There Is no Escape by J. S. Washburn

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 15, 1906

There Is no Escape

By J. S. Washburn

J. S. WASHBURN

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” Yes, not the servant, as we consider a servant to-day, but the bond-slave. We have sold ourselves for naught, and our will has been surrendered

to the cruel one, who hates those who serve him most faithfully, and pays them, in the end, not the glittering rewards promised, but corruption and death, eternal shame and ruin.

By no power of the will, by no protestations of sincerity and of good intention, can we escape the awful consequences of sin. The highest intellectual gifts or attainments, yea, the deepest spiritual understanding and knowledge, even of the Word of God; the highest, the most lofty position, even though it be that of an angel shadowing the throne of the eternal God, can not preserve him who turns aside from the straight and narrow path of right to follow the ignis fatuus of his selfish desire and his own vain imagination. An angel, the most beautiful in the heavenly courts, the very day-star, has become the prince of darkness. The Bible is full of painful examples, of pathetic pictures, of fallen mighty ones. The whole of the powerfully written book of Jude, also the second chapter of Second Peter, are full of warnings to those who turn aside from the simple, plain truth to delusive sophistries and the illusions of their own pride and self-will.

Their theories, their beliefs, may be painted in all the colors of the rainbow about the throne of God; they may be spoken of in apparent sincerity as being special revelations of the kindness and love of the Father in heaven, but every departure from the plain, straight, sensible word of God, every deviation from God’s special message for the time in which men live, leads to ruin and corruption: there is no escape.

He who “spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” he who “spared not the old world,” but destroyed it with a flood; who turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes;” who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, and afterward “destroyed them that believed not,” can not spare any man who commits sin, and continues therein.

Now we have come to the days when Satan’s last terrible delusion is sweeping into his net the millions of the world, and a number even of those who profess to believe God’s last message. A host of evil spirits is swarming over the world. The so-called Christian nations of the West are replenished from the East with heathen philosophies and delusions. Have men forgotten the terrible examples of the past—Saul, Judas, Balaam? Of these the Scripture says, “These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; . . . for when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.” “Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

A falsehood not practised at first, but accepted in the mind, permeates, and at last destroys. “Ungodly teaching is followed by sinful practise. It is the seducing bait of the father of lies, and results in the impenitence of self-satisfied impurity.” — “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VIII, page 293. The spirit of prophecy is here speaking of the danger of receiving the “doctrine of an impersonal God, pervading all nature, and similar errors,” and immediately says, “The experience of the past will be repeated.” The Testimony further says, “The exaltation of nature as God, the unrestrained license of the human will, the counsel of the ungodly,—these Satan uses as agencies to bring about certain ends.”

Countenancing, or compromising with, these delusions, there is no escape. And there is hope only in an utter, unconditional, and continual surrender of self, and an acknowledgment of wrong. Even then much sorrow and pain must be endured by those who have gone aside from the simple truth as God has revealed it in his last message to the world. Sin is a cruel, merciless monster. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.”

And yet in this, the last battle of the conflict of the ages, we have the strong assurance that, if we abide in him, no man shall be able to pluck us out of his hand. “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”

Takoma Park, D. C.