In chapter one our
particular emphasis was upon the nature of "The
Testimony of Jesus," which, in a word, is this; that
the great objective and 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
within the "witnesses." That same Lord Jesus
had become an inward reality by the Holy Spirit, and the
nature of the manifestation of that inward fact was a
life, "eternal life," resurrection life, life
triumphant over death, Divine life in all its energy,
spontaneousness, might, persistence, holiness, and
fruitfulness; the life which the Lord Jesus is in Person.
(1 John 1:2, 5:9-13,20, R.V.; Acts 1:8,22, 2:32,36, 3:15,
4:33, 5:30,32, 10:40-42, 13:30,37; 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.
Our present course will
be to show something more of what this means in
experience and service, especially in connection with the
age-purpose of a witness to 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 blight upon any
activity which counts even a little for Him. We have a
burden, a sometimes overwhelming burden, and the
acuteness is occasioned by both comparative and complete
ineffectiveness; to say nothing of the confusion, and
manifest misconception of Divine ends and methods so
widely existent. It is the more immediate, direct, and
absolute spiritual effectiveness that governs the
pursuance of this subject.
Let us again state the
main and all-inclusive basis and background of all true
and 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 that great record of conquests
in many regions through many instruments. This goes
behind all advocacy of foreign or any other missions and
makes such advocacy unnecessary. Not that advocacy has
been fruitless, for God has come through it; but its
strenuousness and its costliness are the marks of
spiritual decline and the characteristics of a system
which speaks of a bondage in which the Lord is involved.
We shall best explain what we mean if we illustrate from
history.
Some
Notable Examples.
We have before us the
records of movements and men that have been especially
effectual and fruitful in the world testimony of the Lord
Jesus.
Here is the amazing
story of those great days of Moravian missions. 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
sufferings gladly endured, the range covered, 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
evangelisation 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 three
million to one million population they were reduced by
persecution. Indeed it sometimes appeared as if they
would be entirely extinguished. Out of this fire 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 later possible breathe 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 in relays an entire twenty-four hours was 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 deep
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 million
in darkness and death for want of a deep baptism of the
Church - a company of saved ones - into the passion and
love of God in Christ.
If the China Inland
Mission is a monument to anything as to God's methods, it
is supremely such to the living reality of union with
Christ. With all his vision and passion for inland China,
it is well known that as he went from place to place
addressing gatherings of Christians in this and other
countries, Mr. Hudson Taylor said very little about
China, often nothing at all. He poured out his spiritual
message to bring the Lord's people to the fuller
knowledge of what their union with Him meant. 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 by organisation, advocacy, propaganda, appeals, or
advertisement; but a man with a deep knowledge of God
born of the Cross being deeply inwrought, with a living
spiritual message for the Lord's people as to their
fullest life in Him and the practical outworking of such
a life through prayer. Mr. Hudson Taylor was no teacher
in the sense of presenting truth in a systematised 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. One, 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 who had no chance of
receiving it only by such special endeavour to reach
them. Mr. Hudson Taylor's life (and we must therefore
think that the history of the mission) turned at a given
point upon a deeper realisation 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 by
means of the South Africa General Mission with its 115
white, and nearly 300 African missionaries, bearing
testimony in a dozen languages or dialects, including a
much blessed work among 100,000 Indians, but in all parts
of the world the ministry of Dr. Andrew Murray has been
wondrously rich in its fruits. Not, again, by advocacy or
propaganda, but purely by spiritual teaching, 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, has
this fruit been born.
We could add at great
length to the evidence, pointing to the influence of such
lives, and the power of the movement for "the
deepening of spiritual life"; pages from the
missionary issues of "Keswick's" great men and
messages in those early days; pages from that monumental
"history" of the C.M.S. by Dr. Eugene Stock.
The
Basic Reality.
The evidence is
overwhelming that from "Pentecost" onward the
basis of the fullest, richest, and most effectual
world-testimony of Jesus is "a holiness movement
from heaven," a heart-changing,
life-revolutionising, whole-being-captivation realisation
of Who Jesus is and What Jesus is; the first as to His
Sovereignty in the Throne of Deity, and the second as to
His sovereignty in the life on all points. To be filled
with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with Holiness, Love,
Humility, Joy, and a passion for securing unto the
"Beloved" the fruit of His travail in every
nation. No "spiritual" movement, convention,
teaching, is valid without the hall-mark of spontaneous
concern for the eternal well-being of others. Far too
often intensive movements result in morbid introspection.
There is nothing more paralysing than this. The reaction
from this is just as perilous. Enthusiasm, interest, high
spirits, "personality," education, enterprise,
harnessed to a more or less dated "decision for
Christ" are frequently the points of emphasis in
this reaction.
The cost to a New
Testament convert was too great to permit of anything
superficial or merely a matter of romance or enthusiasm.
The balance must be of a very real and deep knowledge of
the Lord and an ardent passion for His satisfaction in
the nations.
What
Pentecost Was.
We have failed far too
terribly to realise exactly what "Pentecost"
really was. The cumulative and external effects have
obscured the deeper elements. We have interpreted it in
terms of activity, signs, waves of emotion, excitability,
&c.
Our supreme need is to
know just exactly what the "Baptism of the Holy
Spirit" is. All-inclusively it is 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 numerous specific things just one or two of
which we may point out.
Firstly "The
Baptism of the Holy Spirit," is a baptism into
the holiness of the Lord. Pentecost was a holiness
movement from heaven. This was the significance of the
terrible incident with Ananias and Sapphira. It is a
baptism with fire, which must be interpreted primarily,
not as zest, but as sanctification. 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.
Doubtfulness, questionableness, equivocation, and
such-like elements are a contradiction and an antagonism
to the Spirit of Holiness. It is unfortunate that it
should be necessary to even mention this 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 temperamental,
large-nature, natural warm-heartedness, 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 tip, 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 have its interests crossed, to
be set aside, to be outshone, 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," &c.
Immediately upon His
baptism the Spirit came upon our Lord and He was there
and then brought 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 baptised
into Christ. Thank God, the victory has been secured and
the issue settled at Calvary, but the fight continues. It
will take the mighty energising of the Spirit of the Lord
of Hosts - "Strengthened with all might by His
Spirit into the inner man" - 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 not able to
work, or preach, or 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 which counts, not much business. We
will break off here for the time being, but will just
append a paragraph from the story of Uganda which carries
its own significance.
A
Typical Instance.
In the early days of
the Church in Uganda a boy who had been baptised 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,
"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 long time 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."