Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 67. Heart-Breaking
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 67. Heart-Breaking
Other Subjects in this Topic:
Heart-Breaking
This is a sad story to be telling. It costs keenest pain to get the words of truth out at the pen-point. The heart pulls the hand back, while the quiet, inner, insistent Voice speaks clearly, and the will holds the hand to its reluctant task. The saddest part is yet to be put down. There will come a time when the Holy Spirit will be withdrawn from the Church. He is its life, its principle of organization. But He is in large measure ignored. The ignoring amounts to a prayer. That prayer is being heard and answered. The withdrawal from the corporate body known historically as the Church has been going on gradually for a long time. Some sad day it will be complete. A sad day? Yet it will point to the near coming of the King. "When ye see these things... look up, and lift up your heads." [Note: Luk_21:28.] The very darkness cheers. The bursting of the new sunlight follows the night's blackest hour.
A picture of an individual Church from which the Holy Spirit has withdrawn might be sadly instructive. Its membership is large, its seats all engaged, its income assured, its organization perfected. Men of good business judgment manage its affairs, in the same shrewd way that they manage their business affairs. The services are made impressive with eloquence and music and well-appointed classical ritual. Its Sunday-school prides itself on its thorough, "up-to-date" organization and large attendance. It may support some missionaries in the foreign field, for that is the modern thing to do. It contains many true children of God. As a corporate body it merits high praise from the best human standpoint.
But—there is something absent. The Holy Spirit is named in hymn and possibly in prayer and sermon, but He is absent. The crucified Lord, so long practically ignored in the sermons and active life of the Church, has withdrawn His Spirit. It has a name to live, but—! Would to God, the description were overdrawn, or true of only a few! All through this time up to the very last there will be "the Church within the Church," little groups, and faithful lonely ones, scattered everywhere.
There will come a time when the governmental support, which carries the greater part of the whole Church, will be withdrawn. And the Church will be persecuted by the civil governments. This will come at the very last. With our Lord's return the inner Church, the body of believers, will be caught up into His presence. These will be joined with the whole body of redeemed ones from creation's morn. And this body of the redeemed shall reign with Christ, over the earth, during the Kingdom period. They will have fellowship in service with the Jew in evangelizing the whole race. It will be a blessed ministry, with the wondrous liberty and powers of their resurrection bodies. The identity of the Church as a distinct body is thus merged into the whole body of the redeemed.
After the Kingdom period is over, when the wondrous city is lighted with the glory of our Lord's presence, there will be a memorial on the foundation stones, of the Church's service of witnessing. But they will not be thinking of that. Their gaze is centred on the King's shining face.