The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

professing church systems. It is this that has built again a priestly hierarchy, as necessary
mediators between God and the professed people of God. It is this that, if it were possible,
would rob God's people of their place and standing with God in Christ. It is this that has
caused true Christianity, true Christian experience, to be hidden to the great masses of
professors, as also to the world. It is in this that we have exhibited the triumph of the great
Adversary, denominated by St. Paul as a form of godliness, lacking the power; and
referred to by Christ in this message as "the synagogue of Satan."
This title describes most fully the gradual change that took place in the outward nominal
manifestation of Christianity in the second and third centuries, and has continued from
then until now. The word translated church means an assembly of "called out" ones. It is
considerably different from the word synagogue. The Assembly of God is Christ's Body,
assembled for fellowship and instruction, and none but such are recognized by God as His
Church, His Assembly, no matter how many others may be gathered with them. "Ecclesia"
is the assembly of those "called out." The word synagogue means merely a "gathering
together," no matter of whom. Synagogue is, of course, a Jewish word designating an
assembly of Jews under the old dispensation. Ecclesia is a Christian word, and relates to an
assembly of Christians of the Body of Christ.
The "synagogue of Satan," therefore, in the Smyrna period would seem to imply the
development and establishment in the Church of certain forces and influences
corresponding in character and results to those Judaizing teachers of St. Paul's time, who
sought to bring Christians under bondage to the Law and to forms and ceremonies, thus
perverting the Christian faith, robbing it of its real life and the power of godliness.
"Judaism decided the eternal state of none. As a dispensation of law, it could give no
assurance, it could preach no justification. For if the law says on the one hand, 'the man
that doeth these things shall live in them,' it says also 'there is none righteous--no not one.'
And that was not merely the effect, but the designed effect: 'We know that whatsoever the
law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all
the world become guilty before God.' . . .
"Thus, as the law could not justify, it could not bring to God. The unrent vail is the
characteristic of Judaism, as the rent vail is of Christianity. 'Thou canst not see My face, for
there shall no man see Me and live' is the contrasted utterance to Him who says, 'He that
hath seen Me hath seen the Father'; as is, 'who can by no means clear the guilty' the
opposite declaration to that of the Gospel, that we 'believe on Him who justifieth the
ungodly.' The darkness is passed from the face of God, and the true light--for God is light-shineth.
We walk, therefore, in the light, as God is in the light, and have fellowship one
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
"The Judaizing of the Church means therefore, first of all, the putting God back (if that
were possible; possible for our hearts it is) into the darkness from which He has come
forth; replacing the peace which was made for us on the cross with the old legal conditions
and the old uncertainty. Darker than the old darkness this, inasmuch as Christ for whom