DR. THOMAS AT THE
BIRMINGHAM CHRISTADELPHIAN SYNAGOGUE
Matthew, 16. chapter.—This is the record of an interesting passage in the history of Jesus, while he was engaged in preaching the great salvation, as recorded by one of his witnesses, Matthew. It is a very suggestive portion of Scripture. The first part of it draws our attention to the condition of society in the days when Jesus was preaching to the people. The clergy of that day were the Scribes and Pharisees. They were the teachers of the people, and sat in Moses’ seat, and read the law to the people; a class whom Jesus exhorted his audience to hear, but not to follow their practices; to hear them so far as they set forth, uncorrupted and untraditionised, the things that God had spoken by His servant, Moses, who was faithful in all his house as a servant.
These Pharisees, who separated themselves from all in those days, except their own sect, seemed to men to be righteous. They had a very righteous exterior, in garments, phraseology, tone of voice, and cast of countenance. They illustrated human nature in its most holy or pious attitude or development. They were natural religionists, for the religion of God taught them no such thing as long face, holy tone, or cant form of speech. Hence it was that the people, looking upon them with the eye of sense, mistook them for righteous men—as Jesus said, they appeared to men to be righteous, but God regarded them as mere whited sepulchres full of dead men’s bones; concealed graves over which as men walked, they were defiled; for according to the Law of Moses, if a man walked over a grave, he was thereby defiled, and had to be separated a week, in order to become purified. So these Pharisees were likened to concealed graves, which were only defiling in their influence upon those who followed them and regarded them as righteous. Jesus, calling the attention of his audience to the righteousness of these men, said “Except your righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Now human nature, in all ages, repeats itself, only modified by the peculiar circumstances of the times in which the reproduction takes place. And thus we see around us, on the right hand and on the left, east, west, north and south, in society at the present day, a class, or order, or heirarchy, which to the unthinking multitude, appears to be very pious, very holy, but it may be said to the men of these times, as it was said to the Jews of old, “Unless your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the clergy, you cannot in any wise inherit the kingdom, or eternal life in it;” for they appear to men to be righteous, but God knows their hearts that they are but whited sepulchres, or concealed graves, conferring upon any one under their influence nothing but that which defiles, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance and the blindness of their hearts.
Such were the clergy in the days of Jesus, termed the Pharisees and Scribes. There was another class of clergy called the Sadducees, who believed neither in angels nor spirits. These were the enemies of Christ on his first appearing, and they were continually urging upon him that he should shew them a sign from heaven. They wanted to see something marvellous. They did not care about the things signified, but they wanted to see a sign from heaven, that they might be astonished. This is a propensity peculiar to the unenlightened, uninstructed, carnal mind. We find this from the testimony in Jeremiah 10 , where we see what this mere longing after signs was connected with.
The second verse says “Learn not the way of the heathen, (or the nations, or the Gentiles, for the original signifies these three things,) and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.” There was a great propensity in the minds of the Gentiles to look for omens in the flights of birds, and in the appearance of victims offered in sacrifice to their gods. No true believers want to have signs from heaven. Their minds are anxious to apprehend the meaning of the signs already given; therefore let us not be like certain persons in our day, who are looking to the sun, the moon, the stars, and the darkness of the atmosphere, for signs of the coming of the Lord. The signs are not there; they are not to be given there. It is only the heathen that look for signs in that sphere of operations; therefore, says Jehovah, “Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven.”
“The things that are highly esteemed among men,” says Christ, “are an abomination in the sight of God.” This ought to be a hint to us whenever we find all the world looking after anything. It is a common saying that what everybody says must be true; but the fact is, the truth is just the contrary of this: what everybody declares to be true is false. There are two classes of ideas in the world: the ideas of man and the ideas of God; and God says that His ideas, ways and thoughts are the very opposite of the ideas, ways and thoughts man; “My thoughts, are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”—( Isaiah 55:8 , 9 ). So that what all men think is true, you may tell infallibly, without setting up to be Popes, to be false Therefore, the revelation which Jesus, who expounded the mind of the Father, gives us—that that which is esteemed among men, is an abomination in the sight of God, is a principle of judgment that will save us from making a vast number of mistakes in the political or ecclesiastical world. There you see what God reprobates: those things that are highly esteemed among men, are the very essence of abomination in the sight of God, who is purity and truth.
“The customs of the people are vain.” They were vain in the days of Jeremiah and of Jesus, and they have been so ever since. The customs of peoples, of majorities, of any uninstructed in the word of God, are vain. Hence, all people are walking in “the vain imagination of their evil hearts;” consequently, the world is sitting in darkness: “darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people;” and the reason why Jesus Christ is coming again, is to dispel this darkness. Darkness cannot chase itself away; ignorance cannot enlighten itself; there is nothing that can chase darkness away but light; for when the sun rises, the darkness flies away; and so we shall see that in the midst of this gross darkness that covers the earth and the people, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in his beams, that he may chase away that darkness. All the light that there is in this world, at present, is in those individuals in whom the word of Christ dwells richly in all wisdom. The light shines into their hearts as into a dark place, and, taking its lodgment there, the enlightened heart gives it out again. No light is derived from the world; it does not spring spontaneously from within us. We receive the ideas of the divine testimony from the word, and they taking root within us, develop light; then, having the light of the truth, we are enabled to diffuse it around us.
So much, then, for looking for signs from heaven. We are not looking for such signs. We are looking for God’s signs already given, that is, already declared in His word, and not for any new signs. “Jesus answered and said unto them, when it is evening ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red; and, in the morning, it will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowring. Oh, ye hypocrites! Ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” If Jesus had been living in these days and called the clergy hypocrites, would he not have been considered abusive? He called them a generation of vipers, too. He admitted that the principles upon which they judged the atmosphere were correct, and that the weather came out as they expected; and what appears to be his argument is, that if the people have good sense enough to predict what sort of weather it will be from the face of the sky, they have natural sense enough to be able, under the inspiration obtained from the word of God, to discern God’s signs in the heavens of another sort, viz., the political heavens.
But those who have got the natural capacity to discern the signs of the sky, have not often the spiritual capacity to discern the other signs. Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees “Oh, ye hypocrites . . . ye cannot discern the signs of the times.” Then he proceeds: “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, but there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” What the sign of the prophet Jonas was, you know from the history of Jonas. He was bound three days in the bowels of a great fish. In Matt. 10:11 , 38 , you will find how Jesus uses this sign. Jonas was swallowed up by the whale, and, on the third day, he was vomitted forth; and that was to Jonas a resurrection from the entombment of which he was the subject. He was cast overboard, and swallowed up: that was his burial, and when the fish came and vomitted him forth on to the land, that was his resurrection. Putting this together, it became a sign as to what was to happen to the “ Son of Man .” He was to be buried and to be the subject of a rising again from the receptacle in which he was deposited. The sign, therefore, which was to be given to that evil and adulterous generation was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And, we may remark that it was also a sign to all subsequent generations until the second coming of Christ. You will find from Acts 17 . that it was a sign to the Athenians.
The apostle Paul, when he was at Athens, made the following reference to the things signified by this sign of the prophet Jonas “The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now he commandeth all everywhere to repent;” to change their minds from idolatry, and from the tradition of the Scribes and Pharisees, and to receive a better system—the things which Paul presented to them for their reception. “Because he (God) hath appointed a day in the which he will judge (or rule) the world (or the habitable.)” How is he going to rule it? “In righteousness.” By whom? “By that man whom he hath ordained.” “Who is that man?” “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Where is the proof? “Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead;” as if he said “The sign that God is going to rule the world in righteousness is the sign of the prophet Jonas,” in other words, that the man who was buried as Jonas was for three days, and raised as Jonas was, would rule the world, and that the resurrection of that slain man was an evidence that God is going to rule the world by him in righteousness in the times of restitution foretold by the prophets. It was the great sign of that generation, a political as well as religious sign.
Government is a political question, and Paul connects the resurrection of Christ with the future government of the world. The things set forth by Paul had a political as well as an ecclesiastical, an individual, a social, and a spiritual bearing. When they come to be realities, they will change the whole constitution of things; the world will be turned upside down, as the Ephesians perceived. When Paul went to Athens, the most civilized city of those times, he just presented the sign of Jonah to them, as the sign that God was going to rule the world in righteousness. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very basis of that doctrine. It is the token and pledge of a great political revolution. It has also to do with a revolution in relation to ourselves as individuals; for Paul says “He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. ” If Jesus had not been raised again, there would have been no justification for any one; and baptism, which not only represents the burial of Jesus Christ, but that we hereafter hope to be planted in the likeness of his resurrection, would have been no use to us. The resurrection, then, is a sign to us, individually and doctrinally, and it is a sign to the world politically. God does not intend that the world shall always be governed by sinners; He is going to set aside the present systems, and introduce a personage styled “the Son of his handmaid” whom he has made strong, and who will be manifested in his own time.
That time is near, and the signs are plain. While men are looking for signs in the sun, moon, and the stars, suddenly will come the things signified. It is for us to look not at the natural heavens for signs, but to make ourselves acquainted with God’s signs in the political heavens, that Jesus may not come upon us as a thief. Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees, “Ye cannot discern the signs of the times.” If they had been able to discern them, they would not have put Jesus to death; but inasmuch as they did not discern them, they fulfilled God’s purpose in crucifying him. The seventy weeks of Daniel were just about being developed in their fulfilment; but these Scribes and Pharisees did not perceive that they were on the very verge of their completion,—that the last week of the seventy was on them, that they were actually existing in the week of the confirmation of the covenant, and that when they saw John on the banks of the Jordan baptising all the lower classes, whilst they rejected the counsel of God against themselves, and Jesus coming to John, and descending into the water of the Jordan, and on coming up out of the water being anointed with the Spirit of God Almighty upon him in the form of a dove, and being saluted with the voice “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,”—they were beholding the very signs of that time. They did not recognize these indications of the time in which they lived. Those, however, that were of the truth, perceived that John was a great prophet, and had got a mission from heaven, and that he was engaged in preparing a people for the Lord, whose coming he was proclaiming beforehand. Those who discerned the signs of the times believed. The Scribes and Pharisees admitted that John was a prophet, but they could not discern the object of his mission. It is just so now. What are we doing? What was there in Birmingham twenty years ago? Where was there a voice uplifted for this word in its purity, apart from tradition, and for the necessity of its being believed, as a means for the development of a people to receive the Messiah, who is near at hand, and shortly about to manifest himself? Nowhere. There was the stillness of death in relation to the truth of God. But now, what has been going on for a few years past? Why, an earnest contention for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, in this community; and what is the result?. The state of things before you.
God’s eyes are constantly on the truth. As Paul said to the Athenians, when arguing with them, “He is not far from everyone of us;” and what is this that now exists but one of his signs?—the preparation of a people for him. But the Scribes and Pharisees of our day do not discern the sign. They no more discern the development in their midst, by the power of the word, of a people who shall be prepared to receive the Messiah at his second coming, than the old Scribes and Pharisees did the existence of a people created by the preaching of John for the reception of Jesus in their day. I dare say they can tell you pretty correctly whether in the evening, it will be a fine day on the morrow, but they cannot discern the significance of the spectacle to be witnessed every first day of the week, in the Athenæum Hall. They would not understand it if they could hear the protest against every form of superstition that exists in Christendom, by a people not developed by the wise and the great and the noble, but by the Word in the hands of persons who have been surrounded by all sorts of difficulties. If we had been here twenty years ago, we should have said, “Where are the means to bring about such a result?” We should have been so discouraged at our feebleness and absolute want of means, that we should have come to the conclusion that it could not be. But the truth has been developed; there is no denying the fact. Now, what does the fact mean? It is a sign of something; what is the signification of the sign? The Lord, the Spirit, said in the Apocalypse, that after the pouring out of the sixth vial, he would come as a thief:—“Behold, I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, that he may not be found naked and that he be not put to shame.” How can a man watch without light? How can a man keep his garments if he has none? How can a man get a garment unless he knows how he may be covered with that covering for the naked, that was brought in at the end of the seventy weeks? These questions throw light upon the present situation. It was necessary that under the sixth vial, there should be a revival of the knowledge of the way; hence, the necessity of “the Law and the Testimony,” and of reasoning out of them,—of exposition; and as a result of exposition, understanding; and as a result of understanding, believing; and as the consequence of believing, yielding obedience; and as a consequence of yielding obedience, the enforcement upon one’s contemporaries of the testimony, that men must believe in the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, in order that Christ may become to them, the end of the law to righteousness.
Here, then, is an interesting state of things, developed by no other power than the power that John had. John did no miracles; we cannot do any miracles. But John, by the preaching of the word, developed a people for the Lord, who were glad to see him when he made his appearance. And here we have precisely the same results. We cannot perform miracles, but we can do as John did; we can shew the truth; we can reason the truth into the minds of those that are among us; and the truth, getting into their minds, does the rest. We are the mere agents in presenting the truth. But when the truth has been worked into the thinking organ of the system, when it takes root, it is not easy to cast it out. It then becomes a purifier; and just in proportion as it gets deep into the mind of a man does it purify and control him, and govern him, and direct him, and keep him. Well then, here is a sign. We can see it; we can perceive the sign which proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; and while we are arguing for the truth as it is in Jesus, the Lord will make his appearance as he did whilst John was engaged in the same work John says, “I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him, the same is he who baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.” Inasmuch, therefore, as he didn’t know him, all he had to do was to go on preaching the baptism of repentance; and while he was doing this, unconfirmed by miracle, Jesus made his appearance.
And now, here is the counterpart of the sign just preceding the coming of Jesus Christ in power and great glory. We have run through the times, (I believe) the 1260 years. Just reflect what was to obtain during the 1260 years, those forty-two months of years that John measured when he measured the Holy City . During that 42 months, the Holy City, made up of the saints, was to be trodden under foot. You know nothing can be lower than that which is under foot; it is just on a level with the ground—the very dust or dirt upon which we tread. This has been the fate of God’s holy ones, God’s saints, God’s holy community, the Holy City, for 1,260 years; so that they could not develop themselves as we can now. They had to labour under all disadvantages, without much organisation: a scattered and down-trodden people, like the Jews themselves, oppressed and despised. How is it now? Why, that period having elapsed, we can stand up in the face of the world, and maintain the truth without being trodden down; for we have equal rights, equal privileges, and as ample scope as any other denomination. Here then is a sign, that although Christ at the end of forty-two months, did not come as a flash of lightning, yet that the truth, which was before as the dust under the feet of the popular party, has asserted itself, and has been placed upon its feet, and maintains itself in the face of the enemy.
This is the first step announcing the coming of Jesus Christ to his own people. He does not come to the enemy; he comes to those who are accredited by the word; to those who have believed the truth and obeyed it. While these results are developing in our day and generation, they constitute a preparation to receive Jesus. In the Apocalypse ( 19:7 ) it is testified concerning this reception, as an accomplished thing: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” Marriage is a union between two persons, and the marriage of the Lamb is his union with those whom he recognises. If it can be affirmed that his wife hath made herself ready, it implies that there must have have been a previous period occupied in making herself ready. They cannot develop character in a flash of lightning; they have to begin by the perception of the truth in order to develop character under its influence. And this that is already in operation, is an incipient development of this preparation of the bride. It has begun and is now in progress, but it has not yet reached the culmination appointed. It will not be consummated until the Lamb shall form a union with those who constitute the wife or bride, who, having undergone previous moral preparation, will be the subjects of a material preparation that will constitute them incorruptible and deathless saints. Till that time arrives, the bride will consist of persons intellectually and morally prepared by the truth. This is the time for that preparation; there must be a beginning and a progress before the end is reached, and the beginning and the progress must be before the end. The beginning was made with the end of the down-treading period, and progress is now in operation; for the end, we must wait in patience. Our operations are misconstrued. Let us be regardless of this, and devote ourselves to the work. The Scribes and Pharisees did not recognize that which transpired in their day in preparation for the first coming of Christ; so the Scribes and Pharisees of Christendom do not recognize the process going on preliminary to this second coming, but all who are enlightened in the truth are enabled to see the sign, and, seeing the sign, rejoice, take courage, and watch.