We stand related to the changeable and unchangeable but in different ways. We know by experience what the changeable is; every day is giving us a taste of that. We do not require to look very far back to see that we live in a world of perpetual change. Our own individual cases are the best illustration perhaps, but that is, when we can disengage our experience from the fevered stream of present preoccupation. We look back and see a baby, dimly conscious of existence, slowly developing with the growth of the months into the various stages of childhood. We began to discover that there was a world outside of ourselves. Our own sensations were necessarily the largest and most urgent things for the time being; but before long we discovered how small and weak we were, and by-and-bye, how small a thing our house was, which seemed so great, and by-and-bye still, how small a town the place in which we lived. As time went on, we became boys and girls, and went through the horrors of education, thinking that when we were done with school days we should get into bliss. By-and-bye, we were done with those days, and for a time it seemed it was bliss. Everybody does think the next stage is bliss, especially when they come to the matrimonial stage, which seems so sweet that people speak of it as “honey,” but they suggestively add the word “moon,” that is, 28 days. I won’t say the honey need be exhausted in that time; but life, as it goes on, wears a more sombre complexion than we dream of. The noonday is not so sweet as the morning, and the evening comes, when the shadows lengthen, and between one thing and another, in endless variety, we are brought to endorse Solomon’s declaration that-

“All is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

There are always some people ready to dispute this verdict, but they only require time enough to accept it at the last, perhaps with the admitted bitterness of hopelessness concerning a future, which can only be redeemed through connection with, and submission to, the work of God.

Change is our portion now, and it is well to face the fact squarely and thoroughly. It is possible to shut our eyes to it, like the drunken man on board the City of London, who gambolled on the deck of the steamer as she went down, but this is the act of folly. It is a folly of which the vast majority are guilty; they blind their senses to the perception of truth by various preoccupations. If there were no Bible and no future, they might be excused. But what should they do? Wear sackcloth and ashes? Be demure and ascetic and miserable? No; that is not the part of wisdom, any more than cracking jokes and have a rollicking time.

There is a middle course, in which there is both satisfaction and cheerfulness. Look the facts in the face, and act in harmony with them. There is something besides the changeable. We do not require to indulge in metaphysics to see this. Our very experience of the unchangeable is proof of the existence of the changeable. The changeable has been made, the unchangeable has not; and the changeable has been made by the unchangeable. Creation is the power of the Creator incorporate. So far as our experience as mortals is concerned, it does not appear to have been made to much purpose, but we must take the view wider than a mortal view. We must take the view the Bible gives us: in this we see God and a future towards which the earth is struggling; in which His wisdom in permitting even the imperfections of the present will be perfectly justified. God has spoken, and the Bible is the central proof of that fact. It is the fact that brings us together this morning; who would waste their time at such a meeting, if it were not that God has spoken? If there were even any doubt of the fact, it would be more wise to spend the present in pleasures within our reach, which the Bible forbids. But the matter is not in doubt; God has not only spoken, He has acted. The Psalms speak of His “wondrous works.” Some people think this means the mountains, the ocean, the sky, and such things. These are part of His works, but they are not the works the Bible refers to.

If we had no other works to go by than His works in nature, we should have very slender ground for hope, for these speak with very indefinite and doubtful voice on the question of the upshot of things; but there are other works, works wrought for this express and alleged purpose,

“That all the earth may know that I am God.”

With this avowed purpose He smote the power of Egypt by the hand of Moses, when He opened the Red Sea to let Israel through; He sustained a nation in the desert 40 years, where it could not have lived for a month; He gave them a law which is unapproached for wisdom, and has lasted unchanged for a hundred generations. For a thousand years He did many other marvellous things with the race of Israel under their judges and kings, and last of all He spoke with the voice, and worked with the power that have left its mark in all the earth to the present day.

There is no dimness in the case of Christ. His whole case from birth to ascension is before us with the brilliant and detailed clearness of noonday light. Born in Bethlehem, cradled in a manger, reared at Nazareth, subject to his parents for 30 years, and then manifest before Israel for three years and a half, as the great and unmistakeable power of God. His fame went through all the land. There is no doubt about this, brethren and sisters; we have the evidence before us at this moment. His fame is in all the earth at this day. Such public and universal fame must have had a beginning, and it must have been something very famous that created such a fame. The record of what it was has been in the hands of the world from the very day of its commencement. God has given us a testimony that comes straight from the very presence of His Son upon the earth 1800 years ago.

The gospels are the narratives of his companions and apostles, whose very style is the pledge of their truth, even if we did not know that the writers were righteous men, and sealed their testimony with death. When we ask what it was that created the fame, Peter gives us the cause in brief, in telling us in his speech to the Jews two months after the crucifixion,

In these signs and wonders narrated with such minuteness by the four evangelists, the unchangeable is brought very nigh to us. Who but God can heal crowds with a word? Who but God can walk on a tempestuous sea? Who but God can raise the dead? God has not only spoken, He has confirmed His word by action of the most unmistakeable kind. This was the point of Paul’s declaration to the Athenians, that God had not only appointed a day for Christ’s intervention in earth’s affairs, but had given assurance of His purpose unto all men, in that He had raised Christ from the dead.

His resurrection is not the only assurance that God gave, as you know; for after an intercourse of six weeks, he was withdrawn from his disciples in an open manner, and in ten days thereafter, he fulfilled the promise which he had left them. The Spirit came upon them in fullness of power, by which they were qualified to give effectual witness of the resurrection of Christ. He left his word in the hands of the apostles, to do the work necessary to be done in his absence. The work has been a successful work in the true sense, though men who do not understand, represent it as a failure. It has not been a great work numerically; it never was intended to save the world, but only to take out a class from the world suitable for the use required at Christ’s return. In the words of the parable, the wedding must be furnished with guests. These guests are procured here and there in various countries and in various generations. Their number, never great at one time, will be sufficient when they are all brought together. They are scarcely discernible at any time in the mass of the world’s life. Three thousand were gathered in on one day of Pentecost, and a stir was made at that time. Why did not the work continue on that scale? Because God’s purpose did not require it. Even those who were brought to Christ at that time did not all continue faithful, the majority turned aside; and ever since then the field has been monopolised by a false church, and then by Mohammedanism, and largely by pure heathenism; but this is no failure when the object is considered.

Success is to be considered with reference to the object aimed at. God succeeds in the work in getting the men who are to be His jewels, whatever amount of rubbish has to be acted upon in the procuring of them. His work in this sense has succeeded in the worst of times. It is succeeding now, and we are certainly living in one of the worst of times for the truth. It is a bad time for this work, because of scientific infidelity, ecclesiastical darkness, and superstitious extravagances of the Salvation Army type. It is, in fact, a wonder that the truth exists at all in our age. It would never have done so if God had not sent a man specially qualified for the work of bringing it to light at such a time. People are apt to say we build on Dr. Thomas; this is not true. He did not come with any new revelation or new interpretation, but only pointed sternly to the Scriptures. The device on his banner consisted of that passage in Isaiah with which we have all become so familiar,

He put the Bible in the foreground, and asked us to look at it. We looked at it, and we found in it nothing of what we understood as religion. We found in it the hope of Israel, and of His Son, by whom He was manifest. In a word, we found the truth and embraced it, and have not sold it to this day.

Dr. Thomas having done his work was laid aside, and we have had to stumble through the confusions of 25 years since his death, never dreaming at any time that there could be so long a tail to the work he began. He died at the end of the “time, times and a half” allotted for the papal persecuting power. He lived to see the French empire vanish like a meteor, as he always said it would. When he awakes, as he presently will, this will be his first memory, and it will seem to him as if the Lord came in upon him at that time. Practically, it will seem to him as if his interpretation of the times was correct; but we have lived beyond him, and have seen that the 1290 is an overlapping of the 1260. There could, of course, have been no reason in distinguishing the one from the other, except that the one was longer than the other; for these periods were given for guides at the ending and not at the beginning of them. The 1290 period is now nearly expired. We are not absolutely certain that it is the Lord’s coming that is due at the end of that period, because nothing is revealed as to the dispensational bearing of its close, beyond the fact that it marks an era in Israel’s history. The coming of the Lord will undoubtedly be such a marking point, and it will probably turn out that this is its meaning but there is an absence of ground for absolute certainty. But, however this may be, the lord’s return cannot be long after, because of the events appertaining to the 45 years following, as clearly revealed. Individually, none of us may have to wait any length of time at all; for we are always liable to be released as dr. Thomas was, and that means to us the instantaneous vanishing of the rest of the time, and our instantaneous introduction to the presence of Christ. The great solicitude relates to our reception by him. Shall we, when the Gospel net is pulled ashore, be among the fishes that are thrown aside as useless, or among those who are carried off in baskets for use at the King’s table? It does not follow because we have attained to a knowledge of the Gospel that we shall be included amongst the chosen.

Everything depends upon our conformity to his will as expressed in the word of the apostles. This conformity is an affair of educational assimilation: the Christ-word will produce the Christ-type, if we bring it to bear. This is why we have our meetings and our readings, and this is why it is so foolish to neglect these. There are, of course degrees of conformity. Jesus indicates this in the parable of the sower, some thirty-fold, some sixty, some an hundred; but all chosen because they have loved God and kept His commandments. These commandments preclude the behaviour common to men, who almost everywhere return evil for evil, and often before evil is inflicted. It is our part to be as he was; “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,” and sat before his shearers dumb. It is difficult and often painful for the time, but the end will pay for all. There is still an interval between us and the judgment-seat; let us make the most of it, that perchance God may be pleased to forgive us our sins, and accept of our feeble endeavours to do His will, and admit us to His glorious kingdom.

Taken from: - “More Seasons of Comfort”

Pages 633-638

By Bro. Robert Roberts

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