But this, rather by the way, I will now come again nearer to ourselves and to my subject.
In the New Testament, we have the present dispensation presented to us in three successive conditions. First—The Churches, as such, are seen under the pastoral care of the Spirit in Paul—as is witnessed by his epistles to them. Secondly—They are challenged as candlesticks, or as churches under responsibility; and they are called to give an account of themselves, by the Son of Man who appears before them in bright, burning, judicial glory—as we see in Revelation 1-3. Thirdly—They are, as it were, lost in Christendom, no longer nourished and disciplined as churches, or challenged as candlesticks, but meeting, as Christendom (the corrupted worldly thing in the earth which calls itself by the name of Christ), the judgment of the Lord—as we see in Revelation 4-19.
These are three eras in the story or progress of the dispensation, three phases which it bears successively. I ask—Do not many things connected with Christian place and service and duty change with these changing aspects of our age, as they did in like changing eras in the story of Israel? From the simplest analogy, yea, from moral necessity, I might answer, surely. But a meditation on the two epistles to Timothy will determine this for us, and give us to know, that this is the divine good—pleasure concerning us.
The first of these two epistles contemplates the churches in the first of the conditions I have noticed above; that is as under the pastoral care of the Spirit through the Apostle. The second of them contemplates, I believe, the saints in the interval between the second and third, of these conditions; that is between the challenge of the candlesticks and the judgment of Christendom—this assuming that the challenge has ended in conviction and dismissal or removal.
It may, however, be asked, Is such an assumption warranted? Yes, I say, fully—because the challenge of His steward by the Lord, in each and every dispensation, at all times, and under all circumstances, has ever so ended; that is, in conviction and dismissal. Man in a responsible relation to God has never had an answer for his Lord. None, entrusted of Him with any deposit, has ever been found faithful, but He of whom it is written, “all the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him amen.” “Give an account of thy stewardship,” has always ended in the stewardship being taken away (Luke 16). If “God stand in the congregation of the mighty,” if “He judge among the gods,” the conviction will surely be pronounced, “they know not, neither will they understand, they walk on in darkness, all the foundations of the earth are out of course;” and the sentence will be delivered, “ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes” (Psalm 82).
So that the challenge of the candlesticks in Revelation 1-3 must be assumed to have ended in conviction and dismissal. And to establish this as a fact, I may refer to John himself in those chapters. He is a kind of representative of the churches or candlesticks, and he is set before the Lord Jesus, the Son of Man, as one that was walking among them as a Judge, shining before John in bright, burning, judicial glory. Had He appeared to John as Judge of the world, John would have stood; for he had already learned and taught that “we have boldness in the day of judgment.” But He was standing among the candlesticks, and before John as representing them; and this was overwhelming. As one dead, he falls at the feet of such a Judge, such a glory. He came short of it—he had no answer for it—the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, would do for him as a sinner, but not as a steward—he is overwhelmed and falls at his feet as one dead. Just like Isaiah in like conditions; for when the throne of Jehovah set itself before him in judicial glory for the challenge of Israel, the Prophet cries out: “Woe is me, for I am undone!”
All join in telling us what the end of this challenge must be. The steward is called to give an account of his stewardship, and it comes to pass again, as it had ever done before, that he is no longer steward. The stewardship is taken away—the dispensation is in ruins—and upon this, the long and dreary age of Christendom, of a corrupt and ruined dispensation, begins to take its course, and it is still doing in this our day, and, as it will do, in growing corruption of every form, and multiplied confusion in every place, till it end in the judgment of Christendom as the specially guilty thing on the earth, under the eye of God.
Now, the second Epistle to Timothy anticipates, as I believe; and as I have already said, this interval—the era between the challenge of the candlesticks and their consequent removal, and the judgment of Christendom. From the Epistle of James to that of Jude (and this includes all which are not Paul’s), the churches have receded from the eye of the Spirit; inasmuch as it is not churches, but saints personally or individually considered, that he is then and there addressing. It was otherwise in Paul’s epistles. And this further prepares us for the challenge of the characters in Revelation 13, and their consequent disappearing.
And let me here turn aside for a moment just to say, that we ought to acquaint ourselves with the mysteries of this dispensation, as the Lord Jesus told His disciples in His day, that they ought to know “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Mat. 13:11). We ought to know the course, and the changes, and the successive phases through which it was to pass, for otherwise we cannot be duly instructed scribes to bring out of our treasures the old things and the new things of God, according to “His manifold wisdom.”
To return, however, to the two epistles to Timothy, of which I was speaking, and to give them a little closer inspection, we may observe, that the first of them contemplates a disciplined house, outside of which the unclean were to be put; the second contemplates a repudiated house, outside of which (in a sense) the saints were to retire. (This is kindred, I may say, with the different state of things in Israel, as in the days of the Judges and at the Captivity. It was discipline of Israel under the Judges—it was repudiation of Israel when Babylon made them captive.)
We know not what time intervened between the writing of these two epistles. It is likely that it was some considerable time; for Paul was at large, abroad in active ministry, when he wrote the first of them, but he was a prisoner at Rome, having already appeared before Caesar to answer for himself when he wrote the second. And Timothy was at Ephesus, left there for the care and ordering of the house of God, when the first of these was addressed and sent to him; but we cannot say, with any certainty, where he was when he received the second.
But then, when we further look at the two, and compare them still for a little longer, we find in the first of them that the house, under the care of Timothy, is called “the house of God, the church of the living God,” and it is dignified, or had in honor, as “the pillar and ground of the truth”—while, in the second of them, the house contemplated (though not under the care of Timothy, not provided for by the Holy Spirit) is called “the great house,” and, in its uncleanness and corruption it is presented to us as having been formed by a lie, namely this, “that the resurrection is passed already.”
These are strong contrasts.
Then again, in the time of the first of them, Paul is an authoritative Apostle; in the second, he is a deserted prisoner, in bonds to the Romans, and neglected by the saints; one who has to weep over the failure within, as well as to suffer the persecution from without.
And again—and this is an affecting fact—in the second epistle, Paul talks of personal, family associations, dwelling in the remembrance of them with evident relief and comfort of heart, as in 2 Timothy 1:1-51Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus, 2To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; 4Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; 5When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:1‑5). But this, in a way full of interest and tenderness, lets us know that church associations were now disappointing him. For it was not after this manner he wrote in his earlier epistles to the churches. He had then his kindred in Christ to remember, and was not, put back to his associations and recollections in nature.
And further still, in the progress of this same epistle, he speaks of Jannes and Jambres, likening the day which that epistle contemplates to the day of those adversaries. For Satan was then, in Christendom, purposing to neutralize the truth, by putting it into strange company or with evil admixtures, as he was doing with those magicians in the day of Moses, and thus blinding the conscience whether of the King of Egypt, or of the world.
What a premonition of that which has come to pass! What is Christendom but the scene of such admixtures as have neutralized the power of the truth! These and kindred marks show us, that the dispensation was contemplated as under different conditions, as the Apostle was writing these two epistles. In the first of them the light in the candlestick is fed and trimmed—in the second, the Candlestick has been removed.
But is this to be a surprise to us? Are we to think that the steward of God in this age would have proved faithful, since every other steward of His, from the beginning hitherto, as we have already seen, had been judged and set aside? The Church was to have been under her Lord, and in the Spirit, the light of the world, the pillar and ground of the truth. But she has become worse than darkness—a false beacon on the hill that has betrayed the traveler. But Adam, the steward of Eden, at the beginning, then Noah, lord of the world that now is, and then Israel, the husbandman of the vineyard in Judea, had already been found wanting. The King had failed ere this, the Priest, the Prophet—and now the Candlestick. It is a tale told again and again, the unfaithfulness of man as responsible to God, the Steward called to give in his account, and that ending in the stewardship being taken away from him. The house of prayer, so to speak, has always become a den of thieves.