There are, it seems to me, three kinds of pillars. Some are merely for decoration. Superfluous structurally, they are there nonetheless to give the appearance of strength and stability. There is a famous one like that in the south of Spain. The architect designed an arch that was thought to be too wide to support the roof. In apparent acquiescence, the designer installed a pillar halfway across the arch. It was some time before it was discovered that the capital was a half inch short of reaching the arch it was supposedly supporting.
Some pillars were once meant to carry the weight of magnificent structures of the ancient world. These pillars, however, are now only shadows of their past glories. Broken, like fingers protruding from the earth, they hold up nothing.
Then there are pillars that satisfy the claims of both form and function. Such is “the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).
That the truth holds up the Church is taught in Scripture (Eph. 2:20), but it is also the solemn privilege of the people of God to hold up the truth of God to declare His glory. So we come to our question: “Is the Church holding up?”
Do you remember Boaz and his companion, Jachin, in the Old Testament? They stood over thirty-four feet high. Strong as molten bronze, they guarded the entrance to “the house of God” in the glory days of Israel. Around their brow they wore garlands of lilies interwoven with pomegranates.
Pillars they were, not people. There were hundreds of pillars gracing the temple precinct, but only these two were named. Jachin means “stabilished”; Boaz means “strength.” Could this have been the image in Paul’s mind as he wrote 1 Timothy 3:15? The promise to the overcomer in the church of Philadelphia is: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God . . .” (Rev. 3:12).
Here, then, are characteristics of God’s pillars. The truth which we uphold should be fragrant, like the lilies around the capitals, and fruitful like the pomegranates, full of potential. The base of the pillar should be stable like Jachin and strong like Boaz. And the columns themselves should be grounded — “go(ing) out no more.” A pillar is of little use if it leaves its post when the pressure is on. They should also be glorifying, inscribed with the name of God.
So are we holding up the truth? Or are we imbibing the world view? C. I. Scofield states: “The danger-point today is the effort to divert the Church from her appointed pathway of separation from the world, and her appointed task of testimony to the world, into efforts for world betterment apart from individual salvation.”1 R. A. Torrey adds: “If the Church is to accomplish the work that God has called her to do, she must understand God’s plan and God’s method, and must conform to that. It is not God’s plan in the present dispensation to save society but to save individuals and to call out from the world a people for His Name.”2
What should we be holding up to our lost fellow-travelers to eternity? Is the truth to us a magnificent and intricately detailed capital? Is its foundation solid and immovable? Are its columns vast and straight? Then let us not hold up to the world our credentials and scholarship; our programs and entertainment; our opinions and ideas.
Roger Palms has this incisive observation: “So men and women are searching; many are coming to our churches to look there, at least once, because they have a longing and they have looked everywhere else . . . Churches that bring people together to focus on God and Scripture will do better than churches that are acting as if people want only a religious version of secular events . . . Will we offer what television, clubs and style magazines can’t offer, or will we simply offer poor imitations of the same, trying to copy what the seekers no longer want?”3
Hold up the truth; it’s what the world needs to hear.
1 The Folly of Federation by R. E. Neighbour; Bible Truth, p. 1.
2 Ibid, p. 7.
3 Decision, March 1987.