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God’s Infinite Wisdom And Love
[Given in Shanghai,
China, Jan. 7, 1912]
"Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation."
—Isa 12:3.
China’s hundreds of millions of patient, incessant
workers have had my sympathy from childhood. The philosophies of childhood are
often as correct as those of mature years—sometimes more so. Well I remember as
a child inquiring what would be the fate of the heathen, and the answer that I
received—that only through faith in Jesus, the Redeemer, is there any
salvation. Then I queried, What is the penalty of their ignorance of the Only
Name given under Heaven or amongst men whereby we must be saved? The answer was
the usual one of all of our "Orthodox creeds": that they would spend
eternity in a hell of unutterable anguish. How my heart went out sympathetically
toward every missionary movement on behalf of the heathen!
Then came mature thinking and I said, Like others I am imperfect in every way;
my sympathy and love, therefore, cannot be as great as that of our Creator. How
is it possible that God, with all the force of the Universe at His command,
could look calmly on and see the operation of His own laws carrying thousands
of millions to eternal misery and yet refrain from giving those creatures the
necessary information? There is something wrong with the Bible and with our
creeds which we have built upon it.
I threw all away and began to reason—but, thank God!
not along irreverent lines. I reasoned that He who made the Universe also made
man; that whatever noble qualities I could find in humanity were the work of
the Creator.
I said, Man’s noblest qualities are justice and love, and hence the Creator
must possess these unlimitedly. I bowed in worship before God, infinite in
Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power.—Ps 33:4-8.
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HE THAT SEEKETH FINDETH
I said, O great Almighty God, although unknown to me, I worship Thee! I adore
Thee! My whole being cries out for the pleasure of more intimate acquaintance
with Thee, that I might know Thy will regarding me and Thy purposes respecting
humanity. I said, Assuredly, as God is all-wise, He must have an all-wise
purpose, of which I need not be ashamed! So surely as He is just and loving,
all of His plans and purposes must accord with His attributes; and having made
man capable of appreciating these qualities, He will surely be willing to
bestow the information which I desire—information as to how I can best please
and serve Him and as to what His purposes are respecting mankind.
My prayers convinced me the more that there must be a Divine Revelation
somewhere in the world. I thought that I had searched the Bible faithfully and
proved it unreasonable and contrary to every conception I could have of a
Divine Creator and His purposes; hence my eyes turned toward this Eastern land
and your sacred books. I studied them for a time, only to find them far less
satisfactory to my intellect than the Bible I had already cast aside.
I returned to the Bible. I asked myself, Might you not have been prejudiced
when you examined it before?
Although I thought not, I made a fresh investigation, because I felt there must
be a Revelation from the true God somewhere, and because the Bible thus far
gave the best testimony. It, indeed, told of a God of Love, as no other
religious books do; yet its teachings respecting the future of the non-elect
staggered me, for I was sure that they were not Godlike, but the reverse.
Disregarding the Old Testament Scriptures entirely, I began with the New. I
said, Was not Jesus a most wonderful character? Is it not true that "never
man spake like this Man"? Both heart and head answered, Yes!
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His teachings are the noblest found on earth! His example fully comports with
His teachings! I asked, Can I rely upon the evidence? My mind replied, Yes. If
just such men today told you their observations you would believe them
implicitly. These men confessed that they were ignorant and unlearned men,
telling of their own weaknesses in a way that impostors would not do. Their
Message abounds in "good tidings of great joy for all people," and
not merely for their own nationality. My heart began to take courage. I began
to feel that I had found a footing for my faith and that the Bible indeed
differed considerably from the various and conflicting creeds which claimed it
as their support and authority.
However, I suddenly remembered that much of the New Testament is composed of
passages from the Old Testament and comments thereon. Alas! I said, for I
cannot accept the Old Testament Scriptures. But the more I studied the matter
the more convinced I was that if Jesus and the Apostles were at all what they
claimed to be, the Old Testament must be as true as the New—as St. Peter
declared, "Holy men of old spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy
Spirit."—2Pe 1:21.
THE BIBLE HELL IS THE KEY
Then I began a more critical study of the Old Testament; and to my joy, as I
sought, I found; as I knocked the door of Truth opened for me. I found the
Bible teaching very different from what I had supposed it to be, very contrary
to that of all the creeds. The latter, indeed, each and all, contain truths
taken from the Bible, but truths incrusted with various human credulities and
misconceptions—the Bible message as a whole divided amongst many creeds and
made to contradict itself.
To my surprise I found the presentations of the Bible not only more logical
than anything else in the world, but absolutely the only logical presentation
on earth. As interpreted by itself, and not by the creeds and theories
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of the Dark Ages, the Bible tells one beautiful, reasonable, harmonious story,
from Genesis to Revelation. It tells nothing of a fiery hell manned by
fire-proof demons, and supplied with fuel for all eternity, to which Adam and
his race were sentenced on account of sin. On the contrary, it teaches that "the
wages of sin is death."
It tells that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die"; and tells that
Adam sinned and came under this death penalty and that all of his race by the
laws of heredity are subject to frailty, weakness, mental, moral and
physical—and that these have triumphed in a reign of Sin and Death for now six
thousand years. It tells that this death is the death into which Adam and all
of his race go—sheol, the hell of the Bible, for all mankind, good and bad. It
tells that there is no pain or suffering there, no knowledge, no work of any
kind.—Eze 18:4,20; Ro 6:23.
It tells that all, both good and bad, sleep, awaiting the resurrection of the
dead. It tells that man’s death would have been an extinction as complete as
that of the brute beast had God in His Wisdom and Love not arranged for human
redemption and a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust. It
tells that the Divine arrangement whereby God could be just and not repudiate
the rulership of His own Court and yet recover man from the death sentence, was
arranged for. The arrangement was that Jesus, "by the grace of God, should
taste death for every man"; that "as by a man came death, by a Man
also should come the resurrection of the dead; for as all in Adam die even so
all in Christ shall be made alive, every man in his own order."—Heb 2:9;
1Co 15:21,22.
With God "a thousand years are as one day." (2Pe 3:8.) He has
therefore arranged that six of these great Days shall constitute man’s period
of battling with sin and death and that the seventh of these great Days shall
be the Day of Messiah, the Sabbath or Rest Day to the world, in which Messiah,
as the Divine Representative, shall lift up all the willing and obedient,
opening
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their blind eyes, unstopping their deaf ears and causing all to know the Lord,
from the least to the greatest.
"ALL SHALL KNOW THE LORD"
As a result, some will refuse and die the "Second Death"—utter
destruction. No more than a century of trial is to be granted; for we read,
"The sinner a hundred years old shall be cut off"—a child a century
old in sin shall be accursed—to the Second Death. (Isa 65:20.) But all who will
accept Divine favor may then be brought to full, human perfection, similar to
that which Adam enjoyed at the beginning, plus the knowledge of good and evil,
which he lacked.
Of these willing and obedient ones it is written, "Every knee shall bow
and every tongue confess, to the glory of God." Many of the Chinese,
doubtless, will then be bowing before the great King of kings and Lord of
lords, whom then they will know completely; for "the knowledge of the Lord
shall fill the whole earth as the waters cover the great deep." And their
forefathers, whom they reverence, will be there, too; their eyes shall be
opened and their ears unstopped, as it is written, "All the blind eyes
shall all be opened and all the deaf ears shall be unstopped." What a
great reunion time that will be for the Chinese hundreds of millions! Yes, and
still more! As the Scriptures declare, all the families of the earth shall be
blessed similarly with a knowledge of God and with a full opportunity for
restitution to all that was lost in Adam—to all that was redeemed at Calvary.
Do the Chinese say to me, This news is too good to be true? Do they say, No
missionary ever told us of such a gracious God and such a mighty Savior! Had we
heard such a gracious Message it would have attracted our hearts long ago, for
our gods are non-sympathetic—they are great, powerful and vicious! But we
thought as we heard the missionaries’ message that the Christian God must be
even more ferocious than ours, for the awful,
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burning hell of which we have heard through Christians is terrible beyond
anything we heathens had ever heard of before or conjectured for ourselves!
SATAN THE GOD OF THIS WORLD
Alas! my dear friends, I know this very well and the Bible explains the whole
matter. It tells us that we have been believing "doctrines of
demons." (1Ti 4:1.) These vicious doctrines in the past, when more
literally believed than today, led some noble Christian people into most
atrocious conduct.
We are all awaking from this sad condition, thank God! We are emerging slowly
from the darkness of the past. We are in the very dawning of the morning of
Messiah’s Kingdom; which is to bless the world. The rising of the Sun of
Righteousness is to bring the New Day of emancipation from ignorance,
superstition and death. The more awake we become the more clearly do we see the
beauty of God’s Word and the ridiculous inconsistency of things we once
believed.
St. Paul explains to us why Satan strives to put darkness for light and light
for darkness. He explains why Satan represents himself as an angel of light and
endeavors to besmirch the Divine character and to make God the very
personification of wickedness and injustice!
It is a part of his general endeavor to thwart the Divine Plan, to mislead
those who are seeking to know God.
Hearken to the Apostle’s words: "The god of this world hath blinded the
minds of them that believe not, lest the glorious light of God’s goodness, as
it shines in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord, should shine into their
hearts."—2Co 4:4.
In proportion as humanity misconceives God’s character and His Word, in that
same proportion they will shun the Bible and its God, and thus get away from
the faith and hope revealed in the Bible. As I have told you, I had my own
bitter experiences along this line. How I
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thank God for the "eye-salve" and for the glorious vision of the
Divine character and Plan which now stands out so distinctly before the eyes of
my understanding!
GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY
The Gospel of the Bible, the Message of the great God, Infinite in Justice,
Wisdom, Love and Power, is a Message of grace, of mercy, as has emanated from
no other quarter—such as no other religious book in the world presents.
And what else should we expect than that the great Supreme Being would be a
Fountain of grace, of blessing to His dependent creatures. It should not
surprise us, then, to find the Bible clearly teaching that the God of all Grace
has in store for humanity great blessings—"Times of Restitution of all
things spoken by the mouth of all the holy Prophets since the world
began."—Ac 3:19-21.
Another Message should not surprise us; it is the message that was sung by the
angels on the night of Jesus’ birth, "Behold, we bring you good tidings of
great joy, which shall be unto all people"—the thousands of millions of
the Chinese included! It is a joy to me to be permitted to tell this glorious
Message to such as have the ear to hear it. It is a further joy to me that in
the Divine arrangement the time is coming when "all the deaf ears shall be
unstopped" and when the clear knowledge of God’s goodness shall fill the
earth as the waters cover the great deep.—Lu 2:10; Isa 35:5; Hab. 2:14.
God first told this Message of His benevolent designs toward humanity about
thirty-six hundred years ago, when He declared to His friend Abraham, I intend
to bless all the families of the earth, and this shall be done through your
posterity—"In thee and in thy Seed shall the families of the earth be
blessed." The natural seed of Abraham was first developed and instructed,
and consequently uplifted, under a Law Covenant. This arrangement prepared the
natural seed of Abraham more than others of the world’s peoples to receive
Jesus; hence,
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when He presented Himself, and when afterward His Message was proclaimed by His
twelve Apostles, approximately sixteen thousand Jews became His footstep
followers, were begotten of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and after, and thus
became members of the promised Seed.
THE NUMBER IN THE FIRST RESURRECTION
But this number was short of the Divine purpose—"a hundred and forty-four
thousand." (Re 14:1.) Hence, in due time, the Message of grace and the
privilege of becoming members of the Spiritual Seed of Abraham was extended to
one nation after another—to the Jew first, but also to as many as the Lord our
God has called, of every nation, people, kindred and tongue. This
"elect" number of spirit-begotten followers of Jesus will very soon
be completely changed by the glorious First Resurrection, when this mortal and
corruptible shall put on immortality. All those found faithful will be made
partakers of the Divine nature, far above angels, principalities and
powers—associates with the Redeemer. (Eph 1:21.) Then the Seed of Abraham will
be completed and qualified for its great work of blessing the race.
St. Paul declares, "Know ye not that the saints
shall judge the world?" (1Co 6:2) The judging will be in the nature of a
trial or testing, to determine how many of humanity can be helped up to human
perfection and harmony with God and everlasting life, and how many unworthy
will be destroyed in the Second Death. God, who has elected these kings,
priests and judges, has appointed a Day in which they shall rule, bless,
instruct, judge mankind in general. It will be the thousand years of Messiah’s
Kingdom, for "a day with the Lord is as a thousand years."—2Pe 3:7,8.
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