GOD’S OPERATIONS IN TIME

C. J. H. Davidson

1 Kings 18: 21, 30–39; Mark 6: 1–3, 7, 8, 12, 13; Acts 19: 1–7; Revelation 21: 10–12, 14, 21–23

It is very interesting the use that God has made of time. He is the God who dwelt in a past eternity—and there is a coming one—but God has made use in time of the number twelve—

extensive use. A beloved man who lived in this city said of that number that it is the manipulation of love. The children here can know that, unless they are too taken up with their calculators to be able to do money sums without calculators! You can have twelve ones, and six twos, and four threes, and three fours, all out of the number twelve. And God has fastened that on the present creation. The Lord Jesus said, Are there not twelve hours in the day in which men may work? (John 11: 9). Not many men work twelve hours a day now. The Lord also said, “The night is coming, when no one can work”, John 9: 4. That has been a word to me; I go on in view of the twelve hours of the day. And then God has put the stamp of twelve upon the months, twelve months in the year. The beginning of months for Israel was the month Abib which we call March. There is a lovely meaning to that name, ‘the month of green ears’, the shoots coming up in the spring-time. Ah, you say, when you see the buds breaking on the trees. Summer is near!

O beloved, summer is near. But the months are under the hand of God; He manipulates that number twelve for His own purposes and it goes right through, from the beginning of the creation that now is, to the end of that creation. There will be no need for numbers in eternity.

One blessed feature is that the word of God says that in that day of glory, night shall not be there (Revelation 21: 25); it will be eternal day without a night. Oh, to think of it!

God does not create division, but when waste and darkness entered the world God said, I must separate between the light and the darkness, because He is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1: 5). And then, when His greatest blessing came in with the birth of Christ at Bethlehem and men refused Him all His days and killed Him by wicked hands at the cross, God said, I will still go on giving light to men, the light of the gospel. And it has come right down to our day. But, beloved, there is a separation that needs to be maintained between the light and the darkness, because God has done it and you and I have got to do it.

In this wonderful recovery in which we have our part Elijah the prophet stands for the great ministers of the recovery in our day. What a scene this is—there are the false gods; they gave no answer. Their idolatrous followers cut themselves till the blood gushed out upon them. Stupid people! There was no answer.

How could there be an answer from the god that they were looking to? And so many are looking to gods many and lords many at the present time. Paul says, “Yet to us there is one God”, 1 Corinthians 8: 6. So Elijah on this great day of recovery says, I must get back to what Jehovah started with; the number twelve in Israel; the sons of Jacob, twelve men. So he takes twelve stones and builds again the altar of Jehovah. And he calls upon Jehovah. Oh, I love to think that the men who have served us in the recovery got down on their knees and, like Elijah, said to God, ‘Answer me, answer me’. And God did. I do not know if you young ones realize the privilege you have that one hundred and fifty years ago God raised up a man like Elijah the prophet. God waited through nearly two thousand years of darkness in Christendom and then He said, I will give men the best light that I have, as to an exalted Christ and an assembly built according to Him, man being God’s image and glory (1 Corinthians 11: 7). The recovery started with a man who said, God’s principle of unity is separation from evil, and all the light of the coming glory started to flood in.

Then, beloved, think of the privilege we have had in knowing a man to whom the Lord gave, I believe, the closing ministry of the recovery; the matter of the Person of the Son of God in 1929 and later the truth as to the Person and glory of the Holy Spirit. All of that has come into the span of one hundred and fifty years, and I tell you, beloved, it is like Elijah first having to come before the Lord comes. The Lord said that when they asked Him, Why say the scribes that Elijah must first come? Oh, He says, Elijah did first come to restore all things, and they have done to him whatever they would (Matthew 17: 10–12). That was John the baptist. Elijah is one of the outstanding men in Scripture, but his successor, John, in the spirit and power of Elijah, was there to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. What did he do? He turned the hearts of the fathers to the children (Luke 1: 17). You young people here, be thankful for what your parents have and hold on to it because it has been brought to you through the sufferings, prayers and supplications of the ministers of the recovery. I want to be in it at the end, and I want to see the hearts of all us older ones turning towards the children, the younger ones, that they too may be among a people made ready for the Lord.

So Elijah is a great figure. He builds that altar again. And we have had, as it were, built again before us the glory of the ministry of Christ and the assembly. What a structure that vessel is, divine workmanship in every detail. But Elijah says, I will bring in the matter of death—the water—because there is nothing of nature that can express God. So we have to learn that our natural relationships, ordered of God and to be enjoyed rightly, of themselves cannot bring us into the glory of the recovery. So having done that, the fire of Jehovah falls. But there is just that one expression that I want to dwell on for a moment. Elijah says, “Thou hast turned their heart back again”. Oh, if there has been any declension with any of us, let us have our hearts turned back again to Christ. I tell you, beloved, there would be not one bit of division amongst the people of God if the hearts of all were turned back to be faithful to that blessed and glorious Man.

Oh, what a Man He is! He knew how to use the number twelve. They disdained Him in chapter 6 of Mark. Just a carpenter, they said; what wisdom is this that He has? His family was not of much importance to them, but it was of great importance to heaven because they were all there in the end in the upper room when the structure of the assembly was being brought about by the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. His mother and His brethren were there. Oh, how lovely that is! And the great Carpenter could handle those twelve men, the apostles, and make them what they were. You know, He is still doing that, fitting persons into the divine system, fitting His servants. There are no apostles today, but the spirit of what was apostolic entered into the recovery in men who laid down their lives for the sake of the Lord Jesus. That is what they did; and they got on their knees and said, Answer me, answer me! And He did. Was there ever anyone like Jesus for putting people together, fitting them together? Paul speaks of the whole body being fitted together (Ephesians 4: 16). That is the work of the great Carpenter.

So immediately in this chapter, where they dismiss Him as a mere tradesman, the Spirit records that He called the twelve and sent them out two and two. That is part of the manipulation of love. Peter and John were like that, the handiwork of Christ when He was here among men, and they are seen in the book of the Acts and they can say to the lame man, “Look on us”. Oh, do not forget the background to all of this; it is just the loving-kindness of God that He should allow us at the end of the dispensation—the longest that there has been and the greatest, but in some sense the saddest because there has been such turning away and darkness—to see and hear about the mysteries of God’s grace.

Do not be discouraged, beloved, by few numbers. You ponder how few Christ had when He was here. He says, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought”, yet He says in the prophet, “my judgment is with … Jehovah”, Isaiah 49: 4. And so it is; the day will declare what Christ has wrought, and what He wrought at the beginning He did with few men; “the men were about twelve” in Acts 19. What was Paul in his ministry going to do with them? He was going to fit them by his ministry, given him from heaven, for their part in the great assembly of God in Christ Jesus, where there will be glory to God to the ages of ages. What a system of glory it is! But it began in that wicked city where the stupidity of man fancied that there was a great goddess, a woman, Diana, or Artemis. Benighted darkness was there and in it Paul found twelve in whom the work of God had already started. They were repenting persons. Let us continue to be such. You may say, How wonderful to have Ephesian light, but the foundation of it was in John the baptist’s ministry. But they had missed the key in John’s ministry. John did his work well; that man was magnificent in his making way for the increase of Christ. Paul says, You ought to have believed on Him that came after John the baptist. John the baptist preached a good gospel—Oh, did he not? “Behold the Lamb of God”, John 1: 36. That is not a very long gospel to weary people, but everything is in that Man.

And so things light up at Ephesus and Diana goes down, as Jezebel will go down. At the present time Jezebel is rising up, putting a nice kind face upon things to win the Protestants over. God remembers the blood of the martyrs. Mr. Taylor did not forget it; he said he had respect for the Church of England because in the middle ages if you wanted this precious book you had to go to the little churches around England to get it. I have seen Bibles with chains on because that was the only place where you could read the Bible. And then he said he respected it because of the blood of the martyrs. You think of men being burnt alive.

As they suffered, Latimer, who loved Jesus, said to his fellow-martyr Ridley, ‘Play the man—we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out’. And I tell you it is very largely in these other parts of the world, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, that the candle-light has come because of the blood of the martyrs. Oh, let us be more inspired, beloved, to be definite. The beginning at Ephesus is in Acts 19, and there the whole counsel of God was announced. The end is John’s record in the Revelation.

See what God makes of the number twelve at the end; twelve gates, twelve angels, the names of the twelve tribes, twelve foundations, the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, and finally, twelve gates, twelve pearls. That is a magnificent galaxy of glory because love is in every one of those matters, particularly the pearl. There is a gate for the assembly position here in this city. You are not the assembly; there are many believers around who belong to that one body; but you hold assembly light. I could not go anywhere else preaching. The ‘open’ idea is that you can go just anywhere you like, it does not matter what error is held.

That is absolute lawlessness. Mr. Darby says it is neutrality as to Christ. Well, I am not going to be neutral as to Christ, and the number twelve in its bearing does not involve anything but the perfection of the work of that Man.

So there is a great deal at the end to rejoice in. What a structure it will be! We sang Mr. McCallum’s hymn at Villa Grove, ‘Jerusalem, eternal! The city of Christ’s God’, Hymn 221. The Lamb is there. The nations that are saved for the millennial glory will have free access to that city and whenever they approach one of the gates there will be a reminder that the assembly, and the assembly alone, is the “one pearl of great value”. I remember Mr. Myles giving an address on the one pearl of great value and some of the sisters gave up afterwards what they had worn decoratively, ropes of pearls; but the one pearl is Christ’s assembly. Paul says how the women are to be dressed (1 Timothy 2: 9, 10). You come to each gate and it is one pearl. The unity of affection for Christ in the assembly is surpassingly wonderful.

May we be encouraged then that the recovery is not going to peter out; it is going to go on, and will go out in glory. One of the hymns speaks of ‘That glorious blaze of living light’ (Hymn 79), one of the most splendid statements in spiritual poetry; and we are going to see it and be in it and be part of it. It is no longer a question of personalities bulking largely before us and turning some aside one way and some aside to another party; that is not it at all; it is 84 one structure, the handiwork of the Spirit and of Christ, and the Father’s pleasure is bound up in it. May we be cheered, beloved, by what is before us, for His name’s sake.

Address in Brooklyn, N.Y.
22 June 1985