--when I remember that such men have said such things, and that words like these have been approved by Christians, I can only fall down and pray that such a night may not return, and that where it yet weighs on men's hearts the Lord may scatter it.
For it is not unbelievers only that are hurt by such teaching. Those who believe it are even more injured. For our views of God re-act upon ourselves. By an eternal law, we must more or less be changed into the likeness of the God we worship. If we think Him hard, we become hard. If we think Him careless of men's bodies and souls, we shall be careless also. If we think Him love, we shall reflect something of His loving-kindness. God therefore gave us His image in His Only-Begotten Son, that “we with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, might be changed into the same image.” (2 Cor. iii. 18.) What that image was the Gospels tell. In word and deed they shew that “God is love;” “bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things; never failing,” (1 S. John iv. 8, 16; 1 Cor. xiii. 7.) when all around Him failed; to the end, as at the beginning, the life and hope of lost sinners. Oh blessed gospel—“He who was rich yet became poor, that we by His poverty might be rich.” (2 Cor. viii. 9.) He “who was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God, yet made Himself of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” (Phil. ii. 6, 7.) He came from life to death, from heaven to earth; “because we were in the flesh, He came in the flesh,” (Heb. ii. 14; 1 S. John iv. 3.) to bear our burden for us; to take our shame and curse and death, that He might break our bonds, and bring us back, in, and with, and for, Himself, to God's right hand for ever. How He did it, with what pity, truth, patience, tenderness, and love, no eye by God's yet sees fully. Our unlikeness to Him proves how little we have seen Him; for “we shall be like Him when we see Him as He is.” (1 S. John iii. 2.) Yet what some have seen has made them new creatures. Men who lived for self have “laid down their lives,” (1 S. John iii. 16.) yea have “wished themselves accursed for their brethren,” (Rom. ix. 3.) because His spirit possessed them, and therefore they could not but spend and be spent, like Him they loved, to save lost ones.
Will the coming glory change all this? Will Christ there be another Christ from what He was here? Can He there look on ruined souls without the will to save; or is it that in glory, though the will is there, the power to save is taken from Him? And will the glory change His members too,--change them back to love their neighbour as themselves no longer? Shall a glimpse of Christ now make us long to live and die for others; and when, by seeing Him as He is, we are made like Him, shall our willingness to die and suffer for the lost, be taken from us?
Will this be being made like Him? If what is so generally taught is the truth,--and I can scarcely write it,--Christ there will be unlike Christ here: He will, if not unwilling, be yet unable, to save to the uttermost. Nay more,--so we are taught,--instead of weeping over the lost, as He wept here, He will feel no pang, while myriads of His creatures, if not His children, are in endless torment. Then at least He will not be “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” (Heb. xiii. 8.)
Is this blasphemy? Then who teaches it? Surely men cannot know what they are doing when they teach such doctrine. Do they not see how, because it is a lie, it hardens, and must harden, even converted souls who really believe it? For if with Christ in heaven it will be right to look on the torments of the lost unmoved, and to rest in our own joy, and thank God that we are not as other men, the same conduct and spirit cannot be evil now. Many shew they think so. The world is lost, and they are saved; but they can live now, as they hope one day to live with Christ, so rejoicing in their own salvation, that they have no pity for the crowds, who, if not yet in hell, are going thither all around them.
Even true believers are injured more than they are aware, just in proportion as they really believe in never-ending torments. If not almost hopeless about the removal of any very subtle or persistent form of error, they shew that they have little faith in the power of unwearying love to overcome it. Why should they not allow some evil to remain if the Lord of all permits it for ever in His universe; or how should they expect to overcome evil with good, when, according to their creed, God Himself either cannot or will not do so through ages of ages? Why should they not therefore after a few brief efforts leave the willful and erring to their fate, since the God of patience Himself, according to their gospel, will leave souls unchanged, unsaved, and unforgiven for ever? With their views they can only judge the evil: they do not believe that it can be overcome by good, or that those now captive to it can and must be delivered by unfailing love and truth and patience.
Even the very preaching of the gospel is affected by this view; for men are hurried by it into crude and hasty work and souls,--unlike Him who “stands at the door and knocks,” (Rev. iii. 20.)—by which they often prematurely excite and thus permanently injure the proper growth of that “new man,” whom they desire to bring forth. Blessed be God, His grace is over all; and He is better than His most loving children think Him; and our mistakes about Him, though they hurt His people and the world, can never change His blessed purpose. And His Word,--and men would see this if they searched it more,--in the “law of the first-fruits,” in the “purpose of the ages,” and in salvation through “the cross,” that is through dissolution; above all in the face of Jesus Christ, tells out the truth which solves the great riddle, and shews why man must suffer while he is in sin, that through such suffering and death he may be brought back in Christ to God, and be re-made in His likeness.
I conclude as I began. The question is, What saith the Scripture? If these hard views of God, which so many accept, are indeed the truth, let men not only believe them, but proclaim them ceaselessly. If they are, as I believe, only misconceptions of the truth, idols of man's mind, as false and contrary to the revelation God has made of Himself in Christ as the idols of stone and wood and gold and silver were to the law of Moses, may the Spirit of our God utterly destroy them everywhere, and change our darkness into perfect day. No question can be of greater moment, nor can any theology which blinks the question meet the cravings which are abroad, and which I cannot but believe are the work of God's Spirit.
The question is in fact, whether God, is for us or against us; and whether, being for us, He is stronger than our enemies. To this question I have given what I believe is God's answer. And my conviction is that the special opening of this truth, as it is now being opened by God Himself, everywhere, is an evident sign and witness of the passing away of present things, and of the very near and imminent judgment of apostate Christendom. A time of trial and conflict plainly is coming, between a godless spiritualism on the one hand, and on the other a so-called faith, which has lost all real experience of spirit-teaching and spirit-manifestations, whose professors therefore have nothing to fall back on but a letter of tradition, which, however true, will in carnal hands be a poor defence against a host of lying spirits. Alas for those who in such a trial, while calling themselves the Lord's, know nothing of hearing His inward voice or of being taught by His Spirit. But He yet says, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith,” His grace, if sought, is still sufficient for us. May He more fully guide us into His own truth, and as a means open to us yet more of His Holy Scriptures, which, like the world around, contain unknown and undiscovered treasures, even the unsearchable riches of Christ, which are laid up for lost creatures.
I remain,
Yours most truly,
ANDREW JUKES.
Extract from -:
The Restitution of all Things
Andrew Jukes
http://www.tentmaker.org/ScholarsCorner.html
Preface and Contents
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Restitution%20of%20All%20Things/restofall.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment