Bible Students Monthly, June 1911
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International Bible Students Association. ^ubJishers.
Vol. III.
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
No. 6.
Religious and Scientific Gleanings
CLERGYMEN SCORED BY EVANGELIST.
It must be a rather bitter pill to clergymen to sit on the platform behind the Rev. Billy Sunday, evangelist and ex-base ball player, and hear themselves roundly censured by the great man they are backing in his great work of grace, who charges them with slandering the Divine character and misrepresenting the Divine Purposes. We give Mr. Sunday’s words respecting the ministers, as quoted in a Lancaster, Ohio, exchange, as follows: “The seminaries are turning out a bunch of buttermilkeyed, red-nosed, 2x4 infidel Evolutionists, from a theological ice box, who are preaching a pandemonium and poppycock religion. The churches need the old bunch made over.’’
NOT AN ATHEIST.
“I am not an atheist—never have been, never said I was’’—declared Thomas A. Edison, the inventor, in an Interview yesterday. “I believe in a Supreme Intelligence, but I have grave doubts as to whether you and I and all the other good folk of this earth are going to be roused from our graves to go to some beautiful, shining place up aloft.
“Don’t see it, can’t understand it, and neither do these ministers of fashionable churches. They don’t say what they think. Often they don’t even think. It’s all business with ’em. They tell me I’m heading straight for hell. Maybe I am. But I’ll take my chances with the fashionable minister, and if there is such a spot as heaven, I’ll bet I get there first—yes, even before Dr. Aked.
“Religion! Hereafter! What do these ministers know about it that I don’t know! I wonder how many of them have seen the things that are being done at the Rockefeller institute, where they cut off a leg, put it in cold storage for a week, and then sew it on again—and it knits and heals and feels and Is alive just like any other living limb!”—N. Y. Press.
MONEY FORBIDS ALL WARS.
Briefly, these are the conclusions of David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford University, as he delivered them in a lecture on “The Old Peace With Velvet Sandaled Feet,” at Abraham Lincoln Center.
The - men who make the war loans control the civilized nations,” Dr. Jordan said. “Emperors and kings and parliaments may not declare war to satisfy a whim, defend their honor or even to right a wrong until they have secured the permission of their ‘uncle.’
“There is no danger of war, but there is grave danger that the war debt will be doubled. Europe’s war debt is $26,000,000,000. One-third of all the money in the world is due on the war debt of Europe alone. The Rothschilds and other money-lending families control the situation.
“Nine-tenths of the war scares in Europe and elsewhere are made by crafty statesmen and a yellow press to divert the attention of the people from reforms they are demanding.
“When the powerful of the earth find themselves hard pressed by the people they issue a call to the mob to go off somewhere to plunder and murder, for the mob is always ready to join in the man hunt, and-they fight until the people forget what they wanted.’’—Boston Post.
A SOLDIER'S GREAT MISTAKE.
When Alexander the Great was plundering the palace of Darius, one of his soldiers found a leather bag containing the priceless crown jewels of Persia.
The price was millions, but the stupid fellow, ignorant of its value, shook out the little glittering stones among the rubbish and went away boasting about the fine bag he had found for carrying his food. So have the higher critics thrown from the Bible priceless treasures belonging to the King of kings and Lord of lords, and have left nothing but an empty bag!—Exchange.
WITHOUT GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITATION.
The Women’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands has decided to eliminate all reference to heathen from its title. Comparisons are apt to be undesirable. Heathendom and Christendom alike are without geographical limitations. — Philadelphia Bulletin.
THE MILLENNIUM OF PEACE.
Rev. John Wesley Hill, who spent a season abroad studying the attitude of several of the European powers towards armament, has this to say of the enormous cost of war equipment:—•
“During the last quarter of a century, a period of incomparable peace, the armies and navies of Europe have enforced an expenditure of $111,000,-000,0C0, enough money to pay for the education of every European child and put an end to the tragedy of poverty.”
GOSPEL IS SLIGHTED IN SUNDAY LESSONS.
“If the International Sunday School Lesson committee keeps on eliminating the things which the Presbyterian church stands for, there will not be enough gospel left in the Sunday school lessons to save the gizzard of a mosquito.”
This was the opinion expressed by Rev. R. F. Sunzer at the last session of the conference of the Presbyterian missionaries on Sunday school work here. He was attacking what he termed “the Sunday School Lesson trust.” —N. Y. Press.
PAIN NOT A NECESSITY OF NATURE.
Against gloomy pessimism Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace raises the standard of victorious revolt. He sets forth the theory that pain is strictly limited, and that its beneficial results are eternal. His chapter, “Is Nature Cruel?” might be read with advantage from every pulpit. Pain, according to Dr. Wallace, is one of the essential factors of evolution. It was developed in the animal world for a purpose, and is always subordinated to the law of utility.
He argues with great force that it is preposterous to imagine that the lower animals suffer as acutely as we do. Our extreme sensibility to pain is necessary for our survival. Where pain is not developed irreparable injury is often inflicted before the danger is discovered.
“The possibility is,” says Dr. Wallace, “that there is as great a gap between man and the lower animals in sensitiveness to pain as there is in their intellectual and moral faculties.” To endow a worm or an oyster with the acute sensitiveness of a highly developed mammal would have been fatal to its survival.
“In order to be fit to survive, man needs to be keenly sensitive to pain. But in order for the majority of created things to survive long enough to fulfil their destiny and be eaten, they need not suffer pain at all. Even the process of being eaten need not necessarily involve any pain.
Death a Comfort to the Oyster.
"It may even have been not merely absolutely painless, but slightly pleasurable—as in the case of the oyster— a sensation of warmth, a quiet loss of the little consciousness they had, and nothing more—a little sleep and a forgetting.”
The sharp fangs and claws and stings with which nature arms so many of her creatures are to Dr. Wallace as beneficent as the instruments in a surgeon’s outfit. Some of them produce anaesthesia, all of them are devised to avoid bungling which might inflict painful wounds instead of merciful death. Excepting among the highest vertebrates there is no pain or next to none, any more than there is in vegetables, which also have life.
—Exchange.
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PRINCE LUCIFER
OF OLD IS NOW PRINCE OF DEMONS
"The God of Peace shall bruise Satan DOUBTLESS MANY have been much surprised when told that Satan is not in some far-off place stoking fires and torturing human or other victims, but that he is present amongst men, an invisible angel of evil, ably supported in his work as an Adversary of God by legions of other fallen angels, of whom he is master — a “Prince of Demons,” either because of his superiority of nature, or because of belonging to a higher rank or grade than the ordinary angel. It is a surprise to many to learn that Satan, so far from being ill favored, is beautiful, according to the Scriptures, and that he is supervising the work directly and through the fallen angels, his servants, to mislead and to deceive humanity—putting light for darkness and darkness for light, error for truth, etc.
The time was not long ago when intelligent people made light of everything in the Scriptures respecting invisible spirit beings, good and bad— the messengers of God and the messengers of Satan. This, however, can no longer be done. Under the increasing light of the New Dispensation man himself today can do things which but a short time ago would have been considered impossible. Can we not speak with our friends over hundreds of miles with a telephone and recognize each other’s voices? Yet there is no pipe, no tube to convey the sounds and nothing, seemingly, carries it over the wire. We speak into a hole in the wall and our friends hundreds of miles away hear plainly. Still more marvelous is wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony. If man can accomplish these things, what cannot the Almighty accomplish? Who can deny the possibility of the invisible presence of spirit beings and yet admit the possibility of wireless telegraphy? We are safe, dear friends, in guiding our judgments directly by the Word of God and reasoning inside and not outside of its boundaries.
The Bible in Perfect Accord.
The Bible, and it alone, explains certain phenomena, and all of the Bible explanations, although written, some of them centuries apart, are in most perfect accord. Thus in Genesis the Bible tells us respecting Satan’s deflection, and the book of Revelation, written more than three thousand years later, tells us of his binding for a thousand years, of Messiah’s reign and Satan’s ultimate destruction. Isaiah and Ezekiel tell us of his being at one time in full harmony with God, and that then he was the “covering cherub,” glorious, grand, beautiful, and that his name was Lucifer, which signifies the Morning Star.
All of the angelic, heavenly hosts are termed stars, bright ones; but Lucifer, being of a higher order, was styled the Morning Star, the Brightest Star. It was at that time, while in Divine favor, that Satan permitted the lodgment in his mind of a disloyal thought of how, indirectly, by being in higher responsibility, he could work some wonders and do some things better than the Almighty. He craved the opportunity to make a demonstration of what he could do. But the Scriptures declare that, first of all, he said this merely in his heart and uttered it not. “He said in his heart, I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God (still farther above his angelic associates), I will be as the Most High”—a ruler.
The Opportune Time Came.
Never had there been sin in heaven. Satan was the first of all its inhabitants to cherish, to entertain, a rebellious thought and to bring it to a consummation. He held the thought in abeyance until the opportunity afforded, and God Himself afforded the opportunity, with full knowledge of the consequences, and with the desire that this test of the entire heavenly host, and of a human race as well, should be effected, because God seeketh not the worship of constraint, but “seeketh such for worshipers as worship under your feet shortly.”—Rom. 16: 20.
Him in spirit and in truth,” voluntarily, joyfully.
It was when Satan beheld our first parents, in the image and likeness of God, yet not spirit but flesh, earthly, that he perceived the opportunity of gaining the coveted power for an empire, separate from that of Jehovah. In the first pair the Adversary beheld a new thing, a creature of Godlike qualities and possessed of the power to propagate his own species. Satan Realized that the conquest of this pair and the bringing of them into subjection to himself would signify the capture of a world full of people eventually—that the enslavement of the parents would signify the enslavement eventually of the race.
Satan’s Methods Were Successful.
We cannot deny that Satan’s plans were logical and that he has carried them out with great success—so that the Scriptures declare him “the Prince of this world” (John 14: 30); and again, “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4: 4). Nevertheless, his victory was not so great a one as he doubtless expected it to be. No doubt he expected that he was capturing an immortal race. Quite probably he believed the falsehood he told mother Eve, when he contradicted the Word of God—that sin, that disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, would bring upon them the penalty of death, “dying thou shalt die.’
Satan’s charge was that God had misrepresented the facts for the purpose of holding His creatures in mental slavery to Himself; that He did not wish them to be wise, therefore He forbade the eating of this particular kind of fruit and declared the penalty of death for the transgression of His Law. “I, Satan, assure you that you need not be afraid of the fruit; I assure you that it will do you good, and that you will not surely die from the eating of it.”
Alas! Mother Eve believed the Adversary and disbelieved her God, and then enticed her husband, still thinking, no doubt, that she would not die and that the serpent had told her the truth and that God had been the deceiver. St. Paul tells us that father Adam knew better and ate the fruit, knowing that it would cause his death, willing thus to disobey in order to maintain the fellowship of his wife, whose life, he realized, was already forfeited.
When the Divine sentence began to go into execution, when our first parents were driven out of Eden to battle with the thorns and thistles until they should return to the dust, no doubt Satan was disappointed. He would rather be the Prince of a noble, living family of angels or of humans than the Emperor of a weak and dying race. However, from that day to the present time he has been fighting upon the sa,me line; he has been contending with mankind that the Word of God is false when it declares that “the wages of sin is death,” and that “the soul that sinneth it shall die.” From that day to this he has been using this falsehood to the injury of our race, and surely he has succeeded wonderfully.
Today, not only in heathen lands, but amongst the most civilized, it is freely believed (and by many Christians considered Scriptural to believe the nonsensical) tJhat a dead man is more alive than before he died. People of good, sound, reasoning faculties on ordinary subjects seem to be “hoodooed” by this falsehood of Satan, “ye shall not surely die.” So true is this, that it seems not inconsistent to them to say that a man hit over the head with a stick and knocked senseless knows nothing, but a man hit over the head harder and killed, knows everything.
The Fallen Angels.
It was sometime after the fall of Satan and the fall of man that the Lord permitted the great test to come upon the angels of heaven, under which test a host of them fell into sin, discontinued on 2d page, 2d col.)
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IS $12,000 SUCH A BIG SALARY FOR A PREACHER i
The Rev. Dr. Jowett, an eloquent preacher 'of Birmingham, England, has been invited to come and preach at the NeW York Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church—one of the richest churches in the world.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the gentleman’s coming and about his salary, which was advertised as twelve thousand dollars a year. That salary has caused comment. And the Rev. Dr. Jowett, grieved by the suggestion that money had tempted him to move from Birmingham to New York, has felt compelled to say that it was not money that influenced him, and that, in fact, he would not take all that money. Twelve thousand a year seemed to him too much.
If it is worth ten thousand dollars to save a man from the electric chair, which isn’t at all painful, how much is it worth to save thousands of people from the pit that is alleged to burn forever and ever?—N. Y. Journal.
MIL BRYAN ON THE BIBLE AND MATERIALISTS.
William J. Bryan, speaking in Chicago, at the tercennial celebration of the King James translation of the Bible, challenged materialists and those opposed to the theory of Divine Inspiration of the Bible to show they were right by producing a book superior to that volume. He said:—
“Atheists and materialists declare that the Bible is merely the work of man, and that it was written under limitations that apply to human wisdom. Taking this position, they must necessarily contend that, unless man has degenerated in ability and declined in wisdom, he now can produce a book equal to the Bible. Let them produce it.
“Atheists and materialists have assailed the Bible at every point; they have been as bold as the prophets of Baal in defying the living God and in heaping contempt upon the written Word. Why not challenge them to put their doctrines to the test? VZhen Elijah was confronted by a group of scorners, who mocked the Lord, he Invited them to match the powers of their god against the power of his God and he was willing to concede superiority to the one who would answer with fire.
“Now why not a Bible test?
“Let them collect the best of their school to be found among the graduates of universities—as many as they please—and from every land. Let the members of this selected group roam at will wherever science has opened a way; let them use every instrumentality that is employed in modern civilization and when they have exhausted every source let them embody the results of their best intelligence in a book and offer it to the world as a substitute for this Bible of ours.
“They have prayed to their god to answer with fire, prayed to inanimate matter with an earnestness that is pathetic; they have employed in the worship of blind force a faith greater than faith requires, but their almighty is asleep.
“But to the doubts and ‘I don t knows’, of the agnostic, the Christian, Bible in hand, answers, ‘I believe.’ ”
POPE ADMITS CHILDREN OF SEVEN TO COMMUNION.
Pope Pius has recently decreed that children in the Catholic Church shall take their first communion at seven years of age, instead of at twelve years, as heretofore.
One is at a loss to account for this except upon the supposition that experience teaches that the customs of children are likely to persist with a firmer hold than those acquired after a measure of thought and maturity have been attained.* Neither Catholics nor Protestants seem to have any hope of reaching thinking people. They practically admit that their entire hope for Church membership rests upon gaining a control of the will and mind in infancy.
Thieves in Paradise
Luke 23:43.—This greatly misunderstood text explained in Vol.
I, No. 7.
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(Continued from 1st page), obedience, etc., and since then are known in the Scriptures as the fallen angels, and as devils—more properly demons. These fallen angels, demons, are under Satan as their great Prince and they have been his active agents for long centuries in deceiving mankind and opposing the Divine Program.
Satan the Great Murderer.
No less ah authority than our great Lord and Redeemer tells us that Satan is a murderer and a liar. He declares that “He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth; when he speaketh a lie he speak-eth of his own, for he is the father of lies” (John 8: 44). It is well that we keep this Divine testimony in our minds. It is well that we note just what the first great lie was, namely, Satan’s misrepresentation, saying, “Ye shall not surely die.” It is important that we notice this, because so thoroughly has Satan accomplished his deceptive work that practically everybody, heathen and civilized, accepts Satan’s version of the matter and discredits that of the Almighty.
Let us notice that Satan is a murderer; that he murdered Father Adam and Mother Eve, and that his lie is still murdering our race, under the just laws of heredity. The error of believing Satan instead of God has gotten many into the confused situation of disclaiming that God proposed that man should live forever on earth in a Paradise, and, as his family would increase and continue in harmony with His wise regulations, the boundaries of his Paradise would be enlarged and be a Paradise filled with the knowledge of God and the home of a perfect humanity, in accord with God, privileged to maintain everlasting life here. And, says this theory, by Satan’s lie and our first parents’ fall, we die and by dying become more alive and some of us go to heaven and the mass to some eternal, fiery hell, of which we have no knowledge.
“The Gift of God is Eternal Life” (Romans 6: 23).
God, while permitting Satan and sin and depravity and death to take their course, has not been idle. He has had, and still has, a great plan for human salvation—a plan for recovering man from sin and from death and from all of his fallen conditions, a plan of restitution to human perfection, a plan by which the Seed of the woman shall yet, literally, crush the Serpent’s head, and undo Satan’s great original misdeed—recover man from his murdered condition and from his fallen estate to all that he had at first (plus the knowledge and experiences of the present life and plus the experience Incidental to his uplift, during the reign of Messiah, for which we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.”
The Scriptures clearly show us that all of this recovery is to be accomplished through the merit of Jesus' sacrifice—“the just for the unjust.” That the work has not yet begun is evident. We are still living under the reign of sin and death. The Messianic Kingdom must come in power and great glory and be established, the Scriptures tell us, in a great time of trouble. Then the earth will be made to blossom as the rose, and the wilderness and the solitary places will be made glad, and all mankind will receive Divine blessing and opportunity to return to Divine favor and eternal life as human beings. And the wilfully disobedient and negligent of those opportunities will die the Second Death, from which there will be no recovery, no resurrection, no hope.
“The Saints Shall Judge the World” (I Corinthians 6: 2).
These great blessings of restitution, for which Israel and the whole world
PASTOR RUSSELL’S SCRIPTURE STUDIES.
These volumes deserve a careful Study by all who are not thoroughly satisfied with the Bible interpretations of the “dark ages.” They can be bought for a trifle or borrowed free. Address us.
Respecting the first volume of this work “The Atlanta Constitution” says editorially
“It is impossible to read this book without loving the writer and pondering his wonderful solution of the great mysteries that have troubled us all our lives. There is hardly a family to be found that has not lost some loved one who died outside the church—outside the plan of salvation, and, if Calvinism be true, outside of all hope and inside of eternal torment and despair.
“This wonderful book makes no assertions that are not well sustained by the Scriptures. It is built up stone by stone, and upon every stone is the text, and it becomes a pyramid of God’s love and mercy and wisdom. There is nothing in the Bible that the author denies or doubts, but there are many texts that he throws a flood of light upon that seem to uncover its meaning.”
The set of six volumes, cloth, 3,000 pages, is supplied by’ the BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY. NO. 17 HICKS ST., BROOKLYN, N. Y., for the usual price of one such viilurne, namely, $2. This includes postage or expressage to your home, anywhere. are waiting, cannot be brought about until first the special salvation of a special class, the salvation of the very elect—not to human nature, but to a heavenly nature, as the Bride of Christ —shall be accomplished. The selecting of these has progressed for nearly nineteen centuries and, apparently, is about complete. The Divine blessing and work then to be inaugurated will be restitution to earthy nature and perfection—“to the Jew first.”
Satan Serves the Saints.
x During all these centuries, While Satan has been the Prince or ruler amongst the children of this world, and while he has blinded them with his sophistries and falsehoods, he has also done another work for the saintly few now being called to the heavenly places. For these he has, so to speak, turned a polishing grindstone to prepare them for the riches of the heavenly glory as New Creatures, as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ their Lord. Quite unwittingly, we may be sure, he has served the Creator’s purposes and helped to prepare, through trials, this class for the glorious things which God has in reservation for those that love Him.
Satan as an Angel of Light.
St. Paul declares of Satan, “We are not ignorant of his devices,” and he tells us that Satan and his servants transform themselves into servants of righteousness, etc. We see this principle in operation as we read Church history. Satan, all through this Age, has sought to pervert Christian hopes and distort Christian doctrines by presenting counterfeits of Bible truths. Thus, for instance, the Scriptures tell us that eventually the Church, “a little flock," will be associated with Mes
Thousands of Demons Infest Earth's Atmosphere
"Giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines spirits in high positions” (Eph. 6: iz). and not to God”
THE BIBLE’S TEACHING that the earth’s atmosphere is infested with evil spirits is now very generally disbelieved. As a result of the disbelief thousands of well-meaning people are being the more easily entrapped by these evil spirits. The blight is both physical and moral. The usual method of procedure is to arouse curiosity. While the quest for knowledge proceeds, an influence much like that of hypnotism affects the investigator, impelling him forward to further investigation. Sometimes the curiosity is attracted through the outer senses, at spiritualistic seances, with ouija boards, etc.’ At other times it is by spirit rappings. Again, it may be by whisperings in the ear, inaudible to others. At other times the messages come through trance mediums.
In every instance these communications purport to come from dead human beings. This of itself gives to the communication a special charm to many. They feel honored in being sought out by the dead and in being able to communicate with them. They are curious for information respecting the hereafter. They forget that they have been taught from infancy that the holy dead are far oft in heaven, and that the unholy dead are far off in torment.
They Teach False Doctrines.
How fully this is forgotten is shown by a letter which we received on the first day of this month from a Catholic lady. In it she tells how she first obtained clairvoyant powers—the gift of hearing what others could not hear. This, in turn, permitted her to communicate with the evil spirits, the fallen angels. These, representing themselves to her as inmates of purgatory, came to her for help. They solicited her prayers and were progressing to get her more and more under their control. Just in time she was rescued through reading our writings on the subject. Since then she has exercised her will and her prayers against having any fellowship whatever with these fallen angels. Gradually she is becoming more and more enlightened in the Truth of God’s Word.
Not infrequently do these spirits personate the Heavenly Father and Christ, urge more prayer, accuse of sin, recommend the reading of the Scriptures, etc. This appears to be with a view to gaining the confidence, the relaxing of the will. Later on dishonorable suggestions are made. The Bible is scorned, prayer is laughed at. If, then, the subject takes fright and seeks to break the hypnotic chain, the evil spirits laugh at him, swear at him, and sometimes tell him that they will shortly have him fully in their power to roast him forever. If he attempts to pray, they intrude and interrupt and tell him that God would not hear him now, that he has gone too far, etc.
With some the matter goes so far that the human will is broken down completely and the spirits obsess them and use their bodies foolishly—-sometimes viciously, sometimes insanely, until, finally, they are pronounced dangerous and committed to asylums. We do not claim that all the insane are siah in His Kingdom of glory, to reign a thousand years. It was Satan's method to counterfeit this hope, to suggest to men the establishment of an earthly Kingdom with an earthly little flock, an earthly glory, an earthly reign. This was set forth as the fulfillment of the second Psalm.
And when later on some of Satan’s dupes began to get free from some of his snares, he became their leader in an opposite direction, called them Reformers and led them to claim that all the civilized kingdoms of the earth are the kingdoms of Christ. This is the status of affairs today. The world in general believes that Christ’s Kingdom has come, even though they are still praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Satan has led them away from careful attention to making their own calling and election sure by Christian character development, into the various reform movements of the world, whose trial time has not yet come. Thus Christians of all denominations have been bewildered, confused by the artful wiles of our enemy.
Now, however, as the morning of the New Dispensation dawns, our eyes of understanding are opening. We perceive that our Adversary has but a short time until he must be bound for a thousand years; that the Messianic Kingdom must prevail that all the families of the earth may be blessed through the Seed of Abraham. Finally, at the close of that reign of righteousness, the Scriptures declare, Satan shall be destroyed.
The Church is the Body of Christ, of Messiah. Hence the Apostle’s words of our text apply to the Church in glory—“The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.”
of demons” (I Tim. 4:1). “Wicked “The heathen sacrifice to devils
(I Cor. 10: 20).
obsessed of evil spirits, but so far as we can judge, nearly one-half the inmates of asylums are obsessed by demons, who live in them while they are mastering their wills.
Prepared For These Delusions.
God, through His Word, has forewarned His people against these delusions. In permitting many, nevertheless, to fall into these traps, He Is merely teaching a great lesson; the terrible results of disobedience, of neglect of God’s Word, are not eternal.
The Divine arrangement is that ultimately the entire human family shall be released from the bonds of sin and death, ignorance and superstition, and all have full opportunity for coming into full harmony with God. The present lesson will illustrate the necessity for searching the Scriptures and obeying God’s voice therein.
Seducing Spirits—-Doctrines of Devils.
St. Paul, in describing our day, declares one of its prominent signs to be that many will now give heed to these seducing spirits, whose teachings and practices lead away from God. St. Paul intimates also that by these misleading spirits many will come to hold doctrines of demons, or devilish doctrines. It is a sad commentary upon our wonderful day of enlightenment that the most enlightened people should hold the most awful doctrine respecting the hereafter.
A doctrine of demons it most surely is which tells, to the dishonor of God’s name, that nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of humanity are to be eternally tortured, either because of Divine incompetence to make better arrangements for them, or because God willed and foreordained it so before creation. This doctrine of demons has enslaved many honorable people who would themselves scorn to make such a plan of the ages as they attribute to God.
Thank God, the time is not far distant when these seducing spirits will be completely bound, restrained, and deceive humanity thus no more. But the deception has so long prevailed that poor humanity is thoroughly under its control. The falsehood leading up to all this error is Satan’s first lie to our parents in Eden. There, contradicting the words of God, he said, “Ye shall not surely die.” Ever since, for six thousand years, he has worked along this line, and all the fallen angels with him. His message is, “Ye shall not surely die”—you do not surely die; when men seem to die, they become more alive than before they died.
On account of these errors, that dead men are alive, Satan and the fallen angels, contrary to the teachings of the Bible, have instilled into the whole world, nonsensical, heathen superstitions respecting heaven, purgatory and hell. The Catholics pray for those who go to Purgatory, to help them out. Protestants do not so pray, believing that the saintly few go direct to heaven and all of the unsaintly go as directly to eternal torture.
If this great lie wherewith Satan first seduced Mother Eve and murdered our race could be fully eliminated from our minds and our creeds, it would mean a religious revolution to both Catholics and Protestants—back to the Bible and away from the domination and seduction of the lying spirits, the fallen angels, who personate humanity.
The Fallen Angell* Lustful.
So far as we can learn from those who have once been spirit mediums, the trend of Spiritism is toward unchastity, impurity. And this agrees well with the Scriptural declaration relative to the sin through which these fallen angels first became reprobate.
St. Jude (6) and St. Peter (2 Peter 2: 4), tell us briefly of the fall of the angels—that “they left their own habitation and kept not their first estate.” Both Apostles mention the circumstance in connection with human lasciviousness. The story of the fall of tire angels is given us briefly in Genesis 6: 1-4. After man’s fall into sin God permitted the holy angels to have communication with humanity. And because human eyes cannot see spirit beings, God permitted the angels to materialize. For instance, we note the case of the angels who visited Abraham on the plains of Mamre and for whom he prepared a veal dinner. We read that, materialized, these angels were like men, and taken by Abraham to be men, while they ate and talked with him. It was subsequently that Abraham learned that they were really heavenly visitants.
So it was with all the angels before the flood. They were permitted to materialize and to appear in every sense of the word as men. The record shows that the angels became lustful. We read, “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and took unto themselves wives of such as they chose.” The angels, with superior powers and superior knowledge to man’s, acted as the masters of men, who were practically obliged to do their bidding. The result is stated in few words. The children of this mesalliance, we are told, were giants as compared with the ordinary members of our race. And not only were they giants physically, but also intellectually—“They were men of renown.” Poor humanity could not compete with this race. The result was that strife and contention and lustful, sinful practises abounded in all the earth until God declared that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.
God had foreknown all this, and a canopy of waters, which then surrounded the earth, similar to Saturn’s rings now, was held in readiness to cause a flood, that sinful men and the human offspring of the angels might be destroyed. Only Noah and his family were found worthy of preservation to be the new start of humanity this side of the flood. The declaration of the Scriptures respecting Noah’s family is, “Now Noah was perfect in his generation.” He was properly generated or born—so were his children. There was no strain or admixture of the angelic stock in that family. The plain information is that the remainder of humanity were so degraded by the seductions of those fallen angels that they were not fit to live. The entire race had become corrupt.
Angels Restrained—Chains of Darkness.
Of course, the fallen angels were not destroyed in the flood, for they not only had the power to materialize, but also the power to dematerialize. It was at that time, however, that all of the fallen angels were put under restraints—not permitted again to materialize, the limitation lasting “until the Judgment of the great Day.”
Their chains are not physical, to confine them to a certain place in Tartarus—the earth’s atmosphere. They may roam at will, but are chained, or restrained from materializing. The intimation of the Scriptures seems to be that, with the ending of this Gospel Age, just prior to the inauguration of the New Dispensation, these evil spirits may be allowed to break their chains and manifest themselves as men, in connection with the great trouble time incidental to the change of Dispensation.
Separated from God and the holy angels, and unable to assume human bodies, the sinful angels have probably had terrible experiences during the past forty-four hundred years. True happiness is not to be expected amongst those alienated from God. Anger, malice, hatred, strife, “works of the devil,” the Apostle says, are not compatible with the love, joy and peace which belong alone to a condition of holiness. Under such circumstances we cannot wonder that these fallen angels would seek association with humanity. Being under the control of Satan as a chief or prince of devils, they have followed his course and propagated his original falsehood •—-“Ye shall not surely die.” They have conjured to men’s minds the hell of the heathen, the hell and Purgatory of the Catholics, and, worst of all, our Protestant misconception of awful and unending torture for all except the saintly few.
These doctrines of demons have increased the gulf between God and humanity and have made the Bible, the Message of God’s love, a book of terrors—not to be loved, merely to be endured or kept as a fetish to secure possibly a cooler place in purgatory. We may safely say that all the false doctrines of Christendom, represented in all of tiie creeds of the “Dark Ages,” are doctrines of demons. Our minds became defiled—our hymn-books, our creeds, everything.
Thank God that the light of the New Dispensation is now bringing to us the beginning of blessing—release from some of our darkness. The seeing of the true wage of sin—that it is death and not eternal torment—is one of the most important features connected with our enlightenment. When we learn that the dead are really dead and, as the Bible declares, will not know anything until the resurrection, then we begin to see the beauty of God’s Plan—the need of Christ’s death,-the need of His second coming; the need of His Kingdom; the need of a resurrection; the need of an opportunity for all mankind to come to a clear knowledge of the great Truth of redemption through the precious blood and the opportunity then, by God’s grace, of attaining eternal life—either during this Gospel Age, as N w Creatures, spirit beings like unto the angels, or in the New Dispensation, during the more general salvation of the world to human perfection in an earthly Paradise.
Jesus Cast Out Devils.
Our great Redeemer manifested His power by casting out demons from those who had become obsessed. And we read further that He commissioned His Apostles to heal all manner of diseases and to cast out unclean spirits. We are told' that they did this—and numerous instances, in illustration, are given us. One man was obsessed by a legion of these spirits. No wonder the poor fellow was crazy. But after they were cast out he was clothed and in his right mind and became a disciple (Duke 8: 2(5-36).
SB Paul and Silas had an experience with an obsessed young woman who practised soothsaying, fortune-telling, by the power of the evil spirit which obsessed her. As the evil spirits recognized Jesus and cried, “We know Thee, who Thou art, Jesus,” so this
A Holy Nation Pictured
'‘Happy the people that fare thus! Happy the people whose God is Jehovah"—Psalm 144:15
AT THE TIME God accepted Israel to be His people He entered into a Covenant or agreement with them. He gave them the Law, represented in the Ten Commandments, as the basis of the Covenant which Moses mediated. Israel agreed to be faithful to God, and to keep those commandments perfectly. And God agreed that in that event He would bless them. They should be His people and by doing the things contained in the Law should live everlastingly — not die. Not only so, but He promised to bless them in all the temporal affairs of life; in their homes, in their families, in their flocks and herds and fields they should be prospered.
Israel failed to get these blessings, for the same reason that any other people would have failed; namely, because God’s Law is perfect, the measure of a perfect man’s ability: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, being and strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hence, the Israelites continued to die, as their fathers had done, and as all mankind die—not being able to keep the Divine Law perfectly. For the same reason Israel experienced wars, famines, pestilences and droughts in proportion as they were negligent of the ^erms of their Covenant.—Lev. 26: 14-33.
Happy is That People.
In the text above the Prophet David pictures the holy, happy, blessed nation of the Lord. It is a picture of the future and not of the past. It is an ideal picture. It will be realized when Messiah’s Kingdom shall have been established amongst men—when Satan’s power shall be restrained, when he shall be bound, when the blessings of Restitution shall have uplifted mankind from sin and degradation and shall have brought them back to the image and likeness of God lost in Eden, but re-acquired for our race through the sacrifice of our Lord on Calvary.
But that happy nation will acquire, additionally, a happy home and world-
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spirit knew the Apostles and, through the young woman’s lips, cried after them, “These be the servants of the Most High God, which show to us the way to obtain eternal life” (Acts 16: 16-18).
Neither Jesus nor the Apostles were willing to accept demon testimony and commanded the evil spirits to come out of their victims.
Scientists Being Entrapped.
The Scriptures indicate that there will be a wonderful activity amongst the fallen angels in the close of this Gospel Age. The Master declared that the deceptions would be such that, if it were possible, the “very elect” would be deceived. But that will not be possible, because Divine providence stands engaged to protect the elect. The Ninety-First Psalm, which gives a picture of the closing of this Age and its sundry trials and tests, declares that God will give His messengers a charge concerning the feet members of the Body of Christ in all their ways—lest a foot should be dashea against a stone of stumbling (Psalm 91: 12).
If our understanding of the Scriptures be correct, we need not be surprised if the fallen angels may again seemingly gain a victory over the Divine restraints and materialize in broad daylight—personating not only the dead, but also at times personating the living. Spiritists and mediums are claiming such things as already beginning and likely to be accomplished on a grand scale shortly. Should it come it will inaugurate a terrible time of trouble such as has not been since the flood. God’s people, while resting confidently and at ease under Divine supervision, should be on the alert to resist everything akin to Spiritism, Occultism, Hypnotism, and to warn their friends respecting these things.
Numerous scientific men are being entrapped by these lying spirits whose doings and powers they are investigating under the name of Psychic Phenomena.
Thank God we are nearing the time when Satan shall be bound and when every evil influence shall be restrained. Not only will there be a full cleansing from a physical obsession, but a still greater cleansing and freeing from the doctrines of demons.
wide Paradise. Even human perfection would not bring happiness if cyclones, tornadoes, blizzards, tidal waves, earthquakes, famines and pestilences continued. Thank God, the Bible’s assurances are that the blessing of the Lord shall be, not only upon mankind, but upon all their earthly home. The earth shall yield her increase. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad and blossom as the rose. The Lord will make His footstool glorious. —Acts 3:19-21; Isa. 11:9; 65:25; Ezek. 37; Isa. 35:1; 60:13.
Particulars Given by the Prophet.
Incidental to the blessed condition of the holy nation of the future, the Prophet David mentions a deliverance from strange children: “Rid me and deliver me from the hands of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and whose right hand is the right hand of falsehood.”—Psa. 144:11.
In the Church of the present Age there are some whom the Apostle styles “bastards,” or strange children. All may make the same profession and confession, but “the Lord knoweth them that are His,” and in His due time shall separate the false or strange children from the true and will glorify the saintly ones as members of the great Messiah, The Christ. Then will come the time for dealing with humanity in general—the time described in our text, when humanity in general, under the Messianic Kingdom, will be privileged to become the holy and happy people of God—when Satan and sin will be banished and righteousness and Truth will flourish and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the whole earth.
The great Messiah undertakes to be the world’s Life-Giver, Father, Regenerator. All mankind will be awakened from the tomb and have the opportunity for regeneration and full attainment of human perfection and God-likeness. However, for quite a time there will be strange children amongst men —■ those who will experience the blessings of that glorious time without giving proper heart responses. Not until the world shall have been rid of these, by their dying the Second Death, will the fullness of happiness prevail amongst the children of men. With the wrong spirit they utter vanity, foolishness, and their right hand, their best powers, prove disloyal to the King of kings, of whom King David was merely a type.
“Times of Refreshing Shall Come, and He Shall Send Jesus Christ.”
“Then your sons will be like plants, grown up in their youth; your daughters like corner-pillars, sculptured in the model of a palace.” The grace and
beauty of the children of Messiah, partakers of human Restitution blessings (Acts 3:19-21), will be marvelous. They will attain to more than Adamic perfection, for they will have an increase of knowledge.
Then the garners will be full, furnishing all manner of provisions. Then your sheep will bring forth thousands and tens of thousands in your open pastures. The earth shall yield her increase under the blessings of Messiah’s Kingdom.
Then the oxen will be strong to labor. Then there shall be no breach—no rupture of the happy relationships. Even death shall be destroyed.
Then there will be no migration—no further seeking for better or more happifying conditions. Then there will be no complaining in our streets. Discontent is now rapidly increasing with every added blessing of our wonderful day. The difficulty lies in the fact' that sin and selfishness are reigning in the hearts and minds of men. Under the wonderfully changed conditions of Messiah’s Kingdom, peace, happiness, contentment will take the place of selfishness and discontent.
No wonder the Prophet declares that happy will be the people who fare thus —happy are the people whose God is Jehovah. We need to correct our ideas, our theologies. God does not acknowledge Himself the God of the wicked and He declines to treat evil-doers except as rebels, aliens, foreigners, strangers, as respects His promises and favors. Our entire race was originally thus estranged. But Divine grace provided a “Savior and a great One.” This Savior is already reconciling a saintly, faithful Church, who will be His associates in the Heavenly Kingdom. Shortly He will apply of the merit of His sacrifice on behalf of all mankind.
The Scriptures assure us that this will be fully acceptable to the Heavenly Father, who will enter into a New Covenant with Israel, of which Messiah will be the great Mediator, the antitype of Moses. (Jer. 31:31). Under that New Covenant all mankind will be privileged and assisted to come back to Divine favor under the processes of Restitution, in connection with the judgments and disciplines of that Messianic Kingdom. The result of the thousand years of that reign of righteousness will be the development of mankind as one holy nation or people, whose happiness will be complete and everlasting. There shall be no more sighing, no more crying, no more dying; for all the former things shall have passed away, and He upon the Throne shall have made all things new. —Rev. 21:1-5.
NO CROSS—NO CROWN.
“Oh blessed crown of glory!
Oh crown of righteousness!
Oh crown of life immortal, How can I thee possess? In answer to my longing
A voice said, soft and clear, ‘The crown is yours, beloved,
If you the cross will bear.’
* “What is the cross?’ I questioned.
‘Tis bearing every day
The trials which the Father
Permits along' the way;
’Tis sharing the reproaches
Your Master meekly bore, While those who claim to love Him
Revile you, more and more.
“ ‘The world will look upon you With disapproving eye;
And friends whom you love dearly Will coldly pass you by.
They’ll have no patience with you;
Your good works they’ll deride, And every righteous motive
To you will be denied.
“ ‘And all the powers of evil
Will gather to assail;
They know your every weakness
And where they might prevail.
They’ll try to overwhelm you
By coming like a flood,
You must with force oppose them, Resisting unto blood.
“ ‘The flesh will strive to win you.
Exerting every power, ’Twill be perpetual warfare
Between you every hour— A fight that ceases only
When one of you is dead.
It is no easy pathway,
Beloved, that you tread.’ “And then I answered, ‘Master,
I’ve counted all the cost;
And deem it highest honor
To bear with Thee the cross.
And I will bear it gladly,
Till it works out in me That blessed transformation
Which proves me part of Thee.
“ ‘And when the cross grows heavy, By faith, I gaze upon
The crown Thou art reserving
For those who overcome—
The crown of great rejoicing,
The crown of righteousness, The crown of life immortal
I’m striving to possess.’ ”
What Say the Scriptures About
SHEOL-HADES—HELL?
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What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” Psalm 8:4.
N otwithstanding all that the Bible has to say respecting the ■attire, of man few subjects seem to be More misunderstood. Science declares man to be an animal of the highest type or order. In this science is in absolute agreement with the Scriptures, which declare of our first parents, “The flrst man was of the earth, earthy” (I Cor. 15: 41). Our text agrees with this, declaring that man was made a little lower than the angels—angels being the lowest form of spirit beings, man the highest type of earth beings. A particular account of man’s creation is given, and when we examine it we find it in full agreement with what we have seen to be the teachings of other parts of the Scriptures. That •account declares that God formed man of the dust of the earth, and it tells us that after man’s transgression had brought him under the Divine condemnation of death, his Creator said to
him, “Dust thou art, shalt thou return.”
Whence Came Our
In view of the facts,
and unto dust
Confusion T which we now
have clearly before our minds, how strange it seems that most of the civilized world denies all and declares to the contrary—that man is a spirit being, and that his death is merely an evolutionary step by which he passes on to his real nature as a spirit. This Is supposed to be very scientific, because many presumably wise and scientific people thus assert themselves. However, according to these same people, such an evolution, from human nature to spirit nature, at death, instead of being a desirable progression or evolution, is a decided disadvantage, because, as they tell us, the majority of those thus graduated from flesh conditions to spirit conditions will find themselves tortured, either purgatorially or eternally. It would seem, if this be true, that this, at least to the majority, would be a step of de-volution rather than one of evolution.
But upon what are these “scientific” and learned assumptions based? Who will vouch for the change said to take place at death? Who will prove to us that a man in dying becomes a spirit being of a higher order than human?
There is no such proof; the wish is parent to the thought. Yet why should men wish to be spirit beings at death, if they believe, as the creeds declare, that tortures await them in the spirit land—await nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand? Ah, here again humanity does not believe its own creeds. The devilish suggestions are allowed to remain in the creeds, unbelieved by the intelligent, to affright the unintelligent. But alas! these misrepresentations are really blasphemies against our Creator, which misrepresent His Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power. And these blasphe-
will tell you, at very most, that he believes some of them are honest, or will tell you sorrowfully that some of them have lied to him ume and again, and if he be an advanced and experienced spiritualist he will tell that at times some of these evil spirits have made all manner of vile suggestions to him. But he will tell also that at first it was not so; instead, he was at first told that he should pray more and read the Scriptures more. Afterwards he was jeered at and mocked and told that the Scriptures were nonsense and that although there is a God the inquirer is too renegade to hope for any blessing from Goa.
We have neglected our Bibles too much; we have trusted too much to worldly wisdom. The Bible alone gives the solution of the matter. It alone tells us respecting these spirits—that they are not humans and never were; that they are the fallen angels.
“A Man’s a Man For A’ That.”
The Bible is thoroughly consistent with itself; from first to last it maintains that man is an earthy being. According to the Greek and the Hebrew of the Bible he is an animal soul or animal being in contradistinction to
a spirit soul or spirit being. “Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble”; “Man dieth and wasteth He shall not of his sleep more”—until things shall 14; 1-1U).
away, and where is he? awake nor be raised out until the heavens be no
tive present order
of
have passed away (Job
Again we read respecting the death sentence and man’s hope of recovery out of death by a resurrection, “Thou turnest man to destruction; Thou say-est, return ye children of men”; “Cease ye from man, whose spirit (breath of life) is in his nostrils” (Psalm 90: 3; Isaiah 2: 22); “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of mine appointed time will I await until my (resurrection) change come. Thou shalt call and I will answer Thee (awakening from the sleep of death), for Thou wilt
the First-born," and again, "the first-fruits unto God of His creatures." The elect of this Gospel Age are not, therefore, all who are to be saved, but merely all who are to be saved to the spirit plane. With the completion of the elect Church and her glorification with our Lord in His resurrection, the “First Resurrection” (Phil. 3: 10; Rev. 20: 6), the Kingdom will be established for
spirit had been received by any member of our race. The Lord Jesus Himself became the Captain and Forerun -
ner of “the Church, which
His
which we pray.
The Kingdom, ual, invisible to earthly agents and its dealings
per se, will be spiritmen, but it will have and representatives, will be with mankind,
to uplift Adam and his race from sin and degradation—not to spirit conditions, not to the heavenly plane, not to make them like the angels, but, as the Scriptures declare, to restore them to human perfection—to perfection of the earthly nature, in which Adam
was created and from which by he fell and will be recovered by grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Begotten to a New Nature.
Very long ago the distinctions
sin the
be-
tween those two salvations was lost sight of—the Heavenly Calling for the
Church and the Restitution for world (Heb. 3: 1; Acts 3: 19-21).
Old
the The
Body,” and which, during this Gospel Age, has been walking in His steps of self-sacrifice. The special privilege of this Gospel Age is the sacrifice of the earthly nature in order to the attainment, instead, of the heavenly nature.
This was an incomprehensible matter to those to whom it was preached at first. No Jew had ever thought of anything higher than the human plane
and 1 plane.
Divine service on the human
But the
pel was a call heavenly nature as the Bride of Heirs in glory, says that it is
message of the Gos-or invitation to the and heavenly service Christ and His Joint-Of this call St. Paul a “Mystery that was
hidden from past Ages and Dispensations, but that it is now revealed unto the saints” (Col. 1: 26). It was not proper that any but the saints should fully appreciate and comprehend this. ‘‘To you it is given to know the things of the Kingdom, but to outsiders these things are spoken in parables and dark sayings that they might not understand.”
This Mystery was, therefore, never
Testament refers exclusively to understood by many because the saints
the earthly and the fact that the New Testament tells almost exclusively of the heavenly and its promises was overlooked. Thenceforth no difference was recognized between the consecrated Church and mankind in general, and the words of the Apostle, addressed to the Church class only, were applied to all.
For instance, in first Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter, St. Paul discusses the general fact of death reigning through Adam and of the provision, through Christ, of a resurrection of the dead. Then he proceeds to speak specially of the Church class, saying, “this is the resurrection of the dead.” The (emphatic) resurrection signifies the special or First-Resurrection class, and the dead similarly marks the special class of dead ones—the saintly dead, the Church of Christ, begotten of the Holy Spirit to a new nature, the heavenly nature.
Not noticing this, commentators and people in general have applied these
were never many, and thus, later on,
when saintship was at a discount when nominal Christians became merous and influential and made creeds, it was but natural that Mystery should become more or
and nu-the the
less
befogged. But instead of going back to preach human restitution to the human plane, in a world-like Eden, the misinfermed theologians hung their own hopes and the hopes of the world upon the heavenly assurances— just where they did not belong.
Thus it is that, despite our five senses and every plain statement of the Bible, it has become the prevalent
belief that humanity ture and not earthly, Ing is but getting Heaven, Purgatory or confusion the danger
is of spirit na-human; that dy-one either to Hell. With this all along theo-
logical lines has become great, so that practically every doctrine of the Church is more or less confused thereby. This is the secret, this is the reason why the Bible is misunderstood
words to humanity in general and un- and being cast aside with the creeds derstand them to teach that all that of the Dark Ages as no longer worthy
…