01.01. The Battle on This Planet
Chapter 1. THE BATTLE ON THIS PLANET.
There is a war going on in the universe, beside which the military conflicts of the nations of this earth sink into utter insignificance. As to duration, we observe that our Civil War lasted four years, the Revolutionary struggle eight, the campaigns of Napoleon twelve or fifteen, the Carthaginian and Roman wars several decades of years; but the great contest we speak of as taking place in the universe has been going on without the intermission of a day or hour for thousands of years. As for numbers engaged on either side, one to three million of soldiers would easily cover in a numerical way the combatants in the campaigns of the nations, while in this moral conflict which is raging as described in the Bible and recognized in life, every angel in Heaven, every devil in Hell, and every human being on earth has taken part or is at present doing so.
Then when in addition we notice that its battle fields are worlds; that the fight is not between a man and his fellow simply, but between the creature and his Creator; that the result is everlasting life and blessedness, or eternal death, woe and misery; we see at once how unspeakably this war of the universe transcends in every particular, battles of the kingdoms and nations of this world.
How far into the vast creation of God this conflict has gone we cannot tell. It has touched other orbs according to the Bible, and there seem hints that would point to its presence in still more distant globes.
It is evident from Scripture that the battle is over in one of these three worlds, God having obtained the victory there as he will in all other places where the rebellion has broken out. The sinning angels completely defeated there, are today with their leading Head, simply awaiting God’s time to send them into the Pit, the penitentiary of the universe. The place, where the war existed before our time, is perfectly free now from every enemy of God, and the conflict is transferred to the planet we live in. It has been raging six thousand years, is in every country, city and village, has penetrated every home, and the battle lines rush and fall back, wave and waver, advance and retreat in every human breast. The shot and shells the gasp and groan, the captivity and death, the shout and victory has taken place in every part of the whole round world upon which we live.
God for wise reasons has allowed the fallen angels or devils to take part in an unseen but unmistakably felt way in this strange, sad, bitter and long lasting contest on earth. This very fact of allowing wicked angels to help evil men, in itself shows that He has no fear or apprehension whatever of the final triumph, when the nations that forget God, and all dying in unbelief and disobedience, shall be turned into the Hell that was prepared for the Devil and his angels. The features of this war seem in a certain sense to change as it rages in first one world and then another, or comes moving down the centuries in our own earth. That is, certain great principles and truths have to be defended and reestablished, so to speak. Different doctrines and facts, from God’s existence authority, character and person, down to the least commandment, have to be rescued from alien, perverting, and inimical hands, and not only vindicated and proved, but fixed all the more firmly as well as abidingly in the heart, minds and lives of the moral, intellectual beings the Almighty has made. But whatever is the question, the issue, the struggle, the defiance, the denial or the resistance, it is always a fight against God in some form. The attack is made upon something that God is, or has said or has done. In the first conflict we read of that broke out in another world, we gather from certain lines in the Scripture that it was God’s dominion and rulership that was assailed. In the early portion of our planet’s history the great battle with the nations was not only the authority of God, but the fact that there was only one God. The prophets of Heaven, few in number, met this issue continually as they were confronted with many priests and prophets representing a multitude of gods.
There is but one God is the Old Testament cry from beginning to end! Every true Servant of Heaven, stood for this issue in the face of the idolatry and polytheism of the day. "There is one God" he said, "and beside Him is none other"!
Now let the reader ask himself if this is the question in our day? And at once he must answer, No.
What is the fight now? Certainly not the fact of a divine, exalted person. Every heathen land recognizes a supreme being. The Jews stand for that. The Mohammedans have that truth cried out from the minarets of their mosques by their muezzins twice or thrice every day. Even an infidelity called Deism admits an infinite divine One called God.
What is the fight about now, has been for the two thousand years, and will be, and must be, until the end of time or the close of this earthly probation? Do we need to say to any intelligent Christian, or any thoughtful, observant being, that the battle today is in regard to the person and claims of Jesus Christ? Is He the eternal Son of God? Is He Divine? Is He the Messiah? Is He the second person in the Trinity? Can He forgive sins? Can He sanctify the soul by the baptism with the Holy Ghost? Can He raise the dead? Is He the judge of all the earth? The whole struggle of the last twenty centuries circles about Christ, as to who He is, and what He can do.
It is certainly well to know this in order to fight intelligently and successfully, and in order not to beat the air uncertainly, to waste our ammunition, and really do nothing and get nowhere. It would be pitiful indeed to think we were on Christ’s side, and yet not only be doing nothing for Him, but be actually against Him. For instance, what time and energy are lost in trying to prove that there is a God or supreme being, when this is really not the issue on hand; and when the Bible says that everybody believes the fact but a "fool." That is in view of the manifest, design in creation all around us, to be an atheist, or one who says there is no God, is to be senseless or an idiot! And what is the use of reasoning with idiots? This is not the battle anyhow! The fight is about Christ, His messiahship, divinity, ability to pardon, sanctify, raise the dead, and judge the world. To be in the true war going on we must say yes to all these facts, and stand up for every one of them. If we do not, then we have left or are leaving the battle line.
Hence it is First; that a man who denies the Messiahship of Christ is out of the real contest.
He has been whipped by the other side. He is a captive now in the ranks of God’s enemies, for God is backing up the claims of His Son, and bids men to kiss the Son lest He be angry, and declares that He laughs at and will bring to naught the counsel of the kings against "His Anointed."
Second, when Mohammedanism denies the divinity of Jesus, it, while claiming to be a true religion, is out of the army of God, and actually arrayed against the cause of the Being whom they profess to believe and in whose service they fancy they are.
Third, when Unitarianism declares against the divinity of Jesus Christ, robbing Him of His place in the God-head, they have ceased at once to be on the Lord’s side in the battle that is now going on in the world. For the fight is not now "Is there one God?" that is an achieved victory! But is there a Trinity of persons in this one God, and is not Christ the second person in that Triune God? Hence it is that Unitarianism is no longer in the fight on God’s side, but is in the ranks of His enemies.
Fourth, when Infidelity and what is called the general unbelief of the multitude, say that Christ cannot forgive sins, then all such people by this very statement, and their consequent conduct, range themselves in battle array against the cause of Heaven in this world.
Fifth, when numbers of Christians so-called, declare that there is no second work of grace in which Christ sanctifies the soul, but ascribe holiness to growth and development, to a result of good works, etc., they have surrendered or denied the most important claim of the Son of God, robbed Him of His distinctive glory, and loaned their regiments and brigades to the enemies of the Father and His Son. Fancying they are for God, they are really fighting the cause of God.
Sixth, when Swedenborgianism and other religious schools and followings like them, deny the future resurrection of the body, and the coming day of Judgment, giving the most fanciful, unwarrantable and mystical meaning to the Scripture stating these facts, and which the Father says shall be done by His Son, they have been whipped out of the battle line of truth, and become mixed up with the enemies of the Son of God.
Seventh, when Christians join lodges, fraternities and brotherhoods where the divinity of Jesus Christ is not recognized, where not even His name is in their rituals, then they have virtually given up the very battle which the Father is making for His Son, and has been pressing for the last two thousand years.
Preachers and laymen of different churches who have joined secret societies and brotherhoods, have informed us that the lodge or fraternity was established on a broad basis, viz.: the fact of a supreme divine being and the brotherhood of man. Our reply to them is that the Bible does not teach any such brotherhood, but the contrary. That Christ said of a certain people that they were of their father the Devil, and the Scriptures declare unsaved men to be children of wrath. So that the popular platform talk about the brotherhood of man is mere oratorical gush and moral rot.
Moreover that which they term the broad basis of the lodge’s system is a complete surrender to the side of the enemy, of the person and claims of the Son of God. That which they pronounce a broad platform is so constructed in its so-called breadth as to push Jesus Christ clear of the ground, and leaves Him out of sight and hearing, without worship and without even recognition.
We call their attention to the fact that the "fight" now on, and that must be on until Jesus appears as the Judge of the earth in the mid Heavens, and "His enemies shall become His footstool," is not over the truth that there is a divine supreme being, for all nations and religions agree to that, but the more faith-trying statement and revelation of Heaven that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, and the only Saviour of the World. This is the assertion and contest of a true unfallen Christianity. So that to join a lodge or fraternity with the idea that such a society or brotherhood offers a broader basis than can be found in the Christian Church by the simple recognition of a supreme divine being, is really to give up the "battle," is to deny the Saviour, surrender the claims and rights of Jesus Christ, and actually be found warring against the will and work of the "Supreme Being," who as God the Father, is vindicating and pressing on to final triumph the cause of His Son in this present dispensation. In addition to this when we behold a so-called "Congress of Religions," where Christian ministers sit on the same platform with Jews, Mohammedans, and followers of Buddha and Confucius, and hear the mongrel meeting called by the newspapers, and thoughtless unspiritual church members, an assembly of beautiful fraternity, a public exhibition of Christian unity and love; we are filled with loathing, disgust and horror over the delusion, misconception and misstatement of the sickening affair. Instead of Christian fraternity it is nothing else but downright Christian disloyalty! It is a slap, blow, wound and public insult given to Christ. It is a virtual surrender in a most prominent and conspicuous way of the dignity, divinity and supremacy of Jesus the Son of God. For a Christian minister to sit in fraternal relation in a pulpit or on a platform with Hindoo priests who deny the divinity of our Lord, and by the side of Jewish rabbis, who affirm that our Saviour is a bastard and impostor; is for that same preacher of the gospel or church layman not only to put Christ to a public shame and humiliation, but to bring Him on a level with false saviours and gods, to deny Him, to surrender Him, to give up the real fight of the last twenty centuries and be found on amiable friendly terms with the opposers and enemies of the Son of God. The Congress of Religions and the Lodge occupy the same position in this horrible treason, this traitorship in regard to Jesus, the Son of God, the only Saviour of the world.
God save every reader of these lines from such a broadness and so-called fraternity and catholicity of spirit, that after all its flowery speeches and sentimental gushings is nothing but the denial, the betrayal, the surrender, and downright forsaking of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
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