Studies in the Gospel Message
THE subject of the fourth lesson in this series, the one for April 26, is The Two Mysteries. There are two expressions in the Scripture which stand over against each other in marked contrast, each one of which is found but once in the whole Bible. The one expression is ‘the mystery of godliness,’ and the other is ‘the mystery of iniquity.’ In writing his first letter to Timothy, his ‘own son in the faith,’ the apostle Paul says: ‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.’ In the Revised Version the passage reads, ‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh,’ etc. It is only necessary to read this verse to see clearly that ‘the mystery of godliness’ is more than an abstract doctrine, more than an article of faith in the ordinary meaning of that term, and that it includes the personality of the incarnate Son of God. When ‘the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,’ then the mystery which had been hid from ages and from generations was made manifest. The Son of God manifested to the world as the Son of man is ‘the mystery of godliness.’ This union of divinity with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ in the flesh constitutes the rock upon which the church is so securely built that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ It is through this provision in their behalf that sinful men may become ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ and herein is found the only basis of hope for a successful Christian experience; for ‘he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’ This is the fundamental truth of Christianity. ‘The just shall live by faith.’ The same apostle Paul, in his second letter to the church at Thessalonica, uses the expression, ‘The mystery of iniquity.’ Here is the passage: ‘Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; . . . for the mystery of iniquity doth already work.’ It is equally as plain from these statements that ‘the mystery of iniquity’ is not a mere false teaching, not a mere lie, but it is a false teacher, a liar. It is the incarnation of wickedness as opposed to the incarnation of righteousness. It is Satan taking complete control of the flesh, and working against the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. It is ‘that man of sin . . . showing himself that he is God,’ claiming to be the vicegerent of the Son of God, when he is in reality the vicegerent of Satan. This is ‘the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’ This is the crowning effort to pervert (instead of to prepare) the way of the Lord. ‘The mystery of godliness’ is the Lord’s own revelation of the truth, and his provision to make that truth an experience in the believer, that ‘the just shall live by faith.’ ‘The mystery of iniquity’ is Satan’s effort to pervert this revelation to serve his own ends, and to teach man to believe in himself instead of in God. The one is the personal revelation of the truth of justification by faith; the other is the personal revelation of the falsehood of justification by works. The ‘falling away,’ of which the apostle Paul wrote, has come. The man of sin has been revealed. The mystery of iniquity has been manifested. That divine grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but was made manifest by the appearing in the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and which is the very corner stone of our Christianity and the Lord’s own provision for the revelation of his righteous character in us, has been perverted by Satan into a system of fleshly works through which he has manifested himself and revealed his own character. This utter perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ, by which ‘the mystery of iniquity’ is substituted for ‘the mystery of godliness,’ is popery, and the system through which it has been revealed is the papacy. ‘It is a system of unrighteousness so set forth as to seem that system of righteousness which God has revealed for the salvation of the world.’ All this effort to misrepresent the character of God and to pervert the gospel of his grace has been plainly revealed in prophecy. This is the one great theme of the symbolic prophecies of Daniel and John, which are linked together by the brief but remarkably clear picture drawn by the apostle Paul. By the light thus thrown upon history we can plainly see that in the papacy and its workings we have the historical interpretation of the first beast of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation. This is that world-power ‘which reigneth over the kings of the earth’ to whom the great dragon, ‘that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan,’ gave ‘his power, and his seat, and great authority.’ This is that power to which ‘all that dwell upon the earth . . . whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb’ were, according to the prophecy, to yield obedience, and in so doing they would worship the beast, and in worshiping the beast they would worship ‘the dragon which gave power unto the beast.’ Satan. The beast from the earth, the second symbol in this same thirteenth chapter of Revelation, finally adopts the same false principles as those revealed by the beast from the sea, the first symbol, and says ‘to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast’ from the sea. Thus these two powers join hands, and become the twofold and world-wide channel through which, while pretending to reveal saving grace to the world, Satan works to pervert the pure gospel in the final stage of the controversy between Christ and Satan. It is to unmask this deceptive working, and to reveal to all men what the mystery of godliness really is, that the closing message of ‘the everlasting gospel’ of justification by faith, the righteousness of Christ, and salvation by grace alone, must be proclaimed with a loud voice ‘unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.’ It is certainly clear then that the creative sentence, which was the life and light and power of the Reformation in the days of Luther to overthrow the false gospel of the papacy, must also be the life and the light and the power of this third angel’s message, which is to carry the same work to a glorious and final triumph. ‘The just shall live by faith.’