Their Decline

by J.L. Ferguson, Barrhead | Category: New Testament Churches Of God | Sept 1967

In the writings of the Old Testament prophets, we cannot fail to be impressed with the immense amount of repeated warning and entreaty, the pleadings of God with His people that they might turn again and walk with Him the life of faith. Generously, the Lo~ said to them through Jeremiah. "I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals; how thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (2.2). But Hosea saw their "goodness... as a morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away". And again God charged them through Jeremiah, "I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. This hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not My voice" (22.21). All down the years of Israel's history, and increasingly in the years of decay before their captivity, this they consistently refused to do - obey God's voice.

The New Testament apostles and prophets, in the spirit of discernment, saw all this clearly. A reference to Stephen's oration in Acts 7 will suffice. There, for example, he pinpointed the monstrous situation of a newly delivered nation on its way to the promised land actually carrying two tabernacles through the wilderness, the one for their true Saviour God, in the line of divine revelation, the other for Moloch, to whom their idolatrous longings had already begun to lean. How quickly a deceived heart turned Israel aside, in persistent deflection!

But the New Testament prophets saw further. Not only could they trace in the pattern of Israel's history, the weaving in and out of false seducing prophets to whom the people so willingly gave ear, but they predicted with utmost precision the presence of false teachers in the churches of God of their own day. They will "privily bring in" wrote Peter, "destructive heresies... and many shall follow their lascivious doings; by reason of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of" (2 Peter 2.1,2).

The warning of the Lord Jesus had been specific on the point-false prophets would come in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they would be ravening wolves. Only by their fruits would they be known. So they crept in, for example, unsuspected by any, to the churches of Galatia. They were false brethren, bent on destroying the truth of the gospel, bent on interfering with the counsel of God for a new covenant people. Therefore, Paul contended with them. Nothing could dim the clarity of his vision of the way of God. He had seen it all too clearly in the early days in Arabia. And, had it not been for his brilliant understanding and unswerving loyalty, the pure stream of divine truth would have been polluted earlier than it was.

But it was one thing to contend with the false teachers, and quite another to counteract the spread of their teaching in the assemblies. It had bewitched, for example, the Galatian disciples. The clean break of the Christian life was losing its distinctiveness. In the Lord's counsels the old covenant, with all its elementary things which the eye could see and the hands could handle, was now ready to vanish away in the full blaze of the life of faith, in the era of grace. But the Galatians, fresh as they were from their very real Calvary experience, had yielded to the deception that the Cross was, after all, not complete without circumcision, or the hearing of faith without the works of the law. The rot had set in.

Nor was it any different in Corinth. The church of God there had been planted only some three or four years when Paul had to reprove them in connexion with divisions in the church, and with regard to the place they were giving to "false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ", men who openly challenged the authority of his God-given apostleship and teaching. There is a deep pathos in Paul's pleadings in 2 Corinthians 11 and 12. It was all so clear to him. The serpent of Eden was again in the garden of God, seducing, beguiling, corrupting the minds of the saints "from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ".

Yes, the service of God associated with His new covenant house and people was in complete simplicity. The great company of the priests who were obedient to the faith (Acts 6.7) must have been deeply impressed by this. The temple with its rich embellishments, its altars, its ceremonial dress, its music, occupied them no longer. They had gone outside the camp to Him, and to a service which was simple but profoundly significant to faith. Now the meeting-room might be plain, but the place of service was above, within the true tabernacle itself, with robes of righteousness for vestments, and the songs of the free as richer music than the temple strings.

But the will of God, thus revealed, soon proved as irksome and unacceptable to many, as the message from Sinai had proved of old. Even three years apostolic ministry in Ephesus, a ministry of tears, could not stem the tide of false teaching which swept through the assembly there, within a matter of a few years. Hence Paul's warning, as by the Spirit of God, that following his final talk with the elders of the church, men from their own ranks would arise and by their false teaching would draw away the disciples after them. Little wonder Paul regarded "anxiety for all the churches" as the most profound of all the things which pressed on him daily. The decline would affect them all.

Nor was it any different in Colosse. If "the spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines" in Saul's day, they were out again in a spiritual sense in Paul's day. The potential spoilers were in the midst of the saints in the church at Colosse - philosophy, vain deceit, human tradition, worldly things were their weapons-these, warned the apostle, would spoil the assembly for God.

Thus the word of the Spirit was given in specific, stated terms in 1 Timothy 4. "In later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits... through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies". The seducers and the seduced-all of them made shipwreck of the Faith which had been once for all delivered to the saints. The law from Sinai had been confirmed by Malachi. It held the field for the dispensation. So the teaching of the apostles was to remain the basis of divine service until the end of the age. It was immovable, imperishable, but the disciples were fast moving away from it. And Revelation 2.5 would lead the unbiased reader of the New Testament to the conclusion, that one by one the golden lampstands of divine testimony would be extinguished.

Next month we shall look more closely at specific instances of declension which, by the close of the first century, had become evident in the early churches of God. The love of power, of the ornate, and of the things which the senses see and hear-these were to displace the original simplicity and uniqueness of Christian testimony. It is withal a sobering reflection. Well did the Holy Spirit alert us all to the sin which so easily besets us, as it beset Israel, of falling away from the living God; of jettisoning by means of human reasoning, spiritual principles which are dear to Him.

Many of these great and precious truths were recovered for us by our spiritual forbears. We hold them in trust today as a priceless heritage. And down the centuries rings the voice for our encouragement, "That which ye have, hold fast till I come".

J.L. Ferguson, Barrhead | Sept 1967
New Testament Churches Of God