October, 1934
349
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
skeptics, and agnostics know themselves to be unbelievers, yet they insist on handling the holiest vessels-of the Lord within the sanctuary. They seek the touch of ordaining hands, fawn over the Bible, and kiss the blessed cheeks of our Lord Jesus Christ. They covet the sacred offices of the church—pastor, elder, and bishop. They parade the titles “Reverend” and “Doctor of Divinity.” Yet they only use these powerful instruments of sacred office to bore from within and undermine the citadels of the faith.lThese modernistic sappers who have crept within the church, into her pulpits and into the chairs of her seminaries and universities, would have us believe that the story of crea tion in Genesis does not have a scientific leg on which to stand i that to believe that Eve was made from Adam’s /* v //-i9 9 ’
[among these lying prophets] hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it?” (Jer. 23:9-18). F alse P rophets U sually S yncretists The false prophets of Jeremiah’s day were mealy- mouthed syncretists. They would stretch the tent of Jehovah over every strange god, because, as they reasoned, all religions were but flowers in one garden. But the Lord God of Israel is exclusive. How could He be other wise in His absolute knowledge that there was (and is) no other living God beside Him? How can absolute truth entertain a lie and retain its purity ? Jehovah never allowed Himself to be presented as one of the ways, but as the way! He was not even the best way. He was THE way!
rib is equivalent to believ ing that the moon is made out of green cheese; that the story of the serpent’s deceiving the woman is only a lot of irrational claptrap; that “to believe that God turned stone mason and chiseled, the Commandments on tables of stone” is to stultify one’s intelligence; that Moses never wrote the Pentateuch, though Christ said he did ; that Noah never outrode the waves of a flood in an a rk ; that the deluge was only a period of unusually high waters at Babylon; that Methuselah’s longevity is incompatible with rhyme or reason; that Melchize- dek was only a chimeri cal Canaanite deity; that the pillar of fire was merely a brazier of hot coals carried before the army of Israel; that the plagues that smote Egypt were tales to tell to old ladies back in the moun tains; that the story of the sun standing still on Gibeon, and the moon over the valley of Ajalon, is unscientific balder dash; that the record of Jonah and the “whale” is but a fishy satire; that to believe that three Jews walked unscorched in a fiery furnace dem ands taking leave of one’s senses; that the virgin birth of Christ is a fable that can be duplicated in the life of Pythagoras, Plato, Buddha, Cedric, and others; that the star of Bethlehem was a bit of condensed moonshine gathered within a cranial vacuum; and that (ex a c tly as one o f the “prophets” declared at
That which brought the wrath of God down upon the head of Israel is the danger that confronts the church of the living God in A. D. 1934—the sym pathetic attitude of its prophets toward palaver ing syncretism! F alse P rophets in I s rael from C hrist to O u r D ay No sooner had our Lord uttered His solemn warning than the march of “false C h r is ts and f a ls e prophets” began, plaguing both Israel and the church. In A. D. 44, Paul made speedy dis posal of “a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Bar-jesus . . . seeking to turn away the deputy [Sergius Paulus] from the faith” - (Acts 13:6, 8) : “O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteous ness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:10). Were Paul still living, it would be inter esting to stand by after introducing him to some of the high priests within professedly evangelical Christendom today! Bar-jesus was but a pioneer in the devil’s chief business, i.e., sub stituting honied cakes of sawdust for that “bread which cometh down from heaven” (John 6:50). Ever since his day, false prophets c o n tin u e to sneak into the tents of the faithful, seeking from within to turn men away from “the faith . . . once for all delivered unto the saints.” Atheists, infidels.
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Satan's Lie in Modern Guise # Many Christians were startled by the boldness of the assertions ap pearing in "A Man Among Men," a recent article in the Reader's Digest. The discussion, condensed from Charles Hall Perry's article in Scribner's Magazine of April, 1931, is a typical, though perhaps unusu ally frank, statement of the modern viewpoint. Such passages as the one quoted below are peculiarly deadly because they involve not only denial but also misrepresentation of the Word of God: Nearly every tenet of the church's creation of a theologic Christ— his deity, his kingship, his place in between God and man, and, most unethical of all, his propitiatory sacrifice, met with denial from him. . . My contention is that Jesus must be known exactly as he was in Judea— what he said, what he did, what he was . . X He refused to be a God or a king. He desired, above all, to be a man among men. In contesting the question raised by Mr. Perry, the K IN G 'S BUSINESS does so in no spirit of criticism of the man, for although he may not wish to admit it, he is one "for whom Christ died." But faced with such a challenge to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as that which the writer presents, we must declare our uncompromising opposition to the view expressed. In our protest against the assertion that what are now the "tenets" of the church "met with denial from him," we shall limit ourselves to the Gospel accounts of "what he said" although, recognizing the authority of the entire Word of God, such scriptures could be multiplied. H IS DEITY: "H e that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). H IS K INGSH IP : "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: . . . Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre pared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:31, 34). H IS PLACE IN BETWEEN G O D A N D M AN : "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me" (John 14:6). H IS PROPITIATORY SACR IFICE : "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mk. 10:45). "H E DESIRED, ABOVE ALL, TO BE A M A N A M O N G M EN ": "Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world" (John 8:23). Truly, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The whole modern interpretation of Jesus Christ rings through the words, "my contention." Just here lies the issue. It is because men "have turned every one to his own way" that "the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
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