SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
FORGOTTEN
TRUTHS
CHAPTER 9
MEANTIME, THE
CHURCH AGE
"MY people doth not consider." Such was the reproach cast
upon Israel in the days of Isaiah's prophecy. And surely a like reproach rests
upon the people of God today in regard to the promise of the Lord's return.
During all His ministry He spoke of His coming again; and He confirmed the
promise after His resurrection from the dead. The teaching of His inspired
Apostles gave prominence to the hope. And in His final message to His people,
as recorded on the last page of Scripture, the words are three times repeated,
"I am coming quickly."
"Surely I am coming quickly." No reference here to a
thousand-year day of the eternal God, but to the time calendars of men. "The
time was long," was Daniel's lament as he pondered the revelation made to him,
that seven times seventy years would pass before the realization of the
promised blessings to his people. And more than four centuries elapsed between
the promise of the land to Abraham, and the day when his descendants took
possession of it. But nineteen centuries! And in view of such a promise,
"Surely I am coming quickly"! Here it would be the pettiest quibble to raise
the question of the Tribulation - persecution definitely limited to a term that
might be covered twenty times within a single lifetime. At this point, then,
let us turn aside from controversy. Let us awake to realities and think. And if
we do but think, the staggering fact of a nineteen centuries' delay will lead
us to "consider" with a solemnity and earnestness we have never known
before.
Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, given to "lead them into all
truth," the Apostles taught the saints to look for the Coming as a present
hope. The suggestion of subterfuge or mistake would be profane. The facts are
not in dispute. how then can they be explained? Israel's story may teach us
something here. When the people were encamped at Sinai, Canaan lay but a few
days' march across the desert. And in the second year from the Exodus, they
were led to the borders of the land, and bidden to enter and take possession of
it. "But they entered not in because of unbelief." The Canaan rest, moreover,
was only a type of the promised rest of the Messianic Kingdom. That rest was
preached again "in David," (Hebrews 4:7) but lost again through unbelief and
the apostasy which unbelief begets. And in the exile it was revealed to Daniel
that it would be further deferred for seven times seventy years. Lastly it was
preached at Pentecost, and lost once more by unbelief. And to continued
unbelief is due the fact of these nineteen centuries of Israel's rejection.
Does not this throw light on the seeming failure of "the hope of the Church"?
Putting from us the profane thought that the Lord has been unmindful of His
promise, are we not led to the conclusion that this long delay has been due to
the unfaithfulness of His people upon earth? The third chapter of 2 Peter has
no bearing upon the question. In that passage the Apostle is not dealing with
either the hopes or the heresies of Christians, but with the scoffing of the
unbeliever who mocks at the Divine warning that the world shall at last be
given up to judgment fire. The scientist may possibly be right in thinking that
"for untold millions of years this earth has been the theatre of life and
death."1 All that we know is that "in the beginning" (whenever that was) God
created it, and that He did not create it "a waste," albeit it had become a
waste (Isaiah 45:18, R.V. Cf. Genesis 1:2, R. V.,)2 before the epoch of the
Adamic creation. And 2 Peter 3:5, 6, points to the cataclysm referred to in
Genesis 1:2, by which "the world that then was, being overflowed with water,
perished."
"Where is the promise of His coming!" is not the appeal of an
inquirer as to the Coming of Christ, but the taunt of a scoffer about the
coming of "the day of God."3 And the Apostle answers his appeal to the
permanence of "all things from the beginning of the creation" by referring to
the aeons of Genesis 1:2, and to a God with whom a thousand years are as one
day.4 But what bearing can this passage in Peter's Epistle have upon the
question here at issue? The long-suffering of God explains His tiding back the
sea of fire by which the world is at last to be engulfed, but it cannot explain
the Lord's delaying to fulfill His promise to His believing people. "The coming
of the day of God" means endless destruction for all the ungodly inhabitants of
the earth; whereas beyond the coming of the Lord Jesus there lies the
fulfillment of the hope of Israel, which is to be "as life from the dead" to
the nations of the earth; and beyond that again there lies the deliverance of a
groaning creation.
No, no; the question here cannot be solved in that way.
Nor can we tolerate the thought that the promise has failed. Sometimes in the
past, God has not fulfilled His word, but only when His word threatened wrath.
(See, e.g., Exodus 32:11-14; Joshua 3:10) No Divine promise of blessing has
ever failed. But if we reject that solution of the difficulty, what other can
be found? No event or influence of a transient nature deserves a moment's
consideration; nothing partial or merely local in its effects. We must find a
cause of which the influence began to be felt before the Apostles left the
earth, and which has been in operation during all the centuries until the
present hour. And by a process of negative induction the suggestion forces
itself upon us that the evil history of the Church on earth may afford a
solution of the mystery.
Christian thought, I again repeat it, is leavened
with the error of failing to distinguish between the heavenly Church and the
Church on earth. But here I would fain shirk the role of an iconoclast, and I
will shelter myself behind the. words of others in seeking to expose the
prevalent; superstitions to which that error has given rise,, superstitions
which are inconsistent with undivided loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ. The
following sentences are quoted from Canon T. D. Bernard's Bampton Lectures of
1864,5 a great book which ought to find a place in every Christian library:
"How fair was the morning of the Church! how swift its progress! what
expectations it would have been natural to form of the future history which had
begun so well! Doubtless they were formed in many a sanguine heart but they
were clouded soon
"While the Apostles wrote, the actual state and the
visible tendencies of things showed too plainly what Church history would be;
and at the same time prophetic intimations made the prospect still more
dark
"I know not how any man in closing the Epistles could expect to
find the subsequent history of the Church essentially different from what it
is. In those writings we seem, as it were, not to witness some passing storms
which clear the air, but to feel the whole atmosphere charged with the elements
of future tempest and death
"The fact which I observe is not merely
that these indications of the future are in the Epistles, but that they
increase as we approach the close; and after the doctrines of the Gospel have
been fully wrought out, and the fullness of personal salvation and the ideal
character of the Church have been placed in the clearest light, the shadows
gather and deepen on the external history. The last words of St. Paul in the
second Epistle to Timothy, and those of St. Peter in his second Epistle, with
the Epistles of St. John and St. Jude, breathe the language of a time in which
the tendencies of that history had distinctly shown themselves; and in this
respect these writings form a prelude and a passage to the Apocalypse."
The
Church's story from the close of the New Testament Canon to the era of the
Patristic theologians must be gleaned from the revelations their writings
afford of its condition in their own time. Who can doubt that then, as in the
days of Israel's apostasy, there were many who feared the Lord and thought upon
His name? But here I am speaking of the Church as a whole. Protestantism
delights in attributing to the Romish apostasy the vices which disgraced the
Church of Christendom during the Middle Ages; but in this regard the Church of
Rome was merely the product and development of the much-vaunted "primitive
Church" of the Fathers. Abundant proof of this will be found in the acts and
words of some of the great and holy men who sought in vain to stem the evil
tide. The facts are disclosed in various standard works; here of course s few
characteristic extracts must suffice.
The birth of Cyprian occurred about a
century after the death of the last of the Apostles. Born and bred in Paganism,
he was converted in middle age, and three years afterwards he became Bishop of
Carthage. Ten years later he suffered martyrdom in the Valerian persecution.
The following words may indicate the condition of the Church in his time
-"Serious scandals existed even among the clergy. Bishops were farmers,
traders, and moneylenders, and by no means always honest. Some were too
ignorant to teach the catechumens. Presbyters made money by helping in the
manufacture of idols."6
In Cyprian's day "the virgins of the Church"
("nuns" we call them now) were held in special honour on account of their
reputed sanctity. What, then, passed for superior sanctity may be gleaned from
the following words of that eminent and holy man - "What have the virgins of
the Church to do at promiscuous baths, there to violate the commonest dictates
of feminine modesty! The places you frequent are more filthy than the theatre
itself; all modesty is there laid aside; and with your robes your personal
honour and reserve are cast off."7 Half a century before these words were
written, Clement of Alexandria had bewailed the low morality which prevailed
among Christians, even at a time when, as he said, "the wells of martyrdom were
flowing daily." Referring to their attendance at church he wrote: "After having
waited upon God and heard of Him, they leave Him there, and find their pleasure
without in ungodly fiddling, and love songs, and what-not - stage plays and
gross revelries."
The "conversion of Constantine" set free the Church to
put her house in order, and pursue her mission to the world without hindrance
from without. But her condition in those halcyon days may be judged by the fact
that at a single visitation the great Chrysostom deposed no fewer than thirteen
bishops for simony and licentiousness. Nor was this strange, having regard to
the means by which men secured election to the episcopal office. Here are
Chrysostom's words: "That some have filled the churches with murders, and made
cities desolate when contending for this position, I now pass over, lest I
should seem to say what is incredible to any." He was equally unsparing in
dealing with the vices of the lower orders of the clergy. The natural result
followed. The "historic Church" convened a packed council, which deprived him
of his archbishopric, and he was banished to Nicaea. Moved, however, by the
indignant fury of the laity, the Emperor recalled him, and his return to
Constantinople was like a public triumph. But his fearless and scathing
denunciations of the corruptions and immoralities of Church and Court led to
the summoning of another council, more skillfully arranged; and his second
banishment was intended to be, as in fact it proved, a death sentence. He
practically died a martyr - one of the first of the great army whose blood
cries to God for vengeance upon the "historic Church."
Nor were
licentiousness and simony evils of recent growth in the Church; nor were they
peculiar to the see of Chrysostom. In A. D. 870 an imperial edict was read in
the churches of Rome, prohibiting clerics and monks from resorting to the
houses of widows or female wards, and making them "incapable of receiving
anything from the liberality or will of any woman to whom they may attach
themselves under the plea of religion; and (the edict adds) any such donations
or legacies as they shall have appropriated to themselves shall be
confiscated."
This edict, sweeping though its terms were, had to be
confirmed and strengthened by another twenty years later. And here is the
comment of Jerome on the subject: "I blush to say it, heathen priests, players
of pantomimes, drivers of chariots in the circuses, and harlots are allowed to
receive legacies; clergy and monks are forbidden to do so by Christian princes.
Nor do I complain of the law (he adds), but I am grieved that we deserve it."8
According to Jerome, so great was the evil, that men actually sought ordination
in order to gain easier access to the society of women, and to trade upon their
credulity. He, at least, maintained no reserve about the vices of the clergy of
his day. And the picture he draws of the state of female society among the
Christians is so repulsive that, as a recent writer remarks, we would gladly
believe it to be exaggerated; but (he adds) "if the priesthood, with its
enormous influence, was so corrupt, it is only too probable that it debased the
sex which is always most under clerical influence."9
Of "Saint" Cyril of
Alexandria, Dean Milman writes' "While ambition, intrigue, arrogance, rapacity,
and violence are proscribed as unchristian means, barbarity, persecution,
bloodshed, as unholy and unevangelical wickednesses, posterity will condemn
this orthodox Cyril as one of the worst of heretics against the spirit of the
Gospel."
A kindly estimate this, of a man who was morally guilty of the
murder of Hypatia, and who was a notorious mob leader, and the brutal
persecutor of the Jews, whom he drove out of Alexandria in thousands, giving up
their houses to pillage. This turbulent pagan claims notice here only because
he was the ruling spirit in the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 481), which dealt with
the heresies of Nestorius. Cyril had hurled anathemas against him for refusing
to acknowledge the Virgin Mary as the "Mother of God," and he procured his
condemnation by means that would discredit the lowest political contest,
including the free use of a hired mob. So disgraceful was the disorder which
prevailed that the Emperor dissolved the Council with the rebuke' "God is my
witness that I am not the author of this confusion. His providence will
discover and punish the guilty. Return to your provinces, and may your private
virtues repair the mischief and scandal of your meeting."10
No one need
suppose that a wider outlook would lead us to reverse the judgment to which
these facts and testimonies point. A portly volume would not contain the
evidence available to prove the utter apostasy of "the primitive Church of the
Fathers." One more testimony, however, is all I will here adduce. In his early
life Salvian of Marseilles was the contemporary of Jerome and Augustine, the
greatest of all the Latin Fathers. A century had elapsed since "the conversion
of Constantine." The "persecution" which the Christians had most to fear from
the State was due to their vices and crimes, and to the operation of penal laws
of drastic severity, designed to prevent their lapsing back to paganism. Why
was it then that God seemed to have forsaken the Church? Here is Salvian's
answer -"See what Christians actually are everywhere, and then ask whether,
under the administration of a righteous and holy God, such men can expect any
favour? What happens every day under our very eyes is rather an evidence of the
doctrine of Providence, as it displays the Divine displeasure provoked by the
debauchery of the Church itself." The following are further extracts from the
same treatise:
"How can we wonder that God does not hearken to our
prayers
Alas! how grievous and doleful is what I have to say! The very
Church of God, which ought to be the appeaser of God, is but the provoker of
God. And a very few excepted who flee from evil, what is almost every assembly
of Christians but a sink of vices. For you will find in the Church scarcely one
who is not either a drunkard or a glutton, or an adulterer, or a fornicator or
frequenter of brothels, or a robber or a murderer. I put it now to the
consciences of all Christian people whether it be not so
"The
Churches are outraged by indecencies
You may well imagine what men have
been thinking about at church when you see them hurry off, some to plunder,
some to get drunk, some to practice lewdness, some to rob on the
highway
"How should we exult and leap for joy if we could believe
that the good and bad were nearly balanced in the Church as to
numbers!
How happy should we be in so thinking, but in fact we have to
mourn over almost the whole mass as guilty."
In accounting for the growth
of Christianity in early days, Gibbon the infidel gives prominence to the
morality of the Christians. And Tertullian declared that no one who
transgressed the rules of Christian discipline and propriety was recognized as
a Christian at all. And yet two centuries later, "almost every assembly of
Christians had become a sink of vices!"11
There is no need in this
connection to speak of the Church of the Middle Ages - the fiendish enemy and
persecutor of all who feared the Lord and followed righteousness and truth. The
estimates formed of the number of the martyrs are unreliable; for though not
one of those many millions is forgotten in heaven, the records on earth are
altogether faulty. This at least is certain, that for long ages God was on the
side of the martyrs, and that the Church of Christendom was the most awful
impersonation of the powers of hell that earth has ever known. "No means came
amiss to it, sword or stake, torture chamber or assassin's dagger. The effects
of the Church's working were seen in ruined nations and smoking cities, in
human beings tearing one another to pieces, like raging maniacs, and the honour
of the Creator of the world befouled by the hideous crimes committed in His
name. All this is forgotten now, forgotten and even audaciously denied."12
And what of the Churches of the Reformation? Here I will call another
witness whose words should command attention. The following is a quotation from
Dean Alford's Commentary on the Lord's Parable recorded in Matthew 12:48-44.
After explaining the direct application of the parable to the Jewish people, he
proceeds:
"Strikingly parallel with this runs the history of the Christian
Church. Not long after the apostolic times, the golden calves of idolatry were
set up by the Church of Rome. What the effect of the captivity was to the Jews,
that of the Reformation has been to Christendom. The first evil spirit has been
cast out. But by the growth of hypocrisy, secularity, and rationalism, the
house has become empty, swept, and garnished by the decencies of civilization
and discoveries of secular knowledge, but empty of living and earnest faith.
And he must read prophecy but ill, who does not see under all these seeming
improvements the preparation for the final development of the man of sin, the
great repossession when idolatry and the seven worse spirits shall bring the
outward frame of so-called Christendom to a fearful end."
With what
increased emphasis might Dean Alford write these words today if he were still
with us! Half a century ago the Church of England was giving a bold testimony
to the principles of the Reformation, or, in other words, to the Divine
authority of Scripture, and the great truths which Scripture teaches. And
Nonconformity was a great spiritual power throughout the land. But today the
Epistle to Laodicea is finding its fulfillment on every hand. For though "empty
of living and earnest faith," the Churches were never so boastful of their
condition. "The tree of knowledge, now, yields its last, ripest fruit," for men
sit in judgment on the Word of God!
The Philadelphian Epistle promised an
open door that none could shut; and at the Reformation the Bible was given to
the people. The Devil has thus been baffled for centuries; for a return to his
former methods is barred by the printing-press. But quite as effectually, and
by far more subtle means, the Old Serpent is now filching the Bible from us. It
is acclaimed as the best of books, but it is not the Word of God. And the
agency by which he is seeking to achieve this fell design is the same as that
which he used in pre-Reformation times - the Professing Church on earth.
And the Churches of the Reformation are his chief agents in this evil work.
Within living memory they stood together in defence of the Bible, but there is
not one of them that corporately maintains that testimony today. Stier's
epigram about the teaching of German Rationalists applies to the teaching of
most of our Theological Colleges and numberless quasi- Christian pulpits
-"Heaven and earth will never pass away, but the words of Christ pass away in
time!"
Some one may object, perhaps, that all this refers only to the
Professing Church, and not to the true Church. But there are not two Churches
on earth in this dispensation, any more than in that which preceded it. "The
Jewish Church" was Divine in its origin, but it was apostate; and so is it with
the Church on earth today. The only true Church is that which the Lord is
building, and it has no corporate existence upon earth. But it may be said that
the real Christians, though within the Professing Church, are in no way
responsible for its apostasy. In the age of the martyrs this plea might,
perhaps, have been sustained, but never before or since. And certainly not
today; for their apathy amounts in effect to positive connivance with evils
which are undermining true Christianity. If they stood together in refusing to
enter any church in which an altar, with its pagan furniture, has supplanted
the Communion Table, or where, in the ministry of the pulpit, the "Higher
Criticism" has dethroned the Word of God, the very apostasy itself might prove
a blessing in disguise. But faithfulness to the Lord is subordinated to the
maintenance of "Church unity." And so "the salt has lost its savour," and all
hope of recovery is gone.
It seems to be forgotten that discipleship is a
personal bond. "Follow Me" is not addressed to congregations, but to the
individual Christian. To love father or mother more than Christ is to be
unworthy of Him; but it is deemed allowable to love one's Church more than Him?
In the Epistles to the Seven Churches, from Ephesus to Laodicea, the ruling
note is individual faithfulness - "to him that overcometh." A similar note
vibrates in the Apostle Paul's address to the Elders of Ephesus. The future of
the Church was dark. Grievous wolves would enter in among them, and of their
own selves there would arise fomenters of heresy and leaders of schism. And
what was to be their resource? "I commend you to God and to the word of His
grace." (Acts 20:29-32)
It marks a crisis in the Apostle's ministry. His
earlier Epistles had been addressed to churches; but Ephesians, Colossians,
Philippians, written during his Roman imprisonment, were addressed to "saints."
In sympathy with the Apostle's words, Chrysostom, writing three centuries
later, lamented that "all things which are Christ's in the truth" were
counterfeited in the prevailing heresies of that age, and he urged that
Christians "should betake themselves only to the Scriptures." And in our own
day all this found an echo in the exhortation of the late Bishop Ryle, that
Christians should expect nothing from churches, but look only to the Lord.
The student of human nature who has adequate means and opportunities of inquiry
respecting the vices and crimes of men finds no need of a devil to account for
everything in that sphere. But, without the Satan of Scripture, the religion of
men is an insoluble enigma. For Satan is the god of this world, and therefore
the religion of the world is the normal sphere of his activities. And, as
Luther said, all his assaults are aimed at Christ Himself. He blinds the minds
of men to the revelation of a Christ who is "the image of God." (2 Corinthians
4:4-6) The Deity of Christ is thus his main objective, for upon that depends
everything that is vital in Christianity.
Hence his campaign against the
Bible. For no one whose mind is not warped or blinded by the superstitions of
religion can fail to recognize that it is only through the written Word that we
can reach "the living Word." The man who denies the Divine authority and
inspiration of Holy Scripture and yet clings to a belief in the atonement of
Calvary and the Deity of Christ is a superstitious creature who would believe
anything.13
Chapter Ten
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