Part 2
(Continued)
So, I say, there is no New Testament promise that the church shall recover her consistency and beauty, ere her translation comes. She passes from her ruins to her glory; while the world goes from its magnificence to its judgment—ruins, too, I add, which witness the judgment of God. The sword has never departed from the house.
May I not say, beloved, in the light of these truths, comfort yourselves as you look abroad, and see what it is that is strong now-a-days, and what it is that is weak. But let me add—let not the weakness of which I speak, the corporate or church weakness of the saints, be the least occasion for personal moral relaxation. This would be a sad and terrible use to make of the truths we are speaking of, and gathering from Scripture. We are, most surely, to be separate from evil as distinctly as ever, and to cherish all the thoughts and ways of holiness as carefully as ever.
But further—We may find some hesitation in knowing exactly how to speak of Israel’s history, whether it be that, of a martyr or a penitent. It has something of each in it—more, however, I judge of the latter. But whether or not, their recoveries and redemptions illustrate the mystery which we now have before us, that the apostate thing goes to judgment in the hour of its chiefest strength and greatness; and the true thing rises from amid its infirmities and ruins to its glory and blessedness.
They were in a low condition in Egypt, as brick kilns and taskmasters tell us, and the exacted tale of bricks without the accustomed straw, just as the Lord was sending Moses and his rod for their deliverance.
So again in Babylon. The enemy was insulting their bonds, making merry in infidel despite of the captivity of Jerusalem and her Temple, when, that very night, the deliverer of Israel entered Babylon.
So again in Persia. The decree had fixed a day for their destruction, and that decree would not, could not be changed. Their Amalekite persecutor was in power, and all, as far as the eye could reach, was utter destruction—but Haman fell, and the Jews were delivered. And so will it be again with the same people (Deut. 32:3636For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. (Deuteronomy 32:36) and Isa. 59:1616And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him. (Isaiah 59:16)).
“At evening time it shall be light.”
The city will be taken; all the peoples of the earth will be round it in its day of siege and straitness; half of it will go into captivity; the houses shall be rifled, and all will be waste and degradation—but the Lord from heaven shall, in that instant, plead their cause.
“At evening time it shall be light.” The shadow of death shall be turned into the morning (Isa. 29:1-81Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year to year; let them kill sacrifices. 2Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow: and it shall be unto me as Ariel. 3And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee. 4And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust. 5Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. 6Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire. 7And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. 8It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion. (Isaiah 29:1‑8); Zech. 141Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. 2For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. 3Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. 4And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. 5And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. 6And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: 7But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. 8And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. (Zechariah 14:1‑8)).
And again, Caesar Augustus was in strength and majesty. His proconsuls were in far distant provinces, his decree had gone to the ends of the earth, and the whole Roman world was set in beauty and order, just as Jesus was born (Luke 2). But the remnant were feeble. The family of David lived at Nazareth, and not in Jerusalem. The hope of the nation lay in a manger at Bethlehem. A devout, solitary, expectant saint or two frequented the temple, and it was shepherds during their nightly watches who had glories revealed to them. Israel had thus fallen, together with the house of David; and fallen, each of them, by their iniquity, and the judgment of God. The sovereignty of the Romans could command the chief of Israel’s sons from Galilee to Judea, to be taxed and estimated like the rest of Roman property. But the Lord was at hand. The Child, who was to be for the fall and the rise of things and people, was just born.
Let us be emboldened according to God, and judge not according to flesh and blood, but by the light of the Lord. And again, I say, as the Apostle teaches, it is better to be judged of the Lord, than to be condemned with the world. Judgment has begun at the house of God. He abaseth the proud and exalteth them that are cast down. The candlesticks are visited in the keen and searching power of Him whose “eyes were as a flame of fire” —and as far as we know them here on earth, there they are left—but the place of judgment proves itself to be next door to the place of glory (Rev. 1-4).
It is all right and comforting to faith; strange to the reasoning and religion of nature. The church will go from her ruins up to glory—the world will pass from its proudest moment of greatness to the judgment. God takes the beggar from the dunghill to set him among princes.
Would that the saints, of God were apart from the purposes and expectations of the world.
“Come out of her, My people.”
“The feeble saint shall win the day,
Though hell and death obstruct his way.”
The Lord will vindicate His own principles, and establish His own thoughts forever and ever, though the voices that witness them be feeble, and well-nigh lost in the din of the world’s exultation. May the heart of the humbled, broken saint be comforted in Him!
(Concluded)