W. J. Seaton

Dear Friends,

The history of the Church of Christ is something that every believer should have a keen interest in. When J. C. Ryle gives his selection of short biographies of the men of the eighteenth-century Evangelical awakening, he has this to say; “I pity the man who takes no interest in such enquiries. The instruments that God employs to do His work in the world deserve a close inspection. The man who did not care to look at the rams’ horns that blew down Jericho, the hammer and nail that slew Sisera, the lamps and trumpets of Gideon, the sling and stone of David, might fairly be set down as a cold and heartless person …”

With that statement we would heartily concur; and there is scarcely anything that can rob a believer, both of a spirit of gratitude and a spirit of humility, like an ignorance of God’s providential dealings with His Church in the past through His saints in those particular generations in which He has placed them and used them. Be that as it may, however, the history of the Church ought to be rightly appreciated, or else it can become wrongly applied. And very often there can be more than just an ounce of the golden calf of idolatry in the Church’s view of her past and former days. It is one thing to look back to those particular times where the Lord has visited His people in blessing, and from such a look to be desirous of God’s blessing for us and exhorted to search for God’s blessing for us. But it is quite another thing to fail to see something of the total picture of such times and thereby fail in our own times due to unfair, or unfitting comparisons that either lead to despondency or turn to degeneracy in finding ways and means to promote such blessings in our day.

The Book of Haggai furnishes us with a firm example of that behaviour pattern. The children of Israel have returned from their seventy years of captivity in Babylon, and they have returned to their homeland with the directive to rebuild the Temple of the Lord that was thrown down under Nebuchadnezzar. The work is hindered on account of various attitudes of heart and mind among the people. “It is not yet time to build the Lord’s house,” some of them are saying; and so the stones etc, that they had initially gathered began to grow moss. And then, in chapter two of the book, we find another attitude of mind has become prevalent, and is in danger of hindering the work now recommenced. There were, apparently, still some men and women left alive among the people of Israel who could remember the Temple as it had originally stood before its overthrow by Nebuchadnezzer. Perhaps some of them were still only at their mothers’ knees in those days, but they could remember the grandeur of Solomon’s Temple. And now, as they looked on the meagre beginnings of the work of rebuilding and reestablishing God’s house, they had begun to disparage the efforts and say, “This is indeed, the day of small things.” “My, when we were young,” they would be saying, “we used to see the Temple packed to capacity in those days – the sacred fire burned then, you know – the Ark of the Covenant used to sit over there beneath the outstretched wings of the cherubim – the Shekinah glory shone in the Holiest of Holies; this is nothing compared to the old house that stood in the olden days.” And Israel stood once again in danger of a spirit of pessimism entering in and hindering the work that God had given that generation to do to the glory of His name then.

Thus, Haggai’s exhortation: – “Who is left among you who saw this house in her first glory? And how do ye see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?” He knew, them through and through! And then his great prophetic word that the glory of this “latter house” will be greater than the glory of the “former,” for the Lord had a day fixed in His purposes when “the desire of all nations” would come, and Christ Himself would stand in that “latter house” – on the very selfsame day in which Haggai prophesied so long ago** – and cry, “if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.”

Now, we must not lose the lesson of the principle set forth there in Haggai. Nor should we overlook the fact that those who were harking back to the former days were forgetting that it was their generation that was led away into captivity in the first place! They had, indeed, all the advantages; but that did not guarantee God’s ire not being turned against them in their failure to rightly use those same advantages. And whereas we have no infallible rules for sitting in judgment on past generations, neither must we look back with rose-tinted glasses that only obscure the present as well as the past.

What vast, vast changes have overtaken the world and the Church of our day. This is true even of the last few decades, not to mention the last few centuries. Time was when a lot of people were happy enough to go along to Church because there wasn’t much to do. A cup of tea and a bun at a Saturday night gospel meeting was quite a perk to the drab rationed life of the war years. All that kind of thing has totally changed. The average family has a super-abundance (even though we still complain) of all these things. Sunday evening is the great highlight night for television; who needs the bit of warmth and escape that the Church can offer when you can be transported into worlds unknown at the flick of a switch or the turn of a knob? Religion, as such, isn’t popular any more, or fashionable any more, and we ought to bear in mind that much of the religious images that we have of – say the last century – are images drawn out of a situation when religious fervour was very high for all involved.

I would trust that our love for and loyalty to that esteemed man Charles Haddon Spurgeon would be unquestioned, but when we think of a Spurgeon, even, we must think straight. As that brother preached to his thousands in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, others were not all that far behind – to the “right” hand, and to the “left.” James Wells of Surrey Tabernacle, considered to be a hyper-calvinist of the hypers, ministered to his thousands also, while Joseph Parker, a rank Arminian, packed them in at the City Temple. The days of the 18th century Awakening
themselves need a balanced view, or else we might well find ourselves sitting among the potsherds in our gloom. The great Jonathan Edwards himself was to take such a balanced view in retrospect, even before the days of his own life were over. With all that was of the Holy Spirit in those former days, there was also that which was attributable to other factors, but which have become part of the total “glorious” picture in some people’s eyes. Whatever, those days changed – rapidly changed at some points – and we today are left with such debris as we have. Our task in our day can be greatly encouraged by looking back to how God has shown His grace and favour at other times, but, it can also be greatly impeded through a one-sided view of those times or a failure to appreciate our own times as compared to those other times. God give us grace to take into account the times factor in our reading and considering with regards to the history of His Church.

And then, let us never lose sight of the times factor itself. How easy it is for us just to light on the glorious event involved and fail to place it in its time sequence and consequence. Yet if we only but read the history of redemption itself we would eliminate this fault. Take Abraham: the promise of the “seed” is made, and true to His word, and faithful to His promise, God causes that “seed” to appear in Isaac. But when? Immediately after the promise? Not by any means – and not until Abraham is a hundred years old. Very well; but Abraham wasn’t in a state of suspended animation during those forty years between promise and fulfilment. God didn’t place Abraham in a deep freeze. And never fail to appreciate and “feel” what Abraham went through during that time – so much so, that he even rose to the heights of failure in the affair with Hagar and the production of that son Ishmael, “born after the flesh” and not “after the spirit.”

We have the “twelve sons of Jacob” as the family line of Abraham expands, but remember all those years when there was only Jacob himself? One male child in all the world in whom God’s promise of the coming “seed” could be fulfilled. Fleeing from his father’s house to escape Esau – nearly seventy years old and no wife, not to mention no son – lying down in his absolute misery at Bethel – going on to be cheated for years by his uncle Laban. Out of his loins came the patriarchs, indeed, at last; but what about the years between.

Into the New Testament: Zacharias and Elisabeth sing out with joy at the birth of their son, John the Baptist – herald of the Saviour who has come – but it will be thirty years before their son will come preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and they will never see it! Simeon and Anna will sing of what the Christ child will perform; but they will have mingled their dust with the dust of the earth before He utters one word. Pentecost comes with all its glories – and Samaria – and the “early thousands” of conversions. Then – “a multitude” – “many” – “some.” Then – individuals; then – even Paul can preach, and although he impresses or even convicts some of his hearers, they do not believe – and the work of the Church’s labours, outwith the extra ordinary, is begun, even before we leave the pages of the Acts of the Apostles.

And is it not lovely, and exciting to read of “revival” at some given points in the history of the Church? Indeed, it is. But never fail to note, so often, the time period before the harvest is reaped. It is easy to cover twenty-five or thirty years within the compass of a few pages of a book; – brother so-and-so came to such-and-such a town in 1701, and in 1731 a great outpouring of blessing was witnessed. We’ve read it in less than five minutes. But there are thirty years involved between the two dates; thirty years of hardness, labour, toil, setback, frustration; here and there, no doubt, a few mercy-drops, for the Lord is gracious – but “feel” the thirty years with those involved, as they laboured to be faithful in their day and age.

Who knows what will yet be the outcome of our day and age? It’s becoming current coin once again to look on our days as “the end times.” Well, a few glances at the history of the Church will show that every age thought itself to be in the end times. It’s irrelevant anyway, when all’s said and done: if these are the end times, we are only called to be faithful in them. But there may yet be great times ahead for the Church of Christ on earth, and future generations might yet look back and speak in awe of how the Church was “visited” in the year’s past. But as that generation would consider those years, we would trust they would also view aright those years in which we now labour and work.

In the meantime –
“I know not when my Lord may come,
I know not how, or where …,”

There appears only one course open to us all: to endeavour to be like David and “serve the Lord in our generation.” In that way we will best honour and use past generations, and we will best serve future generations. God grant us grace to do so.

Yours sincerely,
W. J. Seaton