p. 6 (390) | SALVATION FROM WITHIN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 22, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 25.

SALVATION FROM WITHIN.

The destruction of faith in God's Word, and the destruction of faith in the plan of salvation which God instituted, was bound to result in a man-made plan of salvation—and it has come.

Schools for the propagation of this new faith-destroying teaching of the “Higher Criticism” and the soul-wrecking doctrine, or philosophy, of the “New Thought” are starting up in many places in this and other countries. The core of those teachings is this: Disbelief in the Bible as the Word of God, and confidence in the sufficiency of man for the salvation of man. With the destruction of faith in God's Word, God's plan, and, consequently, in God Himself, man has begun to look to himself, to exalt himself, to make a saviour of himself, while treating as a myth or fable the only Saviour who can save anybody or anything in the world or out of it.

Those theories, or philosophies, are working the works of “the man of sin” as truly as the Papacy has ever done it; for they put man in the place of God as Saviour, teach the abolition of a mediator between God and man, and the dethronement of an everlasting King. All that is what Satan tried to do in heaven, and he is seeking now to accomplish it in the minds of men in the earth; and men and women are allowing themselves to be deceived into taking just such a disastrous position.

The “New Thought” is expressed in various forms; but a prominent exponent of the idea has expressed it in such language as this:—

Man is his own saviour, by virtue of the divine immanence within. It is an eternal decree of life that man must evolve and work out his own destiny throughout the earth and the more interior spiritual spheres of his existence. The Christ must be generated from within in every individual soul. Every living soul must be its own saving power. There will not be a single soul saved by any power external to itself.

What it means to be “saved” in the sense in which it is there used is difficult to imagine. What that kind of a saviour is able to do for one they do not tell us. But every one who has measured his own life by the true Pattern and realized how far short he has come of it, can determine that for himself. It is certain that the salvation of which they speak is not the salvation which the blessed Bible brings to view. The saviour of whom they teach is not the Saviour by whose life and sacrifice man and the earth on which he walks are to be redeemed from the curse of sin. They are different entirely—and not only different, but diametrically opposed to one to the other. The inspired Word declares, “In none other is there salvation.” This latter philosophy makes every man his own saviour, and not only that, but goes so far as to declare that there is no salvation outside of man—no one but man who can save man, thereby taking direct issue with God, contradicting God's pronouncement word for word.

Christ declares, “Without Me ye can do nothing.” This philosophy declares, in effect, that Christ Himself can do nothing for us; that all the Christ there is within us. These are its own words: “There will not be a single soul saved by any means external to itself.”

God's Word teaches that in Him is the treasure-house of wisdom and knowledge; that in Him is the fountain of life. The “New Thought” receives “the fundamental truths of life direct from the interior realms of being,” which they hold to be “the central home of all truth.” Its reception by the individual “will make him free in thought and action and enable him to become independent of all external methods of salvation.” Certain it is that such belief will put men beyond the reach of the salvation of Jesus Christ. While promising man salvation as a saviour, that philosophy robs him of both, and fits him for the salvation which God has prepared.

But these two things, the contradiction of God's Word and the building of the new tower of Babel, are working in perfect harmony under the direction of one mind, for the accomplishment of one purpose. That purpose is the ruin of souls, and the directing power is the same that contradicted God's Word in Eden and inspired wicked men to build a tower of self-salvation on the plains of Shinar.

There is only one power that can save souls, and that is the power of God. Any agent that comes to you with any other plan is the agent of God's age-long enemy, who is bent upon your ruin. It will come to you in ingenious phrases, folding and infolding into each other, interweaving and intertwisting, until the mind is lost in its mysterious mazes, confused and unsettled.

Do not dally with the tempter. There is One God, whom you know to be the way, the truth, and the life—cling to Him. There is one sure way, straight and narrow—take that; for the straight line is the shortest line, and the narrow way is the safest way. It is plenty wide for you and the Man of sorrows and sympathies to walk side by side. There is a world of difference between desiring to be like Christ in purity, truth, and love, and the assertion that we are Christ—deity incarnate in our flesh. The first is the legitimate outgrowth of yielding to God, while the second is the fruit of selfishness and disobedience. Let us not carve out of our own corrupt natures a god of self with which to block our path to Paradise.