by Watchman Nee (CLC)
Having every one of us been in bondage to sin, we readily believe that sinful
things are Satanic; but do we believe equally that the things of the world are
Satanic? Many of us, I think, are still in two minds about this. Yet how clearly
Scripture affirms that "the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5:19).
Satan well knows that, generally speaking, to try to ensnare real Christians
through things that are positively sinful is vain and futile. They will usually
sense the danger and elude him. So he had contrived instead an enticing network,
the mesh of which is so skillfully woven as to entrap the most innocent of men.
We flee sinful lusts, and with good reason, but when it comes to such seemingly
innocuous things as science and art and education, how readily do we lose our
sense of values and fall a prey to his enticements!
Yet our Lord's sentence of judgment clearly implies that everything that
constitutes "the world" is out of line with God's purpose. His words, "Now is
the judgment of this world," clearly imply the condemnation of all that goes to
make up the kosmos, and would never have been uttered if there were not
something radically amiss with it. Further, when Jesus goes on: "Now shall the
prince of this world be cast out," he is stressing not merely the intimate
relation between Satan and the world order but the fact that its condemnation is
linked with his. Do we acknowledge that Satan is today the prince of education
and science and culture and the arts, and that they, with him, are doomed? Do we
acknowledge that he is the effective master of all those things that together
make up the world system?
When mention is made of a dance hall or a night club, our reaction as Christians
is one of instinctive disapproval. To us that is "the world" par excellence.
When, however, to go to the other extreme, medical science or social service are
discussed, there may be no such reaction at all. These things command our tacit
approval, and maybe too our enthusiastic support. And between these extremes
there lie a host of other things varying widely in their influence for good or
bad, between which we should probably none of us agree on where to draw an exact
line. Yet let us face the fact that judgment has been pronounced by God, not
upon certain selected things that belong to this world, but impartially upon
them all.
Test yourself. If you venture into one of these approved fields, and then
someone exclaims to you: "You have touched the world there," will you be moved?
Probably not at all. It takes someone whom you really respect to say to you very
straightly and earnestly: "Brother, you have become involved with Satan there!"
before you will so much as hesitate. Is that not so? How would you feel if
anyone said to you: "You have touched education there," or "You have touched
medical science," or "You have touched commerce"? Would you react with the same
degree of caution as you would if he had said, "You have touched the Devil
there"? If we truly believed that whenever we touch any of these things that
constitute the world we touch the prince of this world, then the awful
seriousness of being in any wise involved in worldly things could not fail to
strike home to us. "The whole world lieth in the evil one"-not a part of it, but
the whole. Do not let us think for a moment that Satan opposes God only by means
of sin and carnality in men's hearts; he opposes God by means of every worldly
thing. Oh, I agree with you that the things of the world are all in one sense
material, lifeless, intrinsically without power to harm us; yet even that should
itself suggest that they are resistant to the purpose of God, as indeed is
everything in which there is no touch of divine life.
The recurring phrase "after its kind" in Genesis 1 represents a law of
reproduction that governs the whole realm of biological nature. It does not,
however, govern the realm of the Spirit. For generation after generation, human
parents can beget children after their kind; but one thing is certain:
Christians cannot beget Christians! Not even where both parents are Christians
will the children born to them automatically be Christians, no, not even in the
first generation. It will take a fresh act of God every time.
And this principle applies no less truly in the affairs of mankind more widely.
All that belongs to human nature continues spontaneously; all that belongs to
God continues only for as long as God's working continues. And the world is all
inclusively that which can continue apart from divine activity, that is, which
can go on by itself without the need of specific acts of God to maintain it in
freshness. The world, and all that belongs to the world, does this naturally-it
is its nature-and in doing so it moves in a direction contrary to the will of
God. This statement we shall now seek to illustrate both from the Scripture and
from Christian experience.
Let us take first the field of political science. The Old Testament history of
Israel affords us the example of a highly privileged nation and its government.
The people of Israel, we are told, wanted to be on terms with the nations
around them, so they set their heart on a king. We will leave aside for the
moment their election of Saul, and move on to the point where eventually, in his
own time, God gave them the king of his choice who would establish the kingdom
under his own direction.
Now even when this was clearly God's doing, the natural trend of the kingdom
proved to be, "like the nations," away from him. For a kingdom is a worldly
thing, and in keeping with all worldly things it tends to come into collision
with the divine purpose. Wherever in the world a nation's government is left to
itself, it follows its natural course which is further and further away from
God. And what is true in secular national politics worked itself out equally
surely even in divinely chosen Israel. Whenever God discontinued his specific
acts on their behalf, the kingdom of Israel drifted into idolatrous political
alignments. There were recoveries, it is true, but every one was marked by a
definite divine intervention, and without such intervention the trend was always
down hill.
It will scarcely surprise us that the same thing proves to be true in the field
of commerce. I can think of no sphere where the temptation to dishonest and
corrupt dealing is so great as here. We all know something of this. We all know
how hard it is to remain straight and to conduct affairs honestly in the
competitive world of trade. Many would say that it is impossible, and certainly
to do so calls for a life that is cast upon God in an unusual way.
We recall that our Lord Jesus tells us of two contrasting men, one who gained
the whole world and forfeited his life, and another, a merchant, who went and
sold all that he had to buy one priceless pearl. To the latter of these Jesus
likened the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:26; 13:45, 46). The Spirit of God has
not infrequently moved men in business to action of a like character. There have
been not a few well-known business firms whose profits have been turned over to
divine ends in the spread of the Gospel and in other ways.
I think of one such enterprise that, at the outset of its history, was the
creation of a God-fearing business man. Now godly fear is a quality that can
only exist as it is sustained from heaven, but business acumen and the efficient
organization which it creates can be self-perpetuating. In the first generation
of this firm's history we find divine life being mediated through its founder
sufficient to hold what was even then a worldly concern securely under the
authority of God. But by the second generation that restraint was gone and, as
one would expect, the business gravitated automatically into the world system.
Godly fear had drained away, but the firm itself is still flourishing.
Suppose we take now so apparently innocent a matter as agriculture. Here
Genesis, written in a primitive world of flocks and husbandry, has something to
tell us. After Adam's fall God was compelled to say to him, "Cursed is the
ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the
herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground," No one would suggest that in Eden, where the tree of
life flourished, farming or gardening was wrong. It was God appointed. But as
soon as it was let go from under the hand of God it deteriorated. Man was
condemned to an endless round of drudgery and disappointment, and an element of
perversity marked the fruit of his toil. The deliverance of Noah was God's great
recovery movement, in which the earth was given a fresh start. But how swift,
how tragic was man's reversion to type! "Noah began to be a husbandman, and
planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was
uncovered within his tent." Of course agriculture is not in itself sinful, but
here already its direction is away from God. Just let it follow its natural
tendency and it will contrive to take a course diametrically opposed to him. Do
we know something of this today in such physical disasters as the drying out of
continents?
How different is the Church, God's husbandry! Through the grace of God and the
indwelling Spirit she possesses an inherent life power capable, if she responds
to it, of keeping her constantly moving Godward, or of recalling her Godward if
she strays.
When we turn to education, both the Bible and experience have something to say
to us. Speaking allegorically we might say that in rejecting Saul and choosing
David God was passing over a man distinguished by his head (for he was that much
taller than his peers) in favor of the man after his heart! But more seriously,
the men such as Joseph and Moses and Daniel, of whose wisdom God made public
use, each received in a direct way from God himself the understanding they
needed. They took little account of their secular education. And the apostle
Paul clearly placed scholarship among the "all things" that he counted to be
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord (Phil. 3:8).
He draws a clear distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom that
comes from God (1 Cor. 1:21, 30).
But it is experience that demonstrates the essential worldliness of scholarship
as such. Most of the historic university colleges of the West were founded by
Christian men with a desire to provide their fellows with a good education under
Christian influence. During their founders' lifetimes the tone of those
foundations was high, because these men put real spiritual content into them.
When, however, the men themselves passed away, the spiritual control passed away
too, and education followed its inevitable course toward the world of
materialism and away from God. In some cases it may have taken a long time, for
religious tradition dies hard; but the tendency has always been obvious, and in
most cases the destination has by now been reached. When material things are
under spiritual control they fulfill their proper subordinate role. Released
from that restraint they manifest very quickly the power that lies behind them.
The law of their nature asserts itself, and their worldly character is proved by
the course they take.
The spread of missionary enterprise in our present era gives us an opportunity
to test this principle in the religious institutions of our day and of our land.
Over a century ago the Church set out to establish in China schools and
hospitals with a definite spiritual tone and an evangelistic objective. In those
early days not much importance was attached to the buildings, while considerable
emphasis was placed on the institutions' role in the proclamation of the Gospel.
Ten or fifteen years ago you could go over the same ground and in many places
find much larger and finer institutions on those original sites, but compared
with the earlier years, far fewer converts. And by today many of those splendid
schools and colleges have become purely educational centers, lacking in any
truly evangelistic motive at all, while to an almost equal extent, many of the
hospitals exist now solely as places merely of physical and no longer of
spiritual healing. The men who initiated them had, by their close walk with God,
held those institutions steadfastly into his purpose; but when they passed away,
the institutions themselves quickly gravitated toward worldly standards and
goals, and in doing so classified themselves as "things of the world." We should
not be surprised that this is so.
In the early chapters of the Acts we read how a contingency arose which led the
Church to institute relief for the poorer saints. That urgent institution of
social service was clearly blessed of God, but it was of a temporary nature. Do
you exclaim, "How good if it had continued!"? Only one who does not know God
would say that. Had those relief measures been prolonged indefinitely they would
certainly have veered in the direction of the world, once the spiritual
influence at work in their inception was removed. It is inevitable.
For there is a distinction between the Church of God's building, on the one
hand, and on the other, those valuable social and charitable byproducts that are
thrown off by it from time to time through the faith and vision of its members.
The latter, for all their origin in spiritual vision, possess in themselves a
power of independent survival which the Church of God does not have. They are
works which the faith of God's children may initiate and pioneer, but which,
once the way has been shown and the professional standard set, can be readily
sustained or imitated by men of the world quite apart from that faith.
The Church of God, let me repeat, never ceases to be dependent upon the life of
God for its maintenance. Imagine a living church in a city today with its
fellowship and prayer and Gospel witness, and its many homes and centers of
spiritual activity. Some years hence what do we find? If God's people have
followed him in faith and obedience it may be a place filled more than ever with
the life and light of the Lord and the power of his Word; but if in
unfaithfulness to him they have forsaken their vision of Christ, it may equally
well have become a place where people preach atheism. By then as a church it
will have ceased to exist. For the Church depends for its very existence upon a
ceaseless impartation of fresh life from God, and cannot survive one day without
it.
But suppose alongside that church there is a school or hospital or publishing
house, or other religiously founded institution, originating in the faith of the
same church members. Assuming that the need for its service continues still to
exist ten years hence and has not been met by some alternative private or State
enterprise, then the probability is that that work will still be operating then
at a no less efficient and commendable standard of service. For given ordinary
administrative know-how, a college or a hospital can continue efficiently on a
purely institutional level without any fresh influx of divine life. The vision
may have gone, but the establishment carries on indefinitely. It has become no
less worldly than everything else that can be maintained apart from the life of
God. And every such thing is embraced in the Lord's sentence: "Now is the
judgment of this world."
Suppose I put to you the question, "What work are you engaged in?" You answer,
"Medical work." You say that without any special consciousness other than pride
in the compassionate nature of your calling, and without any sense of the
possible danger of your situation. But if I tell you that medical science is one
mote unit of a system that is Satan-controlled, what then? Assuming that as a
Christian you take me seriously, then you are at once alarmed, and your reaction
may even be to wonder if you had not better quit your profession. No, do not
cease being a doctor! But walk softly, for you are upon territory that is
governed by God's enemy, and unless you are on the watch you are as liable as
anyone else to fall a prey to his devices.
Or suppose you are engineering, or farming, or publishing. Take heed, for these
too are things of the world, just as much as running a place of entertainment or
a haunt of vice. Unless you tread softly you will be caught up somewhere in
Satan's snares and will lose the liberty that is yours as a child of God.
How then, you ask, are we to be delivered from his entanglements? Many think
that to escape the world is a matter of consecration, of dedicating themselves
anew and more wholeheartedly to the things of God. No, it is a matter of
salvation. By nature we are all entrapped in that Satanic system, and we have no
escape apart from the mercy of the Lord. All our consecration is powerless to
deliver us; we are dependent upon his compassion and upon his redemptive work
alone to save us out of it. He is well able to do so, and the means whereby he
does it will be the theme of our next chapter. God can set us upon a rock and
keep our feet from slipping. Helped by him we may turn our trade or profession
to the service of his will for as long as he desires it.
But let me repeat again that the natural trend of all the "things that are in
the world" is toward Satan and away from God. Some of them may have been set
going by men of the Spirit with a goal that is Godward, but as soon as the
restraint of the divine life is removed from them, they automatically swerve
around and take that other direction. No wonder then that Satan's eyes are ever
on the world's end, and on the prospect that at that time all the things of the
world will revert to him. Even now, and all the time, they are moving in his
direction, and at the end time they may be expected to have reached their goal.
As we touch any one of the units of his system, this thought should give us
pause, lest we be found inadvertently helping to construct his kingdom.