It is said in Mark 16, "these signs shall follow them that believe." When are we told they will be discontinued; and why should we not expect them now to follow them that believe?

ANSWER.

The above declaration was made to the Apostles. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth (the gospel) and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not (the gospel) shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe (the gospel). In my name shall they cast out demons, &c. And they (the apostles) went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord co-working and confirming the word through the signs following."

The reader will observe that the signs were to be worked by the Lord through those who believed the gospel preached by the apostles. Hence, as long as the apostles preached, signs would follow; for the Lord Jesus, though unseen, was influentially present with them to the end of their career, as he had promised, saying, "Behold I am with you all the days until the end of the age." Aided by his cooperation, they fulfilled their mission to every creature, as he had commanded. Paul testifies this in writing to the Colossians, about thirty years after the ascension. "The hope of the gospel, which ye have heard," says he, "has been preached to every creature which is under the heaven." The command to preach, recorded in Mark, was therefore obeyed and perfected by the apostles; Jesus co-worked with them as he had promised, and the manifestations through the believers ensued as he had declared. He did not promise to confirm the preaching of any who might claim to be their "successors," nor to confirm by signs any other sort of preaching than the apostles.

The reader will also please to observe what "gospel" the Lord Jesus commanded them to preach for salvation, and which alone he undertook to confirm. Matthew tells us that he began to preach "the gospel of the kingdom" in Galilee, and as a sower to sow it as good seed in the hearts of the people. In performing this work, he predicted the dissolution of the Commonwealth of Judah, as constituted by the Mosaic law, and that the event might not take them unawares he gave his disciples signs by which they might discern its approach. Among these was one couched in the following terms: "And THIS Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable for a testimony to all the nations; and afterwards shall come the end."—Matthew 24: 14. These words were uttered before the crucifixion of Jesus. The pronoun "this," consequently, is demonstrative of the particular gospel he was himself anointed to preach. Hence the conclusion is inevitable, that when he commanded the apostles to go and preach the gospel to every creature, he enjoined upon them to go, and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to all the nations of the Roman habitable, for a testimony to them of what Jehovah purposed to accomplish by "His Servant" within the bounds of their habitation. Hence the heaven-attested proclamation is, "HE THAT BELIEVES THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, AND IS BAPTISED SHALL BE SAVED; and he that believes it not shall be condemned."

The signs were to follow those who believed the Gospel; and if the promise had extended beyond the Mosaic age, and personal ministry of the apostles, the signs would only be wrought through them who believe the gospel of the kingdom. This is the only faith the Lord ever promised to confirm; and as he confirmed it sufficiently for his purposes through the apostles and their converts, he ceased to work when the former had fulfilled their mission.

But the world has outgrown the confirmation, and a system of nations exists on the Roman habitable to which the gospel of the kingdom has never been preached for a testimony. The modern world is a stranger to it; and the "gospel" it sanctions, a miserable fiction of the carnal mind, deduced from Gentile philosophy and Jewish deceit. The gospel of the kingdom, confirmed by miracles, was a testimony to the ancient world then verging towards its fall. That world has long since ceased to exist. It was a world of pagan nations, which began to pass away when the gospel of the kingdom began to prevail in its habitable; and finally vanished with the fall of the Roman empire. During its decline the gospel of the kingdom was preached to it, and confirmed by signs; and in nine months of years from the day of Pentecost it had so leavened society as to effect a change in the political constitution of the empire. In a hundred years after this, the sacrificial worship of the gods was abandoned, and their temples deserted. This result, however, does not imply the conversion of the empire to Christ. The worship of the gods was exchanged for an idolatrous worship of the ghosts of the Virgin Mary, and a cloud of imaginary saints and martyrs: so that the exchange, when consummated, was quickly followed by the judgments of God, which resulted in the fall of Rome, and the foundation of the Modern World, which, like its predecessor, is declining to its fall.

During seventy of the hundred years above indicated, a successful effort was made to strengthen and increase the genuine confessors of the truth, that they might be its pillar and support in the heart of a wide-spread apostasy, and in the tribulation coming upon the empire. These became the foundation of that testimony which has been continued to this day, with an interruption of about a century, and which, like the flickering of an expiring taper, is still glimmering in the lamps of those who profess to believe the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.

But God is long-suffering and abundant in mercy. His purpose is to abolish the modern as He did the ancient world. He announced His purpose to this by the apostles; and He has revealed that it is His intention also to proclaim to this our world His determination to supersede it by judgments, and to establish a new and better condition of things upon the earth. He will do this by apostles, whose mission He will make credible by unexceptionable attestations. They will blow "the great trumpet" among the Gentiles, and declare the Lord’s fame and glory to the nations that have neither heard nor seen them. Like the Apostles to the ancient Roman nations, these that are to go and preach the gospel of the kingdom to the nations of the modern Romans will be Jews of that third part which shall escape, to whom a new heart will have been given, and a new spirit infused. The period of their mission is styled "the Hour of God’s Judgment," then, as a dry heat impending lightning, as a cloud of dew in heat of harvest—ready to explode and to convulse the heavens and the earth.

But Rome and her kindred nations will be deaf. The signs confirming the proclamation will but harden the hearts of the wicked, whose will has long been their law. Like Pharaoh, being vessels fitted for capture and destruction, their impiety and presumption will be their ruin; and in their fall the world will be gloriously redeemed from all the lying miracles and signs, and all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, and all the oppression and cruelty which characterise the superstitions and polities of the nineteenth century—an age in which "darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people."