03.06. If the Dispensation Cannot Be Restored, What Remains To Be Done?

If The Dispensation Cannot Be Restored, What Remains To Be Done

It will be said that the word and the Spirit still remain in the church: most true. Blessed be God for it: this it is which is the whole ground of my confidence. What the church wants, is to learn to lean upon this. It is on that account that I am enquiring what the word and the Spirit say of the state of the fallen church, instead of arrogating to myself a competency to realise that which the Spirit has spoken of the first condition of the church.

What I complain of is, that the thoughts of men have been followed, and that which the Spirit has recorded as having existed in the primitive church has been imitated, instead of searching for what the word and the Spirit have declared concerning our present condition. The same word, the same Spirit, which, speaking by Isaiah, told the inhabitants of Jerusalem to be still, and that God would preserve them from the Assyrian, said, by the mouth of Jeremiah, that he who should go forth to the Chaldeans should be saved alive. Faith and obedience in the one case was nothing less than presumption and disobedience in the other. Some will say this tends to confuse simple minds. Obedience to the word in humility of mind never confuses.

I add, that those who are bent on restoring the whole church ought to be well instructed in the word, and to abstain from doing anything under the pretext of simplicity. The lowliness that feels aright the real condition of the church, preserves us from pretensions, that impel to an activity which is unauthorised by the word. The truth is, that the Scriptures, even those already quoted, prove that the condition of the dispensation at its close will be just the reverse of what it was at its opening. And the text quoted from the Romans (Romans 11:22) is decisive on this point, that God would cut off the dispensation instead of restoring it, if it continued not in the goodness of God. The passage - "My Spirit remaineth among you - fear ye not," contains a most sure and precious principle. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the keystone of all our hopes. But this cheering prophecy of Haggai did not lead Nehemiah, who was faithful to God, when Israel returned from the captivity, to set about fulfilling the task assigned to Moses, who was faithful in all his house at the commencement of that dispensation. No, he confesses, in the plainest and most affecting language, the fallen condition of Israel, and that they were "in great distress." We see him doing all that the word authorised him to do, in the circumstances in which he stood; but never did he set about making an ark of the covenant as Moses had done, and because Moses had made one-nor imitate the Shekinah, which God only could make, nor the Urim and Thummim, nor put in order the genealogies while the Urim and Thummim were wanting. But we are told in the word that he had blessing such as had not been "since the days of Joshua"; because he was faithful to God in the circumstances in which he stood, without assuming to make anew that which Moses had made, and Israel’s sin had destroyed. If he had done that, it would have been an act of human presumption and not of obedience. Obedience, and not the imitation of the apostles, is our duty in such circumstances. It is far more humbling; but, at least, it is more lowly and safe; and that is all I ask or desire, that the church should be more humble. To rest satisfied with existing evils, as if we could do nothing, is not obedience; but neither is it obedience to imitate the actions of the apostles. The sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit delivers us at the same time from the evil thought of being obliged to continue in that which is evil, and from the pretension to do more than the Holy Spirit is at the same time doing-or from regarding either the one or the other of these states as a state of true order.

I shall be asked - Would you then have our arms hang down, and ourselves to do nothing until we have apostles? By no means. I only doubt whether it be God’s will that you should do what the apostles did; and I say that God has left for faithful Christians directions sufficient for the state of things in which the church now is. To follow those directions is more truly to obey, than if we should set about imitating the apostles; and the Spirit of God is ever with us to strengthen us in this way of true obedience.