God's Message for This Time
By M. C. Wilcox
GOD is one. Normally, His universe is one, bound together by the life which is in Him. The myriad suns and countless spheres are all of one, as truly as the members of a man's body are one. If one suffer, all partake of that suffering. God's everlasting purpose is to "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on the earth" (Eph. 1: 9, 10), and to hold them together by the bonds of His all-comprehending life and all-comprehending law throughout all eternity. Sin has seemed to thwart the Perfect Purpose. Where we look for union, we find division. When we seek strength and stability, we find weakness and wavering. We look for gladness of heart, and find grief of soul. We hope for righteousness and integrity, and lo, sin and decay. We long for manifestations of love, but see strife and hatred and envy. The earth, established to feed and to nourish, brings forth, in response to the blood poured by brutal hatred upon her bosom, thorns and thistles. And the culmination of all the misery is manifested and felt in the great restless, throbbing, longing heart of humanity. But God's purpose is one still; and "He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand." Dan. 4: 35. He has sworn by His own existence that His good pleasure in Christ Jesus shall be completely met in an eternity of oneness and love. Isa. 45: 17, 18. But "we see not yet all things put under Him." We know, the most optimistic of us, that the universe is not normal. It will be the purpose of this number and numbers which shall follow to set forth briefly, definitely, comprehensively, that which earnest hearts in both church and world are day and night longing for — the divine diagnosis of world and church, and God's all-efficient and all-sufficient remedy for this time. Nor do we arrogate to ourselves superior wisdom in thus doing. We have no wisdom, save what God by the Spirit freely bestows upon all; we have no source of knowledge, save the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make all "wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus." The world and the divided church have messages and messengers many, as numerous and varied as their costly heavenward-pointing towers. They are certainly not all true, yet all may be false. What and where is the true? What message has God, wringing with the true metal of heaven, bearing God's hallmark of truth, to lead the world and church from the wilderness of human creed and tradition, from the quagmire of infidelity and unfaith, to the clear highway of right and righteousness, to the solid ground of faith and verity? The great sick world and divided, sore-wounded church are longing for a healing remedy which will take from the saturated systems the poison of the panaceas of human compounding, and bring the healing life of heaven into the soul. For among the worst of earth's ills are the panaceas of man's devising. Their forms are many; their base, in the last analysis, is ever the same — self-salvation. How the world has hoped and hoped to despair; and how it has struggled and wrestled in the hopeless struggle; and how, even in the advancement which has been made, it has failed to recognize the true Source of uplift. Is there a message, definite, clear, strong? Is there a balm in Gilead, a physician, a healer for the dying ones? In all other ages of the past God has had messages, definite and clear; remedies, specific and all-potent. When the world was worthy of destruction at the time of the Deluge, God sent the definite message of warning, of righteousness, of healing, through His righteous servant Noah, and provided the refuge from destruction in the Heaven-preserved ark of salvation; and He would have provided a thousand fleets, if it had been necessary, for those who believed the message. Very clearly came God's warning through Lot to wicked Sodom, while Abraham prayed for the city. Clear, definite, and strong came God's repeated warnings to Jerusalem and Samaria and their kings, and to all the nations and cities of the past. Betimes and all-sufficient has been the remedy and its proclamation to all who would believe and receive. Definite, strong, and clear rang out the message of John, the forerunner of Jesus, in the Judean wilderness, typical of the greater spiritual desert in which Judea was famishing and dying; and those who believed and accepted, "justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John," while the Pharisees and scribes "rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized by him." Luke 7: 29, 30. When the darkness of the Dark Ages was upon the church and world, and the very sun of truth seemed sinking into the oblivion of everlasting night, God struck the light-darkening bandage of superstition from a monk of Germany, a scholar in England, a soldier in Switzerland; and to the church and world again rang out the saving message of God's truth in Jesus Christ. Not the less God has a message for this time, and as clear, as definite, and as strong, as any in the past; a remedy He has, not less specific and potent. That message, it will be seen, includes God's everlasting purpose in Christ Jesus; the everlasting Gospel, fitted to meet the definite need for this time; a present, living truth, demanding living, active, progressive faith. Study the great question with us.