Studies in the Gospel Message
The subject of the Sabbath-school lesson for November 15 is, Changing the Law of the Kingdom. There are some simple facts concerning which it may be well to refresh our minds. Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Lord foretold through the prophet Daniel the rise of a power which should work against the establishment of his kingdom in the earth. After giving such particulars of time and circumstance as enable us to determine the time and place of the rise of this power, his work was spoken of in these words: “He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High: and he shall think to change the times and the law.” History furnishes the most convincing testimony that the power which has fulfilled this prophecy is the papacy. As an example of the extraordinary and audacious blasphemies which the papacy has uttered against God, we quote the following words of Pope Boniface VIII: “The pope is of so great dignity6and excellence that he is not merely man, but as if God, and the vicar of God. The pope alone is called most holy, . . . divine monarch, and supreme emperor, and king of kings. . . . The pope is of so great dignity and power that he constitutes one and the same tribunal with Christ, so that whatsoever the pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of God. . . . The pope is as God on earth.” What could more accurately describe such claims than the words of the apostle Paul? “He as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The record of the papacy in wearing out the saints of the Most High is well summarized in the following quotation: “Terribly as the saints suffered under the Cæsars of pagan Rome, they suffered far more terribly and far longer under papal Rome. Let the massacres of the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Hussites, the Lollards, the massacres in Holland and the Netherlands, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the massacre in Ireland in 1641, the tortures of the Inquisition, the fires of the stake kindled over and over in every country in Europe,—let these speak and testify to the fulfillment of prophecy. Yes; the papacy has made war with the saints, and overcome them, and worn them out, and would have totally crushed and annihilated them, but for the sustaining hand and reviving power of God. In its prolonged, cruel, and universal persecution of the saints, the papacy has fulfilled this solemn prophecy.” In this study, however, we wish to call special attention to the effort of the papacy to change the law of God; and in order that we may appreciate the full meaning of this effort it will be necessary for us to study the real nature of the law and man’s relation to it. When God created man in his own image, he gave him his law, not expressed in a code, but the law of his own being in the gift of his own life to him to be revealed in the flesh. In sharing with man his own nature of love, he wrote the law of God in the very being of man. Man was perfect in his being, and in harmony with God. His every impulse, growing out of his intimate fellowship with his Maker, prompted him to right conduct as the simple expression of the law of his life. His will was in perfect agreement with the will of God, and it was his delight to do his Creator’s will. The law of God was in his heart. And this law of love expressed itself in the service of love, and the law of self-renouncing love was the law of life for man. Thus man’s likeness to God revealed itself. By sinning against God, man repudiated this law of love as the law of his life, and adopted the principle of self-aggrandizement in place of the principle of self-renunciation. Instead of accepting the fact that he had been made in the likeness of God, he yielded to the suggestion that it was necessary for him to do something in order to be “as God.” But by this very act he lost his likeness to God. Thus it was that man, inspired by Satan, thought to change the law of God, and thus it was that sin with all its consequences found admittance to our world. The gospel is the provision which God has made that man may be created anew in the image of God, and that the law of love may again be written in his heart. In the gift of his own Son to our flesh, God again united the law of his being with the flesh, and thus opened the door of hope to man. By himself becoming an interpretation to the universe of the fullness of the meaning of his own law of self-renouncing love, he prepared the way that man himself might again become obedient to that same law. And man is asked to accept the fact that in the person of Christ humanity has been restored to the likeness to God, acknowledging that he cannot restore himself, and repudiating the law of self-aggrandizement for the law of self-renunciation. This is done by believing, by believing on Christ, by believing on him as the last Adam, the head of a new humanity, by submitting to the power of the endless life which he restored to humanity in his own person. This is the provision of infinite love and wisdom. Thus can God “be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” And so the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth,” and it cannot be the power of God to salvation to those who do not believe. On God’s part the provision for salvation is made by the gift of his Son. This provision becomes effective in each individual who accepts the gift. And this can be done by believing, but in no other way. Thus the broken law is kept again by faith. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” Inasmuch as Satan led man into sin in the first instance by persuading him to doubt God, and to seek to uplift himself through some act of his own, it would be only natural to expect that he would attempt to thwart the plan for man’s salvation by the same method. And this is just what has been done. This counter-working of Satan has found expression in various ways among different peoples and in different times, but his crowning effort is “the mystery of iniquity.” In this masterpiece of deceit Satan has attempted to change the law of God, not by openly working against it, but by so completely perverting the principles of the gospel right in the church itself as to turn it into “the synagogue of Satan.” In this way the papacy has been built up, the fundamental axiom of which is that the pope is the vicar of the Son of God. In reality, however, as we have seen, the pope is the vicar of Satan, the visible agent through whom he works in his attempt to overthrow the government of God. Under the blasphemous claim that he was the special representative of God in the earth, and that all authority had been delegated to him as such, the pope as the head of the papacy has not hesitated to put his word above the word of God, and to add to, or subtract from, or change the word of God just as might best serve his own purpose. And he has met with an apparent success in this dreadful work because he has presented to men in the name of religion a system which professedly satisfies all the claims of God, while at the same time it does not demand a change of the heart. This is an appeal to the perverted natures of men. “What they desire is a method of forgetting God which shall pass as a method of remembering him. The papacy is well adapted to meet the wants of all these. It is prepared for two classes of mankind, embracing nearly the whole world,—those who would be saved by their merits, and those who would be saved in their sins. Here is the secret of its power.” To meet these demands the papacy has evolved a so-called system of religion which is the salvation of man instead of the salvation of God. It substitutes the human for the divine. It puts man’s word in the place of God’s word. It discards the divine method of justification by faith for the human method of justification by works. As a consequence it merely cloaks sin with a pretended garment of righteousness, rather than cleanses from sin. And as sufficient proof of its authority to do any of the lesser things in its perversion of God’s appointed means of salvation, it appeals to the change which it has made in that brief summary of the law of love,—the ten commandments. Of course it has not really changed God’s law, but it has thought to do so, and as a result many are ignorantly transgressing God’s holy law to-day. Having substituted salvation by merit for salvation by faith, the papacy has set aside the sign of God’s power to create, and therefore to save,—the Sabbath of the fourth commandment,—and has put forward in its place the sign of its merely human power—the spurious sabbath, the first day of the week. This is the supreme effort of Satan to overthrow the Lord’s plan to establish his kingdom in the earth, and to establish his own in its place. But the message of justification by faith as the preparation for the coming King is now sounding forth in the earth, and the unchanged and the unchangeable law of the kingdom of heaven—the law of7self-renouncing love written in the heart—is being established in the experience of those whose eyes are being opened to see the attempted change of the law of the kingdom by the papacy. The result will be a people who “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Blessed law! Blessed are they who keep it.