EXTRACTS

CAC In connection with the court we get the two pillars again, which are enlarged upon. We get here the network and chains and four hundred pomegranates, suggesting, it would appear, the place in which the saints are set up by God in testimony here, as working out together the principles of Christian fellowship. All this is connected with the brass.

Christian fellowship is not exactly a spiritual question, but a moral one, that is we are under obligation to be true to the fellowship; there is no option whatever about it. None of these four hundred pomegranates could break away. The pomegranates represent the saints as having a fruitful character, but I think the point here is that they are held by the network and the, chains—they cannot get loose. Speaking from the moral side, it is not possible to break away from the bonds of fellowship. We are absolutely lawless if we do.

At the beginning, “They persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2: 42). I think that is like the network. Now that is the great object that God sets forth in testimony to the world, because the court is public. No one who is really in life would think of breaking away from the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. It is absolutely monstrous to think of breaking away, looking at the thing morally.

Rem. The doors of the court were overlaid with brass.

CAC I think the doors would intimate to us there is a within and a without, and at Corinth Satan would break

that down. We have a responsibility to judge not those without but those who are within; all that is a moral question.

Ques. “With all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1: 2). Does that bring in the network universally?

CAC I think so. The saints are baptised into one body universally, and held together practically by the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers.

You dread anyone breaking away. If anyone breaks away it is apostasy in principle.

Rem. There is the exhortation “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace” in Ephesians 4: 3.

CAC Yes, that is really in the spiritual realm. Those who break away from the fellowship have no part in the service of God whatever; they could not have. The testimony of God has suffered terribly for many years because the principles of fellowship have been broken. The network has been broken and the pomegranates go where they like!

C. A. Coates (Vol. 27a ‘Outline of Second Chronicles’ pp.213–215) Ques.

Why do you think the “Saviour of the body” comes in in this remarkable passage?

JT I think it is a question of our bodies, which are weak and subject to illnesses and the like. We can count on the Lord to save us instead of trying medicines and the doctor. Of course, I am not saying a word against that, but it is as if everything is superseded in his mind, in the light that He is the Saviour of the body. So we can count on that; it shows the preciousness of a saint as a member of the assembly.

J. Taylor (Vol. 73, p.23)

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