QUES. 20.-I have been perplexed of late by statements new and strange to me, though probably old to you, as they have been in print some time. I would appreciate an answer in Help and Food as it might give light to other perplexed ones beside myself.

It is said that the Church is now invisible. That there is no collective testimony any more. That the Lord has removed the candlestick from the Church, and that the removal of the candlestick means the removal of the testimony from the Church. So now the testimony is said to be purely individual-not collective any more, for the Assembly as tuck has ceased to be. The proof given is that all have failed, and yon cannot point to any company and say, That is the Church.

I had always thought since I learned the truth, that the seven lamps on the golden lamp-stand represented the testimony of the Holy Spirit concerning Christ through the Church as the light-bearer. That the Lord chastened the Church if false to her true testimony, but did not remove her testimony till the time described in Rom. 11:13-25.

If what I now enquire about be true, then our assembling together, and all the labor and care bestowed on Christian assemblies is but the empty form of a by-gone thing.

ANS.-Cling to what you have "always thought since learning the truth," for it is what the word of God teaches. The teaching which has perplexed you does not come from the word of God but from disappointed men who, with plenty of self-will, set themselves about doing what God has given none of His people to do, namely, to unite all His own in one company. Missing the true sense of John 17:21 they took it as an ecclesiastical unity for them to carry out. Failing utterly in this, as might well be expected, it produced bitterness of spirit, and so everything must be cried down, and all done to dishearten those who still carry on "the good fight," then retire, each man in his corner to enjoy the sweet but not very humble thought that " I, even I only, am left."

The very proof they give for their theory, "That you cannot point to any company and say, That is the Church," proves the theory wrong. No company of Christians taught by the Word and the Spirit of God would ever lay claim to being the Church since the first break in the Church took place, for they know well that God has multitudes of children outside themselves. The most they can say is, we could no longer be faithful to God and endure the idolatry of Romanism or the infidelity and sectarianism of Protestantism, so we obeyed the apostolic injunction of 2 Tim. 2. We separated from error only to be free to hold, preach and practice truth; from infidelity, to believe, enjoy, and teach the inerrant and infallible word of God from cover to cover; from sectarianism, to confess the common membership of all the children of God in the Church which is the body of Christ; from indifference about morals in the professing Church and the impossibility of godly discipline there, to exercise the holy government which God demands in His house.

Thus, while as far as possible from laying claim to be the Church, nay, weeping rather over the desolations in the Church in which they have part, and realizing how feebly they are carrying out what God has enjoined upon His Church as a whole, they nevertheless bear a collective testimony which is owned in heaven and felt to the ends of the earth. The proof that it is owned in heaven is that it meets on earth the same treatment as does the cross of Christ.
But see further:In that wonderful chapter (2 Tim. 2), of such immense importance since ruin set in, the apostle bids Timothy teach faithful men the things which he had heard from him. What would be the use of the first epistle to the Corinthians, a prominent part of Paul's teaching, if there is no more collective testimony? It would be but a dead letter. What would mean the letter to Philadelphia, one of the seven churches, if Philadelphia as a collective testimony does not go on to the rapture of the Church ? Why tell her, "I also will keep thee from (out of) the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Rev. 3:10), if there is no Philadelphia to be taken out of that hour?

When some of God's people said, We are Philadelphia, the Lord disciplined them for their pride; but with or without them Philadelphia goes on, and will go on, till "the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout" to take us home. Let each of us only see to it that we heed the Lord's admonition, "Behold, I come quickly:hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown" (Rev. 3:11).

Our having penned a few words on " The Gates of Hell " (see "Editor's Notes" of this issue) before your question came, has been a cheer to us as it leads in the same lines as this. God is a builder, not a destroyer, except of evil, and the men of God are ever marked as builders according to the dispensation in which they live. In the days of Nehemiah there were men who sought to dishearten the builders. So now. Only let the builders carry in their hearts a deep sense of the ruin of our own dispensation, then labor on to build according to God amid such conditions.