In our last issue our particular
emphasis was upon the nature of the “testimony of Jesus.”
We saw that the great, objective, historic fact, that Jesus was
risen from among the dead and was in the place of supreme
sovereignty and glory—which fact had been manifested by many
infallible proofs—had also a subjective counterpart: namely,
within the ones who were His “witnesses.” That
same Lord Jesus had become to them, by the Holy Spirit, an inward
reality, and that inward fact was manifested as a life: “eternal
life,” resurrection life, life triumphant over death; Divine
life in all its holiness, energy, spontaneity, might,
persistence, and fruitfulness; in fact, the life which the Lord
Jesus is, in Person. (See 1 John 1:2; 5:9–13,20;
Acts 1:8,22; 2:32,36; 3:15; 4:33; 5:30,32; 10:40–42;
13:30,37; Rom 1:4.):
“And
the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and
declare unto you the life, the eternal [life], which was with the
Father, and was manifested unto us”. (1 John 1:2 R.V.)
“If we
receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for
the witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness concerning
his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in
him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he
hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning
his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal
life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the
life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. These
things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have
eternal life, [even] unto you that believe on the name of the Son
of God... And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath
given us an understanding, that we know him that is true, and we
are in him that is true, [even] in his Son Jesus Christ. This is
the true God, and eternal life.”
(1 John 5:9-13,20 R.V.).
“But ye
shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye
shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.... beginning from
the baptism of John, unto the day that he was received up from
us, of these must one become a witness with us of his
resurrection.” (Acts
1:8,22).
“This Jesus did God
raise up, whereof we are all witnesses... Therefore let all the
house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same
Jesus, Whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts
2:32,36).
“Whom
God raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.” (Acts 3:15).
“And
with great power gave the apostles their witness of the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them
all.” (Acts
4:33).
“Him
did God exalt with his right hand [to be] a Prince and a Saviour,
for to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we
are witnesses of these things; and [so is] the Holy Ghost, whom
God hath given to them that obey him.” (Acts 5:31,32).
“Him
God raised up the third day, and gave him to be made manifest,
not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before
of God, [even] to us, who did eat and drink with him after he
rose from the dead. And he charged us to preach unto the people,
and to testify that this is he which is ordained of God [to be]
the Judge of quick and dead.”
(Acts 10:40-42).
“But God raised Him
from the dead: and He was seen many days of them which came up
with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses unto
the people... But He, Whom God raised again, saw no corruption”
(Acts 13:30,31,37).
“Who
was declared [to be] the Son of God with power, according to the
spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead; [even] Jesus
Christ our Lord”
(Rom. 1:4 R.V.).
The testimony to the Person of
Jesus is the power of His Life in and through His “members”
by the Holy Spirit.
The Starting
Place of the Testimony in Every Nation
Our present object will be to
show something more of what this means in experience and service,
especially in connection with the age-purpose of a testimony in
the nations. If comparisons and contrasts are made and
disorders pointed out, it is not in a spirit of criticism, far
less of censoriousness; neither is it want of appreciation of, or
esteem for, the work being so honestly and sacrificially
done. God forbid that any word of ours should bring a
shadow upon any activity which counts even a little for
Him. We have a burden—a sometimes overwhelming burden—occasioned
both by the spiritual ineffectiveness (partial or complete) that
we see around, and by the manifest misconception and confusion
that prevails regarding Divine ends and methods. It is the
need for immediate, direct, absolute spiritual effectiveness
that governs the pursuance of this subject.
Let us again state the
all-inclusive basis and background of all true, victorious life
and service. It is the revelation of the Person of
Christ crucified, in the Godhead, and in the throne of absolute
sovereignty, and this objective fact becoming by the Holy Spirit
a power in the life and a passion in the heart.
It is the effect of this that
lies behind all the great record of conquests in many regions,
through many instruments. This goes behind, and makes
unnecessary, all advocacy of ‘foreign’ or other
missions. Not that such advocacy has been fruitless, for
God has come through it; but its strenuousness and its costliness
are the marks of spiritual decline, and are the characteristics
of a system which speaks of a bondage in which the Lord’s
honour is involved. We shall best explain what we mean if
we illustrate from history.
Some Notable
Examples of Modern Times
We have before us the records of
movements and men that have been really effectual and fruitful in
the world-testimony of the Lord Jesus.
Here is the amazing story of the
great days of the Moravian mission. In the first twenty
years they actually sent out more missionaries than the whole
Protestant Church had done in two hundred years. Of the
closed lands entered, the range covered, the sufferings gladly
endured, the lives lived and laid down, the grace of God
manifested, it stirs wonder and shame to read. Someone has
said that ‘if members of the Protestant churches went out as
missionaries in corresponding numbers there would be a force of
400,000 foreign workers, which is vastly more than the number
estimated as necessary to achieve the evangelization of the
world.’
Only for want of space do we
reluctantly refrain from giving pages from this tremendous story;
but what lay behind it?
In the first place the Cross had
been deeply wrought into the very being of this people. Their
country was made a field of blood by massacre. They were driven
from their homes. From a population of three million they
were reduced by persecution to one million. Indeed it
sometimes appeared as if they would be entirely extinguished.
Out of these fires of affliction there arose a company purified
by the fire, and with another fire burning in their bones.
It was the fire of a passionate love for the Lord Jesus.
The meetings of these brethren, when they later became possible,
breathed the atmosphere of “the upper room.” Covenants
were made that self in all its forms should be entirely banished—self-will,
self-love, self-interest, self-seeking. To be poor in spirit
would be their quest, and everyone would give himself to be
taught by the Holy Spirit. A prayer-watch was set up which
should burn day and night, and by means of relays the entire
twenty-four hours were occupied in seeking the Lord. ‘To
win for the Lamb that was slain the reward of His sufferings,’
was their adopted motto.
All this is its own
argument. Here a deeply inwrought work of the Cross issued
in a mighty, personal love for the Lord Jesus. Personal
considerations were lost, and no persuasion was necessary.
Shall we not say the truth when we say that souls languish by the
millions in darkness and death for want of a deep baptism of the
Church—the company of saved ones—into the passion and
love of God in Christ?
If the China Inland Mission has
been a monument to anything as to God’s methods, it is
supremely so to the living reality of union with Christ.
With all his vision and passion for inland China, it is well
known that Mr. Hudson Taylor, as he went from place to place
addressing gatherings of Christians in this and other countries,
said very little about China, often nothing at all. He just
poured out his spiritual message to bring the Lord’s people
into a fuller knowledge of the meaning of their union with
Christ. The central and supreme thing in this fellowship
with the Lord was the universal efficacy of prayer.
Listen to him: ‘In the
study of that Divine Word I learned that to obtain successful
workers, not elaborate appeals for help, but earnest prayer to
God... and the deepening of the spiritual life of the Church, so
that men should be unable to stay at home, were what was needed.’
Were we to put the inner history
of this work—the original spiritual background—into a
few words, we should say that it was not a matter of
organization, advocacy, propaganda, appeals, or
advertisement. It centered in a man with a deep
knowledge of God, born of a deeply inwrought work of the Cross,
bringing to the Lord’s people a living, spiritual message as
to their fullest life in Him, and as to the practical outworking
of such a life through prayer.
Mr. Hudson Taylor was no ‘teacher’
in the sense of presenting truth in a systematized form. He
was not one of the great ‘Bible teachers,’ in the
generally accepted sense of that term. His was a message which
immediately led to two issues: firstly, the relationship of the
believer to the Lord; and then the practical outworking of that,
in prayer and other forms of service, to bring the Gospel to
those whose only chance of receiving it was by means of such
special endeavours. Mr. Hudson Taylor’s life (and therefore,
we must think, the history of the mission) turned at a given
point upon a deeper realization of what oneness with the Lord
really means. This is revealed in a letter to his sister
which is printed in the second volume of his Life.
Not only in Africa, through the
South Africa General Mission, but in all parts of the world, the
ministry of Dr. Andrew Murray has been wondrously rich in its
fruits. It was not, again, by advocacy of propaganda, but
purely by spiritual teaching, through a ministry almost
exclusively to the Lord’s people, a message concerning
practical holiness, the ministry of intercession, and the power
of the Holy Spirit, that this fruit was born. Out of
this ministry sprang the above ‘Mission,’ and the consecration
of many lives to the Lord’s service. The ministry, not
the ‘Mission,’ was the dynamic.
We could add at great length the
evidence, pointing to the influence of such lives, and to the
power of the movement for the ‘deepening of spiritual life.’
The pages of the missionary issues of Christian periodicals; the
messages of ‘Keswick’s’ great men in those early
days; and the pages of that monumental History of the C.M.S. by
Dr. Eugene Stock, all bear testimony to this.
The Basic
Reality
The evidence is overwhelming
that from Pentecost onward the basis of the fullest, richest, and
most effectual world-testimony of Jesus has been a ‘holiness
movement from heaven’: that is, a heart-changing, life-revolutionizing,
whole-being-captivating realization of Who Jesus is—the
first as to His Sovereignty in the Throne of Deity, and the
second as to His Sovereignty in the life at all points. To
be ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ is to be filled with
Holiness, Love, Humility, Joy, and a passion for securing to the
“Beloved” the fruit of His travail in every
nation. No ‘spiritual’ movement, convention,
teaching, is valid without the hallmark of spontaneous concern
for the eternal well-being of others. Far too often intensive
movements result in morbid introspection. There is nothing
more paralyzing than this. And the reaction from it is just
as perilous. Enthusiasm, interest, high spirits, ‘personality,’
education, or enterprise, harnessed to a more or less dated
‘decision for Christ,’ are frequently the points of
emphasis in this reaction.
The cost to a convert in New
Testament times was too great to permit of anything that was
superficial or merely a matter of romance or enthusiasm.
The motive power must spring from a very real and deep knowledge
of the Lord, balanced by an ardent passion for His satisfaction
in the nations.
What Pentecost
Was
We have failed far too terribly
to realize what ‘Pentecost,’ and the ‘baptism of
the Holy Spirit,’ really was. The external accompaniments
and effects have obscured the deeper elements. We have
interpreted it in terms of activity, signs, waves of emotion,
excitability, and so forth. But our supreme need is to know
the true meaning of this ‘baptism.’
We therefore give the following
all-inclusive definition. The baptism of the Holy Spirit
means the enthronement of the Lord Jesus as absolute
Sovereign, without reservation or rival, in the entire life, in
all its interests and activities.
Within this compass there are
one or two specific things which we may point out.
Firstly, the baptism of the Holy
Spirit is a baptism into the holiness of the Lord.
It is a baptism with fire, which must be interpreted,
primarily, not as zest, but as sanctification. Pentecost
was a ‘holiness movement from heaven.’ This was
the significance of the terrible incident with Ananias and
Sapphira. This holiness of the Lord, established by the Holy
Spirit, has to be carried into every phase and department of
life: spirit, mind, body; relationships, transactions, methods,
means. Anything doubtful, questionable, equivocal, and so
on, is a contradiction and an antagonism to the Spirit of
Holiness. It is unfortunate that it should be necessary
even to mention such things in the realm of the work of the Lord,
but that necessity is laid upon us.
Secondly, the baptism of the
Holy Spirit is a baptism into the love of Christ.
This is another element in the ‘fire.’ It need
hardly be said that this love is something more and other than
natural warm-heartedness, largeness of nature, generosity,
sentiment and nice words. It is love which ‘suffers
long, envies not, knows no jealousy, makes no parade, gives
itself no airs, is not puffed up, never rejoices in self-vindication
when opponents are proved wrong, is always slow to expose, always
eager to believe the best, never seeks its own ends or interests.’
This love knows how to be abased, to be set aside, to be
outshone; how to have its interests crossed; how to persist when
forsaken; and much more. Only the Holy Spirit can impart
and maintain this love.
Thirdly, the baptism of the Holy
Spirit is the baptism into the war of the ages. Not
into a religious playground or sports field, but into the grim,
terrific, bloody conflict with “principalities and powers,”
with “the world rulers of this darkness,” with “the
spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Immediately upon our Lord’s baptism, the Spirit came upon
Him, and He was brought there and then, by the act of the Spirit,
into awful contact with the leader of the opposing
hierarchy. So it was with the Church. So it is with
every one baptized into Christ. Thank God, the victory has
been secured and the issue settled at Calvary, but the fight
continues. It will take the mighty energizing of the Spirit
of the Lord of hosts—“strengthened with power through
His Spirit in (lit. “into”) the inward man” (Eph.
3:16)—in all the efficacy of the Precious Blood, to
accomplish the deepest work of God in this age. There will
be times when we are unable to work, or to preach, or to do
anything but ‘stand and withstand.’ Many are
contented while they can be active and do something. This
can be a real snare. It is spiritual vitality that counts, not
much busy-ness.
A Practical
Instance
We will conclude with an
incident from the story of Uganda which carries its own significance.
In the early days of the Church
in Uganda, a boy who had been baptized came to Pilkington and
told him of his failure to be true to Christ in the pathetic
words, ‘I sin as much as ever I did.’ Pilkington
was cut to the quick, and the desire for fresh spiritual power
was deepened in his heart. Shortly afterwards he went apart
on to one of the islands in the Victoria Nyanza that he might
wait upon God and receive fresh power from Him. His prayers
were answered, and later he could write to Bishop Tucker as
follows:
“I want to tell you that we
(mission and people) are in the midst of a time of great
blessing. God has enabled several of us to see that for a
longtime past we have been working in our own strength, and
that consequently there has been no power in our lives, and very
little blessing. We have, however, been brought to see that the
command, ‘be filled with the Spirit,’ is as much laid
upon us as upon the Ephesians, and that power for effectual service
is placed at our disposal if we will but appropriate it. I cannot
tell you the difference it has made to us in our lives as well as
in our work. Now we are full of joy, whereas a little while
ago (I am speaking of myself in this) the depression was almost
unbearable. As for our work, God is now using us, and a wonderful
wave of blessing is passing over the land.”