(by Rev. J. P. MACQUEEN, London.)
Zechariah XII, 10:—”And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first born.”
As the supernatural, omnipotent, and sovereign operations and influences of the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the glorious and ever-blessed Trinity, are absolutely indispensable in the conviction of sin, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of sinners, and repentance towards God against Whom all sin is committed, resulting in a practically consistent life of Christian obedience, I cannot think of a more appropriate message to send to our dear friends everywhere than one based on Zechariah XII, 10.
This sovereign Divine prediction refers primarily to the Jews, and had its partial fulfilment on the Day of Pentecost, when three thousand were convinced of sin and converted, under the preaching of the Apostle Peter. The Word of the truth of the Gospel, in the hands of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the Apostle Peter, first convinced them of sin, causing them to cry out in pungent anguish of soul “Men and brethren what must we do?” The Apostle then preached the indispensable necessity of saving faith and repentance, with the blessed result mentioned above, for “repentance is the tear in the eye of faith turned to a crucified Saviour,” crucified for our sins, and crucified by our sins. Looking unto a crucified Saviour, pierced by our sins and for our sins, produces holy mourning and godly sorrow for sin, evangelical repentance not to be repented of. In other words, evangelical repentance is the broken heart and contrite spirit for sin, produced by the Holy Ghost’s supernatural influences, in first, shining in the individual heart, “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,” absolutely considered, as seen in the Moral Law of God, reflecting the glory of the infinite inflexible justice of God, the infinite inviolable holiness of God, and the infinite infallible truth of God, followed by “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” thus producing the love of God “shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” The truth of Law and Gospel must be first light in the judgment and understanding, producing conviction of sin and of eternal realities, followed, in order to salvation, by love of God and His truth in the heart. “We love Him, because He first loved us.” This is the origin of grace, or Christianity in the individual human heart. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.”
While the Holy Spirit is the Divine Author of this blessed work in the individual human understanding and heart, He generally uses human instrumentality, as in the case of the Apostle Peter above referred to (on the Day of Pentecost), but on exceptional occasions He does, in His sovereignty, dispense with human instrumentality. The preaching of the Word is the main means and method of salvation, but sometimes the mere reading of the Word is the means used. “It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe,” for “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God,” thus showing that nothing but circumstances which we cannot control, such as sickness, the infirmities of old age, or other unavoidable circumstances in the providence of God, should keep us away from the Gospel ordinance of preaching, under a faithful Gospel ministry, for “How can they preach except they be sent?” “No man taketh this office unto himself, lawfully, except he be called of God as was Aaron.” On the other hand, it emphasises the private reading of the Word of God, for some are saved by the reading of the Word, therefore “search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me,” nevertheless it is “especially the preaching of the Word,” providential circumstances being subordinate to the Word.
The most important fulfilment of our text, however, is still future, relative to the Jews as a race, for while individual Jews and families, have been, and are being converted, here and there, in various parts of the world, throughout the centuries, the general, not necessarily universal, conversion of them, as a race, is still future, but daily nearing fulfilment. “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?” “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?” It shall be a glorious time of refreshing and revival not only for the Jews themselves, but also for the whole Gentile world. As the praying Gentiles are deeply, under God, in debt to the Jews, for “salvation is of the Jews,” how much the Lord’s praying people ought to be on their knees day and night, praying for the speedy fulfilment of the prediction of our text, to the Jews, thus imitating the Apostle Paul when he said: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved (Rom. X, 1.)” Nothing short of the omnipotent, sovereign, supernatural outpouring of the blessed influence of the Holy Ghost will conquer and subdue the otherwise incorrigible unbelief and obstinacy of the Jews, or of any other unbeliever.
Thus the sovereignty, omnipotence, and supernaturalism of the Holy Ghost, in spiritual operation, is absolutely indispensable to the conviction, conversion, sanctification, edification, comfort, and final glorification of the individual soul, whether Jew or Gentile.
Man is so irretrievably ruined, as far as creature power is concerned, that of man or angel, that he must be supernaturally convinced of sin. It is solely the prerogative of the Holy Ghost, in the economy of redemption, to convince the world of sin, and in this unique distinguished eminence “He will not give His glory to another.” It is equally His distinguished honour to manifest Christ to the individual soul, thus solving, to that highly-privileged individual, the great mystery of godliness, “God manifest in the flesh.” He is thus the only effectual Teacher in spiritual and eternal realities, for otherwise the natural man, however richly endowed intellectually, and however cultured and scholarly, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually (or supernaturally) discerned.” The teaching of the Holy Spirit, with or without, human instrumentally, is absolutely essential to human salvation.
Though, however, sovereign, supernatural, and omnipotent in His operations in the human soul, He is also the Spirit of promise, and promises, great and precious ones, are diffused throughout the Word of God (the Bible) in order that they may be pled. “I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.” “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” for, “if ye being evil (being sinners) know how to give good gifts unto your children (have enough parental instinct and love) how much more shall your heavenly Father (a reconciled God and Father in Christ) give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all men liberally, and upraideth not, and it shall be given him.” The early and diligent seeker shall be rewarded with finding, not because there is any merit either in the seeking or in the diligence, but because God has promised it, and what God has joined together let not man put asunder, either by his hyper-Calvinistic fatalism, or by any other means whatsoever. Thus God has placed in the hands of man the most powerful weapon, believing prayer, that can possibly be wielded, for it thus unites a poor feeble human worm of the dust with an omnipotent God. It thus moves the hand that rules and regulates the universe, from the inconceivably vast to the infinitesimally small. There is therefore no ground for despair, or even despondency, for man, while he is on this side of death, so that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint,” for “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” in spite of all nuclear weapons, and all the other self-destructive weapons of the sinful children of men, and their perverted inventive ingenuity, urged on by the devil, and the ceaselessly intriguing Vatican and its cursed Jesuit world-wide organisation. Let not the Christian ever forget that this Lord God omnipotent is his (or her) own covenant God in Christ, omnipresent, and omniscient.
When Dr. Duncan (“Rabbi” Duncan) was asked by Rev. Dr. Moody Stuart if an unconverted sinner could ask for the Holy Spirit to these blessed ends, he paused, and then replied, “Yes, provided he asked it at the foot of a sovereign God.” Thus, though John Calvin wrote more about Divine sovereignty, logically, Scripturally, and more frequently than any other theologian outside the bounds of Divine Revelation, he also gave the free, unfettered, indiscriminate offer of the Gospel, with the unspeakable gift of Heaven involved, more than any other writer or preacher we know of, with the possible exception of the worthy Rev. Ralph Erskine, therefore the hyper, super, ultra Calvinists have no legal or Scriptural right to the term, Calvinism. The free offer of the Gospel has nothing to do with free-will Arminianism, for the genuine Calvinist believes that God has not lost His right to require love (supreme love), obedience, service, worship, and trust, from his rational responsible creatures, though man, through morally and spiritually rebellious conduct has, guiltily, lost both the ability and will to perform his highest duty to God. The doctrine of human responsibility runs as prominently through the Word of God as the doctrine of Divine sovereignty, for man, though fallen, with a vitiated reason and conscience, is still not an irrational animal without a conscience, but responsible to God for all his thoughts, words, and deeds. “The two pillars on which human responsibility rest,” said Dr. Kennedy of Dingwall, “are rationality and moral agency.” Therefore, “how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation,” showing man guiltily criminal in neglecting the great salvation, freely offered in the everlasting Gospel. “How often would I, but ye would not.” “Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life.” “All day long have I stretched out My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.” “Oh, that My people had Me heard, Israel My ways had chose, I had their enemies soon subdued, My hand turned on their foes.” Therefore, “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” This, then, is my message to our dear friends in nominal Christendom and elsewhere, for we are all in the same condemnation the world over, as the fallen race of Adam, and our greatest and most indispensable need by far is the everlasting salvation that is in Christ Jesus, freely offered in the immutable everlasting Gospel.
It should, therefore, be the daily prayer of the genuine Christian that the Papal System, and all it stands for, should be destroyed from off the face of the earth, by the supernatural omnipotent power of the Holy Ghost, through the instrumentality of the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. So far from thus wishing ill to any individual Romanist victim of papal delusion, the Christian desires and prays that the pure Gospel of the grace of God, that conveys everlasting salvation to the individual soul, should have free course among all people, Jew and Gentile, instead of being, as at present, frustrated by the tyrannical oppression of papal superstition, idolatry, and satanic intolerance. There will never be international peace among the nations of the earth while there is a Vatican Palace in Rome, with its world-wide, intriguing, undermining and subterranean Jesuit organisation. Let the whole world of true Christians, therefore, pray day and night for the Scripturally-predicted downfall and doom of Popery, and, meantime, let them pray that the United-States of America will never be permitted, in the providence of God, to be cursed with a Romanist President, the most terrible downfall and doom that could befall the noble land of the Pilgrim Fathers.
I shall now conclude this brotherly Christian message to the readers of “The Free Presbyterian Magazine” by reciting the late saintly Rev. Lachlan MacKenzie’s (Lochcarron, Ross-shire, Scotland) definition of “The Happy Man”:—”The happy man was born in the city of Regeneration, in the parish of Repentance unto Life. He was educated at the School of Obedience, and lives now in Perseverence. He has a large estate in the County of Christian Contentment, and many times does jobs of self-denial. He wears the garment of Christian Humility, and has another robe to put on when he goes to Court, called the Robe of Christ’s Righteousness. He sometimes climbs the Mountains of Heavenly-mindedness, but often walks in the Valley of Self-Abasement. He breakfasts every morning on Spiritual Prayer, and sups every evening of the same. He has meat to eat that the world knows not of, and his drink is the sincere milk of the Word of God. Thus, happy he lives, and happy he dies. Happy is that man who has Gospel submission in his will; due order in his affections; sound peace in his mind; the Redeemer’s yoke on his neck, and a vain world under his feet. Happy is that man who believes firmly, walks patiently, lives holily, watches his heart, redeems his time, guides his senses, loves Christ, and longs for glory. He is necessitated to take the world on his way to Heaven, but he walks through it as fast as he can, and all his business by the way is to make himself and others happy. Take him all in all, he is a man and a Christian.”
May God add His blessing.