Is It I?

Here the Apostle tells us something that is going to happen to the church itself. He said, “Be not soon shaken in mind, neither by Spirit, or by word, or by letter from us, that the day of Christ is at hand.” He said that day shall not come except there come a falling away first. Now evidently in the last days preceding Christ’s coming, there shall be a falling away.

I feel this Scripture has to deal with the people of God who lost their birthright, who sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. For this reason – how can someone fall away from something they never had? We know what the nominal Christian in our day and time and in the shallow dimensions of his faith, never having really been delivered from Satan’s bondage and the world – they can’t fall away from something that they never had.

But the believer, who by the grace of God had been converted, and became a child of God by the Spirit of adoption, they had attained a precious standing in hope. As the Saviour Himself said of John the Baptist, he was the greatest prophet ever born to women. But He (Christ) said, “He that is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist.” The close relationship God has drawn those of us who are in Him to Him – much closer than the closest of all prophets.

Now then, is it possible that those whom once God has redeemed and drawn out of darkness and made partakers of the greatest liberty in Christ, if they should go back again in their former life, gradually and by degrees? That is something for us to give thought to.

The Apostle mentions another time when he refers to the declension of God’s people; he said, however, I have more confidence in you, even though I thus speak. So it might be wholesome for us, it might be timely for us to entertain some concern about this thing.

Sometimes it occurs to me when I read this Word, when I meditate upon it, can it mean me?

It reminds me when the Lord Jesus told his little band of disciples in the Upper Room, He said, “One of you are going to betray me.” No doubt a deathly stillness descended upon the little band of disciples. They finally began to say, “Lord, is it I?” Another one: “Is it I?”

And so it is. This might be well to ask ourselves the question – and ask the Lord: “Is it I?” “Am I going to be one of those who is going to contribute in the falling away?”

Therein that man of sin, the son of perdition, will be revealed.

The devil is a great imitator. And as Jesus Christ was the Son of God in the flesh, so the devil is also going to produce himself in the flesh. He will be a man just as Jesus. He will walk to and fro visibly in this world. He will be seen of people. He will be worshipped, and recognized as god, although he is the enemy of God.

Now that’s the situation the last-day church is facing, brethren, and the question now rises, are we going to be able, by God’s grace, even to cope with this situation?
--Sermon Excerpt: Elder Bro. N.S.