Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume IIMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Notes on the Book of Deuteronomy, Volume II
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Bible. Deuteronomy -- Commentaries
We should like to ask the reader this one question: If the apostle
Paul were to come to London for next Lord's day, where could he find
what he found in Troas eighteen hundred years ago, as recorded in Acts
xx. 7? Where could he find a company of disciples gathered simply by
the Holy Ghost, to the Name of Jesus, to break bread in remembrance of
Him, and to show forth His death till He come? Such was the divine
order then, and such must be the divine order now. We cannot for a
moment believe that the apostle would accept any thing else. He would
look for the divine thing; he would have that or nothing. Now, where
could he find it? where could he go and find the table of his Lord, as
appointed by Himself the same night in which He was betrayed?
Mark, reader, we are bound to believe that the apostle Paul would
insist upon having the table and the supper of his Lord as he had
received them direct from Himself in the glory, and given them by the
Spirit in the tenth and eleventh chapters of his epistle to the
Corinthians--an epistle addressed to "all that in every place call on
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours." We cannot
believe that he would teach God's order in the first century and
accept man's disorder in the nineteenth. Man has no right to tamper
with a divine institution. He has no more authority to alter a single
jot or tittle connected with the Lord's supper than Israel had to
interfere with the order of the passover.
Now, we repeat the question, and earnestly entreat the reader to
ponder and answer it in the divine presence and in the light of
Scripture,--Where could the apostle find this in London, or any where
else in christendom, on next Lord's day? Where could he go and take
his seat at the table of his Lord, in the midst of a company of
disciples gathered simply on the _ground_ of the one body, to the one
_centre_--the Name of Jesus, by the _power_ of the Holy Ghost, and on
the _authority_ of the Word of God? Where could he find a sphere in
which he could exercise his gifts without human authority,
appointment, or ordination? We ask these questions in order to
exercise the heart and conscience of the reader. We are fully
convinced that there are places here and there where Paul could find
these things carried out, though in weakness and failure, and we
believe the Christian reader is solemnly responsible to find them out.
Alas! alas! they are few and far between, compared with the mass of
Christians meeting otherwise.
We may perhaps be told that if people knew that it was the apostle
Paul, they would willingly allow him to minister. But then he would
neither seek nor accept their permission, inasmuch as he tells us
plainly, in the first chapter of Galatians, that his ministry was "not
of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who
raised Him from the dead."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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