THE ADDRESSES TO THE CHURCHES, (Continued)
Pergamos:the Church united with the World. (Rev. 2:12-17.)
"We have seen, then, two main steps in the Church's outward decline, after the loss of first love had made any departure possible. First of all, the divine idea of the Church was lost. Instead of its being a body of people having, in the full and proper sense, eternal life and salvation, children of God, members of Christ, and called out of the world as not belonging to it, it became a mere "gathering together" of those for whom, indeed, the old names might in part remain, but who were, in fact, the world itself with true Christian people scattered through it. Children of God, no doubt, they might be by baptism,* and by it have forgiveness of sins also, but that was no settlement for eternity at all. *" The prodigal son answers," says Chrysostom, in his first homily on Repentance, "to those who fall after baptism:he does so inasmuch as he is called a son; for none are sons apart from baptism, with which are connected all the benefits of heirship, and a community of interests with the family. He is called, moreover, the brother of him who was approved; but there is no brotherhood without the spiritual regeneration " (baptism).
In another place:" Although a man should be foul with every vice-the blackest that can be named, yet, should he fall into the baptismal pool, he ascends from the divine waters purer than the beams of noon."
"As a spark thrown into the ocean is instantly extinguished, so is sin, be it what it may, extinguished when the man is thrown into the laver of regeneration."
I quote from Isaac Taylor's " Ancient Christianity," (Philadelphia edition, pp. 346,325,326,) on " the means of estimating the quality of the Nicene theology," where much else of the same character may be found. It is significant that the Nicene Creed, with all its Trinitarian orthodoxy, knows nothing but "one baptism for the remission of sins."* They were confessedly under trial, uncertain as to how things would finally turn out,-a ground which all the world could understand and adopt, with sacraments and means of grace to help them on, and prevent them realizing the awfulness of their position.
Of course this immense change from Church to synagogue was not at once effected. Yet the church, historically known to us outside of the New Testament, is but in fact essentially the synagogue. The fire of persecution combined with the fidelity of a remnant to prevent for awhile the extreme result, and to separate mere professors from the confessors of Christ. Still, through it all, the leaven of Judaism did its deadly work; and no sooner was the persecution stopped than the world's overtures for peace and alliance were eagerly listened to, and with Constantine, for many, the millennium seemed to have arrived. Could the Church of the apostles have fallen into the world's arms so? Their voice would have rebuked the thought as of Satan, as indeed it was. "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friend-ship of the world is enmity with God?"
The second step we saw in the rise of a clergy, a special priestly class, replacing the true Christian ministry, the free exercise of the various gifts resulting from the various position of the members in the body of Christ. The clerical assumption displaced the body of Christian people,-now a true laity,-as at least less spiritual and near to God:a place, alas! easily accepted where Christ had lost what the world had gained in value with His own. As Judaism prevailed, and the world came in through the wider-opening door, the distance between the two classes increased, and more and more the clergy became the channels of all blessing to all the rest. Practically, and in the end almost openly, they became the church; and the Church became, from a company of those already saved, a channel for conveying a sacramental and hypothetical salvation.
We now come to look at the issue of all this when circumstances favored. In Pergamos, the change in the Lord's position is noteworthy and characteristic. He presents Himself no longer in the tender and compassionate way which He exhibits toward His suffering ones in Smyrna. It is now " These things saith He which hath the sharp sword with two edges." His word is a word of penetrating and decisive judgment. It is with this two-edged sword that He by and by smites the nations (chap. 19:), so that there can be no question as to its meaning. And while it is of course true that it is not His own at Pergamos who are smitten with it, yet it is those whom He charges them with having in their midst (5:16).
The characteristic thing in Pergamos is that they are dwelling where Satan's throne is. " Throne," not merely "seat," is the true word, though our translators, as it would seem, because of the strength of the expression, shrank from using it. To what it referred in the actual city, no commentator can tell us. Trench remarks, "Why it should have thus deserved the name of 'Satan's throne,' so emphatically repeated a second time at the end of this verse-'"where Satan dwelleth,' must remain one of the unsolved riddles of these epistles." But did the Lord bid him that hath an ear to hear what must remain an unsolved riddle ? Assuredly not. It is one of the characteristics of the prophetic view in these epistles, that it delivers one from the necessity of waiting until some archaeologist shall be found who can explain such things, and gives us one for our profit both clear and satisfactory, derived from Scripture itself. But not only so. The practical worth of the archaeologic rendering would be very likely little, if it could be gained. Of what value would it be if we believed with Grotius that this expression had reference to the worship of Aesculapius, whose symbol was a serpent ? Surely of very little. Whereas the prophetic view flashes light upon the whole condition.
Satan reigns in hell, according to the popular belief; and Milton's picture, while it reflects this, has done much to confirm and make it vivid. But hell is a place of punishment, and Scripture is quite plain that he is not confined there. Then he must have broken loose, is the idea. God's prison was not strong enough! One might ask, How do we know, then, it will ever be? Think of the government which allows the chief malefactor to reign in his prison over those less evil than himself, and to break prison, and roam freely where he will! God's government is not chargeable with this. In hell, Satan will be, not king, but lowest and most miserable there; and once committed to it, no escape will be permitted. But this will not be till after the millennium, as Rev. 20:assures us.
But this idea permits people to escape from the thought-an appalling one, no doubt,-that he is still what the Lord designates him-" prince of this world:" " the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me."
True, He does speak so, some one may suggest; but does He not also say, when predicting the effect of His cross, " Now shall the prince of this world be cast out"? has he not, then, been cast out of his kingdom? and are we not "translated into the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ" ?
The latter is true; but as to the former, the Lord only predicts the certain effect of the cross, and the "now" simply declares it to be the effect. Here one startling expression of the apostle Paul, going beyond even that which the Lord uses, is decisive as to the matter; he calls the devil-long after the cross-" the god of this world " (2 Cor. 4:4).
And indeed the expression is stronger even than this. For the margin of the Revised Version is assuredly right, and it is the word "age," not " world," which the apostle uses. " The god of this age" is surely a very solemn title to be given to Satan after the Christian dispensation, as we call it, had already begun. Yet there it stands; and "Scripture cannot be broken."
Yes, it is over the world, and in these Christian times, that Satan exercises this terrible sway, and this is what makes the expression here, " dwelling where Satan's throne is," so sadly significant.
For "dwelling in the world" is another thing from being in it. We are in the world perforce, and in no wise responsible for that, but to be a dweller in it is a moral state:it is to be a citizen of it, the condition which the apostle speaks of in Philippians as obtaining among professing Christians:"For many walk, of whom I have told you before, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things:for our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."
Their characteristic is that they are enemies, not of Christ personally, but of the cross-that cross by which we are crucified to the world and the world to us. Their hearts were on earthly things, which, not satisfying them, as earthly things cannot, made their god to be their belly; their inward craving became their master, and made them drudge in its service.
The Christian's citizenship is in heaven. That delivers him from the unsatisfying pursuit of earthly things. But little indeed is this understood now. Even where people can talk and sing of the world being a wilderness, you will find that in general the idea is rather of the sorrows and trials of which the world is full, and which Christians are exposed to like the men of the world themselves. " Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;" and pilgrimage in their minds is a thing perforce. The world passes away, and they cannot keep it; so they are glad to think that heaven is at the end. In the meanwhile, they go on trying (honestly, no doubt, if you can call such a thing honest in a Christian,) to get as much of it as they can, or at least as much as will make them comfortable in it.
But a pilgrim is not one whom the world is leaving, but who is leaving it. Otherwise the whole world would be pilgrims, as indeed they talk about the "pilgrimage of life." But this is the abuse of the term, and not its use. We can be pilgrims in this sense, and find all the world companions; and such, in fact, had got to be the idea of pilgrimage in the Pergamos state of the Church They talked of it, no doubt, and built their houses the more
solidly to stand the rough weather. God said they were dwelling where Satan's throne was.
It was the history of old Babel repeating itself. You may find the vivid type of it in Gen. 11:, where men "journeyed," indeed, but not as pilgrims, or only as that till they could find some smooth spot to settle down in. They "journeyed," as colonists or immigrants on the look-out for land; from the rough hills beyond the flood, where human life began ; " from the east"-with their backs, that is, toward the blessed dawn; " and they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there."
Such was, alas! the Church's progress-from the rough heights of martyrdom down to the level plain where there were no difficulties to deter the most timid souls. There the Church multiplied, and there they began to " build a city, and a tower whose top should reach to heaven." But "a city" was not Jerusalem, but Jerusalem's constant enemy; not the "possession of peace," but a city of "confusion"-Babel.
Yet it prospered:they built well. True, they were away from the quarries of the hills, and could not build with the "stone" they had there been used to. They did what they could with the clay which was native in that lower land. " They had bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar." We have seen some of this work already. It looks well, and lasts in the fine climate of these regions quite a long time:human material, not divine,-"bricks," man's manufacture, "for stones," God's material. They cannot build great Babylon with the "living stones " of God's producing. Man-made Christians, compacted together, not by the cementing of the Spirit for eternity, but by the human motives and influences whereby the masses are affected, but which the fire of God will one day try. So is great Babylon built.
Now it is remarkable that the word " Pergamos" has a double significance. In the plural form, it is used for the " citadel of a town," while it is at least near akin to purgos, " a tower." Again, divide it into the two words into which it naturally separates, and you have per, "although," a particle which "usually serves to call attention to something which is objected to" (Liddell & Scott), and gamos, "marriage." Pergamos,-"a marriage though."
It was indeed by the marriage of the Church and the world that the "city and tower" of Babylon the Great was raised; and such are the times we are now to contemplate.
Before we proceed, however, let us to this double proof unite another, that the threefold cord may not be broken. The parallel between the first addresses to the churches and the first four parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13:I have referred to before. The first parable gives the partial failure of the good seed, as Ephesus gives the initial failure of the true Church. The second parable gives the direct work of the enemy-the tares sown among the wheat, as the address to Smyrna does the " synagogue of Satan." But the tares and wheat are separate, and the view is, in the first two parables, an individual one; the third parable is entirely different in this respect. One seed stands here for the whole sowing, and what is seen is now the aspect of the whole together. The little mustard-seed produces, strange to say, a tree, in which the birds of the heaven lodge, and the tree is a type of worldly power. Turn to the fourth chapter of Daniel, and you will find in Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, such a tree. Surely it is significant that in every direction in which we look from here there is a finger-post which points to Babylon! And here in Pergamos, as in the mustard-tree, it is the Church as a whole which is spoken of. It is established, as men triumphantly say:it is fallen is the lament from heaven.
For this is not the Church's establishment upon its Rock-foundation, where the gates of hades cannot prevail against it, but in the world's favor; and if Satan be the prince of this world, what must be the price of this?
As a consequence, we find not only Nicolaitanism fully accepted, but the doctrine of Balaam also. They are still what is called " orthodox." " Thou holdest fast My name, and hast not denied My faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was My faithful witness, who was slain among you where Satan dwelleth." For these are the Nicene times, the time of the first Christian council called (at Nicoea) by a Roman emperor, and which maintained the deity of Christ against Arianism. It was a sight, they said, to see at the council the marks of the confession of Christ in those who had endured the late persecutions. The Nicene period was that of two, at least, of the creeds substantially acknowledged by the faith of Christians every where since. But theirs was an orthodoxy which, while maintaining (thank God!) the doctrine of the Trinity, could be and was very far astray as to the application of Christ's blessed work to the salvation of men. Orthodox as to Christ, it was yet most unorthodox as to the gospel.
Where in the Apostles' Creed, so called, do you find the gospel. "The forgiveness of sins" is an article of belief, no doubt, but how and when? In the Nicene creed is acknowledged " one baptism for the remission of sins," but there is entire silence as to any other. In the Athanasian, it is owned Christ " suffered for our salvation," but how we are to obtain the salvation for which He suffered is again omitted. Practically, the belief of the times was in the efficacy of baptism, and so painful and uncertain was the way of forgiveness for sins committed afterward, that multitudes deferred baptism to a dying bed, that the sins of a lifetime might be more easily washed away together.
The Lord goes on to say, " But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them which hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a trap before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication."
Balaam, the destroyer of the people, is a new graft upon Nicolaitanism. A prophet, in outward nearness to the Lord, while his heart went after its own covetousness,-a man having no personal grudge against the people, but whose god was his belly, and so would curse them if his god bade:-one whose doctrine was to seduce Israel from their separateness into guilty mixture with the nations and their idolatry round about. The type is easily read, and the examples of it distressingly numerous. When the Church and the world become on good terms with one another, and the Church has the things of the world with which to attract the natural heart, the hireling prophet is a matter of course, who for his own ends will seek to destroy whatever remains of godly separateness.
It is one step only in the general, persistent departure from God never retraced and never repented of. Solemn to say, however much individuals may be delivered, such decline is never recovered from by the body as such. At every step downward, the progress down is only accelerated. " Have ye offered Me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them; and I will carry you away beyond Babylon. There were many reformations afterward, more or less partial, but no fresh start.
So with the Church, Men talk of another Pentecost. There never was another. And the first lasted for how brief a season! " Unto thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off."
From Constantine's day to the present, world and Church have been united in Christendom at large; and wherever this is found, there in truth is Babylon, though Rome be the head of Babylon, as indeed she is.
Let us look about us with the lamp the Lord has given us, and see whereabouts we are with regard to these things. How far are we individually keeping the Church and the world separate? How far are we really refusing that yoke with unbelievers which the passage in 2 Cor. 6:so emphatically condemns? Our associations are judged of God as surely as any other part of our practical conduct; and '' Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers" is His word. He cannot, He declares, be to us a Father as He would, except we come out and be separate! Solemn, solemn words in the midst of the multiplicity of such confederacies in the present day! Can we bear to be ourselves searched out by them, beloved brethren? Oh, if we value our true place as sons with God, shall we not be only glad to see things as they are ?
Now this "yoke" forbidden has various applications. It applies to any thing in which we voluntarily unite with others to attain a common object. Among social relations, marriage is such a yoke; in business relations, partnerships and such like; and in the foremost rank of all would come ecclesiastical associations.
To take these latter, now:There are certain systems which, as we have already seen, mix up the Church and the world in the most thorough way possible. All forms of ritualism do:-forms wherein a person is made by baptism " a member of Christ and a child of God." Where that is asserted, separation is impossible; for no amount of charity, and no extravagance of theological fiction, can make the mass of these baptized people other than the world.
All national churches in the same way mix them up by the very fact that they are national churches. You cannot by the force of will or act of parliament make a nation Christian. You can give them a name to live, while they are dead. You can make them formalists and hypocrites, but nothing more. You can do your best to hide from them their true condition, and leave them under an awful delusion, from which eternity alone may wake them up. That is much to do indeed, and it is all in this way possible.
All systems Jewish in character mix them up of necessity. Where all are probationers together, it is not possible to do otherwise. All systems in which the church is made a means to salvation, instead of the company of the saved, necessarily do so. When people join churches in order to be saved, as is the terrible fashion of the day, these churches become of course the common receptacle of sinners and saints alike. And wherever assurance of salvation is not maintained, the same thing must needs result.
Systems such as these naturally acquire, and rapidly, adherents, money, and worldly influence ; and among such, the doctrine of Balaam does its deadly work. The world, not even disguised in the garb of Christianity, is sought, for the sake of material support. Men that have not given themselves to the Lord are taught that they can give their money. It is openly proclaimed that God is not sufficient as His people's portion. His cause requires help, and that so much, that He will accept it from the hands of His very enemies. There is an idolatry of means abroad. Money will help the destitute; money will aid to circulate the Scripture; money will send missionaries to foreign parts; money will supply a hundred wants, and get over a host of difficulties. We are going to put it to so good a use, we must not be over-scrupulous as to the mode of getting it. The church has to be maintained, the minister to be paid. They do not like the principles that "the end sanctifies the means"-but still, what are they to do? God is in theory of course sufficient, but they must use the means, and the nineteenth century no longer expects miracles.
But why go over the dreary round of such godless and faithless arguments? Is it a wonder that infidelity bursts out into a triumphant laugh as Christians maintain the impotence of their God, and violate His precepts to save His cause from ruin ? Nay, do you not in fact proclaim it ruined -irredeemably, irrecoverably ruined, when His ear is already too dull to hear, and His arm shortened that it cannot save?
Money will build churches, will buy Bibles, will support ministers,-true. Will it buy a new Pentecost? or bring in the millennium? Will you bribe the blessed Spirit to work for you thus? or make sheer will and animal energy do without Him? Alas! you pray for power, and dishonor Him who is the only source of power!
But what is the result of this solicitation of the world ? Can you go to it with the Bibles you have bought with its own money, and tell it the truth as to its own condition? Can you tell them that "the whole world lieth in wickedness"?-that "all that is in the world-the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-is not of the Father, but is of the world"? Can you maintain the separate place that God has given you, and the sharp edge of the truth that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God"? Of course you cannot. They will turn round upon you and say, "Why, then, do you come to us for our money? You ask us to give, and tell us it will not please Him our giving! It is not reasonable:we do not believe it, and you cannot believe it yourselves!"
No:the world does not believe in giving something for nothing. Whatever the Word of God may say, whatever you may think of it in your heart, you must compromise in some way. You must not maintain the rigid line of separation. Balaam must be your prophet. You must mix with the world, and let it mix with you; how else will you do it good? You must cushion your church-seats, and invite it in. You must make your building and your services attractive:you must not frighten people away, but allure them in. You must be all things to all men; and as you cannot expect to get them up to your standard, you must get down to theirs. Do I speak too strongly? Oh, words can hardly exaggerate the state of things that may be every-where found, not in some far-off land, but here all around us in the present day. I should not dare to tell you what deeds are done in the name of Christ by His professing people. They will hire singers to sing His praises for admiration, and to draw a crowd. They will provide worldly entertainments, and sit down and be entertained in company. And as more and more they sink down to the world's level, they persuade themselves the world is rising up to theirs; while God is saying, as of His people of old, " Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people:Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not,-yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not. And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face; and they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this" (Hos. 7:8-10).
It is a downward course, and being trod at aft ever-increasing pace. Competition is aroused, and it is who can be the most successful candidate for the world's favors. The example of one emboldens another. Emulation, envy, ambition, and a host of unholy motives are aroused; and Scripture, the honor of Christ, the jealous eyes of a holy, holy God-ah, you are antiquated and pharisaic if you talk of these.
There is one feature in this melancholy picture I cannot pass by briefly thus. The ministry, or what stands before men's eyes as such, how is it affected by all this? I have already said that Scripture does not recognize the thought of a minister and his people. Upon this I do not intend to dwell again. But what, after all, in the present day has got to be the strength of the tie between a church and its ministry? Who that looks around can question that money has here a controlling influence? The seal of the compact is the salary. A rich church with an ample purse, can it not make reasonably sure of attracting the man it wants? The poor church, however rich in piety, is it not conscious of its deficiency? People naturally do not like to own it. They persuade themselves, successfully enough, no doubt, that it is a wider and more promising field of labor that attracts them. But the world notoriously does not believe this; and it has but too good reason for its unbelief.
The contract is ordinarily for so much money. If the money is not forthcoming, the contract is dissolved. But more, the money consideration decides in another way the character of man they wish to secure. It is ordinarily a successful man that is wanted, after the fashionable idea of what is success. They want a man who will fill the church, perhaps help to pay off the debt upon it. Very likely the payment of his own salary depends upon this. He will not be likely most to please who is not influenced by such motives; and thus it will be only God's mercy if Balaam's doctrine does not secure a Balaam to carry it out. But even if a godly man is obtained, he is put under the influence of the strongest personal temptation to soften down the truth, which, if fully preached, may deprive him of not only influence, but perhaps even subsistence.
Will the most godly man be the most popular man? No; for godliness is not what the world seeks. It can appreciate genius, no doubt, and eloquence, and amiability, and benevolence, and utilitarianism ; but godliness is something different from the union of even all of these. If the world can appreciate godliness, I will own indeed it is no longer the world. But as long as the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life still characterize it, it is not of the Father, nor the Father of it. And then, why in that passage does the apostle say "the Father"? Is it not because in thinking of the Father's relation to the world, we must needs think of the Son ? As he says again in another place, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" And why ? Because it is the Son of God the world has crucified and cast out; and that the cross, which was the world's judgment of the Son of God, is, for faith, God's judgment of the world.
Was Christ popular, beloved friends? Could He, with divine power in His hands and ministering it freely for the manifold need appealing to Him on every side,-could He commend Himself to men His creatures? No, assuredly. But you think perhaps those peculiarly evil times:they understand Him better now, you think. Take, then, His dear name with you to men's places of business and to their homes to-day, to the work-shop and the counting-houses, and the public places-do you doubt what response you would get?
"In the churches?" Oh, yes, they have agreed to tolerate Him there. The churches have been carefully arranged to please the world. Comfortable, fashionable, the poor packed in convenient corners, eye and ear and intellect provided for:that is a different thing. And then it helps to quiet conscience when it will sometimes stir. But oh, beloved, is there much sign of His presence whose own sign was, " To the poor the gospel is preached "?
Enough of this, however; it will be neither pleasure nor profit to pursue it further. But to those with whom the love of Christ is more than a profession, and the honor of Christ a reality to be maintained, I would solemnly put it how they can go on with what systematically tramples His honor underfoot, yea, under the world's foot,-falsifies His gospel, and helps to deceive to their own destruction the souls for whom He died. The doctrine of Balaam is every where:its end is judgment upon the world, and judgment too upon the people of God. If ministers cannot be supported, if churches cannot be kept up without this, the honestest, manliest, only Christian course is, let the thing go down! If Christians cannot get on without the world, they will find at least that the world can get on without them. They cannot persuade it that disobedience is such a serious thing when they see the light-hearted, flippant disobedience of which it is so easy to convict the great mass of professors, while it is so utterly impossible to deter them from it. " Money " is the cry; " well, but we want the money." Aye, though Christ's honor is betrayed by it, and infidels sneer, and souls perish. Brethren, the very Pharisees of old were wiser! "We may not put it into the treasury," they whispered, "because it is the price of blood." F.W.G. (To be continued.)