Studies in the Gospel Message
The subject of the Sabbath-school lesson for November 1 is, The Perversion of Christianity in Modern Babylon. Christianity is unique. Among all the so-called religions of the world it dwells alone. It is not a development of some other less perfect systems. It is a revelation from God. It is the blessed gift of heaven. It introduces into the world divine principles which are entirely foreign to the thought and experience of a sinful humanity. And the method by which these principles were revealed to the world and brought within the range of human experience could be devised only by infinite love. Christianity is the divine character in the concrete. It is a person rather than a mere system. It is God manifest in the flesh. And herein lies the essential difference between Christianity and the pagan imitation of a degenerate ceremonialism. The one is the gift of the divine mind, the other is but the echo of the phrases and forms in which the divine mind was expressed. The one is a living body, the other is a body without life. The one is the revelation of the divine presence wrought into human conduct, the other is the unavailing effort of humanity to be its own god. As a consequence of this difference, genuine Christians have been born “from above,” and have become citizens of the kingdom of God, and live a heavenly life on earth; professed pagans or paganized Christians seek to patch up the old life without making such radical changes in the inner character as would separate them from the world, and try to satisfy the inward unrest by an abundance of dead forms. In the one case there is an actual defense against sin, in the other case sin is baptized and apparently sanctified by being cloaked in the stolen garments of Christianity. In these “perilous times” when men are described as “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof,” it is essential that we should recognize these facts that we may be saved from deception and eternal loss. Let us look at the foundation of the gospel. “God is love.” God loved. God so loved. God so loved the world. God so loved the world that he gave. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The whole story is found in these simple words. The love, the sacrifice, the faith, and the resulting salvation are all here. God’s gift of love and man’s appropriating faith are the divine and human essentials in Christianity. We may well study further concerning the gift. It is the “unspeakable gift.” In giving his Son God gave himself; for “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” The Son was so completely the gift and revelation of the Father to the world that Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And God’s gift of himself to humanity in the person of his only begotten Son is a very real thing. It was the eternal gift of divinity to humanity. It actually brought a change in the family of God. It was the eternal sacrifice of Jesus, “who, being originally in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men.” The divine Word did not come among men in the original form of the Word, but “the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us.” “When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” He took our humanity as all other members of the same family have taken it. He was born into the family. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” And the heavenly messenger declared to the shepherds, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” “Christ brought human nature into a personal relation with his own divinity.” Thus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. Thus the mystery of God’s purpose which had been hid from ages and generations was revealed. “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.” This was God’s gift to humanity. “O Love how deep, how broad, how high,
That God, the Son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortal’s sake!”
In order that this gift of God may meet the personal need of the individual, there must be a definite act of receiving it. What God has given man must receive. This is done by believing. And this act of faith is more than the assent of the mind to the statement of truth. It is more than the acceptance of a creed. The carnal mind can do all this, and still remain unchanged. It is not belief in a mere statement, but belief in a person that is required. Christianity is not a dogma, but a personality. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “Except ye believe that I AM, ye shall die in your sins.” “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him.” “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” The indwelling Christ, received into the heart by believing, is the experience of Christianity. The union of God in Christ with the believer is of the closest kind. The Son not only took the flesh, but he took our sinful flesh. “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The connection between heaven and a fallen world is completely established in the person of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man. The ladder which Jacob saw in his dream was “set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.” It requires no splicing at either end. “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Before the mystery of godliness was revealed in God manifest in the flesh, men were deceived into regarding every separate manifestation of God in his works as a god. Thus they “worshipped created things rather than the Creator.” This was open and manifest idolatry. After the revelation of the mystery of godliness in the person of Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, so that God in the flesh became an object of worship, then arose “the mystery of iniquity,” that masterpiece of Satan’s ingenuity, by the working of which flesh in which God was not manifested was substituted as an object of worship for God manifest in the flesh. In this way was fulfilled the prophecy of the apostle Paul, through whom6it was revealed that the day of the Lord would not come “except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that 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.” This is the papacy, with the pope claiming to be the vicegerent of the Son of God, and poor humanity exalting itself to the place to which humanity was lifted by its wondrous union with divinity in the person of Jesus. This is idolatry in a more refined form. This is paganism adapted. This is that perversion of Christianity which retains the forms and names of Christianity, but leaves out the one thing which distinguishes Christianity. Through the prophecies of the Scripture it is made clear to us that those principles which made ancient Babylon what it was would be revived in a professed church of God, which by inspiration is designated as “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” It is therefore important to understand the essential points in the creed of Babylon, so that we may recognize them when they appear under the cloak of Christianity. They are these: the exaltation of self and the denying to God of the place which he has purchased for himself in humanity. Daniel’s charge against the king of Babylon was, “Thou . . . hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven;” and the wise men of Babylon, when pressed to make good their claim that they could practice the occult art, declared that no one could meet the requirement of the king “except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh,” or “except that God, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” This is the creed of paganism, humanity lifting up itself against God, and shutting out God from his rightful place in the flesh. This was done openly in ancient Babylon, but covertly in modern Babylon. By apparently adopting the vital feature of Christianity in assenting to the doctrine that God was manifested in the flesh, but by denying that God was manifested in sinful flesh, the same as we have, the papacy has perverted Christianity into paganism pure and simple. It has removed the corner stone of Christianity, Jesus Christ, the union of divinity with our own humanity, and has built upon the sand. In order to reach heaven from this foundation it has introduced human priests, saints of its own making, angels which are the creation of its own imaginings, and a mother of God who occupies a place utterly unknown in the gospel plan. The heaven which is reached by such a way as this is not the heaven of Christianity. Is it not time that there should be a message with a loud cry which should warn the world against this hideous perversion of Christianity? But it must be remembered that such a message cannot be the reply of creed to creed, but the reply of truth as a personality testifying in “the power of an endless life.” It is time that every one who knows the reality of Christianity should confess “that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” This is the work of the hour.