“Behold, God is my salvation.” “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.” “Behold your God! Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.”
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”
“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!” “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation.”
“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.”
These scriptures set before us the essential truths in the gospel of salvation, putting them in the very setting in which they should be preached to the world in this generation, as the means of preparing the way for the coming of the Son of man.
First, they set before us that salvation is God in his personality,—“Behold, God is my salvation,”—that salvation is not an abstraction, but that salvation is God. They set before us the contrast between the flesh in its weakness and God in his mightiness: “All flesh is grass;” “Behold your God!” They set before us the hope that this God, who is in himself, in his own personality, salvation, will come, and give his reward to those who look for him. “Behold, the Lord God will come. . . . Behold, his reward is with him.”
They set forth that this God, who is in his personality salvation, will come in the flesh. “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us;” which means now, salvation with us.
They set before us that this was actually fulfilled in the birth of the Man of Nazareth. “I bring you good tidings of great joy. . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,”—God our salvation, God with us, God manifested in the flesh in the person of his Son.
They set forth God as our salvation in the person of his Son with us in the flesh, as our sacrifice, our substitute, and our surety. “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!”
All these truths are bound up and put before us anew in that setting of the gospel which constitutes the threefold message of Revelation 14; for in those messages, or that threefold message, all these truths are gathered up, and revealed in just the way that they must be revealed at the time when that message must be given; else these mighty truths of God in his personality as our salvation, of God with us in the person of his Son, of God himself in Christ reconciling the world to himself, of God himself in Christ becoming our sacrifice, our substitute, our surety,—all these truths would be set aside, nullified, made of none effect in salvation to the world in this last generation, in the work that must be done to prepare the way for the revelation of the Son of man, were it not for the light which is cast upon them, and the setting which is given to them, in the threefold message of Revelation 14. Not that the words in that chapter in themselves say all that we have said, and not that these words alone are all the words in which this message is to be spoken in this time; but these words, with what is implied in them, and with what is connected with them as an integral part of the essential thought in them, must be the setting of the everlasting gospel in this generation, to save in this generation from confusion concerning these very principles, to make clear to this generation these very truths, as salvation for this generation, and to make such a revelation of the purpose and plan of God in the salvation of man that in the day of judgment not one soul can rise up before God and say, I knew it not; it was not revealed in my day; it had been hidden; I did not learn of it.
The True Gospel Principles
There will be, under the preaching of this message for this generation, and in the doing of the work that is to be done in this generation, such a clear presentation of the essential, vital truth of God our salvation, God in his personality, in the gift of himself in his Son in the flesh, and such an unmasking of every statement that pretends to be the gospel of salvation, that is not the true gospel for this generation, that there will be no need of confusion on the part of any one whose heart is set to do the5Lord’s will. That is our only hope. That is the only hope of the world.
God has not set his purpose to reveal salvation to this world, he has not given himself in the person of his Son to be the Saviour of the world, and then left it to his enemy to hide it, to cover it, to confuse it in such a way that men who desire to know God as their Saviour, and to know him as their salvation, shall be left in doubt, in confusion, in darkness, and be lost. Any other view must impugn the very goodness and wisdom of God.
But it is not enough to say these things. I have put this before you in this way that we may, in the light of these scriptures, and in the light of these statements, study this question of salvation from this standpoint, and study the setting in which this salvation must be preached in this generation, to accomplish the will and purpose of God, and to make him clear before the universe; and that is our business.
The proclamation of the everlasting gospel in Rev. 14:8, under the leadership of this angel first seen to fly in the midst of heaven, is stated in this language: ‘Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.’
A study of the prophecies, and especially the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Revelation, preceding this statement, will make clear that when these prophecies are fulfilled, unless the gospel of God shall be hidden, and his salvation not clearly revealed at that time, there must be a setting forth of the true principles of the gospel to counteract those principles which have been brought in by the enemy of God.
Now you will note this—you must have noted it already: up to the time when God was revealed in the flesh in the person of his Son, when he was actually here in the earth as the Son of man, heathenism, opposition to the cause of God in the earth, generally took the form of expressing in some outward way the ideas which men held concerning God, and in worshiping under that form their conception of God.
That is, one would seek out a tree, another a stone. By the use of implements, and the skill of man’s hands, they would express as best they could their idea of God. Then they would worship that work of their hands,—not to pay homage to the material of which it was composed,—forgetting, as the prophet Isaiah sets forth, that from the very tree from which one had taken timber to form his god he had cut a portion and built a fire and warmed himself, and another portion he had used as fuel with which to bake bread,—forgetting all that, but looking to the expression which he by the work of his hands, and which the goldsmith had put upon it, overlaying it with gold, he worshiped now, not the wood that made him warm, not the wood which he used to make fire to bake his food, but his conception of God as set forth in that which he had made out of that material. That was heathenism, open, gross, manifest.
After God was manifested to the world in the person of his Son, and after there had been such a revelation of the true idea of God as was revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, so that both believers and unbelievers were obliged to confess to the wonderful character that was revealed in him, so that even the heathen Pilate, his judge, was obliged to say, ‘I find no fault in him;’ I find no case against him; I find no case on which any action can be based against him,—after such a revelation of the true character of God, and the true conception of God, had been made in the person of his Son in the flesh, then, in order that the deception should be successful in leading men away from the true conception of God, and the true idea of God, there must be a change in the manner in which this revelation of the false idea of God, and the false conception of God, should be made to the world.
False Conceptions of God
And so after a most terrible attempt to crush out of the world the true idea of God as revealed in his Son, and as revealed in his church, of which his Son in the Holy Spirit was the head, after that effort had failed, after those centuries of most terrible persecution, the most bitter and determined effort of the enemy of God to shut out the idea of God from the world, that men should not know God,—after that time came a variation of heathenism, which was intended to be even more successful in shutting away from the world the true God as the salvation of the world.
That perversion was not to express in outward, visible form the idea of God which men held, the false idea of God; but, preserving the names and the forms and the outward appearance in this clearest and fullest and latest revelation of God, to substitute in those words, in those forms, under those appearances, the same heathen idea of God that had been before expressed in the form of images of wood and stone.
All this was the subject of prophecy. All this has been set forth with clearness in the Scripture; and this effort to which I have just referred is clearly placed before us in the familiar prophecy in the second chapter of 2 Thessalonians, being the second letter written, or the second book of the New Testament written, and taking hold directly upon the vital issue which the church was even then beginning to face, as we see in this prophecy. Let us read these familiar words, that the picture may be before our minds anew:—
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”
That is, not permitting the true conception of God, the revelation of God as salvation in the person of his Son, to have its place without opposition, one rises up who opposes, who sets himself against this, and who, in the place of exalting God as revealed in the person of his Son as in himself salvation; in the place of exalting him as the priest in the temple, as the only one who can minister himself as salvation in the personality of his own presence, he attempts to keep the outward temple the same, but to step into it himself in the place of God; to put his idea of God and salvation in the place of the true idea of God and salvation as set forth in the gift and revelation of his Son; to put himself in the place of God. And, instead of accepting and putting to the front as the head of the church him who was both man and God, there is put forth as the head of the church one who is man and not God, but who sets himself forth as God. So that instead of having salvation in the temple of God to be ministered to lost sinners, such a salvation as has in it all the power, all the presence, all the wisdom of God in his own being who was manifested in the flesh, that he might be manifested in the flesh of all who accept this salvation, there is put forth the same flesh without God, the same flesh without salvation in it; and an effort is made to substitute the false for the true, while keeping the same outward paraphernalia, so that under the name of a church, under the profession of following the Word of God, under the profession of believing in Christ the Saviour, under the profession of salvation by faith, there is revealed an organization which is not a church,—an organization which does not take the Word of God as the guide,—an organization which does not give to Christ his place, as must be given by those who believe in him,—an organization with all the outward forms and paraphernalia of salvation, which neither saves nor justifies anybody.
As the result of this perversion of the truth and the salvation of God, there arose the papacy; and the world, both6political and religious, was plunged into that period known as the Dark Ages, because he who is the light of the world was shut out from his true place, and the light was not permitted to shine. In that movement which we know as the Reformation of the sixteenth century, there was an effort under God to restore truth to the world, to bring back the light again, so that the word might be again fulfilled, just as it was when Jesus was manifested in the flesh, “The people that sat in darkness saw a great light.”
Righteousness by Faith
And notice that the light in that time was focused in this truth, “salvation by faith,” “righteousness by faith,” “justified by faith we have peace with God.” Up to that time these same phrases may have been repeated; but the truth that was revealed in the sixteenth century was that the means by which humanity was to lay hold of this salvation revealed, was that faith which is the gift of God; and that through the exercise of that faith personally in that gift of God in his Son, humanity, far separated from God by sin,—humanity, which had lost the true conception of God and the true idea of God as salvation,—would be enabled to deal directly with those truths without any other intervention than the one which God had supplied in the person of his Son Jesus Christ; that there is “one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.”
So long as this principle was allowed, and so long as those who professed to believe it and to follow it, held their way, light increased. And had that never been lost, had those Reformers never departed from the principles which they laid down, there would have been increasing light unto the perfect day; because righteousness by faith is the essential thing in the gospel of salvation. And with those same principles laid down, with the Holy Ghost given according to the promise, to guide into all the truth, with a willing heart to obey, to walk in the light revealed, men may be fitted for residence in the eternal kingdom. But of course the enemy of the kingdom of God in the earth would not permit that revelation to pass without effort to overthrow it, any more than he would permit the reformation wrought by Jesus himself in person to pass without his effort to overthrow it.
And so there followed again the introduction of those same heathen ideas, and the very principles that the Reformers themselves established, the later reformers and the sons of the reformers repudiated, not in open terms, not by arraying themselves in outward and open opposition to these principles, but by a system as it were of dry rot, by a system of inner decay, by a system which devitalizes, by a system which takes out the life, and leaves the shell, until there has come the latest revelation of this very principle of which we are speaking, that principle which deprives men of the knowledge of God in his personality as salvation.
And the latest revelation of that effort to hide God from man which has always been in the world, which is no new thing except in the way of its development, is what we have been wont to call “the higher criticism.” This is a method of dealing with God, of dealing with his Word, of dealing with his church, of dealing with his Son in the flesh, of dealing with the means which God has established for the carrying out of this salvation for man, in such a subtle way that only in the light that shines from God’s Word, and only in the message which God himself has prepared for this generation, can this generation be saved from the snare.
Believe in God?—Yes. Believe in his Word?—Yes. Believe in Christ?—Yes. Believe in salvation by faith?—Yes. Believe in the church as established by God in the earth?—Yes. Believe in the future life?—Yes. But how? Instead of believing in those things as interpreted, and as they only can be interpreted through the man Christ Jesus, they are believed in as they are interpreted by every man to his own mind. And when that is done, every man puts himself in the place of God as revealed in Christ.