Mr. Oliphant Read Haggai.
The beauty of the combination of the call to consider our ways accompanied with the comfort comes out in these scriptures. Is not the secret of all the trouble, “You run every man to his own house, and the house of the Lord lieth waste.” It is self and its concerns that occupies the heart. How far is itself with us? How far have Christ and the Church the place really that is due? How far is there the readiness to die for the saints? How far is the heart affected by the state of things around us? And if in any measure the Lord has given the feeblest or the youngest any sense of what the Church is in relation to Christ—what it was at the starting — what it is now — we get into the place of comfort. The comfort is, “the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this House with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts.” And as there is sorrow of heart, as Christ and the Church are by the Spirit of God given a place in our souls, Christ in glory and His Church on earth, and we know something of a mourning spirit; “God is for us” is a real vantage ground. Provided we are above this, provided we hearken to His Word.
He says to us, “Fear not, I am with you.” Be it that it is all feebleness and weakness; the comfort is, that the Desire of all nations shall come. He is coming! and on the eve of it. It is the return of the people out of Babylon, answering much to the place in which we are found together, and the word of the Lord has been to us, “Consider your ways.” As we answer to His call He bids us “Fear not, I am with you;” and the exhortation founded upon it, “Go up and build the house”—it is Christ and the Church. Nothing narrower. The whole Body of Christ on the earth. The Lord grant we may see the wonderful place He has given us in relation to Himself and answer to it, while we are in the dust before Him as to the practical state of things today.