GOD'S EYE OF PITY AND MIGHTY ARM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 27 December 1913, Page 3

GOD'S EYE OF PITY AND MIGHTY ARM.

GOD ONLY CAN ROLL AWAY THE ■OURSE OF DEATH AN EE-. DEEM MAN.

(Inserted by Arrangement.)

August 31. —Pastor Russell, of the 7 London Tabernacle, had for his text to-day the words: "The people which shall be created shall praise the Lord; for He hatli looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behoKt tli3 earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those appointed to death?' (Psa. cii. 18-20). He said: The Bible declares the only God of love, sympathy, aiyl compassion. The heathen gods are all vengeful, tyrannical, merciless,, captious ; and the picture of God in our creeds formulated in the "dark ages" misrepresents Him even more than do the heathen idols. All the false gods are repulsive. Only the God of the Bible can it be truly said, "My heart and flesh cry out after the living God." To rid traitselves of the misconception of the Almighty furnished by our creeds and to appreciate ife God of the Bible should be the endeavour of every intelligent person. All who truly find Him can truly say: « I've found a Friend, oh such a Friend, ; He, loved me ere I knew Him. Ho drew me with the cords of love, And thus He bound me to Him. These words are not less true of the Heavenly Father than of the Redeemer, who is the express image of the Father's person and the exponent of the Divine character and plan. Mark the sympathy of God for his fallen creatures as expressed in our text. Note how it contradicts all of our theories respecting the Divine predestination of more than ninet&ntha of our race to eternal torture. The Lord was mindful of His creatures. He did not abandon them because of the disobedience of Eden. He Jooked down from the height of His holy sanctuary. From heaven He-beheld the earth with its teeming millions plunged i|i sin by the great Adversary and suffering the penalty for son—"Dying, thou shalt die."

HUMAN WRETCHEDNESS IN GOD'S SIGHT. To behold the earth from the heavenly viewpoint must be a terrible sight—enough to make angels weep—sighing, crying, dying everywhere. Some' are demented to the extent of preferinjig darkness to light, to wallowing in the ; mire of sin and feeding upon the apples of Sodom; some qf them so depraved that they love the wrong-and hate the'right;'others so weak that they cannot do the things they would; manjr of them in gaols, penitentiaries, etc.; hundreds of thousands /in hospitals, still other hundreds of thousands in insane asylums, and thousands of millions gone down to the tomb, with a few in comparative health seeking for happiness, or fighting and cheating to amass fortunes ' which, dying, they must leave. Verily, as God looks down, the earth must appear to him like a vast hospital, cemetery, mad-house. Not with curiosity did the Almighty look upon us, but with sympathy—with a loving intention. Indeed, from the very beginning He foreknew man's wayward course and its penalty of sin and death, and from that beginning He had planned the great rescue which now Ho would begin. The rescue was not. from a fiery hell of evenl asting torture but from a terrible'condition of sin and death iii which we find ourselves today. FREEING DEATH-APPOINTED PRISONERS,

The entire race of Adam, shackled with sin and under sentence of death, have for 6000 years been marching to the great prison-house of the tomb. An ever-increasing number, they are now entering the prison-house at the rate of 90,000 every twenty-four hours. Notwithstanding 'the efforts they make to be happy, the Apostle was undoubtedly correct in his declaration that the whole creation is ' grooving and travailing in 1 pain together, dying on account of Adam's sin. But the Apostle also declares that the entire groaning, creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption—slavery to deatli. This deliverance will be during the period of Messiah's Reign and as ;a result of his sacrifice. Delivering or freeing from the bondage of corruption means re-creation, restoration, resurrection. The bondage of corruption; includes all ejickness, pain, weak-iiess-rmehia!i»moral,, physical. Hence the Apostle's statement speaks to us of the complete rolling away of the curse and the full ,e-estalilishment of all the willing and obedient; in God's ffiyour, and under His i. "blessing, which maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow therewith." • God has heard the groaning of these piisoners, has sympathised with them, and provided a redemption. As one man's sin brought the curse upon himself, and, by laws of heredity upon all his children, so Divine wisdom has arranged that' a Saviour and a great One should give himself a ransom for Adam and his race. This already has been nccomplislie 1. in that Christ, died, "the Jusrb for the unjust," to bring back to harmony with God the condemned Adam and his race. But that ia not sufficient, it is only the beginning. The thousands of millions brought into being as children of Adam need to be rescued from the prison-house of death. It is not sufficient that they should be legally loosed. They need to be actually set free, and since life Has been lost, life itself must be restored to them ere they could profit by the Redeemer's sacrifice. Adam and his race, need to be.rented —re-created, as our .text declares: "The people which shall be created shall praise the Lord, for He hath looked down," etc. " THE NEW CREATION. God's benevolent design for the recreationoos the human family began its operation at Pentecost in His acceptance of the Church and the begetting of its members by the Holy .Spirit—a work which has continued ever sirice and will continue until the entire nu -lbe;* of the fore-ordninod

New Creation shall .have been accepted, tested, and gloriously exalted by the power of the First Resurrection. But completing th.> Church unci exalting her with the Redeemer on the heavenly piano will not be tho end of the Divine programme of blessing and re-oreation arranged for Adam and liia race. Rather, as the Scriptures express it, this will be a kind of firstfruits to God of His creatures. The after-fruits will be a muoh more numerous company, though less choice in respect to quality. If "the Church of the Firstborns whoso names are written in heaven'' ar ethe first-fruits, as the tribe of Levi represented the firstborns of all the tribes of Israel, then the inference is clear that there are to bo after-horns —that the whole groaning creation is to have at least an opportunity for a sharo in the recreation judicially arranged for in the death of .Tesus for the sins of the whole world.

True, we are not to forget that the Scriptures indicate- that there will he a testing of character in respect to those who will he fully restored, fully re-created, brought back to all that was lost, but the testing shall be such as all will approve. All who participate in the experience« of the Fall and its reign of Sin and Death must me made acquainted with the Redeemer and his restoring powers; but only such as respond to these blessings and come to love righteousness and hate iniquity will have confirmed to them the gift of God, everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. All others will justly die the Second Death, from which there will be no redemption, no resurrection, no recovery.