Will the World Be Converted?
WOULD God that it might. Many believe that it will be. The bishops of the great Methodist denomination in their address to the recent General Conference at Baltimore, declare, as printed in the Daily Christian Advocate of May 8: "The Gospel will win and is winning the world. The student of God's word and providence can see it. We do not believe His message a failure. We dare not preach that His promised victory is to be won by His sudden appearance after the failure of His Gospel and the coming of a new heaven and a new earth by a tremendous act of power. Christ works and wins thru men. He comes in and thru and by His church. 'Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.'" Surely such a statement as that by a body of men so eminent is worthy of examination. Thousands will say, Amen, and rejoice at the utterance. But the thoughtful, clear-eyed student of the Bible and of world-conditions will ask, Is it true? Does God's word teach it? Do present conditions indicate the world's conversion? Is the world being won to Christ? The question of the failure of His Gospel is another matter. Again, we say we would that the world might be converted by the preaching of the Gospel. We would that the old wreck might be so renovated en voyage by those on board that it might sail into port a new ship, laden only with the fruits of righteousness, decks clean swept, masts and spars straight and stanch, stays taut and strong, sails full-spread to a fair wind, bearing no marks of her sixty-century conflict with sin and Satan; not manned with a crew of blood-stained heroes, with gory swords and smoking guns, but strong and stalwart Christians, blood-washed and guilt-free. We would that all this might sometime be, aye, in the near future. Did the world's conversion rest in God's willingness and power to save, it would be accomplished; but it does not. God in His infinite wisdom drew around mankind the sacred circle of free will, and into that domain even Deity will not enter to compel. Life and death, blessing and cursing, righteousness and sin, have ever been set before man, but he must make free choice; and the history of sixty centuries has demonstrated what the choice of the majority has been. God has manifested in warning, entreaty, in sacrifice, an unfathomable love. Christ, the Creator, gave Himself to die to save rebel man; but how few comparatively have responded to His love. Divine justice has been visited upon the transgressor, yet the careless world laughs on, and goes its way. Many have given their lives for the truth's sake, but the great mass trample upon their graves heedless of the truth for which they died, or if mindful, garnish their sepulchers and despise their teaching. But what saith the Scriptures? Our Methodist brethren believe the Bible. One of the resolutions they passed was preceded by the preamble: "Whereas we recognize the Bible as the authoritative word of God, the 'entrance' of which 'giveth light.'" Surely, better than our desires, better than any human "optimistic" visions, is the truth of God, however unwelcome. It is better to tell the man afflicted with a fatal malady his true condition that he may set his house in order, than to deceive him with false hopes, and let him die unprepared. True "optimism" does not build on false hypothesis, however desirable. It looks on the best side of things as they are; but it does not call error truth. But what does the Bible teach? 1. The teaching of the prophecies of Daniel. The second chapter portrays before us in the form of a great image the great world empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome, to the end. That closes with the utter destruction of the image, and the setting up of the Stone-Kingdom which crushes and pulverizes, but does not convert. The seventh chapter presents the same successive empires under symbols of cruel, rapacious beasts, growing more and more unnaturally cruel to the end, when they "by a tremendous act of power" are destroyed and burned. The prophecy of the eighth and ninth chapters, and that of the tenth and eleventh, covering the same history, closes with violence, and then—the reign of Michael. But in none of these is there a suggestion of conversion, but ever of the opposite. In the prophecies to date every particular has been fulfilled. Surely, they will not prove false in teaching the destruction of a cosmos, even tho men are looking for its conversion. 2. The prophecies of the Revelation belie the theory of the world's conversion. Read the description of the seventh typical church—Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-21); of the sublime and awful events under the sixth seal (6:12-17); of the angry nations and sure judgments under the seventh trumpet (11:18); of the remnant persecuted church (12:17); of the dominant beast power, the impending judgment, of which God faithfully warns us, just preceding the second coming of Christ (13:8, 15-18; 14:6-14); of great, dominating, world-enthralling Babylon, intoxicated with power and steeped in iniquity, destroyed by sudden judgment, when she is rejoicing as a queen, out of whom God calls His people (18:4-8, 16, 19-24); of the triumph of God's children and of the regnant Word of God, tho all earth's foes are listed against them (15:2, 3; 19:11-21). The "no more curse" comes when God by a "tremendous act of power" destroys sin and incorrigible sinners from the universe. 3. Our Lord in a great discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, and in other scriptures, depicts the last days as evil, and likens them to the times of Noah and Lot, where historic concrete illustration emphasizes His clear declarations. 4. In the parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matt. 13:24-30, 37-43) the wicked are likened to tares, the righteous to wheat. The tares are not converted, nor weeded out. Both grow together till the time of harvest; then they are separated, the tares are burned, the wheat gathered into the garner. "The harvest is the end of the world." Verse 39. We know not how such teaching as this of our Lord can be fitted to the Whitbyan theory of the world's conversion. 5. The teaching of the apostle Paul and his coworkers is equally conclusive. "All that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." 2 Tim. 3:12, 13. He declares that the "last days" will be "perilous times," because of the wickedness and sinfulness tolerated among those who have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. 2 Tim. 3:1-5. Those who cry, "Peace," he declares, will be deceived. 1 Thess. 5:1-3. Peter, James, John, Jude, all bear similar testimony of the same import. Whether the Gospel is a failure or not depends on God's purpose, and God's purpose includes man's free will and his possible rejection of the Gospel. To say that the Gospel is a "failure" if the world is not converted is to set the power of Christ over against that of Satan struggling for the possession of an object having no choice in the matter. On the same supposition the Gospel is a failure if one soul is lost, if Lucifer himself is not saved. For it would be as much a test of lack of power to lose one soul as to lose a million. The Gospel of God is not a failure. The eternal purpose of God proposes a sinless earth, filled with a righteous people, saved in accordance with His own perfect, gracious plan in Christ Jesus. Those who yield to His purpose are saved. They are the elect. Those rejecting His purpose are lost. They become no part of His election or purpose. There is no question of the success of all He has purposed in Christ Jesus. The grief of the Heart of the Universe is that men will not yield to it and be saved. The purpose will stand; but the conversion of wicked kingdoms and men is no part of that purpose. Like a rift in that optimistic Methodist lute, played so skilfully by the bishops, comes a speech on a resolution concerning the "Social Problem." That resolution was presented by a committee representing six conferences, and the speech was made by William M. Balch, of Philadelphia, who said: "It is a crisis in the conflict which confronts us. On the one side are predatory monopolies, with no less than continental sway, and luxury so shameless and enervating as almost to recall that of the Roman empire in its decadence; on the other side, extreme filth and misery of oppressed and disinherited multitudes and the DEADLY AND INCREASING CLASS HATRED which daily moves underneath our deepest foundations like unmeasured volcanic energies. . . . In such an emergency nothing can be more deplorable9than the MANIFEST FACT that the MASSES are not only INDIFFERENT to the church, but also suspicious that the church is indifferent to themselves." "Be not deceived." Notwithstanding all that God and His people are doing, men, the mass of them, within and without the church, are multiplying humanly tolerated and "respectable" sins, multiplying "scientific" heresies, which take the edge from the Gospel sword, and hearts are hardening against truth. Old-time piety and integrity are rare. Faith in the great Bible facts of the atonement is wanting. The world is drifting on to its doom. But, soul, Jesus Christ and the Gospel are not failures. Christ is able to save to the uttermost if you desire salvation. Help us to win souls from the wreck of sin.