BROOKLYN, N.Y., JANUARY 22ND, 1906
[p. 38] BROOKLYN, N.Y., JANUARY 22ND, 1906
Mr. T. H. Reynolds.
My Dear Mr. Reynolds — Your letter of the 25th ult. was duly received.
I see that you quite misunderstand the trend of thought in the Notes of the New York meetings regarding the church’s relation to the earth. It was entirely a question of testimony. The Son of God was said to have come into the sphere of testimony, and that having come He did not leave it morally; the earth was said to be the scene of the testimony at the present time and the church is here in this connection. But (although it was not expressed at that reading) my thought as to the entire sphere of testimony is that it includes the heavens as well, hence when I spoke of the church being removed for a time, but that morally it was not removed at all I meant simply that it would come into view again: it would appear in the scene of testimony again, but in the heavenly part of it. In a subsequent reading (on Ephesians 2) you might have seen that this was what was held. The statement you give from the Notes is misquoted in the essential part of it. You underline the words ‘from earth’ as proving your point, and these words do not appear in the passage at all in this connection. It is true you say you had not the Notes by you to refer to, but this misquotation of an essential passage only proves your misapprehension of what they contain.
I can scarcely understand your remarks that your objection to Christ being connected with the earth through the church, did not refer to the world to come, but to the present time. I could never have divined that you referred to the present time, for it did not occur to me that any Christian would deny that the church is not only connected with the earth now, but actually on it — which latter will not be true in the coming age. The church is on the earth; it was formed primarily at Jerusalem, and is spoken of at Corinth, Ephesus, etc. These cities were on earth. The assembly at Corinth was said to be Christ’s body. It was not Christ’s body in heaven; it was His body in that city; and if His body He was in it, and in it to be expressed morally there. “Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you”. Further, Saul was not persecuting Christ in heaven, but here on earth. Christ was here on earth morally in the saints, and was expressed in testimony before the world. In the Revelation He is seen in the midst of the [p. 39] candlesticks, which were the seven assemblies in Asia. As all this is unquestionable (indeed you admit it in your letter), and as it involves connection with the earth, your statement is quite unintelligible.
But your charge that I make the church an earth-dweller I utterly refuse, and you have not proved it from any statement I have made. I have said many times (and you must know this, seeing you have read the Notes of the different meetings) that the church’s distinctive place is in heaven; I said this in my last letter to you indeed, and also that I did not believe she would ever be actually on earth again after the rapture. At the present time she is on earth, as I have been showing, although ever essentially heavenly; and her position morally is in heaven (Ephesians 2) — in the world to come she will be actually there.
As to what you have printed on the Chicago Notes, I do not think I misunderstood you, as you say, and your not accounting me alone responsible does not bear on the point. In my letter I said you had criminated others and myself with ‘doing dishonour to Christ, and giving up the testimony’ without endeavouring to find out whether the testimony you had was authentic. You did not need to write to every brother in America for this information, even if each was responsible: the persons whose names appeared could easily be communicated with. Indeed in the note you sent me with the copy of your letter you said I was mainly responsible. This was the truth, hence your failure in not communicating with me. I have not heretofore dealt with the contents of your ‘Letter to Brethren in America’, having confined myself to pointing out the unfair and unscriptural basis on which it rests. I would now refer briefly to one or two points in order that you may see more clearly my ground for asking you to withdraw it.
To my mind the most objectionable part is the insinuation on page 4 that the spirit of antichrist could be traced in the ‘Notes’. How you can allow this to remain in circulation among your brethren, and still assume to be in fellowship with those responsible, even offering to be ‘a fellow-helper in the truth’ (your last letter) with the one ‘mainly’ so, is beyond me entirely. In order to make this insinuation you were compelled to force the passage you allude to in 1 John 4. You say ‘The Spirit of God confesses Jesus to be Lord, that is, exalted’. The confession in that passage is not the Lordship [p. 40] of Christ at all, as any one reading it can see: it is “Jesus Christ come in flesh”. The title “Lord” does not once occur in 1 John. Your insinuation would apply to it, if the confession of Christ being Lord is the test, more justly than to the ‘Notes’. In the latter the word “Lord” is constantly used, and the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God formally affirmed. The confession of the Lordship of Christ is found in 1 Corinthians 12, but it is not the point in John’s epistle. But it is utterly unfair to assume that because any given truth is omitted in an address or reading, it is thereby denied, and this I may say is the leading feature of your letter. As I have pointed out above as to John’s epistle, such an assumption places us in a very serious position in regard of Scripture itself. See, for instance, the book of Esther: the word “God” does not occur. How dreadful it would be to assume that His existence was denied! On page 2 of your letter you say, ‘Much is made in these Notes of the house of God, and little of the body of Christ’. The same thing applies here. The first two readings were on 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, in neither of which epistles is the body of Christ mentioned. Why not? Because it is not the subject. This applies exactly to our Readings at Chicago. The body was not the subject at any of them. It is true that it appears in some of the scriptures read, and indeed it is alluded to in the Notes, but as it was not the subject on our minds at the time it was not made prominent. I may say the house was the leading thought all through. This accounts for a great deal that has occasioned difficulty. The house being viewed as here on earth the consideration of it did not demand the bringing into prominence of the exaltation of Christ (this, although stated, being assumed to be a universally accepted fact among Christians) and the heavenly calling of the church.
On page 8 you say the attention of the multitude in Acts 2 was arrested by ‘the apostles speaking with other tongues’. The passage does not say this. It says “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues” (Acts 2: 4). What arrested the attention of the multitude was the effect of the Holy Spirit in the 120 — the house. The apostles as such are not mentioned till verse 14. All you say on this and the following page as to the sovereign right of Christ to send out His servants is entirely irrelevant, for it is not at all denied in the ‘Notes’. The church was viewed in the very broadest sense, as it was primarily formed and as it [p. 41] appeared in the presence of men. In this sense it include the apostles (indeed it always did) and their testimony was connected with it. It was the centre practically from which the light of God went out. It was in this sense I said ‘The whole of Asia heard the word through Ephesus’. The preaching and teaching were by the apostle, but he stood connected with the assembly.
When I said (page 10) ‘If you have not the building you have nothing to preach about ... I mean you have nothing to present that is of practical help to men’, I obviously referred to what is connected with the Holy Spirit down here. You quote, “We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord”, as if I were denying it. I was simply emphasising that the preaching depended not only on Christ being exalted, but on the effect of it, the kingdom and the house as formed by the Holy Spirit down here. There was no preaching in Acts 1, although Christ had gone into heaven, but in Acts 2 there was preaching. If Paul preached Christ Jesus Lord he preached the kingdom. I do not go into further details in your letter, but I hope what I have said may be received in a kindly spirit — that in which you evidently received my previous letters — and that you may be thereby led to reconsider the whole matter and withdraw your letters.
I may add that I have little or no difficulty with what you say toward the end of your letter as to Christ’s position in heavenly glory and the church’s peculiar place in Him there: I have anticipated this earlier in my letter. You say, ‘If you only saw this place of Christ and its consequences, your hand would be the first to burn those Notes’. I have always seen it in my measure since I have known the truth, and do see it now, and yet I have not burnt the ‘Notes’, and do not intend to. The ‘Notes’ affirm this truth themselves, they affirm that the distinctive place of Christ and the church is in heaven, and your imputation to the contrary is simply not true. In revising the ‘Notes’ I am only availing myself of a right that belongs to every one going into print, viz: to present his thoughts at the time of publication as accurately and clearly as possible. Many things are clearer in my mind now than they were a year ago, and it is natural that this should appear in the revision I have made. No right-minded person would wish it otherwise. It is an easy matter for you to ask me to withdraw the Notes, and for Mr. Allen to say (as you report) that it is [p. 42] undesirable that they should be in circulation, but your judgment does not cover my responsibility to the Lord, nor does it counter-balance the fact that many unbiased people both in this country and on your side have read them with interest and profit.
With love in the Lord, I am Yours in Him,
James Taylor.