In all the dispensations, while each was still subsisting, there has been separation after separation. We see this in Israel. Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, were, each of them, returned captives, a separated remnant who with their companions left Babylon. But the day came, the day of the prophet Malachi, when “they that feared the Lord” had to separate from the returned captives, and “speak often one to another,” as though they had been another remnant (Malachi 3).
So it is in Christendom. The Reformation, for instance, was a time of separation. But from the persistent, growing, and accredited corruption which still or again prevailed, further withdrawing or separation has again and again had to take place. The return from Babylon did not secure purity in Israel, nor has the Reformation recovered it and kept it in Christendom. The emptied, swept, and garnished house would not do for the Lord Jesus. He has found no habitation for His glory there. The unclean spirit, the spirit of idolatry, may have gone out from Israel, for there were no idols or high places in the land after the return from Babylon; but Israel was not healed. Infidel insolence, the challenges of the proud and scornful, were heard there fearfully. And what else do we see, if not this again, in the Reformation-times of Christendom? Read the prophet Malachi, and look around at the moral condition of things at that time. Mark the striking analogies that there are in the stories of corruption and confusion in man’s world, whether here or there, whether now or then, whether in Israel or in Christendom, whether in our day, or 2000 years ago. Is it not so?
J. G. Bellett