Contrasts and Counterfeits by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 21, 1908

Contrasts and Counterfeits

By C. M. S.

— No. 7

We have seen from step to step in these studies the deliberate unfoldment of a systematic attack upon God’s purpose and God’s law, the ten commandments. That law furnished the pivotal point in the controversy, and we can follow the attack down through the law from the first command to the last.

Satan’s first move in this world was against the veracity of the Lawgiver, a positive contradiction of the Creator’s plain declaration. The archenemy sought, by discrediting the truthfulness of the Lawgiver, to bring the law itself into disrepute, and so encourage the breaking of its several precepts. “Ye shall not surely die,” was designed to stimulate distrust of the Lawgiver. “Ye shall be as God,” was a deliberate attack upon the first precept of the decalogue, which said: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” But it did not stop here. As men listened to the words of Satan, and refused to heed the prohibition of the Lawgiver in that precept, the inevitable result was the breaking of the second and third precepts. With that first commandment discredited and broken, there would be nothing to prevent the making of graven images, or the bowing down to them, or the taking in vain of the name of the Creator.

All that has been accomplished in all portions of the earth. Men have been taught and are now being taught that they are “essentially divine,” “the highest expression of divinity,” and worthy of their own worship. Whenever men so educated and so believing take the name of God upon their lips, they necessarily take that name in vain; for, denying to God the sole possession of the attributes which are his alone, they have made it impossible for him to do anything for them in carrying out his purpose concerning them; and claiming to have within themselves the attributes which he alone possesses, they are unable to sense their great need of divine assistance in the perfection of a righteous character. If we had no other proof of the existence of the law of God in Eden, the logic of Satan’s systematic attack upon God’s purpose in this earth would establish the fact of the existence of God’s law from creation down. But “death reigned from Adam to Moses.” Death is the fruitage of sin; and “sin is not imputed where there is no law.” So both the law and the attempt to subvert it are at least as old as Adam.

We may take all the remaining precepts of the decalogue, and we find on the part of the kingdom of darkness the same opposition directed against them. There is no one of those precepts but finds something in the unconverted human heart fighting against it. For instance, the law commands the keeping holy of the Sabbath day and designates the day. The kingdom of darkness seeks to eradicate the command entirely from the minds and hearts of men, or, where that is impracticable, to put in its place a counterfeit institution, thus drawing the minds of men away from what the Sabbath stands for, and so robbing men of the blessings attendant upon true Sabbath-keeping.

“Honor thy father and thy mother,” says the law. Satan, who honored not his Father, is out of harmony with this; and so wherever his kingdom rules in the hearts of men, parents are dishonored, and sad hearts are burdened with the grief of this terrible wrong.

“Thou shalt not kill,” says the law; and wherever that command is broken, it is broken because of Satan’s warfare against God. He who caused war in heaven has introduced it into the earth also. “Thou shalt not kill,” says the law. “Thou shalt kill — thou must kill,” says war; and though it may not be literally true that “war is hell,” it is true that it is the invention of him who made necessary whatever hell there ever will be.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” says the law; but there is probably no precept of the decalogue whose disregard is sweeping so large a number over the brink of ruin. That precept has been systematically assailed from the beginning. Where the carnality of the human heart was not enough to satisfy the enemy of souls, that counterfeit of God’s marriage institution — polygamy — was invented. Then followed polyandry and the other travesties on marriage heretofore mentioned, reaching down into lower and still lower depths, till the crowning product of God’s creative acts was brought lower than the creatures over which God set him.

And so has it been to the end of the list. Did God forbid false witness? Satan has filled the world with falsehood — against neighbor, against friend and foe, against God and against his purpose for man. Did God forbid stealing and coveting? Satan has set himself against that precept until the world looks upon coveting as no sin, and stealing has been made a system and a science, through which massive fortunes have been built up to weigh down the souls of men and smother conscience.

The inheritance of disobedience has put within the human breast a law of enmity with the law of God, and made necessary the reconciliation which the Redeemer came into the world to effect. That law which disobedience had established in our nature alienated us “from the commonwealth of Israel,” made us “strangers from the covenants of the promise,” leaving us with “no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.” Eph. 2:12, 13. “In due season Christ died for the ungodly.” Rom. 5:6. Knowing with whom we have to deal, is it surprising that our Creator’s purpose thus to heal the breach between man and his Maker should be bitterly attacked by the one who caused that breach? Man’s yielding to Satan’s suggestions put him outside the purpose of God, and the law set up in man’s nature was designed to keep him there. The reconciliation planned by the Creator would bring him back. Therefore there has been invented a system of doctrine teaching that man has not fallen, and is, therefore, in no need of a Redeemer. Thus with masterful subtlety the enemy of all righteousness carries on his campaign against God’s law and his purpose concerning man.

C. M. S.