YE SHALL BE AS GOD

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 27.

“YE SHALL BE AS GOD.”

Older than the history of man is the purpose of man's enemy to be “like the Most High;” and the fall of man dates from the day when he believed Satan's story that by disobedience to God's command he could be as God. It was the angels' deception in heaven; it was man's deception in the earth. That was a generic falsehood; from it have sprung a great swarm of falsehoods and false systems of worship. It was the fountain-head of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; for it was coupled with, and had in it the essence of, that other statement, “Ye shall not surely die.” That seed-lie sprang into a great tree, whose branches have ever since been dropping down fruit whose flesh had in it the essence of death; for Christ has declared, “Every plant which My Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” This doctrine is certainly one such plant; for from the mouth of God's enemy it sprung. And all the false systems and beliefs that owe their origin to it and are based upon it will be uprooted with it. They who base their hopes upon it are doomed to have them blasted. No error will have part in the triumph of God's truth; for the triumph of His truth means victory over error. Those, then, who propagate error and cling to it will go down in its overthrow.

There is a very powerful tendency in the world to-day to cling to and to propagate that very error which came to man in Eden—“ye shall be as God.” Altho it is the basis of much of the religious teaching of ancient heathenism, it is not confined to the ancients—it is with us yet.

A modern teacher of this ancient false system of religion, in pretending to send healing power by silent thought-force to two correspondents, declares,

“My words are spirit and life, and go where I send them. I will speak to you both at once. You will hear me and profit by this answer.” This teacher's declaration is an attempt to take to herself the attributes and power of God. Christ said: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life;” and this teacher has, in that which is practically a quotation from Christ, attempted to put herself in His place. She seeks to justify this by declaring that all have in them a “Christ principle” “either latent or active”—not the idea of “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” but divinity inherent in the flesh. He who has yielded his mind and will to the mind and will of Christ, consecrating himself to the service of Christ, having forsaken sin and obtained pardon, has Christ enthroned within. Christ is reigning in his mind and heart. That is what the apostle means by having “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” There is a vast difference between that and the idea that we are a part of Him who made us; that we are part human and part divine; and that, having divinity in us, we must therefore be immortal.

That philosophy is the philosophy with which Satan overthrew man in Eden; and through that philosophy he proposes to perpetuate that overthrow. Its remarkable revival at this time in so many different quarters of the earth is a sign of the times. It is one of Satan's last strenuous efforts to blind the eyes of the race.

Before me is a journal called The Sun Worshiper—not printed in Persia, India, Egypt, or the islands of the South Sea, but in the center of the United States of America. In that journal the same heathen and Satanic philosophy is expounded; man is his own saviour; to become free, he must learn to liberate himself; he must find in himself the power to cure himself of sickness and sin; everything has within itself the power of creation; and “man is the highest expression of God.”

In this not only is God's Word utterly discredited; but the plan of redemption, all that God has done for man, is flatly denied, cast aside, trampled under foot; and man is put in the place of God, to do for man that which only God can do. Some time ago we called attention to a society started in one of the Middle States for the express purpose of exalting man, parading his divinity, and setting forth man's all-sufficiency in himself. That society has many supporters now in the multitude of journals that are devoting their strength and influence to the propagation of that very idea. The whole thing works toward the exaltation of self and the worship of self. It is man's attempt to do in the earth what Satan attempted to do in the heavens—exalt self. Satan said, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . . I will be like the Most High.” Isa. 14:13, 14. And man, to-day, is allowing himself to be actuated by the same terrible ambition. The primal author of that disastrous purpose is the same in both cases.

It is right to worship God; it is our duty so to do. If God is inherently in us, if any part of us is God, then it would be right to worship self; for in doing that we would be worshiping God. That false doctrine teaches, first, that God is in us inherently; that we are part divine, and therefore immortal. Then in exalting and worshiping self, we are exalting and worshiping God. By that subtle falsehood—God inherently in us—the worship of self takes the place of the true worship of God, and all that false and fatal system comes trailing after, overthrowing (in the minds of those blinded by it) the whole divine plan, making Christ's life and sacrifice for us superfluous, and the Word of God “of none effect.” That one subtle purpose has run through the work of Satan from the day he conspired against his Maker even to this present day, and will so continue until his last victim has been ensnared. His power over the minds of those who have not the mind of Christ will increase to the end. The subtlety of his sophistry will continue to grow keener to the end. The rapid increase in the teachings of the philosophy of heathenism now proves that this is so. There has been an awakening among those false systems in the lands of their origin, and they have been rapidly spreading in lands that had not known them hitherto. They are even permeating the pulpit orations of so-called Christian churches, and are winning their disastrous way wherever the power of God has not come in to dominate the life. The harvest of the earth is ready for the sickle—the weeds as well as the wheat. It is a time to seek God, to “watch unto prayer,” that the over-spreading delusions of these last days may not reckon us among their victims.