Jottings

The Lord stated a fundamental truth to His brethren in Galilee when they were encouraging Him to go up to Jerusalem to the Feast of Tabernacles: "The world cannot hate you; but Me it hateth, because I testify of it, that its works are evil" (John 7.7). The same attitude as was taken up by the Jews toward the Lord was that shown by their fathers to the prophets, as Stephen the martyr on the day of his death clearly stated, "which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? and they killed them which shewed before the coming of the Righteous One; of whom ye have now become betrayers and murderers" (Acts 7.52). We need to be quite clear in our understanding as to the place and portion that will be ours if we have set our hearts to walk the path of faithfulness and obedience to God; we shall be outsiders so far as this world and all its arrangements, systems and sects are concerned. We shall no more be applauded and praised than the Lord, the prophets and the apostles were. We may have to walk a comparatively lonely path, if we would walk with the Lord. We may trace the course of sacred history from the first; we may think of the prophetical outline of events yet to be, and the testimony is the same, that the righteous are a people apart from the wicked, and apart too from those Lot-like righteous folk who seek to have it both ways, wealth and position now and a reward in the day of Christ, and, alas, are destined to lose both. Lot's life and Lot's wife were of like sort, both were worldly. Against the Lord's command she turned and looked back to the raging fire of a burning Sodom and as a warning to all who would look back (see Luke 9.62), she was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19.26). Her worldly possessions and friends had been in Sodom, but they were now gone, but she still longed after them. "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17. 32), said the Lord; a warning indeed to all who would turn back. "Never look back and you will never turn back " said a wise preacher years ago, and we may wisely repeat his words now, in this cold and deceitful time.

If we turn over the page of Scripture to the beginning we see righteous Abel being killed by his brother. Why? John tells us the reason. "Wherefore slew he him? Because his works were evil and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3.12). Abel had not stolen his brother's riches nor defamed his name; the simple reason was that he had dared to obey God' and at the same time Cain had dared to disobey Him. But John goes deeper as to the cause of Abel's death and tells us that" Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother." The cruel, malignant antagonising of the devil to God and all that is of God was the deep underlying reason for this cruel murder. The persecution of prophets, apostles and saints, the murder of the Lord and His martyrs, rise from the devil who by deception gets men to align themselves with him and by the means of votaries he carries on his systematic opposition to and persecution of all who would do the will of God in their time. Look, beloved fellow-saint, at the honour God is bestowing on you to stand faithfully for God and His truth against all the opposition of your day. Relief will one day reach you, for the Lord is coming!

As silently as the world turns daily upon what is called its axis, and wings its way in the vast spaces of the universe in its yearly orbit around its central sun, so silently does God work in this world fulfilling His purposes. So silently does God work, and unseen to mortal eyes, that many have been disposed to think and to say that there is no God at all. But others whose eyes have been opened through grace can plainly see in the march of events, that what God spoke of long centuries ago is beginning to take shape for the last scenes in the drama of Gentile dominion on this earth. Peter tells us that in the last days there will be those who in mockery challenge the fact of the Lord's coming again.

"Knowing this first, in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Peter 3.8, 4).

Who are the mockers? They are such as think they can treat God's things as mere playthings (the word for mocker is derived from the verb paizo, to play).

Why is the Lord silent and has been so for nearly 2,000 years, all the long time since He left His disciples on the slopes of Olivet? Why does not the Lord burst the heavens and reward the wicked for their words and acts? Peter tells us that time, with Him who is at God's right hand, does not exist as this world reckons it, for in His sight a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. But why does He not come? impatient unbelief asks. Scripture answers this in the word

"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3.9).

"To you-ward" signifies believers, not unregenerate persons, and the Lord is longsuffering toward such believers as are walking far-off from Him, and wishes that ere He comes they would repent and be in a state to welcome Him, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming, as 1 John 2.28 speaks of. "Perish" in 2 Peter 3.9 bears the same meaning as "destroy" in Romans 14.15 (apollumi), which means that one for whom Christ died may be destroyed or perish, so far as his service for God is concerned, but he can never perish eternally, as the word perish (apollumi) is used in John 3.16. No one to whom eternal life is given can suffer eternal destruction, but it is quite clear that one who is a believer may be destroyed or corrupted because of the work he has done. See 1 Corinthians 3.17. We do not need to emphasize that many of God's children need to repent; many, alas, are in the snare of the devil, but God has not pledged himself to grant repentance to those who are so ensnared. It is said "if peradventure": "correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil" (2 Timothy 2.24-26). Many are quite content to remain in the devil's snare in which they are, content it may be in a pleasant social system, and with what may be bright evangelical meetings with or without organs and solo singing, but to seek the knowledge of the truth, and to be where the truth of God ever leads, namely, God's house (see Psalm 43.3, 4; 1 Timothy 3.14, 15) seem to be far remote from their thoughts. Indeed there may be complete ignorance of the fact that God wishes to have a house at all, or there may be utter confusion of thought as to what the house of God is. It would be sad in the extreme if the present condition amongst God's children were in the Lord's longsuffering keeping back His coming again.

unknown | Aug 1954
Jottings