Love Not the World by Watchman Nee

Author:Watchman Nee [Nee, Watchman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619580251
Publisher: CLC Publications
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Seven

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We have seen the church as a thorn in Satan’s side, causing him acute discomfort and reducing his freedom of movement. Though in the world, the church not only refuses to aid the world’s construction but persists in pronouncing judgment upon it. But if this is true, if the church is always a source of irritation to the world, then equally the world is a source of constant grief to the church. And because the world is always developing, its power to distress God’s people is ever expanding; in fact, the church has to meet a force in the world today with which in the early days she was not confronted at all. Then the children of God met open persecution in the shape of outward physical assault upon their persons (Acts 12; 2 Cor. 11). They were always coming into collision with material, tangible things. Now the chief trouble they meet in the world is more subtle, an intangible force behind its material things, that is not holy but spiritually evil. The impact of that spiritual force is far greater than it was then. And not only is it greater; there is an element present now that was not there formerly.

In Revelation 9 we read of a development which, to the author of that book, lay far in the future.

The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fallen unto the earth: and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss. And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace. . . . And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was said unto them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only such men as have not the seal of God on their foreheads. (9:1–4)

This is figurative language, but the star falling from heaven obviously refers to Satan, and we know that the bottomless pit is his domain—his storehouse, we might say. Thus it appears that the end time is to be marked by a special release of his forces, and men will find themselves up against a spiritual power with which they previously did not have to contend.

Surely this accords with conditions in our day. While it is true that sin and violence will be greater than ever at the close of this age, it is apparent from God’s Word that is not specifically these with which the church will have to grapple then, but with the spiritual appeal of far more everyday things.

As it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

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