I NEED hardly make any excuse for myself in bringing this subject before you. I believe I can trace all the divisions in the present day to simple ignorance of what the testimony is.
God has always had a distinct course of action. I might illustrate what I mean by the trade winds, a natural fact, I suppose, familiar to every school boy. A sailor once told me that he had been in sight of the trade winds seven weeks, and yet could not get into them. He was becalmed just outside their influence. A calm is produced by the action of two winds one against the other, when the force of each is neutralized. I believe spiritually many are there. If we are in the testimony, we are in the sphere where the whole force of God's Spirit is in operation. And if we are out of it, we lack power. We lose everything if we are not in communion with the Lord as to His present course, of action on earth. All is in abeyance; we are becalmed, and make no progress.
The testimony begins with the call of Abram. I count four distinct testimonies. I believe the first began with Gen. 12 Mark the circumstances under which it began. God had set up man afresh on the earth after the flood. It was a special thing with Noah. God set man up at that time under a new covenant. Now when God makes a covenant with man, all man has to do is to submit to it, he is to have no will in the matter. But man set about building a tower in simple defiance of God. And from that Babylon sprang. Babylon is the world's future; there, everything gives place to enjoyment; everything yields to the pleasures of the senses. I may say indeed that it began with Eve. Eve was a woman of taste; she was aesthetic; she saw that the fruit was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and that which would make one wise; she was intellectual. And thus came in the exaltation of man; he turns his back upon God, and counts himself quite able to get on without Him. All this comes out in manifest form in the tower of Babel. Conversion is just the opposite of all this. I turn my eyes to God, and my back upon all that is of man.
And now comes out election for the first time. Abram is called to get out of his country and kindred and father's house, and "he went out, not knowing whither he went." This was the great characteristic of the testimony at that time; and we must not lose sight of this first moral feature, for the final testimony embraces all the former testimonies. You do not lose a moral feature of them.
Abram then comes out, counting simply on God. He leaves the land of Shinar, mark you. He turns his back upon the city of man's creation-that city which foreshadowed what will yet be accomplished by man on earth, and he looked for " a city whose builder and maker is God." I am sure you will not be surprised if I say that that city is the New Jerusalem. He left Babylon. He turned his eye in dependence on God, and looked for that city which would show forth Christ's glories upon earth. Wherefore God was not ashamed to be called his God.
Now as long as he kept to this path God supported him in it. But famine came, and he went down to Egypt. He got out of the testimony. We always lose the best thing we know, if we are not in communion. Still there is restoring grace, and Abram comes back again to the land.
If we pass on now to chapter 13:14, we read, " And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever." Here we find that Lot had separated from Abram. Lot is here a typical man; he has dropped out of the testimony, though I admit he is converted. No doubt he is a gross case. He deliberately gives up the path of faith for worldly advantage. He did not give up God, but he gave up the path of testimony. God is able to preserve him, and He did preserve him: He knows how to deliver the righteous out of temptation. It is not that his soul was lost, but he has lost the testimony, and that is what brings him into all the trouble.
I pass on to another instance of losing the testimony which was committed to Abraham, and one still more to be dreaded. This is Jacob at Shalem. When a soul drops out of the testimony his worship bears the character of it. It is not that a man becomes irreligious; but his religion bears the stamp of his failure. So, selfishness is stamped on Jacob's altar.
Eventually Jacob becomes, at the close of his life, rather the remnant of this period. The remnant is always a bit of the original thing, it is not a new thing. As we read in Isa. 6, " The holy seed shall be the substance thereof." Everything that God has entrusted to man, fades in his hand; but God never loses sight of the first characteristics of what He has set up, and at the end they come out pure and simple; come out at eventide in all the freshness and beauty of the dawn. Jacob’s death bed is a beautiful close to that period.
However, I was more dwelling on how he dropped out of the testimony. After his long exile in Syria, he has got back to the right ground; to a night of trembling, but to the name of Israel. And thence he passes on to Shalem, where he neither gives up the right ground, nor loses sight of his new name, but where he gives up the testimony in a very insidious way. He buys a piece of land and builds a house. Now the testimony in that day was not to have a foot of land. Remember that I do not condemn a saint for having land now; it is no worse than having a house. But Jacob's possessing it took him out of the testimony. Abraham had great riches, but he never used them to exalt his position by possessing the land of Canaan. Beware of making a position in the world with your money.
Jacob is way-worn; he comes to a moment of rest at Shalem; he thinks that, as he is in the right place he may rest; and he builds an altar. But what kind of altar? He circumscribes the blessing to himself We see this in our prayers sometimes; our desires revolving round ourselves. But if in communion with the Lord we shall take His circle instead of our own. I compare it to a man walking in his garden and saying, How beautifully the sun shines on my garden. If he could only see the magnificent circle the sun performs and how nothing is hid from the heat of it, he would find out that, in its blessing of all creation, it did not leave out his garden. A man out of the testimony always becomes individual; he is not occupied with the range of God's blessing, but circumscribes it to his own circumstances.
We find in Gen. 35 what a cleansing Jacob's house and surroundings got. The more I am in concert with Christ, the more the minutest thing in my ways which is unsuitable to Him is disclosed to me. It is not a question of bringing Christ down to where we are, but of carrying us up to where He is. If you bring Him down to your interests, you make use of Him as the Man of sorrows. He does sympathize with us, thank God; He knows how even a shower of rain may affect us. But I say I have to do with Christ in His divine interests, and the more I am in concert with Him, the more He assures me of His interest in my things, in all the minutiæ of my needs down here.
The second testimony is Joshua. This is a further step, and, to my mind, a very important one. It is quite a different thing; it is possession of the land. We find that Abraham's burying-place is the very spot given to Caleb for a possession. Abraham was not to possess; but in Joshua's time the word was: " Go in and possess." Joshua is a figure of the Spirit of Christ: by the Spirit of Christ I possess now those heavenly things which are mine in Him. We find the antitype of it in Ephesians; we are brought into the possession in heaven now, but it is as militant. We belong to that place. Like Abraham we are called out to walk on earth as separated to God, as God's man here, looking for a city that has foundations; and also, like Joshua, we are called to go in and possess it. We are called to hold the heavenly places by the power of God. This is our present calling.
But perhaps, as you look at the history of faith, you ask: What is the difference between Abraham in the Land and Joshua? I answer, Abraham was the heavenly stranger in type, which Philippians sets forth. Joshua typifies how God has brought us into possession of His things, not in body yet, but in spirit; and the difficulty is to maintain that ground, and to maintain it as brought there by God. We see in Israel's history how they failed to do so, and how they were diverted from it by the enemy.
We find in Samuel what characterizes the close of this period. Two things mark him. Samuel believes in the trade winds. He believes in getting the people back into the current of God's ways. Look at 1 Sam. 7 He says, " If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines." They were actually in the place, and yet they were not in possession of the place. They were actually strangers in their own land. The divine action here is beautiful in its simplicity. What happened? Samuel prayed; the Lord thundered with a great thunder, and the Philistines were discomfited and smitten; and they came up no more into the coasts of Israel all the days of Samuel.
And then Samuel set up a stone there, and called it Ebenezer. I want you to compare the difference between the stone here and the stone in Joshua. That in Joshua hears all the counsel of God for His people. The one in Samuel is rather a witness to God's gracious help to them in the trial into which their own departure from Him had brought them. Hitherto had Jehovah helped them Just as a man will specially care for, minister to, and help his wife when she is in feeble health. The heart rejoices in the confidence that mere weakness is no hindrance to our communion with the Lord, but is rather an opportunity when fidelity to Him discovers the greatness of His interference on its behalf.
Though it might come in more suitably a little later on, I turn to Haggai. Jacob's failure was caused by having a selfish object; it was pretty much the same in Haggai's time. This is the most dangerous kind of departure, and it is the saddest too: that of being discouraged in God's
service because of the difficulties in the way. The people had gone through great sorrow and exercise of heart to escape from Babylon; they had really begun well in the testimony in Ezra's time; but the pressure became too great for them, and they stopped building. We get the same class of people described in 2 Timothy, where Paul speaks of all those that were in Asia as having turned away from him. So the people stopped building for sixteen years, and were exclusively occupied with their own blessings. It is astonishing how devoted saints occupy themselves with their own blessing-how they get concentrated and absorbed in their own spiritual gain, how they limit God to providing for them. Their walk is very correct, but they are not in the testimony; they have lost God's object, the great center of their position; they are not occupied with the Lord's interests, and, as a consequence, they are not getting on, not making progress, not gaining light.
But what is the testimony in the present day? you ask. In the Gospel of John we find quite another thing from that which we have been considering; we find there a most deeply interesting subject. When the fullness of time was come God sent forth His Son into this world. And now there is a faithful witness on earth. All the preceding testimonies we have seen break down, but there is no break-down here. It is the full and perfect testimony for God. It is a blessed divine Person walking on earth, a Man among men. It is " the Son of man who is in heaven." He never left heaven. I see a Man on earth who was not formed by anything here; I see the bringing down of a new thing that was entirely according to the mind of God. It is marvelous! Nothing can be more marvelous! I see Him day after day, year after year, sitting among men-and I watch tier upon tier of that wonderful unfolding of all the beauty of God in the framework of a man-in all the small details of the life of a man upon earth. He never adopted a single habit or fashion of this world; He only brought God down to it; He was the full exhibition of Him in every detail of human life. Here you have the perfect witness. Well might it be said of Him that " the world itself could not contain the books" that could be written about Him!
The new Jerusalem will be the beautiful reproduction of everything that that blessed One was-of all the attributes of His Person. You and I will be little atoms of that wonderful city which will come forth to illuminate the earth in the ages to come.
"He that cometh from heaven is above all." This is the One we have. A Nan who was entirely dependent upon God; who fully set forth God; who did everything according to the mind of God; in whom there was nothing borrowed, nothing acquired; so that they could say of Him: " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" Yet He could say: " I have more understanding than all my teachers." The King had really come; He wept over the city that would not have Him. And see His interest in the house of God; how He drives out all that was defiling it; and, as He goes out of that temple to give all His living in order to bring out what is really due to God on earth, He meets a poor widow casting in all the living that she had. She is in sympathy with God's testimony at the time, in sympathy with Him who was Himself the testimony, who was maintaining what was due to God on earth. It was not now the 19th Psalm creation and revelation bearing testimony: that was God's testimony. The testimony was now in a Man, the Son of God. He fulfills all. He could say, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." He carries your heart up to the One He is expounding. All the resources of God are connected with this blessed One. Yet some, when they heard this, went back and walked no more with Him. They dropped out of the testimony; few followed this stranger from heaven.
Since the history of faith began there were always two classes of believers; those who have faith for the testimony, and those who have not. I do not slight the latter, but I do say they are not in the testimony though saved souls. In a day of distraction like this, I believe our true place is to be pioneers, sappers and miners to the whole army of God. We ought to face the difficulties, and make the road for the others to come on by. We should remove the impediments in the way, and thus make straight paths for our own feet and those of others, thus doing everything that may conduce to their help and blessing.
But the Lord has gone away; and the testimony is very simple. He is the Center of it. He is the Sun of this new system. And He Himself has gone away. But He says, I will send to you the Holy Ghost, and He shall " testify of me." I believe everything now depends on that " me." Some one might say, I thought that was the gospel. It is quite true that I must speak to a lost sinner of Christ, but we have something more than that here. I can call nothing true testimony but that which is a reproduction of Christ. The proclamation of the gospel is connected with the testimony, because formative of the testimony. The Lord is rejected from His Place here, and the Holy Ghost comes to testify of Him during His absence. " To testify of me."
Individually, "whom the Father will send in my name." The name is the testimony. The name is the reproduction of what is already expressed. The Holy Ghost comes to dwell in my body, and to acquaint my heart with this One whose name I am to carry out down here.
In 2 Tim. 1 find the apostle looking at the times that were coming, and at the character of those who depart from the testimony. Demas was not an unconverted man; my impression is that he went off preaching.
The apostle says that Timothy was " not ashamed of the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner." Paul was the one who had been the great exponent of the glorified Christ, the heavenly man on earth. No person is in the testimony who does not hold that it is not the earthly man but the heavenly man the saint is to be down here. A heavenly man is characterized by two things: he is a stranger here, claiming nothing but a burying-place in the world; but, by the Spirit of God, the earnest, he has possession in heaven.
All in Asia turned away from the testimony when they found the teacher of it in the enemy's hand. Like those in Haggai, they gave up because of pressure. In Hebrews the people began brightly, they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in themselves a better and an enduring inheritance.
Now we find in 2 Timothy two things that suit the perilous times: Paul's doctrine, and the other scriptures. If you do not understand Paul's doctrine, you cannot interpret the Old Testament. How could you interpret Joshua if you did not understand Ephesians? Where could you get the clue to it? Paul put the two things together: " Continue thou in the things which thou host learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." I turn to Colossians for a definite statement of what the testimony is: " Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." It is in. His name. Let the youngest begin to carry that out! It will affect the very tie you wear! If truly carried out it would effect a wonderful change in every one of us. Do not say, That is too exacting! Not at all, if your heart is in the simple enjoyment of fellowship with Him. I do not believe a wife wears anything particular but that it answers to something that she finds in the secret of her husband's heart. It is just so with us and the Lord. It is doing the thing He would like me to do. I have often asked myself, in writing a letter, What Would the Lord have me say? Oh! you say; that puts the standard too high. Not if you are to " do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus."
I say in conclusion, that there is such a force of evil working around us-such a power accumulating-as will raise man here on earth to independence of God. I feel we need to be able to stand against it. We shall surely be drawn into it unless we can come out with some counter thing vastly superior to it, such as: " I belong to Christ."
In conclusion, what then is our simple calling? It is to reproduce Christ. It is, as the apostle says, that Christ may be magnified in my body. That is the way to begin; it is an individual thing for each one. But I do not believe that any one can truly carry on the testimony apart from the body of Christ. I cannot do without the members. I will give you two little lines that are of great use to myself:
I must go on without many;
I cannot do without any.
If my arm has been cured of paralysis, I say, Thank God, my arm is well again; and now I am laboring to get the whole system free. You do not understand the testimony if you do not embrace every soul that belongs to Christ; "His own;" the " me" of Acts 9.
In the Revelation John begins with the marred candlestick; but, before the close of the book, he is shown the church coming down from heaven resplendent in divine beauty, to show forth the attributes and glory of Christ in the very scene where the defection occurred; it comes down in all the beauty of Christ and without one thought of self. He delights to call us His bride; He owns no other identity; and you are not true to your identity if you are not bridal in character. And as the bride, we enter into the most wonderful and intimate fellowship with Him.
The book being given to John, his work is done; his tarrying " till I come " is fulfilled. And now the bride says, in company with the Holy Ghost, " Come."
May we have power to grasp the magnificence of such a calling, of being given such a testimony. May our affections be so entirely occupied with the Lord, identity of interest with Him so command our souls, that every heart may rise up with delight at the very thought that He is coming.
The Lord grant that our souls may grow into a simpler and fuller knowledge of what the testimony is, and keep therein, for His name's sake.
(J. B. S.)