Mar-Apr 2006

  1. DAVID’S REGRET FOR SIN
  2. LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
  3. ROBBERS IN YOUR HOME
  4. ARE YOU PREPARED?
  5. OLD SAINT’S BIBLE
  6. ANNOUNCEMENTS

Life and Immortality

ALL AROUND US we see what the Scriptures designate as a reign of sin and death. The various forms of life in nature—the grass, the flowers, the lower animals and man—exist for a brief summertime of life, then wither and die. This does not strike us as strange, except in conjunction with humanity, and that because of man’s higher intelligence—his appreciation of the value of life, his growth in knowledge and his ability to use life’s opportunities for himself and for all creation with his increased wisdom. The disposition to avoid death is not peculiar to man; it is the law of nature. The smallest creature, by instinct, flees from death. The law of self-preservation is properly said to be the first law of nature.

The lower animals, like man, have sensation, an appreciation of pain; but this perception is much more pronounced in humanity than in the lower animals and the lowest forms of life. We are not defending vivisection, but we quite agree with scientists that the pain, the suffering of the lower animals, is much less in comparison with that of humanity. We even note the fact that the more refined a human being, the more intense his suffering. Correspondingly, refinement and intelligence bring fear of death and desire for life everlasting. All mankind seem, instinctively, to hope for a future life, even though with the majority the hope is accompanied with dread respecting its conditions. However, only the Bible reveals a rational basis for faith in regard to a future life—a reversal of the general death conditions everywhere prevalent. The heathen hope for a future life, but none of them furnish a logical basis for such expectations. Only in the inspired Word can this reasonable basis be found.

A WAY OF ESCAPE

The heathen hope is represented by their great philosophers, Socrates, Plato and others. Their hope is, in brief, that, in view of man’s great superiority over the beast, if he desires a future life, he will receive it, even though, to all appearances death means the same to the human as to the animal creation. The Bible explains that man was created in his Maker’s image and likeness and granted the privilege of eternal life on condition of obedience, but he disobeyed and therefore became subject to death; and that penalty of death affects him exactly as it does the brute creation. But the Bible does not leave the subject here. It tells of God’s pity and love and of His provision to rescue Adam, together with mankind, from sin and from death. The Divine curse on the race instructs us that only those who ultimately attain perfection may have everlasting life.

Adam and his race, as imperfect sinners, could not have eternal life after their violation of the Divine Law, unless some release from their condemnation is provided. To meet this emergency, Divine Love, from before the foundation of the world, provided a Redeemer, who was to die, “the Just for the unjust.” The Scriptures provide the answer: “As by a man came death, by a Man also comes the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive; every man in his own order” (1 Cor. 15: 21-23). Hence God has manifested His character in a way and to a degree which could never have been known to angels or to men had He not permitted sin to enter the world. His Justice has been manifested in the infliction of the death penalty upon our race for over six thousand years.

JESUS’ PRE-EXISTENCE

Divine love has been manifested in the arrangement made in that the Only Begotten Son of God, on the heavenly plane, counted it joy to sacrifice His life for the benefit of the human family. He gave up His heavenly glory and honor with the Father and was made flesh, a human being, in order to die for our sins. This manifests the fallacy of the statement that is so prevalent today, to the effect that: “God died for our sins.” Of course those who present this view, fail to distinguish between the two persons the Almighty God on the one hand and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the other. In your experience have you ever known of a father to be the same person as his son? The Scriptures are very plain in their statement that it was not God, the Father, who provided the ransom for Adam and his race; but it was Jesus, His son, who died on Calvary as is stated by Paul, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15: 3; Rom. 5: 6, 8).

HUMANITY TO BE FREE

Before the Divine Plan shall be fully consummated, God’s Wisdom and Power will also be revealed through His dealing with sin and sinners. Through the merit of Christ’s death, Adam’s transgression will be fully offset; and the penalty of Adam’s sin will be fully paid to Justice; and Adam himself and all of his posterity, who have shared his penalty, will be set free from the sighing and crying, the pain and trouble, mental, moral, religious and physical ills incidental to the execution of the death sentence against sinners. Therefore, through the sacrificial death of Jesus and the Church, Divine provision has been made for a future eternal life for mankind.

The Restitutionists who come to appreciate the Millennial privileges and conform themselves to the Divine law then in force, will gain perfection of human life. How natural it is for us to be impatient! The few years of our lives, measuring our knowledge and experience, leave us little appreciation of the span of Eternity, from the Divine standpoint. We are inclined to say, If God designs to do anything for man’s aid, why does He not do it immediately? We cry out, O Lord, Haste! Haste! Behold the human race, mentally, morally, religiously, and physically, is in a deplorable condition, unable to help themselves, dependent upon Your mercy, Your salvation! Like sheep we are laid in the grave; like the brute beast we seem to perish; we have only a promise of salvation from death through the Redeemer and a resurrection from the condition of death as a hope for the hereafter.

THE DIVINE PLAN TAKES TIME

But God will not be hastened. He has a wise, as well as gracious purpose. He has a definite time for every feature of His great work. He allowed four thousand years to pass before He even sent His Son to begin the work of redeeming mankind, by the payment of a ransom price. He has allowed nearly two thousand years, since then, to elapse without recovering mankind from sin and death conditions. It is for faith to trust; and yet it is but natural that we should inquire, Why this delay? Why does God wait so long?

The reply is two-fold: (1) God leaves time for the birth of a sufficient number of Adam’s children to people and fill the earth, indicating that the powers of procreation and the begetting of children shall not continue in the future as at the present. He declares to us that those who attain to that world to come “will neither marry nor be given in marriage,” but in this respect people will then “be like unto the angels,” who have no children, who do not propagate their kind (Matt. 22: 30). (2) Incidentally, in connection with man’s fall and recovery, God purposes a most wonderful manifestation of His Wisdom, Love and Power in the bringing into existence a new order of beings, higher than human nature, and higher than angels. God provided for a New Creation whose members were limited in number and made partakers of the Divine nature, far above angels, principalities and powers. This New Creation, the most wonderful exemplification of Divine power ever manifested or ever to be manifested, He developed as a class in the Gospel Age during the reign of sin and death. They were selected from among sinners, and took precedence in rank and time of completion over the human salvation which is still future and will be accomplished in the Millennial Age.

THE BRIDE IN GLORY

This “little flock” of Kingdom recipients have now received their glorious exaltation as the Apostle Peter tells us that these have attained the Divine nature by faith in “the exceeding great and precious promises” (2 Pet. 1: 4). These were not coerced into obedience—theirs was a voluntary submission to the Divine will. The test upon them was loyalty and faithfulness to God to the very limit, to the extreme of self-denial, and voluntary humiliation in the service of righteousness, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Indeed, Jesus is the first and the Head of this New Creation. None could have attained it except by and through His Ransom sacrifice on Calvary’s cross. He is the Captain of their salvation. He was their forerunner in this great “race” to which, with Him, they were invited by God, the reward of which, to those who faithfully overcame sin and the world is “glory, honor and immortality,” as their eternal portion.

ATTAINMENT OF IMMORTALITY

The Apostle writes concerning the Church, the elect “little flock” of called, chosen and faithful ones. He tells us that by perseverance in well doing this chief class would attain to exaltation to the Divine nature (Rom. 2: 7). This reward, to the faithful, came in the First Resurrection, when mortality was clothed with immortality, when the new body, glorious and of the Divine nature, was granted to each of these faithful, as instead of the fleshly and imperfect bodies during their earthly preparation. In other words, their trial was not to demonstrate the perfection or imperfection of their flesh, for this was already known to God and to them. “In my flesh dwells no good thing” (Rom. 7: 18). The trial is to demonstrate the loyalty of the will and of the heart. It was necessary to conquer the will of the flesh and bring it into subjection to the will of God by the application of all the powers of mind and body. This tested their loyalty to principle, to righteousness, and to God. St. Paul, as one of these loyal ones, declared before his death, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me at that day, and not to me only, but to all those who love His appearing” (2 Tim. 4: 7, 8). This included all who were hungering and thirsting and striving for that righteousness which Messiah’s heavenly Kingdom brought to the Church in the First Resurrection and that will eventually be brought to the world through the establishment of Christ’s earthly Kingdom, which will restrain everything that is in opposition to the Kingdom’s arrangements, and uplift every person and principle loyal to God.

CHURCH AND WORLD DIFFERENTIATED

The immortality for which the Apostle declares that the Church has attained is of a different kind of life entirely from that which the world will receive in the Millennial Age. It is a different kind of life even from that which the angels possess; for immortality is a feature or quality of the Divine nature only. This immortality, the Scriptures assure us, was originally possessed only by God (John 5: 26). Then we read of Jesus (the Father evidently being omitted from this comparison) that He is One “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach, Whom no man hath seen nor can see.” The Logos, (who was Jesus in His preexistence) was the Only Begotten of the Father and was then made flesh in order to redeem mankind (John 6: 62; John 1:14). The Logos, who became the Man Christ Jesus, was rewarded by the Father with glory, honor, immortality and the Divine nature. As time and the Plan progressed, the opportunity to attain to the “high calling” salvation was given to the elect “little flock,” the Bride class, to become associated with Jesus in the sufferings of the Gospel Age and they have now faithfully completed their earthly testing and are now with Him in heavenly glory (Prov. 4: 18; Rev. 19: 7).

The invitation to the Church was to follow the example of Jesus their Redeemer. They walked in His steps and sacrificed earthly interests and with Him became partakers of the Divine nature also—glory, honor and immortality (2 Pet. 1: 4). Our Lord Jesus corroborates the same thought, saying, “As the Father hath life in Himself [immortality, life in the highest sense of the word—deathlessness], so hath He given unto the Son that He should have life in Himself” (John 5: 26). The Bride class, those who were “more than conquerors,” received it by patient continuance in well doing (Rom. 2: 7). As we have seen, the Almighty first possessed immortality until He gave it as a reward to His glorious Son—Christ. The First Resurrection is now complete, and the elect 144,000 have entered upon this same plane of immortality, and therefore, the opportunity to become of this Divine nature has ceased, as the Scriptures declare (Matt. 25: 10; Rev. 19: 7).

HUMAN LIFE IN THE MILLENNIUM

The life enjoyed by the spirit angels, otherwise spoken of in the Scriptures as everlasting life, is not inherent immortality, but an eternal life maintained by the Creator, subject to the condition of obedience and righteousness. This condition will also be the experience of the Restitutionists in the next age (Acts 3: 19- 21). Likewise, Adam had at his creation everlasting life, but his life was dependent upon his obedience to his Creator. When he disobeyed, the Divine provision for his sustenance was withdrawn. He was expelled from Eden that the sentence of death would take effect, “you shall surely die” (Gen. 2: 17). Similarly, Satan and the other unrepentant angels, because of sin through disobedience, will be destroyed, hence their life is proven to be conditional, as was that of Adam and the race (Heb. 2: 14; Is. 27: 1; Matt. 25: 41). The redemption to be accomplished by the Redeemer during His reign as Messiah is to reinstate all the willing and obedient to human perfection and Divine favor, as these were enjoyed by Adam before his transgression. All the wilfully wicked, all not desirous of returning to fellowship with God through the Redeemer, will be destroyed in the Second Death—not eternal torment. The test will be so thorough, so crucial, that God declares that there shall be no more crying, no more dying; which implies that there will be no more sin— that the lessons connected with human and angelic transgression will be so thoroughly learned that those found worthy of eternal life will have their characters grounded in righteousness and opposed to sin; but they must be obedient to the Kingdom’s arrangements in order to maintain their perfection and retain everlasting life. The Scriptures, as we have already intimated, use the word immortality in a more restricted sense than is in common use. The Bible applies the word to the Father and to the Son, and to the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife. The blessing of everlasting life provided for angels and for men found obedient to the Divine will is Biblically called, not immortality, but eternal or everlasting life.

TWO PARTS TO SALVATION

Therefore, the Scriptures explain the two-fold work of Christ: (1) The work for the world, in providing for all the willing and obedient of mankind everlasting life; (2) the work for the Church, that secured for the willing and obedient of the Bride class, glory, honor and immortality, the Divine nature. The Scriptural expression is that “Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel” (2 Tim. 1: 10). Everlasting life was hinted at in the remote past, but not specifically stated. The declaration that “the Seed of the woman should bruise the Serpent’s head” implied a recovery from sin and death, a victory over the Adversary, a release of mankind from the death penalty. But it was not specific. The promise of God to Abraham, that in his Seed all the families of the earth should be blessed, contained an intimation of a Divine provision for the restoration of humanity from death and the present fallen condition, a restitution to eternal life conditions. But this was not made apparent then. The prophets also gave some implications of coming blessings through a great Messiah, but failed to say that eternal life would be the grand result. Not until the Savior appeared and made His consecration unto death, on behalf of the race, was it proper for even Him to give such assurances. After His consecration in A.D. 29, and during the three and a half years of His ministry, He declared His mission to be the seeking and recovery of that which was lost, and the giving to His footstep followers a share with Himself, not only in their Gospel Age sufferings, but in their present reign of glory (2 Tim. 2: 12). Then was the time in which, by holiness, faithfulness, loyalty to God and to the Truth, and the laying down of life as a part of the sin-offering, that their “calling and election” was made sure to the highest reward of glory, honor and immortality, the Divine nature. Praise God for the wonderful Plan of Salvation which centered in the Lamb slain from “before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1: 19, 20).