THE BIGGEST FAILURE OF THE CHURCH AGE
Dr.
Cyrus
Ingerson Scofield
*
The Association of
Messianic Congregations has not formulated an official
position as to how and to what extent believers are
authorized by Scripture to influence the politics and
conditions of nations and other civic institutions. This
article is not presented to establish such a position, but
to present biblical and historical insight in regard to much
of the church's claim that it has
replaced Israel as a covenant people of God, and for consideration
of Dr. Scofield's conclusions as to how
that claim has influenced church history, and of his
opinions as to what the goal of the church ought to be in this
age. - editor.
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"Promises which were
given to Israel alone are quoted
as justifying what we see all about us today."
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I believe that the failure of the Church to see that she is a
separated, a called-out Body in the purposes of God, charged
with a definite mission limited in its purpose and scope, and
the endeavor to take from Israel her promises of earthly glory,
and appropriate them over into this Church dispensation, has
done more to swerve the Church from the appointed course than
all other influences put together. It is not so much wealth,
luxury, power, pomp, and pride that have served to deflect the
Church from her appointed course, as the notion, founded upon Israelitish Old Testament promises, that the Church is of the
world, and that therefore, her mission is to improve the world.
Promises which were given to Israel alone are quoted as
justifying what we see all about us today.
The Church, therefore, 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. Did you ever put side by side the
promises given to the Church, and to Israel, and see how
absolutely in contrast they are? It is impossible to mingle
them.
The Jew was promised an earthly inheritance, earthly wealth,
earthly honor, earthly power. The Church is promised no such
thing, but is pointed always to heaven as the place where she is
to receive her rest and her reward. The promise to the Church is
a promise of persecution, if faithful in this world, but a
promise of a great inheritance and reward hereafter. In the
meantime, she is to be a pilgrim body, passing through this
scene, but abiding above.
In the New Testament we have the history of the Church down to
the year 96 A.D. In the first chapter of Acts we have the birth
of the Church, and oh, how beautiful she was in her first
freshness of faith! It was a lovely manifestation of simplicity,
unselfishness, holiness and spiritual power. Yet we pass on but
a few years, and in the Epistles to the Corinthians, what do we
find? Paul writes, I hear there are divisions among you. They
began then, and they have never ceased to this day. In the
second and third chapters of Revelation we have the condition of
the Church at that time; full of words still, but fallen from
its first love.
After Ephesus, A.D. 96, comes the period of persecution. For
three centuries the Church was in awful persecution. Then came a
great change. The Emperor Constantine professed conversion, and
Christianity became the court religion. Then the tables were
turned and the Church began to persecute! And, of all things she
should never have done, she became the persecutrix of the Jews!
The Church, saved by faith in the Messiah who came from the
Jews; having in her hand the Bible which was written by the
Jews; receiving her teaching solely and only through Jewish
sources, became, for one thousand years, the bitter, relentless,
bloody persecutor of Judaism. With that came worldliness and
priestly assumption, and the Dark Ages.
Then in the fifteenth century, came the Reformation out of which
have come Protestant movements of various kinds. The Bible was
put into the hands of the people, and has been translated into
many tongues. With an open Bible came light and liberty again,
but never union again. On the contrary, division followed
division; sect followed sect. It is true that the great body of
the churches believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the
living God, but they have turned aside the greater part of their
resources, to the attempt to reform the world, to educate the
world, and, in short, to anticipate the next dispensation in
which those things belong, and to do the work that is distinctly
set apart for restored and converted Israel in her Kingdom Age.
Is the Gospel then a failure? God forbid! The Gospel never
failed, and can never fail. God's Word by the Gospel is
accomplishing precisely the mission which was foreseen and
foretold for it, that whereunto it was sent. And we must not
forget, either, that the Gospel will yet bring this world to the
Saviour. It is not at all a question of the ultimate triumph of
the blessed Lord. The heathen may rage and the people imagine
vain things, but the Father will yet set His King on His holy
hill in Zion. Converted Israel, glorified saints, even a mighty
angel shall yet proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom, and
the
mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of
the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all
nations shall flow into it (Isa. 2:2).
The earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isa.
11:9). All this will surely come to pass, for the Lord hath
spoken it - but not in this dispensation. This is the age of the
"ecclesia" - of the called out ones.
Let me ask you, what is God doing in this age of ours? Is He not
taking out of the Gentiles a people? A few Jews are being
converted, for Paul tells us there is always a remnant in Israel
according to the election of grace (Rom. 11:5), but the great,
the altogether vast majority of the Church is taken out of the
Gentiles. This we all see. To believe this is not at all a
matter of faith, but of simple observation. Not, anywhere, the
conversion of all, but everywhere, the taking out of some. The
evangelization of the world, then, and not its conversion, is
the mission committed to the Church. To do this, to preach the
Gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth, to offer salvation
to every creature, is our responsibility. It is the divinely
appointed means for the calling out of a people for His Name,
the Church, the "Ecclesia."
Further, the purpose of the Father in this age is not the
establishment of the Kingdom. The Old Testament prophets 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. Alas, nothing would
suffice but the bringing of the prophets bodily over into this
Church age! This is the irremediable disaster which the wild
allegorizing of Origen and his school has inflicted upon
exegesis. The intermingling of Church purpose with Kingdom
purpose palsied evangelization for thirteen hundred years, and
is today the heavy clog upon the feet of them who preach the
glad tidings.
See how inevitably so. The Kingdom applies spiritual forces to
the solution of material problems. How shall man live long and
wisely? The Kingdom is the answer. How shall exact justice be
done on earth? The Kingdom provides for it. When shall wars and
human butchery cease in this blood-saturated earth? When the
Kingdom is set up by the King Himself. When shall creation give
up to man her potential secrets? In the Kingdom age. When shall
the earth be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea? When the King and His Kingdom are here.
Of all these things the O.T. prophets are full. 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 Matthew Thirteen, its full revelation being
postponed till the harvest,
which is fixed definitely at the
end of this age. And then the Kingdom being thus postponed,
what is revealed as filling and occupying this age? THE CHURCH!
Christians, let us leave the government of the world till the
King comes; let us leave the civilizing of the world to be the
incidental effect of the presence there of the Gospel of Christ,
and let us give our time, our strength, our money, our days to
the mission distinctively committed to the Church, namely, to
make the Lord Jesus Christ known to every creature!
*
Dr. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield
(1843-1921) was an attorney,
evangelist, Congregational minister and writer. The
Biggest Failure of the
Church Age is republished
by permission of www.BibleBelievers.com,
where Rightly
Dividing
the Word of Truth and other
fine articles may also
be found.
Rightly
Dividing the Word of Truth, which appeared in
previous
Shofars,
may also accessed via links in our
Library.
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