Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 23. The Gospel in a Single Word

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 23. The Gospel in a Single Word



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 23. The Gospel in a Single Word

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The Gospel in a Single Word

John, in his old age, felt, as did Paul, the intensifying of the indications of the last times. Three of his five allusions to this subject, in his first and second letters, touch this point. "It is the last hour," he writes, and then, using a word for the lawless one peculiar to his writings, speaks of the many Antichrists then present, as growing evidence of the coming of the Antichrist. [Note: 1Jn_2:18.] These were evidences of the last hour. He urges that we so live, abiding in Christ, that when He is openly revealed we may be boldly confident, with no sense of shame as we come into His presence, because we have not been so abiding in the midst of last-hour conditions. [Note: 1Jn_2:28.]Then he reminds us that if are truly living as children of God, the world will not be able to understand us, nor the motives controlling us, even as Jesus was not understood. And further he reminds us that when our Lord is openly revealed we shall be made perfectly like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, and that sight will have transforming power over us. And the blessed anticipation sets us determinedly to being pure now, the great likeness to Him. [Note: 1Jn_3:2-4.]

The last two references are to the one whom John calls "the Antichrist." They are simple but immensely instructive and significant. They explain just what is the genius and the distinct mark of both the Antichrist, and of the spirit of Antichrist which will precede the coming of Antichrist himself. By this mark that spirit may be unfailingly identified now, and that person, when he comes. "Every one that confesseth not Jesus, is not of God, and this is the spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it cometh, and now it is in the world already." [Note: 1Jn_4:3.] The force of the word under "confesseth" is to declare openly and positively. There is a striking alternate reading in some manuscripts. In place of "confesseth not" is "annulleth." It is not a change of thought, but a putting of the positive side of the truth. Where Jesus is known, not to confess Him openly is to annul Him so far as your testimony is concerned, that is, to do away with Him, to deprive Him of what is His.

Jesus is the whole of the Gospel. God's message to us is condensed in a single word—Jesus, with all its tremendous meaning. Jesus is the outshining splendour of God's glory, and the express image of His person. He is the only begotten God, now in the Father's bosom, the only one through whom God is known, or can be known. He is the only one through whom the Father can be approached. Jesus is God. Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father. [Note: Heb_1:3; Joh_1:18; Joh_14:6-9; Mat_11:27.] And the one central, tremendous event for which that Name stands is the death upon the cross. He, Jesus, is our only message to men. He that gives his strength in service to anything else than telling and taking Jesus to men is annulling Him, and, whether intentionally or not, consciously or not, he is in that revealing that he is under the dominance of the subtle spirit of Antichrist.

This is a tremendous thing the Holy Spirit is saying through John. It should send us off to our secret chamber, there alone on our knees to look at our service, and testimony, and all the swing of our life, and ask does it all spell out "Jesus," and only Jesus, and all of Jesus? The whole attack of the Antichrist is upon the person of Jesus, and upon what He did in dying. The attack upon the Bible is really an attack upon the person of Jesus. When you begin to question it, you begin to question that He was all it declares Him to be.

And the attack upon the person of Jesus is a very cunning attack on the meaning and peculiar value of the dying on the cross. The one who is hidden behind the Antichrist spirit now, and the Antichrist himself when he comes,—he hates the cross, he hates the blood of Jesus, and every mention of it; he fears it; aye, more, he must flee like a whipped coward before it. This explains the subtlety of his attack upon the Book of God, and the only begotten God Himself. This same thought is repeated in the seventh verse of the second letter.

The little one-chaptered epistle of Jude fairly scorches the paper with its denunciation of men within the circle of God's people who were even then, in Jude's time, doing the very thing John has spoken of,—denying the only One. [Note: Note Jud_1:4, Jud_1:8, Jud_1:10, Jud_1:12-14, Jud_1:16, Jud_1:19.] Such have been found in every age. It was to such that Enoch preached, before the flood, of the coming of the Lord, and judgment then. The Apostles had plainly taught that there would be such in the last times. [Note: 17, 18.] Then the coming Christ fills Jude's eye, as he reminds them of Him, who is able to guard them from stumbling in the midst of this faithlessness, and to present them without blemish before His glorious presence. [Note: 24.]