THE INFLUENCE OF ELDERS
P. W. Hickmott
I was struck when reading this section in Judges recently that “the people served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders”, but that after they had gone, as this book shows, rapid and gross departure from God came in. I just wondered if it might serve to apply it to the present time. Christianity has been set forward by gifted men in leadership from the very beginning, first in the apostles, then down through the history remarkable men have been used of God to maintain the essentials of Christian testimony. In the period we are specially connected with, the time of the revival of the light of the Head in heaven and the body on earth, the element of leadership has been used of God to establish something and to unfold the full light of Christianity.
But we are not in that time now. In figure Joshua has died, but elders have continued, “whose days were prolonged after Joshua, who had seen all the great works of Jehovah, which he had done for Israel”. So there are still some amongst us, elders, that would fit, I would suggest, into this category, and the question would be as to whether in any sense we are among them, or whether we ourselves understand the great works that God has done for Israel. What works they were as you think of the types. The question would be whether we know anything about them. You think of younger generations amongst us now; you love to hear of it and see it, that God is retaining interest among younger persons, bringing them in and holding them in the area where they can get blessing. But if there is going to be the prevention of departure and something preserved, there would have to be an understanding corresponding to what these elders had, that they had “seen all the great works of Jehovah, which he had done for Israel”. I could not go into the detail, but where did they begin for Israel? Think of the passover, think of the blood of the passover lamb, persons saved from judgment, a nation indeed, a people, saved from judgment by the fact of individuals obeying the word as to the blood when the passover took place—“When I see the blood, I will pass over you”, Exodus 12: 13.
Well, do we understand what that means? Individually, do we understand deliverance from judgment through the blood of Jesus? And then deliverance from the bondage of Egypt—Egypt typifying the wretched, sinful world that would hold us in its bondage—God acted in mighty power to deliver His people from it through the Red Sea, which speaks of the death of Christ. We may know the teaching, but the concern would be that we may know the experience, .young and old. Do we live in Egypt and love it, and thus stay under its grip and its bondage, or do we realize that God has wrought a great deliverance in the death of Jesus and we are thus in the wilderness on the other side of the Red Sea? That would be another great work of Jehovah. So we could go over them, the works and the history of the children of Israel that apply to the history of the believer, and to the history of God’s people currently.
So you think of the manna. What a work of Jehovah, what a miraculous work of Jehovah, the manna was. Nobody would ever get it in Egypt. If you let the world in, and live in the world, well, you will not have the manna, but if you are truly in the wilderness in experience you will know that you cannot live without the manna, without feeding on that blessed Man in His lowly pathway here. Then you could think of the smitten rock, life in the Spirit coming in through the smiting of Christ. There are many other matters—the giving of the law; the brazen serpent on the pole—“Every one that is bitten, and looketh upon it, shall live”, Numbers 21: 8. Then the Jordan itself—think of persons who have known the wilderness in experience, not just the theory and the doctrine and the books, but the experience of what the wilderness is, finding that between them and the land is the Jordan, “full over all its banks”, Joshua 3: 15. It is the acceptance of death in principle and then the wonder of the fact that Christ by His death has made a way through into the enjoyment of that heavenly portion.
Well, these things were seen by these elders and at the end of Joshua (Joshua 24: 31) I notice it says that they were known by the elders, and it shows that as long as these men were alive, who knew about it in experience, the people themselves were saved from dreadful departure.
I just wonder if that does not have a bearing on us, that we are to be concerned about ourselves and the younger generations growing up so that we do not just drift along in the belief that things are all right because older people are around. I am sure of this that the vitals of the revival will only be maintained if there is an understanding, a desire, to look into the truth and the history to find what God has done, including what He has done in our time.
What has He done in the last one hundred and fifty years? Can we go back over it sensibly and see what has been manifestly of God, and see what has come in that has not been of God; to be able rightly to divide as to it, and to discern the works of Jehovah? After one hundred and fifty or
so years of the revival, as we speak of it, how is the life-line going to be preserved amongst us? From the divine side the Spirit will not fail in His mission, but from our side it will be by this element of these elders “whose days were prolonged”. Well, we need to be concerned to be among them in order that things are preserved amongst us, so that there is some expression in experience and enjoyment of what the assembly really is. That will not be arrived at, or preserved, by our being casual or by relying on others who know about it, or whom we think know about it. It seems to me that one element of weakness that has affected the history of the revival is the presence of persons who have seemed to know all the answers and yet, somehow, the essence of the thing has been missing. These elders were not like that; they knew the great works of Jehovah and they preserved the people to serve Jehovah as long as they were alive. May we be among them, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Christchurch, N.Z.
17 January 1984