ATTRIBUTES OF GOD'S REMNANTS.
WHEN sin is in a human soul, that soul is bound to Satan by just so much. When God translates an individual, He translates no sin along with him; He translates nothing but that which is His own. The individual who is translated from this earth at the second coming of Christ, will, through the power of God, have squared and trimmed his life in accordance with "the pattern shown in the mount;" that is, the law of God, the expression of the character of God. That pattern, given to man on Sinai, has never been revised, because the character of God has never changed. He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."5Satan owns man by just so much as there is sin in man. Sin in man is the product of Satan's campaign against God. Righteousness in man is the product of the eternal purpose of God. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies," is the admonition of the Word; for the reign of sin is the reign of Satan. Every day of our life we are choosing our master in the deeds we do, the words we speak, and the thoughts we think. When sin is entirely cleansed from our souls, God can place His hand upon us and say, This is all Mine; come up to be with Me. That is no ordinary experience; and the trials borne by such souls are no ordinary trials. God found such an one in Enoch, the seventh from Adam. He found another such one in Elijah the Tishbite. He will find many in the very closing days of this dispensation when the fiery trials of Satan's focused wrath have proved unable to overthrow God's remnant in the earth. It is necessary that we measure our own lives by God's great standard of righteousness. Is there enmity in our soul? God disowns that attribute. He will not take into His kingdom that which is the antithesis of His own character; for He is love. He will not take us to His eternal abode bearing that barnacle of iniquity, to plant again the seeds of another rebellion. Is there covetousness there, a spirit of taking that which is not our own? That, too, is unlike God. That brought disruption in heaven, and cast Satan and his angels out of their former abode, to enter again no more. Is there the lust of the eye and the pride of life? They are foreign to God's purpose; they are weeds and tares that will choke out of your soul the very shoots of eternal life. God can not lay His hand on you and say, This is all Mine, while such thorns and thistles are cultivated and thriving in your heart. Is there envy and jealousy in your heart? Satan was jealous of God,—envied Him His throne,—and what God could not permit in Lucifer, the Light Bearer, He can not permit in you. If God could tolerate those things in you, He would not have expelled His own covering cherub for holding them. When Christ was ready to be offered, He said, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me." If Satan could have found any of his attributes in Christ, the work of Christ in our behalf would have been a failure. There is a deep significance in the expression, "hath nothing in Me." Christ would have been Satan's in just so far as He possessed the attributes of the evil one; and had Jesus Christ possessed a single evil attribute, God could not have claimed Him as His wholly. Christ was free from all such evil contaminations, all such evil ownership. Why, then, was He not translated without seeing death, even as Enoch and Elijah?—Because He had another work to do, not for Himself. All that was done in His life. There can be no reason given for the death of Jesus Christ, save the reason that He Himself gave—"a ransom for many." He died to free us from the mortgage that eternal death held upon us; died that He might have a right to unlock the tombs of all who believe on Him and accept the release purchased by His blood. Of those who are redeemed and permitted to "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," this is said: "In their mouth was found no lie; they are without blemish." Rev. 14:4, 5. This also is said of them: "Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12. When God points to a people and declares that they "keep the commandments of God," it means something. It means more than a mere formal obedience. It means a life separate from sin; for He claims that company as His, and He can not and will not claim ownership of sin. If we expect to dwell with God in that kingdom where righteousness rules and sin has no abode, we must begin now, by God's help, if we have not already, to pluck up out of our lives, one by one, the roots and shoots of sin, and cast them to-day into the burnings of God, lest to-morrow they should carry us with them into the burnings that will consume them and us. S.