THE WITNESSING OF GOD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 29, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 29.

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THE WITNESSING OF GOD

By Editor

THE BASIS OF OUR CONFIDENCE

By the Editor

XI. The Witnessing of God in the Early Church

The church—the authoritatively called-out ones, the body of Christ—is one of God’s living witnesses to the world. She is His chosen instrument to bear to the world His gospel message for the salvation of men. When faithful to her trust, she is powerful and mighty in her work of soul winning; when false to her trust, while she loses power as a soul winner, still in the great wisdom of God she is even then one of the two-fold witnesses that is irrefutable. We find both phases of experience and witnessing in the Christian era, but with the first only, in the early church, we will deal in this article.

1. The First Witness

As in the witness of Jesus Christ, the primal witness is the Word, the immutable, infallible word of God, uttered through various human voices from Moses to Malachi.

That inspired word is the guide and teacher of God’s people. In the patriarchal age God dealt directly with His own children, as with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; or through messenger and prophet, as with Noah and Enoch. Often the patriarch of the family is the prophet, and sometimes the prophet of the tribe. We may well believe that the human conscience and soul were more responsive in those early days, before sin had hardened the human fiber against the voice of God. When the human race had become so degenerate that it was no longer thus responsive, God gave them His written word.

Among His first revelations of this character was the written law of moral conduct. It was a revelation of God’s government and God’s character against sin, and of His love to the sinner. That law as recorded in Exodus, the twentieth chapter, verses 1-17, became the very center around which all other services and worship revolved. Its high preeminence is shown in the fact that God spoke it with His own voice from heaven, wrote it, or engraved it with His own finger on tables of enduring stone. Then it was placed in the holy ark that was especially prepared for it, over which was the mercy-seat and the Shekinah, or living presence of God’s glory. See Ex. 32:16; Deut. 5:22, and other scriptures.

All the display attending the giving of this law was designed to impress His people in all generations with its majesty and holiness. The fact that it was engraved on stone showed its immutable character. This, too, is expressly declared in the written word: “The works of His hands are verity and judgment; all His commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness.” Ps. 111:7, 8. By the prophet Isaiah, chapter 51:6-8, is drawn a contrast between the things of earth which are perishing, and the things of God which are everlasting. He directs man to lift up his eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth,—the things that to man seem the most stable of all things,—and yet the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and all that dwell therein shall die; but God’s salvation shall be forever, and His righteousness shall not be abolished. And then that we may know what that righteousness is, we read, “Harken unto Me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law.”

This law therefore became a test of all teaching and all doctrine, of all conscience. Would other prophets arise? Would other teachers set forth new doctrines? Would there be supernatural manifestations by which the people of God were likely to be led astray? God gives us the means by which these shall be known: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isa. 8:20.

It may be thought sometimes that God has given us many commandments, and how shall we discriminate between them? But He has already given us clear evidence by which we may discriminate in the manner of the giving of the law, to which “He added no more.” Deut. 5:22. All other moral teaching of the Old Testament apart from the Decalogue is but the drawing out of the principles of the Decalogue. And so God says to His rebellious children, “I wrote for him the ten thousand things of My law; but they are counted as a strange thing.” Hosea 8:12. God gave His law in the form He did because He loved His people. They looked upon its giving as terrifying. This is clearly shown us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. Moses saw in the giving of the law the wonderful love of God, and so records it in a later song: “And he said, Jehovah came from Sinai, and rose from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran, and He came from the ten thousands of holy ones: at His right hand was a fiery law for them. Yea, He loveth the people.” Deut. 33:2, 3.

Moses had had experience that to the man of faith who would by faith look into the face of God and receive His law, God in His love and grace would shine that law into the heart and into the character. So He did with Moses, and therefore when the people asked, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die,” Moses said, “Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.” Ex. 20:19, 20. Moses saw the gospel in the

revelation of the law, and the power of God wrote it in his heart. The people saw the law, did not want God to speak further, and rested in condemnation. To them the glory was the glory of condemnation, but to Moses it was the greater glory of justification. Such God would have His witnessing church to know.

His people who were called out of Egypt, in the great majority, did not see this. Moses and Joshua and Caleb, Eleazar, and others did, and then for fifteen centuries God witnessed to His people, developing among and in them through prophet and teacher “the great things” of His law—the “ten thousand” things.

Light and Appeal

That witnessing word of God is a light, and designed so to be to the path of each one of His children. Therefore the writer of the 119th Psalm, almost every verse of which refers to the law of God, says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The wise man speaks in kindred terms, “For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.” Prov. 6:23. While the prophet Micah, four centuries later, thus sums up man’s duty: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

The Witnessing Church

When we find the second witness, whether in individual or church, it will be witnessing in harmony with this wonderful word. Jesus was the light of the world. He Himself declares, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” But He is careful to qualify this at a later time by saying, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” His word is the light of the world. “The commandment is a lamp; and the law is light.” “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” What made Jesus the light was because He was the incarnate Word itself. John 1:1. Therefore as long as He was in the world He was that word personified, shining forth in living character. But He could not always remain in the world; He must leave it. It was expedient that He should go away.

But has He left the world without living, personal witness of the power of His word?—Nay, not at all. In the wonderful Sermon on the Mount He declares to His disciples, “Ye are the light of the world;” and they themselves become the light of the world by permitting the light of God to shine through them,—“that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life.” Phil. 2:15, 16.

By that word were the individuals of that early church cleansed: “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,” said Jesus to His disciples. John 15:3. By that word are they sanctified, separated from the world, and set apart unto God. So Jesus prays, “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.” John 17:17.

An apostle testifies: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever.” 1 Peter 1:22-25. The last part of this is a direct quotation from Isaiah 40.

The word of that gospel is the power of God to save, and therefore Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” Rom. 1:16. It mattered not whether the one who believed it was incased in the hard shell of human tradition, or struck through and through with the rites and wretched sins of heathenism. The word of God is able to save to the uttermost. The sin might be as scarlet; it should be made white as snow. It might be as crimson; the gospel could make it wool.

Thus was demonstrated the power of that word in the early church. In Pentecost we have the record of the first sermon that was preached by the apostle Peter. It goes without question that we do not have the whole of the sermon, simply a synopsis of it. It is not noted for its eloquence; it is marked by its directness. He did not dwell upon abstract speculations or Greek philosophy; he told them the simple truth of the One who died and was risen, and of their own part in it. When they listened they were pricked to their heart, and cried out to Peter and the apostles, “What shall we do?” And the reply was equally simple: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” and they yielded, thousands of them. Acts 2:41.

It was not upon that day alone, however, that all that work was done. We find at the close of Peter’s sermon somewhat of the fruit of our Lord’s labors for three and a half years. This people had heard of Jesus; they had known more or less of His teaching; they had pondered it, doubtless, in their hearts, and when the Spirit in mighty power brought it home to them, there came the harvest of the three thousand souls.

The same power of the word is manifest in the record of the next chapter, in the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful gate of the temple. The poor cripple came as he had repeatedly come, having given up all hope of healing, and asked simply for alms. He meets two common, ordinary-looking men who are coming into the temple, and he asks alms of them, and one of them turned and said, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” And this simple miracle, just like the miracles that Jesus had Himself wrought, again stirred the people, and again fruit was brought forth for the Son of God.

The apostles’ work was gaining among the people. More and more the people were turning toward them. In a way it was becoming somewhat popular. Devoted men were giving their all to it, like Barnabas. God did not demand it, but they gave it freely. They were held in honor among the people. Ananias and Sapphira his wife thought that they could gain all this honor and credit and fellowship and support from the common fund by giving a part of theirs and keeping back the other in case there was a failure in the early church. But this was checked by the power of the Spirit of God. The presence of God which destroys sin, slew those who had identified themselves with sin, and kept the early church pure. Those who were like-minded did not dare join themselves to the apostles. Those who were seeking God did yield themselves, and five thousand more were added to the church of God in Jerusalem. Deacons were set apart. The power of God rested upon the deacons. Therefore we read, “And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly.” Wherever a soul accepted God’s word he was a witness of that word in his own life; and so the word of God multiplied in the multiplication of believers.

But the church of God could not stay in Jerusalem. They were getting too many of the witnesses there, when the great world needed witnesses elsewhere; so the Lord suffered persecution to come upon that little company, and they were scattered everywhere, but wherever they were scattered they carried the word. Philip is sent down to a certain point in the desert where nobody lived, where nobody was ever expected to live; but at the same time God by another route sends to that specific place the Ethiopian eunuch. To him the gospel is preached from the book of Isaiah from which we before quoted, and the eunuch becomes a changed man, baptized into the faith. He himself carries the gospel to his own people.

In the ninth chapter we have the record of the miracle of the same word raising Dorcas from the dead. In the chapter following, the gospel is first preached to the Gentiles—the center of which is the Roman centurion—bringing astonishment to Peter, the very one who preached it, to think that God could do such a thing as save a Gentile. His word, however, is potent to heal all. The story of “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” did its effective work there, until Peter could say, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized?”

In the twelfth chapter we have a record of how a king rises up against that word, how he put one of the apostles to death and imprisoned another. By that very means he separates himself from God, is smitten in judgment, and dies. But we read in the twenty-fourth verse, “The word of God grew and multiplied.” It does not mean that there were more words of God, so far as the written word was concerned. It means that that written word had multiplied itself into more and more souls, and they themselves were bearing the word on to others.

In the nineteenth chapter we have a record of the wonderful work the word did in the exceedingly wicked city of Ephesus, that was given up to the licentious idolatry of Diana or Artemis. But there, though meeting with fearful opposition, it takes hold upon hearts until men who had the books of curious arts of idolatry brought them and burned them before all men, the price of which was 50,000 pieces of silver. “So

mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.” And these are but incidents of the work which was wrought at that time in the great heathen world. Thousands were longing, in the darkness of that heathen world, in the dead, dry husks of heathen philosophy, for something which would give life; and when that word came, the word of that wonderful gospel showing God’s regard for man, for the individual man,—His power and His willingness, His longing to cleanse the heart from sin and give liberty to the soul that believed,—there were thousands that responded, from the poorest among the people to those who were next to kings upon the throne.

There is a reference to where the word went down to heathen Thessalonica and moved them to turn from their dumb idols to serve the living God. We quote it because it shows the power of that word. The apostle declares: “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” No wonder that it made them witnesses of a new power in that part of the heathen world. The apostle could indeed say that he could remember without ceasing their work of faith, labor of love, patience of hope. It was the same in Philippi, another heathen city. God called out of that city those who would glorify His name, those who could be “blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life.”

Thus those who received the word became apostles of Christ, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone but in tables that are hearts of flesh. They were His epistle known and read of all men. There might be thousands who would not read and could not read the word written, and which had been written for centuries; but the living epistles and the living books in human lives could be read of all. Even so would the gospel witness doubly to-day, if received by living faith as it was received in those days. The mighty power of God then witnessed to both Jews and Greeks, and saved them; it is equally potent to-day. But that most fine gold of the early days became dim; that church which had been so earnest and devoted departed from her Lord. Would she witness still? Would she still become a living witness of the word? This we will study in our next.