The church’s pilgrimage is fast running to its close, and there is a need to sound out, before it ends, a word of warning and an awakening cry to all our fellow-believers within reach. A very stealthy and unsuspected foe is amongst us. Its presence is not signalized by grave sins or scandals. It gains the ascendancy and holds sway even when the outward religious life of the Christian is conducted with regularity and smooth propriety. Its name is SLEEP.
Sleep is evidently a foe marked by peculiar tenacity during the present dispensation, for the simple reason that watchfulness was intended to characterize it. We are living in the moment in which the kingdom of heaven was likened by the Lord Jesus to “ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom,” and of these He said,
“While the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps” (Matt. 25:5-7).
The Return of the Bridegroom
Our Lord’s prophecy in this parable was duly fulfilled. Rejected and condemned to death by His own people, and handed over by them to the Gentiles by whom He was crucified, He took up His place in risen glory, outside every existing institution on earth. Consequently, those who believed in His name and became His followers went forth also outside all existing human institutions, sharing His rejection and awaiting His return. This was the church’s proper and primitive position. They “went forth to meet the Bridegroom.”
Again the prophecy was fulfilled. The Bridegroom tarried and consequently sleep took over. Both wise and foolish, “they all slumbered and slept.” Drowsiness overcame the people of God. First love waned, as we find in Revelation 2:4, and consequently the sleep inducing influences of the world prevailed against them. They lapsed into that condition of insensibility and lethargy which is sleep of a spiritual sort. As the result of the insensible condition of the people of God, every kind of corruption invaded the church, and all the abominations of the Romish system appeared.
The Hope of the Lord’s Coming
We may pursue the parable one step further and point out that the “midnight cry” has gone forth. The coming of the Bridegroom has again become an expectation and a hope and consequently once more its separating power has been known. Saints reverted once more to the original position that they had left, but which should have marked them all along. The cry was, “Go ye out to meet Him;” they obeyed and consequently found themselves where they had been when first they “went forth to meet the Bridegroom.”
And now, especially where this precious truth has been well known, there are serious symptoms which would lead us to fear that sleep is again overcoming many. The world is tolerant, outward persecution is lacking, and circumstances are comfortable in many western countries. How easy, then, while doing nothing that can be objected to by one’s fellow-Christians, to become insensible to the urgent needs of the hour and lethargic as to the Lord’s interests. We may be kindly, amiable and orthodox, and as to the things of God regular enough and quite willing to help, if such help does not involve the setting aside of one’s own interests. Yet we may be asleep in the scriptural sense of the word.
The Need to Stay Awake
We need to awake from dull lethargy and shake off the drowsy influences of the world. The coming of the Lord draws nigh! Shall we then, who are His and consequently identified with His interests and testimony, be frittering away the present opportunity of being wholeheartedly for Him, by immersion in the pursuits and the pleasures of the age? Listen to the words of the apostle —
“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day” (Rom. 13:11-13).
Here the exhortation to awake is based upon the fact that the day is approaching which will mean our full and final deliverance from the present age. We are still in the night but we belong to that day and are to walk “honestly” or “becomingly” as in that day — not taking the ways and customs of the night-age as our standard, but walking according to the ways and principles of the day-age, before the day comes.
The Dark Hour of Apostasy
The day, carrying with it our salvation, is at hand! Do we really believe it? Is it plain to us that the night is rapidly approaching its darkest hour of apostasy and the consequent outpouring (once the church is gone) of the long pent-up wrath of God?
The signs of the last days are fully manifested. We have no wish to occupy our readers with the doings of the present evil age, but, on the other hand, it is well sometimes to take a good look at conditions as they are. No doubt many of our readers have learned the blessedness of the true Christian path of separation from the world-system, and perhaps for that very reason they hardly realize how fully the world is approximating in its ways to the days of Noah and of Lot, only on a much greater scale. The days of Noah ended in a deluge of water; the days of Lot in a deluge of fire; the present age will soon end in a deluge, not providential nor provisional, but of the direct judgment of God.
F. B. Hole (adapted)