THE GREAT SALVATION by Geo. W. Reaser

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 30, 1907

THE GREAT SALVATION

By Geo. W. Reaser

By GEO. W. REASER.

DIVINE REVELATION.

"It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

THE great theme of all the Scriptures is salvation. Were it not for the revealing of this, God's one purpose toward the children of men, they need not, and would not have been written. Consider the infinite pains taken to make the plan of salvation successful. It required the preparation and preservation, by the Creator, of the most wonderful Book that the world has ever known.

"Hast thou ever heard Of such a Book? The Author, God Himself; The subject, God and man; salvation, life And death—eternal life, eternal death— Dread words! whose meaning has no end, no bounds. Most wondrous Book; bright candle of the Lord; Star of eternity; the only star By which the barque of man could navigate The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss." —Pollock.

What hopelessness, what blackness of despair would be the lot of mankind were it not for the revelation of the plan of salvation, as found in the Bible. The future would be a blank, the tomb without a ray of light, the termination of life an uncertain leap in the dark, were it not for this light of life. The darkness in which the world is enshrouded—the gloom of sin spread over the face of the whole earth—would inevitably result in the blackness of the night of eternal death, were it not for the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, as revealed in the Bible, which banishes darkness and lights up the tomb.

Purity of Teaching.

"The Bible presents a religion of purity and holiness far above man, while it gives to every one who desires that purity with his whole heart the power to reach it. The teaching of the word of God calls man ever onward and upward."

The Unity of the Scriptures.

"Its different parts were written all the way from 1500 B.C. to 98 A.D.. They were written by men in every phase of life, by the lowly herdsman, Amos; the priest, Ezekiel; the warrior and man of God, Moses; the royal psalmist, David; the wisest of men, Solomon; the prime minister and prophet, Daniel; the fisherman, Peter; the physician, Luke; the learned Jew, Saul of Tarsus; the beloved John; and many others. It was written by the lonely waters of Euphrates, in Persia's royal city, in Jerusalem the city of the great King, among the mountains and vales of the Holy Land, in the tents of the Idumean emirs, on rock-ribbed and ocean-bound Patmos—written by all these, in all these various places, at all these different times, under different circumstances and influences, yet the same unity, the same Spirit, pervades the whole. It is not alone many books; it is one. It addresses men as they are everywhere; it reveals the same disease, sin; it shows the only remedy, the blood of Jesus."

Its Impartiality.

"Had it been the work of priests, or the work of kings, or the work of any in high position, it would have glossed, and excused, and palliated, and utterly hidden their sins and crimes. But it does nothing of this. It reproves faithfully and fearlessly prophet and priest, king and noble, prince and peasant, soldier and citizen. The very ones reproved often record their own fall and reproof. Is it David the great king, or Solomon the wisest, or Moses the man of God, the reproof of God is given with even more sternness than to the humble in station. It espouses the cause of the poor, the meek, the defenseless; it knows no caste, differing in these respects from all other religions in the world, and proclaiming loudly that 'God is no respecter of persons.'"

"Its Comprehensiveness

is likewise proof of its divinity. It takes in every phase of human life—all the woes, the infirmities, the vicissitudes, the dangers, the weaknesses, the needs. It is adapted to all minds, to all grades, to all classes and conditions. There is counsel, warning, encouragement, instruction, condemnation, and approval for each one according to his needs. There is balm for every bruise, healing for every hurt, cleansing for every stain, the great storehouse for all blessings. No other book can show such unity in connection with such many-sidedness and comprehensiveness. All that would minister to men's curiosity, God has omitted. But in that which He has given, He has stored and piled such mighty and far-reaching truths that an eternity of study upon them would not exhaust their meaning, their fulness, their richness, their power. . . . Men have endeavored to write books and creeds and evolve religions thru all the past, but not one book, not the excellencies of them all, can compare in number and fulness with the excellencies of the 'Book of Books.'"

"The Bible is a Book which has been refuted, demolished, overthrown, and exploded more times than any other book. Every little while somebody starts up and upsets this Book; and it is like upsetting a solid cube of granite. It is just as big one way as the other; and when you have upset it, it is right side up, and when you overturn it again, it is right side up still."

"They overthrew the Bible a century ago, in Voltaire's time—entirely demolished the whole thing. 'In less than a hundred years,' said Voltaire, 'Christianity will have been swept from existence, and will have passed into history.' Infidelity ran riot thru France, red-handed and impious. A century has passed away. Voltaire has 'passed into history,' and not very respectable history either; but his old printing-press, it is said, has since been used to print the word of God; and the very house where he lived is packed with Bibles, a depot for the Geneva Bible Society."

"Thomas Paine demolished the Bible, and finished it off finally; but, after he had crawled despairingly into a drunkard's grave in 1809, the Book took such a leap that since that time more than twenty times as many Bibles have been made and scattered thru the world as ever were made before since the creation of man."

"This Book outlives its foes. If you could gather all the books written against it, you could build a pyramid higher than the loftiest spire. Now and then a man goes to work to refute the Bible; and every time it is done it has to be done over again the next day or the next year. And then, after its enemies have done their worst, some of its professed friends torture and twist and mystify and misrepresent it."

[This article will continue in our next, presenting the "Power and Life of the Scripture."]