p. 4 | Untitled article by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 12, 1908

Contrasts and Counterfeits— No. 2

By C. M. S.

LUCIFER opened his anarchistic campaign in this world by a denial of a divine truth, and by laying an accusation of falsehood against the Author of that truth.

God had said to man: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Satan said: “Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.”

Those statements of the two opposing powers outlined the purpose and the policy of each. It was God’s purpose that his creatures should be obedient, loyal, righteous, and happy. He tells them the consequences of disobedience, but he does not take from them the power and privilege of choice. God knew that the tree of disobedience could bear no other fruit than death. The universe was governed and held together by law resting on a foundation of absolute truth. The campaign of Satan, being a denial of truth, a contradiction of its Author, and a propagation of disloyalty and distrust, meant no less than the overturning of the very foundation of creation, and the disintegration of the universe. God foresaw it all, and therefore sought to put man on his guard by warning him of the consequences of disobedience—not to coerce, but to leave man without excuse for choosing wrong, and to reward him royally for choosing right.

But, “Ye shall not surely die,” said the fallen angel, “ye shall be as God.” As the reward held out by Satan for disbelief and disobedience of the Creator accomplished the purpose of him who uttered it, we must deal first with that. The very statement of the temptation impelled in man a comparison of his present condition with a condition to which he might attain, and yet one which was now being denied him. Hitherto he had known only good, happiness, contentment, joy, peace, and confidence; and all this was the fruit of obedience. It could bear no other fruit. To be “wise” in such wisdom as Satan had to offer, disobedience was necessary. Eve saw that the tree “was to be desired to make one wise.”

So it was, in that kind of wisdom; but with that must come a decrease, in double ratio, of the wisdom they already had. Distrust of the Source of true wisdom narrowed the channel of its reception, while disobedience—sin—bore in their own souls a poisonous fruit that deadened their powers to perceive and grasp the good. So, instead of their disobedience making them like God, it began to create in them the likeness of him who was fighting against, and misrepresenting, God. Man, created in the very image of God, is made to feel that disobedience to the One who made him so will make him a god also, and clothe him with actual divinity. This “first man Adam” thought the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, and he attempted to grasp it, in spite of the divine injunction.

The desire to scale the heights of heaven by efforts of his own has been cropping out in man’s nature ever since the fall of Adam. The temptation that overcame Adam has been held before the eyes of every other man, and multitudes have yielded to it as Adam did. It is abroad in the world to-day, manifested in various ways. Books have been written for no other purpose than to help man to cultivate the divinity within himself, that he might thus arise to the grandest heights of divinity. The declaration is plainly made that man is the highest and only revelation of God, and as man develops, he is developing God. One writer says: “Man will yet fling himself into the heavens and abide.” Again: “Even now we dare to face the Eternal and pull back the mystic curtain. . . . We are essentially divine and everlasting, our very covering laced with the imperishable. . . . It is fitting for us to unloose our shoes and bare our heads before the majesty of ourselves. . . . It is clear, I think, that we are divinities in disguise. . . . Every person is a new incarnation of Divinity. . . . We are coadjutors of the First Cause, and not only apprehend his designs, but lend a helping hand. . . . We are not so very far behind him. . . . A new consciousness of the divinity of men will rehabilitate society, become a wreath of happiness and a wall of defense around us all. If we rate all men as gods, where are the under classes, where the ethical problems? . . . Whither tends this journey arranged in flights, steps, belts?—It is the leap of divinity from the dust. . . . All things fondle and caress us, are on their knees in reverence and affection. . . . Fundamentally we are all divine. . . . Instinctively we repeat God in counterpart and genius. Following our nature we follow him. God is in us as the sap is in the tree, the blood in the arteries, magnetism in planets.”

Such boastful, blasphemous language flows on from page to page, from volume to volume, in an effort to prove to the race that there was no fall in Adam’s transgression—to prove that the words of Satan were true, “Ye shall be as God.” Not only does it seek to make gods of men, but to cause men to believe that God himself came into being through the process of evolution. Through the ages of human existence Satan has sought to instil in the hearts of men the same unholy aspirations that stirred him to his rebellion in heaven. He has found easy victims, and is still finding them. It is significant also that this attempt to exalt and magnify man has been coincident with the effort to misrepresent and debase the Creator. Satan did it in Eden by charging God with injustice and untruth. It is done in the preceding quotations in attempting to make the Creator a product of evolution, and in setting forth the aspiration of the carnal heart as the inspirations of divinity. This campaign of the present day is the complement of the teachings of Satan in the garden of Eden; and in both the early ages and in this we see the sad outworkings of that doctrine. When the descendants of Noah set themselves down in the plain of Shinar, they said, “Let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name.” They called their tower the gate of heaven, and sought to make themselves the gatekeepers of heaven. God called their tower Confusion (Babel), shattered it, and scattered them.

To-day men have built them a city and constructed a system that aims at heaven, as Babel did. It stands where Babel stood,—that is, between man and God, by self-appointment, a gate to heaven,—and the head of the system is the keeper of the keys. Of the chief of that system the Word of God says, Who “opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God.” 2 Thess. 2:4. That same system is represented as saying of itself, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning. Therefore in one day shall her plagues come, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judged her.” Rev. 18:7, 8. Note the similarity between the aspirations and purposes of the Babel builders and the aspirations and purposes of that system above referred to. Note also the similarity of the judgments meted out.

With these parallels in mind, note another. Lucifer, the inspirer of the Babel builders and the creator of spiritual Babylon, had this in mind before

heaven’s gates were closed against him: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isa. 14:13, 14. That was the same spirit which he put into the breast of man in Eden, the same spirit that actuated the Babel builders, the same spirit that actuates spiritual Babylon to-day and is permeating a large portion of the world at the present time. Satan has ever urged it on; God has ever warned against it, and meted out the same judgment upon those who yielded to it. Those who permit themselves to be deceived may read their doom in that pronounced upon the originator of the deception: “Thou shalt be brought down to Sheol, to the uttermost parts of the pit.”

C. M. S.