GOD'S GREAT PURPOSE by Francis M. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 12, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 37.

GOD'S GREAT PURPOSE.

By Francis M. Wilcox

FROM preceding articles regarding the condition of the world in the last days, we have found that wicked men will exist even until the coming of the Lord. He will find them alive on this earth when He appears in the clouds of heaven, and they will be destroyed by the brightness of His coming. It is the desire of the loving Father to save all men, but this He can not do consistent with the principle of free moral agency, upon which His relationship to mankind is based. He invites, He exhorts, He pleads, He wooes by His Holy Spirit, but only a few from each age of the world have yielded to the Spirit's drawing power, and have been won by its gracious wooing, and this was in the mind of God away back in the beginning of this earth's history when the plan of salvation was first given to man.

Originally God designed that this earth should be peopled by a holy race. After the earth had been filled with inhabitants, doubtless the increase of population would have ceased. Sin entered, and the Lord said to the woman, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;" knowing this to be a necessity in order to secure out of the multitude of the children of Adam and Eve the requisite number to fill up God's original purpose. And so, in no period of the history of the world have all the men then living been converted to the Lord. As James says in the first council of Christian churches ever held, as reported in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts, "Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name." Even when the Lord had chosen a particular nation, the Jews, and set them apart as His own peculiar treasure, many of them were rebellious, and fell out by the way. Says Paul, All are not Israel who are of Israel. Without reference to the heathen world, even in the professed church of God, in every age, true Israel has not included all who outwardly bore the name.

The Gospel of Christ is the same in every generation. In the days of Adam it possessed the same power as to-day. At the first advent of Christ it was the same divine, all-powerful agency as it was in the days of Luther and Wesley, and in the last days it will possess no power that it has not possessed in every preceding period. Consequently as it has been the work of the Gospel to gather out of the nations of the past a people for the name of God, so that purpose to-day remains unchanged, and with humanity sunken still lower we can not expect the Gospel of Christ to accomplish any more glorious results to-day than in the history of the past. This principle which we have just enunciated, is clearly taught by our Lord in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, in the following verses: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world; the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of

fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."

As stated above, the Gospel net has embraced within its folds the evil as well as the good. The evil is to be cast away. Declares our Lord in the great prophetic discourse of Matthew 24, verse 14, "And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." We believe fully in the evangelization of the world in the last days in the sense that the Gospel will be preached to earth's remotest bounds. It is to be preached for a witness to the nations. If they receive it, it will result in their salvation. If they reject it, it will testify against them. The truth of God in every age has been a "savor of life unto life, or of death unto death." That truth has been both positive and negative in its character—positive in that it has inculcated aggressive truth; negative in that it has withstood sin, and every system of error. Titus 2:11-14. Hence the Gospel message has always been a reform message. It has pointed out both the evil in the church and in the world. This is true, and will be true in an emphatic sense, in the work of the Gospel in the last days. In the last-day church, apostasy has found a place. That special phase of the message which applies to the last generation, will rebuke that apostasy, and call back the church of God to her allegiance to her Lord. Says the prophet Joel, "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand." Chap. 2:1.

Here it will be seen that the trumpet must first be blown in the church, to awaken it from its indifference, and from there the warning cry is to go out unto the ends of the world. But the church as a whole, and the professed people of God in their entirety, will not receive the message, because, as indicated in preceding papers, professed Christianity in the last days occupies a low plane. Under the term "Babylon," it is represented as in a fallen condition, and so great is its fall, and so general is its apostasy from the Lord, that the Lord can no longer work through it as a church. In it are honest souls, true and loyal to every principle of right as they know the right, and these individuals are sighing and crying for the abominations that are done in the midst of God's professed people. The Lord, in His infinite love, does not leave these souls in darkness. He calls them out from among their associates to a higher plane of Christian living and experience. Says John, the Revelator:—

"And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lighted with His glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Chap. 18:1-4.

This call to Babylon, or to apostate Protestantism, is now sounding to the world. By voice and pen, over land and sea, it is being proclaimed to earth's remotest bounds. Thousands are responding to the call. God does not call these thousands to the acceptance of a new Gospel, but He asks them to return to the old paths. He requires them to take their stand upon the broad platform of the "commandments of God and the faith of Jesus;" to revere the law of God, which has been despised; to exalt the Sabbath of Jehovah, which has been trampled in the dust. This is the work that God is doing in connection with the proclamation of the everlasting Gospel; this is the message He is sending to the world. These, indeed, are ominous and thrilling times. This, of all the ages making up the history of the world, is the most glorious. In it are being worked out to a finale, the most momentous problems which have concerned the human family. Truth and error, which have so long been antagonistic, which have so many times met each other in fierce combat, have in this age entered the field for the last mortal conflict. Error may have on its side the unnumbered multitude. The visible advocates of truth may be few, but truth has God on its side, and with God on its side what matters who may be arrayed against it? Truth has been crushed in the past, but—

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers; But error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies amid her worshipers."

May God give to every honest heart spiritual discernment, integrity of character, strength of conviction. The victory will soon turn on Israel's side. The destruction of sin in the last days will be but the destruction of evil principles. All who have identified themselves with these principles will be destroyed with them. The triumph of truth will be but the triumph of right principles, and all who have identified themselves with right principles will triumph with the truth. The triumph of right and truth will be the triumph of all the Israel of God.