The transgression and fall of Adam and Eve brought sin and wretchedness upon the human race, and man followed his own carnal desires, and changed God’s order.[1]

Every one should seek to understand the great truths of the plan of salvation, that he may be ready to give an answer to every one who asks the reason of his hope. You should know what caused the fall of Adam, so that you may not commit the same error, and lose heaven as he lost paradise. You should study the lives of patriarchs and prophets, and the history of God’s dealing with men in the past; for these things were “written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” We should study the divine precepts, and seek to comprehend their depth. We should meditate upon them until we discern their importance and immutability. We should study the life of our Redeemer, for he is the only perfect example for men. We should contemplate the infinite sacrifice of Calvary, and behold the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the righteousness of the law. You will come from a concentrated study of the theme of redemption strengthened and ennobled. Your comprehension of the character of God will be deepened; and with the whole plan of salvation clearly defined in your mind, you will be better able to fulfill your divine commission. From a sense of thorough conviction, you can then testify to men of the immutable character of the law manifested by the death of Christ on the cross, the malignant nature of sin, and the righteousness of God in justifying the believer in Jesus, on condition of his future obedience to the statutes of God’s government in heaven and earth.[2]

Introduction

The true introduction is the paragraph above. The paragraph provides the aim of the paper, limits its scope, explains its significance. It promises strength and nobility on condition of concentrated study of the paper’s themes. Then do not read quickly. Do not hurry over the more difficult thoughts. May the “whole plan of salvation” be “clearly defined in your mind.”

Certain questions will be addressed in the paper. But to answer them is not the mission statement of this document. The mission statement is in the true introduction. Nevertheless, being aware of the questions will, for some, trigger one’s attention when he stumbles over a hint or an answer.

Here are some of the questions.

Why do we sin? How has Adam’s sin affected us? What is the relation of depravity to guilt? Was Luther right when he alleged that even his righteous deeds were sin? Can sin be well defined as “essentially a broken relationship with God”? What is the difference between sin and iniquity? Is there a difference between the meaning of sin and the definition of its plural form “sins”? To what extent was Jesus like us in his moral nature? In what manner was He incarnated differently?

Advancing on an inferior force tends to excite soldiers loving plunder and to bore soldiers loving war. Both classes, however, approach an entrenched and better-armed enemy with fear.

Many view the contest between Christ and Satan in terms of a strong man binding a weaker one. Even Jesus used this metaphor. He, the strong man, would bind Satan. Illustrating His own work, Jesus spoke of himself as breaking into the enemy’s home. Christ would spoil Satan’s goods. Unashamed of portraying himself as a mighty thief, the Savior challenged the evil one to defend his property.

The apparently fearless Jesus engaged his foe on earth after expelling him from heaven. Satan trembled. But the plausibility of victory by some dark plot kept Satan from calling a truce or asking for terms of surrender.

The Devil cherished scant hope that he could meet and overcome the Divine Son of God. But four thousand years after Adam’s fall, the human Jesus appeared in a more helpless form than wicked beings had ever imagined he would. Could it be that the Commander of Heaven had so far humbled himself that he might fall prey to temptations?

What about Jesus? Did Jesus fear for the outcome of the controversy? Our gut reaction is “of course not.”

But at Calvary Jesus did, indeed, feel a crushing fear. As we undertake a study that involves a consideration of his human nature we pause here to solemnly meditate on the following statement.

As he felt his unity with the Father broken up, he feared that his human nature would be unable to endure the coming conflict with the prince of the power of darkness; and in that case the human race would be irrecoverably lost, Satan would be victor, and the earth would be his kingdom.[3]

The prospect of such a victory on Satan’s part appeared to evil angels thousands of years earlier. The leader in rebellion inflamed them with his spirit and rallied them to earnest warfare against Christ.

But in the first days of rebellion, in quiet moments, the recently fallen one shuddered. He nearly backed away from the battle on earth before it had started. The decision of other angels to follow his leading moved him to finally brave the consequences.

Satan cast off his feelings of despair and weakness, and, as their leader, fortified himself to brave out the matter, and do all in his power to defy the authority of God and his Son.[4]

His courage failed him briefly during the flood when he feared for his own existence. But a greater dread haunted him long before the fountains of the great deep were broken up.

“When Satan heard that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, he knew that though he had succeeded in depraving human nature and assimilating it to his own, yet by some mysterious process, God would restore to man his lost power.”[5]

That had been the source of his earlier indecision. He “feared that his purposes might be defeated.”[6] He counted on the depravity now pervading the human race to secure to his wicked self the kingdom of earth.

But what does the statement mean that human nature had been “assimilating” to the nature of Satan? Is the nature of man now satanic?

The Fall and Its Consequences

Keeping secrets from the All-Knowing God is pointless. When Adam and Eve were placed in the garden of Eden,

Satan announced his purpose to conform to his own nature the father and mother of all humanity, and to unite them with his own ranks of rebellion. He was determined to efface the image of God from the human posterity, and to trace his own image upon the soul in place of the divine image.[7]

The deceiver understood the malignant nature of sin. If only we did.

When the sinner realizes the aggravated character of sin, the transgression of the law, he will cease to sin.[8]

From the Bible we find several direct results from the sin of Adam. Externally, the ground was cursed “for man’s sake.” Eve was placed in subjection to her husband. Man’s diet expanded to include vegetables. Man was expelled from the garden and so barred from the Tree of Life. It seems that the latter of these consequences was the most significant to Satan. He did not expect, as we might, that sin would lead to a natural death regardless of access to the special plant.

Had man after his fall been allowed free access to the tree of life, he would have lived forever, and thus sin would have been immortalized. But cherubim and a flaming sword kept “the way of the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24), and not one of the family of Adam has been permitted to pass that barrier and partake of the life-giving fruit. Therefore there is not an immortal sinner.[9]

Internally the fall had immediate effects on the nature of Adam. Admitted by all, this fact is yet little understood. Did the five-minutes-since-the-deadly-bite Adam have an evil temper? Was he likely to get sick that evening? Did he overeat that evening? Did he hate God? Love Satan? Was he proud? Was his bodily system beginning to decay? Was his memory weaker than it had been ten minutes earlier? Did God work a miracle, as a punishment for sin, to make his nature corrupt? Did sin work a miracle to make him that way? If corruption was natural, what natural law determined how far and to what extent it would act?

Some results of the fall were natural. Other effects, if they can be called that, were the results of supernatural intervention. The latter will be discussed when we approach the topic of God’s promise to put enmity between the seed of Satan and the seed of Adam.

Adam’s indulgence of appetite brought one change that led to a chain reaction of disasters. Man’s mind was created with two sets of mental organs. The first system, or set of organs, might be called the Will Guidance System. From moment to moment these mental organs would work together to discover and execute God’s will. Ellen White called this system the “Higher Powers” of the mind.

The second system, or set of organs, might be called the Motive and Gratification System. These organs, our desires, appetites, and passions, were created to inform the Will of the needs of the being, and to give man the capacity for enjoying the gratification of those needs. This system has been dubbed the “Lower Powers” of the mind. This has led some to conclude that the system is itself a result of the fall. Not so.

The appetites of our physical nature were given us for important purposes. Kept, as they were at first created, in subjection to reason and to the laws that God made for their regulation, they would have worked only for good.[10]

Eve would have been prompted by per passions to draw nearer to Adam. This motive, a source of thought in the mind, would have been addressed to the higher powers and the will. Conscience, one of the higher organs, would answer “God said man should not be alone.” Reason would concede that two were better than one. The Will, deferring always to the claims of the higher powers, would have moved Eve’s body to approach the man.

God’s order in the nature of man was the essence of God’s image. Reversing this order placed the powers of the mind in a relation to each other that, in practice, rather imitated the mind of Satan than the mind of God. The lower powers were intended, not to subdue the will, but to initiate thought and reasoning. The brief quote that follows the title of this article is a reference to how the fall affected this order.

The transgression and fall of Adam and Eve brought sin and wretchedness upon the human race, and man followed his own carnal desires, and changed God’s order.[11]

When used aright these desires would preserve man’s physical nature by reminding the higher powers to meet physical needs—i.e. to eat from the tree of life. Spiritual desires would have, in a similar fashion, have tended to the development of spiritual health.

Their legitimate action would have prompted health and happiness; but the Creator’s benevolent purpose has been interfered with. By the fall, man was brought into bondage to sin. He lost his moral uprightness and his physical perfection. The appetites and passions that were given to him as blessings were perverted, and became warring lusts, the ministers of death. And so man passed under the dominion of the grave. Sin is the cause of physical degeneration; sin has blighted the race, and introduced disease, misery, and death.[12]

Connected with the reordering of the human nature, with our enslavement to our own desires, are the primary internal results of the fall. The reordering led to:

Bondage to Sin
Moral Degeneration
Death
Physical Degeneration
Disease

This list is not comprehensive. Myriads of miseries might be added. We will explore, in turn, each of these points and its bearing on our moral nature. God placed a limit to the effects of sin. The method required to place that limit is the object of universal wonder.

Jesus Gains for Us the Advantages Possessed by Adam

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represented a great gift from heaven. Its presence in the garden informed the holy pair of God’s confidence in them. Trusted to leave it alone, their human natures longed to prove themselves worthy of the trust. Love forbade transgression.

More than a revelation of confidence, the tree was a gift of probation. Before receiving access to unfallen worlds and to the gift of immortality, man’s loyalty was to be tested.

Our first parents, though created innocent and holy, were not placed beyond the possibility of wrongdoing. God made them free moral agents, capable of appreciating the wisdom and benevolence of His character and the justice of His requirements, and with full liberty to yield or to withhold obedience. They were to enjoy communion with God and with holy angels; but before they could be rendered eternally secure, their loyalty must be tested.[13]

The test chosen was not selected arbitrarily. Man’s freedom, to serve God by following the Spirit or serve self by following passion, determined the nature of the test.

At the very beginning of man’s existence a check was placed upon the desire for self-indulgence, the fatal passion that lay at the foundation of Satan’s fall. The tree of knowledge, which stood near the tree of life in the midst of the garden, was to be a test of the obedience, faith, and love of our parents . . .. They were also to be exposed to the temptations of Satan; but if they endured the trial, they would finally be placed beyond his power, to enjoy perpetual favor with God.[14]

Adam’s sin forfeited probation. His own case became so miserable, so hopeless. At that moment of his greatest need God announced the plan of Christ’s sacrifice. We, Adam’s children, may thank Jesus for not taking our first parents’ advice during that meeting.

“In their remorse and anguish they pleaded that the penalty might not fall upon Him whose love had been the source of all their joy.”[15] “they pleaded to die themselves, or to let them and their posterity endure the penalty of their transgression, rather than that the beloved Son of God should make this great sacrifice. The anguish of Adam was increased. He saw that his sins were of so great magnitude as to involve fearful consequences. And must it be that heaven’s honored Commander, who had walked with him and talked with him while in his holy innocence, whom angels honored and worshiped, must be brought down from His exalted position to die because of his transgression?”[16]

Though Adam protested the plan of salvation, he stood in dire need of the rescue. Before the fall he had great advantages over men living today. With Jesus on the throne of his heart, the unfallen Adam could have answered the claims of the law for perfect holiness. His moral strength, when empowered by the Spirit of God, rendered him invincible except where he could be induced to yield. This is not the condition of the fallen man.

Adam and Eve, when faced with the prospect that they were about to be driven from Eden, pledged to faithfully obey and asked only that they be given a second chance. Angels explained to them why a second trial would be much more difficult than the first.

They entreated to be permitted to remain, although they acknowledged that they had forfeited all right to blissful Eden. They promised that they would in the future yield implicit obedience to God. They were informed that in their fall from innocence to guilt, they had gained no strength, but great weakness. They had not preserved their integrity while they were in a state of holy, happy innocence, and they would have far less strength to remain true and loyal in a state of conscious guilt. At these words the unhappy pair were filled with keenest anguish and remorse. They now realized that the penalty of sin was death.[17]

Analysis of this passage reveals two changes that made obedience so much the more difficult. The first of these was “great weakness.” As this had to be announced to them, it is not reason to suppose that the weakness was physical in nature. The nature of the weakness was the derangement of the faculties of the mind. Without conscience at the helm of the will, man was incapable of resisting temptations.

And though they might choose loyalty again, their “conscious guilt” would sap their steadfastness. While aware of their condemnation and its justice, hope could present no reason to remain true to their commitment. Choosing to do right in face of hopelessness was more than could be expected from re-ordered faculties of the fallen human mind.

Here intelligent beings might ponder well that forgiveness alone, however costly it might be, could not undo the mess that Adam inaugurated. The reclamation of his offspring would require simultaneous solutions to the four-fold problem of forfeiture, guilt, weakness, and derangement.

In the first case, God granted Adam and his posterity a second probation.[18] This required a promise that the death of Jesus would satisfy justice. The consciousness of condemnation, otherwise expressed as guilt, and its incumbent hopelessness, was a more complex problem.

Saving man from weakness, derangement, and hopelessness involved perilous risk. The method of this grace will occupy the remainder of this essay. In summary, Jesus came as a second Adam and placed mankind on “vantage ground.”[19] His life stood as more than a guarantee to justice.

Jesus came as Hope.

But to be Hope, Jesus had to be like man in ways that seemed to make holy living hopeless. More than that, He had to overcome while under the crushing disadvantage of conscious guilt. On the first point we read:

Because man fallen could not overcome Satan with his human strength, Christ came from the royal courts of heaven to help him with His human and divine strength combined. Christ knew that Adam in Eden with his superior advantages might have withstood the temptations of Satan and conquered him.[20]

The advantages of Adam included divine power operating in his system. He was built for that. It also included access to the light and love of God that, manifested throughout the garden of Eden, warmed the heart and motivating man to devotion. It included personal moral strength derived from the health and right action of the mental faculties.

[Christ] also knew that it was not possible for man out of Eden, separated from the light and love of God since the fall, to resist the temptations of Satan in his own strength. In order to bring hope to man, and save him from complete ruin, He humbled Himself to take man’s nature, that with His divine power combined with the human He might reach man where he is. He obtained for the fallen sons and daughters of Adam that strength which it is impossible for them to gain for themselves, that in His name they might overcome the temptations of Satan.[21]

The Definition of “Sins” and “Sin.”

In its plural form, sin is rather easy to define. Sins are transgressions of the law. Stealing, Lying, Murder are examples of active sins. Hating, Coveting, Lusting are examples of passive sins, violations of commandments 6, 10, and 7 respectively. Not witnessing, not working, not honoring one’s parents are examples of transgression by omission of commandments 6, 4, and 5 respectively.

Exceeding broad in its scope, the law extends its jurisdiction far beyond the bounds of what we call “behavior.” Thoughts and intents (Heb. 4:12) and “every secret thing” among those thoughts will be compared to the law of the Ten Commandments. A question that must be addressed next is whether the law condemns the quality of a man’s moral nature, condemns his poverty of moral worth. These items can not be plural and consequently “sins” are easier to define than “sin.”

Closely related to the idea of sin is the idea of guilt. Most Christian bodies speak of Adam’s sin and its impact on all his children as “original sin.” With most of these, this original sin involves guilt. Perhaps all significant parties confess that we receive guilt from Adam. Because of his sin we are barred from the tree of life. We are appointed to die before the judgement. Such a death, manifestly, can not be the execution of a judgment that has not yet occurred. We die because Adam sinned.

But how have this guilt and its attendant death been passed down? One class maintains that it was a corrupting of the inward soul, and that the creation of each soul at conception involves an inheritance of this rebellion. In this view, the rebellion is itself sinful even before a thought has been formed. The nature is, itself, enmity against God. So man is condemned first, not for thoughts and intentions, but for his relation to Adam.

Adventists, despising dualism, can not buy Calvin’s version of this thought. For decades they bought no version of it at all. But recently the notion has received an Adventist following with the abstract soul being replaced with an equally abstract relationship. Sin, in this mode of thinking, is essentially “a broken relationship.”

There is some evidence that Ellen White viewed sin this way. Guilt follows sin. If we inherit guilt from Adam, it stands to reason that we inherited sin from him in some way. We can not inherit acts of transgression. But we certainly can, and did, inherit an antipathy toward God.

A third class suggests that we receive sin and guilt from Adam in a two-step process. We inherited weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Before we could say “mama” demons had targeted those infirmities and led us to transgression. We were speaking lies at a very early age, perhaps even prenatally.[22] For our transgressions, we suffer as guilty with Adam in choosing rebellion. The two steps are: 1. Inherit weaknesses 2. Commit sins and experience guilt.

Before progression to the arguments urged in favor of the latter two views, we will spend some time considering arguments made by Satan himself. The answers God has arranged lighten our steps as we approach nearer to truth regarding the nature of sin.

Satan’s Arguments

Satan expected more from the fall than reality delivered. Reasoning from Adam’s position as ruler of the world, the deceiver calculated that Adam’s master was, by virtue of that relationship, master of the planet as well. At least this reasoning was the basis of Christ’s third temptation in the wilderness. Jesus contests, not the flow of logic, but the supposition that Adam was the world’s ruler.

When Satan declared to Christ, The kingdom and the glory of the world are delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it, he stated what was true only in part, and he declared it to serve his own purpose of deception. Satan’s dominion was that wrested from Adam, but Adam was the vicegerent of the Creator. His was not an independent rule. The earth is God’s, and He has committed all things to His Son. Adam was to reign subject to Christ. When Adam betrayed his sovereignty into Satan’s hands, Christ still remained the rightful king.[23]

Satan’s tends to take partial truths and to work them into apparently logical expressions – expressions of falsehoods. Unhappily, the consistency of Adam’s children demonstrated their moral weakness. Men, the fallen angel argued, were fully depraved.

After tempting man to sin, Satan claimed the earth as his, and styled himself the prince of this world. Having conformed to his own nature the father and mother of our race, he thought to establish here his empire. He declared that men had chosen him as their sovereign. Through his control of men, he held dominion over the world. Christ had come to disprove Satan’s claim.[24]

So in one partially true sense, Satan did rule the world. Christ attacked Satan’s claim to be sovereign by showing that men had chosen rebellion and had thus forfeited their delegated authority. If man was fully depraved and incapable of perfect loyalty, who could contest the practical truth in Satan’s claim to rule the intelligences of earth?

As the Son of man, Christ would stand loyal to God. Thus it would be shown that Satan had not gained complete control of the human race, and that his claim to the world was false. All who desired deliverance from his power would be set free. The dominion that Adam had lost through sin would be recovered. [25]

God had, Satan alleged, designed a self-serving law. The nature of the law had prompted sinless Adam and Eve to disobey. Their children could do nothing else but disobey. To hold them accountable was cruel. Yet God held them accountable, the devil complained. God was responsible for the curse, for if man’s resources were not sufficient to make perfect obedience possible how could God enforce death as the penalty of sin? Had God created men to judge them for doing what they could not but do?

Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. “In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” Heb. 2:17. If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are.” Heb. 4:15. He endured every trial to which we are subject. And He exercised in His own behalf no power that is not freely offered to us. As man, He met temptation, and overcame in the strength given Him from God.[26]

Ironically, Satan’s accusations placed Satan as the would-be-benefactor of the race.

He had been leading them astray by his false representations of God’s character. Claiming for himself the attributes of mercy, goodness, and truth, he had attributed his own character to God. These misrepresentations Christ knew he must meet in human nature, and prove to be false.[27]

Satan finds promoters for the idea that man is totally depraved. Christ’s sinful human nature provides the key to answering each of these claims. Not recognizing the falleness of Christ’s humanity, false teachers are blinded to heaven’s refutation of Satan’s arguments.

There are persons professing to be ministers of Christ, who declare with the utmost assurance that no man ever did or ever can keep the law of God. But, according to the Scriptures, Christ “took upon himself our nature,” he “was made in fashion as a man.” He was man’s example, man’s representative, and he declares of himself, “I have kept my Father’s commandments.” The beloved disciple urges that every follower of Christ “ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.”[28]

Four Fascinating Statements

When reading the four following statements, one must ask the question, “How could Jesus come in the fallen nature of man and not need a Savior himself?”

Adam sinned, and the children of Adam share his guilt and its consequences[29]

As related to the first Adam, men receive from him nothing but guilt and the sentence of death.[30]

Human nature is depraved, and is justly condemned by a holy God.[31]

The religious services, the prayers, the praise, the penitent confession of sin ascend from true believers as incense to the heavenly sanctuary, but passing through the corrupt channels of humanity, they are so defiled that unless purified by blood, they can never be of value with God. They ascend not in spotless purity, and unless the Intercessor, who is at God’s right hand, presents and purifies all by His righteousness, it is not acceptable to God. All incense from earthly tabernacles must be moist with the cleansing drops of the blood of Christ. He holds before the Father the censer of His own merits, in which there is no taint of earthly corruption.[32]

My own first exposure to these four statements brought surprise. Having been exposed to faulty quotations previously, I actually doubted the veracity of one of them. But they are real and exist as you read them above. My suspicion to the contrary arose from a familiarity with so many statements apparently contrary to these. This larger body of statements and their bearing on understanding the truth in these four will be the subject of the next few sections.

Corruption as Result of Past Personal Sins

God addressed a string of interesting questions to the Jew’s. If a man that is clean touches an unclean item, does the unclean item become clean? They answered “no.” What if an unclean man touches a clean item? Does the item become unclean? They answered “yes.” Corruption is a one-way street. No volume of cleanliness is sufficient to be combined with a small amount of corruption and to produce purity.

In like manner, when a man has once broken the law his life is hopelessly corrupted. No amount of subsequent right-doing can suffice to purge away the single wrong. He could never approach God with an offering without a covering for his past record.[33]

The corruption caused by sin is, however, more than a record in heaven. The sins we commit are, Jeremiah says, written with a pen of iron. They are represented as engraved in the horns of the altar of the sanctuary. In Daniel we find that the sanctuary does contain a record of sins, and this record is in books. Just as the presence of blood on the altars determined the fate of the sinner, so the judgment evaluates sinners in relation to the covering of their sins with Christ’s blood.

Beyond the record in heaven, cleansed in the ongoing course of end-time events, Jeremiah speaks of a record closer to home. They are engraved in “tables of their hearts.” It is “sins” that are written there, as opposed to an original “sin.” Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our experience of corruption is how God has made provision for cleaning the table of the heart.

Cleaning away the defilement of sin was the work of the Hebrew sanctuary. The Levitical laws were established to remove varieties of guilt. The sacrifice of Jesus was prefigured by many symbols, and not one was without significance. Without shedding of blood there was no remission of sins, even in type. Sacrifices in Leviticus were established for sins of ignorance, and some for sins of not-thinking. Sins of omission and commission were disposed of through the system.

But there was no sacrifice to atone for a parent’s sin. No rite required the confession of Adam’s fall. Selah.

While Ellen White writes several times about corruption in terms that apply to men in general– men that at some time in the past have been at enmity with heaven– most of her statements reserve the various forms of the word for a narrower purpose. She uses it much as we would in the sentence “that man is corrupt.” In this wider context corruption can be avoided and reversed, inherited and cultivated.

The statements on inherited corruption shed light on the nature of the first fall. They point out a modern analogue or model that can help us understand the change that came to man’s nature through sin.

As a rule, every intemperate man who rears children transmits his inclinations and evil tendencies to his offspring; he gives them disease from his own inflamed and corrupted blood. Licentiousness, disease, and imbecility are transmitted as an inheritance of woe from father to son and from generation to generation, and this brings anguish and suffering into the world and is no less than a repetition of the fall of man.[34]

What does the intemperate man pass on to his children? Inclinations and evil tendencies. This model, Ellen White reveals, is not some lesser legacy than that passed on by Adam.

But an inheritance of inclinations and tendencies is not, itself, “corruption” under either of the definitions Ellen White uses for the word. Such an inheritance would need to be acted on, nourished if you will, before becoming “corruption.” The inheritance only tends to corruption. A stamp of character constitutes the genetic gift.

Parents give the stamp of character to their children. Children that are born of these parents inherit qualities of mind from them which are of a low and base order. Satan nourishes anything tending to corruption.[35]

By this formula, a man that has been changed by the grace of God and has been a partaker of the Divine nature, is no longer corrupt. He possesses the graces of God’s Spirit. His corrupt nature has been uprooted. To secure such a man Satan would be at pains to plant that corrupt nature anew.

Will you permit him to steal from you the graces of the Spirit of God, and plant in you his own corrupt nature? or will you accept the great provision of salvation, and through the merits of the Infinite Sacrifice made in your behalf, become a partaker of the divine nature?[36]

The two definitions of corruption found in Ellen White’s writings might be summarized as debtor corruption and nature corruption. A concrete understanding of both will smooth our sailing into the next section.

Once we have sinned we are debtors to the law. Were our characters ever so pure, our natures ever so elevated, were we raised incorruptible, yet it would remain true that, without the covering of Christ’s righteousness, that one sin would forever bar our entrance into heaven. Debtor corruption is illustrated by the records of our life made in the books of heaven.

A man that has submitted to the control of his tendencies to evil and has thus cultivated a propensity for sin has corrupted his life. The disorganized faculties of his mind, with the will serving the appetites and passions, constitute a corrupt nature.

This corruption can grow to horrible proportions. Unlike debtor corruption, it is transmitted from generation to generation as an inheritance of tendencies that soon bloom, by consent of the will, into new harvest of corrupt natures.

This latter definition, nature corruption (by inheritance of character), may well be called “depravity.” In the following passage we find how Ellen White understood the relation between these words. In short, when corruption has not been expelled, human depravity remains.

Those who are enamoured of this religion of fancy[37] do not relish the idea of destroying the old man with his deeds, and bringing into subjection every rebellious thought to the dominion of Christ. They do not desire to submit themselves to the control of the Spirit of God, which works in the human heart to expel every corruption and to establish vital principles of virtue, temperance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and Christlike love.

Yet those who receive the Spirit of God, though they were dead in trespasses and sins, will experience the active working of that power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The vital power of the Holy Spirit will raise up those who realize their helplessness, and who come confessing their sins and believing in Jesus.

All the faculties are to be brought under the control of the Spirit of God . . .. When all the wisdom of the schools, all the accumulations of human ability, are brought to bear upon those who are dead in trespasses and sins, they avail nothing for the reformation of character. Human selfishness remains in all its depravity. The Spirit of God alone can make and keep men pure. Its work upon the soul is represented as bringing life to the dead, and freeing the soul from the slavery of sin, which has brought it under the condemnation of the law, where wrath and tribulation fall upon every evil doer.[38]

Depravity and Corruption as Unregenerate Activity

Ellen White’s use of the word depravity differs significantly from the use of the word by Calvinists. Non-Calvinists do not tend to speak much about depravity. As a result, the Calvinistic use of the word dominates the theological world.

This means that when an old lady says “that man is depraved” she means something somewhat different by the word than her recently graduated parson. To her, only the unconverted lust-serving man is depraved. To him, saints and sinners share human depravity.

Ellen White used the common man’s definition rather than that of the school men.

Self is difficult to conquer. Human depravity in every form is not easily brought into subjection to the Spirit of Christ. But all should be impressed with the fact that unless this victory is gained through Christ, there is no hope for them . . .. By His assisting grace, all evil temper, all human depravity, may be overcome.[39]

[Christians] will not bring human depravity into things small or great. They will do nothing to perpetuate division in the church.[40]

One thing I wish you to understand, that I have not been in harmony with the expelling of students from the school, unless human depravity and gross licentiousness make it necessary, that others shall not be corrupted.[41]

We read earlier that Satan has worked to plant his nature in men. Jesus had something to say about what he would do about that implanted depravity.

Jesus said “I will summon every heavenly power. Angels that excel in strength shall unite with humanity, sanctified to my service to uproot evil. The depravity of man requires all this expenditure of heavenly power, that man may be sanctified through the grace of God. Jesus said, “I will redeem my people from the earth. The perishing shall be rescued.”[42]

Ironically, the depravity that theologians consider to be universal in its scope is limited by the prophet to working in the personal experience of those “that remain voluntarily and fearfully in the dark.”

When you see your great spiritual lack you will realize the fact that human depravity, specified in the word of God, is true in your experience. You are both pharisaical, and are in danger of remaining voluntarily and fearfully in the dark in regard to your dangers and your true standing before God.[43]

Depravity, when allowed to bear sway over little things, deepens. When allowed full liberty it comes to despise restraint. It is the force of the corrupt nature and becomes a predictor of what will happen in a time of testing.

You are so situated in your responsible position that you must necessarily meet all classes of people with all kinds of characters. It is any wonder that you shall very often meet professed Christians who are inconsistent in practice? The force of a corrupt nature, allowed full liberty over the little things, shall, when brought to the point of decision against inclination, disdain all restraint, and claim entire independence.[44]

The whole world is verily condemned. Is it because they are transgressors? Or because they are the children of transgressors? They lost Eden for the latter reason and heaven for the former.

It is by grace that the sinner is saved, being justified freely by the blood of Christ. But Christ did not die to save the sinner in his sins. The whole world is condemned as guilty before God, for they are transgressors of his holy law; and they will certainly perish unless they repent, turn from their disobedience, and through faith in Christ claim the merits of his precious blood. The sin of Adam and Eve lost holy Eden for themselves and their posterity, and those who continue to live in the transgression of God’s law will never regain the lost paradise. But through the grace of Christ man may render acceptable obedience, and gain a home in the beautiful Eden restored.[45]

Another evidence of the nature of guilt, that it follows sin rather than heritage, is found in the judgement against Jesus. He suffered, not for the nature of man, but in the nature of man; not for the bent of men’s hearts, but for their evil thoughts, evil deeds, and evil words.

The guilt of every sin pressed its weight upon the divine soul of the world’s Redeemer. The evil thoughts, the evil words, the evil deeds of every son and daughter of Adam, called for retribution upon Himself; for He had become man’s substitute.[46]

Laws of Heredity

Deep in the Ten Commandments are gems of thought that illumine today’s controversies. An example can be found in the second commandment where we read of “mercy shown to thousands of them that love [God] and keep [His] commandments.”

Examining the sentence, a searching soul would find, to the following questions, the following answers: Do commandment keepers deserve heaven? No, they need mercy. Do lovers of God receive mercy? Yes, if they keep the commandments. Do commandment keepers receive mercy? Not if they have a formal or legal religion. Love is essential.

So as soon as there was a written law there was a written presentation of the saved-by-grace-through-an-obedient-and-loving-faith gospel.

In the same commandment we find the first Biblical enunciation of the laws of heredity. Briefly yet comprehensively the sentence answers questions regarding the impact of transgressions on future generations.

“For the Lord thy God is a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and showing mercy to thousands [of generations][47] of them that love me and keep my commandments.”

God’s jealousy, in hereditary law, signifies that entire obedience is required.[48] God will not bless double-mindedness. Neither the mercy promised to the loving and obedient, nor any other good gift, should be expected by that class.

The laws of heredity play a key roll in answering the questions addressed in this paper. I will adduce one of the most comprehensive of Ellen White statements on the subject.

Yet this [becoming human] was but the beginning of [Christ’s] wonderful condescension. It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man’s nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.[49]

We want to plumb the depths of this paragraph, and to do so by studying the “great law of heredity.” But before broadening our search, let us take a moment to glean something about the law from this statement’s immediate context.

We know that the “results” of this great law can be seen in the earthly ancestors of Jesus. In a simplified note, the results of the law are something that can be seen in history. The law has a visible impact on human life to such an extent that by studying history one may learn to trace effects of the law.

**************

A brief survey of Christ’s human ancestry is informative. David had a moral weakness and took more than one wife. His son Solomon had greater weakness and took a greater number of wives. Solomon, when unconverted, was an exacting king. His son, Rehoboam, inaugurated his brief reign with an announcement that he would be a great deal more exacting than his father.

Abraham lied about his relationship to his wife. His son Isaac did the same, and for the same reason. But more than that, he gave birth to a son whose lying reached the point of deceiving his own father. Jacob tried to turn the order of the birthright by fraud. His son, Joseph, resisted the order of the blessing chosen by his father at the blessing of Ephraim and Manessah.[50]

Upon fathers as well as mothers rests a responsibility for the child’s earlier as well as its later training, and for both parents the demand for careful and thorough preparation is most urgent. Before taking upon themselves the possibilities of fatherhood and motherhood, men and women should become acquainted with the laws of physical development–with physiology and hygiene, with the bearing of prenatal influences, with the laws of heredity, sanitation, dress, exercise, and the treatment of disease; they should also understand the laws of mental development and moral training.[51]

Take encouragement. If the millions of not-yet-parents are here called to understand the laws of heredity, and if they can be understood from examining history, these laws can not be very complex in their operation. Bible history, because it is so concise and so focussed on morality, seems written to aid the study of heredity.

Secular history, which covers either a nation or a war or an era, passes by the likenesses of son to father as expressed in their similarity of moral weaknesses. In the scriptures, these similarities seem to form the basis of inclusion for many of the stories of the patriarchs. Some might see in this interesting circumstantial evidence for the theory that God intended that even young and inexperienced students of scripture understand these things.

Inheritance is an abstraction to most of us. What to our parents give us? Inclinations? Bad habits? Guilt? Weaknesses? A certain human hatred of God? Iniquities or sins?

The law of heredity in the Second Commandment indicates that we receive the iniquities of our fathers, and guilt for those iniquities, and death as a result of that guilt.[52] How iniquities are passed on genetically (or metaphysically) is the subject of hereditary law.

If the nature of heredity allows strong tendencies to be passed on, and if these tendencies were the content of the degeneracy that parents give to their children, we might expect that some would resist and remain unsullied by the inheritance they had received. On the other hand, if actual guilt was passed on despite the compliance of the children, then degeneracy would be unavoidable. In the first case, the cause of future degeneracy would be continued disobedience and transgression. In the latter, it would be the hopeless destiny of the naturally degenerating posterity.

Adam was carried down through successive generations, and saw the increase of crime, of guilt and defilement, because man would yield to his naturally strong inclinations to transgress the holy law of God. He was shown the curse of God resting more and more heavily upon the human race, upon the cattle, and upon the earth, because of man’s continued transgression. He was shown that iniquity and violence would steadily increase; yet amid all the tide of human misery and woe, there would ever be a few who would preserve the knowledge of God, and would remain unsullied amid the prevailing moral degeneracy. Adam was made to comprehend what sin is–the transgression of the law. He was shown that moral, mental, and physical degeneracy would result to the race, from transgression, until the world would be filled with human misery of every type.[53]

Again, if the guilt we inherit from Adam is the guilt of his transgression, then the laws of heredity would have corrupted Jesus. On the other hand, if we share the guilt of Adam because we share with him the personal experience of transgression, then Jesus could have submitted to the laws of heredity without accruing personal guilt.

In the latter case everything depends on the action of the will. By our will we chose to join Adam in transgression and by our will choose to flee to Christ for freedom from transgression.

We have reason for ceaseless gratitude to God that Christ, by his perfect obedience, has won back the heaven that Adam lost through disobedience. Adam sinned, and the children of Adam share his guilt and its consequences; but Jesus bore the guilt of Adam, and all the children of Adam that will flee to Christ, the second Adam, may escape the penalty of transgression. Jesus regained heaven for man by bearing the test that Adam failed to endure; for he obeyed the law perfectly, and all who have a right conception of the plan of redemption will see that they cannot be saved while in transgression of God’s holy precepts. They must cease to transgress the law, and lay hold on the promises of God that are available for us through the merits of Christ.[54]

By the theory being advocated in this paper, our inheritance from Adam includes wrong tendencies, perverted appetites, and debased morals, as well as physical disease and degeneracy in cases where the parents are not loving and obeying God. The law of heredity speaks of the hatefully disobedient particularly.

“Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me.” It is inevitable that children should suffer from the consequences of parental wrongdoing, but they are not punished for the parents’ guilt, except as they participate in their sins. It is usually the case, however, that children walk in the steps of their parents. By inheritance and example the sons become partakers of the father’s sin. Wrong tendencies, perverted appetites, and debased morals, as well as physical disease and degeneracy, are transmitted as a legacy from father to son, to the third and fourth generation. This fearful truth should have a solemn power to restrain men from following a course of sin.[55]

Why do children suffer for the consequences of their parent’s sins? In other words, why do we suffer for Adam’s sin? Because “it is inevitable.” Here we find an insight into the nature of God’s law. God did not mean, in the threatening of the second commandment, that he would arbitrarily curse children for their parent’s sins. But while parents pass on a deranged moral system (with the lower powers in ascendency) it is inevitable that unconverted children will imitate the example of their parents.[56]

“This fearful truth should have a solemn power to restrain men from following a course of sin.” I have witnessed the truthfulness of this inspired assertion. And this statement is not the only one of its kind. A grasp of this part of the commandments should move men to obey the rest.[57]

As noted in the last quotation, wickedness is passed from generation to generation by “inheritance and example.” Do not underestimate the power of example in enforcing the law of heredity. Children grow up from infancy, nay, from times prenatal, forming characters under the shadow of their parents. They watch their parents daily year after year and it can be no wonder that the law of beholding (as found is 2 Cor. 3:18) would mold their minds.

God did not mean in this threatening [of the Second Commandment] that the children should be compelled to suffer for their parents’ sins, but that the example of the parents would be imitated by the children. If the children of wicked parents should serve God and do righteousness, he would reward their right-doing.

But the effects of a sinful life are often inherited by the children. They follow in the footsteps of their parents. Sinful example has its influence from father to son, to the third and fourth generations. If parents indulge in depraved appetites, they will, in almost every case, see the same acted over in their children. The children will develop characters similar to those of their parents; and unless they are renewed by grace, and overcome, they are truly unfortunate. If parents are continually rebellious, and inclined to disobey God, their children will generally imitate their example.

Godly parents, who instruct their children by precept and example in the ways of righteousness, will generally see their children following in their footsteps. The example of God-fearing parents will be imitated by their children, and their children’s children will imitate the right example their parents have set before them; and thus the influence is seen from generation to generation.[58]

When the children of rebellious parents are brought into the world, the curse mentioned in the Second Commandment works three ways.

Children are born with their passions in a position to overpower their conscience
Children are born into a family where example leads them astray
Children make their own choices based on items one and two, and these react on their character.

The second and third points extend the curse beyond the realms of heredity, for our neighbors will also behold our example.

Their neglect to cultivate their children in righteous ways will not only be the ruin of their own families, but the wrong principles they inculcated in them, bear fruit in other lives, and are transmitted from parent to child to the third and fourth generation. There will be a harvest to be gathered that will be hard to be reaped. The irreligious practices of the children produced effects in their own characters and in the characters of others, and instead of being a blessing in the world, they became a curse.[59]

Cultivating a debased character requires neither thought nor attention. It is very natural. To cultivate a righteous character, either in one’s self or in his children, requires all the effort men can make. Each child requires individual attention. If we have more children than we have time and energy to train in righteousness, we break the spirit of the Second Commandment.[60] Our lack of training affects our own neglected children, and their character affects the family’s associates.

By injuring our neighbor we break the last six commandments. Having children who, by our neglect, will be a drain on the race is unchristian. These parents break the law.[61] The same could be said for parents with particularly weak morals or with debilitating mental or physical diseases that are likely to be passed on genetically. Can these have children without being unkind?

Those who increase their number of children, when if they consulted reason, they must know that physical and mental weakness must be their inheritance, are transgressors of the last six precepts of God’s law. . . . They do their part in increasing the degeneracy of the race and in sinking society lower, thus injuring their neighbor. If God thus regards the rights of neighbors, has He no care in regard to closer and more sacred relationship? If not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, will He be unmindful of the children born into the world, diseased physically and mentally, suffering in a greater or less degree, all their lives? Will He not call parents to an account, to whom He has given reasoning powers, for putting these higher faculties in the background and becoming slaves to passion, when, as the result, generations must bear the mark of their physical, mental, and moral deficiencies?[62]

Realizing the impact of our family government on our neighbors, Christians should study. We should concern ourselves with all that can be known about raising righteous children. To quiet their consciences some might object that even the children of godly parents are wayward. If they can not raise an upright son, how can anyone else be expected to? They excuse their deficiency.

Those who realize their deficiency in a matter which concerns the happiness and usefulness of future generations, should make the subject of family government their most diligent study. As an objection to this, many point to the children of ministers, teachers, and other men of high repute for learning and piety, and urge that if these men, with their superior advantages, fail in family government, those who are less favorably situated need not hope to succeed.

The question to be settled is, Have these men given to their children that which is their right–a good example, faithful instruction, and proper restraint? It is by a neglect of these essentials that such parents give to society children who are unbalanced in mind, impatient of restraint, and ignorant of the duties of practical life. In this they are doing the world an injury which outweighs all the good that their labors accomplish.[63]

Intemperance in sexual (sensual) activity costs something. Not only does it increase the likelihood of an unplanned pregnancy, but it leads to a hereditary gift of sensual intemperance.[64]

Heredity and the Degeneration of the Race

Earlier we considered an interesting modern analogue to the fall of man—the effects of intemperance in the laws of heredity. Here is the statement again.

In 1878 the Health Reformer printed at article giving a more detailed description of the same analogue. In the following extract from the article Ellen White explains the means by which the race degenerates. She comments on how tendencies practiced become propensities, or bad habits. And these propensities, passed on as stamps of character, become “second nature” to those who continue indulging them. In the unconverted the race is fearfully weakened from one generation to another. Emphasis below is supplied.

Parents who freely use wine and liquor leave to their children the legacy of a feeble constitution, mental, and moral debility, unnatural appetites, irritable temper, and an inclination to vice. Parents should feel that they are responsible to God, and to society, to bring into existence beings whose physical, mental and moral characters shall enable them to make a proper use of life, be a blessing to the world, and an honor to their Creator.

The indulgence of perverted appetite is the great cause of the deterioration of the human race. The child of the drunkard or the tobacco inebriate usually has the depraved appetites and passions of the father intensified, and at the same time inherits less of his self-control, and strength of mind. Men who are naturally calm and strong-minded not infrequently lose control of themselves while under the influence of liquor, and, though they may not commit crime, still have an inclination to do so, which might result in the act if a fair opportunity offered.

Continued dissipation makes these propensities a second nature. Their children often receive this stamp of character before their birth; for the appetites of the parents are often intensified in the children. Thus unborn generations are afflicted by the use of tobacco and liquor. Intellectual decay is entailed upon them, and their moral perceptions are blunted.

Thus the world is being filled with paupers, lunatics, thieves, and murderers. Disease, imbecility, and crime, with private and public corruptions of every sort, are making the world a second Sodom. For the sake of that high charity and sympathy for the souls of tempted men for whom Christ died, Christians should come out from the popular customs and evils of the age, and be forever separated from them.

But we find in the clergy themselves the most insurmountable obstacle to the promotion of temperance. Many are addicted to the use of the filthy weed, tobacco, which perverts the appetite, and creates the desire for some stronger stimulant.[66]

When we learn how the race degenerates and falls in the scale of moral worth, we will have a tool for evaluating the nature of the impact Adam’s sin had on his children. The fact is that we have learned something about this already. But the data on degeneration throws even more light on the subject.

The facts in this case reveal something of the content of Christ’s condescension. What degeneration did to mankind, its plague did the same to Jesus.

What a contrast the second Adam presented as He entered the gloomy wilderness to cope with Satan single-handed. Since the fall, the race had been decreasing in size and physical strength, and sinking lower in the scale of moral worth, up to the period of Christ’s advent to the earth. In order to elevate fallen man, Christ must reach him where he was. He took human nature, and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He humiliated Himself to the lowest depths of human woe, that He might be qualified to reach man and bring him up from the degradation in which sin had plunged him.[67]

Not all that Cain and Seth received from Adam was negative. There was a reason for the longevity that characterized the race for the millennium following Adam’s death. The antedeluvian lifespan contrasts sharply with that of the race in Christ’s time. The Spirit of Prophecy explains that if Adam had not passed on such a vibrant constitution, one so full of life, that disease would have, ere this, brought mankind to extinction.

In Christ’s day, and ours, the dissolution of the human body has progressed so far that even infants are plagued and subject to mortality. There is no record of any such event as a natural infant death during the first half of earth’s history. By the time of Christ’s appearance, paediatrics had joined the list of needed medical specialities. Children were sick.[68]

Still more deplorable is the condition of the human family at the present time. Diseases of every type have been developed. Thousands of poor mortals with deformed, sickly bodies and shattered nerves, are dragging out a miserable existence. The infirmities of the body affect the mind, and lead to gloom, doubt, and despair. Even infants in the cradle suffer from diseases resulting from the sins of their parents.[69]

The cause of this “deplorable” “condition of the human family”, as pointed out by the prophet, confirms the thesis of this paper. The indulgence of appetite has been both the origin and the continued source of moral pollution in the world. Our Father in heaven made choice of a fruit tree as the medium of choice for testing our parents. He had given our parents every fruit tree as a source of food. Meditate a few moments on the fact that the whole test was designed, before the fall, on the ground of the relation of the higher to the lower powers.

The holy desires of Adam and Eve, for food, for human companionship, for intellectual growth, were placed in contradiction to the higher powers of their nature. Their belly and their conscience were to collide over their relation to the tree. The nature of the contest exalts the power of temperance to prevent moral decline. Self-indulgence degrades.

It was through the temptation to indulge appetite, that Adam and Eve fell from their holy and happy estate. It seemed a small matter to our first parents to transgress the command of God in that one act–the eating from a tree that was so beautiful to the sight, and so pleasant to the taste; but it broke their allegiance to God, and opened the gates to a flood of guilt and woe. And it is through the same temptation that the race have become enfeebled. Since the first surrender to appetite, mankind have been growing more and more self-indulgent, until health has been sacrificed on the altar of appetite. The inhabitants of the antediluvian world ate and drank till the indulgence of depraved appetite knew no bounds, and they became so corrupt that God could bear with them no longer. They filled up the cup of their iniquity, and by a flood He cleansed the earth of its moral pollution.[70]

When appetite bears sway over reason, men underestimate their danger. They flatter themselves that such a trifling sin as eating could not be punished with much severity. Their moral senses are blunted. They fail to discern in disease and misery an effect that has followed hard on the cause. Indulgence is the cause and decay—the result.

Yet the fruit of the forbidden tree appeared more desirable to her than the fruit of all the other trees in the garden of which she could freely eat. She was intemperate in her desires. She ate, and through her influence, her husband ate also, and a curse rested upon them both. The earth also was cursed because of their sin. And since the fall, intemperance in almost every form has existed. The appetite has controlled reason. The human family have followed in a course of disobedience, and, like Eve, have been beguiled by Satan to disregard the prohibitions God has made, flattering themselves that the consequences would not be as fearful as had been apprehended. The human family have violated the laws of health, and have run to excess in almost everything. Disease has been steadily increasing. The cause has been followed by the effect.[71]

Discounting the Degradation

“Man can not obey.” That has been Satan’s theme. To bolster that claim he developed the arguments mentioned earlier in this paper. His work has been to make these prominent—especially the argument that the race is so depraved that they can not possibly be expected to obey.

Christ has taken the lead in discounting the degradation of the race. Through his own life, and by that of his faithful followers in the last crisis, He shows that men weakened as they are, and loaded with feelings of guilt and worthlessness, may be men still. They may yield to the claims of conscience and bring their appetites back into subjection.

The stigma resting on human nature Jesus removed by representing that nature in the theatre of the universe. Men and angels may see that humanity, combined with Divinity, conquers temptations.

Ellen White addressed these issues in a letter to the captain of Adventism’s missionary boat—the Pitcairn:

Christ is the Son of God in deed and in truth and in love and is the representative of the Father as well as the representative of the human race. His arm brought salvation. He took humanity, was bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and submitted to all the temptations wherewith man would be beset. He showed in the great controversy with Satan that He was fully able to remove the stigma and discount the degradation of sin which Satan had placed upon the human family. By taking humanity and combining it with divinity, He was able to meet every demand of the law of God, to overcome every objection which Satan had made prominent, as standing in the way of man’s obedience to God’s commandments.[72]

The objections that stand “in the way of man’s obedience” men may inadvertently revive. To make an issue of the fact that Christ was divinity clothed with humanity, as if His divine nature helped him in some way that it can not help us, undermines the work of Christ. To speak of his person as though he was not crippled by the ailments, the habiliments, that rest on other men, echoes Satan’s prominent theory.

Who would dare present the case in such a way as to remove the objection to sin because Christ clothed His divinity with humanity! Christ spoke in human nature. The divine and the human were united. Those who are following the will of Christ will have messages condemning sin and exalting righteousness, but always condemning sin.[73]

Never was the Son of God more beloved by his Father, by the heavenly family, and by the inhabitants of the unfallen worlds, than when he humbled himself to bear disgrace, humiliation, shame, and abuse. By becoming the sin-bearer, he lifted from the human race the curse of sin. In his own body he paid the penalty of that on which the power of Satan over humanity is founded–sin.[74]

Perhaps many have clouded the issue of Christ’s nature by advocating something very near the truth. To say that Christ had not advantage over men born today is vague. Even men have advantages over men, depending on the circumstances of their birth. These differences are no mean triviality. We have seen already that children may inherit almost unimaginably strong and perverted appetites. They may inherit very little power of self-control. The worst cases are so mentally or morally ill as to be closer to the “brutes” than to their fellow men.

The truth would better be stated “Christ accepted no advantage that men may not gain by partaking of the Divine nature.” Never was it the work of Jesus to prove that men alone could do something well. Rather, he showed what they, with the faculties heaven has provided them, might accomplish by the power of God.

After the fall of man, Satan declared that human beings were proved to be incapable of keeping the law of God, and he sought to carry the universe with him in this belief. Satan’s words appeared to be true, and Christ came to unmask the deceiver. The Majesty of heaven undertook the cause of man, and with the same facilities that man may obtain, withstood the temptations of Satan as man must withstand them. This was the only way in which fallen man could become a partaker of the divine nature.[75]

The book of Hebrews describes the nature of Jesus in words like these, “took on him the seed of Abraham,” [Heb. 2:14-] .. [“took flesh and blood, he likewise took part in the same.”]

Our bodies are corruptible. They will never enter heaven without an extreme change.[76] They die and turn to dust…rather than burn and turn to ashes. This was the curse that came upon Adam as a result of sin and Jesus bore that curse in his body. His corpse was spared from rotting only by his self-resurrection. “You will not suffer your Holy one to see corruption,” David prophesied. Yet the corruptible flesh and blood of Jesus carried with it no guilt of its own.

Arguments from Reversal

The truth regarding human nature differs from most evangelical positions. By way of contrast, the latter hold that human depravity and corruption to be intrinsic to man in his unglorified state. The former proclaims that much of what sin has done to degrade the race may be undone by the gospel even now.

If this assertion be proved, it demonstrates that Christ may indeed have come just as we may become. He may have taken our nature without partaking in the depravity and corruption that need not be part of it.

Sin degraded men physically, mentally, and morally. Marriage was given to ennoble man in the very ways that sin degraded him.

“Marriage is honourable”; it was one of the first gifts of God to man, and it is one of the two institutions that, after the fall, Adam brought with him beyond the gates of Paradise. When the divine principles are recognized and obeyed in this relation, marriage is a blessing; it guards the purity and happiness of the race, it provides for man’s social needs, it elevates the physical, the intellectual, and the moral nature.[77]

The first step in reversing the damage done by sin includes making man aware of his corruption.

Christ must be brought into your life. He alone can cure you of envy, of evil surmising against your brethren; He alone can take away from you the self-sufficient spirit that some of you cherish to your own spiritual detriment. Jesus alone can make you feel your weakness, your ignorance, your corrupt nature. He alone can make you pure, refine you, fit you for the mansions of the blessed.[78]

Our bodies are the root of our problems. Their desires and passions cry for indulgence. The thoughts of self-gratification they urge upon our mind are to be expelled. This can be done. Done repeatedly, it is the undoing of the work of corruption.

The lower passions have their seat in the body and work through it. The words “flesh” or “fleshly” or “carnal lusts” embrace the lower, corrupt nature; the flesh of itself cannot act contrary to the will of God. We are commanded to crucify the flesh, with the affections and lusts. How shall we do it? Shall we inflict pain on the body? No; but put to death the temptation to sin. The corrupt thought is to be expelled. Every thought is to be brought into captivity to Jesus Christ. All animal propensities are to be subjected to the higher powers of the soul. The love of God must reign supreme; Christ must occupy an undivided throne. Our bodies are to be regarded as His purchased possession. The members of the body are to become the instruments of righteousness.[79]

The position of those that return to commandment-keeping in the future will reveal tendencies wholly at conflict with humanities deep-seated hatred against God. The contrast will prompt men to accuse the faithful among their brethren as traitors against the government of earth.

The hostility to heaven will go on to still greater lengths. War, bloodshed, rebellion against God’s law, will reach an aggravating pass that many do not think possible. So deep and increasingly strong is the infernal enmity and hatred to God, which has struck deep its roots into human depraved hearts throughout the mass of humanity, that anyone who shall show any inclination to return to God and keep His commandments, will be denounced as treacherous to the governments of earth.[80]

These have escaped the corruption that was in the world. Peter revealed that it was appetite, “lust,” that brought the corruption. And the same apostle pointed to promises as the means by which we might partake of the Divine nature and escape the power of those lusts and the corruption that it brings.

When we are securely anchored in Christ, we have a power that no human being can take from us. Why in this?–Because we are partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust,–partakers of the nature of Him who came to this earth clothed with the habiliments of humanity, that He might stand at the head of the human race, and develop a character that was without spot or stain of sin.[81]

There is wonderful meaning in the words “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, all things are become new.” We have moral tastes, preferences for rebellion or loyalty, that when perverted gravely endanger the soul. Conversion changes these tastes. It makes man into a “good tree” that can be seen by its fruits.

Our experience of regeneration should reflect how we have “learned Christ.” We hear Jesus and are taught by Him to rid ourselves of the “old man” descended from Adam. That old man is corrupt. When renewed in the Spirit of our mind, we are created again in the image of God. The old man was born in sin. The new is “created in righteousness and true holiness.” The heart is changed and from its abundance is to come nothing corrupt.

“But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. . . . Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.[82]

Pride, selfishness, passionate temper, these corrupt fruits grow on the “evil tree.” Man may be transformed into a “good tree” and this itself is high-quality evidence that depravity need not be retained.

The question to ask the soul is, “Am I a partaker of the divine nature, represented as being born again? Has a new moral taste been created? If not, the soul is in deadly peril. He who is born of God is a new man. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” The old imperious will is gone. The pride is cleansed from the soul. Selfishness is uprooted. The quick, passionate temper no longer masters the man; for Jesus Christ has brought the thoughts into captivity to himself.

“Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let no arrogancy come out of your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.” “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.[83]

This change is paramount to removing both inherited and cultivated tendencies to evil. Think of it. What would it mean if God would remove inherited tendencies to evil? It meant a great deal to brother McCullagh.

The Lord loves Brother McCullagh because his soul is precious, but He will never excuse sin. If Brother McCullagh will accept of the working of the Holy Spirit, the Lord will pardon him, He will take away his natural and hereditary tendencies. But God will not compel obedience from any soul. The Lord will work with him, if he will repent and be converted, and will give him His Holy Spirit, which will enable him to overcome and receive the overcomer’s reward.[84]

Our trouble in understanding why Christ had to win the right to live inside of us rests partially on the narrowness of our thinking. We tend to regard the merits of Christ in only legal terms. But the moral value of our Savior’s life is more than a legal credit to cover a man’s sin. Far more than this, his merits infused the race with moral power. Those that depend on his strength may have it. The weakness inherited from our fathers is undone in Christ.

There is help for us only in God. We should not flatter ourselves that we have any strength in wisdom of our own, for our strength is weakness, our judgment foolishness. Christ conquered the foe in our behalf because He pitied our weakness and knew that we would be overcome and would perish if He did not come to our help. He clothed His divinity with humanity, and thus was qualified to reach man with His human arm while with His divine arm He grasped the throne of the Infinite. The merits of Christ elevate and ennoble humanity, and through the name and grace of Christ it is possible for man to overcome the degradation caused by the Fall, and through the exalted, divine nature of Christ to be linked to the Infinite.[85]

Satan understood his situation well. If Christ would withstand his temptations, his tyranny over the race would be doomed to failure and fallen angels doomed to destruction. If he failed to defeat Christ, the example of Christ’s obedience would add power to the race Satan would be too feeble to oppose.

Satan knew that the plan of salvation would be carried out to its fulfillment, that his power would be taken away, that his destruction would be certain, if Christ bore the test that Adam failed to endure. The temptations of Satan were most effective in degrading human nature, for man could not stand against their powerful influence; but Christ in man’s behalf, as man’s representative, resting wholly upon the power of God, endured the severe conflict, in order that he might be a perfect example to us.[86]

Through his transgression Adam lost far more than innocence. His power to control self was forfeited and his natural love for God perished from his heart. This was the work of the fall. By it the image of God was nearly obliterated in man. Our question in this section is whether such damage to our nature can be undone here in this earth.

God said in the beginning, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;” but sin has almost obliterated the moral image of God in man. This lamentable condition would have known no change or hope if Jesus had not come down to our world to be man’s Saviour and Example. In the midst of a world’s moral degradation he stands, a beautiful and spotless character, the one model for man’s imitation. We must study, and copy, and follow the Lord Jesus Christ; then we shall bring the loveliness of his character into our own life, and weave his beauty into our daily words and actions. Thus we shall stand before God with acceptance, and win back by conflict with the principalities of darkness, the power of self-control, and the love of God that Adam lost in the fall. Through Christ we may possess the spirit of love and obedience to the commands of God. Through his merits it may be restored in our fallen natures; and when the Judgment shall sit and the books be opened, we may be the recipients of God’s approval.[87]

If self control may be restored to our fallen nature, then the lusts of that nature may be subdued. But that is not all the same as purifying the nature. Spiritual leaders have perceived something of the depth of our nature’s defilement. Simple reasoning has led them to conclusions that we must partially share. “We see and are compelled to acknowledge human depravity, but we do not need to stop at this conclusion, for through faith in Christ life and immortality are brought to light.”[88] When we neglect to consider the power of the Holy Spirit in the life, we may grossly underestimate the kind of victorious experience available to us. We may fatally misrepresent what man must be and do to be saved.

All human ambition, all boasting, is to be laid in the dust. Self, sinful self, is to be abased, not exalted. By holiness to God in the daily life here below, we are to manifest the Christ-life. The corrupt nature is to become pure and undefiled, subdued, not exalted. We are to be humble, faithful men and women. Never are we to sit upon the judgment seat. God demands that His representatives shall be pure vessels, revealing the beauty of sanctified character. The channel is always to remain unobstructed, that the Holy Spirit may have free course; otherwise, spiritual leaders will gloss over the work that must be done in the natural heart in order to perfect Christian character, and they will present their own imperfections in such a way that they make of none effect God’s truth, which is as steadfast as the eternal throne. And while God calls upon all His watchmen to lift the danger signal, at the same time He presents before them the life of the Saviour as an example of what they must be and do in order to be saved.[89]

Here we may approach another one of our “fascinating statements.” The word “nature” as used in the last several passages refers to elements in man that may be changed—degraded or purified. The word “depraved” as used in paragraphs earlier in the study connotes unregenerate man. “Human nature” when not qualified by “united with Divinity” is code for man in his morally deranged state, his higher powers serving the lower. The words “a new nature” in the next paragraph show that it is man’s personal rebellion apart from Christ that is “justly condemned” rather than his blood relationship to fallen Adam.

Human nature is depraved, and is justly condemned by a holy God. But provision is made for the repenting sinner, so that by faith in the atonement of the only begotten Son of God, he may receive forgiveness of sin, find justification, receive adoption into the heavenly family, and become an inheritor of the kingdom of God. Transformation of character is wrought through the operation of the Holy Spirit, which works upon the human agent, implanting in him, according to his desire and consent to have it done, a new nature. The image of God is restored to the soul, and day by day he is strengthened and renewed by grace, and is enabled more and more perfectly to reflect the character of Christ in righteousness and true holiness.[90]

The nature of human depravity could be summed up this way: It is too weak to obey. That is Paul’s summary. “For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh…” Ro. 8:2.[91] God’s intention was that this might be remedied by providing that nature with “renovating energy.” This is done by a miracle.

Unless man is given the converting grace of heaven, he will have no disposition to oppose Satan’s counsels, and will become the enemy’s willing dupe. It is God alone who puts enmity to sin in the human heart. The Lord gives man a new mind. He causes the conflict that will not submit to Satan’s deceptive reasoning. It is God who makes a conflict where heretofore there has been unity of action. It is the Lord’s purpose that depraved human nature should, through His divine power, be provided with a renovating energy.[92]

The Miracle of Enmity

Lucifer’s statements would have been close to correct regarding the nature of man had the race been left alone to reap their natural harvest. But God promised Satan that the human family would not be abandoned to their vices. Enmity would characterize both camps in the human family, those that served God and those that served their bellies. Jesus reiterated this promise as the purpose of his mission to earth. “I came not send peace, but a sword.”

Without the miracle of Christ’s mission of division, we would be, as a race, thoroughly united in our opposition to God and His throne. The very wording of the promise of enmity against Satan proves that not every member of the race would receive it. The blessings that it brings are reserved for those that accept the gift of enmity personally.

God declares, “I will put enmity.” This enmity is supernaturally put, and not naturally entertained. When man sinned, his nature became evil, and he was in harmony, and not at variance, with Satan. The lofty usurper, having succeeded in seducing our first parents as he had seduced angels, counted on securing their allegiance and cooperation in all his enterprises against the government of Heaven. . . . But when Satan heard that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, he knew that though he had succeeded in depraving human nature and assimilating it to his own, yet by some mysterious process, God would restore to man his lost power, and enable him to resist and overcome his conqueror.[93]

It is the grace that Christ implants in the soul that creates the enmity against Satan. Without this grace, man would continue the captive of Satan, a servant ever ready to do his bidding. The new principle in the soul creates conflict where hitherto had been peace. The power which Christ imparts, enables man to resist the tyrant and usurper. Whenever a man is seen to abhor sin instead of loving it, when he resists and conquers those passions that have held sway within, there is seen the operation of a principle wholly from above. The Holy Spirit must be constantly imparted to man, or he has no disposition to contend against the powers of darkness.

Shall we not accept the enmity which Christ has placed between man and the serpent? . . . We have a right to say, In the strength of Jesus Christ I will be a conqueror.[94]

I find it interesting that the thorough development of Calvin’s view of human nature leads to carnal security. Calvin’s view was Satan’s early view. The evil one was so certain of man’s entire depravity that it led him to the original carnal security. He was sure that he could win the controversy. That faulty feeling of assurance that the Devil persuades men to accept, he felt himself for a brief time. Until he heard the promise of enmity.

When Satan heard the word, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed,” he knew that man would be given power to resist his temptations. He realized that his claim to the position of prince of the newly created world was to be contested, that One would come whose work would be fatal to his evil purposes, that he and his angels would be forever defeated. His assurance of certain power, his sense of security, was gone. Adam and Eve had yielded to his temptations, and their posterity would feel the strength of his assaults. But they would not be left without a helper. The Son of God was to come to the world, to be tempted in our behalf, and in our behalf to overcome.[95]

Division under Adam and Noah – Enmity at Work

Two Righteous men with fallen characters gave birth to three sons each.[96] In each case there were two that grew up to inherit the blessings available through faith in Christ. In each case division was the natural result of the varied choices of the will.

And in none of the cases was the difference in the choices of the will a result of varied inheritance…with some sons inheriting more natural goodness than the rest. In each case the posterity of the three sons, Abel obviously excepted, demonstrated the power of example and inherited tendencies.

Seth was of more noble stature than Cain or Abel, and resembled Adam more closely than did his other sons. He was a worthy character, following in the steps of Abel. Yet he inherited no more natural goodness than did Cain. Concerning the creation of Adam it is said, “In the likeness of God made He him;” but man, after the Fall, “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.” While Adam was created sinless, in the likeness of God, Seth, like Cain, inherited the fallen nature of his parents.[97] But he received also the knowledge of the Redeemer and instruction in righteousness. By divine grace he served and honored God; and he labored, as Abel would have done, had he lived, to turn the minds of sinful men to revere and obey their Creator.[98]

Cain’s fall involved his will at every step. I have italicized verbs in the following paragraph to highlight Cain’s complicity in his own demoralization.

Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam, differed widely in character. Abel had a spirit of loyalty to God; he saw justice and mercy in the Creator’s dealings with the fallen race, and gratefully accepted the hope of redemption. But Cain cherished feelings of rebellion, and murmured against God because of the curse pronounced upon the earth and upon the human race for Adam’s sin. He permitted his mind to run in the same channel that led to Satan’s fall–indulging the desire for self-exaltation and questioning the divine justice and authority.[99]

God cursed Cain after the murder of his brother and Canaan after the sin of Ham. Both curses took in their posterity. In the case of Cain and Seth, one might have expected that their children would be known, Biblically, as Cainites and Sethites. But the record of those early centuries names the children in harmony with the developments in the plan of salvation. Those that inherited the depravity of Adam, that were made in “his image” were appropriately named the sons or “daughters of men.” Those that accepted the miracle of enmity and permitted God to renovate their natures into His image where with equal propriety called “sons of God.”[100]

The prophecy of Noah [regarding his children and their descendants] was no arbitrary denunciation of wrath or declaration of favor. It did not fix the character and destiny of his sons. But it showed what would be the result of the course of life they had severally chosen and the character they had developed. It was an expression of God’s purpose toward them and their posterity in view of their own character and conduct. As a rule, children inherit the dispositions and tendencies of their parents, and imitate their example; so that the sins of the parents are practiced by the children from generation to generation. Thus the vileness and irreverence of Ham were reproduced in his posterity, bringing a curse upon them for many generations. “One sinner destroyeth much good.” Ecclesiastes 9:18.[101]

The promise of enmity made a statement not only regarding the repentant woman Eve, but regarding her seed. The miracle of enmity and the uplift that it brings to humanity tends to lift descendents of the righteous. The children of holy men are miraculously blessed. This is the counter-working of God against the work initiated by Satan to deprave the race. David speaks of the blessing of the chosen seed in the 37^th Psalm.

“How richly rewarded,” in contrast to Ham’s deserts, “was Shem’s respect for his father; and what an illustrious line of holy men appears in his posterity! “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright,” “and his seed is blessed.” Psalm 37:18, 26. “Know therefore that the Lord thy God He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations.” Deuteronomy 7:9.[102]

This is the crowing principle in our study of the Laws of Heredity. Enmity against Satan and power to do right may be inherited through miracle by those that love God and their descendants that chose the same. This law of heredity, embedded in the Second Commandment, required an immense risk on the part of Christ to secure. It is, itself, grace abounding.

How Christ Secured the Gift of Inherited Righteousness for His Children

The relation of Christ’s humanity to his divinity can be but partially understood. The Jews were expecting a divine man to overawe them into belief. Jesus understood this and his love for them made it a “difficult task” for him to “maintain the level of humanity.” “The Jews utterly failed to understand the spiritual connection which identified Christ with both the human and the divine, and gave fallen man a presentation of what he should strive to become.”[103]

The sons of God and the sons of man both trace their lineage to God. The former trace their genealogy directly to heaven. They have been “born” again “not of corruptible seed” but of the Word of God. The latter are the sons “of Adam, who was a son of God.”

If Adam had died immediately for his sin, the hope of his posterity would have died with him. A dead man has no children. Eve’s bite placed mankind on the endangered species list. Adam’s could have brought extinction. Being unborn we would be unsaved. In this sense we were “all dead.” We were doomed to not have life.

When the fallen pair were granted a second chance, it opened a door of hope for their children. In the gift of probation, it was the race that was saved from immediate death.

Adam and Eve were given a probation in which to return to their allegiance; and in this plan of benevolence all their posterity were embraced. After the Fall, Christ became Adam’s instructor. He acted in God’s stead toward humanity, saving the race from immediate death. He took upon Him the work of mediator between God and man. In the fullness of time He was to be revealed in human form. He was to take His position at the head of humanity by taking the nature but not the sinfulness of man.[104]

Paul spoke of the universal work of Christ in granting life to the race. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall men be made alive.” Someone might ask “how is the resurrection related to probation?” In the case of those that are righteous it is easy to reason that they need to be resurrected…although some might question “why do they need to die in the first place?”

The resurrection of the wicked is even more perplexing. A fuller treatment of this question may be found in an article titled “Authority” found in a collection of my articles online.[105] For the purpose of this paper I would suggest that life is not appropriate for sinners. When a sinless being is granted probation, they may live justly until they sin, and then they may die justly.

But when a sinful being is granted probation, the moments that he spends serving his passions accumulate a weight of guilt that his mortality will not atone for. The pain he inflicts on others must come on him. Were this justice to be executed at the event of the transgression, the mortal body would cease to existence before the gospel would have a chance to win the heart.

So in mercy God appointed that men should die a death of results before facing a death of justice. “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.” Do the justified need to die? Apparently the death of the just is not a moral requirement in the Great Controversy, for there are notable exceptions. On the other hand, those exceptions are few. Human life apart from the tree of knowledge does not carry on forever.[106]

Jesus is the only human that has access to the tree of life. He alone has immortality. He alone has passed the test that acted as a gulf between Adam and eternal life.

Jesus Christ is the only member of the Godhead that has been incarnate as man. He alone can accurately represent man in the judgement. He alone can add to a condemnation and equitable judgement that takes into account the weaknesses and frailties of human nature.

These qualifications combine with a greater one yet to make Him the Mediator. Only by virtue of his sacrifice can man escape immediate death. When heaven relates to a man as though he is not hopelessly doomed to burn, that relation is based solely on Calvary. Christ’s intercession has formed the basis of all communication between heaven and earth.

Christ is the Ladder; the foot on the earth in His human nature, the top in heaven in His divine nature. His human arm encircles the race while His divine arm lays hold upon the Infinite. All the intercourse between heaven and earth since the fall is by the Ladder.[107]

Christ laid aside His crown and royal robe, stepped down from His high command, clothed His divinity with humanity, and for our sake became poor, that we through His poverty might inherit the heavenly treasure. He placed Himself at the head of humanity. If we walk in His footsteps, we are accepted by God. By His sacrifice we are “accepted in the Beloved.”[108]

We accept Christ and become partakers of the Divine nature. That is the new birth. In our first birth, from Adam, we inherited evil things by two avenues: Example and natural tendencies.

When we become connected with God through Christ we are changed in like manner. Jesus becomes our parent. And he takes our training solemnly. For our inherited tendencies He has been given grace to give to us. We have already learned how grace undoes the damage tendencies have done. Christ’s example is no less efficacious.

But Christ steps in and passes over the ground where Adam fell, enduring every test in man’s behalf. He redeems Adam’s disgraceful failure and fall by coming forth from the trial untarnished. This places man on vantage ground with God. It places him where through accepting Christ as His Saviour, he becomes a partaker of the divine nature. Thus he becomes connected with God and Christ. Christ’s perfect example and the grace of God are given him to enable him to train his sons and daughters to be sons and daughters of God.[109]

The Law of Heredity that describes the power of example to change later generations is not limited to the example of Jesus. It, rather than genetics, is the basis of the gift of mercy that is shown to “thousands” of generations. Those that understand this law of heredity will strive to gather up the treasures of faithfulness that have been left to us by holy men of old.

God expects the youth to think soberly and intelligently of how those of past generations toiled and sacrificed to leave to future generations a heritage of light. The patriarchs and prophets and the disciples of Christ received impressions from the Great Teacher, and this light and knowledge they bequeathed to those who live in this age. The youth now have the privilege of improving all the treasures that have been acquired by past generations. The Lord expects these hereditary trusts to be gathered up as golden treasures, and imparted to others.[110]

For those that would like to see the words “objective gospel” and “subjective gospel” in any article like this, here is your paragraph. Jesus saved us from doom and saves us from sin. He saved the race from doom and can be said, in that sense, to have saved “the world” or “all” or “mankind.” This is the objective gospel and is certainly good news of the highest quality. As a balance to that thought I should add that there is quite some difference between a news headline and the news itself. Were the objective gospel to be presented in too brief terms men might entirely misunderstand. Hope is not security. The subjective gospel is what Christ, by virtue of his sacrifice, does in our experience to fit us for heaven.

The saving of the whole world from doom required more of our Savior than many would guess.

Christ was tempted by Satan in a hundredfold severer manner than was Adam, and under circumstances in every way more trying. The deceiver presented himself as an angel of light, but Christ withstood his temptations. He redeemed Adam’s disgraceful fall, and saved the world.[111]

A Character to Share

Against fallen men the threefold current of degenerate tendencies, evil example, and conscious guilt repressed courage. During the wilderness temptation, as an inauguration to His ministry, Jesus bore even the last of these three in every way as truly as he did at Gethsemane.

It was not merely the gnawing pangs of hunger which made His sufferings inexpressibly severe, but it was the guilt of the sins of the world which pressed so heavily upon Him. He who knew no sin was made sin for us. With this terrible weight of guilt upon Him because of our sins He withstood the fearful test upon appetite, and upon love of the world and of honor, and pride of display which leads to presumption. Christ endured these three great leading temptations and overcame in behalf of man, working out for him a righteous character, because He knew man could not do this of himself. He knew that upon these three points Satan was to assail the race. He had overcome Adam, and he designed to carry forward his work till he completed the ruin of man.[112]

The character that Jesus worked out, under the pressure of our sins, is the righteousness that He share with us. The circumstances under which he worked out the character are as essential to its effectual power as the purity he maintained. It is the circumstances that motivate us to stop sinning. They are integral to the example phase of our moral inheritance.

No one can fully enter into or understand the suffering of Christ, the Son of the infinite God. Proportionate to His majesty, His purity, His innocence, His exalted character, was the depth of His suffering as a substitute and surety for the human race. When the sinner realizes the aggravated character of sin, the transgression of the law, he will cease to sin.[113]

Unity with the Father constitutes the Christian’s strength. That was no less true of Christ. During his life, under the power of that unity, he chose right, disciplined self, gained victories over the impulses of his lower nature. He “learned obedience by the things which he suffered” and “was perfected.” The end of this struggle was that the human Jesus had developed a righteous character, one like Adam could have developed in the garden by resisting the temptations of the knowledge tree.

But he had not the advantages of Adam. The thought of what those final moments of struggle, when separated from the Father, might bring filled Jesus with fear. Fear of failure is one of the crushing weights that men bare in the struggle of life. It was a point in which Christ was tempted like as we are.

He must not call his divinity to his aid, but as a man, he must bear the consequences of man’s sin and the Creator’s displeasure toward his disobedient subjects. As he felt his unity with the Father broken up, he feared that his human nature would be unable to endure the coming conflict with the prince of the power of darkness; and in that case the human race would be irrecoverably lost, Satan would be victor, and the earth would be his kingdom. The sins of the world weighed heavily upon the Saviour, and bowed him to the earth; and the Father’s anger in consequence of that sin seemed crushing out his life.[114]

Christ’s righteousness stands, not only in contrast to Adam’s fall, but to Satan’s. In order to reconcile the race, the world, our Lord took the sins of all. Again, this was essential even to open the door of communication between Heaven and earth. It was a one-way reconciliation that paved the way for angels to work and God to empower humans. So eager are the angels to do evangelism that they recruit us to win our fellow fallen brethren.

Now it was seen that for the salvation of a fallen and sinful race, the Ruler of the universe had made the greatest sacrifice which love could make; for “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” 2 Corinthians 5:19. It was seen, also, that while Lucifer had opened the door for the entrance of sin by his desire for honor and supremacy, Christ had, in order to destroy sin, humbled Himself and become obedient unto death.[115]

The very angels who, when Satan was seeking the supremacy, fought the battle in the heavenly courts, and triumphed on the side of God; the very angels who from their exalted position shouted for joy over the creation of our world, and over the creation of our first parents, who were to inhabit the earth; the angels who witnessed the fall of man and his expulsion from his Eden home, are most intensely interested to work in union with the fallen, redeemed race in the development of that power which God gives to help every man who will unite with heavenly intelligences to seek and save human beings who are perishing in their sins. If men will become partakers of the divine nature, and separate selfishness from their lives, special talents for helping one another will be granted them.[116] If all will love as Christ has loved, that perishing men may be saved from ruin, O, what a change would come to our world![117]

Probably there are readers that have already felt frustrated at the repetition in this article. How often must one writer say that “we can’t do anything by ourselves”? We know we need Christ’s righteousness, but why so much repetition about the need for a holy life? Why the focus on “righteousness,” as if men don’t know what it means?

Of the Comforter which he was to send to his disciples, he says, “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” The natural heart does not enjoy this constant reproving of sin and continual exalting of righteousness. Men feel disgusted when they are represented as helpless to do good; yet Jesus declares, “Without me ye can do nothing.” The word of God requires humility and practical godliness, and the picture of man’s dependence upon God is mortifying to the selfish independence of man, to his grand ideas of eloquence and finery and parade, which he esteems as essential for the conversion of the world.[118]

Add somewhere: Rom. 16:18 and the following:

You may obtain strength from Christ to stand unsullied amid the pollutions of this corrupt age. “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Keep the eye steadily fixed upon Christ, upon the divine image. Imitate His spotless life, and you will be a partaker of His glory, and with Him inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. {2T 49.2}

Insert somewhere the issue of “iniquities” and “sins” from the article “Iniquity, the data.”

Not one in twenty of those who have a good standing with Seventh-day Adventists is living out the self-sacrificing principles of the word of God. But let not their enemies, who are destitute of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, take advantage of the fact that they are reproved. This is evidence that they are the children of the Lord. Those who are without chastisement, says the apostle, are bastards and not sons. Then let not these illegitimate children boast over the lawful sons and daughters of the Almighty. {1T 632.2}

[1] CC 36.3

[2] RH, April 24, 1888 par. 15

[3] 5Red 15.3

[4] ST, January 16, 1879 par. 16

[5] RH, July 18, 1882 par. 4

[6] ST, January 16, 1879 par. 15. The context of this statement reads as a tragedy.

[7] RH, April 14, 1896 par. 4. The battle lines, over time, were drawn openly. Jesus also announced his intentions. “For this, he, the Commander of all heaven, one with God, clothed his divinity with humanity. He humbled himself, taking up his abode on the earth, that he might become acquainted with the temptations and trials wherewith man is beset. Before the heavenly universe he unfolded to men the great salvation that his righteousness would bring to all who accept it,–an inheritance among the saints and angels in the presence of God.” YI, June 2, 1898 par. 6

[8] 10MR 290.2

[9] GC 533.3

[10] PHJ, February 1, 1902 par. 3

[11] CC 36.3

[12] Ibid.

[13] PP 48.4

[14] PP 48.4. Just as Adam would only pass the test by a habitual obedience that developed a righteous character, even so he could not pass the test by a solitary act of obedience. And how could we, his descendants, fail the test given us and forfeit our probation? Not by an act of disobedience, but by habitual self-corruption that produces a hopeless character. “Our world is fast approaching the boundary line when probation will no longer be granted. A long-suffering God bore with the inhabitants of the world in the time of Noah; but at last he declared to his servant saying, ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.’ ‘And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.’ ‘And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth; and God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ The condition of society today is similar to what it was in the time of Noah; and if Jesus was among us, he would say, ‘Can ye not discern the signs of the times?’ ‘And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.’” ST, June 4, 1894 par. 7-9. “‘And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.’ Here the faithful historian with an inspired pen draws the portrait of Noah’s day, when we are told that the heart of man was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The nature of man unrenewed by grace is not changed in our day from what it was in Noah’s time. Christ has said a similar state of things would be prior to his second coming as existed before the flood. In the days of Noah men followed the imagination of their own hearts, and the result was unrestrained crime and wickedness. The same state of things will exist in this age of the world.” ST, January 3, 1878 par. 1-2. Carefully observe that corruption, in these passages, develops from the choices of man. They “corrupt their way” until “every imagination is only evil continually.”

[15] PP 66.3. It appears that the clause following this one should read “Rather, let it descend on them and their posterity.” In place of “posterity” I read (on my edition of the CD ROM) “prosperity.” The next statement bears out that, at the least, my suggested reading would be factually accurate.

[16] LHU 23.5

[17] ST, January 23, 1879 par. 12

[18] “Adam and Eve were given a probation in which to return to their allegiance; and in this plan of benevolence all their posterity were embraced.” 7BC 912.8. We will return to the remainder of this statement later.

[19] 9MR 236.1

[20] Con 45.2

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ps. 58:3. “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” KJV. The NIV reads “from the womb” for “as soon as they be born.”

[23] AG 41.4

[24] DA 114.3

[25] Ibid.

[26] DA 24.2

[27] YI, June 2, 1898 par. 5

[28] This statement is preceded by a sentence that indicates that, had it not been for Christ’s promise to take man’s sin, Satan’s second argument about obedience would have been true. Man without hope and without an indwelling Spirit could never obey. Here is the preceding statement: “After the fall, it had been impossible for man with his sinful nature to render obedience to the law of God, had not Christ, by the offer of his own life, purchased the right to lift up the race where they could once more work in harmony with its requirements.” RH, September 27, 1881 par. 11 (here) and 12 (in the document)

[29] FW 88.3

[30] CG 475.3

[31] RH, September 17, 1895 par. 7

[32] 1SM 344.2

[33] “And so even Christians should think of self as fallen and sinful. “Reverence should be shown also for the name of God. Never should that name be spoken lightly or thoughtlessly. Even in prayer its frequent or needless repetition should be avoided. “Holy and reverend is his name.” Psalm 111:9. Angels, as they speak it, veil their faces. With what reverence should we, who are fallen and sinful, take it upon our lips!” “Many know so little of faith that when they have asked God for his help and blessing, they look to themselves to see if their prayer is answered; and if they have a happy flight of feeling, they are satisfied. This is not faith, but unbelief. We should trust God, whether we experience any change of feeling or not. We cannot expect to be very joyful and hopeful while we look to ourselves; for we must think of self as sinful. A large class of the professed Christian world are watching their feelings; but feeling is an unsafe guide, and those who depend upon it are in danger of imbibing heresy. Satan can move upon our feelings, and he can so arrange surrounding circumstances as to make our feelings changeable. Victory in God is not feeling, but faith. It is the faith that will not yield although there are seeming impossibilities to be encountered.” CG 538.5, ST, May 22, 1884 par. 4. Emphasis supplied in both passages. The fourth of our four fascinating statements illumines these simple principles in practical light. Our very best deeds and truest praise would be rejected as homage from a rebel were it not for Christ’s ministration. The sentences following the fourth statement read: “He gathers into this censer the prayers, the praise, and the confessions of His people, and with these He puts His own spotless righteousness. Then, perfumed with the merits of Christ’s propitiation, the incense comes up before God wholly and entirely acceptable. Then gracious answers are returned. Oh, that all may see that everything in obedience, in penitence, in praise and thanksgiving, must be placed upon the glowing fire of the righteousness of Christ. The fragrance of this righteousness ascends like a cloud around the mercy seat.” 1SM 344.2-3

[34] AH 173.1 Emphasis supplied.

[35] SA 174.2. In one of her strongest statements on corruption Ellen White writes of the case of a man debased by continual masturbation. – “Children born to parents who are controlled by corrupt passions are worthless. What can be expected of such children, but that they will sink lower in the scale than their parents? What can be expected of the rising generation? Thousands are devoid of principle. These very ones are transmitting to their offspring their own miserable, corrupt passions. What a legacy! Thousands drag out their unprincipled lives, tainting their associates and perpetuating their debased passions by transmitting them to their children. They take the responsibility of giving to them the stamp of their own characters.” CH 621.1

[36] TFG 175.2. This paragraph is introduced “Satan is determined to enslave every soul if he can; for he is playing a desperate game to win the souls of men from Christ and eternal life.”

[37] “religion of fancy” –Ellen White’s phrase for the idea that man with his eloquence and greatness need not be represented as “helpless” to do any good thing.

[38] ST, November 5, 1894 par. 8. Emphasis and paragraph divisions supplied. This passage is one paragraph in the original article.

[39] 4T 349.1

[40] 6T 238.5. Other documents bear out the conclusions. “Human depravity will surely overcome” those that do God’s work without personal devotion. You should be careful “that human depravity shall not neutralize your work. For professed Christians that do not take heed, “what human depravity will come to light” in the judgment. TM 169.1; TSA 12.1; RH, January 10, 1893 par. 11. In every case, depravity is revealed in the life of the unconsecrated.

[41] FE 277.1

[42] GH, May 1, 1898 par. 2

[43] 3T 321.1. Depravity, in these paragraphs, is acting out the impulses that come from our corrupt nature. These impulses can be and should be resisted. Speaking of the injured Samaritan, “Had those who injured him, respected and obeyed the law of God, they would have loved their neighbor as themselves. They could not have treated him as they did. But acting out the impulses of their sinful, corrupt nature, as though there were no law to forbid their cruelty, they cared neither for God nor for their neighbor, and left the wounded man to die by the wayside.” RH, January 1, 1895 par. 3. Jesus, like the Samaritan, suffered at the hands of those that could have relieved him. “The depravity of the human heart, the guilt of transgression, the ruin of sin, are all made plain by the cross where Christ has made for us a way of escape.” FW 96.2

[44] 19MR 96.1

[45] ST, July 29, 1886 par. 3

[46] FLB 101.3

[47] The insertion of the words “of generations” is warranted by parallelism in the sentence itself, and by comparison with a parallel passage in Deuteronomy 7:9. A look at Deuteronomy 34:7 shows that the phrase “to the third and fourth generation” is found in the original without the word “generation.” The translators supplied it there as they could see its need. And It is also unreasonable to assume that the words “of men” would be better, as if God’s mercy is limited to some certain number of “thousands” of individuals. Finally, Ellen White’s use of the verse, conforming to the data presented here, is compelling. “‘Showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.’ In prohibiting the worship of false gods, the second commandment by implication enjoins the worship of the true God. And to those who are faithful in His service, mercy is promised, not merely to the third and fourth generation as is the wrath threatened against those who hate Him, but to thousands of generations.’” PP 306.4

[48] “‘I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,’ was thundered from Sinai. No partial obedience, no divided interest, is accepted by him who declares that the iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him and that he will show mercy unto thousands of generations of them that love him, and keep his commandments.” ST, July 29, 1897 par. 9

[49] DA 48.5

[50] Joseph is listed here as an example of how the law works, though he was not part of the lineage of Jesus.

[51] Ed 276.1

[52] This idea was referenced earlier under the subtitle “Four Fascinating Statements.” A fuller statement of the same may be found in 9MR 236.1. It reads “Parents have a more serious charge than they imagine. The inheritance of children is that of sin. Sin has separated them from God. Jesus gave His life that He might unite the broken links to God. As related to the first Adam, men receive from him nothing but guilt and the sentence of death.” The fact that parents have a “charge” in this matter belies the reality their choice has something to do with what they pass on. A third edition of the idea can be located in 13MR zz.z. Notice in the statement that “sin” in the 9MR statement becomes “disobedience” in the statement below. This squares nicely with the idea that sin is not some intangible antipathy to God, but rather, actual breaking of the law. Then consider that the statement below is buried between two statements about the value of the converted mother. Her work is contrasted with that of Adam’s. He gave guilt and death and disobedience. What does she give? She teaches. She works to restore the image of God in her children. She reshapes the character. These hints point to Adam’s work as passing on poor example (as instruction) and undoing the image of God by misshaping the character. “If one mother has been turned from her disloyalty to obedience, you may rejoice. The mother who follows on to know the Lord will teach her children to follow in her footsteps. The promise is to fathers, mothers and their children. (Acts 2:39) These dear children received from Adam an inheritance of disobedience, of guilt and death. The Lord has given to the world Jesus Christ, and His work was to restore to the world the moral image of God in man, and to reshape the character.”13MR 14.1

[53] 1SP 52.1

[54] ST, May 19, 1890 par. 8. A nearly identical statement in Faith and Works was referenced in the section “Four Fascinating Statements.”

[55] PP 306.3

[56] The connection between ill-bred children and unconverted parents is most natural. The nature of unconsecration is an unrestrained passion. Those that will not restrain their own passions can not be expected to restrain those of their progeny. “The minds of the young left unrestrained are directed in a channel to suit their own corrupt nature.” HP 218.5

[57] “Habits of strict temperance always have been and always must be the only safeguard for our youth. Let old and young remember that for every violation of the laws of life, nature will utter her protest. The penalty will fall upon the mental as well as the physical powers. And it does not end with the guilty trifler. The effects of his misdemeanors are seen in his offspring, and thus hereditary evils are passed down, even to the third or fourth generation. Think of this, fathers, when indulging in the soul and brain benumbing narcotic, tobacco. Where will this practice leave you? Whom will it affect besides yourself?” ST, March 2, 1882 par. 10-11. 121. “Will he not call parents to an account, to whom he has given reasoning powers, for putting these higher faculties in the background, and becoming slaves to passion, when, as the result, generations must bear the mark of their physical, mental, and moral deficiencies?” 2SM 424.2-3

[58] 1SP 257.2

[59] RH, March 13, 1894 par. 7

[60] “In addition to the suffering they entail upon their children, they have no portion but poverty to leave to their pitiful flock. They cannot educate them, and many do not see the necessity, neither could they if they did, find time to train them, and instruct them, and lessen, as much as possible, the wretched inheritance transmitted to them. Parents should not increase their families any faster than they know that their children can be well cared for, and educated.” 2SM 424.2-3. In this case the Testimonies urge that the unkindness is not alone done to society. The mother suffers. Husbands that neglect to guard the happiness of their wives ‘violates the marriage vow.’ “A child in the mother’s arms from year to year is great injustice to her. It lessens, and often destroys, social enjoyment, and increases domestic wretchedness. It robs their children of that care, education, and happiness, which parents should feel it their duty to bestow upon them. The husband violates the marriage vow, and the duties enjoined upon him in the word of God, when he disregards the health and happiness of the wife, by increasing her burdens and cares by numerous offspring.” Ibid. This violation of the marriage vow can not be considered as absolving the wife from its claims on her. It can not justify divorce. I have written in a different article on the grounds for divorce. See canvassing.org/docs.

[61] The section of the article is borrowed largely from a section in 2SM on the topic. The reader is referred to this section for more information. “We see this holy injunction almost wholly disregarded, even by professed Christians. Everywhere you may look, you will see pale, sickly, careworn, broken-down, dispirited, discouraged women. They are generally over-worked, and their vital energies exhausted by frequent child-bearing. The world is filled with images of human beings who are of no worth to society. Many are deficient in intellect, and many who possess natural talents do not use them for any beneficial purposes. They are not cultivated, and the one great reason is, children have been multiplied faster than they could be well trained, and have been left to come up much like the brutes.” 2SM 425.2

[62] 1MCP 136.4 quoted from HL (Part 2) 30, 1865. A few pages later in the same 1865 publication, Ellen White wrote: “In past generations, if mothers had informed themselves in regard to the laws of their being, they would have understood that their constitutional strength, as well as the tone of their morals and their

mental faculties, would in a great measure be represented in their offspring. Their ignorance upon this subject, where so much is involved, is criminal.” 1MCP 142.4, quoted from HL (Part 2) 37, 1865.

[63] PaM 88.1. Does this idea, that the faulty family government of an otherwise faithful worker for God does more harm than his labor did good, seem extreme? Ellen White defends it reasonableness thus, “Those children transmit their own perversity of character as an inheritance to their offspring, and at the same time their evil example and influence corrupt society and make havoc in the church. We cannot think that any man, however great his ability and usefulness, is best serving God or the world while his time is given to other pursuits, to the neglect of his own children.” Ibid.

[64] “The physical and mental condition of parents is perpetuated in their offspring. This is a matter that is not duly considered. Wherever the habits of the parents are contrary to physical law, the injury done to themselves will be repeated in future generations. Satan knows this very well, and it is through this hereditary transmission that he is perpetuating his work. Those who indulge the animal passions and gratify lust will surely stamp upon their offspring the effects of their debasing practises, and the grossness of their own physical and moral defilement. Let the husband and wife in their married life prove a help and a blessing to each other. Let them consider the cost of every indulgence in intemperance and sensualism. These indulgences do not increase love, they do not ennoble and elevate. By physical, mental, and moral culture, all may become co-workers with Christ. Very much depends upon the parents. It lies with them to decide whether they will bring into the world children who will be a blessing or a curse. The father and mother who know no higher rule of life than selfish indulgence of lustful passions are not Christians. They are lowering the standard of intellectual and moral character, and are descending toward the brute creation, rather than ascending to work in harmony with Jesus Christ to restore the moral image of God in man. GosHealth, May 1, 1898 par. 3. An extreme position that sexual expression of love is, itself, intemperate can not be gathered from this sentence. Temperance is moderation in the good and abstinence from the evil. As the “bed is holy and undefiled,” moderation is the answer for those parents who would be a blessing to their spouses.

[65] AH 173.1 Emphasis supplied

[66] HR, August 1, 1878 par. 9-10

[67] Con 32.3

[68] “Since the fall the tendency of the race has been continually downward, the effects of sin becoming more marked with every successive generation. But so great was the vitality with which man was endowed that the patriarchs from Adam to Noah, with a few exceptions, lived nearly a thousand years.

Moses, the first historian, gives an account of social and individual life in the early days of the world’s history; but we find no record that an infant was born blind, deaf, crippled, or imbecile. Not an instance is recorded of a death in infancy, childhood, or early manhood.

Obituary notices in the book of Genesis run thus: “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.” “And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.” Concerning another, the record states, “He died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years.” It was so rare for a son to die before his father that such an occurrence was thought worthy of record: “Haran died before his father Terah.”

Since the flood, the average length of life has been decreasing. Had Adam possessed no greater physical force than men now have, the race would before this have become extinct.

At the time of Christ’s first advent, humanity had so degenerated that many endured a terrible weight of misery; and not only the old but the middle-aged and the young were brought to the Saviour from all the country around, to be healed of their diseases.” PHJ, February 1, 1902 par. 4-6

[69] Ibid., par. 7. Emphasis supplied.

[70] ST, December 1, 1914 par. 2

[71] CD 145.2

[72] Letter 11a, 1894, pp. 7-8. (To Captain Christiansen of the Pitcairn, Jan. 2, 1894.)

[73] 20MR 68.2

[74] YI, June 28, 1900 par. 5

[75] 1SM 252.1. Emphasis supplied. The paragraph continues with a comment about why this was the “only way.” “In taking human nature, Christ was fitted to understand man’s trials and sorrows and all the temptations wherewith he is beset. Angels who were unacquainted with sin could not sympathize with man in his peculiar trials. Christ condescended to take man’s nature, and was tempted in all points like as we, that He might know how to succor all who should be tempted.”

[76] “We have seen by the scriptures just given that when the Son of man comes, the dead are raised incorruptible, and the living are changed. By this great change they are prepared to receive the kingdom; for Paul says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” 1 COR. 15:50. Man in his present state is mortal, corruptible; but the kingdom of God will be incorruptible, enduring forever. Therefore man in his present state cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” GC 322.2

[77] AH 25.4. Marriage not only promotes holistic health, but it provides a morally correct fulfillment of man’s sexual desires. By this action it serves as a barrier against the immoral fulfillment of the same. This power should not be underestimated. Ellen White pointed out the depravity of a man that was given to masturbation even after matrimony. “This is not a solitary case. Even the marriage relation was not sufficient to preserve this man from the corrupt habits of his youth. I wish I could be convinced that such cases as the one I have presented are rare; but I know they are frequent.” CH 621.1

[78] 5T 486.2

[79] AH 127.2

[80] 6MR 392.2

[81] SpTB04 22.2. The reference is to 2Pt 1:4.

[82] From Paul, see also YI, August 24, 1893 par. 8

[83] ST, September 26, 1892 par. 4. Some have taken this principle too far. They have concluded that if God is truly working in the soul, if Divine love is bubbling out of the heart spring, that selfishness will be no more. An error of this nature may lead to ill timed and ill mannered corrections. The gospel makes the tree good and cleanses the heart from evil, but the latter is not an instantaneous process. “Jesus bears tenderly with them, not rebuking their selfishness in seeking preference above their brethren. He reads their hearts, He knows the depth of their attachment to Him. Their love is not a mere human affection; though defiled by the earthliness of its human channel, it is an outflowing from the fountain of His own redeeming love. He will not rebuke, but deepen and purify. He said, “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They recall His mysterious words, pointing to trial and suffering, yet answer confidently, “We are able.” They would count it highest honor to prove their loyalty by sharing all that is to befall their Lord.” DA 548.6. Our service need not, however, be defiled by its channel. James and John profited later from a more consistent, and thus more telling, look at Jesus. “

The eye should not be so constantly looking to man, studying the plans which men devise; but rather seeking for a knowledge of the plans which are determined by the Source of all wisdom. Then there will be no danger of having plans for work contaminated by flowing through impure human channels.” RH, July 23, 1895 par. 9

[84] 9MR 354.2

[85] TMK 269.4

[86] RH, February 5, 1895 par. 4

[87] ST, December 22, 1887 par. 2. Emphasis supplied.

[88] ST, November 5, 1894 par. 9

[89] 12MR 70.1

[90] RH, September 17, 1895 par. 7

[91] “The apostle Paul clearly presents the relation between faith and the law under the new covenant. He says: ‘Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ ‘Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law.’ ‘For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh’–it could not justify man, because in his sinful nature he could not keep the law –‘God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’” (Rom. 5:1; 3:31; 8:3, 4). AG 140.4

[92] Manuscript 5, 1904

[93] RH, July 18, 1882 par. 4

[94] TMK 16.4-5

[95] RH, May 3, 1906 par. 4

[96] I speak of those that are named

[97] An earlier edition of this same statement seems to hark to Psalms 51. Where this statement says “Seth, like Cain, inherited the fallen nature of his parents” the earlier edition reads “He was born in sin.” 1SP 60.2. The wording of the later edition suggests Ellen’s interpretation of her own earlier words.

[98] PP 80.1

[99] CC 24.2

[100] This is the manifest meaning of Genesis 4:26 Unless we believe that Abel was educated enough to offer sacrifices but not enough to talk to God, the reading “began to call the name of the Lord” can not be correct. The marginal reading is much preferable. “began to be called by the name of the Lord” as opposed to being called by the name of their earthly ancestor Seth. As further evidence of this I would suggest that this verse is the only antecedent for the phrases found in Genesis 6:4. And only the marginal reading would provide a clue as the meaning of “the daughters of men.” Cohabitation with angels is certainly not the meaning supported by Jesus who said angels neither marry nor are given in marriage. Finnaly, the reading suggested here unites the passage to the chain of Bible truths about what it means to be a child of God.

[101] PP 118.2

[102] PP 118.3

[103] 6Red 77.2,1. The first paragraph has something to say regarding false ideas of masculinity. “Christ was God in the flesh. As the son of David, he stood forth a perfect type of true manhood, bold in doing his duty, and of the strictest integrity, yet full of love, compassion, and tender sympathy.”

[104] ST May 29, 1901; 7BC 912.8

[105] www.canvassing.org/docs

[106] I am aware that I have neglected to well answer the question “why do most righteous die.” Write and ask if you are interested in more on this topic. Canvassing@canvassing.org.

[107] 19MR 338.4; In Christ were united the divine and the human–the Creator and the creature. The nature of God, whose law had been transgressed, and the nature of Adam, the transgressor, meet in Jesus–the Son of God, and the Son of man. And having with His own blood paid the price of redemption, having passed through man’s experience, having in man’s behalf met and conquered temptation, having, though Himself sinless, borne the shame and guilt and burden of sin, He becomes man’s Advocate and Intercessor. What an assurance here to the tempted and struggling soul, what an assurance to the witnessing universe, that Christ will be “a merciful and faithful high priest”! 7BC 925-926.

[108] 7MR 125.3. This paragraph carries an almost surprising appraisel of the extent to which the life of Jesus is a model for us. Some parts of his life seemed to be for Him alone. We, for example, do not expect to have a dove land on us and to hear a voice that says “this is my Son in whom I am well pleased. But should we expect it? “The same glory which flashed from the threshold of heaven at the time of Christ’s baptism, is revealed to every earnest seeker of Christ.” Ibid.

[109] 9MR 236.1. “. . . Christ’s perfect example and the grace of God are given him to enable him to train his sons and daughters to be sons and daughters of God. It is by teaching them, line upon line, precept upon precept, how to give the heart and will up to Christ that Satan’s power is broken.” CG 475.3

[110] YI, June 29, 1899 par. 2

[111] YI, June 2, 1898 par. 7. The paragraph following this is more subjective. “With his human arm, Christ encircled the race, while with his divine arm, he grasped the throne of the Infinite, uniting finite man with the infinite God. He bridged the gulf that sin had made, and connected earth with heaven. In his human nature he maintained the purity of his divine character. He lived the law of God, and honored it in a world of transgression, revealing to the heavenly universe, to Satan, and to all the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, that through his grace, humanity can keep the law of God. He came to impart his own divine nature, his own image, to the repentant, believing soul.”

[112] 3T 372.1

[113] 10MR 290.2

[114] 5Red 15.3

[115] GC 502.2

[116] These powers, of course, are not granted by the angels. At times Ellen White, in vision, heard Jesus speak and was directed to quote him. These statements are most precious. One of them concisely says much of what this paper is intended to teach. “‘Where stands the throne of Satan shall stand my cross.’ Satan shall be cast out, and I will become the center of attraction in a redeemed world. I will engage every holy agency in the universe to cooperate with Me in the plan of salvation. I will summon every heavenly power. Angels that excel in strength shall unite with humanity, sanctified to my service to uproot evil. The depravity of man requires all this expenditure of heavenly power, that man may be sanctified through the grace of God. Jesus said, ‘I will redeem my people from the earth. The perishing shall be rescued.’” GH, May 1, 1898 par. 2

[117] PH008 9.2

[118] ST, November 5, 1894 par. 7. Much of the debate does, indeed, boil down to what is essential to salvation. Here Ellen White insightfully remarks that those that would belittle the necessity for God’s inner working and personal holiness are the same that exalt human show and rhetoric, plans and evangelistic schemes, as essential to the salvation of a lost world. In words this class cries correctly that the essential element is a “saving knowledge” of Jesus. But loving words do not, in the judgement, weigh as much as loving deeds. “The time is at hand when the judgment will sit, and the books will be opened, and every one will be judged according to the deeds that have been done in the body. What an hour that will be! What human depravity will come to light even among those who claim to be Christians, but whose practical life has testified that they had not a saving knowledge of Christ!” RH, January 10, 1893 par. 11. Emphasis supplied. Those that make their fallenness an excuse for sin fail in attaining a saving knowledge, or understanding, of the love of God. “God is love. He has shown that love in the gift of His only begotten Son. Yet the love of God does not excuse sin. God does not excuse sin in Satan, in Adam, or in Cain, nor will He excuse sin in any of the children of men. The perverted nature of man may distort the love of God into an attribute of weakness; but light is shining from the cross of Calvary, that man may have correct views and hold theories that are not perverted.” LHU 158.4

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For the Word Document, click here: Laws_of_Heredity SOP version

Intercessory Prayer and Revival

How to Know God’s Will for Your Life

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How_to_Know_Gods_Will_for_Your_Life

How to Know God’s Will for Your Life

Who is burdened of soul to make plans or devise means whereby agencies may be put in operation for the advancement of truth?—Ellen White

Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.—David, the son of Jesse

David had been held more than once by bit and bridle. His lying stay with Achish[1], preceding immediately his ascension to the throne of Israel, was not heaven’s plan A. This study will present a system of truth that, incorporated into the life, will assure safe guidance in the choosing of a career, and even in the smaller things in life. The truths here have the power to keep you from your Achish. They will show that there is a less painful way to be led than the method required for mules.

And more than that, they promise to reduce your anxiety regarding the future and to leave a “plain path before your feet.” You will, child of God, make the right decision, if you follow closely.

The Bible makes most precious promises for those that feel their need of Heaven’s help in decision making. These promises are not without instructions on how and when to use them, and on the conditions under which they will be fulfilled. Consider the promises from the Psalms.

The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way. Ps 25:9

For thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me. Ps 31:3

I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee. Ps 32:8-9.

For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death. Ps 48:14

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Ps 73:24

Who will God lead? The meek. Those that are not determined to have their own way, who are searching for the right path, who feel their need of help and are distrustful of self. They will be led.

How will God lead them? He will guide their judgement. They may feel that they are simply thinking, but their thinking process is greatly helped by the One that undertakes to guide them.

How will God guide their judgement? He will teach them His way. He will guide them with His counsel. As they become familiar with His counsel and with the general plan that He has ordained for the work, their judgement will be sanctified.

Why will He guide them? God guides us for His own sake. We can pray that way, as did David. The work on earth is His. The loss or gain that will come from our ill or well-made decisions is His own. When we pray that He will guide us for His own sake we pray in harmony with His will. “He will lead us in the path of Righteousness for His own sake.” Psalms 23.

When will He guide us? From our youth to our death He will make His counsel available. If we will not heed it, He does not say that He will guide us forcefully as a man may guide the mule. The implication is that if we do not follow, we may not arrive. But if we have failed to follow in the past, if we are not in the way of Righteousness, in short, if we are lost, then there are more promises even for us.

Our own generation, refusing the latter rain in preference for its own sins, is invited to accept God’s guidance as were the Jews in Jeremiah’s time. See Jeremiah 3:1-4. And it is a promise to Adventists in particular (those who “ask of Me the ordinance of justice” and who “build up” the old paths and who are to “call the Sabbath a delight”) that, though they have been wicked, yet they may repent. Then, meeting the conditions, the promise is theirs:

And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. Isa 58:11. Emphasis supplied.

What are those conditions?

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: v. 6-7, 9-10.

We could add a study on each of these points, but that would be beyond the scope of this paper. Notice, however, that there is a distinct relation between our loving service to others and God’s personal guidance in our lives. If we are to claim the promise of continual guidance, we would do well to read these conditions often as we aim to implement them.

Besides specifying that God should be our guide, the Bible also points out a number of influences that should not determine our direction in life. You may have heard someone say “just follow your heart.” The Bible indicates that this is getting the cart before the horse.

Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Pr 23:19

The heart is to be guided, if you will, by the wisdom that comes from hearing the Word of God. If we follow that Word with truest sincerity, it will not fail us. Doing what we know to be right is integrity.

The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them. Pr 11:3

So our heart is not to guide us. But most men are guided by their hearts. And we are not so very adept at knowing which men are leading themselves astray. For that reason the Bible is very clear that we can not depend on men to guide us:

Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. Mic 7:5

If this seems out of harmony with the counsel that in a multitude of counselors there is safety (c.f. Pro. 11:14; 24:6) then see the latter portion of this study that deals with this point. For the place of human authority, whether parental or ecclesiastical or governmental, see an essay by the author of this one titled “The Draft and Its Relation to Believers in the Present Truth.”

God’s guidance is not always recognized by our conscious mind. He leads us while we seem to be making our own plans. His guidance takes us on the right path when we know not that we are being directed.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way;

A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps; And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. Ps 37:23; Pr 16:9; Isa 42:16

But when we feel our need of knowing, we can claim the promises of direct intervention. They will be fulfilled as we believe them whether or not we perceive the guidance.

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa 30:21

Besides our daily decisions, there are areas of life that require constant guidance from heaven. One of these is our need to know what is true. The promise of Jn. 16:13 is that the Spirit will guide us into all truth. Being thus led by the Spirit is the hallmark of a true Child of the King. Rom. 8:14. But the guidance that leads to the truth is itself a study. Contact the author for more information on this topic.

Armed with the promises, we are ready to tackle the nitty-gritty job of finding out God’s specific will for our lives. We are opposed in this effort. The following statements will help a great deal.

Satan and his evil angels, combined with wicked men, are seeking by every possible device to bear before the world a testimony against the truth of God’s word. The enmity of Satan against Christ is determined and unrelenting, and in the great controversy between good and evil, while Satan and his confederacy are bringing in their false testimony against God and his truth, in order that men may not receive the love of the truth, but believe a lie, who is burdened of soul to make plans or devise means whereby agencies may be put in operation for the advancement of truth? Will those who profess to believe the truth stand in idleness, when Satan and his hosts work with intense activity for the overthrow of the cause of truth? Will the professed followers of Christ allow him to preoccupy the field? Who will be a volunteer to witness for God in these far-off lands? Who will open the Scriptures to those who are ignorant of the words of life? Who will let his light shine out to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death? {HM, September 1, 1892 par. 3}

First, there is sometimes a limit to how far in advance we can know God’s will for our personal lives. This should not stop the church from making large and long-term plans.

They felt sufficient in themselves for all things, and realized no need of a higher wisdom to direct their acts. But the Son of God was surrendered to the Father’s will, and dependent upon His power. So utterly was Christ emptied of self that He made no plans for Himself. He accepted God’s plans for Him, and day by day the Father unfolded His plans. So should we depend upon God, that our lives may be the simple outworking of His will. {DA 208.2}

There are three ways that God speaks to us:

There are three ways in which the Lord reveals His will to us, to guide us, and to fit us to guide others. How may we know His voice from that of a stranger? How shall we distinguish it from the voice of a false shepherd? God reveals His will to us in His word, the Holy Scriptures. His voice is also revealed in His providential workings; and it will be recognized if we do not separate our souls from Him by walking in our own ways, doing according to our own wills, and following the promptings of an unsanctified heart, until the senses have become so confused that eternal things are not discerned, and the voice of Satan is so disguised that it is accepted as the voice of God. {5T 512.1}

Another way in which God’s voice is heard is through the appeals of His Holy Spirit, making impressions upon the heart, which will be wrought out in the character. If you are in doubt upon any subject you must first consult the Scriptures. If you have truly begun the life of faith you have given yourself to the Lord to be wholly His, and He has taken you to mold and fashion according to His purpose, that you may be a vessel unto honor. You should have an earnest desire to be pliable in His hands and to follow whithersoever He may lead you. You are then trusting Him to work out His designs, while at the same time you are co-operating with Him by working out your own salvation with fear and trembling. You, my brother, will find difficulty here because you have not yet learned by experience to know the voice of the Good Shepherd, and this places you in doubt and peril. You ought to be able to distinguish His voice. {5T 512.2}

The previous statement said that God will not guide us if we are not resisting the impulses of our unsanctified hearts. The impressions are not for the big decisions (where to go, who to marry, whether or not to surrender self), but the decisions that “will be wrought out in the character.” Impressions may say “you have had enough to eat,” “she needs you to listen right now,” “don’t jump to conclusions,” “the Sabbath is starting soon, be ready.” God does not want us to be victims of our imagination, going from place to place because we are thus “impressed.”

When we make plans, they may not be good ones. Since we can not see the end from the beginning, we should make our plans in wet concrete (still able to change when Providence makes it plain that we should.)

Consecrate yourself to God in the morning; make this your very first work. Let your prayer be, “Take me, O Lord, as wholly Thine. I lay all my plans at Thy feet. Use me today in Thy service. Abide with me, and let all my work be wrought in Thee.” This is a daily matter. Each morning consecrate yourself to God for that day. Surrender all your plans to Him, to be carried out or given up as His providence shall indicate. Thus day by day you may be giving your life into the hands of God, and thus your life will be molded more and more after the life of Christ. {SC 70.1}

But we should not confound our lack of contentedness, our itchiness for something new and different, with God’s providence. We should be determined to do our duty even if it is as distasteful to us as going to Nineveh was to Jonah.

Many are dissatisfied with their lifework. It may be that their surroundings are uncongenial; their time is occupied with commonplace work, when they think themselves capable of higher responsibilities; often their efforts seem to them to be unappreciated or fruitless; their future is uncertain. {MH 472.3}

Let us remember that while the work we have to do may not be our choice, it is to be accepted as God’s choice for us. Whether pleasing or unpleasing, we are to do the duty that lies nearest. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” Ecclesiastes 9:10. {MH 472.4}

If the Lord desires us to bear a message to Nineveh, it will not be as pleasing to Him for us to go to Joppa or to Capernaum. He has reasons for sending us to the place toward which our feet have been directed. At that very place there may be someone in need of the help we can give. He who sent Philip to the Ethiopian councilor, Peter to the Roman centurion, and the little Israelitish maiden to the help of Naaman, the Syrian captain, sends men and women and youth today as His representatives to those in need of divine help and guidance. {MH 473.1}

Our plans are not always God’s plans. He may see that it is best for us and for His cause to refuse our very best intentions, as He did in the case of David. But of one thing we may be assured, He will bless and use in the advancement of His cause those who sincerely devote themselves and all they have to His glory. If He sees it best not to grant their desires He will counterbalance the refusal by giving them tokens of His love and entrusting to them another service. {MH 473.2}

In His loving care and interest for us, often He who understands us better than we understand ourselves refuses to permit us selfishly to seek the gratification of our own ambition. He does not permit us to pass by the homely but sacred duties that lie next us. Often these duties afford the very training essential to prepare us for a higher work. Often our plans fail that God’s plans for us may succeed. {MH 473.3}

But the fact that we our plans are not always God’s plans should not prevent us from making plans. It should not make us incline back and forth between options.

Sometimes various ways and purposes, different modes of operation in connection with the work of God, are about evenly balanced in the mind; but it is at this very point that the nicest discrimination is necessary. And if anything is accomplished to the purpose it must be done at the golden moment. The slightest inclination of the weight in the balance should be seen and should determine the matter at once. Long delays tire the angels. It is even more excusable to make a wrong decision sometimes than to be continually in a wavering position, to be hesitating, sometimes inclined in one direction, then in another. More perplexity and wretchedness result from thus hesitating and doubting than from sometimes moving too hastily. {3T 497.3}

When we claim God’s promises for guidance and use all our mental powers to weigh options, God works miracles to bring the right information our way. God can and does bring the needed information to those that are searching for it. We should “take counsel” with our reason, thinking clearly about what we already know about God’s will. If we are willing to surrender to that counsel, to what we know is right, we will be “guided by the Lord.”

O if men in exalted positions only knew their weakness and God’s strength and sufficiency and fullness, they would pray most earnestly ‘let thy word be my counselor.’ I tell all who have any connection with our institutions, Take counsel with sanctified reason, surrendered wholly to God. Then you will be guided by the Lord. Many of you have kept the truth far away from the citadel of the soul. A man can not continue in sin, and be a Christian. Christ always separates the contrite soul from sin. Men may labor in connection with the work of God as did Noah’s carpenters, and yet resist the divine influences. The spirit of God is beckoning heavenward, to imperishable honors. The love of God pervading the soul possesses a re-created power through the Holy Spirit.—1888 Materials p. 1387 (Also in 17MR p. 114)

When we follow His plan for knowing His will, even our honest mistakes will be made to serve His interests. But we must move forward quickly. Taking too long gives the Devil time to trick us by his deceptions and false “providences.”

I have been shown that the most signal victories and the most fearful defeats have been on the turn of minutes. God requires promptness of action. Delays, doubtings, hesitation, and indecision frequently give the enemy every advantage. My brother, you need to reform. The timing of things may tell much in favor of truth. Victories are frequently lost through delays. There will be crises in this cause. Prompt and decisive action at the right time will gain glorious triumphs, while delay and neglect will result in great failures and positive dishonor to God. Rapid movements at the critical moment often disarm the enemy, and he is disappointed and vanquished, for he had expected time to lay plans and work by artifice. {3T 497.4}

There are some rules that would ensure that we will chose the right occupation.

We need to follow more closely God’s plan of life. To do our best in the work that lies nearest, to commit our ways to God, and to watch for the indications of His providence–these are rules that ensure safe guidance in the choice of an occupation. {Ed 267.3}

God chooses not to guide us by chance methods. He longs for us to develop mental power, and this comes from thinking from cause to effect. If He gave us visions when we prayed for guidance, we would be inclined to not think carefully about the consequences of our choices. Our mental powers would be shrinking, our imagination existing for only vain purposes.

You endeavor to reach correct decisions regarding religious duties, and to make decisions regarding business enterprises, by the tossing up of a coin, and letting the position in which it falls decide what course you shall pursue. I am instructed to say that we are not to give encouragement to any such methods. They are too common, too much like sleight-of-hand movements. They are not of the Lord, and those who depend upon them for direction will meet with failure and disappointment. Being nothing more than a matter of chance, the influence of adopting such tests regarding duty is calculated to lead the mind to depend on chance and guesswork, when all our work and plans for work should be established on the sure foundation of the Word of God. {2SM 325.2}

The people of God can come to a correct understanding of their duty only through sincere prayer and earnest seeking for the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. When they seek aright for instruction concerning their course of action, these strange and unreliable methods will not be accepted by them. They will then be saved from haphazard work, and from the confusion that is ever the result of depending on human devisings. . . . {2SM 325.3}

Asking for Signs is often the same as flipping a coin. God prefers to guide us by sound principles. If lives are at stake, if the future of God’s church is on the line, as was the case in the story of Gideon, and if you are doubtful that your direct revelations are from God, there might be an excuse to asking for a sign. But even Gideon recognized that asking unwisely might displease God.

But now a doubt arose, since wool naturally absorbs moisture when there is any in the air; the test might not be decisive. Hence he asked that the sign be reversed, pleading that his extreme caution might not displease the Lord. His request was granted. {PP 548.2}

If you must ask for a sign, ask for only miraculous signs, and do not pray out loud. For example, ask that a blue colored light will appear in the sky over the moon if you should go to place A, or a red color light over the moon if you should go to place B. In the great majority of cases, you will get neither. That is because God does not prefer to use signs. But if you make the mistake of asking for a one-sided sign (like, a red light over the moon if I should go, and no light if I shouldn’t) you virtually try to force God to guide you by a sign, because if He does nothing, you will consider it a sign. This is not wise. I do not say that it is good to ask for signs like this (it is bad), only that asking for signs in this way will help to prevent self-deception when God does not give one.

It is a haphazard method, which God does not approve. To men who have suggested such tests, I have said, “No, no.” The sacred things which concern the cause of God must not be dealt with by such methods. God does not instruct us that we are to learn His will in any such way. {2SM 327.2}

Will it furnish us with experiences that will glorify God, for us to decide what is His will by the dropping of a card or a coin, and observing how it falls? No, no. Such tests as this will spoil the religious experience of the one who adopts them. Everyone who depends upon such things for guidance, needs to be reconverted. {2SM 327.3}

After the great disappointment of the Adventist people in 1844, we had all these things to contend with over and over again. Then I was raised up from a bed of sickness, and sent to give a message of reproof for such fanaticism. They used different methods. They would select a sign, and then follow the course indicated by the sign. {2SM 327.4}

In one case they would not bury a child that had died, because they understood from the sign that they had set, that the child was going to be raised from the dead. {2SM 327.5}

I was sent to bear my testimony regarding the fallacy of these things that they were using as signs. According to the light that God has given me, there is no safety for us except to take a “Thus saith the Lord.”

God also teaches us through nature and through Godly counselors and through the Spirit of Prophecy. But these are not an addition to the three ways first mentioned. The Bible was the first way, and it enforces the other three. Nature helps us reason from cause to effect and subdues our souls. Godly counselors lead us back to scripture and help us understand the providential leadings in our lives. The Spirit of Prophecy is enforced by the Word and provides a solid platform to build on in our studies.

Through nature and revelation, through His providence, and by the influence of His Spirit, God speaks to us. But these are not enough; we need also to pour out our hearts to Him. In order to have spiritual life and energy, we must have actual intercourse with our heavenly Father. {SC 93.1}

There are a thousand temptations in disguise prepared for those who have the light of truth; and the only safety for any of us is in receiving no new doctrine, no new interpretation of the Scriptures, without first submitting it to brethren of experience. Lay it before them in a humble, teachable spirit, with earnest prayer; and if they see no light in it, yield to their judgment; for “in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” {5T 293.1}

Did you take notes while you were reading? If not, read this article again with a pen in hand. Share what you learned and it will become yours for keeps.

This study compiled by Eugene Prewitt, adventexpositor@gmail.com Please feel free to contact the author with questions, corrections, or comments.

[1] I Samuel 28-29.

How to Deal with Pain

The Rest Remaining in Hebrews 4

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Hebrews_4_Article

Hebrews and the Rest that Remains

An Essay by Eugene Prewitt

The Problem

Hebrews four, at least as it reads in the King James Version, combines a number of statements about “rest” in such a way as to confuse me. And I think it is fair to extrapolate that fact to say that it confuses many.

The rest looks, sometimes, future. Other times, it looks to be at present. It looks to be God’s rest of the Sabbath that has been here for millennia. Then it looks like the rest of heaven (which most commentators have concluded it to be.) Some persons use the passage to prove that we should keep the Sabbath. Others use it to prove that born-again persons are spiritually keeping the Sabbath by their restful dependence on the grace of God.

And frankly, it is the devil’s very normal mode of operation to preach error and take for his text a confusing passage. If we feel that we can’t say what the passage really means, we hesitate to say that anyone else is wrong regarding its meaning. And so the Devil is bolder.

It is also normal for me to undervalue what I do know about a passage when struggling to understand a portion that I do not really understand. I will resist that tendency in this essay.

The Context and Message of Hebrews

Hebrews opens with one big idea. God spoke to His people many ways before Jesus came to earth. But at the last, God spoke through Jesus. This is the Jesus that created all things. And this is the Jesus that will inherit all things.

God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Heb 1:1-2

The remainder of chapter 1 contrasts Jesus with the angels. He is in every way more exalted. He is the Creator and they the created ones. He sends them to help us and they are sent.

That is how chapter two is introduced. In view of its Source, we ought to give special heed to the truth that angels have communicated.

For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; Heb 2:2-3

And why do men receive such valuable service by the angels? Why do they serve us and not rather we them? Because of our relation to Jesus, the one we have seen that is “appointed heir of all things.” Initially it was a man, Adam, that was set over the works on this planet. And that is the point Hebrews is making. Adam was set over the works of God’s hands.

For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Heb 2:5-7

And this brings us back to the original point. Jesus is destined to inherit all things. But He has not inherited them yet. The things on earth are not “subject to him.”

But now we see not yet all things put under him. Heb 2:8

The next few verses address the important question: How does Christ’s exalted destiny benefit us? And the answer is that Jesus became a man, and so became the “captain” of our race. He tasted death for us so that we might taste the joys of what He deserves. He lives as our Priest to assure that we can inherit with Him the things that he inherits. He lives to comfort us.

For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted. Heb 2:18

Chapter 3 begins by inviting us to “consider” Jesus in these dual roles of priest and apostle (one that has been sent). The Hebrews are invited to compare Christ to Moses. What do they have in common: They were faithful. How do they differ? Christ built the household of which Moses was a member.

And this brings us to our portion of Hebrews. Under what condition are we counted as part of Christ’s household, the one He created and faithfully cares for?

And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. Heb 3:5-6

Endurance Makes the Difference

So being part of Christ’s “house” is not conditioned on an event. Those that are faithfully faithful to death are counted as His seed. (Faithfully faithful – that is, we should be talking and acting as if our faith were invincible, holding our “rejoicing” “firm” despite the changes in our feelings.)

If faithfulness is the condition of being part of Christ’s family, then Satan will aim at interrupting that very thing, faithfulness.

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, ‘To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: Heb 3:7-8

The passage goes on to quote a large portion of Psalm 95 that will be referred to over and over again in chapters 3 and 4. The idea is that “to day” is the day to be faithful. Today is the day to believe and obey rather than to “harden” the heart.

When the quotation from Psalms 95 closes (with the right parenthesis), the book comes right back to this point: Unbelief leads away from faithfulness and causes us to depart from “the living God.” In view of the significance of holding fast we are to encourage each other every day to be faithful.

‘So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.’) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; Heb 3:11-14

So Psalms 95 is brought into the narrative to encourage life-long faithfulness. What exactly does the passage say? This is the last half of the Psalm, the part used repeatedly in Hebrews:

For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. Ps 95:7-11

The idea is very much like that of Hebrews 3. We are his flock, but on condition. We won’t be made to lie down beside green pastures any more than the ten spies were if we grieve the Lord the way they did. “Today” is the day to believe, to obey. And what is this word “rest” that concludes Psalm 95?

Rest in Scripture

Psalm 95 is rehearsing a story that is found in Numbers 14. Where Psalm 95 says “they should not enter my rest” the story in Numbers says “they shall not see the land that I swear unto their fathers.” “Doubtless ye shall not come into the land.” “And ye shall know my breach of promise.” Numbers 14:23, 30, 34.

Such oaths are found elsewhere. “And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying, ‘Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers.’” Deuteronomy 1:34-35.

Was Canaan the promised rest? Joshua and Caleb and the second generation entered the land. And there they had a type of rest. They had rest from war[1], the gift of safety. Without such rest the promised land could hardly be a possession that fulfilled the promises.

… ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and … he giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; Deuteronomy 12:10

… the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it. Deuteronomy 25:19

… And the land had rest from war. Joshua 14:15

If this kind of rest was the ultimate fulfillment of the promise (Genesis 12 and 15) then Joshua did, indeed, give the people this kind of rest. But, in fact, that kind of rest was only an early installment of the rest that the “fathers” were looking for. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had the new earth in mind when they were thinking about the “promises.” They were looking “afar off” into the future for the fulfillment of God’s covenant.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God…. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. . . Now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:8-16

The condition, that we have already observed, of being counted as part of the family that inherits this eternal rest, is holding fast to faith. How long must someone hold on? Until death. And so it is, in scripture, that death is pictured as the first installment of that eternal rest. Westerners have adopted this idea into their phrase “rest in peace.”

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. Revelation 14:13

And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Revelation 6:11

Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: Acts 2:26

This places the timing of the conscious portion of our “rest” at the very end of time, at the resurrection of the just. That is when the unconscious portion of our rest ends. And for those that are troubled here on this earth, being relieved by Christ’s coming is a very sensible rest. That is the rest we anticipate.

And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. 2 Thessalonians 1:7

As Canaan is to heaven, so is respite to the same. The refreshing seasons here are foretastes of the future. According to Baxter in The Saints Everlasting Rest it is our troubles that make us sensible of how precious our eternal rest will be. Rest from persecution was a welcome change to the early church. Acts 9:31. And a temporary rest from wearing labor was treasured by the apostles.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. Mark 6:31

These external periods of restfulness have their spiritual parallel. When we feel secure and right with God, when we are conscious of the grace that surrounds us, we have an internal rest that coexists well even with intense work, even with external troubles.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Matthew 11:28-29

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Jeremiah 6:16

God’s Rest

God is not inactive. Neither does Deity die. Nor is our Lord perplexed by the multitude of cares. So the rest we have described so far hardly applies to Him. Nevertheless, the Bible speaks of God’s rest. God rests securely “in His love.” He is confident regarding his people when they have no such confidence regarding their own future.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. Zephaniah 3:17

And the Bible story very early notes God’s rest. After six days spent creating the world God rested. From other Bible information we might even gather that this rest was far more significant than it appears. If men were the last of the created intelligences and earth the last of the created habitats, then God rested from a much larger work than the creation of the planet. He rested, rather, from having finished the making of “all the hosts” of the heavenly bodies.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:1-3.

God wasn’t tired. His rest must be some parallel to what we call a refreshing experience. The Greeks had an active verb that means “to cause to rest.” It is translated as “refreshed” in the New Testament. Faithful brethren refresh us (1 Cor 16:18; 2 Cor 7:13; Philemon 1:7, 20).

And the Hebrews had a word for active refreshing “rest” – Sabbath, the original rest of God.

Summary of Rest in the Scripture

Outside of the book of Hebrews we find that God offers several varieties of rest to men. Abraham was promised a prosperous inheritance from the Euphrates to the Nile. He had in mind a city with foundations that would be built by God and just such a city will eventually land there. Those who are faithful to death will have part in that eternal rest.

But in the meantime, they may experience rest here. The Sabbath is the closest to what is coming and is, in fact, a remnant of the rest given in Eden.

And God may grant men other periods of refreshing rest from their labor. He may at times give them rest from oppression. At the end of their lives they rest in the grave, free both from temptation and affliction.

But the greatest rest is that one called “peace” in the promise “My peace I give unto you. In the world ye shall have tribulation, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” It begins here in a place where it does not match our circumstances. It continues over yonder where it matches all things well. It is the rest of grace, the “answer of a good conscience toward God.” It is the rest found in the “old” and “good” paths, for those that will walk in them.

Rest in Hebrews

The idea of rest in the book of Hebrews is a microcosm of what is found in the rest of scripture. The discussion is built around Psalm 95 and so had particular reference to the rest that was promised to Abraham and that was lost by the contemporaries of Joshua.

In Hebrews 3:15-18, the psalm is reviewed with the addition of the fact that Moses brought them out of Egypt but was unable to bring “them that sinned” (v. 17) and them that “believed not” (v. 18) into the promised land. In the psalm itself, it is those that always “err” in their “heart” and who have not “known [God’s] ways.”

Taking Hebrews and Psalms together you can gather that to know God is to trust him and that obedience is a function of the heart. And finally, that knowing God insufficiently to believe and obey is to be excluded from the promised rest.

So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Hebrews 3:19

If Abraham’s descendants failed to realize the promised rest, then there is reason to fear that we might not fare better. That is the thought of the next two verses.

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Hebrews 4:1-2

If the unbelievers will not enter the rest, then it remains that believers will enter it. And what do we know about the rest? It is, God says in Psalm 95, “my rest.” We have already observed that God’s rest from creating the universe began when this earth was finished. So for us the “rest” has an ancient origin and a current enjoyment. This is the message of the next verse.

For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Hebrews 4:3.

The Sabbath rest is used to prove this point, that “all” God’s works were finished creation week. And this rest of God is, emphatically, the rest referred to in Psalm 95 when God says “my rest.” He rested in a perfect and complete creation. So the next two verses communicate.

For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. Hebrews 4:4-5.

Now while we have the Sabbath, we do not have a perfect and complete creation. The fulfillment of Abraham’s promises waits for the creation of a “new heaven and a new earth” more than a thousand years from now. So the enjoyment of Sabbath is a foretaste of God’s rest, of what is coming. Not until heaven will the Sabbath be the very thing itself.

The descendants of Abraham received the promises first. That is, they heard them first. Now the message has gone to all the world and that is a good reason for us to profit from their failures. By unbelief they judged themselves unworthy of “eternal life.”

Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief[2]: Hebrews 4:6.

Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. Acts 13:46.

Now this is where we need to use our memory. We noted in chapter 3, when Psalm 95 was first introduced, that the condition of being counted as part of Christ’s family is life-long endurance. And that is the reason that God designates a specific day for being faithful. Which day? “Today.” As long as we serve God today, and for today, every day, our hearts will never be hardened.

Again, he ^{[“designates” YLT]} a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Hebrews 4:7

If Joshua’s conquest of Canaan had been the promised rest then God wouldn’t have warned us against missing that rest. The rest that was established at Creation still exists for God’s people. We are still to rest refreshingly in the creative power and accomplishments of the Creator. This restful dependence on the grace of Christ is so much like the Sabbath that it is called, in Hebrews 4, sabbatismos. In many versions it is called “a Sabbath keeping” while in the KJV (Hebrews 4:9) it is called “a rest.”

8 For if [Joshua] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day ^{[“today”]}. There remaineth therefore a rest^{[that will fulfill the promise that was not fulfilled in Canaan}] to the people of God ^{[who are the believing persons, like Joshua and Caleb].}Hebrews 4:8-9.

Unlike Joshua, Jesus has gone before us into heaven and is set down on the right hand of God. When on earth, Jesus was our example of a believing and obedient soul that refused to speak his own words or to do his own works. He refreshingly rested from these in true dependence on the Creative power of his Father. Whether it is he, as our example, or we as his followers, that is designated by “he” in verse 10, I do not know.

For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works[3], as God did from his. Hebrews 4:10

Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. John 14:10

But as the footnote indicates, there is quite a connection between Sabbath keeping and the rest of grace. Those that repudiate their own words and ways to honor the Sabbath are learning by blessed experience what it is to depend moment-by-moment on the life-giving power that animated the man Jesus.

We are to cease from sin. 1 Peter 4:1-2. Through obeying the law we are to be freed from the Law, and that is part and parcel with “no longer” doing our own works. It is Jesus that is to live in and through us. Galatians 2:19-20.

And so it is true in more ways than one that a Sabbath-keep remains for the people of God. It remains that we shall keep the Sabbath in the New Earth where we will rest every day in the completed creation of God.

And it remains that we are to keep the Sabbath here that was given us (with marriage) in Eden and preserved to us after the fall.

And it remains that we are to believe and obey today and so to rest in the security of salvation by faith.

It is the last of these three that seems to fit the next verse best. It sounds very much like the rest Jesus promised in Matthew 11 to those that are “weary” and “heavy laden” and who are willing to yoke up with Christ.

Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. Hebrews 4:11

Our “labor” is to believe in the most practical way. But belief is a very internal motive. We may not even judge well whether or not we believe. And this emergency is met with the wonderful discerning power of the living Word of God. It can point out for us our fatal unbelief. God sees our unbelief already. It is via the Word that He reveals it to us.

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:12-13.

Summary of Rest in Hebrews

The rest of God, set aside for our benefit in the Sabbath, to be experienced best in the New Earth, is the consoling gift of a grace-controlled life today. It comes to the believing soul and never to any other class. We ought to be conscious of the danger of missing it and encourage each other to faithfulness. Ultimately the best of the rest comes only to those that are faithful to death. And so “today” is the day to avoid hardening our hearts.

Moral Metaphors and the Sabbath in Hebrews

Some have, when noting that the Sabbath is commemorative of the rest that will characterize the new earth, concluded that the Seventh-day Sabbath is part of the ceremonial sabbaths. The effect of this conclusion is that the very passage that says that a Sabbath-keeping remains to the people of God is used to prove that Sabbath-keeping is not obligatory.

I admit that the Sabbath in Hebrews 4 is made into a metaphor of sanctified living. But am I thus admitting that the Sabbath is not part of the moral law?

Commands make ideal metaphors. Adultery represents illegal spiritual union of church and state. Marriage represents the bond between Christ and the church that is broken by that spiritual “adultery.”

Theft represents a lack of evangelism in Jeremiah 23 as does debt in Romans 1. In a reverse metaphor, we are to “covet earnestly the best gifts.” Men’s bellies are their gods in Romans 16:17-18. And in Hebrews 4 the Sabbath well represents the work of sanctification, of resting from our works while depending on the powerful grace of God.

But does the metaphor of Christ and the church make the seventh commandment into a ceremonial law? Hardly. Husbands and wives have a moral obligation to each other and to any children they may have. That obligation is no empty form. When it is ignored human woe escalates.

And just so with the fourth commandment in Hebrews 4. How ironic it is that the command that begins “remember…to keep holy” is relegated to ceremonial laws on just such reasoning as this: Christ is our “rest” and therefore we no longer obey Him? The Sabbath-keeping illustrates our relation to Him and so we are under no requirements to keep it any longer?

Adventists have long taught that the Sabbath is a sign of sanctification. We have recognized the illustrative value of the Sabbath since before we were organized as a religious body.

Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them. Eze 20:12

Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you. Exodus 31:13

The passage indicates that the moral value of the sign is that in promotes a knowledge of the Lord as the sanctifying Agent. He that set aside a day as holy and blessed it, can do as much for a man. As God’s creative power gave existence to the Sabbath, so His creative power works in us both to will and to do his good pleasure. And as he was refreshed on the Sabbath at the experience of a job well completed, so we can be refreshed any day of the week at the thought that Jesus spoke meaningfully when he said “It is finished.”

It would be too bad if some believers in the present truth began to shy away from the metaphoric value of the Sabbath over fear that it would belittle the importance of keeping the command. On the contrary, let us exalt the Sabbath as the sign of sanctification. And as Isaiah 58:13-14 suggests, let us look for the blessing that comes to the obedient.

Jesus as our High Priest

This passage (Heb 3-4) is buttressed at both ends with direct references to Jesus as our High Priest (Heb 2:17-3:1; Heb 4:14-16). The high priest is the one person that, on earth, entered into the Most Holy Place. And in heaven Jesus certainly enters there, as Hebrews testifies.

What is in the Most Holy Place? In Revelation, where Jesus shows up dressed as High Priest, we twice see in the heavenly sanctuary evidence that the Ten Commandments (“the testament” or “testimony” in the “ark of the testament”) are there.

And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. Rev 1:13

And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: Revelation 11:19

And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened: Revelation 15:5

It would be too ironic if the passage that exalted Christ as High Priest were used to undermine the authority of the Law that resides in the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary.

Conclusions Regarding Hebrews 3-4 and the Sabbath

Hebrews 3-4 is about Christ as our High Priest. It is about enduring to the end. It is about the heart-hardening nature of unbelief. It is about the restful nature of obedient faith.

Its backdrop is the off-repeated (in scripture) story of the Exodus. Men on that trip failed to please God because of their unbelief. Yet they had plenty of evidence on which to base their faith in the love and power of God. They had reason to belief. God said, regarding their situation:

The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes; And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God, Deuteronomy 1:30-32

And when, despite the evidence, they believed not, “the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying, Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers.” v. 33-34.

But there were exceptions. And they help us know how we can avoid the mistakes of their peers.

Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the LORD. v. 36

“Wholly” following the Lord is the same thing as believing him (See also Numbers 32:11). It is the same idea found in Jeremiah 6. There some persons try to help God’s people. Their method is to preach “peace, peace.” But though the people feel better, they are not much helped. They have not learned to be ashamed of their wickedness. And so they will fail of entering the rest.

Nevertheless, the rest is offered to them.

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Jeremiah 6:14-16

And as in Jeremiah, so in Hebrews, it is in the “old ways” of obedient believing, that men find “rest” for their “souls.”

The rest is for those that hold fast to their faith. And it is ironic that the passage of Hebrews 3-4 would be used by some to say “turn away from the good old paths” when the passage is written to keep us in the same. We are to “hold fast our profession” in view of the fact that Jesus is the High Priest.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. Hebrews 4:14

Yes, to believe and to obey are synonyms in this passage. Hebrews 3:12-13; 3:17-19.

Those who are unwilling to give the Lord faithful, earnest, loving service will not find spiritual rest in this life nor in the life to come. “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. . . . Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fail after the same example of unbelief.” The rest here spoken of is the rest of grace, obtained by following the prescription. “Labor diligently.” {PUR, November 7, 1901 par. 6}

One quarter of the Bibles references to “unbelief” are in Hebrews 3-4. Another quarter are in Romans 11. Our unbelief hinders the “mighty works” of God. Matthew 13:58. Yet unbelief only has that power when it is unconfessed. When we pray “I believe, help my unbelief” that prayer is answered. Matthew 17; Mark 9.

And in Hebrews 3-4, unbelief hardened the heart. Belief refreshes the soul.

And for those that know by experience, that it what the Sabbath does. It is the rest of the Lord, given to us in Eden. And it well illustrates the 24-7 rest that comes from yoking up with Christ. That is how Paul uses it in Hebrews, as an excellent illustration.

Those that rest the most in the power of grace during the six work days most appreciate the special time set apart for resting on the Sabbath.

Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. Jeremiah 6:16

— The End

Appendix

Richard Baxter on Hebrews 4:10

“The Saints Everlasting Rest” by Richard Baxter is about the Hebrews 4 passage and is entirely predicated on the idea that the rest is that of heaven. He mentions the Sabbath and Canaan as illustrations of the heavenly rest.

Adam Clark on Hebrews 4:10

For he that is entered into his rest The man who has believed in Christ Jesus has entered into his rest; the state of happiness which he has provided, and which is the forerunner of eternal glory.

Hath ceased from his own works–No longer depends on the observance of Mosaic rites and ceremonies for his justification and final happiness. He rests from all these works of the law as fully as God has rested from his works of creation.

Those who restrain the word rest to the signification of eternal glory, say, that ceasing from our own works relates to the sufferings, tribulations, afflictions, as in #Re 14:13. I understand it as including both.

In speaking of the Sabbath, as typifying a state of blessedness in the other world, the apostle follows the opinions of the Jews of his own and after times. The phrase shabbath illaah, veshabbath tethaah, the sabbath above, and the sabbath below, is common among the Jewish writers; and they think that where the plural number is used, as in #Le 19:30: Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, that the lower and higher sabbaths are intended, and that the one is prefigured by the other. See many examples in Schoettgen.

We need not be left a prey to Satan’s power. . . . The children of God should not permit Satan to place himself between them and their God. If you permit him to do this, he will tell you that your troubles are the most grievous, the sorest troubles that any mortal ever bore. He will place his magnifying glasses before your eyes, and present everything to you in an exaggerated form to overwhelm you with discouragement…. Take the Word of God as the man of your counsel, and humble your doubting soul before God, and with contrition of heart say, “Here I lay my burden down. I cannot bear it. It is too heavy for me. I lay it down at the feet of my compassionate Redeemer.” . . . {OHC 319.3}

[1] It was this kind of “rest” that was prophesied to characterize the reign of Solomon. He was to be a “man of rest” and God promised to “give him rest from all his enemies round about” and to “give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days.” 1 Chronicles 22:9

[2] Jude 1:5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.

[3] Is 58:13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

God and Pain, an Essay on Why

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My Faith or God’s Faith?

Romans 14

Perfection in the Last Generation

Laws of Heredity

The Laws of Heredity

Introduction

Jesus Gains for Us the Advantages Possessed by Adam

Adam’s sin forfeited probation. His own case became so miserable, so hopeless. At that moment of his greatest need God announced the plan of Christ’s sacrifice. We, Adam’s children, may thank Jesus for not taking our first parents’ advice during that meeting.

The Definition of “Sins” and “Sin.”

Satan’s Arguments

Four Fascinating Statements

Corruption as Result of Past Personal Sins

Depravity and Corruption as Unregenerate Activity

Laws of Heredity

Heredity and the Degeneration of the Race

Discounting the Degradation

Arguments from Reversal

The Miracle of Enmity

How Christ Secured the Gift of Inherited Righteousness for His Children

A Character to Share

Intercessory Prayer and Revival

How to Know God’s Will for Your Life

How to Deal with Pain

The Rest Remaining in Hebrews 4

Hebrews and the Rest that Remains

God and Pain, an Essay on Why