[E15]
STUDY I
THE FACT AND PHILOSOPHY OF
THE ATONEMENT
It Lies at the Foundation of Christian Doctrine from the Bible Standpoint
--Three Views of the Subject--The "Orthodox View," the "Heterodox
View"; the Bible View, which Unites and Harmonizes Both--
Evolution Theory Antagonistic to the Truth on this Subject--Reconciliation
of Divine Justice Accomplished--Reconciliation of the
Church in Progress--Reconciliation of the World Future--The
Grand Final Results when the Mediatorial Throne and Kingdom will
be Vacated.
THE doctrine of the Atonement lies at the very foundation
of the Christian religion. Having thus the most important
place in theology, a clear understanding of this subject is
very essential, and this is generally conceded amongst
Christian people. Nevertheless, the Atonement, though believed
in, is little understood; the various ideas and theories
respecting it are disconnected as well as vague; and faith
built upon these disconnected and vague views of the foundation
doctrine must, of necessity, be proportionately unstable,
weak and vague. On the contrary, if this important
subject be clearly seen, in all the grandeur of the proportions
accorded it in the Word of God, as the foundation of
the divine plan of salvation, it not only will firmly establish
faith, rooting and grounding it upon correct principles, but
it will serve as a guide in discriminating between truth and
error in connection with all the minutiae of faith. When the
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foundation is well established and clearly discerned, and
every item of faith built upon it is kept in exact alignment
with the foundation, the entire faith superstructure will be
perfect. As we shall show later, every doctrine and theory
may be brought in contact with this touchstone, and have
its proportion of gold or of dross quickly determined
thereby.
There are two general views of the Atonement:
(1) What is known as the orthodox view, namely, that
man, as a transgressor of the divine law, came under divine
condemnation--"under wrath"; and that God, while hindered
by Justice from exonerating the sinner, has provided
a just redemption for him, and thus provided for the forgiveness
of his sins, through the sacrifice of Christ. This entire
work of satisfying the claims of Justice and making the
sinner acceptable to God, is denominated the work of
Atonement.
(2) What is known as the unorthodox view of the Atonement
(at one time represented chiefly by Unitarians and
Universalists, but which has recently been spreading rapidly
and generally in every quarter of Christendom), approaches
the subject from the opposite side: it presupposes
no requirement on the part of divine justice of a sacrifice for
the sinner's transgression; it ignores the wrath of God as
represented in any special sentence of death; it ignores "the
curse." It holds that God seeks and waits for man's approach,
placing no hindrance in the way, requiring no
atonement for man's sin, but requiring merely that man
shall abandon sin and seek righteousness, and thus come
into harmony with God--be at-one with God hence this view
is generally styled At-one-ment, and is understood to signify
harmony with righteousness regardless of the methods by
which mankind may be brought into this state: atonement
for sin being considered from the standpoint of expiation
by the sinner himself, or else as unconditional forgiveness
by God. From this standpoint our Lord Jesus and all
[E17]
his followers have part in the at-one-ment, in the sense that
they have taught and exhorted mankind to turn from sin to
righteousness, and in no sin-offering or ransom sense.
(3) The view which we accept as the Scriptural one, but
which has been overlooked very generally by theologians,
embraces and combines both of the foregoing views. The
Bible doctrine of the Atonement, as we shall endeavor to
show, teaches clearly:
(a) That man was created perfect, in the image of God,
but fell therefrom, through wilful disobedience, and came
under the sentence of wrath, "the curse," and thus the entire
race became "children of wrath." Eph. 2:3
(b) While God justly executed against his disobedient
creature the sentence of his law, death, and that without
mercy, for over four thousand years, yet, nevertheless,
blended with this justice and fidelity to principles of righteousness
was the spirit of love and compassion, which designed
an ultimate substitutional arrangement or plan of
salvation, by which God might still be just and carry out his
just laws against sinners, and yet be the justifier of all who
believe in Jesus. (Rom. 3:26) By this plan all the condemned
ones might be relieved from the sentence without
any violation of Justice, and with such a display of divine
love and wisdom and power as would honor the Almighty,
and prove a blessing to all his creatures, human and angelic
--by revealing to all, more fully than ever before seen,
the much diversified wisdom and grace of God. Eph. 3:10
Diaglott
(c) It was in the carrying out of this program of Atonement
to the divine law for its transgression by father Adam,
that our dear Redeemer died, "a ransom for all, to be testified
in due time," 1 Tim. 2:6
(d) But the sacrifice for sins does not complete the work
of Atonement, except so far as the satisfaction of the claim
of Justice is concerned. By virtue of the ransom paid to Justice,
a transfer of man's account has been made, and his
[E18]
case, his indebtedness, etc., is wholly transferred to the account
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid to Justice the full
satisfaction of its claims against Adam, and his race. Thus
Jesus, by reason of this "purchase" with his own precious
blood, is now in consequence the owner, master, "Lord, of
all." Rom. 14:9
(e) One object in this arrangement for Adam and his
race was the annulment of their death sentence, which, so long
as it remained, estopped Love from any efforts to recover
the condemned, whose privileges of future life under any
circumstances were wholly abrogated--destroyed.
(f) Another object was the placing of the fallen race
beyond the reach of divine Justice, and under the special
supervision of Jesus, who as the representative of the Father's
plan proposes not only to satisfy the claims of Justice,
but also undertakes the instruction, correction and restitution
of so many of the fallen race as shall show their desire
for harmony with Justice. Such he will ultimately turn over
to the Justice of the divine law, but then so perfected as to
be able to endure its perfect requirements.
(g) Though originally the only separating influence between
God and man was the divine sentence, now, after six
thousand years of falling, degradation and alienation from
God through wicked works--and because of ignorance, superstition,
and the wiles of the Adversary--and because the
divine character and plan have been misrepresented to
men, we find the message of grace and forgiveness unheeded.
Although God freely declares, since the ransom was
accepted, that he is now ready to receive sinners back into
harmony with himself and to eternal life, through the merit
of Christ's sacrifice, nevertheless the majority of mankind
are slow to believe the good tidings, and correspondingly
slow to accept their conditions. Some have become so deluded
by the sophistries of Satan, by which he has deceived
all nations (Rev. 20:3), that they do not believe that there is
a God; others believe in him as a great and powerful adversary,
without love or sympathy, ready and anxious to torment
[E19]
them to all eternity; others are confused by the Babel
of conflicting reports that have reached them, concerning
the divine character, and know not what to believe; and,
seeking to draw near unto God, are hindered by their fears
and by their ignorance. Consequently, as a matter of fact,
the number who have yet availed themselves of the opportunity
of drawing nigh unto God through Christ is a
comparatively small one--"a little flock."
(h) Nevertheless, the sacrifice for sins was not for the few,
but for the "many," "for all." And it is a part of the
divine
program that he who redeemed all with his own precious
blood shall ultimately make known to all men, "to every
creature," the good tidings of their privilege under divine
grace, to return to at-one-ment with their Creator.
(i) Thus far only the Church has been benefited by the
Atonement, except indirectly; but the teaching of the
Scriptures is that this Church shall constitute a priestly
Kingdom, or "royal priesthood," with Christ the Royal
Chief Priest, and that during the Millennial age this Heavenly
Kingdom class, this royal priesthood, shall fully and
completely accomplish for mankind the work of removing
the blindness which Satan and error and degradation
brought upon them, and shall bring back to full at-one-ment
with God whosoever wills, of all the families of the
earth.
(j) In harmony with this is the Apostle's statement that
we, believers, the Church, have received the Atonement. The
Atonement was made, so far as God was concerned, eighteen
centuries ago, and that for all; but only believers have
received it in the sense of accepting the opportunity which
the grace of God has thus provided--and the rest of mankind
are blinded. "The god of this world hath blinded the
minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the
glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them." 2 Cor. 4:4
(k) In harmony with this thought also is the statement of
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Scripture, that the first work of Christ in connection with
his Millennial reign, will be to bind, or restrain, Satan, that
he shall deceive the nations no more for the thousand years
(Rev. 20:3), also the numerous statements of the prophets,
to the effect that when the Kingdom of God shall be established
in the earth, the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the
whole earth, as the waters cover the great deep, and none
shall need to say to his neighbor, "Know thou the Lord"
(Heb. 8:11), also the petition of the Lord's prayer, "Thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth"--because this
implies what the Apostle expressly declares, that God desires
all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
1 Tim. 2:4
(l) The Atonement, in both of its phases--the satisfaction
of Justice, and the bringing back into harmony or at-one-ment
with God of so many of his creatures as, under
full light and knowledge, shall avail themselves of the privileges
and opportunities of the New Covenant--will be completed
with the close of the Millennial Age, when all who
shall wilfully and intelligently reject divine favor, offered
through Christ, "shall be destroyed from among the
people," with "an everlasting destruction from the presence
of the Lord, and from the glory of his power"--with a destruction
from which there will be no hope of recovery by
future resurrection. Acts 3:23; 2 Thess. 1:9
(m) Then the great work of the Atonement will be completed,
and all things in heaven and in earth will be found
in harmony with God, praising him for all his munificence
and grace through Christ; and there shall be no more dying
and no more sighing, no more pain there, because the former
things shall have passed away--as the result of the work
of the Atonement, commenced by the propitiation of Justice
by our Redeemer's sacrifice, concluded by the full
reconciliation of all found worthy of eternal life.
However the word Atonement may be viewed, it must be
conceded that its use at all, as between God and man, implies
[E21]
a difficulty, a difference, an opposition, existing between
the Creator and the creature--otherwise they would
be at one, and there would be no need of a work of atonement,
from either standpoint. And here particularly we discern
the deadly conflict that exists between the Bible and
the modern doctrine of Evolution, which, for the past thirty
years in particular, has been permeating the faith of Christian
people of all denominations, and which shows itself
most markedly in theological schools and in the principal
pulpits of Christendom.
The Evolution theory denies the fall of man; denies that
he ever was in the image and likeness of God; denies that he
was ever in a fit condition to be on trial before the bar of
exact Justice; denies that he ever sinned in such a trial, and
that he ever was sentenced to death. It claims that death, so
far from being a penalty is but another step in the process of
evolution; it holds that man, instead of falling from the image
and likeness of God into sin and degradation, has been
rising from the condition of a monkey into more and more
of the image and likeness of God. The logical further steps
of the theory would evidently be, to deny that there could
be any justice on God's part in condemning man for rising
from a lower to a higher plane, and denying, consequently,
that Justice could accept a sin-offering for man, when there
had been no sin on man's part to require such an offering.
Consistently with this thought, it claims that Christ was not
a sin-offering, not a sacrifice for sins--except in the same
sense, they would say, that any patriot might be a sacrifice
for his country; namely, that he laid down his life in
helping to lift the race forward into greater liberties and
privileges.
But we find that the Word of God most absolutely contradicts
this entire theory, so that no harmony is possible
between the Scripture teaching and the teaching of Evolution
--science falsely so-called. Whoever believes in the Evolution
theory, to that extent disbelieves the Scripture
theory; and yet we find a very large number of Christian
[E22]
people vainly struggling and attempting to harmonize
these antagonizing teachings. To whatever extent they hold
the theory of Evolution, to that extent they are off the only
foundation for faith which God has provided; to that extent
they are prepared for further errors, which the Adversary
will be sure to bring forward to their attention, errors
presented so forcibly from the worldly-wise standpoint that
they would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect. But
the very elect will have "the faith once delivered to the
saints"; the very elect will hold to the doctrine of the Atonement,
as presented in the Scriptures; the very elect will thus
be guarded against every item and feature of the Evolution
theory: for the very elect will be taught of God, especially
upon this doctrine of the Atonement, which lies at the very
foundation of revealed religion and Christian faith.
The Scriptures unequivocally testify that God created
man in his own image and likeness--mental and moral;
that man, an earthly being, was the moral and intellectual
image or likeness of his Creator, a spirit being. They declare
his communion with his Creator in the beginning; they declare
that his Creator approved him as his workmanship,
and pronounced him "very good," very acceptable, very
pleasing; they show that the proposition of life or death was
set before the perfect Adam, and that when he became a
transgressor it was an intelligent and wilful act, inasmuch
as it is declared that Adam "was not deceived." They declare
the beginning of the execution of the death penalty.
They record the progress for centuries of the death sentence
upon the race. They point out how God revealed to faithful
Abraham his purpose, his intention, not at once, but later
on, to bring in a blessing to the race, which he declared he
had cursed with the sentence of death. Gen. 1:31; 2:17; 3:23;
1 Tim. 2:14; Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 3:17
Since the curse or penalty of sin was death, the blessings
promised implied life from the dead, life more abundant:
and the promise to Abraham was that in some unexplained
way the Savior who would accomplish this work of blessing
[E23]
the world should come through Abraham's posterity. The
same promises were, with more or less clearness, reiterated
to Isaac, to Jacob and to the children of Israel. The prophets
also declared that the Messiah coming should be a
Lamb slain, a sin-offering, one who should "pour out his
soul unto death," for our sins, and not for his own. And they
portrayed also the result of his sacrifice for sins, in the glory
and blessing that should follow; telling how ultimately his
Kingdom shall prevail, and, as the Sun of Righteousness,
he shall bring into the world the new day of blessing and
life and joy, which shall dispel the darkness and gloom and
the sorrow of the night of weeping, which now prevails as
the result of original sin and the fall, and inherited evil
tendencies. Isa. 53:10-12; 35; 60; 61
The Apostle Peter, speaking under the inspiration of the
holy Spirit, so far from telling us that man had been created
on the plane of a monkey, and had risen to his present
degree of development, and would ultimately attain perfection
by the same process of evolution, points, on the contrary,
a reverse lesson, telling us that Christ died for our
sins, and that, as a consequence of the redemption accomplished
by his sacrifice, there shall ultimately come to mankind,
at the second advent of our Lord, great times of
refreshing--times of restitution of all things, which, he declares,
"God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy
prophets since the world began." (Acts 3:19-21) Whoever
may think the Apostle Peter was preaching a doctrine of
evolution, when preaching the gospel of restitution, must
have closed his eyes and stopped the operation of his reasoning
faculties; for if the original condition of man was
that of a monkey, or if it was anything whatever inferior to
our present condition, the Apostle would have been the veriest
fool to hold out, as a grand hope and prospect, times of
restitution, for restitution means a restoration of that condition
which previously existed.
On the contrary, the Apostle's words are thoroughly out
of harmony with and antagonistic to the theory of evolution,
[E24]
and in strictest harmony with the doctrine of the
Atonement, reconciliation and restitution--in strictest harmony
with the Scriptural teaching that mankind were sold
under sin, and became the slaves of sin, and suffered the
degradation of sin, as the result of father Adam's original
disobedience and its death-penalty. Restitution, the good
tidings which Peter preached, implies that something good
and grand and valuable was lost, and that it has been redeemed
by the precious blood of Christ, and that it shall be
restored, as the result of this redemption, at the second advent
of Christ. And the Apostle's reference to the prophets,
declaring that these restitution times were mentioned by all
of them who were holy, distinctly implies that the hope of
restitution is the only hope held out before the world of
mankind by divine inspiration.
All the Apostles similarly pointed backward to the fall
from divine favor, and to the cross of Christ as the point of
reconciliation as respects divine Justice, and forward to the
Millennial age as the time for the blessing of all the world of
mankind with opportunities of knowledge and help in their
reconciliation to God. They all point out the present age as the
time for the gathering out of the elect Church to be associates
with Messiah (his "royal priesthood" and "peculiar
people") to cooperate with him as his "bride," his
"body,"
in the work of conferring upon the world the blessings of
restitution secured for them by the sacrifice finished at
Calvary.
Mark the words of the Apostle Paul along this line: "By
one man's disobedience sin entered into the world"--and death
as a result of sin; and so death passed upon all men, for [by
reason of inherited sin and sinful dispositions] all are sinners.
The Apostle Paul quite evidently was no more an
Evolutionist than the Apostle Peter and the prophets. Mark
the hope which he points out as the very essence of the Gospel,
saying: "God commendeth his love toward us, in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us; much more then,
being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath
[E25]
through him." (Rom. 5:8,9) Here is a specific declaration
that the race was under divine wrath; that the saving power
was the blood of Christ, the sacrifice that he gave on our
behalf; and that this sacrifice was an expression of divine
love and grace. The Apostle proceeds to show the work of
Atonement, and the restitution which will follow as a result,
saying: "As through one offense [Adam's disobedience] sentence
came upon all men to condemnation [the death sentence];
so also through one righteous act the free gift [the
reversal of the sentence] came on all men unto justification
of life. For as through the disobedience of one man [Adam]
many were made sinners [all who were in him], so by the
obedience of one [Jesus] many [all who ultimately shall
avail themselves of the privileges and opportunities of the
New Covenant] shall be constituted righteous."
Rom. 5:12,18,19
The same Apostle, in many other of his masterly and logical
discourses, presents the thought that the Atonement,
so far as God is concerned, is a thing of the past--finished
when "we were reconciled to God through the death of his
Son," while we were yet sinners. (Rom. 5:10) In this he
evidently
did not refer to a work accomplished in the sinner,
reconciling the sinner to God, because he states it in the reverse
manner, and declares that it was accomplished, not in
us, but by Christ for us, and while we were sinners. Note also
that in various of his learned and logical discourses he
points out a work of blessing to the world, to be accomplished
through the glorified Church, under Christ, her
divinely appointed Head, showing that it will consist in
bringing the world to a knowledge of God's grace in Christ,
and that thus so many of the redeemed world as may be
willing can return to at-one-ment with their Creator during
the Millennial Kingdom--a restitution of the divine favor
lost in Eden.
As an illustration of this point note the argument of
Rom. 8:17-24. Here the Apostle distinctly marks as separate
salvation of the Church and the subsequent salvation
[E26]
or deliverance of the world, the "groaning creation." He
calls attention to the Church as the prospective joint-heir
with Christ, who, if faithful in suffering with him in this
present time, shall ultimately share his glory in his Kingdom.
He assures us that these sufferings of this present time
are unworthy of comparison with the glory that shall be revealed
in us by and by. And then he proceeds to say that
this glory to be revealed in the Church after its sufferings
are all complete, is the basis for all the earnest expectations
of the groaning creation--whose longings and hopes necessarily
await fruition in the time when the sons of God shall
be revealed or manifested.
Now the sons of God are unrevealed; the world knows
them not, even as it knew not their Master; and though the
world, indeed, looks forward with a vague hope to a golden
age of blessing, the Apostle points out that all their earnest
expectations must wait for the time when the Church, the
sons of God, shall be glorified and shall be manifested as the
kings and priests of God's appointment, who shall reign
over the earth during the Millennial age, for the blessing of
all the families of the earth, according to the riches of divine
grace as revealed by God in his promise to Abraham,
saying: "In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be
blessed." Gal. 3:8,16,29
The Apostle proceeds to show that mankind in general,
the intelligent earthly creation, was subjected to frailty
("vanity") by heredity, by the transgression of father
Adam, according to divine providence, and yet is not left
without hope; because under divine arrangement also, a
sacrifice for sins has been provided, and provision made
that ultimately mankind in general may be emancipated,
set free, from the slavery of sin, and from its penalty, death,
and may attain the glorious freedom (from sickness, pain,
trouble, sorrow) which is the liberty of all who are the sons
of God. It was from this plane of sonship and such "liberty"
that mankind fell through disobedience, and to the same
[E27]
plane of human sonship they will be privileged to return, as
a result of the great sin-offering at Calvary, and of the completion
of the work of Atonement in them, reconciling them
to the divine law by the Redeemer, as the Great Prophet,
the antitype of Moses. (Acts 3:22,23) The Apostle also
points out that the Church, which already has received the
Atonement (accepted the divine arrangement) and come
into harmony with God, and has been made possessor of
the first-fruits of the spirit, nevertheless, by reason of the
surroundings, groans also, and waits for her share of the
completed work of the Atonement, in her complete reception
to divine favor, the deliverance of the body of Christ,
the Church, in the first resurrection. Rom. 8:23-25
These two features of the Atonement, (1) the righting of
the wrong, and (2) the bringing of the separated ones into
accord, are shown in the divine proposition of a New Covenant,
whose mediator is Christ Jesus our Lord. When father
Adam was perfect, in complete harmony with his
Creator, and obedient to all of his commands, a covenant
between them was implied, though not formally expressed;
the fact that life in its perfection had been given to father
Adam, and that additionally he had been given dominion
over all the beasts and fish and fowl, and over all the earth
as the territory of his dominion, and the additional fact
that it was declared that if he would violate his faithfulness
to the Great King, Jehovah, by disobedience, he would forfeit
his life and vitiate all those rights and blessings which
had been conferred upon him--this implied, we say, a covenant
or agreement on God's part with his creature that his
life was everlasting, unless he should alter the matter by disobedience,
and bring upon himself a sentence of death.
The disobedience of Adam, and its death penalty, left
him utterly helpless, except as the Almighty provided for
the recovery of the race through the New Covenant, and
the New Covenant, as the Apostle points out, has a mediator
--God, on the one part, deals with the mediator, and not
[E28]
with the sinner; the sinner, on the other part, deals with the
mediator, and not with God. But before our Lord Jesus
could become the Mediator he must do for mankind a work
which, in this figure, is represented as sealing the New Covenant
with his own precious blood--"The blood of the New
Covenant." (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Heb. 7:22; 9:15-20)
That is to say, God, in justice, cannot receive nor deal with
the sinner, either directly, or indirectly through a mediator,
so as to give the sinner a release from the sentence of death,
and reconciliation to God, with its accompanying blessing,
the gift of eternal life--except first divine Justice be remembered
and satisfied. Hence it was that our Lord Jesus, in
paying our penalty by his death, made possible the sealing
of the New Covenant between God and man, under the
terms of which all who come unto God by him, the mediator,
are acceptable.
Reconciliation with God, at-one-ment with him, was impossible
until, first, the redemption had been secured with
the precious blood, that the one seeking at-one-ment might
approach God, through the mediator of the New Covenant:
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man
cometh unto the Father but by me." (John 14:6) It is for
this reason that the highest privilege of the most favored of
mankind, previous to the commencement of Christ's sacrifice,
was that of "servants" and "friends" of God--none
could be accorded the high privilege of sonship (with all
that this implies of divine favor and eternal life), and none
were thus recognized. (John 1:12; Matt. 11:11) Thus
it will
be seen that those who ignore the sin-offering and Justice-appeasement
features of the Atonement are ignoring important
and indispensable parts--primary and fundamental
features. But not less do others err, who, while
recognizing the sacrifice of Christ as the sacrifice of the
Atonement for sealing the New Covenant, ignore a work of
reconciliation toward men, by which men are to be
brought, through the operation of the New Covenant, back
into harmony with God.
[E29]
Nor can this work of Atonement, so far as mankind is
concerned, be accomplished instantaneously and by faith.
It may begin in an instant and by faith, and at-one-ment may
be reckonedly accomplished between the sinner and the Almighty
through faith; but the scope of the At-one-ment
which God purposes is grander and higher than this. His
arrangement is that those of the human race who desire to
return to at-one-ment with him (and his righteous law)
shall be reckonedly accepted through their Mediator, but
shall not be fully and completely received (by the Father)
while they are actually imperfect. Hence, while it is the
work of the Mediator (Head and "body") to proclaim to
mankind the fact that God has provided a sin-offering,
whereby he can be just and yet receive the sinner back into
harmony with himself, and that he is now willing to confer
the blessing of sonship and its eternal life and freedom from
corruption, it is additionally his work to make clear to all
mankind that this offer of salvation is a great boon and
should be promptly accepted and that its terms are but a
reasonable service; and additionally to this, it is the Mediator's
work, as the Father's representative, to actually restore
--to mentally, morally and physically restitute
mankind--so many of them as will receive his ministry and
obey him. Thus eventually the Mediator's work will result
in an actual at-one-ment between God and those whom the
Mediator shall restore to perfection.
This great work of the Mediator has appropriated to it
the entire Millennial Age; it is for this purpose that Messiah's
Kingdom shall be established in the earth, with all
power and authority: it is for this purpose that he must
reign, that he may put down every evil influence which
would hinder the world of mankind from coming to a
knowledge of this gracious truth of divine love and mercy;
this provision under the New Covenant, that "whosoever
will" may return to God. But while the great Mediator shall
thus receive, bless and restore, under the terms of the New
Covenant, all who desire fellowship with God through him,
[E30]
he shall destroy from among the people, with an everlasting
destruction, all who, under the favorable opportunities of
that Millennial Kingdom, refuse the divine offer of reconciliation.
Acts 3:23; Matt. 25:41,46; Rev. 20:9,14,15;
Prov. 2:21,22
The close of the Millennial age will come after it shall
have accomplished all the work of mediation for which it
was designed and appointed. And there the mediatorial office
of Christ will cease because there will be no more rebels,
no more sinners. All desirous of harmony with God will
then have attained it in perfection; and all wilful sinners
will by that time have been cut off from life. Then will be
fulfilled our Lord's prophecy that all things in heaven and
earth will be found praising God; and then will be realized
the divine promise that there shall be no more dying, no
more sighing and no more crying, because the former
things (conditions) will have passed away. Rev. 21:4;
Psa. 67
When the great Mediator-King shall resign his completed
work to the Father, delivering up his office and kingdom
as the Apostle explains (1 Cor. 15:24-28), what lasting
results may we expect the great Mediator's redemptive
work toward mankind to show?
It will have accomplished:
(1) The sealing of the New Covenant with his own precious
blood; making its gracious provisions possible to all
mankind.
(2) The reconciling or bringing back into harmony with
God of a "little flock," a "royal priesthood," zealous of
good
works--willing to lay down their lives in God's service; who,
because thus copies of their Savior, shall by divine arrangement
be privileged to be his joint-heirs in the Millennial
Kingdom and partakers of his divine nature. 1 Pet. 2:9,10;
Titus 2:14; Rom. 8:29
(3) The reconciliation, the full restitution, of an earth
full of perfect, happy human beings--all of mankind found
desirous of divine favor upon the divine terms: these the
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Mediator turns over to the Father, not only fully restored
but fully instructed in righteousness and self-control and
full of the spirit of loyalty to God, the spirit of holiness and
possessed of its blessed fruits--meekness, patience, kindness,
godliness--love. In this condition they shall indeed be
blameless and irreproachable, and capable of standing every
test.
(4) The destruction of all others of the race, as unworthy
of further favor--the cumberers of the ground, whose influence
could not be beneficial to others, and whose continued
existence would not glorify their Creator.
Thus, at the close of the Millennial age, the world will be
fully back in divine favor, fully at-one with God, as mankind
was representatively in harmony, at-one with God, in
the person of Adam, before transgression entered the world:
but additionally they will possess a most valuable experience
with evil; for by it they will have learned a lesson on
the sinfulness of sin, and the wisdom, profit and desirableness
of righteousness. Additionally, also, they will possess
an increase of knowledge and the wider exercise of the
various talents and abilities which were man's originally in
creation, but in an undeveloped state. And this lesson will
be profitable, not to man alone, but also to the holy angels,
who will have witnessed an illustration of the equilibrium
of divine Justice, Love, Wisdom and Power in a measure
which they could not otherwise have conceived possible.
And the lesson fully learned by all, we may presume, will
stand for all time, applicable to other races yet uncreated
on other planets of the wide universe.
And what will be the center of that story as it shall be told
throughout eternity? It will be the story of the great ransom
finished at Calvary and of the atonement based upon that
payment of the corresponding price, which demonstrated
that God's Love and Justice are exactly equal.
In view of the great importance of this subject of the
Atonement, and in view also of that fact that it is so imperfectly
comprehended by the Lord's people, and in view, additionally,
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of the fact that errors held upon other subjects
hinder a proper view of this important subject, we propose,
in its discussion in this volume, to cover a wide range, and
to inquire:
(1) Concerning Jehovah, the Author of the plan of the
Atonement.
(2) Concerning the Mediator, by whom the Atonement
sacrifice was made, and through whose instrumentality all
of its gracious provisions are to be applied to fallen man.
(3) Concerning the holy Spirit, the channel or medium
through which the blessings of reconciliation to God are
brought to mankind.
(4) Respecting mankind, on whose behalf this great plan
of Atonement was devised.
(5) Respecting the ransom, the center or pivotal point of
the Atonement.
Taking these subjects up in this, which we believe to be
their proper and logical order, we hope to find the divine
statement respecting these various subjects so clear, so
forceful, so satisfactory, as to remove from our minds much
of the mist, mystery and misconception which has hitherto
beclouded this admittedly important subject of the Atonement.
But to attain these desirable results we must not come
to these subjects hampered by human creeds or opinions.
We must come to them untrammeled by prejudice, ready,
willing, nay anxious, to be taught of God; anxious to unlearn
whatever we have hitherto received merely through
our own conjectures or through the suggestions of others,
that is not in harmony with the Word of the Lord; anxious
also to have the whole counsel of God upon every feature of
this subject. To all who thus come, who thus seek, who thus
knock, the great Teacher opens the way, and "they shall be
all taught of God." Isa. 54:13
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