02.04. The Manufacture of Gods
Chapter 4 THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS.
One of the strange and dreadful powers of men is the ability to make gods for themselves. No matter how ordinary their talents, and unsuccessful their efforts in other directions, here in the deity constructing business they always excel, and from the successful manufacture of one, they can soon turn out "gods many." In fine scorn and irony the prophet addressed an idolatrous people, and said, You take the trunk of a tree, make an image of it, call it God, and then afterwards burning it up, fail to see the silliness and absurdity of the whole proceeding. But this and all other arguments fail to deter idolaters from their god manufacture; so intellectual Greece had thirty-three thousand false deities, military Rome possessed as many, and benighted Africa owned as great a multitude. No tribe, no matter how degraded and poverty-stricken, seems to be poor when numbering their gods. They are legion, and they are of brass, iron, wood, stone, and anything and everything but spirit. In enlightened America we have as many false gods as the countries mentioned ever possessed. Men are still busy making gods. It is true that in this nation men have better conceptions of the Divine Being than the Asiatics and Africans possess; they know that God is a spirit and is not to be constructed in the forms and images which the heathen fashion for themselves.
Nevertheless, all misconceptions of God are idolatrous. All wrong ideas which result in the robbing him of certain moral attributes, or which deny his Will and Word and Work, inevitably make an idol or false God.
It is marvellous to see what impertinent and sacrilegious hands men lay upon the Almighty.
They take from him attributes which belong to him and clothe him with qualities which he plainly disclaims, and which are perfectly alien to his character. The result is of course a false God.
Evidently the God of the Bible does not suit people in America, and so they have gone to work to cut him up, shave him down, and then add a certain worldliness, weakness, and general molluscousness to his character which really brings another false God upon the scene, whom men worship, and whom at last they will find powerless to save.
It is a sickening thought that there are so many Christian congregations in the land today who are worshipping a false Christ. About all some of them have of the real, true Saviour is the name Jesus Christ. That a certain divine man named Christ died on Calvary two thousand years ago is the one fact and truth they start out with, but after that comes in their handiwork in all that remains. Instead of changing their hearts and lives to suit the Holy One of the Bible, they alter him to suit their worldly and sinful lives. So a soft, easygoing, worldly Christ is lifted up in their Church as the object of worship. As a God he is indifferent to the amusements and business life of his followers. He winks at card-playing, theater-going and Sunday traveling. He does not mind white lies, gossip, and various kinds of diversions in the family and church. He is perfectly satisfied that his people come to his temple twice on Sunday, sing him an anthem or two, bow slightly in the pews, and if convenient attend the prayer meeting on Wednesday night. The rest of the week can be spent anywhere and everywhere, it suits them; it is all the same to him.
We have not the shadow of a doubt in our minds that we have churches throughout our country called "The Church of the Redeemer," or "The Church of the Messiah," that if the real Christ, as he is, should walk down its aisles, the congregation would not know him and if he preached a single sermon they would never hear another; and if he persisted in his rebuke they would kill him as certainly as did the Jews.
It is purely an imaginary Christ that many congregations are worshipping. They have manufactured a God to suit themselves. The boundary lines of his salvation have been so run in and out as to allow not only questionable things, but matters forbidden by the Law and the Sermon on the Mount. The Christ of the Bible, demanding a complete consecration, a devoted service, and a rulership without a rival in the heart, is one being, and the one they call Christ who permits compromise, a half-hearted following, and actual sin and worldliness is another person altogether different. The first is the true God, the second is a false one manufactured by the worshipper and unable to save in life, comfort in death or deliver at the Day of Judgment. In our goings about we have often heard the following expression: "My God allows me to do so and so, or this and that." We never heard the speech, but felt that some kind of sin was being covered. In numerous instances the proof was finally given to verify the suspicion. The explanation of the phrase is that the man, being plainly forbidden by the God of the Bible from committing certain things, or acting in various ways, immediately proceeded to make a God for himself who would allow him to do whatsoever he desired. This manufactured deity he calls "his God." Then in due season we hear the words, "My God allows me to play cards," or to "go to the theater," etc., etc.
These gods of course are very diverse, as people do not all favor the same kind of sin; and so they differ and are numerous as well. If a town has a population of three thousand people it is perfectly safe to say there are over one thousand false gods in the community, while a city of a million would have an array of man-created deities that would make the thirty-three thousand idols of Athens look like a corporal’s guard.
It stands to reason that if we would wield a harsh, slanderous tongue, we must be under the necessity of creating a God who will allow this, so that we can in the indulgence of such unkindness and spleen be able to say that our God continues to smile upon and bless us. The God of the Bible is against such words and such a spirit; so the counterfeit deity is struck off, elevated into position, and then, with hands wet with the blood of a brother’s reputation, the deluded man looks upward, while the lips say, "My God allows me to do this," "My God continues to bless and prosper me while I do and say such things."
If a man wants to be divorced from his wife for other than the scriptural cause, he is under the necessity of making a God to let him do it, for the true God forbids it. Hence we do not have to travel far these days to hear a man or woman say, "My God allowed me to get a divorce; and the ground was incompatibility" Another God-maker!
If a person would like to gossip, or repeat evil reports; if he would condemn a fellow-being unheard, and nurse a grudge; he must manufacture a God to permit such a spirit and life, for the true God is against it all. No one need be surprised to hear people, who are well-known to be guilty of these things, stand up in testimony meetings and say that God dwells in their hearts, and they never enjoyed religion more in all their lives than now. The explanation is that a God has been manufactured to suit the unloving, unChristlike life. It is true that their tongue is sharper than a serpent’s tooth, and their conversation is one of abuse, detraction, and slander; yet here comes the stereotyped expression, "My Lord was never nearer and dearer to me than now. He fills me now. He keeps me blessedly all the time." In spite of the bold declaration many of the readers of this chapter will recall how the God of the Bible failed to make his presence felt at this juncture; and how, when the testifier sat down there was a peculiar silence, unctionless, ominous and oppressive.
False gods allow us to retain right eyes and right arms that offend. They grant seats at Jezebel’s table, and most distinguished favors and attentions from the world. They generate no fears, whisper nothing about a coming judgment, but rock the soul to sleep with the nonsensical but soothing doctrine of Final Restoration.
It is dreadful to mark the confusion and horror which comes with the light of the death hour revelation to men who have worshipped gods of their own creation. They find with a sudden and unspeakable shock that they have been adoring fantasies, delusions, and silly imaginations of their own. They find vanishing illusions where they wanted a divine Person, and mental fog where they needed the arm of the Omnipotence.
They compassed themselves with sparks of their own kindling, and now, says the prophet, they lie down in sorrow. They took their own desires to be divine leadings; their personal spleen to be righteous indignation, and their pitiless treatment of their fellow-creatures to be zeal for the Lord. With Christ’s own statement that no one who cast out devils in his name could speak lightly of him, and could not be against him, yet they proceeded to condemn and cast out from their regard and presence all that did not "follow with them," no matter what miracles of grace these same people were performing in Christ’s name. This strange anomaly and contradiction was their religion, and this un-Christlike Christ was their Lord. Of course at death no such God appeared to help and save. The true God had been substituted with a false one, and he was not only powerless to deliver, but being a mere concept, and a vain one at that, he was not even present to comfort, and so the now undeceived soul was left to flounder in darkness and despair in the hour of death.
Better far to serve the true God, though that service cost not only the right eye, and hand and foot, but all of earth beside. What are our members to us if we be cast with them in the Lake of Fire? and what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul? If the reader has a god, he should take it at once to the Bible and see how it compares with the Holy Being revealed there. If dissimilarity exists, and the prodigious blunder has been made of making a God instead of receiving One who never had a beginning, there should be an instant destruction of the idol, the abandonment of the false, and a cleaving now and forever to the one true God, high over all and blessed forevermore. It is infinitely better to discover a great spiritual mistake in life, than in death, when the senses are failing, the mind wandering, devils are assailing, and all the strange, trying and paralyzing sensations attending dissolution sweep like dark billows over the soul.
It would be a dreadful thing in the midst of dying gasps, fading faces, and a receding world, to discover in the last moment of life that we had worshipped a wretched counterfeit, a base imitation, a helpless idol, a God that we ourselves had manufactured.
Alas for the man who has created an imaginary God; served all his life a false God; and dies at last with no God!
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