The word to Abraham is, “Get out of your country, and from your family, and from your father’s house.” Abraham is not told to remain in the city of Ur and deal with man’s wickedness, or attempt to improve its social condition, or reform its domestic ways, or attempt to make it a better and a brighter world. He is called to come out of it in every form. He is to leave the political world: “your country”; the social world: “your kindred” and the family world: “your father’s house.”

The call today is no less definite. The world around us is a world that has the form of godliness without the power, the world of corrupt Christendom; and the same epistle to the Hebrews that tells us we are partakers of the heavenly calling (3:1) exhorts us to separate from its corruption. We are to “go to [Jesus] outside the camp, and bear the reproach He endured” (13:13). It is not that we are to despise government; it is still God’s appointment. Nor can we neglect family ties; they are ordered of God. Nor are we to cease to be courteous, and kind, and do good to all men as we have opportunity. But, as believers, we are called from taking any part in political activities of the world, the social round, and the whole sphere in which unconverted members of our families find their pleasure without God. We are not asked to reform the world or seek to improve its condition, but to come out from it. The word is still, “Go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord” (2 Cor. 6:17).