379

S XIV.

A RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE OUTLINE

IF one page in this volume be true; if the mass of Scripture quoted in it be not quoted deceivingly, it is very obvious that the progress of the Age in which we live (as indeed of all previous Ages) is, not towards Good, but towards Evil. As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be," are words too clear to be evaded. In whatever way the Book of Revelation be explained in detail, it is evident that it declares that the Dispensation in which we live is to end in judgment. Nor is there one of the Prophets, from Enoch, the seventh from Adam, to Malachi, whose testimonies do not show that "lamentation, mourning and woe," are written on the whole history of the World's Civilisation, and more especially on the Civilisation of the latter day. It must be so if "the whole world lieth in the Wicked One." Jeremiah 1. and li. and Revelation xviii. give to us the closing picture of the condition of human civilisation drawn by the hand of God Himself.

Accordingly, the servants of God in this, and all previous Dispensations, have had committed to them.

as one of their chief duties and chief honours, the maintenance of the Prophetic testimony. The people of God, if they are to grow up as a holy Temple unto Him, must be builded "on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets." The testimonies of Jeremiah were not abolished, but confirmed and amplified by the testimonies of John in Patmos. Both led to bonds and imprisonment; but both were honourable and blessed; and needful to enable the man of God to stand girt with Truth on the battlefield.

No one was more sensitively alive to the importance of these things than the Apostle Paul, whose mission was peculiarly to us Gentiles. He was, indeed, most anxious that the souls of them to whom he ministered should be established in the knowledge of grace; this, the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans abundantly prove. But he well understood that the knowledge of those truths which teach us our own individual relation to God is not the only knowledge that we require; we need also to be instructed respecting the sphere in which we are called to serve. What rightly ordered army ever entered an enemy's land without minute instructions as to the course and character of its operations? No campaign can be entered on without a plan. We stand in a sphere in which the Prince of darkness has been permitted to put forth his mighty energies to crush, for a season, the Truth of the living God, and to give supremacy to his own lies.

We have, all around us, his citadels of strength. Do we need no light, no guidance in the midst of such dangers ? The Dispensational knowledge of Scripture supplies this light and guidance. Accordingly, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Romans (chapters than which none have been more neglected, perhaps I should rather say, despised) Gentile Christianity finds an outline of its history.

After the one oblation on the Cross was finished, God was pleased to appoint three great corporate bodies as the especial subjects and spheres of His operations: first, Israel; secondly, the nations of the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman Empire to whom supremacy in the Earth is given during the whole period of Israel's rejection, and who are, ultimately, to serve and worship Antichrist; thirdly, Gentile Christendom. In 2 Thessa

lonians ii., the Apostle Paul ratifies all that had been predicted by Daniel respecting Antichrist and his reign; but Romans xi. is devoted to the religious history (if I may use the expression) of Israel and of Christendom. Israel nationally is denoted by a branch belonging to an olive-tree of God's planting, whose root was full of sap and fatness, but the sap was hindered in its flow; the branch withered, became a cankered branch, and was broken off under judgment. Facts, obvious to all, attest the reality of that excision. The Jewish Branch was broken off (the date of its excision may be fixed

at Stephen's martyrdom) and another branch was graffed in. It symbolised a position of blessing accorded to Gentile converts, and became the emblem of Gentile Christendom. Promise and grace were the sap of the symbolic Abrahamic olive-tree into which Gentile Christendom was graffed. Its early history was blessed. "From Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum," said the Apostle, "I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ." The result was the hallowment of thousands of Gentiles as a πроσдора -a meat offering unto God.* The Gentile Churches thus sanctified by the Truth were, for a time, Epistles of Christ-living expressions of His doctrines and They were gathered in various localities, having local unity, for in each place in which they were gathered they were strictly one; and they had catholic unity, for all the various gatherings were practically one in doctrine, discipline, and practice. The visible bond of their unity was the government which was vested in the Apostle and his fellow labourers (such as Timothy and Titus), by whom they were all alike controlled. In 1 Cor. iv. 17 the Apostle speaks of his instructions being the same

ways.

everywhere in every Church." All of the Churches, therefore, whilst thus governed, could be represented by associated candlesticks of gold, all equal, all alike,

* Just as those converted in Jerusalem at Pentecost were a πроσpора a new meat offering there. See Leviticus xxiii. 16. The converts themselves are the offering hallowed unto God, through the ministry of the Apostle as the instrument.

perfect individually, and perfect in their association. As lamps of the sanctuary viewed collectively, they were the pillar and ground of the Truth. But their light soon waned-the fine gold changed. Darkness entered where light had reigned. The Apostle saw the declension, and in Romans xi. he admonished and warned. The Gentile Churches had "become wise in their own conceits." Pride and worldliness had come in among them. They boasted themselves against chastened Israel, coveted their distinctive blessings, and spake as if Israel was for ever to be excluded from the covenant of grace and of glory. The Apostle, therefore, rebuked their folly and their sin, told them that Israel should surely be graffed back again (and that as a distinct Branch) into their own olive-tree, and added that they (Gentiles), if they continued in their downward course, would as a Body inherit judgment, and be cut off as Israel before had been; and with the Gentiles there was no covenant of restoration. ·

The Apostle Paul in his last address to the Church in Ephesus-a Church he loved so well-warned them of the danger that was close at hand. "I know this,

* Gentile Christians often (in speaking of the future of Israel) speak of them as if they were to be merged, when converted, into Gentile Christendom, in which case they would have been represented in Rom. xi. as graffed in on the Gentile olive-branch, whereas they will be graffed in as a separate branch into their own olive-tree, and the Gentile branch will be cast out.