Victory in the Evil Day # 1

Victory in the Evil Day # 1

I am constantly receiving correspondence stressing the evil of the days in which we live. Ought we to be surprised that the days are evil? Are we not living in a dispensation when satan is yet the 'god of this world'? Has he ever proved to be the author of anything but evil? The important thing surely is that the Scriptures never disguise the fact that the days are evil, but insist that the Church is invested with power to stand unshaken in the evil day (Ephesians 6:13). We shall do well, therefore, to remind ourselves of two supremely important facts. In the first place, the root cause of the evil around us is the ceaseless activity of "the rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12). In the second place, we may, if we will, be armed with the complete armor  of God, which ensures complete and overwhelming victory. I propose to examine the armor provided for us, because through each piece there is unveiled to us the lines of attack by which the forces of evil plan to render us impotent.

First - truth. The rank and file of the Church today are impotent because they are almost unarmed as far as a strong personal grasp even of the basic truths of the Christian faith are concerned. Our failure to grasp the fact that the Spirit has indeed been given to lead us as individuals into all truth,and that He can reveal all we need direct to us through Scripture, has played right into satan's hands. Jonathan Goforth telling of the transformation of his whole Christian service,and God's leading into days of revival and triumph for the Gospel in China, wrote, "Restless and discontented, I was led to a more intensive study of the Scriptures. This desperate agonizing after the truth of the power of the Holy Spirit brought him to the place of liberty and effective service. If we are to triumph it will never be through the cheap, shallow aids to Bible study, which are provided for our spoon-feeding today, the cliches, the attractive alliterations, etc. All these minister to the fleshly mind, and are as easily forgotten as they are assimilated. The wisdom of Solomon still has a call for each one of us, "My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; so that these incline thine heart unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding. Yes, if thou criest after knowledge,and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of His mouth cometh understanding ..." (Proverbs 2:1-6).

The modern fallacies of security and provision of need without personal effort and sacrifice are eating into the care of the Church's thinking; leaving her deploring the evil about her, but utterly unable to cope with it. We seem to prefer to take the line of least resistance, to listen, to enjoy or to criticize but we do not stir ourselves to search for the treasure which the Spirit of Truth is waiting to show us, because that search demands time and labor.

Next - righteousness. The history of revivals has always been the story of sin put right; and a powerful Church is always a purged Church with a tender conscience. But we must remember that even the confession and pardon of sins against God and man, although absolutely vital as a first step to victory, is not the whole story. Righteousness is a very positive word, and Christian righteousness is no less a thing than the "the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith" (Romans 1:17). Even among Christians there is a strong tendency to judge questions of sin and righteousness from purely human standards. And yet Jesus told His disciples, "I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:20); and a Christian is described in Romans 8:4 as one in whom "the righteousness of the law" (God's law) is to be fulfilled. satan has managed to obscure this issue, and we must face the fact that if the Church is to prevail against him it will only be when, as John Wesley says, "We so preach faith in Christ as not to supersede, but produce holiness; to produce all manner of holiness, negative and positive, of the heart and of the life." The days will remain evil without relief, and satan unnecessarily powerful until the Church will permit God the Holy Spirit to sit as judge, and unveil sin as it is visible to the eyes of God. To quote Goforth once again, "Let us not delude ourselves by thinking that all is well with our old established Churches at home. It is sin in individual Church members, whether at home or on the foreign field, which grieves and quenches the Holy Spirit." A letter recently received from a missionary says, "The Lord had to convict me of my shut mouth, and that had to be put right openly. The hindrance out of the way new light began to dawn from the Word itself ... new light about our death with Christ, and the need of abiding in it if we are to abide in "life" at all. Here is s soul being liberated for victory and revival, and invested with the breastplate of righteousness. She passed from repentance, and confession to an understanding of her place as dead to sin, but alive as a partaker of God's righteousness.

~Jessie Penn-Lewis~

(continued with # 2)