p. 4 | Our Imperishable Inheritance by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Apr 1, 1909

Our Imperishable Inheritance

By C. M. S.

Earth Conditions and God’s Purpose

There is no cry that pierces the heart of a parent like the cry of his child for life when the curtain of death is about to fall. It breaks heart strings, and crushes hopes and happiness. And the same cry that grips the heart of the parent when the little one is being smitten by the destroyer, reaches the heart of heaven also. The tyrant Death, which entered the realm through the disobedience of man, is the enemy at once of God and man. “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord Jehovah: wherefore turn yourselves, and live.” Eze. 18:32. “The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.” 1 Cor. 15:26. Misguided men have sought to rob it of some of its terrors by calling it the gateway to glory and a friend of the race. God calls it what it is,—an enemy,—and proclaims his purpose to destroy it. “He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more.” Rev. 21:4.

Death is reaping with a swift sickle in every clime. Nowhere under our star-sprinkled sky is there a single locality that has not tasted the bitter cup. The millions that tread the earth to-day are but as a single handful to a great harvest, when compared with the millions on millions who sleep in the dust beneath our feet. When the polished face of the great pyramid was glistening new and fresh in the steady sunlight of ancient Egypt, the same was true. Before the flood of waters had washed sin and the sinner for the time out of the earth, men, women, and children, birds, beasts, fishes, and creeping things had already fallen by the millions under the stroke of death.

By the side of everything that has lived upon the earth there has stood, from the moment of its conception, the specter of death and dissolution. Life and Death have thus walked hand in hand through the earth from the day that Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden of Eden. It is not pleasant to contemplate, but that is the picture that has been thrust into the forefront of heaven’s view in looking down upon our unhappy realm.

What an anomaly, what a paradox, that in one corner of the domain of the God of love and light and life we should find conditions so cruel, so mantled in darkness, so full of death! One has well summarized these conditions in this language:—

What strange contrasts this earth of ours presents! Noonday and midnight are not more opposite than the scenes which are constantly passing before our eyes. Truth and falsehood walk side by side through our streets, and vice and virtue meet and pass every hour of the day. The hut of the starving stands in the shadow of the palace of the wealthy, and the carriage of Dives every day throws the dust of its glittering wheels over the tattered garments of Lazarus. Health and sickness lie down in the same apartment; joy and grief look out of the same window; hope and despair dwell under the same roof. The cry of the infant and the groan of the dying arise together from the same dwelling. The funeral procession treads close on the heels of the bridal party, and the tones of the lute and viol have scarcely died away before the requiem for the dead comes swelling after. O, the beautiful and the deformed, pure and corrupt, joy and sorrow, ecstasies and agonies, how strangely blended together on this our restless planet! O, how good and evil, light and darkness, chase each other over the world!

That is the world as we know it; but it is not the world as God purposed it to be; neither is it the world as God purposes that it shall be. A discordant note has been struck in the great symphony of the universe. It is not reasonable to suppose that the Master of the harmony will permit its jarring, riotous discord to go on forever. Neither will he. Jesus said: “Every plant, which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” An indication of what will be included in that process of eradication was given by our Saviour in the work he did. Whatever Jesus Christ set his face against when here in the flesh will be rooted up in the accomplishment of God’s great purpose for this world. He condemned sin—condemned it in his own flesh, and condemned it in our lives; he condemned blindness, and gave light in its place; he condemned sickness, and gave health; he condemned greed, and taught men the grace of benevolence; he condemned covetousness, and inculcated generosity; he condemned lust, and set forth the beauties and rewards of virtue; he condemned falsehood, and established truth; he condemned hatred, and planted the love of God in the hearts of his children; he condemned flattery, and exalted the grace of humility; he condemned self-exaltation, and set forth in its place the blessed gospel of service; and then, that he might show the Father’s purpose to stamp out death itself, he snatched its victims from its very grasp, went through its gates himself, and brought forth the keys of the tomb.

Up to the time of the resurrection of Jesus, the triumph of the Messiah that was to be was a triumph in prospect. From that moment on, it was a triumph accomplished. What wonderful consequences waited upon the continued sleep or the triumphant waking of the smitten Gift of God! Death claimed him; but righteousness could not be holden of iniquity—even of the prince of iniquity himself. The Roman soldiers standing guard over the tomb of the Son of God were typical of Satan’s attitude toward God himself and all God purposed to accomplish for man. But when the Roman guard was smitten by the angel of Jehovah, who broke the seal of the Roman government, and rolled away the stone that shut man’s Mediator in the tomb, Satan had God’s answer to his challenge, and the world saw accomplished that great work through which man was to come again into that inheritance lost in Adam’s disobedience.

God has been pictured as a God of vengeance. He pictures himself as a God of mercy. “The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity.” Num. 14:18. “His mercy endureth forever.” Ps. 106:1. “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” Ps. 103:17. “He delighteth in mercy.” Micah 7:18. Heathen religions have pictured God as a God of hatred, nursing malevolence toward man, and demanding appeasement from his creatures. But God speaks of his attitude toward man on this wise: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31:3. Again: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him.” John 3:16, 17.

What is death? How and why came it into the world? What had Jesus’ mission in the world to do with it? Is death always to continue its work among the race? Do men really die? Do they sleep forever? Are angels the spirits of the dead? Whence come and who are the spirits that communicate with men in the darkened room, and “materialize” in the secret cabinet? Is man immortal? What is the end of the matter? How these questions come trooping into the mind when we approach the great question of man and his relation to his Maker! These questions and many that grow out of them we will attempt to answer in articles that will follow.

C. M. S.