I AM pleased to see that you like the book I sent you, (for I humbly think that it contains a kind of truth—that which directs to the person of Christ in the heavenly glory—which saints in your land much require to have preached to them at the present time; for doctrines, however precious, do not fill renewed hearts, they must have the person of the Lord Jesus Himself.
It was when He Himself appeared and showed His disciples His hands and His side and said, “Peace be unto you,” that they were glad, for they “saw the Lord.” The position of the saints in your country just now is very much that of the disciples on the sea of Galilee after the Lord’s death, when they “toiled all night and caught nothing.” But they caught a glimpse of the wonder-working Stranger on the solid shore, and they got not only a great draft of fishes at His word, but they left the ship and made towards Him on the shore, and found a feast as well as Himself there. This is in parable what will be when we see Him on the shore—outside all human systems.
Their work at Christ’s bidding led to worship; they got a great draft of fishes on the right side of the ship when they let down the net at His word; but this led John, the most spiritual and loving, to whisper, “It is the Lord,” and that word ran through them all, and drew them from the ship and nets around Himself on the solid shore, where they had personal intercourse and precious refreshment, and restoration of soul and heart, where this was needed.
In this country this divine watchword, “It is the Lord,” has been uttered from heart to heart and from lip to lip, and tens of thousands have left all The ships of man, all denominational distinctions and ecclesiastical systems, and have made for the shore and the blessed person of the Son of God, and have gathered around Him to feast and worship outside of all sects and churches on the original ground of the Church of God, as did the primitive Christians in the days of the apostles. There were no Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Calvinists, or any other confusions then, but they were “all one in Christ Jesus,” children of God, members of Christ, and they worshipped God “in one body.” There was no such folly uttered as saying “we are all one in heart though we may be in different folds and churches,” for they had the Lord Himself as their one center, the Holy Ghost as the one gatherer of souls, and He gathered only to Christ, and the result was “one body,” as there was “one Spirit” and “one God and Father.”
If we read to find God’s present work in the Word, we will see that which few seem to have apprehended about the coming and presence of the Holy Ghost to be in and with the Church. Be so kind as read and ponder what is written in Acts of the Apostles, chap. 1, also Eph. 1-4, 1 Cor. 12-14., and the Epistle to the Hebrews. If the truth of “the great mystery—Christ and the Church”—is got hold of by us in the living grace of the Holy Ghost we will have a spiritual apprehension of what Christianity and the Church of God are in God’s word such as is known by few. Some might think it very presumptuous to write thus, and ask, “Can it be that, with all our learning, talent and piety, we are in gross ignorance of Christianity, as a divine system, and of the Holy Ghost as a present divine person now come to be in the saints and with the Church of God”? But the fact of the existence of different denominations skews it is even so, and little wonder, when the Lord Jesus is so ignored in His living person that saints generally think only of His death, and cannot be roused to think of Him either as the living “Head of His Body the Church” in heaven, or of His imminent personal coming for His saints, to take them up to heaven in glorified bodies like His own.
When Christ was here did He not gather to Himself? and is He not carrying on the work of gathering His people to Himself by His Word and Spirit now that He has gone into heaven? Hence all gathering into sects and churches with human names and creeds is against Christ’s mind, and opposed to the Holy Ghost’s mission and work—and that, my dear brother, is not only solemn, but awful. Jesus says, “He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth” (Matt. 12:3030He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Matthew 12:30)). All those ministers of the Lutheran Church who gather Christ’s people into that Church for worship and the Lord’s Supper, are “against” Christ in this action, and, because they gather not with Christ, they “scatter” Christ’s sheep. All who gather to the lesser denominations do the same evil and unscriptural thing. The Holy Ghost gathers out of all to Christ Himself in the heavens. This and more is proved conclusively and irrefutably by Holy Scripture. It is quite contrary to God’s mind, as Holy Scripture teaches, to be inside any human fold; for, as the Lord says, the time has come now when there is “one flock and one shepherd.” He does not say “fold;” but “one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:1616And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. (John 10:16)). There is now no fold at all here below of an earthly kind like that which Israel had. That is “the camp,” and the Word of God says— “Let us go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 1316But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. (Hebrews 13:16)).
A “fold” is a falsity and a denial of Christianity. Plainly, therefore, all denominationalism is “against” Christ, and tends only to “scatter” Christ’s saints, and distinctly against the Holy Ghost, who baptizes all saints into one body (1 Cor. 12:12-1312For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12‑13)), and whose design in coming was to form them livingly into one body, with their living Head in heaven, and have them manifestly “one body” on earth: for the Church of Corinth was an expression of that one body there (1 Cor. 1212For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12‑13).), and we read, “Now ye are Christ’s body,” verse 27, and to show that He meant the whole Church in the next verse, he said— “And God has set certain in the assembly—apostles, prophets, teachers, &c.” Two things are referred to: 1. The Assembly, which meant the whole Church of God on earth; and 2. The assembly at Corinth is called Christ’s body, because it gave expression to it there—just as if a husband put his hand out at a window, and a wife should say (though not seeing his whole body), That is my husband. It was not all Christ’s body that appeared at Corinth, but it was nothing else, and it was visible. There was no talk about an “invisible” Church in those days. It was not until man had ruined the Church of God as His house on earth that they talked foolishly about the invisible Church! The Assembly of God was intended to be the light of the world: but of how much use would an invisible light be to mariners in a dark night?
The Holy Ghost, beyond all controversy, came to baptize all believers into one living, spiritual, visible body, the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-1312For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 13For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12‑13)); and our duty is to keep this unity already made, and not break away from it to any human unity formed by “the flesh” and Satan, to subvert the Spirit’s unity of the one body, comprising all believers on the earth. His Word is surely binding above man’s, dear brother, and He has written this: “Using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace—one body and one Spirit”; that is “the Spirit’s unity” which we are to keep practically, and not to break away from, though we should stand alone with Christ and the Holy Ghost for it is the only thing we dare do unless we deliberately set ourselves to be against Christ and “scatter” the saints. “He that gathereth not with me scattereth.” I write thus freely, beloved friend, because I know your true-heartedness for Christ, and because you write as you do, and say, “I am wearied out with sectarianism.” Why then go into a new ecclesiastical sphere, and go on again with man’s sectarianism? Can you not leave all, and go forth in faith to Christ outside all sectarian societies? Is He not enough? Led forth of the Holy Ghost to Him, you would be thus practically in God’s assembly.
I myself long strove in the very way you are doing, after the unity of God’s people, without seeing that I myself should first be practically in that unity by coming out of all hindering things to Christ Himself. Trained like yourself for many years at school and university for the work of the ministry in man’s Church, and ordained there in due form according to man’s ideas, I have preached Christ’s Gospel, and taught His saints as he enabled me. But only lately I saw it to be inconsistent to be upholding that system with the one hand, and pulling it down with the other. The teaching was right; but the teacher’s position wrong. For when I preached fully about Christ and His Church, and the presence of the Holy Ghost on earth, exercised and spiritual souls withdrew, and took up that position around the Lord Himself in the unity of His body, which the following of the full truth they learned from me gave them; and they told me that it was my teaching that made them leave “the Church” and take the outside place with God’s rejected Son.
This led me to weigh well what the Word of God said as to the saints’ place in this day, and I read. “Let him that nameth the name of Christ [‘the Lord,’ rather in the true text,] depart from iniquity;” and about vessels to honor and to dishonor in a great house (i.e., to us, Christendom), and that if a man is to be a vessel unto honor fitted for the Master’s use, he must purge himself from these vessels to dishonor. I saw that I was in a system that was ecclesiastical “iniquity,” for, on comparing the Presbyterian system in all its branches, as well as its doctrinal basis, discipline, worship, and ministry, with Holy Scripture, it fell before it as a thing that had no basis or warrant therein; and, on examining all other sectarian Churches of all the varied ecclesiastical patterns, I found that none of them answered to the pattern of the one body and the one Spirit, which characterized the apostolic Church: and so I gave all human institutions called Churches “a wide berth:” I would join none of them; but fell back on the Word and Spirit of God, and am content with the blessed Christ of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the Church of God; and I find all the faithful who are truly enlightened by the Spirit and Word on the subject, and have Christ formed in them, are doing the same thing in all parts of the world. I was astonished to be told after I left you, and passed through Germany, that in that country there are hundreds of assemblies, gathered out the same as those you read of in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the New Testament, without any human organization or humanly-appointed ministry. I am told that there are also hundreds of them in France and Switzerland, in America and Australia, India and Africa, and even in Palestine; while in this country they are in most of the larger towns and villages. God’s intention appears to be to give His saints in all lands an opportunity of taking up a right position with regard to Christ the Holy and the True, and to color the whole of the Christian profession with the Holy Ghost’s peculiar testimony to Him for these last days before He comes to take up saints to the promised Home with Him in the Father’s House.
Will you then, beloved brother, still cleave to tradition, or have the special honor to be dishonored with Christ, and suffer more distinctly for His name in your country? Does not loyalty demand it, and His dying love constrain you to do that which will, most of all, please Him, being so attracted by His person, that you will go forth to Him without the camp bearing His reproach? We are now at the very close of a failed dispensation; and the Lord’s mind for this hour is to be sought out and met. There is a right position and place for all His saints to occupy at this time, when all in Christendom is ecclesiastically wrong.
The Scriptural thing for all the saints of God in all the world is to abandon that which is wrong; to “cease to do evil,” and be in the present current of the Holy Ghost for the honor of Christ, according to His present mind concerning us. We are His; and as our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, the call is— “Wherefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6.). It is with the body that we can show our practical attachment to the Lord Jesus. I cannot glorify God with my body if I keep my body bound down voluntarily to the rules and regulations of any ecclesiastical institution formed by man on the face of the earth; I must keep my body for the Lord, in the unity of His body and Spirit, the Church of God. The outside place with the Rejected of men is the place for all His followers. Inside, in the holiest of all, is our place of worship; outside the camp where man’s judgment was borne is the place of testimony to a cast-out Christ—the meek and lowly Son of God. Oneness with Him in the Spirit, in the presence of God, gives the soul the consciousness of a union which excludes all the unions of men, however pious, wise, and well-intended. United by one Spirit to the Lord in the heavens I am thereby loosed from everything that would hinder me from following Him beneath the sun. This is a time when those who will prove fully faithful to the Lord are but a mere remnant: “Let him that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” Read also Rev. 3:7-137And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; 8I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. 9Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. 10Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. 11Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. 12Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. 13He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. (Revelation 3:7‑13). It is an individual thing— “If a man purge himself” from these, &c.; but when we do so, we will not want for companions in the separated path to Jesus our Lord, for 2 Tim 2:22, says— “Follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” In this way while the faithfulness is individual, true faithfulness to Christ cannot rest with “individualism,” but must necessarily impel, as Christ’s love must “constrain” all who, as to their ecclesiastical place, are led of the Spirit and formed in heart by contemplation of Him where He is, to press through all obstacles to Christ Himself at His table, separated as it is from all the sectarian tables of men, with all who are in the holy fellowship of the Spirit in “GOD’S ASSEMBLY.”