THE PRESENT OPPOSITION
THE PRESENT OPPOSITION
In 2 Timothy we are given the varied influences which hinder and mar the truth. The first is, that “all who are in Asia ... have turned away from” Paul. The fact that those among whom the apostle had laboured chiefly should turn away from him necessarily had a very injurious effect on souls. Those who had not known him, and who had heard of his teaching, must have been shaken in their minds as to the validity of it, when those who had heard him first and most turned away from him. If I turn away from a teacher when I have only first heard him, it may be alleged that I have not understood him; but when those who had known him well turned away from him, after having received from him the deepest truth, they must have been perverted by direct Satanic agency.
It is a different thing to be slow or unwilling to receive a truth, and to renounce and abandon it after having received it. In the one case I have not as yet felt in my conscience the divine verity of it; in the other, after having received it as the truth of God, I have deliberately abandoned it. There cannot be any growth until this retrogression has been confessed and relinquished; whereas, if I have never received it, there is still hope that the word may be effectual. The former case is of the character of the sow that was washed, and hence it is “better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them”. A truth may be refused without a surrender of conscience, but when truth once accepted has been given up, then the conscience has been corrupted and over-ridden.
[p. 403] We can hardly conceive anything more damaging to one earnest about the truth, than to find that those who had long received it, and from the best teacher, should now quite openly and avowedly give up the teacher, for with the teacher, all that is identified with him is surrendered and abandoned. The impression which such a surrender would leave on the mind is that the truth with which Paul was identified was, after all, only of high pretension and little moral weight, and without a divine hold on the heart. It is a great success to the enemy when any renounce the truth which they had accepted, because it gives the impression that it was not morally true, that it was found to be chimerical. This is like the ten spies who commended the land, but said that to possess it was untenable and impracticable — a depreciation which weighs with those who seek an excuse to escape from their responsibility.
To the “man of God” at such a juncture, the word is, “Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner”. It is a most critical time when there is defection all around; as in the days of Shammah, when “the people fled from the Philistines. But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines”, 2 Samuel 23: 11, 12. Like a tree that has blossomed well and has made a great show, but a blight has fallen on it; the power of the tree is tested, and the result is that only a solitary pear here and there tells of its name and nature.
One requires to be in the presence of the Lord in a scene of unclouded purity to be able to form an adequate idea of the terrible power and machination of Satan at work, when saints openly turned aside from the greatest servant God had ever used to instruct them. If they had never tasted of the good of the truth, if they never had heard of it from the lips of the apostle of the gentiles, there would have been some palliation for their perversion and moral blindness. But to be so stultified that they should belie the truth they had once accepted,
[p. 404] and thus close their eyes to the brightest light that ever shone into the heart of man, declares that they had fallen under the power of distinct Satanic aggression.
Thus the era of retrogression began; and surely there is no one who has carefully taken note of the opposition to the truth in our time, but must have seen how one of the most significant marks of the enemy’s power is the shameless way in which some have turned away from the truth which they had once accepted, as well as from the teacher they once revered as God’s messenger of it.
Now while this deep dark foe was preying on the consciences of the saints, secretly abstracting from them the very eyesight of the soul, there were also in the assembly openly “profane and vain babblings” which would “increase unto more ungodliness”; so much so that two well known men maintained that the resurrection had taken place already; that is, there was an open denial of fundamental truth. When the assembly became so demoralised as to suffer such an intrusion, it was very evident that the Lord’s presence was not there, that the saints were not in faith gathered to His name. If there had been even two or three of them thus gathered, such a grievous intrusion would have been resisted. And if the conscience of the assembly, not merely the conscience of a few, were not aroused to the enormity of their course, there was then no option left but to separate from these vessels to dishonour.
In the first instance we have the abandonment of the teacher sent of God, and once accepted as such. Next we have in the assembly the unblushing advocacy of a teaching which undermines christianity, “saying that the resurrection has taken place already”. Many in christendom are leavened with this doctrine, who would not avow it. Surely the godless way in which christians, Corinthian-like, seek pleasure as if their bodies were not the Lord’s, is a practical denial of the resurrection of the body; it is the principle of, “Let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die”, 1 Corinthians 15: 32. Is it to be wondered [p. 405] at that concurrently with or consequent upon an avowed abandonment of the apostle, the servant of God, to whom specially the truth of “the mystery of the gospel” was committed, the next inroad of the enemy would be to introduce false doctrine into the assembly? When this evil was permitted in the house of God it was defiled, and the only course open to the faithful was simply to separate from the vessels to dishonour, and to identify themselves with “those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart”. Thus as a true remnant they would maintain the truth which had been relinquished, and they, gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, would still enjoy His presence here, and be as God’s house, where He could make known His pleasure.
Hence the action of divine power is greater in restoring than in introducing. In the latter a space is necessary, but in the other all the influences which together had dismantled and almost destroyed the assembly — God’s house — are overcome, and it comes forth, as it were, from the dead in spite of them. Satan seemed to succeed when everything was at its prime; but God sets Satan at nought when, through even a handful, He restores the testimony; and then, too, there is a greater manifestation of His power for us, though not by us.
We have considered the nature of the opposition to the truth when failure set in. Now we have to dwell on the character of it in “difficult times”. The opposition in these times is twofold; one when the truth is withstood by an exhibition of power, and the other, when their ears are turned away from the truth, and are turned to fables. The first is more with reference to the teachers; the second, to the congregation at large.
It is almost inscrutable how one professing to be a christian could attempt to withstand the truth like Jannes and Jambres. We must remember that these withstood Moses by claiming to do the same works that Moses did by “the finger of God”. They would neutralise that which was of God, by showing that they, by [p. 406] their enchantments, could do the same. Their object was to defeat the work of God, and to prove that they were as powerful as Moses, because they could do the same as he did. They did not assume to be sent of God, as Moses did, but their intention was to prevent the people from owning that it was God’s hand, by their doing the like. It is not easy to point out at the present hour a form of opposition which fully answers to this, though no doubt it does exist. Plainly, any who teach that by his own works and penances, man can procure his salvation, withstand the truth, and set up a power which is opposed to God’s power. But there is a more subtle form than this; where a measure of evangelical truth is received, and with it is supplemented the doctrine that one can attain to perfection or holiness by an exercise apart from the Spirit of God; or where there is any expectation or effort to sway the hearts of men by human eloquence or man’s wisdom. In fine, where there is any attempt to arrive at anything similar to what God’s power effects, there is a resort to the enemy’s power to withstand the truth of God. There cannot be a more effectual way of withstanding the truth than to seek to produce something similar to its effects by a hostile power. It would hardly be credited that any sensible man could be thus deceived, but Scripture warns us of it; and alas! we see it in our own day, often coupled with true light in the soul. The design of the enemy is very evident, even to defeat the truth; and when he cannot prevent the soul from accepting the gospel in part, then because of his unremitting hostility, he pursues each of us unceasingly, to see if he can possibly at any stage thwart the work of God. It is remarkable that it is Paul’s doctrine and example which are given to us as the preservation from this opposition. It will be remembered that the magicians were defeated when it came to a question of producing life (Exodus 8: 16 - 19), and hence the sure and true way of controverting this opposition is by setting forth the height and greatness of God’s [p. 407] calling in our life: Naturally one would have supposed that the course to be adopted in order to expose an imitation would be by instituting a comparison between the real and the spurious; but that is not the way enjoined here. It is by insisting on the greatness of the positive truth as practically exhibited. “Thou hast fully known my doctrine”, and, “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them”. The more fully I am acquainted with the Scriptures, the more I am formed and swayed by them; as one has said, ‘I not only get thoughts from Scripture, but Scripture forms my thoughts; and thus in a very blessed way I am kept from man’s ways and devisings, and adhere simply and truly to God’s ways and manner of acting’.
When one is not proof to this part of the opposition, the second is sure to prevail, namely, such as is described in 2 Timothy 4: 3, 4. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables”. It is not now trying to neutralise the truth by seeking to produce an action similar to what God’s power produces; and it is not only the deliberate turning away their ears from the truth, but there is the turning of them to fables, myths, things that never had any existence, false creations of the mind by a power foreign to God; it is an entire surrender of the truth for myths. But the servant of God must not yield: “Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry”. And the apostle himself is the example of the solitary unit suffering for the truth of God; an encouragement to us, that if through faithfulness to Christ we are reduced to the same isolation, we shall find the same consolation and succour from the Lord that he found. “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that [p. 408] all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen”.