A DECEPTION OLDER THAN EDEN.
By Uriah Smith
WITHIN the last few years there have sprung into being many teachers and many periodicals whose purpose is to teach men to think themselves gods or a part of God. That was an ancient plan, conjured in heaven by one who chose the worship of self above the worship of Him through whom he had his being. It proved the angels' deception in heaven; it proved man's deception in the earth. It was a generic falsehood; for from it have sprung a great crop of other falsehoods and false systems of worship. That teaching in the Garden of Eden was the fountain-head of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; for it was coupled with, and had in it the essence of, that other statement, "Ye shall not surely die." The tree which sprung from that seed-lie has been dropping down fruit that had in it inherently the essence of death. That teaching which was the foundation of all heathenism has not been left to the heathen world—it is with us yet, clung to, and propagated by, much of the professed Christian world. The Word of God teaches this truth, that he who is made a new creature in Christ Jesus has Christ in him, "the hope of glory." It teaches men also to let the mind of Christ be in them, that it may direct them in the ways that are in harmony with the law of God; but the doctrine of that ancient error teaches Christ or God incarnate in our flesh. The ideas may seem to some akin, if not in harmony; but they are as far apart as light and darkness, as life and death, as far apart as the poles of the heavens. The one exalts man, and brings in as a natural consequence the worship of self; the other exalts Christ, and puts away from us every form of worship save the worship of God; the one is the counterfeit, the other is the genuine; the one turns men into the ways of destruction, the other leads them by the straight path up to the throne of God; the one must explain away all scripture that is not in harmony with it, the other takes the Word of God and hews itself to the line of that Word, "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Satanic in its inception, that doctrine of deception can end only in the destruction which uproots every plant that has not been planted by the eternal God. Satan said, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will be like the Most High;" and that is the doctrine which he preached to the angels. It is the first doctrine which he preached to the innocent pair in Eden for them to believe and work upon for their own self-exaltation. In this new thought, this new theology, which is new only in its metamorphosis into a sort of Christian ethics stage, man is declared to be able to compass his own salvation, to be his own saviour, able to liberate himself from sin and its consequences, having within himself the power to cure himself of sickness and all the ailments of the flesh, and being in himself "the highest expression of God." In this not only is God's Word utterly discredited; but the plan of redemption, all that God has done for man, is flatly denied, cast aside, trampled underfoot; and then man is put in the place of God, to do for himself that which only God can do for him. Some time ago there sprung up in this country a society whose express purpose was the exaltation of5man, the setting forth of his divinity and his all-sufficiency in himself. That society has many supporters now in the journals that are devoting their strength and influence to the propagation of that very idea. Books are multiplying rapidly which advocate the same ideas, the pith of which is contained in this expression: "Man will yet fling his form into the heavens and root himself in God." That is what Satan tempted Eve to attempt to do; that is what the builders of the tower of Babel tried to do. The same idea is voiced in these presumptuous words: "Order is our only saviour, and, like the picture in the soul of the artist, it lies within us waiting to be revealed." In other words, we are in need of no Saviour but ourself. This all works toward the exaltation of self and the worship of self. It is man's attempt to do in the earth what Satan attempted to do in heaven, and the two things are branches of the same evil root. That one subtle purpose has run through the work of Satan from the day he conspired against his Maker even down to the present day, and will continue thus until his last victim has been ensnared. His power over those who have not the mind of Christ will continue unto the end, and increase as it continues. The subtlety of his sophistry will continue to grow keener unto the end. The rapid increase of these teachings of heathenism to which we have referred proves this to be so. There has been an awakening among the adherents of these teachings in the lands that have been longest enslaved and darkened by them, and they are now rapidly spreading in the lands that had not known them hitherto. They are even permeating the pulpit orations of Christian churches, and are winning their disastrous way wherever the power of God has not come in to dominate the life. The harvest of the earth is ready for the sickle—the weeds as well as the wheat. It is time to seek God, to "watch unto prayer," that the overspreading delusions of the last days may not reckon us among their victims.