(December 2002 Edition)
Editorial - The Hardest Trial of Faith
At the Lord's Table - Feeling Sorry for Ourselves
Editorial
The Hardest Trial of Faith
The scriptures return to the theme again and again: the hardest trial of our faith, the hardest test of all, is not poverty or hardship or persecution, but prosperity.
Moses knew the terrible depth of the pitfall: “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and your silver and gold increase, and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:10-18).
The life and death tests of faith during the reigns of Saul and David yielded wonderful generous-hearted souls like Jonathan and Barzillai and Abigail. The prosperity that followed under Solomon was a test that the Israelis and their king failed dismally. During Solomon’s lifetime, Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree…So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. The LORD became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the LORD (I Kings 4:25; 11:6,9).
The Lord Jesus acknowledged that persecution can be a challenge of faith. But prosperity chokes the word of truth, so that faith is sterile, bearing no fruit (Mark 4:19).
Very recently, we received a sad letter from a prominent British Christadelphian who has been about sixty years in the faith. He laments “a growing lack of interest in the Christadelphian faith both from members and those outside.” This he claims, “is due to indifference, lack of interest in the scriptures, centralization of opinions, and lack of commitment by local membership.” Much of this is due to the “choking” effects of prosperity. The ‘good things of life’ are increasingly looked upon as a blessing from God, even a reward for good living. But Moses saw them as a possible snare: when we live in large, flourishing cities and houses filled with all kinds of good things, then be careful! Temptation to spiritual amnesia is right at our door! (Deut. 6:10-12). A lukewarm Laodicean ecclesia is an almost inevitable outcome (Rev. 3:14-22).
Homeless street dwellers lie like Lazarus at the entrance to the great Guy’s St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, where patients range from dukes to poor asylum seekers. Observably, almost the only donors to these unfortunates are Asians, Africans, West Indians, hospital orderlies and cleaners. The prosperous multitudes merely pass them by, or actually step over them. Luke 21 reminds us that generous sharing with others is often inversely proportional to prosperity (v. 3). The special ecclesial collection for the poor brothers and sisters in Judea was a dramatic example (II Cor. 8:1-7). Another, perhaps, is the situation in our own brotherhood today. There is a whole menu of interesting tours and holidays – all very educational – on offer to brothers and sisters. There has been little difficulty in collecting thousands of dollars to assist one of the most prosperous regimes in the world (Israel) in building a reservoir – a worthy cause, no doubt, aimed at hastening the coming of the Lord. But at the same time some efforts are short on funds to preach the gospel of salvation. And one of the poorest ecclesias in the world struggles to help a faithful widower elder without relatives who was, at a recent visit, lying completely naked, with no bedclothes, and with no food in the house.
Let us remember Ecclesiastes 6:1-2 and 7:12: I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men: God gives a man wealth, possessions, and honour, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them…Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.
Great wars to come
After their return to their own Land, way being made for them by the
weakening of the Turkish power, it is very likely there will be great wars,
and much blood shed, and the Jews will be much diminished and brought very
low, as we may read in Daniel 12:1. The prophet Zechariah tells us that
many of them shall be cut off and die and their holy city taken. A compound
of nations shall engage in a war, not with one another, but principally with
the Jews, and many nations shall be gathered together in battle against them
to destroy them. There shall be such a time of trouble as never was since
there was a nation to that same time. Then will the Lord go forth and fight
against those nations in the battle of the great day of God Almighty. God
will destroy all nations that come against Jerusalem. And Christ will
personally and visibly appear, and when his feet shall stand on the Mount of
Olives from whence he ascended, then he will come and all his saints with
him.
Then shall they [the Jews] be converted to Christianity, partly by vision, Christ personally appearing to them, whom they shall look upon and see with their bodily eyes and mourn, under a deep sense of their sin. Then it is likely that they will cry as those converted Jews in Acts 2:37, “What shall we do?”
Then will be the deliverance of his people out of the hands of all their adversaries, and the destruction of all the enemies of Christ and his kingdom. Then all the kingdoms of the world shall be his, and he shall reign, and his name shall be great from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.
Exhortation to us
Seeing these things, and many things more which might be named, must come to
pass, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and
godliness? Looking for, and hastening to, the coming of the day of God and
our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may be found of him in peace, having our
loins girt and our lights burning.
It is a great duty incumbent on all Christians at all times, not only to wait, but to watch. Hardly any duty is more pressed in scripture than this, Christ foreseeing that wise virgins as well as foolish would slumber and sleep, when he should come. The apostle, speaking of the day of the Lord coming as a thief, warns the Thessalonians to watch and be sober. Blessed is that servant whom, when his Lord comes, he shall find so doing!
William Torrey, Weymouth, Massachusetts, 1695.
[It is well known among us that in the 17th century many groups of Baptists, both in Europe and America, believed in the Hope of Israel and the fundamental biblical truths taught by Christadelphians. Many brethren and sisters have copies of one early Baptist statement of faith which was reprinted some years ago and distributed by a Christadelphian ecclesia. One such independent Bible believer was William Torrey of Weymouth, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Torrey studied at Harvard University, being admitted as a freshman in 1650, when the entire faculty consisted of the President and three junior instructors. He studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. It is likely that he was acquainted with works of the Polish Brethren in Christ, as we know that many of the earliest accessions to the world-famous Harvard Library included such works. For many years he preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, insisting that eternal life depended upon resurrection and judgement. He also lectured on prophecy and the signs of the times. The relevance of his views today is illustrated by one lecture he gave in 1695, when he was in his sixties, entitled “Man’s Extremity, God’s Opportunity.” The above selection from this address, in the original words with modernized punctuation, indicates that brethren have always studied prophecy seriously and prayerfully, but not necessarily assumed that the Second Coming was imminent in their own day. With conflict escalating in the Middle East, William Torrey’s lecture to his fellow Americans three hundred and six years ago is strikingly relevant.]