Author: Sosthenes

Once the ruler of the synagogue at Corinth Then a co-writer of a letter by Paul - just a brother - no longer an official Now a blogger seeking to serve the Lord by posting some words that the Lord has given His Church.

Bert Taylor – Raised with Jesus

For the believer in Christ, there are few verses of scripture that could be more comforting than 2 Cor. 4: 14 (‘knowing that he who has raised the Lord Jesus shall raise us also with Jesus, and shall present us with you‘*),
 because it is speaking of what God has done. The wonderful matter is that He has raised the Lord Jesus. That pathway was so perfect; so full of light to heaven. Man put Him on a cross but God has raised Him. The beauty that shone on earth now shines more fully in heaven. But then it goes on to say, ‘Shall raise also us with Jesus’. What a beautiful touch for the believer in Christ, that not only has He raised Jesus – worthily so – but He will raise the believer in Christ…the work of God is going through, that is what will be raised. What has been wrought in these bodies of humiliation; nothing will be lost, each precious gem will be raised.

Robert Taylor, Ealing, 2000

Golden Nugget Number 273

* Darby translation

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD UK

Charles Henry Mackintosh – C H Mackintosh – CHM

C H Mackintosh would not allow his “thoughts to indulge in fulsome praise (of men) – rather to recognise the grace of God vouchsafed to His servant,

C.H.Mackintosh

Charles Henry Mackintosh was born in October 1820, at Glenmalure Barricks, County Wicklow, Ireland, the son of the captain of a Highland regiment. Mackintosh was converted at the age of eighteen through the letters of a devout sister, and the prayerful reading of J. N. Darby’s Operations of the Spirit. When he was twenty-four years of age, he opened a private school at Westport, but it was not long before he concluded he must give himself entirely to the ministry of the Word of God, in writing and in public speaking. Soon thereafter he felt led to establish a periodical, which he continued to edit for twenty-one years, Things New and Old.

The American author of a brief obituary remarked that he would not allow his “thoughts to indulge in fulsome praise (of men) – rather to recognise the grace of God vouchsafed to His servant

Mr. Mackintosh took a great interest in, and actively participated in, the great revival of 1859 and 1860. He died on November 2, 1896, and was buried in Cheltenham Cemetery, awaiting the resurrection morn.

From Stem Publishing

 

About, by or adapted from CHM – Articles, Hymns, Snippets and ‘Golden Nuggets’

[catlist name=”C H Mackintosh” orderby=date order=desc, numberposts = -1]

C.H.Mackintosh – He looked for  comforters, but He found none 

Golden Nugget Number 272

C.H.Mackintosh

How truly delightful and refreshing to turn to the only perfect Man who ever trod this earth!  His path was indeed an isolated one — none more so.  He had no sympathy with the scene around Him.  The world knew Him not.  ‘He came to His own [Israel], and His own received Him not‘ (John 1:11). ‘I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none‘ (Psalm 69:20).  Even His own beloved disciples failed to sympathize with, or understand Him. They slept on the mount of transfiguration in the presence of His glory and they slept in the Garden of Gethsemane in the presence of His agony. They roused Him out of His sleep with their unbelieving fears and were continually intruding upon Him with their ignorant questions and foolish notions.

How did He meet all this? In perfect grace, patience and tenderness.  He answered their questions; He corrected their notions; He hushed their fears; He solved their difficulties; He met their need; He made allowance for their infirmities; He gave them credit for devotedness in the moment of desertion; He looked at them through His own loving eyes and loved them, notwithstanding all.  ‘Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end‘ (John 13:1)

Christian reader, let us seek to drink into our blessed Master’s spirit and walk in His footsteps. Then our isolation will be of the right kind, and though our path may be narrow, the heart will be large.

(C.H.Mackintosh)

 

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

 

William Johnson – Our appreciation of Christ has been through a sense of need.

William Johnson

Is there one answer to all your tears, all your desires, all your prayers?  God has one answer and that is Christ.  If you are passing through bereavement and sorrow and the heart feels it – God intends you to feel it – it is to find Christ.   Blessed compensation.  If I have been through deep sorrow and found Christ, what blessed contemplation.  I have found that He is more than enough to fill every breach.  Do you think I could, by searching with my brain, find out Christ?  Every bit of appreciation of Christ has been through a sense of need.  It is an experiential thing, not a doctrinal thing.  There is no such thing as a mere doctrinal knowledge of Christ.  No.  I beg your attention to it; every bit of apprehension you may have of Christ, you have been led into the knowledge of and the blessedness of, experimentally.

 

(William Johnson, London, early 1900s)
Golden Nugget Number 271
 

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

 

Charles Andrew Coates – C A Coates – CAC

Charles Coates

Charles Andrew Coates (affectionately known by his initials CAC) was born in Bradford, England, on the 7th. Dec. 1862. He died in Teignmouth, Devon, on 7th. Oct. 1945. For many years he broke bread in Rebecca St. Hall, Bradford.   C A Coates never enjoyed robust health and the many occasions when he was laid aside through illness were put to good use in prayerful meditation and the study of Holy Scripture. One of the many books that CAC wrote, “The Believer Established,” was a great help to the writer of these notes [and also to myself – Sosthenes].

A story told about C A Coates is well worth repeating. Some brethren were gathered together to consider the sad case of a brother who had been declared bankrupt. They all expressed how sorry they were for the brother’s plight. Coates placed a £10 note on the table and said, “Dear brethren I am £10 sorry. How sorry are you?” A good practical example and it is to be hoped that it was readily adopted.

Early in life  C A Coates showed that he had poetical ability. When he was 16 years old he composed this poem on his conversion:

Henceforth my lips and pen
Shall seek to spread His fame:
My hands and feet shall swiftly move
To glorify His Name.

I seek no earthly place;
My joy is all in Him;
My thirsty soul shall drink no more
From fountains stained with sin.

And when He takes me home
To gaze upon His face,
More loud, more sweet my soul shall sing
The riches of His grace.

Charles Coates has three hymns in ‘Spiritual Songs (1978)‘ – SS78 below.

In the 1962 and 1973 Little Flock hymn books there are

Hymns by C.A. Coates
161 Son of God, with joy we view Thee (No 310 in SS78)
293 Thy grace, O Lord, that measured once the deep  (7 in SS78)
431 No act of power could e’er atone, (359 in SS78)

Source

STEM Publishing : Hymns : Spiritual Songsters : C.A. Coates, 1862 – 1945.
I have excluded the opinions of the writer of STEM pubblishing.  The link will point to the original text.

For more information and notes refer to the biography section of ‘My Brethren’ – again any opinion is that of the late author of that site and not necessarily shared by the owner of this site.

About, by or adapted from JBS – Articles, Hymns, Snippets and ‘Golden Nuggets’

[catlist name=”Charles Andrew Coates ” orderby=date order=desc, numberposts = -1]

A J E (John) Welch – Are we ready for the Lord Jesus to come and receive us?

 

He, the Lord Jesus, is coming for us. He is coming, too, to take up His rights, to resolve everything, to leave no question in the universe unsettled.  It is this same Jesus whom we love that will do that.  I want to be very simple about this because it is a very simple yet holy matter. Are we ready for the Lord Jesus to come and receive us so that we may be as the word is, “always with the Lord”?  Have we any expectations here that would stand athwart our hearts longing for His coming immediately?  I would say very simply, after what the Lord has graciously given us, that I would like to be at the Supper again, but I would not want to allow even that to hamper the expectancy of His coming.

Think of the glory of His Person who for us has already accomplished all that needed to be accomplished, to the point that the very next thing for us is to go to be with Him. Note the point that may have been observed as we read, the emphatic “we” of 1 Thess 4: 15; alongside of that, we have the emphatic “our” of Phil 3: 20. That is, we can rightly regard ourselves, as part of the great throng that is in the expectancy of His coming. Such are not claiming to be anything, not claiming ecclesiastical status of any kind, but just expectant that the Lord will soon come.

 

(A J E Welch)

 

Golden Nugget Number 270

 

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

 

C A (Charles) Coates – God is concerned with what we are much more than about what we say

Charles Coates

Moral Realities

Golden Nugget Number 269

 

Moral Realities:  The glad tidings in power in our souls would completely separate us morally from corrupt and fallen man, and set us on the line of pursuing all that belongs to the Man of glory and honour and incorruptibility…

 

God deals with moral realities; He is concerned with what we are much more than about what we say.

 

No creature will ever know the full value of the blood of Christ, but it is known to God.

 

(Jottings from C A Coates, Outline of Romans)

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Golden Nugget Number 269

Click here for a short biography of C A Coates

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Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

 

 

 

J B Stoney – That which was under judgment has been removed in judgment

James Butler Stoney

 

The judgment of God on man must first be removed in judgment.  Many are in comparative darkness, because they do not see that the man under judgment has been terminated judicially in the cross for the believer.  God never revives that man.  That which was under judgment has been removed in judgment.  The resurrection of Christ is not merely a receipt that your sins are atoned for, but that a Man after a new order has come up out of death, no more according to the flesh, so that for the believer, not only is the mortgage on the house paid off, but every stone of the house has come down, and a new one is built on the same spot, but with none of the old material…May each one of you rejoice that the man under judgment has gone, and that Christ—the glorified Man, the “greater than Solomon”—is the only source of your life and your every blessing…

 

(J B Stoney, NS vol. 6 p 5-8)

 
Golden Nugget Number 268
 

 

 

 

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

C H Mackintosh – How to study Scripture

C.H.Mackintosh

 

 Hence we may see how very real and practical is this question of how to study Scripture. It is intimately connected with our entire moral and spiritual condition, our daily walk, our actual habits and ways. God has given us His Word to form our character, to govern our conduct and shape our course. Therefore, if the Word has not a formative influence and a governing power over us, it is the height of folly to think of storing up a quantity of scriptural knowledge in the intellect. It can only puff us up and deceive us. It is a most dangerous thing to traffic in unfelt truth; it brings on a heartless indifference, levity of spirit, insensibility of conscience, which is appalling to people of serious piety. There is nothing that tends so to throw us completely into the hands of the enemy as a quantity of head knowledge of truth without a tender conscience, a true heart, an upright mind. The mere profession of truth which does not act on the conscience and come out in the life, is one of the special dangers of the day in which our lot is cast. Better by far only to know a little in reality and power, than profess a quantity of truth that lies powerless in the region of the understanding, exerting no formative influence upon the life. I would much rather be honestly in Romans 7 than fictitiously in Romans 8. In the former case I am sure to come right, but in the latter there is no telling what I may come to.

 

(Short Papers, C H Mackintosh)
Golden Nugget Number 267
Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

C A Coates – What the Lord Jesus exhorted the Disciples

The Lord never exhorted people to do what was not exemplified in Himself.

 

It has been said that we are never asked to do anything that has not been already done; we are not entitled to ask others to do what we ourselves are not doing.  If I exhort another, I must examine myself.  Paul never exhorted people to do what was not exemplified in himself.  The Lord Jesus exhorted the disciples to do what had already been seen in Himself.  The true servant says, “Follow,” not “Go.”…That is the difference between law and grace.  The true servant takes the lead and says, “I will show you the way.”  Look at the references Paul makes to his own life and service and spirit!  It is astonishing.  The apostle could present himself and his ways as a model.  No one could say that those things were impossible.  If only we gave the true Isaac His place all would be well.  Paul gave Christ His place from first to last.  Christ reigned in his heart, and his ways and teaching were of Christ.  If Christ has His place all will be right.

 

(C A Coates, Outline of Mark, p364)

Golden Nugget Number 266

 

 

Golden Nuggets are published by Saville Street Distribution, Venture, Princes Esplanade, Walton-on-the-Naze, CO14 8QD  UK

 

 

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