QUOTES
From many sources
The church has failed to follow her appointed pathway of
separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an absent but coming
Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilizing the
world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth,
and, in this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not
where to lay His head.
"The merits of my cause should not be judged by
my ability in presenting it."
So long as we persist in the error that
to us is committed the conquest of the world, that it is our business to get
the world converted, we shall devote to that purpose the resources in men and
money, which in great part ought to be used for evangelization.
I have
already said that the Kingdom is the great theme of the prophets. They tell us
in perfectly simple, unambiguous language how the Kingdom is to be brought in,
who is to be its ruler, and the extent and character of that rule, and the
result in the universal prevalence of peace and righteousness. We perceive at
once that this Kingdom is to regenerate society, to deal directly with economic
questions, to concern itself with the temporal as well as with the eternal
interests of man. Indeed, so far as the prophetic testimony goes, the temporal
so predominates that, shocked by what seems to us a too material conception, we
are fain to read into the prophets the spirituality which is the very
atmosphere, so to speak, of the fourth Gospel, and of the Epistles. We turn to
the New Testament and find, what? The birth of the King, the heralding of the
Kingdom as "at hand," the announcement, in the Sermon on the Mount of the
principles of the Kingdom, the utter refusal of Israel to receive her King, the
passing of the Kingdom into the mixed and veiled condition set forth in the
seven parables of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, its full revelation being
postponed till "the harvest," which is fixed definitely "at the end of this
age." (Matthew 13:39, 42) And then, the Kingdom being thus postponed, what is
revealed as filling and occupying this age? THE CHURCH.
We turn to the
New Testament and find, what? The birth of the King, the heralding of the
Kingdom as "at hand," the announcement, in the Sermon on the Mount of the
principles of the Kingdom, the utter refusal of Israel to receive her King, the
passing of the Kingdom into the mixed and veiled condition set forth in the
seven parables of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, its full revelation being
postponed till "the harvest," which is fixed definitely "at the end of this
age." (Matthew 13:39, 42) And then, the Kingdom being thus postponed, what is
revealed as filling and occupying this age? THE CHURCH.
This, then, is
our mission, to preach the Gospel to every creature. This, then, is the purpose
of God in this age – to take out of the Gentiles a people for his name,
the Church, the ecclesia, the called-out-ones. Here we stand fast. We will not
attempt in this age the work which God has reserved for the next.