The Doctrine for All Nations

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1908

The Doctrine for All Nations

THERE is no other doctrine which so exalts the work of Christ the Saviour of the world as does the fundamental truth of conditional immortality and life in Christ. There is no doctrine which more effectually robs Christ of the glory due to him as Saviour of the world than the fundamental error of natural immortality and life inherent in man. In the one doctrine honor is given to Christ because he “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” In the other doctrine Christ is dishonored because his office as the life-giver is abolished, and life and immortality are made to be entirely independent of the gospel.

Furthermore, the preaching of the second advent of our Lord as an imminent event is the message to be proclaimed to all nations in this generation, and this teaching will prepare believers to stand in the judgment hour; but this great truth is either made secondary or ignored altogether by a very large majority of the ministers of the gospel to-day, whether they stand before a nominally Christian people in the home land, or meet gross heathenism face to face in the dark places of the earth. It is time for the message to be heard, in all lands, which proclaims Christ as our life, and which says, “Behold, he cometh with clouds.”

There is special need of teaching these two great doctrines as the demonstration of the superiority of the gospel of Christ over any heathen religion. This clear light of truth will dispel the darkness of error, and will guide in the heavenly way many who are now wandering in the devious paths of a satanic philosophy. This is well set forth by Edward White in his work “Life in Christ,” from which we take the following extract:—

Under present conditions the natural force of the gospel is abated. It does not take hold of the moral understanding of Asia. . . . Where is the force of truth and grace that smote the philosophies and idolatries of the Mediterranean in the apostolic age, and shook like an earthquake the whole of Roman Europe and Asia in a single generation? Let it not be said it was the stress of miracles that then availed. Miracles exerted an inconsiderable influence, in comparison with a truth which inspired an overpowering energy of faith, a grace that commended itself to all affections, and an announcement of approaching doom which struck like a blazing thunderbolt from the uplifted hand of the Almighty.

Is it not that we are propagating both abroad and at home a Christianity which is half paralyzed in its two chief forces of hope and fear through the perversions of an unbiblical theology? We fail in thoroughly presenting God’s love to the nations,—a love strong enough to melt even Chinese arrogance, and to develop the belief of a real and personal God among Chinese Buddhists, because we have encumbered Christianity with a doctrine of hell, so unjust, so indiscriminate, so hardening in its frightful propositions, that men’s consciences refuse to receive it. Our missionary theology can not commend itself “to every man’s conscience,” because every man’s conscience, whether in Europe or in Asia, in proportion as it is enlightened, rejects it with horror.

But the predominant system of teaching in heathendom fails also, I venture to think, in another department—through withholding the influence of a truth favorable to the production alike of hope and of fear. Not only does the retribution preached at home and abroad fail, by its unscriptural representations, to awaken terror in the educated classes, since whatever you exaggerate you weaken; but it is nearly everywhere the

custom with missionary societies to send out teachers opposed to the belief of Christ’s advent to judge the nations, as the next great event in the history of the world.

The plain doctrine of St. Paul, in the second letter to the Thessalonians, that the personal advent of Christ will occur for the purpose of destroying “the man of sin;”—the doctrine of the prophet Daniel, that the Son of man will come in the clouds of heaven for the destruction of the fourth kingdom, and of that “horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake great things;”—the doctrine that Christ himself will come to punish “with flaming fire” an antichristian clergy that has perverted revelation until men can no longer believe in it, and to judge nations that persist in idolatry after due summons to repentance;—this doctrine of Christ’s ever-impending advent, under the influence of which the gospel was spread in the first century, is denied by the missionary societies and the generality of their agents. Here is a present loss, and possible recovery of power, which may be readily appreciated.

Let the gospel be preached in India and China as the message of life to the dead, as the gift of immortality in body and soul, to a race sitting in the death shade of atheism; let it be preached as the message of a God who is intelligibly beneficent, but intelligibly and justly “terrible” to wicked men; let it be proclaimed that the times of pagan ignorance this righteous Judge “overlooked,” but now, on peril of the “greater damnation,” commands all men everywhere to repent; let the words of the apocalyptic angel become the topic of the missionary, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come!”—and one can not but believe that a new power might attend in the East, as in the West, the diffusion of Christianity.

There is something so heart-striking, so fitted to compel attention, in the apostolic warning of Christ’s imminent return to destroy obstinate and filthy worshipers of idols, to avenge the perversion of truth in Christendom, to raise in glory the sleeping saints, and to establish heaven’s kingdom on earth,—that even languid India must lift her head to listen, and haughty, philosophic China harken awestruck to the trumpet-blast. Christianity is a power which is designed to act on men from before as well as from behind, through the expectation of coming events, as well as through the study of facts accomplished. It is a prophecy and a mighty world-embracing drama, as well as a history. But under the prevailing system of teaching it is a gospel without the vivid hope of that advent of Christ to crown his followers, the prospect of which, at the beginning, filled and reddened like a dawn of glory all the eastern sky. The whole body of prophecy is now supposed to prove only, when interpreted with due caution, that the Lord “delayeth his coming,” that wisdom consists in proclaiming the doctrine of the “evil servant,” and in relegating the expectation of the Lord’s return to a generation that shall live at the end of the millennium. . . . Who, then, can wonder that a Christianity so diminished in its forces both to win and to appal, so pale and so colorless, naturally maintains a doubtful fight with the stiff-necked pagans of Asia? Is there not wanted a doctrine that commands itself more cogently to the reason and to the conscience of men, of the teachers as well as the taught, to their imagination not less than to their affections,—a love so real, so tender and intelligible,—a terror so soul-subduing, so near at hand, and so appreciably just, as to shake if it can not vanquish the stoutest resistance of the heathen;—a hope of speedy victory to the church, sufficient to restore the death-daring energies of the first century, and a courage founded on overpowering conviction which would engage in closer conflict with Eastern Buddhism and the stolid positivism of Confucius? That “throneless king,” as the Chinese call him, would soon, I trust in God, lose much of his opposing power, before a Saviour preached as if he were the very Jesus of the Gospels, coming quickly again to be the Lord of the world.

This sentiment is entirely in harmony with the instruction given through the spirit of prophecy concerning the preaching needed at this time: “The return of Christ to our world will not be long delayed. Let this be the key-note of every message.” We believe that the labors of those ministers will be most fruitful who keep in the forefront these two great doctrines of the Scriptures,—life in Christ and the imminent coming of Christ. These are the doctrines for all nations.