, and the inmate within, overwhelmed by
a sudden burst of flame, escapes for his life through a blazing corridor of
fire - “he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire.” THEREFORE
“LET EACH [DISCIPLE] PROVE HIS OWN WORK” NOW (Gal. 6: 4). “O could I always live for eternity, preach
for eternity, pray for eternity, and speak for eternity! I want to see only God.”
- Whitfield.
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17
The Place of the Dead
No dead soul stands in the presence of God in heaven. The Type, first of all, forbids it. Aaron shall bring the blood “within the veil,
... and make atonement for the holy place. ... And there shall be NO MAN in the tent of meeting when he
goeth in to make atonement, until he come out” (Lev. 16: 17).
This is exactly the high priestly work on which our Lord is now
engaged. “Through His own blood [He] entered
in once for all into the holy place, ... [to cleanse] the heavenly things with
better sacrifices,” that is, His own (Heb. 9: 12, 23). So long as our High Priest tarries within the
Temple precincts, no man is anywhere in the heavenly courts: until, at the
Second Advent, He comes forth, one Man alone is in the Temple in heaven.
The Law of God also forbids it.
To touch a corpse, or even a grave, was to be unclean. “Whosoever in the open field toucheth ... a
dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be UNCLEAN seven days” (Num. 19: 16).
Nor was it a corpse only which defiled: a far deeper defilement sprang
from contact with a departed spirit. “There shall not be found with thee ... a
consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer” - i.e., one
who holds intercourse with the dead – “for whosoever doeth these things is an
abomination unto the Lord” (Deut. 18: 11).
Death, in all its parts, is Legal uncleanness: it is the visible Curse
of God, the holy, resting on man, the sinner; it is the foul rotting of the
leprosy of sin. None such can stand in
the Holy Temple, until resurrection, resting on the Blood, has finally
obliterated all taint and consequence of sin. 2 Cor. 5: 4.
One crucial example is given that the dead are still
unascended. David had said: - “Thou wilt
not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see
corruption.” David, says the apostle,
could not have spoken this of his own soul.
Why not? Because, Peter says, “this
Jesus did God raise up”; whereas “David is
NOT ASCENDED into the heavens” (Acts 2: 34), and therefore he could not
have spoken it of himself. This assumes
that no disembodied human spirit [soul] is ascended
to God. For if not David, who is? “He
died and was buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day.” Death is an unclothing (2 Cor. 5: 4): God’s
kings and priests may not appear before Him unclothed. Ex. 28: 42, 43. “No man
hath ascended into heaven” (John 3: 13).
Affirmative revelation also establishes the truth. THE
RESURRECTION of the body is a fact absolutely cardinal to the Christian
faith. “If the dead are not raised, neither
hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain;
ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15: 16): - Atonement has never been made,
Death still reigns, the Curse clings to the dead or ever. But Christ is risen: and “if the Spirit of
Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up
Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His
Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). John 5: 28. For a naked spirit, [i.e
a disembodied soul] judicially
disembodied, to enter the presence of God on high would be to approach Him in
the shrouds of the Curse.
[* NOTE. The “spirit” which returns to God at the time of Death, is
His animating spirit (Luke 8: 55, R.V.)]
For THE BODY has [not yet] been redeemed [Rom. 8: 23]. Glorified human spirits are unknown to the
Word of God: glorified human persons - body, soul, and spirit - are to be the
perfect fruit of redemption. “How long, O
Lord, holy and true?” (Rev. vi. 10), cry the naked souls under the Altar, waiting to be clothed upon: so “ourselves
also ... groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body” (Rom. 8: 23); for “we wait for a Saviour ... who shall
fashion the body of our humiliation, that it be conformed to the body of His
glory” (Phil. 3: 21). Earth is one vast
field sown with the dead: out of it, like the rising Lord, will soon burst the
waving harvests of resurrection. I Cor. 15: 20-26. This cannot be until our High Priest issues
from the Temple. “The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs” - not in
the heavens – “shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done
good” - the saved are therefore included - “unto the resurrection of life” (John
5: 28); for “the dead in Christ shall rise” - not descend – “to meet the Lord
in the air” (1 Thess. 4: 16).* Meanwhile two compartments enfold the departed. Dives, like the citizens of Sodom, imprisoned
in the lower Hades, already suffers the vengeance of eternal fire. Luke 16: 23.
Jude 7. PARADISE, in which our Lord and the penitent Thief met on the night
of the Crucifixion (Luke 23: 43), and where, in His divinity, He still is (Ps.
139: 8), is described, now as a rest, now as a slumber, now as a harbour, now
as a garden, now as a home. “For me to
die,” says Paul, “is gain; ... for it is very far better” (Phil. 1: 21):
wherefore “we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home
with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5: 8). Life in
Christ is good: death in Christ is better: resurrection in Christ is best. “I
am in the happiest pass,” said Rutherford, in his dying hours, “to which man
ever came. Christ is mine, and I am His: and now their stands nothing betwixt
me and resurrection, except Paradise!”
* The actual locality of Sheol, or Hades, is indicated by such
scriptures as these: - Matt. 12: 40; Num 16: 30, 33; 1 Sam. 28: 13, 14; Job 26:
5, 6; Amos 9: 2; Eph. 4: 9; and Ps. 63: 9.
So scripture speaks of descending into it (Prov. 1: 12; Isa. 5: 14;
Ezek. 31: 15, 16), and of rising up out of it (I Sam. 2: 6; Ps. 30: 3; Prov.
15: 24; Rom. 10: 7).
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18.
Facts Every Man Ought to Know
1. - ALL
men have got to meet God as a Judge. “God
now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day in
which He will judge the world” (Acts 17: 30): for “all the world [shall] be
brought under the judgment of God” (Rom. 3: 19). This judgment will be conducted by strict
process of law, based on the acts of every soul, acts recorded with unerring
precision in the books of God. “I saw
the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were
opened; ... and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in
the books, according to their works”
(Rev. 20: 12). Nor can any man avoid
this judgment. “Reckonest thou this, O
man, ... that thou shall escape the judgment of God” (Rom. 2: 3).
2. - The Judge will adjudicate exactly
according to the evidence. It is
impossible for a just judge to clear a guilty man, or to condemn a man who has
obeyed the law. “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the
righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 17: 15). Of this abomination God, of all judges, will
not be guilty: and He says so. “The Lord [is] a God ... that will by no means
clear the guilty” (Ex. 34: 7): “He will not at all acquit the wicked” (Nah. 1:
3). He is a Judge of absolute
righteousness. “Shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right”(Gen. 18: 25): “for He cometh to judge the earth; He shall
judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth” (Ps. 96: 13):
“at the revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render unto every
man according to His works” (Rom. 2: 5).
The records will decide the sentences.
3. - A man must be able to present to the
Judge a perfect righteousness. “Not the
hearers of a law are accounted righteous before God, but the doers of a law
shall be justified” (Rom. 2: 13). What
does this mean? That it is not enough to be forgiven for having broken the Law:
if I am to be saved. I must be proved to
have kept it: the soul must be proved, not only innocent, but righteous. “Cursed is every one which continueth not in all
things that are written in the book of the law, to do them” (Gal. 3: 10). The only righteousness which any judge - much
more the Righteous Judge - can accept is a complete, flawless, life-long
obedience to the whole Law: less than this involves the Curse of a broken
Law. One sin snaps the chain, one
disobedience shatters the vase that holds eternal life. “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and
yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all” (Jas. 2: 10). Law can justify only those who have kept it
in its entirety.
4. - No man has such a righteousness to
present. With the Searcher of all hearts
as Judge, my conscience as accuser, my life as evidence, and the secrets of my
heart as witnesses, what is the finding of the just Judge? “All under sin; as
it is written, There is none righteous, no not one” (Rom. 3: 9). I am found guilty: “not having a
righteousness of mine own” (Phil. 3: 9); for “we are all as an unclean thing, and
all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64: 6). But this is the doom of every soul. Law cannot be flouted: God Himself cannot
save a soul against law: every man is lost.
5. - A perfect righteousness has been
provided. What is it? “The righteousness
of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1: 1). Christ obeyed the whole Law. Matt. 5: 17.
John 8: 29. His righteousness is the
righteousness of a Man: it is a righteousness according to Law: it is the
righteousness whereby alone the Law’s prisoner is justified. “A man is not justified by works of law, except
through faith in Jesus Christ; ... because by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified” (Gal. 2: 16). Here
is a paradox. A man is not justified by
works of law, except: He is, and he is not: what does it mean? This.
I am not justified by works of law wrought by myself: I am justified by
works of law wrought by Christ. What I
did not do, He did: what I was not, He was: and if “in Christ,” I am “found” -
not guilty, but, “in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that
which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3: 9). In Christ, His righteousness is mine: for “through
the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous”(Rom. 5: 19), “unto
whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works” (Rom. 4: 6).
6. - This perfect righteousness may become
any man’s. “The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus [is] unto
all” (Rom. 3: 22). To refuse it is to be
lost: even as Israel, “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to
establish their own, did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law unto
righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10: 3). Christ is offered to all. John 3: 16; 10: 9; 1 Tim. 2: 4; 1 John 2: 2;
Rev. 22: 17. “God in Nature is God above
us; God in Providence is God beyond us; God in Law is God against us: but God
in Christ is God for us, with us, and in us.”
7. - This righteousness becomes any man’s
simply on faith. Christ wove; I wear:
Christ obeyed; I believe: Christ gives; I take.
“The righteousness which is through faith in Christ,” – “the
righteousness which is from God [as a gift] upon [the shoulders of] faith” (Phil.
3: 9): “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe” (Rom. 3: 22).
Christ wove the flawless robe: He bore it up from the wardrobe of His
grave (John. 16: 10): He clothes me in it the moment I believe: - the Law is
vindicated, the Judge is satisfied, the angels rejoice, and one more soul
passes into everlasting life. Isa. 61: 10. Rom. 3: 26, 31.
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19.
China’s Crisis
This decade appears to be, for China, the decade of destiny. It is the slow waking of a dormant
giant. “When China is moved,” said
Napoleon, “it will move the world.”
China was an empire before Abraham was born; its foundations were laid
before the foundations of the Pyramids; and long ere the birth of Rome it
possessed elaborate ceremonials and a national literature. It is the oldest government in the
world. Nor is the Chinese character less
remarkable. “The Chinaman,” says Dr.
Pentecost, “is a far greater man than the Japanese, only he is asleep. The brain of China has got on it the plaster
cast of Confucianism, and as soon as they break that cast the Chinaman will
wake.” A fourth of the human race is
Chinese. On account of its mass, its
unity, its high possibilities of intellect, its resources, its immensity, China
is perhaps the vastest burden and the most magnificent opportunity now laid
upon the shoulders of the Church by God.
For the awakening has come.
Eleven years ago China had 200 miles of railway; to-day she has 3,746,
with 1,622 under construction. A few
years ago there was no daily press; to-day two hundred dailies are creating a
ferment of new thought: and in five years political and educational reforms
have been decreed more drastic than were ever enacted in any half century, in
any country in the world except Japan.
Nine or ten years ago two officially commissioned students landed in
Japan. Shortly they rose to 591; in 1904
they increased at the rate of 100 a month; in 1905 they were 8,620; to-day they
number more than 10,000. Chinese
universities contain some 64,000 more students than are in the whole of Europe,
bent upon mastering the knowledge of the world. “The whole of China is now
awake,” says Dr. Timothy Richard, “and of all the renaissances that have taken
place in the history of the world, there is not one comparable to the
renaissance going on now in China.”
Ponder the peril that this implies.
The Great Wall is now all too narrow to restrain her overflowing
millions. Two-and-a-half millions have poured into Siam, another two-and-a-half
millions into Formosa, while Australia, South Africa, and America are
confronted with grave Chinese problems.
“If the working men of the western nations,” says Bishop Bashford, “knew
what would make for their peace during the twentieth century, they would pour
money by the million into the evangelisation of their not distant competitors
in China, who have reached the highest point of economic efficiency of any
heathen race. The cloud to-day, due to the industrial conflict between the
Chinese and western nations, is not larger than a man’s hand; but in less than
a quarter of a century it may cover the entire heavens.” It is said that within a few decades China
will be able to put twenty-five millions of men upon the battlefields of the
East; and if the Chinaman is not tamed by conversion to the Christian faith,
says Sir Robert Hart, the land of the Dragon Throne will become a terror to the
civilised world.
Nor is it less wonderful how the winds of God are sweeping over the
plains of China. “Idols have been dislodged,” says Dr. Griffith John, “and the
temples converted into schools; and generally the gods have been treated with
the greatest contempt - thrown into the streets, or emptied into the rivers.” 3,833 missionaries, and nearly a quarter of a
million native Christians, now press the claims of Christ. It is said that there are more Christian
converts in the Far East to-day than there were Christians altogether in the
fourth century. Two-and-a-half million
copies of the Scriptures were sold in China by the Bible Societies in 1906; and
the Bible Society’s agent in Shanghai writes (1907): “The demands upset all
calculations, and bring gray hairs to those responsible for meeting them.” A
church to which Christ has given a Pastor Hsi enfolds untold spiritual
potentialities. But China is still the
land of the Dragon Throne. Christ walks
unknown through 1,500 out of its 1,900 capital cities. China is under the tutelage of the land whose
Viscount Hayashi has translated Tom Paine’s Age of Reason into Japanese. “Never,” says Mr. Connell, “was there a
greater opportunity before the Christian Church of turning the energies of a
reborn civilisation Godwards; but the penalty will be terrible in the event of
failure.”
This decade appears to be China’s decade of destiny. The mould of the Chinese mind may now stiffen
and grow cold at any moment, before it has taken Christian shape. Nelson said that there is one five minutes
which mean the winning or losing of a battle; and “the secret of victory,” said
Napoleon, “is to bring up the reserves when the struggle is at its crisis.” Have we no reserves to call up? reserves of
men, money, prayer, time, study, love? but, most, of men? Between two and three thousand Chinamen pass
hourly into Christless graves; thirty-three thousand will pass to-day beyond
our reach; and before our missionary, sent to-morrow, lands in China, a million
and a quarter of Chinese will have gone to their last account. In the dangerous task of “sealing” Port
Arthur, two thousand Japanese sailors volunteered for the peril, and each man
signed his application in his blood.
“THEY THAT BE WISE SHALL
SHINE AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT; AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS AS THE STARS FOR EVER AND EVER”
(Dan. 12: 3).
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20.
A Board in the Tabernacle
1. - THE BOARD. Ex.
26: 15-30. Cut from shittim or acacia, a
tree which grew in the desert, a cheap and common timber, each board was worth
about half-a-crown. It is a figure of
our common humanity. The sinless human
nature our Lord took, is so described. “He
grew up as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground” - the shittim is
a wilderness tree - “He hath no form nor comeliness” (Isa. 53: 2). Half-a-crown is all our worth: the
extraordinary value of a human soul lies in the value God puts upon it, not in
its intrinsic worth. The tree is felled: its root in earth is absolutely
severed: no longer “flourishing as a bay tree,” it lies a prostrate log,
passive in the hands of the Carpenter of Nazareth, until planed and grooved and
shaped into a board for the House of God.
2. - ITS STANDING. In
the wilderness it was felled; in the wilderness it now stands for God: where a
soul is saved, there it must shine. But
now founded on what? The tree’s roots
are replaced by silver sockets, cast from the ransom-money. “The rich shall not give more, and the poor
shall not give less, than the half-shekel” - a silver coin - “to make atonement
for your souls” (Ex. 30: 15). The whole
Tabernacle stood upon the atonement-money, and the whole of the atonement-money
was used for supporting the structure. “For
other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”
(1 Cor. 3: 11).
I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand;
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.
The soul’s worth, 2s. 6d.; each socket, £250: what God founds the
saved soul on is of vastly greater value than the soul itself: “who gave
Himself a ransom” (1 Tim. 2: 6). 1 Pet. 1: 18. Matt. 20: 28.
3. - ITS SOCKETS. “Two sockets under one board”: why? Because Christ had to do a double work for my
soul. His life obeyed the law in perfect righteousness; His death satisfied the
law in perfect atonement: so in Him I have obeyed all the Law required, and
have satisfied all the Law demanded.
Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die;
Another’s life, Another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.
4. - ITS COVERING. “Overlay the boards with gold.” I rest upon Christ, but I also dwell in
Christ: my standing is on what He did, but my life is in Him: my resting-place
is of silver, but my dwelling-place is gold.
All grains and knots and stains in the wood are now invisible: the dead
board is lost in the life and glory of Another. Isa. 61: 10. “In Christ”: -
that is an address which will always find a saint. Rom. 16: 7. Gal. 1: 22. (The baptised disciple has put on Christ in
spirit, soul, and body: Gal. 3: 27.) The
soul, half-a-crown; the sockets, £500; the gold plating, £250: salvation is six
thousand times the value of the thing saved, or £36,000 for the forty-eight
boards. God’s salvation is more costly
than we shall ever know.
5. - ITS ERECTION. The
Board is not erected in the wilderness by itself: its loneliness - “hateful, hating
one another” (Tit. 3: 3) - belonged to the old life of the Tree. A board is sawn and planed and shaped for
building; so that many boards, dovetailed, compacted, and mutually supporting,
may form a house. So in Christ “ye also
are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2: 22): “for
we are a sanctuary of God; even as God said, I will dwell in them” (2 Cor. 6:
16). Forty-eight boards: - four, the
number of earth, twelve, the number of perfection: the perfection of earthly
worship is impossible without the association of all. Rom. 12: 5, 20.
6. - ITS LINKS.
Four visible and one invisible bound the house together: so it was in
the first of God’s churches. Acts 2: 37-47.
“Pricked in their heart” - the tree felled; “they received his word” -
the silver sockets; “were baptised” - visible absorption into the gold; “added
together” - the boards compacted; “the apostles’ teaching” - bar one; “and
fellowship” - bar two; “the breaking of bread” - bar three; “the prayers” - bar
four: one faith, one love, one communion, one worship. The invisible bar was in all, and ran through
all, the only unity for ever impossible of rupture: for “in one Spirit were we
all baptised into one body” (1 Cor. 12: 13). Eph. 2: 18. Phil. 1: 27. Eph. 4: 3. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost, without
which discipleship does not exist (Rom. 8: 9), is the one visible unity which
can never be broken.
7. - ITS DESTINY. The
Tree rots where it grows - no motion, no progress: its cradle is its
grave. But the Board ever advances, as
part of ‘a moving tent,’ each day pitched “a day’s march nearer home.” The Tabernacle, of boards, crossing the
wilderness, is the Church on earth; the Temple, of stone, in the Holy Land, is
the Church in Heaven. Eph. 2: 19-22. The
Board, albeit golden, is mortal still; the living Stone is imperishable
immortality: the one, dying, is life swallowed up of mortality; the other,
risen, is “mortality swallowed up of life” (2 Cor. 5: 4).
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21.
Exclusion from the Kingdom
1. - Godly servants of Christ have
understood the Scriptures to teach the possibility of a believer’s exclusion.
So Mr. Robert Chapman: “Has any
child of God any warrant of Scripture to expect that he will reign with the
Lord during the period of Rev. 20.? But,
on the contrary, has not every child of God a promise of reigning with Christ
in the perfect and final state?”* So Mr. G. H. Pember: “To
those who believe on Him, but go no further, the Lord does, indeed, give
eternal life; but the fruition of it will not begin until the Last Day, until
the thousand years of the Millennial reign are ended. Such persons will not,
therefore, be permitted to enter the Kingdom of the Heavens.” So Dr,
A. T. Pierson: “The greatest of all the revelations about the future
condition of the saints is, that they are to be identified with Jesus Christ in
His reign, - that is, those who ‘overcome.’ Not all saints are to be elevated
to this position; this is for victorious saints.” So Mr.
Robert Govett: “The native magnitude of this truth must speedily redeem it
from all obscurity. Those who have the single eye will perceive its amplitude
of evidence, and embrace it, in spite of the solemn awe of God which it
produces, and the depth of our own responsibility which it discloses.Ӥ
* Morning Star,
Oct, 1902. .. The Church, the Churches, and the Mysteries, p. 46. .. Life of
Faith, Sept. 14, 1904.
§ Preface to
Entrance Into the Kingdom.
2. - It is certain that all crowns are
conditional on works done after faith. 2 Tim. 2: 5. (1) The crown of
incorruption. “In a race all run, but
one receiveth the prize. Even so run, that
ye may attain. And every man that
striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now they do it to receive a
corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible” (1 Cor. 9: 24, 25). Can that racer be crowned who failed in the
running? Paul dreaded the loss of the
crown for himself: “lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I
myself should be rejected.” (2) The crown of rejoicing. “What is our hope, or
joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even
ye, before our Lord Jesus at His coming?” (1 Thess. 2: 19). Dan 12: 3.
Can he be crowned for turning many to righteousness who never turned
one? (3) The crown of glory. “The elders
therefore among you I exhort, Tend the flock of God, … and when the chief
Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:
1-4). Can a disciple be rewarded for shepherding
the flock of God who never did it? (4) The crown of righteousness. “I have kept
the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, ... and
not only to me, but also to all them that have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:
7, 8). Can the crown for watchfulness be
given to one who never watched? (5) The crown of life. “Blessed is the man that
endureth temptation: for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown
of life” (Jas. 1: 12). Rev. 2: 10. Can
he be crowned for resisting temptation who succumbed to it? That a crown may be lost to a believer is as
certain as any truth in Holy Scripture.
“Hold fast that which thou hast, that
no one take thy crown” (Rev. 3: 11). Matt. 7: 21.
3. - Scripture states that the Kingdom is
offered to all believers as the master-prize for service and suffering. “He
that overcometh, and he that keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give
authority over the nations” (Rev. 2: 26).
2 Tim. 2: 12. It was a supreme
desire of Paul. He abandoned all, he
says, and suffered all, “if by any means I may attain unto the [select] resurrection
from the dead. Not that I have already
obtained, ... but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal
unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be
thus minded” (Phil. 3: 11-15). For the
fall of Israel in the wilderness is a designed type of the present peril of the
Church on earth. Hebr. Chs. 3. & 4. “Let us therefore give diligence to enter
into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.” Hebr.
4: 11.
4. - Scripture also explicitly asserts the
exclusion of certain believers. Proud (Matt.
18: 3, 5: 3); unfaithful (Matt. 24: 48-51); disobedient (Luke 12: 47, 48);
covetous (Eph. 5: 5); effeminate (1 Cor. 6: 9); slothful (Matt. 11: 12);
strife-loving (Gal. 5: 20); unbaptised (John 3: 5); erroneous (1 Cor. 3: 15);
or luxurious (Luke 6: 24) disciples are unripe for the duties and harmony of
Messiah’s Reign. Most rigorously also
will all unclean disciples be excluded. Eph. 5: 3-8; 1 Thess. 4: 3-7.
The Holy Ghost has given a summary of exclusion. “Now the works of
the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness,
lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths,
factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:
of the which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they which practise such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God”(Gal. 5: 19-21). 1 Cor. 6: 9, 10. For it is the Kingdom of the holy, who are
holy, not by imputation only, but also by active righteousness. Heb. 12: 14; 2
Thess. 1: 5.
“BLESSED AND HOLY IS HE THAT HATH PART IN THE FIRST RESURRECTION: THEY
SHALL BE PRIESTS OF GOD AND OF CHRIST, AND SHALL
REIGN WITH HIM A THOUSAND YEARS” (Rev. 20: 6). “O God, I have lost this world: grant that
I lose not that which is to come!” (Carson).
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22
The Glories of Israel
“It is not easy,” says McCheyne, writing on Mount Carmel, “to pray
really for Israel; it needs you to have much of the peculiar mind of God.” Now that mind unchanged (for Paul uses the
present tense) is revealed in nine glories which God has given irrevocably to
Israel. Rom. 9: 3-5.
1. - ISRAELITES. Not
Jacobites, but Israelites: not men’s supplanters, but wrestlers on their behalf
with God; princes by conquest in intercession.
“Thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen. 32:
28). It was Israel’s glory to be God’s
intermediary: the Temple was “the house of prayer for all the nations” (Mark 11: 17). Rom. 11: 18. Isa. 61: 6.
2. - THE ADOPTION. Ex.4:
22, Jer. 31: 9. The Church receives an
adoption as sons (Gal. 4: 5); Israel received an adoption as a people; and it
is a national adoption confined to Israel for ever. “Hath God assayed to go and
take Him a nation ... according to all that the Lord your God did for you?” (Deut.
4: 34): “He hath not dealt so with any nation” (Ps. 147: 20). Israel is God’s solitary and peculiar people,
- the only nation to whom the Messiah personally ministered (Matt. 15: 24), and
the only nation, as such, for which He is said to have died. John 11: 50.
3. - THE GLORY.
God’s Shekinah Fires never dwelt in the midst of any nation except
Israel. “He made thee to see His great fire; and thou heardest His words out of
the midst of the fire” (Deut. 4: 36).
From a burning Bush Israel was called; by a burning Cloud Israel was
led; on a burning Mercy Seat God dwelt in the midst of His people: Israel is
the sole nation that has ever beheld and contained the devouring fires of
Deity. Num. 14: 14.
4. - THE COVENANTS.
Apart from Noah, God has never entered into a covenant with any man but
a Jew. Eight covenants were made with
Abraham; one with Moses; at least two with Israel; and the New Covenant, the
blood of which has been shed (Luke 22: 20), and the ministers of which have
been appointed (2 Cor. 3: 6), has yet to be made with the Houses of Israel and
Judah (Heb. 8: 8). Covenants between God
and man belong only to the blood of Abraham.
5. - THE LAW. Jehovah’s descent in person on Sinai, with a Decalogue written by
the fingers of Deity, is an unique glory of Israel. “He showeth His word unto
Jacob, His statutes and His judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as
for His judgments, they [the nations] have not known them” (Ps. 147: 19). The mind of God was distilled in the Law,
ministered through angels, and deposited at last in the hands of the Jew.
6. - THE WORSHIP. ‘Jew’ means ‘praise’: and God’s liturgy,
the sole mode of ritual access into His presence under the Law, was revealed to
the Jew only. “If thou bearest the name of a Jew, [thou] restest upon the law,
and gloriest in God, and knowest His will ... being instructed out of the law”
(Rom. 2: 17). God planned every knob and
tent-pin in Tabernacle and Temple, and no Gentile ever crossed the threshold of
the Holy Place, much less ministered in the divine ritual.
7. - THE PROMISES. All promises are held in germ in one promise to Abraham; - “In thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22: 18). ‘Thy seed’ is a Jew: whether, therefore, by
way of circumcision, or through faith, salvation is of the Jews, because
salvation is from a Jew. So also the
promise of the Spirit was first given to the Jew. Gal. 3: 14. Acts 2: 39.
8. - THE FATHERS.
God’s providence never leaves the Jew because His love never leaves
their fathers. “Because He loved thy fathers, therefore He chose their seed
after them” (Deut. 4: 37). No man ever
gave God a name but a Jew: He is not known as the God of Adam, or the God of
Noah; but, - “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3: 6). No
nation ever had divine priests but Israel (except Melchizedek): for two
thousand years none other had divine prophets (except Balaam): no other nation
has had divinely anointed kings: and there is no author of divine Scripture but
a Jew (except Luke). Rom. 3: 2.
9. - THE CHRIST. In
Bethlehem lies Israel’s consummate distinction. “Of whom is Christ as
concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” The Son of a Jewess, of the seed of David (Rom.
1: 3), of the tribe of Judah (Rev. 5: 5), the Word tabernacled in flesh of
Israel. Heb. 2: 16. Eternity can hold no
racial glory so unique. Here, then, is the mind of God. None of these glories sprang from natural
excellence, but all from supernatural grace, so revealing how peculiarly God
has isolated Israel in honour, as “the dearly beloved of My soul” (Jer. 12: 7),
“My glory” (Isa. 46: 13). Oh, for more
of this mind of God! He who had it most
fully could say, - “I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my
brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9: 3).
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23
The Trial of Jesus
The Sanhedrim, a court regularly constituted of Israel’s shrewdest
and most judicial minds, was a tribunal not unworthy of the nation which, alone
among all nations, possessed the Law of Jehovah. Yet the amazing trial of Jesus was thick with
illegalities.
(1) Our Lord was arrested and tried at night: which, on a capital
charge, was illegal. (2) The trial was
conducted, not in the Hall of Purchase, where the Sanhedrim was regularly
convened, but in the private house of the High Priest. This, if not actually
unlawful, was highly irregular: it obviously savoured of conspiracy. Mark 14:
1, 2. (3) The Prisoner was pronounced
guilty on the day of the trial: whereas, according to the law of the Sanhedrim,
although a prisoner might be acquitted on the same day, he could never be
condemned. (4) The Sanhedrim, in
appealing to Pilate, dropt the charge of blasphemy, and substituted the charge
of treason (Luke 23: 2): quashing their own proceedings, they carried an appeal
to a higher court on a new and unsubstantiated charge. The trial was thick with illegalities. But these are technicalities: although
establishing a grave presumption against the equity of the Sanhedrim, they are
not fatal; it is conceivable that, in spite of technicalities violated,
substantial justice might yet be done to a prisoner.
We turn therefore to the Trial. Two charges were brought against
Christ: the first sedition, the second blasphemy. The charge of sedition was
based on an alleged statement threatening the destruction of the Temple. Apart from the fact that Christ never said He
would destroy the Temple, but, - “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up” (John 2: 19); apart from the fact that it was the reestablishment
of a destroyed Temple that He promised - a beneficial act that could hardly be
made into a criminal charge; apart also from the fact that the sole reference
was to His own body, not to the Temple at all (John 2: 21): one crucial fact,
so far as the trial is concerned, emerged.
The evidence was so conflicting, so obviously suborned, that the charge
was quietly dropt: that is, on a point of palpable fact the prosecution breaks
down. Mark 14: 56, 59. Caiaphas now
adjures Christ to assert His Sonship of God: which He does. On this answer of Jesus Caiaphas formulates
the charge of blasphemy. Two gross illegalities,
invalidating the whole trial, are now committed.
(l) Everything, on such a charge, obviously turns on who the
Prisoner is: yet the Court never examines the point at all. If Jesus was the Son of God, it was no
blasphemy to say so: if He was not, it was.
The action of the Sanhedrim would make it impossible for the Messiah
ever to come at all without being liable to immediate arrest and destruction
for blasphemy.
(2) The Law of Moses expressly forbad condemnation, on a capital
charge, on the evidence of less than two witnesses (Deut. 17: 6): Jesus was
condemned to death on none. He was then
spit upon and smitten. Matt. 26: 67. So,
hundreds of years before, Isaiah had said, - “By oppression and judgment He was
taken away” (Isa. 53: 8): Micah also, - “They shall smite the Judge of Israel
with a rod upon the cheek” (Mic. 5: 1).
The Roman Law has been the foundation of the soundest jurisprudence of
the world: yet here again the air is thick with illegalities. Not one of the essentials of Roman law was
observed in the trial of Jesus. There
was no notice of the trial; no definition of the charge; no invoking of the law
whose breach was alleged; no examination of witnesses; no hearing of counsel;
no proof of a criminal act; no sentence formally pronounced. Still more
amazing, the judge actually acquits the Prisoner whom he delivers to
execution. Three times Pilate pronounces
the Prisoner not ‘guilty’ (Luke 23: 4, 15, 22), yet each time re-tries Him:
whereas under Roman law a prisoner might not be tried twice for the same
offence. Three times Pilate pronounces
the Prisoner ‘not guilty’: yet over the cross, as the law required, Pilate
wrote the charge, and he wrote - treason.
Three times Pilate pronounces the Prisoner ‘not guilty’: yet he orders
his soldiers to execute the sentence of ‘guilty.’ “Jesus of Nazareth,” says a
member of the New York Bar, “was not condemned; he was lynched. The martyrdom of Golgotha was not a
miscarriage of justice; it was murder.”
The People had not yet officially condemned Jesus. Pilate, conscious of Christ’s innocence,
resorts to the last expedient open to him under Roman law, short of
acquittal. A judge might stop a trial at
the demand of the prosecutors, if it appeared to him that that demand was
prompted by just motives, and not actuated by any unlawful object. Pilate presents the pitiful object of the
Saviour bleeding after the flogging, crying, “Behold the Man!” and tries the
pulse of the crowd by suggesting His release in place of Barabbas. A hoarse cry warned him off: the prosecutors
refuse to drop the charge. Pilate then
publicly reveals what is happening. It
was a Jewish custom, in order to attest one’s innocence of murder, to wash the
hands: Pilate therefore, to ensure being understood in that deafening uproar,
and amid a crowd of so many diverse languages, symbolises silently that which
all will understand - he washes his hands.
The judge pronounces the whole transaction to be murder.
The World, alas, now shares the verdict. The issue is as momentous as ever. “Nineteen
centuries,” says a member of the Italian Bar, “will not again go by before
either the cross of Golgotha shall become once and for ever the emblem of
victory; or man, born to strife, shall sink, vanquished eternally in the
age-long struggle for his redemption.”
Illegalities as gross - the same - are thick in the modern trial. Christ is not given a hearing; or, men never
really examine His claims: or, those claims are set aside for self-interest;
or, the claims are admitted, but decision is shirked: - Caiaphas and Pilate, in
innumerable multitudes, again do despite to a Saviour’s love. “Is it no thing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like
unto My sorrow, which is done unto Me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me in
the day of His fierce anger” (Lam. 1: 12).
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24
A Sacrificial Priesthood
“We venerate the Eucharist,” says Pope Pius X, addressing the
Eucharistic Congress (1908), “as the sacrifice of the New Testament, ... a
tribute of thanksgiving and praise, of atonement, and propitiation, ... a
sacrifice foreshadowed by the offerings of the Fathers of the Old Law, notably
by that of the High Priest Melchizedek.” Now into the hands of two priestly
Orders only has the knife of sacrifice been committed, the order of Aaron, and
the order of Melchizedek; since Moses God has received atoning sacrifices from
no other hands: and Pius X claims for the Roman Priesthood succession to the
Order of Melchizedek.
For it is universally agreed that the Order of Aaron is gone:
Israel is “without sacrifice and without ephod” (Hos. iii. 4). Nor was our Lord’s priesthood after Aaron’s
order. “For it is evident that our Lord
hath sprung out of Judah; as to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning
priests”: therefore Christ was “named of God a high priest after the order of
Melchizedek” (Heb. 7: 14; 5: 10). The
solitary sacrificing Priesthood that remains is Melchizedek’s: and it is the
Sacrifice peculiar to the High Priest of the Melchizedekian Order which Rome
claims to offer. “In the Eucharist,” says Pius X, “that selfsame sacrifice
offered once upon the cross is renewed.”
Therefore one test is simple and final. Seven times is the parallel
drawn between Melchizedek and Christ, in order to define the characteristics
without which none can be a priest after that Order. Has the Roman Priesthood these
characteristics?
1. - Without descent: “without father, without mother.” God
suppressed certain details in Melchizedek’s life that, as recorded, it might be
made like unto the Son of God’s: he is not like unto the Son of God, but is
made like by, the silences of the Scripture.
Without recorded father or mother, he types Him who, as Son of Man, had
no father, and, as Son of God, no mother.
Why? Because this Priest had to
offer a superhuman Sacrifice. “Sacrifice and offering [of the Aaronic Order] Thou
wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepared for me” (Heb. 10: 5). The Priest must be divine who is to offer the
Son of man: and the Priest must be human who is to be Himself the Sacrifice: He
must be Son of God, and Son of man.
2. - “Without genealogy.”
Genealogy was a requisite for Aaron’s Order. On the return from Babylon certain priests “sought
their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not
found: therefore they were deemed polluted and put from the priesthood” (Ezra
2: 62). It is most startling to observe
that that on which modern priests lay the supreme emphasis - apostolic, or
priestly, succession - is the genealogy which disqualifies for the Order of
Melchizedek. ‘Apostolic succession’ is
fatal to the Melchizedekian Priesthood.
3. - Without origin or end: “having neither beginning of days nor end
of life.” Neither birthday nor deathday
is recorded of Melchizedek: so our Lord was not born to the priesthood, for He
was never born, and thus required no genealogy; and His priesthood is not
forfeited by death, for He never dies; birth and death, to Him, were but
incidents in an eternal existence.
Behind His birth lies the eternity of the Godhead: beyond His
resurrection lies the eternity of His Priesthood, - “a priest for ever after
the order of Melchizedek.” Here is the
final overthrow of the Roman claim. The
Order of Melchizedek stopped with Christ.
Without successor, as without predecessor, He never lays down this
priesthood, and so no other ever takes it up.
“He, because He abideth for ever, hath a priesthood that doth not pass
to another” (Heb. 7: 24, marg.), - an irrevocable, inviolable, un-transmittable
priesthood.
Most solemn is God’s attitude to the claim of sacrificial
powers. It is the sin of Korah. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram - Levites, not
priests* - for
offering animal sacrifice - how much more daring the impiety of offering human
sacrifice, nay, a divine - met instant wrath.
“The ground clave asunder ... and swallowed them up”; and upon their
adherents “fire came forth from the Lord and devoured them” (Num. 16: 32). Judgment on priestless sacrifice now tarries
only for the expiration of the day of grace.
“Depart, I pray you” - ours becomes the sorrowful invocation of Moses -
“from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be
consumed in all their sins.”
* So we, though priests. have no power to offer atoning sacrifices,
but spiritual only. 1 Pet. 2: 5. Heb. 13: 15.
Behold the supreme glory of the Son of God. As Aaron soared above Israel, - as Abraham
above Aaron, - as Melchizedek above Abraham, - so, but incomparably more, Jesus
soars above Melchizedek. What an apex of
glory!
(1) He is the human Priest. The
Order of Melchizedek arose long ere God had chosen the Jew: humanity was one,
and Melchizedek was its priest, Not once does Jesus call Himself ‘Son of Judah’;
but sixty-three times ‘Son of man.’
(2) He is the royal Priest.
Royalty and priesthood were kept distinct in Israel. 2 Chron. 26: 19.
But - sprung from the Royal Tribe - on Christ’s head are crown and mitre; in
His hand, sceptre and censer; and He passes, like Melchizedek, from throne to
altar - at the Incarnation, and from altar to throne - at the Ascension. Zec.
6: 13.
(3) He is the solitary
Priest. Melchizedek himself, already half vanished
into the night, was but a type: so tremendous is a world’s atonement, that no
Priest was sufficient but One - the Son of God; and no Sacrifice was sufficient
but One - the Son of man: for ever “the Priest upon His Throne.”
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25
The Higher Criticism
The Higher Criticism. - Advanced Criticism has arrived, in some
quarters, at a goal which challenges the attention of the whole Church of
God. In presenting some ‘results’ of its
more extreme developments, it should be borne in mind that (1) all the Higher
Criticism, none of which professes to present a single new manuscript, or to
produce a tittle of fresh external evidence, yet claims so to dissect the
Scriptures as to have discovered facts as to their history, authorship, and
value, not only unknown to the Church of God hitherto, but also profoundly
revolutionary of our whole conception of the Divine Book. And (2) the Higher Critics from whom I quote
(I believe, without exception) are professed believers in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and paid and public defenders and expounders of the faith of the Son of
God. These two facts, a critical and a moral, together dominate the situation.
Results: Old Testament. “The
legends first taught by word of mouth,” says the Dean of Westminster, “you may
read in the Book of Genesis. These
stories, which fathers used to tell their children about their national heroes,
contain only that amount of history which such stories contain in the case of
other peoples.” “Abraham’s real existence,” says the Encyclopoedia Biblica,
edited by an Anglican Canon, “is as doubtful as that of other [legendary] heroes”:
the Book of Jonah is to be classed with Tobit and Susannah as “imaginary
religious stories”: the Red Sea was crossed by a natural wind: the setting up of
the Tabernacle in the wilderness “must be pronounced utterly impossible”:
Jehovah was “a wilderness deity, who had his abode in Sinai or Horeb.”
“Ezekiel,” says Prof. Peake, “seems to set on the throne of the universe a
self-centered egoist who bends the whole course of history to glorify his holy
name.” “Critical research,” says Prof. Krüger, “has annihilated the Old
Testament Canon. There is no longer any theologian who can conceal from himself
the final outcome of Old Testament criticism. The century just dawned will in
all probability consign the New Testament also to the same fate.”
Results: New Testament. “The connexion of sin and death in
Scripture,” says Prof. Denney, “is no piece of supernaturally revealed history,
to be accepted on the authority of Him who has revealed it. In such revelations
no one believes any longer.” “The picture of Jesus,” says Prof. Bousset, “is
drawn from the standpoint of the miraculous.
The historian can scarcely do otherwise than admit that legends, and not
history, are before us.” “So far as the reported miracles of Jesus [were to
establish His Messiahship],” says Dr. Abbott, “they are no longer to be taken
to be credible; either they never happened at all, or (at least), if
historical, they were not miraculous.” “For modern criticism,” says Dr. Abbott,
“the story [of Calvary], even in its most historic version, is not pure truth,
but truth mixed with doubtful legend”; and among the legendary “details” are
the parting of the raiment, all the sayings on the cross, the rending of the
temple veil, and the supernatural darkness. “An intelligent man,” says Prof.
Schmidt, “who now affirms his faith in such stories [the miracles] as actual
facts can hardly know what intellectual honesty means.”
Results: Jesus Christ. All
storms close at last around one lonely Brow. “The Messiah,” says Prof. Harnach,
“is a conception to which we can no longer attach a meaning or validity.” “Jesus,”
says Prof. Schmidt, “never assumed the title ‘Son of God’: it was a bestowal
upon him of a title he did not claim, and probably could not have understood.
When he was lifted up from the earth, and made a god, he drew all men unto
himself.” “It ceases to be a matter of fundamental importance,” says Prof.
Schmeidel, “whether Jesus rose again on the third day. The belief of the
disciples [that they had seen the risen Lord] does not prove that what they saw
was objectively real: it can equally well have been merely an image begotten of
their own mental condition. The accounts of the empty tomb are none of them
admissible.” “There is no use,” says
Prof. Burkitt, “in shirking the plain fact. The old infallible Bible has been
taken away. It has been given into the hands of the Critics, and what they have
given back is shorn of its old authority. We no longer believe because the
Bible tells us to do so.”
Consequences. “The Higher Criticism” says Prof. Peake, “has drawn
the fangs of the Secularist”: only - we sorrowfully add - by removing them to
the mouth of the theological professor. The sale of Bibles in England is
falling. “Across not one church
threshold in Wales,” says Dr. Pierson, “where the Higher Criticism is taught,
did the Holy Ghost pass in the revival of 1904.”
Nemesis is at the doors. In Liverpool - the second city of the
Empire, a sample city - in 1881, 40 seats out of every 100 were filled in
morning worship in the Free Churches; in 1891, 31; in 1902, 25; in 1908,
12. So also evening attendance has
fallen from 57 in every 100 seats in 1881, to 28 in 1908. The average morning attendance in 1881 was
274; in 1891, 212; in 1902, 170; in 1908, 85.
So also the average evening attendance has fallen from 392 in 1881 to
190 in 1908. These are appalling
figures.
When doubt speaks in the pulpit, infidelity sits in the pew, and at
last empties it; diluted doses of infidel criticism are killing the churches,
undermining public confidence in the Bible, and laying the foundations of
approaching apostasy. “But thou, O man of God, flee these things!”
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26
Adam and Christ
1. - SIN. “Through one man sin entered into the
world” (Rom. 5: 12). How so? Because God “made of one blood [or stock] all
nations of men” (Acts 17: 26). Made of
one stock, sprung from one source, pollution at the fountain-head necessarily
fouled the whole stream; as a severing blow at the root of a tree levels all
the branches also. An angel might sin,
and conceivably - if isolated, as a small-pox case is isolated - the sin might
not spread; for angels “neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Mark 12: 25):
the sin could be isolated to the angel.
But humanity increases by procreation; through one man therefore -
because he was the first - sin infected a world: nothing short of arrested
increase - i.e., the total annihilation of the race - could cut the entail of
inherited corruption. Behold our helplessness.
“Sin entered”: it is a done thing.
2. - DEATH. “So
death passed [travelled] unto all men.”
Death is not essential to true humanity: God could have garnered the
whole race, as Enoch or Elijah, without death.
Why then did death come? Because,
with sin, rottenness entered into the bones; and now, though a man may doubt universal
sin, who doubts universal death? And
universal death proves universal sin. “Sin
bringeth forth death” (Jas. 1: 15); “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23); “the
soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ez. 18: 4); “in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. ii. 17): - death is a consequence of
sin. Only he may say, - ‘I am no sinner,’
- who can immediately add, - ‘Because death will never cross my threshold.’ A doctor’s utmost achievement is to postpone
his final failure. What
helplessness! “Death passed”: it is a
done thing.
3. - IMPUTED GUILT. But the gravest fact of all
is one which it would never have entered the human mind to conceive. “So” - through one man - “death passed unto
all men, for that all sinned.” That is, in Adam all died, for in Adam all
sinned. Human solidarity is a profound mystery
comprehensible only to Deity; but so real is it, so actual, that death seals in
every man what every man did in the first man.
Imputation of guilt is as real as the imputation of righteousness. Could helplessness sink lower? “All sinned”: it is a done thing.
4. - RUIN. So
look at the facts. (1) A man is lost
thousands of years before he is born: even could he atone for his own sins, he
is powerless to wipe out his share in Adam’s: sin entered, death came, the
tragedy was over, the race was ruined thousands of years before we were
born. Moreover (2) every man himself
enters the world a sinner. Ps. 51: 5.
The stock is ruined: so, while I commit corruption, I also am
corruption: I carry in me from birth the seedbed of all sin. But also (3) we are helpless, not so as to be
irresponsible, but so as, by ourselves, to be unsavable. Why? Because since birth we have made sin our
own by the delight with which we have sinned.
Where in all the world is a sinner who does not love sin? But if a man catches the plague, and dies, he
dies, not of the other man’s plague, but of his own. “Death reigned”: it is a done thing. The ruin is complete.
5. - IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS.
God’s antidote now exactly fits the poison: as by a solitary sin came
death, so by a solitary righteousness came life. “So then” - for, as the fall, so the
redemption - “as through one trespass the judgment came, ... even so through
one righteousness the free gift came.”
As Adam involved us in Hell before our birth, so, before our birth also,
Christ secured to us a right to Heaven.
But how? “As through the one
man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, through the obedience of the one
shall the many be made righteous.”
Adam’s sin imputed made sinners; Christ’s righteousness imputed makes
saints: and, as the imputed guilt begot actual sin, so the imputed
righteousness produces active goodness.
But for whom was Christ’s obedience wrought? “As through one trespass the judgment came
unto all men to condemnation; even so through one righteousness the free gift
came unto all men to justification of life.”
The obedience of Christ for redemption is coextensive with the
disobedience of Adam for ruin: the All that fell is the All that is
redeemed. “The free gift came”: it is a
done thing.
6. - LIFE. The
salvation also travels back in effect over the road of ruin. Life springs from righteousness exactly as
death springs from sin. Prov. 12: 28. “So
as through one trespass the judgment came ... to condemnation; even so the free
gift came ... to justification of life.”
Adam gave us his death: Christ gives us His life. We are one with Adam by birth, and that is
our ruin: we are one with Christ by second birth, and that is our salvation. So that all shall be saved? no, but that all may
be saved. For as we have sinned
wilfully, so we must be saved willingly.
“For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much
more shall they that receive [take] the abundance of grace ... reign in life.” The righteousness bringing life has been
wrought: the thing is done.
7. - SALVATION. So
God has mercifully made salvation as helpless a thing as the ruin in which we
were born. We were passive recipients of Adam’s sin: we are passive recipients
of Christ’s righteousness. Thousands of
years before I was born, I was lost: thousands of years (nearly) before I was
born, I was redeemed. Salvation, equally
with the Fall, is a done thing: I can no more alter it, or add to it, or take
from it, than I can alter, or add to, or take from Adam’s guilt: I can reach
neither, across a gulf of thousands of years, any more than I can gather up
last winter’s snows. I can only suffer
the one: I can only take the other. All
that I can do, all that I ought to do, all that I need do, is to take it; that
is, to believe it, to accept it. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of
life freely” (Rev. 22: 17): “the free gift came,” and the moment I take it, it
is mine for ever.
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27
The Judgment Seat of Christ
1. - THE WILL OF GOD. The
ideal manhood - “A man after My heart, who shall do all My will”(Acts 13: 22):
its aim - “I am come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10: 7): its business - “My
meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me” (John 4: 34): its fellowship - “whosoever
shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, he is My brother” (Matt. 12:
50): its education - “Teach me to do Thy will; for Thou art my God” (Ps. 143:
10): its pleasure - “I delight to do Thy will, O My God” (Ps. 40: 8). So God’s ideal for a disciple is obedience to
His will; and God’s ideals are not optional, but obligatory. “We labour”(A.V.)
- “we strive” (Alford) - “we are eager” (Stanley) - “we make it our aim” (R.V.)
- “we are ambitious (R.V., margin) to be well-pleasing unto Him” (2 Cor. 5: 9).
Why? “For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ,” to
give account: we must report to God whether we did His will or not.
2. - THE TRIBUNAL. (1) The tribunal is a Bema, not a
Throne; a Judgment Seat for the investigation of disciples, not a Throne for
the arraignment of rebels: for the Judge (2 Tim. 4: 8) is “a certain king, which
would make a reckoning with his servants” (Matt. 18: 23). It is the first of our Lord’s three judgments
(Rom. 14: 12; Matt. 25: 31; Rev. 20: 12) on His return; and judgment begins “at
the house of God” (1 Pet. 4: 17). (2) Thus those examined are Christians
only. “We all” - i.e., “them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
saints, with all that call upon the name of our Lord in every place” (1 Cor. 1:
2): it is a final investigation of the whole Church of God. No Book of Life is produced, for it is no
judgment of the lost: “the wicked shall not stand [or, rise] in the judgment
... of the righteous” (Ps. 1: 5). (3) The process is individual: “so then
each one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14: 12). ‘Must’ - it
is inevitable; ‘all’ - it is universal; ‘made manifest’ - it is public; ‘judgment-seat’
- it is judicial; ‘stand’ - it is in resurrection; ‘each’ - it is individual; ‘give
account’ - it is responsibility; ‘to God’ - it is Divine.
3. - A JUDICAL PROCEDURE: “that each one may receive the things done.” Not, that each may receive something from
God, but “that each may receive the things” he himself has “done”: it is not a
general granting of glory, irrespective of service; but an exercise of the
Divine Law, - “as he hath done, so shall it be done to him” (Lev. 24: 19). “Be
not deceived” - is a word to disciples - “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6: 7). Paul puts it with exquisite clearness, and
two-fold emphasis. “Whatsoever good thing” - for a judge approves - “each one
doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether he be bond or
free” (Eph. 6: 8): on the other hand - “Ye serve the Lord Christ. For he that doeth wrong” - for a judge
censures - “shall receive again for the wrong that he hath done: and there is
no respect of persons” (Col. 3: 25).
4. - THE EVIDENCE: “things done by means of the body.” We must all “appear in our true light”
(Alford): as the fossil imprint of a bird’s claw, made ages earlier by a
momentary alighting when the stone was soft, now records that act in solid
rock, so our actions are the unerring imprint of our characters; the things
done reveal what the body was. Like a
palimpsest, when the heat of fire (1 Cor. 3: 13) passes over it, so our life
silently steals forth in lines every one of which we ourselves wrote: so that
what our eyes looked on, what ours ears listened to, what our hearts loved,
what our minds believed, what our lips said, what our hands wrought, where our
feet walked: - these are the unimpeachable evidences of the Judgment Seat. Rev.
22: 12. Secrets (1 Cor. 4: 5), motives (Matt.
6: 1), soul-attitudes (Luke 6: 36-38), and just church decisions (Matt. 18: 18),
also sway the adjudication.
5. - THE AWARDS: “whether it [the award] be good or bad.” The Greek points to the award: “that each may
receive according to the things done, whether it” - i.e., what he receives - “be good or bad.” Reward (as distinct from salvation, which is
through faith, against deserts) is strictly defined by works. So minutely do actions tell, that “whosoever
shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in
the name of a disciple [it is true only of Christians], shall in no wise lose
his reward” (Matt. 10: 42); how much more, greater benefactions! Matt. 19: 29. Conversely, as judicial, the Bema, inevitably
taking cognizance of a disciple’s unrepented offences, may inflict loss, or
even penal (but temporary: Matt. 5: 26) consequences. I Cor. 3: 15. “That servant, which knew his lord’s will, and
made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be
beaten with few stripes” (Luke 12: 47). Matt. 18: 35. (Nevertheless, eternal
1ife cannot be forfeited by a disciple: John 3: 16; 10: 27, 28.)
So somewhere there exists a draft by the hand of God of what our
life might have been, and still can be: some have lived wonderfully near God’s
thought for them: let us find and follow that Divine original. Eph. 2: 10.
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28
The New Birth
Nicodemus - sincere, moral, upright, needing no reformation - meets
Jesus: Jesus says, - You need to be remade.
How much more an open sinner! For
“verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God” (John 3: 3). “A man” -
therefore it is true of all. For man is
(1) sightless: “he cannot see.” He does
not now see Christ in his stead, a perfect righteousness and a perfect
sacrifice: and he who has never seen the Blood can never see the Glory.
He is (2) lifeless: “except a man be begotten.” Begetting is the imparting of life; and life
is imparted to the dead, not to the living.
Who ever saw a man who was not born? no more has anyone even seen a
Christian who was not born again. Man
enters no world except by birth: and we must be born into heaven if we are ever
to enter it.
He is (3) fatherless: “ye must be born again.” A second birth implies another fatherhood: “begotten
of the Spirit”- it is the second birth which produces sonship of God. Even Nicodemus - sincere, moral, upright,
needing no reformation - is a sightless, lifeless, fatherless soul, who can be
saved only by being remade.
“Ye must be born afresh”: “if any man is in Christ, he is a new
creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new” (2 Cor.
5: 17). Many a sinner, bitter and
broken, cries: “Oh, that I could begin life afresh!” That is exactly what Christ offers: “ye must
be born afresh.” “Ye must” - therefore ye may: ye may - therefore “ye must.” Regeneration is not so much an organic
change, creating or extinguishing human powers, as a functional change, whereby
our old powers take a new direction, move by a totally new life, and expand to
the fullness of their created capacities.
Man redeemed fulfils all, and more, than God planned in man
created. But Nicodemus interposes. “How
can” this be? Jesus now introduces
baptism the more fully to unfold His meaning.
“Except a man be born out of water” - not a second time of his mother -
“he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God.”
The new begetting is regeneration: the new birth is baptism. Secret, viewless, mysterious is the begetting
of the soul: open, visible, natural is the birth out of water which manifests
life already begun. As an infant is
alive before it is born, so within the water is a living soul, and out of the
water issues a new birth. It is a new
man that issues out of the water: not made new by the water, but by the Spirit
before the birth. Therefore only the regenerate may be baptised. Regeneration is a renewal (Tit. 3: 5); a
translation (Col. 1: 13); a quickening (Col. 2: 13); a creation (Eph. 4: 24); a
cure (1 Pet. 2: 24); an emancipation (Gal. 5: 1); a resurrection (Eph. 2: 6).
Our Lord now probes deeper: “that which is born of the flesh is
flesh”: i.e., a second fleshly birth would be useless. A thousand re-births from the flesh would be
- flesh: a new start indeed, but the millionth would be a start as polluted as
the first. “It is not the children of
the flesh that are children of God” (Rom. 9: 8). Our Lord rarely states total depravity: He
always assumes it. Matt. 7: 11; Luke 18: 19; Mark 7: 23. Total depravity is not that every man is as
bad as he can be, but that the flesh - i.e., every faculty of the natural man -
has an unchanging bias to evil. The flesh may braced with laws, and educated
with culture, and moulded with religion, and chastised with the hair-shirt of
the monk; but it remains that incurable thing which begets sin to endless
generations. A re-introduction to the
cradle, and the baby-face, and the mother’s arms, would be a second birth into
a life of deeper guilt. “The mind of the
flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither
indeed can it be”(Rom. 8: 7).
But the crowning marvel of regeneration remains. It is a re-birth: but with whose life? “The
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest
not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the
Spirit.” Animal paternity gives animal
life; human paternity gives human life; divine paternity gives divine life: it
is possible to start life afresh with the life of God. As the flesh is the seed-bed of all vices, so
the new creation is a seed-bed of all the virtues of Him who begat it: we are
indeed put back into the cradle, but out of that cradle spring the mighty
limbs, and the soaring soul, of a son of God. Children are sometimes born
crippled, or with limbs missing: there are no cripples from the second birth.
The divine power has entered in a divine birth to produce on earth
a divine life: it is a birth from above: and Heaven’s gates swing back to the
born again, because their life, their nature, their creation belong to
Heaven. O Nicodemus, have you learnt the
lesson yet? But mark: how shall the wind
blow our way? We can no more control
that Wind than we can handle the hurricanes.
Listen to the Gospel which our Lord immediately adds. “As Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that
whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.” The price of the new life is the old: the
renunciation of sin is the birth-travail: but the moment of faith is the moment
of regeneration. Accept Christ’s work for you, and instantly begins the
Spirit’s work in you.
“Whosoever BELIEVETH that Jesus is the
Christ is begotten of God” (1 John 5: 1).
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29
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Powerful and tempting arguments are now being used for the union of
all disciples on a basis of the spiritual divorced from the external. Possessing the realities for which the rites
stand - it is asked - why maintain the forms, so creating, and perpetuating,
division? Our Lord, in principle, has graciously revealed a profound answer. “Why
do thy disciples fast not?” (Mark 2: 18): why, as a Teacher come from God, -
for this is the underlying question to which our Lord addresses His answer -
dost Thou add no ritual to Moses’ Law?
The Lord’s reply is the great RUBRIC
OF RITUAL.
Jesus, having guarded Himself from any condemnation of fasting, of
which He approves in His absence (Matt. 6: 16), answers: - “No man rendeth a
piece from a new garment and putteth it upon an old garment” (Luke 5: 36). The ritual of Moses for two thousand years draped
the Law of Jehovah: as an outward vesture, it clothed and expressed that which
God Himself now calls “the old covenant” (2 Cor. 3: 14), “the oldness of the
letter” (Rom. vii. 6), the Covenant grown “old” (Heb. 8: 13). No man - Jesus
says it is a truism - patches an old garment: the reasons are obvious.
(1) It is useless: “else he will rend the new.” The patch will be stiffer and stronger than
the garment: the old worn, vesture, too threadbare to stand the strain, will
rend: and “that which should fill it up taketh from it, and a worse rent is
made” (Mark 2: 21). Both patch and
garment perish. Moreover (2) it is unsightly: “also the piece
from the new will not agree with the old.”
It does not match: the ‘patch of unbleached rag’ - unwhitened by
sunlight or chemicals - is not only a badge of poverty, but a positive
ugliness. God rejects it.
Profound ritual principles here stand revealed. The Son of God refuses to add a single rite
to the ritual of the Law. He removes the
robe, to replace it with a better: but patchwork is abhorrent to His eye: so
long as God preserves the vesture, no human hand may tamper with its
handiwork. This is the condemnation of
all man-made rituals, such as the ‘Seven Sacraments’ of Rome. To Christ’s new ritual, no church, episcopal
or other, may add rites: even so simple a rite as hand-washing before eating -
a patch sewn on to the Law by Pharisees - evoked our Lord’s drastic
censure. “Ye reject the commandment of
God, that ye may keep your tradition” (Mark 7: 9). No man has got God’s loom: he cannot
manufacture fabric of the same texture or pattern: and his clumsy and ugly
patches offend the eye, and only end in new and more disastrous schisms.
Ritual principles deeper still are now revealed. “No man putteth new wine into old wineskins; else
the new wine will burst the skins.” As
the skin yields to the pressure of the wine, and yet the wine is exactly
delimited by the skin, so a rite enshrines and expresses a doctrine, and the
doctrine is exactly defined by the rite.
Christ therefore had to make new rites.
The old skins had become rigid: new wine, poured in and fermenting,
would have expanded the skins, till they burst: the strong, seething, expansive
spirit of the Gospel would have ruined the old rituals. The modern Jew instinctively realizes this
peril to the Law. “If ever there was a
converted Jew,” says a worker, concerning a recent convert, “he is one”. And yet, whilst his religious conviction is
well known to the Jews, and even to his employer, he cannot accept
baptism. While not baptized, it is
little matter to the Jews what his religious opinions may be: they still
consider him as one of their own. Once
he submits to baptism, however, he becomes an outcast, and is regarded as worse
than a heathen. For the Jew prefers the
doctrine which sets the flesh on its trial - as in Circumcision - to the
doctrine which buries it as incurable - as in Baptism: “for he saith, The old
is better” (Luke 5: 39), - that is, is milder.
The Decalogue from the Mount is an easier rule of life than the Sermon
from the Mount.
Our Lord now establishes His Ritual Rubric. Doctrine must be enshrined in rite: “new wine
must be put into fresh wineskins.” Why?
“They put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matt.
9: 17): for if the skins are rent, “the wine itself will be spilled, and the
skins will perish” (Luke 5: 37). Says
Dr. Marcus Dods:- “We are in possession of descriptions of proselyte baptism
which make it impossible to doubt that the rite was performed by immersion. And
it is probable that unbiased interpreters of the Pauline Epistles will continue
to believe that his allusions to baptism are intelligible only on the
supposition that he had in view baptism by immersion. Of course it is also the fact that owing to
the inconvenience and frequent impossibility of performing the rite in the
ideal manner, another and also significant mode was commonly adopted. But if the meaning of baptism is understood,
why fuss about the mode?” Because to
rend the skin is to lose the wine: the meaning evaporates with the mode. Burial and resurrection disappear from a
baptistry that is no more a grave: a priest, standing before an altar, swathing
a water with incense, and offering a sacrifice of masses - what of truth
lingers when the Feast of Communion is visibly gone? “New wine must be put into
fresh wineskins.”
So long as our Saviour’s sacrificial death for sin is to be kept
before the eyes of the world, so long are the wounded Bread and the shed Wine
to be kept before the eyes of the Church, showing forth “the Lord’s death till
He come” (1 Cor. 11: 26): so long as the flesh is to be buried as incurable,
and saved souls are to rise to newness of life, so long is baptism to be the
funeral service and the resurrection rite of the Church of God - “baptising
them ... even unto the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 19, 20). “So both [doctrine
and rite] ARE PRESERVED.”
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30.
An Empty Tomb
1. - THE SEPULCHRE. “Came
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre” (Matt. 28: 1). What did they see? (1)
A new tomb, “wherein never man lay”: therefore, if a resurrection took place,
it was not, as in Elisha’s case (2 Kings 13: 21), a resurrection from contact
with a holy body: it was a new tomb. (2) A tomb “hewn out in the rock”:
therefore there was no subterranean passage by which a body could be withdrawn;
by the door the corpse entered, it issued.
(3) An open, empty tomb. What did this prove? That what had been buried, that had been
raised; namely, a crucified corpse. The
resurrection could not have been the rising of the spirit of Christ, because the
spirit of Christ had never been in the tomb at all. The world had waited thousands
of years to see a tomb that would never be refilled: it saw it now.
2. - THE EARTHQUAKE. “And
behold, there was a great earthquake.” The Prison-house into which our Lord
descended was a Prison-house erected by sin.
“Through sin came death”: the place of the dead is the place of
sinners. Now shaking by God is
preparatory to destruction. “Whose voice
then shook the earth,” signifying “the removing of those things that are shaken,
... that those things which are not shaken may remain” (Heb. 12: 26). The realms of death have been twice violently
shaken: the third shock (Rev. 20: 14) will be a final paralysis. When Jesus entered Hades, it trembled “Jesus
cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold ... the earth did quake; and the
rocks were rent; and the tombs were opened” (Matt. 27: 50). So, at the resurrection, “there was a great
earthquake”: Hades shook beneath the rising tread of the Son of God, and faint
tremors reached the surface of the world.
The Resurrection was the death of Death, and the first instalment (for
the redeemed) of the obliteration of Sin.
Hos. 13: 14. Rev. 20: 14.
3. - THE ANGEL. “An angel of the Lord descended from heaven”; “his appearance was
as lightning, and his raiment white as snow.”
The presence of the Angel was of incalculable importance. That Figure - bringing with him part of the
shining of Heaven - proves that Christ did not ‘break prison,’ but issued with
a free and legal discharge, authorised by God.
Christ’s body needed no rolling away of the stone: the Angel did not
raise Him: the supreme function of God’s officer, in flinging open the gates of
death, was to show to the universe that the great Burnt-offering had been
accepted for a guilty world. The Angel
brought the legal authorisation of God. Rom.
6: 4.
4. - THE WATCHERS. “The
watchers did quake, and became as dead men.”
Our Lord’s resurrection had two immediate and opposite effects: - dead
saints became living, and living sinners became as the dead. Roman soldiers, the hardiest of the world’s
sons, able to meet death in battle with a smile, are cowed by the lightnings
from an angel’s face. It is the terror
of another world. Earth’s bravest become
white to the lips when they see through the open grave into the dread world
beyond: but to the weak and defenceless women Jesus says, - “Fear not ye.” It
is a presage of the dual effect of the Last Assize.
5. - THE NEWS. “He
is not here; for He is risen, even as He said.”
“Give me the resurrection as a fact, and I will shatter in pieces the
modern view of the world.” It casts lightnings backward. Again and again our Lord had foretold His
resurrection, “By His death all that had gone before seemed disproved; by His
rising, it was proved that nothing had been disproved; nay, that everything had
been proved.” The sinlessness of Jesus (John
8: 46); the miracles of Jesus (John 14: 11); the prophecies of Jesus (Luke 22:
69); the salvation offered by Jesus (Matt. 11: 28); the judgment foretold by
Jesus (Luke 19: 27); the Heaven and Hell (Matt. 5: 12, 22) Jesus revealed: the
resurrection is the last link that shows the whole chain, backward, as solid
gold. “He is risen, even as He said.”
6. - THE BRIBE. - “They gave large money unto the soldiers,
saying, Say ye, His disciples ... stole Him away while we slept.” This last session of the Sanhedrim recorded
in Scripture seems an incredible fail: yet Israel’s history since reveals how
foul must have been the fountain that has poured forth two millenniums of
unbelief. No nemesis is so awful as the nemesis of the rejected fact. (1)
The Soldiers preached the Resurrection to the Priests: Hell ends by confounding
itself. (2) ‘Large money’ - compare that with ‘thirty pieces of silver’;
Hell felt it supremely more important to crush the Resurrection than to crush
the Saviour. Hell estimates the
Resurrection at a great price. (3) What is the only explanation of the
Resurrection offered by the keenest critics it ever had, living on the spot,
and at the time? ‘The soldiers, being
asleep, saw thieves; and, still asleep, recognised in the thieves Christian
disciples.’ One of the things most
amazing to unbelievers in the Day of Wrath will be to discover what fools they
were. All deniers of the Resurrection
range themselves with the Sanhedrim.
7. - THE COMMISSION. “Go
ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” An empty tomb means that there is a gospel to
preach. The sweep of the Commission has
been verified by history; the Resurrection is the cause of the Church, but the
Church is also the proof of the Resurrection, The Commission Christ bases on ‘all
power’: He clothes it in the Triune Name: He assumes myriads of unborn
witnesses: He foresees the homage of nations: He flings its arches sheer across
two thousand years of Christian experience and Christian love. History has
verified it. And what for the individual
soul? All God asks for salvation is the
acceptance of the Resurrection, and action upon it. “FOR IF THOU SHALT CONFESS WITH THY MOUTH JESUS AS LORD, AND SHALT BELIEVE IN THY
HEART THAT GOD RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD,
THOU SHALT BE SAVED” (Rom. 10: 9).
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31
A Dying World
The shock of earthquake at Messina was preceded, says an
eye-witness, by “a low growling like distant thunder,” followed, as the earth
cracked and split, by “a tremendous roar like the firing of a hundred guns.” So “the heavens shall pass away with a great
noise [a crashing roar (Lange)], and the earth and the works that are therein
shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3: 10). The
crash of final dissolution baffles all human imagination. Laws which uphold science can discover; laws
which dissolve are beyond our experience, and therefore beyond unrevealed
knowledge. Dissolution, as much as
creation, is a unique power attaching solely to the Godhead. “Upholding all
things by the word of His power” (Heb. 1: 3) - the put-forth force of Christ is
the soul of all things: when that is withdrawn, the universe falls together
like a soulless corpse, and lapses into burning ruin. Twice the Holy Ghost
asserts the dissolution. “The heavens
being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent
[intense] heat. But we look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Rev. 21: 1.
God reveals no fact (I suppose) without implying a moral
consequence: all inspired doctrine is a verbal statement of fact leading to
practical goodness. God reveals eternity
- that I may become a child of eternity; He informs me of the Second Coming -
that I may be prepared to meet my God.
So here. “Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what
manner of persons ought ye to be.” The
big things of eternity dwarf the seductions of time. How can I live for a world which will soon be
dust and ashes? Science must dissolve
with the dissolution of that which it examines: all gold will melt in the last
fires: the pleasures of sin are dissolving views which depart with the world that
bred them: - wisdom does not allow the heart to settle on that which can suffer
dissolution. 1 Cor. 7: 29-31. These tremendous facts are designed and
revealed to have an effect no less tremendous on our life.
“What manner of persons.”
All things are dissolving: personality abides. What manner of persons can rise above what a
ruin of worlds! 1 John 2: 17. Some
insects are born, grow old, and die within twenty-four hours: when we confront
personality we confront the imperishable.
What manner? “In all holiness.” Holiness is a growing recoil from the horror
of sin: “righteousness is conformity to the law of God, but holiness is
approximation to His character”: holiness beholds ten thousand burning worlds,
and sins not. Holiness in doctrine is
good, but holiness in life is better; for it necessarily presupposes the
possession of holy doctrine: “in all holy living.” Our life is long? Not so wise Angels say Who watch us waste it,
trembling while they weigh Against eternity one squandered day.
What manner? “In all godliness.”
Godliness is the life of Heaven lived on earth: it is the activity of
God reproduced through a human soul: it is the air of eternity always blowing
through a human life. The world may rock
in the last earthquakes, but God remains: therefore, “as the hart panteth after
the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!” (Ps. 42: 1). Heb. 1: 10-12. Godliness is, in me, the activities and aims
and joys and griefs of God: - “furnished completely unto every good work” (2
Tim. 3: 17): “prepared unto every good work” (2 Tim. 2: 21): “in every good
word and work” (2 Thess. 2: 17). This is
the calling of the child of eternity.
The attitude - “Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose again
this morning, and is coming back to-morrow”: the atmosphere - “The closet is an
excellent place in which to practise meeting Christ in the air”: and the aim -
“That ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in His sight” (2
Pet. 3: 14). How deep the Church’s
slumber! “It is possible, and even probable, that the world will last hundreds
of thousands, or a million, or even millions of years, before the coming of
Christ” (Church Quarterly Review, 1901). “Was St. Paul mistaken? Christ has not descended with the voice of
the Archangel yet. Will He never
descend? For the most part the Church of
Christ is now content to answer, Never” (Expository Times, Oct. 1905). Yet down the ages the Church’s nightingales
have kept up the midnight song - “earnestly desiring the coming.” “There is
nothing left for the faithful but with wakeful mind to be always intent on His
second coming” (Calvin). “Ardently I desire the day of Christ. I half call His
absence cruel - O when shall we meet?” (Rutherford). “I am daily waiting for
the coming of the Son of God” (Whitfield). “I waken, and I hear the birds
twittering, twittering, twittering, and I expect to hear the Trumpet break in
upon their song” (A. Bonar). “His coming
will be visible, corporeal, local; and wherever we open the New Testament, we
find it thrilling to the heat and joy of that manifestation of the Lord when we
shall see Him as He is” (Robertson Nicoll). “I never lay my head upon the
pillow without thinking that may be before the morning breaks, the final
morning may have dawned. I never begin my work in the morning without thinking
that perhaps He may interrupt my work and begin His own” (Campbell Morgan).
“SURELY
I COME QUICKLY. AMEN. EVEN
SO COME, LORD JESUS” (Rev. 22:
20).
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32
An Unknown God
1. - ONE BLOOD: “God made of one blood all nations of men.”
Acts 17: 26. The solidarity of the human
race is one of the awful and mysterious facts of life. That solidarity is the basis both of the Fall
and of the Redemption. One blood - so, if poison enters anywhere, it enters
everywhere: one blood - so, if Christ died for one man, He died for every
man. If there has been one sinner since
Adam, all are sinners: if one has been saved, all can be saved: if one is lost,
all are lost: if one has become radiantly Christ-like, so can all. One blood circulates through the whole human
race.
2. - ONE AIM: God made all nations “that they should
seek God.” God made the human soul for
God: the soul is a great emptiness which only the Divine can fill: God made
every man for Heaven. When He moulded
the human soul, He gave it a bias Godward.
Creation - our birth - our present heart-throbs - the world in which we
live, all have come into being simply that we might seek God. Nor is He far to seek. “He is not far from
each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” If a veil has dropt between God and man, it
is a veil God never made. The world is
full of God: every word we speak is spoken into the ear of God: every motion we
make is made in Him: the difficulty is not to find God, but to escape Him. God
made your soul for that research to which all science is a toy - the search for
God; therefore - Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can
meet, Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
3. - ONE LIKENESS: “for we are also His offspring.” This is an immense advance on earlier
statements: it means that when we find God, we can know Him. Gen. 1: 27. Man has lost the moral likeness of God (Gen.
5: 3), but the rational likeness remains.
God can see and feel and hear - so can we: God can reason - so can we:
God can love and yearn and sorrow - so can we: that is, God and man can
understand one another when they meet. Herein is the deadly insult of idolatry.
To make God wooden, or even golden, is not only an almost incredible
degradation of the human intellect in worship; but also, instead of a seeking
after God, it is a blotting out of the image of God, by the substitution of a
caricature. Nevertheless our rational
affinity with the Divine remains. It is the inalienable dignity of the human
spirit that it can communicate with God. Jer. 9: 23-24.
4. - ONE COMMAND: God “now commandeth men that they should
all every where repent.” Repentance is a
change of mind about sin: it is a sinner taking sides with God against himself:
it is a lost soul retracing its steps back to God. God commands this. To
whom? “All men - everywhere.” The poison is in the one blood: - in cottage
and palace, in young and old, in moral and immoral, - wherever God is God, and
man is man, “God commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” When?
“Now.” Now - that the days of
ignorance are past; now - that Calvary has bought, and offers, pardon; now -
while there is space to repent, and while the Spirit still strives: now -
without a moments delay. 2 Cor. 6: 2.
5. - ONE APPOINTMENT: “because He hath appointed a day.” God’s wishes are made as clear as light. Who?
- all men. Where? - everywhere. When? -
now. Why? - “because He hath appointed a
day, in the which He will judge the world.”
To-day is a merciful interlude, a last opportunity, a golden moment, a
supreme crisis, before one Day arrives, to which God is converging all events,
and in which He has fixed all judgment.
God’s cry is urgent because there is no hope in judgment. God never breaks His appointments: He will be
there, and the world will be there: and mercy will be swallowed up in doom. Heb.
9: 27.
6. - ONE MAN: “He will judge the world in righteousness by
the man whom He hath ordained.” Men will
be judged by a Man; and He only among men who tasted death for every man has
the right to pass eternal sentence upon any man. The man who judged the leper (Lev. 13.) was
the priest who atoned for him; and the priest who atoned for him was the one
who judged him. God is very slow to
pronounce any man a sinner: every scrutiny is resorted to, every delay is made,
every opportunity for amendment is given: and even when the case is hopeless,
then atonement is made. Lev. 13; 14. But
judgment comes at last. The greatest
friend the leper ever had exiles the un-purged leper from the Camp for ever. Lev.
13: 44, 46; Rev. 22: 15. Jesus examines,
Jesus atones, Jesus absolves, Jesus condemns: no element in the destiny of the
lost is more hopeless than the fact that the Priest who atones is at the last
the Judge who dooms. It is the wrath of
the Lamb. Rev. 6: 16, 17.
7. - ONE PROOF: “whereof He hath given assurance unto all
men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.”
All things tell of coming judgment.
Every star that obeys its orbit; every human state founded on the
administration of law; every career that tells of the triumph of virtue, or the
ruin of vice; every warning in the soul of sins that go before us into the
other world:- all things speak loudly of coming judgment. But one fact proves it. There is only one Judge: the Father “hath
given all judgment unto the Son” (John 5: 22): and the Judge is alive. God has lodged all judgment in the Son: if
Christ be dead, so is all judgment; if Christ be risen, judgment is risen from
the dead. O man, be warned of approaching judgment.
“If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but
also for the whole world” (1 John 2: 1).
Claim the advocacy now. A lady
wrote to her lawyer to undertake a case. “Madam” he replied, “I am sorry I
cannot undertake your case: I am no longer an advocate; I have been made a
judge.”
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33
Ten Pounds
1. - THE PARABLE. Luke
19. 11-27. The Parable is two-fold
throughout: two reasons for its utterance (1) “because He was nigh to Jerusalem”
at the close of an all but royal progress, and (2) “because they supposed that the kingdom was
immediately to appear” in consequence; two classes - citizens and servants;
two judgments - a compulsory muster of citizens and a willing assembly of
servants; and two adjudications - slaughter and reward exactly measured by
service. (With the Citizens -
unbelievers, who are taken and destroyed - we are not now concerned: nor are we
concerned with the differences in ability (Matt. 25: 15) among the Servants,
which is the ground of the distribution of the Talents).
2. - THE KINGDOM. Our
Lord’s words at once postpone the Kingdom.
“A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a
kingdom, and to return,” Israel - and
even the apostles after the resurrection (Acts 1: 6) - expected the kingdom
immediately: the Church since the second century has supposed, for the most
part, that it has been established: Jesus reveals that, until He had died,
risen, ascended, and returned, the kingdom is impossible. The Nobleman must go “into a far country, to
receive for himself a kingdom and to return.” 1 Cor. 15: 50.
3. - OFFICERS. The
supreme principle of the Parable is now laid bare. Officers are required for the administration
of a kingdom: so God deliberately interposed a prolonged period between the two
advents, that our Lord might be enabled so to test His servants, in His
absence, as to discover which are fitted for positions of responsibility and
trust on His return. A silent period of
profound mystery is slipped in, for the servants to reveal their character, for
the citizens to reveal their enmity, for God to reveal His justice upon both,
and for the Nobleman to reveal the Kingdom he has gone to obtain. Rev. 10: 7;
11: 15-18.
4. - SERVANTS. Ten
servants are chosen (ten is the number of responsibility; Ex. 34: 28; Luke 17:
17; Matt. 25: 1; etc.): “of his”- all are the Nobleman’s property (1 Cor. 6: 19):
each is entrusted with a sovereign: all are commanded to trade: and, on the Nobleman’s
return, all are assembled for judgment, Matt. 25: 19; 2 Cor. 5: 10. The court is full: the ‘bystanders’ (ver. 24)
- doubtless Angels - keenly watch the adjudication, and carry out the sentences
(Matt. 5: 25): and each servant steps forth, isolated and alone, to report to
his Lord. Rom. 14: 12.
5. - Faithful Servants. The
first servant’s report is brief and pregnant - “Lord, thy pound hath made ten
pounds more.” (1) Not, “I have made,”
but, “Thy pound hath made”: the utmost we can do for God is what God shall do
through us. Phil. 2: 13. 1 Cor. 4: 7.
God’s gifts in us push through into fruit and flower: our responsibility
is to give grace free scope by which to multiply itself. John 15. The servant trades, and the pound
multiplies. (2) No servant had more than one pound: no servant was without one
pound: every servant had an equal opportunity of making ten pounds: yet only
one so (far as we know) did so. 1 Cor. 9: 24.
(3) The recompense exactly
corresponds to the trade done: for every pound a city. “Well done, thou good
servant: because thou was found faithful in a very little, have thou authority
over ten cities.” The servant receives
the ‘well done’ for one reason only - because he has done well. Eph. 6: 8. So the second servant: - “be thou also over
five cities.” God works through us: but
He rewards us exactly according to the measure in which we have allowed Him to
do it. “Unto every one that hath shall
be given; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken
away from him.”
6. - An Unfaithful Servant. The
First - Commendation and reward: The Second - Reward; but no commendation: the
third Servant, neither commendation nor reward, but reproof and loss. “Lord,” this servant says, “here is thy pound,
which I have kept.” But the Lord had
told him to circulate it, not to keep it: “trade ye herewith till I come.” To bank money is the easiest way to reap
returns: this servant’s refusal even to bank it revealed, not only how little
he had his master’s interests at heart, but that, while willing to take money
from his Lord, he was unwilling to spend it for his Lord. But worse lies behind. Sadducean denial of a believer’s judgment
according to works, flowers at last into open criticism of Christ when that
judgment is found to be a fact. “Thou
art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapest that
thou didst not sow”: that is, I object on principle to the servants of God
coming unto any judgment for their works. (“Just as the Legalist resents the
doctrine that good works can have no part in effecting our forgiveness, so the
Evangelical recoils from the idea that they can constitute any ground for our
recompense.” - Dr. A. J. Gordon.) The
Judge answers: - Your very consciousness of the severity of the principle ought
to have made you more careful, not less, to meet its requirements Rev. 2: 23;
Heb. 12: 28, 29; 1 Pet. 1: 17. “Take
away from him the pound, and give it unto him that hath these pounds:” - for
the capacities and opportunities of service, out of which spring the emoluments
and dignities of coming glory, if despised by one, will be reaped by another. Rev.
3: 11.
7. - OUR CRISIS. Do
we realise the tremendous nature of the crisis through which we are
passing? Before the Nobleman departed,
He laid plans for the selection of officers to aid Him in the administration of
the Kingdom: He devised a plan for bringing to light who these officers are on
His return: this plan is in operation at the present moment, purposely so
contrived as to reveal individual capacity for office, and personal fitness for
trust; and - most impressive of all - the Long Journey is now nearly over, and
at any moment the investigation may begin.
“Make haste about cultivating a Christlike character. The harvest is great: the toil is heavy; the
sun is drawing to the west; the reckoning is at hand. There is no time to lose; set about it as you
have never done before, and say. ‘This one thing I do’ ” (A. Maclaren).
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34
The Indestructible Jew
“The preservation of the Jew during so many centuries of complete
dispersion is a fact standing nearly, if not absolutely, alone in the history
of the world. It is at variance with all other experience of the laws which
govern the amalgamation with each other of different families of the human race.”
(Late Duke of Argyll). There is no land
without a Jew; and so fecund and virile is the race that in fifty years it has
leapt up from four millions to twelve, and now exceeds by five millions the Jewish
census of the time of King David.
Between Babylon and Rome stretches the vast chain of Gentile empire:
Babylon crushed the royalty of Israel, and Rome crushed her priesthood: Babylon
has been a ruin for two thousand years, and the Rome of the Caesars is a dream,
- yet the Jew survives, “The world has found out by this time that it is
impossible to destroy the Jew.” (Lord Beaconsfield).
Nor is the racial type altered.
Other races have suffered dispersion, but dispersion in colonies; the
Jew alone has been a race in solution among other races: yet what he was on the
Jordan and the Euphrates, that he is to-day on the Thames and the Hudson. “The
black hair, the dark eyes, the sharply cut nose, the somewhat prominent lips,
the pale complexion, the piercing glance, the slight figure, the foreign
accent, foreign in all lands, the politeness and servility, the combination of
a love of appearance with slovenliness, the overweening estimate of money and
money’s worth, - this is no Negro, no Turk, no Egyptian; this is simply and
only the Israelite.” Jewish births
compared with Gentile are as five to three; and the Jews who exceed ninety
years of age, compared with Gentiles, are as five to two. “We still preserve
laws,” says a son of Israel, “that were given to us in the first days of the
world: our history begins at the cradle of mankind, and it is likely to be
preserved to the very day of universal destruction.”
We are now confronted with a startling fact. The ineradicable instinct of the Jew has been
to seek absorption among the nations. Even in the golden age of Israel the
Psalmist had to say, - “They mingled themselves with the nations and learned
their works” (Psa. 106: 35); and it was the unceasing grief of Jehovah that
Israel, His Bride, was never weary of breaking wedlock. So eagerly did Israel absorb a Babylonian
atmosphere that, after seventy years, Nehemiah had to translate the Law into
Hebrew (Neh. 8: 8), and a thousand years later the language of Palestine was
still a compound manufactured in Babylon.
Yet every instinct of absorption has been defied by an invisible barrier
of mysterious destiny. Intermarriages
with Gentiles have but one third to one fourth the fertility of pure Jewish
marriages. A ring of fire has kept the
Jew lonely, isolated, and indestructible.
“Experience shows that this conservation is due in a great degree to the
very hatred which they have incurred” (Spinoza).
It was the persecutions of a Pharaoh which first isolated the Jew
into a national consciousness, and made him a nation. It was the whips of
Philistia, and the scorpions of Egypt and Syria, which kept him a nation for a
thousand years. For two thousand more,
in Ghettos and Pales of Settlement, by Jew baiting and ‘pogroms’ a nation has
been forged now more vital and united than at any time since the Fall of
Jerusalem, - a burning bush, unconsumed.
The indestructibility of the Jew is a fact of unsurpassable
significance. There could be no more
startling proof as to Who it was that hung upon the Cross than these nineteen
centuries of un-exhausted expiation. “For our SINS” - the Jews have confessed
every year since the burning of the Temple - “we have been exiled from our land.”
Now mark: - in seventy years, that is, in two generations, Israel in Babylon
discovered its sin, and was cured of idolatry for ever: in nineteen hundred
years, or seventy generations, the sin producing the second dispersion has
never been discovered or expiated.
Nor could it be the transgression of the Mosaic Law alone; for
Jehovah had explicitly promised, that, on repentance,
“the Lord thy God will TURN THY
CAPTIVITY, and have compassion upon thee” (Deut. 30: 3). No people has fasted longer, or prayed more
fervently; no nation has so studied the Law, or sought more earnestly to obey
its precepts: yet not a single [spiritual] blessing, that was to follow obedience,
has been procured, and not a single curse, which was to follow disobedience,
has been averted. What immediately
preceded this tremendous catastrophe. CALVARY. “All the people answered and said, His blood
be on us, and on our children” (Matt. 27: 25). “This scattered, undying people
offer the most irresistible evidences of the Divine mission of the Christ whom
they crucified” (Bishop Geo. Moberley).
Calvary is the solitary clue to eighteen centuries of exile.
The survival of the Jew is an equally arresting proof of the love
of God. The worlds that roll around our
earth are no more indestructible than the people of God’s choice. “Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun
for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light
by night: If these ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the
seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever” (Jer.
31: 35). All blessing for the world God
has lodged in the Jew. “In thee shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed”: with the absorption of the Jew among the nations, therefore,
would disappear, as a river that sinks out of sight, the hope of the world, and
his survival is essential to the salvation of the race. The indestructible Jew carries in ‘the
wandering feet and weary breast’ the irrefutable proof of the crucifixion of
the Son of God, and the perpetual witness of Jehovah’s un-exhausted love.
Take the Jew from the world, and what becomes of the Bible? Take the Bible from the world, and how do you
explain the Jew? Interpret one by the
other and the proof is overwhelming that God has sent His Son into the world, that
through Him the world might have life.
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35.
Living Letters
Not a line written by our Lord’s hand has come down to us. Once,
and once only, He wrote (John viii. 6): and that word vanished with the dust in
which it was written. Nevertheless, for nearly two thousand years Jesus has
been writing millions of letters: what are these?
1. - THE RAW MATERIAL.
What is Christ’s paper? “Ye are
an epistle of Christ, written, not in tables of stone, but in tables that are
hearts” (2 Cor. 3: 3). God might write
on the mind - yet, knowing what is right, I might refuse it; God might write on
the conscience - yet, feeling what is right, I might neglect it; but when He
writes on my heart, He grips the centre of my being, and masters my life. “I will put my laws on their heart, and upon
their mind also will I write them” (Heb. 10: 16).
2. - THE PARCHMENT. All
writing material - whether reeds, or leaves, or skin, or rag - is utterly unfit
to be written on until worked up: the reeds and leaves have to be dried, the
skin to be dressed, the rags to be pulped; even stone must be polished before
it can take the engraver’s tool. The raw
material is the heart: what is the parchment ready for inscription? “Written in tables [or tablets] that are
hearts of flesh.” A heart which refuses
to absorb the ink, which takes no saving impression from the Gospel, is a ‘hard’
heart, which has no part nor lot in salvation.
“I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you
an heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36: 26). But
all rags can make good paper. A
manufacturer cares nothing concerning the original state of the rags: - foul,
or clean, all he asks is that it should go through the indispensable process:
so the cleanest sinner will not enter Heaven because of his cleanness, and the
foulest sinner need not keep out of Heaven because of his foulness. Joel 2: 13.
3. - THE PEN.
Christ writes no letter with the pen of an angel, or an audible voice
from Heaven: what then is His pen? “An
epistle of Christ, ministered by us.”
The sun takes the photograph, but human hands set the camera: so the
penmanship is Christ’s, but the
amanuensis is any one who can write God’s truth on other hearts. “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Ps.
45: 1), and that Writer is Christ. 2 Cor. 4: 13.
4. - THE INK.
What is the invisible and mysterious fluid, which, traced by the finger
of Christ, engraves God upon the heart?
“Written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.” The Tablets are alive: the Pen is alive: so
must the Fluid be living too: the Holy Ghost is God’s great Agent of life
without Whom salvation is impossible. “If
any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom. 8: 9). As flowers and figures upon porcelain are
burnt in, so as never to be blotted out; - so the words ‘Sin’ - ‘Judgment’ - ‘Hell’
- ‘Blood’ - ‘Pardon’ - ‘Christ’ - ‘Heaven’
[and ‘Kingdom’] are engraved in letters of fire on the
saved heart for all eternity.
5. - THE WRITER. How
can we be sure that the Writer is Christ?
The author of a letter is revealed, not alone by the penmanship, or the
signature - these can be forged, - but supremely by what he says, and how he
says it: that is, by the contents, and the style. “An epistle of Christ” must give “a savour of
Christ.” “I saw a terrible object” says a traveller - “propped against the
wall. He had lost all semblance of
humanity, eyes and face eaten away: he could neither move nor speak, but could
hear a little. Near him stood a handsome
young Chinaman. ‘Do you see that young man?’ said the doctor. ‘When he came to
us he was intensely proud, and bitterly opposed to the Gospel. He was
converted. His first thought was, What can I do for Jesus? He constituted himself the nurse of this
melancholy object, sleeping by his side, feeding him before touching his own
food, and lifting him hither and thither.’ ” As a violet will fall out of an
opened letter, or some word of love in it suddenly set all our pulses beating,
whose is the aroma of this subtle and exquisite perfume? Whose is the image and superscription? It is ‘a sweet savour of Christ.’
6. - THE CORRESPONDENT. No
letter was ever written except to convey thoughts to others: to whom are these
letters addressed? “An epistle known and
read of all men:” that is, read and re-read; the handwriting recognised, and
the contents studied; read within and read without. “The godly man is the ungodly man’s Bible.” Everybody knew what the Corinthians had been:
everybody knew what they now were: in every one of them, therefore, all Corinth
saw an autograph letter from God.
7. - THE CONTENTS.
What do these letters declare?
And who may become living letters?
(1) “Ye” - the whole church -
“are an epistle.” As there are many copies
of the Bible, but only one Bible, so there are many Christians, but only one
epistle; and as a copy of the Bible may be mutilated or defective, yet the
Bible is perfect, so, however defective a Christian, all the grace in the world
to-day is lodged in the Church of Jesus Christ.
One Christian is a living document overthrowing all infidel argument:
how much more the entire Church! It
spells a divine Christ. (2) If Christ has written one such
letter, He can write a thousand, and He can write a million: and if your
neighbour has become God’s love-letter to the world, so can you. (3) Life
can hold no higher possibility for a man than to become God’s living letter:
for it is Christianity in its most convincing form - the godlike life; in its
most persuasive form - a loving voice; in its most enduring form - an immortal
heart; and in its divinest form - an autograph of God.
Christ will soon close His correspondence for ever. He will soon have written the last
letter. Will you be one? God’s Church is a letter addressed to you: He
who wrote it is waiting for an answer.
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36.
Schism
1. - THE CHURCH.
Countless problems are solved the moment the word ‘church’ is correctly
defined. What is the Church? It is - as the word indicates - an assembly
called out of the world [by
the Holy Spirit]; a body of
men, women, and children who believe in Jesus as the Christ (1 John 5: 1), and
who confess Him as the Son of God (1 John 4: 15). Seven times the Scriptures describe the
Church as that body of people which is vitally one with Christ. It is (1) a Vine; “I am the Vine, ye are the
branches” (John 15: 5): (2) a Flock;
“other sheep [Gentiles] I have, which are not of this fold: ... they shall
become one flock, one shepherd” (John 10: 16): (3) a Temple; “unto Whom coming, a living stone, ye also, as living
stones, are built up” (1 Pet. 2: 4): (4)
a Bride; “that He might present it unto Himself a glorious church, not having
spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph. 5: 27): (5) a Family; “that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”(Rom.
8: 29): (6) a Body; “God gave Him to
be head over all things to the church, which is His body” (Eph. 1: 22): (7) a Spirit; “he that is joined unto
the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6: 17).
The sole fact which constitutes membership of the Church is vital union
with our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. - RECEPTION. The
moment the Church is defined correctly, the terms of communion become
inevitable and obvious. If the Church is
the assembly of all vitally united to Christ, all so vitally united constitute
the Church, and must therefore be acknowledged as the Church. We do not make a Christian, the utmost we can
do is to receive him: we do not manufacture fellowship, we can only acknowledge
it: we do not make the unity of the Spirit, we can only keep it: and we are
bound by the very construction of the Church to receive into our fellowship all
whom God has received into His, - for they are the Church. Rom. 14: 1-7. “Wherefore
receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God”
(Rom. 15: 7). Heb. 12: 13.
3. - SCHISM. We
are now in a position to define the sin of Schism. God is compacting His saints into unity:
Schism tears them asunder. “God tempered
the body together, ... that there should be no schism in the body” (1 Cor. 12:
24). God tempers together: Schism, which
means a split, or rending, pulls apart; it is party spirit in the Body,
alienating hearts that still profess the same fellowship. 1 Cor. 1: 10-13. Whence does it come? “Now the works of the flesh” - that is,
permanent tendencies in us all, springing from the old nature - “are manifest, which
are these, faction, divisions, parties” (Gal 5: 20). Jude 19.
4. - HERESY. But
there is a worse sin, - the sin of Schism grown hard and old: this Scripture
calls Heresy. Schism is heart-separation in the Body: Heresy is an undisguised
faction (often involving a separate Table, and an organisation hedged by
separatist terms or communion) which ultimately develops into a split from the
Body. Both sins are named in one
passage. “I praise you not, ... for I hear that schisms [heart-separations] exist
among you; and I partly believe it. For
there must be also heresies [factions] among you” (1 Cor. 11: 17). It is crucial to observe that Heresy - which
never bears in Scripture its modern moaning of false doctrine - is a faction
which divides the people of God either on a truth or on an error. Its sinfulness lies, not in that which
divides, but in the division. The
forcing of any doctrine or ritual or practice - whether true or false - as a
term of communion compels division, and is the sin of Heresy: and the heretic,
or party-maker, is to be avoided. Tit. 3: 10; Rom. 16: 17.
5. – EXCOMMUNICATION. The
only commanded excommunications are those for implacable injury (Matt. xviii.
17), certain stated immoralities (1 Cor. 5: 11), and perhaps also for
persistent sloth (2 Thess. 3: 11, 14).
All other exclusion is unscriptural and evil. “Neither doth he himself receive the brethren”
- the grounds of Diotrophes’ excommunication of others are not stated, for they
are immaterial: it is the excommunication which is the sin - “and them that
would he forbiddeth, and casteth them out of the church. Beloved, imitate not that which is evil, but
that which is good” (3 John 10, 11).
Schism and Heresy will exclude disciples from the millennial kingdom of
Christ. “Factions, divisions, heresies, and
such like: of the which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they
which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5: 21).
6. - THE SCHISMATIC. A
fact of supreme practical importance remains.
Who is the Schismatic? The
Schismatic is the one who raises barriers to communion with his brethren which
God never raised. If an individual, or a
church, or a group imposes as a condition of fellowship any doctrine or ritual
or practise which God has not imposed - that is, any doctrine except that which
makes a Christian (Rom. 10: 9) - the guilt of schism lies with the imposing
body, and not with the conscientious objector who is thereby debarred from
fellowship. God has founded His Church
on life: he who, ignoring a disciple’s life in Christ, and his entire innocence
of the immoralities of 1 Cor. 5: 11, insists on a doctrine or a ritual or a
practice as a term of communion, - he is the Schismatic: on the other hand, the
individual or the church which, loving all God’s children, receives them on the
sole ground of regeneration, nor exalts un-sectionalism as the fresh
rallying-cry of a sect, no excommunication can bring in guilty of Schism at the
bar of God.
7. - CATHOLICITY.
Here lies the true Catholicity. “I
take a whole Christ for my Saviour; I take the whole Bible for my staff; I take
the whole Church for my fellowship; and I take the whole world for my parish”
(Augustine). In spite of the deep
disorder and tragic sin at Corinth, they are all still to Paul “my beloved” (1
Cor. 10: 14), to whom he can say, - “Ye are in our hearts to die and live with
you” (2 Cor. 7: 3).
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37
The Blood and the Soul
1. - SACRIFICE. A
custom that is universal, dating back through all ages, and spread through all
nations, is bloodshed in Sacrifice. The
most ancient writers, as Pythagoras and Plato, complain that so strange a
practise - one so abhorrent (as it is) to reason, and opposed to all the
dictates of natural religion - had even then spread through the whole world:
modern travellers affirm that it is still as wide-spread as the human
race. How could the blood of a dead
animal please God? Imagine the first
sacrifice. No animal had yet been killed
by man. No creatures were yet
slaughtered for food. No holy human
instinct demanded bloodshed for worship.
Yet Abel deliberately cuts his lamb’s throat, and its blood welters on
the ground; when the last quiver of the heart has ceased, he places the carcase
in the flames; and the fire consumes it into silent ash. Blood, hot with life, poured out is a tragic
and awful thing: could it please God? Ezek.
18: 32.
2. - GUILT.
Abel’s only possible motive is that which has been the motive of all
Sacrifice since. The dreadful accents of
an offended God still rang in the ears of the disobedient family. Abel, profoundly moved, must have felt thus:
- “I can come before God no more in the glow of child-like innocence and
gratitude: the purpose for which He made me, I have destroyed: I have sinned,
and now I am sin; even as this sacrifice is burnt to ashes, so I deserve nothing
but death.” But the moment God’s
lightnings fell on the lamb, and not on him, imagine Abel’s joy. “God is pleased, somehow; the philosophy of
it I do not understand: how an innocent animal can replace my guilty soul, I do
not know: all I know is that I have escaped the fire.” It was life for life.
3. - FAITH. But
was God pleased? “By faith Abel offered”
his lamb: and, since “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”
(Rom. 10: 17), God must have told Abel to do it. How else could Abel know he was not to offer
the animal alive? How could he tell
which animal was sacrificial? How could
he know God would not be angry with the slaughter of His lovely living
thing? Moreover, God had already done
it. The first animal ever slain was
slain by God (Gen. 3: 21): not for human food, but to cover man: life was
taken, that life might be preserved. It
was life for life.
4. - BLOOD. The
meaning of the bloodshed now begins to appear.
Death is no pleasure to God: it is a tragic and horrible necessity. “For
the soul of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it” - the blood,
containing the soul - “to you upon the altar to make atonement” - that is, a
covering - “for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement; by
reason of the soul” that is in it (Lev. 17: 11). It is soul for soul. There is no magic in blood, but there is a
soul in it: and only when the blood is poured away with the soul in it is death
assured, and soul has been given for soul.
Therefore God, for mercy’s sake, reserved all the blood for sacrifice
alone. “No soul of you shall eat blood:
... I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement.” It is soul for soul.
5. - CALVARY. Now
observe that the brunt of tragedy falls on God.
The blood of sheep and oxen has a soul in it (Rev. 16: 3): why then was
it perfectly valueless (Heb. 10: 4) for atonement? Because it had not a human soul in it. A sacrifice to be atoning must be in the
nature that has sinned: a man must die for men: an animal will not do, nor an
angel. “A man of sorrows, ... He poured
out His soul unto death: ... Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” (Isa.
53: 3). But why could no other man do
it? Because no other man had a soul
sinless in quality, and Divine in value: atonement for the entire race could be
wrought by the God-man alone. Ps. 49: 7.
“Awake O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my
fellow, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 13: 7).
And the death of the Man who was God’s Fellow is specifically stated to
have been in our place: for “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities.” It was soul
for soul.
6. - JUDGMENT.
Therefore all Sacrifice - and Calvary supremely - does not lessen, but
enormously enhances, the terrors of judgement.
For the holy Law is shown immeasurably more dreadful in Calvary than it
could ever have been in the open punishment of the sinner. Why?
Because sinless, holy, and Divine though He was, God spared not His own
Son: if the Law never hesitated for one moment in smiting the sinless One,
because He took the sinner’s place, how shall it spare the sinner himself? Again, all infliction which is punishing
punishment, and not merely reformative, is now often said to be immoral and
revengeful: but if all punishment is only to amend, how did it ever fall on
Christ? Calvary is an awful revelation
of the penal destiny of the lost: the sinless Cross stands for ever as the
dreadful nemesis of the offended majesty of the Law. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek.
18: 4).
7. - CONFUSION. How
then, and when, is atonement - God’s mercy-gift - made mine? The Law of Moses - the most organized and
wonderful sacrificial system the world has ever seen - first made plain, by its
ritual, the identity of the sacrifice and the sinner. “Aaron shall lay his hands upon the head of
the live goat, and confess all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and
all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the
goat” (Lev. 16: 21). Personal contact -
personal appropriation - personal identity, must be established between the
sinner and the sacrifice: I must take Christ as my personal Saviour: and the
moment I do so, the sins of the sinner pass to the Sacrifice, and the merits of
the Sacrifice pass to the sinner. 2 Cor. 5: 21.
“And he shall lay his hand upon the head of
the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him [by God] to make atonement”
(Lev. 1: 4).
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38.
The Prize of the Kingdom
Is the Millennial Kingdom (Rev. 20: 4-6) the Prize for which the
Christian is to run, and which may be forfeited, unless a standard of holiness
be attained known only to God? It is so -
1. Because our Lord states it in the Gospels,
- the Holy Spirit repeats it in nearly every Epistle, - it is the basis of the
promises and threats to the Seven Churches, - and it is foretold as an actual
experience in the prophecies of the Apocalypse.
[1] Matt. 7: 21; Luke 20: 35, etc.
[2] Eph. 5: 5, 6; Gal. 5: 19-21.
[3] Rev. chs. 2. & 3.
[4] Rev. 11: 18, 20: 6.
2. Because the Types of the Old Testament,
largely an unquarried mine, strikingly corroborate it, thus confirming our
understanding of the literal passages of the New Testament, and weaving all
into an exquisite mosaic of revelation. 1
Cor. 9: 24 – 10: 12: Ex. 12: 15; Luke 17: 32; Heb. 4: 11.
3. Because the Age to Come - as distinct
from the Eternal State, which is based (Rev. 20: 15) on grace alone - is
revealed as “one last day of a thousand years, a full and perfect judicial aeon,”
in which all seed sown in this Age reaps its exactly corresponding harvest, and
to which the consequences of works done after faith are confined. Rom. 2: 5-11; 1 Pet. 4: 17; 1 John 4: 17;
Gal. 6: 7-9.
4. Because it safeguards the infinite merits
of our Lord’s imputed righteousness and divine sacrifice by establishing the
spotless and eternal standing of every believer in Him; while it also
safeguards human responsibility and divine justice by making every believer
accountable for his walk, under pain of a possible forfeiture of coming glory.
[1] Heb. 10: 14, Rom. 8: 33;
[2] Phil. 2: 12, Rev. 3: 11.
5. Because - since God’s dealings with His
people must always rest on the character of God, and God’s character is not
mercy only, but justice also - it is inconceivable that a disciple’s life, if
unholy, should have no profounder effect on his destiny than mere gradation in
glory. Heb. 10: 30, 31; Rev. 22: 12; 1 Cor. 3: 15; Luke 20: 35.
6. Because, if we acknowledge any judgment
of a believer’s works at all, and that before a tribunal which is a judgment
seat and not a mercy seat, we are thereby compelled to acknowledge, further,
that the investigation must be strictly judicial, and that it will therefore be
as exactly graded in censure as it is in praise. 2 Cor. 5: 10; Rom. 14: 10-12; Col. 3: 24, 25;
2 Tim. 2: 5.
7. Because it vindicates the holiness and
justice of God from the charge of compounding with His people’s sins, and makes
the highest glory of God to rest only on the active righteousness of the
disciple co-operating, consistently and ceaselessly, with the imputed
righteousness of his Lord, - obedience being the only proof of love. 1 Cor. 3: 17; 1 Thes. 4: 6; Matt. 5: 20; Rev.
20: 6.
8. Because it is the supreme reconciliation
between Paul and James, - that is, between justification through faith unto
Eternal Life and justification through works unto Millennial Reward.
[1] Before works - Rom. 4: 10, Gen. 15: 6;
[2] After works - Jas. 2: 21, Gen. 22: 16.
9. Because it is perhaps as near an
approximation as has yet been reached to a solution of the perennial
controversy between the Calvinist and the Arminian: for it establishes all the
passages of glorious certainty, while it leaves ample scope for the most solemn
warnings: it takes both sets of Scripture as it finds them. John 10: 27, 28; Rom. 6: 23; Rom. 11: 29;
John 15: 6; Heb. 10: 26; Matt. 5: 22.
10. Because it gives the natural and unforced
interpretation to the facts of Church life, as it does also to the simple
statements of Holy Writ, and reveals how exactly the one squares with the
other, both in present character and in just recompense. 2 Cor. 12: 20, 21; Jas. 2: 5; Matt. 18: 18;
Rom. 8: 12, 13.
11. Because large sections of the Church of
God are purged, and can only be purged, by seeing the drastic consequences of a
carnal life: and because, for want of a frank and fearless statement of these consequences,
multitudes of disciples are now wrapt in a profound slumber. 1 Cor. 5: 5, 11, 6: 9; Matt. 24: 48-51; Luke
12: 47, 48; Rev. 3: 16, 21.
12. Because it purges every motive with the
awful vision of the Judgment Seat of Christ, and supplies a lever of
unsurpassed power for alienating the disciple from the world and filling him
with a passion for the Kingdom of God. 1
Pet. 1: 17; Rev. 2: 21-23; Phil. 3: 11-14; Rev. 2: 26, 27.
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39.
Jehovah Our Righteousness
TRANSGRESSION. “By works of the law shall no flesh be
justified in His sight” (Rom. 3: 20).
What is the Law? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy
neighbour as thyself” (Luke 10: 27): “on these two commandments hangeth the
whole law, and the prophets” (Matt. 22: 40).
Love from cradle to grave; love to God from every part of one’s being;
love to every act, to every truth, to every attribute, of God; love that has so
controlled us as to prevent, under all circumstances, and at all times, injury
to God or man; love to every neighbour without exception, with a love no less
than love to self; love that has never ceased, and that has never slipped: -
this is the Law of God. The soul that
imagines that flesh can be justified before God by works of law has no
conception whatever of the true nature of the Law of God.
REPENTANCE. Nor can Repentance ever be Justification.
“For through the law cometh the knowledge” - or consciousness - “of sin,” or
guilt, and not its removal. No law court
in the world ever justified an offender because he repented: for law has to do,
not with the feelings of the guilty, but with his deeds: it has never said,
Repent and live, but always, Do this, and live (Ezek. 18: 19). “The doers of a
law shall be justified,” that is, pronounced righteous (Rom. 2: 13). For law to acquit the guilty on the ground of
repentance, or on any ground whatever but that of obedience, is to dissolve the
very foundations of righteousness. Prov. 17: 15. Gal. 3: 10.
RIGHTEOUSNESS. But
listen. “Now” - since the Gospel came - “apart from law a righteousness of God
hath been manifested.” A righteousness
now manifested, - now, for the first time: and it is God’s: what is this righteousness? God was never manifested anything but
righteous: and so far from the Gospel revealing a righteous God, it is the Law
which supremely did this (Ps. 119: 142): what then is this righteousness now
revealed? Look again. “A righteousness of God”: but righteousness
before law is the Law pronouncing righteous one who stands before it: when did
God ever so stand? Look again. This must be a human righteousness; for it is
human conduct which the Law regulates: what then is it? Christ.
PAUL ANSWERS. “Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth ... to show His righteousness: ... for the showing, I
say, of His righteousness at this present season.” “Whom God brought forward”: God brought Jesus
out of the veiled eternities, led Him under human gaze for three-and-thirty
years, lifted Him on the cross to the eyes of all men and all ages, and then
drew Him back to God. Behold the
Righteousness! It is the “righteousness
of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1: 1); “for as through the one
man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of the
One shall the many be made righteous” (Rom. 5: 19). It is a Man’s obedience, for Christ was “born
of a woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4: 4): yet it is God’s righteousness, for
it was “God manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3: 16) who gave that obedience its
infinite value and reach. It is “Jehovah
our righteousness” (Jere. 23: 6). Phil. 3: 9.
JUSTIFICATION. So
justification before law - though “apart from law” so far as the sinner is
concerned - becomes both possible and a fact. Gal. 2: 16. “For the showing, I say, of His righteousness
at this present season; He might Himself be just, and the justifier of him that
hath faith in Jesus.” On what
ground? Because, since the Law has been
perfectly obeyed in a living righteousness, and perfectly obeyed also in a
death under judgment, the Law itself now justifies him who is in Christ. If I have faith, I am in Christ: not only,
therefore, may God justify me, but - by His own gracious provision - He must;
once justice is satisfied, it were injustice to ask for more: the just Judge
can now justify the unjust without losing his character, - nay, while
gloriously vindicating His holiness. Is. 61: 10.
BOASTING. “Where
then is the glorying? It is excluded.” Three things must follow if I had a finger in
my own salvation: - (1) the Divine
holiness would be irretrievably damaged in my eyes, for God would have slurred
over, and accepted, an imperfect goodness; (2)
my eternity would be uneasy, for how should I know what fresh guilt the Law
might not uncover in my earthly life?
And (3) for all eternity I
could boast in the face of Heaven that “salvation belongeth unto God” and
myself. Rev. 7: 10. But now the
righteousness that saves is not mine at all, but God’s; nor is it God’s
righteousness eking out mine, but substituted for mine: the meriting cause lies
wholly outside my conduct, and wholly inside Christ’s; and the Law, “Thou shalt
love” - the highest law that man could hear, or God could give - has been so
divinely fulfilled from Bethlehem to Calvary that now “Christ is the end of the
law unto righteousness to everyone that believeth,” Rom. 10: 4.
LAW. “Do
we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid: nay, we
establish law.” “The law is holy and
righteous and good” (Rom. 7: 12): its enforcement is holy and righteous and
good: and the joy of eternity is a salvation that rests, not on a pardon
granted against law, but on a righteousness founded on the vindication of
law. God is pleased to impute Christ’s
righteousness to the soul on faith as surely and effectually as He imputes the
soul’s sin to Christ. “Him who knew no
sin He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become” - not righteous, but
- “the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5: 21).
“There is such dignity in the Godhead that all it does is infinite
in its merit, and when He stooped to suffer, the Law received greater honour
than if a whole universe had become a sacrifice” (Spurgeon).
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40.
Soul-winning
1. – IT IS A COMMAND. “To
save” (John 12: 47) - that was our Lord’s mission; “I must work” (John 9: 4) -
that was His motto: and “as He is, even so are we in this world” (1 John 4: 17). “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers” (Matt.
4: 18): every follower is to be a fisher: and our witness, like a pebble
dropped in a pool, is to widen out to the utmost frontiers of mankind. “Ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem”
- the home circle; “and in all Judea” - the homeland; “and Samaria” - the place
of corrupt religion, or (for us) Christendom; “and unto the uttermost part of
the earth” (Acts 1: 8) - the vast heathen world beyond. Mark 16: 15. Not a single disciple is excepted from the
great command.
2. – IT IS A RESPONSIBILITY. 1
Cor. 1: 27, 28. It was labouring men out
of whom our Lord made the greatest Fishers.
All the college that is needed is a heart set on souls; all the
learning, an experimental knowledge of saving truth; all the training, actual
experience in soul-winning; and all the ordination, the impulse of the Holy
Spirit. 2 Cor. 4: 13. The very
consciousness of our sinfulness is the best warrant for our pointing others to
the Saviour.
Christ, the Son of God, hath sent me
Through the midnight lands;
Mine the mighty ordination
Of the pierced Hands.
3. – IT IS A RESOLVE. “I
determined that as I loved Christ, and as Christ loved souls, I would press
Christ on the individual soul, so that none who were in the proper sphere of my
individual responsibility or influence should lack the opportunity of meeting
the question whether or not they would individually trust and follow Christ.
The resolve I made was, that when ever I was in such intimacy with a soul as to
be justified in choosing my subject of conversation, the theme of themes should
have prominence between us, so that I might learn his need, and, if possible,
meet it” (Dr. Trumbull). Prov. 11: 30.
4.
– IT IS A GREAT CHALLENGE. For every ten men competent and desirous to
address a meeting, there is not one competent and desirous to deal with
individual souls; for winning the individual is incomparably the hardest work
that God has given us to do. “From
nearly half a century of such practice, I can say I have spoken with thousands
upon thousands on the subject of their spiritual welfare; yet I find it as
difficult to speak about it at the end of these years as at the beginning. If there is one thing Satan is sensitive
about, it is the danger of a Christian’s harming the cause he loves by speaking
of Christ to a needy soul” (Dr. Trumbull).
It is a challenge to the highest manhood in the soul. Luke 14: 23.
5. – IT IS A GREAT
BLESSING. The first recorded soul-winners in the
world - save Noah - were angels fresh from the throne of God (Gen. 19: 15): our
work is the work they dropped: and we too must live in Heaven if we would do
personal work on earth. We must win men
to us if we would win them to the Lord: the effort, the self-watchfulness, the
unselfishness evoke all that is loveliest in the soul. In dealing with souls, “Be especially careful
of the hand, the voice, and the smile” (Evan Roberts). Mr. Muller’s five principles of intercession
produce the highest type of character. (1). “I have no shadow of doubt in
praying for their salvation: 1 Tim. 2: 4 and 1 John 5: 6. (2).
I never plead for their salvation in my own name, but in the all-worthy name of
my precious Lord Jesus: John 14: 14. (3). I always believe in the
willingness and ability of God to answer my prayers: Mark 11: 24. (4).
I have not allowed myself in known sin: Ps. 66: 18. (5).
I have continued in believing prayer for over fifty-two years, and shall so
continue until the answer is given.” Nor
need the highest talents lie unused. “Every
one out of Christ I look upon as a fortress that I must storm and win; and when
I look back upon the thousands of youths whose hearts have opened under my
influence, I can only say, ‘The Lord hath done it.’ In working to save souls, my life has been
one of joy, rather than of toil.” (Dr. Tholuck). Jas. 5: 20.
6. – IT IS A GREAT
RESPONSIBILITY. “In the great eternity which is beyond, among
the many marvels that will burst upon the soul, this surely will be one of the
greatest, that the Son of God came to redeem the world, that certain
individuals were chosen from among mankind to be the first-fruits of the new
creation, that to them was committed the inconceivable honour of proclaiming
the glad tidings to their fellow-creatures still in the darkness, and they did
not do it” (Dr. Eugene Stock). Matt. 21:
30.
7. – IT IS A GREAT NEED. Isa. 60: 2. The need is greater by many millions of souls
than when our Lord gave the command nineteen hundred years ago. “Thirty millions of souls go to no place of
worship in England” (Bishop of Thetford): can we not reach some of these with
the spoken or printed word? “Your blood be upon your own heads” - can we cry? -
“I am clean” (Acts 18: 6). God is searching
for His jewels among the dust-heaps of the world, and He wants hands to find
them: it is better to have our hands cut with a score of bits of broken glass,
and grasp one jewel, than to have whole hands, and no jewel. Jude 22, 23.
8. – IT IS A GREAT
OPPORTUNITY. “They that be wise shall shine as the
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the
stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12: 3).
Then do it. Don’t wait for what
men call a passion for souls; don’t wait for a more perfect equipment; don’t
wait for an audible voice from Heaven: Hell is not waiting in swallowing up the
lost. Matt. 18: 14.
“Do something, oh do something!
By the hell on earth these poor creatures suffer to-day; by the
destruction on the verge of which they hover; by the abundant mercy provided
for them; by the deliverance we have proved so possible; by the agony of the
Cross under which I make this appeal, I plead for a united, desperate, persistent
effort to save the lost” (Gen. Booth).
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41.
Onesimus
1. - A RUNAWAY SLAVE. Onesimus had fled from the mountains of
Phrygia, to escape from the service of a master conspicuous for his goodness
and love (Philemon 5). By doing so he
cast a slur on Philemon’s character as a master: the service which, as a slave,
he owed, he refused: he set an example of lawlessness to Philemon’s other
slaves: and - to reach Rome - he probably had robbed his master’s till. Behold us all, the Lord’s Onesimi! My sin casts a slur on the God who made me: I
have robbed him of the lifelong service that was his due: my unregenerate life
has been full of evil example to others: I have wandered far away into the
prodigal’s land. And the extreme penalty
against a runaway slave was crucifixion.
2. - A LETTER. Philemon, wealthy, loving, wronged, hurt;
Onesimus, a runaway, a thief, an outcast, a criminal: - now there appears one
between, - Paul, a sufferer, a sympathiser, an intercessor, a surety. What does Paul do? “Whom I have sent back to
thee in his own person.” The first thing
Christ does with a soul is to send it back to God. Sinner or saint, pure or foul, saved or
unsaved, we must all get back to God.
But how? With a covering letter
only. No excuses, no denials, no vows,
no promises; no offers to pay our debt, or to work out our own liability:
Onesimus, silently pointing to the letter in his hand, stakes everything on
Paul’s influence with Philemon. “If any
man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1
John 1: 2).
3. - VITAL UNION.
Paul presents Onesimus in a way the most awkward possible for Philemon
to refuse. “I beseech thee for my child,
Onesimus; - whom I have sent back to thee in his own person, that is, my very
heart: ... if then thou countest me a partner, receive him as myself.” Onesimus comes back, not Onesimus, but a part
of Paul: for Philemon to refuse him now, would be, as it were, to strike out
Paul’s eye, or to pluck out Paul’s heart. What a picture of Christ’s love! “I in them, and Thou in Me, ... that the
world may know that Thou lovedst them even as Thou lovedst Me” (John 17: 23). Philemon must receive him, so.
4. - A NEW BIRTH. ‘But,’
Philemon may say, ‘how can I take back one so false and untrustworthy? a second
time he may ruin me utterly.’ Therefore
Paul gives back another man. “My child, whom
I have begotten in my bonds: [who] perhaps was parted from thee for a season, that
shouldest have him for ever.” Paul gives
back one born over again; one re-created in his own likeness; the new nature,
one with the Holy Father. The child of
God is begotten in the bonds of Calvary: Christ reproduces Himself in me, and
then He gives me back to God. What a
philosophy, too, of the Fall! “Perhaps
he was parted from thee for a season, that thou shouldest have Him for ever:” -
have in full, have exhaustively. Paul
gives back far more than Philemon ever lost: the re-created in the last Adam is
a more wonderful being than the Adam who fell.
5. - THE DEBT. But
Onesimus is a bankrupt slave and the debt remains. ‘If my slave,’ Philemon may say, ‘can rob me
with impunity, and I merely cancel his debt, how can this be just to my other
slaves?’ Paul answers: “If he hath
wronged thee at all, or oweth thee aught, put that to mine account, ... I will
repay it.” Paul had not robbed Philemon:
but the liability for the debt, by this offer, now passes from Onesimus to
Paul: after this, Onesimus is no more in debt.
Crucifixion, the extreme penalty of a runaway slave, has been paid in
full: “having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, nailing
it to the cross” (Col. 2: 14). The
redeemed soul is in debt to God no more: the bond is cancelled, because the
debt is paid.
6. - A BROTHER BELOVED. So
Paul takes the whole liability: Onesimus takes a full discharge: and what is he
to Philemon now? “No longer as a slave, but more than a slave” - that is, a
slave still, but much more – “a brother beloved.” He was Philemon’s in body before: now, in
body and soul. Why? Because the soul has
now understood its God; that our God is love, essential, originating,
all-comprehensive love: and it has found salvation in simply letting God love
it. The state of salvation is the state
of love between God and the soul. “Every one that loveth is begotten of God, and
knoweth God” (1 John 4: 7). Nothing, in
heaven or earth, is nearer the heart of God than His redeemed child.
7. - COMING HOME. In
one point - perhaps the loveliest - the picture fails. Paul had to work on the sympathies of
Philemon, to win back his love to Onesimus: in the Gospel it is Philemon who
sent Paul after his runaway slave.
And none of the ransom’d ever knew
How deep were the waters cross’d;
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord
pass’d through,
Ere He found His sheep that was lost:
Out in the desert He heard its cry,
Sick, and helpless, and ready to die.
O Onesimus, will you present Christ’s letter, on your behalf, to
God? God will be certain to hear that
plea: none ever came to Him through Christ in vain, “Are you there, Mary?” a
blind girl, dying, said to her attendant. “Yes.” “Have you got a Bible?” “Yes.”
“Turn to Heb. 7: 25.” “I have got it.” “Read it.” “He is able to save unto the
uttermost all that come unto God by Him.” “Yes, that is it. Now take hold of my
hand, and put my finger on that verse. Is it there?” “Yes.” “Now, my God, I die
on that verse.”
“I AM
THE DOOR: BY ME IF ANY MAN ENTER IN, HE
SHALL BE SAVED” (John 10: 9).
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42.
The Great Escape
THE PERIL. “All
these things that shall come to pass” (Luke 21: 36): what things? Crowding and disastrous miracles: - terrors
from heaven (ver. 11); signs in sun and moon and stars (ver. 25); the powers of
the heaven shaken (ver. 26): for these will be the days of vengeance (ver. 22),
of persecution (ver. 17), of distress of nations, men fainting for fear (ver.
25). Jer. 25: 32. “Then shall be great
tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, no,
nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24: 21). No
peril so awful has ever demanded an escape so great.
A HEAVENLY ESCAPE. Escape is possible: “to escape all these things.” Gen. 19: 22. Now since the distress is universal it can only
be an escape into the heavens: “for it shall come upon all them that dwell on
the face of all the earth.” No foothold
of safety will exist in the whole inhabited world. It is an escape to “the Son
of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”: for “He bowed the heavens
also, and came down; ... He made darkness His hiding place, thick clouds of the
skies :.. He sent from on high, He took me” (Ps. 18: 9). 1 Thess. 4: 17.
A MORAL ESCAPE. Nor
can this be the deliverance of the elect Jewish remnant: for (1) the escape of the Jew is into the
wilderness, never into the heavens. Rev. 12: 6.
The earthly escape was typed by Noah passing through the Flood, the
heavenly by Enoch who escaped it altogether; and this is an escape which sets “before
the Son of Man.” Matt. xxiv. 26. (2) The Jewish escape is active: this
escape is passive. The faithful Jew is
to “flee to the mountains” (Matt. 24: 16): the faithful disciple here is to
pray to be removed - “to be set [‘by angels,’ Alford] before the Son of Man.” (3)
The Jewish escape is on purely physical grounds, - if he instantly sets his
face to the mountains whatever his exact moral condition, he escapes: this
deliverance turns crucially on moral acceptability - “accounted worthy to escape.”
A CHRISTIAN ESCAPE.
Other Scriptures are conclusive that this escape is Christian. (1)
To the head of a Christian church is our Lord’s promise: - “Because thou didst
keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that
hour which is to come upon whole world” (Rev. 3: 10). 1 Thess. 5: 9; Heb. 9: 28. (2)
To the head of a Christian church is also our Lord’s warning: - “If therefore
thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour
I will arrive over [see Greek] thee” (Rev. 3: 3). Matt. 5: 13; Rev. 12: 17. (3)
The Type exquisitely confirms it. The
Field is the world; the Wheat is the church; the Reapers are angels (Matt 13:
39): - the Reapers first of all gather the Firstfruits, then garner the
Harvest, and finally glean the Corners of the Field which had been deliberately
left unreaped. Lev. 23: 10-22. So
firstfruits are found in the Heavenlies before the harvest (Rev. 14: 4): and
after the harvest (Rev. 14: 15) the warning to watchfulness still goes forth (Rev.
16: 15). “Only those who are devoutly
looking and waiting for the Saviour’s return shall be taken at first” (Dr.
Seiss).
A CONDITIONAL ESCAPE. The
moral crisis of the escape lies in the condition: “watch and pray that ye may
be accounted worthy to escape.” These
Divine words, if they have any meaning at all, must mean that without the
prayerful vigil the worthiness is impossible: “watch and pray always.” Heb. 11:
5. “No command is more frequent, none
more solemnly impressed” (Dean Alford): for the escape is no privilege attached
to faith, but a reward attached to a standard of holiness known only to
God. “Then shall two men be in the field;
one is taken, and one is left; two women shall be grinding in the mill; one is
taken, and one is left. Watch therefore,
for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh” (Matt. 24: 40). “Our Lord assumes that some of His beloved
Church will continue to be cared for as His sheep upon earth, until He destroy
‘that wicked’ with the breath of His mouth” (Dr. Tregelles).
THE WAY OF ESCAPE. ‘Watch’
is one of the great comprehensive words of the Bible. Watch oneself: watch the advances of the
world-crisis: watch for the King; watch for the highest interests of Christ:
watch for flying opportunities: watch for dying souls: watch Satan: watch
God. Watchfulness is acute alertness
exercising every faculty for God. But it
must be accompanied by specific prayer: - “pray that ye may be accounted worthy”;
“that ye may prevail [with God] to escape.”
Watchfulness invokes all our powers for God, - prayer invokes all God’s
powers for us; but more than that, - watchfulness devotes our works to God, -
prayer devotes ourselves. 2 Tim. 4: 8.
THE CRISIS. The
cry of urgency should now ring through the whole Church of God. Ezek. 2: 7.
Why? Because (1) “if my faith is wrong, I am bound to change it: if my faith is
right, I am bound to propagate it” (Dr. Whately). To withhold the warning is to rob the Church
of the very truth which is to deliver from the peril. Because (2)
no more powerful lever can be imagined for overturning our natural
sluggishness. 1 John 3: 3. Dan. 12: 10.
Facts are more moving than a whole library of exhortation. Because (3) the peril, however imminent, has
not yet fallen. 2 Thess. 2: 2. “Lukewarm Laodiceans can be roused before it
is too late: Christ is standing at the door” (Mr. G. H. Pember).
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43.
A Cancelled Bond
THE BOND. No
judge can liberate accused man without first disposing of the indictment which
holds the prisoner in an iron grip. That
indictment is absolute master of the situation.
Now such a bond, Paul says (Col. 2: 14) - a document that binds - exists
between the soul and God. The contract
in the bond is obedience in all points to the Law of God: man is a debtor to do
the whole law (Gal. 5: 3). The advantage
named in the bond is Eternal Life - “he that doeth [the works of the law] shall
live” (Gal. 3: 12): the penalty named is a Curse - “Cursed is every one which
continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do
them” (Gal. 3: 10). The great Creditor
now holds the Bond: drawn originally in His actual handwriting (Ex. 31: 18), it
is deposited with Him, and therefore there can be no evasion of its
obligations. As all-knowing, no detail
of the debt can escape Him; as almighty, the payment can be enforced; as
all-just, the indebtedness must be exacted; as all-holy, He cannot tear up His
own bond. The indictment flutters over
the whole human race.
BROKEN. No
honourable and solvent man need fear a bond: he can not only meet its
obligations, but it guarantees his own claim.
The Bond binds me to obedience, but it also binds God to grant me life,
on obedience. But the exactness and
comprehension of the contract allows of no flaw in the fulfilment. “Whosoever
shalt keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of
all” (Jas. 2: 10). One sin, therefore, releases God from the Bond: one sin
renders me powerless to enforce my claim upon Him. But God’s claim upon me does
not lapse: on the contrary, the penalty agreed upon the Creditor, as a just
judge, has now no option but to enforce.
And my sin is not one, but a multitude (Jas. 5: 20): the list of the
Law’s enactments has become, approximately, the catalogue of my sins.
HOSTILE.
Thus a bond, which is broken, becomes actively hostile: it becomes
virtually a writ for my arrest. I can be
proceeded against in a court of law, and the broken bond is the fatal document.
“Which was [secretly] hostile to us, and [also openly] contrary to us.” Secretly: for myriads, resting on obedience
for salvation, thus actually appeal to the Bond for justification; which is as
though a thief, caught red-handed, pointed to his indictment to clear him. Slowly it dawns on the debtor that he is “dead
through his trespasses”; and, if a Gentile, doubly dead, for his signature -
circumcision - has never been affixed to the bond at all - “dead [also] through
the uncircumcision of your flesh.” Even
if he has kept the Law, he is powerless to enforce his claim on an unsigned
bond.
EXPUNGED. Now
God, anxious for the salvation of all, deals, not with the debtor, but with the
indictment; for the cancelling of the indictment is the only hope of the
accused. First, therefore, “having
blotted out the bond”: He has expunged the charges of the broken Law. How?
In the only way open to a judge in a true indictment. The debt has been paid. 1 Pet. 2: 24. The penal consequences having been endured,
the obligations are discharged: justice never strikes twice for the same sin:
every sting for every sin, emptied into Christ, is a spent sting: therefore the
handwriting of the Bond fades and disappears, Jesus having undergone my capital
punishment, the writ against me no longer runs: His death is the death of my
sins: and the only condition is my acceptance of the discharge. “Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts. 3: 19).
REMOVED. But God has done more: He has bodily removed the indictment, “taking
it out of the way.” The Law rose up as
the great barrier between God and man; it blocked the road to life; it was
powerless - through the weakness of the flesh - either for justification, or
for sanctification: God has therefore removed the Flaming Sword from the way to
the Tree of Life. Who has removed it?
THE CREDITOR. The
document on which all His claims rest, - by which alone He can enforce those
claims, - in which lies the only record of my debts - He has taken it away; and
the Judge Himself is powerless against me without the indictment. The indictment is withdrawn because all the
charges have been met.
PUNCTURED.
Our merciful God has finally turned the Bond into a receipt: He has “nailed
it to the cross.” Who was nailed to the
cross? Christ. What was nailed to the cross? The Law.
Then the two were identified, and both were crucified. The nails which pierced the Lord, pierced the
Law: the moment a debt is paid, a bill becomes inoperative: it becomes a
receipt. A man once entered an American
bank, and presented a cheque of considerable value. The cashier, after examining it, asked him
where he obtained it. “I do not see,” the customer replied, “that that is any
business of yours: is it not made payable to bearer?” “Certainly,” the cashier replied. “Is it not
a genuine cheque?” “Yes,” said the cashier. “Then why won’t you cash it?” “Look
here,” said the cashier, “I don’t want to exceed my official duty; nor do I
question that you came by this cheque honourably. But here, in the middle of
the cheque, is a peculiarly-shaped and clear-cut little hole. It corresponds to
the die of this little instrument, with which we bankers puncture cheques that
have been paid. That cheque has been cashed. Once punctured, it has no power or
authority over the bank.” Exactly so it is with the Law. The Law has no
fraction of authority over me any more: it is a cashed cheque: it is a
cancelled bond: and God now hands it to every soul, for the taking, as a
receipted bill.
“For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one
that believeth” (Rom. 10: 4). To refuse
the receipt - I do not pay for a receipt, I take it - is to make oneself
responsible for the payment of the whole debt in person, which is - Calvary:
and who shall deliver from that cross?
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44.
The Blood and the Leaven
THE TYPE. Ex.
12. A zoologist, it is said, if he be
given but a single bone of an animal, can reconstruct the entire anatomy to
which the bone belongs: so one sure clue is sufficient to explain a type: and,
in the Blood and the Leaven, three explicit clues are given by the Holy Spirit,
so as to put all beyond doubt. “Our
passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ” - therefore the lamb’s blood
typifies Christ’s blood: “wherefore let us keep the feast” - therefore the
Church age, the Seven Days between Advent and Advent, is the antitype of the
Feast of Unleavened Bread: “not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of
malice and wickedness” - the leaven, therefore, is sin - “but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5: 8). No type could be clearer or surer. 1 Cor. 10: 11.
THE BLOOD.
Jehovah’s first command was putting of the Blood upon the House. “They shall take of the blood, and put it on
the two side posts and on the lintel, upon the houses wherein they shall eat”
the lamb (Ex. 12: 7). The Destroying
Angel sought out every house, for every house held sinners; but he lowered his
sword, and passed, wherever he saw the blood.
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Why?
Because death had already crossed the threshold: the lamb had perished
in the place of the firstborn. But into
every other house the Angel entered. The
moment Christ’s blood rises up between my soul and Jehovah, it is “the
beginning of months” to my soul: it is regeneration, the begetting of a new and
divine life: in that moment, when I have consciously appropriated Calvary, I
leave the world, in spirit, and start travelling home to God. “Even the selfsame day all the hosts of the
Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It
is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out of the land
of Egypt.” The pilgrim life starts with
the putting on of the blood. Heb. 9: 14. John 10: 28.
THE LEAVEN.
Jehovah’s second command was the putting forth of the Leaven from the
House. “Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day” - that
is, from the moment of conversion - “ye shall put away leaven out of your
houses.” Israel started the pilgrim life
with sufficient sweet dough to last them the whole Seven Days: the old, sour
dough - all discoverable sin - was to be left in Egypt: and so urgent is
Jehovah that He commands the putting forth of the leaven nine times. Paul is no less urgent. “It is actually reported that there is
fornication among you. Know ye not that
a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
Purge out the old leaven.” (1 Cor. 5: 1, 7). 1 Pet. 1: 14-19.
JUSTIFICATION.
Here then is God’s dual truth exquisitely revealed. The Blood - Justification; the Leaven -
Sanctification: the Blood - Christ’s work for us; the Leaven - the Spirit’s work
in us. Now observe. There is no command to put out the Leaven
before putting on the Blood. The Lamb,
it is true, must be eaten with unleavened bread (ver. 8); the heart must turn
from all sin in the act of appropriating Christ: but we are not to attempt to
cleanse the House from Leaven before it is presented to God for the Blood.
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.
“Being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath
of God through Him” (Rom. 5: 9).
SANCTIFICATION. But
the completed work of Justification immediately introduces the complementary
work of Sanctification: and only when the Blood is on the door have we power to
put forth the Leaven. “Work out your own
salvation” - the Leaven put forth - “with fear and trembling; for it is God
which worketh in you” (Phil. 2: 12) - the Holy Spirit is now in the House. Jehovah does not say that the presence of
Leaven in the House proves that there is no Blood on the door: on the contrary,
the constant peril of known or discoverable, but un-expelled, leaven is assumed
as the peril of every house. We cannot be too passive under the Blood: we
cannot be too active in purging out the Leaven. “My sins slew my Saviour: now I
must slay my sins.” Mark 9: 43-50.
DISOBEDIENCE. Both
these Divine commands involve grave consequences. The Israelite or Egyptian who refused or
neglected to apply the Blood, perished: he perished at the hand of God: he
perished in Egypt: he perished lost. “We all” - that remain in Egypt - “be dead
men” (Ex. 12: 33). Even if his house
were comparatively pure of leaven, the Destroying Angel destroyed. Heb. 2: 2, 3.
Nor can the disobedient disciple escape unscathed. The Israelite under the Blood who refused or
neglected to expel the Leaven, was cut off (ver. 15): not, it is true, in
Egypt: nor was he cut off by the Angel: nor was he cut off from God, but from
Israel: that is, he fell an excommunicated pilgrim, on the right side of the
Blood, and on his way to God. 1 Cor. 9: 24 - 10: 12; Heb. 4: 11. It is not eternal destruction. Rom. 8: 33-39. But the disciple who (like the incestuous
Corinthian) stretches privilege so as to cloak sin must meet a stern
disillusionment at the Judgment Seat of Christ: no appeal to the Blood will
deliver the Leaven-eater from his judgment. 1 Cor. 11: 30-32; Luke 12: 47, 48;
Col. 3: 25.
OBEDIENCE. Put
on the Blood: O my soul, purge out the Leaven!
A traveller once watched a carpenter in Nazareth search his house for
leaven. Girding himself up, he turned
every board, opened every drawer, swept every cupboard; till suddenly, with a
cry of horror, he started back. A
workman had left some old bread in a small canvas bag. Solemnly and anxiously the carpenter laid
hold of it with two pieces of wood - not with his fingers - and, carrying it to
the fire, dropt bag and all into the flames.
“LET US CLEANSE OURSELVES FROM ALL
DEFILEMENT OF FLESH AND SPIRIT, PERFECTING
HOLINESS IN THE FEAR OF GOD” (2 Cor. 7: 1).
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45.
The Vision of God
Some twelve visions of God are revealed in Scripture: all (since
Adam) granted to fallen mankind: and all (with one exception) granted to
redeemed souls of conspicuous holiness and utmost fidelity. What was the effect?
JOB.
Job is one of the very few men whom God has called perfect. “Hast thou considered my servant, Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a
perfect and an upright man” (Job 1: 8).
So Job himself says: “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it
go”: “I am clean, without transgression” (Job. 27: 6; 33: 6). But what happened
when he saw the Lord? “Then the Lord
answered Job out of the whirlwind”: and Job said, “Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job. 38: 1; 42: 5-6).
Behold the perfect man when face to face with God.
MOSES. Moses was ‘fair unto God’ in the cradle;
though fiery-spirited, his lowliness of heart made him the meekest man on earth
(Num. 12: 3); Jehovah revealed the whole body of the Law through him; and he
accomplished the mightiest administrative work for God ever achieved by human
hands. But what followed on a vision of
God? “God called unto him out of the
midst of the bush, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for
the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” (Ex. 3: 4). Sin-cursed earth near which was Deity was too
holy for Moses.
ELIJAH.
Elijah has been called “the grandest and most romantic character that
Israel ever produced.” He is one of the
two men who, alone of the human race, never saw death: ripe on earth for
Heaven, he went up in a chariot of fire. But what followed on a vision of God? “Behold the Lord passed by, and a great and
strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord: and,
behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1
Kings 19: 11); and at the sound of the still, small voice, “Elijah wrapped his
face in his mantle.” The man who in one
day broke Baal-worship for ever with lightnings from God had fled from the face
of a woman.
ISAIAH. No
Old Testament prophet had sublimer revelations than Isaiah: none caught so full
a Gospel light from the still unrisen Sun.
But what followed on a vision of God?
“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train
filled the temple. One seraph cried unto
another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is
full of His glory. Then said I, Woe is
me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips: for mine eyes have
seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6: 1).
The mouth through which some of Heaven sublimest revelations were poured
was a mouth of unclean lips.
DANIEL.
Daniel is the only man in the whole Bible in whom his enemies could find
no fault except that he prayed too much: he is the only man to whom God has
sent an angel from Heaven to tell him that he was loved. But what followed on a vision of God? “His body was like the beryl, and his face as
the appearance of lightning, and His eyes as lamps of fire. I saw this great vision, and there remained no
strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption” (Dan. 10: 6). The most faultless saint of Scripture could
not face God without being turned into corruption.
PAUL.
Paul came nearer to justification.
Paul works [more] than any man that ever lived. By birth, the purest Hebrew; by education,
the straitest Pharisee; by conviction, a burning flame; by conduct, blamelessly
righteous… But what followed on a vision of God? “Suddenly there shone round
about him a light from heaven: and he fell upon the earth. And when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing”
(Acts 9: 3). Even Paul’s eyes were so
sinful that he could not look on the Glory without blindness.
JOHN.
John’s, perhaps, is the supreme case.
The man whom Jesus specially loved, - the disciple who alone was
faithful in the judgment hall, - the apostle selected for the authorship of the
divinest of the Gospels, and the most stupendous of all Revelations: - in the
ripeness of perfected maturity the old saint sees his Lord. What followed on his vision of God? “His head and His hair were white as white
wool, white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one
dead” (Rev. 1: 14). Earth’s ripest and
loveliest saint, who had lain in the bosom of his Lord, falls as lifeless when
he meets God.
This is not only the overthrow of ‘sinless perfection’ in any
believer: it is much more. These
overwhelming issues were all to saints: what will the vision be to
sinners? Sinless Adam had no such experience
in the Garden. “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD!” We may disown Him as Father; we may reject
Him as Lord; we may dethrone Him as King; we may refuse Him as Saviour: - but
we must meet Him AS GOD. See now the only Vision that saves. “It was a human body that writhed, pale and
racked, upon the accursed tree; they were human hands that were pierced so
rudely by the nails; it was human flesh that bore that deadly gash upon the
side; the soul that yearned over His mother was a human soul. But every wound was a mouth to speak of the
grace and the love of God: every drop of blood that fell came as a messenger of
love from His heart, to tell the love of the fountain” (McCheyne).
“HE
THAT HATH SEEN ME HATH SEEN THE FATHER: THE BREAD WHICH I WILL GIVE IS MY FLESH, FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD”
(John 6: 51; 14: 9).
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46.
The Kingdom
THE KINGDOM DENIED. In
certain present-day influential Christian circles the Millennial Kingdom is
scouted and derided as never before. “The
predictions, as they stand in our documents, clearly assert that the return, or
coming, of the Son of Man was imminent.
Our Lord is recorded in the Gospels to have made predictions which
certainly have not been, and cannot now be fulfilled. Whatever the disciples may have thought, He
did not fancy Himself filling the role of Daniel’s Son of Man in the near
future: such a notion would not be compatible with sanity. The Kingdom could not be ushered in by any
Jewish apocalypse. Messianism was
shattered from within” (Dr. Inge, Guardian,
May 13, 1910). “Millenarianism, I
thought, had now gone the common way of absurdities in a more or less sane
world. It is a stupid and prosaic
perversion of Jewish apocalyptic. Most of the oracles of the Revelation are cryptograms
to which the key is now lost. Prophecy-mongering is an unwholesome farrago of
charlatanry, ignorance and vanity, and I had thought its day was past” (Dr.
David Smith, British Weekly, April 7,
1910). This comes perilously near an
apostolic warning.
“IN THE LAST OF THE DAYS MOCKERS SHALL COME WITH MOCKERY, WALKIKG
AFTER THEIR OWN LUSTS, AND SAYING, WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING? FOR, FROM
THE DAY THAT THE FATHERS FELL ASLEEP, ALL THINGS CONTINUE AS THEY WERE FROM THE
BEGINNING OF THE CREATION” (2 Pet. 3: 3).
Num. 14: 6-10.
THE KINGDOM AFFIRMED. The
return of our Lord in person to establish a Kingdom over the whole earth was
the universal faith of the Church in its purest dawn. “The assurance [of that return and reign] was
carefully inculcated by men who had conversed with the immediate disciples of
the apostles, and appears to have been the reigning sentiment of orthodox
believers” (Gibbon). “This prevailing
opinion met with no opposition previous to the time of Origen” (Mosheim): until
Origen no Christian writer can be found who denied it. “No one can hesitate to
consider this doctrine as universal in the church of the first two centuries”
(Giesler). “The doctrine was believed and taught by the most eminent fathers in
the age next after the apostles, and by none of that age opposed or condemned:
it was the catholic doctrine of those times” (Archbishop Chillingworth).
“FOR THE LORD HIMSELF SHALL DESCEND FROM HEAVEN, WITH A SHOUT, WITH
THE VOICE OF THE ARCHANGEL, AND WITH THE TRUMP OF GOD” (I Thess. 4: 16): “AND
HE THAT OVERCOMETH, AND HE THAT KEEPETH MY WORKS UNTO THE END, TO HIM WILL I GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE
NATIONS; AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON” (Rev. 2: 26).
THE KINGDOM RE-AFFIRMED. The
world-wide revival of the Gospel of the Kingdom before the End is certain. Matt.
24: 14. “In our Lord’s teaching the
conception of the Kingdom is supreme.
Yet it is safe to say that there is no subject upon which there exists a
greater amount of division among expositors. For some the Kingdom is definitely
the historical Church; for others it is altogether in the future, a great
Divine supramundane order of things which is suddenly to overwhelm the temporal
order; for others again it is simply the ideal social order to be realised on
earth; for a fourth class the Kingdom is the rule of God in the heart of the
individual. Among recent critics the
tendency is more and more to lay stress on the eschatological interpretation,
and to hold that, in our Lord’s
teaching, the Kingdom is essentially the great future and heavenly order of
things which will be revealed at His coming. The Kingdom in its fulness is yet
to come. It is always to be prayed for.
It is the great end which is ever before us” (Bishop D’Arcy,
University Sermon at Oxford, 1910).
“FOR FLESH AND BLOOD CANNOT
INHERIT THE KINGDOM OF GOD, NEITHER DOTH
CORRUPTION INHERIT INCORRUPTION. BEHOLD,
I TELL YOU A MYSTERY: WE SHALL NOT ALL SLEEP, BUT WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED” (1 Cor. 15: 50).
THE KINGDOM A PRIZE. Slowly
the further truth is emerging that the Kingdom, ushered by the First
Resurrection, is the supreme prize of the Christian hope and calling. I Thess. 2: 12 (R.V.). Heb. 3: 12, 15, 4: 1,
2. “It is most evident that Paul had
some special resurrection in view (Phil. 3: 11) even the first: and to share in
that he was straining every nerve” (J. MacNeil). The opinion that the Millennial Reign was
confined to the martyrs “prevailed, as is known, to a great extent in the early
Church, and not only proved a support under martyrdom, but rendered many
ambitious of that distinction” (De Burgh). Heb. 11: 35. “Scripture speaks plainly concerning the
exclusion of those who permit the old nature to disgrace their Christianity:
while they may be saved as by fire for Heaven, they will forfeit all their
position in the coming Millennial Kingdom of Christ” (Dr. A. T. Schofield). 1
Cor. 6: 8-10. Gal. 5: 19-21. Eph. 5: 5.
For “in this exclusion from the Kingdom, which is the dominion of the
good made visible at the return of our Lord, we are not to see the loss of
eternal salvation: an entrance into the Kingdom is rendered impossible [in
certain cases], but not by any means does it follow that salvation can be
thereby prevented” (Olshausen). “Oh for
a noble ambition to obtain one of the first seats in glory! Oh for a constant, evangelical striving to
have the most ‘abundant’ entrance ministered unto you into the Kingdom of
God! It is not Christ’s to give those
exalted thrones out of mere distinguishing grace. No, they
may be forfeited, for they shall be given to those for whom they are prepared;
and they are prepared for those who, evangelically speaking, are ‘worthy’ ”
(Fletcher, of Madeley). Luke 20: 35.
Rev. 3: 4.
“NOT
EVERY ONE THAT SAITH UNTO ME, LORD, LORD, SHAL ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, BUT HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF MY FATHER, WHICH IS IN HEAVEN” (Matt. 7: 21): FOR “BLESSED AND HOLY IS HE THAT HATH PART IN THE FIRST RESURRECTION: THEY LIVED, AND REIGNED WITH CHRIST
A THOUSAND YEARS” (Rev. 20: 6).
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47.
The Theology of Heaven
“Could not an all-powerful God,” wrote an unbeliever recently, “especially
at this time when criticism is raising so many honest doubts in many minds,
send an angel to the earth to tell us really what to believe? This would be proof for ever and ever.” From angels has come the most tremendous
testimony to the Lamb of God the created universe has ever known.
THE CHALLENGE.
With the scales of infinite justice, as it were, in his hand, and a cry
flung into the furthest recesses of the universe, a strong Angel challenges all
creation for a soul of spotless holiness and infinite worth. “Who is worthy?” On the palm of Deity, in the secret blaze of
the Godhead, there lies a little Book: who is so holy as to see it, so
meritorious as to take it, and so powerful as to open it? A hush falls on the assembled multitudes of
Heaven, broken only by the sobbing of John. “I wept much, because no one was
found worthy” (Rev. 5: 4). Not one with
a vicarious merit; not one with a communicable holiness; not one with a Divine
fidelity: - creation has no holiness in itself with which to deliver a fallen
world.
A MAN. One
Figure now draws all eyes. In the midst
of the Elders, - closer still, in the midst of the Cherubim, - closer still, in
the midst of the Throne, a Man stands: “and He came, and He taketh it out of
the right hand of Him that sat on the throne.”
In His eyes before whom all character is as transparent glass, here is
the face that never knew a shadow, the heart that never knew an unfaithful
throb, the only stainless, radiant, infinitely worthy life. Jesus
of Nazareth is in the midst of the Throne.
(There are no arguments for the Resurrection in Heaven: for “the Lamb is
standing in the midst of the throne”).
The silence is suddenly broken by a rush of hallelujahs. The Lamb draws all hearts: He enlightens all
eyes: He governs all angels: He blesses all creation: He is the theme of all
Heaven’s song. Heaven has no potentate too
mighty to fall before the Lamb: it is only on earth that men are too great to
worship Him.
A LAMB.
John heard - “the Lion”; but when he turned he saw “a Lamb:” - a Lamb
with the might of a Lion, and a Lion with the heart of a Lamb. But why is the Lamb upon the Throne? Why are the faces of all creation turned
towards a Lamb? Because the wounds are
there: they flush forth in the heart of the glory: it is “a lamb, as though it
had been slain.” The crowning worthiness
Heaven puts upon Christ is due to Calvary.
All the splendid attributes, all the incomparable glories, concentrate
in the wounds. The place of a lamb is
upon an altar: but, because of a perfect atonement perfectly accepted, the Lamb
is now upon the Throne. The wounds
abide. It is, as it were, a fresh death;
for the Atonement can never lose its freshness: God never forgets it, the
Angels never forget it, the redeemed never forget it: eternal wounds are the
pledge of an eternal pardon. The man who
knows the incarnate God slain for human sin stands at the inner most core of
truth, and knows Heaven’s final secret.
THE GOSPEL. The
testimony of all God’s Angels now reveals what is the theology of Heaven. “I
heard a voice of many angels, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of
thousands, saying with a great voice, Worthy art Thou to take the book, for
Thou wast slain.” Heaven is not ashamed
of the cross on which Christ was slain.
What a slaughter! And what a
song! Christ was slain prospectively
from the foundation of the world; He was slain typically in a thousand
sacrifices under the Law; He was slain judicially by the pre-determinate
counsel of God; He was slain actually by Jew and Gentile; He is slain
retrospectively by every trampler upon the Blood. “Thou didst purchase unto God with Thy blood
men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.” The Blood alone purchases the sinner to God:
the Father comes into His inheritance of human souls only by the blood of the
Son.
Therefore what do all angels yield to the Lamb? “The power, and riches, and wisdom, and might,
and honour, and glory, and blessing.”
What a song! All crowns meet upon
that Brow: all power are in those pierced Hands: all love flows from that rent
Side: all the Godhead shines in that human Face: and this is the Theology of
all the angels of God. “The blood of Christ, it binds all heaven, with its many
mansions and throngs without number, in holy and indissoluble security. My soul, seek no other stream in which to
drown thy leprosy! My lips, speak no
other song with which to charge your music!
My hands, seek no other task with which to prove your energy! I would be swallowed up in Christ. I would be
nailed to His cross. O my Jesus! My Saviour! Thine heart did burst for me, and
all its sacred blood flowed for the cleansing of my sin. I need it all. I need
it every day. I need it more and more. I search out the inmost recesses of my
poor wild heart, and let Thy blood remove every stain of evil.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
Mighty Saviour! Repeat all
Thy miracles by taking away the guilt and torment of my infinite sin” (Dr.
Parker).
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48.
Burial to Sin
A GRAVE. So
urgent is God on our separation from the world that He has taken two of the
mightiest events of all history - the drowning of the old world in the Flood,
and the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea - as types of a perpetual
Rite. 1 Cor. 10: 2; 1 Pet. 3: 21. The trench, deep, black, abiding, which He
keeps before the eyes of His Church between Advent and Advent, is nothing less
than a grave. “All we who were baptized
into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death”: “we were buried therefore with
Him through baptism” (Rom. 6: 3). What a lightning-like illumination of
baptism! It is the dead who are buried;
if an unbeliever - alive to sin and to the world - is baptised, it is burying a
man alive; it is entombing the un-crucified; it is burying one who has no right
to a grave. I must be one with Christ on the cross before I can be one with Him in
the tomb. “We died to sin: ... we
were buried therefore.” So the converse
is also true. Every dead man ought to be
buried: the moment Jesus has become my death, that moment I must prepare for my
burial. “We died to sin: ... we were buried therefore.”
A BURIAL. So baptism is the sole God-given ritual of
consecration. For the Rite next reveals
a new and wonderful aspect. The believer
is judicially dead with Christ, but he is not actually dead to sin: baptism,
therefore, enters as a self-inflicted death, by which he drowns the old life,
and smothers and suffocates the past. The waters of death and judgment fill the
grave; the living man steps down, and plunges beneath them; and so real is the
ritual that, left but for a few minutes, he would die. “Very soon,” said a Bechuana convert, a
shepherd, “I shall be dead, and they will bury me in my field. My sheep will come and pasture above me. But I shall no more go to them, or they come
to me: we shall be strangers. So am I in
the midst of the world from the time that I believed in Christ.” This is the meaning of baptism. Crucified with Christ - this is the order of
the prepositions in the passage - baptised into Christ, buried unto sin like
Christ, we are now alive in Christ. Gal. 3: 27.
A CONSECRATION.
Alas, how little we baptised have lived the exquisite ritual! It ought to be - in God’s design it is - as
unnatural, as monstrous, for a believer to live in sin as for a dead man to
cross his grave back into life. The whole man and the whole life are baptised
into Christ. A heathen tribe in the
middle ages, about to be immersed, asked that their right arms might remain out
of the water, that they might still slay their enemies! Baptism buries all the
man into all the holiness of God. “There
was a day,” says George Muller, “when I died, died utterly; died to George
Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will - died to the world, its
approval or censure - died to approval or censure even of my brethren and
friends - and since then I have studied to show myself approved unto God.”
Baptism not only buries our past, but ourselves. “Even so reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ.”
A RESURRECTION. But
baptism has a still lovelier side: it is not only immersion, but also emersion:
“that like as Christ was raised from the dead, so we.” Passive as a corpse under redemption, we are
at once to pass into intensest activity: “alive” - not to a creed, or a church,
or a philanthropy, but - “unto God.” On
one half of us we are dead: the calls to wealth, to fame, to pleasure, to sin,
are to reach us on our dead side, all the avenues of which, into our souls, are
blocked. So it was with Jesus. “Who is
blind, but my servant? Or deaf, as my messenger that I send? Who is blind as he
that is at peace with me, and blind as the Lord’s servant?” (Is. 42: 19). The kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them appealed to a dead man in Christ.
But on one half of us we are to be all a-quiver with life: the calls to
God, to heavenliness, to service - these are to find us as responsive as the
harp to the wind, or the sunflower to the sun.
So also was it with Jesus. “He
wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that are
taught” (Is. 50: 4). Our bodies are to
be a living sacrifice (Rom. 12: 1), pulsating with life God-wards.
A LIFE. ‘Hebrew’ means a man who lives on the
other side of the water: so we, beyond the ritual grave, are ‘to walk’ - dead
men do not walk - not in a new life so much as “in newness of life.” The deep, dark grave of Christ lies between
us and the world that cast Him out; with Him we are to walk on the further
shore: on which side, therefore, are the theatre, the whist-drive, the
novel? On which side is that love of
money which is ruining untold multitudes of disciples? Are these things ‘Hebrew’? Are they newness of life? So, naturally, the newness of life ends in “the
life which is really life” (1 Tim. 6: 19). Rom. 8: 13. “For if we have become united with Him
[fellow-plants] by the likeness of His death [baptism], we shall be also
[fellow-plants] of His resurrection.”
Sown together in the seed-bed of the baptismal grave, we shall spring
together - heavenly snowdrops, the first to break up from under a frozen
ground. Rev. 3: 4; 20: 6. Baptism is the
ritual act; sanctification is the truth it enshrines: when crystallised
together into an actual experience, together they will lead into the Select
Resurrection (Phil. 3: 11, Greek) from the dead.
Brother, have you been entombed (both spiritually and ritually)
since you were crucified? “WHY CALL YE ME LORD, LORD, AND DO NOT THE THINGS
WHICH I SAY?” (Luke 6: 46): “HE THAT HATH MY COMMANDMENTS AND KEEPETH THEM, HE
IT IS THAT LOVETH ME” (John 14: 21).
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49.
Heirs Wanted
THE HEIRS. The
law regards a child as the continuation of the personality of his father, and
so as the legal possessor of his property after his death: therefore, “if
children, then heirs” (Rom. 8: 17). So
it is with God. Not, if men, then heirs; nor, if Jews, then heirs; nor, if
moral and upright, then heirs: we must become partakers of the Divine nature
before we can become heirs of the Divine inheritance: “if children, then heirs.” Property descends because father and son are
of one stock, one life: so “as many as received Christ, to them gave He the
right to become children of God: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1: 12). But the Birth carries with it the
Inheritance. All are not apostles or
prophets; all are not shining or eminent; all are not even spiritual or
separated: but all are heirs; - “if children, then heirs.”
THE WILL. A son does not inherit his father’s life - he already has that; he
inherits his father’s property: here then is an inventory of the Will. “All things are yours; whether Paul, or
Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or
things to come; all are yours” (1 Cor. 3: 21).
Have you yet seen all things? The cattle on a thousand hills; the gold
in all mines, the pearls in all oceans; the wealth and beauty of the Father’s
home: “all are yours.” Moreover the Will
bequeaths, not on leasehold, but in perpetuity; and this for two reasons. Heirs on earth often outlive, or squander,
their inheritance: inheritances constantly outlive their heirs: but an
inheritance “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away” (1 Pet. 1:
4) must be in perpetuity for heirs who never die. “If ye have not been faithful in that which
is another’s” - all present wealth is a stewardship only - “who will give you
that which is your own?” (Luke 16: 12): the true riches are personal and held
for ever. So the Will bequeathes ‘all
things’: it bequeathes it to all children: and it bequeathes it to them for
ever.
A CODICAL. The
Will is unconditioned: in it is a Codicil, however, to which a condition is
attached. “Heirs of God indeed” (men) - no condition, save regeneration: “but (de)
joint-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer” - ‘in case we suffer as He
did’ (Olshausen); ‘provided that we suffer’ (Alford) - “with Him, that we may
be also glorified with Him.” (Si autem
filii, et heredes: heredes quidem Dei, coheredes autem Christi: si tamen
compatimur, ut et conglorificemur: Vulgate).
Both heirships involve eternal life: but the Codicil, which
bequeathes joint-heirship with Messiah in His Millennial Reign, and bequeathes
it on the same condition on which our Lord receives it (Phil. 2: 9; Heb. 1: 9;
Isa. 53: 12), antedates the Will by a thousand years: it is “the reward of the
inheritance” (Col. 3: 24), a legacy which entitles to an ‘abundant entrance’
into the Eternal Kingdom (2 Pet. 1: 11).
Both heirships are in the Will: both heirships are offered to all:
both Will and Codicil depend for their validity on the death of the Testator:
but without the fulfilment of its condition, the Codicil is inoperative. “The suffering with Him must imply a pain due
to our union” (Moule): “if we suffer,
we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. 2: 12): the Will is the unconditional
bequest of free grace, the Codicil is a glory conditioned on identity of
experience with Christ.
THE TESTATOR. A
legal proverb says, - “Living men have no heirs”: the State requires proof of
death before an estate can be inherited under a will. “For where a testament is, there must also of
necessity be the death of the testator. For
a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at
all” - it is not valid - “while the testator liveth” (Heb. 9: 16). But this is God’s last will and testament:
when, then, did that death occur? The
inheritance had become alienated from man by sin: a ‘fugitive and a wanderer’
from the gate of Eden, man became a disinherited soul: but God, in the Person
of His Son, “buyeth that field,” ‘so as to will it to whom He would’; and He
wills it to ‘the called of the inheritance.’ But what makes the Will
valid? The death of the Testator. Jesus is now presenting the Blood to the
Father, in proof of the Testator’s death: the Will is therefore now operative: the
Estate has been bought, and made over: the Title-deeds He has put into our
hands: and at any moment we may enter on the Inheritance.
THE ADVERTISEMENT. But
the most amazing fact of all remains.
Something like forty million sterling lies to-day in Chancery,
unclaimed, for want of heirs: and ‘heirs wanted’ is a commonplace advertisement
for these vast inheritances. The Gospel
is such an advertisement. Through all
the world God is sending the amazing cry of ‘heirs of all things’ wanted; it is
the offer of untold wealth (1 Cor. 2: 9); and in the advertisement is to be
found a careful description of the missing heirs. What is that identifying description? “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with
their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps is under their lips: whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood” (Rom.
3: 13). The heir of the Tichborne
estates was known to have been careless, slovenly, ill-educated; and to prove
his inheritance the claimant established his own carelessness, slovenliness,
and ignorance. So only could he hope to
obtain the inheritance. Is your name in
God’s Will? If you are a sinner, it
is. We are not saved although we are
sinners: we are saved because we are sinners.
My sin is my sole identifying plea for a sin-bearing Saviour’s merit,
and the life which that merit brings: if you are a sinner, rejoice! Your name is in the Will.
“I came not to call the righteous, BUT SINNERS” (Mark 2: 17): “The Son of
man came to seek and to save that which was LOST” (Luke 19: 10).
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50.
An Urgent Danger
COVETOUSNESS - not only the desire of what we have not
got, but the refusal to part with what we have - God ranks among the blackest
of sins. It is one of the supreme
Prohibitions of Jehovah (Ex. 20: 17); it is defined by God as ‘idolatry’ (Col.
3: 5), a sin, under the Law, reserved for capital punishment; it renders a
believer so unholy that he is to be excommunicated from the Church on earth (1
Cor. 5: 11); and twice (1 Cor. 6: 10; Eph. 5: 5) it is stated as involving a
disciple in the loss of the Millennial Kingdom.
“The peril of the Church is not so much an unorthodox creed as an
orthodox greed” (Dr. A. J. Gordon). Love of money brought us the first awful
discipline of the Holy Ghost (Acts. 5: 5): love of money is the absorbing
passion of the last Church named in the Word of God - Laodicea.
THE MONEY CHEST. It
is extraordinarily significant that last thing on which our Lord’s eyes rested
in the Temple was the Money Chest. Twice
He had cleansed the Temple, the great type of the Church, from merchandise:
once in His life, and once only, He used violence, - when, in hot indignation,
He drove money out of God’s holy things (John 2: 15): on leaving the Temple for
the last time, He sits down deliberately to behold “how the multitude cast
money into the treasury” (Mark 12: 41).
Nor is it less significant that the only donor on the subscription-list
of the Temple whom He has not buried in oblivion is an anonymous one - ‘this
poor widow.’ Matt. 6: 3.
GOD’S AUDIT. “Verily I say unto you” - our Lord pledges
Himself to the most startling of all revelations on money - “this poor widow
cast in more than all”: that is, more than any other donor, or else, more than
all put together. Those who give most
often gives least, and those that give least often give most. Why?
Because God judges what we give by what we keep. “For they all did cast in of their
superfluity; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her
living.” The widow had given all she had
to live on for that day; and was so walking with God that she could trust Him
for tomorrow’s meal. I Kings 17: 15; Heb. 13: 5. God’s scales, in weighing gifts, also weigh
what is not given: so, quite literally, the poorest can give more than the wealthiest,
and all can give immense gifts: for the amount withheld exactly determines the
value of the amount given.
OUR DANGER. We
now arrive at the peril. “The love of
money is a root of all kinds of evil” (I Tim. 6: 10). It can estrange friends, divide families, and
harden hearts; nurse extravagance, pamper appetite, and foster pride; ‘sweat’
labour, freeze up charity, and indulge every lust - “foolish and hurtful lusts,
such as drown men in destruction and perdition.” Every year increases our peril. “In the last days men shall be lovers of
money” (2 Tim. 3: 2): “ye have laid up treasure in the last days” (Jas. 5: 3):
“because thou sayest, I am rich, ... thou art miserable and poor and blind and
naked” (Rev. 3: 17): “thus shall Babylon be cast down, for thy merchants were
the princes of the earth” (Rev. 18: 23).
“Of all the temptations none has so struck at the work of God as the
deceitfulness of riches; a thousand melancholy proofs of which I have seen
within these last fifty years. By riches I mean not thousands of pounds; but
any more than will procure the conveniences of life. Money-lovers are the pest
of every Christian society. They have been the main cause of the destruction of
every revival. They will destroy us, if we do not put them away” (John Wesley).
1 Cor. 5: 11; Mark 10: 23.
INDESTRUCTIBLE PURSES. How
is the peril met? “Sell that ye have, and give alms; make for yourselves purses
which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not” (Luke 12: 33). No warnings on wealth are severer than
Christ’s: so there is no greater tribute to the power of money over the human
heart than the startling silence of the Church on these warnings of her Lord. “With such words [as 1 Tim. 6: 6-10] before
him, one would think that any Christian man who is laying up money, or is
planning to do so, would at once abandon his project. But how many such cases
have ever been heard of? I cannot remember one” (Dr. J. P. Gledstone). O beloved, the indestructible purses must be
manufactured now! “Hearken, my beloved brethren; did not God choose them that
are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He
promised to them that love Him?” (Jas. 2: 5).
“The most sensitive part of the civilised man is his pocket” (Sir W.
Ramsay): so grace is supreme when it is the biggest jewel in the purse. Heaven’s purses are filled by emptying those
on earth.
“But thou, O man of God, flee these things!” What things? “They
that desire to be rich” - fly even the desire! The man who has nothing to gain
is the man who can never be bought: so if you would be the man of God - a man
who belongs to God, who is devoted to God, whose wealth is in God, who lives
for God - then flee these things. “I
make no purse. What I have I give away. ‘Poor, yet making many rich’ shall be
my motto still” (Whitefield). Prov. 11:
24. The costliness of the gift is the
measure of the love behind it: God did not keep back His Son when He loved the
world: what God did not keep back was the measure of the love that He felt. So
we! One of the Lord’s people, who had once been rich, was asked how he bore his
poverty so happily. “When I was rich,” he replied, “I had God in all my wealth:
now, I have all my wealth in God.” How
much more he who has deliberately lodged it there!
“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. FOR
WHERE THY TREASURE IS, THERE WILL
THY HEART BE ALSO” (Matt. 6: 20).
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51
Man and His Destiny
MAN.
What exactly is ‘man’? Scripture
regards both the body and the soul as ‘man.’
“The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his [still lifeless] nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2: 7): “they took the
body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths; - there then they laid Jesus” (John
19: 40): Dorcas “fell sick and died; and they laid her in an upper chamber” (Acts
9: 37): in each case the body is the man.
So also, only more emphatically, is the soul or spirit. “I will go down
to Hades to my son mourning” (Gen. 37: 35): “this day shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise” (Luke 23: 43): “the garments which Dorcas made, while she was with
them” (Acts 9: 39): - in each case the spirit is the man, Thus both body and
soul (in this context I am using ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ as one) are essential
elements in man: humanity is “body, soul, and spirit” (1 Thess. 5: 23). Death, therefore, we had almost said,
dehumanises: it is a decomposition, a disintegration, a dissolution, of ‘man’:
it is a violent rending asunder of his constituent elements, consequent on sin:
and, to speak exactly, though body and spirit are each ‘man’, neither is man
alone. The body rots; the spirit departs
to Hades: the man is dead.
CHRIST.
Thus, when God deals finally with man He deals, not with a corpse, nor
with a disembodied spirit, but with a man: man, for all eternity, can never
cease to be ‘man’: his eternal destiny, whatever it be, must be the destiny of
a man. Now our Lord, as the typical Man,
is the One who, alone hitherto, has passed through all the processes of
man. First, He was truly man: - “they
took the body of Jesus” (John 19: 40); “my soul is exceeding sorrowful” (Matt.
26: 38); “into Thy hands I commend My spirit” (Luke 23: 46). Violent dissolution took place on the Cross:
“being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit; in which He went
and preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3: 19). After three days and three nights, the angels
said: - “Why seek ye the living among the dead?
He is not here” - His corpse is not in the graveyard, His soul is not
left in Hades (Acts 2: 31) - “but is risen” (Luke 24: 5); that is, the
recumbent body stands again upon its feet, and the spirit is ‘returned’ into it
(Luke 8: 55). Christ, born of a woman,
was born full man: He died as a man dies: and He rose with body, soul, and
spirit re-knit in everlasting resurrection. “I am the Living One; and I was
dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore” (Rev. 1: 18).
RESURRECTION. A
passage now arises before us than which perhaps the whole Bible itself contains
none more solemn. “For since by [a] man came death” - dissolution,
decomposition, disintegration - “by [a] man came also the resurrection of the
dead” (1 Cor. 15: 21) - the re-knitting, in individual re-composition, of the
whole man: and this, for the entire race.
“I AM RESURRECTION AND LIFE” (John 11: 25): since Christ was made man,
and is resurrection, resurrection has become an essential part of human nature.
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” - not
regenerated, but made alive physically: for as physical death poured itself
through Adam into all the race, so physical resurrection becomes integral to
humanity from the second federal Head of mankind. Because Christ was a Man, and
rose, all rise; for all partake of the same flesh with Christ: but believers
are “one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6: 17): so, while unbelief severs from
all benefits of the Passion, no man can escape the consequent
resurrection. The Incarnation empties
every grave.
THE SECOND DEATH. The
eternal destiny of our race now stands revealed. “The last enemy that shall be
destroyed”- for all mankind - “is death”: man, after entering on resurrection,
never suffers dissolution again: “it is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb.
9: 27): full manhood follows for ever.
Thus the redeemed are wholly redeemed: redeemed in spirit, and also in
body (Rom. 8: 23), the man, as man, is redeemed utterly and eternally. What then of the lost? “Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but
are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in Hell” (Matt. 10: 28).
The wicked equally abide as men for ever: “they twain were cast alive” -
that is, body, soul, and spirit - “into the lake of fire, which is the second
death” (Rev. 19: 20; 21: 8). The Second
Death is not decomposition, the splitting up of the personality, as was the
First: much less is it annihilation: it is the final and eternal abode of the
undivided man. “This is the second death,
even the lake of fire. And if any was
not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev.
20: 14).
Unbeliever, what a destiny!
And what a Christ! “I am a substance nobler than the stars”: they must
perish, but, for better or worse, we endure: none can escape the momentous
consequences of the Incarnation. It
twists its roots under and about all that is human, and lifts the entire race
into resurrection from death. And what a
Christ! Christ is so truly man that He
actually died as a man dies: He is so truly God that He not only raised
Himself, but the whole of humanity, in His rising. The resurrection of one is the peculiar
prerogative of the Godhead: who but the Son of God, by the mere fact of
association in the flesh, could raise all?
Then confess Him as the Son of God!
“I
AM RESURRECTION AND LIFE” (John 11: 25): “whosoever shall confess that JESUS is the SON OF GOD, God abideth in him, and he in God” (1 John 4: 15).
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52
The Parousia of Christ
‘PAROUSIA’ - a word
which is the cardinal pivot of all Second Advent truth, and the keystone in the
arch of unfulfilled prophecy - in itself states merely a stationary presence,
and is a ‘coming’ only when linked with words implying motion.
The ‘Parousia of Christ,’ used by the Holy Spirit as a technical
expression, the Psalmist exquisitely unfolds. “He bowed the heavens also, and
came down; and thick darkness was under His feet ... He made darkness His
hiding place, His pavilion round about Him; darkness of waters, thick clouds of
the skies” (Ps. 18: 11). Christ’s downward motion stops: His people’s upward
motion stops: the Lord silently forms His Royal Court in a pavilion of
cloud. The Parousia is thus secret - a
hiding place; it is stationary - a pavilion; it is invisible - in thick
darkness; and it is the centre of rapture - “He sent from on high, He took me.” For thus our Lord is to return. He ascended visibly, and was wrapt from sight
in cloud: but He is to “so come in like manner” (Acts 1: 11), - that is, the
process is to be reversed: He descends in visibly, concealed by clouds, and
then bursts forth, visibly and bodily, as the Sun of righteousness. The interlude is the Parousia.
The Parousia serves purposes of vital import to the Church. It is thither saints are to be rapt,
encompassed, as our Lord was, with clouds: “we that are alive, that are left, shall
together with them be caught up [‘a sudden and irrestible seizure by a power beyond
us’: Dr. Eadie] in the clouds to meet the Lord”; a reunion, not on earth, nor
in the heaven of heavens, but “in the air” (1 Thess. 4: 17); as homing doves
flock to their airy dovecotes (Is. 60: 8).
The Parousia is our ark of refuge.
“In the covert of Thy presence Thou shalt hide them from the plottings
of man: Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues”
(Ps. 31: 20). It is the heavenly
Tabernacle against which Antichrist, enraged by the loss of his prey, hurls
impotent blasphemies. “And he opened his
mouth for blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, even
them that tabernacle in the heaven” (Rev. 13: 6). Thus the ‘epiphany’ or manifestation to the
Church (1 John 3: 2; 2 Tim. 4: 8) occurs in the ‘parousia’: the epiphany to the
world (2 Thess. 2: 8) is delayed until the ‘apocalypse’ (2 Thess. 1: 7).
The Parousia is also the judgment court of the Church. Judgment begins at the House of God (1 Pet.
4: 17): for “after a long time the lord of those servants cometh and maketh a
reckoning with them” (Matt. 25: 19).
Within the Parousia are enacted the Virgins, the Talents, the Pounds:
here converts are presented by the evangelist (1 Thess. 2: 19): here the
disciple’s heart and life are examined (1 Thess. 3: 13), and blamelessness (1
Thess. 5: 23) or shame (1 John 2: 28) revealed.
For the Household is examined in camera: the Bema is set up in the
Throne-room: and the approval of the Judgment Seat is the supreme reward of the
disciple, and an incorruptible motive of holiness. “We make it our aim to be well-pleasing unto
Him. For we [disciples] must all be made
manifest before the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive the
things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or
bad” (2 Cor. 5: 10).
The Parousia of Christ runs simultaneously with the Parousia (2
Thess. 2: 9) of Antichrist: the heavenly Parousia is the advanced outpost
whither God recalls His ambassadors, on the outbreak of war against the world
and the last judgments of God. “The
Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice; hailstones
and coals of fire. And He sent out His
arrows and scattered them; yea, lightnings manifold, and discomfited them” (Ps.
18: 13; Rev. 8: 5; 10: 3; 11: 19; 16: 10).
But Antediluvian and Sodomic wickedness recur, and remain obdurate,
during the Parousia. Matt. 24: 37. At
length ripeness of iniquity below, and the close of the judgment scene above,
together produce the break-up of the Parousia; scattering clouds on a sudden
reveal to every eye the triple glory (Luke 9: 26) burning in the heart of the
Pavilion. “For as the lightning cometh
forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the presence [see
Revised Margin throughout] of the Son of Man” (Matt. 24: 27); who shall
paralyse Antichrist by the manifestation, or outburst, of His Parousia (2
Thess. 2: 8); and “then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13: 43).
Our Lord’s feet alight upon Olivet.
Zech. 14: 4.
So the Presence is to be the lode-star of the Church: for its Bema
is the criterion for all regenerate life and conduct. Unfulfilled prophecy all lies after the
Rapture: nothing stands between us and the summons of God. No premonitions, no
warnings, no signals, no prophecies: “know this, that if the master of the
house had known in what watch the thief was coming” - silently, secretly,
suddenly, as a thief comes - “he would have watched, and would not have
suffered his house to be broken through.
Therefore be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not the Son of
Man cometh” (Matt. 24: 43). Holiness is
the supreme passport into the Presence. Luke
21: 36; 1 John 3: 3. “The miller’s apron,
the baker’s cap, the labourer’s coat, the housewife’s gown, are all suitable
material for ascension robes”: every day, every hour, puts in a stitch, or
drops one, in the garment of our coming glory. Rev. 19: 8. “What I say unto you
I say unto all, WATCH” (Mark 13: 37).
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53.
The Greatness of Jesus
“What think ye of Christ?” No question is more
fundamental, more critical, or more persistent: none could be asked more
fraught with irrevocable destiny. What
do men think? The Atheist thinks nothing about Him at all; for, as there is no God,
there can be no Son of God. The Worldling, given over to pleasure and
the love of money, is careful not to think about Him: for to think about
Christ, is to think about holiness. The Unitarian thinks that He is the noblest
of all men, a revealer - or the revealer - of God, but a man only. The Swedenborgian
thinks He is God, the only Person in the Godhead, and now not man at all. The Arian
(such as the Millennial Dawnist [i.e., today’s ‘Jehovah
Witnesses’]) thinks He is a
created god, a powerful and Divine archangel, come into the world. The Gnostic
(such as the New Theologian, the Christian Scientist, and the Theosophist)
thinks of Jesus as a son of Joseph, but peculiarly and mystically indwelt by
the Christ. The Mohammedan thinks that He is a real prophet, but inferior to
Mohammed. The Jews thought that He was a carpenter’s son; and the Pharisees thought Him a demoniac. The CHRISTIAN
- and the Christian only - sees in Him “the MAN Christ Jesus, - born of a woman; who is over all, GOD blessed for ever.”
ABRAHAM.
None in Christ’s lifetime ever doubted that He was a man; those who saw,
and heard, and even handled Him (Luke 24: 39; 1 John 1: 1) never doubted, and
could not doubt, the Manhood; - that was left to the invention of a later
age. But what rank did He take among
men? This was the inquiry, and it began
with Abraham. Abraham loomed up
incomparably the greatest figure on the horizon of Israel: he was the
embodiment of the promises, the father of all faith, the friend of God. “Art
Thou greater than our father Abraham?, the Jews asked Him; “whom makest Thou
thyself?” (John 8: 53). The directness
and intensity of the challenge drew as startling an utterance as even our Lord
ever gave of Himself. “Before Abraham
was” - before there was an Abraham - “I
AM”: the greatest of the Patriarchs was but a star of the dawn, swallowed
up and lost in the Day he foresaw: for I
AM is the tremendous title of Deity.
How much greater therefore? As
much greater as Jehovah is than Jehovah’s Friend.
JACOB. “Art thou greater” - again Jesus is
challenged - “than our father Jacob?” (John 4: 12). Jacob, the wrestler with the Jehovah-Angel,
was ‘a prince with God’ - what a title!
Jesus answers: - “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that
saith to thee, Give Me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would
have given thee living water.” Jacob dug
the well, and gave the earthly water: Jesus says He gives water straight from
the hand of God to the lips of the soul.
How much greater therefore? As
much greater as the living water is than the earthly, so much greater is the
Giver of the one than the giver of the other.
SOLOMON.
Solomon, in outward splendour, was incomparably the greatest of Israel’s
Kings, and endowed with a gift of wisdom possibly never surpassed. “For he was wiser than all men; and there
came of all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (I Kings 4: 30): for it was
supernatural illumination, and embraced all nature. I Kings 4: 33. Art Thou greater, O Lord, than Solomon? Hear Jesus: - “The queen of the south shall
rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them:
for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and
behold, a greater than Solomon is here” (Luke 11: 31). Jesus is the Divine Logos. John 1: 1. How much greater therefore? As much greater as the Giver of wisdom is
than the wisdom He gives.
JONAH. We
pass to the Prophets. Perhaps no greater
miracle (apart from the Flood) stands forth in the Old Testament than Jonah’s
descent into Sheol (Jon. 2: 2), - a man who literally came back from the
dead. Art thou greater, O Lord, than
Jonah? Jesus answers: - “The men of
Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn
it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than
Jonah is here.” Jonah came up from [i.e.,
from “the belly of Sheol” (Jon. 2: 2, R.V.) - the place of] the dead, but he was not dead: Jesus was
dead, yet mastered death. How much
greater therefore? As much greater as
resurrection is than natural life.
THE TEMPLE. The
Priests remain. One spot of earth alone
held the local manifestation of God: one Holy of holies enshrined the Deity:
one sacred Temple held the only Divine Priesthood in the whole world. Jesus was greater than Solomon, the builder
of the Temple: was He greater than the Temple?
Again He replies: - “I say unto you, that One greater than the temple is
here” (Matt. 12: 6): ‘a greater thing’ than the temple; for “in Him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2: 9). God was more in Christ than He was in the
Temple: the Body enshrined the Godhead as no temple ever could: He was holier
than the Holy of holies. How much
greater therefore? As much greater as a
son is than the house in which his father dwells.
THE ANGELS.
Rank over rank rise the hierarchies of Heaven, - thrones, dominions,
principalities, powers. Art Thou
greater, O Lord, there? Listen to the
testimony of the Most High. “By so much
better than the angels, as He hath inherited a more excellent name than they. For”
- now hear the voice of God - “of the angels He saith, Who maketh His angels” -
angels are made - “winds, and His ministers a flame of fire: but of the Son He saith, Thy throne, O GOD” - un-create, from everlasting -
“is for ever and ever” (Heb. 1: 4). How
much greater therefore? As much greater
as the Creator is than the creature, so much greater is Christ than all the
thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers that circle the throne
of God. “Of the SON He saith, O GOD!”
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54
Social Reform
The Church of God is now impaled on a tremendous dilemma: it is no
less than a choice between some form of Socialism, and the Second Advent. For the Golden Age, it is agreed, must come:
God’s explicit pledges cannot fall to the ground: is it - this is the issue -
to be erected by human effort, or created by Divine intervention? Christ has
said. “The Son of Man shall send forth
His ANGELS” - social reformers of
adequate wisdom and irresistible might - “and they shall gather out of His
kingdom ALL THINGS THAT CAUSE STUMBLING”
- all social evils - “and THEM THAT DO
INIQUITY” - the incurable originators of social wrongs: “then shall the
righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13: 41).
ADMINISTRATION.
Social Reform insists on judicial equity and administrative purity: the
Kingdom of God, on our Lord’s return, will be the quintessence of righteous
administration. “With righteousness
shall He judge, and reprove with equity; He shall smite the earth, He shall
slay the wicked” (Is. 11: 4). The dream
of all noble statesmen will have come true at last - a state so ordered that
sin will be difficult, and goodness will be easy: the citizen’s conduct will
meet with instant recompense from an administration incorruptible and irresistible.
Some have supposed that the Sermon on the Mount, brimming over with gentleness
and inexhaustible patience towards the sinner, will be the law of the Kingdom:
the exact opposite is the truth; - for the oppressed and the poor there will be
law-courts of swift and unerring power, and of perfect equity: tyranny - of
despotism, or star-chamber, or papacy, or trust, or union, or secret society - can rear its head no more: each must give his
due, and will get his due. “He shall
rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to
shivers” (Rev. 2: 27).
ENVIRONMENT.
Social Reform lays an immense emphasis on Environment. “The doctrine of environment” as Dr. Campbell
Morgan says, “had its death-blow in the garden of Eden”: man is made or unmade
from inside, not outside (Mark 7: 15): nevertheless a changed environment - in
a lifted curse, vanished disease, and an imprisoned Hell - is essential for
human bliss.
(1) Men of science say that the tiger’s fangs
and claws are not original, but acquired: certain it is that a restoration of
the conditions of Paradise will rob the lion and the bear of their rage, and
substitute the fir-tree for the thorn (Is. 55: 13); the little child shall play
by the crevice in which once lurked the deadliest serpents, and the evil
passions of the Fall be exorcised by almighty Power. (2)
So also “the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick” (Isa. 33: 24): disease -
except where supernaturally inflicted (Zech. 14: 18) - vanishes: life - except
in the case of capital punishment for sin (Is. 65: 20) - is prolonged
throughout the Thousand Years (Rev. 20: 4): the ages of the Patriarchs
return. (3) Best of all, Hell is incarcerated in the Pit. “It shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that
I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land” (Zech.
13: 2): for the Abyss is sealed over Satan, “that he should deceive the nations
no more, until the thousand years should be finished” (Rev. 20: 3). Is. 24: 21. What but the miraculous intervention of God
could create a threefold change of environment so drastic and sufficing?
EDUCATION.
Social Reform works for universal education: but the education of God
begins with the heart: so “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord”
- that is, saving knowledge - as completely as the ocean covers the sea-basin;
“and He will destroy the veil that is spread over all nations” (Is. 25: 7). 2
Cor. 4: 3, 4. Thus the Kingdom starts
wholly regenerate: its kings - the co-heirs of Christ, saints of tried ability
and tested holiness; its viceroys - Israel, all saved; its subjects - the Sheep
of the Parable, saved Gentiles: it is the REGENERATION,
when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory. Probation throughout the first century of
life will be granted to every soul born during the Kingdom: “the sinner being
an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Is. 65: 20). No land so remote, no climate so inclement,
no tribe so savage, as to be outside the Kingdom of Christ: “ask of Me, and I
will give thee the nations for thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of
the earth for thy possession” (Ps. 2: 8): “they shall all be taught of God”
(John 6: 45; Is. 54: 13).
DISARMAMENT.
Social reform agitates for disarmament with profound conviction: nor
need we wonder. Of the total revenue of
the leading nations, something like one half, or £600,000,000 goes for war:
what could this not alleviate, poured through the poverty of the world! But no
‘league of peace’ can banish war: the controversy between God and the nations
over the crucifixion of the Son of God has never been settled: “there is no
peace to the wicked, saith my God” (Is. 57: 21). Rev. 6: 4; Jer. 25: 27, 28. Regeneration is the sole secret of
disarmament. For “whence come wars and
whence come fightings among you? Ye lust,
and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war” (Jas. 4:
1). The sword is first forged in an evil
heart: wrench it out of the hand, and the heart only forges another. But, in the Regeneration, “they shall beat
their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”
(Is. 2: 4): for “of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be
no end, upon the throne of David, and
upon his kingdom. THE ZEAL OF THE LORD OF HOSTS SHALL PERFORM
THIS” (Is. 9: 7).
Who shall create this? The
creation of a perfect age is as utterly beyond our powers as the creation of a
perfect character. Before Christ came
neither a perfect age nor a perfect character had appeared: now one has: and
the perfect character is the pledge of the perfect age. Because Christ has been, the Kingdom of
Christ will be: “AND THE LORD ALONE
SHALL BE EXALTED IN THAT DAY” (Is. 2: 11).
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55
Did Christ Rise as a Spirit?
“Even men who were considered stalwart in orthodoxy a few years ago
have now ceased to insist upon the physical resurrection of Jesus: this is a
gain: Christianity no longer rests upon an alleged physical fact. ... THE CRUDE BELIEF OF THE GALILEANS THAT THE PHYSICAL BODY OF JESUS WAS
TAKEN UP TO A HEAVEN BEYOND THE SKY AND THEREFORE GLORIFIED IS NOW IMPOSSIBLE”
(Christian Commonwealth, April 2,
1911). By such statements the League of
Liberal Christianity and its president, Mr. R. J. Campbell, deny, totally and
without reservation, the supreme factor which the Church of God has stood with
unbroken front for nineteen centuries.
THE PANIC. A
panic like that which overtook Eliphaz (Job 4: 15) suddenly seized the Apostles
in the upper room. “The disciples were
terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they beheld a spirit” (Luke 24: 37). It was an ideal environment in which to prove
resurrection. For even had the disciples
expected our Lord’s body to rise, that expectation was now shattered - they did
not, therefore, imagine it: His entering through locked doors made them suppose
He was a Spirit - therefore they were ignorant of the nature of a resurrection
body, and were thus unbiased witnesses: nor were they sure it was the Lord at
all - “a spirit” - therefore it was no self-induced hallucination of
Christ. No better test conditions could
be imagined.
THE SCARS. A
startling fact at once confronts us. The
person most anxious to prove His bodily resurrection is our Lord Himself: it
must be of the gravest moment. He
presses the evidences upon them. “See My hands and My feet, that it is I myself:”
“handle Me and see,” (or, as in John), “feel the nail prints:” “and He showed
them His hands and His feet.” All law
courts accept a scar as a sufficient proof of identity; for a scar, after the
wound is healed, can be so shaped and placed as to be unique and decisive. So it was here. Not only did the prints in the palms and the
soles confine the body examined to one of the three crucified; but the scar
under the ribs identified it as the only Body that had the spear-thrust. It was therefore no reincarnation: the Body
was His own. As a wound inflicted in
childbirth, or in infancy, can bear a scar which survives all the physical
changes of a lifetime, so the body of Jesus, passing under the mighty change of
resurrection, nevertheless carried the death-wounds. “It is I myself.”
THE BODY. A
decisive proof remains. The Apostles
witness to a kind of resurrection so puzzling as to have been, among
themselves, long disbelieved. The
apparition of a spirit [i.e., a disembodied soul], like Samuel’s, they understood: the
resurrection of a body, like Lazarus’s, they had seen: what the Old Testament
had never unfolded, and what no man had ever guessed, is what the apostles end
by asserting as a fact again and again - a spiritual body; combining the
properties of body and spirit [and
soul] in a way never hitherto
conceived by the human mind. It was the
same Body, for there was no body in the tomb, and the body they handled was
identically scarred: yet it was another fashion of body, not always
recognizable, passing through matter, and ultimately into heaven, without
difficulty. Nothing but actual
experience, tested and re-tested, could have convinced them of so puzzling, so
unique, a fact. So also our Lord’s
resurrection is the model of ours. 1
Thess. 4: 14. The bodies of the saints
arose (Matt. 27: 52): our bodies are to be quickened (Rom. 8: 11): our body is
to be made like His body (Phil. 3: 21): and, while it will be a spiritual body,
it will also be a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15: 44). The change that passes over the rapt, who do
not leave their bodies on earth, is exactly equivalent to resurrection. 1 Cor. 15: 52.
THE RESURRECTION. Our
Lord Himself is the finally decisive witness.
He says: - “Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, AS YE SEE ME HAVE.” If the body did not rise from the grave, what
did? - for the spirit had never been in the grave at all; and if it had, it
would have needed no rolling away of the stone, to free it: a spirit is already
free as air. An apparition, a phantom -
our Lord says - though it can be seen and heard, (as He assumes), cannot be
felt: it is too imponderable, too immaterial, to be handled: it has no flesh
and bones. “Who maketh His angels winds,
and His ministers a flame of fire” (Heb. 1: 7).
Nor was it only solid flesh and bone: it was wounded flesh. A spirit is not scarred by a physical
incision: if, as Gnostics taught and teach, our Lord’s body on the cross was a
phantom, no scars would or could have remained.
Palpable to the touch; visible or invisible at will; scarred with the
earthly experience; eating or not, as He chose: - “a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye see Me have”: He says He is not a spirit. If Jesus came back as a spirit, He came back
as a lying spirit. 1 Cor. 15: 14, 15.
The gravity of the issue it is impossible to exaggerate. For the Lord’s resurrection in flesh is the
criterion both of demons and of antichrists.
“That Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,” (the perfect denoting a past
act continuing to the present: Lange), is the truth which no demon, when
challenged, will ever confess (1 John 4: 2, 3): ‘Christ come’- the Divine Being
arrived; and ‘in the flesh’- not into flesh, to disappear out of it again, but
- a Man for ever. So it is the criterion
of the antichrists. “Many deceivers are
gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh”
- in the Second Advent - “IN THE FLESH. This is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2
John 7). A deliberate and systematic
denial of the resurrection is more than an overthrow of Christ: it is the
revelation of an antichrist.
“LITTLE
CHILDREN, IT IS THE LAST HOUR: AND AS YE HEARD THAT ANTICHRIST COMETH, EVEN NOW
HAVE THERE ARISEN MANY ANTICHRISTS;
WHEREBY WE KNOW THAT IT IS
THE LAST HOUR” (1 John 2:
18).
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56.
Excommunication and Exclusion
THE CHURCH. As,
in the regenerate, the current of being sets towards good, and evil is a
backwater; so, in the unregenerate, the current of being sets towards evil, and
effort after good is a backwater: and this is always the criterion of
regeneration. 1 John 3: 7, 8. Yet it is
also certain that the regenerate can sin deeply, and die in such sin. For - as an example - three facts decisively
establish the regenerate nature of the incestuous brother whom the Holy Ghost
has made a perpetual and conclusive proof.
(1) Excommunication was to deliver his flesh,
but not his spirit, to Satan: Satan might touch his body, like Job’s, but not
his soul: “that the spirit may be SAVED
in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5: 5).
Now the destruction, like Ananias’s, might be immediate (for aught we
read to the contrary) and yet his salvation was assured: therefore he was
regenerate before excommunication. 1
Cor. 11: 30, 32.
(2) Paul sharply limits the jurisdiction of
the Church to believers: “do not ye judge them that are within, whereas them
that are without God judgeth? Put away
the wicked man” - pass sentence, for he is within - “from among yourselves.” The right to judge unbelievers, Paul says,
belongs solely to God: therefore the incestuous brother, judged by the Church
at Paul’s command, was a believer.
(3) This brother, if excommunicated at all,
was promptly restored: for in his second Epistle Paul says, - “forgive him and
comfort him; confirm your love toward him” (2 Cor. 2: 7). This is absolutely decisive. The sharp discipline had severed him from his
sin: acting under an inspired command the Church restored him to full
fellowship, as a living member of Christ.
Therefore a believer can so sin, and has: and - since there may be
destruction of the flesh - can also die in it.
EXCOMMUNICATION. But
a fact of overwhelming decisiveness still remains. Paul states that the identical sin might
permeate the whole assembly. “Know ye
not that a little leaven leaveneth the WHOLE
LUMP?” Was the ‘whole lump’ all good
dough, or half bad? Was the assembly
regenerate throughout or not? “Purge out
the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump” - fresh, pure dough throughout - “even
as ye ARE unleavened.” Those whom Paul is alone addressing (1 Cor.
1: 2) had all left the hands of God as pure, sweet dough on conversion: all
were regenerate: “ye are unleavened”: now keep so, Paul says, and if any leaven
returns, purge it out, to keep the lump new.
For fornication - as also the other immoralities named - might spread
through the entire Church: “know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the
whole lump?” So far from Paul regarding
the incestuous brother as no believer, because of his fornication, he asserts
exactly the reverse - that, unless drastic measures purge the Body,
immoralities may contaminate the whole, 1 Cor. 10: 12. No disciple is immune from peril.
THE KINGDOM.
Thus it is certain that believers can commit such sins: it is certain
that some in Corinth did: it is certain that all such are to be excommunicated:
Paul now unfolds the tremendous revelation that disciples so unclean as to be
shut out of the Church, must also be shut out of the Kingdom; that the
excommunicated will be the excluded. For
what is the catalogue of excommunication?
Fornicators, idolators, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. 1
Cor. 5: 11. And what is the catalogue of
exclusion? “Ye yourselves do wrong”: at
what peril? “Know ye not that wrong-doers
[the same word, with no article] shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived” - could a well-instructed
Church like Corinth be in peril of imagining that unregenerate adulterers would
enter the Kingdom? - “neither fornicators, nor idolators, [four new sins are
now added, three an expansion of fornication, one an expansion of covetousness:
exclusion is a wider thing than excommunication], nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners” - each excommunicating sin is also an excluding sin
- “shall inherit the kingdom of God.”* It
is the same list: the justly excommunicated will be the infallibly
excluded. For “whose soever sins ye
forgive [e.g., the incestuous brother’s], they are forgiven unto them; whose
soever sins ye retain” - always assuming that it is an excommunication which God has commanded - “they are retained”
(John 20: 23): for “whatsoever things ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven” (Matt. 18: 18).
* “The Kingdom of God is here taken in the eschatological sense” -
Godet: “the Kingdom of God refers here to its external appearance at a future
period” - Olshausen. That ‘the Kingdom’
is the Millennial, and not the Eternal, this very Epistle declares: - “He shall
deliver up THE KINGDOM to God, even the Father” (1 Cor. 15: 24). Eternal life, on the other hand, is the
irrevocable gift of God on saving faith. John 3: 36.
EXCLUSION.
Paul closes with words finally conclusive. “Such were some of you; but ye were washed” -
through blood and water - “but ye were sanctified” - set apart for God as
hallowed - “but ye were justified” - through the accepted righteousness of
Christ: these are the souls Paul is threatening with exclusion: “defiled, ye
were cleansed; profane, ye were hallowed; unrighteous, ye were justified.” Dare any of you become foul again? Paul asks.
If unbelievers only are excluded, Paul’s warning is not only pointless,
but unjust. Believers are sinning;
unbelievers are to be excluded: “ye do wrong”; therefore the world will be
punished: does God reveal the sins of one set of men, to threaten punishment to
another? “I fear lest I should find YOU
not such as I would,” because of “uncleanness and fornication and
lasciviousness which they COMMITTED”
(2 Cor. 12: 20). It is the washed, the
sanctified, the justified that are in peril.
Are [unregenerate] hypocrites - empty professors, false
brethren, who have slipped past the Church examiners - washed, sanctified,
justified? Hear what the Spirit is
saying to the churches: - “HE THAT DOETH WRONG SHALL RECEIVE FOR THE WRONG THAT
HE HATH DONE; AND THERE IS NO RESPECT OF
PERSONS” (Col. 3: 25). “Thou hast a few names in Sardis which did not defile their garments:
and THEY shall walk with me in
white; FOR
THEY ARE WORTHY” (Rev. 3: 4).
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57
Christ
RECOGNITION. “For
a long time” a madman (Luke 8: 27) - probably years - the Gadarean, dwelling
apart “in the tombs,” could have known nothing of Christ: yet he instantly
names Jesus. Such knowledge could only
be supernatural. “Jesus I know,” cried a
demon far off in Ephesus (Acts 19: 15): Christ was immediately recognized by
the unseen world - they hailed Him in the tombs, in the deserts, in the
synagogues: there was not a spirit who ever had to ask Christ who He was. “He suffered not the demons to speak, because
they knew Him” (Mark 1: 34).
IDENTIFICATION. Thee
demons recognised Jesus: did they, then, hail Him as one of themselves? Or as a malignant power? Or as an angel? Or as son of Joseph? “What have we to do with
thee, Jesus, THOU SON OF THE MOST HIGH
GOD?” Hell instantly declared that
it has nothing in common with Jesus Christ; and as instantly it identified Him
as the Messiah. “The Son” was a title of
Messiah (Ps. 2: 2, 12) for appropriating which Jesus incurred the charge of
blasphemy (Mark 14: 64): it is the title of the Judge (Ps. 2: 9), before whom,
as such, the demons recoil in terror. “Rebuking
them, He suffered them not to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ”
(Luke 4: 41).
AUTHORITY. The
Jews were deeply startled by the instant obedience of the unseen world to
Christ. “They were all amazed, saying, What is this? With authority He
commandeth the unclean spirits, and they obey Him” (Mark 1: 27). The obedience of unseen principalities and
powers, of keen malignancy, vast experience, and great power is an astounding
tribute to the inherent authority of Christ: and yet more to His holiness. For attempting exorcism without holiness the
Sons of Sceva fled naked and wounded from a single demon (Acts 19: 16): yet our
Lord controls at least two thousand (for all the swine were entered), and when
He says, “Get thee behind Me, Satan,” even Satan himself obeys.
SOVEREIGNTY.
Facts compelled an extraordinary confession from the demons. “Art Thou come hither to torment us before
the time?” (Matt. 8: 29): “and they intreated Him that He would not command
them to depart into the abyss” (Luke 8: 31).
The Abyss, into which our Lord Himself descended (Rom. 10: 7), and out
of which evil spirits will swarm in the last judgments, (Rev. 9: 2), is the
strong prison of Satan at last (Rev. 20: 3).
Thus the demons confess that Christ can control the legions of Hell;
that He can send them anywhere He chooses; that He can compel the Abyss to
receive whom He will; and that He can command souls of angels or men into the
Eternal Torments. What a Christ! Devils would make us doubt Christ, but they
never doubt Him themselves: they would have us doubt Hell, but they never doubt
it themselves: “the demons also believe, and shudder” (Jas. 2: 19).
MAJESTY. So
also Christ had the manner of God. “Who
hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor hath taught Him?”
(Is. 40: 13). God acts - famine or
plague sweeps away millions - and He offers no explanation. It has been said that the owners of the swine
were Jews, and justly suffered as transgressors of the Law; that the loss was
meant to startle concerning the peril of the soul; that the deliverance of one
man is worth the destruction of many swine: Jesus gives no explanation. “What things soever the Father doeth, these
the Son also doeth in like manner” (John 5: 19): it is the un-challengeable
majesty of the Godhead, acting as God, and consulting none. “Declare how great things GOD hath done”: “and he published
abroad how great things JESUS had
done” (Luke 8: 39).
WISDOM.
Three prayers are offered: the prayers of enemies are answered, - the
prayer of the friend is refused: what man would have done that? The demons are not commanded to the Abyss -
for even devils will not suffer more than their due: Jesus departs - because He
never forces the human soul: the disciple is left - because, if Gadera has
abandoned Christ, Christ has not abandoned Gadera. The greatest demoniac of the New Testament
becomes a preacher of salvation to ten cities.
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His
ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11: 33).
POWER. One
power quells the storm, exiles the demons, cures the maniac: what a power! Evil spirits, even through human wrists, can
snap fetters like thread: yet one word from Jesus binds them with links of
adamant. What follows? That no madness
is incurable; no sin (save one) unpurgeable; no devil invincible; no habit
unconquerable; no outcast beyond reach: - that all power is gathered into those
glorious Hands.
“ALL POWER IS GIVEN UNTO ME IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH” (Matt. 28: l8): “THE SON OF MAN HATH POWER ON EARTH TO
FORGIVE SINS” (Mark 2: 10).
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58.
Emperor-worship
ANCIENT. The
acceptance of the King as the Saviour is older than history; and no sooner had
God deposited all earthly power in the hands of a single monarch than the
worship of the emperor, or of his image, broke forth. “To you it is commanded, O
peoples, nations, and languages, that ye fall down and worship” (Dan. 3: 4). God smote Nebuchadnezzar, thus intoxicated
with universal (Dan. 5: 19) power, with madness - “till thou know that THE MOST HIGH ruleth in the kingdom of
men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will” (Dan. 4: 32). But the lesson was never learnt. Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, Cyrus the
Persian, Alexander the Greek, Caesar the Roman - every one of the
empire-dynasties have claimed divine honours: emperor-worship became an
ineradicable sin in the controlling dynasties of the world.
ROMAN. The
worship of the King as Saviour rose to its height in that Empire the revival of
which we await (Rev. 13: 1; 17: 9, 10) - the Roman; and it reached its climax
under Marcus Aurelius. Says a Roman historian: - “Every stage of
life, both men and women, every rank and condition, rendered the Emperor divine
honours; a temple was erected to him, with priests and high priests, and all
those other institutes which antiquity has decreed for worship.” A tablet to Marcus Aurelius is inscribed
thus: - “From one most devoted to his Godhead.”
Multitudes of Christians lost their lives for refusing emperor-worship:
of others, in Bithynia, Pliny writes to the Emperor Trajan, - “all of them
worshipped your image, and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.” So foreign kings, captured, were sometimes
compelled to confess the Deity of the Emperor by offering sacrifices to him as
God: it became the compulsory state religion of the Roman Empire.
MODERN. It
is very startling to discover that, since Babylon, the world has never been
without this acme of human iniquity; for since the fall of the Roman Caesars
emperor-worship has been steadily maintained in Japan. Says an official of the Court of the Mikado:
- “The Emperor is our Father, but he is also to us as a God; and as long as we
are faithful and obedient to him, we are fulfilling the mandates of religion”
(Fortnightly Review, May, 1906). Admiral
Togo telegraphed after the battle of Port Arthur: - “The fact that not one man
was injured must be attributed to his Majesty’s glorious virtue”; and the
Minister of Marine replied - “Success attributable to the Emperor’s illustrious
virtue.” Nor are we without ominous
symptoms nearer home. Prince Henry of
Prussia, when sent to China by the Kaiser, thus addressed him: - “I am only
animated by one desire - to proclaim and preach abroad to all who will hear, as
well as those who will not, the gospel of your Majesty’s Anointed Person [i.e., Christ]. Let the cry resound far out into the world, -
one most serene, mighty, beloved Emperor, King, and Master, for ever and ever”(Dec.
16, 1897).
ANTICHRIST. Thus the world-conditions are rapidly approximating to the
culmination of all emperor-worship: - “all that dwell on the earth shall WORSHIP him” (Rev. 13: 8). In one of the deadliest of magazines, steeped
in Theosophy and Gnosticism, we read: - “Behind this universal empire rises a
still more majestic idea, the notion of a world-Saviour. A mighty world-ruler must come, who will at
the same time be a Saviour of the world” (The
Quest, April, 1911). So also a
leading Theosophist: - “We await the coming of One to whom none may say, Go,
but who ever breathes, I come; the supreme Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, the
blessed Buddha yet-to-be; who shall shape the religions of the world into one
vast synthesis.” Emperors hitherto have
never been able to wield miracle: crushing power alone has compelled worship:
but “he whose coming is according to the working of Satan” will seduce to
worship “with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood” (2 Thess. 2: 9). To receive his sacramental sign will be
certain damnation. Rev. 14: 10. The
magazine which heralds the Messianic Emperor also studies magic and the return
of the dead: it emanates from circles saturated with Spiritualistic miracles;
the miracles in which Antichrist is to be cradled are already in the group
which is raising the cry of a Messianic Emperor. “WATCH
YE THEREFORE, AND PRAY ALWAYS, that
YE may be ACCOUNTED WORTHY TO ESCAPE all these things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21: 36).
CHRIST. How
glorious a light it sheds on the Redeemer!
How does a forger start to forge a coin?
Whereas the material is bad - it may be chalk, that immediately snaps on
the counter - the appearance of the coin is a copy as exact as he can make
it. When Satan launches his supreme
counterfeit Christ, what does he forge, so that the world may mistake him for
the original? A man who is also God: an
emperor who is also a saviour: one who is gifted with all miraculous power, yet
human, whose are the uttermost parts of the earth, and to whom incense is
offered by all nations. That is what
Satan knows Christ to be: that is the original Coin which he counterfeits: he
forges a world-saviour, because he knows a Divine Empire is imminent, and a
Divine Emperor. For the angelic cry is
near: - “The kingdoms of THIS WORLD
are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of HIS CHRIST; and He shall reign for
ever and ever” (Rev. 11: 15).
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59.
Brotherhood
The Brotherhood of Man, as springing from the alleged universal
Fatherhood of God, is incomparably the most popular doctrine in the modern
world. It is (for example) a bedrock
doctrine of the Gnostic groups, such as Theosophy and the New Theology; of
Bahaism, which aims to unite the religions of the world; of all Socialism, so
far as it is religious; and of the Brotherhood Movement - a movement growing
with such enormous rapidity that its societies in 1906 numbered nine, but in
1911, 1,543, with 600,000 members. “All
classes and all creeds” are embraced, officially and of set purpose, in this ‘brotherhood’
of mankind, as they were also embraced in the motto of the French Revolution -
“liberty, equality, brotherhood.”
EXCLUSIVE SONSHIP. The
first arresting fact which confronts us is that four revealed sonships, by
their very terms, deny universality. (1)
Our Lord, as Son of God, is “the only-begotten of the Father” (John 1: 18);
that is, His is a Sonship so unique, so Divine, as to exclude all others: no
other man is the Son of God in this sense. (2) Angels, as sons of God (Job 38:
7), are sons as His direct agents (John 10: 35): it needs no proof that, as we
are not angels, all men are excluded from this sonship. (3) Again we read, - “the son of Enos, the
son of Seth, the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3: 38). As son by direct creation, and alone so of
all mankind, the genealogy itself excludes all but Adam from this sonship. (4) Of Israel Moses says: - “ye are the
children of the Lord your God” (Deut. 14: l): but here, also, Israel’s
selection from among the nations for sonship (Jer. 31: 9) excludes all others,
but Israel. Thus these four revealed
sonships, by their very terms, exclude the sonship of all mankind.
SATANIC SONSHIP. Of
these four sonships but one now remains on earth: if, therefore, any one in the
flesh is a son of God, it is the Jew: does our Lord so regard him? If not, much less all others. Israel pressed the claim on Christ: - “we
have one Father, even God” (John 8: 42).
Jesus answers with awful decisiveness, - “If God were your Father, ye
would love Me: for I came forth and am come from God. YE ARE
OF YOUR FATHER THE DEVIL.” Divine
sonship is a moral likeness to the Divine Fatherhood: all are offspring (Acts
17: 29), but not all are sons: for “the lusts of your Father” - lies and
murders - “it is your will to do.” 1 John 3: 8. Spiritual likeness betrays
spiritual sonship as infallibly as physical features reveal earthly paternity.
“All classes and all creeds” are a brotherhood in the flesh: but “it is not the
children of the flesh that are children of God” (Rom. 9: 8); and such a union
must include criminals, adulterers, idolators, and atheists.* No such
brotherhood can God acknowledge.
* The Prodigal Son
(Luke 15: 1, 2, 11), exactly expounded, reveals Israel’s national sonship as
then still un-forfeited, even by the publicans and harlots. Matt. 15: 24. But since, and individually, “they are not
all Israel, which are of Israel” (Rom. 9: 6): personal regeneration - even of a
Nicodemus - is vital.
DIVINE SONSHIP. Where then and what, is the true
Brotherhood? For it must be discoverable
amongst mankind, and yet it must be sharply severed: for we read - “Honour all
men. Love THE BROTHERHOOD” (1 Pet. 2: 17).
God’s Word declares that the Brotherhood stands revealed by its place,
its spirit, its character, and its conduct.
(1) Its place: “come ye out from among them, and
be ye separate, and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord
Almighty” (2 Cor. 6: 17). The
brotherhood of all men is exactly the place where it is impossible to find the
Divine Brotherhood. (2) Its spirit: “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons of God. For ye received the spirit
of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Rom. 8: 14). Antagonism to the
Spirit in the Word and in the Church betrays Satanic sonship: it is only the
indwelt of the Holy Ghost that have become sons of the Father. (3)
Its character: “that ye may be blameless and harmless, children of God without
blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2: 15). The sonship is not in the crooked generation:
only where we see the character of God, do we see the sons of God: for sonship
is not so much a title, or a privilege, or even a relationship, as a
transmitted life. (4) Its conduct: “he that doeth righteousness is righteous: in this
the children of God are manifest” (1 John 3: 7, 10). The sons of God are those into whom the
Spirit has so entered that, as temples of the Holy Ghost, they work the works
of God.
The Gospel now throws wide open its golden gates. Before we can be a son, we must be born:
before we can be sons of God, we must be born of God: and - here is the unique
revelation of our Faith - all men, of all classes and all creeds, are invited,
and are able, to become sons of God, and thus to enter the holy brotherhood of
the regenerate. Human birth no man can
obtain for himself, or control: his parents, his birthplace, his epoch are
utterly beyond his choice: the marvel of revelation is that all men can now
choose to become sons of God. “For ye [disciples] are all sons of God through
faith” (Gal. 3: 26): and “AS MANY AS
RECEIVED HIM, to them gave He the right to become CHILDREN OF GOD, even to them that BELIEVE on His name: which
were BORN, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but OF GOD” (John 1: 12).
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60.
Catholicity
No corporate restoration of the Church is to be expected before the
Lord returns (Matt. 5: 13, 13: 33): nevertheless, for individual purity, and
for confronting an ever-growing and spurious catholicism, the catholicity laid
down by the Holy Ghost is one of the urgent needs of a growing crisis. What is that catholicity?
IN FACT.
Fellowship in His Church our Lord has thrown open to all believers. John
13: 35. Separation is commanded: but it
is separation from the world (2 Cor. 6: 14-18), not from fellow-disciples;
unless they be guilty of the sins named in 1 Cor. 5: 11 - “with such a one no, not
to eat.” Only as severed from the world
is the Church a party or sect. Acts 28: 22.
For him whom God has received the Church must receive (Rom. 14: 3):
Christ’s acceptance of us is the imperative reason, without option, for our
acceptance of our brother. “Wherefore RECEIVE
ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God” (Rom.
15: 7). Conversion is the compelling reason for communion. “Is a man a believer
in Jesus Christ, and is his life suitable to his profession? - are not only the
main but the sole inquiries I make for admission” (Wesley). For our Lord came to gather into one the
children of God (John 11: 52); He prayed, “that they may all be one” (John 17:
21); He tempered the Body together, “that
there should be no schism” (1 Cor. 12: 25): for, in fact, the Body of
Christ is an indivisible unity. “Now ye
are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof” (1 Cor. 12: 27). “The unity of the Body is a fundamental truth
of revelation, not only to be held as a theory, but manifested as a fact. More
than that which is necessary to unite us to Christ is, or ought to be,
unnecessary to unite us to one another” (Fuller Gooch).
IN NAME. “I
wish all names among the saints of God were swallowed up in that one name of
Christian. Are you Christ’s? If so, I love you with all my heart”
(Whitefield). No other proper name is
ever applied to disciples by the Holy Ghost. “If a man suffers as a CHRISTIAN, let him glorify God in this
name” (1 Pet. 4: 16): “the disciples were called Christians” - i.e., by God: the word here for ‘called’
is used for the response of an oracle - “first in Antioch” (Acts 11: 26). If I name myself after a rite (as baptism),
or a man (as Luther, or Wesley), or a place (as Rome), or a form of church
government (as episcopacy, or independency, or presbyterate), or a method of
organisation (as an army), or a sectional use of a catholic name (as friends,
or brethren) - and if I organise, and exclude from communion, within these
limits - I am a factionist. Even the
name of Christ, used in a sectarian sense, is forbidden. “Each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I
of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.
Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1: 12).
Factions are inevitable (1 Cor. 11: 19), but factions are not thereby
justified: participation in ‘factions, divisions, parties’ - all ‘works of the
flesh’ - will forfeit coming reward. Gal.
5: 20. For party spirit is of the
essence of the world. “For when one
saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not men? Are ye not carnal, and walk after the manner
of men?” (1 Cor. 3: 3). “If I had a drop
of sectarian blood in my veins, I would open a vein and let that drop out”
(Moody).
IN HEART. Thus catholicity is not inter-denominationalism, or a conglomerate
of factions: it is the casting down of all barriers to full communion for every
disciple of Christ. For fellowship with
a brother in error is not fellowship with his sin, but with his regeneration:
we do not hold communion with his weakness, but with his faith: “him that is
weak in the faith RECEIVE, for God
hath received him” (Rom. 14: 1, 3). The
Church is God’s convalescent home - the perfectly cured, in justification, are
getting better, in sanctification; and it is justification, and no exact degree
of sanctification, on which communion is based by God. “Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and
the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is
lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed” (Heb. 12: 12). Supreme forbearance is thus required, not for
the laxity of indifference, but for the catholicity of love; and differences of
judgment on Scripture must be met, not by excommunications (as in 3 John 9-10),
but by instruction (Acts 18: 26), longsuffering (2 Tim. 2: 24, 25), and
humility (1 Cor. 8: 2). For God
liberates us from the thraldom of sect in order that we may love and serve all
who are in Christ. (Such the world will
but label with a new name: it is at the Judgment Seat alone that our
catholicity, if we be faithful, can be revealed). “We are to receive, on the one great truth of
Christ’s salvation, all who, through divine grace, believing it, are converted to
God: we are to receive all that are on the foundation, and reject and put away
error [not by excommunication, or refusal, but] by the Word of God, and by the
help of His ever blessed, ever living, and ever present Spirit” (J. N. Darby).
There will be no divisions around the Throne: daily let us
recollect how rapidly we are nearing “that all-reconciling world where Luther
and Zwingle are well agreed.” As two
drops of water become one at a touch, so should redeemed hearts: “receive ye
one another, TO THE GLORY OF GOD.” True catholicity is a great sorrow, not an
angry scorn, over a mutilated Church: it is no attitude of impatient protest or
impotent un-charity: on the contrary, it is the love that “beareth all things,”
and gathers all disciples into its bosom, even as God does. “But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? Or
thou again, why dost thou set at nought thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment
Seat of God. LET US NOT THEREFORE JUDGE ONE ANOTHER ANY MORE: but judge ye this
rather, that no man put a stumbling-block in his brother’s way, or an occasion
of falling” (Rom. 14: 10).
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61
The Miracles of Christ
THE CONSECRATION.
Miracle which has behind it efficient cause and sufficient purpose
becomes utterly credible the moment it is established as historic fact. Now the miracles of Christ have behind them
precisely that efficient cause and sufficient purpose. For “whom the Father sanctified”* - set apart for a specific use - He “sent
into the world” as the Son of God (John 10: 36): that is, Jesus entered the
world charged with the power of God - an efficient cause; and consecrated as
the world’s Messiah - a sufficient purpose.
Miracles in Christ, so far from being idle and incredible wonders, are
so inevitable that if they do not occur, He is not the Messiah.
* This word for “sanctify”
means “to set apart for God”; if the person is unholy, it involves a change of
nature; if holy, as Christ was, it is simply consecration to a divine purpose.
THE FACT. We
now turn to the fact. Did our Lord work
miracles? We may be told that the
narratives of miracle are subsequent legends; that He worked no miracles, but
that myth-makers said He did. But “John
did no miracle” (John 10: 41), and no one ever said that he did. John was a contemporary of our Lord, and
probably as famous as Christ in his lifetime: yet the Jews never said that he
worked miracles; the Bible never says it; tradition since has never said it:
not a single miracle has gathered round his name. Neither, therefore, need miracles have been
invented of Christ. But the proof that
Jesus, as a matter of fact, did work miracles it is impossible to resist. Many were wrought on public men - as Jairus,
a synagogue ruler; Lazarus, a man well known to the Jewish authorities; and
Malchus, an officer of the High Priest: and some were permanent miracles - that
is, the cured leper, the blind whose eyes had been opened, the man raised from
the dead, could be handled and cross-examined years after. So real were the miracles, so indisputable,
so palpable, that no refuting evidence was ever produced, no denial of them was
ever made, no contemporary doubt of their occurrence was ever expressed. The men who were looking at Christ, both
friend and foe, never doubted that He worked miracles: but His foes said that
they were Satanic: an explanation which at once establishes, out of the mouth
of the keenest hostile critics on the spot, that they were actual occurrences. The Talmud, hundreds of years after, still
puts them down to magic.
THE KIND.
This brings us a step further. Of
what nature were our Lord miracles? Were
they Satanic? Apocryphal literature asserts that, as a child, He made clay
birds to fly, turned children into goats for refusing to play with Him, and
cursed a boy with death for running against Him; exactly the kind of miracle
which our Lord did not work, but which miracle-mongers invent. Had the Gospels been apocryphal, such
miracles would cram their pages; but not one such miracle can be found. Two characteristics are so supreme in our
Lord’s miracles as to isolate them from all others, and to establish their
Divine character.
First, goodness: “many good works” - fair, beautiful, comely - “have
I showed you from the Father” (John 10: 32).
Moses slew an entire army in the Red Sea; Elisha smote Gehazi with
leprosy; even Paul blinded Elymas: - all righteous miracles, but miracles
judicial and dreadful: Jesus, on the contrary, never worked a destructive
miracle on man. He blighted the
fig-tree, that men might know it was no lack of judgment power; but every other
miracle was a lovely and comforting miracle, in helpfulness of hunger or
disease, taxation or marriage joy, deliverance from demonism or death. Is that kind of miracle Satanic?
Secondly, power: “many good works have I showed you out of the
Father;” works therefore omniscient and omnipotent. Moses was constantly at a loss what to do -
at the Red Sea, at the desert rock, at the revolt of Korah: our Lord was never
perplexed, never consulted anyone, never was baffled, never failed. He asked Philip how they should feed the
multitude, but “He Himself knew what he would do” (John 6: 8). Elisha, to raise the dead, stretched himself
along the corpse, and cried again and again to God: Jesus, never. Once our Lord prayed before a miracle, but He
was careful to add, - “because of the multitude which standeth around, I said
it” (John 11: 42). He so dwelt in God,
and God in Him, that He did not ask God for miracles, He showed them: “many
good works have I showed you out of the Father”: therefore their goodness was
without exception, and their power as absolute as their goodness.
THE CHALLENGE.
Thus our Lord’s miracles are a grave and un-escapable challenge to every
soul. “If I do not the works of my
Father, believe Me not”; “though ye believe not Me, believe the works”; “believe
Me for the very word’s sake” (John 14: 11).
The miracles are fundamental to our salvation. Why?
Because forgiveness is so invisible a transaction, so purely spiritual,
that it requires to be proved by supernatural credentials direct from God. To
say, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” is a knocking off of invisible shackles, a
healing of an invisible soul, a cancelling of a debt in invisible books: but to
say, “Arise and walk,” is a removal of visible shackles, the restoring from a
physical paralysis, such that the fact can be seen to correspond immediately
and exactly with the word. If Christ’s
word is instantly operative in the physical sphere, it is equally instantly
operative in the spiritual sphere. “THAT YE MAY KNOW THAT THE SON OF MAN HATH
POWER ON EARTH TO FORGIVE SINS, He saith unto him that was palsied, I say
unto thee, Arise” (Luke 5: 24). The
outward sign of power instantly guaranteed the inward gift of grace. Are the miracles real? So is the pardon. Are the miracles un-bought and unearned? So
is the pardon. Does the miracle
perfectly cure? so does the pardon.
Reader, have you sought and got the pardon? How sad, if Jesus can forgive sins, and you
are never forgiven! Seek it and you will find it. “THE SON
OF MAN HATH POWER ON EARTH TO
FORGIVE SINS.”
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62.
Seducing Spirits
“The Spirit saith expressly”- so momentous is the announcement,
that for once the Holy Ghost italicises His own utterance - “that in later
times” - that is, on the threshold of the Second Advent (2 Thess. 2: 3) - “some
shall fall away from the faith” - become apostate - “giving heed to seducing
spirits” (1 Tim. 4: 1) - spirits, that is, who masquerade in a personality or a
holiness not their own, for the seduction of Christian souls. THE
GREAT APOSTASY IS TO SPRING OUT OF [regenerate]
CHRISTIANS GIVING HEED TO UNTESTED SPIRITS. It is a fact of
incalculable gravity that Christian leaders, at this moment and before our
eyes, are giving ever deeper and closer heed to spirits miraculously present,
and advancing the most monstrous claims.
AS OUR LORD.
Seductive spirits sometimes masquerade as the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is Mr. R. J. Campbell’s startling
confession. “I am conscious of someone’s
presence in the mysterious unseen at this moment. Who is it?
I have always believed it to be Jesus; it is no vague abstraction, but a
definite, living, personal being. I work under his orders. Am I wrong [in supposing it to be Jesus]? If so, I have been deluded into doing a good
many things which otherwise I would never have attempted. Someone is directing me from the spirit
world: it not Jesus, who is it? To me it
is a thing incredible, impossible of acceptance, it should be anyone else”
(Christian Commonwealth, Nov. 30, 1910).
No more awful lightning-flash could reveal, not only how a local
apostasy originates, but also the origin and methods of the world-wide Apostasy
yet to come.
AS THE DEAD. Again, these seductive spirits masquerade as the Dead. “I pray to my wife,” said Dr. Joseph Parker,
“every day. I never come to the work without asking her to come with me: and
she does come. I never come to this place
without her coming with me” (Review of Reviews, Jan. 1902). In a book of messages from the dead, endorsed
by prefaces from Mr. R. J. Campbell and Dr. F. B. Meyer, Mr. Meyer says: “We
are evidently passing into a new realm.
The veil is getting thinner, and the day is at hand when we shall see
face to face. What may lie immediately
before us is known only in Heaven: but it is sweet to think that the Departed
may not only be a great cloud of witnesses, but a great body of helpers!” This
is Spiritualism: and Spiritualism is either the work of the dead, that is,
Necromancy (Deut. 18: 11), and therefore of the wicked dead; or it is the work
of personating demons, that is, Sorcery: either was forbidden by the law of
Jehovah under pain of death. On Mr. Meyer’s
words Mr. W. T. Stead comments thus: - “The work is important because it has
received the imprimatur of the Rev. F. B. Meyer, who may be regarded as an
exponent of the average belief of Nonconformists on this matter. When so competent an authority tells us that
he is convinced that the spirits of our departed friends may return and visit
us, is it not the duty of all Christians to take up the study of Spirit Return
and Ministry as a religious duty?”
AS MAHATMAS.
Apostate spirits also seduce through false messiahs, alleged
reincarnations, and world-teachers. The Theosophical Society, founded to “lead
an open warfare against dogma,” by Madame Blavatsky, who asserts that “the
Serpent of Eden was actually the Lord God Himself,” whereas “Jehovah is Cain,”
- now foretells, through Mrs. Besant, the imminent coming of “the blessed
Buddha yet to be, who shall shape the religions of the world into one vast
synthesis. He loves all faiths, blesses
them all alike, sends his messengers to every one of them and is the heart and
life of each. And ever the World-Teacher
is connected with what are called the mysteries, that which Origen called
Gnosticism; and in those mysteries the teaching of the World-Teacher was ever
the same. He is waiting till his
messengers have proclaimed his advent, and to some extent have prepared the
nations for his coming.”
Here is the Satanic groundwork preparatory to the Advent of
Antichrist. Yet it is Dr. R. F. Horton
who writes: - “It would almost seem from these addresses that Mrs. Besant has
been brought back to Christ by the road of Theosophy. It is to such a heart, determined to find the
truth and to speak it when found, that we could well imagine the communication
should be given of the coming of the Lord: it is an appeal which, I trust, will
come home to us all. The anxiety of the
lecturer was lest, through our unfitness and blindness, we should not be able
to recognise the great World-Teacher when He comes, lest we should treat Him again
as He was treated when He came before; lest if He should come again as a poor
man, or if He should come with the skin of the black man or the yellow man, we
should not receive Him.” What a
conception of the Advent! “Then if any
man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, or, there: believe it not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the
east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man”
(Matt. 24: 23, 27). Ignorance or refusal
of prophecy is as grave a danger as is now possible to a human soul.
As the Holy Ghost. Nor do
these conscienceless spirits - having “consciences cauterised as with a hot
iron” - shrink from masquerading as the Holy Ghost. “We state the grave fact,” says a collective
utterance of German pastors (1908), “that in the late Tongues movement in
Cassel and other places, well-known Christians have got a gift of prophecy and
tongues that was not from the Holy Ghost.
We must say that we missed in a deplorable measure the trying of the
spirits, as the Word of God [1 John 4: 1-3 and 1 Cor. 12: 1-3] orders; and we
confess this deficiency as guilt and blame falling on us, as on wide spheres of
the Christian Church.”
It was by a spirit personating the Holy Ghost that Mr. Prince, of
the Agapemone, was led at last to exclaim: - “In me you see Christ in the
flesh; by me, and in me, God has redeemed all flesh from death.”
May God help us! The Advent
cannot be far. “IF THOU PUT THE BRETHREN
IN MIND OF THESE THINGS” - the Apostasy,
seducing spirits, and the doctrines of the Apostasy - “THOU SHALT BE A GOOD MINISTER OF JESUS CHRIST” (1
Tim. 4: 6).
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63.
Korea
THE CHURCH. The
creation of the Korean is one of the modern marvels of God. In 1885 there were 10 missionaries and no
converts; in 1886 there were two baptized Koreans; in 1888 there were 125; in
1903 there were 15,000; and in 1910, 250,000: a strong, living, fruitful
church, probably second to none in intensity, created, within quarter of a
century, out of nothing. The Korean receptivity
to the gospel has been rarely equalled.
The same amount of evangelistic work (Bishop Montgomery estimates)
results, in Japan, in ten converts, in China, in fifty, but in Korea, in one
thousand. So, too, the Korean welcome to
the gospel was extraordinarily prompt.
In Japan it was six years before the first convert was baptized; in
China it was twenty; but the second year bore fruit in Korea, and now an
average of one new congregation, or some 450 converts, are added to Christ in
Korea every day. In fifteen years the
Korean Church has grown by one thousand per cent.
THE LAND. The
background of this mighty work of the Holy Ghost is one of the oldest of the
nations. The rectangular streets in
Pyeng Yang, its oldest city - only recently altered - were laid down 3,000
years ago: the text-books used (until lately) in the schools date back a
thousand years: and so dark was the nation spiritually, that the word for God
(as we understand it) had to be created.
Until 1885 no Korean could become a Christian under pain of death; and
as lately as 1902 proclamations were placarded on the roadsides, “If you see a
foreigner kill him: if you see a native reading the Bible, kill him.” Korea killed its first missionary; and when
the others were only stoned, Dr. Lee said to Mr. Moffet, - “What do you suppose
we are out here for?” “God led us here,” was the answer, “and it must have been
right that we should come.” So God
plucks dawn out of midnight.
THE REVIVAL. A
revival swept over the infant church from 1903 to 1907. Prayer and Scripture were the two dominant
characteristics of the revival. A
passion of prayer fell upon the people.
Whole days and nights were spent in prayer; they would kneel for hours
on the frozen ground on the mountain sides; there are churches which have had
prayer meetings every night since they were founded; and the largest prayer
meeting in the world - with an average attendance of eleven hundred, frequently
with an overflow meeting - is in Pyeng Yang. “Prayer is like some vast deposit
of precious ore: time must be taken to sink deep the shaft to reach the richer
veins; and this the Korean does.” So
also Bible conferences sprang up everywhere; there are now more than a thousand
such throughout Korea; and the Koreans will walk a hundred miles, or more, to
attend. Prayer and the Word of God are
the sole, simple instruments the Holy Spirit has used for the creation of a
modern church second to none in faith and zeal.
THE FRUIT.
Here are a handful of Korean fruits.
A blind sorcerer walked five hundred miles to find a blind man’s
Bible. One man saved five slices of
bread, and lived on one a day, that he might attend a Bible conference. One assembly - and Korea is reputed the
poorest land in the Far East - gave £2,500 for the erection of its own church,
an assembly only ten years out of heathenism.
Whole days and weeks are set aside by church members for personal work
in winning the unsaved: in one young Korean’s diary a missionary saw a record
of 3,400 such personal interviews in one year.
In a village where there was no money to build the church, a
farmer-evangelist sold his ox, a valuable one, and finished the erection of the
church; and when the missionary arrived, he saw this man and his brother yoked
together in the plow, while their aged father held the handles, and followed
the furrow. What must be the mighty
undercurrent of grace which can throw up such living marvels on the crest of
its wave!
THE LESSON. The
lesson is exquisite and solemn and I beseech any unsaved reader to mark
it. Korea has been the last of the
nations (except Tibet) to open its doors to the gospel: yet it has sprung at
one bound into the front rank of the churches.
“Many shall be last that are first; and first that are last” (Matt. 19:
30): did even our Lord ever utter a more solemn word to the Church, or one more
exquisitely encouraging for the last? It
is possible to reach the loftiest heights of sainthood out of the lowest depths
of sin: there is no handicap: all things are possible to all. But how did the Korean reach it? In the words of Mr. Goforth - “they were in
all the agonies of judgment”; “they would weep and wail,” says an eyewitness, “and
beat their breasts, and sometimes they would sink down upon the floor under
such a weight of sin as to be wholly unable to articulate distinctly. At times
the whole congregation would wail together and cry out to God for mercy.” It is concerning the time of the End that it
is written - “Many shall purify themselves, and make themselves white, and be
refined” (Dan. 12: 10). To-day the
Korean Church is one of the happiest and most fruitful of churches: but it has
all sprung out of the deepest sin-revelation, and utter trust in the cleansing
Blood. Therefore no height is impossible
to us.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and
to our God, for He will abundantly pardon” (Is. 55: 7).
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64
Baptism
The Testimony of History. It
will be accepted without challenge that Mr. Gwatkin, professor of
ecclesiastical history in the University of Cambridge, is second to none among
English ecclesiastical historians. Here
is the testimony on baptism [by] this Anglican clergyman.
“Christian life [in the early church] properly began with baptism,
for baptism was the convert’s confession before men, the soldier’s oath which
enlisted him in the service of Christ.
The rite was very simple, as described by Justin in the 2nd century. After more or less instruction, the candidate
declared ‘his belief in our teachings, and his willingness to live accordingly.’ Then he might be directed to fast a short
time, in way of preparation. He was then
taken to a place ‘where there was water.’
Here he made his formal confession, and here he was baptized by
immersion in the name of the Trinity.
After this he was taken to the meeting and received by the brethren. We have decisive evidence that infant baptism
is no direct institution either of the Lord Himself or of His apostles. There is no trace of it in the New
Testament. Immersion was the rule: the
whole symbolism of baptism requires immersion, and so St. Paul explains it” (Early Church History, vol. i., pp.
248-250). Thus the Early Church baptized
only believers, and baptized only by immersion.
The Testimony of the Old Testament.
The Holy Ghost has selected the two mightiest catastrophes by water in
all history to picture baptism, and thus to reveal its significance and its
mode. These two catastrophes were
judgments in which, in the one case thousands, and in the other millions, were
drowned; while, in both cases, the people of God, though in the water, and
overwhelmed by the water, nevertheless came through it dryshod.
(I) God “waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing,
wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water: which also after a
true likeness” - no fancied analogy, but a real type - “doth now save you, even
baptism” (1 Pet. 3: 20). Sin provoked
the Flood, which turned the world into one vast watery grave: all mankind
perished: but the household of faith, passing through judgment unscathed, arose
on Ararat out of the grave of the world.
(2) At the Red Sea both church and world are again plunged into a
common grave: the mountainous walls of water roll down on the Egyptians, wiping
them out of existence: while God’s people, threatened on every hand with a
watery death - for they “were all baptized in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor.
10: 2), the two forming together a stupendous coffin - nevertheless emerge
alive on the further shore. Thus
baptism, as foreshadowed in the Old Testament, pictures death overwhelming all
- all flesh drowned in the judgments of God: but, while one group perishes
irremediably, the other - because God is with them in the Ark, and in the cloud
- survives judgment. Thus again, the Old
Testament being witness, believers only are to be baptized, and baptized only
by immersion.
The Testimony of the New Testament.
It is with exquisite appropriateness, therefore, that one of the first
allusions to baptism in the New Testament runs thus: “Jesus baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon, because
there was much water there” (John 3: 23).
A tumble-full could have sprinkled a thousand converts: not so
immersion: nor without the destruction of the symbolism. For “we were buried therefore with Him through baptism into death” (Rom. 6: 4);
“having been buried with Him in baptism,
wherein ye were also raised with Him”
(Col. 2: 12). Burial is total immersion
in earth; and when it is ocean-burial, it is no less total. “For as many of you as were baptized into
Christ did put on Christ” (Gal. 3: 27) - clothed with Christ in Ark and Cloud,
to pass safely through judgment. It is
the ritual bath: “be baptized and wash away thy sins” (Acts 22: 16); for “he
that is bathed is clean every whit” (John 13: 10): for a bath is total
immersion.
“Of all revealed truths, not one is more clearly revealed in the
Scriptures [than believer’s baptism] - not even the doctrine of justification
by faith; and the subject has only become obscured by men not having been
willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide the point” (George Muller). Judgment passed over the believer on Calvary,
and therefore he now passes safely through the waters of death and judgment:
that is, the New Testament witnesses that baptism is only for believers, and
that baptism is by immersion only.
The Testimony of Experience.
Experience exquisitely confirms baptism, so administered, as of
God. Here are some testimonies the
writer has himself received. “Last night
I was smitten to the dust. Of course I
shall obey Him in baptism! There is
nothing else to do. I do so gladly,
humbly, thankfully, gratefully.” - “Sunday night was far more beautiful even
than I had thought: I saw no one - the Master was there.” - “I shall never
forget how I realized the preciousness of Christ after I obeyed Him in baptism.”
- “I have been thinking over the matter for 25 years: I only wish now it had
taken place years ago.” - “It has brought greater joy into my life, and it has
given me a stronger passion for service.
‘To obey is better than sacrifice.’
The blessedness that has been mine since my baptism is more than words
can express.” - “I was just trembling in every limb, - but when the time come
to step into the water, it was just as if He held my hand, and led me. Never in my whole life has He been so near: I
cannot tell you all that it meant to me, as I laid my whole life at His feet.”
- “Each moment of this evening last week comes to my mind to night; so
overpoweringly, that I was forced to my knees in an ecstasy of joy. What hath
God wrought!” Is it likely that such
experiences flow from an illusion, an error, a misunderstanding, or a falsity
disapproved by the Holy host? Then obey!
“He that hath My commandments, AND KEEPETH THEM, He it is that loveth
Me” (John 14: 21): “why call ye me, Lord, Lord, AND DO NOT THE THINGS WHICH I SAY?” (Luke 6: 46).
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65
Expiation by Blood
HUMAN SACRIFICE. The
sacrifice of a substitute is one of the oldest instincts of the world. Here is a cuneiform text from the Accadian,
the most ancient of all civilizations. “The
lamb, the substitute for a man, the lamb he [the offerer] gives for his life:
the head of the lamb he gives for the head of the man, the back of the lamb he
gives for the back of the man, the breast of the lamb he gives for the breast
of the man,” etc. But substitution,
groping after the actual redemption desired, inevitably became human. At Athens, for example, at a festival called
the Thargelia, a man and woman were led forth from the city, wearing, as type
of worthless character, white and black figs, to be solemnly burnt in a desert
spot for the purification of the city, and their ashes cast away as
unclean. So in China an ancient
inscription bears the image of in emperor kneeling, in time of national
calamity, before an altar, and offered up as an atonement for the sins of his
people. In Gaul, amongst the Druids, a
gigantic figure of a man, made of wicker-work and filled with a hundred
victims, was consumed by fire as an offering to the gods. Central Africa, Armenia, Ethiopia, Hindustan,
and Mongolia, the South Sea Islands, and Peru - it is startling to learn at
from no nation has human sacrifice been absent.
EXPIATION. What lay in the heart of humanity in this awful holocaust? An Egyptian inscription tenderly and profoundly
replies. An ox, about to be sacrificed,
was stamped with a seal bearing the image of a man: on this seal the man’s
hands were bound behind him, and a sword-point was at his throat. The ox perished in the place of the doomed
man. A Babylonian treatise on astrology,
speaking of children offered by their parents to the Moon-god, says: - “The son
who lifts up his head among men, the son for his own life must he [the father]
give; the head of the child must he give for the head of the man, and the neck
of the child for the neck of the man.”
It was substitution with a view to expiation. In Greece reprobates, chosen as sacrifices
and thrown into the sea as an expiation of national guilt, were despatched with
the formula, - “Become thou an off-scouring for us! ” That is, adds Suidas, the ancient historian,
“a means of salvation or ransom.” The
sacrifice was a definite expiation.
IDENTIFICATION. Thus animal sacrifice, felt to be inadequate, became human:
moreover, in some cases sacrifices were selected, the dearest to the offerer
that could be found. Deeply pathetic was
the sacrifice of children. These were selected on two grounds: - (1) as the most innocent, they could
stand for the guilty; and (2) they
were the sacrifices dearest and costliest to the offerer’s heart. The parents stopped their cries by fondling
and kissing them, for the victim had to be mute: the sacrifice must be so
wholly voluntary that if either child or parent wept, the expiation was forfeited. Blind instinct of Calvary! So in Mexico the offerer, to benefit by the
expiation, must touch the body: nor would an Egyptian taste the head of any
animal, since on that head might have been laid the sins of others. Jewish tradition, wholly apart from the
Bible, prescribed these words to the offerer: - “O God, I have sinned, I have
done perversely, I have trespassed before Thee.
Lo, now I repent, and am truly sorry for my misdeeds. Let this victim be my expiation.” The touch identifying the offerer and the
sacrifice made the substitution complete: it was appropriation by the hand of
faith. Lev. 1: 4.
CHRIST. Now
what has God to say to these human sacrifices?
“They have built the high places of Topheth, to burn their sons and
their daughters in the fire; which I commanded not, neither came it into my
mind” (Jer. 7: 31). Jehovah’s rejection
of Isaac, and His substitution of the ram, reveals once for all His refusal of
all human sacrifices: when He said: - “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou
shalt surely die.” He knew that He passed
sentence of death upon Himself. The
reason of God’s rejection of human sacrifice is clear: no sinner can be a
propitiation for another sinner. “Shall
I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of
my soul?”(Mic. 6: 7); when “none can by any means redeem his brother, nor give
to God a ransom for him”: that “must be LET
ALONE FOR EVER” (Ps. 49: 7). To
offer up a sinner for a sinner is to add murder to a futile sacrifice.
CALVARY. Yet
the matter cannot end there. How is it
that all races and all nations have felt that sin can only be expiated by
blood? It is obviously the terror of
guilt, and the consciousness that only death can meet the transgression of law. If parents could so stifle human instinct as
to offer their babes to a fiery or a bloody death, terrible indeed must have
been the consciousness of their own guilt and doom. Human sacrifice, awful and murderous,
nevertheless was the sole and inevitable mode of expiation finding an unclean
echo in the vast gulf of human need: it was the world’s cry for an atoning
Saviour. And He has come! “For it is impossible that the blood of bulls
and goats should take away sins. Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He
saith, Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body” - for human
sacrifice; indispensable, if there is to be substitution for human sin - “didst
Thou prepare for me. In whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure; then said I, Lo, I” - the great Burnt Offering and
Sacrifice for sin - “am come to do Thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that He may
establish the second. By which will WE
HAVE BEEN SANCTIFIED THROUGH THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST ONCE FOR ALL” (Heb. 10: 4).
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66
The Church and the Kingdom
THE CHURCH. No
‘church,’ properly defined as such, existed before our Lord appeared: “upon
this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16: 18): un-built in His lifetime, He
nevertheless here foretells it as we know it.
He also legislated for it: - “if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto
the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as
the Gentile and the publican” (Matt. 18: 17).
For the stones our Lord quarried became the foundation stones of the Church
(Eph. 2: 20); and all disciples, made and baptized between the two advents, are
to be taught “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:
20). The next occurrences of the word,
immediately after Pentecost, assume the Church as by this time actually
existing in the world. “Great fear came
upon the whole church” (Acts 5: 11): “they were gathered together with the
church” (11: 26); “when they had appointed for them elders in every church” (14:
23); “when they had gathered the church together” (14: 27); “it seemed good to
the apostles, with the whole church” (15: 22).
The Book of the Acts refers throughout to the church as a body actually
in the world: it is the book of the propagation of the church: it refers to Jew
and Gentile, - gathered out to Christ, and compacted together, - as the church:
and it does so from the moment of the Holy Ghost’s descent, - the birth-moment,
therefore, of the church. The Epistles
follow, as church documents: and, in the Apocalypse, churches are addressed for
the last time by our Lord - “Hold fast till I come” (Rev. 2: 25): that is, the
church is to continue until He comes.
THE KINGDOM. The
essentially church documents, the Epistles, refer constantly to ‘the Kingdom,’
and - with the exception of Col. 1: 13 - invariably refer to it as future. So did our Lord. When “they supposed that the Kingdom of God
was immediately to appear,” He answered that the Nobleman must first go into
the Far Country “to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return” (Luke 19: 11):
and so He says, - “they [shall] see the Son of man coming” - at the Second
Advent - “in His Kingdom” (Matt. 16: 28).
Thus the close of the Church is the start of the Kingdom: the Kingdom is
future so long as there is a church on earth.
So Paul also defines the apostolic attitude. “Flesh and blood” - the
living, unchanged - “cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption”
- the dead, unrisen - “inherit incorruption.
Behold, we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15: 50), ere the Kingdom can be
entered. Its time and place are put
beyond all doubt by the Apocalyptic vision.
“There followed [after the last judgments] great voices in heaven, and
they said, The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of
His Christ” (Rev. 11: 15). (The
references to the Eternal Kingdom, consequent on the destruction of the old
earth, seem nearly totally confined to Rev. 21. and 22.: the Kingdom linked
with the Advent is obviously the Millennial.)
THE KINGDOM IN MYSTERY. In
one aspect, however, the kingdom is now present: for in parables the kingdom is
the church: in literal passages, it is the literal kingdom; in figurative, it
is the mystical. The reason seems clear.
Our Lord, when personally present, spoke of the kingdom as present also, for it
was present in the person of the King: “if I by the Spirit of God cast out
demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you” (Matt. 12: 28). When the King withdrew from the world, so did
the kingdom. But the Lord is mystically
present with His Church: there is, therefore, a mystical kingdom: “who
translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1: 13).
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM.
Scripture finally unfolds the right attitude of the Church to the
Kingdom. The Church is to preach the
Kingdom, to pray for it, and to seek to enter it. (1)
Paul, peculiarly the ‘Church’ apostle, “reasoned and persuaded as to the things
concerning the kingdom of God” (Acts 19: 8); and the last time we hear him
speak (Acts 28: 31), as in the last letter he ever wrote (2 Tim. 4: 1, 8), he
is still “preaching the kingdom of God.”
(2) So also, “when ye pray, say, Thy kingdom come”
(Matt. 6: 10): and the last prayer of the last apostle is still the same cry, -
“Even so come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22: 20).
(3) Moreover we are to seek
to enter the Kingdom. “Seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and His righteousness” (Matt. 6: 33) - i.e., the godlike rightness that leads thither; or, as Paul puts
it, - “walk worthily of God, who calleth you” - is calling you - “into His own
kingdom and glory” (1 Thess. 2: 12): “to the end that ye may be counted worthy
of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer” (2 Thess. 1: 5). For “in this exclusion from the Kingdom,
which is the dominion of the good made visible at the return of our Lord, we
are not to see the loss of eternal salvation: an entrance into the Kingdom is
rendered impossible [in certain cases], but not by any means does it follow
that salvation can be thereby prevented” (Olshausen). “For the First Resurrection is limited to a
portion of the redeemed Church: and while eternal life and the inheritance are
of faith and free grace, and common to all believers merely as such, the
millennial crown and the first resurrection are a Reward - the reward of
suffering for and with Christ; a special glory and a special hope, designed to
comfort and support believers under persecution: a need and use which I have
little doubt the Church will before long be called on to experience
collectively, as even now, and at all times, it has been experienced by some of
its members” (Burgh).
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67
Paul’s Autobiography
LIFE. “I
was alive,” Paul says, in the most wonderful of all revelations of conversion,
“apart from the law once” (Rom. 7: 9).
Paul, unregenerate, and ignorant of the nature of the Law, was once
honestly at rest. So to-day are myriads
of unbelievers. For the Law promised
life to all who obey it: the perfect man was always sure of eternal life: and
the unbeliever is not conscious of a broken law. “If thou wouldst enter into life,” our Lord
said to the young Jew, “keep the commandments” (Matt. 19: 17); and Paul, “as
touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless” (Phil. 3: 6),
had a sense of perfect security. “I was alive” - possessed, in my own eyes, of
eternal life - “apart from the law once.”
LAW. “But when the commandment came,” Paul continues, “sin revived.” What commandment? One he has just named, the tenth in the
Decalogue, - “Thou shalt not covet,” or lust, or have an evil desire; the
solitary command in the Decalogue that deals solely, not with outward actions,
but with internal emotions. Coveting, or
lusting, or evil desire is a motion of the soul which may, or may not, flow out
into action: our neighbour may never know that we covet ‘anything that is his’:
nevertheless the mere desire the Law forbids.
A sinless soul, not only would never indulge an evil desire, but would
never have one: God has no evil motion of the soul. “The commandment came” home to the conscience:
it found the heart lustful, and, after it has come, the heart remains so: the
Law reveals sin, it does not create it.
But instantly, in Paul’s eyes, “sin revived”- sprang back into life; the
dormant, latent sin deep down in his heart sprang up like a serpent in his
face. Paul had run his finger down the
Decalogue, the great summary of the Law.
He is no idolator - no blasphemer - no sabbath-breaker - no dishonourer
of parents - no murderer - no adulterer - no thief - no false witness: he is a
righteous man. But suddenly his finger
stops: his eye is riveted by a command that blazes at him as if he had never
seen it before, - “Thou shalt not covet.” He had controlled all his outward
actions; but how can he control the motions of his soul? But if the motions of his soul are sinful,
how can he be without sin? And if he is
sinful, a law-breaker, how can the Law grant him freedom*? If evil desire is sin, who in all the world
is not a sinner?
DEATH.
What then was the effect of this awful discovery upon Paul? “I died”: I saw myself a dead man, I fell
back dead. Why so? Because the Law says, - “whosoever shall keep
the whole law” - Paul had kept nine commands - “and yet stumble in one point” -
Paul had broken the tenth - “he is become guilty of all” (Jas. 2: 10). The only possible condition on which law can
grant life is a perfect obedience: for the Law is an entirety, covering all
righteousness; and less than the whole Law is not the Law. The man who is to win eternal life by perfect
righteousness must possess a righteousness that is perfect. But Paul’s failure was not only negative: it
was positive. “The soul that sinneth” - to break a single commandment is sin -
“it shall die” (Ezek. 38: 4): “the wages of sin” - whether little sin or much
sin - “is death” (Rom. 6: 23). So long
as God remains God, and sin remains sin, not murder only, or adultery, but evil
desire also, damns. Internal haemorrhage
kills as surely as external; a man can bleed to death inside, without a drop of
blood ever becoming visible on his skin: so a man externally righteous can
become hellish, and sink into Hell, while ‘found blameless’ - so far as human
eyes can reach.
Moreover the Tenth Commandment is the root command of all. Idolatry, a lust after other gods; murder, a
lust of hate; slander, a lust to wound; adultery and theft, lust after that
which is another’s: coveting, or lust, carries the germ of every sin. In it, it is not the man’s life that stands
out black, but the man; and whereas a vile hand can be cut off, and a foul eye
can be plucked out, what is a man to do with an evil heart? The heart is the man. So Paul fell back
dead. For it was as though a sleeper
rested in a pitch-dark room, in perfect security and peace. He is sure, as he lies in the dark, that all
is well. But as the first light creeps
through the window, he suddenly realises that the room is full of wild beasts,
and the door is locked. From the
chandelier hangs, half uncurled, a serpent, poised with lolling fangs and
constant hiss; beneath the window a tiger, with eyes glaring full upon him,
crouches in the act to spring. “I was
alive [in my own eyes] apart from the law once: but when the commandment came [home
to my conscience], sin revived [sprang back into life], and I died [saw myself
a dead man].”
CHRIST. So
the Law had done its glorious work, preparatory to salvation: the Spirit had
wrought conviction of sin, before He displayed saving righteousness. It is ever so. The pangs of the sinner are the blessed
footsteps of the Holy Ghost. For who
immediately confronts Paul? He who said,
- “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2: 17): “for the Son of
man came to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19: 10): and on the way
to Damascus He found an utterly lost soul.
And what did Paul find? That the
life he could not live, Christ had lived; that the death he could not die,
Christ had died; and that the life and the death were offered in the place of
the lost. “I have been crucified with
Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but CHRIST liveth in me: and that life
which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me”(Gal. 2: 20).
Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning, He
shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed: Christ is the end, for Christ was the
beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
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68
Rome: A Warning
WORLDWIDE BLOODSHED BY THE
CHURCH OF ROME IS FORETOLD BY THE HOLY SPIRIT BEFORE THE END. “I
will show thee the judgment” - not the history, or the mediaeval corruption,
but the judgment - “of the great harlot”: “these shall burn her utterly with
fire” (Rev. 17: 1, 16). It is a judgment
which is on the immediate threshold of the Advent; for the Woman is seen
actually riding on the Antichrist after he has come up out of the Abyss. Rome, at first allied with the Beast, and
resting on his imperial power, is ultimately destroyed by his field-marshals:
at that final moment, in what condition is she seen? “And I saw the woman DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS, AND WITH THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS OF JESUS.”
EXTERMINATION.
Rome, be it deeply understood, exterminates ‘heretics’ on principle. John 16: 2.
“Heretics and schismatics,” says the Council of Trent, “are within the power of the Church, and may be
called to trial by her, be punished, and condemned by anathema.” St. Thomas Aquinas directs that heretics,
after a second admonition, must be handed over to the secular power for
extermination - a doctrine which the Breviary declares was directly inspired in
Aquinas by the Holy Ghost. By Roman
Canon Law all secular princes must extirpate every heretic in their states, on
pain of dethronement and excommunication; and Honorius III, Innocent III,
Innocent IV, Alexander VI, and Clement VII all issued bulls - presumably
infallible in Roman eyes - for the total extirpation of heretics. Nor has Rome hesitated to enforce these
decrees. The Spanish Inquisition, for
example, burnt alive 10,220 persons in its first twelve-month; and after the
massacre of St. Bartholomew Gregory XIII, in words never since repudiated or
renounced, urged Charles IX “to persevere in so pious and wholesome a measure,
till his once most religious kingdom should be thoroughly purged of blasphemous
heretics.”
TOLERANCE. Now
a most startling fact confronts us. For
four centuries we have lived in an era altogether exceptional, before which was
blood, and after which will be blood again; and this era will not last. The acceptance of Protestantism by half the
governments of Europe robbed Rome of her sword, and paralysed her power to
burn. Yet, even so, she has drunk blood
in secret since the Reformation. Colonel
Lemanoir, after demolishing the offices of the Inquisition in Madrid in 1809,
reported as follows to Marshal Soult: “In the cells we found the remains of
some who had died recently, whilst in others we found only skeletons, chained
to the floor. In others we found living
victims of all ages and both sexes, young men and young women, and old men up
to the age of seventy, but all as naked as the day they were born. In another chamber we found all the
instruments of torture that the genius of men or demons could invent.” Identical dens were unearthed in Rome itself
in 1848. “I was present,” says Signor
Bianchi, “when the prisons were visited. In one chamber, very wide and high in
the roof, we found heaps of bones; and there was still to be seen two great
furnaces filled with calcined bones.” It is said that the Jesuits’ oath to-day
contains these words: - “I will, when opportunity presents, urge relentless war
against all heretics, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; I
will spare
neither age, sex, nor condition; I will hang, burn, waste, boil,
flay, strangle, and bury alive; and when the same cannot be done openly, I will
use the poison-cup, or the bullet, or steel.”
Nevertheless, it is also true that a gracious respite granted to us by
God has withheld Rome from open bloodshed for four hundred years.
BLOODSHED.
Consequently no intellect in the world to-day is less intoxicated or
more wary than that of Rome; for she has slept off her deep potations of blood:
but the respite will not last; at the End she is once again “DRUNK with the BLOOD of the saints.”
In the twentieth century Rome has re-affirmed her right to
slaughter. In 1901 the “Institutiones Juris,” published by the
Papal press in Rome, with a warm approval from Leo XIII stamped upon its cover,
laid it down that “by Divine right the Church may confiscate the property of
heretics, imprison their persons, and condemned them to the flames.” In 1908, in a work published by one of the
Consultors of the Congregation of Rites at Rome, it is explicitly asserted that
a heretic may not only be excommunicated, “but also justly be killed” (sed etiam juste occidi). In 1909, for the first time for five or six
centuries, the Pope laid a town (Adria) under interdict, during which all
churches were closed, no masses were said, and the town was deprived of every
vestige of worship by the thunderbolt of Papal anathema. So obvious are the signs of recurring
struggle that astute statesmen and historians, wholly ignorant of prophecy,
have foretold it again and again.
“The day is not far distant, and may be very near, when we shall
have to fight the battle of the Reformation over again” (Sir Robert Peel). “I do not pretend to be a prophet; but though
not a prophet, I can see a very dark cloud on our horizon, and that cloud is
coming from Rome. It is filled with tears of blood” (Abraham Lincoln). “I am not one of those who think that the
difficulties of religious strife are over, or that indifference is likely to
spread and continue as enlightenment grows in civilised countries. Roman
Catholics have never abandoned the right, when they think it expedient, of
forcing their doctrines by every means in their power” (Mr. A. J.
Balfour). “The struggle ended in blood
before, and it will end in blood again” (Prof. J. A. Froude).
Be it so: the blood of the martyrs has always been the seed of the
Church. “Thirty attempts,” says Mr. Chiniquy, “have been made to kill me; but I
have ever remarked that the very day after I have been bruised and wounded, the
number of converts has invariably increased.”
John 12: 24. O for grace to say,
with an old-time martyr, - “Can I die for Christ but once?”
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69
The Ascension
ASCENSION.
That we saw him go, that we have heard from him since, and that he has
been seen in that other land, is the sole evidence we ever have of a friend’s
existence on another continent. Such is
the evidence we have of Christ. The
crucifixion was public, the burial was public, the appearances after the
resurrection were public, and as public as all the rest was the ascension: “as
they were looking, He was taken up” (Acts 1: 9). While all eyes were calmly,
attentively, lovingly turned towards Him as He speaks, He was slowly carried up
into Heaven. No eyes had seen Enoch go:
Elijah went up in a flash - seen but by one: the calm, quiet convincing gaze of
eleven sober men watched the Lord upward.
They saw Him go. No fact could be
more simple or sober or real. As the
Body had been physically handled in the upper room, so it went up, physically
visible, until a cloud came between; as literal as the cloud, so literal was
the body; and up to the moment that He disappeared behind the cloud, it was the
actual Jesus who had talked and walked and eaten with them. He had shown His power over the sea by
walking on it, over the earth by raising the dead out of it, over Hades by
leaving His own grave, and now over the air by rising up to God through it. “Who
maketh the clouds His chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind” (Ps.
104: 3).
DEPARTURE. If
the ascension did not happen, what did?
The Lord had risen; the tomb was empty; He had talked and eaten with
more than five hundred people; He had been handled by reverent unbelief: - how
then did He leave the earth? If He left
it by death, - the whole resurrection thus becoming meaningless, - if He wasted
away with disease, fell once again into the grave, and was laid to rest by
those who have since died for love of Him, how is it that there is not even the
whisper of a tradition how and where He died?
We have the tomb of Abraham, in Hebron; of Mohammed, in Medina; of
Napoleon, in Paris: where is the tomb of Jesus?
Again, if His grave, like that of Moses, was dug by God, in a sepulchre
never seen by human eyes, and unknown to this day, how is it God has never told
us so, as He did of the burial of Moses?
Has God let millions of the holiest lives ever since build themselves on
a lie, and never broken the silence?
Again, is it conceivable that our Lord, the soul of purity and honour,
allowed Himself during a storm - as some unbelievers suppose - to seem to
disappear, in a kind of stage ascension, and then carefully kept up the
deception until His death? Could you
believe that? As risen from the dead,
and therefore deathless and immortal, no other mode of leaving the world can be
imagined than ascension. The philosopher
who tells of another world, and then falls into the grave, leaves us
unconvinced: but when Christ tells us of another world, and then visibly
departs into it, and is seen there (Acts 7: 55), and communicates with men from
it (Rev. 2, 3.), we know we are not in the region of conjecture, but of fact;
and in the presence of the only explanation which the facts will bear.
FORETOLD. The
ascension, moreover, is a section of a coherent whole. Our Lord had plainly foretold it. “What then
if ye should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before?” (John 6: 62). “Yet a little while am I with you, and I go
unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall seek Me”
- as the prophet’s disciples sought Elijah - “and shall not find Me: and where
I am, ye cannot come” – [i.e.,
until the time of your resurrection] (John 7: 33). Why not? Peter answers: “Whom the heaven must receive
until the times of restoration of all things” (Acts 3: 21). Why ‘must’? Because it needs be that Scriptures be
fulfilled. “Thou hast ascended on high”
- so runs a passage which the Holy Spirit applies to Christ (Eph. 4: 7); “Thou
hast received gifts for men” (Ps. 68: 18): for “He that descended,” Paul says,
“is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens” (Eph. 4: 10); “who
is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven” (1 Pet. 3: 22); “a great
high priest, who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God” (Heb.
4: 14). Christ has moved up from off
this earthly globe, and passed into the real, sure, abiding portion of the
universe; we are divided from that great world only by a cloud; up to the edge
of the cloud human eyes followed the Lord, now as literally and as actually on
the other side as ever He was on this; and how thin that cloud wears at times,
and how quickly and suddenly we too may step behind it!
THE BLOOD.
What then is the deep significance of the ascension? The High Priest, on entering the Holy of
holies, was required to enter with blood, and to deposit it in the Sanctuary,
so covering Israel’s approach to God.
Now “a spirit,” Jesus says of Himself, “hath not flesh and bones” - the blood
is not in His resurrection body - “as ye see Me have” (Luke 24: 39). As the Priest entered with the blood, in a
bowl, separate from himself, so God “brought again from the dead the great
shepherd of the sheep with the blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13: 20); “who,
through His own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place” (Heb. 9: 12). That blood, in the immediate presence of God,
is the silent witness of a slaughter for sin, - a capital punishment endured, -
a law met and satisfied, - a wrath righteously quenched: the sinner can now
penetrate to the very presence of God because he follows in the wake of the
blood. Heb. 7: 25. Any man, guilty of any sin (save one), can
now plead all the efficacy of the blood, and the plea has behind it the whole
advocacy of Christ.
“If any man sin, we have an ADVOCATE with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, BUT ALSO FOR THE WHOLE WORLD”
(1
John 2: 1).
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70
The Sabbath and the Lord’s
Day
THE SABBATH. The
Sabbath was a Jewish ordinance founded on (l) God’s after-creation rest, and on
(2) the deliverance of Israel from Egypt.
“In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and rested the seventh day:
wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Ex. 20: 11); and
so Israel is commanded to “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:
8, 11). No such command is recorded in
the Bible as given to a Gentile nation: the Gentile was liable to its
observance only when inside Israelitish gates (Ex. 20: 10). (The Babylonian sabbath was not a day of the
week, but of the month - the 7th, 14th, 2lst, and 28th of each month: so also
(it is said) to-day Greeks observe Monday, Persians Tuesday, Assyrians
Wednesday, Egyptians Thursday, and Turks Friday; and even the French Republic,
on hygienic grounds, decreed one rest-day in seven. These may be echoes of Eden; but that God’s
sabbath was not enjoined on Adam, or ever kept by him, seems certain since God’s
seventh day was Adam’s first.)
For the sabbath was a specifically Jewish ordinance. “Thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant
in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God brought thee out: therefore the Lord
thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day” (Deut. 5: 15). Israel crossed the Red Sea on the sabbath:* immediately after, it was made binding on
Israel - a statute to which the ‘remember’ of Ex. 20: 8 points back. Neh. 9:
13, 14. So Israel had eight sabbaths -
one weekly and seven others on specific dates, besides the sabbatic year; and
sabbaths still to come (Matt. 24: 20 and Is. 66: 23) are for a future Age. “Speak
thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily ye shall keep My sabbaths:
FOR IT IS A SIGN BETWEEN ME AND YOU throughout
your generations” (Ex. 31: 13).
* It was a three
days’ journey to the wilderness of the Red Sea (Ex. 3: 18), by which Israel
ultimately journeyed (13: 18): so the lamb was slain on the fourteenth of the
first month, and the Sea crossed on the seventeenth. But Israel murmured for food after Elim (Ex.
16: 1, 2): the next day (the sixteenth of the second month) the manna fell,
fell for six days, and then stopped for the Sabbath: therefore it must have
first fallen on a Sunday, - the people must have murmured on a Saturday, - and
reckoning backward, the date of the crossing fell on a Sabbath. “There” - at
Marah - “he made for them a statute” - presumably the Sabbath, “and an
ordinance” (Ex. 15: 25) - presumably the Passover. Ezek. 20: 10-12.
We now turn to the Lord’s Day.
The word ‘sabbath’ is never used in Scripture for the first day of the
week; nor is there any hint of a change of days - one newly hallowed, and one
now made unhallowed. God is nowhere
stated to have done this: no church has the power. “The seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord
thy God” (Ex. 20: 10). BUT THE LORD’S DAY IS HONOURED FOR REASONS
TOTALLY DISTINCT FROM THE SABBATIC.
REDEMPTION. As
Jehovah rested on the first day after creation, so He rested on the first day after
redemption. “He that is entered into [God’s] rest hath himself also rested from
his works, as God did from His” (Heb. 4: 10): God now rests in the finished
work of Christ; and as the ark rested on Ararat, after its strenuous salvation,
on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, so the Lamb, slaughtered on the
fourteenth day of the same month, rested on the seventeenth, redemption
completed. God had carried the redeemed
beyond their Red Sea flood when the Lord’s Day dawned.
RESURRECTION. The
‘firstfruits,’ and also ‘the Resurrection, first of the firstfruits,’ were
offered on ‘the morrow after the sabbath’ (Lev. 23: 11): so Christ, ‘the first
of the firstfruits,’ and the body of already risen saints (Matt. 27: 53), were
both offered to the Lord on the Lord’s Day.
As eight resurrections are recorded in Scripture, so the eighth day, the
day after the sabbath, is the day of resurrection, our Lord’s first day as the
first-begotten from the dead.
PENTECOST.
Pentecost (meaning ‘fifty’) always fell fifty days after the Sunday
preceding the Passover feast, that is, on the Lord’s Day. Thus the Holy Ghost descended on the Lord’s
Day: for “when the day of Pentecost was now come, suddenly there came from
heaven a sound as of a rushing mighty wind” (Acts 2: 1). The Church, by the descent of the Spirit, was
born on the earth on the Lord’s Day; and John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s
Day: for whereas the day of the Letter was the Seventh, the day of the Spirit
is the First.
LIFE. The
First Day is supremely the day of the resurrection of dead souls. On the eighth day Israel was circumcised: our
Lord, appearing in His assemblies on the first and eighth days (John 20: 19, 26),
now accomplishes, in far their vastest number, His circumcisions of the
heart. It is the day when Heaven’s joy
is sevenfold, and when the Spirit’s regenerating power, put forth to the
utmost, presents His birthday gifts to the risen Lord.
Thus the honouring of the Lord’s Day - its observance is nowhere
commanded in the Scripture - is a practise (not a precept) sanctioned by the
Holy Ghost: for “upon the first day of the week” the disciples “gathered
together to break bread” (Acts 20: 7), and offered their substance to God (1
Cor. 16: 2). Although all days are now fundamentally
alike to the robust believer (Rom. 14: 2, 5), the First Day, as peculiarly
attached to our Lord and His resurrection, it is permissive for us to honour,
in a strictly non-legal sense. But to
cancel it, and to return to the Jewish Sabbath, is to put oneself back under
the Law, with all its rigours and terrors.
“How turn ye back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments? Ye observe
days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid of you” (Gal. 4: 9).
The Sermon on the Mount is our Decalogue, the Gospels and Epistles
our Law, and the Apocalypse our Prophets; “for ye are not under law” - the
Decalogue was the summary and quintessence of the Law - “but under grace” (Rom.
6: 14): “let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect
of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: which are a shadow” - for
sabbaths are part of the vanished Law - “of the things to come” (Col. 2: 16). For we are “under law TO CHRIST” (1 Cor. 9: 21).
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71
Probation after Death
GOD’S CHARACTER. ‘God
is almighty’ - so runs one plea for probation after death: ‘He abhors sin, and
He must triumph; therefore He will empty Hell, some time, by swinging open the
door of mercy to all mankind - or else His character of goodness and love is
destroyed.’ But a fatal objection lies
against this plea. The perfections of
God have not prevented sin entering into the world, and remaining in it for
sixty centuries; therefore a God of love can co-exist with a world of sin, for
He has. If God’s perfection allowed sin
to enter the universe at all, why cannot His perfection allow it to stay, and
why not allow it to stay for ever? God’s
absolute goodness does co-exist with a sinning world: there is no reason,
therefore, why it should not co-exist with a sinning Hell. ‘But’ - it may be said - ‘there are good
reasons why sin should be permitted to exist now’: but that at once admits that
God may allow, nay, does allow sin to exist for good and sufficient
reasons. But who knows what those
reasons are? Who can say that they are
not eternal reasons? But as long as the
reasons persist, so will the sin. If
evil may wisely be permitted now, it may wisely be permitted for ever: if an eternal
Hell is the ruin of God’s character, that character - I speak as a man - is
already ruined. But “God is light, AND IN HIM IS NO DARKNESS AT ALL” (1
John 1: 5).
MAN’S CHARACTER. ‘But
another opportunity,’ - so runs a second plea - ‘would save many souls who did
not, or could not, choose the right in this life’; that is, it is assumed that
God has but to offer mercy, in order to empty Hell. But how is it to be done? It can only be by the appeals of the old
Gospel, the exhibition of the old love; for God has no new pity to disclose, no
new saving power to display: all that can be brought to bear on lost souls is
that which has already been pressed to its utmost limit, and has failed. The Gospel has used all its arguments and
appeals, and it is a spent Gospel: the Spirit has used all the agencies at His
command to move the heart, and He is a rejected Spirit: what can now change
man’s hate to love? Death works no
magic: what is to make men love that which, by their very nature, they
abhorred, and still abhor? For there
would be the same demand for righteousness, the same commanded renunciation of
the world, the same stern prohibition of sin, the same offer of a salvation by
mercy alone. All that is abhorrent in
the Gospel now would be abhorrent then. If men can reject God for forty years,
they can reject Him for forty aeons, or for 40 millions of aeons; if they can
trample on the blood of the cross for a generation, they can trample on it for
a hundred generations: if all the love and wisdom and miracle of Jesus Christ,
God incarnate preaching in person, could not open deaf ears, what could, on the
other side of the grave? But if
probation is useless, God will not offer it: even now, “if they hear not Moses
and the prophets, NEITHER WILL THEY BE
PERSUADED, IF ONE RISE FROM THE DEAD” (Luke 16: 31).
PUNISHMENT. ‘But punishment,’ - so may run the final plea - ‘will make men
wise: an experience of Hell, short or long, will open the heart for appeals to
which, here and now, it was deaf.’ Is
this so? The facts are against it. Every conviction in the law courts makes a
convict’s ultimate cure less likely. It
is said that for every adult criminal reformed by prison discipline, at least
fifty go from bad to worse. The
successive judgments of God never subdued the heart of Cain - Pharoah - Ahab -
Israel. It was a chief complaint of
Jehovah against His people that all His severe scourgings - now exercised in
unmingled justice for nineteen hundred years - availed nothing. Devils besought our Lord not to thrust them
into the Abyss: no cry for salvation ever escaped their lips. Satan, after experiencing the Pit for a
thousand years, immediately on liberation is immersed in sin to the lips. But prophecy has already settled the point. In the last judgments men will gnaw their
tongues for pain, amid scenes of unparalleled agony; yet one refrain alone
ascends throughout, - “and they REPENTED NOT of their murders, nor of their
sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Rev. 9: 21). Hence the Saviour’s heart-broken cry, - “If
thou hadst known in this day the things which belong unto peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes” (Luke
19: 42).
FINAL CHOICE. The
bed-rock fact lies deeply embedded in the nature of things. Growth that is continuous tends to become
permanent: for one man who changes, a thousand never change. If a soul goes on rejecting the good, that
rejection will shape a permanence of character which will at last for ever
choose the evil. And - most solemn fact
of all - it is a law of nature that permanence is attained but once. The ship rolls, and the roll makes the expert
seaman; but let the lurch glide a few inches too far, and the vessel sinks
never to rise again. Slash a gum-tree, and the gums go out as commerce into all
lands; but let the gash sink a shade too far, and the tree withers never to
bloom again. A thousand years after - a
million years - the ship does not float, nor the tree spring. So it is also in the spiritual kingdom. The moment came when Satan himself passed the
irrevocable line: the occasional choice of evil had hardened into the habitual:
the habitual had passed the line where character becomes adamant: and the
permanent is attained but once. “How
shall ye escape the judgment of [that consists of] hell?” (Matt. xxiii. 33);
that is, if dying unrepentant, how avoid it?
And if once in it, how escape out of it?
For “it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh” - not
probation, but - “JUDGMENT” (Heb. 9:
27); therefore “now is the acceptable time” - the time in which sinners can be
accepted; “behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6: 2).
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72
Civil War
GOVERNMENT.
Civil war of necessity begins in a revolt against authority: whereas a
perpetual command to Christian teachers is this, - “Put them in mind to be in
subjection to rulers, to authorities” (Tit. 3: 1). For in the background of all government rises
the awful majesty of God. “The powers
that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13: 1).
‘The powers that be’ is a carefully chosen phrase of the Holy Ghost;
fair or foul, king or president or dictator or emperor - “there is no power but
of God”: therefore, to the divine aloofness of the Christian pilgrim the form
of government is of no concern, the government is; for every rule has the
Divine sanction, and is a Divine ordinance.
For administration of justice; for preservation of order; for the
punishment of the lawless; for the protection of property and life: “by Me
kings reign, and princes decree justice.
By Me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth” (Prov.
8: 15). God has created all government
to enrich and bless the governed; so, as a matter of fact, no government
punishes good as good, or rewards evil as
evil: nor is the worst government as bad as pure anarchy. But thus to police the world is a duty committed,
not to the Church, but solely to the Gentile power, from whose hands God has
never withdrawn it since it was granted to Babylon. Dan. 2: 37. The sword is given to Nebuchadnezzar, not to
Paul: we are to submit to it, not to wield it; until, at the Advent, “the
greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people
of the saints of the Most High” (Dan. 7: 27).
REBELLION. A grave fact thus reveals itself.
“Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God.” These instructions were issued with the
crimes and cruelties of Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius fresh in memory, and
with the monster Nero upon the throne: to no age of the Church could the
command have been more startling, or obedience to it a more signal triumph of
grace. For rebellion is rebellion
against God. Political resistance passes at once into spiritual: the power is
God’s power, the sword is God’s sword, the wrath is God’s wrath (though it may
reach us through the magistrate); for “he that resisteth the power,
withstandeth the ordinance of God.”*
* There is one exception to the rule.
The State may, and must, be disobeyed when it commands something God has forbidden, or forbids something God
has commanded. If a Nebuchadnezzar
orders image-worship, or a Darius forbids prayer, or a Sanhedrim prohibits the
Gospel “we must obey God rather than men”
(Acts 5: 29): but, even so, refusal to submit must never be with firearms. 2
Cor. 10: 4; John 18: 36.
Neither ancestry, nor sword, nor ballot-box is the real source of
political power; “there is no power but of God”: the power is God’s, the abuse
of the power is man’s; and God does not ask the Church to interfere between Him
and His administrative officer. For a bad
ruler may be - like Saul - His judgment on a nation; or - like Pharaoh - a
monument for wrath (Ex. 9: 16); or - like Nero - a fulfiller of the
martyr-roll; or - like Napoleon - a scourge for anarchy. The Most High “will strike through kings in
the day of His wrath” (Ps. 110: 5); but throughout the day of His grace “they
that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.”
CONSCIENCE. So
then obedience is essential to the will of God.
“Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath”
- as fine or prison - “but also for conscience sake.” Militant disciples, whether Crusader or
Inquisitor or Covenanter or Ironside, have always pleaded ‘conscience’; but it
is a perverted conscience; for God says we are not to resist for conscience
sake. An uninstructed conscience can
fall into colossal blunders. John 16: 2; Acts 26: 9. An act of parliament is to be obeyed, not for
the act’s sake, but for the Lord’s sake: obedience is a spiritual duty to God,
irrespective of the goodness or badness of act or government. Thus a Christian has no ‘right of rebellion’:
he may always emigrate (Matt. 10: 23); but so long as he uses the coin of the
realm, and therefore draws its attendant advantages, he must render to Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s. “Render to all their dues”- for submission is not
a gift, but a debt: “taxation to whom taxation; custom to whom custom; fear to
whom fear; honour to whom honour.”
Conversely, also, the disciple who pays all taxes, submits to all ordinances,
and prays for all rulers, may legitimately accept in return the privileges of
passive citizenship - police protection, pensions for the aged, general order
and liberty - as from “ministers of God’s service, attending continually upon
this very thing.”
PILGRIMS. Our
Lord has summarised His will for us in a little parable of arresting
beauty. Peter, challenged by the
taxation authorities, at once acknowledges our Lord’s habit of yielding to the
civil requirements. “What thinkest thou,
Simon?” - Jesus then suddenly turns upon Peter - “the kings of the earth, from
whom do they receive toll or tribute? From
their sons” - the princes of the blood royal - “or from strangers?” - all
outside the palace. “From strangers,”
Peter answers, “Therefore the sons are free,” the Lord replies: the sons of God
inherently are lifted far above all earthly taxation; as heirs of the world and
called to the thrones of the Advent, they are as exempt as princes of the blood
royal. “But, lest we cause them to
stumble, give unto them for Me and thee” (Matt. 17: 24). Lowly pilgrims, blameless and harmless, and
winning their way by love, must yield to all civil exactions and state
ordinances a winsome and Christ-like obedience.
“BE
SUBJECT TO EVERY ORDINANCE OF MAN FOR THE LORD’S SAKE: for so is the will
of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of foolish
men” (1 Pet. 2: 13).
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73
Laying Hands on the Sacrifice
FORGIVENESS. “I
the Lord change not” (Mal. 3: 6): as God forgave sin three thousand years ago,
exactly so, in principle, He forgives sin to-day. An Israelite, guilty of a sin, had to bring a
bullock or a lamb - neither spotted in colour, nor defective in shape or limb;
perfect, that is, of its kind - to the priest: the guilty man then put his hand
on the animal’s head (Lev. 1: 4): the priest drew a knife across its throat,
and burnt it to ashes: then the Israelite went home forgiven. What had become of his sin? It had been consumed with the sacrifice: as
annihilated, the man could never be charged with it again. So only did God ever forgive: Abel - and a
sacrifice; Noah - and a sacrifice; Job - and a sacrifice; Moses - and a
sacrifice: no sin for four thousand years was ever forgiven except under cover
of sacrifice.
THE HAND ON. Now
one act was absolutely vital, without which there was no forgiveness: one act
which alone set the whole machinery of pardon in motion. “He shall LAY HIS HAND UPON the head of the
burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev.
1: 4). What did the laid-on hand
mean?
It meant (1)
confession. As Aaron, laying his hands
on the head of the Scape Goat, confessed over it “all their transgressions, even
all their sins” (Lev. 16: 21), so the Israelite bowed his heart as a sinner
before God, laying his hand in token on the lamb. What was a sacrifice there for, if there was
no sinner? And if this man was not the
sinner, why had he brought the sacrifice?
It meant (2) acceptance. How should the priest know whose sacrifice it
was? The hand which grasped the lamb
said, as it were, ‘Regard this as myself, its life as my life, its death as my
death’: and the moment the man had thus laid on his hand, God said, “it shall
be accepted for him” - i.e., on his
behalf, in his place, standing in his room, his sacrifice.
And it meant (3)
transference. The sin of the man passed
to the sacrifice through the laid-on hand: the spotless innocence of the lamb
passed to the man through the laid-on hand.
As the sudden junction of two wires immediately transmits the electric
shock, so the moment the man touched the sacrifice his atonement was accepted:
“it shall be accepted, to make atonement for him”; “and the priest shall make atonement
for him as concerning his sin, AND HE
SHALL BE FORGIVEN” (Lev. 4: 26).
THE HAND OFF. So
the reverse also is true: refusal to lay the hand on the sacrifice means a
refusal of the sacrifice and therefore of the pardon. (1)
Here is a man to whom the priest says, ‘Put your hand on the lamb, in token of
your sin’; but the man draws back, saying, ‘That this is Jehovah’s method of
forgiveness I do not question; but I cannot, and will not, confess myself a
common sinner before all the tribes of Israel!’
Would that man have gone home forgiven?
1 John 1: 9; Prov. 28: 13.
(2) Another man approaches the priest, deeply
moved, and crying, “O my sins, my sins! Tell me how I can be forgiven?” The priest replies, ‘Most gladly will I
explain all I know, and remove, if I can, every difficulty you may feel: but
look! The sacrifice is actually here, and all you need for instant pardon is to
grasp it: put your hand on this lamb.’
But the man turns sadly away, putting his hands behind his back, and
crying, ‘O my sins, my sins! I do not think I shall ever be saved.’ Would that man have gone home forgiven? Matt.
18: 24, 26, 27, 32.
(3) The priest approaches a third man. ‘Is
that your sacrifice?’ he asks. The man answers, ‘Yes.’ The priest then says, ‘Will you put your hand
on it?’ ‘No,’ he replies, ‘I don’t believe in sins being forgiven like that; I
used to, but I don’t now; each of us ought to bear his own sin like a man:
after all, it is not much wrong that I have ever done.’ Would that man have gone home forgiven? Mark
2: 17. THE HAND ON THE LAMB IS VITAL TO ALL SALVATION.
CALVARY.
Does not this explain why some of my readers are unsaved? The devout Israelite laid his hand on the
victim before it was slain - for he looked for a Redeemer yet to come: we lay
our hands on the Sacrifice after it has been slain - for He has come, and has
been killed. “BEHOLD, THE LAMB OF GOD”
- the Lamb, not brought by man, but by God; the Lamb of which all other slain
lambs were but kindergarten pictures; the only Lamb - “WHICH TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD” (John 1: 29).
The whole machinery of pardon is ready. “Him who knew no sin God
made to be sin on our behalf,” - therefore sin by transference - “that we might
become the righteousness of God” - therefore righteousness by transference - “in
Him” (2 Cor. 5: 21). How quickly can it
be done? As quickly as a hand can be
laid on a lamb. “Forty years ago,” said
an old saint to me, “I was alone in my bedroom, when I suddenly saw Jesus, and
instantly my burden was gone; and for forty years, under the blood, I have
never felt that burden again.” Mark 5: 30, 34.
But it is possible to see a lamb without touching it: it is possible to
believe that the Gospel facts are all true without being saved.
If a rope is thrown to a drowning man, and he sees it but refuses
to grasp it, can that rope save him? If
carbolic acid has been swallowed by mistake, and a powerful emetic is handed to
the patient but [did] not drunk, can that emetic save him? When a miner examines the rope that lets down
the basket into the mine, and exclaims, ‘It is a sound rope and perfectly safe,’
- that is believing in the rope; but when he enters the basket, and trusts his
life to it - that is believing on the rope.
Accept the Saviour as yours, and tell God you do so.
“BELIEVE
ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND THOU SHALT
BE SAVED” (Acts 16: 31): for “if I touch but His garments, I shall be MADE WHOLE “ (Mark 5: 28; Luke 6: 19).
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74
Under Law to Christ
All utterances of our Lord - including the Sermon on the Mount, and
excepting only instructions issued to the Jews as Jews (e.g., Matt. 23: 3), and
illustrations drawn from Legal customs now superseded (e.g. Matt. 5: 24), are
binding upon the Church of God for reasons exceedingly weighty, and involving
issues of the utmost gravity. No less is
at stake than the authority of the Son of God, and His control of His own
Church.
THE LAWGIVER. For
one solitary Teacher fills the horizon of the Gospels; a new Lawgiver has
arrived, who, as God manifest in the flesh, not only claims our utter
allegiance, but can never be superseded.
“One is your Teacher” (Matt. 23: 8), so solitary, so unique that twice
from Heaven a voice fell, saying, - “Hear ye Him” (Mark 9: 7). So the
Epistles pronounce us ‘under law to Christ’ (1 Cor. 9: 21); - which can only
mean that what Christ has said is to be law to us, to whom the Epistles are
addressed.
GRACE.
Consequently Scripture knows but one sharp antithesis: “the law was
given by Moses” - i.e., the Old
Testament - but “grace and truth” - the New Testament - “came by Jesus Christ”
(John 1: 17). For our Lord has Himself
decided the exact watershed between Law and Grace. “The law and the prophets” -
the Legal prophets, as distinct from the Christian - “were until John” (Luke
16: 16): Himself, and all that follows until the Second Advent, is grace and
truth, under which we live. So every
utterance of Christ - except perhaps His words to the Pharisees - is crammed with
grace; no judgment miracle did He ever work on man; it is gentle, unresisting
love from cradle to grave; and this grace is nowhere more intense or
characteristic than in the Sermon on the Mount. For the Sermon, so far from
being Jewish, is an antithesis of the Law: whole decrees of Sinai are revoked,
and their actual opposites substituted (e.g., Matt. 5: 33, 38, 43): it is grace
superseding justice; for it is not possible that a higher standard should be
given to a lower people. “For Christ is
the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10: 4):
free for ever from the Law of Moses, we that believe will never be free from ‘the
law of Christ.’
THE SPIRIT. For
the Second Comforter has not come to disenthrone the First. “If I go I will
send Him unto you: and He shall guide you into all the truth: for He shall not
speak from Himself” - He will not set up a new and independent doctrinal
system: “for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you” (John 16: 7). The Spirit, speaking through apostles and
prophets, has established no new, much less no conflicting, revelation of
doctrine, or standard of conduct; but, by “bringing to your remembrance all
that I said unto you” (John 14: 26), He expands more fully what Christ had sown
in germ and embryo. So the Acts,
Epistles, and Apocalypse are but an organic outgrowth of the Gospels. For Christ instituted the Rites; ordained the
Ministry (Matt. 10: 9; 1 Cor. 9: 14); foretold the call of the Gentiles (John
10: 16); revealed ‘the Body’ as actually existing before Paul’s conversion (Acts
9: 4); outlined the whole history of the Church (Matt. 13.); legislated for it
(Matt. 18: 17); predicted its apostasy (Matt. 5: 13); and, on Olivet,
foreshadowed in germ the entire Apocalypse.
So also, as a peculiarly decisive example, the Epistles duplicate seven
leading characteristics of the Sermon on the Mount:
(1) prohibition of oaths - Jas. 5: 12;
(2) non-resistance - 1 Cor. 6: 7;
(3) love towards enemies - Rom. 12: 20;
(4) fasting - 2 Cor. 6: 5;
(5) the peril of unforgiveness - Jas. 2: 13;
(6) renunciation of wealth - Jas. 5: 1; and
(7) the command to seek the Kingdom - 1
Thess. 2: 12, R.V.
For all that Christ utters, the Spirit utters, and re-utters, and
expands: so much so that what our Lord dictated to John is seven times
described as what “the Spirit saith to the churches”: for it is one God, one
utterance, one dispensational revelation - through gospels, acts, epistles, and
apocalypse - “grace and truth by Jesus Christ.”
THE CHURCH. So
those to whom Jesus is Lawgiver are always a heavenly people - which excludes
the Jew: yet also a suffering people - which excludes the Millennial Age. If persecuted, “great is your reward in
heaven” (Matt. v. 12); if wise, they would “lay up treasures in heaven” (Matt.
6: 20); if justly excommunicated, it would be ratified “in heaven” (Matt. 18:
18); if escaping the Tribulation, it is a heavenly escape - “to stand before
the Son of man” (Luke 21: 36) returning on the clouds of heaven; if in the
Kingdom, in its heavenly compartment (2 Tim. 4: 18): a Kingdom taken away from
the Jew (Matt. 21: 43), and the heavenly compartment of which he has lost for
ever. But our Lord’s utterances are also
for sufferers. The smitten cheek, the
fasting, the abandoned treasure, the anxiety for food and clothing, the peril
of false prophets - it is legislation for here and now: it is no remote ideal,
to be fulfilled in a Millennial Age.
Twice the Gospels name the ‘church’: the first (Matt. 16: 18) is manifestly
Christ’s Church of the Epistles, still un-built in the days of His flesh;
therefore the second (Matt. 18: 17), for which He legislates, is the Church of
the Epistles also: for Scripture knows nothing of two ‘churches’, and the first
mention rules the definition of the second.
So our Lord’s own words, dwelling in us for ever, are vital to prayer (John
15: 7), essential to love (John 14: 23), and inseparable from reward (Mark 8:
38), - an inextinguishable Word, never abrogated, never superseded, and never
destroyed.
How long then shall ‘grace and truth’ thus reign? “Go ye therefore,
and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you all the
days, even unto THE END OF THE AGE”
(Matt. 28: 19): i.e., as long as
Gospel converts are to be made, and baptized, so long are they to be told all
that our Lord said, AND BIDDEN TO
OBSERVE ALL THAT HE COMMANDED: until, at the End of the Age, ‘the
acceptable year of the Lord’ makes way for ‘the day of vengeance of our God.’
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75
False Christs
“IF ANY MAN SHALL SAY UNTO
YOU, LO, HERE IS THE CHRIST; OR LO,
THERE; BELIEVE IT NOT” (Mark. 13: 21).
“Second advent” doctrine can come from Hell as well as Heaven: beneath
the Satanic religious of the world (as well as Judaism) there rolls a deep
undercurrent of Messianic expectation.
The Moslems await the Mahdi, the Buddhists the fifth Buddha, the Zoroastrians
Shah Bahram, the Hindus the reincarnation of Krishna. But our Lord’s words are a forecast of the
immediate End; and the preparations for Antichrist are now rapidly focusing in
an outburst of intense Messianism.
1. THE HEALING MOVEMENT. “The
healing movement is ever growing apace. Wherever I go, it is wanted. It is one
of the sure things of this new day of the Son of Man. Yes, Christ is coming;
that is my testimony to your readers. Only let us find this Christ so nigh unto
us that he becomes I and I become he” (Mr. Macbeth Bain).
2. THE WOMAN MOVEMENT. “The great need of the present day, and
every day, is the coming of Christ into the communal and individual life of man
kind. A manifestation of the renewed
coming of the Lord of Life is eagerly awaited by the angels who watch this
earth. A sign of this visitation will be
the reinstatement of woman” (Mrs. Pethick Lawrence).
3. THE NEW THEOLOGY. “Many workers and thinkers are making
ready the way for the second Advent - a reincarnation of the Logos in the
hearts of all men; the heralds are already attuning their songs for a reign of
brotherly love; already there are ‘signs of his coming and sounds of his feet’;
and upon our terrestrial activity the date of this Advent depends” (Sir Oliver
Lodge).
4. JUDAISM. “I believe with perfect faith in the
coming of the Messiah, and, though he tarry, I will wait daily for his coming”
(Authorised Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British
Empire). Our Lord foresaw the
peril. “I am come in my Father’s name, and
ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive”
(John 5: 43).
5. BAHAISM. “At
the First Coming Christ came from heaven, though apparently from the womb; so
at his Second Coming he will come from heaven, though apparently from the
womb. That which is meant in the
prophecies by ‘the Lord of hosts’ and the ‘Promised Christ’ is the Blessed
Perfection [Baha Ullah, the Persian Messiah] and His Highness the Supreme [the
Bah, his forerunner]. The faith of
everyone must gather round this clear saying” (Baha Ullah). It is astounding - and ought to be known, for
the terror of it - that Abdul Baha, the worldwide herald of this false Christ,
has been officially received in England by the Society of Friends; publicly
recommended by (among others) Prof. Margoliouth, of Oxford, and Drs. Whyte and
Kelman of Edinburgh - Dr. Kelman declaring, with Abdul Baha on the platform,
that Bahaism “is part of the great hope and promise of the Kingdom of God upon
earth”; is referred to as ‘the Master’ in Christian Commonwealth circles; and
(in Sep., 1911) was placed on the bishop’s throne to give the benediction to
the kneeling congregation of St. Margaret’s, Westminster. The
ignorance of prophecy in the general Church of God almost passes belief, and is
of the utmost peril to the cause of Christ.
6. THEOSOPHY. “We await
again the coming of the supreme Teacher, the Lord Maitraya, the blessed Buddha
yet to be; who shall shape the religions of the world into one vast
synthesis. He is waiting till his
Messengers have proclaimed his advent, and to some extent have prepared the
nations for his coming” (Mrs. Besant).
We have already had the worship of a False Christ in the twentieth
century in London. “The interior of the Ark [a church founded in Clapton in
1896 by the sect of the Agapemone] is white stone beautifully carved, the seats
are of a light oak colour, and beyond them, in a semi-circular altar, was a
throne. Upon this throne was seated a
tall, emaciated man. After a deep
silence he [Rev. J. H. S. Pigott] got up slowly and said: ‘I, who speak to you
to-night, I am that Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose again and ascended into
heaven. I am that Lord Jesus come again
in my own body, for the second time, as the Bridegroom of the Church, and the
Judge of all men. It is not up there, in
Heaven, where you will find your God, but in me who am united with the Father.’
The speaker walked slowly back to his throne; and after a silence of some
minutes a well-dressed woman got up. ‘Every word he has spoken,’ she said, ‘God
has spoken. God is here. I see him on
the altar.’ An old grey-headed man got
up and said, ‘Behold, there is Christ.’
The speaker appeared to be quite calm. ‘Behold, that is God,’ said
another, ‘the Desire of all nations.’ A
man fell convulsively on his knees, his eyes full of tears, and dragging his
wife on to her knees, said, ‘God, Annie, that is Jesus.’ After the last testimony had been given,
several, addressing themselves to the figure on the throne, cried aloud, ‘O
hail! hail! holy Man!’ after which the entire body of those present sang, ‘O
hail, thou King of glory!” (Morning
Leader, Sep. 8, 1902).
“For there shall arise false Christs and
false prophets, and shall show signs and wonders,
that they may lead astray, if possible, the
elect. But take ye heed: BEHOLD, I HAVE
TOLD YOU ALL THINGS
BEFOREHAND” (Mark 13: 22).
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76
The Two Justifications
ABRAHAM’S FAITH. One
man Gods has chosen to be the supreme model of all justification; and one
apostle the Holy Spirit has specially selected to express justification by
faith. For to Abraham, a repentant
heathen idolator with his face set towards the Holy Land, God said: “He that
shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir” (Gen. 15: 4):
then, leading him out under the countless stars, God said again: “So shall thy
seed be.” Then we read, “Abraham
believed in the Lord” - that is, as Paul puts it, he believed God (Rom. 4: 3);
“and God counted it [his faith] to him for righteousness.” Abraham believed God - that was all: as God
dimly, but really, presented Christ to him, far down the ages - the single Seed
as well as the plural seed (Gal. 3: 16) - he accepted God’s Word without
question or doubt; and God thereby instantly accepted him as a righteous
man. No voice ratified it from Heaven;
no wave of emotion (so far as we know) swept over believing Abraham: silently,
mysteriously, suddenly God regenerated, and Abraham, on bare faith, was
justified.
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. Now
the apostle asks the critical question, “We say, To Abraham his faith was
reckoned for righteousness. How then was
it reckoned? When he was in circumcision,
or in uncircumcision?” (Rom. 4: 9). Had
Abraham earned his justification? Or
obtained it by ‘sacraments?’ Or won it
by long obedience and a holy life supplementing the mercy of God? Or was it by faith alone? So vital is the reply that it is couched both
negatively and positively, - “not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision: that
he might be the father” - the progenitor, the pattern - “of all them that
believe.” The reply of the Holy Ghost is
thus perfectly explicit. Abraham was justified before he brought forth any
works at all, or submitted to any ritual: therefore he must have been justified
by faith: before ever he worked for God he believed God: and until he believed,
Abraham was a Chaldean idolator, a lost soul.
Behold, therefore, the perfect model and the unchanging example of how
God saves: “the father of all them that believe.”
ABRAHAM’S WORKS. But
there is a reverse side to the Shield of Faith.
Abraham had reached the end of a radiantly holy life; God had asked of
him his last great renunciation, and he had yielded it: now upon the aged
patriarch, tested again and again, a second great justification falls. The moment Isaac had been (in intent)
offered, the Angel of the Lord said, “Because thou hast done this thing” - that is, works - “and hast not withheld thy
son, in blessing I will bless thee” (Gen. 22: 16). Here was no regeneration, silent, mysterious,
internal: it was coronation, an open and solemn approval of God unto
reward. Paul is the New Testament
parallel. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have
kept the faith” - all works; “henceforth there is laid up for me the crown” - a
special revelation made to Paul, as to Abraham, at the close of life - “of
righteousness” - the crown consequent on righteousness - “which the righteous
Judge” - awarding a second justification - “shall give to me at that day” (2
Tim. 4: 7). From that moment Paul knew
that of which he had been ignorant (1 Cor. 9: 27; Phil. 3: 11-14) before.
JUSTIFICATION BY WORKS. The
Holy Spirit has selected a second apostle through whom to reveal the second
justification with startling emphasis. “Was not Abraham our father justified by
works, in that he offered up Isaac upon the altar? By works was faith made perfect: by works a
man is justified, and not only by faith” (Jas. 2: 21). James is not speaking of works before faith,
that is, works of law: for “faith wrought with his works, and by works was
faith made perfect”: faith was already there.
The justification of James, therefore, is not justification unto eternal
life. Scripture strenuously denies that
works before faith could ever justify: “by the works of the law shall no flesh
be justified” (Rom. 3: 20). But works
done after faith, works done in faith, the ‘work of faith’ (2 Thess. 1: 11)
does justify for reward. “If any [disciple’s]
work shall abide, he shall receive a reward.
If any [disciple’s] work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he
himself shall be saved” (1 Cor. 3: 14) - as already possessed of the
justification unto life. “I know nothing
against myself; yet am I not hereby justified” - with the second justification:
even a conscience void of offence in a regenerate apostle cannot ensure that:
nothing can (apart from a special revelation) but the Judge upon the Bema - “but
he that judgeth me is the Lord. Wherefore
judge nothing before the time” (1 Cor. 4: 4).
Therefore the Spirit bids us, - “So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a
law of liberty” (Jas. 2: 12) - the law, not of Moses, but of Christ.
God called Abraham, and he believed; God proved Abraham, and he
endured: the two justifications were then complete. For his justification by faith Paul points to
the moment of his regeneration: for his justification by works James points to
his final act of accomplished obedience.
Both justifications are demanded from every human soul. First, justification by blood, then
justification by obedience; first, justification by faith, then justification
by works; first, justification for [eternal] life,
then justification for reward [in
the “Age” to come]; first, the
escape of Israel out of Egypt, then the escape of Caleb and Joshua out of the
wilderness: the one is an adjudication of a transferred righteousness through the obedience of Another, the
other is an adjudication of an active
righteousness through obedience of our
own.
For blessed is “the man unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart
from works” (Rom. 4: 6): blessed also is “the man that endureth temptation
[testing]; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive THE CROWN OF LIFE” (Jas. 1: 12).
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77.
The City and the Salt
THE CITY. “The situation of this city,” certain
citizens said to Elisha, “is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is
naught, and the land miscarrieth” (2 Kings 2: 19). The growth of the Christless every year is
greater by many millions than the growth of the saved: the cities of the world
were never so full of the lost as they are to-day.
THE SALT. Elisha said, “Bring me a new cruse and put salt therein.” The waters are the multitudes of mankind (Rev.
17: 16): disciples are the salt, - “ye are the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5: 13). God reaches souls through souls; the impact
of life flashes to the unsaved through the saved; it is God’s Salt which heals
the world. Even the worldly statesman
can see the wisdom of the method. “The
hardest task for the reformer,” says M. Clemenceau, the French statesman, “is
not that of creating the future city, but of making the men who will make the
city.” “I am trying to build up new countries.” Cecil Rhodes said to General
Booth, “you and your father are trying to build up new men; and you have chosen
the better part.” In a ripe maturity of
political experience second to none, Mr. Gladstone said: - “The welfare of
mankind does not now depend on the State, or on the world of politics: the real
battle is being fought out in the world of thought; and we politicians are
children playing with toys in comparison to that great work of restoring belief.” For conversion is the marvel of the ages. “There is no medicine, no act of parliament,
no moral treatise, and no invention of philanthropy which can transform a man
radically bad into a man radically good: science despairs of these; politicians
are at the end of their resources; the law speaks of ‘criminal classes’:
conversion is the only means by which a radically bad person can be changed
into a radically good person.” An ounce
of regeneration is worth a ton of political or social effort: therefore let us
concentrate on regeneration.
THE SALT IN THE CITY.
Elisha “cast salt therein.” The
wealth of a city, in the eyes of Salt in the City. God, is according to the
number of the righteous in it: every new soul regenerated, so long as it abides
in a city, is a fresh guarantee against the judgments of God. “If I find in
Sodom ten righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their
sake” (Gen. 18: 26). So long as Lot was
in Sodom the dam of judgment could not burst.
“Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come”
out thence (Gen. 19: 22). Therefore, once granted the facts of sin, atonement,
and regeneration and our supreme civic duty, that on which turns the very life
of a fallen city, is to multiply the righteous in it: little though the
guildhalls and council-chambers know it, the godly are their final safety. The life - the lip - the spirit - the touch
of the child of God, all these are the facets of the salt crystal with which
God heals the waters.
THE CITY WITHOUT THE SALT. But
the Salt will not always be in the city.
“Now ye know” - Paul says, after foretelling the removal of the Church
out of the world - “that which restraineth” (2 Thess. 2: 6). Salt checks corruption and arrests
rottenness: we salt that which is dead, not that which is living: the Church,
by its mere presence, arrests the decay and ruin of the world. Wherever the Gospel has flourished,
unconscious but mighty in its effect on the entire community, law and order
have appeared as a reflex effect. A
public opinion has been created which has supported law, and shamed
lawlessness; in a limited measure, an atmosphere of discipline and duty has
been formed; above all, GOD has been
unveiled, as a God of law and order, to whom all account must ultimately be
rendered by every human soul. Thus ripe
lawlessness will mean the imminent revelation of the Lawless One. “For the mystery of lawlessness doth already
work: only there is One that restraineth” - the Holy Ghost, dwelling in ‘that
which restraineth,’ the Salt, until both depart together - “until he be taken
out of the way. And then shall be
revealed the Lawless One” (2 Thess. 2: 7).
The removal of the still salted Salt - the savourless Salt is left to be
trampled underfoot of men (Matt. 5: 13) - will be the breaking of a vast dam;
the loosening of a rock that blocks the rush of a cataract; the lifting of its
preservative out of the world’s corruptible flesh.
THE WATERS. But
the world is to be healed at last. “Thus
saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any
more death or miscarrying.” Secularism
and Socialism is rooted in the unconscious ignorance of a Saviour who is coming
back to reform the world. “Sir,” said a
Crimean soldier many years ago to the secretary of a Secularist Society in
Nottingham, “I doubt not that you have often read the Bible to find its
‘contradictions’; have you ever searched it to find its confirmations of itself?” “I cannot say I have,” was the answer. “Then
sir,” the soldier replied, “I beg you to read Psalm 22., Isaiah 53. and John 19.
consecutively, and to tell me the result.”
“Very well, if it will please you, I will do so.” Four days later the soldier returned. “Have you read the passages, and
consecutively?” “I have.” “And with what
result?” “I never saw such truth in my life,” the secretary replied; passing
there and then under the powerful regeneration of God, he severed his
connection with the Secularists, and lived for Christ. Thus the First Advent saves the individual:
the Second Advent will save the world.
For “the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall
gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do
iniquity: THEN SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS SHINE
FORTH AS THE SUN IN THE KINGDOM OF THEIR FATHER” (Matt. 13: 41).
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78
Temples of the Holy Ghost
THE BODY.
Christ took a body, and that body is part of Him for ever; His
discourses were often concerning the body, and His miracles were chiefly upon
the body; His rituals are spiritual truths brought into contact with the body;
and He has founded the whole faith of God on the resurrection of His body. Dr. Timothy Richard asked a thoughtful
Chinese philanthropist, a heathen, what had impressed him most in the Bible. “I
have read the New Testament three times” he replied, “and the most wonderful
thing to me in the whole book is that it is possible for men’s bodies to become
temples of the Holy Ghost.”
THE HOLY GHOST. How
is this stupendous thing made possible?
“Your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost, which ye have from
God” (1 Cor. 6: 19): from God, not from your mother at birth. Here is no dream of a pantheist, to whom
every man is a fragment of Deity; nor of a mystic, whose aim is to get so
absorbed in God as to become God: a ‘temple’ is the house of an indwelling god,
a god who has entered; so no man is a temple of the Holy Ghost until he has the
Spirit from God. “If any man hath not
the Spirit of Christ” - the Apostle assumes the possibility; if the Holy Ghost
has never entered - “he is none of His” (Rom. 8: 9). The moment the earthly
Temple had been dedicated, - instantly the invocatory prayer closed, - the
Shekinah Glory fell upon the blood-sprinkled Mercy Seat: so, at the moment of a
penitent cry, the Holy Ghost enters and descends to dwell upon the throne of “a
heart sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10: 22).
A TEMPLE. A
temple is a place where Deity manifests itself; there is more of God manifest
in a Christian than anywhere else in the world.
It was not the magnificence of the structure, nor the fragrance of the
incense, nor the solemn ritual, that made the Temple so awful, but the actual,
personal presence of God: so the weary eyes, the pain-wracked frames, the
ill-clad limbs, the heart in the sick room almost too tired to beat - these
bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost; for “God is in His temple.” A Christian - driven to the workhouse,
throttled and dying with asthma, and deserted by her only child for a life of
shame, once said to me, - “My heart is sometimes so full of joy that I can
hardly keep my tongue quiet.” “The
King’s daughter is all glorious within”: the humblest believer is exalted to a
dignity above earth’s highest thrones. “Mine
eyes and my heart” - as God said of His ancient house - “shall be there
perpetually” (1 Kings 9: 3).
CONSECRATION. The
potentiality of this truth is utterly incalculable. We so indwelt lose heart, but we can never
lose power - the power to be and to do the impossible, with no limits but the
will of God; dormant the power maybe, but latent it is there: for power is a
Person, and that Person resides within.
“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train
filled the Temple” (Is. 6: 1). God does
not enter the Temple alone. The sound of a rushing mighty wind - an indraught
of God and lo, a man is a temple; and “His train” - that which God brings with
Him of infinite resources and incalculable power - “filled the temple.” No limb, no member, but can be penetrated and
permeated through and through by the Spirit of God: the eyes, to be made so
pure as one day to see God; the mouth, to be given sovereign control over that
which comes in, and that which goes out; the hands, to be set building for
eternity; the heart, made to beat with a love that will never; cease so long as
it beats; every thought, even, brought into captivity to Christ. For “the body is for the Lord; and the Lord
for the body” (1 Cor. 6: 13) - marvellous words! And “holiness becometh thy house, O Lord, for
ever.” All holiness, all truth, all
life, all power reside in the Holy Ghost: and the Holy Ghost resides in us:
therefore all things are possible to us: “know ye not that YOUR BODY is a temple OF THE
HOLY GHOST?”
DEDICATION. Is
my reader unsaved? Here lies the
solution of all your problems. “Would’st
thou pray in a temple? Then pray within thyself: but first become a temple”
(Augustine). Pompey, curious to know
what lay behind the curtains in God’s House, drew them aside, only to find a
dark and empty shrine: if the curtains of your heart were drawn apart, within
your Holy of holies men could find no God.
A heart un-possessed of the Spirit is a temple without a deity. But will He come in? “The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come
to His temple;” for “Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst” - any
man can become a temple of the Holy Ghost: He is willing to enter into any man
- “let him come unto Me and drink. This
spake He of the Spirit” (John 7: 37).
The thirsty soul that comes to Christ, can drink in the Spirit of
God. But mark well: - no invitation, no
entrance; no entrance, no temple; no temple, no God: “the Lord, whom ye seek, shall
suddenly come to His temple” (Mal. 3: 1).
“How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit TO THEM THAT ASK HIM?” (Luke 11: 13). Ask, and ye shall receive.
In Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, on the death of a young Christian
man, much loved in his home and college, a large concourse assembled at the
funeral. Finding the entry of the chapel
blocked, his father, a well-known preacher, cried to the pall-bearers, - “Young
men, tread lightly! Tread lightly! Ye bear the temple of the Holy Ghost.” These
simple but startling words fell like an electric shock on the hearers, and a
revival swept through the college and the town.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
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79
Counsels for Young Workers
I. READ: THINK: PRAY. “Sow
an act, and reap a habit; sow a habit, and reap a character; sow a character,
and reap a destiny”: - therefore read hard, think hard, pray hard. Habit is tyrannous: make it tyrannous for
good. “Give heed to reading, to
exhortation, to teaching. Be diligent in
these things, give thyself wholly to them; that thy progress may be manifest
unto all” (1 Tim. 4: 13, 15). Phil. 4: 8.
Read much in Christian literature, but live within the covers of the
Book. Jas. 1: 25. Read, that you may know the mind of God;
think, that you may assimilate it; pray, that you may fulfil it. 2 Tim. 2: 15; 3: 14-17. No backslider can ever be created except
outside the prayer meeting. Heb. 10: 25,
26.
2. KEEP ALERT: KEEP AT WORK:
KEEP PROGRESSING. The moment we begin resting on our oars, that
moment we begin drifting downstream: Satan finds a prompt use for those who
leave the employment of Christ. Mark 13: 34-36.
“The only way to be kept from falling” says McCheyne, “is to grow.” Luke
8: 18. Grow in faith (2 Thess. 1: 3); in works (Rev. 2: 19); in fruitfulness (Phil.
4: 17); in love (1 Thess. 3: 12); in Christlikeness (Eph. 4: 15): - “we exhort
you, brethren, that ye abound more and more.”
Learn the grace of patience.
Wellington said: - “British soldiers are not braver than others; they
are as brave for quarter of an hour longer.” The work is solemn - therefore
don’t trifle: the task is difficult - therefore don’t relax: the opportunity is
brief - therefore don’t delay: the path is narrow - therefore don’t wander: the
Prize is glorious - therefore don’t faint. 1 Cor. 7: 29-31. “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one
take thy crown.” (Rev. 3: 11).
3. NEVER DO LESS THAN YOUR
BEST. “Nothing is done,” said Napoleon, “if
anything is left undone”: thoroughness won him his battles. Tax heart and brain and muscle to the utmost
for God: every life-drop counts in the coming Glory, every heart-throb tells in
the struggle now. “Whatsoever ye do, do
it from the soul, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that from the
Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord
Christ” (Col. 3: 23). Rom. 13: 11. Ezra 7: 23. John 9: 4. Concentrate all time, focus every energy, on
the irreducible ultimate of things: - for the believer, the Judgment Seat of
Christ; for the unbeliever, the great White Throne, and Him who sits thereon. The single eye (to cite Robert Chapman) is
the eye that is fixed on the Judgment Seat of Christ. 2 Cor. 5: 9, 10.
4. STEADILY FACE THE GREAT
RENUNCIATION. Luke 14: 33.
Youth is never stronger than when it is strong over itself. Prov. 16: 32. Renounce the world, and you conquer it: love
it, and it conquers you: it is a feud to the death. Jas. 4: 4. What ruined Lot’s wife? Society; Achan? Fashion; Solomon?
Self-indulgence; Judas? Money; Simon Magus? Ambition; Demas? Worldliness: - and
all these were numbered among the people of God. “I have written unto you, young men, Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world; for all that is in the
world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is
not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2: 15). Concerning some of you I confess I am afraid:
I beseech you in Christ Jesus, that you flinch not from the great
renunciation. Christ (says Rutherford)
has married the saint to sorrow, but He will divorce them at Heaven’s gates. 2
Cor. 4: 17.
5. GIVE
ALL TO GOD: LIVE IN ALL WITH GOD: USE ALL FOR GOD. Be acutely sensible to sin (Jude 23): never
let sin lie on your conscience (1 John 1: 9): indulge in no pleasure which
wounds a conscience, your own or another’s (Rom. 14: 13): choose companions -
especially the life-companion - only in the Lord (2 Cor. 6: 14): dwell in
purity (1 Tim. 5: 22): abide in God.
Take care to be most Christ-like at home. Holiness is a life-long struggle. Matt. 11: 12.
Some of you will fall back into a ruined discipleship: see, brother that
it is not you. Some, last converted,
will be first crowned. Therefore “I
charge [you] in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and of Christ
Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession; that [you] keep
the commandment, without spot, without reproach, until the appearing of our
Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 6: 13).
Younger brethren tenderly beloved, I set before you a most
difficult standard: the Church expects that you will fulfil it. The higher our ideal, the more men will flog
us with it if we fail: yet life gone is gone for ever, and any ideal short of
the highest is folly. God is able to
produce in us that which He commands. 2 Cor. 9: 8. Our Lord has told us the secret.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and
it shall be opened unto you. FOR EVERY
ONE THAT ASKETH RECEIVETH; AND HE THAT SEEKETH FINDETH; AND TO HIM THAT KNOCKETH IT SHALL BE OPENED” (Luke
11: 9).
Yet it is well, and Thou hast said in
season
‘As is the Master shall the servant be’:
Let me not subtly slide into the treason,
Seeking an honour which they gave not Thee.
Nay but much rather let me late returning
Bruised of my brethren, wounded from
within,
Stoop with sad countenance and blushes
burning,
Bitter with weariness and sick with sin.
Let no man think that sudden in a minute
All is accomplished and the work is done;
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst
begin it
Scarce were it ended with thy setting sun.
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80
Gethsemane and Calvary
GETHSEMANE. The
Holy Ghost has most carefully emphasised certain physical facts in our Lord’s
sufferings as revelations (I suppose) of the sources of Christ’s agony. “His sweat” - this is the first physical fact
- “became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground” (Luke
22: 44); as it were, for they were blood-clots mingled with sweat, and so not
pure blood. The night air was cold (for
fires had been lit in the palace), nor had His enemies yet laid rough hands
upon Him; no external cause could account for the sweat: “My soul” - our Lord
Himself says, so explaining the non-physical source of the sweat of blood - “is
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26: 38). It was a fearful soul-conflict that forced a
sweat that drew blood. “Excessive fear
and grief delilitate and almost paralyse the body, whilst agony or conflict is
attended with extraordinary strength.
Under the former the action of the heart is enfeebled; and if, owing to
the constriction of the cutaneous vessels, perspiration ever occurs, it is cold
and scanty. Under the latter the heart
acts with great violence, and forces a hot, copious, and in extreme cases, a
blood sweat through the pores of the skin” (W. Stroud, M.D.)
THE CUP.
What then was it that struck Jesus like a sudden tornado, producing a
palpitation so fearful as to force the blood through the brow? (1)
It was not a guilty conscience: for of this hour He had said, “I go unto the
Father. I will no more speak much with
you for the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in me” (John 14: 30). (2) It
was not the impotence of weakness: “Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech My
Father, and He shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt.
26: 53). (3) It was not dread of death: for Jesus had confronted death again
and again - on the brow of the cliff, on the lake, in the temple - with no
trace of fear; and He who had raised others from the dead, and constantly
foretold His own resurrection, would not have sweated blood because of
dying. Nor (4) was it the grief of human rejection: for “blessed” - He Himself
had said - “are ye when men shall reproach you; rejoice, and be exceeding glad”
(Matt. 5: 11). But He has Himself told
us what it was. On entering the Garden
He quotes His Father’s words, saying: “I will smite the Shepherd” (Matt. 26: 31);
in Gethsemane the Lord began to lay on Him the iniquity of us all; “Thy wrath
lieth hard upon me; Thy fierce wrath is gone over me” (Ps. 88: 7, 16). As Christ suddenly realizes that communion
with His Father is gone - as He stands forth charged as the supreme criminal of
the race - as He recoils from the sin-load with the fearful sensitiveness of
perfect innocence, struck with shock and almost frantic with grief, He implores
that this cup - “the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath” (Rev. 16:
19) - may be taken from Him. Atonement
had begun.
CALVARY. A
Second physical fact the Holy Ghost records with peculiar and reiterated
emphasis. (John 19: 34). “One of the
soldiers” - striking up obliquely into the neighbourhood of the heart - “with a
spear pierced His side, and straightway there came out” - emptying itself by mere
force of gravity, in a discharge of clotted blood and watery liquid so
plentiful, yet so sharply distinct, as to be clearly visible some distance off
to John - “blood and water” (John 19: 34).
The moment our Lord left Gethsemane, His perfect calm and fellowship
with His Father returned; for (as He had said) “the hour cometh, yea, is come, that
ye shall be scattered, and all leave me alone: yet I am not alone, because the
Father is with Me” (John 16: 32): but after the lapse of three hours upon the
cross - hours in which comforted the dying thief, committed His mother to John,
and prayed in still unbroken communion - a sudden supernatural darkness
fell. Again God’s face is gone: for
three hours our Lord, wrapt in fearful silence, utters no prayer or cry; until,
revealing that it is the frightful desertion of God that has come back, He
cries - “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?” And at last the pounding palpitation forcing
a rupture of the heart* (which leaves a conscious minute or two before death), with the
sudden loud cry of One dying, not of exhaustion, but of a broken heart, He
dismisses His spirit, as did the High Priest in slaughtering the sacrifice of
old: “who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God”
(Heb. 9: 14).
* “Such rupture is
usually attended with immediate death, and with an effusion into the
pericardium (the capsule containing the heart) of the blood circulating through
that organ; which when thus extravasated, although in scarcely another case,
separates into constituent parts; namely, a pale, watery liquid called serum,
and a soft clotted substance of a deep red colour termed crassamentum; the
crassamentum, or red clotted portion, containing nearly all the more essential
ingredients of the blood, and the serum, or pale yellow liquid, consisting
chiefly of water” (W. Stroud, M.D.).
Two unique periods of concentrated agony - one of an hour’s
duration, another of three hours, both forcing appalling physical symptoms -
constitute the Divine Atonement, and perfected for ever the bearing and the
consuming of sin.
“BEHOLD
THE LAMB OF GOD, WHICH TAKETH AWAY
THE SIN OF THE WORLD!”
(John 1: 29).
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81
Rapture
1. - All Rapture is one in principle, and
must ultimately embrace all believers (2 Cor. 5: 10), and so Scripture does not
speak of raptures, in the plural: nevertheless plurality of rapture is a
provable fact; for isolated acts of rapture have already occurred (as our
Lord’s, and presumably the saints of Matt. 27: 52), and will occur again, as
distinct from the Church, (e.g., martyrs under Antichrist, who are on high with
Christ, Rev. 15: 2); for Rapture, though one in principle and comprehension, is
effected in separate and graded instalments.
2. - The phrase ‘rapture of the Church’
(whether before the Great Tribulation or after) occurs nowhere in the
Scripture, and deviation from Scripture phraseology always betrays a deviation
from Scripture truth.
3. - The Epistles which most exhaustively
state Church privileges (Ephesians and Colossians) are silent on rapture, from
which it is a legitimate inference that rapture is not a privilege attached to
simple faith: nor can Rapture occur in the dispensation of Grace at all, since
it is the recall of God’s ambassadors for war, - the Judgment Throne is set
before the cry goes forth, “Come up hither!” (Rev. 4: 1), - and it is the
extinction of Church standing on the earth.
4. - The only passage that appears to state
a solitary rapture embracing all believers is addressed to disciples described
as abounding in goodness and love (1 Thess. 1: 3), and, as Scriptural
sufferers, ready to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom (2 Thess. 1: 5) - that
is, to believers already qualified for instant rapture; and it expressly
implies that it is only the premature dread of being overtaken by the Day of
the Lord which is forbidden. *
* “That ye be not QUICKLY
shaken from your mind” - prematurely terrified - “as that the day of the Lord
is now present” (2 Thess. 2: 2): believers actually caught by that Day may well
be panic stricken; for the judgments throughout the Tribulation are punitive (Rom.
2: 5), though, for the child of God, also remedial. Paul, like his Lord, warns in this very
passage against spiritual slumber (1 Thess. 5: 6).
5. - For all the passages dealing,
technically and expressly, with requisites for rapture,*
- and which therefore must
be decisive of the question, - assert personal watchfulness and worthiness as
essential; the ready virgin alone enters (Matt. 25: 10), the ready householder
alone is un-robbed (Matt. 25: 44), the ready disciple alone is rapt (Luke 17:
34) - “therefore be ye also READY.”
* “Each in his own company” implies distinction in rapture “in His
Presence,” i.e., during the Parousia
(1 Cor. 15: 23): so 1 Cor. 15: 52 speaks of universal change, not simultaneous
rapture. Luke 21: 36; Matt. 24: 42; Heb.
11: 5; Rev. 3: 3; Rev. 3: 10.
6. - Thus the two current views, basing
themselves on two apparently antagonistic sets of Scripture namely (1) that all believers will escape the
Tribulation, and (2) that all will
pass through it - both avoid personal responsibility by casting upon God the
deliverance, or the non-deliverance, as (in either case) part of the economy of
Grace; whereas God places the responsibility of escape upon His people: the
whole Word of God taken together, here as ever, is a just balance between two
sharp extremes; and so to a watchful church (Rev. 3: 10) a conditional promise
is given, and to an unwatchful (Rev. 3: 3) a conditional threat.
7. - Former precedent also rules in favour
of exclusiveness in priority of rapture: for not all the redeemed accompanied
Enoch, or Elijah, or Christ: even among prophets, Enoch is taken, Lamech is
left - Elijah is taken, Elisha is left: (though for Elisha and the Apostles no
dishonour was involved, since God was not then about to flood the earth with
His judgments).
8. - The Type revealed expressly for this
point is wholly decisive: for the Wheat is the Seed the Son of Man has sown,
and is sowing (Matt. 13: 38); and the garnering (according to the Type) is
accomplished in a first sheaf (Christ), then in first-fruits, then in harvest,
and finally in “corners of he field” thus reaped according to ripeness (Lev.
13: 10, 17, 22); for all immature grain ripens, sooner or later, in the violent
heats (Rev. 14: 15, margin R.V.) of the Tribulation.
9. - Our Lord Himself asserts (Matt. 5: 13)
that while His disciples, as the salt of the earth, cannot change their nature,
they can lose their savour, and that all such salt will be cast out and trodden
under foot of men; and He therefore commands (Luke 21: 36) a perpetual prayer
for escape.
10. - The Judgment Seat will redress the
balance between all saints, both dead and living, so that the unwatchful dead
will gain no advantage by death over the unwatchful living, nor the watchful
living gain at the expense of the watchful dead: for our deserts are not all
reaped at the same moment; - “some men’s sins are evident, going before unto
judgment; and some men also they follow after” (1 Tim. 5: 24).
11. - Our Lord, from the view-point of the
Revelation and of His Advent, divides the Church throughout this dispensation
(“the things which are,” Rev. 1: 19) into seven divisions: so the Apocalypse
reveals seven raptures* extending over the period of the Parousia; or at least
refers seven times to raptures, the majority of which (e.g., Rev. 11: 12; 12:
5; 15: 2) are provably distinct resurrections and ascensions.
* Rev. 4: 1; 7: 9:
11: 12; 12: 5; 14: 1; 14: 16; 15: 2.
12. - Thus there are two essentials for
rapture - faith and works; or, as our Lord implies (Luke 21: 36), discipleship
reinforced by unceasing vigilance and prayer: (1) “BY FAITH Enoch was translated
that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him:
for (2) before his translation he hath had witness borne to him THAT HE HAD
BEEN WELLPLEASING UNTO GOD” (Heb. 11: 5).
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82
The Ethics of Atonement
FORGIVENESS. The
germ of all forgiveness, and therefore a latent principle of all atonement,
lies in the fact that whosoever forgives deliberately sustains the consequences
of the wrong done in order that the forgiven may be exempt. If I cancel a debt, I lose the amount; if I
forgive a blow, I acquiesce in the injury with which it bruised my body; if I
pardon an insult, I endure without complaint the laceration it caused my
soul. Forgiveness cancels all in jury at
its own expense: that is, the innocent must suffer in the place of the guilty
if, after wrong done, there is to be atonement.
For forgiveness not only foregoes the penalty which could legally be
exacted from the offender, and which, in the eyes of justice, is an exact
equivalent of the offence; but it also consents to suffer, in person and
without a murmur, any injuries - to feeling or reputation or property or limb -
which the wrong has caused. So if a
murderer were forgiven, beyond the grave, the murdered man would in effect
consent to his own death, un-avenged, that the murderer might be exempt from
punishment - that is, that his death should go in place of the murderer’s; - an
extreme case which brings us within actual sight of the Atonement. Every act of forgiveness is an act of
substitution, whereby he who is sinned against, being innocent, substitutes
himself as a bearer of the consequences of the sin, from which, by doing so, he
relieves the guilty person.
THE ATONEMENT. Now
we apply this to the Atonement. God the
wronged, man the wronger: no third, differing in nature from either, can effect
atonement, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3: 4): i.e., it is supremely and always an affront levelled at the
lawgiver, at God as God. Thus it is not
bulk of suffering that justice demands for the expiation of sin; for atonement
is a readjustment of jarred relations between two persons or parties: all that
justice requires is an adequate expiation of the offence; and the only person
who can give this expiation, if the penalty is not to fall on the wrongdoer, is
the one aggrieved. “Shall I come before
the Lord with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I” - resorting even to human sacrifice
- “give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of
my soul?” (Mic. 6: 6). No: for all such
suffering, however great, however intense, falls outside the two concerned, God
the wronged, and myself the wronger. Either the law must take its course, and I
must suffer the full penalty of my sins - which is justice, or the dread
consequences must fall on God - which is mercy, effecting a means of
forgiveness. For forgiveness is not
justice, but mercy, and therefore has no exact parallel in earthly courts of
law; but it is mercy which has first satisfied the principles of justice.
CHRIST. We
now arrive at God’s plan of salvation.
If Christ is God, the atonement is just; and conversely, if the
atonement is just, Christ is God: the atonement is based absolutely on the
Godhead of Christ. For Christ, being
God, is the Person wronged, and can thus, by bearing the dreadful consequences
of the guilt, acquire power to remit.
But the Manhood of Christ is equally essential to the atonement. For what is the penalty of the wrong? “The
law is unto life” (Rom. 7: 10), - that is, keeping it tends to life: therefore
transgression of it bears the natural and inevitable consequence of death: “the
wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23). It
is not suffering for suffering’s sake that justice requires, but suffering that
falls as a natural, righteous, and inevitable consequence of sin. But God is immortal; “who only hath
immortality” or deathlessness (1 Tim. 6: 16): of the two, then it is only man
that can die. Therefore the Incarnation
is essential to the Atonement. Thus Christ,
the God-man, in virtue of His Godhead is the One sinned against, and therefore
can forgive, after satisfying the principles of Justice in bearing the
consequences of the guilt; and in virtue of His manhood, and therefore ability
to die, He could and did bear in His own person the natural and legitimate
consequences of the guilt, and thus now is free to forgive.
PARDON.
Thus human forgiveness, however broken a light, illuminates the grace
and marvel of Divine pardon, if it is morally wrong for the innocent to suffer,
voluntarily, in the place of the guilty, then all forgiveness is for ever
impossible, and all forgiveness now being exercised is morally wrong, for it is
the innocent choosing to suffer the consequences that should legally, fall on
the guilty. But who will affirm that it
is wrong to forgive who has once known what it is to be forgiven? Is it wise or safe, on the plea of justice,
to repudiate all forgiveness, human or Divine?
Bur if not, we have already accepted the principle of the Atonement. For punishment to fall on the innocent in the
place of the guilty against his own will is iniquity: for the innocent to
suffer in the place of the guilty (as Christ did) of his own accord at once
exhausts the penalty, vindicates the law, delivers the transgressor, and
glorifies God. God is both just and the
justifier of the ungodly through the exhaustive penalty borne by Christ in the
sinner’s stead: He is free to forgive because He has Himself borne the full
consequences of the sin.
“Feed the church of God, which He purchased WITH HIS OWN BLOOD.” (Acts 20: 28).
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83
Prayer
1. - THE
FOUNDATION OF PRAYER. The promises
are colossal, and as sure as God Himself.
Plead His own Word, and how shall God say nay? Answers can be evoked by two. “If two of you shall agree on earth as
touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father”
(Matt. 18: 19). Answers are as wide as
the will of God. “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: and
if we know that He heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions which we have asked of Him” (1 John 5: 14).
Answers are only limited by faith.
“All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9: 23). God is the sole manufacturer of opportunities;
the only rescuer of the lost; the One alone inexhaustibly wealthy; the solitary
occupant, in all the universe, of a throne of grace; not a standing reservoir,
but a flowing river of blessing, “rich unto all that call” (Rom. 10: 12):-
therefore pray.
2. - THE
POWER OF PRAYER. It is a Person. “Whatsoever
ye shall ask in My name, that will I do”; “if ye shall ask Me anything in My
name, that will I do” (John 14: 13, 14).
Prayer that reaches God through Christ reaches Him as from Christ. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth. Go ye therefore” (Matt. 28: 18);
and therefore come. “Nothing shall be
impossible to you” (Matt. 17: 20): - what a trumpet-blast from the lips of the
Son of God! O Beloved, pray!
3. - THE
PREPARATION FOR PRAYER. “Prepare your prayers,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “by
preparing yourselves.” 1 John 3: 22. We
carry into the assembly the atmosphere we have made at home: we betray our
lives when we open our mouths.
Therefore, come from the Throne of Grace, ere you go to the Throne of
Grace. Pray with holy hands; or God
refuses His ear. Ps. 66: 18. Pray
without wrath; for God is silenced by injury to a brother. Mark 11: 25. Haunt the prayer meeting. Be much with God and God will be much with
you.
4. - THE
FORM OF PRAYER. Pray briefly. Eccl.
5: 2. One stone flung hard is better
than a handful of loose gravel. Pray
humbly. Luke 18: 13. “Pride” says McCheyne, “is Satan’s wedge for splitting
prayer-meetings to pieces.” Pray
pointedly. Phil. 4: 6. Every prayer
should be full of pointed phrase and definite petition. Pray Scripturally. Luke 11: 1. To pray Scripture is a safe way to pray
according to the will of God. Take pains
to avoid a self-made liturgy. Prayers
cease to leave the earth when they get caught in ruts. Pray believingly and gratefully. Jas. 1: 7. Faith and thankfulness (1 Thess. 5: 18) are
the wings of prayer, which lift it readily to the Throne. Pray together. 1 Cor. 14: 16. If the prayer of a righteous man avails much,
shall not the prayer of a righteous host avail more? The work of a church is done at the Throne:
all other work is mere detail. “Apart
from Me ye can do nothing” (John 15: 5).
Pray intensely. Deut. 4: 29. It
has been said that Satan can build walls round us, but no roof overhead; but we
may add that lethargy builds a ceiling to its own prayers. The whole man ought to become one burning
prayer.
5. - THE
HEART IN PRAYER. “Let us lift up our
heart with our hands unto God” (Lam. 3: 41).
As a doctor will lay his ear against the heart, to judge its beating, so
does God; He inclines His ear, not to the lips, but to the heart. Matt. 15: 8. Keep praying throughout the meeting. Forget all others; cultivate a deep
consciousness of the presence of God.
Importunity is of the essence of prevailing prayer: never stop
praying. Luke 18: 1-7. At dawn, with
David; at noon, with Daniel; at midnight, with Silas: in sorrow, as Hannah; in
sickness, as Job; in joy, as Christ: in childhood, like Samuel; in youth, like
Timothy; in manhood, like Paul; in hoar [grey] hairs, like
Simeon; in dying, like Stephen. “As the
hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God” (Ps.
42: 1).
6. - THE
OBJECTS OF PRAYER. Be catholic in
your prayers: praying for all men (1 Tim. 2: 1); for all saints (Eph. 6: 18);
for the unity of all believers (John 17: 21); for all things (Rom. 8: 32). Pray for Israel (Rom. 10: 1); for the
Gentiles (Luke 10: 2); for rulers (1 Tim. 2: 2); for ministers (Eph. 6: 19);
for conversions (I Tim. 2: 1, 4); for personal enemies (Luke 6: 28). Pray at once for pardon after known sin. 1
John 1: 9. Pray for the recovery of sick
disciples. Jas. 5: 16. Covet the
miraculous gifts. 1 Cor. 12: 31. Pray for world-wide revival. Rev. 3: 18. Pray for the return of Christ. Rev. 22: 20. Pray for your own share in rapture. Luke 21:
36. Pray that the [Holy] Spirit may show you for what to pray. Rom. 8: 26. “With all prayer and supplication for all the
saints, praying at all seasons in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all
perseverance” (Eph. 6: 18).
7. - THE
FRUITS OF PRAYER. We must get
answers; for the silence of God is one of the dreadful things of the world. Gen.
32: 26. Prayer is a field which is
thrice reaped. (1) It sanctifies the suppliant.
As God saves by a Lamb, so He preserves by a cry; and “praying will
either make a man leave off sinning, or else sinning will make him leave off
praying.” (2) It enriches the
suppliant. Our Lord wants us to overflow
with joy because of answers received. “Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy
may be fulfilled” (John 16: 24). (3) It will glorify the suppliant. “Pray to
thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall
reward thee openly” (Matt. 6: 6).
Therefore pray more.
(i.) “I prevented the DAWNING of the morning, and cried” (Ps. 119: 147).
(ii.) “My voice shalt thou hear in the MORNING, O Lord” (Ps. 5: 3).
(iii.) “At NOON will I pray, and cry aloud” (Ps. 55: 17).
(iv.) “Let my prayer be set before Thee as
incense; the lifting up of my hands as the EVENING
sacrifice” (Ps. 141 2).
(v.) “At MIDNIGHT I will rise to give
thanks unto Thee” (Ps. 119: 62).
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84
The Servant of Jehovah
TRADITION. Israel
is sometimes called the Servant of Jehovah; but never, as here (Isa. 53: 11), ‘my
righteous servant’; and in Zechariah (3: 8) it is obvious that ‘my servant the
Branch’ is Messiah. So all early Jewish
rabbis expound, including the age in which inspired prophets revealed the mind
of God on the written Word. Even the Targum has, “Behold, my Servant the
Messiah” (Isa. 52: 13): for seventeen hundred years the Jews beheld the Messiah
in Isaiah’s portrait; and only under intolerable pressure from the Christian
Church did they abandon (about 1150 A.D.) an interpretation until then
universal in the Synagogue. Nor would a
Jew familiar with atonement through blood find any intellectual difficulty in a
vicarious Sufferer. So also the Church
for eighteen centuries has identified the portrait: only a few doubters of pure
prophecy and blood-atonement have, like the Jew, found in it another face than
that of the Messiah. But these fifteen
verses (Isa. 52: 13 – 53.), written, as all are agreed, centuries before
Christ, could not have been suggested by His life: the life did not suggest the
portrait, though the portrait could (by miraculous inspiration) forecast the
life. For two and a half millenniums
Synagogue and Church have identified Jehovah’s Servant as Messiah.
THE HOLY SPIRIT. But
God has left us in no manner of doubt.
The portrait consists of fifteen verses divided into five sections of
three verses each: every one of these five sections is directly applied to
Christ by the Holy Spirit.
In section one (Isa. 52: 13-15) Paul identifies the message of the
Servant sent to ignorant nations as the good news concerning Christ delivered
to the Gentiles (Rom 15: 21): in section two (Isa. 53: 1-3) John finds in
Israel’s refusal of Jesus the direct fulfilment of the Prophet’s heart-broken
cry concerning unbelief (John 12: 38): in section three (Isa. 53: 4-6) Matthew
recognises in Christ’s healing miracles the Servant who was to carry our
sicknesses, and to exhaust Himself with our healing (Matt. 8: 17): in section
four (Isa. 53: 7-9) Philip, full of the Holy Ghost, and speaking under His
direct command, answers the Eunuch’s question on the identity of the Servant by
preaching to him Jesus (Acts 8: 32): and in section five (Isa. 53: 10-12) Mark
discloses in the two robbers the transgressors with whom Jehovah’s Servant was
to be catalogued (Mark 15: 28).
In every section our Lord’s degradation is named, thus puncturing
the photograph, so to speak, with the five wounds of the cross. So peculiar is the Prophecy that, if it was
not fulfilled in Jesus Christ, it will require another Calvary, and another
ascension to the Seat of Deity, to fulfil it: so that in no case can we escape
the vicarious suffering and the blood-atonement predicted: nor, even so, can it
be thus fulfilled, for five times the Holy Ghost has already riveted the
portrait upon Jesus.
CHRIST. Our
Lord Himself has cut away the last foothold of doubt. He who, on the way to Emmaus, unfolded “in
all the Scriptures” - the Old Testament - “the things concerning Himself” (Luke
24: 27), on the way to Calvary numbered Isaiah Fifty-three among them,
fastening, if not the most grievous, (as Isa. 53: 10), certainly the most
galling, clause upon Himself. “For I say
unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled IN ME, And He was reckoned with transgressors; for that which
concerneth Me hath an end” (Luke 22: 37): all Old Testament types and
prophecies are rivers which empty themselves in the ocean of Christ. Thus our Lord expected nothing less than the
fulfilment of Isaiah word for word: He identifies Himself as the suffering
Servant of Jehovah: He in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge, Whose words are ‘spirit’ and ‘life,’ Who is the Truth, God manifest
in the flesh, says that Isaiah spake of Him.
THE SUFFERER. Now
it is critical to the whole Gospel that, in this “most central, deepest and
loftiest utterance that the Old Testament, outstripping itself, ever achieved,”
Messiah appears, not as Lawgiver, Teacher, Conqueror, or King, but as the
supreme, lonely and awful Sufferer of eternity.
Immediately after the vision of enthroned Deity - “exalted, lifted up, and
very high”: expressions confined by Isaiah to the Godhead (Isa. vi. 1; lvii. 15)
- we are confronted with a ring of shocked and horrified spectators (cf. Luke 23: 48). For “His visage was so marred more than any
man” (Isa. 52: 14); sweating blood in the face, lacerated by the thorns in the
face, struck on the face (Luke 22: 64), spat upon in the face (Matt. 26: 67),
with hair plucked from the face (Isa. 50: 6), and convulsed in the face with
death-agonies until God’s gracious darkness veiled it all, - no form was ever
so mean and abject, no visage so fearfully marred. But why?
An inexorable dilemma impales us.
Either His sinlessness must be denied, or the vicarious nature of His
suffering must be acknowledged: either we must esteem Him justly smitten of
God, as Cain; or else behold in Him One Who “had done no violence, neither was
any deceit in His mouth.” But God has
decided the point. Twelve times His
sufferings are here declared solely vicarious and expiatory.
(1) “He hath borne our griefs”;
(2) “He hath carried our sorrows”;
(3) “He was wounded for our transgressions”;
(4) “He was bruised for our iniquities”;
(5) “the chastisement of our peace was upon
Him”;
(6) “with His stripes we are healed”;
(7) “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity
of us all”;
(8) “for the transgression of my people was
He stricken”;
(9) “Thou shalt make His soul an offering
for sin”;
(10) “He shall bear their iniquities”;
(11) “He bare the sin of many”;
(12) “He made intercession for the
transgressors.”
For He was wounded not by our transgressions, but for them: it was
not that our iniquities bruised Him, but that He was braised because of our
iniquities: “for by His stripes” - not the lashes, but the livid weals left by
the Roman thongs - “we were healed”; for “He bare our sins in His body upon the
tree” (1 Pet. 2: 24).
So is revealed the great saying antithesis of all time. “ALL
WE LIKE SHEEP HAVE GONE ASTRAY”: all have lost the way to God; all have
created sin, which has come back on all as a damning load; all, without
distinction, without exception: “AND THE
LORD HATH LAID ON HIM THE INIQUITY OF
US ALL”; all the multitude of sin, all the consequent mass of guilt, all
the therefore inevitable load of punishment - God gathered all the hell-storm,
and broke it upon the brow of Christ: that all may be saved, except such as
exclude themselves, by Him who is “the propitiation for THE WHOLE WORLD” (1 John 2: 2).
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85.
The Two Overcomings
THE FIRST OVERCOMING.
The first of the two great overcomings named in Scripture is our Lord’s.
“Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16: 33). The ‘world’ is all the mass of temptation,
allurements to sin, ungodly habits, unholy life, which make up our present
environment: by steadily, unceasingly, and completely resisting its pressure,
Jesus overcame. The term is most
expressive, an ‘overcomer’; it implies pressure, resistance, battle, victory,
over that which calls for beating down and subduing; it is constant effort
carried through to a victorious issue.
Never to sin, in spite of fierce and unceasing temptation, is to be an
absolute overcomer; and One only ever so overcame - Jesus Christ.
Faith. Now this conquest of
our Lord is the victory of all His saints.
“God giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15: 57):
for “this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John
5: 4). Not ‘will’ overcome, but ‘hath’
overcome (R.V.); yet not ‘Christ,’ but ‘we’: for faith transfers Christ’s
conquest to me: I have overcome in Christ; for He and I are one. “The conflict and suffering which we now have
is not the real battle, but only the celebration of the victory” (Luther). From the first moment of faith the victory of
every disciple is an assured fact: “whatsoever is begotten of God” - the whole
mass of the regenerate - “overcometh the world: and this is the victory that
hath overcome the world, even our faith.”
Our Lord inflicted a deadly wound upon the world of evil; the head of
the Serpent is bruised, and its writhings are but symptoms of a mortal agony;
and sin in the flesh (indwelling sin) was executed once for all upon the cross:
and all this perfect and eternal victory is mine by simple faith.
THE SECOND OVERCOMING.
But another great overcoming is named in Scripture; not past, but
present and future; and not for
salvation, but for reward. Seven
times our Lord invokes every member of His Churches to become an overcomer;
attaching peculiar reward to each believer who achieves it, and warnings of
tangible displeasure to all who fail.
For every believer has against him evil men, the whole mass of worldly
atmosphere and tradition, his own flesh, dragging him down, evil spirits,
incessantly active; and, as only dead fish swim with the stream, so a living
soul has against it the pressure of an entire world. Intensely true is that word of Mr. Moody: - “The
reason why so many Christians fail all through life is just this - they
underestimate the strength of the enemy.”
Therefore our Lord’s invocation, in substance seven times repeated, is
this: - “He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in my throne,
as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches”
(Rev. 3: 21).
WORKS. We
thus arrive at God’s duplex truth.
Compared with the world, all believers are overcomers; compared with one
another, some are overcomers, and some are not: for the first overcoming is by
simple faith, whereas the second is by unswerving obedience. The second overcoming, no more than the first,
is a sudden act, or the victory of a moment, or a rush of holy emotion; it is a
confirmed habit of goodness, - the long wind, the hard biceps, the iron muscle
of the unwavering, unswerving runner; it is not a victorious battle, but a
victorious campaign. It is on this
ground that our Lord is rewarded, and certain selected believers with Him. “Therefore
[in consequence of suffering] I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His
soul unto death” (Isa. 53: 12): “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated
iniquity; therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness
above Thy fellows” (Heb. 1: 9).
Responsibility fulfilled, and not privilege possessed, is the
ground of all reward. Without a holy
violence, blessedly aggressive until the end, there can be no entrance on the Millennial Reign of reward; unless we
storm it, we shall never enter it: for “the kingdom of heaven suffereth
violence, and men of violence take it by force” (Matt. 11: 12). By His sufferings and His death, and not by
the glory He had before the world was - and as the Servant of Jehovah, not as
the Son of God - our Lord acquires the vast heritage (Ps. 2: 8) which other
conquerors have won by the cannon and the dreadnought: so also, for the disciple,
power and glory and thrones lie open; the world is to be the ‘spoil’ that shall
be divided: but the path to Olivet is the hard, rugged, narrow road that lies
across Calvary. “He that overcometh, and
he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the
nations” (Rev. 2: 26).
ASSURANCE.
Now the practical import of it all is tremendous. All discipleship is a battle; it is a battle
that can be won; it is a battle which can issue in a victory the greatest that can
now be won in the universe; and it is a battle that every disciple can
win. For we start with ‘the full
assurance of faith.’ “Haring therefore boldness to enter into the holy place by
the blood of Jesus, let us draw near in full assurance of FAITH” (Heb. 10: 19). Our eternal life, based on the covering blood
of the Atonement, is as sure as God.
But a vast vista opens up beyond.
“Show the same diligence unto the full assurance of HOPE even to the end: that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of
them who through faith and patience [i.e., perseverance] inherit the promises” (Heb. 6: 11). I am not to hope that I am saved, but to
believe it: on the contrary, I am not to believe I have won the ‘prize,’ but to
hope that I shall win it. For only ‘the
end’ can reveal how I have run. But the
more battles won, and the more mileage covered, the more we can mature to the
full assurance of hope.
“WE
ARE WELL ABLE TO OVERCOME” (Num. 13: 30).
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86
Witnesses to Christ
Rousseau. “Is it possible that the Sacred
Personage, whose history the Scripture contains, should be Himself a mere man?
What sweetness, what purity of manner!
What sublimity in His maxims!
What profound wisdom in His discourses!
What presence of mind, what subtilty, what truth in His replies! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who
could so live and so die?”
Napoleon. “I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a
man. His spirit overawes me, and His
will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world there is no
possible term of comparison. He is a
Being by Himself. His gospel, His
appearance, His empire, His march across the ages, everything is for me a
prodigy, a mystery insoluble, a mystery which I can neither deny nor
explain. Here I see nothing human.”
Goethe. “I look upon the Gospels as thoroughly
genuine; for there is in them a reflection of the greatness and the benevolence
of Jesus, which was as divine in kind as ever was seen upon the earth. I bow before Him as the divine manifestation
of the highest principle of morality and fraternity.”
Renan. “A thousand times more alive, a thousand
times more beloved since Thy death, Thou shalt become the cornerstone of
humanity, so entirely, that to tear Thy name from this world would be to rend it
to its foundations. Between Thee and God
there will no longer be any distinction: all ages will proclaim that among the
sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.”
Mill. “The Prophet of Nazareth is in the very
first rank of the men of sublime genius, of whom our species can boast:
probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr who ever existed upon earth;
nor would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of
the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavour so to
live, that Christ would approve our life.”
Lecky. “Through all the changes of eighteen
centuries, one ideal character has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned
love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments,
and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the
highest incentive to its practise, and has exerted so deep an influence, that
it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life
has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of
philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.”
Ingersoll. “I place Him with the great, the
generous, the self-denying of this earth, and for the man Christ I feel only
admiration and respect. Let me say, once
for all, that to that giant and serene Man I gladly pay the homage of my
admiration and my tears.”
1.
Who then is Christ? ‘Gigantic intellects’ standing on the very pinnacles
of human fame; - biased against the
Christian Faith; - some, like Renan,
apostates - others, like Ingersoll, aggressive infidels; - yet exhausting
the powers of language in praise of Jesus, and voicing a universal homage so
peculiar, so unique, that no man has approached it within the remotest
distance: - who then is Christ? What was
He, and whence? “His beneficent commands,” says Huxley, “were of incalculable value”: “higher human thought has not
yet reached,” says Carlyle, “than
Jesus of Nazareth.”
2.
Christ Himself reveals who He was, and is. He says that He is (1) the Son of God, on an equality with the Father (John 10: 30),
sharing the Divine glory before the world was (John 17: 5); (2) the Messiah, of whom all the
Scriptures spoken (Luke 24: 27); (3)
the Redeemer, whose flesh was given “for the life of the world” (John 6: 51);
(4) the universal Judge, before whose throne of glory all nations are to be
brought (Matt. 25: 32), and who shall come [to rule and reign in righteousness and peace upon this earth]* in the last day upon the clouds of heaven (Mark
14: 62).
Now the dilemma is inexorable.
The assertions of Christ are fatal to His moral character, if He is only
a man; on the other hand, if His moral character is what men have universally
believed it, He is more than a man: either His goodness establishes His
assertions, or else His assertions destroy his goodness. His personality, His utterances, and His life
are woven without seam throughout.
3.
For our Lord was without any consciousness of sin. He rebuked self-righteousness in others, and
commanded repentance to all, yet never once betrayed that He needed repentance
Himself. He who was so sensitive to
human sin as to have become the moral conscience of mankind, challenged any man
to convict Him of sin. Nor has any one
ever succeeded in doing so. Therefore
His assertions are true: He says - “I am the Truth” (John 14: 6): He is perfect
Man, because He is perfect God.
4.
Thus follows a fearful consequence.
Admiration of Jesus is utterly valueless for salvation. God demands faith in, and worship of,
Him. Rousseau, whose teachings ultimately drenched Europe in blood - Napoleon, the slaughterer of eight
millions of mankind - Goethe, as
alien as Shakespeare from the
Christian Faith - Renan, an apostate
- Mill, in the front rank of English
infidels - Lecky, a determined
opponent of Christianity - Ingersoll,
its bitter enemy: - admiration of Christ
can never save. “YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN” (John 3: 7).
[* NOTE. We sometimes hear of Messiah’s coming; but seldom do we
hear what He is coming for, and what He is coming to do! To silence or misinterpret the numerous
prophetical statements throughout both Old and New Testaments, is to reveal the
deplorable and sickening spiritual condition of Christ’s Church today!]
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87
Watch
THE PAROUSIA. The
ark of the Parousia, invisible, and silently moored in the heavens; a world so
absorbed in the things of sense as to prove it wholly incredulous of a coming
judgment; a sudden closing of the ark on certain rapt persons, followed by a
judgment-flood so universal that this rapture out of the inhabited earth is the
sole heavenly escape: - “As were the days of Noah, so shall be the Parousia of
the Son of man: one is taken, and one is left.
Watch therefore” (Matt. 24: 37).
It is a rapture of heavenly escape.
THE TAKEN. A
woman mill-hand in Scripture stands for the extreme social contrast to royalty
(Ex. 11: 5): the rapt will be amongst the humble of the earth; and all who
would now rise in the social scale are proving themselves fools in the sight of
God (Is. 2: 12; Luke 16: 15). Shut in
above the storms of wrath until the seventh (the millennial) month, and
liberated on the 17th of Nisan, the resurrection day, they issue forth at last
to rule a world washed clean by the storms of judgment.
THE LEFT. Who
then are the un-rapt? * Of these two closely associated souls - “one
is taken, and one is left” - is the one left an unbeliever? This is impossible; because - (1) It is the natural inference from
our Lord’s words that it is the unwatchfulness of the one left, and his
unwatchfulness only, that has prevented his rapture. “One is taken, and one is left. Watch therefore.” For watchfulness implies a heart already
awakened by grace: we do not tell the dead to watch. “Watch therefore: for ye know not on what day
your Lord” - the Lord of both the taken and the left - “cometh.”
* With the view that the taken are taken to judgment, and the left
are left to glory, it is needless to say more than that it is built on a single
(not unnatural) misconception. For the
word ‘took,’ in the case of the Antediluvians - “took them all away” - means ‘to
arrest,’ ‘to take to destruction’; whereas when “one is taken and one is left,”
the word means ‘to take as a companion.’
It is a rapture of honour: it is the word used when our Lord selects
three only out of the Twelve for watchfulness against the great tribulation of
Gethsemane, the select resurrection of Jairus’s daughter, and the kingdom glory
of the Transfiguration.
(2) None but disciples were present; and in Luke
17: 22, 34 our Lord says - “I say unto you, Watch ye”; so Paul, after the warning
- “let us watch and be sober” - adds - “whether we wake [keep awake, are alert,
wakeful, watchful: the word is so used throughout the context] or sleep, we
shall” - as all being believers - “live together with Him” (1 Thess. 5. 10). The sole distinction stated by Jesus is a
distinction of watchfulness; therefore both are believers; for between the
believer and the unbeliever yawns an infinitely wider gulf.
(3) Our Lord directly forbids the unbeliever
to watch. To unregenerate Pharisees,
inquiring the date of the Advent, He says: - “The Kingdom of God cometh not
with observation [with watching]; for lo, the Kingdom of God” - so far as you,
unregenerate souls, are concerned - “is within you” (Luke 17: 20) - it is an
internal matter; for “except a man be begotten from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:
3). For the unbeliever to watch for the
Advent is to watch for his own fearful judgment.
(4) Would an unbeliever watch for Christ’s
return, if told to do so? To be caught
away to Him would be, even more than death, a disgust and a terror, far it
would be an immediate transition to the throne of judgment. No soul can watch for Christ until it loves
Christ; and even of those who love Him, few love His appearing.
(5) Three passages are here (Matt. 24: 37-51)
knit closely together - the unwatchful disciple, the robbed householder, and
the unfaithful steward: obviously they are all warnings pointed at one target:
if, then, they are warnings for worldlings, for hypocrites, for empty professors,
why does our Lord not say so? He drops
no hint to that effect: none but true disciples, so far as can be seen in the
narrative, fill His vision. If the left
disciple, the robbed householder, and the unfaithful steward are all
unregenerate souls, then these commands are not for Christ’s disciples at
all. Why, then, does our Lord speak them
to disciples only, and why does He not tell them to pass them on to the world,
whom alone they concern?
(6) Had these warnings been for the world,
Christ’s words to His own must have been profoundly different: instead of
rousing His disciples by exhortations to watchfulness, He would have comforted
them with explicit assurances that, since rapture rests on sovereign, electing
grace alone, whatever their conduct at the moment of the Advent, their rapture
is sure - an utterance that never falls from His lips.
(7) An overwhelming proof still remains. Can a believer be unwatchful? If so, he instantly falls under the penalty
involved, and if unwatchful at the moment of the Advent, he must be left. Were the Apostles watchful at
Gethsemane? Did Peter watch in the
judgment hall? Were Ananias and Demas
and Diotrophes watchful believers? Why
did our Lord tell the Sardian Angel to become watchful again (Rev. 3: 2), if it
is impossible for a believer to be anything else? Our Lord assumes it possible for the whole
Church to be asleep: “Watch therefore: for ye know not when the Lord of the
house cometh: lest coming suddenly he find you” - you all - “SLEEPING” (Mark 13: 35).
The matter is infinitely grave for us, now in the last hour. For precisely as, in the actual moment of
rapture, Satan will physically dispute the ascent of his supplanters (Rev. xii.
5, 7); so now, spiritually, his supreme aim is so to dissipate watchfulness as
to prevent rapture through un-ripeness: and all teaching that thus lulls the
Church assists his aim - however sincere its motive, or pardonable its
error. Therefore let us heed our Lord’s
solemn call to all His own all down the ages, a call never more urgent than
now: - “What I say unto you [apostles] I say unto all [apostles [and regenerate disciples]], WATCH”
(Mark 13: 37).
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88
The Use of Firearms
No one would ever have dreamed that war is Christian had it not
been for the grave consequences, public and private, of a refusal to fight. “Men
of the most eminent abilities and extensive erudition,” in the words of the
late Bishop Ryle, “have never yet, nor ever will, produce arguments sufficient
to prove that the profession of a soldier is consistent with the profession of
Christianity.”
FORCE. It
is not that force is no remedy; force is an inferior remedy, but it is a
remedy: but the force which is yet to establish righteousness is not ours. “If
my kingdom were of this world” - out of this world, its source and origin here
- “then would my servants fight” - compel submission by armed revolution, to
which alone Gentile Powers yield: “but now is my kingdom not from hence” (John
18: 36).
Angels of irresistible might will subdue iniquity, “at the
revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power in
flaming fire, rendering vengeance” (2 Thess. 1: 7); who “shall gather out of
His kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity” (Matt.
13: 41). The swords which alone are to
enforce righteousness are not human swords at all; and meanwhile all men are
left free to reveal their hearts, with no compulsion more severe than the moral
persuasions of grace.
THE HAZARDS OF WAR. Even
the Sacred Person of our Lord was not to be so defended; and He has Himself
adjudicated on an actual case. To Peter,
with a sword drawn and blooded in his hand, Jesus says, “Put up again thy sword
into its place: for” - here is the first reason for refusing the sword - “all
they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matt. 26: 52). God has withdrawn, as the God of grace, from
behind the man or the movement that appeals to the sword, and remains only as
the God of providence: soldiers are left to the hazards of war.
“The Reformation,” says D’Aubigne, “grasped the sword; and that
very sword pierced its heart.” It was
not always so: war, which is not in itself wrong, was again and again
commanded, under the Law of, Moses, by ‘the God of battles,’ ‘Jehovah of hosts’;
and Jehovah then guaranteed His obedient servants military victory, - “If ye
walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, your enemies shall fall before
you by the sword” (Lev. 26: 3, 8). But
now all fighters are left to the hazards of war: “if any man is for captivity, into
captivity he goeth: if any man shall kill with the sword, with the sword must
he be killed. Here is the patience and
the faith of the saints” (Rev. 13: 10).
The Hugenots gave no quarter in battle, and God let them be wiped
off the face of the earth; as, for example, Virens, one of their pastors, who,
discovered in a cave, shot two soldiers with his own hand, and was immediately
shot dead himself. Zwingle perished as a
young man on the battle field. General
Gordon, after writing, - “I go to the Soudan sure of success,” fell under a
rain of spears on the steps of Government House at Khartoum. Praying Boers were cut up in battalions; as,
centuries earlier, whole armies of Crusaders were annihilated by the
Saracens. In 1907 an American missionary
in Persia led a band or fierce fighters in the defence of Tabriz, and was
himself shot. The soldier who now
survives the hazards of battle does not survive because he is a Christian.
GRACE. It
is not that we are powerless. “Thinkest
thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and He shall even now send Me more than
twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26: 53): if a single angel breathed into
unwaking sleep the whole Assyrian host (2 Kings 19: 35), what power could the
armed millions of Berlin and Paris bring against twelve legions? But we are now bound to the uttermost by the
law of mercy. Luke 9: 54, 55. So our
Lord’s second reason for refusing the sword is this: - “The cup which the
Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18: 11). In the words of Luther: - “We would rather
die ten times than see our Gospel cause one drop of blood to be shed: our part
is to be like lambs for the slaughter.”
Although from the first individual disciples have yielded to persuasion
or compulsion, nevertheless martyr after martyr under the Roman Emperors cried:
- “I am a Christian; and therefore I cannot fight.” To the attack of Celcus, the Gnostic of the
second century, charging the Christian Faith with forbidding arms, Origen
replied admitting it, and asserting the unlawfulness of war to a
Christian. Nor is it lack of
courage. Hard though it be to confront
the grapeshot, it is harder to be dragged to a prison cell under universal execration,
and it is hardest to be wounded in the
house of our friends, and denounced by the vast majority of modern disciples. To stand defenceless before loaded guns is a
braver thing than to confront them from behind another battery. So to the persecutors of the last days,
killing the righteous man, the Spirit prophesies, - “he doth not resist you” (Jas.
5: 6). For at all costs to ourselves the
Gospel must be proved a Gospel of love: “the cup which my Father hath given me,
shall I not drink it?”
THE LAMB AND THE DOVE. For
our supreme Example, and our gracious Indweller, are the Lamb and the
Dove. “There ought to be no question
that the spirit of meekness, which will not meet violence by violence, is the
Christian spirit; and in this day of a recrudescence of militarism, we need
more than ever to insist that the highest type is ‘the Lamb of God,’ ‘as a
sheep before her shearers’ ” (A. MacLaren).
What else do these Scriptures mean?
“Be ye harmless as doves” (Matt. 10: 16); “resist not him that is evil; but
whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt.
5: 39): “the Lord’s servant must not strive, but be gentle towards all” (2 Tim.
2: 24): “avenge not yourselves, beloved, for it is written, Vengeance belongeth
unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord.
BUT IF THINE ENEMY HUNGER, FEED HIM; IF HE THIRST, GIVE HIM TO
DRINK” (Rom. 12: 19).
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The Sinless Christ
Consciousness of Sin. Our
Lord was without any consciousness of sin.
He grew in wisdom and stature, it is never written that He grew in
holiness. When thousands were baptized
in Jordan, confessing their sins, Jesus was baptized, but confessed none. He directed all men to repent (Luke 13: 3),
but never repented Himself. He was never
weary of seeking the wandered sheep, but He never comforted one of them by
saying that He had once wandered Himself.
He never says, If we forgive, our Father will forgive us; but, “If ye forgive, your heavenly Father will
forgive you” (Matt. 6: 14). He not only
confesses no sin; He forgives sin. Now
this becomes the more startling when we remember that the holier a man grows,
the more sensitive he grows to sin in himself; exactly as the more wicked a man
grows, the less he feels his own sinfulness, and becomes ‘past feeling.’ All the Prophets before and after the Lord
had a keen consciousness of their own sin: Moses
- “I am a man of uncircumcised lips” (Ex. 6: 12); Isaiah - “I am a man of unclean lips” (Is. 6: 5); Peter - “I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke
5: 8); Paul - “the chief of sinners”
(I Tim. 1: 15). Jesus never used such
language. He who disclosed the human
heart as the sole reservoir of sin (Mark 7: 21), - who never diagnosed the
surface only, but described the unregenerate Pharisee as “full of all
uncleanness” (Matt. 23: 27), - and all mankind as “being evil” (Matt. 7: 11) -
this probing power that pierced all secrets never went like a dagger into His
own soul. He who commanded confession,
never confessed; He who ordered repentance, never repented; He who gave the
prayer - “God, be merciful to me a sinner,” never prayed it: and, most
astounding of all, the Holy Spirit, whose express function on the earth is to “convict
the world” - the whole world - “of sin” (John 16: 8), never convicted
Christ. Jesus was wholly without
consciousness of sin.
Proof of sin. The facts,
moreover, exactly square with consciousness. “Which of you” - so He challenged
those who watched Him daily, anxious to see Him trip - “convicteth Me” - not
supposes or assumes or imagines, but can prove - “of sin?” (John 8: 46). The Jew accused Jesus of blasphemy, and the
Gentile of treason: but if He was the Son of God, it was not blasphemy to say
so; and if He was the Heir of David, it was not treason to say so: and these
were the sole charges on which He was ever convicted. The Talmud refers to Christ with intense
bitterness, but finds no crime with which to charge Him: nor have any of his
critics since. Those who knew Him best have placed Him highest. Peter - “who did no sin” (1 Pet. 2: 22); John
- “in Him is no sin” (1 John 3: 5); Paul - “who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5: 21);
and even Judas, in spite of the agony of his need to justify his act, says, - “I
betrayed innocent blood” (Matt. 27: 4).
What His own conscience never did, no outside critic has ever done: even
the keenest detective eyes in the universe, with four thousand years’
experience in probing human deceit, found nothing (John 14: 30) in Him. In nothing is our Lord so unique, or more
lonely - so ‘separated from sinners,’ in a catalogue by Himself - than in His
total sinlessness: if sin, after all, is there, the very claim is His fearful
ruin; for it would reveal no ordinary sinner, but a hypocritical impostor of
utterly unsurpassed magnitude and deceit; and “the hope of the world were a lie.”
Deity. Now the implication
is as isolated and stupendous as the fact.
Here is One who, while carrying goodness to its utmost limit, and
teaching not less than perfection, is not conscious that He has done, or can
do, anything wrong Himself. Now this can
be explained in only one way: - not that Jesus was a good Man, for goodness
only makes us more sensitive to our sin; but that He was a perfect Man, for
perfection banishes consciousness of sin altogether. And it is vital to salvation. “Whosoever
shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of
all” (Jas. 2: 10): a Saviour in any degree sinful would be no saviour at
all. One leak would have sunk the Ark of
Noah: one sin would have ruined that saving righteousness of which the Ark is a
type: so, therefore, Scripture always links together, as with clamps of steel,
the sinlessness of the Sacrifice and its efficacy. “Who offered Himself” - as a burnt-offering -
“without spot” (Heb. 9: 14): “who did no sin; but bare our sins upon the tree”
(1 Pet. 2: 22): “manifested to take away sins; and in Him is no sin” (1 John 3:
5): for “once at the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9: 26), “with blood as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1: 19).
But the implication is still more stupendous: it is not only the
sacrifice that is perfect, but the Person. “Why callest thou Me ‘good’? none is
good” - in the absolute sense; that is, perfect - “save one, even God” (Mark
10: 18): DO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I AM
GOD? Perfection reveals the Godhead:
it was God who purchased the Church with His own blood (Acts 20: 28): so the
glad cry goes up from the Church of all ages, - “Thou only art holy; Thou only
art the Lord; Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the
glory of God the Father.” For “we are in
Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.
THIS IS THE TRUE GOD, and
eternal life” (1 John 5: 20).
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The Prophecy on Olivet
Our Lord’s great prophecy, evoked by questions that embraced the
world, covers, as we should therefore expect, the totality of mankind: it
unfolds, in three deeply serrated sections, the destiny of the three inspired
divisions of mankind - “THE JEWS, THE GENTILES, AND THE CHURCH OF GOD” (1 Cor.
10: 32), all of whom remain in the world up to the end of the Age. Four is the world-number (Dan. 7: 2, 3; Rev.
7: 1, 9, etc.): so four apostles are selected to receive and transmit this
world-utterance; and the revelation is fourfold, revealing, in answer to the
disciples’ first question (1) the
destiny of the Temple, and then, in answer to their two further questions, the destiny
of (2) the Jew; (3) the Church; and (4)
the Gentile.
THREE SECTIONS. Thus each main section, radically distinct from the rest, is
peculiarly characteristic of the group of mankind whose destiny it
reveals. In the Jewish and Gentile
sections all is literal - in the Church section all is figurative: words of
sight, not faith, occur in the Jewish and Gentile sections, and their ‘signs’
are signs obvious to the senses, for they walk by sight, not faith; whereas the
‘signs’ presented to the Church are, as throughout Scripture, moral: in the
Jewish and Gentile sections no reference is made to ‘servants,’ for God’s
servants in this Age are Christian: and lessons are drawn for the Apostles in
the Church section only, for it alone concerns them and us. All three sections are radically distinct in
phraseology and theological import.
THE JEW. Matt.
24:7-31. Thus, after the first question of the apostles has been met by the
announcement of the Roman destruction (Matt. 24: 1-6), and separated by a great
gulf from the rest - “But the End [concerning which the disciples asked, the
consummation of the Age] is not yet,” the Jewish section - uttered for “them
that are in Judea” (24: 16) - at once deals with a literal ‘holy place,’ or
rebuilt temple; ‘salvation’ is used in the sense of physical deliverance; the
Gospel named is the Gospel of the Kingdom; escape is by physical flight to the
mountains; prayer is to be offered that the sabbath be not violated by the
flight falling on that day; false Christs are especially emphasised, for the
Jew is still in danger from messiahs in ‘inner chambers’; and the tribes of the
land, beholding Messiah’s descent in glory, and penitent, are gathered as God’s
earthly elect, not from Heaven, but from the four winds. All is Jewish throughout.
THE CHURCH. Matt.
24: 32, 33; 25: 30. The Church section
is wholly diverse. Parables immediately
begin, and compose the whole section; for to us it is given to know the
mysteries of the Kingdom. Thus the first
section is local, and directed to Judea: the second is universal, even as the
Church is Catholic. ‘Day’ in the first
section is literal, in the second figurative: ‘night’ in the first is literal,
in the second figurative: ‘sleep’ in the first is literal, in the second
figurative: ‘winter’ in the first is literal, ‘summer’ in the second
figurative: ‘house’ in the first is literal, in the second figurative. So also, whereas the Jewish escape is
earthly, across the mountains into the wilderness, the Church escape is
heavenly - a sudden and mysterious disappearance off the earth altogether: the
Jewish escape depends on physical activity, the Church escape depends on
spiritual watchfulness: therefore prayer in the one case is for the avoidance
of flight on a sabbath or in winter, in the other case it is for moral
worthiness (Luke 21: 36). Sex is
disability to the Jewish escape; it is none to the Christian. No Household (24: 45) since our Lord spoke
has been recognised by God except the Christian Church; so also the Parable of
the Virgins, ready and unready for the Advent, is manifestly Christian; and the
Parable of the Talents is especially stated (25: 14, 19) as extending from
Advent to Advent, and is therefore also Christian. So the two living (24: 40), one rapt and one
left, and the ten dead (25: 1), five prudent and five imprudent, together make
up the Twelve of the whole Church. All
is Christian throughout.
THE GENTILE. Matt. 25: 31-46. The Gentile section gives the last act of the
old Age before the actual establishment of the Kingdom, and covers the last
remaining portion of mankind at the End.
It is wholly silent on the Church, and its reference to the Jew - the ‘least
brethren’ - is veiled: in it ‘all the nations’ - the mass of Gentiles - are
gathered before Christ. In all three
sections Christ appears in His universal title as Son of Man; and, in the
Jewish section, as Son of Man only; but in the Christian as Lord of the
Household, and also as Bridegroom; and in the Gentile, as King, and as a King
unknown (25: 37) to the Gentile world.
So for the Gentile alive at the Advent, saved in a later epoch, and
elect ‘from the foundation of the world’ (25: 34), unlike the Church elect ‘before’(Eph.
1: 4), judgment is not by faith, but by a law of works - “inasmuch as ye did it”;
but is neither the Law of Moses, nor works done after faith in Christ; but a
law of works peculiar to the Gentile world immediately before the Advent, and
based upon Christ as the Jehovah of the Jews.
All is Gentile
throughout.
Thus our Lord, as Universal Prophet, unfolds the destiny of all
mankind; the faithful Israelite finding safety in the wilderness, the watchful
believer finding safety in rapture, and the redeemed Gentile finding safety
through his kindness to the Jew. To each
group our Lord portrays its peculiar peril, and reveals its sole avenue of
escape:
(1) for the Jew, instantaneous flight, on a
given signal;
(2) for the Christian, perpetual
watchfulness and prayer for ripeness to be reaped; and
(3) for the Gentile, grace shown to the
miraculously gifted (Mark 13: 11) ambassadors of Israel,
which Christ will accept as grace shown to
Himself.
Worldwide questions, covering the time of the End, our Lord thus
answers by revealing the destiny of the world at the consummation of the Age.
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To Each His Work
WORK. Our
Lord’s motto for every disciple is - “TO
EACH HIS WORK” (Mark 13: 34): and so ample and complex is that work that it
is called ministering service (Matt. 23: 11), household service (Rom. 14: 4),
responsible service (John 18: 36), worshipping service (Rom. 12: 1), succouring
service (Heb. 3: 5), priestly service (Phil. 2: 17), and, as here, bond
service. God calls a soul to work the moment that He calls it to life.
OUR WORK. When our Lord laid down His Divine task,
He entrusted it - not to angels, nor to kingdoms, nor to apostles only, but -
to you and me. “It is as when a man, sojourning
in another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants”:
- authority for what? - “to each his work.”
Millions of souls have to be saved, and myriads to be sanctified:
countless truths, popular and unpopular, are to be sown over the world: whole
continents must receive the light: - and each of us is a designed cog or
flywheel in this mighty mechanism of God.
Before our creation in Christ - it may be in the eternal ages - God
chose us for it: “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore
prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2: 10).
OUR SHARE.
Christ reveals an individual allotment.
Not, to each some work, or, to each a work, but, “to each his work.” This is an exquisite revelation. Each can give a glory to God which no other
being in the universe can: each can do a work for God which from eternity has
been allotted to him alone. How this
ennobles and dignifies the saved soul!
God has allotted the toil of the whole Church so as to rest in wise
distribution upon each.
OUR TASK. The
size of the task is not stated. It may
be a great work, or a small work: the supreme point is that it is my work; and
as such I can do it, I ought to do it, and at the Judgment Seat I will be asked
if I did do it. Luke 19: 15; 2 Cor. 5: 10.
Christ would have us do a small work which He commanded, rather than a
large work which He did not; for all planned work is necessary to the building,
and planned work only. “A man’s
character is what he is in the dark”; a man’s work is what he does in the dark:
and if I do what God tells me, and how He tells me, I am doing the supremest
thing possible to my soul: and a soul’s utmost is always magnificent. Mark 14:
8, 9. We are weaving our own
glory-robes. Rev. 19: 8; 2 Cor. 5: 3. “Behold,
I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each according as his
work is” (Rev. 22: 12).
OUR VINEYARD. The
work waits. Matt. 20: 3. (1) It is possible to find it. Our Lord would hold no soul responsible for a
work unless with the work was granted the power to discover it: but He alone
can tell us what it is. His foundations
were laid in eternity; His plans for the superstructure were drawn up in
eternity also; in eternity each task He allotted by name: - “Lord, what wilt
Thou have me to do?” Gal. 6: 4. (2)
It is possible to do it. Christ has not
planned work outside our abilities, or beyond our opportunities: He knows what
He made us for, and what we can do best, and He has planned that we should do
that. He made us in nature with a view
to what we should become in grace: He chose our cradle, and He will choose our
grave, and He chooses all the Christian work we are to do between. (3)
It is possible (I think) to know that we are doing it. How? God will open the way by circumstances:
He will satisfy our conscience that it is right work: He will convince our
judgment that it is the right work for us: He will confirm it by the approval
of mature Christian friends: and He will establish it with definite
blessing. Then (4) having found it, we must persist in it until He tells us to
drop or change it. One kind of firefly,
in the tropics, glows only so long as it flies, - the moment it rests, it
darkens. Wesley’s motto - “All at it,
and always at it” - is the secret of the luminous life. Matt. 5: 16.
OUR MASTER. “To
each [Christ gave] his work”: therefore I am doing it for Him. “Our conversation,” says Tertullian, of the
early Christians, “is that of men who are conscious that the Lord hears them.”
When the world puts its ear to our work, it should hear in it all - like the
ocean in the shell - the great Eternity to which we hasten. “The love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor.
5: 14): how this transmutes the daily toil, and the household drudgery, into
the golden labour of a better world! “For
years,” Mr. Moody said, before he died, “my prayer has been that God will let
me die when the spirit of revival dies out of my heart.”
OUR INCREASE. Are
any of us shirking our allotted task? “The
shirking of the man who prays, and the praying of the man who shirks, is
equally an abomination to God.” So soon
we shall have to lay all work down. “We
must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when
no man can work” (John 9: 4). Task every
faculty; strain every power; break new ground; put no limit to your toil save
that which God put when He made you: be it said of each of us - “I know that
thy last works are more than the first” (Rev. 2: 19). 2 Cor. 9: 8.
Let us fling open every compartment of our being to the in-draught of
God: let us fling ourselves into the mid-current of His all-gracious,
all-glorious purposes.
“He that overcometh, and he that keepeth My WORKS unto the end, to him will I
give AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS: and
I will give him the morning star” (Rev. 2: 26).
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The Seed and the Soil
HARD SOIL. For
three times our Lord is recorded as carefully explaining that all our
fruitfulness depends on our doctrinal receptivity. Let us ponder so practical a truth. Much Seed poured upon the ground - “the seed
is the Word of God” (Luke 8: 11) - never germinates. How is this? “The evil one snatcheth away
that which hath been sown in his heart” (Matt. 13: 19): “the words indicate
that the ‘catching away’ takes place almost during the act of hearing”
(Lange). A momentous principle
emerges. Fruit in the fruitful - all
that is good in a man’s life - lies in the seed, not in the soil: therefore to
reject the seed reduces the character to perpetual barrenness. Where no
softness, no hunger, of spirit absorbs the Word, Satan “immediately” (Mark 4:
15) removes the truth as it lies on the surface of the heart; the life is
seedless, rootless, treeless, fruitless. Luke 8: 12.
SHALLOW SOIL. Other Seed-springs with exquisite promise. Soon, however, the face darkens, the life
shrivels; the whole Christian service
(sooner or later) wilts and withers. How
is this? “These straightway receive the word with joy, ... but, when
tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word [i.e.,
“the word of the Kingdom” (Matt. 13:
19)], straightway they stumble”
(Mark 4: 16). A principle hardly less
momentous emerges here. Our Lord assumes
the perpetual union of truth and tribulation, of service and sorrow, of cross
with crown: he therefore who flinches from the sorrow forfeits the fruit. Deep roots require deep soil. The Shallow Soil retains that Seed only which
involves no risk, or is not distasteful.
But Truth in a world of falsehood is necessarily a severe sufferer. So the [spiritual] life
begins to wilt from the moment there is a picking and choosing of
doctrines. It is a grave error to
imagine that we may believe what we choose in the Word of God. Each Divine
doctrine is a seed: each seed can alone produce its peculiar fruit: so the rejection
of any one seed makes its fruit for ever impossible to us. For each revealed truth God designed and gave
in order to have a specific effect on character, and result in life: refusal,
or choking, of the seed defeats the design.
WEEDY SOIL.
Still other Soil compels the conviction of a great harvest: yet the
fields of waving green never ripen into gold.
How is this? “Thorns ... choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matt.
13: 22). Four are the kinds of the
soul’s thornbush:- (1) cares of this age; (2) deceitfulness of riches; (3)
lusts of other things; (4) pleasures of this life. “They sit before thee as my people, and they
hear thy words, but do them not: for with their mouth they show much love, but
their heart goeth after their gain” (Ezek. 33: 31[R.V.]). A secret blight attacks the bloom, stunts the
young fruitage, and, though the Seed is retained, none ever comes to
perfection: it is a barren orthodoxy.
BARRENNESS. All
three Soils are unploughed: it is the un-harrowed heart that bears no fruit to
God. The enemies are three: - the Birds
- Satan; the Rock - the flesh; the Thorns - the world. Of four seeds one fell, but never sprang; one
sprang, but never grew; one grew, but never fruited; only one bore fruit. How solemn!
In the first soil, no moisture - no
wish to learn, no receptivity of
soul; in the second, no depth - no love
of the truth, no resolution of
character; in the third, no
cleanness - no singleness of heart,
no real consecration: the fourth
soil – soft, deep, clean. Our present character and our future destiny
are shaped solely by our treatment of the Word of God.
GOOD SOIL. “These bear the word” - search the Scripture - “accept it” - believe it - “and bear fruit” - obey it: “having heard the word” - attention - “they hold it fast” - meditation - “and bring forth fruit” (Luke
8: 15) - obedience. By hearing the soil opens: by meditation the
seed germinates: by obedience the doctrine becomes life. Whether it be fundamental, dispensational,
prophetic, or devotional; whether it touches salvation, or character, or
conduct, or reward; whether for teaching, or reproof, or correction, or
instruction in righteousness: - the doctrinal is the seed-bed of the practical;
truth is the root, out of which springs life, the fruit. Jas. 1: 21-25.
The wise hearer consults the Oracle in his lap, unwrestingly (2
Pet. 3: 16), unrebelliously (Is. 66: 2), undeceitfully (2 Cor. 4: 2),
unwearying (Deut. 6: 7). So let us (1) hear. The soil, of itself, is empty; we must take
in seed if we are to give out fruit; and the amount of fruit given out will be
exactly regulated by the amount of seed taken in. Every [false] doctrine
rejected is a fresh impossibility of a hundredfold yield: every new truth,
received and obeyed, lades a new branch with fruit. Let us (2)
hold it fast. Seed, once absorbed, can
be expelled: the fruit peculiar to that seed can then never be borne. Every abandoned truth is a crippling of
character, a damage to testimony, a mutilation of life: whereas seed absorbed,
and kept buried in AN HONEST AND GOOD
HEART, itself does the rest; with the lovely unconsciousness of a springing
flower, it fruits in a faithful life.
Let us (3) bear much fruit. John
15: 8. How immense the chasm between
thirty fold and a hundredfold! We are
nearing the last cataracts: let us make our hearts a seed-bed for the whole
Book of God, for only so can our characters grow to the full-orbed character of
the Divine Author.
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Purgatory
PURGING. It
is a supreme peculiarity of our Lord’s love to His own that it can never stop
short of the perfection of the person loved.
“As many as I love, I chasten” (Rev. 3: 19). “He chastens us for our profit, that we may
become partakers of His holiness” (Heb. 12: 10). His holiness is perfection; so that our
discipline, however drastic or prolonged, is never a proof of His enmity, but
of His love; and is never a sign - either now, or at the Judgment Seat - of a
disciple’s ultimate destruction, but of his ultimate perfection. Where others show their love by indulgence,
Christ shows His by chastisement. “Every branch that beareth fruit, He PURGETH it” (John 15: 2).
PURGATORY.
The Roman doctrine of Purgatory would have been impossible had the
Church always held and taught the full Scripture truth of a believer’s
purging. Only twice has the Roman
doctrine been officially defined. “If
such as be truly penitent die in God’s favour before they have satisfied for
their sins of commission and omission by worthy fruits of penance” - i.e., assisted their own atonement - “their
souls are purged after death with purgatorial punishments” (Council of
Ferrara); “and the souls delivered there are assisted by the suffrages [prayers
and devotions] of the Faithful, and especially by the most acceptable sacrifice
of the Mass” (Council of Trent).
ERRORS OF PURGATORY.
The manifest errors here - apart from such fearful accretions as the
sale of indulgences, or the efficacy of the Mass - are mainly three. (1)
The doctrine of Purgatory locates the purging in Hades: Scripture locates it in
this life, and at the Judgment Seat after resurrection, but never in
Hades. Paradise, for all believers, is
the ‘very far better’ of the immediate presence of Christ. (2)
No power of pope or priest, and no prayers of fellow-believers, can in the
slightest degree modify the judgments due to any man, believer or unbeliever,
after he has once passed into the other world.
“It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh JUDGMENT” (Heb. 9: 27). Paul, most remarkably, does pray for a
believer “that he may receive mercy of the Lord in that day” (2 Tim. 1: 18):
but Onesiphorus was still alive; and there was still room for Paul’s prayer to
become operative in his life. Prayer for
the dead is unknown in the Scriptures.
This cuts away the root of all abominations (indulgences, etc.) that
have grown around the Roman doctrine. (3) But the vital error lies in
confusing discipline with salvation.
Chastisement is necessary and salutary: it is inflicted by God in this
life upon all believers without exception (Heb. 12: 8): it may, in extreme
cases, be fearful bodily disease (Ex. 15: 26), or even be mortal (1 Cor. 11: 30):
since death produces no magical change, converting the sinning into the sinless.
and since much less can - it cancels unrepented offences during discipleship,
chastisement may be equally necessary and salutary at the Judgment Seat:- but
disciplinary suffering has no connection whatever with eternal life. There are no atoning sufferings but the
sufferings of Calvary: works with a view to salvation are sinful and
deadly. “Not of works, that no man
should glory” (Eph. 2: 9).
PURGING BY BLOOD.
Now we turn to the Scripture discipline: and the purging by blood must
precede the purging by discipline. “According
to the law, all things are purged by blood” (Heb. 9: 22): “how much more shall
the blood of Christ purge your conscience from dead works” - the deadly efforts
of self-righteousness - “to serve the living God” (Heb. 9: 14). For Christ has affected the essential and
fundamental purging once for all: “who when He had purged our sins, sat down on
the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1: 3): and this purging is the
sole basis, and predisposing cause, of all subsequent purging. For only a saved soul can be purged by
chastisement. No amount or degree of
suffering can improve into life a soul dead in trespasses and sins, any more
than dead wood can be made to grow fruit by pruning: chastisement cannot purge
him: he can be purged, but not by chastisement: and God is not habitually
chastening the wicked at all. For “if ye
are without chastening, whereby all [believers] have been made partakers, then
are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb. 12: 8).
Corrective sufferings are only granted and effective to those already
purged by the sacrificial sufferings of Calvary.
PURGING BY DISCIPLINE.
The second purging is discipline. “Every branch that beareth fruit” - i.e., living wood, set in the living
Vine - “He purgeth it” (John 15: 2). A
soul which is born again, yet still having ‘the flesh’ in him, can have his
still fallible character corrected and elevated and cleansed by
chastisement. Nor need this purging end
with life. “Some of the oldest Roman
divines taught that all the remains of sin in God’s children are quite
abolished by final grace at the very instant of their dissolution; so that the
stain of the least sin is not left behind to be carried into the other world”
(Archbishop Usher’s Answer to a Jesuit, p. 165). This ancient Roman doctrine is as
unscriptural as the later Roman doctrine of Purgatory. For the believer who falls asleep unwatchful,
wakes unwatchful - the servant who dies slothful, appears before the Judgment
Seat slothful: their last look on this world is, morally, their first look on
the next: they will be purged, but they are not purged: there is no magic in
death, and no opportunity in Hades to correct a faulty discipleship: and the
coming millennial day of justice, dominated by the Judgment Seat, has for its
essential characteristic the recoil of works in judicial retribution.
“For he that doeth wrong” - the context is addressed solely to
believers - “SHALL RECEIVE AGAIN FOR THE
WRONG THAT HE HATH DONE: and there is no respect of persons” (Col. 3: 25). But it is Divine Love that will not rest
until all we who believe are “become partakers of His holiness”: no disciple
ever involves our destruction; it effects, sooner or later, our perfection.
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94.
The Image of the Invisible
God
THE BEGINNING. No
word could be altered in the first five verses of the Gospel of John - so
wrought are they with extremest care - without opening the door to the gravest
errors; and the first two verses are one of the exceedingly rare photographic
negatives, so to speak, exposed to the void eternity of God. Now, as the curtain is thus drawn from
Eternity, in the background of all worlds, the first object which strikes our
eyes is Christ; the first orb shining in the primal dawn, already there, is the
Logos. “In the beginning” - not, in the
beginning of the world; but in the dawn behind the worlds - “was” - as a
luminary already shining in meridian splendour - “the Word” (John 1: 1): men
are born, worlds are made, Christ is.
The world was from the beginning; Christ was in the beginning: He was in
the beginning, for He never had a beginning.
Christ is the Thought or Word of God; and, as there could never be a
time when God had no thought or word, so Christ must be as eternal as God. He who is before all worlds must be God. “Out of thee, Bethlehem Ephrahah” - out of
the manger in the inn - “shall One come forth whose goings forth are from of
old, FROM EVERLASTING” (Micah. 5: 2). The Morning Star in the great Void backward
is the eternal Christ. No one could tell
us this but God; for no one then existed but God; and God says that, in the
primal dawn, Christ was already there.
THE COMPANIONSHIP. But
is He the solitary Orb? Is He the only
Godhead, so that when emptied of Deity? is there no God but the Word? Another Orb of Deity co-equally fills the
void, exposed on this sensitive plate set to Eternity. “And the Word was with” - literally, stood
over against, yet for ever moved towards - “God”; two Thrones of Deity
confronting one another, face to face in a co-equal blessedness, and a
perpetual communion. The same responsive companionship is betrayed in a later
preposition, - “The only begotten Son, who is into the bosom of the Father” (John
1: 18): the eternal motion of Christ is Godward, and the eternal response of
God is Christward; “whose goings forth are from everlasting” (Micah 5: 2). So the Psalm, with extraordinary clearness, -
“Of the Son He [God] saith, Thy throne, O God”- two Divine Persons, each
addressing the other as God - “is for ever and ever” (Heb. 1: 8); and our Lord
recalls the companionship, - “And now, O Father, glorify Me with the glory
which I had with Thee before the world was” (John 17: 5). God is love, and this proves it; for love is
a relationship between persons, and is impossible without plurality: so our
Lord says, - “Thou lovest ME before
the foundation of the world” (John 17: 24).
The eternal Christ was enthroned in communion with God from everlasting.
THE DEITY. Now
we arrive at a definite declaration of Godhead.
“And the Word was God”: not a god, but God; not a lower kind of God, but
God: and the word ‘God’ is put in the Greek in the place of emphasis. Christ not the only Godhead, but He is
essential Godhead: “I am in the Father and the Father [reciprocally] in Me” (John
14: 10); “I and the Father are” - here are two Persons - “one” (John 10: 30) -
for there is but one God, in nature, in essence, in kind. The oneness of the Godhead is as vital as the
plurality of the Persons. Ever blessed
Trinity in unity! “It is rashness to
search too far into it; it is piety to believe it; it is life eternal to know
it” (Bernard). But this simple, profound
utterance, ringing out like a sharp, pungent oracle, forever defines the Christ
of God. “In the beginning was the Word”
- an eternal Christ; “and the Word was with God” - a coequal Christ; “and the
Word was God” - a Divine Christ: “in the beginning was the Word” - the eternity
of Jesus; “and the Word was with God” - the separate personality of Jesus; “and
the Word was God” - the Godhead of Jesus.
THE IMAGE. So
we arrive at the exact position of our Lord in the Deity. “Who is the image of the invisible God” (Col.
1: 15). In the background is God
invisible, “dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor can
see” (1 Tim. 6: 16): the invisible God - how dreadful is this impenetrable
vail! how fathomless the mystery! For He
dwells “in light unapproachable”: that is, all approach, all revelation of
Deity, must come from that side; and it has.
“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in
the bosom of the Father, HE HATH
DECLARED HIM” (John 1: 18). As on
the depthless darkness of midnight skies the sun, coming forth out of the bosom
of the heavens, reveals the burning light buried deep in the darkness, so
Christ is “the effulgence” - the apocalypse - “of His glory, the very image of
His substance” (Heb. 1: 3): He is the outburst of God. For He was God manifest, long ere He was God
manifest in the flesh; His were the manifestations, visible and tangible, of
the Jehovah Angel; and from all eternity He images forth that in God which is
invisible. All the holiness that is in
God, is also in Christ; all the power that is in God, is also in Christ; all
the love that is in God, is also in Christ, - “who is the effulgence of His
glory, and the very image of His substance”; the Image, not of the Father only,
but of God. “He that hath seen Me HATH SEEN THE FATHER” (John 14: 9).
THE GOSPEL.
What then is the inconceivably important consequence of the God head of
Christ? That the Gospel is true, and
that no man rejects it except at his own infinite peril. For what Christ was before all worlds alone
reveals how He was able, and He only, to carry the vast burden of a world’s
guilt, and to undertake the stupendous enterprise of a world’s salvation. As infinite as the Person, so infinite is the
merit and the work: for “unto us a child is born, and his name shall be called
the Mighty God” (Is. 9: 6); “of whom is Christ concerning the flesh, who is, GOD OVER ALL, blessed for ever” (Rom.
9: 5); and the Church, has thus been bought with the blood of the infinite - “the
church of God, which he purchased with His own blood”(Acts 20: 28). So also we wait for the Image of the
invisible God. For the Father never ‘appears’
to men in the flesh - “whom no man hath seen, nor can see” (1 Tim, 6: 16); but
we “look for the appearing of our GREAT
GOD and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2: 13).
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95
One Shall Be Left
THE JEWISH ESCAPE. A Woman, in parabolic prophecy, is a
city (Gal. 4. 25; Rev. 18: 18; 21: 9, 10, etc.): Jerusalem, the mother of all
dispensations, is crowned with the twelve Patriarchs, has the Law beneath her
feet, and is clothed with Christ (Rev. 12: l); it is the holy City. Thus her flight - for “the woman fled into
the wilderness”- is the escape from Antichrist of believing Jews, obedient to
our Lord’s command, - “When ye see the abomination of desolation standing in
the holy place [the rebuilt Temple], then let them that are in Judea” - Jews,
who hold this command in their hands, and believe it - “flee unto the mountains”
(Matt. 24: 15) - beyond which lies the Wilderness, where the experience of
Sinai is repeated: “that there they” - presumably the Angels - “may nourish her”
- doubtless again with manna, ‘angels’ food,’ the commissariat of the
wilderness - “a thousand, two hundred and threescore days,” or throughout the
reign of Antichrist. It is the earthly
deliverance of the earthly people.
THE CHRISTIAN ESCAPE. A
second, and heavenly, deliverance immediately precedes: “her child was caught
up unto God, and unto His throne.” This
child is not Christ: because (1)
Christ was Mary’s firstborn - this mother has already had other seed (ver. 17);
(2) Christ has already been rapt
nearly 1900 years before this prophecy, which, as all the Apocalypse after chapter
3., is still unfulfilled; (3) like
mother, like child - as the mother is obviously figurative, and therefore is
not Mary, so is her child also figurative, and therefore is not Christ; and (4) Bethlehem, not Jerusalem, gave
birth to Jesus. It is “a manchild, who
is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron”: therefore it is that group of
saints named by our Lord, - “He that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works
unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations; and he shall rule
them with a rod of iron” (Rev. 2: 26).
Here, without question, there is a rapture - “unto God, and unto His
throne”; and a rapture which totally delivers from the Great Tribulation, for
that the Dragon creates after the Child is gone. It is an escape in accordance with another
command of Christ, - “Watch ye, and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall
come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21: 36). It is the heavenly escape of the heavenly
people.
DISOBEDIENCE.
Now we reach a crucial point of incalculable importance. To the Jew Jesus says - ‘Fly’; To the
Christian He says - ‘Watch and pray’: but what if they do not? Are Christ’s commands, as a matter of fact,
or of Scripture record, always and constantly obeyed by all His people? No command did God ever give to His people
but some of them disobeyed it. But here
the decision of the point, as a matter of prophetic fact, is swift and sure. If the whole of saved Israel escapes into the
wilderness, and the whole of the Church escapes into the heavens, no believing
Jews, and no Christian believers, are left throughout the habitable earth: the
whole world has been reaped by one swing of the scythe. But the reverse is here revealed as the truth. “And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and
went away to make war with the rest” - the remnants, the remainders; the Greek
is plural - “of her seed”: two remnants - (1)
“they which keep the commandments of God,” a characteristic description of
God’s earthly people; and (2) “they
which hold the testimony of Jesus,” a description confined in Scripture to the
Church, the heavenly people. Nor can
these remnants be converts made during the Great Tribulation: for they are
older children of the Woman; they were already on earth, as her regenerate
seed, before the rapture of the Child, and before the flight of the Mother; and
also before Satan is cast into the earth to start the hurricane of the
Tribulation. Here are the disobedient of
both Peoples exposed to the full blast of Tribulation wrath.
ONE SHALL BE LEFT. For
the Scripture references put the matter beyond doubt. “They” [are] Paul’s
testimony concerning Jesus (Acts 22: 18) - that is, the Christian gospel: “I am
a fellow servant with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of
Jesus” (Rev. 19: 10) - manifestly John’s fellow-Christians “I saw the souls of
them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 20: 4) -
Christian martyrs: one Remnant harried by Satan is the uncut, unripe wheat of
the Church of God. It was the peril that
beset the Sardian Angel. “If thou shalt not watch”- obviously a rebuke, a
threat; a failure on his part to keep the essential condition of the
rapture-promise (Rev. 3: 10) - “I will come [Greek: arrive], 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, to the total ignorance of the un-rapt Angel. Thus also is our Lord’s other word
fulfilled. “Ye are the salt of the earth:
but if the salt have lost its savour” - not change its nature, which is
possible neither to salt nor to a disciple; but lose its peculiar flavour, like
the ‘dead’ Sardian Angel - “it is thenceforth good for noting, but to be cast
out and trodden under foot of would not receive men” (Matt. 5: 13) - exposed to
the hot persecutions of the Day of the Lord.
Ripened by persecution, many such will enrich the martyrs’ roll: “blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord [Christians therefore] from henceforth” (Rev.
14: 13) - that is, in the Tribulation epoch.
Total entanglement is as possible to a believer as total deliverance.
WATCH. “Then shall two men be in the field; one
is taken, and one is left: two women shall be grinding at the mill; one is
taken, and one is left. WATCH THEREFORE” (Matt. 24: 40).
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96
Strangers and Pilgrims
THE HOLY NATION.
Rarely, if ever, has the church of God been in graver peril of betraying
her God-given standing than she is at this moment throughout the world. For what is the standing of the Church of God? “Ye are a holy nation; which in time past
were no people, but now are the people of God” (1 Pet. 2: 9). Three times Jehovah said to Israel, - “Ye are
a holy nation”; but Israel fell into deep ungodliness: now therefore, out of
all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, God is composing ‘a holy nation’;
and there is no other holy nation in the world.
All nations (including Israel) are Lo Ammi - not my people. It is said that England is a commercial
nation, Germany a military nation, - France an artistic nation: this is a holy
nation, not always holy in conduct, but holy in calling, in imputation, and in
destiny. It is a nation in which there
is someone from every nation (Rev. vii. 9) that ever existed: its government is
not visible, its territory is not here, its code of laws is not human, its King
is at present a world-exile. All other
nations belong to the world, - for the world is but an aggregate of the
nations; this Nation belongs to God: therefore between this and all other
nations yawns a gulf high as Heaven and deep as Hell. “I saw, and beheld, a great multitude, which
no man could number, out of all tribes and peoples and nations and tongues, standing
before the Throne” (Rev. 7: 9).
FOREINNERS.
What then is our exact relationship to all other peoples of the earth
through whom we are scattered? “Beloved,
I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims.”
The word here rendered ‘sojourners,’ means ‘foreign settlers,’ ‘dwellers
in a foreign land’; and the word rendered ‘pilgrims’ means ‘transient settlers,’
almost ‘tourists,’ travellers passing through: the one word means that we are
not at home, the other that we are not among our own folk. “For they that say such things” - namely that
they are ‘strangers and pilgrims upon the earth’ - “make it manifest that they
are seeking after a country of their own” (Heb. 11: 14).
So, then, “if we are naturalized as citizens there, we cannot help
being aliens here” (Dr. A. Maclaren): no man can be a naturalized citizen of
two countries at once. Thus we are not ‘nationals’;
for God has called us “out of” - and so outside of - “all nations and tribes
and peoples and tongues”: nor ‘internationals,’ or cosmopolitan - citizens of
the world; for “I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John
15: 19): we are foreigners in every land; everywhere we are missionaries in a
foreign land; we speak every language of earth with a foreign accent.
Now our peril is that we may think that all such language is simply
poetry, instead of language that expresses God’s holy and profound principles,
on which we are to build our conduct.
When we say ‘we,’ what ought we to mean?
The Holy Nation: not Britain, or France, or Germany, or China; but the
Holy Catholic Church throughout all the world; “where there is neither Greek
nor Jew circumcision, nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free” (Col.
3: 11); but alone stands forth the Mystical Christ. It has ever been so, even when God’s nation
had a territory and a name. “I am a
stranger with Thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were” (Psa. 39: 12). From the moment that God said, “Cursed is the
ground,” all sons of God have been homeless wanderers and disinherited
exiles. As godly pilgrims (not hermits)
we submit to every ordinance of the nations through which we pass (1 Pet. 2: 13)
that does not clash with the law of God (Acts 5: 29); we render taxation to
whom taxation is due (Rom. 13: 7); we are Divinely appointed intercessors for
all in authority (1 Tim. 2: 2); - a threefold helpfulness to the State which,
combined, is equalled by no citizen in any nation: we are to act in love toward
all nations, at all seasons, under all circumstances, in all ways: but “our
citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3: 20).
Since heaven has become my country, the whole world is a place of exile;
for Constantinople is no nearer Paradise than the desert to which they have
sent me” (Chrysostom).
A CRUCIFIED WORLD.
What then is the practical issue?
“Come ye out, and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6: 17). The Church and the World are two circles
which intersect nowhere: two divisions of mankind, without a third, mutually
exclusive each of each. In which circle,
as a matter of fact, lies the State? The
Army and Navy? Politics? Wars and duels
and rifles? The theatre, the
betting-ring, the racecourse? “Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world: for all that is in the
world is not of the Father” (1 John 2: 15).
The world was buried for us in the baptismal grave. As Israel, separated from all nations,
plunged into the Red Sea, and rose to walk, a lonely nation, with God in the
wilderness; so the Church, composed of all tribes and peoples and nations and
tongues, goes down into baptism many nations, but rises up one nation, with all
national, racial, fleshly distractions obliterated for ever, drowned: for “through
the cross” - set forth in the ritual death - “the world hath been crucified
unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6: 14).
And now shall we go back? “And
if indeed they”- God’s sublimest heroes of the Old Testament - “had been
mindful of that country, from which they went out, they would have had
opportunity to return: but now they desire a better country, that is, a
heavenly: wherefore” - for it is the pilgrim - whom God supremely loves - “God
is not ashamed” “of them, to be called their God, and He hath prepared for them
a city”: - He will see to it that we are not pilgrims for ever.
BIRTH. So
what is the Holy Nation? “An elect race”- or generated thing; one stock out of
one birth: as Israel all sprang from one man, Abraham, so the new Nation all
spring from the one generation of the Holy Ghost. How did we become
British? By birth: how then do we become
part of the Holy Nation? By birth again.
“Ye MUST be born AGAIN” (John 3: 7).
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97
The Creator Christ
CREATION. The
first view we ever get of Christ is as God: “in the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was God”: and when Eternity passes into Time, at the exact junction of
the crossing where all worlds were made, it is in the full panoply of the
creating Godhead that we behold our Lord.
For “all things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made
that hath been made” (John 1: 3): “in Him were all things created: all things
have been created through Him” (Col. 1: 16).
Our Lord not only is God, but He has acted as God: for creation is the
challenging proof of Godhead, and the whole creative power of the Godhead
centres in Christ: “He that built all things is God” (Heb. 3: 4). No materials lay at hand for the construction
of a universe: “the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is
seen hath not been made out of things which do appear”(Heb. 11: 3): “whether
thrones” - the crowned heads of the Angels - “or dominions” - angelic satrapies
- “or principalities” - subordinate chiefs - “or powers” - controlling winds
and lightnings; “all things have been created through Him.” As no creature is too minute, so none is too
gigantic; as none is too simple, so none is too complex; as none is too humble,
so none is too sublime: through whom “He made the worlds” (Heb. 1: 2) - the
heavenly world, and the earthly world; the external world, and the internal
world of the soul; this world, and all other worlds. Our Lord emerges into Time exercising the
full functions and prerogatives of Godhead.
PROVIDENCE. But
the matter does not end there. “Who upholdeth all things by the word of His
power” (Heb. 1: 3): for “in Him all things consist”(Col. 1: 17) - that is,
cohere, hold together; so that, but for the power momently issuing from the
word of Christ, binding creation in continuous life, all things would fly back
into their native nothingness. Jesus is
as essential to the existence of the universe as He was to its creation. He who said, “Let there be light,” says also,
Let light abide. The world is not a
mechanism, wound up and left to go of itself: the sun rises only because Jesus
is: every law of nature, every force, every manifestation of life, reside in
Him: the intellect of angels, the march of empires, the burning of the suns,
the fall of a sparrow, our birthday and our deathday - all worlds, and all
forces in all worlds, are but manifestations of His will.
Providence (one had almost said) is the act of creation
indefinitely prolonged. “All things that
are mine are Thine,” Jesus said to His Father; but He also said, - “All Thine
are Mine” (John 17: 10). Nor did this
cease with our Lord’s earthly experience; for, in one of His profoundest and
most mysterious utterances. He says, - “No
man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the
Son of man which is” - during His earthly life - “in heaven” (John 3: 13): for
the Word, become flesh, as the Word, never left the throne of the universe: “who
upholdeth all things by the word of His power.”
REDEMPTION. But
a revelation still more astounding remains.
“All things have been created unto Him” (Col. 1: 16): the universe came
forth from Him, but it also sweeps back to Him, in a gigantic circle: He is
Alpha, but also Omega; He is the Beginning, but also the End. Christ made the universe Himself; He made it
by Himself; but most wonderful of all, He made it for Himself. It is not only a palace of His erection, but
a palace for His ultimate occupation: a fact that carries with it the
redemption of the universe, when one dark cesspool shall have drawn off and
hidden for ever the filth of the worlds.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and
the end” (Rev. 22: 13).
ANNIHILATION. Yet
another, and an awful, function of Godhead is exercised by Christ. “Thou, Lord,
in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the
works of Thy hands: they shall perish; but Thou continuest” (Heb. 1: 10). Of whom is this said? “Of the Son He saith.” And who causes the perishing? “As a mantle shalt Thou roll them up.”
Creation and annihilation are but two aspects of one Divine power;
and both reside in Christ. Christ
created, Christ annihilates: “Thou hast laid the foundation” - “Thou shalt roll
them up”: Christ begins the creation, and Christ ends it. It was the creator Christ who said in Genesis
(7: 4), - “Every living thing that I have made I will destroy”; and it is the Son,
into whose hands all judgment is given, “before whose face the earth and the
heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them” (Rev. 20: 11). The worlds lapse back into the Void, out of
which He called them, at the will of Christ, to make way for new worlds (2 Pet.
3: 13) of His creation.
WORSHIP. So
righteous, therefore, and so founded on fact, is the decree of God; - “When He
again” - at the Second Advent - “bringeth in the firstborn into the world, He
saith, And let all the angels of God worship Him” (Heb. 1: 6). Had the Angels not been most exalted beings,
the Apostle would never have compared them to Christ; yet God says, - “Let all
the angels of God worship Him.” Angels
never created a world, - Christ created all worlds; angels, under permission,
handle lightnings and wield hurricanes, - Christ arrests the universe from
lapsing into nothingness; angels are immortals only as drawing life from God, -
Christ hath “life in Himself” (John 5: 26).
So then our duty is plain. If angels need to worship, so do we: if
angels on the spot and in the heart of Heaven, knowing the exact truth
concerning Christ, worship Him, so ought we: if angels of the highest rank - ‘all
angels’ without exception - worship Christ, not one of us can be too exalted to
worship Him: if sinless angels worship Christ, how much more ought sinful
mortals: if God commands all angels to worship Christ, can He command us
less? And if angels, for whom Christ
never died, worship Him, shall the redeemed refuse? “And they WORSHIPPED Him” (Luke 24: 52).
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98
The Last Watch
SECRET RAPTURE.
Again and again our Lord asserts His coming as a thief, with the
consequent need of our unceasing alertness.
“Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed
is he that watcheth” (Rev. 16: 15). Now
a thief-like approach - for which, in our Lord’s case, there is no reproach,
since He takes only that which is His own - is pregnant with meaning. It implies a hidden Saviour, ambushed in a
secret Parousia, from which He accomplishes His thefts: it implies that the
stolen goods disappear invisibly, and are discovered as stolen only by having
vanished: it implies that, thief-like, only the costliest goods are removed:
and it implies that constant watchfulness, an unbroken vigil throughout the
night, is the sole preventive of the burglary, since no thief gives warning of
his coming. “But know this, that if the
master of the house had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have
watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken through. Therefore
be ye also ready” (Matt. 24: 43).
LOOKING FOR RAPTURE. So,
in all ages, the Church is to be watchful; for even our Lord, though fully
conscious of coming death, had His mind set, not on death, but on rapture. “When
the days were well nigh come that He should be received up” - rapt - “He
stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9: 51). Death for all the watchful is only an
incident on the way to rapture as Dean Alford selected as the epitaph for his
own tombstone, - “The inn of a traveller on his way to Jerusalem”: and for
rapture itself, even the Son of God had to summon all His energies, and to
concentrate all His faculties: “He stedfastly set His face to go.” A thousand solicitations and subtle dangers
lie, for us all, on every hand: as his soldiers used to say of Cromwell, before
a fight, - “See, he has his battle-face,” so our Lord’s tense, set, white face
was fixed for rapture. For Rapture finds
us exactly what we are. Throughout his
last day on earth, Elijah was full of the occupations of a holy life: there was
no shrinking, but a joyful, heart-whole concentration; no clinging to earth, or
to earthly things; no fear of the unseen world; no reluctance to drop the now
finished task: in the evening, when the chariot came, he was ready.
A LOST RAPTURE. For
unwatchfulness is most perilous. Christ
applies the fearful catastrophe of Lot’s wife, not to the world, but to both
peoples of God. He slips in a pregnant
warning - “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17: 32) - between a command to His
earthly people to flee, and a command to His heavenly people to watch: her
unset face is the peril of both. For
Lot’s wife was, up to a point, perfectly obedient. God said, “I will destroy Sodom” - and she
believed it: God said, “Flee” - and she fled: God said, “Stay not in all the
plain” - and she stayed not. A soul
effectually called out, full of faith in God’s coming judgments, anxious to
escape, and with face turned towards Jehovah on high, she disobeyed only one
command. The Jehovah Angel had said: - “Escape
for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain, lest
thou be consumed” (Gen. 19: 17). It was
no plan or desire of God that His child, one of the escaping Household of
Faith, should be blighted near Sodom; He had given her full notice of the
coming storm, - had told her the exact conditions of escape, - and had sent His
angels for her. Yet she broke one
condition of deliverance. She never went
back, for she is no type of an apostate: she only looked back - she abandoned
the face set for rapture; and a look can reveal a heart. “For her disobedience’
sake, Lot’s wife must bear a temporal punishment; but her soul is saved: 1 Cor.
5: 5” (Luther). Sodom’s destruction never touches her; she was not of the
world, and so that doom is not hers; she has a judgment all her own: for God
knows how to inflict just penalties on His own Servants for disobedience
without confounding them in the eternal destruction of the lost. Luke 12: 47.
AFTER RAPTURE. For
the world will be no place for the saint at the End. Hooligans (not little children: it is the
word used of young men in Gen. 37: 2, 1 Kings 3: 7, and Jer. 1: 6, 7) are
accustomed to mock at rapture, of which they will then be perfectly aware. “Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head”
(2 Kings 2: 23); ascend, where your Master has gone; why are you left? Begone!
This occurs at Bethel. Now both
Hosea and Amos change its title from ‘Bethel,’ the House of God, to ‘Bethaven’
the House of the Idol: the mockers at rapture will speak out of the heart of
the Apostasy, and under the shadow of the Idol of the chief mocker,
Antichrist. “And he opened his mouth for
blasphemies against God, his mouth for blasphemings against God, to blaspheme
them that tabernacle in the heaven” (Rev. 13: 6), - the apt, that are now
beyond his reach. Sore judgments will
follow. Elisha bore the insult for a
while: then - evidently by the inward direction of God - turned; and, not in
his own name, but in God’s, the curse falls: and it is exactly one judgment of
the apostate. “If ye walk contrary unto
Me, I will send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children” (Lev.
26: 21): “and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty
and two of them”: even as God, at the end, will kill “by the wild beasts of the
earth” (Rev. 6: 8).
SELECTIVE RAPTURE. So
we seek to watch and pray. “There are
some Bible scholars, and among them names that are held in universal esteem,
who say it is only the Virgins whose lamps are burning that are qualified to go
in; that there is a just suspicion in Luke 21: 36 that those Christians who do
not watch will not escape all these things.
In view of this bare but awful possibility, there is but one position -
habitual expectation” (J. MacNeil). “Those
who are translated will have to be accounted worthy of it: it is not a gift,
but a prize to be won, in the strength of the Lord, by the fruits of faith,
conduct and works after conversion” (G. H. Pember). “In the FOURTH WATCH of the night”- “Jesus came
unto them” (Matt. 14: 25).
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Latent Romanism
ROME. The
conditions which originally created Rome are recurring to-day, and will create
her again. For Rome is ‘Mystic Babylon,’
or veiled confusion; her capital error has always been the confounding together
of things which God has eternally severed, a confusion which God calls
spiritual fornication: and all spiritual ‘babels,’ or confusions, in this
dispensation have sprung from Rome, and return to Rome as their eternal
metropolis; “the great harlot with whom the kings of the earth committed
fornication, and they that dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine
of her fornication” (Rev. 17: 2).
CHURCH AND THE WORLD. Rome’s first and vital confusion is the confounding together of the
saved and the unsaved, the regenerate and the unregenerate, the believer and
the unbeliever, in one mixed mass which she calls the Church. How did this arise? Let a foremost ecclesiastical historian,
himself a paedo-baptist, answer: - Upon the earlier conception of the nature of
the Church “there supervened a most significant change. The first cause of this change was the
extension of the limits of Church membership which was caused by the prevalence
of infant baptism. When infant baptism
became general, men grew up to be Christians” - that is, not by conversion,
manifested in public baptism; but - “as they grew up to be citizens” (Dr. Edwin
Hatch’s Early Organization of the Christian Churches, p. 139) - that is, by
ordinary birth. The Church opened her
arms to great hordes of the unconverted: then, to justify her action, she
assured these unregenerate members that they had been regenerated by their
baptism: and so welded together, in one massed confusion, the Church and the
World.
CHURCH AND STATE.
Rome’s second confusion is the welding together of the Church and the
State. The ‘state,’ the section of the world under which, as a government, a
given church resides, consented to grant recognition, countenance, and even
establishment and endowment to the followers of Christ, on condition that the
whole population was regarded as Christian.
Rome was the first to shape all ecclesiastical organization on the
model of the Roman Empire, - so completely, that if all histories were lost,
the Imperial outline could still be reconstructed from the Episcopal Churches;
the Church and the State became closely and vitally associated; and then of
necessity such commands of Christ as clashed with national law had to be
silently abrogated.
The Early Church, for example, strictly enforced Christ’s
prohibition of Oaths; but - and we take as witness a foremost Roman Catholic
historian - “When the Church had opened her gates to whole nations and populations,
and had established definite relations with the civil power, she was obliged to
allow political and judicial oaths” (Dr. Dollinger’s First Age of Christianity, p. 390).
No blunder in Church conduct can be more cardinal than to imagine
that God has placed the Church and the State - the State is merely the World
organized for purposes of government - under identical rules, and conducts them
on identical principles. No unbeliever
is under the dispensational laws of Christ at all; - laws under which no State
could possibly be conducted, - and laws never given by Christ to the State, but
to a pilgrim body scattered through all nations. The confounding of these two radically
distinct spheres can only end in the prostitution of that Virgin Bride whose
chastity lies in a wholly separated devotion to Christ.
LAW AND GRACE.
Rome’s third confusion, now fearfully prevalent throughout Churches, is
the confusion of the dispensations, the confounding together of Law and
Grace. Under the Law God did grant
national recognition - though to one nation alone; and as the regime was
judicial, the sword was commanded and blessed: under the Gospel all national
recognition - even Jewish - disappears; and a dispensation of perfect mercy
removes the sword out of the Church’s hand.
“Christ, in disarming Peter, disarms all Christians” (Tertullian).
But Rome, while professing grace, reverts to law. In the words of the ablest modern defender of
war as Christian: - “In the act of recognizing, and including within herself,
nations, collecting within herself so many different political communities, the
Christian Church necessarily admitted war within her pale” (Dr. J. B. Mozley’s
Sermons, preached before the University of Oxford, sermon v).
So the appalling spectacle is presented of Russian Greek Catholics,
German Lutherans, French Protestants, Austrian Roman Catholics, and British
Anglicans and Nonconformists bayoneting one another, and beseeching the same
God to bless their rival arms to the horror of the whole heathen world. It is the acme of ‘babel.’
ADULTERY.
Thus it has now been made certain by events that God’s people do not
understand the gravity of this Babylonian and Roman sin, with which the
atmosphere of the Churches grows more and more laden. No saint can grow in holiness without growing
also in a profound horror of the world: in Scripture it is a word charged with
midnight darkness. For what fornication
is in the physical realm, so foul, so loathsome (in God’s sight) is the mixture
of the Church and the World in the spiritual sphere, and so certain of His
coming judgments; and as adultery is possible only to the truly wedded, so it
is the regenerate only who can commit (not spiritual fornication, but)
spiritual adultery. (Rome is never said
to commit adultery, but harlotry, for God does not acknowledge her as the Bride
of Christ).
“Whence come wars and whence come fightings among you? [In the
world, the magistrate rightly wields the sword: the unbeliever, so long as he
is an unbeliever, is under no dispensational prohibition of Christ]. Ye lust, and
have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war. Ye ADULTERERS and ADULTERESSES, know ye not that the friendship of the world is
enmity with God? WHOSOEVER THEREFORE
WOULD BE A FRIEND OF THE WORLD MAKETH HIMSELF AN ENEMY OF GOD.” (Jas. 4: 1).
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Garnering the Wheat
RIPENESS. The
vital principle of all harvesting has been laid down by our Lord once for all:
- “When the fruit is RIPE,
immediately he putteth in the sickle” (Mark 4: 29). No farmer reaps his field because a fixed
date is come, but because his corn is ripe; the reaping of unripe corn is
utterly unknown; and the farmer cuts only those sections of his field which are
ripe. So it is in the spiritual sphere:
study nature, and learn grace; for they are from the hand of one Maker. Wheat, our Lord reveals - for He defines the
wheat-plants as the children of the Kingdom, growing, without intermission,
between the first sowing by the Son of Man and the End of the Age (Matt. 13:
38, 39) - is the Church: ‘wheat’ is a type of Christian, not Jewish,
experience. Thus our Lord unfolds a
momentous principle. It is not wheat
that the Angels (Matt. 13: 41) reap, but ripe wheat: neither the individual
believer, nor the Church as a whole, is ripe simply because they are wheat:
(our Lord’s words indicate a delay between the springing of the wheat and its
maturity): and it is not Christ’s return that rules the ripeness of the wheat,
but the ripeness of the wheat that rules the date of Christ’s return.
THE SHEAF. The
spiritual Harvest is inaugurated by the reaping of a solitary Sheaf. “When ye shall reap the harvest, then ye
shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits” - one selected from among the
earliest ripe ears - “and the priest shall wave the sheaf before the Lord” (Lev.
23: 10).
Paul gives us the clue to the type.
“Now hath Christ been raised from the dead”; (resurrection involves
rapture, as God does not leave the risen to dwell on earth): and so our Lord
was ‘carried up into heaven,’ to be waved before God in the upper Temple, - “the
first-fruits of them that are asleep. But
each in his own order” - his own batch or company; each in his own harvesting -
“Christ the first-fruits; then they that are Christ’s in His Presence” - during
His Parousia (I Cor. 15: 20). Thus part
of the harvest has already gone: a Christian rapture has already taken place:
Christ, presumably with a group of risen saints of choice ripeness (Matt. 27:
52), has already been reaped. This
Sheaf, and this Sheaf alone, consecrates the whole Harvest: “to be accepted for
you” (Lev. 23: 11); a surety of the ultimate harvesting of all the wheat: “for
if the first-fruit is holy, so” - in fundamental wheat-nature, though not
necessarily in present maturity - “is the lump” (Rom. 11: 16).
THE FIRST-FRUITS. So
this illuminating clue, furnished by the Holy Spirit, establishes the whole
Type; and reveals at once that, even among the First-fruits, there is more than
one rapture. For seven Sabbaths after,
on the fiftieth day - an immense period, an era of dispensational completeness,
when the Jubilee Sabatismos (Heb. 4: 9) arises - the next removal of wheat
occurs, and it is still First-fruits. “Seven Sabbaths shall there be complete, and
ye shall offer a new meal offering unto the Lord, two wave loaves baken with
leaven, for first-fruits unto the Lord” (Lev. 23: 15). That this ‘fine flour’ was to be baken ‘with
leaven’ at once proves that it is not Christ, for no offering that stands for
Christ was ever offered with leaven, which was strictly forbidden (Lev. 2: 11):
besides, the Sheaf of Christ had gone long before: here is a holy group - two
loaves, Jew and Gentile, consecrated ‘for Jehovah’; yet with the leaven of
indwelling sin up to the very moment of rapture - a part of whom is unveiled to
us on the heavenly Mount. “These were
purchased from among men to be the first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb: they
are without blemish” (Rev. 14: 4). So
here is a second rapture.
THE HARVEST. Now
we arrive at Harvest. “Ye shall reap the harvest of your land” (Lev. 23: 22);
usually some three weeks after First-fruits; for these are wholly severed: if
first-fruits are gathered simultaneously with harvest, they are not
first-fruits; it is a time-word, and implies fruit cut (like our Lord) earlier
than the general crop. So the Apocalypse
also reveals both the maturity which is the determining factor in the date of
rapture, and also the consequent plurality of reaping. For, after First-fruits have already appeared
on high, the message reaches the Son of Man in the Parousia-cloud, - “Send
forth [for the sickle is a reaping band of angels] thy sickle, and reap: for
the hour to reap is come: FOR the
harvest of the earth is over-ripe” (Rev. 14: 15). Here therefore is a fresh rapture. As grain ripens in the hottest season, so the
fierce heats of the Tribulation will dry up roots which once clung tenaciously to
earth, and which, had they but sheltered in warmer valleys and rooted
themselves in richer soil, would never have been left so long un-garnered. “When the fruit yields itself” - yields
itself to its gracious Sun, spontaneously unfolding into full-orbed ripeness -
“straightway he putteth in the sickle” (Mark 4: 29). Christ is responsible for the sowing of the
Wheat, but not for the date of its maturity.
So here is a fresh clue to the Type - the ‘harvest’ is Christian
rapture: for Christian believers only (and not Jews, nor Gentiles) are bodily
removed by descending angels.
THE CORNERS OF THE FIELD. But
even so the reapening is not yet exhausted: the Harvest itself does not remove
all the grain from the Field. “When ye
reap the harvest of your land, ye shall not wholly reap the corners of thy
field, neither shalt thou reap the gleaning of thy harvest” (Lev. 23: 22). Here, then, is yet another rapture. “For we
must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5: 10),
sometime during the Parousia, throughout which the Bema remains set up: the
whole Field must ultimately be reaped: and, in wonderful accordance thereto, at
the very close of Antichrist’s reign, sandwiched in between two descriptions of
Armageddon, and couched in terms always addressed to the Church, a warning cry
goes forth to the un-gleaned Corners of the Field.
“Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his
garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame” (Rev. 16: 15).
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Lo, I am Come
IMPOTENT SACRIFICE.
Paul gives a bed-rock reason why the Sacrifices of the Law are gone; - “It
is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats [the animals offered on the Day
of Atonement] should take away sins” (Heb. 10: 4). But why is all sacrifice, pagan or Jewish,
thus worthless for removing sins? Mainly
for two reasons.
(1) It is obvious that only a man can atone
for a man: an animal can stand in the stead of an animal, but not of a man: the
substitute must be in the nature that sinned.
The punishment must not fall on a being of another race: that must be
offered up to the fire which has incurred the just wrath of the fire. And (2)
bulls and goats do not offer themselves: they are dragged, unwilling and
resisting victims, to the slaughter and the altar. Now this is fatal to sacrifice. If the Law seizes on me, and put me to death
for another man’s sin, all would feel it a monstrous injustice; but if,
plunging after a drowning man, I saved his life but lost my own, all would say
it was a heroic deed. So, since the Law
is pursuing men that have sinned, not animals, and brute nature is incapable of
spiritual suffering and human substitution; and since an involuntary sacrifice
does not satisfy Justice, but only outrages it: - “it is impossible that the
blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.”
REJECTED SACRIFICE. But
a second reason for the cessation animal sacrifice lies in this, - that a
sacrifice, to be effective, must be accepted by the God of the Law which has
been transgressed; for the Law is God’s law, and the insult of disobedience is
thus offered to God. Now the Most High
says: - “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? I delight
not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats [the three animals
offered under the Law]: your appointed feasts My soul hateth; they are a
trouble unto Me; I am weary to bear them” (Isa. 1: 11).
But did not Jehovah Himself institute the sacrifices? He did: but not to take away sin; for they
never did, and never could; but as a perpetual shadow of the coming substance;
- “the Law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of
the things” (Heb. 10: 1). So the Jew,
seeing the Lamb through a thousand lambs, had faith unto eternal life; and
offering - as David did in one day - a thousand rams, whilst he abandoned the
sin thus atoned for, God accepted both offerer and offering on the ground of
the Substance beyond. But such offerings
ceased in Israel, and with them all Divine delight in sacrifice. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an
abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 15: 8): the sinner only becomes more sinful by
offerings without repentance: “bring no more vain oblations; incense is an
abomination unto me: your hands are full of blood.”
UNIQUE SACRIFICE.
Nevertheless in the very moment of sweeping away the sacrifices, Jehovah
reaffirms sacrifice: “Come let us reason together: though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
But how, if all sacrifice, which alone can turn the scarlet of guilt
into the whiteness of pardon, is abolished?
Paul answers: - “He taketh away the first” - the sacrifices of the Law -
“that He may establish the second”- the one supreme, crowning Sacrifice of the
Gospel; “which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body [which casts
the shadow backwards] is CHRIST’S” (Col. 2: 17). It is not sacrifice that had gone, but only
animal sacrifice: God has withdrawn the shadow, to put in its place the substance.
Then what is the Substance?
“Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepare
for Me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin [the four categories of
sacrifice] Thou hadst no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I” - the one great Burnt
Offering of the world - “AM COME, to
do Thy will, O God.” The first - bodies
of bulls and goats; the second - the body of Jesus: “He taketh away the first”
- all animal sacrifices - “that He may establish the second” - the one
substitutionary offering of Christ. The
earlier bodies bled for sin, but never took it away: God never forgot the sin;
it haunted man’s conscience - “my sin,” David cried, “is ever before me” (Ps.
51: 3) - as it haunted God’s memory; and the constant repetition of the
sin-offerings proved their complete failure to remove the sin: whereas “we have
been sanctified” - cleansed from sin - “through the offering of the body of
JESUS CHRIST once for all.” None of the
former objections lie against this Offering. Man has sinned - a Man has atoned:
a voluntary sacrifice is essential - “Lo I am come to do Thy will, O God”: and
the sacrifice must be an accepted sacrifice - “He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second.” And this Offering removes even the memory of the
sin; “and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10: 17):
when a man is saved by Christ, he can perfectly safely forget his old sins, for
God has forgotten them.
REMISSION. One
enormous lesson the vanished sacrifices taught the world for four thousand
years. “APART FROM SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION” (Heb. 9: 22). Law is summed up in this, - “An eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth”: therefore life must go for life, blood for
blood, soul for soul; “the soul that sinneth it shall die,” - “the wages of sin
is death”: therefore there can be no escape for a sinner save through the death
of a sacrifice. Hell must either fall
upon myself or upon my Substitute; and it has fallen upon Him; “who His own
self bare our sins IN HIS OWN BODY
upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might LIVE unto righteousness” (1 Pet. 2: 24).
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102
The Coming Gnosticism
APOSTASY. “The
Spirit saith expressly that in latter times” - as the Age closes - “some shall
fall away from the faith” - apostatize - “giving heed to seducing spirits” - an
apostasy therefore that will be frankly Spiritualistic - “and doctrines of
demons” - who will mould its dogma - “FORBIDDING
TO MARRY AND COMMANDING TO ABSTAIN FROM MEATS” (1 Tim. 4: 1, 3) - ‘articles
of diet,’ either food or drink. Already the footfalls of this fearful
Gnosticism can be heard on the threshold of the modern world.
MARRIAGE. The
assault on marriage began early in the Nineteenth Century, and has grown
steadily in volume since. “A system
could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness
than Marriage” (Shelley, Notes to his
Poems). “Marriage is the chief cause
of all the vice and misery that exists in the world” (Robert Dale Owen, the Spiritualist). “Reasonable consciousness, when awakened in
man, demands complete abstinence, complete chastity” (Tolstoy, Christian Teaching, p. 75: Tolstoy also
forbad flesh and wine). The earlier
editions of Mrs. Eddy’s “Science and
Health” contain prohibitions of marriage which have since been withdrawn.
“Those who have read the proceedings of the Divorce Court
Commission know how startling, how revolutionary, how abominable, were some of
the proposals laid before that body. It
is an ominous and fearful fact that the very worst of these proposals were made
by organised bodies of women. Those who
keep up with current literature are aware that in the most popular and widely
read of the new novels there is an undercurrent - and not always an
undercurrent - of fierce revolt against the teaching of the Christian Church on
marriage. Proposals of the seven years’ lease and the ten years’ lease are
quite common and seem to excite no surprise.
In any gathering of the ‘intellectuals’ of both sexes, it is, to say the
least, very common to deride Christian marriage” (Sir Robertson Nicoll, British Weekly, Jan. 19, 1911). “We -
and with us, in this, at all events, most Socialists - contend that chastity is
unhealthy and unholy. If the coming
society regards it as right for man to have mistresses as well as wife, we may
be certain that the like freedom will be extended to women” (Edward Aveling, The Woman Question, p. 15).
DIET.
All Gnostic (and, earlier, heathen) dietetic prohibition has invariably
centred in flesh and wine, and now lifts its head afresh. All disease and crime, says Shelley, and all
fierce passions, spring solely from the consumption of flesh and wine: “Omnipotence
itself could not save men from the consequences of this original universal sin.” “Abstinence from intoxicating liquors and
from flesh food has an unmistakably uplifting effect upon the intellectual and
spiritual potentialities of the personality” (Witley’s Ministry of the Unseen, p. 104, a Spiritualist). “Let the Archbishop not take any animal food
or alcohol for at least three days before the Coronation” (a Theosophic message
from spirits, Review of Reviews, June, 1911).
The second most widely circulated Anglican weekly journal is now devoted
to Vegetarianism. “It used to be thought
that alcoholic drinks were necessary to health.
This is no longer tenable; and the time is rapidly approaching when the
same truth will be universally recognised with regard to flesh foods: their
impure stimulating elements will be classed with the once glorified, but now
discredited, alcohol” (Church Family
Newspaper April 3, 1912). “Part of
the discipline of life for the practical study of Yoga [Indian mediumship] is
the entire putting aside of every spirituous liquor: another demand is the
dropping of all forms of flesh food” (Mrs. Besant, Christian Commonwealth, Mar. 13, 1912). Drunkenness, a frequent sin in the Church age
(1 Cor. 5: 11), disappears from the catalogue of Apocalyptic sins (Rev. 9: 21). Over wide areas of the wine is being
prohibited by law: in Finland it is already forbidden for the Lord’s
Supper. The moral prohibition has also
begun in England: “about twenty-five years ago our church felt called upon to
use water instead of wine for the sacramental service”(British Weekly, Jan. 28, 1915); - a practise of the Ebionite
Gnostics.
Immense issues are at stake: as the Fall sprang from a
food-question, so will the Apostasy. For
if flesh-eating be evil, the Jehovah who said - “EVERY MOVING THING THAT LIVETH SHALL BE FOOD FOR YOU” (Gen. 9: 3) -
is an evil Being, as the Gnostics said: and if animal slaughter is evil, the
whole sacrificial system of the Law was immoral, and Calvary is overthrown from
its foundations; and His character who created flesh and wine for food (Matt.
14: 19; John 2: 9), consumed flesh and wine (Luke 24: 42; Matt. 11: 19), and
gave flesh and wine to others to consume (John 21: 6, 12; Luke 22: 17), is
hopelessly overthrown. Gnosticism will be once again what it was of old, the
grave of the Christian faith. “WHICH [both marriage and meats] GOD CREATED TO BE RECEIVED WITH
THANKSGIVING” (1 Tim. 4: 3).
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Oaths
AN OATH. Our
Lord quotes from Jehovah’s Law, which said: - “Thou shalt not forswear thyself”
- i.e., break an oath - “but shalt
perform unto the Lord thine oaths” (Matt. 5: 33); an utterance of Jehovah
wholly sufficient, under the Law, to authorize and sanctify oaths. An oath is a self-imprecation, binding the
swearer before God to declare the truth, or to render absolute obedience, at
the peril of the Divine judgments: as Matthew Henry expresses it, - “By oaths,
by the consent of nations, men have cursed themselves, not doubting that God
would curse them if they lied against the truth.” It is in the phrase - “SO HELP ME, GOD” - that
the essence of an oath lies; or, as the Scotch oath puts it, - “As I shall
answer to God at the great Day of Judgment”: for “whatever be the form of an
oath,” says Paley, “it is invoking God’s vengeance, or renouncing His favour,
if what we say be false.”
PROHIBITION. Now it is possible for an act to be right in itself, yet wrong at a
given time; an act appropriate to the Law may be vitally inconsistent with the
Gospel; and an act commanded to one (a Jew) may be forbidden to another (a
Christian): so the sword and the oath may be perfectly legitimate to an
unbeliever, while definitely forbidden to one who has set himself as a disciple
under the commands of Christ. So our
Lord says: - “But I say unto you, SWEAR
NOT AT ALL.” The principle of the
Law - justification by works - allowed an Israelite to stake his eternal
salvation on his truthfulness: as set by Law to work out his own salvation, he
could consistently imperil his life on any part of his conduct. But Grace makes this wholly impossible.
Salvation by works has proved a total and disastrous failure, and God has swept
it utterly aside. Our standing is mercy
alone. The essential peculiarity of an
oath - that which differentiates it from a solemn affirmation - is the invoking
of God as an avenger: it is a challenge to God to deal with us on the ground of
our works; it is a definite abandonment of our standing in grace; it is
courting the thunders of Sinai. God has
sworn (Heb. 4: 3), and the Jehovah Angel will swear again (Rev. 10: 6), but He
has never sworn in the dispensation of Grace.
GRACE. The
new Lawgiver, superseding Moses, thus wholly rescinds the Mosaic legislation on
Oaths. He throws the two legislative
enactments into sharp and studied contrast: - “It was said to them of old time [by
Jehovah: Num. 30: 1, 2], Thou shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths; but I
say unto you, Swear not.” All vain and
rash oaths, all profanity, was already forbidden by the Law of Moses; - “Ye
shall not swear by My name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy
God” (Lev. 19: 12): it was solemn and judicial oaths which the Law enforced in
the quotation made by our Lord, and it is these which Christ forbids. Thus, so far from the Sermon on the Mount
being ‘Jewish,’ it actually forbids what the Law commanded; it forbids it on
the ground that it is inconsistent with Grace, that is, on Christian ground;
and the Sermon has never been accepted, and never will be, by any Jew except
such as become Christians: it is characterically and fundamentally Christian.
TOTAL PROHIBITION. Nor
does our Lord allow any exception or exemption.
“Swear not” - would be sufficient: “swear not at all” - excludes every
possible or conceivable oath, under any circumstances or in any form. Moreover,
He says: - “Let your speech be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; and whatsoever is more than
these cometh of evil.” An oath is
profoundly more than Yes or No, or it would not be an oath: therefore, for one
‘under law to Christ,’ it is evil: and it entered only when the world entered
the Church. “When the Church,” says Dr. Döllinger, “had opened her gates to
whole nations and populations, and had established relations with the civil
power, she was obliged to allow political and judicial oaths” (First Age of
Christianity, p. 390).
The oath is the crux of allegiance to world-powers; it shackles
Christian liberty, and, in oaths of obedience, the believer unlawfully
abdicates his responsibility; it is alien, together with all vows, from simple
dependence on the Holy Spirit; it binds the evil conscience, but it is
superfluous to the cleansed and truth-loving soul. The Holy Spirit, endorsing Christ, prohibits
oaths in words impossible of exception, misunderstanding, or evasion. “Above all things, brethren, SWEAR NOT, neither by the heaven, nor
the earth, NOR BY ANY OTHER OATH: but
let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; that ye fall not under judgment” (Jas.
5: 12). When the State enforces anything
which God has forbidden, the principle laid down by our Lord in Matthew 10: 23
comes into operation: flight, if it gives relief, is both authorized and
commanded.
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104
Armageddon
THE DIPLOMATISTS. The
instigators of Armageddon are in the dark background of every evil modern
movement: it is Spiritualism which creates Armageddon. “Three unclean spirits go forth unto the
kings of the whole world, to gather them together unto the war of the great day
of God, the Almighty” (Rev. 16: 14). The
ground is already thoroughly prepared.
Napoleon consulted a clairvoyant, Elizabeth Poulyne, before the Russian
invasion, who said: - “Sire, fire, cold, and hunger will drive you back”; a
prediction which so impressed Napoleon by its accomplishment that he consulted
her again a few days before Waterloo, when she replied: - “This battle will be
your last; all is over, and a rock obscures the horizon.” Napoleon III had prolonged séances with the
famous medium.
D. D. Home, in the palace of the Tuilleries, producing supernatural
manifestations in which the Empress Eugenie, within the last few months, has
expressed her perfect faith. Four or
five years ago the Kaiser was receiving messages from the unseen world during prolonged
sittings with Spiritualistic circles in Berlin.
Last year (Times, July 14,
1914) a Spiritualistic monk was assassinated in Petrograd, who had such
enormous influence with the Tsar and Tsaritsa that the Press censorship forbad
all criticism of him, and even metropolitan bishops were banished at his wish.
THE MUSTER. The
actual words of the imperial proclamation, in which all nations are called to
the colours, appear to be revealed. “PROCLAIM ye this among the nations; prepare
war [Heb., sanctify war - i.e.,
proclaim a holy war, a crusade: it is awful to see how the word ‘holy’ will be
used at the End]; stir up the mighty men; let all the men of war” - in army
corps, or battleships - “draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your
pruning hooks into spears” - so desperate is the emergency that not only will
every factory be set to manufacture munitions of war, but agricultural
implements will be melted or re-forged into weapons: “let the weak say, I am
strong” - in a conscription then universal no physical disability will be
allowed as a ground of exemption: “haste ye, and come, all ye nations” (Joel 3:
9).
THE STRATEGY.
Incredible though it may seem, it will be an organization of
world-forces in conscious and deliberate attack upon God and His Christ. “And I saw the beast [Antichrist], and the
kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him
that sat upon the horse [Christ], and against His army” (Rev. 19: 19). Men, only hardening under the judgments of
the Great Tribulation (Rev. 9: 21), and enthralled by the miraculous
fascinations (2 Thess. 2: 9) of the Antichrist, are devoted to him body and
soul; and having received his ‘mark,’ his sacramental sign, upon their person, they
know that they are lost (Rev. 14: 11).
The strategy of the gigantic Council of War also appears to be
revealed. “They have said, Come, and let
us cut off [Israel] from being a nation” (Ps. 83: 4). The demon instigators are well aware that the
Jew is the vital thread of prophecy: cut that thread - blot out Israel, burn
the Temple, destroy the Book - and God’s plans lie in hopeless ruins. For the crisis of the ages has come for the
Crown of the World: and the mighty Emperor, trusting in high explosives that
can annihilate whole battalions, receiving the homage of myriads of unseen
powers - for he will have received Satan’s throne (Rev. 13: 2), and maddened by
a poisonous worship such as no human being has ever received: - Antichrist will
in all seriousness measure his strength against God’s. “I will exalt my throne
above the stars of God: I will be like the Most High” (Isa. 14: 13).
THE BATTLEFIELD. The
shock of battle occurs on an entrenched line dug across the uplands of Megiddo
- correctly, Har-Magedon, the mountain of Megiddo, between 150 and 200 miles
from Jerusalem, on the normal caravan and military route. Modern warfare, within the last twelve
months, has elucidated a point hitherto obscure: the entrenchments will be 200
miles in length (Rev. 14: 20), exactly the extension of the battle line of
Mons, the most extended battle yet fought in history. All the armies of the earth are there: the
monarchs are in personal command (Rev. 19: 19): at the head of the enormous
host - how enormous may be judged from the thirty to forty millions now under
arms - rides, in the greatest pomp ever known, an Immortal, the Monarch of the
World.
THE VICTORY. But
suddenly the doom falls, and the world’s sun goes down in blood. “Come all ye nations, round about, and gather
yourselves together: thither cause thy mighty ones to COME DOWN, O Lord” (Joel iii. 11).
“These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, FOR HE IS LORD OF LORDS, AND KING OF KINGS” (Rev. 17: 14); “and
there came out blood from the winepress, even unto the bridles of the horses” (Rev.
14: 20: cf. Hab. 3: 3-6). So sure is the result of the shock of the
opposing forces that a living sepulchre is prepared before-hand. “An angel cried with a loud voice, saying to
all the birds that fly in mid-heaven” - birds of powerful flight, as the eagle
and vulture: “buzzards over the battlefield,” said a telegram from Mexico in
1912, “presented the appearance of low-lying, black clouds” - “Come and be
gathered together unto the great supper of God, that ye may eat the flesh of
all men” (Rev. 19: 17). And what is the
warning drawn by God from Armageddon, sandwiched into the very heart of the
prophecy? It is the peril of
unwatchfulness landing the believer in the Day of Terror.
“BEHOLD,
I COME AS A THIEF. BLESSED IS HE THAT WATCHETH, AND KEEPETH HIS GARMENTS, LEST HE WALK NAKED, AND THEY SEE HIS SHAME” (Rev. 16: 15).
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105
Fasting
In order that the work of self-humbling may go deeper than it has
yet gone, let us ponder - as a symptom, though a symptom only, of lowly
heart-contrition - God’s truth about Fasting.
Our unutterable longing should be for a humility that we have never
known: we have to pray over our prayers, and weep for our tears: oh, that our
sorrow might be lifted into God’s, that where He has to grieve over us, we
might grieve too! “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet. 5: 6).
Christian Fasting. Fasting
is a practice of the Gospel rather than of the Law. By the ‘afflicted soul’ the Jews have always
understood the fasting soul (Lev. 23: 27); nevertheless the works of law, by
which man was to win life, commanded abstinence, not from food, but from
sin. “Is not this the fast,” Jehovah said,
“that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness” (Isa. 58: 6).
Fasting for salvation is not only unmeritorious, since it was not
commanded; it is also wicked, for to go back to law is to fall from grace. Gal.
5: 4. Fasting does not produce life in a
soul: it nourishes humility in a soul already alive. Nevertheless, even an Ahab, if prostrate
before God in humiliation and fasting, can obtain a respite of judgment. “Because he humbleth himself before Me, I
will not bring the evil in his days” (I Kings 21: 29).
OUR LORD. No
Author of Scripture speaks of Fasting so often as our Lord. (1)
Christ practised it. Matt. 4: 2. “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; when
I wept, and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach” (Ps. 69:
10). (2) Christ prophesied it. “The
days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then
will they fast in that day” (Mark 2: 20).
So also Apostles fulfilled Christ’s word. “In everything commending
ourselves, as ministers of God, in fastings” (2 Cor. 6: 5). Thus so far from fasting being confined to
any other dispensation, it is peculiarly for the epoch of the absent Lord; and
if we never last, have we ever yet mourned as we ought for the Bridegroom of
our souls? (3) Christ enjoins it as an act of righteousness. “Do not your righteousness before men. When thou fastest, anoint thy head” (Matt. 6:
1, 17). (4) Christ promises to
reward it. “Thou fastest; and thy Father,
which seeth in secret, shall recompence
thee” (Matt. 6: 18).
The three most prolonged tasters in all history, Elijah, Moses, and
our Lord, were the three transfigured upon the Mount: it is the bruised body
that carries the crowned brow. “My knees,”
the Psalmist says, “are weak through fasting” (Ps. 109: 24).
METHOD.
Christ tells us how to fast. (1) Its times are optional: - “when ye
fast.” Set seasons - feast days, new
moons, Sabbaths - are of the Law (Col. 2: 16), not of the Gospel: the degree
and occasion of the fast (in moderation, a healthful practise) must be
determined by the disciple’s own conscience and judgment. (2) Its
manner is to be secret. “Anoint thy head,
and wash thy face; that thou be not seen of men to fast.” The bread of tears is not to be consumed in
public: it is a silent sacrifice to God offered upon the hidden altar of the
heart. “When ye fasted and mourned, even these seventy years, did ye at all
fast unto Me, even to Me?” (Zech. 7: 5). It is a secret act between God and the
soul. A collective fast (Acts 13: 2),
however, must be public.
OCCASION.
God’s people have ever profited by true fasting. In temptation (Matt. 4: 2); in conflict with
Evil Powers (Mark 9: 29); in appointment of Church officers (Acts 14: 23); in
dispatching missionaries (Acts 13: 3); in peril (2 Cor. 11: 27); after serious
disasters (Jud. 20: 26); alter great sins (1 Sam. 7: 6); to turn away judgment
(2 Chron. 20: 2, 4): the wise church is the church which, on the summons of
circumstances or conscience, prostrates itself before God in this most powerful
of all prayer attitudes. God’s servants
expect answers to a prayerful fast (Isa. 58: 3): if He is silent, it is for sin
(Jer. 14: 10-12). Ahab, fasting, was
reprieved (1 Kings 21: 29); Jehoshaphat, fasting, was victorious (2 Chron. 20:
3, 15, 22); Ezra, fasting, was delivered (Ezra 8: 21, 31); Esther, fasting,
averted massacre (Esther 4: 16); to Daniel, fasting, Heaven opened (Dan. 9: 3,
21); Nineveh, fasting, was spared (Jon. 3: 7, 10). It is commanded just before
the Advent. “Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, and cry unto the Lord. Alas for the day!” (Joel 1: 14). Truth which is not practised, like the manna,
corrupts. “When ye fast,” as Augustine says, is equivalent to “that ye fast”:
then, “why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?”
Fasting, partial (Dan. 10: 3), or complete (Esther 4: 16), Jesus
enjoins; God owns it in the Church, as He did among Israel’s Prophets; in a
host of Scriptural lives - as Brainerd, Whitefield, McCheyne, Muller, Govett,
Hsi - the Holy Spirit has revived this sacred self-humiliation; and Revivals
have taught multitudes to fast unto God who never dreamed of the privilege
before. He who flinches from being
thought peculiar, will never be thought peculiarly Christ-like: to become like
the Man of Sorrows, we must become acquainted with grief.
“Because thine heart was tender, and thou
didst humble thyself before God, and hast rent thy clothes and wept before Me; I
also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold,
thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes see the
evil” (2 Chron. 34: 27).
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106.
Our Prize
“LET NO MAN ROB YOU OF YOUR
PRIZE” (Col. 2: 18). But what is our prize? The Rapture. “There are some Bible scholars,
and among them names that are held in universal esteem, who say it is only the
Virgins whose lamps are burning that are qualified to go in; that there is a
just suspicion in Luke 21: 36 that those Christians who do not watch will not
escape all these things. In view of that
bare but awful possibility, there is but one position - habitual expectation”
(J. MacNeil). “To those of God’s saints
in this Age who are counted worthy a complete escape is to be granted: escape
from the awful period of earth-judgments is possible, but it is conditional”
(Samuel H. Wilkinson). “Like Enoch,
those Christians with the traits of Philadelphian grace and fidelity are taken
before the judgment of the Tribulation.
Such as share the Laodicean spirit will be left behind, to awake,
repent, and witness for their Lord through that awful time of woe; and, whether
by martyrdom or translation of the Harvest, be among the saved at last” (G. D.
Hooper). “The teaching of first-fruits
translation is said to be a legal doctrine, doing despite to grace. How can this be, when apart from grace it is
impossible to live such a life as alone can entitle to the privilege set forth? Nothing can more show one his dependence on
grace, or more animate to believing prayer for grace, than a conviction that
apart from its constant and abundant reception, we must fail to be ready to
meet our Lord with joy” (Fuller Gooch).
“The burden on my spirit day and night is the imminent appearance of our
Lord Jesus Christ. I pray God to make
you ready and to keep you ready. May
your portion be amongst this number that shall be caught up to heaven” (Evan
Roberts). “WATCH ye, and PRAY ALWAYS,
that ye may be ACCOUNTED WORTHY to
escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of
Man” (Luke 21: 36).
THE FIRST RESURRECTION. “When
Paul says ‘resurrection’ [in Phil. 3: 11], it has the preposition ‘out’ before
it, the ‘out-resurrection’ - the special resurrection, the specific
resurrection, the one that is singled out from every other: ‘if by any means I
might attain unto the out-resurrection, the one from among the dead.’ Paul is looking for a resurrection ‘out’ from
among Christians, else he would not have to strive so strenuously: he is striving
to attain something that ordinary Christians will not attain. A ‘prize’ is something to win: there is a
special blessing and reward for those who will go the whole way with God” (C.
H. Pridgeon). “Of his resurrection at
the end of the world, when all without exception will surely be raised, he
could have no possible doubt. What sense
then can this passage have, if it represents him so labouring and suffering
merely in order to attain a resurrection, and as holding this up to view as
unattainable unless he should arrive at a high degree of Christian
perfection? On the other hand, let us
suppose a first resurrection to be appointed as a special reward of high
attainments in Christian virtue, and all seems to be plain and easy. Of a resurrection in a figurative sense, i.e. of regeneration, Paul cannot be
speaking; for he had already attained to that on the plain of Damascus” (Dr.
Moses Stuart). “It is most evident that
Paul had some special resurrection in view, even the first: and to share in
that he was straining every nerve” (J. MacNeil). “BLESSED
and HOLY is he that hath part in the
first resurrection” (Rev. 20: 6): “if by any means I may attain unto the
resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained, or am already
made perfect: but I press on toward the goal unto the PRIZE” (Phil. 3: 11).
THE KINGDOM. “To
those who believe on Him, but go no further, the Lord does, indeed, give
eternal life; but the fruition of it will not begin until the Last Day, until
the thousand years of the millennial reign are ended. Such persons will not, therefore, be
permitted to enter the Kingdom of the Heavens” (G. H. Pember). “Into that
glorious company of the First Resurrection it is probable that only those who
have been partakers of Christ’s humiliation and suffering (either personally or
throughout the present aeon) shall be received - a select portion of the
redeemed, including the martyrs” (Dr. E. R. Craven). “In this exclusion from the Kingdom, which is
the dominion of the good made visible at the return of our Lord, we are not to
see the loss of eternal salvation: an entrance into the Kingdom is rendered
impossible [in certain cases], but not by any means does it follow that salvation
can be thereby prevented” (Olshausen).
“There may be positive and entire forfeiture of the Kingdom, and only
the lowest position in Eternal Life after it. The native magnitude of this
truth must speedily redeem it from all obscurity. Those who have the single eye
will perceive its amplitude of evidence, and embrace it, in spite of the solemn
awe of God which it produces, and the depth of our own responsibility which it
discloses” (Govett).
“Let us LABOUR therefore
to enter into that rest” - the sabbatismos, the seventh millennium (Heb. 4: 11):
for “not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom
of heaven; but he that DOETH THE WILL
of My Father” (Matt. 7: 21). “Know ye not that they which run in a race all run,
but one receiveth the prize? EVEN SO RUN, THAT YE MAY ATTAIN” (1 Cor. 9: 24).
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107.
A Change of Dress
AN EXCHANGE. God
pictures salvation as a change of dress.
Concerning the High Priest, who stood before God for sinful Israel,
Jehovah said: - “Take the filthy garments off him” (Zech. 3: 4); and then,
explaining, He adds, - “I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee”: that
is, the ‘taking off’ of the dress is the blotting out of the sin. But forgiveness is negative: whereas, before
a court of law, a man, to be justified, must be accounted actively
righteous. Therefore, since salvation is
more than an unclothing, God adds: - “And I will clothe thee with rich apparel”:
and God says, - “O Joshua, the high priest, thou and thy fellow [priests] are
men that are a sign” - that is, the whole transaction is typical, and the
exchange of dress in these priests portrays how men are saved; for a priest
stands before God for the sin of men, and the very sacrifice in a priest’s
hands is a confession of iniquity, and therefore of the need of salvation. It is an exchange of clothing which brings
perfect justification before God.
OUR EXCHANGE. Now
we behold God’s wardrobe, and our exchange of dress. Joshua appears as God sees him: not in high priestly
robes of glory and beauty, but in the ‘filthy garments’ - garments smeared with
filth - of a sin-stained life. For “we
are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses” - that is, the best
things in our life, our richest garments - “are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64: 6), a
soiled, stained, polluted garment. So
Joshua appears as God sees him, as he is in fact, and as the awakened sinner
sees himself. “I acknowledge my
transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Ps. 51: 3). To whom then does Jehovah immediately point
the awakened sinner? “Behold. I will bring forward my servant THE BRANCH; and I will remove the
iniquity in one day” (Zech. 3: 8). Jesus
Christ, Messiah, is the Branch. Now the
exchange is presented. “Him who knew no
sin” - here is the rich apparel of a spotless person, a holy life, a perfect
obedience - “He made to be sin”; that is, God did not make Christ sinful, but
He laid our filthy garments upon Him: “that we might become” - not righteous,
any more than Christ became sinful; but - “the righteousness of God in Him” (2
Cor. 5: 21); that is, God lays on us the rich apparel of Christ. Christ was treated as if He were a sinner,
that we might be treated as if we were righteous: both appear before God in a
dress not their own. Ours is a raiment
which, as typed by Israel’s (Deut. 8: 4), never grows old, and never decays,
but, perennially fresh and beautiful, delivers us out of Egypt, and deposits us
safely in Canaan.
OUR APPARAL. So
how does the reconciled sinner now stand before God? “Not having righteousness of mine own” - my
polluted garment is gone; for “as far as the east is from the west, so far hath
He removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103: 12): “but [having] a
righteousness” - for I am not unclothed; I have a righteousness; but it is a
righteousness - “which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is
from God”- a dress woven by the fingers of God, through the obedience of Jesus
- “upon faith” (Phil. 3: 9) - a rich apparel fallen out of heaven upon my now
bare shoulders, a dress I put on by faith.
God loathed the filthiness of Joshua’s garments, yet He did not put him
away, but the garments; and as surely as He laid them on Christ, there to receive
their awful expiation, so surely He “clothes thee with rich apparel,” the
wrought righteousness of ‘the Lord our righteousness’ (Jer. 33: 6). “Thou hast clothed me with the garments of
salvation, Thou hast covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isa. 61: 10). So Satan, standing on the right of Joshua -
where the prosecutor and adverse witnesses stood - to charge and to mock,
suddenly sees the filthy priest arrayed richly by God, with the filthy dress
vanished for ever.
I hear the Accuser roar
Of ills that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more: —
Jehovah findeth none.
THE DISROBING. So, for him who would be saved, the first thing is to disrobe. “Take the filthy garments from off him”; this
implies that Satan’s accusations, and the accusations of conscience, are true;
and that there must be frank confession to God of the hideous moral stains that
have polluted the whole life. “Satan, is
not this a brand plucked out of the fire?”
It is so close a thing that every saved soul has the smell of fire upon
him. But immediately on confession falls forgiveness: “See, I have caused thine
iniquity to pass from thee”: the muddy garments fall away for ever. But, for perfection of standing before God,
it is not enough to be forgiven: none may come before Him simply unclothed: not
to have sinned - the position of the pardoned - is not that active obedience to
the whole law which alone justifies before a judge. So we next ‘put on’ Christ, and His
righteousness; for “as through the disobedience of the one the many were made
sinners, so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”
(Rom. 5: 19). In Him I have obeyed.
Repentance puts off the old dress, faith puts on the new; and God
clothes the moment we disrobe. Here then
is the only ground of perfect peace without pride. For saving righteousness is ‘imputed’ to us,
not imparted; (although God also begins to impart righteousness from the first
moment that He imputes it, in the separate work of sanctification, regeneration
having changed the whole bias of the being at the moment of justification). So
that, exactly as the imputing of sin to Christ never made Him cease to be holy,
so the imputing of His righteousness to us does not, by itself, lessen or
change our natural depravity, but causes us to be reckoned as righteous, in
Him. IT IS A SALVATION TOTALLY APART FROM OURSELVES: IT IS A CHANGE OF DRESS.
Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die,
Another’s life, another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.
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108
My Debt
THE DEBT.
Paul says, “I am a debtor” (Rom. 1: 14): not, My neighbour is a debtor,
or, my church is a debtor; or even, The missionary is a debtor. Ponder it.
Not a whit behind the chiefest apostles, yet a debtor; the amplest writer
of inspired literature except Moses, yet a debtor; a more signal worker of
miracles than any man who ever lived, yet a debtor: therefore it must be a debt
that he owes simply as a Christian. It
is the debt of every child of God. What
then is it? It is the debt of an
entrusted Gospel. If I am given a
sovereign to pass on to another man, until it is actually in his hands, I am in
debt; by accepting the commission, I incur the obligation: exactly so, by
accepting the Gospel for ourselves, we have incurred the obligation of
transmitting it to everyone else. God
has given the Gospel to each, for all.
There is not a soul in all the world to preach the Gospel except the man
who has received it.
THE CREDITORS. We
now see the creditors. “I am debtor both
to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” All the world is named in this context:
Greeks and barbarians, the two halves of the Gentile world; Jews and Greeks,
the two halves of all humanity; and in addition to these racial distinctions,
another division that cuts across all - the thinking and the unthinking. Paul made no distinctions; wherever he saw a
man, he saw his debt: “Christ died for him” - he saw blazoned on every human
brow; and for his conscience sake, as well as for the man’s sake, he started
paying his debt. How marvellous is the
catholicity of the missionary call! God
chose a Hebrew of the Hebrews to be the apostle to the Gentiles: He sent a
Polish Jew (Shereschewsky) to give their Mandarin Bible to the Chinese: He
raised up a German (Müller) to teach the English faith: He selected a Gipsy to
evangelize Anglo-Saxondom. God has made
of one blood all the nations of men, and has redeemed them with the one Blood
of the Cross; so that every soul that is redeemed is a debtor to every soul
that is lost.
THE DISCHARGE.
What then is the discharge of the debt?
“I am a debtor: I am ready.” ‘I’
- all that I am, by nature and grace; all that I have, in possessions; all that
I am able for, in ability: the only legal tender for payment is personal
service, at home or abroad: somehow, somewhere I must discharge the debt in
person. So, “as much as in me, I am
ready to preach the gospel.” The heathen
cannot pay the debt for one another.
What would we think of a man who, being in debt, took advantage of the
fact that his creditors, poor and ignorant folk, did not know of the money due
to them, and let them perish by non-payment?
One of the best governors of the Isle of Man was impeached for treason
in the Civil Wars, and sentenced to death.
The King granted a pardon; but it fell into the hands of a bitter enemy
of the governor, who never delivered it, and the governor was executed. We hold in our hands the pardon of the world:
shall we hold it back? A deputation came
to Bishop Cassels asking for Christian teachers. He answered, - “I have none to send.” The Chinese replied, - “ Sir, in the great
judgment day, when we stand before your God, we shall say ‘God, we asked your people to come and teach us the Jesus doctrine, and
they never came.’”
THE COST. The
payment may be costly. Paul says, - “I
am ready”: ready for what? Rome. “I am
ready to preach the gospel also in Rome.”
Rome was at that moment the danger point of the world, the centre of
Pagan power and emperor-worship. In 1901
a missionary in China dreamed a dream.
He dreamt that he was back in St. Augustine’s College in Highbury,
reading once again on its walls the names of its martyrs in the mission
field. Suddenly, on one of the blank
panels, he saw a name slowly forming, and it was his own. Some months after he was cut down by the
swords of the Boxers. Paul found his
martyr’s crown in Rome. It is always
costly to walk with God. Enoch was rapt
alone. Noah preached alone. Elijah sacrificed alone. Daniel prayed alone. Jeremiah wept alone. Jesus (in Gethsemane) bled alone. Paul died alone. He paid his debt in full.
THE TIME-LIMIT. The debt must be liquidated
now, or we must in some measure appear before our Lord insolvent; and the time
is short. We have reached a stupendous
crisis in the world’s history, the issue of which must either be the salvation
of nations or the death of true religion in the world. The debt is enormous - it is to all nations;
the debt is vital - it is a matter of life or death; the debt is urgent - so
far as we can liquidate it, it must be liquidated now, or never.
Solemn hour: thus on the margin
Of the wondrous Day
When the former things have vanish’d,
Old things pass’d away;
Nothing but Himself before us,
Every shadow pass’d:
Sound we loud our word of witness,
For it is the last
One last word of solemn warning
To the world below;
One loud shout, that all may hear us
Hail Him, ere we go:
Once more let that Name be sounded
With a trumpet-tone, —
Here, amid the deep’ning shadows,
Then - before the Throne.
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109.
The Revelation
AN APOCALYPSE. The
title of the Revelation at once reveals it as literal and supernatural. For it is an apocalypse - i.e., an ‘unveiling’ - of Jesus Christ:
“a cloud received Him out of their sight,” and the Apocalypse is the gradual
melting of that cloud, first in vision, and then in fact. As a ‘revealing’ of what is behind the
breaking veil, it is a literal transcript of facts and events actually seen by
John. So of some forty symbols in the
Book, twenty are explained, and thus cease to be symbols: an average of less
than one undeciphered symbol to a chapter does not make a book symbolic. Literal miracles - resurrection, rapture,
advent - confessedly close the Book: all earlier alleged miracles are therefore
literal also: for it is a coherent and consistent whole. Moreover this Book is a ‘prophecy’ (Rev. 1: 3);
and all prophecies, which God has declared fulfilled, have been fulfilled
literally - the virgin birth, Bethlehem, the call from Egypt, the entry on a
colt, thirty pieces of silver, the parted garments. If the Apocalypse is supernatural throughout,
it is literal: if it is literal throughout, it is supernatural.
A JUNCTION OF DISPOSITIONS.
Miracle always appears at the junctions of dispensations. For under identical circumstances God acts
identically: His action, in a recurring crisis, cannot deviate from its
original perfection. So our Lord
carefully identifies our closing age with former miraculous epochs. “As it came to pass in the days of Noah” -
with supernatural deliverances, as Enoch’s and Noah’s, and supernatural
judgments, as the Flood - “even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of
man: the flood came, and destroyed them all.
Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; it rained fire and
brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: AFTER THE SAME MANNER shall it be in the day that the Son of man is
revealed” (Luke 17: 26). It is an
apocalypse of miracle at the mightiest junction of dispensations yet
experienced.
A FULFILMENT OF FORETOLD
MIRACLE. Scripture states again and again that
miracles will be a supreme characteristic of the last days. “And it shall be in the last days, saith God,
I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy” - prophets will be abroad in the earth once more: “and I will
show WONDERS in the heaven above, and
SIGNS on the earth beneath; blood, and
fire, and vapour of smoke” (Acts 2: 17).
Direct inspiration will have returned (Mark 13: 11): Legal prophets will
wield miraculous plagues (Rev. 11: 6): “and there shall be great earthquakes, and
in divers places famines and pestilences; and there shall be terrors and GREAT SIGNS from heaven” (Luke 21: 11). The Apocalypse is the unfolding of this
miraculous drama.
A COVENANT OF MARVELS. The
Covenant of Marvels has never yet been fulfilled. It runs thus: - “Behold, I make a covenant: before
all thy people I will do MARVELS, such
as have not been wrought in all the earth” - and therefore greater than the
miracles of Moses in Egypt - “nor in any nation: and all the people among which
thou art” - i.e., all nations, for
among all nations is Israel scattered, and the marvels will thus be worldwide -
“shall see the work of the Lord, for it is A
TERRIBLE THING that I do with thee” (Ex. 34: 10). Israel’s worst is yet to happen: for “as in
the days of thy coming forth out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him
marvellous things” (Mic. 7: 15); and “then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful”
(Deut. 28: 59). Rev. 16: 10. The
Apocalypse is a record of Jacob’s participation in miraculous trouble.
A CLIMAX OF NIQUITY.
Abnormal wickedness always provokes God to abnormal retribution. Gen. 6:
5; 13: 13; Num. 16: 29, 30; Luke 23: 28-31.
As Grace follows the line of least resistance, and wins the yielding
heart, so Judgment follows the line of maximum resistance, and smashes with
appalling power. “Howl ye; for the day
of the Lord is at hand. Behold, the day
of the Lord cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a
desolation, and to destroy the sinners out of it: and I will punish THE WORLD for their EVIL” (Is. 13: 6). With man’s sin come to the full, God’s wrath
is come to the full also, in miraculous intervention: “Thy wrath came; and the
time to destroy them that destroy the earth” (Rev. 11: 18). It is unique sin which provokes the unique
judgments of the Apocalypse.
A STRUGGLE WITH SATANIC
MIRACLE. Satanic miracles abounding at the last will compel
Divine miracle. “There shall arise false
Christs, and false prophets, and shall show GREAT SIGNS and WONDERS;
so as to lead astray, if possible, ever the elect” (Matt. 24: 24). Now “like as Jannes and Jambres, withstood
Moses” - i.e., miraculously - “so do
these also withstand the truth: but they shall proceed no further: for their
folly shall be evident unto all men as”- i.e.,
by the counterworking of mightier miracle - “theirs also [Jannes and Jambres] came
to be” (2 Tim. 3: 8). Boils which Satan
cannot cure; worldwide earthquakes from which Satan cannot deliver; vast
resurrections and raptures which Satan cannot prevent; at last a chain which
Satan cannot wrench from off his own wrists: - the Apocalypse is the record of
miracles incomparably mightier than the miracles of Hell.
A VINDICATION OF THE GODHEAD.
Miracle will at last be essential to the vindication of the
Godhead. For in the final crisis it will
not only be a clash of rival Christs - for there will be many false Christs: it
will be an awful collision between rival Gods.
“He sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth AS GOD” (2 Thess. 2: 4); and “all that
dwell on the earth shall WORSHIP him”
(Rev. 13: 8): here is an anti-God in full blast and full power, “whose coming
is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and wonders of
falsehood” (2 Thess. 2: 9). So direct a
challenge to sole deity, backed by blinding miracle, forces the hand of
Omnipotence for the vindication of the Godhead, and sets in motion the
tremendous drama of the Apocalypse. Thus
the Revelation is a rending of the veil between this and the unseen world, and
a literal record of the miraculous interventions of God.
THE END