October 1931
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K i n g ’ s
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proposed to root up the “tares” ; here, the tares seek to exterminate the wheat. Pergamos. “Man” seeks to marry her in spiritual whoredom to the world, after the manner of the injury wrought by Balaam to God’s people Israel. It was a breaking down of their separation to Him. This is what the man Constantine did to the church. Under royal favor, the world, with its heathen customs and beliefs, joined itself to the church. The result was enlargement, as was the case when the mustard seed became a tree. As the tree became a rendezvous for the birds, so the church came to embrace all manner of evil, which was foreign to her spiritual life. Thyatira. “Woman” is here busily doing her work, teaching false doctrine and perverting the ways of the church. Her type is Jezebel, who handed God’s people over to the idolatrous worship of Baal and its sinful cor ruptions. The papal system has now become fully de veloped, its evil working as “leaven” in the church’s life. But our Lord charges her with spiritual fornication, with freely practicing the harlotry injected into her veins in the earlier Pergamos period. We are prepared for her reap pearance as a scarlet woman (Rev. 17), to receive her just judgment. T h e S econd C hance Church history falls, as in the above columns, into two symmetrical divisions—Catholicism and Protestantism. The two are related much as the creative days of Genesis 1 or as the Old and New Testaments: The second is the filling in of the promise, or the correcting of the imper fections, of the first. It is God’s plan, appearing repeat edly in His structural scheme of things. What, then, is Protestantism? It is God’s gracious grant of a second chance to the church—a chance to be true to Him and to her gospel trust, to “overcome” where Catholicism failed. She was born of a great desire to re store the old landmarks, to invite people into her fold solely upon the principle of justification by faith, and to live a life of utter devotion to her Lord. But how has she availed herself of this chance? What has been the result ? The divine Historian, whose insight is inscrutable, whose judgment is infallible, declares that she has fallen into the same, or similar, errors. Sardis. Of her glorious undertaking it is pronounced: “I have not found thy works perfect before God.” Satan halted the Reformation movement half way. The purpose to get back to the first love was but partially carried' out. National churches resulted, instead of a oneness in Christ leaping all earthly boundaries—a weakness in the veins of Protestantism, that has led to multiplying divisions in doc trine, life, and practice with the passing years, till some despair of her life. Philadelphia. She is the great missionary, evangelizing church of modern days, getting back to the love of Christ for men and, with that love, going out to win them. How her Lord loves and commends her for keeping His word! Yet her very zeal has tended to reproduce the Pergamos condition. With her rapid growth, thousands have been brought into the church, who think, believe, and live loosely in all the ways of the world. Again, the divinely ordained line of separation has been largely obliterated. As Bonar used to say, “When I look for the world, I find it masquerading in the church; when I look for the church, I find it in the lap of the world.” Commendable as the work of Philadelphia is—and we may hope that our Lord counts us of her number—she
has nevertheless paved the way for the next step in the decline. Laodicea. This city prided itself upon its riches. The church partook of the city’s spirit. With no sense of need, and hence no sense of dependence upon her Lord, she came to regard herself as self-sufficient. So it is with her modern successors. She has adopted the up-to-date, high- pressure promotion methods of the world. With these, she succeeds in filling her coffers and increasing her fol lowing; why look to Christ for help? Receptive toward the “best thinking” of her day, she has little notion of being limited, as she regards it, to “truth as it is in Jesus” ; why not look for truth everywhere? The result is the modern” church. But it is a church utterly repugnant to our Lord. Unable longer to endure its beliefs and ways, He cries: “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” R ejected C hr ist —R ejected C hurch It is to be carefully noted that the two trials of the church, under Catholicism and under Protestantism, even tuate in each case in a state of the church that is wholly unsatisfactory, yea, utterly disappointing to our Lord. Catholicism developed a system that boldly grafted on to Christian truth its own doctrines, its own practices, its own priestcraft, its own power to forgive sin, claiming the prerogative of coming between the soul of man and his Saviour. Thus set aside, Christ calls upon her to re pent, warning her that otherwise He will set her aside: “Behold, I will cast her into a bed,” etc. Protestantism likewise has developed a system that leaves the Lord with little room or say in His own church. Denying Him His place of rightful authority in her coun sels, that He and His Word should no longer determine her faith and practice, her course is that of a deliberate “steal.” Hence, to make her conscious of her true state, our Lord draws a picture in which He is entirely absent! Yea, in this last development of Protestantism, He por trays HimSelf, where His betrayers have placed Him, [Continued on page 456] The Dog and the New Testament Dr. Moffat, the celebrated missionary to South Africa, tells an amusing story of a lad who had been converted by reading the New Testament. One day he came to Dr. Moffat in much distress, tell ing him that their big watch dog had got hold of the book and had torn a page out of it. Dr. Moffat tried to com fort him, by saying that he could get another Testament. But the boy was not at all comforted. “Think of the dog,” he said. Dr. Moffat, supposing the boy thought that the paper would do the dog harm, laughed and said, “If your dog can crunch an ox bone, he is not going to be hurt by a piece of paper.” Oh, Papa Moffat,” he cried, “I was once a bad boy. If. I had an enemy, I hated him, and everything in me wanted to kill him. Then I got the New Testament in my heart, and began to love everybody and forgive all my enemies; and now the dog, the great big hunting dog, has got the blessed Book in him, and will begin to love the lions and the tigers, and let them help themselves to the sheep and the oxen.” What a beautiful tribute, this African boy, out of the simplicity of his heart, paid to the power of the Bible! —T h e I nd ian C h r ist ian .
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