- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
‘The Church at the Time of the End.’
By Mrs Jessie Penn-Lewis.
Let us look at the message of the glorified Lord to Philadelphia in Revelation 3 v7-13, a message Schofield describes as a message to ‘The true Church in the professing church’ on the eve of the Second Advent of the Lord (v11).
1. The true church at the Time of the End.
It will be a time:
(1) when everything around them will be so antagonistic to the Gospel that only the Lord Himself will be able to open doors for His message and keep them open (v7-8).
(2) when His people will have but a “little strength”.
(3) when the utmost that is possible will be a negative victory, the victory of what they will not do, "you have . . . not denied My Name” (v8).
(4) of profession without real possession of true fellowship with God (v9).
(5) when the Lord demands patience of His people, “you have kept My command to endure patiently” (v10). In this condition of God-wrought patience He will be able to keep them during the darkness preceding the terrible hour which is coming upon the whole earth (v10). Impatience takes a believer out of the keeping power of God almost more than anything else. The Lord therefore says “Since you have kept My command to endure patiently, I will also keep you".
(6) of conflict in which the prize of the crown is at stake. “Hold on to what you have, so that no-one will take your crown” (v11).
2. The World-conditions in the time of the Anti-christ.
In Revelation 13 v1-18 we have a picture of the reign of the Anti-christ, both civil and religious.
When the Beast, the Anti-christ, obtains the throne of the world and great authority, the condition of things depicted in Revelation 13 will not have come about suddenly but be the result of previous workings of the spirit of Anti-christ (see 1 John 2 v18).
The nearer we get to the eve of the Lord’s Return believers will find themselves in the dark shadow of the approaching reign of the Beast, and be able in the light of the Word of God to see increasingly characteristics of the oncoming terror.
The entire situation will be the direct outcome of the schemes and power of “The Dragon”. “The Dragon gave the Beast his power and his throne and great authority” (v2). It plainly says that the Dragon governs the world through two instruments, these are the Beast - Anti-christ, as the head of all civil authority, and the false Prophet as the head of all the religious movements of that time (v11-12).
Some of the primary characteristics of the Beast are:
(1) He received homage from all the world, and through this homage to the Beast, the Dragon obtains the world-worship he has craved for from the moment he said, “I will be like God” (Isa. 14 v14).
(2) Notice the striking descriptions given of the Beast, where all the world wondered at him, and gave him worship. He had had a deadly wound which was healed. Twice more this is mentioned, once when it is said that the people of the earth were made to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed (v12), and again when those who dwelt on the earth were urged to make an image of the Beast, which had the wound by the sword and lived (v14). The Beast was one who had been miraculously healed so that all the world wondered and bowed down before such an evidence of supernatural power. This shows clearly that the Dragon is able to heal and that the Anti-christ and the false Prophet obtain their power over all that dwell on earth by satanic power.
(3) The influence of the Beast was primarily through speech, speaking great things and blasphemies - he blasphemed God and His Name. What a terrible description of the state of the world under the government of Satan. Open blasphemy against God and all that belongs to Him.
(4) The Beast was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer and kill them, and by so doing he apparently became master of the whole earth (v7).
3. The Counterfeit Lamb and his Miracles.
In the second Beast we see a supernatural counterfeit of the true working of the Holy Spirit. It seems that the Anti-christ could only get and hold his power over the whole earth by means of a false religion having signs from heaven to ‘prove’ that it came from God (v11-18).
The second Beast rises up in the form of a lamb, counterfeiting Christ, the Lamb of God, and only distinguishable from Him by his speech. He looked like a lamb but spoke like a dragon (v11). He had equal power with the first Beast, world-wide in its influence (v12), and was devoted to causing all earth’s inhabitants to worship the Anti-christ, and the Dragon (v4).
How did the counterfeit lamb obtain this worship?
1. He did great wonders (v13).
2. He brought fire down from heaven, in which the prince of the power of the air roams at will (v13).
3. He deceived earth’s inhabitants by means of miracles (v14).
4. He was able to give life to an image of the Beast and cause it to speak (v15).
The miraculous healing of the Beast, the great and wonderful supernatural speech, the great wonders in the sight of men, fire from heaven and supernatural miracles, which he had power to do, all will be wrought by the power supplied by the Dragon.
4. The Saints in the time of the Anti-christ.
What of the true Christians? Were there no exceptions to this world-wide homage to the Beast and to the Dragon? Yes, the Calvary Saints refused to worship (v8), but with the result that the Beast had power to kill them (v15). Further, he caused all . . . to receive a mark . . . that none might buy or sell unless they had the mark . . . (v16-17), to starve out those who would not worship as they would have difficulty obtaining the necessities of life.
As we see the increasing working of anti-christian spirits blaspheming God in the world, and in the religious communities anti-christian spirits counterfeiting Christ, what can we expect from God? Do the Scriptures show God doing signs and wonders, in competition, so to speak, with the counterfeits which the spirits of Anti-christ and the false Prophet are already bringing to pass? Or does the picture emphasise that the only power which will enable the saints to stand is the knowledge of the Cross and the only path for them, the way of the Cross?
5. The Calvary Saints before and during the Reign of the Beast.
“All . . . will worship the beast - all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain" (v8).
The picture is of all the peoples of earth giving the Dragon worship with the one exception, in every land, the Calvary saints stand, those holding to the truth of the Lamb slain, and those who were willing to be slain for Him, rather than give one act of worship to the Dragon (Rev. 12 v11).
This does not look like God coming with signs and wonders to counter the counterfeits of Satan. Rather it is in line with the principle of God’s working described by the Lord, no sign “will be given it except the sign of Jonah” (Matt. 16 v1-4), the death and burial of the Lord, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12 v38-40). The only sign God gave to the Jews asking Christ for a sign from heaven was His death at Calvary, and the great sign which He will give, in the days of Anti-christ, will be His witness to the atoning death of His Son through those who are willing to lay down their lives for Him.
This seems confirmed also in Revelation 20 v4-6. Those who lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years were those who had been killed for their witness to the slain Lamb and for their holding to the Word of God, these being the ones who had not worshipped the Beast or received his mark.
All these conditions are already present in the earth and it seems clear that there is no promise for the last days of any God-given movements, of signs and wonders, or even of a rapid gathering in of masses of souls for Christ. But there will be world movements permitted by the prince of the power of the air when the Gospel of the Cross is omitted, or in counterfeit workings of the spirits of Anti-christ aiming at the veiling of the message of the Cross in its fullest power. Neither is there any ground for expecting a visible triumph of the saints, for it was given unto him (the Beast) to make war with the saints, and to overcome them (Rev. 13 7).
6. The Knowledge of the Cross is the need in the last days.
“The Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13 v8). It is striking to find this statement in the midst of the unveiling of the Anti-christ’s reign over the world. The expression embodies the entire work of Christ at Calvary, as the Lamb slain for those whose names are entered in His Book of Life. The one need for the children of God is to know in all its fulness the meaning of the Cross, and to wield it as a weapon of victory over the Dragon in all his varied attacks on the people of God.
7. How to distinguish false from true power.
Are there to be no mighty works, no miracles wrought by God? Most assuredly, but the difference between the counterfeit works of Anti-christ and the working of the Holy Spirit, is that the true power of God invariably reaches the soul through Calvary. Not in spectacular competition with the foretold wonders of the spirits of Satan, but in the deep inwrought application by the Spirit of God to the Cross as the power of God, whereby the believer is not only set free from the power of sin, but is also given to know in his dying flesh the life whereby Jesus conquered death in all its mighty power.
The miracles of God are not always externally accomplished but wrought in the inner spirit through Calvary. Deeper and fuller than any healing of the body is the marvellous working of God, when “He who raised Christ from the dead” (Rom. 8 v11) endows with life the dying body of believers as they carry round in their bodies the death of Jesus (2 Cor. 4 v10).
The disciples came to Jesus privately, “Tell us . . . what will be the sign . . . of the end of the age. Jesus answered, ‘Watch out that no-one deceives you. For many will come in My Name, claiming ‘I am the Christ’ and will deceive many” (Matt. 24 v3-8). He did not say that it would not be possible for the elect to be led astray, but that the aim of the Deceiver would be to reach the elect.
“See, I have told you ahead of time” (Matt. 24 v25) said the Master, making it quite plain that it is through signs and wonders that the danger would come to the children of God, at a time when lawlessness was abounding and the love of many grown cold. In these perilous days let us “watch and be sober” (1 Thess. 5 v6 & 1 Pet. 4 v7).
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