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VOL I.
LONDON,   APRIL   1921.
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"THESE   SIGNS."
A sign may be defined as a visible
manifestation of the invisible God: the
means whereby not only the spirits, but
the senses of men may apprehend the
reality of the Almighty. God has.
always vouchsafed them, has ever been
willing to give them as in Gideon's
case, has even offered them as in the
case of Ahaz. There has been no age
without them. In the dawn of the first
age, the invisible things of Him from
the creation of the world were clearly
seen in order that men might be " without excuse." " And God said, ' Let
there be lights in the firmament of
heaven to divide the day from the night;
and let them be for SIGNS, and for
seasons, and for days, and for years! ' "
.The history of the children of Israel
was ushered in by a series of signs,
which Satan imitated up to a certain
limit, as he always does. During seasons of backsliding their lament was,
" We see not our signs, there is no more
any prophet." And as surely as God
returned in power to them and made
bare His arm, miracles, signs and wonders demonstrated afresh His presence
in their midst. And when the Lord
| Jesus, in the fulness of times, appeared
. to do His great work for men on be-
| half of God, His appeal for their confidence in Him was on the ground of
the demonstration of Divine power
amongst them, " Though ye believe not
Me, believe the works, that ye may
, know and believe that the Father is in
Me and I in Him." Miracles were His
Divine credentials. As Jonah was in
the whale's belly, so should the Son of
Man be in the earth, " For as Jonah was
a sign unto the Nincvites, so shall also
the Son of Man be to this generation."
From His birth to His resurrection,
Jesus was*//ie sign of God: the supreme
miracle. The close of this age is to
. have signs. There are to be " signs
in the sun." and " great signs
from heaven " ; and all this manifestation of Divine power is to be consummated by the " sign of the Son of Man
in heaven."
Thus the past ages have each had
their peculiar and special demonstration of God's might and majesty, and
the close of the age—before the ushering in of the " age to come "—when the
glory of the Lord shall cover the earth
as the waters cover the sea—is to be
thrilled with like manifestations. What
of this intervening age?    Is there any
Scriptural warrant for supposing that
this period of time, known as the
Church age, is to be quite bereft of
these God-given signs? There is no
such warrant in tlie Word of God.
There may be in man's traditions by
reason of the excuse man must give for
his amazing unbelief. On the contrary rather, the New Testament expressly gives us from the lips of Jesus
Himself the assurance that " These
signs shall follow them that believe."
The period to be covered by these manifestations of Divine power is the time
when the Gospel is to be " preached to
every creature." The people in whose
wake the signs shall occur, are not the
Apostles only, but " them that believe.".
The fact is, the words of Jesus are flatly
denied to-day by many of His own
people, and substitutes for signs are
brought in by unbelief, which are a
caricature of His doings. They may
be good in their way and the best man
can do, but in preferring them to His
appointed signs, His people all unconsciously make Him a liar.
Notice the all round applicability of
these provisions in Mark 16.15-20 to the
needs of mankind. You will find six
spheres of operation here, in every one
of which man is powerless. There is
first the spiritual sphere—v. 16. We
are all agreed that Jesus Christ has met
all the problems of the spiritual sphere
by His " simple Gospel." It is at once
granted that the salvation of the spirit
and soul is greater than that of the
body, but in our ardour for that premise we must not lose sight of the provision made for the body too. The
modern church claims that the salvation of the body is her legitimate work;
hence her approval of the multitidinous
schemes for the betterment of the
physical welfare of men, her Hospital
Sunday Collections, her advocacy of
drink reform, her many fruitless
schemes to bring in God's kingdom
while " Man's Day " is in progress. Is
the church not acknowledging the claim
that Christ's salvation is for soul and
body, yet seeking in her way, and not
His, to effect it? Recently a great
Nonconformist preacher in London
said in his morning sermon, " We have
made almost incredible advance in the
historv of healing." He was preaching
on Mark 2.9. He further asked, " Have
we made progress in mastering the
secrets of the Spirit, similar to the advance made in the history of bodily
healing?"       In   soliciting  a  generous
collection for hospitals, he admitted the
healing of the body to be an integral
part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But
his claim of the demonstration of it was
not in the sign of Mark 16, but in the
advance of medical science, purely and
simply the works of man. Did he
mean that medical science is an advance on Christ's methods, which are
detailed here in Mark? Is it possible
that, in expounding what is called " the
simple Gospel," we have simplified
everything out of it, but the purely
spiritual part of it, and in doing so have
shelved the very accompaniments of the
Gospel of Salvation, which were given
for the express purpose of impressing
the world with the evangel message
concerning the unseen, because here in
the visible before their eyes were the
certificates of Christ's ability to bring
man to God? " Whether is easier to
say to the sick of the palsy, ' Thy sins
be forgiven thee,' or to say ' Arise and
.take up thy bed and walk? ' " According to Christ men are to know that He
can save from sin, because He saves
from sickness, that He can cure the
soul, because He does cure the body.
To call this fragment of the Gospel the
" simple Gospel," is to admit an emaciation. There is no " simple Gospel" of
this sort. The GOSPEL is contained
in this whole passage, which begins
with the chief sphere of man's need and
conducts him through all the avenues
of his fallen and pitiable state as a
ruined man, spirit, soul and body. First
of all Christ meets the sinner's spiritual
need, but it is not the end.
He goes on in his magnificent bunch
of undertakings to do something else
—-" In My name shall they cast out
devils." According to this He is master now through His people of the
Satanic Sphere. No wonder the Devil
has gone about to persuade the people
of God that these closing verses of
Mark are not authentic. He wishes
badly that they were not authentic, and
has harnessed the unbelief of God's
people to his wish. They can impress
the " obsoleteness" of these verses
better than he can. Asylums and mental homes are Christianity's modern
application of these words. They may
be so, but they are not Christ's application. Without going into a long assertion of the tremendous power of the
devil in many directions over men's
minds and bodies, we can affirm, and
our readers will agree, that a flood-
tide  of  demonism  is on  us in these