Part 3
The world is “to wonder after the Beast” before “every tongue confesses Jesus to be Lord.” Each will be in its day – but the Beast will have his day, his day of the rule of evil, ere Jesus has His day of the dominion of light and righteousness.
The saint has to walk apart from these schemes or confederacies which are undertaking to make the world what God can accept, till the rejection of Christ be answered from heaven. Little do many who favor the system of religious ordinances, and assert the rights and dignities of office, think that they are combining with those who are cultivating the masses and the people by liberal institutions. But it is so – for all are cultivating man, instead of renewing him. All are doing something against the truth, and not for the truth. (See 2 Cor. 13:8). The attempt is very specious.
The system of the Beast and his kings will, in its day, be very fair. They have all “one mind,” and from the attractiveness of such unity nothing will preserve the soul but the faith that knows the principles of God, and that anything or everything that proposes to set the world in order till judgments have cleared it, is of the god of this world and not of heaven. The thing that is to have this “one mind,” is the very thing that withstands the Lamb, and is judged of God in the day of the Lord. (Rev. 17:14; 19:19-20).
Easy to write this, beloved – but I know that it is the power of separation that is to be cherished by us. It was so in the soul of the clear Apostle, as we have seen him in 2 Timothy. In that affecting epistle, he breathes a spirit which was strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and consciously treading the borders of the glory. And with this he had ardent love for the prosperity of the church, and of his beloved Timothy. Here was the hidden virtue of his beautiful and distinct separation from the world; or the corrupted “great house,” which was then rising up before him and around him. His separation was in the power of this faith and hope and charity. And to like grace the Spirit calls us in this day, when the “great house” of that epistle has become the Christendom of this day.
The scenery of the prophets (and that scenery is as real as what at this moment is under our eyes), and I may say, very specially that of the Apocalypse, is acquiring increased distinctness in the thoughts of many of the saints of God in these days. In other days it was looked on as dim and clouded. And is not this, I ask, some symptom that we are approaching those regions that – we are conscious of increasing distinctness because of nearness?
And besides: there is something of an instinctive turning to thoughts of judgment and of glory among us. There is something of a sense of this solemn fact, that God is about to interfere in some way or another with the course of things around us. The energies of evil are seen to be very active, and the world to be very haughty and self-sufficient.
The present day is the manhood of the world. The world is playing the man now. It speaks of other days as one would remember his childhood. It is boasting itself beyond all former pretensions, and promising to do greater things still. And so will it proceed, till in the moment of its loftiest pride the judgment of God overtakes it.
The people of God should wait with the girdle and the lamp, which are the beautiful standing symbols of their calling till the Lord appears that is, with minds girt up unto holy separation from present things, and with hearts brightened up with the desire and expectation of coming things.
These thoughts of judgments may profitably move our hearts at this hour. But let me add, for it is a comfort to remember it, that the judgments of God are always only by the way, and never close the scene, or terminate his action and purpose. He does indeed pass through them, but He only passes through them, or rather with them, onward to glory and the kingdom, which is His calling.
The Deluge, one of His judgments, led to the new world under the government of Noah.
The judgment of the cities of the plain was survived, and Abraham is seen on high, the next morning, above it all, and Lot is delivered.
The judgment of Egypt was the redemption of Israel destined for the inheritance.
And for still further strength and comfort I may add, that if the mind could be delivered from the blinding and prejudicing power of self-love, it would speak the judgment of righteousness, and justify God in His judgments.
Look at Adam. His hiding behind the trees of the garden gave judgment against himself with God.
Look at the camp in Numbers 14. Their utter silence the moment the Glory appeared did the same. It was like Adam’s hiding of himself.
Look at David. Nathan catches his conscience when he appealed simply to his moral sense, his estimate of right and wrong, his measure of iniquity and its retribution. He got from David such a sentence as justified the judgment of God against himself. He little suspected that he was pronouncing sentence in his own cause. But it was so – and self-love being dismissed or set aside for a moment, and the moral sense being left alone in company with the offense, David out of his own mouth is judged, and God’s judgment is justified.
So the husbandmen of Matthew 21. Like Nathan with David, the Lord catches the conscience of the Jews, and makes them pronounce their own condemnation. And all this, because self-love was again, as it were, sent out of court, and the mere moral sense, the sense of good and evil, right and wrong, is alone on the judgment seat. The decree of God against them is there anticipated by themselves.
And so with the man without the wedding-garment in Matthew 22. He got into the marriage-feast with a careless heart, just thinking of himself in the power of some form or other of mere nature. But again, in his case, when the sense that judged what was fitting and necessary was called into exercise, and there was nothing to interfere with its action in the conscience when the simple, unmixed thought is presented to him, whether any person in such a dress should be in such a place he is “speechless,” he is convicted, he has nothing to say, and his own judgment tells him that such an one as he has no business in such a place as that.
These may be used by the soul as illustrations of the great truth, that the Judge of all the earth will do right, that He will be justified when He speaks, and clear when He judges. Out of our own mouth will He condemn.
When Eve pleaded the serpent’s guile, and Adam pleaded Eve’s gift to him, the Lord God did not condescend to answer the pleas. And who of us at this hour does not justify Him in pronouncing that sentence without replying to those excuses?
All this is for us and our comfort, when we think of Him with whom we have to do; and we may sing of Him and of His praise when the subject is either “mercy” or “judgment.” (Psa. 101). But judgment, again I say, never closes the scene. It is never “the end of the Lord.”
The things of Job were all set right, and much more than that, ere “the end of the Lord” in his history was reached. His things in the world, in his own person, both mind and body, in the family, and in the church, were all in confusion. His cattle were stolen, his houses were in ruins, his children were dead, and his brethren were set against him, he misunderstanding and reviling them, and they injuriously reproaching and condemning him. All was thus out of order, within and around him, as to the world, the family and the church.
How could there be more confusion! But God’s “end” lay beyond all this for we never reach God’s end in either discipline or judgment, the discipline of an individual saint, or the judgment of a people, or a world.
So does the Holy Jesus alone close and crown the book which details the coming judgments of God (Rev. 22).
How little does the soul rise up in the power of these things, which are so easily discerned, and so freely spoken of and written about.
(Concluded)