ROMANS 11 teaches that the Gentile dispensation was liable to failure, as the Jewish had failed before it. But the doctrine of Scripture goes much farther and declares that there would be a rubs or apostasy; nay, that the object to be at last judged was already in existence. But, before citing the direct and abundant testimony of the Word of God, it is to be premised that we must distinguish between the people of God in a dispensation, and the dispensation itself. There were many saints among the Jews, but the dispensation has been cut off. In every dispensation, man has failed, and the dispensation has been set aside, which will happen also to the present dispensation. God has never said that He will confirm to the end the Gentile dispensation. Nay, are going to see the reverse. God’s faithfulness to the Church consists in preserving the faithful, not the dispensation of the Church. The existence of the dispensation depends on the faithfulness of man; the existence of the faithful depends on the faithfulness of God. The evil which has happened in our economy will increase by man’s infidelity until this economy is cut off.
The greatest part of the difficulty, as to this subject, ordinarily felt by believers, is, that they confound the intentions of God as to the dispensation, with His counsels concerning the believers who are found in it. These counsels cannot fail to have their effect, but the dispensation may pass and terminate, (though having been to the glory of God, inasmuch as it has displayed His ways,) because the unfaithfulness of men rendered it unsuitable to be the means of manifesting His glory any longer. Then God, who knows beforehand what He will do, replaces it by another dispensation, in which man is set under another set of trials, and thus all the ways of God are manifested, and His manifold wisdom, in every manner, has its true display, even to the heavenly places.
Thus we see how distinct is the responsibility of man in any given economy, from the salvation of souls in that same economy. To confound these two things is to lose sight either of the grace of God on the one hand, or the responsibility of man on the other. Adam and Eve, formed in innocence, were tried in Eden; and they transgressed, but this hindered not the resource of divine goodness in the woman’s Seed. Noah, again, was entrusted by God with the sword of government. The entire fall of this holy trust is quite another thing from his individual salvation, which, as to him and every saved soul, rested not upon his faithfulness to God, but upon God’s faithfulness to him. So, on a larger scale, although the conduct of believers in Israel was necessarily modified and regulated by the Levitical Law, yet their personal deliverance, so far from depending upon the law, flowed from a totally opposite principle,—from the grace of God which bringeth salvation. The dispensation, as a whole, is judged, condemned, and displaced, because of its unfaithfulness to the trust which God committed to the charge of man; but the security of individuals, all through, is made good by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation, through that blood, existed before this economy, even as there will be saints in the time of Anti-Christ, but this hinders not the existence of the apostasy, for the Word of God affirms that the presence of Anti-Christ will be the sign that it is already arrived. (2 Thess. 2.)
Be it so, that this great apostasy is not yet consummated. Nevertheless, we are taught that the mystery of iniquity, which was already working from the apostolic time, was to continue, and that, on the removal of a hindrance, the wicked one was to be revealed whom the Lord should destroy by the epiphany of His presence, and that, before this, the apostasy should come. And what means all this if it be not the revelation of the ruin of the dispensation,—the revelation of an apostasy whose principles were already at work from time days of the apostle, and which only awaited the removal of the hindrance to be manifested in the grand, crowning agent of this wickedness, viz. the wicked one?
We see in the Word of God two great mysteries, which are developed during the present economy: the mystery of Christ, and the mystery of iniquity.
The counsels which are found engaged in the first have their accomplishment in heaven. The union of Christ’s body with Him in glory is evidently to have its accomplishment on high. But, by the power of the Holy Ghost, there should have been on earth, during this economy, a manifestation of the union of the body of Christ. Here, however, the responsibility of man enters into this manifestation here below, though at the end all be to the glory of God. Wherefore, the dispensation may be in ruin, though the counsels of God never fail: on the contrary, our he shall turn to His glory, while he judges us justly.
In this sphere of human responsibility, Satan may introduce himself from the moment that man rests not absolutely upon God. We know it by the experience of every day.
It is, then, revealed that the mystery of iniquity shall have its course. Here the question is not of counsels, but of an evil done in time. It is a question here of the mystery of iniquity: the apostasy, or revolt, is no mystery. There is no need of a revelation to tell us that a man who denies Jesus Christ is no Christian: he says so. But here there is an evil put in train within the bosom of Christendom in relation with Christianity, of which the wicked one is to be the full manifestation, as the glory of Christ and the Church will be the full accomplishment of the mystery of Jesus Christ. The word “ iniquity “ and the word “wicked one” are the same in the original, save that one indicates the thing; the other, the person; it is pre-eminently. “ the lawlessness “ and the “lawless one.” This mystery of iniquity, then, was put in train from the time of the apostle: later on, the veil would be taken away, the apostasy would be there, and, lastly, the wicked one find his end by the manifestation of Christ’s coming. There was a principle of lawlessness actually at work, though in mystery, which was to continue and, grow up, and, when the letter was removed, was to issue in the complete revelation of the man of sin, whose presence is after the energy of Satan with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, God Himself sending the lost an energy of error that they should believe a lie. That is, we have here described, not a more secular power under which the world groaned, but a religious, though blasphemous, evil, intimately connected with, and resulting from, corrupted Christianity, as one of its chief sources. Thus is the economy to close. Such is the revelation of this passage. Also, as is to be seen elsewhere, this is to be in order to introduce the glory and reign of Christ, that all the earth may be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
The Lord tells us that “as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man; “ and “ likewise also as it was in the days of Lot,” &c. Yet there were saints there whom God preserved; but for all that, the world of their days was in 1 ruin-state. Even thus shall it be when the Son of man is revealed. The predicted state of the present economy at its close is to be analogous to the awful state of things which was then judged of the Lord—a state of apostasy. Compare 1 Tim. 4:1-71Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; 3Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. 4For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 5For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 6If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained. 7But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. (1 Timothy 4:1‑7). 2 Tim. 3:1-51This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (2 Timothy 3:1‑5). In the one, a departure or apostasy from the faith chiefly in practical points; in the other, the return of Christendom to an awful condition, resembling heathenism in its moral evils, maintaining withal the form of godliness while its power is denied. In Rom. 1, the Holy Ghost had spoken of the reprobate state of the Gentiles: these terrible characteristics were already true of the heathen. But in 2 Tim., we find that the same thing would be true, in the last days, of those who were professing Christians. They were to lapse into the worst moral evils of heathenism. The outwardly grossest are to be replaced by others of a subtler and worse character, from the rejection of a fuller light from God. From such the faithful were to turn away. Evil men and seducers are to wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Is not that a state of ruin, when the description of Christendom is that men shall be such as the Gentiles, whom God gave up to a mind devoid of all judgment? (Compare Rom. 1. 2. and 2 Tim. 3. in the Greek.) It is the general character of these perilous times, which demanded extraordinary warnings.
So in 1 John 2:18, 1918Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. 19They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (1 John 2:18‑19). “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” The coming of the antichrist was a subject of warning even to the babes in Christ. “Even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time.” Finally, the apostle directs the attention of the babes to the coming of the Savior. The presence of antichrist is a sign of the ruin, not of the faithful, but of the economy as a whole, and of its speedy cutting off. The passage confirms the testimony, that the evil which was to be the occasion of excision was introduced from the beginning, and was to continue till God struck the blow of judgment, which should destroy the wicked one. This evil is here marked, not as infidelity, but as apostasy from Christianity. “They went out from us.” It had set in even at that time. Antichristian evil was found to have its worst spring from the profession of Christ. The Word of God teaches us that the evil, which is the object of the judgment of the Lord Jesus at His return, had crept within the Church, even in apostolic days; that it should continue, and, in spite of God’s patience and goodness, draw down judgment, See the entire epistle of Jude. Certain men had crept in unawares, foreordained to this condemnation. Although, at that moment, these persons might not have been yet so manifested, the apostle gives them, by the prophetic Spirit, these three characters: the natural hatred of the heart alienated from God, such as Cain’s; the teaching of error for reward, like Balaam; and open rebellion against the priesthood and royalty of Christ, like that of Core. In this last state they perish. He says that these were they of whom Enoch prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh, &c. What was there already in the Church, was the direct mark for the judgment of Christ when He comes, and so predicted from the first. Enoch prophesied of these. The presence of saints does not hinder that. The evil which is to terminate by open revolt and to be judged at Christ’s advent, was found in the Church. What impression does this epistle produce, if it be not a warning to a faithful remnant against a terrible evil which was to bring on judgment—an evil found within the bosom of the Church, of which the state of Sodom and Gomorrah and the fallen angels presented the frightful, but just, picture? Was it not a state of fall and ruin, which might be only in the bud, it is true, at that time, but whose traits and doom were not hidden from the Spirit of prophecy in the apostle? If there is obscurity in all that, there is at least in this obscurity a terrible shade, which God has put there, and which should induce us not to glide so easily by; above all, when the subject in question is one so grave as the destiny of the Church. And here I have an important remark to make. This epistle of Jude, which treats especially of the ruin, like that of John, which puts believers on their guard against antichrist, is not addressed to a Church, but to the faithful in general, as having a common interest, a common destiny. As much may be said of 2 Peter, which also speaks of it, though having a character more in connection with Christians from among the Jews.