Signs of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 28. (7/16/1896)

Signs of the Times

Jul 16, 1896

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1896

A Curse of the Ages

A Curse of the Ages.—The curse of the ages is sin, but one of sin’s strongest allies is intemperance. History’s record is but a repetition over and over of the selfsame tale, varied by local coloring and setting. Nations and people when frugal, abstemious, temperate, and industrious have arisen, become strong, multiplied, and prospered. As wealth has increased, luxury, indolence, intemperance, degeneracy, and ruin have inevitably followed. So went the antediluvian world, the cities of the plain, Nineveh, Babylon, Media, Grecia, Rome. The nations to-day are repeating the same sad story in great object lessons.

What Is Intemperance?—It is not hard to define. It is not indulgence in alcoholic or intoxicating drinks alone. From the standpoint of eating, drinking, the satisfying of the nerves of taste and smell, true temperance is the moderate use of that which is good, and total abstinence from that which is hurtful. Intemperance includes, therefore, inordinate indulgence in good things as well as the use of things evil. To the Christian, true temperance is eating, and drinking, and doing to God’s glory. (1 Cor. 10:31.) It is finding pleasure in those things which will make true men and women, and best fit them, not only for helpfulness in this life, but prepare them for life to come. God’s glory is always consonant with our highest good; and the true Christian, the true believer, will not knowingly indulge in any habits which will degrade and destroy his body, mind, or soul.

Forms of Intemperance.—These are not indulgence in alcoholic, spirituous, or malt liquors alone. Intemperance is multiform. We know—all know, unless so besotted as not to want to know or to be unable to realize—that indulgence in spirituous liquors brings evil and only evil. “It ministers to pleasure;” true, but it is to the pleasures of the lower man; it is pandering to a perverted and cultivated appetite, to the debasement of the nobler powers of mind and body. “It furnishes employment to many;” yes, but it deprives a vaster number of employment, beggars and blasts and ruins temporally and eternally hearts and homes by myriads. It is evil and only evil. Tobacco is a worthy compeer of alcohol. Millions of dollars are burned and smoked and chewed and snuffed every year in the civilized countries of earth. The products of its use are impairment of vision, color blindness, loss of eyesight, deafness, nervousness, dyspepsia, lung disease, heart disease, paralysis, smoker’s cancer, hardening of the moral sensibilities, mentally and morally deformed offspring, other forms of intemperance, depleted incomes, inefficiency as men, and death. Opium, morphine, absinthe, the kola-nut, and other stimulants and narcotics, now growing fashionable, are mighty allies of alcohol. More than this, the strong coffees and teas indulged help to form the appetite for the stronger toxics. In fact, the strong coffee or tea may be worse for the child, sensitive and undeveloped as she is—and there are millions that use one or both—than the stronger stimulants are for father and mother.

Feeders.—These milder stimulants, the gross gluttony and overeating, are but feeders to the great stream of grosser intemperance. The appetite for strong drinks is oftentimes formed and fostered by an unwise parent at the table. To think of her bright-eyed boy as a drunkard or her rosy-cheeked girl as a nervous wreck would horrify the fond mother, and yet she is ministering to both these objects as truly as tho she were purposely training to these ends.

The great variety of dishes at a meal, the mixing of antagonistic elements of food, all serve to minister to overeating, perverted appetites, diseased bodies, depleted purses, ruined homes and characters, and the worse forms of intemperance. These things are most serious, and should arouse every Christian, and every true father and mother.

Gospel Truth.—Temperance is not a side issue, it is an essential part of the Gospel truth. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit of God (Gal. 5:23); it is one of the additional steps in the ladder of true sanctification (2 Peter 1:6); it is enjoined in view of the judgment (Acts 24:25); and he that striveth for the mastery over sin “is temperate in all things” (1 Cor. 9:25). Many are the admonitions, warnings, precepts, promises, examples, given in the word of God with reference to intemperance and gluttony and drunkenness and licentiousness; they all go together. All these things are increasing, despite all the efforts, wise and unwise, against them. Many of the “reformers” are themselves violating in one form the very principles they are seeking to inculcate and enforce in others. The only true way, the only permanent reform, is to begin at the very foundation of the principles of Gospel truth. Until the church is willing to deny self and follow Christ, all efforts to reform others by law will be abortive. Were the professed Christian world living out Christian temperance to-day, they would be connected with a power mightier than all civil enactment and enforcement. But one sad fact is that thousands are so blinded and their moral sensibilities so benumbed by indulgence of one form or another that they are not even stirred at the untellable and immeasurable sin and misery and crime in the world caused by intemperance.

An Illustration.—San Francisco is probably no wickeder than any other metropolitan city of its size. We have never seen more drunkenness in it than we have in other large cities. Its record of intemperance is therefore the record of a typical modern city. Well, here are some of the cogent facts:—

Its yearly consumption of beer, according to the calculation of the United States gauger, is 14,215,161 gallons, or nearly fifty

gallons to every man, woman, and child in the city.

The consumption of whisky is 827,493 gallons, equal to 15,045 barrels of 55 gallons each, nearly three gallons to every man, woman, and child in the city. If loaded on trains, these barrels would fill 500 cars, carrying 15,000 pounds each, making five trains of 100 cars each.

The saloons of the city would cover 66 solid blocks, or put in a straight line would reach 16 miles. This would fill both sides of Market Street, the principal business thoroughfare of the city, to the exclusion of every other business, with nine miles to spare. What a journey that would be on some public holiday! And yet these do not take in what are called “barrel houses,” illicit joints, etc.

The city prison records disclose the fact that the last fiscal year there were 15,392 persons arrested for drunkenness. In July, 1895, the smallest number of arrests were made—900, nearly thirty a day—in December, the largest monthly record, 1,573, over fifty-two per day. This does not include many other equally deserving of and liable to arrest who did not come under the surveillance of the police.

But all these statistics, which we quote from the Examiner, a paper that is by no means temperance in sentiment, very feebly hint at the oceans of misery, the depths of degradation, woe, wretchedness, and despair behind all this. How many women are worse than widowed? How many children worse than orphaned? How many men driven to despair—for the “drunks” are not all men? How many homes ruined? How many souls lost forever? The picture is a horrible one; but, intemperately apathetic and indifferent, the present so-called “Christian” generation hurries on, seeing not, hearing not, caring not. God pity the fallen. God pity those who care not for them.

A Warning—A Duty.—All this increase of drunkenness, misery, crime, licentiousness, is a merciful warning against the very beginnings of sin, is one of God’s signs in the social world that we are nearing the end of all things earthly, and the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ! God has pointed us to other cities and nations as warnings, and has told us that the last days—our days now—would be like them. (See Eze. 16:49, 50; Luke 17:26-30; 21:34, 35; Rom. 13:12-14; Isa. 5:11-25; 56:10-12; Prov. 23:1-3, 20, 21, 29-35, etc.) Our duty as individual Christians—men and women—is to save all we can by every means which God gives us, by every means which will not compromise truth and righteousness and that will glorify him. We should heed the solemn warnings. We should do the imperative duty. We should live as we preach.

“ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED.”

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

In our last study, embracing the first part of the ninth chapter of Romans, we learned something further in regard to God’s purpose and election. We learned that the Jews by nature were never any more the people of God than any other people, and that apart from Christ they were as much accursed as were the veriest heathen that ever lived.

We learned also that, altho God did make choice of certain ones, specially named, who afterwards attained great eminence as children of God, the choice was not arbitrary. Jacob was chosen before he was born, but no more than all other men are. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ, “according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good-pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” Eph. 1:4–6.

“So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” As proof of this, the apostle cited the case of Pharaoh, who was chosen in Christ just as much as Jacob was, and just as much as we are. He was chosen to the praise of the glory of the grace of God, that he might show forth the excellencies of the Lord; but he obstinately refused to submit. But God will be praised even by the wrath of men, if they are not willing to praise him voluntarily, and so God’s name and power were made known through Pharaoh’s stubbornness. It would have been better if the proud king had yielded himself to the design of God, instead of having that design worked out in spite of him. But the lesson that we are to learn is that every man in every nation under heaven has been chosen in Christ, and that none have been chosen in any other way, and that this choice is that they should be adopted as sons. In this choice the Jews have no advantage over others, but are on an equality with them, as is further shown by the remainder of the chapter:—

“Thou wilt then say unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the gentiles? As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people, and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God. Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved; for he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness; because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrah. What shall we say then? That the gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling-stone; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock of offense; and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.” Rom. 9:19–33.

We will omit the usual questions on the text, leaving the reader to press that matter as closely as possible, and will proceed at once to note a few of the lessons set forth in the text.

Replying against God.—This is a very common thing, and its commonness has caused most people to lose sight of its wickedness. The man who begins indignantly to ask, “Why does God do so and so?” or to say, “I can’t see the justice in such a course,” as tho he were especially and personally affronted, makes it impossible for himself to understand even that which a mortal may comprehend of God. It is very foolish and wicked to blame God because we are not equal to him in wisdom. The only way to come to the knowledge of the little that may be understood of God is to settle it once for all that he is just and merciful, and that everything he does is for the good of his creatures. Reverence, and not clamorous questioning, becomes a creature in the presence of the infinite God. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Ps. 46:10.

The Potter and His Vessels.—The one who thinks himself competent to criticize the Lord thinks that he has a sure case against him in verses 21–24 of this chapter. “Surely,” says he, “this text teaches us that God has made some men to be saved, and others to be destroyed.” Most certainly we find nothing of the kind. There is a vast difference between what the text actually says, and what men imagine that it says. The potter has power over the clay, and so the Creator has of natural and unquestionable right power over his creatures. Consider the figure. The potter has power over the clay to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor. Very true; but who in the world ever heard of a potter who busied himself making vessels for the sole purpose of destroying them? He makes vessels of different kinds for various purposes, but they are all intended for use, and not for destruction. So God never made a man for the purpose of destroying him.

God’s Long-suffering.—The fact that God does not plan the destruction of any one is

shown in that he hesitates long before allowing any to suffer the destruction which their own evil deeds have justly earned. He “endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” They fitted themselves for destruction by, after their hardness, treasuring up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath. Rom. 2:5. Note the words that God endured with much long-suffering these “vessels of wrath.” Now we are to “account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation.” 2 Peter 3:15. He “is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Verse 9. The fact, therefore, that God endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, even after they were fitted to destruction, shows that he longed for their salvation, and would give them every possible chance for it.

“Whom He Hath Called.”—God’s long-suffering is also for the purpose of making known the riches of his glory “on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.” And who are these? “Even us, whom he hath called.” And who are they who are called? Are they of some particular nation?—“Not of the Jews only, but also of the gentiles.” The entire chapter is a vindication of God’s choice of men even before their birth, as illustrated in the case of Jacob; and this verse shows that the choosing of Jacob did not mean that God had special privileges for the Jewish nation, but that he bestows his favors impartially on Jews and gentiles alike, if they will accept them.

God’s People.—This is still further shown by verses 25, 26: “As he saith also in Osee [Hosea 1:9, 10], I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.” God visited the gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. The apostle Peter described this visit in these words: “God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” And further, “We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” Acts 15:7–11. And so “there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.” Rom. 10:12.

The Remnant.—“Isaiah crieth concerning Israel, If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved.” Thus the Revision has it. Therefore “at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” Rom. 11:5. No matter how many there may be who can trace their genealogy to Jacob, according to the flesh, it is only they who are willing subjects of the grace of God who will be saved. There is positively no chance for boasting save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Gentiles Ahead.—The gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. The Jews professed to keep the law, but did not; the gentiles were not associated with the law, yet they met its requirements. Now, if the reader will recall Rom. 2:25–29, he will see that real circumcision consists (and always did consist) in keeping the law. Therefore since the gentiles by their faith kept the law, and the Jews through their lack of faith did not keep it, it appears that they had changed places; the gentiles were really Jews, and the Jews by nature were the same as the heathen.

Missing the Mark.—The Jews followed after the law of righteousness, but did not attain to it. Why not?—Because they sought it not by faith, but by the works of the law. How forcibly this sets forth that of which the entire epistle is a demonstration, namely, that faith does not clear one from the observance of the law, but only from its transgression, and that by faith alone can the law be kept! The Jews are not blamed for following after the law of righteousness, but for not following after it in the right way. It is not by works, but by faith, that the works which the law requires can be attained. That is to say that bad works can not produce good works; good can not come of evil. There is no discount upon good works. They are the most necessary things in the world. They are the result of the keeping of the law by faith. But there can not by any possibility be good works without faith; for “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Rom. 14:23.

The Stumbling-Stone.—Do not fail to connect the last part of this chapter with the first part. Remember that the beginning presents Israel according to the flesh as accursed from Christ. To them pertained, among other things, the giving of the law, but they came miserably short of it. Why?—“For they stumbled at that stumbling-stone.” What stumbling-stone?—Why, Christ. They were in the very same condition that so many people are to-day,—they would not believe that the promises of God to Israel were wholly and solely in Christ. They thought, as many professed Christians now do, that God honored them for their own sake, without any regard to Christ. Christ is the stumbling-stone over which all stumble who regard the promises to Israel as made to a certain earthly nation, to the exclusion of all others.

A Sure Foundation.—Strange to say, that very stumbling-stone is a stepping-stone, and a sure foundation. That over which some fall, is the means of lifting up and building up others. “The ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them; but the transgressors shall fall therein.” Hosea 14:9. Christ is a rock of offense to those who disbelieve, but a sure foundation to those who have faith. He is “the Holy One of Israel.” He is “the King of Israel.” He is “the Shepherd of Israel,” and at the same time the fold, and the door into the fold. Without him there could be no such thing as a nation of Israel. Those who think to claim an inheritance in Israel because of their birth, and without respect to Christ, will be ashamed at the last; because whosoever cometh not in at the door, the same will be proved to be a thief and a robber. But “whosoever believeth on him shall not be put to shame,” because his faith will show him to be Abraham’s seed, and thus an heir of God according to the promise.

E. J. W.

Preserved by Christ’s Power

By P. B. Power

He that has parted with the past by the power of Christ shall by that power be preserved in the future. The hand which has cut him off from a past of the evil one's, will bind him to a future of his own.—P. B. Power.

Question Corner

“Enquire, and make search, and ask diligently.”

No. 374. Soul and Spirit.

PLEASE explain Gen. 35:18, compared with 1 Kings 17:21. How can these scriptures be in harmony with Ps. 89:48 compared with Acts 2:27–31? A SEEKER FOR TRUTH.

All these passages will be plain to the inquirer if he will but remember that the term “soul” is used in different senses. It sometimes means the whole man or person: “Eight souls were saved in the ark.” 1 Peter 3:20. “Man became a living soul.” Gen. 2:7. It sometimes means the affections and emotions, as in the text, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Ps. 103:1. Sometimes its meaning is simply life, as in these texts under consideration. “And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing” (Gen. 35:18), that is, her life, breath of life was going out. So also in 1 Kings 17:21, “Let this child’s soul come into him again,” that is, the breath of life (see verse 17). The same thought is expressed in Ps. 89:48. Mortal man has no power over the grave. No man can deliver himself from the power of the grave. So in the Psalms, quoted in Acts 2:27, 31, Christ, speaking through David, says, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” That is, his person, his being, was not given up to the grave. There is nothing whatever in any of these texts that would indicate that the soul is an independent, separate entity, capable of existence as such apart from the body. In Gen. 35:18 and 1 Kings 17:21 it is simply life. It came from God as life; it goes back to him as life.

No. 375. Multiplying and Replenishing the Earth.

In Gen. 1:28 man is commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. First, in what respect did Christ obey this command when he was here in the likeness of sinful flesh? Second, in what respect should we obey it as his followers? H. H. S.

1. We must not get the idea that every particular command that God has given to man sometime in the past, must be obeyed in just that way in the life of Christ. He gave Eve to Adam for a wife. The moral principle involved in that is involved in every true marriage relation from Adam down. But the particular obligation which devolved upon Adam, could not, in the nature of the case, come to others. Adam was told to dress and keep the Garden of Eden. It is impossible that those who lived after him, or that Christ while here upon the earth, could dress the Garden of Eden and keep it. But every moral principle involved in the command was wrought out in Christ. To man in his sinless state God gave the command to “multiply.” After he had sinned, God told the woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.” These came in the natural order of things, not only the multiplication in the raising of children, but the sorrow with it. The original design was

that the products of man’s multiplication should be holy and righteous before God. Sin perverted the law, and those who are born of man come into the world with fallen natures. Jesus Christ came to restore what man had lost, and to beget again in the divine nature, those who should be born children of God by the Spirit. And thus is he meeting all that God gave the first man the privilege of doing,—gathering out a seed which shall inhabit the regenerated earth, a seed which shall be holy and without blame before God.

2. We also, his followers, should labor to do as he did. The object of the first command to Adam in Gen. 1:28 was the filling of the earth with a holy seed. That was Christ’s object in coming into the world,—the carrying out of God’s original plan. That should be the object of every one of his followers. The particular way in which all this is to be done is left for each one of us to learn from God’s precious word. That the begetting of children is involved in the command to Adam is true, and this is in harmony with God’s word, and is proper and right; but the higher question is most important, and that is not the mere rearing of physical children, but the development of eternal characters.

No. 376. Double Prophecies.

PLEASE explain Eze. 37:26. It would seem from it that the people of God would multiply on the new earth. C. G.

As the SIGNS OF THE TIMES has stated many times before, we can only understand the prophecies which God has given in the past, in the light of clear and later promises. In speaking of the Gospel to God’s people, Paul says, “Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel.” We must also understand these promises which God has given to ancient Israel in the light of the conditions so clearly set forth in Jer. 18:7–10. If Israel had fulfilled the mission which God gave them, God would through them have wrought all his work, and fulfilled his promises, even to the renewing of the face of the earth and the multiplication of the holy seed. But this they failed to do, and the work must now be accomplished in the way set forth in the New Testament Scriptures. We do not mean by this that there will be any different principles used, or that salvation can be had in any other way than through Jesus Christ; but Israel as a nation will not be used to accomplish God’s work, simply because they would not be used.

Jesus Christ says that in the coming kingdom “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.” But the work of regeneration begins not with the earth, the home of man, but with man himself; for whom the home is prepared. And such ones, gathered out of every language, people, nation, and tongue, God will multiply, so that they will far outnumber anything which was ever seen on earth as a nation. We may not be able to understand or to see this now, but in that great day when Christ shall come, and the people of God are raised from the dead immortal, and the living changed to immortality, then will be demonstrated the multiplication which has been wrought through the power and Spirit of God throughout all the ages.

In these double prophecies, parts of which apply in the past, and all of which are to a greater or less extent predictions of the future, we must always remember that the Lord used language which was plain to those who lived in the time of the prophecy, to convey to us a knowledge of the future events. So he used the terms David, Jacob, and Israel, those who were true servants of God and true people of God in times past, to designate the true servants and true people of God in the future. Remembering these principles,—that some of these prophecies were conditional, that many have a double application, and that they must be understood in the light of later and fuller revelations,—we will not go astray in our understanding of them.

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