say. Now I think if they would just be honest and read the rest o f the verse, it might reveal some things to them. It says, “ That they all may be one as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” And get the word “ US,” please — “ in us.” The Lord Jesus is talking about a spiritual unity, a unity similar to the one which existed between Him and the Father, not a great organizational unity, not one great ecclesiastical machine, but a spiritual unity! Isn’t it interesting that the Lord Jesus said that they also may be one “ in us” ? It’s a unity based on the Deity of Christ—the oneness of Christ the Son with God the Father. Some of those men who are the driving forces behind the Ecumenical Move ment — one whose testimony was in Look Maga zine a few months ago (the former Bishop in Cali fornia) said he does not believe Jesus is the Son of God. He has “ jettisoned” the Trinity; he has “ jettisoned” the Virgin Birth; he has “ jettisoned” the Incarnation; he does not believe God does spe cial things for anybody or that He answers prayer. How can people who believe that way use a verse like this to back up the ecumenical drive, when it says that they may be one “ in us,” the Lord Jesus united to the Father in full Deity! I would like to call to your attention an inter esting verse of Scripture where the Lord speaks about unity. He speaks of it as a future event, and the context suggests that the ultimate, final, total unity will only come when we are with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. See Ephesians 4:11. He is talking about the gifts which God has given to the Church. “He gave some apostles, and some proph ets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.” These are gifts of God to the Church. What for? Listen: “ For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edify ing of the Body o f Christ.” For how long? Listen to this: “ Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” So the Lord suggests that the final ultimate unity of believers must come through the work of evangelists, pastors, Bible teachers, edifying God’s people in doctrine, in truth, and so on; and the more they are taught, the closer they will be together. This is for the purpose of coming to the unity of the faith. It is pictured as a future accomplishment, and in the accomplishment of that objective, God has given these various kinds o f ministries to men to edify the Body of Christ. The unity comes by spiritual means, not by watering down creeds to the lowest
divisions have come about because of personalities and the fraility o f the flesh, and some divisions that have been certainly a tremendous reproach to the cause of Christ. It is also truth that some ex amples of ecumenism are, to quote an editor friend, ‘pelimeli mergers to save dying enterprises” and “not as much a sign of progress as of desperation.” The wrong kind is pushed at the expense of truth and some o f the great doctrines of the Chris tian faith. It is a very common cliché among liberal thinkers today to say that the scandal of Christen dom is its many divisions. I don’t subscribe to that. We ought to keep in mind that o f the nearly 300 (other estimates go as high as 400) divisions that there are in Protestantism today, over 90 per cent of all Protestants belong to only 24 of them. We could carry it even farther by noting that two groupings, Methodists and Baptists, account for 37 million of the nation’s 68 million Protestants. Another 13 million is accounted for by Lutherans and Presbyterians. One of the common sayings today is that Chris tianity’s divisions put the greatest stumbling block before the man on the street as far as his getting to God is concerned. I don’t subscribe to that eith er ! If the man on the street has any serious, deep interest in the salvation o f his soul, he is not going to be sidetracked through any shallow, surface judgment about the divisions of the religious world. He is going to pry a little deeper than that surely, and if he does, he will immediately find out that some of the divisions are in some respects quite superficial, and that there is a basic unity among all genuine and true Protestant believers. THE SCRIPTURAL BASIS (?) The ecumenists have certain stock texts upon which they like to lean and constantly use. It is very strange that so many of these far-out liberals who have so little reverence for the Bible as the inspired Word o f God suddenly get very “ Biblical” when they want Scriptural support to back up their own point of view! One of their favorite verses is in the priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 17 where He prays that His disciples might be one. Now, unfortunately, they take it out of context and they put the period in too soon. For when they read the 17th Chapter of John, they just love that verse where Jesus says, “ Father, that they all may be one.” That wording they like — “that they all might be one” — one church, they tell us ; the Lord wants just one visible church or ganization, We should all be under one roof, they
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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