Man's Fatal Choice

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 31, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 44.

Man's Fatal Choice

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. No. 4.

Man's Fatal Choice.

THE test of this earth's happiness devolved upon man, its prince. As shown in previous articles, his character, as with all character, must be tested by choice. That he might wisely choose, he was given every advantage. He was placed in a beautiful garden of divine planting. Everything that could charm the eye or delight the perfect sense of mankind was found there. Blooming flowers and fragrant ripened fruit permeated the air with their refreshing odors, and various-hued birds in sinless ecstasy flooded this delightful creation of God with sweetest melody. In the midst of this paradise was the tree of life, typical of the Creator Himself, giving forth of its life in fruit and leaf to man, who in turn was to minister to all by his side and below him.

But one thing of all this glorious life and beauty and abundance did God reserve to Himself. By the side of the tree of life grew the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Upon this man could look. Under its shade he could rest. Upon it he could see inscribed the handwriting of Him who made it all. But of its fruit man was not to eat.

No visible wall protected it. No cordon of angelic police guarded it. It was God's wish that man should not eat. It was to rest with man whether he would eat or not. His free will could wall in the tree from himself, or he could eat and die.

The consequences of a wrong choice were placed before him. If he continued to obey the law of God's life, he would possess that life forever. If he disobeyed, he perverted the channel of God's life to selfishness, and death would result. And so the Lord declared, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen. 2:17. He might choose disobedience and death; but if he did, he should not do it unwarned.

All of Faith.

"But should not man know the knowledge of good and evil?"—Yes, but not experimentally. God designed that he should know it in the only true way, by faith in the word of his Maker. Whether, after the development of perfect faith, all could partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we know not, but this we do know, he must first learn it aright by faith. He must learn to love God by the obedience of faith, every test of which endured would reveal more and more of God's goodness and wisdom.

"Without faith it is impossible to please Him." Heb. 11:6. This is an eternal truth. Its opposite is, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin"—it is missing the mark of God's glory. Rom. 14:23. "For by grace are ye saved through faith." Eph. 2:8. "The just shall live by faith." Heb. 10:38; Hab. 2:4.

There is a profound philosophy which underlies all this. If man could work out his own salvation of himself, if he could perfect character in himself, if he could in himself and of himself attain perfection, he would glory in himself, he would boast of his own powers, he would be limited by himself to his own narrow sphere. So it would be with each; and each, priding himself in himself, and boasting himself of himself, would incite in each and all, envy, division, and strife. Each of himself would make a god. Each, self-limited in spiritual vision, would believe that all should pay homage to his god, and so polytheism and everlasting strife of extermination would inevitably result. And man, gathering all to himself, would stagnate and die.

Faith in the great, infinite God takes man out of himself. It opens his heart, his mind, his whole being to the infinite. It gives him breadth of vision, such as self could never know. It lifts him from the low, miasmatic slough of self to the high mountain of God. It reveals to him God's greatness, God's goodness, God's love—till all his own "comeliness" is seen to be "corruption," and there is created within him an infinite longing to be like God.

He sees God as He is—not an arbitrary ruler exacting of his creatures abject subjection and profitless doing; but he sees Him as the great, loving Heart of all the great universe, from whom pulses forth currents of love and life to all His creatures—giving Himself for all. So seeing God, faith leads man to give of himself for the woes and needs of God's creation,—to let God make of him a channel of His everlasting mercies and blessings. He forgets himself as worthy only of forgetting in the service of others. He knows by faith, he realizes by service, that all good comes from God, and to God he gives all the glory. So it is with every child of faith in God's universe; and if faith had always ruled, each would have found delight in serving all, in glorifying God, and each would have found himself forever served of all.

No one in such a world could be unhappy. No one could stagnate, become dwarfed, or die. Life from the great Fountain would have flowed its eternal rounds, unperverted in its channels, unpoisoned by the malaria and miasma of pestilential self. Each and all would have glorified God, and would be continually glorified of God. Such is the simple, blessed philosophy of faith in God.

Perverted Good.

But for man to partake of that which is of itself good, contrary to God's will, is to take himself from the free current of God's life, and throw his fleshly nature across the power of life's working. We may let the little river flow on and on, carrying blessings every mile of its course, or we may dam it with "shale and straw," and find at last that its bursting has destroyed crops, towns, and people. God "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." In the current of that loving will there is life to all God's children; but its almighty power perverted to selfish channels means destruction to the perverter.

The record does not tell us how long man lived God's life, and basked in the joy of the divine presence. But it tells us that into this paradise of beauty came the tempter, he who in the beginning of evil perverted God's life. He said to man, "Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Gen. 3:4, 5, R.V.

The serpent promised them augmented knowledge apart from God, and infinite exaltation. "Ye shall know," "ye shall be as God;" and his words implied that God had in arbitrary selfishness withheld all from man. With such sophistries and delusions he has ever deceived mankind, perverting every blessing and blighting every hope. And our first parents believed the tempter, took of the forbidden fruit, and ate, and "brought death into the world, with all our woe."

As man was, under God, prince of this earth, the dispenser of God's blessings to all creation under him, it follows that when man fell there fell also upon all creation the curse of sin. "And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Gen. 3:17-19.

And thus it has been from that day to this. The thorns and the thistles have cursed the earth. Hate, cruelty, and malignity have perverted the disposition of the animal creation. The earth does not yield her strength. Mountains vomit fire; the ground quakes and heaves; desert wastes spread over fruitful sections; fearful storms ravage the world. The great giant is groaning, and straining at its bonds of sin. As the apostle expresses it: "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity [sin, death], not of its own will, but by reason of him [man] who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Rom. 8:19-22, R.V.

The hope and the ground of the hope will be considered in future studies.