DECEMBER 17TH, 1931
DECEMBER 17TH, 1931
My Dear Brother, — Yours of the 15th inst. is just received, for which I thank you. I am thankful for your statement, ‘If anything I have said has seemed to convey a slight upon, or indifference to, the’ powers that be ‘it is not meant and I would regret it;’ but the following from ‘City Boundaries’ will show that it does not meet the exercises of your brethren: ‘I am clear that the saints in a given place ... are clothed with responsibilities ... peculiar to that locality ... but one does question whether the import of this is made to depend on bounds and limits imposed by temporal powers. I think not, but that we are left in liberty to decide the question according to our own perception of what results from contact with our brethren and our community of interest with them; in short that the’ powers that be ‘are as much unrelated to this matter as they are, for instance, as to where we meet for the breaking of bread or for prayer’.
Whatever you may have had in your mind or overlooked when you wrote, these are your words, and they take definite issue with what we in New York have acted upon for years as a principle divinely obligatory and which saints generally recognise. What I have quoted disregards the plain fact that Scripture regards cities as having definite boundaries, measurements being taken from them to other places. There is not the slightest hint that these boundaries were other than those set by the authorities.
Saints, as far as I know, have no idea of the powers that be controlling them in an active way as to the spheres of their assembly responsibility, it is a question of God and what He orders; He addresses His assembly in Corinth; He did not build Corinth nor set its boundaries; He recognised the city [p. 333] as it was and His people in it. This is the whole matter; and the principle involved remains. There is no analogy between it and 2 Timothy 2, for the latter has to do with the ruin of the church, whereas the world is not in principle any more ruined now than it was in the apostle’s days. Cities are, of course, larger generally and more irregular, but we cannot make this an excuse for disregarding a scriptural principle.
The application of it may be difficult in some places, and of course we must leave with our brethren in each locality the determination of the limits within which they are to maintain their local assembly responsibilities, but if they avow in doing this ‘that the’ powers that be ‘are ... unrelated to this matter’, then a protest has to be entered, for issue is taken with God’s way. They are making their own boundaries of ‘Corinth’ instead of accepting what exists.
From the outset I have felt it necessary to speak or write frankly as to this matter, and I would suggest now that the only way to meet effectually the consciences of the brethren as to ‘City Boundaries’ is to withdraw what remains — you have already withdrawn some of it — of the paper unequivocally.
Affectionately yours in Christ,
James Taylor.