Now some may inquire, how comes it that this (knowledge of God’s provision for all nations, the whole world) has not been seen long ago?

We answer, God gives light and knowledge to his people just as it is due. The world was left in almost entire ignorance of God’s plan until the Gospel age, when Christ came, bringing life and immortality TO LIGHT through the Gospel. The Jews up to that time supposed that all the promises of God were to and for them alone, but in due time God showed favor to the Gentiles also. Christians generally have supposed that God’s blessings are only to the church, but we begin to see that God is better than all our fears, and though he has given us the “exceeding great and precious promises,” He has made some for the world also.

“The path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more, until the perfect day,” and the fact that it now shines so brightly, and that we are able to see more of the beauty and harmony of God’s word, is strong presumptive evidence that we are in the dawn of that glorious millennial day, when “we shall know even as we are known.”

But we promised to harmonize those doctrines of the Church generally supposed to be antipodes, viz., CALVINISM, or Election, and ARMINIANISM, or Free Grace. Perhaps you already see how they harmonize themselves by simply recognizing the order of the ages and applying each text to the place and time to which it belongs. Let me then point out to you

The Inconsistency of Either Calvinism or Arminianism when separated from each other. In doing so I do not wish to reflect on those who hold these doctrines. I shall merely call your attention to features which their warmest advocates must confess to be their weak points.

First – Calvinism says God is all-wise: He knew the end from the beginning, and, as “all his purposes shall be accomplished,” He never could have intended to save any but a few – the true Church, the little flock. These He elected and predestined to be eternally saved; all others were equally predestined and elected to go to hell, for “known unto the Lord are all His works from the foundation of the world.”

This has its good features. It shows, and properly, God’s Omniscience. This would be our ideal of a GREAT God, were it not that three essential qualities of greatness, viz., MERCY, LOVE and JUSTICE, are lacking, for none of these qualities find place in bringing into the world over a hundred fifty billion of creatures damned before they were born and mocked by protestations of love. No, no. “God is love;” “God is just;” “God is merciful.”

Second – Arminianism says: Yes, “God is love,” and in bringing humanity into the world He meant them no harm, only good. But Satan succeeded in tempting Adam; thus “sin entered into the world and death by sin,” and ever since, God has been doing all He can to deliver man from his enemy, even to the giving of His Son, and though now, six thousand years after, the gospel has only reached a very small portion of those creatures, yet, we do hope and trust that within six thousand years more, through the energy and liberality of the Church, God will have so far remedied the evil introduced by Satan, that all may at least know of His love, and the knowledge of God be co-extensive with the knowledge of evil.

The commendable feature of this view is, that it accepts the statement that “God is love.” But, while full of loving and benevolent designs for His creatures, He lacks ability and foreknowledge adequate to the accomplishment of those designs.

While God was busy arranging and devising for the good of His newly created children, Satan slipped in, and by one stroke upset all God’s plans, and in one moment brought sin and evil among men to such an extent that even by exhausting all his power, God must spend twelve thousand years to even reinstate righteousness to such a degree that man will have an opportunity to choose Good as readily as Evil, and the hundreds of billions of the past six thousand years, and as many more of the next, are lost to all eternity, in spite of God’s love for them, because Satan interfered with his plans as God had not foreseen. Thus Satan, in spite of God, gets one hundred into hell to the one God gets to glory. This view must exalt men’s ideas of Satan, and lower their estimation of Him who “Spoke, and it was done; commanded, and it stood fast.”

But how refreshing it is for us to turn from these fragments of truth, as separately considered, and see How Harmonious and beautiful they are when united. How, during the present and past ages God is electing or gathering, by the preaching of His word, the Gospel church. How He wisely permitted evil to come into the world, in order that He might develop His church, which, thus “being made perfect through suffering,” might be prepared for her glorious work in the future; and how the mass of mankind, though not now on probation (under judgement), are nevertheless getting a knowledge and experience by contact with sin which He foresaw they would be the better of; and, furthermore, how he took occasion, in connection with this, His plan, to show us His great love, by so arranging that the death of Christ was necessary to our recovery from sin, and then freely giving Him “to be a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world,” and then in the next dispensation – “The new heavens and earth” (Rev 21:9-10 and 22:17) – when “The Spirit and the Bride say come, and whosoever will may come and take of the water of life freely.” He will show us His “Free Grace” in fullest measure.

Is not this the teaching of God’s word?

Men never would have thought of such a glorious plan of salvation. Truly God has said: “My ways are not your ways, nor my thoughts your thoughts.” Hereafter when we address Him “Our Father,” may it call to our mind that His love and compassion are far greater than the pity of our earthly parents, and while we study His word more and more, and seek to “grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of God,” let us ever remember that

“Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan His work in vain.

God is His own interpreter,

And He will make it plain.”

Having seen how much of the great plan of God waits the coming of Christ for its accomplishment, and having, we trust, found why Christ comes, can we help loving His appearing? R4