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What Shall We Do with King Jesus?

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 15.

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What Shall We Do with King Jesus?

The United Christian, of Davenport, Iowa, organ of “The Christian Party,” in its issue for March asks:—
What shall we do with King Jesus? Is there no room for God’s law or kingdom in the churches, parties, or governments of our day? When Jesus was born, there was no room for him in the inn; a barn was his reception room, and he was cradled on straw in a manger.
Jesus “came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not.” That was true of him from the night of his birth till the day of his death. That is why he was born in a manger.
But when it comes to making him a king, we find that Jesus Christ asserts his own purpose. When they would take him and make him a king—just as the Christian Party is seeking to do now—Jesus “withdrew again into the mountain himself alone.” On the very day of his crucifixion, we hear him declaring to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He never permitted men to place any crown upon his head save the crown of thorns; and he is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” We have no reason to believe he would accept to-day at the hands of the Christian Party the crown which he refused at the hands of his own disciples. Jesus could submit to the manger birth, to the persecutions, the mockings, the scourgings, the pitiless crown of thorns, the ignominious death on the cross, but the kingship of this world at the hands of men—never! He will receive it one day at the hands of the Father, but that will be when the kingdoms of this world have been smitten by the stone “cut out of the mountain without hands,” and they have been scattered as “the chaff of the summer thrashing-floor,” broken “in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” We have no reason to think that what Jesus spurned yesterday he will accept to-day. The scheme is no more in harmony with God’s purpose than would have been Jesus’ acceptance of Satan’s offer to give him the kingdoms of this world. Then, too, Satan had the kingdoms to give, and the Christian Party has not.