IS UNITY POSSIBLE TODAY? (NOT)

IS UNITY POSSIBLE TODAY?

Men have sought for a present manifested unity by misapprehending two things. (1) Unity is desirable, and it ought to exist, hence God commands it, and good men advocate and endeavor to exemplify it. God can do no less than to require it (just as He demands holiness, etc.), but does God teach us that it will be perfectly manifested in this dispensation? Instead of teaching the preservation of outward unity, we are expressly taught to expect divisions, etc., even in the early Church (Acts 20:29, 30; 1 Cor. 11:16, 18, 19; 2 Tim. 4:3, 4, etc.). The condition of the Church down to the harvest, a mingling of tares and wheat, good and bad fish, foolish and wise virgins, forbids the attainment of a manifested unity however desirable to man and acceptable to God, seeing that such a mixture itself-allowed for purposes of mercy--is productive of diversity. Had an external unity been the aim of God, then undoubtedly the apostles would have presented us with a regular ecclesiastical government (something, perhaps, like the Papacy developed), Canon laws, a Synoptical Confession of Faith, etc. But we are told that, for wise purposes (as e.g. to test character, faith, life), diversity and antagonism were permitted, so that through trial and suffering, fighting and struggling, the faithful members may be perfected. God now permits many things, which in themselves are not agreeable to Him, and which form a source of sorrow to pious souls. The history of the Church is the best commentary on this subject. (2) Unity now, however, exists (not outwardly but) between Christ, the Head, and all faithful, believing members (inasmuch as all receive from Him the same blessings, spiritual life, etc.), and even between such believers when the inward religious experience is permitted to testify (for all having the same faith, the same graces of the Spirit, same experience in spite of denominational ties, the likeness in one will respond to the same in another), and, in view of this spiritual unity (the only one that is promised to exist in the present dispensation), many able and most amiable writers have supposed that it ought to be manifested outwardly in a general amalgamation of all denominations, or in some external union embracing the various churches. That is the one-world church thinking.

Here, however, we must distinguish between things that differ. The union between Christ and His members is necessarily spiritual, invisible, until the day that He appears with them, and such union is openly revealed. The union between His members, resulting from the former, and evidenced by a like experience of grace and power, is undoubtedly to be evidenced by an expression of the same (as e.g. in the present alliances, public meetings of the representatives of various denominations, etc.), but irrespective (as now done) of particular forms of doctrine, church government, etc., being founded solely upon the religious experience of the individual believer, a common Church love arid adhesion to the One Messiah. Outward diversity will, notwithstanding, necessarily exist.

Men, also, have been searching for a bond that might bind into historic union the past Christian centuries. The secular and ecclesiastical institutions, civil and religious wars, the State and Church persecutions, the antagonistic forces arrayed against each other-these with a multitude of facts cannot, however able writers attempt it, be compressed within a bond of unity. Civilization, Christianity, development, etc, do not meet and unite the antagonism. Philosophy and science (today at odds with the Bible and what Christ Himself taught) vainly seek to unravel the mystery, and to account for the perversity manifested. Open the Bible, and it tells us that for certain reasons we are now in "the times of the Gentiles"-times that give no bond of unity owing to Gentile domination being adverse to the only influences that could develop the same. These are times in which truth and error, piety and wickedness, faith and unbelief, reason and cavil, etc., are to be exhibited in constant conflict. The unity is alone found in the Divine Purpose, which allows this period as a punishment to the Theocratic nation (i.e. the Jews), and as a mercy to the Gentiles (i.e. inviting to an engrafting, etc.). This very lack of unity externally is part of the Divine Plan, and its historic relationship is seen when the Divine Purpose is completed. Hence, we must not look for that which can only be made manifest at the end. Unity, in reference to the believer, is now found in what Julius Muller in the Evang. Union calls "an absolute and truthful surrender of one's self to the personal Savior; a surrender of which the simplest child is capable." This leads to fellowship one with another, seeing that the same mind which was in Christ actuates all. That selfish, lordly, alleged holy, exclusiveness, characteristic of some, is not the fruitage of true Christian love; its source is human.

Hold tight, for one day we shall all be perfected and then we shall be one.