Isaiah 8
RileyIsaiah 8:11-20
THE Isa_8:11-20.FOR twenty centuries the visible Church of Christ has travelled by a path characterized by many curves. Some of these have been sharp and even striking, and good men have wondered what the new direction meant. To-day that institution stands before diverging paths and is compelled, therefore, to debate which way she shall take, for it is manifestly evident that these paths can never have a common termination; for, Christianity, rightly defined, has come to the crisis of its existence, and its entire future rests with the decision which must at once be made.The parallelism between Judah and the hour of our text, and Christianity and the hour to which we have come, is at once wonderful and striking. Then there was “an unnatural combination of Israel” with Syrian foreigners against Judah, and the national theocracy was threatened to the point where the Prophet pointed to God as the only and yet adequate hope. He realized, however, and clearly voiced his conviction, that their salvation from the Lord depended upon their repudiation of a popular confederacy, and their creation of a confederacy of their own, the inspiring spirit of which should be none other than “the Lord of Hosts” Himself.The parallelism with the present-day predicament is perfect, and the call of the hour isA Let me hasten at once to define the phrase. “The Christian confederacy,” as it lies in my mind, is a close fellowship, yea, even an organization, of true and evangelical conservatives; or, if you please, of those men and women, churches, schools, and other Christian institutions, that are willing to take the exact position adopted by Martin Luther when he began his reformation, namely that the Bible is the very Word of God, and is, therefore, and must forever remain, the only rule of faith and practice. The time has fully come for both energetic and persistent propagation of the “faith once delivered” as the only antidote to that infidelity which has forced its way beyond the very altars of our churches, and is sliming our schools with its deadly saliva.
The unmistakable sign of such a confederacy to come exists in the circumstance that within two or three years, God, by the still small voice of His Spirit, has spoken to great Christian leaders in different portions of the great civilized world, upon this subject; and, as they have met in national and international conferences for exchange of thought and feeling, they have again and again stood amazed to discover with what unanimity the Spirit had spoken to individuals—separated by great distances, by denominational names, and even by distinct tongues. It is another illustration of God’s own method of making known His will.
To the men who have had ears to hear, there has been a voice behind them saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it”. To the conservative prophets of our day God is saying again what He said to Isaiah, and through Isaiah, to Israel, “Say ye not, A confederacy”, etc. (Isaiah 8:12-20).How marvelously this portion of Scripture compasses the conception already stated. Such a confederacy as is mentioned here is already in existence, and we are enjoined by the Lord not to accept and adopt it.Its name is“THE FEDERAL COUNCILof the Churches of Christ in America.”It professes to represent more than thirty denominations, it claims to have a co-operative membership of more than seventeen millions.Its pretentions and appeal while having no such proportions have undoubtedly met with a great and popular response. The bases of this response may be easily discovered. They lie in three things.It proposes a close interdenominational co-operation; it promises unification of sentiment by a common service; and, it has chosen, as its prominent leaders, special exponents of liberal theology. In each of these facts, it represents the spirit of the times to which we belong.It proposes a close interdenominational co-operation.
That proposition is expressed in its very name—“The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.” It does not limit its fellowship by any exclusive terms. While it has denied Unitarians representation, it was not so much on the ground of doctrine as in the circumstance of a name.
Unitarians have never professed to be “Churches of Christ” even by the most far-fetched of definitions.As early as 1912 the “Council” claimed duly appointed delegates from thirty-two denominations.The very number of denominations mentioned shows how attenuated is the definition,—“Churches of Christ.” The prominent word therefore, is not Christianity; it is “consolidation” instead,—one of the most popular words of the age to which we belong.That word was employed first of all in the economic field, and in the interest of commercial advantages; and there it has been so eminently successful that competition is more and more fading from trade, and mergers,—known as monopolies— more and more control.Certain men, looked upon by some as great religious leaders, have called attention to this advantage in the economic world, have reminded their auditors and readers that this accrues alike to the monopolist and to the people, and have boldly argued that the churches of the land ought to learn from “the children of this generation, who are wiser in their day and generation than the children of light”; and that mergers and Christian corporations ought to kill put the denominational competition which has resulted alike in over-churched villages and no-church communities. It is the dream of a great unification!This “Federal Council” conception contains features of advantage not to be ignored or despised by any thoughtful man. Beyond all question the bitter denominational debates over minor points, while sometimes resulting in clearer convictions as to Scripture teaching, more often produced anger, wrath, malice, prejudices—anti-Christian results!Beyond all doubt, Christ intended that there should be place for the play of individual opinions in the interpretation alike of the Scriptures and Himself; and yet hoped that those who might not see eye to eye on other subjects, would ignore their minor differences and unite upon the major bases of their belief.Again, it is clear that co-operation has advantages in both spirit and method over competition; and that where one man might chase a thousand, two, if united, might put ten thousand to flight. How often has the human chain saved men, just because six or a dozen or twenty men, joined hands and flinging the line out into the surf to the point where the deepest wader, might lay hands upon the endangered or drowning one, and, by a pull all together, bring him to shore.Men have seen these things so clearly, and realized them with such increasing interest, that the call for a closer denominational affiliation, has met the instant response of great masses of church-members; and this confederacy has been the easy result.Furthermore, it promises unification of sentiment by a common service. The language of its present President is: “Christian efficiency lies not in the effort to get everybody to agree about everything, but in the effort to free the world of sin.” It is such a sentiment as excites popular applause! There are so many things wrong in the world that need righting, that leaders in religion and reform can scarcely afford to despise proffered help, particularly if it be offered by good men and they be animated by righteous motives!
Their interests are so far identical in character, in matters for instance of sanitation? in the necessity of education, in the improvement of environment, in social needs, and opportunities of social service, that the appeal of co-operation, whenever and wherever possible, strikes the most popular of all cords, and men are reminded of the fact, (and it is a fact)—that the more they work together, the better they understand one another; and, that such increasing acquaintance and fellowship of service crucifies needless prejudices and quickens into life mutual appreciations.That truth is illustrated by every factory and shop in the land. Men of different nationalities, different tongues, different opinions, different sentiments,—working side by side, at common tasks, become a sort of brotherhood; and are much less likely to fight among themselves than they are to scrap with the fellows from the factory across the way.The leaders of “the Federal Council” have seen this and have said, “Let’s not debate over our differences; but rather, undertake together common tasks, and our unity of feeling and opinion will necessarily be fostered by our agreement in action.”Its prominent leaders are exponents of liberal theology.
The truth of this is put past all dispute by merely calling attention to their names, and reviewing their so-called theological writings. If, by anyone it is denied, the denial would only be in the interest of maintaining the unity for which it stands; and when our attention is called to the names of known conservatives who occupy prominent places, a little study discovers the fact that in every instance they occupy a secondary place, and have been elected to that, in the hope of keeping in line with this movement, radical conservatives.This liberal leadership is not condemnable, viewed from the standpoint of the Federal Council. The very effort to unite all parties in the present-day denominations makes necessary some recognition of theological conservatives, and equally necessary the leadership of liberals. Conservatism always tends to exclusiveness; Liberalism always manifests toleration; and the very life of such a movement as “the Federal Council” depends upon toleration. And yet, to prove that toleration is not carried to the point where Christ can be utterly put aside, Unitarians were denied representation in this movement. It thereby keeps the semblance of consistency in the name “The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America.”Why then, is not the Council sufficient?
Why should the Lord be supposed to be speaking to certain men, insisting that they should not walk in the way of this people, saying “Say not ye, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear their fear, nor be afraid” —speaking to the great leaders in Europe, in England, and in Canada, in the East; in the South, and in the Southwest, in the Northwest, and in the center of the land saying “Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself: and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the House of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. Bind up the Testimony, seal the Law among My disciples”, advising a definite movement which Herbert Booth has well and wisely named“THE !”What would be the essential difference between such a confederacy and the Federal Council? And what would be the advantages, if any, in the latter as against the former? And what could possibly be the justification of a new movement, at a time when religious movements are already confessedly over-multiplied?Let us understand first of all:Its very birth must come of unity in Biblical faith. The men who have thought about such a movement, and who have conferred together about its inauguration, and who now have in mind the calling of a great convention that shall represent alike a mighty constituency of the Old and New World, are one in their unshaken faith that “the Bible is the very Word of God”, and “Christ is the very Son of God”, and “the Cross the only way of salvation”. Think of our Saviour’s prayer concerning His disciples, and in the name of the proper exegesis, omit not its main point—“That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us”.
To what end? That they might be unified in endeavor?
No! that they might cease from bickerings and debates? No!; that they might undertake the task of cleaning up a nasty world? No!; that they might even join hands in the endeavor to save men from sin? No! But “THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT THOU HAST SENT ME”. There is no sentence possible to human thought or speech that could more clearly express at once the authority of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, and the philosophy of the Divine plan of salvation, than does that sentiment; and the people “who are one” in these things, scattered through the different denominations, are today the absolute answer of God to the prayer of His Son.It was after A. J. F.
Behrends came back to the faith from which he had temporarily drifted, that he said: “The angel of unity is our pillar of cloud and fire, and always has been; and we knew it not. We ache and pray for that which has already come. Can it be that our Lord’s prayer has remained unanswered, all these centuries? For myself, at least, the years have taught me, that we need to say ‘we are one,’ as well as to pray that we may be one. I have learned that the unities of the Christian faith are more mighty and majestic than the differences. I have grasped the hand of many a Catholic layman and priest, when at the clasp of palms and mutual greetings the yawning chasm vanished.”Certainly!
The man who is in the Catholic Church, but has the experience of the grace of God, (as some of them have unquestionably had,) entertains an unshaken confidence in the Bible, seeking thereby to conform his conduct and form his character, who accepts Jesus Christ as the very Son of God, and His sufferings on Calvary as the atonement for his sin, is a thousandfold more my brother than the man who belongs to my denomination in name, but in fact repudiates all of these fundamentals of the Christian faith. The time has come, in the Northland at least, when it makes a thousandfold less difference to many of us as to the denominational label than it does as to the doctrinal life.
We know that two men, belonging to different denominations, may hold identical bases, and we know that two belonging to the same denomination, and that, evangelical in name, are, again and again, as remote apart as the Unitarian and Trinitarian, as far removed from one another in convictions, and conceptions as the skeptic is removed from the believer, and sometimes as remote as the atheist is from the Christian. Think of the incongruity of calling I. M. Haldeman and Geo. Burman Foster both Baptists; of naming Reginald Campbell and Campbell Morgan both Congregationalists, labeling L. W.
Munhall and the late Professor Terry both Methodists, of defining Pastor Mark Matthews and President Francis Brown as alike Presbyterians! Has the sentence of the Old Testament lost its significance entirely— “Can two walk together except they be agreed”?
Has the symbolism of Deuteronomy no longer any spiritual significance—“Thou shalt not plow with the ox and the ass together”? Is there no longer any typical truth in the command “Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen”? Can we afford, just because we fling over it the name “Christian” for a covering, the philosophy of an Ingersol, and say, “You have your opinion and I have mine, let it go! Let’s join hands and be good fellows”? Is John’s (1 John 2:9-11) injunction not to receive the rejecter of Christ out of date? Has the day arrived when Jude’s “certain men, crept in unawares?” instead of being now condemned as ministers of the devil, because they preach a bloodless righteousness, denying the very Christ that bought them, are to be called “brothers;” and, are we to labor together when a part of our company reject the Scriptures repudiate the Virgin Birth, excoriate the claims of the supernatural, and bring the God of the Old Testament to the level of a tribal deity, and the God of the New to that of a Jewish bastard?
Has the hour arrived when men who are “in Israel, but not of her,” (in the Church, but not of Christ) can form an alliance with her enemies and the true worshiper give his consent to the compact?Should the world marvel, when such a confederacy is attempted, that God should speak to certain men, saying, “Walk not in the way of this people; join not a confederacy of this kind! Sanctify the Lord of Hosts, Himself, and let Him be your fear”.
Has the time come when Truth is tolerant and willing to compromise with error, when light “should enter into communion” with darkness; and “righteousness” into “fellowship with unrighteousness,” and “believers” should voluntarily yoke themselves “with unbelievers”, and Christ come into concord with Belial, and the “disciples” join hands “with the infidels,” in service? (2 Timothy 4:1).Without at all attempting to name individuals, but standing upon the broad plain of what so-called religious leaders have themselves professed and put into print, there are scores of us, who believe that the Word of the Lord—“Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate” looks to another “confederacy” altogether, namely, a confederacy in Biblical faith; to a better brotherhood,—namely one that shall seek to let the world know that God—according to the authority of the Scriptures—sent His only begotten Son,—Christ, and if we are not “one in Him” we are not one at all!Truly the time has come for the re-affirmation of the Apostle’s Creed, and the fellowship that follows the same: “I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, begotten before all worlds, the very God of very God, who for us came down from Heaven and was conceived of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost.” And the only Church that is worthy to wear His Name must be “that holy Church throughout all the world which does acknowledge the Father, of infinite majesty, His true and only Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.”The value of such a confederacy would depend upon its loyalty to Biblical precepts. The time has come when the so-called Christian church is somewhat equally distributed among the advocates of an infallible Consciousness, an infallible Church, and an infallible Book. No one contends that all of these are infallible; and that to believe any one of them is sufficient in the sight of God; while to believe in them all is an additional merit! On the other hand, they have created partitions in the Church of Christ, far more positive than any ever known as denominational barriers! Just as Rome, by adopting an “infallible Church,” repudiated the infallibility of the Book, so liberal theology, in adopting an “infallible Consciousness” compel the Book to step aside when that Consciousness and Revelation are in apparent conflict. The repudiation of Revelation by Rome, and the adoption of the “Infallible Church” resulted in the Traditionalism that accounts for the Dark Ages; but the adoption of an “inner religious consciousness” as against an external revelation, has resulted in Rationalism and Materialism which increasingly read God out of His own universe and has flung over half of the world into the horrors of a hellish war!The true Christian confederacy will make its every appeal to the exact source to which Christ turned in defense alike of teaching and conduct, namely—the Sacred Scriptures; and insist that not only creeds and opinions be corrected thereby, but our conduct as well.
The heresy of modern times is no more in theological thinking than it is in individual living! As Herbert Booth has remarked, “It is not sufficient to rally around a standard of doctrine only.
False doctrine is not the sole cause of the Church’s stagnation and defeat; it is not even the chief cause! Her worldliness, self-indulgence and backsliding are even more potent reasons.” And only a Confederacy that does call professed Christians unto more righteous living, as well as to more correct thinking, will accomplish aught for the world.However, never let it be forgotten that “as a man thinketh, so is he”! Sound teaching is absolutely essential to sound practice. The relation between the two is that of cause and effect; and if such a confederacy as Booth has named, and scores of our greatest teachers have dreamed and desired is now to be inaugurated, it must mean for ministers of the Gospel and for laymen alike, a call to higher living; to a course of conduct that will honor Christ; that will exalt the spiritual and repudiate the sensual; that will not invite criticism from the world, but, rather, set before it an example upon which Christ could put His approval, and into which He will dare to put His Holy Spirit.The rapidity of its growth will rest with the affiliation of covenant-forces. By covenant-forces I mean such individuals and organizations as will be ready to enter into such a covenant as would concede forever the question of the authority of the Scriptures, the Deity of Christ, the personality and power of the Holy Spirit, salvation by the atonement, separateness from the world, the consecration of self to the cause of Jesus Christ, an acceptation of the scriptural Second Coming of the Lord; and, a confederacy with others, to bear our witness, in this generation, to all the nations of the earth.For such an affiliation, or confederacy, we have numerous individuals and organizations ready and waiting. Hundreds of the most eminent preachers of the world, made up of the very men who believe in a stand for the things afore mentioned, should link their hands and recognize the answer to their Lord’s prayer, namely that they are essentially one.
Within a few years there have sprung up in America and the Old World multitudes of Bible conferences! Almost without exception these are conducted by the very men whose unity of faith is the marvel of the hour.
They should be related, become a chain with which our God could join together the evangelical forces of the land. In this same period, Bible Training Schools have started up to speak the shibboleth of the Scripture, and to turn back the wave of skepticism created by the very breath of those theological seminaries that have adopted so-called “Modernism.” And, to these individual leaders and these mighty and increasing instructors, should be added the Lord’s “little flock” out of every church, whose confidence in the Bible and in Christ, has remained unshaken!When such a fellowship is created, and when the hands of such men are linked, and such instructors are correlated, the tide of criticism, largely German in origin, will find that it has met a more stubborn resistance than German soldiers met at Verdun! Some of us believe that such a movement is as sure as God lives; and that before it the infidelity which has characterized, divided and cursed our churches, is destined to constant warfare, if not an ignominious defeat.Out of this Christian Confederacy must come an educational process that will reach to the uttermost parts of the earth! Text-books for the use of Bible Schools must be provided, and conservative literature that shall be used to the ends of the earth should come from the same. It is nothing less than intolerable to longer consent to liberalism in our Sunday School instruction. The whole subject of evangelism should be clearly presented and only evangelists who know the evangel tolerated in our believing bodies; and with this movement evangelism itself should be forever linked with that social service which is not born of “the modern’s” philosophy, but is the very breath of the Christian religion, and will be rendered not in the power of man’s invention, but in the demonstration of the Spirit.What then, is the conclusion, saveTHE CALL OF THE CROSSIt is a call to consecration for the professing Christian.
There has never been an hour when that call was as loud as now. The boasted “brotherhood of man” has broken down, and all over Europe, and in parts of Asia, and in great sections of the American continent, battle and blood tramples “brotherhood” under unholy feet.
And yet men learn so slowly that all over America we are adopting now the very philosophy (Militarism) exploited in Germany, France and England for the betterment, and even the salvation of men! It is all in vain, apart from Him whose Name we bear, to whom alone we owe our first, last, and eternal allegiance. In the language of Henry Mabie, “We are not to stop short of complete crucifixion of everything that stands between us and obedience to His will.” The Pauline confession is the idea for us, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live; but Christ liveth in me, and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith which is in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” If in the language of the great French preacher Lacordaire, “The church was born crucified” then the weakness of the hour may be due to the circumstance that we have healed the wound, and how else can we break it than by a crucifixion of the flesh of the individual who enters into this membership—such a crucifixion as would fill up that which is left of the sufferings of Christ.The language of Father Ryan is apropos— “Our dim eyes ask a beacon, and our weary feet a guide,And our hearts of all life’s mysteries seek the meaning and the key;And a cross gleams o’er our pathway, on it hangs the Crucified,And He answers all our yearnings by the whisper ‘Follow Me’.”It is a call to reformation for the professing church. Mark you, I employ the phrase “the professing church” knowing full well that there is a profession in the churches to which there is no corresponding possession. To be sure, we need again the spirit of a Luther to declare the truth of God’s Word, “The just shall live by faith”; but we need, none the less, the return of Carey’s spirit to put our convictions into action; for much of the church, reformation is not sufficient; regeneration is needed rather; but for practically all of it, reformation.In the judgment of some of us the professing church has not only grown great branches but developed certain leaves under the shadow of which “fowls of the air” have indeed taken refuge in the form of University and College presidents, liberal pastors, theological professors, instructors in biology, geology, paleontology philosophy and related themes,—who prove their loyalty to “the prince of the power of the air”, by their scoffs at Scripture, their rejection of Jesus, their insistence upon Darwinism, their exaltation of Man! It is not at all certain that these branches can be cut away or the occupants of the church tree dislodged from their comfortable perches, but it is clear that the children of the King can give to the world an exhibition of a truer church within the church, and preach the Word of life in the power of the same Spirit who came upon Peter at Pentecost, and endowed Paul in the old days! Truly, in the language of Sir Robert Anderson, “It is essential now to distinguish between the ‘church’ as a society the administration of which was entrusted to men on earth, and the ‘Church’ as the Body of Christ, dependent only upon Himself as its Lord and Head”. And, we ought to enhearten ourselves with the thought that the building up of “the Church, which is His body”, is His own work, and that it cannot fail. “The gates of hell” have prevailed against the organized Society, “the outward frame,” as Alford calls it, and is pushing it more and more to the point of apostasy—foretold in Scripture.But there is a Church within the church, against which those gates will not, and cannot prevail— the true Body of Christ.
To attempt to name that Body would be at once foolish, and, in the judgment of the world (in the church and out of the church,) would be an egoism and an assumption,— equally condemnable. No man knows!
But we believe that the exaltation of the Name of Christ will result in a demonstration of the true Church, and that there will gather to the standard that exalts “His Name above every name”, the true men and women of God throughout the length and breadth of the land; and that that “confederacy” will increasingly correspond to “the Church, which is His Body”. It ought not to be forgotten that the word “Eagle” is the Old Testament typical word for saint, and that in speaking of Christ, it is said that “where the body is thither will the eagles be gathered together”.Finally, It is a call to world-evangelization in this generation. There never was a more futile hope than that which men are now urging in a multitude of ministries. Like the host that went forth in Gideon’s day, they are too many! Too many by all those that bend not the knee acknowledging the Deity of Christ; too many by all those that drink not from the wells of salvation; (the Word) too many by all those that scorn the efficiency of the shed Blood!If every foreign missionary who denies the authority of the Book, the Virgin Birth, the Biblical report of the supernatural—involving all miracle working, the resurrection of Christ included—were dismissed from service at once, we would be instantly nearer the discharge of our province of preaching this “Gospel of the Kingdom in all the world for a witness”. They that “preach another Gospel” are not aiding in the Great Commission; and Paul tells us in no uncertain speech that such as are removing from Him that called them unto the grace of Christ, were “preaching another Gospel,” and though they be “angels from Heaven”, are not under blessing, but rather, under curse.
The very life of the Commission depends upon elimination from among the commissioned, of both the skeptics and critics. Paradoxical as it may sound, there is a decrease that looks to multiplication.
When in the old day certain ones went “out” from the Church because “they were not of it”, the Church was not weaker but stronger! The Gospel went forward with greater rapidity after the apostate Demas had ceased to speak than it ever could have, had he continued.It remains now, as it ever has, for the Church within the church, to realize the responsibility of world evangelism. In the language of A. J. F. Behrends, “The missionary spirit is its beating heart, and animating breath. The lifted Christ is the adequate Magnet to draw diverging lines together, and cement His followers not only into a unity of feeling, but into a magnanimity of endeavor, making possible this testimony in all nations in this generation.”The Call of the Cross is the Call of the Christ, and as we look into the face of the rising youth of our churches the call becomes a command— “Pray!” We must pray for men who believe God; who receive His Word: who trust His only begotten Son; who are brothers in Christ because supernaturally begotten, and in whose brotherhood is the only hope of either the true Church or the sinning, sinking world!