Truth and Obedience Essential to Salvation.
By Chas. A. Russell
ABOUT the most common objection that the people raise against the truth is, that “it does not make any difference what a person believes if he is only sincere.” This is almost always repeated as a last resort. Such was the case with a gentleman with whom we were conversing lately, who, failing to sustain his position by the Bible, availed himself of this oft-repeated dogma. According to this theory, some of the most abject heathen will be saved; for it is evident that they are sincere. They would not be likely to voluntarily afflict themselves as many do, enduring excruciating tortures, casting their children to alligators to be devoured, and into the fire to be burned, and throwing themselves under the car of Juggernaut to be crushed to death, unless they believed these things would increase their happiness hereafter. But the Bible declares that such shall be destroyed. Ps. 9: 17. But it is evident that unbelief is the foundation of this position. Paul, in 2 Thess. 2: 10-12, plainly tells us that those that believe not the truth shall be damned. We have seen the result of unbelief in the past. If the antediluvians had believed the warning God sent them by Noah they might have been saved with him. The same might be said of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and also of Jerusalem. The Christians, after the withdrawal of the Roman army from around the city, made their escape, in obedience to the warning of the Saviour; while the unbelieving Jews were destroyed. Thus it will be in the great day. Rev. 21: 8. But it is not only those who entirely reject God’s word that will fail to reach Heaven. Those only will get there who are fitted for it, “through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” To believe different from what the Lord has told us is to make him a liar. I John 5: 10. From the above scriptures, it is evident that the Lord will not only punish those who disbelieve his word, but will save only those who believe and obey the truth. When we present the evidences of the soon coming of the Lord and the preparation necessary to meet him, as brought to view in the three messages of Rev. 14, particularly the third, many people who profess strong faith in the Bible, rather than take up the cross and keep the fourth commandment, will settle back into this loose, lax position, that it does not make much difference what we believe, if we are only honest, and that it makes no difference whether we believe that the Lord is coming or not if we are prepared to die; but, according to the words of our Lord in Matt. 24: 39, those that know not the time will be lost, for the plain reason that people will not prepare for what they do not believe is coming, and further, we are taught75that without faith it is impossible to please God; so that we cannot please him and disbelieve anything he has told us. Then how can any person please him when they have no faith in what he has said respecting his second coming, and the signs that should be given to show when that event is near. He says, “When ye shall see all these things, know that it [his coming] is near, even at the doors.” No one can show that these signs are not now fulfilled. And he further elucidates the fact by the most forcible illustration in nature, the putting forth of vegetation in the spring, which is unmistakable evidence that summer is near at hand, and then adds, “So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” This expression of our Lord, “know that it is near,” seems to us as emphatic a requirement as the one to love one another, although a different principle is involved. We would rather not be among those that add to, or take from, the word of the Lord. Glencoe, McLeod Co., Minn.