Concerning the Apostasy from the Christian Spirit and Life
(Universally thriving in Christendom of 2010)
Position 1
That there has been a great apostasy from the Spirit of Christ and from the true light and life of Christianity, which apostasy began in the apostles' days and ripened quickly afterwards.
THAT the apostles and Christians in their days had the true spirit, the true light, and true life, I think will not be denied. We know that we are of God, and that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. 1 John 5:19-20.
They were truly born of God, and knew the Son of God to have come (in them, to be seen by them), receiving from him a true understanding, and the true light and knowledge in that understanding; and both the understanding and knowledge were rooted and seated in him that is true, where their situation and abiding were (we are in him that is true), where they met with the true Spirit, the true God, the true life, even life eternal.
That they had the true Spirit from God, (because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts. Gal 4:6), that they had the true light from God, (God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined into our hearts,.. 2 Cor 4:6), that they had the true life from and in the spirit, (if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit. Gal 5:25), is generally acknowledged concerning them.
Now of an apostasy from this, beginning even in their days, and to be completed not long after, the Scriptures also make mention. The Apostle Paul speaks expressly of the thing, thatthere must come a falling away, and a revealing of the man of sin, the son of perdition. 2 Thes 2:3.
Christ, the man of salvation, had showed and declared the path of life; had discovered the true church, which was the pillar and ground of truth, against whichthe gates of hell could not prevail; had sent the true spirit, which could lead into all truth, and preserve in the truth; but there must spring up a man of sin, a son of perdition, who, in a mystery, should work against this, and cause a falling from this to another thing. And this the apostle did not only give a touch of here in writing, but he had likewise told them of these things by word of mouth, to which he refers them, 2 Thes 2:5.
This were enough to an eye opened; but for further illustration to the thick understanding of man, which is surrounded with fogs and mists of darkness, some more evidences of scriptures may be given.
Christ foretold of false prophets, Mat 7:15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
The Lord sent true prophets under the law, and gave them true visions to declare; Christ sent true apostles and ministers under the gospel, and gave them the truth which they should preach and propagate; but then there were false prophets, false apostles, and ministers to come after, who were never sent by Christ, nor ever received the truth from his spirit. Now these do not come to gather into the life and truth of Christ, but to scatter from it; and so either to begin or uphold an apostasy.
And, said Christ, beware of them; for they come very subtly; they come in sheep's clothing. They get the garment of the sheep upon their backs, even that very garment which the sheep did wear; but they have not the nature of the sheep, but the nature of the wolf, which is ravenous after the life of the sheep. Mark: where there is the garment without, but not the nature within; where there is the form of godliness, but not the power; where there are scripture words and practices, but not the spirit of life from which they came; there is the false prophet! there is the wolf! there is the apostate! there is the seducer from Christ!
Again,Christ foretells of many false prophets,Mat. 24:11.And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And Mat 24:24,For there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
And as Christ himself, so his apostles also after him, by the same spirit, foretell of the same thing.
TheApostle Paul speaks of seducing spirits in the latter times, and of doctrines of devils, which should prevail to cause a departure in some from the faith.1 Tim. 4:1.
And if, in those days, the power of seducers was so great as to draw from the truth, which was then so manifest and living, how easy it would be to keep from the truth afterwards, when it had been long lost, and out of remembrance, and thereby deceit got into the place and name of it.
The ApostlePeter also foretold of false teachers, who should slyly bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them: and thatthey should so prevail, that their pernicious ways should be followed by many, and the way of truth evil spoken of.2 Pet 2:1-2.
Again, Paul, in his2nd Epistle to Timothy, speaks of the last days, that the times of then should be perilous; chap.3. Christ had said, The love of many should wax cold, and iniquity abound. Mat 24:12. And Paul shows how the times would prove very perilous, by the abounding of iniquity.
In the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. 2 Tim. 3:1-4. Behold what kind of fruit sprung up from the false doctrine of the false teachers in the apostasy from the truth. And yet all this under a form of godliness; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.2 Tim 3:5.
Christ sent the power of godliness into the world, to subdue the root from where all this springs; to kill the evil nature inwardly; but in the apostasy the evil nature is not killed, but the power denied which should kill it, and the form kept up to cover the evil nature with the inwardly ravening nature, which devours and destroys the stirrings and shootings-forth of the just-one in the heart, that gets the sheep's clothing, the form of godliness, to cover itself with. Look anywhere among the apostates from the apostles' spirit and doctrine, and see.
Is self-love killed? is covetousness killed?
Are boasting and pride killed? Is the love of pleasures killed? Are persecutors and oppressors killed? And are your honor and glory laid in the dust? No, they are only covered with the form; their life is still in them; the power by which they should be killed was at first denied, and now is lost and not known. Where there is the life, there is the power; and where there is the power, the evil nature is killed. But where the evil nature is not killed, there is only a form of godliness, a covering, a painted sepulchre, but rottenness within.
Now those last days and last times were not far off, but had already began then for the apostle exhorts Timothy to turn away from such, verse 5.
2 Tim. 3:5; From such turn away; intimating, that even then there were such to be turned away from. - And he said, 2 Tim. 3:8, that they did then resist the truth, like Jannes and Jambres; who with a likeness of what Moses wrought, but without life, did strive to resist the life and power that was in Moses. And this is the work of all deceivers, to get their own spirit into the likeness, and then to make use of the likeness to oppose and suppress the true life and power. So that they were come even then, when the apostle wrote this epistle to Timothy.
And Jude 4; Jude said, that ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, were crept in already, of his epistle.
(These false apostles, deceivers, antichrists that were appearing in the Apostles' time labeled themselves Christians. They didn't deny Christ as Lord and Master with their lips, rather they denied him by their continuing to sin; for even John 8:34; Christ said, whoever sins is a slave to sin. Rom 6:16; You either serve God or you serve Satan.)
Andthe Apostle John speaks very expressly, 1 John 2:18-19. Little children, it is the last time; and as you have heard that antichrist shall come, even now there are many antichrists, by which we know that it is the last time. They went out from us.., Christ, instructing his disciples concerning the last times, tells them there shall arise false Christs, with great power of deceit. Mat 24:24.
Now, said John here, there are come many antichrists, by which we know it is the last time. Mark: there were many antichrists to begin and lay the foundation of the apostasy, and make way for the great antichrist, who was to be their successor in the apostasy, and not the successor of the apostles in the truth. These antichrists did not abide in the doctrines of the apostles, who preached the everlasting gospel, nor in the spirit and principle which they were in; but went out from them, from their spirit, (from the anointing to which they kept, and by which they were kept), into another spirit, and preached another gospel; a gospel which was not the power of God to kill the earthly, but consisted in such a dead, literal knowledge of things as the earthly might be fed and kept alive by. And as the great antichrist was to come, so these antichrists who were to make way for him were already come, and were already laying the foundation of, and beginning the apostasy. So that the spirit of antichrist, (that very spirit in which antichrist succeeded, and in which he grew up, and perfected the apostasy), was then in the world, as this apostle said yet more manifestly, 1 John 4:3.This is that spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.
Nor was it idle, but it was at work, working itself into the form of godliness, that it might eat out the power, drive out the true spirit, and make a prey of the life.The mystery of iniquity, said the Apostle Paul, does already work. 2 Thes 2:7.This spirit did work in a mystery of iniquity to eat out the mystery of godliness, and to set up this mystery of iniquity in the world, instead of the mystery of godliness. And it did prevail to wind itself in the form, and get possession of the form, and also to trample upon and keep under the life. ItAnd this mystery of iniquity did not begin to work many ages after the apostles; but even then, in their days, already: the mystery of iniquity does already work.
And look now into the estate of the churches then, according to what the Scripture records of them, and the symptoms of its working will plainly appear. Thechurch of Ephesus, (among whom some of the grievous wolves had entered,Acts 20:29),had left their first love. Rev. 2:4. Thechurches of Galatia were bewitched from the gospel. Gal 3:1.The church atColossus was entangled, and made subject to the rudiments of the world, and ordinances, (which perish with the using), after the commandments and doctrines of men. Col 2:20-22. Mark: when once one comes to be subject to the commandments and doctrines of men, to perishing ordinances, and worldly rudiments, which men teach and command, the true state is lost, and the apostasy is entered into.
Here the wrong teacher is teaching, and he teaches the wrong thing, the wrong doctrines, the wrong commandments; and the wrong ear is hearing, which hears the wrong voice, and knows not the true; and so the more it hears and practices, and the hotter its zeal grows, the deeper it still runs into the apostasy. The church at 2 Cor.11:12-13; Corinth also was haunted with false apostles, 2 Cor. 11:12-13, insomuch that the 2 Cor 11:3; apostle was afraid that church would be corrupted by them. The church in Pergamus had them that held the doctrine of Balaam. Rev 2:14. The church in Rev.2:20-23; Thyatira suffered the woman Jezebel, which called herself a prophetess, to seduce and bring forth children in the apostasy. Rev 2:20-23.
The church inRev.3:1; Sardis had a name to live, but was dead; Rev 3:1. havingRev.3:4; defiled her garments. The church inLaodicea looked upon herself as rich, and increased with goods, and as having need of nothing; but was wretched, miserable, poor, blind, (so then the eye was put out), and naked, wanting the gold, wanting the raiment, wanting the eye-salve. Rev 3:17-18. And lastly, all the Gentiles were warned by Paul, in his epistle to the church at Rome, (by which that church might look upon herself as more particularly concerned with that), to look to their standing; lest they, falling from the faith, from the truth, from the life, into the apostasy, (as the Jews had done), might also feel the severity of God, as the Jews had. Rom 11:20-22.
Thus it is evident that the apostasy had gotten footing, and begun to spread in the apostles' days: and the Apostle John, in the spirit, beholding the future state of things, sees it over-spread and over-run all: Rev.18:3; all nations drunk with the cup of fornication. Rev 18:3. The way of truth had been evil spoken of long before, 2 Pet. 2:2 and the Rock of Ages, which alone can establish in the truth, had been forsaken, and all became as a sea; and up gets the beast, (which could not rise while the power of truth stood), and the woman upon the beast, with the cup of deceit and error from the life, in her hand; and this she gives all the nations to drink, and they drink, and are drunk with it. So that all nations have been intoxicated with the doctrines and practices of the apostasy.
They have taken that for truth which the whore told them was truth, and they have observed those things as the commands of God which the whore told them were the commands of God. And by this means they have never come to be married to Christ, to be in union with him, to receive the law of life from his spirit, and to know the liberty from the bondage of corruption; but have been in the bed of fornication with the whore, and have pleased, glutted, and satisfied the whorish principle in themselves with this fornication. And thus corruption did overspread all the earth; for taking in a corrupt thing instead of the truth, it cannot purify the heart, but corrupt it more.
A corrupt profession, corrupt doctrines, may paint, and make a man to himself seem changed; but the corruption still lodges within, which a spiritual eye can easily discern, though he that is in the corruption cannot. The Pharisees seemed glorious to themselves; but Christ saw through them. And every sort of people now, in their several strains and forms of apostasy, seem glorious to themselves; but the spirit of Christ sees through them all, to that which lies underneath, (in whom it reigns), and there it finds corruption increased and strengthened in its nature by the form, though outwardly painted with it.
Does not fornication defile and corrupt? So does the fornication of the whorish spirit: Rev.19:2; the earth was corrupted with it.Rev 19:2. So that this has been the universal state of Christendom since the apostasy; the error, the deceit, the fornication of the whore, have corrupted them, and withheld their eyes from the sight of that life Acts 15:9, 26:18, James 4:8, 1 Peter 1:22, 1 John 3:3, Tit 2:13-14; and truth that has power in it to purify them. People, multitudes, nations, tongues, have been all waters; weak, unstable, without any foundation in religion, but fit to be swayed and tossed up and down with every wind or breath of the whore, of whose cup they had all drunk, and by whose spirit they were all guided; for the whore sat upon them. Rev 17:15.
The whore, which had whored from God, and so was not the true church, sat upon people, multitudes, nations, and tongues. She sat upon them; she had them under her; she ruled and guided them by her cup of fornication, and with her spirit of fornication, as a man would guide the beast whereupon he rides. So that all that the nations do from henceforth in religion, is under the whore, according to her guidance, by virtue of the wine that they have drunk out of her cup.
(Men drink from the cup of fornications, when they buy off on the false teachings of the whore, who promises them heaven, while they pursue their lusts, pleasures, and pride, with no fear of God. The whole world is drunk on their pleasures and passions, without a clue that they are subject to the fury of God.)
And though God reserved to himself a remnant to worship him, and give some testimony to his truth all this time; yet the beast, (which was managed by the whore), had power over them: Rev 13:7; power to make war with them; power to overcome them. Rev 13:7. The beast had power over all kindred's, tongues, and nations everywhere; to overcome the saints, and suppress the truth they at anytime were moved to give testimony to; and to set up the worship of the beast, and make all the earth fall down before that. Rev 13:7-8.
And Rev 13:12; the second beast had, and exercised, all the power of the first beast, and set up his image, and gave it life, and caused men generally to worship it. Rev 13:12;.
And Rev 13:16; he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive his mark some way or other, either in their right hand, or in their forehead. Rev 13:16
And Rev 13:15; such as would not receive his mark, nor worship him, he had power to persecute and kill; and he did kill them. And Rev 17:6; the whore drank their blood. And Rev 19:2; God required it at her hand.Though she made the hand of the beast execute it, and would seem to wash her own hands of it.
(The first beast was is the beast of heathen religious authority. The second beast looks like a lamb, resembles the original Christian church, but without the Spirit; and so speaks like a dragon - speaks from Rev 8:6-7; the carnal mind of man, which is the evil one speaking: Matthew 5:37,16:23; let your 'yes' be 'yes,' and your 'no,' 'no;' for whatever is more than these comes from the evil one (the spirit of Satan within you. The second beast incorporates heathenish ceremony into the imitation Christian church: infant baptism, eating bread and wine for sacrifice, bowing and praying to images, praying to dead men and women as supposed mediators, a paid clergy, supervision of marriage, etc.; thus the second beast forces its victims to indirectly worship the first beast of heathenish religion.)
So that now, since the days of the apostles, even all this time of the apostasy, since the man-child has been caught up to God, and was not to be found in the earth, (which makes it seem such a strange thing for people to say Christ is in them), and the woman has been in the wilderness, and not in the habitable part of the world, Rev 12:5-6.
If all this time anyone will look for the true religion, for the true church, for the true knowledge and worship of God, he must not look on any nation, or any people, or among the tongues, which are cried up in nations and people for the original, and as the chief interpreters of the original; for they are all drunk with the whore's cup; they are under the power, dominion, authority, and service of the whore, who rides upon the beast to whom power was given over all kindred's, tongues, and nations. But look among the nations who were persecuted, whose blood was drunk, whom the powers of the nations made war against; there alone the testimony of Jesus is to be found. Rev 12:17. There alone are the witnesses against the present idolatry and corruption, and to some truths or other of Christ, which God enlightened them with, and where he stirred them up to give their testimony, though with the loss of their estates, liberties, or lives.
Now, by what has been expressed, is it not apparent to every eye that has room only to let in the letter of the scripture, in simplicity and plainness, that there has been a great apostasy from the true knowledge of Christ, and a universal corruption and power of death sprung up, instead of the power of his life and grace? Titus 2:11-14; The grace of God, which brings salvation, has disappeared; and Matthew 24:15; the abomination of desolation has taken up its place, and filled it with deadly venom against the truth, and against the life; so that enmity against God, under a pretence of love and zeal to him, has reigned generally in the hearts of men, from the times of the apostles to this present day.
And as the light breaks forth, and their eyes come to be opened, they will see that they have been and are haters of God, and of his life and spirit; but lovers of the world, and of such a religion as suits the worldly spirit.
(The woman fled into the wilderness just prior to 400 AD; so at least a remnant of the early church survived 367 years. The early Quakers re-established the true Christian church, starting in 1643. By 1671 the devil had already infiltrated many of the early Quaker assemblies, and by 1880 the last substance of the early Quaker movement had disappeared. Thus the Apostasy, although suffering the setback of hundreds of thousands of Early Quakers rejecting its lies, soon deceived everyone all over again.)