Life Eternal Denied
William Kelly
Table of Contents
Life Eternal Denied as a Present Possession
Of this fundamental truth in its Christian form and present reality the deliberate denial is most clearly avowed by “Notes of Readings and Addresses” in the United States and Canada. The responsibility of the production is acknowledged; for the work appears as “revised by F. E. R.”
If we pass by a cloud of other errors, and some of moment, in page 54 is a plain statement of direct opposition to divine truth. “It used to be commonly said, I know that I have got eternal life. Why? Because the scripture says, ' He that believeth hath everlasting life.' I say you have thus the faith of eternal life; but that does not prove that you have the thing itself (!). Many a person has had a promise, but not the thing promised, that [sic] was the case largely with the Old Testament saints. They embraced the promises; but they had not the things promised. Christianity is not only that you have the faith of the things proposed, but that you have the consciousness of the things that you believe.” “Scripture says” this; “I say” that! But even what he says of Christianity virtually contradicts his aim.
Can any sober Christian question that the truly blessed confession of Brethren from the greatest to the least for seventy years is here abandoned? yea, that the word of the Lord Himself is undermined? How awful to hear one frittering away the plain meaning of “He that believeth hath everlasting life!” This is not a promise, but a revealed fact. The Lord did not say, he that has the faith of eternal life shall have this life by-and-by. To confound His present assurance with O.T. prophecy is to abjure the gospel for the law. The truth in question is distinct from promise, and contrasted with not having the thing promised. Nor does the Lord here speak of having “the consciousness of the things that you believe” (whatever this may or can mean on the speaker's hypothesis), but simply if not solely of now possessing life eternal.
Equally evident in page 56 is the perversion of scripture, even if we omit the misleading talk in the preceding page. “Eternal life is there, and it is God's mind for you to be in it, but there is a gulf between you and it, and you have to pass over that gulf.” This is what “I say.” Let us hear what the Lord says. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but is (hath) passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). F. E. R. contradicts the gospel. The believer's privilege now, this gift of grace, he denies. A gulf may be between the unbeliever, and eternal life. Yet Christ is, not even a bridge over the gulf, but eternal life immediately to him that believes. His word has so explicitly declared the present gift of that life, that it can only be a lie of Satan to teach, as F. E. R. does, a future gulf for the believer to pass. The Lord declares that he has passed” out of death unto life. F. E. R's. voice is not the Shepherd's but a mere stranger's, an “idea” in open contempt of the Savior's final decision by grace which flesh never trusts.
What follows is hardly less evil. For in reply to one who says, “It has been stated that eternal life was communicated to us this side of the bridge,” F. E. R. dares to answer, “There is no truth in it; what is communicated to you on this side of the bridge is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and He is the well of water in us springing up to eternal life. Unless you have the Holy Spirit you will never get divine teaching, but it is by divine teaching that you get over the bridge.” This is no passing mistake or blunder. Is it not utter effrontery? That we have life eternal now he excludes. Yet the gift of the Holy Spirit supposes eternal life given, and redemption rested on by faith previously (Acts 5:32, Gal. 4:4-6, Eph. 1:13). If there were any propriety in the figure of the gulf and the bridge, Christ crossed it to meet the sinner; and the believer has already the life eternal, comes not into judgment, and has passed out of death into life. The gift of the Spirit is to know and enjoy the grace and truth thus come in the power of the new relationships, to live Christ in accordant ways, and to worship in spirit and truth.
The “teaching” here is flatly opposed to our Lord's, and as it is a departure from what even its propagandist long and uniformly professed, who but those in the evil or bent on compromise can hesitate to pronounce it “devilish,” not “divine”? Think of a believer without eternal life receiving the Holy Ghost! It is a quasi-incarnation of God's Spirit. This unscriptural and profane dream “divine teaching” forsooth! Nay, it is the sheerest impossibility if judged on scriptural principles, and the wanton guesswork of impiety. No wonder not a word of scripture is cited for it.
Again, we read in the next page 57, “In the third chapter of the epistle [1 John] you come to children of God, but not yet to eternal life (!!). Children brings in the thought of Father—God is Father to us as children in the world.” In page 58 “Sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places. The close of the epistle lands you in what Paul speaks of, and that is, ' God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.'“ Does such incoherent trash, such shallow confusion, need exposure? The truth revealed in the Epistle as in the Gospel is that every believer has life eternal and is a child of God; to which the apostle Paul adds that he is a “son” as well as a child, and the end everlasting life, but of either “the epistle” says not one word.
Again, Rom. 8 in the central part of that instructive chapter disproves the rash assertion that “sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places"; for therein the apostle speaks of us, alike as “sons” and as “children,” but is silent about “eternal counsel and of heavenly places.” Children is opposed to strangers; sons, to slaves; and thus sons may be adopted for a position of dignity. But we are of God's family also, and hence children in respect of true and intimate relationship. Both terms are well suited and actually employed in view of the glory to be revealed (19 and 21). Gal. 3:26 again refers to present Christian standing, “God's sons,” not children, by faith in Christ Jesus; but in no way does it in itself bring in the thought of eternal counsel and heavenlies. This is not Spirit-led exposition, but random and reckless misinterpretation to the pain and shame of all who honor God's word.
In p. 59 we read, “I think the mistake has been made of confounding the idea of children with eternal life. I have fallen into that too much myself; the thoughts are, I judge, quite distinct. Sonship is connected with eternal life; that puts you outside the death-scene.” Did one ever read such empty and self-complacent driveling? The connection of “children” is really nearer, than that of “sons,” to life eternal. For the scriptures which most fully treat of children treat also of eternal life, predicate both of the same persons, and that, not outside, but now and here, where all else is under the power of death. They are in truth intimately and inseparably associated privileges. “And the witness is this that God gave us eternal life and this life is in his Son.” So says the apostle of all addressed. Ver. 13 goes farther still: “These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have [not at all, that ye shall have] eternal life.” It was now and here where death reigns, yet according to F. E. R.'s wild reckoning “the highest platform,” after having greeted them (chap. 3:1-3) in the most glowing terms as “children of God” from “now” till manifested in glory like Christ. Could scripture more pointedly write folly on this elaborate and persistent effort to say something new, which is after all wholly untrue?
In the pages that follow are strange conceits as to life eternal. Take 66 for example. “If you fail to enter into the reality of eternal life [who ever failed more egregiously than himself?], it proves that you don't understand what it is to be identified with the minister of the sanctuary.” Can the most friendly eye discern a grain of sense, to say nothing of truth, in this jumble? Heb. 8 has its own divine force; but why drag in here failure “to enter into the reality of eternal life"? Even if one have eternal life, one may fail to appreciate, exercise, or manifest it; but how do any such failures prove that you do not understand what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary? The language, the logic, and the exegesis are alike perverse. One comprehends failure in faith, or fidelity, or intelligence. But nothing can “prove,” and nobody can understand (it seems to me), what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary, because it is neither intelligible in itself nor true of any one. To be “all of one” is not identification with Him, which is not taught in this Epistle. Such teaching, far from being “divine,” is not decently human, but a farrago of presumptuous impertinence and falsehood transparent to all that are not blinded.
On the allusions to eternal life in pp. 74, 75, one need not speak, as they refer to “the end “; and this all admit. Such too may be that in p. 94, though vaguely expressed. But we come to egregious trifling, as well as abandonment of the truth, in pp. 107, 108, to omit the page before.
“G. F. Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?
F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple (!) way, he has eternal life if he has it.
R. S. S. It is not a very bad way to ask those people who say they have eternal life, what they have got.
E. R. If I came across any one who asserted it at the present time, I would be disposed to say, ‘If you have got it, let us have some account of it.' Our difficulty in England was that nobody could give any account of eternal life. If there had been anybody who could have given an account of it, the difficulty would have been much less. One person said it was one thing, and another said it was another. One old brother who affected a good many people, said that eternal life was obedience. He took up a verse in John 12 (sic), ‘And I know that His commandment is life everlasting,' and argued from that that it was obedience. It shows you in what a muddle the whole thing was. Everybody claimed to have it, but nobody could give an account of it. Another brother asked me, ‘Have you got eternal life? ' I did not know how to answer it exactly because he simply meant resting on a statement of scripture. [Yes, this is what F.E.R.'s followers must avoid.]
F. Would you not define eternal life?
F. E. R. I do not think that we have any definition of it. You can speak of what is characteristic of it, and scripture gives you that, but surely if you claim to have eternal life you can give some account of it. If a man has a possession he can give me some account of what he possesses. Otherwise I doubt if he has it. I don't say he has not title to it.
R. S. S. Or the enjoyment of it.
F. E. R. I think thousands have title to it who are not in the good of it. Eternal life is God's purpose for you; God gave His Son to that end. I have the light of this, and hence it is mine in title, but to say that I have it is another matter.”
Could the unbelief of a professing Christian go farther? Over and over again is the present possession of life eternal denied. According to F. E. R. it is “God's purpose “; and the believer has a “title to it,” but in no way has he that life himself. “To say that I have it is another matter.” Yet he knows as well as anyone, that the Lord with most marked solemnity ruled that He gives, not will give, life eternal, and that the believer “has” it, not merely is to have it. Simple title or God's purpose is excluded. Christ's meaning is made the more definite and indubitable (except to will under Satan's power), because He also says that the believer has passed from death into life. F. E. R. stands here in open antagonism to the word of the Lord on this vital matter. To quibble away His plain authority for it is to sap divine truth.
Again, how sad is the levity of the oracular platitude in answer to “G. F.! Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?
F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple way, he has eternal life if he has it.”
Any upright mind must feel that such a come-off is Jesuitical evasion. It is anything but “simple,” being just incredulous banter and a cheat.
All but the most ignorant know that life in itself, and of every form in nature, is difficult to explain, especially to a caviler. Yet who questions its reality but a materialist? With such F. E. R. here “lands himself” as to life eternal, however clearly revealed. On the highest authority the simplest Christian is divinely assured that he has this life eternal, not its mere title or promise. He expects indeed its certain completion in his body when Christ comes again; but he has no less certainty of possessing it now in his inner man. This F. E. R. denies emphatically, unequivocally, and constantly. Yet the scheme defrauds every Christian of his primary blessedness, dishonors the Lord in His grace and truth, and perverts His words of spirit and life into a willy-nilly of dark unbelief.
Is it true that in England “nobody” among the companions of this misguided man “could give any account of eternal life”? How deplorable if it were really as he says! I dare not allow that all have accepted the lie for the truth they once seemed to hold firmly and universally. Every intelligent saint, on the contrary, is able to explain that, just as he has by nature the sin-tainted life of the first man, so has he by grace, on believing, the holy life of the Second man. Who could expect our spiritual life to be outwardly cognizable more than our natural life? Yet even skeptics do not go so far as to deny it absolutely as a present thing, though they do its everlasting permanence.
It is almost needless to say that life eternal attests its presence by a newly given faith in Christ, by prayerful dependence on God, by delight in His word, by holy ways and walk, by a broken and self-distrusting spirit, by sympathies and antipathies upward and around and within, never displayed before. Besides these subjective qualities, the objective side is at least as marvelous and real: Christ sent from above, and the only true God, the Father, made known as only then in the gracious working of the Spirit by the word. Surely this, and it might be largely increased, is “some account of it,” and familiar to the family of God. What does this incredulous talker want or mean? He is blinded by self-will and vanity against the truth. But what of the many who know better, yet hold their peace? Are they swamping truth for a unity worthless without it? Is this what they owe Christ the Lord? Do they keep His word, or do they deny His name?
The passage is really a tissue of extreme unbelief, a gross exaggeration of the condition of his companions, and withal vulgar mockery, to support a lie of the enemy. The “muddle” is in F. E. R. and his dupes, through defection from the truth which no doubt he long preached and taught, if he never in heart believed it. It is of comparatively recent years that a doubt was breathed, only to be sternly reproved and scouted as wholly unsound. Even mere Jews, as is allowed, had “the idea of it.” But whatever may be judged of those in O.T. times, the error before us is the formal repudiation of life eternal as actually attaching to the Christian, though the Lord explicitly assigns it as a present inward reality. Even if a believer were so strangely ignorant through bad teaching as to be unable to explain the matter to an adversary, he might have the fullest conviction that he has life eternal and enjoy its effects in obedience, love, righteousness, patience and hope, as he never did before his setting to his seal that God is true. Does anyone but an idiot or a philosopher doubt he is alive, because he cannot give “some account” of life—cannot even explain why his motions answer his volition? Who questions “time,” or “space", because he finds it hard if not impossible to give a ready interpretation of either?
“The idea of eternal life” which Jews had is quite different from the believer's present and known possession of it. This did await Christ's coming. It is a crude and confusing statement that “It was the same thing referred to all along” (page 108). Could any say or accept this save an unbeliever in the Christian's privilege? This depended on the Son of God. Before He came, the saints had life in Him, but they were ignorant as to it; when He came, He gave them understanding of this and much more. It was greatly increased when He rose and the Spirit was given. But it is untrue that “all depended on that.” And the error affects still higher truth.
Think of a person presuming to teach yet so dense as to say that in the opening of John's Gospel “the apostle is, I judge, speaking from his standpoint, not from God's!” Such a judgment might fall from a natural man: Luke 1:2 gives not the slightest warrant for it. It is the kind of slip-shod comment by which Unitarians and other adversaries of the faith seek to undermine Christ. John 5:26 is not the expression of Christ's divine right, but of the subject place He took when He became man, and received everything from God. Otherwise His deity is taken from the Lord.
Take another example. The alleged difference between “the Son” and “the Son of God” is rash and wrong, being even refuted by the text itself. That “Son of God” is in Psa. 2 and elsewhere as John 1:49, as well as Luke 1:35, said of Christ as the King of Israel is true; yet the generalization made in page 109 is a dangerous falsehood, as is made certain by such texts as 1 John 3:8; 4:15, 10, 13, 20. But if one desire a single distinct disproof of its folly, one could not have a more decisive one than 1 John 5:12: “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” In this case the emphasis is rather the opposite way, as every spiritual mind must feel.
Similar lack of insight and subjection to scripture is at the bottom of page 113. God's calling is not “sonship” as such, nor is it synonymous with “eternal life.” Take Eph. 1 where His calling stands richly; but not a word is said of “eternal life,” as indeed page 119 admits. Take the Gospel and the First Epistle of John where “life eternal” is most fully treated; yet we have absolute silence about sonship. And what means the desire in page 116 to exclude “eternal life” from heaven, making it refer to earth? One might have expected a tyro to have profited better by the Lord's words to Nicodemus. A “teacher of Israel” ought to have known that to be born anew was needed for earthly things of God's kingdom; whereas the cross and eternal life suit the higher things of heaven, as made known by Him Who came down from heaven and would return thither, the Son of man who is in heaven.
The conversation on “the sphere” (116, 117) is a characteristic specimen of unintelligent pretension. Of old the term “sphere” had been rightly used to designate the heavenly source whence He came Who was the eternal life and went back into the glory He had left, where we behold Him now and look to be, conformed to Him in body at His coming. We while on earth are given life eternal; but we have it in Him Who is above, and hence for that sphere where we are not yet, however assured by His grace. This morally becomes of the highest importance to act on our faith and love as well as hope according to Paul no less than John. What bewilderment, not to say darkness, of mind to refer to Rom. 5:21, Dan. 12:2, and John 17:3, the last being said to “describe the sphere!” Was ever more pitiable hallucination, if it were not spiritual guilt of a black dye?
Contrast to death is the lowest and shallowest possible “idea” of life eternal. If we simply and truly believed Christ to be our life, could we fail to apprehend that this eternal life is our newly but truly given spiritual being, capable of communion even now with the Father and with the Son Whom He sent? Why this incessant and fruitless beating about the bush, ending in absolute denial of its present possession, the very thing on which the Lord most sedulously insists?
Remark too how far the reduction of life eternal to the contrast with death carries away this sciolist. “I think eternal life refers to earth. I don't think we should talk about eternal life in heaven... I don't think the term will have much force there... I don't see much sense in connecting the idea of eternal life with heaven.” To one who pleaded his understanding “that it is connected with heaven also,” F.E.R., answers, “I don't know the connection. The point of eternal life is that it comes in where death was. I think it stands in scripture in contrast to death.” The expressions that follow might imply getting life here and now. But this he elsewhere so pointedly repudiates that we are obliged to believe that it is only “in anticipation now,” not as actually possessed. But this novel jargon is as unmeaning as the strange dictum, “If you don't apprehend a sphere, you have no idea of eternal life”! It is self-evident that he does not apprehend a sphere, simple as it is, but mystifies it.
On the “proportion” of deliverance here taught (page 106), it is enough to say that it is not so that scripture teaches. There is also no sense of correlation in saying, “I think the Father orders the world” (page 110) (for scripture testifies the contrast between these two), and in thinking that worship addresses itself to the Father, because the thought of God is presented to us in the Father (111). Now John 4 is express in distinguishing the worship of “God” as such from that of “the Father,” as any one may see in comparing vers. 23 with 24. Spiritual perception is wholly lacking; and most sects have a peculiar style, or lingua franca, of their own. Could any one match the strange absurdity that John 17:3 describes the “sphere”? His friend J. S. A. (who writes the introduction) indulges in the dream that where his leader is deeply astray, he is “correcting defective or erroneous use of terms!” Nowhere could be shown infatuation more complete. And the worst is that not only are the terms defective and erroneous to an extraordinary degree, but the vital truth of scripture is misrepresented and lost, whilst empty falsehood takes its place.
The true sphere of eternal life was for the Word, the Son, with the Father (John 1:4, 1 John 1:2) till the Incarnation. Then on earth in due time He said, “I came that they (the sheep) might have life, and that they might have it abundantly” (John 10:10). They believed and had life eternal in the days of His flesh, and in yet greater power when He died and rose (John 5:25; 6:33-50, 51-58; 20:22). Finally He returns to heaven and is glorified above with the Father's own self, with the glory which He had along with the Father before the world was. This is the “sphere” proper to the eternal life in its fullest character as we know it. But it is of the essence of the truth when revealed that we, Christians, have it now, and were to live because He lives, Christ living in each Christian, not merely in a future and risen state, but as to the life which each now lives in the flesh.
There will be, as no instructed saint doubts, life eternal for Israel and the nations in the world to come; but it will be in a way quite inferior to our privilege. For as it is our characteristic portion to know Christ with the Father in heavenly glory, we now have it in Him there but have also Him in us here. Were it otherwise, what incalculable loss! But it is not so; we cannot have the one without the other. The N. T. which alone reveals the full character of the life eternal in no way points us to “the world to come,” which is its earthly display, but to the Son on high. Then shall we, and not we only, reign in life by the One, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5.17); and this is not limited by “the world” and “age” to come, but will be true forever, a far higher and an everlasting enjoyment of life eternal than Israel or the nations enjoy in “the world to come.” Nor can there be a more senseless view of life eternal than to look for the earth at that period as our sphere of its display. It is systematic error from ignorance of scripture, and a falsification of what life eternal is. Too plainly judaizing here ousts Christianity and its better hope. What a blind leader of the blind is he who would exclude “heaven” from the completion of life eternal, or from the Christian's enjoyment of His association with Christ there even now! See the trumpery too of treating “sonship” as greater than eternal life in page 119.
As to “the world to come,” most astounding is the departure from the truth. “What thoughtful person could say that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life now? I do not think it does yet. I do not think that grace is manifestly set in the ascendant” (p. 136). Not yet in the ascendant manifestly when Christ sits on God's throne when grace triumphs in the power of the Spirit sent forth It is the most deplorable ignorance of the world to come; for “righteousness” shall reign then, not “grace” as now. Christianity is ignored for the Jewish hope. This profound error is repeated and applies throughout; yet he says, “I do not doubt at all that what I have indicated to you is the line of divine teaching!” Did ever fancy's fondness for its offspring more deceive itself? But where is God's word and Spirit in all this assumption? It is apostasy from what was once loved as the truth, now alas! trodden down under unclean feet. Rom. 5:21 applies now, as distinctly as Isa. 32:1 will to the world to come.
LONDON:
T. WESTON, Publisher, 53, Paternoster Row.
Published Monthly.
Life Eternal Denied: 1
Though my immediate duty be to vindicate the Christian truth of life eternal and to expose its frightful and pernicious denial now propagated, I cannot refrain from pointing out how the revealed testimony of Christ here suffers eclipse, and little remains but a morass of mud and vapor. Who but F.E.R. would say that we get in Ex. 15 figuratively “an idea” of the Kingdom? No one denies that as to this it goes no farther than anticipating the everlasting reign of Jehovah (18) at the end. But the true aim is the celebrating of the people's redemption by power as well as blood, and the destruction of the enemy's force for salvation accomplished. In no way is it the Kingdom come, which in this series of types is the figuration in chap. 18. Hence here as elsewhere all is confusion worse confounded.
Indeed the like destructive vagueness characterizes the volume from the first address at Quebec and its first page (8): “The Kingdom was coming in in connection with the Lord Jesus, who was the expression of the grace of God.” Could any one of spiritual discernment thus put together Luke 10:21-42 &c. with John 1:17? Indisputable that the Kingdom of God came in Christ and was proved by His casting out demons in virtue of God's Spirit (Matt. 7:27) equally so that it was in their midst then, instead of coming with observation as in the days when the Son of man is revealed. But it is olla podrida to mix up as here grace and salvation with God's Kingdom even in its present moral aspect, which scripture declares to be “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Passing over wild statements about reconciliation, in page 17 as often before we have that phrase, so offensive to a spiritual mind, “you touch life “; “You touch His life now because you have accepted His death.” Among other outlandish expressions (p.172) we read, “The moment you love God, you are in the life of Christ.” Scripture puts the truth in quite the opposite way: Herein was the love of God manifested, that God in our case hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Never is it written or meant that when we love Him, we are that moment in the life of Christ, unscriptural as the language is. That life is from God's love, not from ours. But the constant error is pretending to be in the life of Christ, whilst we have not life eternal; for His life exclusively is that life eternal, and there is no other. Had Christ two lives to give, a life of His now that is not eternal, and another life at His coming which is eternal? Whatever it means, it is a detestable lie of the enemy, incompatible with scripture, and contradictory to it.
What impresses one's soul in reviewing these dreary talks and effusions (“readings” and teachings they are not, save by euphemism), is that Christ is lost, not being held in faith. Hence the truth sinks into a chaos, partly of traditional ignorance as on the Kingdom and the world to come, and partly of hazy “ideas” as on the new covenant and reconciliation far beneath old puritanism. On the kingdom enough has been said however briefly. But a fairly sober Christian has only to confront the “readings revised” with the Epistle to the Hebrews to convince himself how manifestly these speculations stop short of the “divine teaching” vouchsafed to us in holy writ. They are no more than the inanities of an active and feeble mind, which has broken away from subjection to scripture. In 2 Corinthians care is taken to guard against “letter” instead of “spirit “; for though the foundation is laid in the blood of Jesus, the terms and fulfillment of the new covenant can only be for the houses of Israel and Judah. We have only that of it which is compatible with a heavenly calling, yet enough to help greatly the Christian remnant of Jews to whom the Epistle was addressed.
What F.E.R. means by saying in page 38 that “you get two things in this chapter (Col. 1), viz. the new covenant and reconciliation” is just a proof of his total incapacity to expound scripture. Where is a trace of the new covenant in the Epistle to the Colossians? Apparently he, for one statement, alleges “In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell “, but this immense truth goes far beyond, and wholly differs from, the new covenant; and, for the other statement, “by Him to reconcile all things to Himself” is a purpose wholly future. “In the cross” says he, “there was the removal of the old man to the glory of God: but where that man was removed, the love of God was expressed. The latter gives you the covenant! and the former reconciliation!” Can one imbued with scriptural truth imagine greater imbecility, letting pass the phraseology employed? For according to scripture the love of God was preeminently expressed in His Son's mission, that we might live through Him, and that He might die as propitiation for our sins. Only F.E.R., not scripture, connects it with “the removal” of the old man. Nor does scripture but F.E.R. say, that “where that man was removed the love of God was expressed,” but that “love hath been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4). This we could not be if we had not now eternal life, propitiation, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a power far beyond the new covenant or the reconciliation, as Israel are to know under Messiah.
The new creation is a distinct truth, super-added to reconciliation and never in scripture confounded. No divine teaching is clearer on it than Rom. 5:10, 11; which closes the question of God's righteousness in view of our sins, before the supplement which treats the annulling of our old man, a special Christian privilege for faith but not without the need of learning it experimentally.
As to the new covenant the apostle cites Jeremiah's words for days to come of blessing on all Israel; but thence for the Christian he turns to the beautiful shadows of heavenly things which the Mediator's death brought in, “God having foreseen some better thing for us.” This never seems to enter the mind of these interlocutors. Yet is it the express truth which God opens in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a hope that enters within the veil, of which the new covenant in itself knows nothing, and never will. Have these sorry laborers forgotten what used to cheer and gladden the hearts of true men in days that are past, and of some by grace still? Let them read and learn what follows in Heb. 9. 10. where the Christian is shown to be put into living relation with the true holies, ourselves not only sanctified but perfected in perpetuity. Israel even under Messiah and the new covenant will have no such spiritual portion, but Levitical priests, material sacrifices, and an earthly temple with a veil, and the sons of Zadok. How fallen from divine teaching are those who once seemed to enjoy it forsaking the fountain of living water for broken cisterns which can hold no water! And what are others who sit quiet and dumb in the face of such enormous corruption? For there are not a few spiritual men who value heavenly truth, I feel sure, and who groan at this spurious substitute.
But it is in the Toronto reading (23-34) that the vagaries about the Kingdom come out so grotesquely. Matt. 18 is spoken of as very important, notably for the condition of entrance, but “at the close the great principle of the Kingdom i.e., grace reigning through righteousness.” Now every person of real intelligence must know that the closing parable gives a totally different teaching, not in the least grace reigning through righteousness, but after pardon was proclaimed, the one who proved alien from its spirit consigned to condign torment. Can we conceive an archer more thoroughly missing the mark? No wonder he and his friends regard dispensational bearing with disfavor. “This is the rock on which many have split” (26) says the wrecker.
Nor is this specimen of “divine teaching” all the error here. In p. 32 we read that David's throne is really the throne of God! the very thing which the apostle contradicts in Acts 2. For David both died and was buried, and his monument was among the Jews unto that day; but being a prophet he testified of Messiah's resurrection, and to Psa. 16 we can add Psa. 110 where he tells us of His Son sitting at God's right hand, on His throne above, where none ever sat or ever can sit but Himself. “You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne!” Was there ever a more perverse as well as pretentious blunderer? The O.T. does speak of Solomon chosen to sit upon the throne of Jehovah (1 Chron. 28:5), which as it is differently expressed has quite another import. “But in the New” you do not “find that David's throne is God's throne.” Not only is it an invention but a falsehood. The Son of God, the anointed of Jehovah, shall sit on David's throne. But every decently taught Christian knows that this will not be till He appears in glory: and we have always treated such an identification as the ignorance and even folly of adversaries. In contrast with sitting as King on Zion by and by Christ sits now on God's throne, His Father's throne. This is not mere ignorance in F.E.R. It is shameless abandonment of the truth which he long confessed. Yet not one of his fellows moved the wing, or opened the mouth even to chirp. They seem spell-bound and won over to invincible darkness. Can one be surprised that these unworthy retrogradists allowed it to pass that “ecclesiasticism! standing!! ground! and such ideas! have almost ruined us” (34). Brethren, how have such insults to God's precious truth been heard or read without rebuke and repudiation? Truly “all have not faith": if they have only “ideas,” they must come to ruin. Yea, they seem ruined already.
“The New Covenant and Reconciliation” (35-47) abounds in judaizing and the like confusion as before.
But let us turn to page 148 which led to this retrospect. There we find contradiction of himself as well as of his betters. To the question of the difference between the Kingdom “of God” and “of Heaven,” the absurd answer is given that the latter is analogous to what God did at the beginning: [For it was on the fourth day] He set a great light in the heavens to rule the day. Surely any old woman might furnish one with more sense and any Christian child with more truth. But his explanation of the former is duller still. “The Kingdom of God, on the other hand, is connected with the presence of the Holy Ghost down here.” Now he had already acknowledged, as all know, that the Kingdom of God was here before His presence at Pentecost. Again, to one who asked, what was once universally owned, whether the Kingdom of God is a more inclusive term, says F. E. R. “I don't think so.” Yet when another remarked that “the Kingdom was really set up when Christ took His place on high,” his answer was, “Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven.” Yet he adds what contradicts himself that “the Kingdom of God was present when Christ was on earth;” for this conclusively proves the latter to be the “more inclusive term.”
Is it by the way worth noticing the absurd change (p. 121) from the plain and certain force of Gal. 3:26? The only error in the A.V. is in “the children,” where all agree it should be “sons,” of God. Thus “W.M. Do you read that passage in Galatians Ye are all the sons of God in Christ Jesus by faith? F. E. R. I do.” This seems drawn from the R. V. which by its strange punctuation comes to the same sense, or from an English scholar who followed two or three Germans, and, being himself learned, had great weight with the
Revisers in misleading them too often. But learning carries none safely through Scripture. The present instance is a distortion of the sentence, and the issue a truly unnatural abortion. No scholar would so twist a classic. Where is there anything in the N. T. to warrant “sons” any more than “children” in Christ Jesus? Either would be out of harmony with God's word. It is due to sonship on the brain of one who has no title to pose as the least authority in such a question, despising here as elsewhere an honored servant of God who really had the fullest claim to respect.
Who can wonder that one who dispenses such “ideas” says in page 150 “I think a great point in connection with the Kingdom is to get away from dispensational ideas. We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally”? Think of so bold a revolt from the fullest chapter God ever inspired on the Kingdom! For Matt. 13 (and it is far from being alone) for the most part sets forth dispensational teaching, though not this only. “He that hath ears let him hear” said the Lord. F.E.R. says on the contrary, “Get away from dispensational ideas.” “Have ye understood all these things?” the Lord asked. F.E.R. is not afraid to gainsay Him: “We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally”. Exactly so think the uninstructed leaders of Christendom. Extremes meet. Yet only samples are noticed by the way, by no means all that deserves severe castigation as well as entire rejection, that those who love the truth may see how far-reaching is the departure which once would have been felt intolerable and without excuse.
Think too of such monstrous teaching in the same short paragraph (154, 155), “for the moment the Kingdom is hid at the right hand of God,” compared with the quotation of the future day when “the angels shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend,” &c. Had it been said that “the King” is hid, one could understand; but “the Kingdom” has no sense. It is the fruit of sneering at dispensational truth and cultivating a crop of moral vanities. “In a day of confusion” (153) scripture is the divine resource not mere moral views, which without it only mislead. But what can Christians think when to one who asked the difference between the Father's Kingdom and that of the Son, the answer was, “They refer to the same point”! And to another on the same page he maintained that Christ has “received the Kingdom,” and cited for this error, “we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor!” It is to be hoped that all who heard knew the gross mistake of both answers. Heb. 2:9 is no more proof of Christ's reception of the Kingdom than Rev. 4 v. proves that the heavenly saints then reign. It is His present exaltation when we do not yet see all things put under Him. When He comes to reign, He wears many diadems and is not merely crowned. Who can fathom this disgraceful ignorance? or the dense delusion which accepts it as fresh light and truth?
In p. 164 (the Minneapolis reading on the Sanctuary) we come again to the old strange doctrine. “You don't begin with eternal life,” says an accommodating disciple.
F.E.R. You end with it, at least if scripture is right, ‘The end everlasting life.'
W.E. And that scripture does not mean then that you die?
F.E.R. I don't think so. A man gets to eternal life on earth. He may not get it until resurrection, but get it he will. Every believer will certainly get it.
W.H.F. Before he leaves earth? F.E.R. Yes. W.H.F. You don't enter into it now, but in resurrection?
F. E. R. You will be put into it then; you will not enter into it.” The meaning of this utterance seems to be eternal life given only at Christ's coming when we shall not all sleep, but all be changed. But this is to efface the Lord's giving it to believers now as a known and present possession, for mortality swallowed up of life at His coming, with which he confounds it. Scripture is as plain about the beginning as about the end. F.E.R. denies it for the believer when he most needs life eternal to know God, follow the Lord, overcome the world, and resist the devil. He is doing the enemy's work and corrupting the temple Of God.
The human invention of the believer's life by the Spirit, which is not a present reality in Christ or life eternal, explains much said hitherto, and is distinctly taught in “The Wilderness and the Land.” “You have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness” (185). The truth is that life in Christ, life eternal, is at the starting-point; as is taught in John 3:15, &c., v. 24, 25, vi. 40, and very clearly in 1 John 4:9 compared with 10. It is unmistakably false doctrine that “John 3 [3] carries you farther than Rom. 8” [8]: a total misconception of that Gospel, which tells of the Son comedown from heaven yet Who is withal in heaven, light come into the world then manifesting God on earth. This is not less “the wilderness” than anything in the Epistle to the Romans: and “the thought of God” is as truly in both Rom. 5 and Rom. 8 as in John 3. In short the teaching is a string of discreditable and mischievous blunders. Hence “perishing” is in the wilderness (181), yet means not only to “apostatize” like Judas, a lot so exceptional, that there is another string also to the bow. It really expresses the everlasting perdition, whatever its shape, which befalls every unbeliever. And what more inept than the comparison (180), even before that, of Rom. 8 with v.— “what we are for God in the Spirit?” Surely if Rom. 5 is God fully known in grace superior to our sins, Rom. 8 is our place in Christ, superior to law, sin, and every other difficulty. But this book drags souls from divine truth to self habitually, instead of ministering Him Who alone acts on us in the power of grace by the Spirit.
Think too of the strange “idea” in 182 that “The only way in which you escape from the wilderness is in your own house. I don't think one's own house is exactly the wilderness, for it is a circle which God owns. The moment you are outside of your own house, you are in the wilderness”!!! Was there ever such puerility in a Christ-given teacher, or even a sane man? Who does not know that if typically we pass through the wilderness, which the world is to the new man, tents are an essential part of it, and that these become the pilgrim rather than the settled houses of Egypt? But what a conglomerate of thought or at least of words and figures, to claim for “our own house” so favored a circle! Would to God, our homes were more pilgrim-like, and more redolent of Christ!
But we come to more serious and systematic development of error in the use made of some later types in the book of Numbers.
“G. R. Does the brazen serpent answer to Rom. 8; 3?
“F. E. R. Quite so....
“J. S. A. And I suppose that although a person might be out of Egypt through the Red Sea, and. brought to God in that sense, he cannot enter into the purpose of God unless he apprehends the brazen serpent.
“F. E. R. No, the Spirit is the real beginning of life in the believer, ' The Spirit is life' (184)... God goes back to Adam (!) and the serpent, and sin is condemned in the flesh in the sacrifice of Christ, in order that God might impart the Spirit as life to man. You get the Lord's own expression of this in John 3.”
These heterogeneous “ideas” may please souls immature in the truth; but they indicate a mind caught by appearance, and at sea with a compass wholly out of order. For the book of Exodus furnishes the shadows of redemption and its consequences, up to God's dwelling in the midst. There we have not only the sacrifice of Christ in the Passover but God's action in power for His people in the passage of the Red Sea, Christ dead and risen. “The purpose of God” had been before them in Ex. 3:17, and vi. 4, 8; as they all celebrated in the song, Ex. 15:13-17. In figure they were truly and fully brought to God. Then come lessons of grace by the way and conspicuous among them the Bread of life come down from heaven marking out the true rest, and the gift of the Spirit in the living waters from the smitten rock fitting for conflict, though victory depend on the Mediator's intercession on high.
Is it not therefore certainly and manifestly in contradiction of scripture that one could not enter into God's purpose without the serpent of brass? For its object as the emblem of Christ crucified was to annul the power of Satan through the fiery serpents which bit those that loathed “this light bread.” And it was an absolute and immediate remedy to the look of faith, Aaron being dead just before: and those concerned seem not such apostates as Jude speaks of, but such as had not come out of Egypt nor passed through the Red Sea. They were a fresh generation requiring a new enumeration soon after, who have God's intervention for them against the enemy within and without, and hence too receive the Spirit's refreshing, as they had the emblem of Christ made sin for them previously. It was meet that God should grant all this for the generation about to leave the wilderness; as He had done for those who left Egypt for the wilderness.
But what a hodge-podge is made of “divine teaching” by these ill-assorted ingredients from Exodus and Numbers boiled together for a witch's caldron of poison! Yet not a soul among his British companions or his American friends raised a note of warning! If the progress of audacious error is alarming, the silence of men in the party who must see more or less through Satan's deceits seems more distressing still.
If we turn to the fuller light of the N. T., the violence done to revelation is extreme. For a twofold reason is given in the opening of Rom. 8 why there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, itself a wondrous expression of divine favor. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed me from the law of sin and death.” This was not only life eternal but in its risen power: God could not condemn one so liberated. But there is more. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us that walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit.” As God already in Christ's cross condemned sin in the flesh, not merely sins but sin, He is not satisfied only (as the old divines were wont to put it) but glorified therein. Thus on neither score can condemnation fall. The sins of the believer are forgiven in virtue of Christ's bearing them on the tree; and the sin in the nature also has already been condemned there to God's glory. The believer in both respects stands clear, in order to righteous practice in loving God and man, as he walks in that life which he has in Christ according to which the Spirit enables him.
No Christian doubts the part played by the Holy Spirit in new birth: but how can anyone overlook the plain truth that, when the apostle discusses the further working of grace in the verses which immediately follow, not a word here implies that “the Spirit is the real beginning of life for God in the believer, the Spirit of life'“? For F. E. R's aim is to deny that Christ now gives life, life eternal, and here in resurrection power, to the believer. This he deliberately discards as the beginning or indeed at any time in our actual existence till He comes; for “life eternal” he believes only in “the end” —an end of glory which can never come without its beginning in grace now. The apostle shows that it is no question of duty only, but of a new nature with its spiritual affections quite opposed to the flesh and its lusts which are enmity against God. The believer's relationship to God is in the Spirit, but grounded on having Christ for life and on being in Him. This is made clear even by ver. 10: “But if Christ [be] in you, the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit life because of righteousness.” Christ already in him as life warrants him to disallow the body as a guiding power, that the Spirit may act in that life and be life practically. For thus only is sin excluded and righteousness produced. As no Christian doubts that the Son quickens in communion with the Father, so he holds that one is thus also born of the Spirit. God in the fullness of His being acts in this operation of His grace. And here we learn how the Spirit is the immediate energy in the inner man all through. But to pervert it (as heterodoxy usually avails itself of a scripture difficult to many, in order to deny Christ as the present giver of eternal life), O what a sore grief to Him who is sent here to glorify Christ, and should receive of His and report accordingly!
Is it not blindness to say as in p. 185, after Rom. 5 and 8:3, which is said to answer to the brazen serpent, that “you have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness?” As we have seen, the very verse (Rom. 8:10) abused to put forward the Spirit, in exclusion of Christ's gift of life eternal, refutes the unbelief, and makes “Christ in us” the antecedent to the Spirit's power in making it good in our practice. But more: the Lord's application in John 3 proves that the life given forthwith to such as looked on the serpent of brass answers to “eternal life,” and not to an imaginary different and inferior life meanwhile. Scripture never speaks of Christ giving the believer any life but His own life eternal. F. E. R's doctrine is a fraud of dangerous consequence from every point of view. Can a faithful man doubt that the Holy Spirit, far from accepting F. E. R.'s error in pretended honor to Himself, resents it as a profane slight on the Son of God and the Father's love?
If it were really meant that the life we have in Christ may in some disclose little beyond a pilgrim character, whilst they ought to have a heavenly character also as occupied with Christ glorified on high, one would accept its truth as long confessed and prized. This however is in no way his “idea.” He fancies life eternal to mean neither the one nor the other: he asserts it to be “a purpose of God,” and “a promise” to the believer, but in no case his present and known reality, and less still admits it to be the life of which all Christians live. His notion that “the Spirit is life,” to the exclusion of eternal life in Christ now given, is a wicked falsehood, and beneath not only every Christian teacher, but any Christian whatsoever. It is possible indeed that he was beguiled by his own misapprehension of the difference between the heavenly life and the earthly (or pilgrim) life in a practical sense, whether of Christ or of the Christian. Such a misunderstanding of one truly taught of God may have been the enemy's snare into his own systematized error. But if any one a dozen years ago doubted what he meant, there can be no real excuse now. The reader of this volume has abundant and decisive proof. Who with the fear of God can now say that there has been no false system, nor false doctrine at root? To deny it at this time of day would be party-spirited will and obstinacy unworthy of Christ.
No doubt mistake on the side of these who were right in the main weakened their testimony and gave a seeming aid to the adversary. For all ought to have seen that there are two principles and directions for the life Christ communicated, figuratively the wilderness, and Canaan. The heavenly ways and the wilderness walk are quite distinct. It was so even for Christ, where all was perfection. But this raises no uncertainty as to the unity of His life, any more than as to the life eternal now given to us. It affords no real cloak for the error, which positively denies the communication here and now of eternal life, and only admits the gift of the Spirit (56 et passim). For it is foolish and evil perversion of Rom. 8:10 to exclude our having at present eternal life in the Son, under the plea that without it “the Spirit is life.” Even verse 2 had clearly joined Christ with the Spirit, like the verse tortured into the contrary. For what means “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” if not that? What God joined together, let not man venture to sever.
Further, what Christian taught of God does not see that in Rom. 8 it is a question, first in 2, of delivering power in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and, next in 10, of the Spirit as power inwardly in order to walking in the Spirit? Think of confounding all this with being born of the Spirit, or with the gift of the Spirit! Yet this is a root-error throughout the volume; as if one could be born of the Spirit without life, or have life imparted to the believer which was other than life in the Son, life eternal. What a return to old ignorance, if one conceive that the experience of Rom. 7 could be that of a soul not born of God! Yet as clearly it is one without the Spirit of liberty. But F. E. R. is on every side wrong; and the worst is, that it is a departure from light into darkness on the foundation as well as the privileges of Christianity.
Life Eternal Denied: 2
IT would be tedious to analyze “The things before God” (pages 198-207). But there is the like confusion, instead of the truth, in what is fantastic-ally entitled “the world to come” (pages 208-225) and its continuation (226-242), the submerging of Christianity under Jewish expectations, just as in the denial of life eternal as a known and present reality for our souls in Christ. Take the statement that “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has properly reference to the world to come” (208, 9). Now where is the Christian of spiritual intelligence and candor who can fail to discern that this is no casual slip but error down to the foundation of revealed truth? It is the surest self-evidence that he who holds and utters such a view was not taught of God as to either the present or the future; and this in what is and must be the innermost of all, the true relation of God to each according to His word. “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” has no proper reference to “the world to come.” His only reference properly, if we bow to the word, is now to the saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, though of course they will enjoy Him forever. The error is complete on both sides. The proper title of God in reference to the world is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that blessed us already with every spiritual blessing in the heaven-lies in Christ, but Jehovah, El-Elyon or the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, according to the beauteous type of Abraham and Melchisedek in Gen. 14, so predicted in the Psalms and the Prophets.
Nowhere does scripture warrant the faintest hint that God's relation to the world will be “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;” which is His exclusively given relation even now to those who compose the church. No Papist, no Protestant, within the scope of my reading, ever erred so scandalously, not even B.W.N. in his Thoughts on the Apocalypse or any other of his most erroneous writings, though he shared the vulgar ignorance that all saints from the beginning to the end compose the church. F.E.R. learned better through Brethren; and therefore his error is the less excusable, because it is the more inconsistent. Alas! what makes it hopeless, as it is, is his consistency, rather than his inconsistency. He dares, after professing the truth in both respects, to contradict revelation in both; he robs the Christian now of his most cherished relationship shared with his risen and ascended Lord, and bestows it improperly and with reckless ignorance on “the world to come.” All the effort of J.S.A. or J.P. to palliate it (209) is in vain. None ventured to expose or even oppose the twofold lie against the truth.
Again, weigh the words in page 210: “Every thought enumerated in chapters 1-10 (Heb. 1-10) connects itself with the world to come.” Now had it been said that there are points of connection through the Epistle to the Hebrews with “the world to come” (beyond the text in chapter 2 which openly speaks of it), no one could fairly dispute it. But the grand central truth, which governs its teaching through more than those ten chapters, turns those bold words into dust and ashes. Christ's session at God's right hand after having made for Himself (if not also “by Himself”) purification of our sins is from first to last characteristic for the Christian now, and does not connect itself with the world to come. Any one versed in the truth could disprove it in detail from each one of these ten chapters and indeed from all. But, not to heap up counter evidence, it suffices to allege the indisputable fact of the teaching throughout, that sacrifices are now consummated and closed for us Christians in His one offering. Hence even every tyro in prophecy knows that it will not be so for “the world to come;” as for example Ezekiel (43.-46.) proves for Israel, and Malachi (1:11) for the Gentiles.
In these revised notes, after ample time for reflection, there is the issue to every eye of what deliberately and systematically reverses apostolic teaching of a fundamental kind. For in the Epistle from which it is sought to show that “all is viewed in relation to it with the world to come,” the wilderness with the tabernacle and its antitype is ever the ground, not Canaan and the temple as then and there according to the prophets. Our position as Christians ever looking on as sufferers in full assurance of hope is the express aim of its teaching; not “the world to come” but the holiest relationship [not union here] with Christ in heaven itself which contrasts with that world. It is the better light of God's presence on high, the “heavenly” soon to be our actual portion. We are Christians, not Jews anticipatively or the Israel of God, as Christendom fancies; and our time, if this be meant (211), is the eighth day, not the seventh. So the Lord by His word (in John 7:37 et seqq.) would have us enjoy now in the Spirit. But these judaizing errors flow from the fatal root-error of denying to us the known present possession of life eternal.
In the notice of Heb. 11 according to the new school, we are told that since “sin came in saints were being instructed in some way or other in detail as to the world to come. In Abel we see the principle of the world to come, that is acceptance by sacrifice. Then in Enoch we get translation and in Moses the destruction of the world power” (211). Did ever a narrow and prejudiced Puritan convey anything paltrier? In Abel it was really a question, not of the world to come, but of righteousness from and of God, as it was testified in Enoch the next case for heaven and eternity. Noah might as to this bear such a view in the world after the flood; but what God's word actually says is that he condemned the world, instead of inheriting it, and became heir of the righteousness that is according to faith. No doubt the pilgrim fathers are said to be heirs of the same promise; but it is carefully shown that they all sought a better country, that is, a heavenly, the city that hath the foundations. Must one tell these darkened brothers, who formerly needed it not, that “the world to come” means the habitable earth to come, and does not include the heavenly side of the scene? The Epistle, while owning it habitually and in this chapter, was written to set their eyes on things above where Christ sits. This book retrogrades below the “ways” of old. Lastly what halting poverty of application only to get in Moses the destruction of the world-power! Why not point out, in blessed type, the overwhelming downfall of Satan's power and ourselves brought to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus? Yet no one denies the outward analogy when Israel's foes are destroyed by-and-by.
One of the pupils remarks that “It is not that they were delivered at the moment, but they were waiting for the One who delivered them” (213). Now scripture (1 Thess. 1:10) puts “our deliverer” from the wrath to come, as the most expressive form of conveying their abiding rescue. So said our Lord in John 5:24 speaking of the last crisis of that coming wrath (cf. Rom. 2:5, 16), the believer “cometh not into judgment.” It is a present and assured exemption. Another adds from his teacher that “we do not need Christ as our righteousness for this world. We need practical righteousness here, Christ is our righteousness in view of the world to come.” Well, if we have not got eternal life now, and thereby communion with the Father and with His Son, this might be; but just think how its denial degrades His life both now and by-and-by! A third has found out the error of taking (Col. 1:12) as heavenly, the inheritance of the saints in light! “That is not heaven", says J.S.A., “but the world to come”! How deplorable the descent of error!
It may help him to learn that the word which deceived him is not κληρονομίας (inheritance) but κλήρου (portion or lot). It is far above the “world to come.” Even “inheritance” in Eph. 1 rises higher than the earthly horizon. Let him unlearn this folly and use this scripture, as they were all wont to do. How evidently one lie about a vital truth unsettles, vitiates, and falsifies many more! Would to God that no saints might “grasp these thoughts “; for they are a grievous perversion, and can only defile and destroy. A soul less an adept did cite 1 Cor. 1:30 for Christ made to us of God wisdom and righteousness now. Yet F. E. R., after admitting it, said “I don't think it is in relation to this world, but to the world to come(!)” It was written to the saints here and now; and has no more to do with “the world to come” than the rest. “The age to come” attached to “the world to come.” Neither contemplates heaven. This prattle is one tissue of blunder on blunder. No sound and well-taught man can truthfully deny it; and I trust that none such out of party zeal may have the hardihood to palliate it. They are likely enough to cry out about my tone and spirit, as once against J.N. D. because he did not mince his words when his soul fired up against outrage done to Christ or the truth. He was not at all animated by fleshly enmity or feeling, which I too disclaim. Is there to be no righteous indignation?
We can see in pages 220, 221 that neither J.S.A. nor O.O.B. could give up without a protest the certain if mysterious truth of Eph. 6:12; but F.E.R. showed himself alert to lower, too, all he could. “I don't think the rendering is quite right (I). We wrestle against the spiritual things or influences of wickedness in the heavenly places (I) We don't wrestle against the wicked spirits (1:1) We have to do with the effect down here. There are influences which are abroad in Christianity. We have escaped one evil, but may fall into another.” “We don't wrestle against wicked spirits” says this adversary of the truth, ever bold against God's word when it is plain. “We have to do with the effect down here,” says F. E. R. But the apostle says we have to do with the sources up there. The express aim is to assert that our wrestling is, not against blood and flesh which are down here, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against “spiritual [hosts or powers] of wickedness in the heavenlies.” This I venture to affirm is the right rendering; and it is dead opposed to “things or influences,” which sense in the context is nonsense; for this would-be renderer himself means “influences which are abroad in Christianity” [? Christendom], and can hardly mean to call the evil spirits “things” on high. The apostle speaks here solely of spiritual beings of subtle energy and malice banded against us; and all the more seriously, because they rule the world's darkness from that heavenly elevation by their wiles as quasi-deities; he does not speak of “spiritual things or influences” in the heavenlies, but a man as far as possible from being an apostle, for he contradicts the true one. Nor does he seem to be aware that infidelity and rationalism are as real if not rampant in Popish lands as in Protestant, though the latter are generally more open and outspoken.
The reading ends with a few vague, obscure, and scarcely intelligible remarks on eternal life; but there is nothing definite enough to call for any notice further than the mistake of putting resurrection, instead of the Son, for the coming out of that life (225). How all these “thoughts” belittle Christ, and becloud the truth Whose work is it to do either? Not the Holy Spirit's certainly.
Passing by not a little worse than worthless in the last reading as in those before, we may now consider in its continuation (220-242) some of the more shocking errors. Take this in concurrence with J.S.A. (page 227).-” F.E.R. Every point in the Epistle [Hebr.] holds good for the world to come.” Such a sentiment is worthy of a Jew masquerading as a ritualistic clergyman. He saps the transparent truth of the Epistle; for as it proves the “better thing” than even the fathers looked for in the fulfillment of promise, the surpassing difference of Christianity is almost everywhere made plain. The lowest object in God's purpose, the habitable earth to come (ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα), is abused to swamp the far more commanding and distinctive truths of the Epistle.
It is utterly false that “every point in the Epistle holds good for the world to come.” Israel and the nations shall see the King in His beauty, and their hearts muse on the terror of His day begun on earth. But not even the most spiritually intelligent among them can look by faith on the Son seated on the right hand of the Majesty on high when He had made purification of sins (Heb. 1). Nor will they behold Him crowned with glory and honor in heaven, as we do when we see not yet all things put under Him (Heb. 2). For though it is a citation of Psa. 8, the Epistle shows that Christians have the excellency, which Thomas had not, of having believed without seeing. Then again is it no point of vantage that Christians are “partakers of a heavenly calling” (Heb. 3) while the millennial saints have an earthly one? Nor will it be theirs to suffer being tempted, like Christ, yea, to endure, and reign with Him, as 2 Tim. 2:2 says, whereas they are reigned over, having had no such gracious experience. And the rest of God (Heb. 4), is there no difference in enjoying it on the habitable earth to come, or with Christ above?
In all the similar and deadly thrusts of B.W.N. at our heavenly privileges, I remember none so sweepingly pernicious as these “thoughts” of F. E. R. palmed on the unwary as the truth of God. Surely “an enemy hath done this “; for one might easily go through the Epistle and prove that in every salient point it ascends and associates us with Christ, in contrast with the descent to the world to come. But, even again, to cite (the same page) “we which have believed do enter” as our anticipation of it ought to disgrace a child on the outside seats of a meeting-room. For it is really “a promise,” and not our anticipation by faith, as ranters preach, but a simple fact that we enter there (viz. at Christ's coming), not that we have in any sense entered in; in the same context, as ever in the Epistle, we are as yet and only passing through the wilderness. No: this is the reverse of divine teaching, and wholly opposed to the truth accepted and taught by every instructed person among brethren. Surely they are not all traitors to it now!
“This brings in the House of God, for the truth of the House of God is not literally fulfilled in the present time, it points on to the time to come” (page 229). What a discovery! One might have expected a due appreciation of what is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being a corner stone for God's habitation in the Spirit, though it be not literal, and no saint need deny or grudge the future house in the land of Israel. But will that house of visible glory be comparable to a living God's church, pillar and ground (or basis) of the truth? Truly this abuse of “the world to come” is letter, not spirit; and a like abuse pervades the volume. Christianity is here debased. How very largely it is “I think” and “I suppose” and “quite so” we all can see; and alas! how many are content to remain “by this wonderful system” bereft of the truth! Consider the absurdity of counting it (page 234) “a great mistake to think that Christianity is one thing, and the world to come another”! Christianity not another thing from the habitable earth to come! One might excuse such ridiculous error in a pulpit rhapsody from a preacher to whom that earth is an unknown land, or who is a spiritual babe.
But is it honest to allege that F.E.R. can plead either excuse? He poses as the burning and shining lamp in the obsequious company of several who do not think meanly of their lesser degrees of light. Is it not a stern duty, for any loving the truth who can, to expose so shallow and self-complacent a pretender? For where is “Christianity” or “the world to come” in the admirable group of Heb. 12:22-24? Does he identify “Zion” with the one, the heavenly with the other? If so, he only demonstrates the same darkness into which he has fallen by yielding to his own ideas. We can hardly conceive that he found either in the “myriads of angels,” or in the “spirits of just men made perfect.” It would be blasphemy to identify them with God or with Jesus, and folly to do so with the church of firstborn ones (which is neither Christianity nor the heavenly city), or with the blood of sprinkling. Christians these are without doubt.
But Zion, though the most exalted spot of the millennial earth and the embodiment of royal grace as its principle, is a very small part of the habitable earth to come; and the city of a living God, heavenly Jerusalem (distinguished from David's city, the earthly one), is the glory above this world, for which the patriarch waited (Heb. 11:10, 16), not the new Jerusalem seen by the last Seer, the symbol of the Bride, the Lamb's wife herself, not of the glory which is to be the seat of the elders who believed of old. Thus self-evidently this heavenly city is not Christianity, and as clearly distinguished from the assembly of those associated with Christ as first-born ones.
The order of Melchisedec does apply now, in that Christ like him is the one sole priest without predecessor or successor; but the exercise of His priesthood now is after the pattern of Aaron in the sanctuary and His intercession founded on sacrifice, in contrast with the blessing and refreshment of Melchisedec for the world to come. F.E.R. shows he is a bungler following the tradition of Christendom, not scripture, when he says (page 232), “It is King and Priest, Jesus crowned with glory and honor, and at the same time saluted as High Priest.” Heb. 2 has not a word on His kingdom, which is not come till the seventh trumpet of the Revelation, long after the rapture, and only announced a little before His appearing. It is not “at the same time.” The soi-disant teacher is a forgetful professor, and a pretentious dreamer. As almost all in fellowship used to know better, so he must have been drinking the waters of the veritable Lethe from the dark regions. A King in righteousness by and by is not grace reigning through righteousness as now: none but a hopeless ignoramus could say so. But it is far worse; for it indicates, as far as the truth is concerned, a wicked heart of unbelief in departing from a living God. Even he once learned better when at school, and apparently grateful for sound teaching.
Page 236 has again the ridiculous disorder of the new covenant, purgation, reconciliation, and sanctification, directly opposed to what the Epistle indicates, as a child may see. How Satan must enjoy such nonsense greedily swallowed by persons who once seemed to love the truth, and the sad sight of grave men deterred from their allegiance to the Lord in not clearing His name and word by fear of consequences Think too of such trash as the comment (page 237) on 1 Cor. 6:10! “F.E.R. I think every man is set apart in the mind of God (I) before he is justified.” Brethren, is not this a falsification of this text? “Washed, sanctified, justified,” you used to know, is a blessed existing fact, whatever the difficulty of such as have not learned the truth of setting apart to God before justification, as also in 1 Peter 1:2. If it is a childish but mischievous suggestion to say that “the old man [is] gone in the death of Christ” (ib.), it is too plain that the truth largely “is gone” from F.E.R. Just think that his answer (page 238) to What is the Minister of the sanctuary? should be, “Christ is Head of the body, the Church, and has the place of Minister of the sanctuary. He presents the saints to God; He takes the place of Head;” and this is interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews!
Other remarks follow which in an average saint might have seemed strong; as in 240 where F.E.R. says to W. M., “Yes, but you see we are now going in so that we may be qualified to come out. W.B. I never saw that before. F.E.R. Well, it is a very good thought “[!!!] Whatever may be felt at such self-applause, all sober Christians must agree that it was sad for any to remark (241), “I think that word ' will ' declare it, in the second clause of John 17:26, is what has been misleading to many of us.” No, no: the misleading is from another source. But I do call the attention of every saint just after that to the atrocious verdict of F.E.R.: “Eternal life is realized only in the Assembly; no one touches eternal life except in that connection(!)” This is an unmitigated lie of Satan. Scripture never speaks of it in that connection. It is strictly an individual privilege, and was as it is realized in each Christian apart from the assembly. Their corporate communion begins and goes on in the given Spirit. Such a statement betrays a soul not taught of God as to the assembly any more than individual Christianity. It is wanton opposition to scripture; and what must one conclude from his saying (page 242) that “the proper connection” of life eternal is with the world, the habitable earth, to come? Has he ever done more than read to talk about John's Gospel and First Epistle? Is it not there we find eternal life applying to the Christian now, there only assured and applied in the fullest and deepest way? Never is it there connected with the habitable earth to come, which is a prophetic “connection” and not “the proper one;” nor is it “in association” that we get it as a present thing, but individually by faith in the Son of God. “You are out of death” by His death and resurrection, as His coming will prove. As to our souls, we are risen with Him now. To deny this by talking of earning one's living and providing for the family now is like a creature raving.
Life Eternal Denied: 3
The reading on “Fellowship and the Lord's Supper” opens with the effort to draw the contrast between the coming together and the Assembly: the former in connection with our life down here; the latter having it in association with Christ (243). There is the usual fog of thought and phrase; not mystery, for this is God's revelation, but mist wrapping things up in dark ideas. “I think the supper is introductory in the assembly; the supper rallies the saints, and they come together in assembly to eat the supper: it is what is immediately before us in coming together, but as introductory to the assembly” (244). What does this mean? The Supper “is introductory in the assembly,” and yet “introductory to the assembly “, both in the same sentence, and each incompatible with the other, How can the same thing be introductory “in” and “to”? The mystification is increased by the care taken to show that “fellowship may exist even if we never come together” without the least pains to explain what sort of fellowship is meant. The enemy's aim is helped on by leaving high-sounding words in entire vagueness. Truth is not stated or even sought, save that 1 Cor. 10 is referred to for “fellowship” insisted on, without any “coming together.”
Now what true-hearted saint can fail to discern that this is the letter that kills, not the spirit that quickens? Here is what the apostle lays down in real and refreshing contrast with that vain and unprofitable idealizing. “I speak as to intelligent ones, judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of the Christ! Because we the many are one loaf, one body, for the whole of us partake of the one loaf.” In 1 Cor. 11 it is the authoritative order of the Lord's Supper where the coming together of the saints is in season and place to eat it. Here, where the object was to preserve from all taint of idolatry without and not from internal disorder, he even begins with the cup and ends with the one loaf as symbolizing the one body of Christ. Hence there was no moment here to speak of our coming together, but think of the folly of forgetting it is strictly presupposed! We have here as to cup and loaf the expression of our most intimate association with Christ, more so even than in chap. 11. It is not merely fellowship with one another, but also the communion of Christ's body and blood.
But we come next (245) to the still more solemn and most fatal error as to 1 John 1:1-4; for the effort is to confine the fellowship there to the apostles, or to omit the best. This troubled O. O. B. and no wonder.
No soul of the least intelligence doubts the special place of the apostles and prophets as inspired vehicles of Christianity; and here the beloved disciple treats of truth and privilege made known, second to none. The apostles' function is perverted to deny the selfsame fellowship to the Christian. Those heard, saw, contemplated, and handled; for this was manifested, and to many beyond them. But they had seen, and were witnessing and reporting to the saints generally, as none others could with like certainty and power, the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to them. To what end was this testimony and report? Expressly that others, Christians, also might have communion with them. “Yea, and our communion (says John) is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ; and these things write we to you that your [or, our] joy may be filled full.”
Due honor to the chosen witnesses; all praise to the Father and the Son made known in the Incarnate Word, the eternal life that was with the Father manifested. But even the witness and the report of the apostles came that the saints everywhere should know that they share the most essential boon grace bestows, the present possession of eternal life. No otherwise can there be communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This communion is enjoyed in having life eternal. The way is this, and there is none else. Satan never more audaciously assailed “the proper Christian privilege.” Others in general may have been feeble, doubtful, and dark. F.E.R. is his deadly instrument, striking at its principle.
The reason why limitation to testimony is spoken of is because thereby life eternal as ours now in the Son is wholly denied. Thus and thus only had the apostles fellowship with the Father and with the Son; and they in the power of the Spirit communicated the truth of Christ to us, that we having the same eternal life as they should enjoy the same divine fellowship. There is many an inconsistent thing said in these readings; but the most awful feature is the consistency of the error with itself and its power of perverting other things to subserve and confirm the capital error. In my judgment only an evil spirit could effect such con catenation of falsehood and impose a gloss of truth so persuasively on unwary souls.
Observe how smoke from the pit darkens the truth of God: “If anyone will take the trouble to read the first four verses of John's epistle he will see that they are an introduction, in which the apostle shows their title to address us. Then it goes on to say this then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you.” Such a remark proves fundamental ignorance of this scripture; for these verses, far from being a mere assertion of apostolic title, are the foundation laid for all that follows. What proof could be more complete, that this system leaves out the revealed manifestation on which depends the gift of life eternal to the apostles, as well as to the saints for whom their testimony was written, as well as that divine fellowship which follows?
“These things write we to you that your joy may be filled full” refers not to “the message” subsequently sent, but to that manifestation of which the opening speaks, the pillar on which depends all grace builds up. It is utterly false that John begins with the lowest point. This is the spiritual blindness generated by the enemy. He begins with Him fully and intimately manifested, Who was the eternal life with the Father, but afterward a Man as truly as the witnesses, though infinitely more; and what they had seen and heard, they report to other believers also, that they too may have that fellowship which they themselves had with the Father and His Son. And this is the truth to fill with joy, which is evaded and annulled by F.E.R. and his school. For it is plain that many besides himself are caught in the net of the fowler.
Very far is “the message” in the rest of the chapter from being that grace. It follows the true beginning in 1-4; and consists of tests in varied forms of the deepest wisdom and interest, applied to false profession under the name of Christ. The pretension to life is put to the proof by God as light, in whom is no darkness at all by the three “if we say” (6, 8, 10). The first two verses of chapter 2 are an appendix completing all by the provision of grace for any so blessed, if there should be a sin. But the deadly lie betrays itself by denying fellowship in heaven, because of the wildly false hypothesis that fellowship is in a scene of contrariety. If persons born of God can so think and talk, does it not show how far such can wander from the truth?
But this too is sad consistency with the statement in page 116, “I think eternal life refers to earth, I don't think that we should talk of eternal life in heaven.” Were it one demented who blurted out such folly and falsehood, one could compassionate. But no; it is a man with his wits, energized by will to undermine the most precious privileges of Christianity under the darkening work of the great enemy. If eternal life be not now given to be our life, and its best fruit communion with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, Christianity is unknown in its positive and proper character. But if and as it is our sure and present joy, where are F.E.R. and his echoes? That both the life eternal, and the divine fellowship thence, are our portion in God's love by faith in a scene of contrariety is most true, though denied by this dismal system; nor is there ground to doubt that they will be perfectly known and enjoyed in heaven and forever. It is distinctly affirmed in the “eternal” life, and the fellowship results unfailingly by grace.
Next (250 &c.) we find a quantity of truly small talk, as in the previous readings, unfounded and unedifying and indeed injurious: but we may skip these trifles now as before. But in 260 we arrive at words which manifest alienation from God's mind very plainly. “R.S.S. Does not the more blessed part of the meeting come properly after the breaking of the bread? F.E.R. The supper is introductory to the assembly; and that is the reason for finishing all that is formal at first. Passing round the bread and the cup and the box are so far formal; you cannot help this, but it is a great thing to be free of it, so that you may be prepared for the assembly in its proper character."!!! Surely no reverent believer will bear lightly such a profaning of that which is the very heart of true worship, as is the solemn calling of Christ to our remembrance. Can it be that the great thing which ordinarily follows is the speaking of one or more? And the same pair add yet more clearly to the same effect of irreverence and presumption. “R.S.S. Is the first part of the meeting what you do, and the last part what the Lord does? F.E.R. Yes, It is the cup we bless and the bread we break. The Lord never does that again. And then the presence of the Lord is realized; He has His place, and we are conscious of Him as Head.” “If the Supper is over it is over. If you get hymns and thanksgiving after, it is worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary. He leads the praises.” “We are risen with Christ and quickened with Him, and therefore are priests.”
Can words disclose more clearly men who have broken loose from God's word? This never hints at such splitting in two the gathering for the breaking of bread, that is, the Lord's Supper? Least of all, does it sanction any such slight put on the saints in sharing the bread and the wine for remembrance of Christ. There is no part, no time, so profoundly near or deep in the meeting; and the contrast of what goes before with what follows is a myth. The Lord does not come into the midst at the Supper, nor does His word justify such words as you cannot help the formality of passing round the bread and the cup and the box, and a “great thing to be free of it,” or again that “when the Supper is over” it is “worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary.” It is letter work and theorizing with little reality and not a little contempt for the Lord's Supper. And where does scripture connect the Christian priesthood with being risen and quickened with Christ? It is random and sensational effort or mere dogma.
So in One Spirit and one body (263), the Lord and His death are lowered to a means: “the subject leads on to the assembly.” Where is such an “idea” in scripture? In this page the error grows bolder still. “F.E.R. You cannot call Him to mind as dead, but as One who is living, Who did die.” This is to destroy the force of the Lord's repeated words, Do this for remembrance of Me; which is simply, expressly, and exclusively recalling Him to mind in His death, His body given, His blood shed. It is in no way looking up to Him as alive again for evermore and glorified. This is a present joy, not at all His remembrance: His headship or our risen state are not what should then occupy the heart. The argument about the Duke of Wellington is beside the mark. Christ's love in dying for us, for the remission of our sins, is His alone; and Him thus would He have us call to mind. His being made known to the two disciples in the breaking of bread, though it was not His supper, is not “curious” but most instructive.
Further, the contrast (268) between the Corinthian saints and the Hebrews in the Epistle is utterly contrary to scripture and facts. They were alike short of being “perfect” or full-grown Christians; and their state distressed the apostle according to both Epistles. He speaks of falling away or reprobation, and warns solemnly of such an end. Nowhere have we the body of Christ more unfolded than in 1 Cor. 12, save on the still more elevated ground taken for the Ephesians; the practical interior of the assembly on earth is given in 1 Cor. 14. The Epistle of the Hebrews richly treats the heavenly calling and gives the key to the Jewish shadows, and more; but it is silent on the great mystery as to Christ and as to the church.
Again, how incorrect to say that Matt. 18:20 has to do “with prayer, not discipline!” In fact it lays down the great governing assurance of His presence in the midst of even two or three if gathered together unto His name, including both discipline (18) and prayer (19), as well as a larger range not limited to those aims. This may seem a comparatively small mistake; but does it not expose the folly of so unfit a person assuming, or accepted, to “correct” “what is defective or erroneous?” See page 5.
One can hardly conceive a greater muddle of speculation than the theory advanced on spurious authority without a tittle of scripture for a progress from the Lord's supper to the assembly, and thence for some to the sanctuary. As throughout, it is confusion of things which differ, and here of the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Hebrews (270-280). How loose too to say that “if a man is a believer, he is a Christian!” Cornelius is a sample of genuine piety by faith before Peter was sent with words whereby he and his house should be saved. So indeed it had been for Peter and the rest when they received the same gift from God. No doubt all such had been born of the Spirit; but sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise is essential to the new relationship. The error is owing to denying the difference of having life eternal and receiving the Spirit, an error shared with all the uninstructed in Christendom. Only in F.E.R. and his companions it is departure from all that was fully believed, and I hope is still believed by not a few who connive at this painful declension and incredulity. Faith in the gospel of salvation goes far beyond faith in Christ's person. How misleading to say “you may accept the truth of these chapters [presumably 1 Cor. 11 and 12.] and never enter into the reality of the calling, that is, of the sanctuary and the service of God In chap. 15 the apostle deposits tee truth of the gospel with the Corinthians! and in the second epistle he brings to them the new covenant and reconciliation !! So they could not as yet enter into the calling of God !!! (281).” Contrast with it what the apostle says to the Corinthians (i. 26-31). No doubt they were shallow; but this is a sadly common complaint. Is it necessary to refute falsehood so palpable? Was there ever among brethren such a bungler in print? and with pretension so unbounded, yet unrebuked?
The same dark departure appears throughout “Things Unseen” (283-304). Truth, well known comparatively, on Heb. 12:18-29, is set aside, from first to last, yet with a superficial gloss suited to deceive. Speaking of Mount Zion, he says, “I don't think there is the idea of sovereignty in grace so much as in mercy.” Why? Was it his pleasure and Satan's plan here, to oppose one in particular to whom God's children are pre-eminently indebted? to repay his own debt by the vain contradiction that characterizes much through this wretched book? He refers to Eph. 2:4-6; to Ex. 33:19 (where divine mercy occurs), and to the fact that the mass of the people in Indianapolis were not present. But how does all this support his correction of J.N.D.'s “defective or erroneous terms”? The truth is that “mercy” in no way characterizes Jehovah's choice of Zion; nor yet grace only, but royal grace in view of David, and of his greater Son and Lord. This makes it the most honored seat on earth and clothed with the principle of such grace in contrast with Sinai or law.
Next he is equally astray as to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22), which like other untaught men he will have to be the church, with of course his correction. “I think the idea presented is [not God's revelation to himself, but] according to the work of the twelve, especially according to Peter” anything to change and differ. Now there are plain and solid and unanswerable grounds to disprove the general thought, to say nothing of the futile specialty. For first, the epistle speaks fully and 'distinctly of this very city (as none can dispute) in Heb. 11:10, 16; 13:14. By a suited figure it is the designation of heavenly glory, for which the patriarchs waited. But they never awaited the church of God, Christ's body and bride, either in its present condition or in that which is to be. The mystery in all its parts was then hid in God. Secondly, the context itself refutes “the idea.” It is not the truth. “The church of the firstborns enrolled in heaven” is given as a fresh object in its due place within this group (ver. 23).
We may leave the childish talk, and turn to the object subjoined, “To an innumerable company [or myriads] of angels, [not “to"] the general assembly.” Here we have baseless speculations imported from Rev. 21:9 et seqq. which does present the bride, the Lamb's wife, symbolized as the holy city, new Jerusalem: not the heavenly glory where she is to be, but herself. The only one of these vague remarks worth a notice is the strange fancy that “God's providence may in a way appear to be against His people; but angels are not the providence of God, but agents employed for His people” (288)! Is this to “correct” the belief that they were and are so used in His providence?
Then comes the notable idea that “the church of the firstborn which are written in heaven” is “another aspect,” Paul's work here, as the former Peter's. O brethren, is it come to this, that even the least of you should be so readily and madly deceived? Can you have entertained for a moment this double of the church? Separated too by “myriads of angels,” universal gathering as they are, and wholly distinct? Once you were not so easily taken in; but now that you have so soon forgotten the sound teaching of so many departed to be with Christ, you are become the prey of folly and imposture; and silence pervades the better sort, lest the truth should lead to a universal explosion. O why do you not trust the Lord, clear His name, save your own souls from blighting errors, warn the deluded, and deal with the deceivers? If all fail to deliver others, deliver your own souls from His dishonor.
Having demonstrated the false teaching thus far, I have no wish to occupy the reader with lesser points, though it is sad to think even F.E.R. could not see an incomparably higher reference of the firstborns than to those of Israel. The truth is that it beautifully agrees with Heb. 2:12, and means the assembly of persons thus associated individually with the Firstborn, an aggregate, not a unity, in accordance with the Epistle. Nor need we discuss the curt and unsatisfactory remarks on the other objects in this group of glory, which are far from a just explanation. All is poverty-stricken as well as untrue. And you who know it, and are one lump with all, hold your peace Is there not even a watchman to blow the trumpet? How different of old what pity for mere weakness and ignorance! What hatred of presumption in divine things! What intolerance of error! Now you seem looser within your borders than the loosest you used to loathe. Beware too of hypocrisy. You still profess veneration for Mr. Darby as a great expounder of “divine teaching.” Yet none but a simpleton or a knave can fail to discern that this deplorable book undermines his witness in all that is here pointed out and in much more that it would be a wearisome and needless task to expose. Are you now, through desire to hold together at all cost, imitating those with whom we have had “no communion”? They would be ashamed of much which here and till now passes as “great blessing” among you.
Life Eternal Denied: 4
“THE Kingdom as connected with the Church” (Plainfield), beginning at p. 305, betrays the usual desertion of scripture for human imagination, and is fundamentally erroneous. The truth is reversed in the remark, “if you make much of the assembly you make much of Christ.” The assembly wholly depends on Him. Facts too sadly prove that the church may be cried up extravagantly and sinfully to the disparagement of Christ. She answers to the true Eve of the Last and heavenly Adam; she owes all to union with Him. It is a precious truth to know this as our portion in God's sovereign grace; but the one safeguard is to cherish that Christ is “all,” the all: without this, that He is “in all” is often a danger. Those who ignore the assembly are quite wrong, dishonor God and His Son, overlook and misapply a large part of scripture, losing their full joy in the love of Christ a relationship so wondrously near and glorious. But those who teach the error that the mystery is the assembly, instead of the truth that it is CHRIST and the assembly, are inexcusably disloyal, ungrateful, and vain. All she is or has is from His love; and to make Christ the all is God's way to keep her from pride and shipwreck. The actual state of the church is its undeniable proof; and such will be the issue of those who make much of her to exalt Him. She thus becomes an idol. “Children, keep yourselves from idols.”
In the next page we are told that “the institution of the Kingdom of necessity brings in the assembly,” of course without a word of scripture. But scripture is explicit that it is false. The Kingdom, as our Lord speaks of it, is the Kingdom prepared from the world's foundation (Matt. 25:34); but those who were to compose the assembly God chose in Christ before it.
And this is no casual feature, but an essential difference. Neither the Kingdom nor any other institution necessitates the assembly, which is a part though but a secondary part of the mystery, not told to men but hid in God, which the Kingdom was not but just the contrary. The O.T. saints as a whole anticipated the Kingdom exultingly; but not one knew the purpose of God for Christ's glory as Head over all things to the assembly. The thought is a return to the old lack of intelligence from which the truth better known was blessed to saints fallen asleep, and to some who still survive and await the coming of the Lord.
Then what can we expect from one who, being asked in p. 307 what are “the elements of the assembly,” answers, “the Spirit in this chapter [1 Cor. 12]. In the next chapter it is love, which is the heart of the assembly; and in chapter 14 the important point is the mind!” Is this meant for a climax? It is an anti-climax and seems a woefully inadequate summary: and if “mind” be so important, how strange that so poor a specimen should be presented! But leaving this we have in pp. 308, 9 the strange quotation of Col. 1:27 for “the great importance of the church.” Surely any simple saint might rather have said, the all importance of “Christ in us, the hope of glory;” this is not to depreciate the assembly, but it maintains the homage to Christ which is His due, and ought to be our chief joy.
Indeed throughout this page the misuse of scripture is remarkable, as generally throughout the volume. How is this? What has brought about so marked a change? What struck me near sixty years ago was the spiritual intelligence of unlettered souls in the just application of God's word. Here almost all is random and vague, if not erroneous. Think of citing 1 Cor. 12:3 to show that the Spirit “came here to effectuate the Kingdom”! and John 14:17 to make one body! It is certain that the former is a guard against evil spirits; and that John, even in treating of unity, speaks of its family character, never of the body.
The rest of the colloquy is so trivial or such a repetition of errors already pointed out that we may turn to p. 321 where it is taught that “the Holy Ghost never comes where there is not light “; and Eph. 1:13 is quoted as the basis of scripture for it. This led one to suggest that “faith is light,” which was assented to. It is the old story; not a word about life, though our Lord Himself so often assures that “he that believeth hath everlasting life.” Now “light” is equivocal. The apostates in Heb. 6 had been once “enlightened” and had tasted of the heavenly gift, yea had been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God and powers of the coming age, yet fell away. They were not born of the Spirit; they had not life eternal. Anything short of this comes to naught; and this is the aim of a passage so solemn. It was not Paul's function to dwell on life now, but given to John; yet he does fully show in this very connection the necessity of believing, not only in Christ's person but in His work, in order to receive the Holy Spirit. One must have heard the gospel of salvation. It is after this the believer is sealed. The unction follows the blood on the cleansed leper, as in the type here alluded to. But life is ignored, which precedes peace by the blood. Thus as to the great truth of a new and eternal life now communicated, all is confusion and error. Here as ever is the evasion or denial of eternal life as a present possession by the faith of Christ, and known through the Spirit. Again, “Peter was sent to enlighten Cornelius.” Why is scripture so systematically ignored? Peter never speaks of mere enlightenment in the case, when challenged by the Christian Jews of Jerusalem; he says in Acts 11:14, that he was to tell Cornelius “words whereby he and all his house should be saved.” This goes beyond light or even life to salvation assured, and is based on Christ's death and resurrection. Cornelius was not a natural man, nor were his prayers and his alms a lifeless form but acceptable to God. He was already born anew, a dependent, God-fearing, and pious man, like Job or other O. T. saints. But he needed to hear the word of truth, the gospel of his salvation; and this went forth on the accomplishment of Christ's work. Then God's salvation came, instead of being “near to come” (Isa. 56:1), and His righteousness was revealed, as it is now and not before. Without this, as the fruit of Christ's work, the Holy Spirit could not be given; but as Cornelius and the rest were hearing, the heart-knowing God bore them witness; and they received the Holy Spirit as the Jewish saints at Pentecost. The work as well as the life of Christ are the due basis for the gift of the Spirit. “They were enlightened first, and then the Holy Ghost was poured out” is superficial and unsound, leaving out our essential life in Christ, and His work received by faith.
To F.L. it was admitted that “the divine work of new birth is always there first": but it is one of the incongruities of the system to allow it, and to deny life eternal. What life but this is communicated when one is begotten or born of God (1 John 5:1-4)? Not but that in John 3 wisdom shone, in the language of vers. 3 and 5 as compared with verse 15; but it is folly and error to deny life to one born anew, and to doubt that it is life in Christ, life eternal. Think too of one so unenlightened as to say (p. 322) that the blood of Christ is “light, because it is the blood of Christ that reveals God to you!” Where does scripture say anything of the sort? What it teaches is that “the life (not His blood) is the light of men” (John 1). “The true light was that which, coming into the world, sheddeth light on every man;” it is Christ Himself. But the title to become children of God required much more, even to believe on His Name, on God's revelation of the Lord Jesus. His blood lays the basis for showing forth God's righteousness, which is quite another question.
Here too are the old vagaries about the Kingdom and the covenant (323), and the false statement, “that John 3:16 is not the beginning of the gospel;” though the Lord declared it to Nicodemus before His Galilean ministry commenced. It was not merely “in view of eternal life,” but that the believer should have it. Eternal life will be the great blessing in the day of the Lord; but the wonder of Christ dead, come, risen, and glorified, is that the Christian has it now, and knows it both objectively and consciously. Its denial as a present thing is one of F.E.R.'s fatal errors, the denial so far of Christianity.
When one not fully poisoned said (in the same page) “the blessing is heavenly,” F.E.R. boldly answered, “No, I think the blessing refers to earth,” qualified afterward “by the introduction of heavenly things upon earth.” But what confusion! especially when 1 Cor. 12 is mixed up with it. For when the time here spoken of does come, the manifested blessing will be in the highest degree heavenly, and in a rich but incomplete degree on earth.
Pp. 324, 325 tell us that “Christ has not taken David's throne, but He is at the right hand of God.” But this is flatly to contradict what was taught in p. 32, “then David's throne is really the throne of God. You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne.” The truth is that the N.T. really refutes any such confusion, as we have seen already. So too in p. 155 it was false to say, “He has received the Kingdom,” and still more to quote for it, “We see Jesus crowned with glory and honor.” This is the present exaltation of our Lord in heaven; yet where does one word of scripture warrant the rash error that “He has received the Kingdom,” but has not yet returned? On the contrary Daniel predicts in his chap. vii. the uprising of the Beast and the blasphemies of the last horn which domineers it, before he tells us of dominion and power and glory and a Kingdom over all peoples, etc.; given to the Son of Man. Again Rev. 11 is explicit that not till the seventh Trumpet sounded could it be said that He took His great power and reigned.
What sad ignorance, if it was not still more lamentable opposition to what has been heretofore fully believed among brethren of any intelligence! What means this retrogradism? And why such unwonted toleration of error? Here too the fundamental error reappears, “In the coming age eternal life comes in,” which is thus made only dispensational. Dead silence on what Christ gave when here and still gives in richer power, eternal life now the believer's portion for his soul, which he falsely says “you can only touch (!) in association with Christ; the fact is not yet brought to pass.” Alas! the fact really is, that F.E.R. contradicts not only the apostle John but our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, and His present known gift of life eternal, which is beyond all dispensations, and promised before time began.
Next we have Reconciliation as connected with the church (326-345). “In many minds the idea connected with it is extremely indefinite,” says he; and his “idea” follows, that “where distance was there is complacency.” Is this definite? Complacency really was with Christ, where no distance was. Reconciliation has quite another force. It is that change, not in God but in us, when we are brought by Christ's atoning death into God's perfect favor and settled therein.
The grace and truth came in Christ. God was in Christ reconciling the world. Man would not be reconciled, but crucified Him; and God therein made sin Him who knew no sin, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus was reconciliation made effectual for all who believe. But it is untrue that its principle (p. 330) is “No longer I, but Christ living in me.” Life in the Son of God, as living it now by the faith of Him, is in no way reconciliation, though both are our accompanying privileges. That it is the same in principle is truly and “extremely indefinite,” and false too; and to say that “you are reconciled by being removed” is not the truth but new barbarian theology. God reconciled us in the body of Christ's flesh through death.
It is puerile and vain exposition to say (331), “You can understand how Christ is the beginning in that connection.” Not so; in Col. 1 Christ is the beginning, first-born from out of the dead, as adding a second first-born. He was firstborn of all creation; and to be the suited head of the church, He was firstborn out of the dead (15-18). Then we have the two reconciliations; not only the purposed reconciliation of the universe, but the already effected reconciliation of Christian saints (20-22). The order here stated is only confusion. Here is repeated the old mistake, so profoundly wrong, of simply presenting the world to come, the habitable earth really then, instead of (what scripture so plainly says) “all things, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.” Can there be a grosser fault in a teacher than leaving out what is there revealed and bringing in what is not? Again is it not poor work to drag in here Aaron and his house from another part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in order to illustrate Christ's relation to the saints in Colosse where He is set before us as Head of the body? And again what has the ministry or minister of the sanctuary to do with the truth revealed to the saints in Colosse? It is the crudest perversion of the Lord's right paths that I ever remember to have seen; and it is habitual.
Then in p. 354 comes fresh speculation without scripture: “I don't think we shall address one another in heaven.” What is the value of such fancies as these? Souls want the truth God has revealed. But admitting the need of viewing things in spirit as in heaven, it is remarkable that the chapter before us looks at the saints on earth, as its distinction from Eph. 1. It is not you in Christ on high and in the glory, but “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Thus these notes of readings meddle presumptuously with what one has not seen (Col. 2:18), and muddle what God has given for all His saints to profit by.
But we may omit such like thoughts; and come to the serious slight of God's word apparent in page 340. “Suppose I am thinking of the scripture, ' Holy and without blame before Him in love,' I cannot enter into it by accepting a statement; I can only enter into it by being it.” The words of men are “statements,” and if only such they are powerless. But consider what it means so to estimate the word of God, which faith appropriates. It is the more grave here, because he thinks that being reconciled, and presented “holy, unblamable, and unreprovable” before God go together. Yet the one is God's reconciliation of us through Christ's death, and the other is our being thus holy and blameless in love. What more incongruous, or more suited both to build up presumption in the self-confident, and to destroy the peace of the self-judging? Is it only in virtue of our new and divine nature that we could be thus spoken of, we in Christ and Christ in us? If this was intended, it should have been explained. Here all is in the air. But we who believe are to enjoy the wondrous truth God gives us of our place now in Christ, soon to share its glorious result. We are saints according to God's own nature; we are sons according to the good pleasure of His will, who reveals Himself to us as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and blessed us in Him. His word is no barren “statement,” but the means of His grace through faith in Christ to introduce us into every blessing.
With F.E.R. contrariwise it is love that appropriates the Head, instead of His love in all its unfailing fullness appropriating us (Eph. 5). What cloudland! yet no Christian would minimize our love created by love in Christ. First and last this scheme is mischievous. According to it one may have the faith of eternal life, but not the thing; one may have a “statement” of the blessed place in Christ grace gives to faith, but this does not make you to be what is said. Faith, like the word, is powerless, as if the Father, the Son, and the Spirit took no part. “You must be the thing itself in order to be before God according to that,” whatever this ambiguous oracle may mean. It seems mere self-righteousness, like the Pharisee standing and praying thus to himself, “God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men.” Who thinks we enter into Christian blessedness “by accepting a statement”? Who doubts of any door so good and sure as through Him Who is the way, the truth, and the life? His words are spirit and are life.
Life Eternal Denied: 5
Not the unbelief and heterodoxy alone of the novel school, but its folly stands plainly in “Divine Teaching and its End” (pp. 346-356). “Risen with Christ is God's mind in regard to believers,” and so I might go on. “Eternal life is the expression of His pleasure in Christ risen,” etc. But how is this in a system which wholly denies life eternal to believers as an existing fact of His grace? Risen with Christ, it is said, we are; but how could this be if believers have not even life in the Son now? Is “in God's mind” a loophole to escape the acknowledgment that it is already a real thing in the spiritual realm? If F.E.R. means so, simple souls are deceived into thinking that the error is exaggerated, and that he is really orthodox in this; if he does not mean it, it only adds error to error, as if life more abundantly could be in Him risen without life eternal being possessed in Him even before His resurrection.
But “risen with Christ” goes beyond having life eternal, as the Lord told the believer he had when He was here below. It is a fresh privilege which none could have till He was raised from the dead. For this is the way the apostle Paul was inspired to reveal it. Christ is seen as dead and raised up from out of the dead and set at God's right hand: not Christ quickening now, and raising by-and-by, true as this is; but God raising Him by His mighty power, and ourselves who believe quickened and raised together with Him by the same power. If we possess not now eternal life in Him, still less can we be said to be quickened with Him, raised up together, and made to sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. The system betrays its absurdity inherent and evident. The two truths, eternal life now given and ourselves risen with Christ, coalesce in the Christian, but are set aside by this destructive error: and “the consciousness of eternal life” (p. 347) cannot be unless you have it now. The consciousness is false unless we have it in our souls in the most real sense.
The Epistle of John begins with eternal life in the Word of life, that we may have through the apostles' witness that fellowship with the Father and with the Son which they had. This is left out in any real sense here as elsewhere. F.E.R. says it begins with “Christian fellowship,” meaning the fellowship we have one with another in ver. 6. But this leaves out the foundation and fullness of grace conveyed in vers. 1-4, on which depends our true relationship to the Father and the Son. It starts with the holy tests due to God and His nature, which follow in vers. 510, after which comes the resource of grace, if the enjoyment of our proper place and blessed fellowship be interrupted by sin. Hence even here the “Father” reappears (ii. 1), whereas it was “God” in the interval. How shocking the blindness which wholly omits our fellowship with the Father and with His Son, reducing our privilege to “fellowship one with another”!
There is nothing deeper or higher in all the Epistle, instead of its beginning with an elementary stage, whence it rises all through to the climax of “He is the true God, and eternal life” in chap. v. 20. It is a wretched fallacy, a real disorder, a flat untruth. For it is the same true God and eternal life at the end as the Word of life at the beginning, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to the apostles. But therein is, what is not in any part of chap. 5 nor indeed elsewhere in the Epistle, such a fullness of love expressed as our sharing with the apostles the fellowship with the Father and with His Son. This is altogether and systematically explained away. To what spirit can we attribute this? Not surely to God's Spirit, but to “the spirit of error,” of whose working the Epistle so solemnly warns us.
Undoubtedly there is immense force in the impressive close which the Spirit gives to the Epistle in chap. 5:18-21. But the notion of steps leading up from a lowly start to the greatest height of blessing is a complete misconception, even where the truth may be clearly seen. But, true to the unfailing character of this book, falsehood surreptitiously takes its place: and all that the system allows is “carrying us into the scene and sphere where Christ is Who is the true God and. eternal life” (p. 356). For, even then it is not eternal life possessed, only looked forward to in hope. Yet the Lord had declared that He gives (not “shall give” merely) life eternal to the believer, who has it, distinct from but ending in the resurrection at last, not objectively only but subjectively as “our life,” and consciously too as in John 5:13. What monstrous unbelief to doubt such ample testimony.
The same blind insubjection to scripture is seen in “What marks the fathers” (p. 348). F.E.R. says it “is that they had judged the world systems in the death of Christ.” No doubt they had; but that is what is rather attributed to the “young men” distinctively. Wholly different is what the apostle himself says (ii. 13): “I write to you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning,” that is as manifested here; and this is simply repeated in ver. 14; whereas he enlarges on the “babes” and the “young men.” It is not a truth, but a Divine Person Incarnate showing the Father and declaring God; not His giving life merely, but Himself (the eternal life before time) come as man among men, exercised and displayed in every matter small or great, in word and deed. It is not the world judged in His death, but Himself, the True God, yet also a living man in all lowliness, and obedience, and with all love and holiness, yet in all the inscrutability of the Son. “From the beginning” (ἀπ'ἀρχῆς) is contradistinguished from the outset (ἄνωθεν) in Luke 1:2, 3, and should not be confounded; but why notice such mistakes? F.E.R. has a fatality of error, and seems raised up to contradict, undermine, and destroy as far as he can, what God-taught men labored to instill into the faithful for much more than a half-century before. “The consciousness of eternal life” (p. 150), if you have it not, is absurd and self-contradictory; the steps of progress are a fiction of his mind.
Turn we now to another chapter of blatant crudities, “Eternal Life in connection with the church” (357-375). There is the old reiteration of the only order “morally possible” (1), the Kingdom, new covenant, reconciliation, and life eternal, all falsely said to be in Rom. 5 which speaks only of the last two, here misrepresented. For even the last is but eternal life at the end, here and throughout abused to exclude eternal life at the beginning, though it be one of the most distinctive truths and important boons of the Christian as a known present possession.
P. 359 says that “the Church brings us to the truth of eternal life.” What does this mean? It is so vague that it might bear many explanations, not one of them consonant with scripture, either in the final sense which the O. T. recognizes as well as the N., or in that present sense on which Christ insists as His gift now, as He too will effect the other at His appearing. In both cases it is Christ, and not the church. F.E.R. says the church, where God's word points to Christ alone, whether at the first advent or the second. There is not an effort to cite scripture, as indeed not one word bears it out. Are not such baseless assertions from Satan? John's Gospel and First Epistle are the inspired authority for the truth of eternal life as a present gift to the believer; and neither even once speaks of “the Church.”
Here at any rate the present is in view, for “quickened with Him” is referred to; and “the whole body is, in that sense, in the life of Christ; He is the Spirit of it.” How unscriptural the language! and this to avoid and deny that the believer has life eternal! The truth is that “quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,” is another way of regarding God's work of grace: not the Son quickening dead souls by giving them life eternal on faith, but God raising Christ out of the dead, and quickening and raising those who believe with Him. This is an advance on John 6 which teaches life eternal given in the days of His flesh, but emphatically in His death: here it is in resurrection power with Him. The error is that this is allowed according to Col. 2 but the life is denied to be eternal life according to John 6. What other life does Christ give believers? How quickened with Him, if not life eternal? It is really saying and unsaying. He adds in the same page, “Eternal life does not take you off the earth,” though admitting that “the truth in Eph. sets the saints in heaven.” Did they lose life eternal when seated there? Was there ever a more absurd scheme? It is a mania of contradicting what scripture teaches, and what brethren have hitherto believed and taught without a dissentient voice. And now—?
It is flat opposition to our Lord's plain assurance in John 5:24, 25; 6:35-40, that “you cannot get to eternal life except either by resurrection or the setting aside of death” (whatever this last means).
If God sets death aside, as in the millennium, then eternal life comes in.” Not a word of Christ giving it to the believer when He was here (to say nothing of believers previously), though no doubt to none without His death whenever it came, as it was before God for all His own when unknown. “On the other hand, we reach eternal life by reaching resurrection.” What does “reaching” eternal life signify? Not having it: for this is wholly denied. And it is for those who accept the oracle to find out. It is one of the numerous ambiguities throughout these Notes; so that weak persons are deceived to think F.E.R. does not deny the present gift and possession of life eternal, and the strong who know better shut their ears and hold their tongues. Do they flatter themselves that they thereby escape responsibility? Where is their faith working by love?
Passing over questionable and false assertions of no less moment, we hear again (362), “I don't see any meaning in its [eternal life's] application to heaven.” What an egregious statement to one who weighs 1 John 1 to 5:20! We have it communicated to us here: else we do not belong to Him at all; and by the Spirit as power we enjoy. So too are we transformed by beholding God's glory in His face on high, and await His coming to have the same life completely, even for the body, when He will take us up to the Father's house. Christ is eternal life, and on receiving Him we receive eternal life, but only receive it in full when conformed to Him for glory. No doubt it is superior to death, and the believer on Christ, though dead, shall live; but so little has it “to say to death” in itself, that everyone who lives and believes on Him shall never die (John 11:25, 26). For we shall not all sleep, but we shall be all changed. So universally false is every detail. When we go from this earth, eternal life cease or have no longer force (363)! If these men were Jews, one could comprehend. As to it all F.E.R. judaizes, and renounces the special Christian truth, not only of life eternal now but of its only completeness at Christ's coming for and in heavenly glory. A more shocking delusion and antagonism to plain scripture, who can find?
Leaving lesser thoughts, we take up what is said of 1 John 1:2. Every true-hearted person accepts the simple but momentous truth that the life eternal was with the Father before it was manifested to the chosen witnesses here below. There was the source and the home proper to it; and there is that life eternal now. And if we have that life, we have it in Him above. This gave the true meaning of “the sphere.” Life eternal is hers said to be with the Father before the manifestation on earth. It was in its own eternal sphere. Now we have it truly, but in a wholly different sphere; but we await His coming to have it completely where He was and now is. “The world to come” will only know it in a partial and imperfect way, where righteousness reigns, and power suppresses evil; yet there evil is and will break out openly when the wicked one is let loose to call it forth. But this error-loving book lowers the being and gift of the life eternal with the Father to “a moral statement,” which is false; and “an abstract way” applicable to us ("true in Him and in us”), which is also false, for this becomes only true in us “after He rose from the dead.” And again, “in the assembly you are risen with Christ.” What fumbling in the dark! And when one asked “the significance of the term, you touch eternal life” (not the terms of scripture where it is unknown, but a nonsensical invention), the answer of gloom came forth— “Your soul comes into contact with what is outside of death, that is, Christ Himself and the saints looked at as risen with Him; we are called to priestly service and that is where I understand the soul touches the reality of eternal life.” Q. Cannot we touch eternal life outside of the assembly, individually, I mean?” F.E.R. “I don't think so!”
Can there be a more melancholy exhibition of departure from the divine faith of a Christian? F.E.R. owns some sort of a life, but not eternal life. Not only is the individual believer denied, though our Lord affirms it of him, but “in the assembly you are risen with Christ” (a rare utterance of folly), you have not life eternal—not even those on whom the Lord breathed His risen life in the Spirit; you only “touch” its reality And the reason why so little is known about eternal life is “because so little is known about the assembly!!!” Can aught be a more shameless slight of the Son of God? Is it not the voice of Babylon? And J.S.A. asked, “If he is going to die, how can he say he has actually got eternal life?” F.E.R. “It is an enigma to me” (p. 374). Has the enemy cheated these men, not only of divine truth, but of common sense? Did not Christ die, Who was and is the eternal life? Why should one's having life eternal in the soul preserve one from death of the body? So of 1 John 5:13 F.E.R. says, “You are conscious of it—but not as a possession(!).” Can there be a stranger or falser notion? One might have a thing and not be conscious of it; but how be conscious that you have eternal life, and not possess it? It is indeed a delusion.
The last reading (376-396) and the last address (397-406) call for few remarks, though full of the same or kindred errors as we have noticed. But as we have seen the utmost violence done to the truth in leveling down eternal life for the Christian to a Jewish measure, and hence denying its present reception, so here we have Abraham's blessing leveled up to the height of life eternal, as indeed it appeared earlier. Naturally the usual vagueness prevails; yet there is no thought of Abraham having life eternal: but “I think the blessing of Abraham will be eternal life... You get it, I think, in Psa. 133; There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.'“ How simple divine revelation would be, if one could solve deep questions so easily! Because Jehovah promised, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed “: and the Psalm speaks of the blessing, even life for evermore, therefore it is the same thing! Q.E.D.
Rash assertions are repeated on the scriptures, especially “It is no good sending out Bibles if, there are not preachers.” Is this from God's Spirit or from another? 1 John 4:1. Again in regard to certain things which have come out in this country as to eternal life, “the difficulty was that the limit of scripture was transgressed: the moment you get beyond the limit of scripture you are a transgressor.” Pretty bold this from F.E.R. Had all brethren transgressed scripture in affirming, on the word of the Lord, that the believer has life eternal, till all was set right by the audacious denial that any believer possesses it now? And how are those who know he is a transgressor, not only in this but almost every Christian truth, content to wink at the evil?
This declension, this high-minded departure from what once characterized, is of a piece with the denial of life eternal, not in the Jewish future form, but in its incomparably higher Christian privilege.
That will be when Messiah comes to reign. This was when the Son came, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily. No one doubts the blessing then, life evermore for Israel and the nations. But O! what blindness to the True God and eternal life, not only in the person of Christ when on earth, but shining out more brightly still when He died and rose! And this in giving eternal life to the believer now, so that he has it, and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Apostasy from this essential Christian truth is a horror. Christ's words in John's Gospel are so clear that one can only impute their rejection to the deceiving power of the old serpent.
It is the distinctive character of the N.T. to reveal in Christ God come down to earth, and later Man in Him ascended up to heaven. The O.T. in its brightest aspect is predictive in type and shadow, in promise and prophecy. The N.T. starts with the Promised One come (Matt. 1) and in Luke 4 proclaiming, To-day is this scripture [Isa. 61, as far as He read] fulfilled in your ears. His death in rejection led to the Light shining brighter far in His resurrection. It was life abundantly to those who had it already, bound to tell others of life eternal. But the Holy Spirit, both in His action on believers and in oral teaching as well as the inspired writings which followed, wrought as the Spirit not merely of prophecy but of present communion, a fountain within springing up, and rivers of living water flowing out. As He sealed the Son of man, He sealed the believers; and this not merely as having life and light but in virtue of Christ's work. In Him is the Yea; wherefore through Him is the Amen for glory to God by us. But it is the unbelieving rejection of this present power and fullness of blessing in Christ, which alike denies the actual possession of life eternal and the unspeakable value of the scriptures, especially of the N.T. so called. It is accomplishment we have now, not merely “promise “; it is the thing promised before the world began, brought to light by the gospel and enjoyed in the power of the Spirit.
This is in keeping with the slighting of the “living oracles” in p. 125. Like rationalists, J.C. said, “the word of God is in the scriptures;” like Quakers, F.E.R. evasively replies, “Christ is the word of God;” but he too can scarcely be unaware that what he added is just the unbelieving phrase of higher criticism at home and abroad. “The scriptures are more the record of it, than the thing itself.” Every word proceeds out of the mouth of God. They are spirit and life to man sin-sick and indeed dead. They feed the soul as well as quicken it by ministering Christ through the Spirit. They cleanse our feet when defiled, in answer to Christ's advocacy. Time would fail to tell the manifold blessings, which the scriptures confer, though surely not apart from Christ and the Holy Spirit. This unworthy belittling is the precise opposite of what pleases God, or what Christ exemplified.
It is nothing to the purpose that when Paul spoke to the elders in Acts 20, the New Testament was not yet written. Those whom God inspired to write it in due time communicated in the Spirit the same truth from Pentecost which was afterward written by the same Spirit. If we have not the living apostles and prophets, faith is beyond expression grateful for the written word. This, even in a partial shape, our Lord teaches us to set before His oral testimony because of its divinely given permanency: “If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” It is all the more sad that such thankless unbelief should emanate from companions of men of God conspicuous for Bible love and scriptural intelligence and self-sacrificing devotedness beyond any of whom we read since post-apostolic times. O how fallen, fallen, such followers!
Let two remarks on the address suffice. “Those who minded earthly things” does not mean the grossness of “unsubdued flesh” (404), but rather flesh religious, seeking its own things, without living association with Christ on high. Alas! it is and has been ever since the religion of the day. They are enemies, not exactly of Christ, but of His cross. It is a fair show in the flesh, not its corrupt or violent working.
Equally 1 John 3:2 is turned upside down. “It is not that I see Him to be like Him, but I am made like Him in order that I might see Him” (408). Faithful to his mission F.E.R. seems to have no pleasure so prized, or so frequent, as contradicting scripture. The apostle says just the reverse. “We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” To be made like Him first is to have no cause, or at least not the divinely assigned cause for it. What fatality and perversity of contradicting scripture!
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.