Notes of an Address at Winchester 1980
“And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.” (Luke 24:49-53)
The simple desire that has been laid upon my heart this evening is to refer to three portions that bring before us the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and to speak of all the help, the encouragement and the inspiration we can derive from considering what They are doing and what They are able to do and what They will do in the future. It is a very wonderful thing to take account of Luke’s unfolding of the work of the Person of Christ in his Gospel and then how this wonderful life was carried on in the lives and testimony of His beloved people in the Acts of the Apostles. There is blessing to be derived from taking account of what we are connected with. There may be a tendency to think sometimes we are connected with something that began just over 150 years ago. Thank God for that work of God, the wonderful recovery of the truth that happened then, we do not want to discourage that in any way whatsoever, and with the Lord’s help we want to maintain it, but we have got to go back to the beginning of the church’s history to see that we are connected with the glory and distinction of what began in the power of the Spirit as a result of the work of Christ and according to the Father’s will. That is what I want to speak about tonight.
This passage at the end of Luke is extremely encouraging. The Scriptures are the infallible guide for the people of God in all ages. In the history of the church we find that man’s imagination, desire and will are often at work, he thinks he knows better than God, he thinks he has good ideas which are workable and will produce great glory for God, but they all have to be examined in the light of Scripture. We have to ask, ‘Does the Scripture warrant us in pursuing such a course?’ This is the first thing that we find, the Lord Jesus spoke to the two on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:27) and to His gathered disciples (Luke 24:45) and He opened up their understanding from the Scriptures, and He pointed out the things concerning Himself. Dear brethren, if there is something we need more than anything else it is to have our hearts and our minds occupied with Christ. We can be thoroughly engaged in service, we can be extremely efficient in service (thank God if we are), but if it is not held in relation to Christ then it is a very poor kind of occupation. For the Christian the greatest occupation and consideration is to have the heart occupied with the Lord Jesus Himself. We all know by experience that there is nothing more encouraging than to sit down quietly, or, if you cannot sleep at night, to lie down, and to think about Christ. Immediately there is a peace, there is an encouragement, there is a joy, and this is what the Lord Jesus did to the two who were so disconsolate and also to His gathered disciples, who may also have been depressed. He opened up to them from the Scriptures the things concerning Himself to show that what had happened, His rejection, His suffering, His death and His resurrection were all foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures and that what had come to pass was in accord with the plan of God. It was not a chance happening, it was something that was arranged, it was God who desired it to happen this way and now that it had happened He said, ‘You know perfectly well what they did with me, you know how they treated me, I died, but here I am, a living glorious Man out of death. All this was foretold in the Scriptures’. I am sure that those dear brothers, empowered by the Spirit when it came upon them, would speak with great force and authority when they spoke about the sufferings of Christ and His glorious resurrection and all that was available to mankind. ‘We have heard it from His own lips,’ they would say, ‘we have seen Him out of death, we have handled Him, spoken with Him, had meals with Him, He is a living Man, we saw Him ascend into glory, we know that these things are true’. What power they would have in their testimony. That is the first thing I wish to say, the infallible Scriptures are the guide for all things pertaining to the Christian testimony.
Then I want to speak about the Lord Jesus Christ, His death, His resurrection and His ascension. We would not be here tonight if those things had not happened. It is because He died and rose out from amongst the dead that we are here tonight as Christians, it is on that basis our sins have been forgiven. This is the great point at the end of Luke, the Lord Jesus was empowering and instructing His disciples in view of the place that they would occupy in testimony for Him in this world, and it was necessary for that that their sins should be removed and that the Holy Spirit should come upon them. Those who were going to be converted through their testimony would have to come into the church in the same way, through the forgiveness of sins and, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, they in their turn would be empowered to carry on this testimony. They were told to wait at Jerusalem until they should be “clothed with power from on high” (v. 49, J.N.D.), what a wonderful promise, and, said the Lord Jesus, ‘This promise is connected with the Father’s will, it is the Father who wants to clothe you with this power’, and so they were to wait.
The descent of the Holy Spirit indwelling and clothing with power is the distinctive provision for power in Christian testimony. We might think of many other things, we might be convinced that those things are perfectly workable and right, and they might well be if supported by the Holy Spirit, but if we leave the Holy Spirit out of our reckoning in connection with Christian testimony we are ignoring the only power that God has decreed is available for us. That is a very wonderful thing to take account of too, that the power of the Spirit is supplied for us to carry on every Christian responsibility and enjoy every Christian privilege. What a wonderful Father that He should give His Spirit to His own in view of this wonderful testimony. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 2, said, ‘If a man had my spirit he would understand all about me, now God has given us His Spirit that we might know all the things of God’ (vv. 11-12), that is in the realm of apprehension of Scriptural, divine things, but what is more in mind at the end of Luke is the clothing with power in view of the testimony that was to be rendered concerning Christ and God. What I want to lay upon our hearts is that it does not stop there. If we trace the history of the testimony many sad things come to light. There was a time in this land when the light of Christianity flickered with a very dim light indeed, but from the time of the Reformation onwards the light grew brighter and brighter and shone in brilliance when we come to the great evangelical movements of Wesley and Whitfield and the revival of the truth of the assembly through Darby and his contemporaries. Thank God for the great light that is still shining evangelically in relation to the salvation of souls. One would say that the light regarding the truth of the assembly is becoming somewhat dim. This truth is something that needs to be maintained.
The Holy Spirit has been the power to maintain what is of God down through those generations, and what I want to impress upon our hearts is that that power is undiminished, it has not deteriorated, it is in a divine Person, the Holy Spirit, and that power is in you, is in me and in every Christian, and our responsibility is to ensure all that power is allowed to operate in us and through us. Every believer in Christ is connected with what began at the end of Luke 24 and in the beginning of Acts 1. It is a movement that began in heaven, is connected with every believer and will be maintained until the Lord comes. This gives a very dignified lustre to this wonderful blessing of being a Christian, we are connected with a great source of divine power, we are connected with a glorious Man who is at the right hand of God, and we are connected with the plan and will of God that He determined before ever time began. So we rightly say it is a wonderful thing to be a Christian, to belong to this company that God inaugurated through His Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
After the Lord made the promise that the Spirit would come He took the disciples out to Bethany. Bethany would indicate to us a place where the Lord Jesus was always welcome. That little house, the house of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, was a house that was for the Lord Jesus. We do not find recorded in the Bible that the Lord Jesus spent even one night in the city of Jerusalem, He always left that city and spent the evenings outside its walls. Often He resorted to the garden of Gethsemane, or to the Mount of Olives, or to the little village of Bethany on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, and there He was welcome in the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. When the Lord Jesus left this world He did not leave it by way of the cross, that was the public refusal of Him, He left this world by way of Bethany, the place where He was loved. He left the company of those that loved Him and, thank God, He is coming back for those who love Him. What a wonderful thing to contemplate! Now leaving this world from that scene where He was loved also has its lessons for us. Do we make the Lord Jesus welcome in our homes, is He the centre of our assemblies? because this is what Christianity really means. I was listening to a tape of a brother who spoke about ‘going to a meeting’. I am sure that we all use that expression over and over again, ‘it is meeting night’ or ‘we are going to the meeting’ and the brother asked a very pointed question, ‘do we go to the meeting, or do we go to meet the Lord?’ It is a challenging question. In the Old Testament the Tabernacle was called “the tent of meeting”. Did they go to meet each other, or did they go to the place where Jehovah was dwelling in the midst of His people? It was the latter. They went to the tent of meeting in answer to the Lord’s promise to them “there I will meet with thee” (Ex. 25:22, Num. 17:4, etc.). Oh, dear brethren, what a wonderful thing to go into the company of the Lord’s people with this primarily before us, a desire to meet the Lord. I am sure this would raise the value of the gathering together in our eyes and would create expectancy amongst us. We might have various thoughts in our minds as we go along to the gathering of the saints, and unfortunately these thoughts may militate against the enjoyment of the Lord being in our midst, but if we all came together with a desire to meet Him and to know His presence, oh what a wonderful experience it would be!
After the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples and went to Bethany He lifted up His hands in blessing, and then it says, “he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy”. If we had been in their position we would have reacted in the same way. Previously two of them had been very sad, they were very downcast, they had thought that the Lord would restore the kingdom to Israel and they were very depressed that what they had hoped had not come to pass, but now things had changed, they had met the Lord, they knew Him as a risen Man, had heard His communications, had seen Him ascend into glory and they were worshipping Him and had great joy. They returned to Jerusalem and they “were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God”. It seems to me that if we really appropriate these things we cannot possibly stagnate or be wanting in praise or worship to the Lord Jesus or to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. If we really believed and appropriated the fact that Christ is alive and at the right hand of God, that we are clothed with the power of the Spirit and indwelt by the Spirit, surely there must be a response to the Lord Jesus who has made it possible and to God the Father who arranged it all according to His will. I say again, dear brethren, this is what we are connected with. Are we like those early Christians? Is there this outflow of joy, praise and blessing to God the Father and to God the Son in the power of God the Holy Spirit? I am sure it should be, and thank God for the measure in which it is, but oh how we would desire that it were more and more in our lives and in our companies!
“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: and of others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.” (Jude 20-25)
The atmosphere is a little different when we come to Jude. Jude contemplates, not the glory and triumph of the Christian faith, but rather apostasy, and he shows in his writing that this had happened before, it happened in connection with the angels, created beings who gave up the place of blessing that God had given to them. They turned away from what God had provided for them, and it is not going to be any different, says Jude, in the Christian profession. He indicates the kind of things that would happen, “but, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit” (vv. 17-19). Think of the brightness and power and glory of the things that we read about at the end of Luke and carried forward into the Acts of the Apostles. It is, by contrast, a depressing condition of things foretold by Jude which we see all around us today, and we are part of. Why the change? Well, if we read the New Testament we see self-will, we see disobedience to the word of God, we see evil teachings brought in amongst the people of God concerning the Person and work of Christ, we see man’s imagination at work, the philosophy of men as at Colosse, we see depraved living as the man in 1 Corinthians 5, and many, many other things. That was in apostolic times, and if we read the history of the church (and there are many histories available) what a depressing story it is, the same things only in far greater number, but at the base of all that happened is disobedience. This is characteristic of the condition of things as mentioned in Jude and other portions of the New Testament. Thank God there is encouragement for us right at the end just as there was encouragement at the beginning. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are unaffected by the sin, the failure, the disobedience and the deterioration of the outward testimony, it is all on our side, and for those who want to be faithful, thank God, the provision is available. That is why Jude refers here to what can be done in the power of the Spirit, what can be done through our Lord Jesus Christ and what can be done in connection with God (v. 20). That is why I read these verses, “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost”.
This statement “building up yourselves” is something we all know about. We see the process of building things around us in every city, town and village today, old things are being pulled down, new things are being built, but, if those things that are being built are going to stand, the old rubbish must be cleared away and good foundations laid, then the building is slowly but surely raised up according to the correct plan. So we too are exhorted to “[build] up yourselves on your most holy faith”. What is our “holy faith”? They are the things we have drawn attention to at the end of Luke 24. This is the good foundation, indeed you cannot get a better foundation. When Paul went to Corinth he and his companions preached about the things we are speaking about tonight, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and, says Paul, “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). He referred to his preaching and the preaching of others in the city of Corinth. All building by brethren was to be upon the foundation that he and others had laid, that is, Christ. There is no other. This is the foundation for each one of us today, the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we build on anything else it will be sure to come tumbling down. I do not know if any of you have seen the Crusader Castle in Caesarea, the place where Paul was kept prisoner on his way to Rome, but when I was there the guide who took us around showed us a terrific mound of broken masonry and he said that this had been a church, the foundation had been laid and the church had been built until it was nearly complete and then the whole mass collapsed because, unknown to them, they had built over a granary which had been concealed beneath the earth. The building was all right for a while when the foundation was laid because there was not much weight, but the more they built the more weight was added until it was too much for the structure beneath and the whole thing collapsed. A great deal of expense, time and labour had been spent, but it was all to no avail. This can be true in our Christian lives, if we are not building upon the proper foundation we might work hard, we might spend a lot of time and use a lot of energy, but unless it is on the correct foundation it will come to nothing, so this word of Jude is extremely important, “building yourselves up on your most holy faith” and then follows this very important phrase, “praying in the Holy Spirit”.
There are warnings in the New Testament against long prayers and vain repetitions (Matt. 6:7), and there are warnings against praying to yourself. The Pharisee of Luke 18:11-12 is an example of this, his prayer never reached the ear of God. It is a very salutary word to us that in the book of Jeremiah God said to His servant, “Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them” (11:11), and He told him not to pray for them (7:16, 11:14, 14:11). You may say, ‘I thought God is always ready to listen to us and to answer our prayers’, and yet God said to Jeremiah, ‘I will not listen to their prayers, they are following their own way, they are disobedient, they are not concerned about My will, they are only concerned about themselves’. The prayers of those who are only praying for an outward show without any concern for what is proper in the presence of God, who do not do His will, are an abomination to the Lord (e.g. Prov. 28:9). ‘Now,’ says Jude, ‘we do not want any of those prayers, thinking we will be heard for our long prayers, vain repetitions and other things, we want to pray in the Holy Spirit.’ This involves power with God. Many people say, ‘I cannot preach the gospel, I cannot visit, I cannot speak to people’, well perhaps not, but we can certainly pray, and it is a very valuable thing for brothers and sisters to pray. I do not think we realise the great power of prayer. Thank God for people who have power with God in prayer. We can pray in many ways, in the prayer meeting where the brothers are vocal in prayer, sisters can be silent in prayer, but they are all united in prayer. There are also prayers in the home, husband and wife can pray together, and their prayers should not be hindered (1 Pet. 3:7). There are also private prayers where husband and wife can pray separately in private, so there is plenty of scope for prayer, and prayer is an extremely valuable thing.
Praying in the Holy Spirit brings power into the Christian testimony, either individually or collectively. One of the saddest features of the present day is the scarcity of attendance at the prayer meeting. I am not talking about conditions that physically prevent our attending, that is an entirely different thing altogether, God knows that perfectly well, but when we can get there, but because of negligence or wilfulness we do not attend the prayer meetings, that is bound to have an adverse effect upon the collective testimony. Prayer is an extremely important thing. On 24 occasions in the Acts of the Apostles there are references to either individual or collective prayer and it is one of the things that the early believers continued steadfastly in (Acts 2:42). So how important this “praying in the Spirit” is. These are not dry-as-dust routine reiterations but living prayers “in the Holy Spirit”. There is plenty of time in the quietness of one’s own closet to thank God for all the great things He has done, when we come together in collective prayer we should come with specific things upon our spirit. There is plenty of information available about matters at home and in the foreign fields, things that require prayer, so that we can pray for specific things. “Praying in the Spirit” indicates intelligence. Paul said that sometimes we do not know what to pray for, things are so complex we can scarcely discern His will, but we can safely leave that aside, praying it will be dealt with (Rom. 8:26). However, we can be intelligent as to the mind of the Lord in some specific matters and we can simply ask Him in the power of the Spirit to bring His will to pass. I believe, too, there would be the sense of being one with the mind of God and a fervency in “praying in the Spirit” such as we find in the Lord Jesus Himself (e.g. Luke 6:12, 22:44) or in Epaphras who is mentioned in Colossians 4:12 as “always combating earnestly for you in prayers, to the end that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God” (J.N.D.). This was not a casual utterance of Epaphras, his prayers contained all the earnestness that he could command. These things would indicate the kind of prayer that we would pray “in the Spirit”.
Now in verse 21 we are told to “keep yourselves in the love of God”. The love of God is something that cannot alter because God Himself “is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), His activities towards us will always be in love, and in the end, His purpose of love will be fulfilled in each one of us. That is a very comforting and encouraging thing to keep in our minds, that, in spite of our weakness and frailties, God’s love will be victorious and will accomplish what it desires. Here we are told to “keep ourselves in the love of God”. How do we do that? I am going to refer to two portions where, although it is the love of the Father that is referred to, the principle is, I believe, the same. Firstly, the Lord Jesus said, “I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John15:10). It seems to me that this is a way that we keep ourselves in the love of God. We will never be deprived of the love of God, it will always be towards us, but I do not know that we are going to be in it and to enjoy it if we do not keep His commandments. This is not the Mosaic law, but all the commandments that pertain to the New Testament Christian. If we keep His commandments we will abide in His love. There, dear brethren, is a reason why perhaps we do not enjoy the love of the Father as we ought to, if we do not keep His commandments such as to love the brethren and to love each other (and there are many more commandments). Secondly, 1 John 2:15 says, “if any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him”. I know it does not exactly say “keeping [ourselves] in the love of the Father”, but I am sure that is how it operates, the love of the Father cannot be enjoyed by us if in any measure we are seeking after this world. This is very challenging and it is because of this that John says “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world … for all that is in the world … is not of the Father” (1 John 2:15-16). So these are two things, keeping the Father’s commandments and keeping clear of a corrupt and evil world, and if we do these two things we will be kept in the love of God.
Lastly, “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”. We are not to look for a restoration of the church to Pentecostal conditions, nor a restoration of unity where all the divisions and sorrows will be cured, that would be a futile kind of exercise because we would be attempting to build something that would be immune from all the difficulties that beset the early church and has beset it ever since, and nowhere in Scripture are we exhorted to do this kind of thing, rather we are exhorted to be of one spirit and of one mind (Phil. 1:27), we are exhorted to be together in truth and love (Eph. 4:15) and this ought to be our endeavour. Here we are “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”. This is, we believe, an aspect of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ that has to do with taking us out of the world, the professing Christian part of which is rapidly apostatising from God, and the other part of it going heedlessly and carelessly after its worldly things. It will indeed be a mercy when the Lord comes. I know we have many concerns, our loved ones, for example, who are not converted, we would like to see them saved, and we would like to see all Christians walking together in truth, in love and in righteousness, we would like to see those things and we pray for them, but there will come a time (we may even have reached it already) when the yearning of the believers will be to be free from the wickedness and evil and opposition that prevails in the world, they will look for “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”. Oh what a mercy it will be to be taken out of this scene altogether to be with Christ! How much better it is ‘to be with Christ’, and what a mercy it will be to be out of this world with all its increasing opposition to the truth of God and its wickedness. What a terrible thing it is becoming. It will always be an evil world. Perhaps it is even more evil after two thousand years of Christian influence than it was when it crucified the “Prince of life”. That is its worst feature, that after two thousand years of Christian testimony it turns its back upon it and goes on headlong after Satan’s power and influence. What a mercy it will be to be taken out of this scene.
Now it says, “… unto eternal life”. Is this something that we have not yet got? John tells us clearly and simply that everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has eternal life as a present possession (1 John 5:11). Paul tells us the same, that “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Eternal life is a present possession. It is something that no one can take from us, that is the indisputable testimony of the word of God, every believer has eternal life, but when Paul speaks of “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” he is viewing the sphere where eternal life will be enjoyed in its fullness and blessedness in a way that it cannot be here. There are many limitations against the enjoyment of this kind of life here, the flesh, the world and Satan, all militating against this enjoyment, so Paul says, ‘Dear brethren, we are moving on to a scene with Christ where eternal life will be enjoyed without any hindrance or without any limitation’.
“Now unto you who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” is something that every heart will rejoice in. This falling is the stumbling of apostasy, it is not any of us giving way to evil temper, it is not some fault or frailty that comes to light in us—that kind of stumbling can take place any day—but here Jude says, ‘God is able to keep us from stumbling or falling’, this is apostasy, and thank God that every real believer will be preserved from committing this dreadful evil, turning our backs upon the profession of Christ and accepting something else. Mephibosheth sat at the king’s table (2 Sam. 9:11) but his frailties, his weakness, his lameness was with him until the end of his life, but when we are in the presence of the King there will not be any frailties or lameness or any kind of thing that is incongruous to that kind of scene, we will be there in the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
“John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come: and from the seven Spirits which are before the throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:4-7)
The book of Revelation tells us about the triumph of the throne. There are various evil powers acting against the Christian testimony now, there will be evil powers acting against Israel in the future, but the throne will be triumphant, it cannot be otherwise when we think of the One who sits upon the throne. God, and the seven Spirits which are before the throne uphold the dignity, the glory and the majesty of that throne, and this glorious Person, Jesus Christ, “the faithful witness” when He was here, “the first begotten of the dead” now, and “the prince of the kings of the earth” in the future; everything is in the hands of Christ. This reference to the Trinity, the One “who is, and who was, and who is to come” is a reference to the Almighty God, the Ever-existing One. What kind of power is going to be able to stand in the presence of such majesty and glory? Think of all the testimony of the Old Testament, all those great powers, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, they are all gone, and the One who overcame them still lives and always will do. He will come to take complete control over every power that is against Him, He will operate through the Lamb for He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. That is why He is presented in this way and so the church will be presented with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in this threefold way for their encouragement, for their power, for their blessing, that they may not be overcome. Everything is secure in Their hands, what a consideration!
The seven Spirits are not seven separate spirits, the way the Spirit of God is presented here is to remind us of the completeness of His power, the completeness of His wisdom, the completeness of His intelligence and discernment and administration and every other thought or attribute that you wish to think of (Isa. 11:2). The seven Spirits before the throne will guarantee the success of that throne and the administration of its power. This is extremely encouraging, and what a wonderful expression it is.
The phrase in verse 5, “unto him who loved us”, should read, “unto Him who loves us”, it is a present matter. It is not only that He loved us in the past, thank God for that, many Scriptures tell us that, but it is rather “unto him who loves us”, He loves us now and ever will love us. The end is secure in His hands. We might get somewhat concerned as we read our newspapers or if we listen to the radio, we hear depressing news of the power and spread of evil and the inability of man to deal with the problems that he has, and, if we were not Christians, we might well despair, but we know that everything in the end will be better than all right, everything in the end will be glorious, there will be a time of blessing under the hand of Christ. What we are seeing now is exactly what Scripture said would happen, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affections, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:1-4) and, remember, that is connected with the Christian profession, it has “a form of godliness, but [denies] the power thereof” (v. 5). What a terrible thing to consider! Other portions of Scripture tell us about the tremendous evil that will increase in the world where there is not any Christian profession, but is it all going to go on forever? Will it be unchecked? No, the One “who is, who was, and who is to come”, “the seven Spirits before the throne”, and the One who is “the prince of the kings of the earth”, They in Their power and time will take control, everything will be according to Their mind and will and we will have our part in the administration that will then take place for a thousand years.
This word is addressed to the seven churches. Think of Laodicea having this read to them, a company of believers who professed to be gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. John was to write this in a book and send it to the seven churches which were in Asia and this would be read to Laodicea and you can almost hear them saying, ‘We are not interested, we are all concerned with our own affairs, our own pleasure and enjoyment, and the Lord can remain outside’. What a sad thing this attitude is, and unfortunately in many parts of the Christian testimony this is true today. Thank God there is the opportunity for every one of us to be like the Philadelphians to hold fast to His word and not to deny His name. We will not have a great deal of strength, the early believers were “clothed with power from on high”, but the indications are that at the end of the testimony it will be “a little strength” that will characterise the faithful believers and it will be acquired through not denying His name and holding fast to His word. Dear brethren, may we all qualify for that commendation as we take account of the power and resource that is available to us in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. May it be so for His name’s sake.