02.44. In The Day Of Ruin

In The Day Of Ruin In our previous chapters we have sought primarily to consider the Church as it was set up by God in the beginning and to learn from Scripture its nature and order and how it should function according to God’s mind. We have looked at the Church in its universal character and in its local aspect and have seen what should characterize a Scripturally gathered Assembly of believers locally and in collective relationship with Assemblies elsewhere. We have noted here and there how greatly Christendom has departed from the primitive pattern of the Church as originally instituted by God, and have frequently noticed that the profesesing Church on earth (embracing all that outwardly owns the name of Christ) is in a state of general ruin, decay, and disorder. We shall now consider the Church in the day of ruin and the path of God for the believer amidst this ruin. This condition of the Church’s ruin and departure from God’s Word was foretold in the New Testament and had already set in in the days of the apostles. This state of ruin is irreparable and will grow worse until finally the Lord will take the true believers, His bride, to heaven and spue the false Church out of His mouth and execute judgment upon it (see Matthew 25:10-12; Revelation 3:16; Revelation 18:1-10; Revelation 19:11-21).

There is no hope given in Scripture for the return of the Church on earth to its Pentecostal, virgin state of purity, unity, and spiritual power. It will, on the contrary, end in the greatest apostacy and idolatry of Babylon the Great and of the antichrist (Revelation 17:1-18 and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12). That which becomes the earnest Christian in the day of ruin, then, is not to seek to restore the Church to its Pentecostal state, but to own with sorrow and humiliation before God this true condition of ruin and the low estate of the Church (of which we all form a part) and to contend earnestly for the faith in holiness and love.