MR. MAYBELL'S cartoon is not a pleasing picture; but sin is never pleasing in its fruitage, nor is it pleasing when it stands revealed in the white light of righteousness.
It is only in the absence of that illumination, that sin is pleasing. It is when we permit the "lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life," or some pet or cherished thing or scheme, to hide from us the light of soul-piercing and motive-discerning truth, that we come to tolerate the sin and it becomes pleasing. God wishes us to see sin before we reach the sowing of the baleful seed, that we may not reap it in the harvest; for "sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death," and "as I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live."
From the very beginning of human existence God's arch-enemy, the devil, has sought to destroy men by every means in his power, seeking to ensnare them and gather them into the great pit of death and eternal oblivion.
The cartoon on this page is drawn and the article is written to warn against some of the means Satan is using to destroy men. We can only summarize a portion of what has been given in this journal during the last six months. We can not name all his devices, but we can call attention to five great agencies which, like the restless, grasping, hungry digits of a great black, virile hand, are held over the people of the nation. It is a horrible picture, but true to life. One of its fingers is —
THE GRASPING HAND OF DESTRUCTION
I. Spiritism
Spiritism is that agency of the prince of darkness which finds its root in that primitive falsehood in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die, . . . ye shall be as God." Gen. 3:4, 5, A.R.V. How the old falsehood has been perpetuated since!
What a fruitful seed! What a prolific plant it has been! We know of none so fecund in protean forms of evil. From the old serpent's assurance and promise of immortality in sin, apart from Christ, apart from character, have sprung the following beliefs, theories, systems: Conscious State of the Dead, Ancestor-worship, Eternal Misery in Punishment, Invocation and Worship of Saints, Reward at Death, Purgatory, Prayers and Baptism for the Dead, Worship of the Virgin Mary, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Jainism, Taoism, Transmigration of Souls, Pantheism, Druidism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Swedenborgianism, Christian Science, and Spiritism in all its forms and phases, and the consequent rejection of Christ's Second Coming and the Resurrection of the Dead. Take from these beliefs, one and all, the basic belief in inherent immortality, and they would fall into irreparable ruin. But now, under the influence of psychic phenomena and research, millions have ranged themselves under the old falsehood, and millions more are following. Among these are noted scholars, learned scientists. They gravely tell us that our knowledge of the hope of immortality comes through these channels. "Not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God," they fall under the old flattering lie. And in this, in fact, roots every plant of self-salvation, the fruits of which at last will be Dead Sea apples.
II. Apostasy
God sets His truth in this sin-darkened earth as the light of the world. He places in this iniquity-abounding, soul-corrupting, death-producing atmosphere the salt of the earth. Such was Lot for a time in Sodom, such for a time were Abraham and his descendants in Palestine, while "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." Such were Jesus and the Christians in Jerusalem. Such was the Reformation of the sixteenth century. It brought into the world a new flood of light from heaven. It injected into the world's corrupt and dying body copious quantities of the salt of grace, of the life of the Word. The old planet was given a new lease of life, and it was everywhere manifest in Church and State.
The sad thing to record now is that the light of the Word, disclosed by the Reformation, is becoming hidden and dimmed by the apostasy of many who assume to speak for Protestantism. The salt of divine grace in the church in innumerable cases has lost its savor. As the rule of life, as the standard of faith and morals, the Word is repudiated, discountenanced, by the rational criticism largely dominant in Protestant religious circles to-day. The salt of divine grace and the vicarious atonement, the miraculous regeneration of the soul through faith in a divine Saviour, are set aside. Belief in the miraculous birth of Christ and the resurrection of the dead have gone with belief in God's creative power in the making of the world and the remaking of a soul. While we are bound to believe that there are many in the great Protestant bodies who are still loyal to the Word, there are not enough of the true to repudiate the false; and the soul looking for light and leading, and hoping for the relief and salvation that Christ only can give, is left to wander in darkness or join in the utter apostasy of evangelical Christianity. Of this apostasy, of this Higher Criticism, a former devotee says (italics as we find them):
There is no absolute truth, nothing in the moral religious world is fixed or certain. All truth is in solution; there is no precipitate upon which we can rely. There is no absolute standard of ETHICS, no authority in religion. Every one is practically his own god. Jesus Christ is politely thanked for His services in the past, gallantly conducted to the confines of His world, and bowed out, as He is no longer needed, and His presence might be very troublesome to some people. Such a religion is the very negation of Christianity, is a distinct reversion to heathenism. It may be a cultured and refined heathenism with a Christian veneer, but yet a genuine heathenism. (From chapter 6 "My Personal Experience with Higher Criticism," by Prof. J. J. Reeve, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, in "The Fundamentals," volume 3.)
Of this apostasy from His truth, God speaks in many places in His Word. He predicts definitely the forms and phases it will take. We recite simply one expression of this kind from 2 Tim. 3: 1-5:
"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."
Note that there are eighteen different sins, and these sins are held among those that have a form of godliness but that deny His power. What a picture it is of the apostasy of the present time! And this apostasy may well be represented by a finger of that great black hand stretched out over the nations for destruction.6
III. Greed
Greed is religious. It is the worship of wealth. Its victims bow at the shrine of Plutus, and offer themselves as sacrifices on the altar of Mammon. The spirit of greed is innate in the unregenerate human, but it may be restrained, leashed, kept within the bounds of decency. When it breaks the bounds of restraint; when it stupefies the conscience; when it crushes out justice, generosity, benevolence, charity, love; when its vile brood is clothed with the outward veneer of civilization, and bestows large "charities" from ill-gotten gain; when its generals are lauded from the sacred desk, and purchase publications to sing its praise, tho it tramples every principle of justice under foot, and utterly ignores the common rights of humanity,—then it is dangerous.
That spirit of greed was manifest in acquisition of the lands of the untutored savage in the early settlement of this great continent. It received a mighty blow in the war of the Revolution, which gave to the world the "new order of things" through such men as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Henry. The old liberty bell was rung for Men and not for Money or for Things. For a time things went well; then greed built a system of slavery, broad and large and dominating, which cost the Civil War, piled up a debt of billions, drenched the vast country in the blood of her best sons South and North, and bred and deepened race hatred.
After the Civil War, nay, in the very war itself, greed builded again in what Ridpath calls "the rising trade hypocrisies of the North," out of which came the great and mighty organizations, companies, trusts, which control municipalities, States, nations, and have dictated to congressmen how they should vote, to judges how they should decide, and framed in their own interests laws for the government of the people. Mighty and beneficial work have they wrought in the material world, but they have aided mightily in taking away the boon of liberty and equality, and infected with the bacteria of greed millions who indulge in petty graft, till the great mass is honeycombed with the devastating disease. "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil," declares an apostle of God; and its evil fruitage is seen in both poor and rich. How literally and numerously has it been demonstrated in the last fifty years, in multiplied millionaires, in multiplied crime, in multiplied want, in multiplied hate between classes which have been made and organized by greed! Again the apostle writes, "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." But wealth can not save. It breeds disease and destruction to both Church and State.
IV. War
Like greed, war is natural to the unconverted heart. A man that is not at peace with God can easily be stirred to contention, strife, and war with his fellows. The deified self that has ever in view the "Me" and "Mine," including often in its greediness that which of right belongs to the "Them" and "Theirs," needs but slight pretext to go to war. Sometimes this war takes the form of selfish competition, to drive a rival from trade and living; sometimes, mole-like, it burrows, and everywhere in its trail is underhanded plotting and meanness; sometimes it is seen in crushing combination, to acquire what belongs to others, regardless of right, seen in both capital and labor circles; and sometimes between nations it issues in cruel and bloody warfare.
Men do not want warfare more than they want destructive competition in trade. It is the height of folly. They talk peace, hold peace conferences, form treaties, organize courts of arbitration, but above all things else they prepare for war. Millions are expended for peace; hundreds of millions, thousands of millions, for war. The great crushing burden is pushing to death millions of souls and bodies, and corrupting the morals of earth only as vast military camps always do. One writer recently declares that Germany morally is worse than France, owing to her army and the morals of her soldiers. And the harvest will be reaped. The "sure word of prophecy" predicts the war of Armageddon, and men of power and might feel that it is coming. War is one of the digits of the great black satanic hand stretched out over the nations. In another figure in the Holy Scriptures the deadly virus of war is represented as "three unclean spirits . . . of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty."
V. Tradition
Another digit, strong, coöperative, resistless, is tradition based on the authority of man,—the human in the place of God. The center of this is found in the great Roman Catholic Church, which exalts tradition not only to an equality with the Holy Scriptures, but above the Scriptures. The Scriptures, she tells us, can only be understood as tradition interprets them. From pope to lowest peasant, we are not questioning the motives of the devotees who bow at her shrines, nor the sincerity and devotion of many of her children. We recognize her long age and power in the world, her recovery from all her reverses, her triumph over opposing kingdoms, her strong and rapidly growing influence to-day. All these are matters of divine prophecy, so that we are doubly assured of their existence and application. We have not a feeling against a single soul in her communion. It has much of good within it, and many souls will be saved because they have embraced the good; they have permitted the light of God through Jesus Christ to irradiate their souls through that good, and are saved despite the system, not because of it.
We do not believe in its claims to apostolicity. We do not believe in its authority of tradition. We do believe that that tradition has perverted and is perverting the truth of God's Word as regards almost every important phase of the Gospel message; that the exaltation of tradition above the Word puts man in the place of Christ, turns souls from the audience-chamber of the Most High, from the regenerating power of salvation by faith to a system which can not save, and which turns men from the only hope of the world. That system is to-day what it was in the Dark Ages. It has not changed. It declares itself to-day to be unchanged. It defends all the past—the Inquisition, the persecution, the union of Church and State, responsible for the persecution.
Yet notwithstanding this, millions, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God, worship the system and exalt and deify man. Strong, unwavering claims, uncompromising attitudes, long existence, denunciation of Protestantism—in most cases not even resented by compromising, apostatizing churches—lay hold with great power upon those who take little time to examine her claims, and who do not know the "more sure word of prophecy."
Romanism, Tradition, is gathering into her power with all these other agencies the millions of earth. Satan is using tradition, spiritism, apostasy, greed, war, to blind men to God's light, and destroy them forever. There are still other evils; intemperance, for instance, which is better likened to a huge octopus with many arms enclosing its victims and sucking their life-blood. That brother of intemperance, the monster of social vice, is ruining its millions, making the earth a Sodom, and infecting with its deadliest diseases thousands of innocent women and children. It is awful. The vision of the evils alone would appal the stoutest heart. What is the remedy for all these ills?
God's Remedy and Refuge
God has a remedy for earth's diseases; He has a refuge from the fearful perils that stretch black above us. Therefore we are not pessimistic. The perils are real. The diseases are as deadly as the plague or leprosy. Christian Science treatment will neither exorcise the spirit of darkness nor banish the peril. The wise man of God will recognize them in all their protean, ubiquitous evils; will understand from history if he has read it, and from experience if he has had any, how utterly unable man is, singly or in combination, to cope with the perils or escape the dire diseases of this world. But if he knows God he will be assured that the great Physician has not pointed out any awful maladies to tantalize or discourage the sick sons of men. He has not pointed out deadly perils that He may needlessly alarm us. He has declared and forewarned of both, and all and more, in His Book, as no other has set before us; but with His unfailing diagnoses and warnings He has given both remedy and refuge.
Men are seeking to unite the world against these evils, by federations. But federations are futile. They affect the outward form; they do not change the inward spirit, animus, motive. Then, too, no sooner is one federation sprung upon the public than some "wise" man springs a "better," or a rival organization. And soon, as now, we have a hundred organizations working for the same general result; hence a Babylon of organizations rivals in its conclusions the Babylon of creeds.
From old the warning comes to us against questionable confederations—the only unquestionable one is the church in Christ Jesus—to effect salvation and refuge:
Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. For the Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy, neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself; and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. And He shall be for a sanctuary. Isa. 8: 9-14.
The secret lies here: It is not in the associations of men, however great or world-wide, that our help lies, but in the Lord of Hosts, sanctified in the heart. This brings life union, and it is for this that Jesus prayed, "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." John 17: 21. This is not a mere outward union of men; it embraces principles, teaching, doctrine, purpose, life,—"that ye all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." 1 Cor. 1: 10. Such union is not a matter of adoption of resolutions; it is individual life union with Jesus Christ. The real importance in seeking is not to find union with brother or fellow man, but to find union with Him. Knowing and loving Him, we shall love our brother also; therefore the only mind that can unite mortal men, with all their limitations of early environment, education, habits, prejudices, and sins, is the mind of Christ. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Phil. 2: 5.7
A Whole Christ
To be thus united to Christ and by the means of Christ's life to each other, means to accept Christ in the fullest sense. To accept Christ as A Saviour, A Redeemer, A Way of life, AN Example, or A Teacher, will not suffice. He declares, "I am THE WAY, THE TRUTH, and THE LIFE: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." John 14: 6. To accept Jesus Christ as THE Way is to give up all our ways, and yield all willingly (He will never compel) to His way. "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh [renounceth] not all that he hath, he can not be My disciple." Luke 14: 33.
To accept Jesus Christ as THE Truth means to accept the Word of God as God's message through Christ to this world; for Christ is the Word, the One through whom all the Word was given. John 1: 1-3; 1 Cor. 8: 6. It was His power that created all things; it was His Spirit that spoke through the prophets. 1 Peter 1: 10, 11. He it is who has in all times and ages declared the Father to the children of men, whether as the Angel of the covenant, the Pillar of cloud and fire by night, the exhaustless Rock-fountain in the desert, the Man Christ Jesus in Judea, the Inspirer of the Holy Writings, or the Sender of the Comforter, His Representative. The Holy Word with its one law and its one Gospel, its one Spirit and one object, is the message of God through Jesus Christ to the sons of men. So Christ prays of those whom He would make one, "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth;" for by that Word was He sanctified, "that they also might be sanctified through the truth." John 17: 17-19.
He therefore who receives Christ the Truth will receive His Word, the law and Gospel, precept and promise, with all the heart. No tradition will make void in his heart the commandments of God, to render vain his worship. Matt. 15: 6, 9. No sophistry of men will be allowed to nail upon the cold, dead, irresponsive arms of a cruel creed the life-giving fruits of that Word. He who truly accepts Christ will take the Word of Christ into his heart, and there let its vital principles live and grow, fashioning him day by day like the Master. That Word will be Christ revealed in writing, and Christ will be that Word revealed in character.
He who receives Jesus Christ as THE Life will not cut off the life which is in Him by the old serpent-fable of Eden, "Thou shalt not surely die." In the light of God's presence in His Word, the humble soul will acknowledge his sinfulness and thereby his mortality, and look to Jesus Christ alone as the source of righteousness and eternal life to the believer now, the bestower of immortality at His coming.
The acceptance of Christ does not mean that all Christ's fulness must be seen and realized here if we become one in Him, for that can never be, because He is infinite; it does mean that the believer is to accept Christ as He is revealed in His Word. He must allow no civil magistrate, no mitered priest, no human creed or council, no worldly ambitions, no arts of the evil one, to come between his soul and Jesus Christ, and he will leave to prayer, study, experience, and the goodness and wisdom of Christ, to supply the fuller knowledge.
This acceptance of Jesus Christ made the early apostolic church what it was, united in heart and purpose, in word and doctrine, in worship and life. "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship." "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: . . . and with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all." Thus it was in that early church. How precious to them were the truths and hopes of the resurrection, the second coming of Christ, the atonement in its fullest, strongest sense, the power of the simple Word and the Holy Spirit of God in those days! Now these very doctrines are scoffed at, ridiculed, and spirited away, by those high in church councils, with little or no protest from pulpit or press.
God's Plan Ever the Same
God's plan for saving men has ever been the same. With Him "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Human nature has always been the same. The doctrine of God's grace has ever been effectual to save. Types and symbols and shadows have changed, but the holy law and the divine Saviour have remained the same. "I am the Lord, I change not." "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."
Confusion, Babylon
Departing from God's way, erecting human standards, following man's way instead of God's way, adding to His Word, subtracting from it, have always brought division, hence confusion. The would-be wise men of the land of Shinar promised themselves a better way when THEY built THEMSELVES a city and tower and thought to make THEMSELVES a name. They prized their work so highly that they called it according to their brick books "Bab-il, the gate of God," "the gate of heaven." But God could not serve with their sins. He will not give His glory to another. He named it what it literally was, "Babel," confusion. Gen. 11: 1-9. And so every attempt to improve upon God's work has resulted in confusion in the work of God, of which confusion God is not the author. 1 Cor. 14: 33.
It was confusion, Babylon, that came into the Christian church, even before the death of the apostles, and finally a few centuries later the great apocalyptic apostasy developed. The Reformers took some mighty strides toward the one standard of God, albeit in different companies, but they still stopped in Babylon, and confusion persisted. As truly as the great apostate system of the Papacy became Babylon by departing from the truth of God, so truly did Protestantism in the formulation of a multitude of creeds. Not only was confusion brought into the church, but the people of the world seeking for light are confused and driven to unbelief. Just as surely as did papal Babylon commit fornication by forsaking her lawful spouse, Jesus Christ, and uniting with the civil power, just so surely have those Protestant churches that have done the same thing committed fornication with the kings of the earth. And those who have not yet done this, but are clamoring for civil power to enforce unscriptural dogmas or institutions — Scriptural would be no different — are trimming their ways for unlawful lovers of spiritual fornication. Higher Criticism with its results is adding to this confusion.
God's Remedy
Here is God's remedy for this confusion among His people, for He certainly so counted them, and sent His message to heal these divisions. Read Rev. 14: 6, 7:
"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the EVERLASTING GOSPEL to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, 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."
The time when this message is due to the church and the world is when the judgment of God is impending. In the past centuries we are told of "judgment TO COME," of the day when "God WILL judge the world." Acts 17: 31; 24: 25. But in this message the judgment of God IS come. It is already here. It is the adjudication of cases in the heavenly courts, the accounting worthy of those who have been faithful and who will be raised to immortality at Christ's coming to receive their reward. See Luke 20: 35; Rev. 22: 11, 12. "FEAR GOD," says the divine message; "give glory to HIM." It implies that the church has given glory to men. Tradition has made void the commandments of God. Cold, dead creed has displaced the living Word. Elaborate ritual has dispossessed simple worship. The pagan solar holiday has been accepted as the Lord's holy day, in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord, the memorial of Him who made the heavens and the earth. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do His commandments."
Fear or reverence of God leads to obedience. WORSHIP HIM. Turn from the false to the true. The highest worship is obedience, or service. "Thou shalt WORSHIP the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou SERVE," are the words that Christ made His own, and that God would have the church make her own, and so return from Babylon, confusion, to Jerusalem, unity, and peace. As the everlasting Gospel brought unity to the early church, which came from Pharisee and Sadducee, Esene and publican, Jew and Gentile, so God designed that in these last days it should bring union into one and all the churches of modern Babylon. God does not condemn His church for being in Babylon. His desire is to call them out. As of old, He "would have healed Babylon," but the sad result was she was not healed. So God would heal Babylon to-day; but to be healed, she must accept of the remedy. It is the simple, unadulterated Gospel.
"Babylon Is Fallen"
When one who is ill rejects the only remedy that would save him, his disease must proceed to the sad disaster of death. It is just as true with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. If she is ill, diseased with error and sin, her only hope is in accepting the remedy, Christ Jesus, and the rejection of that remedy leaves the church in worse condition that she was before. When that church leaves Christ and unites with the world and the State, she is leaving the never-failing springs and cold snows of Lebanon for human broken cisterns. In thus doing she forsakes her husband, Christ Jesus, and commits fornication with the kings of the earth. And so the angel sorrowfully declares, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Rev. 14: 8. It can not be otherwise. When the Jewish church turned from the close yet healing message of John and Jesus, a message that if received would have restored, they were ready to reject Christ their King, saying, "We have no king but Cæsar." And so when the modern church rejects God's healing message of reproof and warning, she will turn to the world and the State, and under the guise of Christian Citizenship, patriotism, or Americanism, or some other high-sounding and catchy shibboleth, will denounce as traitors those who reveal by the Word of God the true nature of Church and State dogmas, the children of fornication.8
The Last Solemn Protest
What is the church now doing in the direction of the last apostasy? She is centering her efforts and gathering her forces around the Sunday standard. And what is the Sunday? It is an institution which as a religious holiday is wholly pagan in origin, which as a weekly worship day is wholly papal, and for which there is no authority save the papal church and tradition. It is a usurper. Its very genius and character arouse a spirit opposed to the Gospel. It has been connected with apostasy and persecution in all ages. It was the mark of apostasy in heathendom, and Rome claims it as her mark of authority. Many of the Protestant churches and organizations are conceding Rome's claims by upholding in the face of light from His Word that foster child of the Papacy, and by asking the aid of the Papacy to obtain the help of the civil power for the enforcement of the counterfeit as the very test of God and the mark of patriotism. Nevertheless it is, in howsoever shining garments dressed, the mark of apostasy, a sign of tradition, the center of traditional worship, opposed to the Sabbath of the Lord, which is a sign of God's power to create, sanctify, and deliver. See Eze. 20: 12-20; Ex. 20: 8-11; Deut. 5: 15.
But thank God, there are many yet of all these organizations who cleave to the Gospel, who believe in the Gospel, who believe in Gospel methods and Gospel needs for reforming the world. They know that in Jesus Christ alone and in His truth lies the remedy. While mistakingly holding Sunday, they believe in no power save the Spirit to impress hearts, no means save the Word to enforce claims upon men. These stay the tide as it were, but do not change the current. Against this course of Church uniting with the State, the Lord offers to each soul the following fearful warning:
And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, 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 he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Rev. 14: 9-11.
A United Church Once More
Who will heed the Word of God? Some will. The first message, the healing message, sums up all the positive truth of that Word. The second message simply announces the result upon the various organizations composing Babylon, of rejecting the first. The third brings to each individual soul the message of warning to turn from "the beast" (the great system of papal Church-and-State union), from the image (the reproduction of that system by Protestant Church-and-State union), from the mark ("the wild solar holiday of all pagan times," the rival of the Sabbath of the Lord, enforced by civil law). But out of all these organizations, out of the world, from the lowest slaves of Satan, from every land and clime, from those saturated with the disease, plague, leprosy, of sin, God's message is gathering a company, washed, healed, by the blood of the Lamb, and through faith loyal to God and His law. Thus continues and declares the prophet as the result of these messages: "HERE IS THE PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS: HERE ARE THEY THAT KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD, AND THE FAITH OF JESUS." Rev. 14: 12. They keep therefore all the commandments. It could not be said that he who is breaking the first or the eighth commandment, is a commandment-keeper, neither could it be said of him who violated the fourth commandment.
Of those who endured the persecution of the Dark Ages, not having all the light, it is said, "Here is the PATIENCE and the FAITH of the saints." Rev. 13: 10. They had patience; they possessed faith; but the class developed by this last threefold message of warning have an additional characteristic. They "KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD." And why not? How could they have an intelligent faith — the faith of Jesus — and do otherwise? Faith led Him to keep all God's commandments. It led His disciples, the early Christians, to follow in His steps. "He that saith, he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." 1 John 2: 6. Having the same Spirit, having the indwelling Christ, they will do the same works. He kept the seventh-day Sabbath. Why should not His people? He knew it for what God designed it to be, the very rest of God in Christ from sin and self, the sign between God and His children that they might know that He is God. It is that
harvest, which is rapidly ripening. The same sun that ripens the wheat for the garner, ripens the tares for the fire. The same truth that, received, develops the character for the kingdom of God, if rejected develops character for destruction. O soul, accept Jesus Christ as He is, as He desires to be to you, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Accept Him as the riven, sheltering Rock to which you may run from all earth's perils and hide from the coming storm. Take home to your heart the message of the Gospel prophet of old, given to those who would flee from the perils then: "What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That Jehovah hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge." And so again as one who has obtained mercy, as one who has found God all that He has promised to be, let me plead with you to accept the everlasting Gospel and be saved eternally in God's own way.
