1. religion and spirituality
2. christianity

TIMES
PROP, H E'll4C-WEE K
7 w4,1
The American
people bow in
adoration while
Mr. Politician,
in behalf of the
brewers, distillers,
and saloon keepers,
places the bibulous
crown upon the
florid brow of
John Barleycorn.
John Barleycorn Reenthroned
16, 1920, John Barleycorn lost his throne
and his crown. Some say he died forthwith. Others
say that, unfrocked and ostracized, he merely
skulked in back alleys and under the cover of night_ But
December 5, 1933, saw him reincarnated, reenthroned and
recrowned in American life, for upon that date the thirtysixth state ratified the Twenty-first Amendment in repeal
of the Eighteenth. After thirteen years of trying to walk
the straight and narrow way, a majority of those voting have
cried with loud and raucous voice, "We will have John Barleycorn again to reign over us. Bring us back King Alcohol.
Henceforth and forever we will devote ourselves to the
service of Bacchus. Away with abstinence and temperance
and Prohibition ! We want only beer and champagne and
gin and whisky. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
Has John Barleycorn gone back to his throne with any
strings tied to him ? No, indeed ! Unfettered and unabashed, he is reinstated in all power and prestige. For
thirteen years the \Vets solemnly promised us that if John
ever came back, he would come minus the saloon. But now
it appears that promise was for campaign purposes only,
N JANUARY
for on the night of November 7, Jouett Shouse, president of
the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, declared over a nation-wide hook-up :
"Personally, I do not hesitate to express the belief that in
the large centers of population there must be the opportunity to purchase liquor by the drink without the accompaniment of food. Call it a saloon if you will, call it a tavern,
call it what you please. If such places are not provided with
legalized regulation, they are certain to spring up in response to popular demand, and thus we shall have a continuance of the speak-easy and blind pig."
Already saloons are open everywhere. Our cities are fast
becoming Sodoms of suds and Gomorrahs of grog. Those
who make liquor are demanding lower taxation, and those
selling it are asking higher prices. Distillers and brewers
are dictating to legislators and politicians. Men and women
are beginning to drink themselves into poverty and disease
and crime again as they did in days of yore. Drunken
drivers crowd our highways, and inebriates stagger along
our city streets.
Yes, "the good old days are here again." John BarleyB.
corn reigns.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
VOL. 60, NO. 49
DECEMBER 12, 1933
WALTER
RUSSELL
BOWIE
•
Pastor, Grace Church,
New York City
cities, particularly the large cities,
and especially at holiday times such as
Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving,
one of the prettiest sights is the shop windows; and best of all are the windows full
of books. Little books and big books, books
for children and books for grown-up people,
sober-looking books, and books with brilliant
covers, books with pictures, and books with
maps that speak of distant journeyings—all
of them are there. And most of them are
new. Books which were in the forefront in
an earlier season have either disappeared or
else have been retired to obscure shelves.
Like a kaleidoscope, the year's pattern of
books comes and goes, for back of the bookstores and their windows are the great publishing houses, forever seeking new authors,
stimulating new interests, competing with
one another for every fresh manuscript of
brilliant promise that may appear.
I
The Bible is not only true religion, but true literature. Where in the books of all ages will one
find a more touching story than that of Ruth
the Moabitess?
N THE
THE HOUSE OF ONE BOOK
But in contrast with the changing pageant
of the books that come and go, and the publishers with their unending lists, there is a
brick building in the city of New York which
is more significant than many more brilliant and colorful places. It has stood there
for eighty years, and every year, not thousands only, but hundreds of thousands of
volumes have gone out through its doors.
Yet it is not competing for any manuscripts.
It is not troubling to invite any hitherto undiscovered authors. It is not paying any
royalties, because the writers with whom it is
concerned are long since dead. To be sure,
it deals with many editions, and its output
has been in over 200 languages. Yet it is concerned with only one book. That one book
is enough to keep the greatest of all publish-
ing enterprises busy year by year. For the
old brick building is the Bible House, and
the book is the Bible.
Here is an extraordinary fact worth our
contemplation in the ebb and flow of lesser
things. Our ideas about the Bible may alter,
but the Bible itself goes on claiming the imagination and the interest of millions of people on this earth. Why is this so?
To begin with, the Bible is a Book about
life, and all sorts of life. It tells about bad
people, and it tells about good people, just
as they are. It is full of stories that captivate
a child as well as great thoughts which the
wise man or woman cannot completely
fathom. Gather a group of children and read
to them from the Bible of Jacob and Esau,
of Joseph and his coat of many colors, of
David and Goliath, of the little boy Samuel,
and of David's flight from Saul, and see how
they listen. Or ponder with adult consciousness these pictures of men and women with
which the Bible is all aglow. See with what
unmistakable sureness of human touch the
tellers of the old stories have set them forth.
In that procession of figures which moves
Through the pages of the Bible, we see our
same old human nature not only as it used
to be, but exactly as it is now in the world
around us and in ourselves too.
BIBLE NARRATIVES
In the second place, the Bible is great literature, great literature in its original tongues
and equally great in its translation. Read,
for example, the story of Joseph and his
brethren, and ask where in the rest of the
world's literature one can find its match for
the mingled simplicity and human poignancy
of its telling. Or read the lovely story of
Ruth, who followed her husband's mother
into an alien land, saying to her in the constancy of her great, unreckoning affection:
"Whither thou goest, I will go; and where
thou lodgest, I will lodge : thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God." See her
gleaning in the fields of Bethlehem, where
Boaz, appointed by destiny to be her lover,
comes. Read the heroic story of Queen Esther, daring the capricious tyranny of King
Ahasuerus to plead for her own people, saying as she deliberately took her own life in
her hands: "So will I go in unto the king,
which is not according to the law : and if I
perish, I perish." Contemplate the limpid
beauty of such a psalm as "The Lord is my
shepherd; I shall not want." Or turn to the
lyric poetry of the prophets, crying, "Awake,
awake; put on thy strength, 0 Zion; put on
thy beautiful garments, 0 Jerusalem," and
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the
feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that
publisheth peace."
If the Bible had no other value save as a
"Signs of the Times," December 12, 1933. Vol. 60, No. 49. $1.50 a year in the United States. Printed and published weekly (50 issues a year) by the Pacific Press
Publishing Association at Mountain View, California, U.S.A. Entered as second-class matter September 15, 1904, at the post office at Mountain View, California,
under Act of March 3,1917. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage, provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, and authorized September 18. 1918.
Page Two
SIGNS of the TIMES
LIGHT Shineth in DARKNESS"
This is the first of four contributions from Dr. Bowie, which were originally written for a brochure issued by the American Bible Society for
use in the observance of Universal Bible Sunday, December 10. The
article this week deals with the Bible as "The Book About Life."
masterpiece of literature, it would be one of posed that the great oration of the day would early and crude beginnings to the later and
the priceless treasures of our human race ; be that which should be delivered by the larger life. The religious ideas of the paand above all other peoples we English- orator Edward Everett. Yet his oration is triarchs are not as clear and high as those of
speaking folk have most cause to be grateful forgotten, and the one thing that will be re- the prophets. The ideas of the men and
for it. The translation which we most use membered down the years is that brief speech women who lived in the time of the judges
was written in the stately idiom of Eliza- of Lincoln's, "Fourscore and seven years are far removed from those which Jesus gave
bethan England, and it is an enduring stand- ago . . ." so terse, so clear, so true to the to His disciples; and the Bible is true to the
ard of what this tongue of ours can be in the deep emotions, that it has become one of the fact that in any one period the spiritual apprehension of different individuals will imbeauty of simplicity and in grand and rhyth- classics of all time.
measurably vary. Yet in every period, and
mic music too. There is scarcely one among
THE BOOK OF RELIGION
often in men much of whose life was worldly
our greater writers who has not been proIn the third place, and of course su- and common, the Bible reveals that eternal
foundly affected by the influence of the
English Bible; and where peculiar circum- premely, the Bible is the Book of religion. fact of spiritual aspiration which runs
stances have made that Bible the sole food It deals with many kinds of men ; and there- through even the least likely material like
on which the intellect has fed, its effect has fore their ideas of religion and their concep- a scarlet thread,—the men who often were
tions of God, as, among the shadows of their emptiest yet held in their hearts a hunger
been almost miraculous.
A few years ago there was observed the partial understanding, they sought for Him, after God. This the writers who gave us
third centenary of the birth of John Bunyan, are different. This is what makes the Bible our Bible perceived, and this they have made
whose amazing book, "The Pilgrim's Prog- all the more valuable. We do not see religion plain.
There is need in our time of this realizaress," has been printed in never-ceasing edi- through any little segment of our human nations which make its circulation second only ture. We see it as it is reflected all along the tion which the Bible wakes. We have been
(Continued on page 14)
to that of the Bible itself. Where did John spectrum of men's consciousness, from their
Bunyan attain his English style? Preemi4—
nently from the Bible. His schooling was insignificant. He had no touch with any such
thing as college or library. So far as any
records go, he never owned but three or four
books in his life. One of these was Fox's
"Book of Martyrs"; another was the Bible.
During the twelve years which he spent in
FIREPLACE
Bedford jail, the Bible, read over and over
again, entered like great chords of music
FIRE
into all his mind and soul. When he began
L. MITCHELL
to write, he wrote as the Bible reads and as
THORNTON
all men would like to speak, humanly and directly, with the homely phrase of human understanding, and yet with a kind of majestic
poetry too.
he
LINCOLN AND THE BIBLE
What was true of John Bunyan, was true
also of another man in another time. Abraham Lincoln in the backwoods of Illinois.
like Bunyan in the little village of Bedford,
had next to nothing within his reach to read
except the Bible. He read it the more profitably because his mind was not led here and
there by cheap and distracting stuff. Carl
Sandburg in his biography "Abraham Lincoln : The Prairie Years," tells how once Lincoln said to Mrs. Rankin in New Salem that
"before he had learned to read as a boy he
had heard his mother saying over certain
Bible verses day by day as she worked. He
had learned these verses by heart : the tones
of his mother's voice were in them." When
in later years he came to write those state
papers of his which should become immortal, the accents of the Bible would speak
through them. At Gettysburg, it was supfor DECEMBER 12, 1933
T
HE maple is shaking snowflakes down,
And winds are bitter, and chill, and cold;
The meadow grasses are stiff and brown
And elms that border the road to town
Have scattered their wealth of autumn gold ;
Yet none of these things are dark or dire
When I have kindled a fireplace fire.
The garden blossoms have gone their way,
The woodbine sleeps with its banners furled;
The air is damp and the skies are gray,
There's not a sliver of sun to-day
To brighten a frost-enfettered world;
But my heart is gay, and my dreams aspire
To heaven, before a fireplace fire.
Page Tlyee
Do You Know Enough to Choose
Right Foods?
,stpaguiptit.-
GEORGE E. CORNFORTH
Dietitian, New England Sanitarium and Hospital
Stoneham, Massachusetts
'
"Nip
117
. 1.
•
14
it/lost persons eat three
times a day, but give
little thought to the effect food has on their
health.
HAVE just been away on a vacation;
and while I was away, I called on a family
who live on a farm. The wife is ill with a
sickness that would have been avoided if
she had been eating proper food. Of course
the family have splendid specimens of hens,
cows, and horses. They know how to feed
and care for them. They do not feed them
on white bread, pork, fried potatoes, coffee, pies, cakes, and other sweet things.
They give them feed that contains all the
bran and all the embryo of the grain. They
raise Swiss chard greens for the chickens,
and Hungarian millet for the cows. And
while this particular farmer was not raising
fodder corn, I saw it growing on other farms.
Farmers know that their animals must have
green stuff in order to thrive; but they do
not seem to realize that it is equally valuable to their own health. And, while this
farmer's splendid hens were producing many
eggs, I suppose they had reasoned that there
was more money in selling the eggs than in
eating them. Yet I wonder if the better
health that would have resulted from adding some of the eggs to their diet would not
have been of greater value to this family than
the money realized from the sale of the eggs.
If people who raise animals successfully
know that green stuff is so necessary for
them to thrive, it would seem that they
might know that the same principles apply
equally well to the feeding of themselves and
their families.
It has been found by experiments in feeding animals that they cannot be raised on
seeds alone. The whole plant must be used
for food. For instance, cows cannot be
raised on corn; that is, on merely the grain;
they must have fodder corn, which they eat
entire when green—stalks, leaves, and ears.
Animals cannot be raised on wheat alone;
they must have the entire plant, or grass.
No one would think of feeding only oats to
a horse. The horse must have plenty of
grass or hay with a little oats.
Beans alone will not sustain growth and
health. The whole bean plant must be used
Page Four
In the well-balanced diet, clean milk is an important element.
(which is what the Chinese cooks do when
they use bean sprouts in the making of
chop suey).
To help us to understand a little better,
perhaps, what foods we should choose, I
have prepared a diagram of the different
classes of foods according to their use in
the body. This is found on page five.
BUILDING AND FUEL FOODS
To make clearer the use of different kinds
of food in the body, the body may well be
compared to an automobile. Building food
may be compared to the metal and other
building material of which the automobile is
built. Such material, of course, is most important. We must have it to build liviqg
tissue, but we do not constantly need large
quantities of it. In the whole life of an automobile much more gasoline, or fuel, is used
than of metal. So in the body; during the
growing period a larger proportion of building food is needed, but after growth is completed, only a small amount of building food
is required, though fuel food is constantly
needed to support work and to keep us warm.
Work uses up fuel food, just as when an
automobile is in use it uses gasoline; and
the harder it is driven the more fuel it
takes. A football trainer has said that the
winning touchdown in a football game is
not gained on beefsteak, but on potatoes,
rice, bread, butter, and sugar.
Most people use meat as their chief building food, but that is secondhand food, and
we think there are better building foods.
Nature produces milk for no other pur-
pose than to be used for food. It has no
other use, and it is one of the best. Good
authorities consider it the best building food.
Professor Sherman of Columbia University
has said that we used to think of milk as a
substitute for meat; but we now know that
meat is a very poor substitute for milk.
Eggs have medicinal properties. Nuts
have been called perfect meat substitutes.
And while people have regarded beans,—
especially baked beans,—as substitutes for
meat, they alone are not complete substitutes for meat. They need to be supplemented by leafy vegetables. Tomatoes are
a good addition to beans. And when so
supplemented, beans make a valuable hearty
food.
Fat is the most concentrated kind of fuel
food. Milk and its fat products, cream and
butter, are produced by nature for food.
And plants produce oils evidently for food
purposes.
BODY REGULATORS
Now perhaps it would seem that we have
considered everything that could be necessary in the diet—food to build and repair
tissue, and fuel food to keep us warm and
enable us to work. But let us think of the
automobile again for a moment. Suppose
we have a complete automobile with plenty
of gasoline in the gasoline tank, but suppose
there is some misconnection or break in the
electric wiring, or that dirt has gathered on
the armature of the generator, or that too
much carbon has accumulated in the cylinders. In the first place, the car might not go
SIGNS of the TIMES
at all. In the second place, if it did go, the
battery would soon run down and then the
car could not be started. In the third place,
if the car were started again, it would run
very poorly.
So in the human body there are certain
substances—or should I say "substances"?
for we do not understand their chemical
nature any more than we understand the
nature of electricity, though of course we all
use it. So we can provide these factors in
food though we do not understand fully
what they are. I was saying that in the nutrition of the human body certain factors
are needed that are not fuel and not building material. These are called "regulators
of body processes." They make the fuel and
building material of use to the body. In
their absence, life is impossible; and the
degree of health and abundance of life and
vitality a person has is marvelously affected
by the comparative completeness in which
these factors are present in the diet.
But we are going to tell you about these
factors which are so necessary to the maintenance of life and health in our next article.
For the present, let us consider the advice I
gave to that farmer's wife, in order to see
how the information given in this article
may be put into practice in choosing a healthpromoting diet—one as good for human be-
I Meat
Milk
Cheese
Body-building, or
Eggs
Protein, Foods
Legumes—dried beans,
peas, and lentils
Nuts
Starch
Sugar
Fuel
Foods
Fats
Regulators
of
Body
Processes
Cereals
Breads
Potatoes and some other
vegetables
Legumes
Tapioca
Sago
Granulated sugar
All foods made from, or
sweetened with, granulated sugar
Honey
Fruits, especially dried
fruits, figs, dates,
raisins, prunes
Milk
Cream
Butter
Nuts
Ripe olives
Olive oil
Cotton seed oil
Corn oil
Peanut oil
Bean oil
Lard
Beef fat
Mutton fat
Milk
Food
Eggs
Minerals Fruit
and
Vegetables (especially
Vitamins
leafy vegetables, raw
supplied
vegetables, and raw
by
fruit)
Bran and embryo of
cereals
Vegetables
Fruits
Cellulose
Bran
(rough- All-of-the-wheat bread
age)
Cereal foods from which
the bran and embryo
have not been removed
for DECEMBER 12, 1933
ings as that which the same farmer was using to produce the splendid specimens of
horses and cattle and hens on his farm.
GOOD THINGS TO EAT
I told her first what she should eat. Much
advice about eating has consisted of telling
people what they should not eat, and many
people, in endeavoring to follow this instruction have provided themselves with such an
impoverished diet that they have experienced very poor health under the impression
that they were living healthfully.
I told this woman to drink a glass of milk
at each meal; to eat every day a dish of the
Swiss chard greens that they were feeding
to their hens, or some other kind of greens
like spinach, or dandelion, or kale, or beet
greens, or turnip tops, or purslane, or dock,
or milkweed (and there are many others) ;
to eat half a cup of bran at every meal (they
were feeding it to their stock), either just
plain bran such as is fed to animals or some
of the bran that is specially prepared for
eating and is sold in packages in grocery
stores, the bran to be moistened with milk
or water; to eat something raw every day
like celery, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage,
ground young carrots or turnips, cucumbers,
radishes, or raw fruit. I told her that an egg
eaten occasionally would benefit her.
The only restrictions were that she should
eat sparingly of sugar and foods made with
or sweetened with sugar, and of fried foods.
No restriction was placed upon the use of
naturally sweet foods like raisins, prunes,
figs, dates, and other sweet fruits. With
these restrictions, she might eat what she
liked after eating what I had prescribed.
I did not tell her she should not drink tea
and coffee, but she said she was going to
leave off tea, of which she was very fond,
SIMPLICITY IN DIET
I had this outline written out and handed
it to the woman. After reading it, she was
much surprised at the simplicity of it. She
said there was nothing in it but what anybody could do. There was nothing in the
list but what anybody could get. She asked
if she might eat oatmeal. I told her yes, that
it was good food (they feed oats to horses).
This advice, then, forms an outline for the
choosing of a diet that often will not only
restore sick people to health but will keep
well people well. For a change, something
may be substituted for the milk occasionally,
like an egg or some cottage cheese or a few
nuts or a dish of beans whose food deficiencies will be completed by the greens and raw
food prescribed in the diet.
In concluding this article on choosing
foods, let me quote a verse from the Bible.
"Eat ye that which is good, and let your
soul delight itself in fatness." Isaiah 55:2.
This scripture suggests a truth not previously
emphasized in this article—that good food
not only sustains good health, but also influences beneficially the spiritual life.
:;,0NEW$ GL E Ammo
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LA
and drink milk instead. I did not tell her
she should not eat white bread. Some people lay great emphasis upon the need of eating all-of-the-wheat bread, and it is well to
use that if you can get it. But I knew it
would be at considerable expense that she
could get the flour to make such bread if
she could get it at all, so I prescribed foods
that would supply what would be supplied
by all-of-the-wheat bread.
If people would eat all the other things
they should, they might indulge in white
bread occasionally, though I have such a
liking for whole-grain bread that white
bread has a rather insipid flavor to me.
el THREE OUT According to the United
OF FIVE
States Census figures,
61 per cent of the people of the United States have no religious affiliation. This means that three out of every
five in the nation have no connection with any
church or with organized religion. And yet some
would call ours "a Christian nation" !
el CAUSE AND Roger Babson, the noted
CURE
business analyst and statistician, says that "business depressions are caused by dissipation, dishonesty, and disobedience to God's will, resulting in a collapse of moral character. They are
cured by a moral awakening, a spiritual revival,
and the rehabilitation of righteousness." If this
be true, then it looks as if we are a long way
from the right cure these days, doesn't it?
el THE SWEDISH Even Sweden is bitNAVY
ten with the getready-for-war germ
these days. The first warship of any size to be
added to the Swedish navy in fifteen years was
recently launched and christened the "Gotland." The new cruiser is designed for Baltic
Sea service, and carries eight airplanes, six 6inch guns, four 3-inch antiaircraft guns, and
six torpedo tubes. The Department of Defense
has asked for another man-of-war, four patrol
boats, and two submarines.
40 9
ie
el ROBOT Czecho-Slovakia's famous shoe
SHOES manufacturer, Bata, is erecting a huge factory near Baltimore, Maryland. He has devised a machine
which, being fed leather and thread, produces
shoes complete. Only laces are added. Thus far
this robot machine has not been put into operation because of the thousands of employees in
shoe factories who would lose their jobs. Shades
of technocracy 1
el RUSSIAN REAL "If one desires to
ESTATE
build a private residence anywhere in
the Soviet Union, except along its foreign borders," says the Forum magazine, "he may secure land free of charge from the government
—since all land is nationalized. He may then
erect and occupy his house as his very own
for a long period of years (thirty-five years in
the case of a brick house), after which it belongs to the state, just as in this country a building erected on leased land becomes the property
of the owner of the land upon termination of
the lease. In the Soviet Union, however, one
may continue to occupy his house after the termination of the free-use period, upon payment
of a stipulated rental to the local government.
Under this plan of private housing, land speculation is eliminated and building is undertaken
only for one's own use."
B.
Page Five
hall We Know One Another
In Heaven?
I
ply means that in its origin and principles
the kingdom of Christ is of heaven, and not
of earth. The location of the everlasting
kingdom is made plain in Daniel 2:35, 44,
45. There it is stated in so many words that
"no place was found for them" (the kingdoms of this world), and that the everlasting kingdom "filled the whole earth." And
according to Daniel 7:27 it is to be located
"under the whole heaven." See also Revelation 11:15.
GOD'S PRIMAL PURPOSE
No wonder Christ taught us to pray, "Thy
,And what sort of place will the kingdom
kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth,
of heaven be?
as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10. No wonder He said, the meek "shall inherit the
■
earth,"—the earth, of course, not in its present polluted condition, but restored to its
WALTER P. McLENNAN
Edenic beauty; or, as Peter puts it: "Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look
for new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." 2 Peter 3:13. The
HENEVER a question box is used into a far country to receive for Himself a psalmist says that God will renew the face
in connection with a series of Bible lectures, kingdom, and to return." Luke 19:12. The of the earth. Psalm 104:30.
You will observe that Peter says that the
it may be expected that the question "Shall prophet Daniel, in describing this same exwe know one another in heaven?" will be perience, said: "I saw in the night visions, earth is made new according to His promise.
found therein. It is a perfectly natural and, behold, one like the Son of man came Peter undoubtedly has reference to the unquestion, and one that deserves due consid- with the clouds of heaven, and came to the fulfilled promise to Abraham and his seed,
eration. We shall endeavor to answer it as Ancient of days, and they brought Him near recorded in Genesis 13:14-16. That promwe give study to the subject of the kingdom before Him. And there was given Him do- ise was not limited to a few miles of terriminion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all tory that Abraham might have taken in with
of God.
The Scriptures give great prominence to people, nations, and languages should serve his physical sight, for such would not have
the subject of the kingdom. John the Bap- Him: His dominion is an everlasting do- provided a dwelling place for a posterity so
tist stressed the subject in his preaching, minion, which shall not pass away, and His numerous that it could be likened to the dust
when he said: "Repent ye: for the kingdom kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." of the earth and "the stars of heaven." Genof heaven is at hand." Matthew 3:2. Jesus Daniel 7:13, 14. You will note that this esis 15:5. That the promised territory took
likewise preached, "The kingdom of God is kingdom is not confined to the Jews, but is in "the whole world," is plainly stated in
at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." made up of "all people, nations, and lan- Romans 4:13.
That Abraham never realized the fulfillMark 1:15. And when He sent the twelve guages."
ment of that promise is recorded in Acts
apostles out, it was with the words, "As ye
WHAT TERRITORY?
7:5, and that his literal seed has not is stated
go,•preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven
Now as to the territory. Some have been in Hebrews 11:13. "Well," you ask, "has
is at hand." Matthew 10:7.
Let us consider the subject under the four confused by the term "kingdom of heaven," the promise failed?" Not at all. It will be
heads; viz., the King, the territory, the capi- thinking that it meant that the kingdom fulfilled when the seed of Abraham is fully
would be located in heaven. The term sim- made up. The seed of Abraham refers to
tal, the subjects.
all the children of faith, for we
It is generally understood by all Bible
read in Galatians 3:29, "If ye be
students that Christ was to occupy a threeChrist's [or Christians], then are
fold position; that of prophet, priest, and
ye Abraham's seed, and heirs acking. He lived among us as the "Prophet"
cording to the promise."
spoken of in Deuteronomy 18:15.
Since His return to heaven, He has ocGod made this earth to be the
cupied a place on the Father's throne as our
eternal dwelling place of man, acgreat High Priest. See Hebrews 10:12; 8:1;
cording to Isaiah 45:18. If man
4:14-16. But the time will come, and that
had never sinned, procreation
time is not far off, when He will become
would have continued until the
king, and occupy His own throne. Hebrews
earth had been replenished, or
10:12, 13; Revelation 3:21.
filled up, with an upright people.
Genesis 1:28; Ecclesiastes 7:29.
THE ROYALTY OF CHRIST
Thus one more completed or perChrist's own throne is the throne of His
fect world would have been added
inheritance, and is called "the throne of His
to the many worlds that go to
father David." The angel said to Mary, "He
make up the universe of God.
shall be great, and shall be called the Son
But sin has delayed the compleof the Highest: and the Lord God shall give
tion of the purpose of God. Inunto Him the throne of His father David:
stead of His purpose being carand He shall reign over the house of Jacob
ried out through the natural birth
forever; and of His kingdom there shall be
of man, it must now be carried
no end." Luke 1:32, 33. He is "the root and
out through the new birth. And
the offspring of David." Revelation 22:16.
when a sufficient number of all
He, the Father, who made the promise in
those born into this world have
Psalm 89:3, 4, 27, 29, 33-37 and Jeremiah
accepted salvation to carry out
23:5 to David, will fulfill the same to Jesus,
this original purpose of God, the
"the offspring of David."
work will close, the earth will be
To the Christian parent who has lost his child
The Saviour musst. have had the promise
renewed, and the King will "say
in death, no question is of greater interest than
given to David in mind when He likened
unto them on His right hand,
whether in that better land he will meet and
Himself to a certain nobleman who "went
Come, ye blessed of My Father,
know the little one whom he loved here.
Page Six
SIGNS of the TIMES
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world." Matthew 25:
34. How plain, then, that the territory of
the kingdom will be this earth renewed and
brought back to its original condition !
The capital, as we all know, will be the
New Jerusalem, which will come down from
God out of heaven (Revelation 21:1, 2), the
city that Abraham "looked for" (Hebrews
11:10).
Now for the subjects. We have already
learned who the subjects are from a spiritual
standpoint. But how will they appear physically? Will they recognize one another?
That they will have bodies of flesh is evident from the language of Isaiah 66:22, 23,
where we are told that from Sabbath to
Sabbath and from month to month, "shall
all flesh come to worship" before the Lord.
SPIRITUAL BODIES?
"But," you say, "how can that be true
when we are told in 1 Corinthians 15:44 that
we are to have spiritual bodies?" Let us
remember that the opposite of the spiritual
is not the literal, but the carnal. When we
say a person has a spiritual mind, do we mean
that his mind is not literal? Not at all. And
so it is with a spiritual body. It is just as
literal as the carnal body, but it is not sininhabited (Romans 7:17, 18), and therefore
not subject to disease and death.
Again it is said, "Are we not told that
`flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God'?" 1 Corinthians 15:50. "Flesh and
blood," is an expression used to indicate a
corruptible mortal state, as the context
proves. Corruptible, mortal man must be
changed to incorruptible, immortal man before he enters the kingdom. If we are not
going to have a real, tangible, corporeal existence, then what did the Saviour mean
when He said at the time He instituted the
Lord's Supper, "I will not drink henceforth
of this fruit of the vine, until that day when
I drink it new with you in My Father's
kingdom"? Matthew 26:29. Such language
indicates very strongly that we shall eat
and drink in the kingdom.
A CHANGED BODY
In Philippians 3:21 we read that Christ
"shall change our vile body, that it may be
fashioned like unto His glorious body." According to this plain language, our raised
bodies are to be like Christ's "glorious body."
That Christ had a material body after His
resurrection is clearly taught in Luke 24:39
and John 20:27. And that He had the same
body after His resurrection as He had before, is evident from John 2 :19, 21, "Destroy
this temple [His body], and in three days I
will raise it [His body] up." The last time
the disciples saw Jesus He had a literal body,
for it is written, "He led them out as far as
to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and
blessed them. And it came to pass, while He
blessed them, He was parted from them,
and carried up into heaven." Luke 24:50,
51. Now place alongside this last scripture,
Acts 1:9-11, and remember that "this same
Jesus" shall come again, and that "when He
shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we
shall see Him as He is." 1 John 3:2.
In taking the position that we shall have
material bodies in the kingdom, and that
(Continued on page 10)
for DECEMBER 12, 1933
"WHAT IS 'DEAD'?"
GILBERT A. HOPPES, M. D.
T
HE story is told of a three-year-old girl who
was visiting her grandfather. He had mounted
some birds; and when she saw them, she asked:
"Why don't they fly away ?"
"They cannot fly. They are dead," said the
grandfather.
"And what is 'dead'?" asked the little girl.
This same question has come to the entire
human family. What does it mean to be dead?
Recently a book came to my notice which
contained "a thousand thoughts for funeral occasions." It is composed of choice selections by
many eminent clergymen. The whole tenor of
the book is that men do not die, but that at
death they fly away and are in possession of
more happiness and knowledge than ever was
possible in this life.
CURRENT NOTIONS
I quote a few paragraphs: "There is no death.
The great plague of so many lives is unreal, and
has no more substance than the banks of clouds
which seem to barricade the ongoing of the ship
at sea. . . . Now death is not real. It is an experience in the career of life. Yet in it we do not
die. It is a time of transition. Indeed, instead
of death's being an hour of death, it is an hour
of life. It is not evening, but morning. At death
the soul, like an imprisoned dove, with the
morning in its wings, leaves its cage of flesh and
enters the fuller, richer life.
"We often speak of our friends who are
departed as though they were swept out of
existence. It is difficult in the hour of grief to
conceive that they have simply changed relations. We say of the sun at evening: 'It has
gone.' Gone where ?' It has simply faded from
our sight to shine on some other part of the
globe. We say of the ship that gradually sinks
from sight: 'It has gone.' Gone where ?' It is
just wending its way across the pathless sea to
find, ere many days, a shelter in another harbor.
Our friends have gone to find rest in another
harbor, and to shine in another realm."
On yet another page, I read these words by
a different writer: "Man is an immortal mortal."
I think of the last quotation in particular:
"Man is an immortal mortal." It makes me
think of my college days, when the professor of
biology one day told us of the triumph of Burbank in producing "a white blackberry." How
the class roared with laughter ! What an unthinkable thing,—"a white blackberry" ! But
here we have "an immortal mortal" !
Seriously, let us consider. If it be true that,
after all, the thing we call death is not real, that
it is the very beginning of real life, then why
should we not welcome a great war, one so great
that all human life might become extinct? Why
should we seek to prevent war? Why do we
found hospitals for the saving of life? Why
should there be any law against killing ? Why
punish gangsters and thugs who are murdering
so many ? If our premise be true, then is not a
very great favor conferred upon all who meet
the death wound?
"What is 'dead'?" asked the little girl. Let us
turn to the word of God to find the answer. I
read in 2 Kings 20:1: "Thou shalt die, and not
live." Then, according to this, when we die we
cease to live.
Again, consistent with this, we read in Job
14:2 of man and his nature: "He cometh forth
like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as
a shadow, and continueth not." Again we see
that when a man dies he ceases to exist, he "continues not."
Who was the real author of the conception of
immortality as set forth in those quotations
from popular ministers? Satan himself. The
record of the first sermon ever delivered on immortality is preserved in Genesis 3:4, 5. It was
here that Satan said, in substance: "You will
not die ; you will be changed. You will be like
God." Now if we can find what God is like, we
shall understand better what Satan tried to say.
We read in 1 Timothy 6:16 that God is immortal (and, moreover, that He only is immortal).
Then what did Satan tell Eve? He said in substance: "Death is not death; it is only transition.
You will be immortal if you die."
What a change the years have made ! In the
beginning it was Satan who preached the sermon. To-day many religionists tell the same
story, using the devil's text and words; but of
course not giving him credit.
A MISCONCEPTION
More is the pity that when men listen to these
things which tell that they do not die, that death
means life, that death is only change, they are
beguiled by such words, as was Eve in the Garden of Eden. Many times following a funeral
discourse which tells us that the dead are like
the sun going down, only to shine somewhere
else, people exclaim: "Was not that a wonderful
sermon !" In this they are not unlike Eve. The
Bible analyzes her feeling in the following language: She "saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
to be desired."
Set over against this is the plain and consistent
teaching of God. When a man dies, he ceases
to live anywhere and everywhere. His very
thoughts perish, even his love and his hatred
cease to be. Job 14:21; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6;
Psalm 146:4. In death, man sleeps, unconscious,
awaiting the resurrection morning. At this time
he will come forth to receive judgment and reward ; at which time, if he have the eternal life
of Jesus Christ, he will receive immortality as
a gift from God.
In ancient times kings had cupbearers. It was
the duty of the cupbearer to taste all dishes that
were set before the king. If the bearer tasted
and lived, then the king might eat of the food
without fear of poison. So it is, "Christ tasted
death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9), yet He
lives. The grave has no horror for the Christian.
Death is only a little sleep, a little waiting, until
the Life-giver's voice will be heard and we shall
come forth to receive immortality.
r4.1
Page Seven
hen
SUN
WORSHIP
Entered the Church
,And how the head of one branch of
the church became not only "Pontifex Maximus" but also "Pontifex
Solis." ,./4 glimpse into an interesting
chapter in church history.
■
VARNER J. JOHNS
HE cross of shame weighed heavily
upon the shoulders of Christianity. The
church was clad in garments of humility; its
robes were stained with martyrs' blood. This
was in the first century, the day of its purity
and its power.
A relentless warfare was waged against
this early church. Those who rejected its
message of love became its bitter foes. The
followers of Jesus were gathered from the
lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the
Jewish leaders, having rejected and crucified the Christ, turned with fury upon His
disciples. Yet this very persecution became
a tool in the hand of Providence in chiseling the creed of Christianity upon the very
walls of the temple of paganism.
Rome heard the story of the cross, and
even from Caesar's household were gathered
disciples of the Christ of Calvary. Then the
fury of empire was visited upon the church.
Rome, the seat of paganism, became the
center of persecution. In the sixty-fourth
year of our era, during the reign of Nero,
the church experienced a baptism of blood.
Christians were classed as outlaws, as "enemies of mankind." They were found guilty
of odium genet* humani, "hatred of the human race." They were burned at the stake,
crucified, or exposed to wild beasts in the
arena.
FURY OF ROMAN PERSECUTION
Those who were thus persecuted for their
faith in "the name," had only to renounce
their allegiance to Christ and to worship the
image of the emperor; then they received
abundant pardon. Yet having tasted the joy
of salvation from sin, not many followers of
Jesus were willing to worship a Domitian or
a Trajan or a Hadrian or a Pius or a Marcus.
Worship of God, with death, was rather to
Page Eight
be chosen than life with the worship of a
profligate prince; the more so, when the believer knew that a martyr's death meant life
eternal, but that the emperor's grant of life
must end in eternal death.
Persecution is ever the purifier of the
church. It is a blessing in the disguise of
tribulation, for the spirit of martyrdom runs
low when persecutions are past. Martyrs'
blood has often been called the seed of Christianity.
The enemy of righteousness gained by
strategy that which he failed to gain by
force. There came a relaxation in persecution. From violent opposers of the Christian
faith, the emperors of Rome turned to become its protectors and then its sponsors.
Alexander Severus became so tolerant that
he placed the image of Christ, along with
other religious statues, in his private chapel.
Other emperors openly courted the church,
and its prestige grew on apace.
THE PRICE OF POPULARITY
The price of popularity was a fearful one.
The leaven of false philosophy permeated
every Christian doctrine. No longer did paganism seek to crush the church. Indeed it
courted Christianity, and was wedded to it.
Pagan corruptions were fused with Christian doctrines. Paganism and Christianity
were no longer two, but one.
There were two striking movements in
those early centuries of our era which merit
our deepest interest. The first was the influence of Mithraism upon pagan Rome; the
second was the rise to power of the bishop
of Rome.
Mithraism was different from the Oriental religions of the East. Its appeal was not
so much to the sensuous as to the sterner
qualities of rigid discipline. Coming from
In the primitive days of Christianity, how often
was the believer called upon to choose between
Christ and idols! Yet to-day the same choice
must be made.
Persia, this iniquitous system of sun worship
found a ready acceptance in Rome, and numbered its adherents by the thousands among
the soldiery and in the civil service. Its influence upon the rapidly declining Christianity of those early centuries was most marked.
An arresting quotation from an authoritative book, "Christianity in the Light of
Modern Knowledge," will show the stupendous influence of this sun worship upon
Christianity. From page 73 of the Religion
and Philosophy section, by Gilbert Murray,
Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, are taken these words :
"Now, since Mithras was 'the Sun, the
Unconquered,' and the Sun was 'the Royal
Star,' the religion looked for a King whom it
could serve as the representative of Mithras upon earth. . . . The Roman Emperor
seemed to be clearly indicated as the true
King. In sharp contrast to Christianity,
Mithraism recognized Cxsar as the bearer of
the divine Grace, and its votaries filled the
legions and the civil service. . . . It had so
much acceptance that it was able to impose
on the Christian world its own Sun-Day in
place of the Sabbath, its Sun's birthday, 25th
December, as the birthday of Jesus."
The high priest of Mithraism, the visible
representative on earth of the sun god in the
heavens, was the emperor of Rome. He was
called, this dissolute Cmsar, the "Pontifex
Maximus," the highest priest.
"It had so much acceptance," says Dr.
Murray, speaking of Mithraism, "that it was
able to impose on the Christian world its
own sun day in place of the Sabbath." The
unholy influence of false religion upon the
very fundamentals of the faith is forcefully
SIGNS of the TIMES
the sea, and all that in them is, and rested
the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Exodus
20 : 8-11.
In a special sense the Sabbath stands apart
as the seal of God's law. In the fourth commandment is revealed the name of our God,
"Jehovah." His authoritative title, "the
Creator;" and the extent of His dominion,
"the heavens and the earth." Indeed, God
calls the Sabbath a "sign" between Him and
His people, a "sign" of His "sanctifying"
power : "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." Ezekiel 20:12.
The day of the sun, ingraf ted into Christianity by Mithraism, was the distinctive
mark of religious apostasy. This sun day was
born in the abominations of a profligate
priesthood of a corrupt church. Little wonder that the apostle Paul calls the corrupted
church that adopted this mark of pagan sun
worship, "the mystery of iniquity"!
As the church decked herself with the
purple and gold of popularity, she lost her
apostolic purity. Pagan festivals were
adopted, and renamed. "Almost all that was
pagan was carried over to survive under a
Christian name." From simplicity to Babylonian grandeur, from purity to worldly laxity, from Christlike persuasion to cruel coercion—such were the inevitable steps that
were taken by the church as she turned
toward the Roman world.
revealed in this daring attempt of the enemy
to make void the law of God. The substitution of the day of the sun for the Sabbath
of the Lord was a brazen attempt to destroy
the authority of God by nullifying His law.
THE ABOMINATIONS OF ISRAEL
Of all the abominations of ancient times,
none was so great, of all the evils, none so
heinous in the sight of Heaven, as the worship of the sun. To Ezekiel the prophet was
shown a number of abominations that were
practiced by the apostate leaders of Israel.
Then said the Lord to Ezekiel, "Turn thee
yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these." Ezekiel 8:15. Little
wonder that God declared that the iniquity
of the house of Israel was "exceeding great,"
for the record says in verse 16: "He brought
me into the inner court of the Lord's house,
and, behold, at the door of the temple of the
Lord, between the porch and the altar, were
about five and twenty men, with their backs
toward the temple of the Lord, and their
faces toward the east; and they worshiped
the sun toward the east."
Mithraism was the very antithesis of
Christianity. It had a counterfeit sin offering, a counterfeit baptism, a counterfeit communion service, and a counterfeit sabbath!
And the sun day of Mithraism was the hub
in the wheel of abominations. It was the
poisoned tip in the arrow of apostasy.
THE TRUE SABBATH
The Sabbath was hallowed at creation.
The infinite power of God was memorialized
in the day that was set apart, blessed, and
sanctified by the Omnipotent One at the
close of the creative week. In the fourth
commandment of the Decalogue are the
words: "Remember the Sabbath day, to
keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and
do all thy work : but the seventh day is the
Sabbath of the Lord thy God: . . . for in
six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
"itst
46V
OT in the Ten Commandments, but in the laws of paganism; not in the word of God, but in the archives of tradition;
not in the authority of the Creator, but in the abominations of
sun worship, must we go for the origin of the day of the sun as
a day of worship. Sunday is the mark of the apostasy in religion.
It is a counterfeit sabbath, with no higher authority for its observance than that of the Pontifex Maximus of Mithras.
leA
for DECEMBER 12, 1933
ADOPTION OF PAGAN FESTIVALS
Along with this fusion of pagan corruption with Christian doctrine there must be
noted the centralization of authority in the
one who was destined to emerge as the "Pontifex Maximus" of the apostate church.
Three "sees" contended for supremacy—
Rome in the west, Antioch in the east, and
Alexandria in Egypt. By the removal of the
seat of the empire to the east, Constantinople
was added to this list of bishoprics. The
rivalry between Rome and Constantinople
was intense.
"In the ninety years following Theodosius
(A. D. 395-484) the barbarian invasions, deflected from the East, broke in full force
against the Western Empire and destroyed it.
In the shipwreck of almost all the Roman
civil system, the Roman Church, largely neglected by the Eastern emperors, acquired
increasing importance as the representative
and the partial conservative of the old order.
. . . Though East and West cooperated in
the suppression of heresy and the definition
of orthodoxy, the gradual domination of the
Eastern church by the emperors, the firm
defense of orthodoxy by Rome, and the absence of rivals to its claim for supremacy,
contribute to the foundation of the papal
system."
The ascendancy of the bishop of Rome to
the supreme position of authority, civil as
well as religious, has the deepest significance
for the student of prophecy. Sitting in
Caesar's seat, and claiming to sit in Christ's
seat, this man by the Tiber molded the history of the world for more than a thousand
years. Even the title "Pontifex Maximus,"
which had graced the Roman emperors, was
appropriated by the one who called himself
vicarius f lii Dei, "the vicar of the Son of
Page Nine
God." Strange combination of title—"Pontifex Maximus," or highest priest of Mithra,
linked with "Vicar of the Son of God"! No
wonder that the system as thus evolved is
the very masterpiece of deception, for the
rites and mysteries of paganism were veneered with Christian names, the corruptions
of paganism were amalgamated with Christian doctrines, and the high priest of paganism was crowned as the vicar of Christ on
earth!
An interesting title indeed, this title "Pontifex Maximus." From the Funk and Wagnail's dictionary is this word: "pontifices
solis,' the priests of the sun—an order made
by the Roman emperor Aurelian when he
introduced sun worship into Rome from the
Orient; pontifices Veste,' the body of priests
at whose head was the Pontifex Maximus:
so-called because he was also the legal representative of the Vestal priestesses." The
Vestal Virgins were the "nuns" of pagan
Rome. The fact is, all the roots of Roman
theology worship are found in the Rome of
paganism.
INTRODUCTION OF SUNDAY
"Yet when the victory of Christianity was
won and it was established as the official religion of the empire, it is strange to see how
it turned back, never on the imperial cult,
but on the true Roman religion. Not only
was much of the organization of the church,
under a head who took the title of Pontifex
Maximus. modeled on that of the Roman
state religion, but in its detailed love of
ceremony the Roman Church was carrying
on the oldest of Roman traditions."
Even as the title Pontifex Maximus brands
its possessor as the high priest of Mithras,
so does the sun day stand out as the badge
of his religious authority. This day, born in
paganism, was cradled and adopted by the
papal apostasy, and is heralded to the world
as a mark of her authority to alter even
divine law. But the authority is not from
above, but from beneath. The day is not
from Christianity but from paganism. Constantine, who became emperor in 306 A. D.,
held the title Pontifex Maximus as the head
of the state religion. During his administration he regulated pagan cults, defined the
privileges of the priesthood just as his predecessors had done. And yet Constantine accepted Christianity and was baptized upon
his deathbed! The first Sunday law ever
passed, enacted by Constantine in 321 A. D.,
called the day by its pagan name "dies Solis." It would be well to quote from the
book, "Rest Days," by Professor Hutton
Webster of the University of Nebraska, who
says: "During these same centuries the
spread of Oriental solar worship, especially
that of Mithra, in the Roman world, had already led to the substitution by pagans of
dies Solis for dies Satzirni, as the first day
of the planetary week; and Constantine's
famous edict, as we have seen, definitely enrolled Sunday among the holidays of the
Roman state religion. The change from
Saturn's day to Sunday must have further
commended the planetary week in Christian
circles, where the Lord's day (dies Dominica) beginning the week, had long been observed as that on which Christ, the 'Sun of
Righteousness,' rose from the dead. Thus
gradually a pagan institution was ingrafted
on Christianity."
Page Ten
"Tertullian was the first church father to
declare that Christians ought to abstain on
Sunday from secular duties and occupations
lest they should give place to the devil.
. . . Other church fathers of the third century, including Origen and Cyprian, made no
reference to Sunday as a day of abstinence
from labor. The earliest Sunday law, the
edict issued by Constantine in 321 A. D., bore
no relation to Christianity. That began,
however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a
Christian regulation; and a long series of
imperial decrees, during the fourth, fifth,
and sixth centuries, enjoined with increasing stringency abstinence from labor on
Sunday."—Page 268.
A CLEAR-CUT ISSUE
Not in the Ten Commandments, but in
the laws of paganism; not in the word of
God, but in the archives of tradition; not in
the authority of the Creator, but in the
abominations of sun worship, must we go
for the origin of the day of the sun as a day
of worship. Sunday is the mark of apostasy
in religion. It is a counterfeit sabbath, with
no higher authority for its observance than
that of the Pontifex Maximus of Mithras.
In no sense of the word can the Roman
teaching be identified with true Christianity.
Its entire doctrine is tainted with pagan corruption. It is ancient sun worship in medieval and modern dress. It is Babylonian confusion masquerading as Christian perfection. The pope of Rome is not the successor
of Peter, but of Caesar; not the representative of Christ, but of Mithras. And the day
which he holds out to the world as a mark
of his power is the mark of apostasy. Moreover, the Protestantism that seeks to tear
down the framework of God's throne. the
Ten Commandments, that seeks to lessen the
authority of God's sacred law, and to exalt
a spurious sabbath in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord, is no less tainted with sun
worship than is Roman Catholicism.
In the final issue of the conflict of truth
with error, the Sabbath will stand out in
ever clearer light as the sign of the true worship of the Creator. The call to Sabbath observance is Heaven's answer to apostasy in
religion. God's people are to be found in
every Protestant communion, in Roman
Catholicism, in paganism. But the call today is the call, "Come out of her, My people." Revelation 18:4. In these last days of
the conflict, God says, "Here is the patience
of the saints: here are they that keep the
commandments of God, and the faith of
Jesus." Revelation 14:12.
Shall We Know One Another?
(Continued from page 7)
they will be the same bodies we had in this
life, only immortalized, we have reference
to organization, and not to atoms. Scientists
tell us that every few years we undergo a
complete physical change as to the atoms
of which our bodies are composed. But are
we not still recognized as the same persons?
Most assuredly. And by what are we recognized? By bodily, not atomic, organization. The same will be true in the hereafter.
When Jesus Christ saves a man in this world,
he will not be somebody else in the next. If
so, what became of the man whom He now
saves? Again, if we are not to know one another, how could we enter into the joy of
the Lord, which joy, according to 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20, will be to see in the kingdom those to whom He has brought salvation?
How different is the plain teaching of the
word of God on the subject of the kingdom
from the vague idea expressed in the words
of the song,
"Beyond the realms of time and space,
My soul shall find a resting place."
"Feed on His Faithfulness"
(Psalm 37:3, A. R. V.)
"Feed on His faithfulness,"
0 heart of mine;
Though clouds encomria5s. thee,
The stars still shine.
"Feed on His faithfulness,"
Though others fail;
Trust on, He faileth not,
Within the veil.
"Feed on His faithfulness,"
Fret not at ill;
Look up I—He sees and knows.
Rest and be still.
"Feed on His faithfulness,"
Wait patiently;
Thus shalt thou prove His grace
Enough for thee.
—Evangelical Christian.
The absurdity of such teaching led some one
to say, "I want to be somebody when I get
somewhere, instead of being nobody and
going nowhere, and being nobody when I
get nowhere."
How real, sensible, and wholesome are
the Scriptures on this important subject!
Such provisions on the part of our God
should stir every heart and cause us to pray
as never before, "Thy kingdom come."
One cannot go into the room where the
life of a loved one is slowly ebbing away,
and not thank God that there is a kingdom
soon to be ushered in, where the inhabitants
shall no more say, "I am sick," and where
there will be no more pain or sorrow or
death. Surely such a blessed hope should
buoy us up. Such a kingdom should often
be the theme of our conversation.
"I hope your master is going to heaven."
was the remark once made to an old Southern negro.
"I'se 'fraid he's not gain' dar," was the
reply. "When he plan to go fishin', or to de
springs, or to de seaside, he sho do make a
heap of plans, and he always talk 'bout it;
but of he 's goin' to hebben, I'se never heard
him talk 'bout it."
Let us talk about that kingdom and pray
for it, but, above all, prepare for it.
SIGNS of the TIMES
H
E Bible is a wonderful Book. It opens
without an apology. It begins with God in
the first verse, continues with the Holy Spirit
in the second verse, and ends with a prayer
for Jesus to come quickly.
In the third chapter from the beginning
the serpent, and with him sin, sorrow, and
defeat, get into this Book. In the third chapter from its end, these all go out forever.
All before and all after is peace, love, Paradise; and all in between is the story of how
God met and conquered the problem of sin
by love.
One should read and study a book to get
out of it that for which it was written. You
do not read an arithmetic to learn how to
make candy; you do not read a book on
chemistry in order to know how to sell automobiles; you do not read history to find out
how to grow flowers. When you read the
Bible, read it for the purpose for which it
was written. That purpose was to show man
the nature of sin, and to tell him how he
may be saved from it. The Bible was written to tell us, who are so greatly in need of
a Saviour, that God in His love and compassion has provided a Saviour.
WHAT THE BIBLE TELLS US
The Bible is the only Book in the world
that tells of a God we can love, of a heaven
we can win, of a hell we are to shun, and of
a Saviour who can save us. Thank God for
such a Book !
Here is a Book through which the Creator
speaks to His created. Rightly understood,
the heart of this Book is Christ. It is all it
claims to be—the voice of God to man. In
the Old Testament scriptures alone we find
the expression, "The Lord said," or its
equivalent, three thousand eight hundred
times.
Dr. H. L. Hastings was right when he
wrote of the Bible: "I know this Book has
in it the breath of God, from the effect it
C j2,
BOOK
That Tells
About
CHRIST
Many persons, professing to be
Christians, manifest little enthusiasm over the Bible. But Christ
and the Bible stand or fall
together.
JAMES BASIL SPENCER
has upon mankind. There are men who
study philosophy, astronomy, geology, geography, and mathematics; but did you ever
hear a man say, 'I was an outcast, a wretched
inebriate, a disgrace to my race, and a nuisance in the world, until I began to study
mathematics, learned the multiplication
table, and then turned my attention to geology, bought me a little hammer and knocked
off the corners of the rocks, and since that
time I have been as happy as the day is
long. I feel like singing all day long; my
soul is full of triumph and peace; and health
and happiness have come to my desolate
home once more'? Did you ever hear a man
ascribe his redemption and salvation from
intemperance or vice to the multiplication
table, or to the science of mathematics or
geology? But I can bring you not one man
or two or ten, but men by the thousand who
will tell you, 'I was wretched, I was lost, I
broke my poor old mother's heart; I beggared my family, my wife was heartbroken
and dejected, my children fled from the
sound of their father's footsteps; I was
ruined, reckless, helpless, homeless, hopeless, until I knew the words of this Book of
God.' "
MODERN COMFORTERS OF JOB
Dr. Joseph Parker was right when he gave
us the story of Job's modern comforters.
In it he pictures a person in some such plight
as old Job,—fortune all gone, children dead,
property destroyed, wife turned against
him, himself covered with boils and disease.
When he was heartbroken, forsaken by his
neighbors, suffering from his painful malady,
sorrowing over the loss of his loved ones,
Dr. Parker imagines three of the most distinguished skeptics of modern times coming,
like Job's three friends, to console him with
scientific comfort. They bend in genuine
sympathy over him and offer him the best
that science can bring. They talk learnedly
of protoplasm, and molecular disturbances,
and microscopic fungus, and chemistry, and
oxygen, and hydrogen, and carbon dioxide,
and decomposition, and they tell him that the
bodies of his dead children might yet nourish
plants and animals. But what comfort in all
this? No hope, no future, no Saviour! Job's
companions were princes compared to these.
Apart from the Book of God, this world's
comfort is cold, cruel, and worthless.
Good John Wesley was right when he
said: "The Bible must be the invention of
good men or angels, of bad men or devils, or
of God. It could not be the invention of
good men or angels, for they neither would
nor could make a book and tell lies all the
time they were writing it, claiming it was the
saying of God, when it was their own invention. It could not be the invention of bad
men or devils, for they would not make a
book which commands all duty, forbids all
sin, and condemns their own souls to perish.
Therefore I draw the conclusion that the
Bible must have been given by inspiration
of God."
AN INFALLIBLE GUIDE
This Bible was used at the inauguration of George Washington as President
of the United States in 1789.
for DECEMBER 12, 1933
Spurgeon was right when he uttered his
personal conviction: "I do not believe that,
from one cover to the other, there is any
mistake in the Bible of any sort whatsoever
either in natural or physical science or upon
history or anything whatever. I am prepared to believe whatever it says, and to take
it believing it to be the word of God; for if
it is not all true, it is not worth one solitary
penny to me. It may be to the man who is
so wise that he can pick out the true from
the false, but I am such a fool that I could
never do that. If I do not have a guide that
(Continued on page 15)
Page Eleven
C an
The power of Christ
availed even to
cleanse the
lepers.
GOD HEAL THE
SICK?
If He can, does He? Three rules for
those to remember who ask
for divine healing.
■
ROBERT B. THURBER
is a prophecy of death. The
very fact that sickness takes hold on
us, and that we are susceptible to illness, shows that death reigns within us and
will some day triumph. Life experience reveals that from the cradle to the grave we
are slowly dying. It is not a pleasant
thought, but it is true, and must be faced
bravely; and it drives the Christian to lay
hold on the hope of promised eternal life
after this life is over.
But even in this life there is a renewing
power that postpones our funerals, and gives
us a degree of health and happiness that is
good to experience. It comes by obedience
to the laws of our bodies, which are the laws
of God who made our bodies, and from a
victorious Christian experience and a bright
outlook on the future. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Proverbs 17:22.
There can be no optimist equal to a Christian optimist, for he knows that for him "all
things work together for good." Romans
8:28.
ICKNESS
S
CAUSES OF ILLNESS
Some sickness is easily understood and accounted for, and we acknowledge its reasonableness. Acute pains from bad habits of
eating and breathing, undernourishment,
overwork, careless exposure, and uncleanness can be seen as harvests of the sowing of
tares. The way to stop them and to avoid
further trouble is to remove the causes; and
we have only ourselves to blame if we do not
do so. Chronic ailments which we have
brought upon ourselves by this same breaking of laws through long years of outlawry
do not yield quickly to the establishment of
right health habits, but in alleviating them
much may be accomplished by correct living.
But the most difficult sicknesses to understand and to see the justice of are hereditary
and accidental diseases. Why should we have
to suffer for the mistakes of our fathers and
because somebody else was careless? Well,
we do; and more than anything else, we need
to believe that our heavenly Father has our
Page Twelve
cases fully in hand, and will not allow to
come upon us one thing which we are not
able to bear or which is not good for us in
developing a character fit for His kingdom.
Let us ever keep in mind that God has
one all-important object in dealing with
men; and every other object He has in helping them must be subservient to this. This
one object is to save men's souls for eternal
life. No matter what He brings to us here
in His love and wisdom, it is for the best if
it serves to give us life eternal. And He
knows we will be best satisfied with ultimate
happiness, no matter how we complain about
passing pains. God so works in our bodies
as to lead us to make decisions for Him and
life everlasting. And He knows best.
GOD HEALS
There is an old Jewish legend, based upon
Bible truth, to the effect that the tree of life
which grew in the Garden of Eden was
transported to heaven after Adam and Eve
sinned and were driven out of reach of it.
And though man now cannot partake of the
fruit and live forever, a branch of the tree
hangs over the walls of Paradise and its
leaves are within reach of suffering humanity. "And the leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations." Revelation 22 :2.
It is a beautiful and heartening legend, if
no more. But it illustrates the great truth
that there is divine healing available to men
to-day.
Jesus healed the sick while He was on
earth, and He cured lunatics and restored
crazed brains, and even raised the dead to
life and health. In His travels He passed
through towns and villages, and left not a
sick or a maimed or a crazed person behind.
We understand that He healed all because
His healing of the body was a symbol of His
healing of the sin-sick soul, and His promise to cure sin sickness is extended to "whosoever will."
Jesus was prophesied of as "the Sun of
righteousness," "with healing in His wings."
Malachi 4:2. Scientists tell us that no disease germs of any description or degree of
virulence can live in bright sunshine. If we
could just expose every germ to the sun, we
could eradicate all disease. Hence the value
of various light-ray treatments. Jesus was
like the sun, a healing sun. And, like the
sun, which gradually rises in the morning,
so Jesus' miracles of healing began small and
grew greater. He first worked on inanimate
and plant life, making water into wine. Then
He worked on animals, and on men with animal passions, driving them from the temple
court. Then He cured human sickness,
healed the last stages of wasting disease,
drove out devils who are stronger than men,
and lastly conquered death itself, even His
own death, for "it was not possible that He
should be holden of it." Acts 2 :24.
A GIFT TO THE CHURCH
And Christ passed on this healing power
to His church. Among the spiritual gifts to
the church given in 1 Corinthians 12 :9, 28
is the gift of healing. And the church is to
exercise all these gifts until we are all perfect (Ephesians 4:8-13), which manifestly is
not yet; and we are to come behind in no
gift (1 Corinthians 1:7). "These signs shall
follow them that believe," said Christ when
prophesying of His church and its work to
the "end of the world," "they shall lay hands
on the sick, and they shall recover." Mark
16:17, 18. And in James 5:13-15 instruction
is given for the exact procedure in praying
for the sick and drawing healing power from
above.
Now before we go on to deal with just
how divine healing is accomplished, let us
notice three great truths which must be taken
into account. First, forgiveness of sin always accompanies God's healing. Jesus
added to His healing word, "Go, and sin no
more," showing that forgiveness had come
with health. Therefore, the sick one should
never ask for healing unless he is ready to
confess every known sin and p-ut it away.
Clinging to one cherished idol or desire that
we know is wrong will keep away all healing
power. God will not heal without forgiving,
and He cannot forgive unless there is repentance and confession. We can easily see why
this is so. If we did not put away sin, how
would we use the health that God restores?
We would go on in sin, dishonoring Him with
the very health that His mercy had restored.
SIGNS of the TIMES
And God will never grant health for that.
Healing is a redemptive act.
Second, there is no promise anywhere in
God's word that He will heal every one's
diseases, not even those of good, faithful
children of His. Neither can we find any
promise that He will heal any one particular
case. He does make a hundred promises
that He will forgive the sins of every one, on
simple conditions that the weakest can comply with, but no such unqualified promise is
made for body sickness. Therefore, though
He will never heal without forgiving, He may
forgive without healing. We can make no
claims on God by faith unless we have a
promise from Him to cover our claim.
CO-OPERATION WITH GOD
Third, we must first do everything within
our power, or any human power, to heal disease before we ask God to cure us and to do
His part. Of course, all healing is of God.
Mankind, the doctors and nurses, simply
aid nature to effect a cure. We should ask
God to bless from the very first the remedies
and aids we use, and He will do so. But we
should do our utmost before we ask Him to
do all the rest of the healing, ask Him to do
what no human skill can even aid. And He
expects us to do more in aiding nature than
He expected of men of old, because we know
more about such aids than they did. This is
one reason why God's miracles of healing
to-day do not seem as great as they did
formerly. God has gradually given medical
scientists knowledge and skill so that they,
men, now do what was a miracle of God beforetime. Doctors are restoring the blind
to sight to-day by means of the knife, while
in Christ's day it was done wholly by a miracle. God starts, as it were, further along in
the cure than He did before modern science
learned what it has. He expects us to bring
to bear first all that medical science can do.
Then, if it is His will, He will go on to per-
Prominent throughout
Jesus' ministry was the
healing of the sick.
A New System of Bible Marking
By JOHN L. SHULER
12—The Present Truth
for This Present Time
LESSON No.
KEY LETTERS—PT (Present Truth)
1. 2 Peter 1:12. We are to be established in
the present truth. The present truth is the special form of truth that is especially adapted to
the particular time that God sends it to the
people.
2. 2 Peter 2:5. The warning message about
the Flood 'coming in the days of Noah was the
present truth for the people at that time.
3. Matt. 3:1-3. When Christ was about to
appear as the Messiah at His first coming, a
special message of present truth was sent
through John the Baptist to prepare the way
for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah.
4. Matt. 24:37. There will be a special message of present truth for the last days, before
Christ's second coming, as there was for the
people before the Flood came.
5. Joel 2:1. As there was a special message
sent to prepare the way for the first coming of
Christ, there will be a special message to prepare the way for His second coming.
6. Rev. 14:6-12. This special message for the
last days is found in the prophecy of Revelation
under the symbol of three angels flying in midair, preaching to every nation the everlasting
gospel of the judgment being come, the fall of
form the rest. Thus we are "laborers together with God."
See that the sick and the sick room are
clean and orderly, for God's presence is to
be invited in. Let the patient and loved ones
Babylon, the warning against the mark of the
beast, and calling upon people to keep all the
commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
7. Rev. 14:14. The coming of Christ on the
cloud which follows the giving of this message
shows that this message of Revelation 14:6-12
is Christ's special message for those who live in
the last days just before His coming on the
cloud. This message is God's present truth for
this present time. When you accept this message
of Revelation 14:6-12, you can be absolutely
sure that you have the right thing for this very
time, because it is the very message that God
put in the Bible for this very hour in which we
are living. It is as important to accept this message now as it was for the people in Noah's time
to accept the special message for their time.
8. Rev. 14:12. God's people in these last days
will be distinguished by the keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
9. Rev. 15:2, 3. Those who accept the message will be ready to meet the Saviour at His
coming and will stand victorious on the sea of
glass in the New Jerusalem above.
and friends who are converted Christians
pray earnestly beforehand. (God does not
hear the prayer of an unconverted person,
except for conversion. "If I regard iniquity
in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
Psalm 66:18.) Let them pray for the removal of every condition that would stand
in the way of healing.
Then let "him," the sick one, call for the
elders of the church. "Is any sick among
you? let him call for the elders of the church;
and let them pray over him, anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord: and the
prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the
Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."
James 5:14, 15. The patient also, not alone
his loved ones, must desire the elders to
come. If the patient is too sick to know or
to decide, then let the nearest Christian relative, who is in full harmony with the Bible
plan of healing, call for the elders. These
elders are ministers of the gospel, or elderly,
experienced Christians (women as well as
men), preferably those who have special
power, the gift of healing, in such cases.
Three or five persons are enough.
MANNER OF INTERCESSION
Let the leader have some pure vegetable
oil (such as olive oil) ready at hand. All assembled may pray in turn, first asking for
personal forgiveness and righteousness, for
it is only "the effectual, fervent prayer of
a righteous man" that "availeth much."
James 5:14-16. Let the burden of the
prayers be that God will save the soul and
for DECEMBER 12, 1933
Page Thirteen
give eternal life to the sick one. For this we
can claim the promise, for God longs to do
it. Then leave the rest with the will of God.
If in order to grant eternal life, He sees it
best to keep the patient sick or take away
his life, then we concur. For of course the
patient's restoration might be neither for his
own best good, nor for that of others. There
is much that we must leave to the divine will
and the divine wisdom. During the closing
prayer the patient is anointed with the oil,
on the head, or if possible on the diseased
part of the body.
Let faith lay hold of the truth, not simply
that God will heal, but that He will do what
is best, whether it be healing or otherwise.
We submit to His will, and have more faith
in His love and wisdom than ever, when we
now see it is superior to ours. There is such
a thing as Christians so insisting on their own
way that God lets them have it to their sorrow. We may cite the instances, mentioned
in Scripture, of Balaam and Hezekiah. Disaster often follows insistence on our way in
preference to God's. Mothers have insisted
on healing of sons, only to see them grow
up to be profligates. We well remember a
distracted mother whose son was spared only
to be a maniac to the end of his days; and
how many times she wished he had died.
God knows best. There are worse conditions
than sickness and death.
We have some notable cases of God's refusing to heal the best of men. Paul, who
was himself instrumental in healing others,
even raising the dead, prayed earnestly that
his "thorn in the flesh" might be removed.
But God did not remove it, rather consoling
Paul with the word, "My strength is made
perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:
1-10. Paul agreed with God willingly, and
said, "Most gladly therefore will I rather
glory in my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may rest upon me." The reason why
God did not heal Paul was that He could use
a sick Paul better than a well Paul.
MYSTERY OF DIVINE PURPOSES
Job, the righteous man of Uz, was made
to suffer long before deliverance, because
God was using him as an object lesson to
the universe. He was thus honored above all
men of his time, and his experience taught
the world the great truth that God does not
visit afflictions upon men according to how
wicked they are. May not God be using you,
sick one, to help a multitude? Fulfill your
destiny cheerfully.
The blind man whom Christ healed (John
9:1-5) was kept blind from birth to the age
of forty, not because he or his parents had
sinned, but that God might be glorified in
Christ's healing him, and thousands might
be helped by his testimony, "Whereas I was
blind, now I see." God works in a mysterious way. But it is always a good way, and
so we conclude when our eyes pierce the
mystery.
Even Christ could not heal Himself. That
is, He did not save Himself from suffering
and death. He had to suffer and die in order
to save others. He had a great work to accomplish, and there was no other way to
finish it but to suffer and die. Is there anything in that for the sick of to-day? Let us
ask God to show us what our work is. And
if only invalidism or death will accomplish
Page Fourteen
it, let us glory in His will to that end. Let
us say with Paul as he stood at the execution
block, "I am now ready to be offered. . . .
Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown."
2 Timothy 4:6-8.
Now one last word of hope and consolation for the patient invalid who has not received healing in answer to medical skill and
earnest prayer to God, and must spend many
days in bed. May it not be that God could
not trust you with health then, because you
needed to learn some lessons that only long
helplessness could teach, and that now, when
you have learned them, or later if you will
learn them, He will raise you up in answer
to strong faith and prayer? But be sure first,
in such a case, that you are transformed—
and ready.
SIGNS TyyjESt
Advocating a return to the simple
gospel of Christ, and a preparation
for His imminent second appearing
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'Revelation
MARY MILLER LUFKIN
OFTTIMES we're inspired to heaven's height
Where our world is filled with celestial light;
Peace and rest steal through the soul
For a lifted shade has revealed the goal.
These blessed moments give infinite peace
When we know life's stream can never cease—
For divine inflow from the power above
Pours over our hearts as truth and love.
"The Light Shineth in Darkness"
(Continued from page 3)
living in a period not only of deflated money
but of deflated conceptions of man. Much
of our modern literature is filled with the
acids of cynicism and disillusionment. There
is a general feeling abroad that human nature is a feeble and almost contemptible
thing. Many people are afraid to confess
their own ideals and afraid to believe in
ideals in others. Hypocrisy used to mean a
man's effort to appear better than he is. The
modern hypocrisy more often consists in
pretending that he is worse, because he is
afraid to show his real belief that there is
such a thing as being good.
The Bible makes plain the magnificent
truth that there is a hunger after righteousness. Also it does more. It shows that there
is a satisfaction for that hunger.
It is not enough for men to reach their
hands on high. The other and the critical
question would then remain to be answered.
Does any hand reach down to touch these
wistful hands of earth? Does any love of
God speak back to the lips that frame their
prayers? This great question the Bible answers. It shows the light unfolding as fast
as men were able to perceive it. It interprets
the accents of the voice which spoke as fully
and clearly as men were able to understand.
God did not leave Himself without a witness.
If the fullness of truth glimmered at first
only in little points like stars, these stars
were enough for men to steer by. Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, even Joseph and Moses
and David too, moved in a world of thoughtwhich the semi-barbarism of those early
times still strongly influenced; but nevertheless they lived above the level of their age.
Men's consciences had perceived realities of
God which set their feet upon an ascending
road. In the prophets such as Isaiah and
Jeremiah, Hosea and Amos, we see the high
point of awareness to which in the Old Testament times the human spirit had climbed.
These men saw the broadening truths of
God, great truths of a righteousness that
should be universal, of the oneness of human
destiny, and of the unity of God Himself,
rising like the dawn upon the horizon of their
world; and at length in Jesus of Nazareth
there came a transcendent union of the human life that is lifted up and of the divine
life that reaches down. He more than any
other figure who had appeared on this human stage, made men feel, not only that his
own life spired upward like a white flame to
meet the infinite, but that in Him there dwelt
the manifest assurance of the God whom humanity had been seeking. All the old longings for religious confidence, all the patient
dreams of patriarch and prophet for the
realization of the eternal, came true in Him.
Men said that "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."
In Jesus Christ the Bible has made religion convincing. Men may not be convinced by arguments. They will not be led
to spiritual experience by theoretical reasons
as to why it is a good thing for them to attain: but in Jesus religion became embodied
as a supreme fact. He expresses what all the
other figures in the earlier pages of the Bible
foreshadowed and suggested. To think of
SIGNS of the TIMES
Jesus Christ, to walk in imagination with
Him as His figure moves through the pages
of the Gospels, to dare to master the secret
of His meaning until He begins to master us,
is to know with an inner certainty which
nothing can disturb that. human life finds
itself only when it finds its way to God, and
that there is a God who comes to dwell in
man.
Thus the method of the Bible is always
concrete. It tells us about man by telling us
about men. As Dean Hodges has said, "Its
pages bring before us a long procession of
people. Its precepts are embodied in persons. It is akin, not to the dialogues of
Plato, but to the plays of Shakespeare; that
is, truth is not reasoned out, but acted out."
In the Bible, for the most part, people do
not argue about good and evil. They live,
and in their lives we see what good and evil
are. Even when, as in the case of the books
of the prophets, or in the epistles of Paul,
there are long messages of inspiration or of
warning, and of explanation as to what religious faith should mean, these messages
are never abstract utterances, but the warm
and living counsel of men who in their own
souls were wrestling mightily with the great
issues they proclaimed.
son in this world that question, "Why don't
you love Jesus?" No one has any good reason for not loving Him. If you think you
have, I ask you to look at a certain question
in God's Book which has never been answered. Turn to Hebrews 2 :3, and read
the first part of the verse. "How shall we
escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"
Ponder four words,—"escape," "neglect,"
"great," "salvation." Think of what it cost
God to provide salvation for you—a sinner.
Think what is involved in your neglecting !
The most damning sin in all the world is
the sin against love.
I have heard of a man who was traveling
alone over a sandy desert. He found himself lost. Without water, hopeless, weary,
he finally lay down to die. A windstorm came
on suddenly, and a green leaf fell beside
him. A green leaf—what did that mean?
It told him there must be water near by.
Jumping up, he pushed on against the wind,
and in a short while came to a grove of palm
trees with a beautiful spring. So near death,
yet saved!
Friend, I offer you the promises of God's
word as leaves of the tree of life. Follow on
to peace, pardon, rest, life, heaven, through
the Christ of the Bible. Thank God for a
Book which reveals a Saviour !
GREAT surprises of delight are in store
for those who lovingly resign themselves to
the divine will and patiently persevere in
the course which is divinely appointed.—
Joseph Parker.
(To be continued)
The Book That Tells of Christ
(Continued from page 11)
is infallible, I would as soon guide myself,
for I shall have to do so after all; I shall
have to be correcting the blunders of my
guide continually, but I am not qualified to
do that, and so, if my guide be not infallible,
I am worse off than if I had no guide at all."
From its first chapters this Book tells the
story of redeeming love. Even before sin
entered, there is a wonderful lesson presented in the seven steps of creation: chaos,
the brooding of the Spirit, light, life, growth,
fruit bearing, and rest—or the Sabbath. In
re-creation we must take the same seven
steps. The sinner's heart is well represented
by chaos. Then God goes forth to find His
straying child. He takes the first step in
the brooding of His Spirit. If the sinner
yields to the wooing Spirit, light will be born
in the soul. Continue in this light from God,
and there will be a new birth, a new life
formed within. Then comes growth in grace,
then fruit bearing, bringing forth the fruit
of the Spirit, then perfect rest in Jesus.
A hardened skeptic was asked by a child
missionary, "Mr. —, why don't you love
Jesus?" No man would have dared ask him
such a question; but the arrow from God's
quiver sent by a little girl went home to his
heart. Unable to sleep that night because of
this question which kept ringing in his ears,
he decided to get up and read in the Bible
where Jesus contradicted Himself, thinking thereby to find a reason for not loving
Him. He found his wife's Bible, and he
opened it at the Gospel of John. Oh, skeptic, never read the Gospel of John if you
wish to find a reason for not loving Jesus!
You will find, as this man did, a multitude
of reasons why you should love Him. This
man found those reasons, and before morning he surrendered his stubborn heart to his
Saviour. He had learned to love Jesus.
I wish I might ask every unconverted perfor DECEMBER 12, 1933
The Book
of
the Hour
HIS is a very timely book, for in these days of world-wide perplexity, mankind instinctively turns from the teaching and philosophy of men to a
higher source for knowledge and a correct understanding of present-day
conditions. Beginning with the second paragraph of the very first chapter, the
book places before the reader the following pertinent questions :
T
"Are we who live in this troubled twentieth century when wars and rumors of wars
are all about us, when revolution and Communism undermine governments and nations, when our much-vaunted financial
structures have collapsed, when tens of millions are unemployed and hungry, when our
machine civilization is all askew, when moral
standards accepted for ages are cast aside
with abandon, when faith in God seems going into dark eclipse,—are we witnessing the
sunset of civilization?
"Are the present tragic experiences
through which our world is passing the omens
of dissolution and disintegration, or are
they the portents of a new day? Are we in
the death agony of one epoch or the birth
pangs of another? Is it twilight or dawn?"
After a close study of "Our Changing
World," no question will remain in the mind
of the reader as to the final outcome of present-day conditions.
SPECIAL FEATURES
The book is different from the ordinary production in the following ways:
1. The compactness of thought.
2. The forcefulness of style used by the writers in the presentation of the subjects.
3. The sixteen full-page flush illustrations
done in sepia.
4. A two-page Bible study, question-andanswer form, at the close of each chapter.
Illustrated, 144 pages
Embossed paper covers
50
CENTS
POSTPAID
(Higher in Canada)
PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA
Page Fifteen
'CA
The VOW OUTLOOK
The Nobel Peace Prize
IS
announced that there will be no
I award of the Nobel Peace Prize for
1933. Why should there be?
With humanity drifting nearer and
nearer to the brink of conflict, who could
justly claim this award, supposed to be
granted to the person who has rendered
the most outstanding service to peace
this year?
Distinguished recipients of the Nobel
Peace Prize in former years have been
Elihu Root, Austin Chamberlain, Aristide Briand, Nicholas Murray Butler,
Jane Addams, and, most conspicuous of
all, Woodrow Wilson. Doubtless these
individuals deserved their prizes. Yet
scanning the international horizons of
our globe, are we not far nearer to international discord than we were twentyfive years ago?
With all the great powers sitting in
peace councils, why cannot peace be attained?
With disarmament congresses establishing all the rules for a warless millennium, why is not peace an assured fact?
With nations publicly professing the
noblest ideals to which organized society
has ever subscribed, why is the failure of
the peace cry daily becoming more evident?
Because our peace councils and disarmament conferences are merely so
much sunshine on the clouds, making a
splendid show while the glory lasts, but
soon to go out in the darkening night of
human passions.
But what prevents international harmony and cooperation? The answer is,
National ambitions.
"I am for peace," declared the psalmist
centuries ago: "but when I speak, they
are for war." Psalm 120:7. Exactly this
situation prevails in our world to-day.
There are those who are for peace in all
earnestness and sincerity. But they cannot carry their nations with them.
Japan wants Manchuria. China wants
Manchuria. The sword decides their dispute.
Bolivia wants the Chaco. Paraguay
wants the Chaco. The sword decides
their dispute.
France wants security. Germany wants
equality. Already there is the appeal to
the sword, though neither nation at present feels ready for an immediate contest.
The Orient wants the right of selfdevelopment. The Occident demands the
privilege of economic exploitation. And
the appeal to the sword is not far off.
It may be said that the international
outlook is discouraging.
It is, for those who expect peace and
righteousness to triumph by human instrumentality. But there is no discouragement for those who understand and
accept the teachings of the word of God.
For the Scriptures make clear that human history is to end not in universal
peace, but in universal war. "The sixth
angel poured out his vial upon the great
river Euphrates; and the water thereof
was dried up, that the way of the kings of
the East might be prepared. And I saw
three unclean spirits like frogs come out
of the mouth of the dragon, and out of
the mouth of the beast, and out of the
mouth of the false prophet. For they
are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of
the earth and of the whole world, to
gather them to the battle of that great
day of God Almighty." "And he gathered
them together into a place called in the
Hebrew tongue Armageddon." Revelation 16:12-14, 16.
There will then be the setting up of a
better and a nobler kingdom, the kingdom of Christ. "Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall
reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days
Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall
dwell safely: and this is His name
whereby He shall be called, THE LORD
OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." Jeremiah
23:5, 6. This is the world's hope of peace,
—the second coming of Jesus. It will,
no doubt not be awarded any Nobel
Peace Prize. It needs none. It is a great
and final fact toward which our world is
moving nearer and nearer.
D.
Major Fiorello H. La Guardia, mayor-elect
of New York City, recently scored a tremendous victory over the Tammany Hall political system. The new mayor announces that
he plans to undertake a revision of the city's
charter. He will enter office January 1, 1934.
suns
'
Hashish and Loco Weed
T
HE United States has recently sent
a representative to attend the meetof the opium advisory committee at
Geneva.
The problem chiefly before the committee, however, is not opium, but hashish. This is a drug long popular in the
Far East and in parts of Africa, but now
threatening to become common in the
Western world. It is claimed that the active principle of hashish can be extracted
from the loco weed, which grows so
widely in our western states. Cattle, eating this weed, fall in a condition of semideafness and semiblindness; if they continue to eat it (as they invariably will,
unless restrained), they lose flesh, and
begin to suffer from malcoordination of
the nervous system. In human beings,
the effects are not less pernicious. Its
use is followed, an authority declares, by
a "gradual weakening of the powers of
controlling and directing the thoughts."
There tends to be also "the predominance
of one or more extravagant ideas." There
is a tendency to erotic dreams; and a
newspaper states that the police "attribute many of the attacks on women to
smoking hashish." The State Narcotic
Bureau of California is already beginning
its search for peddlers of the drug, which
sells at $35 a pound, wholesale.
Certainly one of the great problems
before the world to-day is the narcotic
problem. Cocaine, heroin, hashish, morphine, opium,—how many thousands of
lives have these drugs blighted! And let
us not forget our minor narcotics,—alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. It may be
denied that these are drugs. Yet, after
all, the popularity of each and all of
them springs from the effect which they
produce upon the nervous system,—an
effect for which the body cries out, if for
any reason it should be deprived of the
drug to which it is becoming so strangely
addicted.
The amount of damage these substances accomplish may be varied by the
reaction of the individual thereto. But
none of them help. It may well be that,
considered jointly, they explain much of
the racial degeneracy which to-day is
threatening society.
The ancient world was largely untroubled by the problem of narcotics.
To-day drug addiction is becoming a major social evil.
What message does Christianity offer? "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink,
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31. To the
use of poisonous drugs in any form or
quantity the religion of Jesus Christ is
opposed.
D.