This is exactly what we are called on to do at the present day. We at the present moment are not to imitate, as unbelief does, what the Jews did, but to maintain all that God has given for His Church. Therefore I say that the path for the saint now is: first, separation from everything that is contrary to or inconsistent with the name of the Lord Jesus; secondly, walking in fellowship with those who have already so separated, refusing among themselves everything that is contrary to the name or revealed character of the Lord Jesus, as they came out from that in which it could not be maintained, and gathered to His name on the principle of the one body.
It is not a question now of having all together. The profession as a whole is in a state of failure, and when we find that the mass cannot be set right, our business is to have our own souls right, and to maintain for God the testimony for which we are all responsible. It has failed, but is not the less obligatory, for it has not yet been set aside, and consequently the responsibility of each individual saint to maintain it remains. It has been always the principle, as we may see, laid down in the prophets, and by the Lord Himself, that, though judgment has been pronounced upon a dispensation, until the dispensation be removed, the responsibility of the faithful is still to maintain the testimony for which the dispensation was designed. The prophets show this most clearly. They never set before the children of Israel a new path, but their call continually is to repent, and return to the path from which the nation had departed. “Ask for the old paths,” Jer. 6:1616Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. (Jeremiah 6:16). So in chapter 22:8,9, the nations ask, “Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this great city?” The answer is, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them.” That is, they had abandoned the testimony originally committed to them.
Now, just one verse in the last chapter of the last prophet: “Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.” Mal. 4:44Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. (Malachi 4:4). This is addressed to the returned remnant, to the very people of whose zeal and faithfulness we have been reading, but who had now gone backward. What is to be observed is, that here, in the latest days of the nation, there is no new testimony given; they are enjoined to return to that which they had from the very first.
I refer also to the example of the Lord Himself. He, being born a Jew, not only submitted to all the ordinances of the Jewish institution, but enjoined others to do so too, as we see in the cleansing of the leper (Matt. 8:44And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. (Matthew 8:4)), and of the ten lepers (Luke 17:1414And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. (Luke 17:14)). He directly teaches the same thing in Matthew 23:2,32Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. (Matthew 23:2‑3): “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works.” That is, He acknowledges that the thing is to be maintained so long as it is continued by God. But when judgment has been executed, and this form of testimony set aside by God Himself, all is changed. The place for testimony then is “without the camp,” and all who are for God must “go forth.” So Peter says, “Save yourselves from this untoward generation”; that is, saints are exhorted to leave the very thing which at a former time the Lord Jesus had urged them to maintain. In the one case the Lord was still living on the earth; in the other, He had died, having been rejected by the Jews, where the fate of the nation was sealed. But until this old dispensation was displaced by a new one, no fresh testimony was given.