ACTUAL, SUBSTANTIAL!

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 46.

ACTUAL, SUBSTANTIAL!

The tendency of all peoples who have accepted the doctrine of the soul’s inherent immortality is to decry and denounce materialism as something utterly abhorrent to Christianity. Materialism in their eyes means the gross materialism of earth marred by sin, subject to corruption and decay; it means the sin-polluted and disease-decaying body of the flesh; and that opposed to this view is the immaterial, which practically makes nothing of God, or of heaven, or of man hereafter. There has obtained the idea that material could not be spiritual, nor could the spiritual be material.

In all this sin has blinded men’s eyes and befogged the vital question of man’s here and hereafter.

The true view-point, the true source of knowledge, of all this is not sinful man and his reasoning, but God’s revelation concerning His purpose regarding man. God made man a material being, composed of flesh, bone, and blood. God’s purpose was and is that man should live forever; He did not create him to die. He placed the man on a material earth, which is destined to abide forever. Its trees, its flowers, its soil, its waters were all material.

But they were not as we see them now. It was a living earth. No threefold curse rested upon it; nay, no single curse had marred its glorious beauty. The Spirit, the life of God, penetrated its every fiber, and bound it together, a member of the living universe of God. Had it not been for sin, here man would have lived and rejoiced forever.

But sin came, and as a consequence death came. And the whole earth has been a great lazar house of sin, and carnage, and woe, and misery ever since. The bright spots are God’s encouragements to hope; they are the manifestations of His power despite of sin.

When the long struggle is over, when the black course and utter ending of sin shall have vindicated God’s merciful justice, then God will gather His people home to a sinless kingdom. Then will He cause those that love Him “to inherit substance.” Prov. 8:21. Then it will be demonstrated that the sinful material was nothing, for it comes to nothing; but that the spiritual, substantial is something. A spiritual, real earth, inherited by spiritual, real beings, will be ruled by a spiritual, real King, to all eternity. God has in heaven for His children a “better and more enduring substance.” The new heaven and earth will last forever. “The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.” Dan. 7:27. The glorious, substantial capital of that substantial, spiritual kingdom is described in Revelation 21.

Dear souls, it is all real, all substantial, all spiritual, which the people who trust in God shall inherit. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” That is all that is worth seeking.