Beloved brother, —The perusal which I have given your letter left in my mind the text, “Say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these?” The answer is as important, and even more important, than the question— “for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.”
The two axes, on which everything under the sun turns round, are, I suppose, that God is always good, and man is always evil. The wise man in Ecclesiastes had more to do with “the former days,” which would terminate in “the greater one than Solomon,” when born into the world; and who, if accepted, would eclipse all that was prior, “and fill the earth with the glory of God.” Traveling upon this line, the further we run the race the brighter and the sunnier it becomes, for God is always good, and doeth good. He makes the future even brighter than the present, as witnessed by their coming millennium, or as manifested to the whole universe of God, by “the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
On the other hand, man is always evil, and therefore his “latter times” must be awful, as they darken in color and deepen heavily in guilt, by the elongation of that sin of sins at the cross and the crucifixion of the true Son of David.
“Dispensations” come into the grand circle of the heavens and the earth, in the history of God and man, and the devil, and turn upon their own little centers, and describe their own little orbits, and often puzzle us, because we think they are to God’s counsels what they are in relation to us. On the contrary, these subdivisions have their “times and their seasons, which God keeps in His own power,” so that they come and go, leaving behind them their histories, which Moses, and the law, and the prophets, record to us. In these little enclosures, out of the immensity of God’s own circle, where the Son is the center, round whom “all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered,” we have the former house and the latter house, in the Old Testament language, or even as the Apostles of the New declare to us the latter times, and the last perilous times.
These characteristics, which the knowledge of God and man open out in time, where Satan is at work, ought not to complicate “the faith of God’s elect” so that the old men should have dismal pictures, and “bury their faces in their hands,” by remembering the glory of the first house any more than the young men (or the Philadelphians of today), should be carried away by the joy of a present position. Both “the shoutings” and “the weepings” (Ezra 3:11-1311And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. 12But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: 13So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. (Ezra 3:11‑13)) ought to be overstepped and outmeasured by the objects and ends which God has in view, and which He is surely reaching without let or hindrance, for His own glory and the place reserved for Christ, as lord of all on earth and head over all things in heaven. If these, as the ultimatum, do not stay the soul in any and all times, former or latter, joyful or sorrowful, we shall not bear the true impress of God, but carry along with us, and be fashioned by what we have picked up by the way, whether pleasing or adverse according to our own standards and thoughts, and very likely carry the savor about, not of “the things which be of God, but those that are of man.”
In short, the wise “old men in 1 Kings” do not suit any more than the counsel of the “young men,” neither will the glory of the former house, nor the deficiency of the latter house much affect us in a time of bankruptcy.
The heavens themselves can alone supply the gigantic lack below. Dispensations won’t suffice for this. The second man must supersede the first, and the Holy Ghost take the place of fleshly energy. “Wisdom” must take the place of every counterfeit in a proud and evil day like this, and “be justified of all her children.” Every other hope must be refused, except the one “blessed hope” of the Lord’s coming and the Church’s departure into heaven to meet Him, as the turning-point of every “right inquiry concerning this.”—Yours affectionately,
J. E. B.