DECIDE NOW by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1904

DECIDE NOW.

By Editor

IN the very nature of the case the closing days of Christian probation will be a period of the greatest intensity. Knowing that his time is short, the enemy of all righteousness will put forth mightier effort, will use every delusion and device which has ever ensnared human hearts, to deceive and destroy the purchase of the life of Christ.

To meet the delusions and power of the enemy, to furnish from the armory of heaven according to His people's need, as He ever has done, God opens the treasure-house of His truth and pours out the latter rain of His Spirit. Every saving truth of God which has been lost to the church will be restored. Every truth of God required to meet all present needs will be given. Every truth reserved for this time will be disclosed. Grand and awful in its import is the time in which we live.

Foreseeing all this, the array of forces on both sides of the conflict eternal in results, the ancient seer of God exclaims: "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision." Joel 3:14.

And even so it is to-day. And the decision even in its last analysis lies between God's Word and the opinions, the theories, the hypotheses, the traditions of men.

The Bible reveals to us the living, personal God, whose word possesses creative power. This world came forth by His fiat in the beginning. In its arrangement for the home of man it was formed and shaped and made by His word in six literal days. That very record of creation bears the Gospel message to souls in chaos and doubt and darkness that the same God can re-create and re-form lost men, and bring light into the darkness and chaos of their lives.

Against this living, personal Ruler of the universe Science sets a "fortuitous concourse of atoms," evolution, "divine immanence," and other vague, meaningless terms, and hypothetical notions, which can neither lighten the darkness of the hopeless heart nor save a single soul.

Which will you choose, reader, the living, loving God, who created the heavens and the earth, who stills the sea, and heals the sick, and raises the dead, who is therefore able and willing to recreate you? or the meaningless, uncertain, and often contradictory hypotheses? Multitudes are in this Valley of Decision; are you among them? Then decide for God; decide now.

The great Ruler of the Universe has a law for His creatures, which reflects the character of the Law-giver, and which through faith in Him comes to us with all the potency of infinite might to enable us to be and to do the thing required. In principle that law is comprehended in one word, love. In operation it looks in the two-fold direction of love to God and love to man. In negative prohibition and prescription of positive duty to sinful man it is comprehended in that expressed Voice of Jehovah, the Decalogue, the Ten Words of Sinai. That His people may better understand it, Jehovah has written it "in ten thousand precepts" in His Word. Hosea 8:12, R. V. Its beauty in character is seen in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was obedient to its every precept, and who died to restore fallen man to harmony with God and loyal obedience to its every requirement.

Against this law the adversary of God and righteousness has ever planted his strongest artillery. To lead men from that law he has used his subtlest devices. And millions upon millions has he turned from the living God to serve idols of wood and stone. He has in the hearts and practises of men torn from that law its fourth precept, guarding God's worship day—an institution ever calling to mind God's creative and redeeming power (Ex. 20:8-11; Eze. 20:20),—and substituted in its place a day ever connected with one of the grossest, most libidinous, and widespread forms of idolatry the world has ever known—sun-worship, and the counterfeit day, "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times." It does not require deep study nor long meditation nor a strongly analytical mind to discern how influential the pseudo-Sunday worship-day has been in turning man from God, the mighty Creator, to a system of "evolution" and so-called "natural selection," which evolved the earth from "fire-mist" and man from the ameba through the monkey.

Between the Sabbath of the living, loving, creative Jehovah, with all its teachings of hope and rest of heart and the Sunday-holiday, worship-day of paganism and apostasy, multitudes are in the Valley of Decision. On the one side is a tree of eternal blessings, on the other side is the blighting, withering, poisoning upas tree, of tradition. Are you yet in the valley, reader? Then decide for the truth, and decide now. "Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted," says Jesus, "shall be rooted up."

As the only hope of a lost world the Bible sets before us Jesus, the Anointed of God, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," the all-sufficient expiation from sin, the Regenerator of a corrupt nature, the Fountain of Life, from which man must draw every supply of power to live for God, the one perfect Exemplar of the will of God; and that all this becomes a mighty, effectual saving power in man if he will by faith accept it all.

But to nullify Christ's every claim, to frustrate His divine mission to men, to shut from man his only hope of release from sin and the grave, Satan, with more than the old Edenic lie of fulsome flattery comes to man, and says, "Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye are as God;" divinity is within you, faith is but the recognition of that power within yourself; you need no blood atonement, there is but one life, and whatever and whoever you are, you possess eternal life. And with such like subtleties, Theosophy, Christian Science, and New Thought are deceiving millions to the deification of the human and the destruction of the soul.

The law of God perverted is not God's law. The life of God perverted is not God's life. A mere exemplar of righteousness, a mere social reformer, a mere teacher of superior ethics, is not the Christ of God. He is to poor sinners wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, but to them that believe not none of these blessings come. Separated from Him we are as dead branches. "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." God in His goodness reveals to us our sad condition that He may save us, not to ourselves, but to Himself.

Between the Christ Jesus of the Bible and the subtle theories which sometimes seem to lift Him up, but only to crucify Him afresh, lies the Valley of Decision and the undecided multitudes. O, soul, are you still there? Then decide for God, and Christ and the Bible and everlasting righteousness and life; and decide now.