But further, as to the course of dispensations. In each of them, while each was still subsisting, there has been separation after separation. See this in Israel. Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, were, each of them, returned captives, a separated remnant who, with their companions left Babylon. But the day came, the day of the prophet Malachi, when “they that feared the Lord” had to separate from the returned captives, and “speak often one to another,” as though they had been another Remnant (Malachi 3).
So it is in Christendom. The Reformation, for instance, was a time of separation. But from the persistent, growing, and accredited corruption which still or again prevailed, further withdrawing or separation has again and again had to take place. The return from Babylon did not secure purity in Israel—the Reformation has not recovered it and kept it in Christendom. The emptied, swept, and garnished house has not done for the Lord Jesus. He has found no habitation for His glory there. The unclean spirit, the spirit of idolatry, may have gone out from Israel, for there were no idols or high places in the land after the return from Babylon; but Israel was not healed; for infidel insolence, the challenges of the proud and scornful, were heard there fearfully. And what else, I ask, if not this again, in the Reformation—times of Christendom? Read the prophet Malachi, and look around at the moral condition of things under the eye, and mark the wondrous analogies that there are in the stories of corruption and confusion in man’s world, whether here or there, whether now or then, whether in Israel or in Christendom, whether in our day, or 2000 years ago. Is it not so?
When we come into the book of the Apocalypse, after contemplating the different aspects of the dispensation in the two epistles to Timothy, we find as I have anticipated already, the Lord challenging and judging, challenging the candlesticks and judging the world—in other words, judging the candlesticks by setting them aside, judging the world by the avenging destructions of His own day.
In the first three chapters, we get the first of these actions. The churches, as candlesticks, or as in their responsible place and character, are summoned to give an account of themselves. The Son of Man walks among them in judicial glory. They had been previously fed and disciplined by the Spirit in Paul, as churches of saints, elect bodies, samples of the Bride of the Lamb; but here they are, as candlesticks, such as were responsible to shine as lights in the world, being set of God for that end, challenged and arraigned—according to which, the Son of Man begins his address to each of them with these words, “I know thy works.” And as we have already seen, that no steward has ever had an answer for God, when challenged to give an account of his stewardship, this challenge of the candlesticks must be assumed to have ended in conviction and dismissal.