GENERATION OF VIPERS by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 6, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 23.

“GENERATION OF VIPERS.”

By G.

WHEN John the Baptist “saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Matt. 3:7. When speaking to this same class of people, Jesus used the same expression, “O generation of vipers,” and added the significant question, “How can ye, being evil, speak good things?” Chapter 12:34. In quoting these expressions of Jesus and John, in both instances the Revised Version reads, “Ye offspring of vipers.” The idea is the same as in John 8:44, where Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” In contrasting His teaching with that of the Jewish teachers and rulers, Jesus had said, “I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.” Verse 38.

Now when we reflect that the devil is Satan, “that old serpent” (Rev. 12:9), who induced our first parents to disobey God, and thus imbued the whole race with a spirit of disobedience, we have the clue to what constitutes a “generation of vipers.” Sin was brought into the world by a disregard of the law of God (1 John 3:4), and that law was the Ten Commandments (Rom. 7:7). It was the existence of the law that made sin possible; “for without the law sin was dead.” Verse 8. That the law existed before it was repeated on Mount Sinai is briefly shown by two other scriptures: “The wages of sin is death” (chapter 6:23), and “death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression” (chapter 5:14). Then the generations before Moses were the generations or offspring of “vipers,” being children of the devil. Those who were faithful to God were individual exceptions to the general rule.

In the time of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ the Jewish people were the recognized custodians of the oracles of God. They not only professed to be His people, but ceremonially they were so recognized. Then how could John and Jesus call them the “offspring of vipers,” the children of the devil?—Because they had made void the law of God by substituting their own traditions. They did not formally reject the law, but they perverted its purpose by their own construction of its terms. It was in this that they followed in the way of Satan, even to the extent of putting Christ to death. This was a generation that brought upon themselves special condemnation. Their rejection of Christ brought upon them “all the righteous blood shed upon the earth.” Matt. 23:35.

If in all the ages of the past, the persistent violation of the law of God constituted men the “offspring of vipers,” and made them the children of the devil, what shall be said of those who do the same things to-day? If the advocacy of human tradition instead of the law of God could lead men to crucify the Lord of glory in times past, to what extremes will they be led who, in a time of far greater light, ignore His perfect, unchangeable law? If in that time such rejection of the righteous law would bring upon them also the results of their fathers’ wicked deeds, what shall be the consequences to those who do the same thing under greater light and more favorable circumstances generally. Here is the principle which Christ laid down to the “offspring of vipers” who in His day claimed to be children of God while making void His law:—

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation [offspring] of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Matt. 23:29-33.

These are the warning words of Christ; and such are the consequences of being led away from His plain law by the traditions of men who ministered in sacred things. In these last days, when it has become so common to teach the abolition of the law of God, and to set up human institutions and ordinances in lieu thereof, it is high time that the warning be earnestly repeated.