SATAN’S greatest triumph up to the time of the first advent of our Lord was to pervert the channels through which God intended to reveal light and salvation. When the Jewish worship became mere form and ceremony, Christ, instead of being revealed in it, was hidden from the people by it, and that was Satan’s greatest triumph up to that time. Christ came into the flesh that there might be a revelation in his person of that which was revealed in type and ceremony, and brushing aside that which hid him from the world’s view, he had revealed divinity in humanity that he might come for salvation into the world. He came into the world to make manifest the nature of God’s law for humanity, to reveal the character of God to humanity; and when Christ came in the flesh, the law of God was written in the heart of humanity. This experience was not a thing apart from humanity, not a thing so far away from us as to be unattainable, but he took sinful flesh, the same as we bear, without availing himself of any other power than is available for us. Christ, the man, stood forth to reveal the character of God, the nature of his law, and to provide that new leaven which must be cast into this mass of corruption in order to restore humanity.
Since that revelation the same perversion has been repeated, and we to-day are seeing in the world the result of the perversion of the gospel of God manifested in the flesh. That perversion is called in the Scripture the mystery of iniquity; and the mystery of iniquity, as5it has been revealed to the world, has itself brought the Dark Ages upon the world, a more full revelation of what it means to reject God’s law, to change God’s law, to turn it aside from the hearts of men, to prevent its being revealed in humanity.
The light perverted becomes greater darkness. As great light had been revealed in Christ through the flesh, so when that had been perverted, darkness settled down upon the earth. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was the effort to break away from that experience.
What is the final conflict in the closing generation? what is the last message to do? The final conflict is between the truth of God manifested in the flesh, and the beast and his image, both in denying and in revealing the opposite in the life. And in our day we look at its climax, the controversy between the mystery of godliness, which is God manifested in the flesh, and the mystery of iniquity, which denies it, and reveals the opposite in the flesh. And in our day and in our generation, that is the controversy, that is the experience which faces us.
Just think briefly of the history of this message. There was the first message, the message of the judgment hour, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” The coming of Christ was placed at a definite time, but that time passed, and there came the second angel’s message and the midnight cry, and the time was again definitely fixed, and again the time passed.
I would like to emphasize the fact that after the time finally passed, the tenth day of the seventh month, the 22d day of October, 1844, those believers in the fulfillment of the prophecy at that time found that they had been mistaken. But, in deciding upon that time as the time for the personal coming of Christ to the earth, the believers in that message had such a personal experience with the message that their experience held them against the disappointment as to the time.
Now to me that is one of the wonderful things in the message; that there were those who had staked their all upon this, that Christ was coming on a certain day, and that the end of the world was to come on a certain day, and had told the world so, and had risked everything upon that definite belief that Christ was coming to this earth to take his people on a certain day, and although that time had passed, they did not give up their faith in that prophecy and in that message, because their faith was founded upon something deeper and stronger than a date. The message was to them such a power in a personal experience that they could not give it up.
Now there is a great lesson in that for us with reference to this message, that this message must be to us personal experience that will hold us even against apparent defeat, and we shall see the need of this as we go on in this message. We are facing that experience, even now, and we need to have such a personal experience in this closing message as will hold us against any apparent defeat.
After that time passed, light came to them further about the third angel’s message, and that message has been in the world, the threefold message, since that time.
Now notice these steps: the first message, the first time passed; the second message, the midnight cry; the third message, and that message of Revelation 18, which is in itself a mighty message, joins with this other threefold message, swelling to the loud cry, and says, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” But that message is given for a specific purpose; these messages are given to meet the needs of the people in this time, and this threefold, mighty message is altogether necessary to keep God’s people in their closing experience, and in the hour of temptation that is to come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the face of the earth.
All the light of this threefold message is not merely that we shall have something to give to the world, but that we shall have something to keep ourselves, something to stay our own souls upon in the final combat with the beast and his image. And all this is nothing more than the return to humanity in this closing generation of the experience made possible for humanity when God was manifested in the flesh in Jesus Christ, a revelation of the nature of God’s law, and the whole controversy is over the question of God’s law and the law written in the heart. The law put into the mind of God’s own worker through the ministry of his Spirit in this generation is the experience of the truth manifested in the flesh. It is the experience of the science of salvation. But you ask, What has this to do with the schools? This may be the gospel message, but what has it to do with the schools?
I am intensely impressed with the idea that this truth to which we have referred must dominate our lives in every way. I can not think that the truth is to be held apart from the daily experience, the daily plans, the daily duties. If so, we shall be overthrown in the hour of trial. Nothing short of a full revelation of the presence and power and glory of God, the fullness of his law, as he interprets it, written upon the hearts of his people, will save them in this time. It is not something for us simply to preach to others; there is an experience in it such as we have not had that we must have.
But what has this to do with the schools? It must dominate the schools as it dominates our lives in everything else. Now let us read a scripture, and see if it does not mean more to us than it may have meant before. In the fourth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, verses 1, 2:—
“And now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.”
The fifth chapter, verse 1:—
“And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.”
Then he recites the ten commandments. Then we come to the sixth chapter:—
“Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it; that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”
What is meant in this instruction? It is more than that certain words were to be written and committed to memory. It was that the veritable law of God in its fullness and breadth as the life, should be received, should be made the thing of life, the thing of experience, should be talked about, should be taught to the children, should be the thing6kept before eye and mind constantly. Why? — Because that law kept that way was like a hedge about them, to protect them from evil, a power unto righteousness. It is the gospel revealed in humanity through faith in God’s provision, and that was simply teaching the law.
But any subject that is so broad as that will include all other subjects that need to be taught, in their relation to it. That is, the science of salvation, or the science of redemption, is that highest and all-inclusive science which includes within it all knowledge of any kind of science that a Christian needs to know.
This is true in its application to what we speak of as natural science, in which we study the revelation of God’s law and God’s thoughts for the universe about us; yet above that is the science of all sciences, and that is the science of salvation. Now to take that as the study, means to study every other science just so far as one is able to do it, but to study it as a secondary science, with reference to that highest of all sciences, in which those same principles, the same thoughts of God, will be more fully and more gloriously revealed unto salvation. And the study of the science of salvation, the study of the science of redemption, as a science, includes the study of all other sciences as contributory to the understanding of the science of salvation. But that will put a different mold upon the whole study of science. It will give a different view of the whole field of science. It will not shut out any fact which is useful, or a blessing to mankind, but everything will find its setting with reference to that highest of all sciences, and a study of these other sciences that are spoken of as the natural sciences will be contributory to one’s own experience with this highest of all sciences,—the science of salvation, the science of redemption.