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I believe that the failure
of the Church to see that she is a separated, a called-out Body in the purposes of God,
charged with a definite mission limited in its purpose and scope, and the endeavor to take
from Israel her promises of earthly glory, and appropriate them over into this Church
dispensation, has done more to swerve the Church from the appointed course than all other
influences put together. It is not so much wealth, luxury, power, pomp, and pride that
have served to deflect the Church from her appointed course, as the notion, founded upon
Israelitish Old Testament promises, that the Church is of the world, and that therefore,
her mission is to improve the world. Promises which were given to Israel alone are quoted
as justifying what we see all about us today.
The Church, therefore, has failed to
follow her appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an
absent but coming Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilizing
the world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth, and in
this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not where to lay His head.
Did you ever put side by side the promises given to the Church, and to Israel, and see how
absolutely in contrast they are? It is impossible to mingle them.
The Jew was promised an earthly
inheritance, earthly wealth, earthly honor, earthly
power. The Church is promised no such thing, but is pointed always to heaven
as the place where she is to receive her rest and her reward. The promise to the Church is
a promise of persecution, if faithful in this world, but a promise of a great inheritance
and reward hereafter. In the meantime, she is to be a pilgrim body, passing through this
scene, but abiding above.
In the New Testament we have the history
of the Church down to the year 96 A.D. In the first chapter of Acts we have the birth of
the Church, and oh, how beautiful she was in her first freshness of faith! It was a lovely
manifestation of simplicity, unselfishness, holiness and spiritual power. Yet we pass on
but a few years, and in the Epistles to the Corinthians, what do we find? Paul writes,
"I hear there are divisions among you." They began then, and they have never
ceased to this day. In the second and third chapters of Revelation we have the condition
of the Church at that time; full of words still, but fallen from its first love.
After Ephesus, A.D. 96, comes the period
of persecution. For three centuries the Church was in awful persecution. Then came a great
change. The Emperor Constantine professed conversion, and Christianity became the court
religion. Then the tables were turned and the Church began to persecute! And, of all
things she should never have done, she became the persecutrix of the Jews! The Church,
saved by faith in the Messiah who came from the Jews; having in her hand the Bible which
was written by the Jews; receiving her teaching solely and only through Jewish sources,
became, for one thousand years, the bitter, relentless, bloody persecutor of Judaism. With
that came worldliness and priestly assumption, and the Dark Ages.
Then in the fifteenth century, came the
Reformation out of which have come Protestant movements of various kinds. The Bible was
put into the hands of the people, and has been translated into many tongues. With an open
Bible came light and liberty again, but never union again. On the contrary, division
followed division; sect followed sect. It is true that the great body of the churches
believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, but they have turned aside
the greater part of their resources, to the attempt to reform the world, to educate the
world, and, in short, to anticipate the next dispensation in which those things belong,
and to do the work that is distinctly set apart for restored and converted Israel in her
Kingdom Age.
Is the Gospel then a failure? God forbid!
The Gospel never failed, and can never fail. God's Word by the Gospel is accomplishing
precisely the mission which was foreseen and foretold for it, that whereunto it was sent.
And we must not forget, either, that the Gospel will yet bring this world to the Saviour.
It is not at all a question of the ultimate triumph of the blessed Lord. The heathen may
rage and the people imagine vain things, but the Father will yet set His King on His holy
hill in Zion. Converted Israel, glorified saints, even a mighty angel shall yet proclaim
the Gospel of the Kingdom, and "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established
in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall
flow into it" (Isa. 2:2). "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. 11:9). All this will surely come to pass, for the
Lord hath spoken it--but not in this dispensation. This is the age of the
"ecclesia"--of the called out ones.
Let me ask you, what is
God doing in this age of ours? Is He not taking out of the Gentiles a people? A few Jews
are being converted, for Paul tells us there is always a remnant in Israel according to
the election of grace (Rom. 11:5), but the great, the altogether vast majority of the
Church is taken out of the Gentiles. This we all see. To believe this is not at all a
matter of faith, but of simple observation. Not, anywhere, the conversion of all,
but everywhere, the taking out of some. The evangelization
of the world, then, and not its conversion, is the mission committed to
the Church. To do this, to preach the Gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth, to
offer salvation to every creature, is our responsibility. It is the divinely appointed
means for the calling out of a people for His Name, the Church, the "Ecclesia."
Further, the purpose of the Father in this
age is not the establishment of the Kingdom. The Old Testament prophets tell us in
perfectly simple, unambiguous language how the Kingdom is to be brought in, who is to be
its ruler, and the extent and character of that rule, and the result in the universal
prevalence of peace and righteousness. Alas, nothing would suffice but the bringing of the
prophets bodily over into this Church age! This is the irremediable disaster which the
wild allegorizing of Origen and his school has inflicted upon exegesis. The intermingling
of Church purpose with Kingdom purpose palsied evangelization for thirteen hundred years,
and is today the heavy clog upon the feet of them who preach the glad tidings.
See how inevitably so. The Kingdom applies
spiritual forces to the solution of material problems. How shall man live long and wisely?
The Kingdom is the answer. How shall exact justice be done on earth? The Kingdom provides
for it. When shall wars and human butchery cease in this blood-saturated earth? When the
Kingdom is set up by the King Himself. When shall creation give up to man her potential
secrets? In the Kingdom age. When shall the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord as
the waters cover the sea? When the King and His Kingdom are here.
Of all these things the O.T. prophets are
full. We turn to the New Testament and find what? The birth of the King, the heralding of
the Kingdom as "at hand," the announcement in the Sermon on the Mount of the
principles of the Kingdom, the utter refusal of Israel to receive her King, the passing of
the Kingdom into the mixed and veiled condition set forth in the seven parables of Matthew
Thirteen, its full revelation being postponed till "the harvest," which is fixed
definitely "at the end of this age." And then the Kingdom being thus postponed,
what is revealed as filling and occupying this age? THE CHURCH! Christians, let us leave
the government of the world till the King comes; let us leave the civilizing of the world
to be the incidental effect of the presence there of the Gospel of Christ, and let us give
our time, our strength, our money, our days to the mission distinctively committed to the
Church, namely, to make the Lord Jesus Christ known "to every creature"! |
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