Inquire of the Former Age by G. H. Lang
[The following writings are taken from The Disciple Vol. 1, No. 3 January, 1954, pp51-66 and pp.73-80.]
IT has been remarked above that the Enemy of all truth has always studied to confuse good men upon the two great subjects of the church of God and the return of the Lord. As to the latter matter the Lord very specially warned us that false prophets would seek to lead astray the very elect, and Paul warned the Thessalonian believers against this attempt by spirit agents (Matthew 21: 4 : Luke 21: 8: 2 Thes. 2: 2). It was therefore to be expected that an attack would be launched against that fresh search into prophecy a century ago.
It soon transpired that two of the most learned and powerful men in that notable group (J. N. Darby and B. W. Newton) held divergent views. They agreed upon such major matters as that the kingdom of God could not be established on earth until the return of the King; that His return to the earth would be preceded by the rise and reign of the Antichrist and the persecution of the godly by him; that his destruction, the deliverance of the godly, the overthrow of Gentile world rule, the reinstatement of the Jewish people as the chief nation on earth - would all attend this descent of Christ to the earth. And they both expected that the descent of the Lord would effect a resurrection of dead saints and be accompanied by a rapture of the living.
They differed however upon the subordinate question of whether that removal of the church to heaven by resurrection and rapture would be before the rise of Antichrist or at the close of his reign. As their respective views upon prophecy became systematized, this divergence developed other differences, and in the course of some ten years these close friends had become estranged, brotherly concord failed, and out of the original minor disagreement there grew contention and division, bitterness and strife. "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water: therefore leave off contention before there be quarrelling" (Prov. 17: 14).
After this most lamentable controversy had passed its climax, Tregelles wrote in 1849 that
You appear to be so perfectly aware that the opposition to Mr. Newton arose entirely from his prophetic views being disliked by Mr. Darby that I need not insist on the point. Out of this sprang all the charges against Mr. Newton, and the endeavour to condemn him on every possible ground. Had he accorded with Mr. Darby on prophecy, we should never have heard his voice raised against him as to ministry or church order, his writings would not have been scrutinized with severity in order to glean matter of accusation (Three Letters, 71).
This statement was written while Darby was alive to contradict it, and it seems to have been justified. Only it should be added that Newton just as intensely disliked Darby's views on prophecy, and opposed him with equal vigour, though more courteously.
This unhappy contention presently extended among the assemblies of Christians they influenced. It is not our present purpose to pursue this history. We remark only that here again is felt the breath of that Spirit that now worketh for the obscuring of truth. For many onlookers the whole topic of prophecy was prejudiced, as being apparently a cause of contention.
This so lamentable and ungodly spirit has, alas, persisted; dogmatism and intolerence have too much marked the advocates of these systems of interpretation, especially that initiated by Darby. One ponders ruefully what might have been the happy results had those two great scholars and Christians continued in the original brotherly search and inquiry, until the reasons for divergence had become evident and the reconciling factors apparent. "The sons of this age are for their generation wiser than the sons of light" (Luke 16: 8). Scientists faced by contradictions in theory or experiment would set themselves to discover errors in theory or mistakes in practice, and thus seek harmony and progress. Why was it otherwise with those searchers into the meaning of God's Word? One can but attribute this finally to the subtle unperceived influence upon their spirits of the great Deceiver. If the spirit of a Christian deteriorates, so that love is chilled, and its daughters humility, patience, forbearance decline, then it is easy for the Enemy to blind the mind and stiffen the will into antagonism. Thenceforth it becomes possible to love what one honestly thinks to be truth, and which may be truth, more than one loves the brother who differs in opinion; whereupon subtle reasons are found to justify strife, such as the duty to contend for the faith or to safeguard fellow-saints from error. But not even right steps can be taken aright if brotherly love has declined. "Let all that ye do be done in love" (I Cor. 16: 14).
As Darby's views and prophetic scheme mightily prevailed and have very widely dominated evangelical thought, it may be helpful to examine some of his basic grounds, especially as his system is the foundation of the notes of the widely accepted Scofield Bible.
William Kelly was another fine scholar. He came into the Movement in the early forties. It is said that a tutor at Trinity College, Dublin, told him that if he would settle there as a coach he could make his fortune. He answered, "Yes, but for which world?" In a pamphlet entitled, The Rapture of the Saints: Who suggested it, or Rather on What Scripture? he gives on pages 5 and 6 Darby's own account of how he came to believe that that Rapture would be before the day of the Lord. Kelly does not give the reference to Darby's writings where the statement is found. He quotes it as follows:
It is this passage* which twenty years ago [i.e. from 1850 when he wrote] made me understand the rapture of the saints before - perhaps a considerable time before - the day of the Lord (that is, before the judgment of the living).
[*2 Thes. 2: 1, 2, which Darby (New Translation) renders : "Now we beg you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, that ye he not soon shaken in mind, nor troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as (if it were) by us, as that the day of the Lord is present."]
This shows that by 1830, in the middle period of the gatherings at Powerscourt House, Darby had reached the conclusion that the rapture of the church would be before, and perhaps a considerable time before, the advent of the Lord to judge the wicked alive on the earth at His coming. Newton, on the contrary, held that the descent of the Lord to the air, with the gathering of the church to Him in the clouds, is to be one instantaneous act on His way down to the earth to destroy Antichrist.
It seems that Darby was in part right, in part wrong. In the statement quoted he does not say what in the passage cited showed him that the removal of the church must precede the coming of Christ to the earth for judgment, and he only hints at the reason in his Synopsis (v. 117) written some years later. The hint is that the saints are to appear with Christ when He comes in glory and therefore must have been taken to Him in advance. But with this Newton's view agreed. The difference between them was as to the length of the interval between the removal and the descent to the earth. Newton regarded it as but the "twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15: 52), Darby that it was a period of some length. Darby was right. I do not know whether he had already seen that the word parousia ("as touching the coming, the parousia, of the Lord") implied some period, but it is now well known that this is its force. It covers not only the arrival of a person but the duration of his stay, and therefore implies a period.
But Darby's programme of the End days required, or was developed to require, that the removal of the church must be before the End days set in; that is, that the parousia must extend over at least the seven years of the supremacy of Antichrist, that is, the Seventieth Seven of Daniel's prophecy (Daniel 9) ; and, in this early statement quoted, he speaks of "the rapture of the saints before - perhaps a considerable time before - the day of the Lord." I have looked steadily, repeatedly, I hope dispassionately at 2 Thes. 2: 1, 2, and I fail to see the slightest hint in the words used as to the length of the interval, i.e. of the parousia. Yet Darby says that the passage gave him ground to think that the interval might be "considerable." But this he ought to have tested, and have proved, if possible, from other passages. It looks as if it was the assumption of this idea that was the point where his thinking on this subject was subtly side-tracked. From the very next verse it is plain that the event mentioned in verses 1 and 2 cannot take place "except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition."
On the other hand, Newton's thinking was inaccurate from want of discerning that the word parousia demands some period and cannot mean only an instantaneous event. That is to say, between the moment when the Lord will descend to the air and the saints rise to Him there, and the hour when He will come to the Mount of Olives in judgment on the Beast, there is an interval: but Darby had no warrant for considering that it will be "considerable," covering seven years or more. In my commentary on Revelation (192-195) it is suggested that the parousia will begin during the Seventh Trumpet (thus according with 1 Cor. 15: 52, "the last trump"), in which case the descent to the earth will be at the close of that Trumpet judgment. Thus (as against Newton) the parousia will be a period, but it will riot be at all as long as Darby's scheme requires.
On this matter Kelly, in the paper mentioned (22) wrote words that ought still to be pondered by supporters of his and Darby's views, as well as by others. He said:
Granted the great truth of His coming for the saints in sovereign grace before they follow Him from heaven for His overwhelming judgments on the earth, the interval is quite secondary; but this too can only be learned satisfactorily from scripture. Surely acrimony might well be spared in searching into such a detail, though of no small interest and importance.
Supporters of Darby's scheme assert that the coming of Christ for the church before the End days is taught in 1Thes. 4 and 1 Cor. 15. These are the chief passages they use. Thus the late W. E. Vine, at a meeting in Exeter in 1918, at which I was present, when arguing for that early advent, said that the prophetic parables of the Lord and the book of Revelation are hard to understand, but that these two passages are simple, and we do well to base our beliefs on the plain scriptures rather than the difficult. This is a tacit admission that the view in question is not found in the chief prophetic portions of the New Testament, the Gospels and the Revelation. Yet in fact the two passages cited yield no light whatever as to whether the events they mention are to take place before the Tribulation under Antichrist or after it. The relation of time between the two events is not alluded to even remotely.
From the first the advocates of that pre-Tribulation coming of the Lord were faced with the formidable facts that the only coming of Christ known to the Gospels and the Revelation is accompanied by power and great glory, being as brilliant and visible as a flash of lightning, and that these portions of Scripture do not speak of a pre-Tribulation coming of Christ. The attempt to meet this obstacle involved various assumptions; for example:
1. The pure assumption that whereas in Revelation 3. the churches are seen on earth, in chapter 4 they are regarded as caught up to heaven in the person of John, and as seen enthroned there in the twenty-four Elders, who are assumed to be representative of the glorified saints. In my treatise on that book (chapter V) this is examined in full detail, and it is proved (I venture to think conclusively) that the Elders do not "represent" any one, but are simply the twenty-four senior angelic rulers of the universe. Kelly's learned exposition of that book, as far as it affects the church of God, and the meaning of the term "saints," depends entirely upon the assumption that the Elders represent the church, and falls without it.
2. Inasmuch as the coming of the Lord is presented in the Gospels and the Revelation as public and open, it was unavoidable that the supposed pre-Tribulation coming, not being mentioned, should be a secret event, not known to the world.
In 1864 Dr. Tregelles, who, as above noted, was one of those earliest students of prophecy and acquainted intimately with the whole of the developments now being reviewed, published his discussion The Hope of Christ's Second Coming. On page 35 he stated that the theory of a secret coming of Christ was first brought forward about the year 1832, which means that it was introduced during the period of the Powerscourt meetings. In a footnote he added:
I am not aware that there was any definite teaching that there would be a secret rapture of the church at a secret coming, until this was given forth as an "utterance" in Mr. Irving's Church, from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether any one ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from Holy Scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God, while not owning the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same flesh and blood as His brethren, but without taint of sin.
Baxter's Narrative of Facts concerning the Irvingite movement throws some light on this. It was in August 1831 that he himself first fell under the "power" energizing that movement (chapter iii.); but he mentions that some time before this his sister had "heard several utterances from Miss E. C. [the chief prophetess among the Irvingites] in which she most emphatically pronounced that Christ would come at an hour when even His own people would not be looking for Him - that the time of His coming would not be known to His own people." Certainly that would be a secret coming.
It is therefore clear that in the Irvingite circle emphasis had been laid upon the secrecy of the Coming before it had been advanced in the other circle. Tregelles was very well read in Christian literature, ancient and modern, and he had a phenomenal memory. As therefore he had no recollection of having read of this doctrine it is probable that it was not advanced before the Irvingite days. Yet too much must not be made of this, for (i) it is the cunning of seducing spirits to commingle truth with error, and so to confuse the former and commend the latter. Thus a demon-inspired utterance may contain an element of truth. (2) No evidence is available that any of the Powerscourt circle took the idea of a secret rapture from the Irvingite utterances, no evidence beyond Tregelles's assertion, and for this he gives no proofs. Yet even if it was from them that this idea was taken, no more can be said than that they ought to have tested it very thoroughly from Scripture.
In his paper before quoted William Kelly repudiated with indignation the suggestion Tregelles made. But Kelly was not in the circle till some years after the Powerscourt time and he may not have known how the idea first arose. In any case he laboured in vain to repudiate Tregelles, for his argument was directed to prove only that the doctrine of the rapture of the saints was held before the Irvingite days, and that the word had been used in that sense by accredited English writers. But Tregelles had not questioned this. He was far too well informed to have challenged it. It was of a secret rapture that he wrote, the word being in italics. This issue Kelly merely avoided, though the italicized word is in the extract he gives from Tregelles. He did not deny the assertion that the idea of a secret rapture originated in the Irvingite circle, nor did he offer any other account of its origin.
These two examples from two such trained minds illustrate how the statements of the best scholars need to be scrutinized. Tregelles implies more than the fact he mentions fully warrants, and Kelly argues beside the point. This is the more to be noted because it has been, and is, deplorably common for the rank and file to accept unhesitatingly, and to repeat very positively, whatever some revered leader may assert. But as a Bishop said to his clergy, "Remember, brethren, that none of you is infallible, not even the youngest of you."
At this point Kelly gives a piece of information not, I think, otherwise available. Speaking of Darby's statement above quoted as to the meaning he saw in 2Thes. 2: 1, 2, Kelly added (pages 6 and 8) that during a visit to Plymouth in the summer of 1845, Mr. B. W. Newton told me that, many years before, Mr. Darby wrote to him a letter in which he said that a suggestion was made to him by Mr. T. Tweedy (a spiritual man and most devoted ex-clergyman amongst the Irish brethren) which to his mind quite cleared up the difficulty previously felt on this very question...It was new, however, to hear that Mr. Tweedy...was the one who first suggested, as a decisive proof from scripture, 2Thes. 2: 1, 2.
Here there seems another instance of the need to watch strictly what good and able men say. The first statement that of what Newton said to Kelly - does not aver that Tweedy spoke to Darby about 2 Thes. 2: 1, 2; it says merely that he made a suggestion, but what that was is not recorded. Later Kelly added that it was about that passage; but he was writing from memory in 1903, when he was 82 (fifty-eight years after the conversation with Newton), when Tregelles's statement first came to his notice.
In any case this suggestion, whatever it was, did not come to Darby as a personal illumination through meditating upon Scripture but from another believer. It did, however, suffice to settle for him a matter before in doubt, and it reached him at the time when the formidable difficulty stated had to be faced, namely, that the Gospels and the Revelation know nothing of a secret coming of Christ and a secret rapture of the saints. This idea involved another basic assumption, namely:
3. That the reason why the three Synoptic Gospels and the Revelation do not even hint at this secret event is that they are not addressed to believers as Christians, but as Jews. Whoever first suggested this idea (and I have sometimes wondered whether this was what Tweedy proposed to Darby), it is absolutely basic to Darby's whole scheme; and it came in, not as a result of direct and careful exegesis of the New Testament, as a truth itself discoverable there, but as an expedient to resolve a difficulty to a dispensational scheme then being formulated. It was not a notion lying clearly in Scripture, only long overlooked, but was a human explanation to dispose of an awkward fact.
The subject will not be argued here at length, the present object being simply to glean lessons from the original years in which these subjects were investigated in modern times, and this is one of the facts which emerge.
Of necessity much else developed from this assumption, such as that:
(a) There is to be in the last days a remnant of Jews who will believe in Jesus as Messiah, after the church has been removed. Of such a company we find no word in Scripture, though it does picture a small remnant of that people who in those times will fear the God of Israel and be called upon to keep the law of Moses (Isa. 1: 9: Rom. 9: 27, 29: Mal. 4: 4-6: etc.). But the very fact that they will be under the law of Moses shows that they will not have reached the liberty that is in Christ. To these are wrongly applied passages which speak of "saints" as holding "the faith of Jesus" (e.g., Rev. 14: 12). It is not until the nations attacking Jerusalem are being destroyed by the Lord that that godly remnant will "look unto Him they pierced" and "mourn" (Zech. 12: 8-11).
(b) It has to be assumed that the Lord, when addressing His apostles, spoke to them as representing that supposed believing remnant. Yet He knew perfectly well that He had chosen them out of and separated them from the world, the Jewish world that had rejected Him as much as from the Gentile world that would do so (John 17.). And He knew that they were the men who were to lay the foundation of that new society, the church, that He had told them He would build, and would be its most distinguished members. In the whole of their writings is there a hint that they looked upon themselves as connected with a Jewish company of the End days ?
(c) From this theory it followed that the Sermon on the Mount, and other precepts and commandments of the Lord given when on earth, do not apply directly to Christians, but only by way of indirect application. The effect of this has been adverse to discipleship, as was foretold from the first by those who rejected Darby's views on this matter. Yet the final direction of the Lord ere He ascended was that the apostles were to make disciples and teach them to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded themselves to do (Mat. 28: 18-20). Their epistles, by their use of Christ's sayings, show that they did this.
(d) To avoid this plain command the theory required the further advance that the direction to spread the gospel, with other commands involved, such as baptism and the Lord's Supper, are not for observance in this age, but for that Jewish remnant when they engage (as is supposed) in the work of evangelizing the nations in the End days.
These ramifications of this dispensational scheme were not developed fully by its first exponents. This was done logically and to the bitter end by E. W. Bullinger, the outcome being that only Paul's prison epistles belong properly to the church, and all the rest of the New Testament, like the Old Testament, is "Jewish."
It is of spiritual significance and importance that the falsity of this line of teaching was exposed about the time it had become widely spread, and by one who never mentioned it. In the Bampton Lectures for 1864 T. D. Bernard showed conclusively that all the teachings of the apostles were rooted in, and, by the instruction of the Spirit, grew out of, germinal sayings by Christ when He was with them. This is the antithesis of the dispensational division of the New Testament propagated by Darby and perfected by Bullinger. When, in my hearing, that learned Christian Jew, David Baron, was asked his opinion of Bullinger's views he replied: "It has been my endeavour to unify the Word of God, not to divide it."
The scheme may be tested by one single passage, with which the whole Bible is in accord. It is alleged that the parousia will commence with a secret pre-tribulation coming of Christ for His church, to be known at the time by them only; but that the epiphany, the public outshining of His glory, will be at the manifestation of that glory before all men. It has been taught that the former is that for which Christians are to look as their true expectation. Yet Paul, who is supposed to be the one who first received the revelation of that pre-tribulation rapture, is the very one who declares that the "blessed hope" of the church is "the epiphany [the shining forth] of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Tit. 2: 13).
Involved in the scheme are such further assertions as that the church is "above dispensations" (whatever that may mean), and is so peculiarly the object of grace that it would be wholly inconsistent for it to have to endure the great tribulation of the End days. Yet it has been permitted to experience the indescrible horrors of the persecutions under the Roman Emperors, the Inquisition, the Boxers in China in 1900, the Bolsheviks, and now again in China. Those who so argue must surely forget the Lord's statement to the apostles, "In the world ye have tribulation" (John 16: 33). That word was not merely prophetic, but general; tribulation is your normal experience while I shall be away. The great Tribulation will not be distinct in nature from the age-long tribulation, but will be its climax and conclusion. The notion that the church will not have to meet it is enfeebling. It were wiser that we should ask for some good reason why we in, say, England should escape what has been the constant portion of the people of Christ, and should prepare our hearts to accept it, if God should so will.
It has been mentioned above that one of the subjects discussed at Powerscourt House was whether the promises of God to the church are conditional. It would have been interesting to know the answers. At least some of those present were distinctly Calvinistic in theology. They held firmly to the truth that the salvation from wrath granted to the believer in Christ is eternal and so non-forfeitable. Their tendency was to apply this to all post-conversion privileges also. Within the area of the church glorified they allowed for diffierences of reward according to merit, but the principle of reward must not be extended beyond this. In particular, the church of God is especially and peculiarly the object of grace. This led to the adoption of the term "sovereign grace." Thus in the statement quoted Kelly wrote of "the great truth of His coming for the saints in sovereign grace."
The idea conveyed by the term "sovereign" is that the grace of God is absolute, unfettered, and that the privileges it grants are free of conditions or limit. Where is this term or an equivalent found in the New Testament? It is not there. The grace of God is not unfettered. It is conditioned and balanced by His other attribute of righteousness. It is blessedly true that "grace reigns," but it is not the rule of an absolute autocrat in disregard of all other considerations. Rom. 5: 21 shows this by saying "grace reigns through righteousness." Grace cannot do ought not consistent with righteousness.
Grace must confer upon the guilty a righteousness which can be recognized by the righteous judge of all the earth. This grace does through the atoning work of Christ. Grace must also produce in the justified a righteousness such as a holy God can acknowledge and reward. This grace does by forming in the believer the character of Christ, by His dwelling in the heart. Now the sinner may refuse to accept the grace that would grant him righteousness in Christ; in which case he cannot obtain that saving benefit. Likewise may the believer thwart that inward work by which the Spirit would develop in him the character of Christ; in which case he will fall short of what the grace of God would have made him and conferred upon him. Very true are Tauler's words that, when God gives the crowns, He will not crown us, He will only crown Christ in us, for Christ alone is worthy of a crown. Thus grace is conditioned not as to what it is willing to confer, but by what we are willing to secure. In the whole range of its blessed activities it must work through righteousness. The term "sovereign grace" blurs the distinctness of this truth.
The common mistake was adopted that the Lord had taught, that the apostles had believed and taught, and that Christians in general had accepted, that His return might be at any moment. It has been urged that he cannot be looking for the Lord who holds that events must take place first. It is asserted that Scripture puts no events as to precede that supposed secret rapture, for the church is "outside prophecy." And when it is replied that Christ very distinctly told His disciples that "when ye see these things [of which He had been speaking] coming to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh " (Luke 21: 31), the reply is made that this is "Jewish," the church is not the kingdom! This assertion is discussed at length (and, I think, completely refuted) in my book on the Revelation, in Dissertation II, Did the apostles expect the return of Christ in their time?
How could they have done so seeing that the Lord expressly told them that His absence would be long (Mat. 15: 19; Luke 19: 12), and that Peter had to live to be an old man and then die? (John 21: 18, 19). In that Dissertation it is shown that the New Testament use of the terms "to look for ... .. to wait for" most certainly do allow the thought of events intervening before the event expected.
Hero worship is dangerous. Subjection of mind to one teacher, acceptance of a scheme of thought without searching into its principles and details, contention for a school of interpretation, are barriers to progress in knowledge. A good hen will find scraps on even a waste-heap. A keen-eyed spiritual botanist will detect a fair flower of truth among rank weeds of error. The true student gleans in all fields and gathers a large sheaf. Careful scrutiny of the differing lines of teaching here reviewed discerns truth in each and mistakes in all. Each looked from a different standpoint and saw features of the landscape others missed, and none saw the whole prospect. Had they patiently and quietly continued their joint survey their maps might presently have been made to correspond, instead of showing divergent features and roads.
As mentioned above, Darby was right in holding the parousia to be a period, but wrong in placing its commencement before Antichrist. Newton was right in placing it at the close of the Tribulation, wrong in not seeing it to be a period. Darby was close to truth in expecting a rapture before the End days, but wrong in associating with it the descent of the Lord and the resurrection of the godly, and in connecting it with 1 Thes. 4 and 1 Cor. 15. For there is to be a removal before the End days, only not of all believers, but of such as watch and pray, keep the word of Christ's patience, and so prevail to escape all those things that will then be about to come on the earth. Upon unwatchful Christians that day will come suddenly as a snare, and they shall in no wise escape the then fast approaching End days (Luke 21: 34-46: Rev. 3: 10; 12: 5; 14: 1-5). But that escape and catching away will not be effected by a descent of the Lord from heaven, nor will it be accompanied by a resurrection. Those affected will simply be taken alive to heaven in order that they may not have to endure the Tribulation, seeing that they will not need its purifying fire. There are passages in Baxter's Narrative which suggest that he and Edward Irving, in spite of the confusion of thought in and around them, had glimpses of the part that faithfulness and worthiness have in being raptured. This aspect was strongly emphasized in an anonymous Irvingite book of 1868 entitled The Purpose of God in Creation and Redemption.
Therefore they were right (and Irving was among these) who regarded the rapture as prefigured by those of Enoch and Elijah, but wrong in regarding those events as types of the rapture of 1Thes. 4. only. For, as Heb. 11: 5 expressly states, Enoch was translated because "before his translation he hath had witness borne to him that he had been wellpleasing to God," which cowardly-minded and carnal Christians are not (Heb. 10: 38: 1 Cor. 10: 5, 6). And Elijah was taken alive to heaven as the crown of a strenuous life of faithful testimony amidst hardships and perils. And at the last, those backward believers who stedfastly endure the Tribulation will thereby become qualified for rapture, though they might have escaped the End days had they walked formerly in faith and obedience as did Enoch and Elijah.
The key to the perplexities that baffled those earlier inquirers, and over which, alas, they separated and fought, is a moral key. The hope of our Lord's return is intended to sanctify us and so to fit us for the inheritance by faith in Him (Acts 26: 18). "Every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, even as He is pure" (1 John 3: 3). "Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and set your hope perfectly [undividedly] upon the favour that is being brought unto you at the apocalypse [unveiling, not a secret affair] of Jesus Christ . . . [and] like as He who hath called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living: because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy" (1 Pet. 1: 13-16).
Therefore at every point teaching may be tested by its moral tendency and effect. This rules out such opinions as that the claims and commands of the Lord, as given in the Gospels, do not apply to Christians; or that the warnings addressed to disciples by Him or the apostles do not apply to regenerate persons. Such views do not serve to sanctify but tend rather to carelessness of heart and ways. By their fruits they are known. Many who have held those views have, indeed, acted as if they denied them, and have lived in fact according to scriptures they in theory held to be "Jewish." God be praised for this inconsistency. But it is not to be denied that many of those who most vigorously contended for such opinions have brought forth the bitter fruits of a controversial spirit, of opposition to any views but their own being taught, and of schism among the people of God. If there be found in us that "true humiliation of soul before God" for which Groves longed, then shall we be patient and forbearing with those who differ from us; and then, as to matters in which such humble souls may be otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto us (Phil. 3: 15.). And this He is even now doing among the lowly in heart.
In the enthusiasm engendered at that time by the great hope of our beloved Lord's return, it was presently suggested that the intense renewed interest therein of that period was the fulfilment of the cry to the Ten Virgins "Behold, the Bridegroom! Come ye forth to meet Him" (Mat. 25: 6). The only comment needed is that, in that case, the foolish virgins have had a sufficiently long time, a century and a half, in which to buy the oil needed! Yet the unwarranted notion is still maintained by people who do not reflect for themselves, but merely repeat accepted assertions.
William Kelly inquired as to the world for which he might make a fortune. This points to another vital feature of those early searchers for truth, even that they were prepared to pay whatever price was involved in securing and using it. Many of them were in a position to pay what the natural man regards as a high price. Some of them could forego high prospects in the academic world. Others could surrender social position, style, and comfort. Mr. Parnell (later Lord Congleton), with an income of £1,200 a year (say £6,000 now) lived at one time in a house rented at £12 a year. It was a common feature that their houses were furnished and ordered in a style that would not deter the poorer brethren from visiting them happily. Maybe that sometimes they went to an extreme in this, but the principle was of love.
A. N. Groves gave up a dental practice with an income of £1,500 a year, as then valued. He and his wife gave away a fortune of £10,000 which came to them, and went to Persia with the gospel in dependence upon the Lord to meet all needs. He was the pioneer of modern faith enterprise in the gospel.
R. C. Chapman knew at his conversion that pride would be his besetting sin, so he abandoned his London practice as a barrister, gave away his means, went to Barnstaple, where formerly he used to drive in a carriage and pair, and took as his home a workman's cottage in a side street. His quaint, but very instructive comment was, "My pride never got over it." He had scotched that sin at a stroke. This was not the step of the aged and mature saint that a few of us remember. At the time he was under thirty and had been a man of fashion moving in good society, with the world at his feet. He was tall and powerful, in full vigour of mind and body. If he wished to go from Barnstaple to Ilfracombe, a dozen or so miles of hilly road, he would walk over to breakfast. And he would tramp the forty miles to Exeter and think nothing of it. This was the man who turned wholly from the world to join the family of Caleb and follow the Lord wholly.
Darby was trained for the bar, where he had excellent prospects, his sister's husband being Chief justice of Ireland. It is said that he had such a high opinion of the powers and learning of his younger kinsman that he hoped that he would be the one to codify Irish law. But Darby feared to scar his conscience by possibly using his talents to defeat justice, so he abandoned law and became a clergyman. When light came upon the thoughts of God as to His church he walked in that light and abandoned that profession also. A well-informed elderly friend, who had moved in Darby's religious circle in Darby's time, told me that his father was so incensed at his son's course that he disinherited him. But I do not know in just what sense or to what extent this was the case.
Such examples show that those men were prepared to "buy" the "wine and milk" of Immanuel's land (Isa. 55: 1). On this diet they became "nourished in the words of the faith," even the "healthful words, the words of the Lord Jesus, and the teaching which is according to godliness" (I Tim. 4: 6; 6: 3: 2Tim. 1: 13). Being thus healthy and strong they could toil and endure. They gave heed to the words of the Lord from heaven: "I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich" (Rev. 3: 18). They became rich, so rich that they had abundance to give to the needy in soul, and through them the whole church of God was enriched.
This could not have been had they been unwilling to pay the price. The law rules still. There are today brethren of talents and learning who yet are not rich and do not enrich others. They discover in the treasury of the Word nothing fresh. Why is this ? Is it for the reason that they are like some of whom Wesley wrote, that they had sundry excellent qualities, but "most unfortunately they know everything and therefore they learn nothing?" or is it that they are not willing to pay the price?
Yet those earlier leaders, whatever the price they had paid, would have said with a still earlier man of social position, learning, and leisure, Paul the apostle of Jesus Christ, "What things were gains to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse" (Phil. 3: 7, 8). A woman throws away lightly the household refuse, nor thinks she has done ought noteworthy. The disciple's earthly price is nothing; the heavenly gain is infinite, enjoyed now and hereafter.
An English clergyman told me that he had been on holiday in the Hebrides. Not having seen a newspaper for a fortnight, on leaving Church on Sunday morning he bought one in the street. An elder of the kirk saw its title, and ejaculated as he passed, News of the World: which world ? "The question for me, as for Kelly, is for which world am I living? ; is it for the seen or the unseen, for flesh or spirit, earth or heaven time or eternity, self or Christ? Oh, to heed the words of Paul, "For me to live is Christ Brethren, be ye imitators of me, and mark them who so walk even as ye have us for an example" (Phil. 1: 21; 3: 17). In spite of their failures, those whose affairs are here considered did seek so to live, wherefore in goodly measure they inherited the blessing of their father Abraham, and were blessed and made a blessing.
After Israel's return from Babylon God gave them instructed teachers of His law like Ezra, with whose word there was authority over conscience and heart. Such God-sent teachers gradually ceased and by the time of our Lord there was a class of scribes who merely peddled the wares of famous rabbis but had no message from God. Hence when Jesus began to teach, men "were astonished at His teaching: for He taught them as having authority and not as their scribes" (Mat. 7: 28, 29). He threw light upon the old truths and added new truth. His word fitted the times, searched consciences, demanded advance; and He paid the price of a prophet by being hated by the scribes, persecuted, and killed. But He served the will of God in His generation and furthered His cause on earth.
At the Reformation God gave to faithful men the message needed for that period. They brought out of the treasury of the Word things new and fitted to that time. They, too, endured a great fight of afflictions but were good soldiers of Christ Jesus. Presently they enshrined and limited their message by entombing it in Creeds and Confessions. They have been followed by a race of scribes mostly content to repeat what their first leaders taught, peddling their wares, with but seldom one who had a message direct from God.
The teachers of a century ago likewise were shown in the Word things new to that generation, things which disturbed the Ecclesiastical mind. Those truths were the message needed to meet the then state of the church. They spread them fearlessly and vigorously, paying the regular price for being men with a message from God for their times. They too, in this respect, were good soldiers of Christ Jesus.
Today their followers are mostly scribes, peddling their wares, repeating the same ideas in much the same phrases, but without a fresh message from God to meet present needs. They bring forth nothing new out of the Word, and commonly they resist and persecute any one who does so. History repeats itself. What is now greatly needed from God is teachers with some message or messages for the present times; men who can throw fresh light on the truths already held and can bring to light truths or phases of truth not yet recognized. The need is for teachers who can search the conscience of the comfortable and worldly-minded, and lead the people of God forward. These also will be hated and opposed by their carnally-minded brethren and will need the courage of the good soldier of Christ Jesus. They, too, must pay the price, make the sacrifices, incur the losses incidental to soldiering. The Lord has many servants few soldiers.Seven thousand still worship Him; few Elijah's fight for Him.
True are the words of Thomas a Kempis:
Jesus has now many lovers of His heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross. He finds many companions of His table but few of His fasts. Many follow Jesus as far as the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion.
May the Lord in His mercy give again to His church messengers with a message, soldiers with stamina, warriors who will lead others to victory, conquerors who, even though they die in His battles, shall sit down with Him in His throne. Is the reader prepared to be one of them?