EDITORIAL by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 5, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 43.

EDITORIAL

By Editor

The Time Is Fulfilled

Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel." Thus reads the record in Mark 1: 14, 15. Jesus' ministry began about six months before this. It ran parallel with that of John a few months, and then His forerunner was cast into the prison of Machærus by the wicked Herod, urged on by his wretched paramour, Herodias. John's work was ended; that of Jesus was just fairly begun, and the brief record of Mark epitomizes the instruction of our Lord.

"THE time is fulfilled." What time? — The time foretold by prophets, preeminently the prophet Daniel in chapters 8 and 9. In chapter 8:14 is given the period of 2,300 prophetic days or years. In chapter 9 is clearly intimated that seventy weeks of these years, or 490 years, were cut off from the 2,300, upon the Jewish people. It is also clearly declared that this period began when the commandment went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. This event occurred in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, as recorded in Ezra 7; but the records of history show that the seventh year of Artaxerxes fell in B.C. 457, and the Jews themselves were cut off from being a special people of God 490 years later, in A.D. 34. According to Daniel, 483 years, or 69 weeks, from that commandment would reach to Messiah the Prince. The word "Messiah" means "anointed." Jesus was anointed at His baptism, as stated in Acts, the tenth chapter, and thirty-eighth verse: "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him." And our Lord Himself states the same thing shortly after His baptism: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to

the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke 4:18, 19. And He immediately declared, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." We have therefore the fulfilment of Isa. 61: 1, which our Lord quoted, and that of the time given in Daniel 8 and 9, fulfilled in our Lord's ministry. "The time is fulfilled." The word of God given from six to five centuries before had met its complement in the work of our Lord. And men knew it. Souls who had been longing for the light, grasped the light. Devout men and women who had been studying the Word, saw it fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And "the people which sat in darkness" in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, "by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles," turned from the shadow of death to the light of life in Christ Jesus.

"THE kingdom of God is at hand." Jesus the King stood among them. They might have then received Him, they might have welcomed Him. The whole temple could have been thrown open to His glorious presence. God would have used that people for the evangelization of the world, but "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." The nation as a nation rejected Him. They declared, "We have no king but Cæsar," and they were left to the pitiful destruction which the Cæsars of the world brought upon them. They were not willing to meet the conditions.

"REPENT" — that is the first condition stated by our Lord. Repentance is defined as "sorrow for sin." There are two kinds of repentance. These are clearly stated in 2 Corinthians, the seventh chapter, verses 9, 10. Paul rejoiced over the Corinthians because they sorrowed to repentance. They were "made sorry after a godly manner," "for godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." If a man is sorry for his sin because the sin is known, he is not sorry because of the wrong in committing the sin; his sorrow is because of the disgrace that accompanies it. The horse thief is sorry when he is apprehended, but he is not sorry because of the intrinsic wrong in the stealing of the horse; he is sorry because he is found out. There is much of such sorrow as that in the world. It works no reformation of life. It works only death. It hardens the heart, benumbs the conscience. It does not reach the root of the matter. But the "godly sorrow" is sorrow for sin. It pays little heed to the penalty, it gives little consideration to the temporary disgrace to the individual. The real sorrow is because the soul

has yielded a slave to the enemy, has brought itself under the bondage of death, has denied its blessed Lord. Such a sorrow as that, leads to clean, clear, ample confession of deeds. It leads to restoration of the things that can be restored. It leads, as it led in the repentant ones in Corinth, to a carefulness of life, to a clearing of themselves by confession, to indignation against sin, to fear lest they should offend God, to vehement desire to put away the sin and correct the life, to zeal and earnestness in God's service. That is the kind of repentance that

our Lord calls for, and upon such a foundation as that may be built the next condition.

BELIEVE the gospel. Believe the good tidings. Not merely assent that they are true, but receive them with all the heart, for the gospel is good tidings. It brings the diagnosis of the law with it, and the diagnosis is not pleasant to the natural heart. It is not pleasing to tell the self-satisfied, self-righteous, worldly-wise soul that he is a sinner, that he is afflicted with leprosy, that he is so unclean that he has no right to stand among God's children, that he will be utterly condemned in the judgment, as even the law now condemns him. And yet that is the diagnosis that God brings to every son and daughter of Adam who is not regenerated through Christ. But it is a part of the "Good Tidings." God does not deceive His children. He does not temporize with sin. He deals with them fully, frankly, strongly. He would have them see the "exceeding sinfulness of sin." But then the good tidings declares, Thy sins shall be taken away. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." "Come now, and let us reason together . . . . Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." These are God's messages to the truly repentant sinner; and however deep the sin may be, however its crimson stains may have dyed the soul, the laboratory of God's grace furnishes the means of washing it white. That is the good tidings, soul; that is what God asks you to receive.

JESUS did not preach some political scheme for reforming mankind. He did not organize a Christian citizenship association for the conversion of men. He makes no appeal to civil law to reform the heart. He had no social plans to propagate. His appeal was personal. He would have every soul come direct to Him, every soul make personal acquaintance with his Lord, every soul have life connection with the Fountain of life. And therefore all are to be brought to the personal Christ, and find in Him not alone the Physician who can rightly diagnose the spiritual sickness, but the Physician who is able to cure all ills, and wash away all sin. Soul, it is the same message to-day, only intensified by the very times in which we live. It is the same sinful human heart with which Christ the Lord has to deal. It is the same blessed Saviour who is able to change from sin to righteousness, and translate us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. And faith makes connection with that power, and reaps the cleansing, the fruitage that Christ has Himself purchased for us. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel."