IN the Song of Solomon, Christ compares the Church to a lily among thorns, and it has been the experience of the Church in every age of time, that the closer it kept to Christ the more the world manifested its hostility. Christ Himself says, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore, the world hateth you.” The truth of that statement has been amply demonstrated in the history of the true Church of God to the present day, and, therefore, it is the duty of the Church to avoid being on friendly terms with the world. The professing Church does not act according to this at all times with the result that bitter experiences fall to the lot of such as are true lovers of Zion. Hankering after the friendship of the world, and after a place in the world has brought evil days upon the professing Church and made her very unlike the pattern shown in Scripture, and has led even to apostacy as in the case of the Church of Rome.
It is an evil day with the Church when her enemies are gathered together in battle against her. “Now also many nations are gathered against thee, that say, let her be defiled and let our eye look upon Zion.” Time and again the powers of mighty empires have been ranged against the Church and they were determined to bring about her ruin, with the result that the Church was, at times, disorganised, its usefulness crippled, many of its most useful members hurried off the face of the earth, while others were hunted like partridges, as in Scotland during the Killing Times, and had to withdraw to the protection afforded by the hills and mountains of their native land. The powers of darkness seemed to triumph and God seemed to have forsaken His heritage so that “Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” The world at such a time will show no friendship and it is vain to expect it, but the Church survived all their endeavours while they themselves are not known now, except to the student of history, proving that truth aptly spoken by one, that the Church of God was an anvil upon which many a hammer was broken.
However, in many ways, it is an evil day for the Church when she is thus persecuted, as Hezekiah said when he heard the taunting words of Rabshakeh, “This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth.” Kings should be nursing-fathers to the Church, endeavouring with all their might to forward the interests of true religion, and in meekness and humility submitting to Christ in all things, but alas! they have too often combined to plot “against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us,” thus harassing what they are, in their high station, pledged to support. The reason for this persecution is that the teaching and practice of the true Church of God is rebuking and condemning the private and public life of many in high places in nations, drawing from them in actions what Ahab, King of Israel said of Micaiah, the son of Imlah, “I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good
concerning me, but evil.” The conscience of the individual testifies to the justice of the rebuke and of the condemnation, and, as conscience will not be silenced, all the power which is at the disposal of the rebuked and condemned is often brought against the Church for no other fault but its faithfulness to God and men.
The true Church of God has not only been persecuted by the nations of the world but also by the professing Church. This has been true of the early Christian Church when it was persecuted by the Jewish Church, of the Church at the Reformation when it was persecuted by the Church of Rome, and in our own land when the upholders of Episcopacy shed the blood of God’s saints in their thousands. In these, and in similar cases, the true Church has been “as a speckled bird; the birds round about are against her.” As a speckled bird, because of its peculiarity, suffers among other birds, so all who are the Lord’s true people because of this peculiarity, even faithfulness to God and His Word, can expect their full share of troubles in this world, for the truth must be fulfilled that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” They have been in the minority in every age of time, and the majority have been accustomed to look upon them as behind the times and lacking in educational attainments of this world. Such a view is not always just, but even in the case of the un-lettered fishermen of Galilee, Christ saw reason for giving thanks when he said: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes.”
The Church falls on an evil day when it begins to forget the goodness of the Lord to it in the time that is past. The Holy Ghost complains that “the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet,” thus giving us a graphic picture of such as see not their ruined condition, and feel not their need of a Saviour to save them from
that ruin. They have no room in their vain hearts for thoughts of the glorious provision God made in a past eternity to meet with the lost and ruined condition of sinners, nor do they meditate on the manner in which that provision was revealed in time. Christ’s sufferings and death and the reasons why he suffered and died have no solemnising effect on them. When the professing Church is filled with such it has fallen on evil days indeed, for spiritual life must be conspicuous by its absence, and God’s threatened judgments cannot be far away.
It is an evil day when some within the bosom of the Church, who professed great zeal for the Truth and for a Scriptural practice, begin to show signs of slackness. When, for example, those who professed to stand by the Inspiration of the whole Bible, begin to cast doubts on the inspiration and the veracity of certain portions of it, then they will find as their chief supporters the very ones, who before, would not give them their proper names because of their contempt for them. The moment they begin to tamper with the Bible or to remove other ancient land-marks or in other ways to walk in the way of sinners they find plenty of supporters: “The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek, the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot.” In cases of this kind it is pathetic to see some who at one time were looked upon as “Valiant for the Truth,” leading such a motley crowd, whose work is described by the Psalmist, “But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers. They have cast fire into thy sanctuary; they have defiled by casting down the dwelling-place of thy name to the ground. They say in their hearts, let us destroy them together: they have burnt up all the synagogues of God in the land.” Truly when such things happen the Church has fallen on evil times.
Accompanying the foregoing marks of an evil day one can expect open renouncing of the Bible. God says, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain
of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Instead of seeking to drink of the fountain of life in God’s infallible Book the professing Church has gone to Rationalism, Higher Criticism and other “broken cisterns” and thus she has slain a countless number of souls, but God has determined that she will not escape with impunity. As the children of Israel, when they refused to learn wisdom by God’s warnings and threatenings, were given over into captivity so that in the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm we have a pathetic picture of Zion in captivity, in the same way it can be seen in our day, that the professing Church is fast going into captivity. Even already Rationalism, Higher Criticism, Ritualism and Romanism have a strangle-hold upon her, so that there is very little appearance of life, but in this there is a further evidence of the evil day, that the majority of members of the professing Church love to have it so, and have no thought of their responsibility in the matter.
In other days the Holy Spirit, through the Prophet Amos, pronounced a “Woe” on such as were at ease in Zion, and truly it is a mark of an evil day in the Church when there are no signs of alarm at the condition of Zion. This case eats like a canker into the vitals of the Church, and even in places where the gospel is proclaimed in its purity there are many sad evidences of it. There may be an outward attendance on the public means of grace, but the Word read and preached is seldom accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, with the result that very few are brought under the power of the truth, so that God’s people in general, and His ambassadors in particular are very much cast down. “The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.”
The troubles of the Church of God in the world are greatly multiplied on account of how weak and insignificant she is in the eyes of the world. “The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged
city,” is the description of an evil day for the Church, which the Holy Ghost gives us, and it clearly expresses the feelings of God’s people on many an occasion. Satan and the world conspire to “cut them off from being a nation: that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.” Their persecutors, nowadays, have not at their command, fire and fagot and gallows as in the days of old, but their persecution, though more in keeping with modern conditions does not in any way lack the venom which characterised the persecutions of Papal Rome. The Psalmist could say of one that “the words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords,” and modern persecutors have adopted one of the favourite instruments of the enemies of Jeremiah. “Come and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.” They make use of the language of Mr. By-ends in the Pilgrim’s Progress in reference to Christian and Hopeful; “The men before us are so rigid, and love so much their own notions, and do also so lightly esteem the opinions of others, that let a man be never so godly, yet, if he jumps not with them in all things, they thrust him quite out of their company.” Their object is to hold up the Church of God to the world as small, insignificant and worthy to be forgotten; is doctrines not suitable for present day needs, and, therefore, it merits to sink into oblivion. First we find the bulk of the professing Church in our day, increasing the evil of the day, by evolving a religion which will suit the taste of the world but which will not in any way disturb the Kingdom of Satan, and in this endeavour to make themselves big in the eyes of the world they merely pander to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life.
Such conduct in the majority of the professing Church strengthens the world in its persecutions of God’s faithful few. Those who go “to the law and to the testimony” are looked upon as bigoted and antediluvian. They are in the minority, why worry about them? But, ah! that will not do. The truth
must be fulfilled concerning them, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” They may go on an even keel for a short time but the storm must come, or else they will become useless for God’s purpose in the world. It is not necessary that they should interfere with the things of the world at all, in order to experience persecution. If they go about their own affairs in a scriptural manner they are sure to incur the displeasure of the world, for the world, evidently, thinks that it is a better judge of these things than the Church, and if the Church will not conform to the ideas of the world then the full blast of the storm is let loose on it so that one would be ready to think that an end would be made of this “impracticable element,” and truly if any worldly association would experience but a small fraction of what the Church endures, its members would be scattered and it would never function again, but fierce as the storm is the true Church of God weathers it. It may seem to be overwhelmed by the waves that continually pass over it so that some may expect it to sink soon and rise no more, but a mysterious power, not only keeps it afloat, but keeps it facing the storm and propels it on its onward course. It is the power of the Omnipotent God, of whom the Psalmist says, “Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.” The forces of earth and hell may, and often do, combine to destroy the Church of God, and they may bring her so low that they imagine they have succeeded, but her Lord has said to her, “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.” In view of this promise and the character of the God who gave it, the Church, in the midst of the worst form of persecution, has a right to say, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”—J. C.