October 1927
637
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
“Everyone shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith shall ye season it? Have salt in your selves." Mk. 9 :49-50. Salted With Fire W E may well ponder such statements. Jesus has ■ just been speaking of hell fire. He now declares thjat saved and unsaved alike shall be salted with fire. There is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29), and there is a conserving fire (Mt. 3:11; 1 Pet. 4:12). The fire of the Holy Spirit glorifies, warms and empowers the believer. As “living sacrifices” (Rom. 12:1) believers must endure “fiery trials” for Christ’s sake. No one thinks of making literal fire out of these precepts as applied to the believer, although some consider the fire of verse 45 as actual flame. Whatever the fire may be, no one can escape fire; but we may have our choice between the fire of life and the fire of perdition. There is evidently an allusion here to the salting of the sacrifices (Lev. 2 :13), a type of the’Spirit’s power to preserve from impurity. The 50th verse proceeds^’to speak of the seasoning property of salt as well (cf. Job 1 6 :6). Divine grace communicates a relish to everything in the Christian life (Col. 4:6). The life warmed by the Holy Spirit is a life with a heavenly flavor. Insipid salt is another name for a savorless life, a religious profession that does not affect the conduct, or impress others with the power of God. The book of Revelation is not Christ’s last message to the world. He must speak to the unregenerate through “living epistles.” How can the world come to see Chris tianity in its true light unless believers have salt in them selves ? “We are the Lord’s last message, Given in deed and word. What if the type is crooked ? What if the print is blurred ?” ' — o — Ordained to Eternal Life “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48). T HE word “ordained” literally means “to arrange in an orderly manner,” hence a disposing, or assigning. The fact here asserted is the divine disposing of these Gentile believers to eternal life. Statements of this kind are often taken to. indicate that some are ordained to be! lost, hence need not concern them selves about salvation. Election, ordination or predesti nation are, however, according to Scripture, preceded by God’s foreknowledge (Rom. 8:29-30) of what the indi vidual would do. Scripture nowhere states that God foreordains any to be lost. The Bible teaches that everything pertaining to salva tion is ordered according to divine purpose. The divine inworking, however, does not annul nor counteract man’s own agency. Those who have not accepted the Saviour could have if they would. Outside heaven’s gates are the words, “Whosoever will.” Perhaps on the inside, we may read, ‘‘Whosoever would was foreknown.” Foreknowledge no more determines choice than after
knowledge does. Foreknowledge is, for God, not us. We cannot have fore knowledge, but we can have forethought. From the divine side, it is God’s determination, in unison with man’s belief, that brings about salvation. If man is lost, it is the result of his own decision. A church member, who was without assurance, once told his pastor that he felt he was not among the elect, and perhaps was ordained to be lost. “If you found your self in hell,” asked the pastor, “what would you do ?” “I would look up some one else in the same fix,” he replied, “and have a prayer meeting.” “The devil would put you out of hell if you did,” said the pastor. “The man who has the honest desire to pray and to know God as you have will not land in hell. You give evidence that you are one of his elect.” If any man has no such desire, it is not because God does not will to save him, but because he does not care to cultivate God’s acquaintance. We cannot perfectly harmonize the two revealed facts of God’s foreknowledge and determination with man’s power of choice, yet any one can reconcile them for himself by accepting Christ as his Saviour. |p || p || \ The Jerusalem Earthquake J UST a hundred years ago an earthquake devastated Palestine and eastern Egypt, killing some four thou sand persons. On July 11, 1927, the Holy Land was rocked again by a quake that was felt from Syria on the north to Egypt on the south, but proved most destructive to life and prop erty in Palestine and in Transjordania, the territory under British mandate east of the Palestine border. Jerusalem itself was not visited by great loss of life, but considerable damage was done to famous buildings, old and new. One of the domes of the Holy Sepulchre, in which the body of Christ is said to have rested before the resurrection, and the goal of millions of pilgrims from the date of the discovery of the site in the time of the Cru sades, was badly cracked. The tower of Government House, on the Mount of Olives, the official residence of Lord Palmer (High Commissioner), was badly damaged. The famous Mosque of Omar, standing on the site of the • Temple, and one of the principal Moslem shrines in the world, suffered much damage. The eastern walls of the Hebrew University buildings caved in, and all work has been suspended in consequence of the grave wreckage of the laboratories. A synagogue in Jerusalem was de stroyed, and one in Tiberias. The greatest damage occurred at Nablus, the “Shechem” of Bible history where lives the remnant of the old Samaritans, about twenty-five in number; this town was almost destroyed. Other towns that suffered were Jericho, Bethany, Ludd (the Biblical Lydda), and Ramleh. Earthquakes are to be among the signs preceding the com ing of Christ in power and great glory (Matt. 24:7; Rev. 6:12; etc.). Hence the report of these happenings re enforces the call to be watchful.
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