Brethren,-The test of even an apostle's message was the truth that he brought. Even the signs of an apostle, wrought before men's eyes “in signs and wonders and mighty deeds,” were never sufficient of themselves to accredit to his hearers the word he carried. The truth was its own commendation, and needed no other. Our Lord's own appeal was, “If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?” And our Lord's own assertion is, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.”
This is my comfort in addressing you, who personally have no claim or title to be heard. If the voice be Christ's, you will recognize it. If your will is to “do Christ's will,” you will “know of the doctrine whether it be of God.” Neither claiming nor desiring anything upon my own account, if I bring you God's word, your responsibility is to Him as to how you hear it.
Nearly eighteen hundred years ago an apostle wrote that it was “the last time,” and gave this sign of it, that there were “many antichrists.” (1 John 2:1818Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. (1 John 2:18).) “Many antichrists” were then, for the apostle, a sign of the last time, and more, that the “last time” had already come.
In men's thoughts these are the fresh first days of the church's history. The vigor of youth was still upon her. In the memory of him who wrote the words before us, Pentecost yet lived. And on every side around him, as he wrote, the word of God was growing and multiplying. More than two centuries of struggles and of triumphs were yet to precede its conquest of the whole Roman world. Yet here, before the very earliest “antiquity” to which men so fondly now look back, before the canon of scripture yet was closed, or the last apostle had passed away, the words of that surviving apostle himself (inspired words, scripture which “cannot be broken") assure us that even then the end, morally, had already come for the professing church; not triumph (alas!) nor a millennium-” the last time” and “many antichrists.”
Already had the apostle Peter uttered a warning as to the same thing. That there should be false teachers among Christians, privily bringing in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and that many should follow their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth should be evil spoken of. (2 Peter 2)
To which Jude could add, when he wrote, that these men were already there; so that it was needful for him to write, exhorting earnestly to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. “For,” he says, “there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” There was no remedy for all this; the Lord was coming to execute judgment upon them. “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints to execute judgment upon all.”
Quick work of ruin, brethren, in what had been once so fair. Apostles even yet in the church and the canon of scripture not completed. Yet there, in that church, were the objects of judgment, and the Lord coming to execute it!
But we may go back farther still, and put the testimony of another inspired writer side by side with Peter, Jude and John. In Paul's address to the Ephesian elders, mingled with the sorrow of his own departure from them, was the sadder foreboding of evil which should quickly follow to the church of God. “For I know this, that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock; also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” And this so soon began, so rapidly developed, that in his Second Epistle to Timothy he writes as of a notorious fact: “This thou knowest, that all they which be in Asia are turned away from me.”
Asia, the scene of so many labors! Was Europe better? From Rome he writes to the Philippians, and he days, “All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.” “Many walk, of whom I have told you before, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.”
Thus East and West were together departing from the Lord. And how does the apostle-no man of gloomy views or narrow mind he at least-how does he look at the future of that church declined, and yet declining, from its primitive faith and love? “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” “Preach the word.... for the time will come that they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and be turned unto fables.” “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves.... lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof.”
This is the apostolic picture with no room for a millennium in it, no prospect of general revival or recovery, but the reverse. “The mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way; and then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit (or breath) of his mouth, and destroy with the brightness of his coming.” Thus there is not a break in the darkness up to the coming of the Lord. The last days are the perilous ones. The last time is known by the “many antichrists.” And that time, however, God's long-suffering has protracted it unto the present, had morally already come when John the apostle wrote.
Brethren, if this be so, where are we? As surely as the word of God is true and reliable, the general church is far gone on the path of decline towards the full apostasy that yet shall be. (2 Thess. 2) A form of godliness there may be, and yet “perilous times.” Dangerous work to be floating with the tide, accepting things because our fathers did; dreaming, after eighteen centuries of sad and miserable failure, that even now we are to undo these centuries of wrong-doing, and do, after all, what yet was never done! Was there not energy and faith and love of old? Were not apostles equal to you in every natural and supernatural qualification for the work they gave their lives to? Does it nowise daunt you that the apostle Paul should have to say of places where all the signs of an apostle, no whit behind the chiefest, had been done among them-"All that are in Asia have departed from me?"-or will you convince him of his error in predicting only an increase in evil, and the last days worst?
But you say you have God's promise and assurance that you shall convert the world. For He has said “that righteousness shall even fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.” True, He has said this. But He has not said you are the ones to do it, but the reverse. “Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the earth with fruit.” Is that the Christian church? Indeed there is nothing plainer in the word than that it is not. If you will listen to one who says he speaks to the Gentiles as the apostle of the Gentiles, he tells you plainly that just as the casting away of the Jews was the reconciling of the world, so the receiving of them back shall be life from the dead. (Rom. 11:1515For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15).) Moreover, he bids you as Gentiles “be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.” “Behold, therefore,” says he, “the goodness and severity of God; on them which fell (the Jews) severity; but toward thee (the Gentile church) goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.”
Brethren, have we continued in God's goodness? Why, then, talk of revival, if there has been no decline? But there has been, as even the scriptures themselves show; which show, too, there will be no general recovery. What is the alternative, then? Cutting off. Yet God's purposes shall be accomplished. “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part is happened unto Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so ALL Israel (the nation, not merely individuals) shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.”
Mark the definiteness of all this. Israel nationally blinded, till God has His complete number of Gentiles gathered in, then all Israel saved; and how? By the gospel? No; but by the Deliverer coming out of Zion. And it is distinctly added, “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes,” treated as such; their own distinctive promises held in abeyance, that God may gather the Gentiles into the church; “but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Words how often quoted, but how seldom applied as the Spirit of God applies them here, to the calling and promises of the nation of Israel!
Thus, if the receiving of Israel be life from the dead for the nations of the world, the “gospel” is not the means of their reception; but as long as it goes on, they are enemies for your sake. When the fullness of the Gentiles is brought into the church, the dispensation will change, the Lord come, and Israel received as a nation be life to the nations of the world. Till the Lord come, then, there is no millennium, no conversion of the world by the church. On the contrary, the expectation of it is the denial of the shame and failure of eighteen centuries, the proud self-assertion of Laodicea, “rich and increased with goods, and needing nothing,” not knowing that she is “wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” and that the Lord is saying, “I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Beloved brethren, for this fatal and disappointing dream of the world's conversion by your means, you have given up the practical hope of the Lord's coming. Persuading yourselves things are going in the main right, you are accepting, with little scrutiny, the ways and means and associations by which you imagine the end you have in view is promoted. Yet the Lord is just ready to judge the whole scene, and your own individual part in it. Yes, judgment is to close the scene which just now may seem so full of promise-Judgment at the coming of the Lord. For that coming we are taught to watch, because we know not when the time is. This is the answer at once to the mistakes of those who set times, near or remote, for His coming; and, on the other hand, to those who would put it off to the end of the millennium. You know not when the time is; therefore the Lord says, Watch. You cannot watch for what you know will not come for a hundred years; how much less a thousand?
Nor can you say that the coming of the Lord bids us watch for is not a real and personal one, except by such a mode of interpretation as would throw all scripture into confusion, and all ordinary language too. For the Lord tells us it is a coming in the clouds of heaven with the angels, when all the tribes of the earth shall mourn to see, because it shall be in judgment like the flood; a day when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory, and all the nations be gathered before Him; and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats. (Matt. 24; 25) Yourselves apply these last words to the time of His real advent, and it is quite evident it is the same coming throughout both these chapters. Thus for this coming it is you have to watch, because you know not when the time is.
Yet, brethren, how many of you give ear to the exhortation? You have suffered Satan to rob you both of the comfort and the admonition of your Lord and Savior's words. And hence a multitude of errors, and of what He will judge as evil and dishonoring ways.
1. You lower the authority of scripture by attributing to it human exaggeration, and therefore falsehood. How could a man, not led of your interpreters, suppose that that coming spoken of in the terms of Matt. 24, was either death, or high-flown language for the simple destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans long ago? If it be so, why should there be any real coming of the Lord at all? Why should not all the passages about it mean something else than they so plainly say? No wonder it should be thought that prophecy can only be clearly interpreted by its fulfillment, if these are really its interpretations! But our inheritance, brethren, our “exceeding great and precious promises"-what about them? Are they not fulfilled prophecy? What if in result all these should dwindle down proportionately; just as the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven has dwindled down into the sacking of a Jewish city?
Alas! infidelity thanks you for the lesson which it has not been Blow to learn; but the simple and ignorant man, whom you have delivered blindfold into the hands of your interpreters, will scarcely thank you for the proof, that the grand and blessed word of his God is but as to much of it a more than half deception-and how much he cannot know.
From hence a wide uncertainty results. The wise and learned differ, it is found; how then shall the unlearned be sure? And “charity” is invoked to cover all mistakes, by asserting-save as to some fundamental points (that is, some points believed to be essential to men's salvation)-the humility of universal doubt. Indeed the Lord has said that “whosoever will do God's will shall know of the doctrine;” but then you must not say you do “know.” You have your opinion; I have mine. Between the two the authority of the word is gone. The Bible is God's word, no doubt; but it is scarcely, “what saith the scripture” any longer. It is “What say your doctors?” And in despite of His own word, His sheep cannot know Christ's voice from the voice of strangers.
But another thing. The scripture says, “The whole world lieth in wickedness.” That applies, you think, only fully to the past; Christianity is rapidly changing that. As we progress towards the millennium the world must certainly be growing better. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution,” says the apostle. But that has ceased to be. Doubtless it was of such a change already begun at Corinth that he wrote: “Now ye are full, now ye, are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us; we are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised.” It is very true we get on better with the world in these days. And times so changed make it difficult to understand how we “are not of the world.” All its harmless pleasures we partake of; all its honors we aspire to and obtain; we find it our positive duty to “get on” in it, and do good to ourselves, that men may speak well of us; we do not believe that Satan is the “prince of this world,” for we are its soldiers, its magistrates, its politicians.
Brethren, where are we? Is this progress, or is it deterioration? Is the “offense of the cross ceased,” or have we ceased to bear it? And are these words “hard sayings,” which we cannot bear even from the lips of our Lord and Master? “But woe unto you that are rich, for we have received your consolation. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers of the false prophets.”
But the church, too-the church it is that all the nations are to flow to yet. Kings are to be its nursing fathers, and queens its nursing mothers. It is the heir of all Jewish promises, the divinely appointed successor to Israel's place and portion. Nay, it is but one and the same church all through, that Jewish and this Gentile. Its law is ours: its union of church and state, its earthly head, its priestly order, its ceremonial services, and its worldly sanctuary; its earthly blessings and dignities, contended for and maintained by carnal weapons: all, all, are ours. Points of detail may be changed without disturbing the essential unity. The church, Jewish or Christian, is all one. So you maintain; with what result it is not difficult to see.
(To be continued.)