As we step over the threshold of another year we may opportunely raise and answer three questions.
1. What is the program me?
God’s program me is the only one that will be carried out perfectly and in every detail. We shall be wise therefore if we make God’s program me ours. But what is His program me? In the present age He is not aiming at the conversion of the world nor the production of an ideal state of things socially or among the nations. We live in the time of Christ’s rejection by and absence from the world, and the work of God today is to “visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name.” (Acts 15:1414Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. (Acts 15:14)). The church of God is that people taken out from amongst the nations.
It is left on earth that it may shine for Christ during His absence. It has no mission to subdue the nations, for that is at present no more a part of God’s purpose than it is to “restore again the Kingdom of Israel.” The instructions are today just what they were at the beginning, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” (Acts 1:88But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1:8)). Thus such as should be saved are being added to the church, and until the church is completed God has no other program me than this.
2. What is the position?
If we look at things social, political, or national, all is in a very unsteady and precarious state. Nor are things religious any better. Rationalism and Ritualism, those ancient foes of the truth, are tremendously active and seem to be carrying all before them, so much so that the average onlooker must be forgiven if he assumes that the simple Christianity of the Bible is a lost cause.
Yet in reality nothing that is of God is being lost. The truth of God, expressed in the Scriptures, abides. The Holy Spirit, sent forth at Pentecost, still indwells believers and operates within and from the church. The “churches” of Christendom nay many of them, be near apostasy, yet true believers are still being edified and sinners under the faithful preaching of the gospel are being converted. Whatever may happen to the various programs of the “churches,” the Divine program me, which is committed to the charge of the Spirit of God, is being carried silently to its completion.
No Christian need be down-hearted or depressed whatever may be the surface condition of things.
3. What is the prospect?
We may be told that while the outlook for the churches is poor the prospects or the world were never brighter owing to the spread of education coupled with the onward march of science and discovery. The truth is that while the world-system is advancing straight to judgment the people of God are advancing straight to glory. We do not entrench ourselves in the present world-order nor is “Back to Pentecost!” our watchword: we rather cry, “On to glory!” That is our hope, and “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” (James 5:88Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. (James 5:8)).
If there was a sense in which such a statement could be made by James so long ago the same statement may be assuredly made in a double sense today. The end of the age is upon us without doubt and we should be in daily expectation of our Lord. Nothing has done more to discredit such expectation than the foolish attempts, so continually being made, to fix the exact time of the second Advent. Do not let us be turned aside by these but let us rather have loins girt and lights burning, so that we may be like unto men that wait for their Lord.