God has something to say to us in the confusion and divisions in the body of Christ nay, He has much to say. They prove how utterly unable we are, apart from His grace and our dependence on Him, to hold fast what has been committed to us. We are not better than our fathers. Very early in the history of the church the great scope of the truth was lost. They did not hold it fast.
In Luther’s day it was especially the truth of justification by faith that was recovered. In Wesley’s day it was more especially the necessity of the new birth and a life corresponding to the nature and character of God. In the nineteenth century it was the restoration of the full truth of God concerning the church, the body of Christ one body, one Spirit, the presence of the Holy Spirit on earth in and with the saints, and the responsibility to keep the unity of the Spirit, as well as the truth as to prophecy and the coming again of the Lord. The full truth of Christianity has been opened up in the most wonderful way.
All this has now been done; it does not yet have to be done. The truth was already in the inspired Word, but Christendom had become blind to it, and men’s minds being formed by the various creeds that have been framed, a vast mass of truth lay buried amid the rubbish of centuries.
In the goodness of God all this has been recovered the testimony has been given. It is not that we do not now have the truth. We have it and are to hold it fast. “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”
But we have not held fast. The truth has been given, and men have not been content. The truth alone did not suffice. Christ alone was not enough. The Apostle Paul says, “All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.”
Men make centers of themselves, and then they speak “perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” not Christ. The testimony that God has given has been rejected by the professing church as a whole. And what is the result? God is giving Christendom over to apostasy. They would not have the truth: He will let them have a lie.
We have God’s Word and Spirit. That is everything in such a day. How blessed to have in that Word the whole counsel of God! And if we so walk that the Spirit is not grieved, He will not fail to minister to all our need and to conduct us on in the faith that leads to Christ above.
May the Lord keep us true in heart to Himself and faithful in service loins girt, lights burning-till He comes.
A. H. Rule