A UNIVERSE FOUNDED ON THE REVELATION OF GOD
[p. 263] A UNIVERSE FOUNDED ON THE REVELATION OF GOD
The “last time” here spoken of is the time of antichrist — when he will be manifested. Men are being tested at the present time by the headship of Christ, and until man sets up a rival head, which is antichrist, God does not interfere in judgment.
Would you say the antichrist is not yet fully developed?
The scripture says he is to be revealed in his own time. The man of sin cannot be revealed until after the apostasy; but then morally you get many antichrists now; as the apostle says to one who has eyes to see, “even now there have come many antichrists”. I think the pope is an antichrist at the present time. Luther and others were not very far wrong when they spoke of the pope as being antichrist. It is rivalry, “I am come in my Father’s name and ye receive me not; if another will come in his own name, him ye will receive”, John 5: 43. Men have the spirit of antichrist at the present time; there are many, but the person of antichrist is not here yet, for the church and the Spirit are here, and the truth cannot be set aside so long as that is so: “He who restrains now until he be gone”. The antichrist assumes to be wisdom in rivalry to Christ, the true head of every man, who is wisdom.
“Ye have the unction from the holy one”. The effect of that was that they were shut up to the Holy One, who is Christ. They were complete in what they had got — “ye know all things”.
Verse 22. The denial of the Father and the Son is really the denial of christianity, and so too the denial that Jesus is Christ. The denial of the Father and the [p. 264] Son is connected with the revelation and the denial of Jesus as the Christ is the denial of headship; but the two go together for headship depends on revelation. I suppose the liar denies the Father and the Son, but it does not put it like that here, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is the antichrist who denies the Father and the Son”. The two stand or fall together. A person cannot deny one without the other. A man who does not admit the truth is a liar. The antichrist is a liar. A unitarian is a liar, because he lies against the truth.
But a unitarian does not set up a counterfeit.
I strongly suspect he sets up man’s mind. These people here went out from among them (verses 19). I suppose it referred to such philosophic agnostic people.
Who is the “us”?
The christian circle. Not exactly the apostles. It is more general. This scripture shows that one who does not acknowledge the Father and the Son is a liar. A unitarian does not acknowledge the Son, he has not the Father, because there is no meaning in ‘Father’ except as a relative term. The idea of the name ‘Father’ in Scripture is relative to the ‘Son’, just as Son is relative to the Father.
Will you please say a word in connection with the babes, young men and fathers, spoken of in this chapter?
The chapter is extremely interesting to me, it is the only chapter in the epistle where you get the “I”, with the exception of chapter 5: 13. I think the chapter brings out the measure in which different classes of saints were in accord with the apostles. The peculiar point in accord with the fathers was that they knew him that was from the beginning; with the young men, that they were strong, and had the word of God abiding in them, and they had overcome the wicked one; and the point in accord with the children was that they knew the Father. This is a kind of [p. 265] parenthetical chapter taking up the saints on the ground of their accord with the apostle, and his doctrine. No doubt it contemplates a kind of progress in connection with the apostolic ministry. It gives admonition and warning against the dangers which peculiarly beset different classes. One form of danger besets the young men, another the children. The young men were stable in regard to the doctrine, but the snare was the world. The danger in regard to the children was the spirit of antichrist — they were not settled and stable in the truth. They knew the Father, and the great point in knowing the Father is that you know what has come out (in revelation) but to know Him that is from the beginning (which was the case with the fathers) you have to go “in”. There are the two things and a great many people hold the first. They are content with what has come out, and they do not “go in”. Christ has come to bring the light of God into the world and they get the benefit of that light, but there is a step further, and the point is to go in and if you do not go in you will never get the knowledge of Christ — the sent One.
Why is there no warning to the fathers?
Because they knew him that was from the beginning. The great point is knowing what Christ is for God — not simply what He is for us, and if people get hold of that they will get Christ dwelling in the heart by faith, and will be pretty sure and stedfast. It corresponds very much with the end of Ephesians 3.
You are to know Christ as ascended, and that is the great point in John’s gospel. In chapter 3 13, “No one has gone up into heaven, save he who came down out of heaven”; chapter 6, “if then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before”; chapter 20, “I ascend to my Father and your Father”.
In the three addresses you get what is characteristic of the three classes, but if you take the sum total you really get what is true of the apostle. I think you [p. 266] want the sum total, one need not be content with a third of it.
In verse 14 he says, “I write to you”. All that is characteristic. Afterwards he says, “I have written” — he then brings in warnings because it indicates his present apostolic care. He says, “I have written” twice. It is very interesting to see how he settles the two sides. You want to overcome the wicked one, and you also want to know what God is going to bring in, that is, Him that is from the beginning. Overcoming the wicked one is in connection with the world’s system here, more particularly with antichristian doctrine. The “beginning”, I think, is the revelation. There is to be a universe founded upon the revelation of God, but where are you going to get the man? “Him that is from the beginning” is the Man. What would the holiest have been if there had not been the ark of the covenant? If God revealed Himself, as He has been pleased to do, there would be no meaning in it, if there were not to be a universe founded upon the revelation. The universe must be evolved, and is founded upon Him who is from the beginning.
I suppose the ‘fathers’ would be those who had known the Father and the Son according to John 17.
Yes. They have got the Man — the One who has gone in and the One who is coming out again. I would not be content with the thought of Christ having gone in, if it did not involve the thought of His coming out. When the light comes in, and God shines out according to what He is, everything must be established in righteousness — that all depends upon the beginning. He has come out, not simply that everything might be revealed, but that everything might be established in righteousness, and that is entirely dependent upon the Sun of righteousness. “Him that is from the beginning” would involve the full revelation of God, and that is the point the ‘fathers’ arrive at. I do not think that Genesis 1 is the beginning. God is the beginning. God was then giving intimations of the way in which He intended to come out, but you may depend upon it, that the real beginning is the revelation of the Father in the Son. Everything that came out antecedent to that was antecedent. The real point of departure was when God came out in revelation in Christ. That is the real beginning of light — “God is light”. All the service of Christ down here upon earth was to make the Father known — “He that has seen me has seen the Father”.
Does verse 20 refer to their capacity in the Holy Spirit?
Yes. It would not be mere natural capacity, nor is it intelligence. “Ye know all things” is conscious knowledge. Every christian has the Spirit of truth, and ought in that way to be able to detect what is not truth. Every christian knows more than what he has been taught, for there is what one may call instinctive knowledge. So in reading Scripture, what you understand is really what you have already got by the Spirit of truth, only you get it in divine order, for which you are very thankful. Men may study Scripture all their days, and get nothing from it. Everything lies in the Spirit. In John 14 He is the Spirit of truth. Hundreds of times in my life have I come to Scripture and attentively studied an epistle without seeming to get a single bit of light, simply because I was giving my attention to something which I wanted in my soul. You never get anything until you are ready for it.
Do you not sometimes see things in Scripture, and say, ‘I do not know what that is’, and pray about it?
Yes, and God gives light upon it — you really get it through the Spirit of truth — “Ye have the unction from the holy one”. My impression is that you really have the thing in principle before you [p. 268] get it intelligently. J.N.D. said divine things were learned in a different way from human things. In divine things you have to know the thing before you can learn it, in human things you have to learn before you can know.
How would that apply to Timothy — from a child he had known the holy Scriptures?
You want Scripture for doctrine, for reproof. It is a test. It is a point of being thoroughly furnished, to know the scripture.
Verse 24. What was that which they had heard from the beginning?
I think it was the revelation, the light — the revelation of the Father in the Son. They were complete in regard to the unction, and also in regard to what they had heard from the beginning.
The young men and the babes were being tested, the former by the world and the latter by those anti-christian teachers, and God allowed it. God does allow us to be tested, and the great point is to come out of the testing sound. It is a serious thing to be tested.
Verse 25. Is “eternal life” connected with the world to come?
Yes, and at the present time it lies in the sphere of knowledge, in the power of the unction. By-and-by it will come out publicly. The present moment is a peculiar one, for the One who is eternal life is ascended above, and therefore everything depends upon knowledge at the present time. That is what the Lord meant, what He said, in John 17, “This is the eternal life that they should know thee”. The “only true God” is revealed, and the sent One of the Father is above.
What does the word ‘promise’ in verse 25 exactly refer to — does it correspond with what the apostle Paul speaks of, the promise of eternal life?
Yes. It was intimated all through that God would bring this in — the promise of life in Christ [p. 269] Jesus. Everything was pointing on to the revelation of God, and the moment the revelation of God comes in you get the Sun of righteousness and an end of the rule of sin and death. “Sin reigns by death”, but supposing you can get righteousness established as the bond of the universe, then there is an end to the reign of sin by death. The “promise” refers to what God had before Him.
If a system is evolved in Christ, Christ must characterise the system. I think the character of man at the present time is really derived from the devil, but when Christ establishes the moral universe and comes out as the Sun of righteousness, things will derive their character from Him.
What is continuing in the truth of it — you do not let it slip? It has been remarked that the word ‘this’ in verse 25 refers to what we have in principle in verse 24.
Yes, that is so.