MAINTAINING THE COLOURS (1)

MAINTAINING THE COLOURS (1)

There is a higher duty incumbent on the evangelist than his gift, and that is, maintaining “the testimony of our Lord”, and “of me his prisoner”.

You see, when everything was in order, the simple duty of the evangelist was service according to his gift. The testimony was supported, and as he worked at his gift, and captured, say a rebel, another was added to the royal corps. But when the demoralisation was universal, and no one would stand to his colours, the duty of every true servant, be he evangelist or not, was plainly, first and foremost, to show that he had recovered from the general defection, and that before he would charge the enemy, he must assume the royal arms and standard; otherwise, the work and object would be to connect a rebel without any real interest or concern for the Lord.

Now the gift comes from the Lord - and seeing we are involved in the state of Asia (Paul says, “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me” (2 Timothy 1: 15), it is plain that the first duty of every servant is to maintain with the greatest distinctness paramount to his gift, his allegiance and duty to the Lord, as not only the One ^[p. 270] who has been refused His rights here, but the One to be presented to the earth by His own on the earth. The Man in heaven has His members on the earth. The Holy Spirit maintains Him in His headship to His body here; and the earth, where He is not, is the place where He, the Holy Spirit, is testifying of Him; and to be in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and in heart associated with the One who is in heaven, is plainly our highest calling.

What is due to the Lord should be more before us than the need of souls; and really it is incompatible to suppose that the latter would be less wisely or truly considered for, because the servant who had, through divine favour (the greatest favour), learned what was due to the Lord here, where demoralisation is widespread, should make this primary. The evangelist should be for the body, not only seeking to get souls saved, and added to the table, but that they should stand openly and faithfully for Christ.

I hope you will not think that I deprecate an earnest love for souls, or disparage the labours of the evangelist; no, certainly not; but I do say that the evangelist in this day, when enlightened as to church truths (covered up for eighteen hundred years), must present what an evangelist ignorant of it would not be expected to do. He ought to be known the moment he appears by his regimentals, so to speak, maintaining the colours, different from all ordinary evangelists - in modus operandi, and everything, distinctly disowning and repudiating all the ways, inventions, and means which have been adopted by evangelists of the great christian republic, which has been formed for the overthrow of Christ’s kingdom.