EXTRACT

It is very comforting that nothing has been lost; we have the inspired record in the Scriptures of what the apostles and prophets made known. It is there for the body of Christ still, and that body is also the vessel of the Holy Spirit. However great the power of evil may be, even in the church, divine activities are still going on “until we all arrive at the unity of the faith ...”, Ephesians 4: 13. The faith would include all that God has made known; the whole system of divine truth would be summed up in the faith. The centre of it all is the Son of God. The edifying of the body of Christ is going on in spite of all the inroads of the enemy at the present time. It is most touching to consider the character of the gospel of John. John was kept in reserve until the ruin of the church was fully manifested and then at nearly one hundred years of age he sits down to write a gospel. One would have thought that an apostle writing in such conditions would have a great deal to say about failure and ruin: he does not say a word about it! He writes about the Son of God; that is the kind of ministry for the day of ruin. He brings in a glorious Person who is unchanged and unchangeable, and he sets before us the blessed possibility of having life in His name. God would not have us fretting our souls about evil. The evil is there and it is right to feel it, but God would have us on the line of life in the name of His Son.

C. A. Coates (Vol. 26, ‘Outline of Ephesians’, p.60)

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