Post by ResLight on May 10, 2021 18:25:16 GMT -5
Sermon by Charles Taze Russell concerning the true church as related to sectarianism and denominationalism. I am in the process of editing to reflect changes in spelling and am adding many scriptural references.
Pastor C. T. Russell addressed a goodly audience Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, Allegheny. His text and discourse follow:
“Upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” -- Matthew 16:18
What instruction can we draw from these words of our divine Master? Well would it have been for all of his followers down through this Gospel age had they given closer attention to the Master’s inspired utterances and those of his heaven-directed apostles, and less attention to the speculations of men, however well intentioned, however wise in earthly lore.
As the “traditions of the elders” confused the Jews and made the Word of God of no effect (Matthew 15:6), and thus hindered many from receiving our Lord at his first advent (John 1:11), so the traditions of the ancients –- coming down to us through the creeds formulated during and following the dark ages -– have tended to becloud the minds of many of the Spiritual Israelites, who today are much more in bondage to these traditions than they are aware of. Let us, dear brethren and sisters, as our eyes open wider to the facts, be the more on the alert to hold fast the precious Word (1 Thessalonians 5:21; 2 Timothy 1:15) and to reject any and everything for which we can not find authority in the inspired records. May the Lord bless to us our study of our text, that our minds may be clarified, our faith purified, our whole lives be more illuminated, and our way toward the heavenly City (Hebrews 12:22) become more and more easy to follow!
The first thought that strikes us in connection with this text is that there is only one Church built by our Lord -– only one Church properly to be recognized as his -– “My Church.” Throughout Christendom we see many churches of many names, some of them founded recently and others in the remote past, some having one hope and some another, some having one baptism and some another, some having one faith and some another, some having one organization and some another. Time would fail us to trace the history of these various organizations of churches. We can only briefly rehearse the matter as follows:
(1) There was the Church which the Lord founded in the twelve apostles (Revelation 21:14) and about five hundred brethren who believed on him (1 Corinthians 15:6), accepted his Messiahship, and became his disciples during his ministry. For these he prayed the Father on the night on which he was betrayed, saying, “I pray not for the world, but for them thou hast given me, That they all may be one; as thou, Father, and I are one: that (eventually) the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on my Word.” (John 17:9-11,20,21) (**** rest needs to be edited) This true Church was formally recognized of the Father at Pentecost, and progressed in its appointed work of seeking out and building up in the most holy faith those who had the ears to hear and the hearts to receive the message that Jesus was the Anointed One who had died for our sins, and who would ultimately deliver all who would accept the favor.
(2) As our Lord foretold in the parable of the wheat and tares, it was not long after the apostles fell asleep in death until the great adversary, Satan, brought in grievous errors in the name of Christ, and thus sowed tares amongst the “wheat.” History shows that the tare-producing errors began to flourish in the Lord’s Church and under his own banner early in the second century, and, as the Scriptures had foretold, the tare class had increased until the wheat was practically swamped. Meantime, gradually an organization sprang up which, while claiming to be of Christ, was really an organization of men along different lines from that which the Master laid down, and bound or organized, not with the cords of love–union with the Head–but with creeds, confessions, forms and ceremonies very different from the simplicity which the Lord and the apostles as his representatives had instituted. This organization established its headquarters at Rome, and gradually increased its power and influence, by fair means and foul, until it acquired such a prominence and predominance that those who adhered to the simplicity of the faith and practice laid down by the Lord and the apostles were gradually lost sight of, or, where noticed at all, were called heretics and were persecuted as such. This condition of things prevailed for fourteen centuries. All this time there were, we believe, here and there solitary individuals, a “little flock,” who held fast the faithful Word and who recognized no other organization than that which the Lord himself instituted, the organization in which each member is united to the Lord in faith, in love, in consecration, and thus united to each other. But these few were so insignificant in the eyes of the world, and in the sight of the great human system that overshadowed everything, that there may be said to be no history of them for all those centuries– indeed there is no history of this kind of Christians even yet.
(3) In the sixteenth century a religious reformation which had been working for some time broke forth. It had its sympathizers in every part of the civilized world, but for the time its chief leaders were Luther and his coadjutors in Germany, and Zwingli and his associates in Switzerland, and others of the same spirit in other parts, particularly in England and Scotland. The reformation thus begun was an attempt to go back to the simplicity of the early Church — the Church of Christ — the Church founded upon the rock, as declared in our text.
The result of this reformation movement we see all about us in the five hundred or more different denominations of Christendom. The motive in the organization of each of these systems undoubtedly was to go back to the original lines of the primitive Church which our Lord founded. But, alas, for human weaknesses, prejudices, ignorance and superstition: in every case, it would appear, a fragment of truth was grasped and combined with old errors from the dark ages, and became the pretext for a new name and a new organization fashioned, not after the original pattern, but corresponding more nearly to the form, style, bondage, etc., of the Roman Catholic “mother.”
In dealing thus with the facts of the case, we are not railing against the good intentions of the organizers of these various sects and parties. On the contrary, we hold that they have been more or less deceived and duped by the great adversary and deceiver, Satan. We give them credit for a considerable degree of honesty, but believe that worldly men with worldly motives, “tares,” had much to do with all these organizations. We merely wish now to call attention to the fact that none of these manmade institutions can properly claim to be the Church which our Lord in our text called “my Church.” Indeed, so far as we are aware, few if any now make that claim — though there was a time when practically each one of them claimed to be the only true Church. Now they recognize that none of these organizations were founded by the Lord, and very few in any denomination dispute our statement that their membership in earthly sects and denominations brings then no favor with the Lord, since they are organizations which the Lord neither established nor authorized, and that the only hope of any is in vital, personal union with Christ and with all who are his, outside of and without regard to any of these human organizations, good or bad.
We see, then, that the Church which Christ organized has existed all through the centuries — has been composed of all of those individuals inside and outside of man-made churches, sects, parties, and only these have ever constituted the one and only Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So many as see this matter clearly and distinctly will be ready to follow the command of the Lord to separate themselves from all human institutions, which the Lord designates Babylon–“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins” (false doctrines and antagonism to those now seeking to lift up the standard raised by our Lord and the apostles). Revelation 18:4.
Upon what rock did our Lord suppose to build his Church? Our Roman Catholic friends quote this passage with fervor and heat and boast that the Apostle Peter was the rock, and that they made him the first Pope of their Church years and years after he was dead, and on the strength of their having done this they claim that they are the only Church on the true foundation – Peter.
We must dissent from this view as unreasonable as well as unscriptural. We have already shown that the organization, creeds, ceremonies, etc., of the Church of Rome are wholly different from those instituted by our Lord and his apostles as set forth in the New Testament. Compare the two. We note carefully our text and its context to ascertain under what circumstances our Lord used these words and what rock he meant. The context shows that the people were beginning to discuss our Lord’s personality–who he was–and our Lord took occasion to inquire of the apostles what they heard on the subject. Then he asked them their opinion, “Whom say ye that I the Son of man am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the living God.” It was this great fact, that our Lord declared to be the truth, which would build his Church. And it is so today: Every true member of the Church built upon the true foundation is resting his faith not upon Peter, nor upon the human Church organization but upon this great truth that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah who had so long been promised, whose mission it was in God’s due time to bless the whole world by destroying sin and the wages of sin, death, and by destroying also all who after full opportunity continue in willful sin.
Our Romanist friends fell into their error in supposing that Peter was the rock because of his having been the one who voiced this great truth respecting Christ’s Messiahship, and because our Lord there associated his name Peter (Greek Petros, which means a piece of rock) with this great rock truth which he had expressed. The word rock in our text, in the Greek, is Petra and signifies a mass of rock. Thus we see that our Lord declared Peter one of the rocks or living stones who, with others, would be built upon this great foundation truth which Peter had expressed by divine inspiration. That the Apostle Peter had this same thought respecting the matter is evident, for in his epistle he speaks of the true children of God as living stones for God’s temple, built upon Christ as the great foundation. -- 1 Peter 2:4-5.
EXAMINING THE FOUNDATIONS
If we examine this rock-truth upon which the true Church was to be built, we find that a great many are building partly upon it and partly upon the sandy foundation of human theories. All who are truly consecrated to the Lord should seek to build their faith upon the full significance of this great foundation truth which our Lord commended as such. Unfortunately the word Christ has in a general way lost its real meaning. It is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word Messiah, but the Messiah thought is lost to many. In the Messiah thought we mean the thought which for centuries God had inculcated in the minds of the Jews respecting the great Deliverer of their race and the world of mankind.
The Messiah “thought” was the one the apostles had, which led them to recognize Jesus as not only the Redeemer of the world, but also the one who, in due time, after selecting his Church, after building it upon this foundation truth, would come a second time and establish in the world a reign of righteousness, with himself as the great spiritual, invisible King, all powerful in the subduing of sin and every evil, all powerful also in the blessing and uplifting of all who will turn from sin to God. This Messianic thought pervades all the writings of all the apostles, as, for instance, in Peter’s declaration following the Pentecostal blessing– “Times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ (Messiah–at his second advent), whom the heavens must receive (retain) until the times of restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began.” Acts 3:19-23
Whoever would get his faith properly built upon the foundation which the Lord declared to be the true one, should see to it that this declaration of our Lord’s Messiahship has its proper prominent place in his faith, his hope, his aspirations, his joys in the Truth. Another part of this rock-truth is that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Many there are in the pulpits of Christendom who gradually, insinuatingly, are introducing to their hearers the thought that Jesus was a mere man, that he was not “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26), that he had no prehuman existence, that he did not come down from above. Such teaching is off the foundation, and all who give heed thereto are building upon the sand, and will surely suffer loss as a consequence. But while yielding to none in our reverence for the great ransom sacrifice which our Lord gave on behalf of the sins of the whole world, and in our admiration for the nobility of character which led him to leave the heavenly courts to become a man that he might redeem us from the penalty of Adam’s sin, and with highest appreciation of his subsequent resurrection to glory, honor and the divine nature, nevertheless we must fault those who falsely teach, contrary to the Scriptures, that Jesus was the heavenly Father as well as the Son of God–that the two were one in person, that he sent himself, that when he died it was the death of Jehovah, and that either
HIS DEATH WAS A SHAM
and deception merely, or else the universe for a time was without a God. Such absurd statements have come down from the dark ages and find no recognition whatever in the words of the Lord and the apostles. Some mistakenly suppose that they thus add honor to our divine Master by claiming that he was Jehovah, for the time disguised in the flesh. But instead of adding honor, these dear friends unintentionally dishonor the Master and discredit his Word. It was himself that said, “I delight to do the Father’s will,” not his own; it was himself that prayed to the Father, and that without deception or fraud; it was himself who prayed in his dying hour to the Father; it was himself who, after his resurrection, declared to Mary, “I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.” Those who contradict the Lord in these matters, and who assume to know more than he did on these subjects, are not properly on the rock foundation which he laid, and which distinctly recognizes him as the Son of the living God. Whoever may thus find himself drifting from the foundation should return thereto, otherwise he will surely suffer loss to the extent that he neglects the Master’s word.
Neither did the apostles contradict the Lord and say that he was the Father, nor that he was equal with the Father. The highest declaration of homage expressed by them is in these words, “Him hath God highly exalted, and given a name above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth,” “And that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” No uninspired man has the authority to add to the inspired utterances of God’s Word, and none should have the temerity to do so. The Apostle Paul distinctly expresses himself on this subject, saying, “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Cor. 8:6) At a future time we may deal with this subject more exhaustively, but since this is a part of the rock foundation of our text, thus much attention is due to the matter here.
THE GATES OF HELL PREVAIL
Our Lord’s words in our text, declaring that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church, are seemingly understood by the majority of Christian people. All educated ministers understand it, but they seem indisposed to communicate their knowledge to the people–probably for fear that they should gain thus a clearer knowledge of the true meaning of the Greek word, hades, rendered hell in this passage and elsewhere. The ordinary mind, ensnared with the erroneous doctrine of eternal torment, which has come down blazing and smoking from the dark ages, draws a picture from these words of our text that is far, far from their true meaning.
The erroneous view sees gates red-hot and flaming, seeking to enclose the Church with the world in a hell of flame and torture under the control of devils. To those who have this view, the Lord’s words signify that he will exert his power to the intent that those who are truly his shall not be shut up to that awful doom which will be upon the remainder of the race. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this picture, which comes to the average mind because of ignorance, false teaching or no teaching upon this subject.
As soon as the light of Truth shines into our minds we learn the true meaning of the Greek word hades in the New Testament and of sheol in the Old Testament which it is used to translate. If time permitted, dear friends, we could give you most abundant evidence from scores of texts that these words, as used throughout the Scriptures, had no significance of torture or fire or anything of the kind. The equivalent hades merely signifies the tomb, the death state, and is translated nearly seventy times, grave, and frequently where the word hell is given in the text, some one disposed to help the reader has in the marginal column given the true significance, “grave.”
According to the Scriptures all mankind go down into sheol, hades, the tomb, the death state. Our Lord himself was dead, was in hades, the tomb, for parts of three days, and arose from the dead, arose from hades. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians describes first the deliverance of the Church from the power of hades, from death, as the first resurrection, to glory, honor and immortality. (1 Cor. 15:42-46) Then proceeding he shows (v. 55) the ultimate deliverance of the remainder of mankind who will come into harmony with the Lord, and in connection with this he quotes from the Prophet Hosea (13:14) a shout of victory over death that will then be due, saying, “0 death, where is thy sting? 0 grave (hades) where is thy victory?” The Apostle adds, “Thanks unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He gained the victory in his own case by his obedience in the things which he suffered, and by laying down his life as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. When he ascended up on high, he applied the merits of his victory to his Church, which he counts as “members of his body;” and these in turn he has invited to participate with him in the victory over sin and death, by laying down their lives, by walking in his steps of self-sacrifice.
The Lord’s victory applied to the Church will result in the deliverance of every member of it from the power of hades, the grave. The gates of hades shall not prevail against the Church. It was sin that brought upon mankind the penalty of death –“The soul that sinneth, it shall die” — but through Christ, believers are justified from sin; and when the entire Church shall be complete in the end of this age, the Lord’s power will be exercised and every member of his Church shall come forth from the gates of death. For eighteen hundred years or more the gates of death, the power of the tomb, have prevailed against the Lord’s Church. Like the remainder of the world they have gone down into death; but when the due time shall have fully come, every member of his Church shall be delivered from hades, the grave, by a resurrection. It was to this that our Lord referred in his last message to his Church, saying, “I am he that was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of death and of hades –the grave.” The key is the symbol of power, authority, ability to open the grave.
Similarly our Lord’s resurrection was prophetically and symbolically represented as the bursting of the bars of the tomb –of sheol. All who are of the Lord’s true Church, by faith and consecration, whether in man-made churches or not, whether or not they have yet obeyed the Lord’s command, “Come out of her,” — all these may rejoice in the Lord’s assurance that the gates, the bars of the tomb, shall not prevail against them; that in his due time every true believer shall be fully liberated from the bondage not only of death but also of sin.
It is another part of our glorious hope set forth in the Scriptures, when we come to understand them aright, that the work of the next age will be to liberate all of the prisoners from this great prison-house of death–sheol, hades, the tomb; and that the Church will be associated with our Lord in that great work, the final victory over death, the victory that was begun in our Lord’s resurrection and that will reach still further development in the resurrection of the Church, which is his body, the resurrection of the just and which will reach a still further development in the raising up to life and fully freeing from every vestige of death and sin all those who, during the Millennial age, coming to a knowledge of the Lord, will come also into harmony with his reasonable and just requirements and receive at its end the blessing of eternal life. All others will be remanded to death, the second death, from which there will be no redemption, no deliverance, no resurrection.
Dear friends, let us appreciate this great foundation of faith which the Lord has laid down for us, and let us build thereon obediently to the letter and spirit of his Word and regardless of human traditions, that we have the special blessing which he is pleased to give to those he will recognize as his faithful followers –to those who will hear and heed his voice and not the voice of strangers.
The National Labor Tribune, May 21, 1905
THE ROCK-BUILT CHURCH
THE ROCK-BUILT CHURCH
Pastor C. T. Russell addressed a goodly audience Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, Allegheny. His text and discourse follow:
“Upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” -- Matthew 16:18
What instruction can we draw from these words of our divine Master? Well would it have been for all of his followers down through this Gospel age had they given closer attention to the Master’s inspired utterances and those of his heaven-directed apostles, and less attention to the speculations of men, however well intentioned, however wise in earthly lore.
As the “traditions of the elders” confused the Jews and made the Word of God of no effect (Matthew 15:6), and thus hindered many from receiving our Lord at his first advent (John 1:11), so the traditions of the ancients –- coming down to us through the creeds formulated during and following the dark ages -– have tended to becloud the minds of many of the Spiritual Israelites, who today are much more in bondage to these traditions than they are aware of. Let us, dear brethren and sisters, as our eyes open wider to the facts, be the more on the alert to hold fast the precious Word (1 Thessalonians 5:21; 2 Timothy 1:15) and to reject any and everything for which we can not find authority in the inspired records. May the Lord bless to us our study of our text, that our minds may be clarified, our faith purified, our whole lives be more illuminated, and our way toward the heavenly City (Hebrews 12:22) become more and more easy to follow!
ONLY ONE TRUE CHURCH
The first thought that strikes us in connection with this text is that there is only one Church built by our Lord -– only one Church properly to be recognized as his -– “My Church.” Throughout Christendom we see many churches of many names, some of them founded recently and others in the remote past, some having one hope and some another, some having one baptism and some another, some having one faith and some another, some having one organization and some another. Time would fail us to trace the history of these various organizations of churches. We can only briefly rehearse the matter as follows:
(1) There was the Church which the Lord founded in the twelve apostles (Revelation 21:14) and about five hundred brethren who believed on him (1 Corinthians 15:6), accepted his Messiahship, and became his disciples during his ministry. For these he prayed the Father on the night on which he was betrayed, saying, “I pray not for the world, but for them thou hast given me, That they all may be one; as thou, Father, and I are one: that (eventually) the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Neither pray I for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on my Word.” (John 17:9-11,20,21) (**** rest needs to be edited) This true Church was formally recognized of the Father at Pentecost, and progressed in its appointed work of seeking out and building up in the most holy faith those who had the ears to hear and the hearts to receive the message that Jesus was the Anointed One who had died for our sins, and who would ultimately deliver all who would accept the favor.
FORETOLD MIXTURE–“BABYLON”
(2) As our Lord foretold in the parable of the wheat and tares, it was not long after the apostles fell asleep in death until the great adversary, Satan, brought in grievous errors in the name of Christ, and thus sowed tares amongst the “wheat.” History shows that the tare-producing errors began to flourish in the Lord’s Church and under his own banner early in the second century, and, as the Scriptures had foretold, the tare class had increased until the wheat was practically swamped. Meantime, gradually an organization sprang up which, while claiming to be of Christ, was really an organization of men along different lines from that which the Master laid down, and bound or organized, not with the cords of love–union with the Head–but with creeds, confessions, forms and ceremonies very different from the simplicity which the Lord and the apostles as his representatives had instituted. This organization established its headquarters at Rome, and gradually increased its power and influence, by fair means and foul, until it acquired such a prominence and predominance that those who adhered to the simplicity of the faith and practice laid down by the Lord and the apostles were gradually lost sight of, or, where noticed at all, were called heretics and were persecuted as such. This condition of things prevailed for fourteen centuries. All this time there were, we believe, here and there solitary individuals, a “little flock,” who held fast the faithful Word and who recognized no other organization than that which the Lord himself instituted, the organization in which each member is united to the Lord in faith, in love, in consecration, and thus united to each other. But these few were so insignificant in the eyes of the world, and in the sight of the great human system that overshadowed everything, that there may be said to be no history of them for all those centuries– indeed there is no history of this kind of Christians even yet.
(3) In the sixteenth century a religious reformation which had been working for some time broke forth. It had its sympathizers in every part of the civilized world, but for the time its chief leaders were Luther and his coadjutors in Germany, and Zwingli and his associates in Switzerland, and others of the same spirit in other parts, particularly in England and Scotland. The reformation thus begun was an attempt to go back to the simplicity of the early Church — the Church of Christ — the Church founded upon the rock, as declared in our text.
SECTARIAN REFORMATION PROGRESSIVE
The result of this reformation movement we see all about us in the five hundred or more different denominations of Christendom. The motive in the organization of each of these systems undoubtedly was to go back to the original lines of the primitive Church which our Lord founded. But, alas, for human weaknesses, prejudices, ignorance and superstition: in every case, it would appear, a fragment of truth was grasped and combined with old errors from the dark ages, and became the pretext for a new name and a new organization fashioned, not after the original pattern, but corresponding more nearly to the form, style, bondage, etc., of the Roman Catholic “mother.”
In dealing thus with the facts of the case, we are not railing against the good intentions of the organizers of these various sects and parties. On the contrary, we hold that they have been more or less deceived and duped by the great adversary and deceiver, Satan. We give them credit for a considerable degree of honesty, but believe that worldly men with worldly motives, “tares,” had much to do with all these organizations. We merely wish now to call attention to the fact that none of these manmade institutions can properly claim to be the Church which our Lord in our text called “my Church.” Indeed, so far as we are aware, few if any now make that claim — though there was a time when practically each one of them claimed to be the only true Church. Now they recognize that none of these organizations were founded by the Lord, and very few in any denomination dispute our statement that their membership in earthly sects and denominations brings then no favor with the Lord, since they are organizations which the Lord neither established nor authorized, and that the only hope of any is in vital, personal union with Christ and with all who are his, outside of and without regard to any of these human organizations, good or bad.
We see, then, that the Church which Christ organized has existed all through the centuries — has been composed of all of those individuals inside and outside of man-made churches, sects, parties, and only these have ever constituted the one and only Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So many as see this matter clearly and distinctly will be ready to follow the command of the Lord to separate themselves from all human institutions, which the Lord designates Babylon–“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins” (false doctrines and antagonism to those now seeking to lift up the standard raised by our Lord and the apostles). Revelation 18:4.
THE TRUE ROCK FOUNDATION
Upon what rock did our Lord suppose to build his Church? Our Roman Catholic friends quote this passage with fervor and heat and boast that the Apostle Peter was the rock, and that they made him the first Pope of their Church years and years after he was dead, and on the strength of their having done this they claim that they are the only Church on the true foundation – Peter.
We must dissent from this view as unreasonable as well as unscriptural. We have already shown that the organization, creeds, ceremonies, etc., of the Church of Rome are wholly different from those instituted by our Lord and his apostles as set forth in the New Testament. Compare the two. We note carefully our text and its context to ascertain under what circumstances our Lord used these words and what rock he meant. The context shows that the people were beginning to discuss our Lord’s personality–who he was–and our Lord took occasion to inquire of the apostles what they heard on the subject. Then he asked them their opinion, “Whom say ye that I the Son of man am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the living God.” It was this great fact, that our Lord declared to be the truth, which would build his Church. And it is so today: Every true member of the Church built upon the true foundation is resting his faith not upon Peter, nor upon the human Church organization but upon this great truth that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah who had so long been promised, whose mission it was in God’s due time to bless the whole world by destroying sin and the wages of sin, death, and by destroying also all who after full opportunity continue in willful sin.
Our Romanist friends fell into their error in supposing that Peter was the rock because of his having been the one who voiced this great truth respecting Christ’s Messiahship, and because our Lord there associated his name Peter (Greek Petros, which means a piece of rock) with this great rock truth which he had expressed. The word rock in our text, in the Greek, is Petra and signifies a mass of rock. Thus we see that our Lord declared Peter one of the rocks or living stones who, with others, would be built upon this great foundation truth which Peter had expressed by divine inspiration. That the Apostle Peter had this same thought respecting the matter is evident, for in his epistle he speaks of the true children of God as living stones for God’s temple, built upon Christ as the great foundation. -- 1 Peter 2:4-5.
EXAMINING THE FOUNDATIONS
If we examine this rock-truth upon which the true Church was to be built, we find that a great many are building partly upon it and partly upon the sandy foundation of human theories. All who are truly consecrated to the Lord should seek to build their faith upon the full significance of this great foundation truth which our Lord commended as such. Unfortunately the word Christ has in a general way lost its real meaning. It is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word Messiah, but the Messiah thought is lost to many. In the Messiah thought we mean the thought which for centuries God had inculcated in the minds of the Jews respecting the great Deliverer of their race and the world of mankind.
The Messiah “thought” was the one the apostles had, which led them to recognize Jesus as not only the Redeemer of the world, but also the one who, in due time, after selecting his Church, after building it upon this foundation truth, would come a second time and establish in the world a reign of righteousness, with himself as the great spiritual, invisible King, all powerful in the subduing of sin and every evil, all powerful also in the blessing and uplifting of all who will turn from sin to God. This Messianic thought pervades all the writings of all the apostles, as, for instance, in Peter’s declaration following the Pentecostal blessing– “Times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ (Messiah–at his second advent), whom the heavens must receive (retain) until the times of restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began.” Acts 3:19-23
Whoever would get his faith properly built upon the foundation which the Lord declared to be the true one, should see to it that this declaration of our Lord’s Messiahship has its proper prominent place in his faith, his hope, his aspirations, his joys in the Truth. Another part of this rock-truth is that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Many there are in the pulpits of Christendom who gradually, insinuatingly, are introducing to their hearers the thought that Jesus was a mere man, that he was not “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26), that he had no prehuman existence, that he did not come down from above. Such teaching is off the foundation, and all who give heed thereto are building upon the sand, and will surely suffer loss as a consequence. But while yielding to none in our reverence for the great ransom sacrifice which our Lord gave on behalf of the sins of the whole world, and in our admiration for the nobility of character which led him to leave the heavenly courts to become a man that he might redeem us from the penalty of Adam’s sin, and with highest appreciation of his subsequent resurrection to glory, honor and the divine nature, nevertheless we must fault those who falsely teach, contrary to the Scriptures, that Jesus was the heavenly Father as well as the Son of God–that the two were one in person, that he sent himself, that when he died it was the death of Jehovah, and that either
HIS DEATH WAS A SHAM
and deception merely, or else the universe for a time was without a God. Such absurd statements have come down from the dark ages and find no recognition whatever in the words of the Lord and the apostles. Some mistakenly suppose that they thus add honor to our divine Master by claiming that he was Jehovah, for the time disguised in the flesh. But instead of adding honor, these dear friends unintentionally dishonor the Master and discredit his Word. It was himself that said, “I delight to do the Father’s will,” not his own; it was himself that prayed to the Father, and that without deception or fraud; it was himself who prayed in his dying hour to the Father; it was himself who, after his resurrection, declared to Mary, “I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.” Those who contradict the Lord in these matters, and who assume to know more than he did on these subjects, are not properly on the rock foundation which he laid, and which distinctly recognizes him as the Son of the living God. Whoever may thus find himself drifting from the foundation should return thereto, otherwise he will surely suffer loss to the extent that he neglects the Master’s word.
Neither did the apostles contradict the Lord and say that he was the Father, nor that he was equal with the Father. The highest declaration of homage expressed by them is in these words, “Him hath God highly exalted, and given a name above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth,” “And that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.” No uninspired man has the authority to add to the inspired utterances of God’s Word, and none should have the temerity to do so. The Apostle Paul distinctly expresses himself on this subject, saying, “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Cor. 8:6) At a future time we may deal with this subject more exhaustively, but since this is a part of the rock foundation of our text, thus much attention is due to the matter here.
THE GATES OF HELL PREVAIL
Our Lord’s words in our text, declaring that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church, are seemingly understood by the majority of Christian people. All educated ministers understand it, but they seem indisposed to communicate their knowledge to the people–probably for fear that they should gain thus a clearer knowledge of the true meaning of the Greek word, hades, rendered hell in this passage and elsewhere. The ordinary mind, ensnared with the erroneous doctrine of eternal torment, which has come down blazing and smoking from the dark ages, draws a picture from these words of our text that is far, far from their true meaning.
The erroneous view sees gates red-hot and flaming, seeking to enclose the Church with the world in a hell of flame and torture under the control of devils. To those who have this view, the Lord’s words signify that he will exert his power to the intent that those who are truly his shall not be shut up to that awful doom which will be upon the remainder of the race. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this picture, which comes to the average mind because of ignorance, false teaching or no teaching upon this subject.
As soon as the light of Truth shines into our minds we learn the true meaning of the Greek word hades in the New Testament and of sheol in the Old Testament which it is used to translate. If time permitted, dear friends, we could give you most abundant evidence from scores of texts that these words, as used throughout the Scriptures, had no significance of torture or fire or anything of the kind. The equivalent hades merely signifies the tomb, the death state, and is translated nearly seventy times, grave, and frequently where the word hell is given in the text, some one disposed to help the reader has in the marginal column given the true significance, “grave.”
According to the Scriptures all mankind go down into sheol, hades, the tomb, the death state. Our Lord himself was dead, was in hades, the tomb, for parts of three days, and arose from the dead, arose from hades. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians describes first the deliverance of the Church from the power of hades, from death, as the first resurrection, to glory, honor and immortality. (1 Cor. 15:42-46) Then proceeding he shows (v. 55) the ultimate deliverance of the remainder of mankind who will come into harmony with the Lord, and in connection with this he quotes from the Prophet Hosea (13:14) a shout of victory over death that will then be due, saying, “0 death, where is thy sting? 0 grave (hades) where is thy victory?” The Apostle adds, “Thanks unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He gained the victory in his own case by his obedience in the things which he suffered, and by laying down his life as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. When he ascended up on high, he applied the merits of his victory to his Church, which he counts as “members of his body;” and these in turn he has invited to participate with him in the victory over sin and death, by laying down their lives, by walking in his steps of self-sacrifice.
The Lord’s victory applied to the Church will result in the deliverance of every member of it from the power of hades, the grave. The gates of hades shall not prevail against the Church. It was sin that brought upon mankind the penalty of death –“The soul that sinneth, it shall die” — but through Christ, believers are justified from sin; and when the entire Church shall be complete in the end of this age, the Lord’s power will be exercised and every member of his Church shall come forth from the gates of death. For eighteen hundred years or more the gates of death, the power of the tomb, have prevailed against the Lord’s Church. Like the remainder of the world they have gone down into death; but when the due time shall have fully come, every member of his Church shall be delivered from hades, the grave, by a resurrection. It was to this that our Lord referred in his last message to his Church, saying, “I am he that was dead, and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of death and of hades –the grave.” The key is the symbol of power, authority, ability to open the grave.
Similarly our Lord’s resurrection was prophetically and symbolically represented as the bursting of the bars of the tomb –of sheol. All who are of the Lord’s true Church, by faith and consecration, whether in man-made churches or not, whether or not they have yet obeyed the Lord’s command, “Come out of her,” — all these may rejoice in the Lord’s assurance that the gates, the bars of the tomb, shall not prevail against them; that in his due time every true believer shall be fully liberated from the bondage not only of death but also of sin.
It is another part of our glorious hope set forth in the Scriptures, when we come to understand them aright, that the work of the next age will be to liberate all of the prisoners from this great prison-house of death–sheol, hades, the tomb; and that the Church will be associated with our Lord in that great work, the final victory over death, the victory that was begun in our Lord’s resurrection and that will reach still further development in the resurrection of the Church, which is his body, the resurrection of the just and which will reach a still further development in the raising up to life and fully freeing from every vestige of death and sin all those who, during the Millennial age, coming to a knowledge of the Lord, will come also into harmony with his reasonable and just requirements and receive at its end the blessing of eternal life. All others will be remanded to death, the second death, from which there will be no redemption, no deliverance, no resurrection.
Dear friends, let us appreciate this great foundation of faith which the Lord has laid down for us, and let us build thereon obediently to the letter and spirit of his Word and regardless of human traditions, that we have the special blessing which he is pleased to give to those he will recognize as his faithful followers –to those who will hear and heed his voice and not the voice of strangers.
