By the Rev. J. P. MACQUEEN, Retiring Moderator.
“And of the rest durst no man join himself to them.” (Acts v. 13).
AS the pattern shown to Moses in the Mount was designed as a model Divine directory for the Old Testament Church in its own particular sphere, the primitive and apostolic Church, described in the Acts of the Apostles, forms the model criterion for the Church of Christ throughout the New Testament dispensation. The aim of the Reformers, Puritans, and Covenanters was a return of the Church to this apostolic pattern. An outstanding feature of the primitive apostolic Church was that it at once repelled the unconverted world from its membership, generally speaking, while it proved irresistibly attractive to the godly. “Believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.” To account for these diametrically opposite effects, produced on the minds of the two classes into which the human race is divided spiritually—the unregenerate and the godly—it might not be unprofitable to walk about Zion, as thus depicted by the Holy Ghost in the apostolic age, to consider her distinctive features, and so to examine and measure our own standing in the light of apostolic authority. In this connection it is recorded of Robert Ingersoll, the militant agnostic, that he once heard a friend of his preach a sermon extolling Higher Criticism. He took him aside after the sermon, and gave him some sound and sensible advice. He said: “Your people (meaning Christians) have built up a system of religion with whose foundation stones you are fooling. My advice to you is to quit. You are hired to preach Christ and Him crucified. You had better stick to your calling.” As we live in an age when there is a widespread fooling with the foundation stones, or fundamental principles, of the apostolic Christian Revelation, we shall endeavour to give a recapitulation of some of the most prominent doctrines of “the faith once delivered to the saints,” concerning which we are divinely exhorted to contend earnestly.
As the apostolic Church, apart from its extraordinary and supernormal aspects, was, however, the model or pattern not only for the primitive Christian faith, but also for the government, discipline, and worship of the Church of Christ for all time coming, we may, in the second place, consider these subjects briefly in passing. We can then, in the third and last place, proceed to consider some of the indispensable qualifica-
tions of those commissioned by the Holy Ghost to proclaim, maintain, and defend the apostolic doctrines of free and sovereign grace, the only doctrines, as supernaturally applied by the Holy Ghost, that can save the soul.
Some may call doctrinal preaching dry, but Martin Luther rightly declared that “doctrine is Heaven,” by which he meant, and by which we also mean, that an eternal destiny is dependent on what doctrines we believe in a day of mercy. In this connection, Mr. Spurgeon stated that in all our discourses we should always endeavour to emphasise the cardinal fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, even when we have the same audience every Sabbath throughout the year, as otherwise the doctrines we cease to proclaim from the pulpit soon cease to be believed in the pew. We shall then make application.
It would not be correct to say that mere belief in a Supreme Being or personal God is peculiar, among professed religions, to the Christian Revelation, Mohammedans, for instance, believe in one personal God, with Mohammed as his prophet, falsely so-called. It is a statement of fact, however, that the fundamental cardinal doctrine of the Trinity is peculiar to Christianity. Let us, then, notice a few things about this doctrine, to begin with. This is a truth which could never be discovered by the unaided human reason, so that we are indebted for our knowledge of it solely to the pure sovereign mercy of God in the Scriptures of truth. In Deuteronomy, Chapter VI, verse 4, we read: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,” showing that He is one Lord as regards his essence or being; while we read in Genesis, Chapter I, verse 26, “Let Us make man after Our image,” a proof at this early stage of Divine Revelation of the trinity of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in an eternal unity of essence. Thus, in the creation of the material universe, and especially that of man, God, the Father, addresses the eternal Son and the eternal Holy Ghost, while elsewhere we read that the Spirit of God (the Holy Ghost) moved upon the face of the waters, bringing an ordered creation, or cosmos, out of primeval chaos; and the New Testament declares, concerning Christ as Creator and Sustainer of the created Universe, that “without Him was not anything made that was made, and by Him all things consist.” Thus is revealed the Trinity, in unity, in operation in the creating and upholding of the material universe. In like manner, the three Persons of the one Godhead are bound, in covenant together, for the safety and security of the Church of Christ. God, the Father, elected the Church in Christ before the foundation of the world, while the second Person of the ever-adorable Trinity redeemed the Church given Him by the Father at the cost of His own precious blood. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, in the economy of redemption, to convince the sinner of his sins, for man is otherwise so irretrievably ruined as to need his being supernaturally convinced of sin—the spirit of truth will convince the world of sin—while it is equally true that He alone can glorify Christ in the soul of the sinner. This precious truth of the Trinity is further confirmed in the apostolic baptismal formula, and the apostolic benediction. Its faithful, solemn, and Scriptural proclamation is consequently well-calculated to produce on the minds of the ungodly the effect recorded in our text: “and of the rest durst no man join himself to them.”
The next doctrine, most certainly believed among all Spirit-taught true successors of the apostles, is that of the Incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity. Though He (Jesus Christ) did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, yet He made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man; He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the accursed death of the Cross. He became man by being conceived supernaturally by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. He became Man and Mediator to bring His Church unto God. Had He not been Man He could not have suffered; had He not been sinless there could be no merit in His sufferings; and had He not been Immanuel, God in our nature, His sufferings could not have satisfied infinite justice. He thus became the Substitute and Surety of His covenant people. This doctrine, like the one already considered, being divine, is therefore immutable and stereotyped, and thus repugnant to the natural man, and if faithfully and sincerely proclaimed repels the ungodly from full communion with the blood-bought Church of Christ. To the sincere believer, however, it is sweet, comforting, edifying, and attractive as the foundation of his hope for Eternity.
The next fundamental apostolic doctrine we shall briefly consider is one which is dreaded and avoided by the unregenerate, and even by certain professing believers, who have had a bad spiritual nourishment, under the teaching of preachers not sound in the faith. We refer to the doctrine of the election of the Church in Christ, and its predestination infallibly, eventually, to be conformed to the image of Christ. To the believer in, and the upholder of, the false doctrine of free will, as opposed to free grace, the Scriptural doctrine of Divine Election is intolerably repugnant. An incident in the life of Miss Booth of the Salvation Army illustrates the truth of this statement. On board a liner in Southampton a gentleman, well-knowing the Arminian opposition and prejudice of the Booth family, and Salvation Army people generally, to this doctrine, drew the lady’s attention to Romans VIII, 29-30. “Oh, yes, I know,” she replied, “and if I had a pair of scissors I would cut these verses out of the Bible this moment.” Our comment is, we would not like to be going to Eternity with a religion that could not stand the supreme acid test of a complete Bible. This, however, is one of the most comforting doctrines conceivable to a saved sinner. Those elected by God are predestinated by Him to a perfect conformity ultimately to the image of Christ (I. John III, 2.), and, as effectual calling is the proof of Divine election to eternal glory, the believer may, with gracious humility, holy confidence, and triumphant assurance, challenge earth and Hell to separate such an one from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. Every chain is as strong as its weakest link, and every link in this golden chain — a logical and spiritual concatenation — is as strong as Divine omnipotence can make it:—election, predestination, effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification. If we divide time into past, present, and future, to accommodate human limitations, though with God it is one eternal now, we may speak of this chain as having one end in eternity past, passing through time, with the other end in eternity future, and the soul apprehending this chain in the grasp of a living faith is secure and safe for time and for eternity. “Kept by
the power of God, through faith, unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last day,” for “He is able to keep them from falling, and to present them, faultless, before the presence of His glory, with exceeding joy.”
Some well-meaning but ill-instructed preachers so pervert this glorious doctrine, however, as to blur, if not obliterate, the distinction between it and sheer fatalism. According to the false conception of fatalism, events move irresistibly and blindly onwards, like an uncontrollable, mighty avalanche, crushing all resistance and opposition before it without guidance or purpose, while Divine election in operation does not, in a single instance, at any time, violate the personality of a rational, responsible moral agent. For instance, in the regeneration of a soul, while supernatural omnipotent power is in actual operation, with the moment of time and the spot of the earth rigidly fixed, in detail, from all eternity, did that soul ever act with more joyful alacrity than when he, or she, exercised faith in a crucified Saviour? So far from any consciousness of coercion or compulsion, there was a holy joyful spontaneity of choice on the part of the individual soul never previously experienced. No violence was done in this blessed solemn transition and transaction between God and the soul, through the crucified Redeemer, to the will of man, but on the contrary there was in operation the most sweetly gentle persuasion in obeying the will of God, where carnal enmity previously reigned supreme. Since then, notwithstanding the temptations, trials, difficulties, and tribulations of the Christian warfare, internally and externally, they manifest daily that their choice is perpetual and eternal. “For if they had been mindful of that country whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned, but now they seek a better country, even an heavenly.” Nevertheless, no doctrine of the Gospel is more surely calculated to arouse the enmity of the carnal mind, if faithfully proclaimed, and thus illustrate the truth of our text. A minister of another denomination, south of the Cheviot Hills, recently declared that it was no use reading the Bible or coming to church if one was not predestinated to eternal life. We would remind that ministerial gentleman that God has elected the means of grace as well as persons, and that it is our duty to preach the Gospel to every creature, commanding them everywhere to repent, for God has not lost His right to command, though man has lost his ability and will to obey.
Our next subject of consideration, under the head of apostolic doctrine, is the fundamental one of man’s fall in Adam, whereby the whole race descended from him, by ordinary generation, came under the threatened curse and condemnation, and heirs of a sinful nature. God created man after His own image in righteousness and true holiness, making Adam the federal head and representative of the whole human race. He placed him in a state of probation, leaving him to the free but unassisted exercise of the perfection of his nature, by which he fell into the snare laid for him by his adversary, the devil; for as a mere creature he was necessarily mutable. Immutability is a prerogative peculiar to God. Infidel modernist theologians (paradoxical as the expression “infidel theologians” may appear, it is nevertheless correct in this connection) deny this doctrine, declaring, on the contrary, that the Garden of Eden narrative depicts the ascent or rise of man rather than his fall. Man is described by evolutionist Modernists as emerging, during millions, if
not billions, of years, from primeval protoplasm or slime, to physiological perfection. The Garden of Eden stage of development, according to this false hypothesis, begins with man perfect as to physical organisation, but still a brute without reason, conscience, or language. According to a well-known present-day Church of Scotland doctor of divinity, who advised Sabbath-School teachers not to teach the children what would have to be unlearned in future years, the Eden scene marks what he calls “the dawning of the conscience in the human soul.” Then he goes on to describe how man’s psychological or mental development continues from that time—Adam and Eve in the Garden—to the present day, the Bible being an important historical record of that development. Were this false theory true, Calvary’s Cross, the central principle of Christianity, would be futile and superfluous, for if there were no fall of man in Adam there is no need of an atoning sacrifice. Yet, in the teeth of this infidel theory, the theme and song of the Church triumphant is the blood of the Lamb. The faithful and sincerely-earnest preaching of this doctrine almost invariably repels the ungodly, and, at the present day, it is more unpopular in Britain than at any time since the Reformation. Satanic evolution is the most colossal delusion that has ever held the human mind in thrall.
Resultant upon man’s fall in Adam is the total corruption, depravity, and spiritual impotence of his nature. We are depraved and morally and spiritually paralysed in all the faculties of our souls, as we are by nature. As the Westminster Confession of Faith, on the fall of man, puts it: “whereby he has lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation.” No doctrine of the Gospel is more humiliating and exasperating to the inherent pride of our fallen nature than this one, and its faithful proclamation will almost inevitably and invariably assure that “of the rest durst no man join himself to them.”
If man is therefore to be saved from the consequences of the fall, Divine external aid and intervention are indispensably necessary, and this leads us to a brief consideration of the glorious doctrine of redemption by Jesus Christ. As we have briefly dealt with this subject already under the head of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, it may only be necessary here to emphasise, in opposition to all other theories, that the atonement wrought, once and for all, upon Calvary’s Cross, by the blessed Redeemer, is substitutionary and vicarious in its nature. The preaching that robs the atoning sacrifice of its substitutionary character fatally emaciates the Gospel of the grace of God. That He died “the Just in room of the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” is truly the Scriptural article of a rising or falling Church, as Martin Luther said on the central Scriptural doctrine of justification by faith. Substitution and suretyship are central in Christianity. The prevailing prejudice against the preaching of this doctrine among professing graceless people in our own day is sure evidence that “of the rest durst no man join himself to them.” As the late Rev. Prof. Machen, D.D., in his book, “What is Faith?” put it, “it requires a tremendous conviction of sin to make us accept the substitutionary view of the atonement,” and that is the nature of the conviction that the Holy Spirit produces in the soul of the sinner. A sincere penitent return to this teaching is our nation’s greatest need to-day.
The doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit is as indispensably necessary in the proclamation of the Gospel as the doctrine of redemption by Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is alone able, and it is His function in the economy of redemption, to apply supernaturally to the individual soul the redemption purchased by Christ, otherwise none of Adam’s fallen race would be saved. Man must be supernaturally quickened and illuminated, otherwise he shall remain dead in trespasses and sins, and unable to discern a single object in the spiritual realm. Eloquence, earnestness, sincerity, and energy in the pulpit are spiritually futile, apart from the accompanying omnipotent sovereign power of the Holy Spirit. This truth emphasises the need of earnest, importunate, persevering prayer on the part of the speaker and the hearer of the Word. The pulpit and Church that insist on the necessity of the faithful Scriptural proclamation of this doctrine will repel the ungodly from full communion. Vital godliness, the fruit of sovereign grace, will repel and expel heresies and errors from a Church, as a healthy body eliminates disease. After all, the apostolic succession that matters is vital godliness.
Intimately connected with redemption and regeneration is the blessed doctrine of justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ. The moment the quickened soul exercises faith, which is of the supernatural operation of God, in Christ as its Object, that moment that soul is justified, never again to come under condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” The righteousness of Christ then imputed, and received by faith alone, gives the precious immortal soul the only title it will ever have to Heaven and the only one it ever needs, while the doctrine of sanctification is inseparably connected with it, as man needs a fitness or meetness for Heaven, as well as a title to it. The doctrine of final perseverance or preservation of the true believer infallibly and inevitably assures the final and eternal glorification of the elect Church of God. The doctrine of an inspired and consequently infallible Bible guarantees the unshakable stability and immutability of the foregoing doctrines—a rock against which, like their Divine Author, the gates of Hell can not prevail. We must therefore, believe them or perish, for, on the same infallible authority, there is no alternative to the great salvation but the great damnation. “He that believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ, and is baptised, shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” The negative form of the solemn question: “How shall we escape if we neglect the great salvation?” is the strongest affirmation. “There remaineth no more sacrifices for sin, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.” The God, whom the Scriptures of truth reveal as Love—God is Love—is against sin, finally unrepented of, “a consuming fire.” “Neither is there salvation in any other. There is none other name under Heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved, but the name of Christ.” “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, Divine almighty Saviour, for He shall save His people from their greatest enemies, their sins.”
Christ said, concerning the finally impenitent and unbelieving: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into everlasting life” (Matthew XXV, 46). In view of these solemn eternal realities, God, in infinite mercy, condescension, and faithfulness, “com-
mandeth all men everywhere to repent, for He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man Whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” The fact of the Resurrection is the sure proof of the validity of Christ’s claim to be the Son of God with power, as God alone can raise the dead, and He would not lend the sanction of His omnipotence to perpetuate a lie. Therefore let Gospel hearers beware, for “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” — an unspeakably solemn thought.
As the doctrines of grace are the divinely appointed channel for conveying the grace of the doctrines to the soul, by the supernatural omnipotent power of the Holy Ghost, the most important question that can occupy the individual human attention is: Have I a supernatural experimental knowledge of their saving efficacy in my own soul? Has the Holy Spirit convinced me supernaturally by the Law, for by the Law is the knowledge of sin, of my lost and ruined condition by nature? I fear there is far too little preaching of the Law in our nation to-day. Has the same blessed Spirit taken of the things of Christ supernaturally, and showed them unto me? Have I, as a result of that supernatural operation, looked upon Him Whom I have pierced by my sins, and Who has been pierced for my sins, and have I mourned for Him, in the exercise of that repentance unto life, which is not to be repented of? An eternal destiny is dependent on the answer to be given, in a day of mercy, to these solemn searching questions.
For the orderly proclamation, defence, and preservation of these soul-saving and soul-sanctifying doctrines, God has appointed a Government in His Church. Christ is supreme Governor, by His Word and Spirit, of the Church, while an order of office-bearers under Him, rule visibly in the respective spiritual and temporal affairs of the Church. This Government is democratic (or Presbyterian) in the truest sense of the term. “One is your Master and all ye are brethren.” The word “brethren” occurs one hundred and thirty-three times in the New Testament. When the primitive disciples began to manifest an ambitious incipient desire for gradation of rank—such as reached its consummation in Popery, and is inherent in our fallen nature—their Divine governing Head rebuked them, reminding them that the kings of the Gentiles exercised lordship over them, but that it was not to be so among them. They were not to lord it over God’s heritage, but to serve, thus curbing and rebuking carnal pride and ambition in the model infant Christian Church.
No less an authority than the late learned Rev. Prof. Rawson Lumby of Cambridge, an ardent episcopalian, concluded, after his scholarly researches in this connection, that “there is not a vestige of foundation for the prelatic or diocesan form of episcopal government in the apostolic church.” Presbyterian Church government, consequently, forbidding gradation of rank in its ministry, is the nearest approach to the apostolic model yet evolved. Carnally ambitious ministers, therefore, who must needs rule over their brethren, shall not join themselves to those who insist upon the apostolic model of ministerial equality of status. If prelatic and diocesan forms of episcopal government are thus condemned by the apostolic criterion, how much more so hierarchical church governments,
such as obtain in the Greek Orthodox Church and in the Papal System. The infinite wisdom regulating this democratic principle of Church government is seen in the light of Church history. Carnal ambition, pride, and worldly wisdom would make intellectual brilliance, academic attainments, refined and scholarly culture, social or financial status, the grounds of this gradation of rank. Confining ourselves to contemporary history, the case of Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, will show the fallacy of this view. Despite his intellectual brilliance and academic attainments, with a European reputation in philosophy, he is a spiritually blind leader of the blind, as seen in his fraternising with the dignitaries of the Papal System, and in his participating in the celebrating of high mass in the Protestant Evangelical Church of England, as established by law, and while paid as a professed Protestant minister of Christ. Is it any wonder that mere political statesmen, like Mussolini and Hitler, treat solemn international contracts and covenants as scraps of paper, when this is how professed ministers of the Gospel in our day treat their solemn ordination vows?
Consequently, let us adhere uncompromisingly and unflinchingly to that Scriptural form of Church government by Kirk-Sessions, Presbyteries, provincial Synods, and General Assemblies, for which our worthy Scottish Covenanting ancestors sacrificed their noble lives. Such uncompromising adherence is the best guarantee against all Babel-Tower ecclesiastical unions, culminating in Popery. Such adherence is also the best assurance of the continuance of democratic apostolic succession in church government.
Regarding primitive apostolic worship, God is not to be worshipped by images, or any other method or form not warranted by the infallible criterion of the eternally-immutable Word of God. As instrumental music was not introduced into the New Testament worship of God till about the seventh century of our era, its use in the Church to-day is therefore not to be countenanced by those who must please God and their consciences rather than yield to the popular clamour of carnally-minded men. The use of uninspired hymns of mere human composition, however evangelical, is equally alien to apostolic usage in the worship of God. Hymns have been a fertile means of introducing heresies, by back-door methods, into the visible Church. “That which is not commanded in the worship of God is forbidden” embodies a Presbyterian principle of Biblical interpretation. Recently a Church of Scotland minister in the Highlands bemoaned the lack of observance of so-called “Good Friday” in Scotland. This is conscious or unconscious Jesuitic sophistry on the part of a professed Scottish Presbyterian. “Christmas,” “Easter,” and “Good Friday” received short shrift from John Knox and his associates, and Scottish Law still forbids their observance, despite the widespread ritualistic mimicry of the so-called Church of Scotland.
Relative to Church discipline, we have an unspeakably solemn example of it on the threshold of New Testament Church history in the chapter from which our text is taken. It is a solemn warning for all time against deliberate hypocrisy, deceitfulness, dishonesty, untruthfulness, falsehood, unfaithfulness, inconsistency, and wrong motives in our professed worship of God. Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne thought, at the outset of his career as a minister of the Gospel, that if he preached the doctrines of
grace faithfully, discipline might be left to look after itself; but more mature experience taught him that if he had not been as earnest to enforce Church discipline as he was to preach the Gospel, he would soon have no Gospel to preach. As “a man who has no control over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls”—the victim of every lawless invader—so a Church without the exercise and enforcement of a Scriptural discipline degenerates into a fertile hotbed of every species of soul-ruining heresy and error. Let us, therefore, adhere with uncompromising fidelity and consistency to that Church that will make our tether shortest in sin.
Respecting the qualifications of those appointed to proclaim, maintain, and defend apostolic Christianity, none take this most honourable of all Offices ever conferred upon man unto themselves, legitimately, except those who are called to it of God, as was Aaron. The fact that under the Old Testament dispensation there were many false prophets and priests, as in the New Testament Church there are many false teachers who introduce many damnable heresies, does not alter the fact that legitimately none take this office but such as are divinely commissioned to preach glad tidings of good things to every creature. The first and indispensable qualification for this holy and honourable office is supernatural grace, without which all other qualifications for it are worse than useless. The next and equally important qualification is a specific call to the work of the Gospel ministry by the Holy Ghost. When the Church can satisfy itself, on the basis of a credible profession, that these qualifications exist, it becomes its duty as well as its highest self-interest, to the glory of God, to equip the candidate for the ministry with the necessary educational qualifications. The Church of Christ is deeply indebted, under God, to the fruits of sanctified scholarship. We owe our unrivalled 1611 Authorised Version of the Scriptures of truth, from the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, and the Greek of the New Testament, to men who were as distinguished for learning as they were eminent for piety. The same is true of the learned and pious compilers of our subordinate Standard, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and of many theologians throughout the centuries, including English, Scottish, and American divines.
Personally, I would like to say humbly, earnestly, and sincerely, that I know of no contemporary branch of the visible Church that so nearly approaches the apostolic pattern in primitive simplicity, and Scriptural purity, as the denomination to which I have the honour and privilege to belong. To compromise one iota, therefore, of our distinctive denominational testimony in a godless, back-sliding nation and generation for the sake of an external so-called union, would be to involve ourselves in deep guilt, betrayal, and ingratitude. Till, therefore, other professed branches of the visible Church, in our native land and elsewhere, return penitently and sincerely to the apostolic model in doctrine, discipline, government, worship, and practical consistency, it shall continue our duty, as it is our privilege, to witness faithfully and contend earnestly for “the faith once delivered to the saints.” In doing so, we may expect, till better days dawn, that “of the rest no man durst join himself to them,” nevertheless, “believers will be the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women,” and the people will magnify us.
Throughout our denomination’s history our people, generally speaking, have, in an exemplary manner, obeyed and practised towards our ministers the Divine injunctions: “Esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake,” and “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account.” Let us, however, guard against the swing of the pendulum to the other extreme of regarding our ministers as if they were incapable of back-sliding. This is a device of Satan to put our people off their guard, regarding the incumbent bounden duty of praying for our ministers continually. “Brethren, pray for us.” Follow our ministers in so far as they follow Christ, not a step further, and give them your heart’s love and loyalty while they continue uncompromisingly loyal to our distinctive denominational testimony, but refuse to follow any of them a step when they begin to cause internal disharmony, disunity, dispeace, and division among their brethren, as happened more than once since 1893. Look upon none of them as perfect while in time, or as infallible at any time, for it is written: “cursed is he that maketh flesh his arm,” and “cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of,” and “trust not in princes or man’s son in whom there is no stay.” Infallibility is a Divine prerogative, possessed by only one unique Man, truly man, but God and Man, Jesus Christ. His example alone therefore is perfect and infallible, and He has left us the blessed legacy of that example that we should follow in His steps. “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls,” “looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith.” Papal claims to infallibility are rank blasphemy.
The Church Militant has many enemies to contend with, internally and externally, in this world of sin and wickedness, but Satan, the great adversary, is most dangerous when he succeeds in labelling his own subtle and soul-destroying heresies by the name “Christian.” This is outstandingly true of Jesuitised Popery, which Calvin described as “the masterpiece of Satan.” It is, as far as Satanic-human organisations are concerned, the most powerful, the most subtle, and the most formidable obstacle in the world against the onward march of apostolic Christianity. We believe that this satanic system of iniquity will not be extirpated and uprooted from the earth till it has drenched the world in blood in its struggle for universal dominion, and ultimately for survival. It is now actually engaged in the process in the prevailing war. The fact that it is a doomed system should not blind the true Church Militant to the significance of its presentday political-ecclesiastical power. The criminal complicity of the present Pope in the prevailing war is proved on incontrovertible documentary evidence, yet, so far from being brought to trial as the ringleader of the war-mongers, his name is being widely proposed as the supreme arbiter at the coming Peace Conference, our own Prime Minister being one of the most ardent supporters of this proposal, as when he suggested to Premier Stalin at the Teheran Conference that the Pope must have a decisive voice at the Peace Conference. Stalin replied, with stunning justifiable sarcasm: “The Pope, the Pope, how many divisions has he in the Allied Army?” Failing sincere repentance, Mr. Churchill will make shipwreck of his political career on the rock of Jesuitised Popery, through the Jesuitic mesmerism of the Eire Romanist,
Brendan Bracken, his chief and most intimate confidant, as God will not be mocked by our Prime Minister’s cringing servile sycophancy relative to the Pope—”the man of sin and son of perdition.”
Infidel Modernism is the Papacy’s most powerful negative ally, for it has deprived a vast section of the Protestant Church of the weapons of its moral and spiritual warfare—an inspired infallible Bible, with its eternal doctrines of free and sovereign grace. Nevertheless, to the apostolic doctrines of grace are reserved the honour of ultimately destroying this formidable papal stronghold of Satan. Despite the fact that it has captured the newspaper Press of the world, international diplomacy and politics, the radio, and Government Departments, it is doomed to be destroyed “by the brightness of His coming, and by the Spirit of His mouth.” Divine love and grace in Christ shall yet conquer the world—when “the gathering of the people shall be unto Him.”
By His coming, we do not mean His personal reign on the earth during the Millennium, a false theory of the Second Advent, cast up as a side-track by the devil, to divert attention from the things which supremely matter. We mean by it His coming in the power of the Holy Ghost, the only Regenerator of sinners, to establish His spiritual reign during the glorious Millennial period. To the blessed doctrines we have been considering belong the unique and glorious distinction of being the Divine instrument in introducing and establishing the Millennium. Till that blessed day dawns, let us adhere uncompromisingly to our honoured denominational position, and God will continue to bless us, for “them that honour Me, I will honour.” As faith comes by hearing the Gospel doctrine that Christ came to save sinners, and gave Himself for them, let us resolve not to know anything among men but “Christ and Him crucified”; or, in other words, let us continue to proclaim, maintain, and defend the whole counsel of God, as revealed in His Word. “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew XXVIII, 19-20.) Thus saith the Lord: “Stand in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah VI, 16.) “And of the rest durst no man join himself to them, but believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women. And the people magnified them.” “No weapon that is formed against these shall prosper.” “These things I will that thou affirm constantly.” Christianity knows no compromise, nor surrender. May the Lord add His blessing.