God and Our Rights by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 18, 1909

God and Our Rights

By C. M. S.

God has always recognized the rights of his creatures. Even though he made the mind, and the creature it controls, he has neither fettered nor forced it. The result of disobedience to moral law was bound to be ruinous and terminate in death. So, as a loving Father, he has faithfully warned of the consequences, while leaving the creature free to choose obedience with blessing and with life, or disobedience with the resultant curse and death.

The service which God desires is the service of love; for it is only such service that honors him. Such service is that which the loyal angels render, and which will be rendered throughout the entire universe of God when the conflict with sin is ended. The free will choosing the way and the service of God brings joy to heaven and glory to the Creator; and in that there is all of peace, joy, harmony, and blessed union. The wrong choice, our will perverted and hardened by selfishness, has ushered in all of turmoil, sorrow, discord, and separation.

Because of the result of choice, God warns, admonishes, and urges every human being in these words: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed; to love Jehovah thy God, to obey his voice, and to cleave unto him; for he is thy life and the length of thy days.” Deut. 30:19, 20. Though spoken first to the liberated bond-servants of Egypt on the border of the promised land, these words are for every human being of this generation so near the borders of the eternal kingdom. The same requirements which the Lord placed upon them in the way of loyal, loving service, he places upon us. The choice is before us as truly as ever it was before them, and God did not require of them in this matter what he does not require of us.

While Israel was still halting in Moab, waiting for the order to go over and possess the land, this special message from the Lord was given to the people through Moses: “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love Jehovah thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances.” Deut. 30:15, 16. The world was not keeping those commandments; the people that did honor them were an outcast people; and the God who gave them, had been dishonored by the nations.

Israel’s inheritance in the Holy Land was but a type of the inheritance of the faithful Christian in the redeemed possession of the new earth, our Redeemer’s eternal kingdom. Likewise Israel’s entrance into that land was typical of the entrance of the faithful child of God into the promised home land of the redeemed. What God placed before the waiting congregation of Israel, he places before his waiting people now. They who, in the days of Moses and Joshua, accepted the requirements laid upon them by Jehovah in the keeping of his commandments, had the right to go over Jordan and enter into possession of the country promised to Abraham more than four hundred years before. And they took that law with them, to be the rule of their life in the land of their heritage. It went before them down into the waters that had walled them out, and it impounded those waters until the people had passed over.

But the days of literal Israel are over, and antitypical Israel waits on the border of the antitypical promised land. It is in this period of expectancy that we hear our Redeemer saying to his people: “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Rev. 22:14. The blessing of Israel’s God went with Israel of old in the keeping of the commandments as they entered the promised land, and our Lord couples his blessing likewise with the keeping of the commandments by those who are ready in the end of the age to enter the eternal city. Israel’s acceptance of that requirement made it possible for the ark of God with the law of God within to open a gateway for them where none had been before. So the attitude of God’s people in the last generation of earth will make it possible for him who sits “between the cherubim” to lead the redeemed hosts of this earth “through the gates into the city.”

God had set apart Palestine for a people who were to be his nation. His law was to be the rule in that nation. The people who took that law for the rule of their life had the right to enter there. The home of the redeemed furnishes a parallel here also. The psalmist says: “All thy commandments are truth. Of old have I known from thy testimonies, that thou hast founded them forever.” Ps. 119:151, 152. There is no question, then, that those commandments, or testimonies, are to be the rule of conduct in the home of the redeemed. That law is the standard of righteousness. It is the “righteous nation” that is to “enter in.” The possession of righteousness is the passport to the kingdom. That is why Inspiration says: “The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein forever.” Ps. 37:29. Who are the righteous? “Harken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law.” Isa. 51:7. The people who keep the law are called by Inspiration the righteous. It is “the righteous”—who have the law in their hearts—that are to “inherit the land, and dwell therein forever.”

It is they, then, who accept the law of God as the rule of their lives, in whose hearts that law is written, and whose lives conform to its precepts, that are to be given the right to enter the home of the redeemed, just as in the case of Israel of old the right to enter was contingent upon the proper attitude toward the law of God. It was to rule in Palestine, and they who accepted it were given the right to enter. It is to rule in the earth made new, and they who are loyal to its precepts will take it with them over into that eternal realm of righteousness and peace. Having taken an attitude of loyalty toward the law of the realm of glory, they “have a right” to become subjects of that realm. God recognizes the right, and the reapers of earth’s harvest, the angels of God, are sent forth “with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Matt. 24:31. Of that small but victorious company it is said by him who redeemed them: “Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12.

God set before Israel life and death, the blessing and the curse, and told them to choose. The choice they made was determined by their attitude toward the law of God. The right attitude conferred upon them the right to enter the land and the right to an inheritance in it. It is just so with us. His great law

separates between those who are his and those who are not. “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.” Prov. 28:9. It needs hardly be said that none will enter the kingdom of God whose very prayers are an abomination to Jehovah.

God sets before us life and death, the blessing and the curse, and tells us to choose. We, like Israel, indicate the choice we make by our attitude toward his law. If we make it a yoke, an enemy, and reject it, our choice does not give us a right to “enter in through the gates into the city.” God has no portion other than death for those who do not enter there. To oppose and reject the law, then, is to make that terrible choice which shuts us out of heaven. We turn the key upon ourselves that bars us out from the presence of our Redeemer. It is a fearful choice to make; but we can not blame God for the result. He has told us to choose; and we have thrown away heaven because of our antipathy toward the law of him who is our King, the ruler of heaven. Out of harmony with the law of the realm, we will have no right there.

How different is the result when we take the position of David: “Then shall I not be put to shame, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.” Ps. 119:6. “I will delight myself in thy statutes.” Verse 16. “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.” Verse 32. “Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law.” Verse 34. That attitude confers rights in the kingdom of God, and God respects those rights—rights even to come to the tree of life, which Adam lost through sin.

This is not to make men their own saviors through the doing of the law; but Jesus Christ can not take men and women into the kingdom of glory whose hearts are at enmity with the law of that kingdom. If men would choose heaven, they must choose the law of the Ruler of heaven. When they do that, Jesus Christ can save them. Until they do, there is no power nor process by which it can be done.

C. M. S.