THE COURSE OF THE TESTIMONY

J. Taylor

A weighty obligation rests on the saints of the present generation. For many centuries Christ, viewed as typified by the ark of the covenant, had been obscured. The recognition of the human element, and the principles of the world, in the church, practically set aside the Holy Spirit; and so Christ was lost to view. The Spirit will ever make Christ prominent, but when He is not allowed to speak, the man after the flesh, instead of Christ, comes into evidence.

The Scriptures foretold that this should occur, and we know by what we see around us that it has occurred. The history of Israel, as

recorded in the book of Judges and the early chapters of 1 Samuel, is analogous to the history of the church in this respect. From the time of the construction of the ark of the covenant it was the great central figure in Israel from the divine point of view, and where intelligent faith existed it was so regarded. But in the days of the judges it was scarcely noticed at all according to its true import; when, however, the people were pressed hard by the Philistines they resorted to the ark as if it could save them, instead of trusting God whose presence among them it symbolised. Alas! He had now forsaken Israel, for their state was such as to preclude His presence. Forms which represent what is divine avail nothing when the state to which these forms primarily referred is lacking. The ark was taken by the Philistines. It was a dark day in Israel; for the glory had departed. But God acted sovereignly in raising up David to reinstate the ark in its place. The same thing, in principle, has taken place in the church: God has wrought; the authority of the Lord has been acknowledged, and as a result, Christ, as the object and centre of God’s counsels, has regained His place in the affections of the saints.

God has done this for us, and the weighty question for the saints is—Shall Christ continue to retain this place with us?

The recovery of the truth alluded to was by men of God. A man of God shines in a crisis. The crisis does not make him a man of God, but what he does in it shows him to be such. He acts for God. But if we are not with God before the crisis, it is not likely that we shall act for Him in it. In the establishment of the kingdom, David was a type of Christ; but David was personally a man of God. He served his own generation by the will of God; he may be regarded as a typical man of God; and his work in Israel is a demonstration of what God can do through one who is faithful to Him. But recovery of the truth is not only connected with men of God, for if we look into the Scriptures we see that the testimony primarily came out through them. The development of God’s testimony was gradual, but steady,

Indeed the accuracy with which each part fits into connection with all that preceded it attests, in the strongest way, the divine authenticity of the whole, and also of the Scriptures, in which we have the record of it. But each phase of the testimony, as it appeared, brought into evidence some man of God. Each had been formed of God so that in him should be set forth some feature of Christ; wherever faith existed there was some conception of Christ; and this gave character to the person. Hence there was a living testimony. We see, therefore, in Abel not only a type of Christ—righteousness was actually there in him, and he suffered for it; he had faith, so we see in his testimony a feature of Christ in a substantial way. The same is true of the other men of faith who followed after Abel.

But our present concern is to show that they were men of God, and so were honoured as taken up to bear witness beforehand to what God intended to set forth in Christ. Under God, we owe to them the wonderful unfolding of the testimony which the typical part of the Old Testament affords. For the psalms and prophetic books, in the same sense, we are also indebted to men of God—“Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”.

Coming to the New Testament, the same remarks apply. The man of God considers only for God, and nothing can afford more food for the soul than to trace this in the Lord’s ministry.

The apostles, too, were men of God. Through them the testimony of God, in its completeness, was established in the world.

Now this precious treasure being in the world, who is to be, so to say, its custodian? At the outset the church as pervaded by the Spirit was this, but even then the man of God was needed. Compare 1 Timothy. But now that the assembly has fallen into outward ruin, the testimony is connected with faithful individuals who, nevertheless, walk in the full light of the church. Here we come to the second epistle to Timothy, which contemplates our own days. Timothy was faithful and

thus the apostle Paul had entrusted the truth to him, and he in his turn was to commit it to other faithful men.

This involves a most important consideration as showing the divine way of transmitting the truth. It is evident in the Old Testament that while a man of God might represent some phase of the testimony, and serve his own generation in this connection, yet he recognised and maintained what God had given in generations before him. David, for instance, recognised the light that came in through Moses; and Stephen, in the New Testament, embodied in his address before the council all the light previously given, and accepted, in the spirit of his Master, the full consequences of his testimony. Each served his own generation by the will of God. But each of these men of God served also the generation that followed him. The blessing and glory of Solomon’s reign were the result of the faithfulness of David; and the exalted ministry of Paul was, in a sense, an outcome of Stephen’s testimony.

To return to the responsibility resting upon us now, God in recent times raised up men who recovered, as it were, the ark of the testimony. This was at the cost of much exercise and conflict. What they recovered they handed down to those following. These in their turn have had sorrow and conflict in seeking to preserve it, and so it has come from faithful hands to us.

What are we going to do with it? Are we going to dance before it with joy, like David, and enshrine it in our affections? Shall we defend it, like Stephen, at the cost of our lives? These are weighty questions for the saints of God at the present time. The maintenance of the truth calls for constant self-judgment and self-surrender. Thus only can we hope to pass on what we have received to a generation following, if it please God that there should be one. In the absence of these, we shall either sell the truth for worldly advantage, or corrupt it in the effort to gain positions of prominence in the church, as some were doing at Corinth. The recent attack of the enemy was

to corrupt the saints by the introduction of human principles in the ordering of the house of God. The Lord has graciously given deliverance, but we may be assured that Satan will set another snare for us. The occasion calls for men of God. Let it be remembered that to be a man of God is a question of faithfulness, and not gift, and so it is within the reach of all.

(Vol. 2, pp.317–320)