03.05. In The Fallen Condition Of The Present Dispensation, Can Man Restore It?

In The Fallen Condition Of The Present Dispensation, Can Man Restore It?

I press this argument on those who are endeavouring to organise churches. If real churches exist, such persons are not called on to make them. If, as they say, they did exist at the beginning but have ceased to exist, in that case the dispensation is in ruins, and in a condition of entire departure from its original standing. They are undertaking in consequence thereof to set it up again. This attempt is what they have to justify; otherwise the attempt is without anything to warrant it. It will be objected that the church cannot fail, and that God has given to it a promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I acknowledge it, if we understand by that promise that the salvation of the elect is secure, that the glory of the church in the resurrection will triumph over Satan, and that God will secure the maintenance of the confession of Jesus in the earth till the church be taken away. That, however, is not the question. The salvation of the elect was equally secured before there was a gathered church. On the other hand, if it is intended to affirm that the present dispensation cannot fail, it is a great and pernicious error so to say: indeed, if such be the truth, why have you separated yourselves from the state in which it was? If the economy or dispensation of God in the gathering of the church on earth still subsists according to its original standing, how is it that you are making new churches? It is a point upon which Popery alone is consistent with itself. But what says the word? That apostasy is to set in before the judgment; that in the last days perilous times shall come; that there shall be a form of godliness without the power. It adds, "from such turn away." And the thought that the dispensation of the church cannot fall away is treated of in Romans 11:1-36 as a fatal presumption, which leads the Gentile Church to its ruin. The Holy Ghost passes condemnation on those who have that thought, as being wise in their own eyes, and teaches us, on the contrary, that God would act towards the present dispensation as He did towards the previous one; that if it continued in the goodness of God, this goodness would be continued to it, otherwise the dispensation would be cut off. Thus the word reveals the cutting off, and not the restoration of the dispensation, in case it should not continue faithful. And to go about re-making the church and the churches on the footing on which they stood at first, is to acknowledge the fact of existing failure without submitting ourselves to the witness of God, as to His purposes in reference to such a state of ruin. It is to act according to our own thoughts, and to rely on our own strength, for the accomplishment of our project-and what has been the result? The question before us is not whether such churches existed at a period when the word of God was written; but whether, after they have, by reason of man’s sin, ceased to exist, and believers have been scattered (and these are facts, the truth of which is admitted), those who have undertaken the apostolic office of re-establishing them on their original footing, and in so doing, to set up again the entire dispensation, have really apprehended the divine will, and are indued with power to accomplish the task they have taken upon themselves-questions which are widely distinct. I cannot think that any, even the most zealous of those persons, who, with a desire of which I willingly acknowledge the sincerity, have sought to again set up the fallen dispensation (and David was sincere in his desire to build the temple, although it was not God’s will that he should do so), are in a condition to be able to do it, or that they have the right to impose upon my faith, as God’s church, the little edifices that they have set up. And yet I am very far from thinking that there have not been churches in time past, when God sent His apostles to settle them; and in my opinion, he who is unable to discern the difference between the state in which the church was in those days and its present condition, has no very clear judgment in the things of God.