In What Is Your Hope?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 29, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 31.

In What Is Your Hope?

IT is a mighty message with which the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah closes. After a description of the destruction of earth's grandest empire, the question is asked, "What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation?" The answer is:

"THAT JEHOVAH HATH FOUNDED ZION, AND IN HER SHALL THE AFFLICTED OF THE PEOPLE TAKE REFUGE."

The counterpart of this message is found in the third chapter of Jeremiah, the twenty-third verse:

"TRULY IN VAIN IS SALVATION HOPED FOR FROM THE HILLS, AND FROM THE MULTITUDE OF MOUNTAINS: TRULY IN THE LORD OUR GOD IS THE SALVATION OF ISRAEL."

The former words were spoken to those to whom had been shown, at least to some extent, how frail are all human structures of shelter or refuge. Mighty, war-panoplied Assyria was to fall; Egypt, Philistia, Media, Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms," should fall, and be broken, and not rise again. Where would humanity find refuge?

The message of Jeremiah was spoken to a back-slidden people, to a people who had been seeking for salvation and refuge among the nations.

Once the people of these nations knew God. They worshiped the Creator of heaven and earth. But they perverted His worship. "They glorified Him not as God," "but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." They deified man and human passions. Seeing these passions in the beasts, they deified the beasts as the representatives of God, till they worshiped "all kinds of four-footed beasts and creeping things," and reveled in "abominable idolatries." See Rom. 1: 20-27.

All these false gods and false theologies were perversions of the true.

To these false gods they erected altars on every high hill and mountain, and under green trees. All these altars and places of worship God commanded His people utterly to destroy. However great or costly or elaborate, they were not to be spared. As valuable assets or works of art they were not to be preserved. Neither could they be converted to temples for the worship of Jehovah. His people were not even to seem to be worshiping at the heathen altars.

But when Israel became backslidden, she first built altars unto Jehovah upon the high places. Thus she became associated with false worship, and accustomed her children to look upon it leniently, and upon the heathen worshipers with charity. Then came fellowship. Then altars were builded to Milcom and Chemosh, and Baal, and Ashtoreth, and a multitude of gods, till at last altars to false gods were erected in the very house of Jehovah. We need only to read Jeremiah 2 and 3 to learn how far this backsliding had gone. Looking to the hills and to the mountains for help was looking to the worship of, and hoping for help from, false gods. Read Ps. 121: 1 as Boothroyd has it:

"Shall I raise mine eyes to the hills? Shall help thence come to me? My help cometh from Jehovah, Who made the heavens and the earth."

When Jesus Christ ascended on high, He left His church, for the great needy world, a pure Gospel, so simple that a child could grasp its saving truth; great and mighty in its power to save, broad based in Him who created heaven and earth.

But that church failed to learn the lesson handed down from the olden days. Men came in teaching perverse things, and drew away disciples after them. Acts 20: 29, 30. Sound doctrine was not endured. Philosophic fables perverted the truth. Teachers with "itching ears" erected their metaphorical high places, and sought to mingle the simple Gospel with heathen mysteries. Heathen temples became "Christian" cathedrals. Heathen days and feasts were named "Christian." Division was sown. Church and state with decree and anathema, with inquisition and torture, sought to compel unity and prevent the harvest. But division grew, till to-day the multiplied philosophies and cults can scarcely find high places for their altars, all erected to the perversion of Christian truth.

The artist has well represented them in our cover cartoon. All in a sense appeal to human elements. All minister, as did the perverted worships of old, to the carnal human idea of self-salvation. To the high places of all, jubilant throngs as well as longing hearts are thronging, and all to be disappointed when the judgment line of God shall measure character, and His righteousness shall be the test; when the overflowing hail of just wrath shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the mountains shall crumble at His presence.

No wonder that Jeremiah wept as he saw his people seeking salvation at the altars of perverted truth. Great wonder that now there are not a multitude of Jeremiahs and Ezekiels sighing and crying at the perversions of God's truth and the multitude of altars erected to those perversions, to human sophistry, to speculative philosophy, to the glory of man.

O reader, turn from all of these to the sure word of God, to the Gospel of God's comfort. True it is that it lays all the glory of man in the dust, and pleads, "Fear God and give glory to Him," "and worship Him that made heaven and earth." Rev. 14: 7. It assures us that "all flesh is grass," all the glory of man "is as the flower of grass," but God by the simple power of His Gospel will save humanity (Isa. 40: 1-10), His plan will give no glory to human devices, but it will invest the believer with eternal glory. "Truly in vain is the help that is hoped for from the hills and noisy throng on the mountains: truly in Jehovah our God is the salvation of Israel."

There are hearts longing for rest in these days of uncertainty. There are painful, toilsome feet plodding the weary ways to these hill altars, who have sought rest and found it not. We invite them to the simple Gospel of Christ. Come to Him in all the ugliness of sin, in all the nakedness of self-renunciation, and let Him cleanse and heal and clothe. His salvation is more joyful here than any earth can give or promise, and it reaches beyond all the perversions of good, beyond all the hopelessness of human helping, to the glorious eternal land and city of light and love. "Jehovah hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge." Tell the glad tidings.