Whose Image Shall We Bear? by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1913

Whose Image Shall We Bear?

By C. M. S.

THE conspiracy that produced the “beast” and planned the “image” is older than Rome and older than Babylon,—older than the conflict in heaven that resulted in the banishment of Satan and his fallen hosts.

When the Father and the Son planned the creation of man, God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . . And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Gen. 1: 26, 27.

Into that council Lucifer was not invited, and bitterness rankled in his soul. Out of that bitterness grew his wild and terrible ambition to be like the Most High, to form a universe of his own and substitute for God’s rule of love and unselfishness the rule of his own despotic will. In that purpose was the germ of every despotic power that has cursed the world. In place of cheerful obedience and willing service he puts the rule of force. Wherever compulsion of conscience has manifested itself in this world, there we see Satan’s enmity to God and to his government of love working out its fearful fruitage and reaping its baneful harvest.

That principle of self-seeking and of force in matters of faith, when manifested in tangible form, is the beast—named so because of its disregard of the principles of justice and charity and humanity. It is the image of him who, with utter disregard of every principle of justice and of righteousness, oblivious to every right of humanity or of divinity, trampling underfoot every element of love, with nothing in view but his own desires and no purpose to serve that did not pander to his own ambition, with furious disregard of what the consequences might be, set his will against the purpose of God and raised the standard of rebellion throughout the universe. Well has the tangible expression of that satanic project been denominated the beast. The beast of field or forest acts without regard to consequences, and is oblivious to the principles of justice,

righteousness, and the rights of others. “So with the fallen light-bearer, and so with every organization that is dominated by his principles.

In nation after nation have we seen those beast principles worked out, and in every nation where they have found expression the worship of the true God has been put under the ban, and those who would persist in worshiping him have done so in spite of threat and fine, whipping, torture, and death.

While there have been many governments that have manifested the beast principles in their operation, in papal Rome those principles found their most dreadful and most complete manifestation. So completely and so persistently did that power identify itself with those principles that the sacred writer personifies those principles in that power and stamps it with a name which fits its characteristics—the beast.

God planted his image here in the sinless beings he set over the estate of this world. Satan purposed not only to deface and destroy that image, but to put his own image in the world in the place of God’s.

In his controversy with God, whatever Satan has controlled he has stamped with the characteristics of his own nature. We read concerning him that “he was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” John 8:44. That beast power, which represented his nature and exemplified his character so long in this world, has piled up a fearful record for itself in the lives it has blotted out, and the tortures it has inflicted in order to maintain its dominance over men and nations.

While that fearful work has been going on, stamping the image of man’s arch-enemy upon the bodies and souls of men, Jesus Christ has been impressing upon individual hearts—willing hearts—the image of God and the character of God, the God of love, our Father. The question which the gospel of Christ, in its triumph, will decide is the question as to whose image and nature man shall bear. Satan has set his purpose to stamp all things earthly with his image, and, in doing so, to blot out the image of God from the souls of men. God purposed that man should be made in his likeness and remain so. Satan has stepped in to thwart that purpose, and to carry out another in its place; and right there the contest is joined. Whose image shall man bear, Satan’s or God’s? That is the question whose answer will determine the eternal destiny of earth’s millions.

Satan proposes to stamp individuals as well as nations “have one mind, and they give their power and authority unto the beast” (are stamped with his seal), we find also that “he causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that there be given them a mark on their right hand, or upon their forehead,” and that mark is “the name of the beast or the number of his name.” Rev. 13: 16, 17. It is Satan’s purpose that every soul on earth shall bear his image; and he proposes to accomplish his object by putting to death all who refuse to be thus stamped with the mark of his character, or to worship in obedience to the arbitrary command of the power that executes his decrees.

But his wicked purpose will not succeed; God’s image will not be blotted out, nor Satan’s be universally accepted; for we read: “I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on the mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads.” Rev. 14: 1. They who are thus marked have refused to desert the standard of Prince Immanuel. They have accepted the work which Christ has done for them, and are sealed with the seal of the Almighty. He has found his likeness, his image, in them, and has stamped them with the hall-mark of the eternal kingdom. And these are they to whom the revelator refers when he says: “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. He that overcometh I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence no more: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and mine own new name.” Rev. 3: 10-12.

Out of this contest there come but two classes, the victors and the vanquished, those who bear the seal, or mark, and the name of Christ and of the Father, and those who bear the seal, or mark, and the name of that power which is the adversary of God and man. The one is marked for an eternal inheritance in the new earth; the other is sealed for eternal death and oblivion. Which image shall we bear? C. M. S.