God’s Message for To-Day
By Abdiel
WE have been giving, during the last four weeks, some special articles on the message of to-day. The first of these was God’s Great Oneness; the second, Present Conditions in the Religious World in contrast with the oneness which God desires; third, The Healing Message, and the need of such a message to heal the divisions and spiritual sickness of Christendom; fourth, The Gospel for To-Day—the rejection of that message by great Babylon, as represented in the various Protestant denominations which are following creed and higher criticism instead of the Word of God, what the result of such rejection must be, the loss of spiritual power. Last week we gave God’s great protest, His warning against the beast and his image and the reception of his mark. The final results of the rejection of God’s message is the topic of this article. It has ever been true, as set forth in another column, that God has had a message for the needs of every age, that this message has come directly to His own people, by whatever name they may have been called. It is His design that His people should first receive His message, whether it be one of reproof and correction, or one in which new light is given. It would be contrary to God’s working, always, to expect this message would spring up in the world outside of His own people. He has not always chosen the great, the learned, the popular—nay, He has never chosen such for the giving of that message, but the humble, the meek, the teachable, the true, the loyal, the seekers after truth, the doers of the will of God. It was Noah preceding the Deluge; it was Abraham who was sent to the inhabitants of Canaan; it was Moses to Egypt; it was Samuel to backslidden Israel; it was Elijah when the nation had become corrupted under idolatrous Ahab and his worse paramour, Jezebel; it was John the Baptist, the teacher of the wilderness, to Judah sunken in dead formalism; it was Martin Luther and Ulric Zwingle and others at the time of the great Reformation. The reception of these various messages brought life and power and regeneration. Their rejection brought coldness, indifference, departure from God, and almost invariably an enmity and zeal against His true children, or those who were proclaiming His message for the time. So it was in the time of our Lord. Those who did not receive the message of John were aroused to enmity against it; those who would not accept Jesus as the Christ brought the guilt of innocent blood upon them at His crucifixion. Those who did not accept the message of the Reformation were stirred to madness against those who gave it, and persecution resulted. And so it must be, and so the Word declares it will be, regarding the last message and the last generation. We print again that great threefold message from Rev. 14:6-12, as follows: “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. “And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. “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 into6the 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. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” We wish the reader to note again the sublime gospel message that is to go to every kindred, and tongue, and people on the face of the earth. We wish him again to note the emphasis that is laid upon the various things in that message,—“fear God,” “give glory to Him,” worship the Creator, that the judgment hour is impending. Let him note that that message which would have healed Babylon, rejected, brings the fall of Babylon spiritually; and let him note, further, that the consequent fall of Babylon brings union with the state, the reviving of the beast power in the old world, the formation of an image to that power in the new, the demand that the inhabitants of the earth shall receive the mark of that power as set forth in chapter 13, and the message is God’s faithful warning against it. Let it be noted also that those who refuse to obey the demands of these apostate powers, but who heed the warning message, develop a character which is described in verse 12: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” It is not needed that this article shall prove that these things are now going on in the world; they are patent to all observers. Throughout the length and breadth of the world men are clamoring for a union of church and state, or that the state itself shall pass certain religious or ecclesiastical dogmas, enforcing them upon the people of the world. Invariably the center of all these is the ecclesiastical Sunday, chosen as the mark of Christian patriotism, and those who advocate it are demanding that it shall be honored just as far as law can compel its honor. The Sunday in and of itself alone, observed by the individual or the church voluntarily, is merely an ecclesiastical institution, erroneous, it seems to us, utterly so from a Bible standpoint, but as such is only an ecclesiastical error; but when that is entrenched in law, and the power of the state is used to enforce the dogma of the church, in and of itself it becomes humanly a mark of distinction, a mark of loyalty on the part of the observer, and of treason or rebellion on the part of him who refuses to observe it. Set over against this, with no other law behind it save that of the Infinite, with no other compelling power save that of love, is the Sabbath of Jehovah as given from Mount Sinai, as observed by Jesus Christ, as enshrined in the volume of inspiration from the beginning to the end. Those who believe in the message of God, will observe His law. Those who accept of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ understandingly, will believe that that grace is designed to bring us into harmony with God, and make us observers of His commandments; as expressed by the apostle Paul, “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” They believe that Christ died to save, not in sin, but from sin; not in transgression, but from transgression; and in loyalty to God, they must obey His law and follow Jesus Christ; and in loyalty to God and in faithfulness to the Captain of their salvation, they can not observe a rival day which apostasy and civil power endeavor to put in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. They therefore not only can not endorse Sunday laws or yield to the worldwide demands of the apostasy, but they must necessarily oppose them, presenting God’s protest to the nations of earth. That is what is going on to-day,—on the one side, great ecclesiastical organizations demanding civil law for the enforcement of Sunday, many, no doubt, engaged in this movement honest, sincere, devoted, believing because of departure from God’s Book, their way to be the only way, but nevertheless working for that which is evil and only evil; while on the other hand there are the faithful of Jehovah, relying implicitly on His Word, presenting His message to the world, of warning against such apostasy; and the prophet Joel, looking forward to this very time, sees its result,—“multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.” The result of accepting God’s message is salvation. Those who do it obtain the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over the mark, and over the number of his name (Rev. 15:2, 3); while those who reject that message receive also the result of their own choosing, the wrath of God against that sin with which they have identified themselves. And therefore we plead with our readers to study the question if they have not already done so. Study it, not in the light of what men may do, or what men may say, not in view of what organizations may be for it or what organizations may be against it; but let each one study it as between himself and God, knowing that he must and shall meet it all in the judgment; that sometime each one for himself shall stand before the great white throne, and give an account as to how he has used the light which God has given in His Word. We plead with our readers to accept the message—the great, creative, power-filled message of the gospel for this day, which gives victory not only over combinations of men against God, but over all inherent and inbred sin in the human heart.