SIFTINGS

SIFTINGS

I feel there is no use in writing unless I enter into something like a history of the state of things. I am sure the test has come, but like an epidemic it has not reached every one yet, nor is it at its height. I see that the Lord called out ‘the brethren’ to testify to the proper calling of the church: the Head in heaven, and His body, in the powers and by the presence, of the Holy Spirit on earth, to maintain Him, His name, where He was not, and where He had a right to be. To be Christ’s representative here was the calling of the church; the unity of the Spirit, kept in the bond ^[p. 374] of peace, was essential to effect this. Lose or neglect this unity, and you fail to comprehend the testimony, and therefore you could not keep it. To be useful to souls has been too much regarded as the end and aim of everything; and hence separation from system became the only church testimony, and this necessarily opened the door for every one who had conscience enough to feel the corruption in systems; right enough in itself, if in the new ground the true standard of the church’s calling was in word and practice set forth, so that each novice not only felt he had escaped from the corrupt thing, but he had reached the nursery where he, though a seedling, saw trees at the proper height. But the contrary has been the case. Crowds have come in, and found, as I have said, relief to their consciences; but they have not been exhorted, by word and practice, that they had entered a corps which had its own calling; and they easily, and without any separation from the world, joined in with the only testimony enjoined or practised, the preaching of the gospel, and a general usefulness which commended them in the sight of men.

Here the mass are; and now when the test comes, they betray the fact that they are not gathered as the church of God, that they do not understand the nature of the unity they have professed to enter into. They may argue, like Lot, that they never knew it, but still they must be tested.

But it is not from the ignorant, or rather, those who admit their ignorance, that the trouble comes most, but from those who, while they are really ignorant in a spiritual sense, assume to know what is right; and this they do know, many of them, in an intellectual way. There is a theoretical knowledge of the church, and this, with evangelisation, is made the testimony. The doctrine of unity, of being one brotherhood, without the Spirit’s unity, has been most pernicious.

I have no doubt that the truth of the testimony embraced in the words, “kept my word, and hast not denied my name” (Revelation 3: 8), is getting strengthened in many souls.

Most of the labouring brothers here are clear and decided as to the testimony - as to the glorious nature of the truth which the Lord has revived to us in these days, and, however feeble, are seeking to maintain Christ’s name here, in and by the church - His body in the earth.

The Philistines are in the land - on the right ground; our only course is, as in Jude, to be morally separate or distinct from them; and thus many will be helped.