Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 66. The Church Within the Church

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 66. The Church Within the Church



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 66. The Church Within the Church

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The Church Within the Church

So this new great messenger-body was formed, and sent out. And right well it understood its sweet, sacred task. The Book of Acts tells how the first Church-generations understood, and strove to be true. Good tradition tells how the fires were kept burning during the early centuries, even though the clogging ashes, and faulty draughts, were already a hindrance to the best burning. Then came the alliance with civil power, then the centralizing of Church authority in the city of Rome, then the great division into East and West, then the great Reformation movement, and so up to the present time.

It should be noted that the word "Church" has had two distinct meanings in this connection. It stands for all who are outwardly joined together as the Church. And it stands, in the first principle of the Church organization, for all who are joined to the Lord Jesus by a living faith, and are joined together by the presence of the Holy Spirit. These have been the two meanings from the first. On Pentecost, the Church's birthday, the two were the same. The outer and inner, the visible and invisible, were identical.

A distinction between the two grew up early. Already in Paul's day, he speaks of "wolves" entering in, and warns the Ephesian leaders against these within the Church leading disciples astray. [Note: Act_20:29-30.] And later, John speaks of those within the Church who lacked the vital thing. [Note: 1Jn_2:18, 1Jn_2:19.]That distinction has continued up to this hour, and will to the end. In many Church circles it is quite a commonplace thing to speak of "the Church within the Church." The phrase recognizes that there is a body of true, faithful ones within the larger, formal organization, which is not so described.

Has this Church of Christ failed as a messenger-body? And the answer that instinctively comes at once is an emphatic "no." Broadly speaking, the light of the Gospel of Christ is in all parts of the world today. Every bit of Gospel light, every good moral standard of society, which has such enormous influence on common life in the western half of the world, every printed Bible in the hundreds of languages, the thousands of missionaries scattered throughout the world,—all these, and very much more of the same sort, would give an emphatic "no" to the question.

Yet while this is true so far, it is not all of the truth; it needs qualification. A thousand millions of the race, two-thirds of our generation, have not heard the Name of Jesus. The overwhelming majority of those who have come and gone since Christ have never heard. The present generation is witnessing the greatest missionary activity, in bulk, ever known, and the greatest otherwise, for long centuries. But it is noticeable that it is by a small minority of the Church; it is through the utmost exertion. And no small part of the missionary propaganda is directed toward the Church itself, with pleas for support piteous to hear.

And, strange to say, the original objective—the bringing back of Christ—has largely slipped out of view. The most remarkable missionary gatherings are marked by an utter absence of this note. An attendant at a recent great missionary conference afterwards wrote these lines:

"The King went forth a kingdom to obtain,

With promise to His own to come again;

The long, long years have passed, the years of pain:

And yet He cometh not—

Have we forgot?

"He bade us keep our hearts forever pure,

And, following Him, to suffer and endure.

That we to Him might weary souls allure

And He might tarry not—

Have we forgot?

"He asked us for Himself to wait and long,

To turn our faces from the worldly throng

Upward to Him, to whom our lives belong.

And yet He hasteneth not—

Have we forgot?

"And thus the days pass by; we joy and sing,

We take His gifts—yet little to Him bring,

And speak no word of bringing back the King;

And so He cometh not—

We have forgot." [Note: Henry W.] Frost.]

It is further a remarkable thing that every forward movement in the Church has been by individual initiative, has been frowned upon and fought by the Church, then endured, and then endorsed—sometimes, but still left to individual effort, to prosper or—die. That "no" must be joined by a "yes" before the full truth is gotten at. And the "yes" overbalances the "no." All the witnessing to the truth has come from within the Church, but has been for centuries, in large measure, in spite of the Church. God has kept the light burning through the medium He provided, but the light-holder has not been faithful to its sacred trust.