| Highlights of Dawn | February 1966 |
The Ever-Living God
SPEAKING of the time of his return and second presence, Jesus raised the question, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8) Faith in the Bible as the Word of God has been diminishing for a long time, so that today the vast majority of the clergy among liberal Protestants look upon it merely as another book on religion, a favorite one from which to quote when quotations which fit their theories can be found. The Fundamentalists still hold to the Scriptures as the Word of God, but seem unable or unwilling to accept its pure teachings in place of their traditions which came down from the Dark Ages.
The latest development in unbelief on the part of the Modernists is the conclusion that God has died. There are a number of young men who call themselves “death-of-God theologians,” or “Christian atheists.” It seems that for some time these have been presenting their views in the relatively secret and secure corners of universities, called divinity schools, and in other places where they would not attract too much attention, including the pages of certain religious journals. But more recently the death-of-God theology has been widely publicized through The New York Times, Time magazine, The New Yorker, and by thousands of sermons and hundreds of newspaper editorials, with the result that the public has been made aware of these men and their teachings.
The question might well be asked as to why this death-of-God theology is permitted to be expressed at all in the great theological centers of learning. In a partial answer to this question The Christian Century writes editorially:
“Why were there no calls for heresy trials, no pleas for dismissal, so long as the professionals had the question in their hands? Some would answer that theological faculties, making an idol of academic freedom, do not want to raise a dispute that could boomerang on their own enterprises. Others say that professors, having grown soft, liberal and impotent, are incapable of recognizing heresy or of attacking it. Whoever has spent five minutes over coffee with a theologian—be he young Turk or aging seer—knows that these explanations do not explain.
“The various schools of theology of our century (neo-orthodoxy, neoliberalism, neoevangelicalism: always ‘neo,’ significantly) were creative attempts to piece together constructive thought around various theisms which had served well in the past. But each of these schools broke up, in part because none of them faced at sufficient depth the ways men think (in formal schools of theology or in common sense informal circles) and act in our world. Attempts to push them back into old molds did not work. Yet theologians wanted to be loyal to Jesus Christ and in less defined ways to his church even though their God-talk failed to satisfy them or the demands of a new age. In this ideological cauldron ‘God-talk’ became for some ‘non-God-talk.’ No one yet knows what will come of the theological disintegrations and reconstructurings which are now occurring.”
What The Christian Century seems to be saying is that all the efforts to harmonize Dark-Age theology with the enlightenment of the present time has failed, and that it was this that led some of the younger theologians to the conclusion that God had died, for they could not see or find the Dark-Age God in any of their theological flights of fancy. And the interesting part of it is that the older and supposedly more stabilized theologians seem unable to come to the rescue of the younger ones.
The Christian Century refers to the “theisms of the past,” meaning the traditional concepts of God handed down from the Dark Ages. What are some of those concepts? Prominent among them is the claim that God is a trinity of deities, called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This conception of God is a monstrosity which cannot be harmonized either with the Bible, or with enlightened thinking. Various of the outstanding leaders of the Protestant church are discarding this concept of God, and the young theologians are unable to find a place for it in their philosophies.
Then there is the hell and purgatory god of the Dark Ages. Here we have another theory that is not supported by the Bible, and is rejected by reasoning minds of the present. Among the Modernists this concept of God has been dead for a long time, and well it might be. How horrible it is to think that an all-powerful Creator would torture countless millions of his human creatures in a fiery hell forever! The theory of purgatory is only degrees less revolting, and we are glad that the torment god has died in the minds of so many.
The “end of the world” dogma handed down to us from the Dark Ages is another one which pictures the true God of the Bible in a very false light. What a fiend God would be to destroy the whole earth with fire in twenty-four hours, and transfer its wicked inhabitants into a hell of endless torment! This is too awful to contemplate, yet it was taught that God would do this. At that horrendous time the righteous of earth were to be transferred to heaven; but we wonder how much joy they could have in heaven, knowing what had happened to their neighbors, and was continuing to happen. This is another dogma the young theologians would have to discard.
Honesty a Gem
Actually, with the exception of a small minority of radical Fundamentalists, these hideous doctrines of the Dark Ages have not been preached to any great extent for many years. But thy are still in the creeds, because the rank and file of church leaders do not have the courage to say openly that they no longer believe them, and advocate a revision of the creeds. This, however, is, in effect, what the death-of-God theologians have been honest enough to do.
The only god these theologians have been told about is the god of the creeds, the trinity god, the torment god, the calamity god. For this god they no longer can see a place in their thinking. To them he no longer exists, so to them God has died; and as yet they have not found a god to take his place. Nor will their philosophies ever reveal to them the true and living God of the Bible. They are honest in proclaiming the death of the Dark-Age god, but, due in part to their lack of understanding, do not possess sufficient faith in the Bible to accept its revelation of the true and living God, the God of all creation, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One God
The Apostle Paul wrote, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” (I Tim. 2:3-6) From this we learn that the one true God of the Bible is a “savior” of his creatures, not their tormentor. He is the great Author of his plan of redemption from sin and death; that plan in which his beloved Son willingly and gladly gave himself in death as a “ransom for all.”
The word “ransom” means “a corresponding price.” Jesus took the place of Adam in death, thus providing release from the penalty of sin which is death. But this could not be understood by those who believed that the wages of sin is eternal torture. But how simply and clearly the Scriptures set forth the plan of God for his fallen human creatures! Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 6:23) And again, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”—I Cor. 15:22
This making alive of the millions of Adam’s children is to be accomplished right here on the earth. This is what Paul refers to in his statement that God will have all men to be saved—saved, that is, from the sleep of death. Following that awakening, the people will have an opportunity to “come to a knowledge of the truth” that God does love them, and has provided for their eternal salvation upon the basis of belief and obedience. This diffusion of the true knowledge of God is referred to by Paul as a testifying of this great truth in “due time.”
Because this knowledge will be “testified in due time” to the whole world of mankind the “knowledge of the Lord” will fill the earth “as the waters cover the sea.” (Isa. 11:9) All will then have an opportunity to know “the only true God,” whom to know aright, “is life eternal.” (John 17:3) No one will lose the opportunity of gaining everlasting life by being left in ignorance of the true God and his will for them. Nor will anyone be saved in his ignorance, for the Lord will then turn to the resurrected people a “pure language,” or message, and all shall know him, and call upon him, “from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.”—Zeph. 3:9; Jer. 31:31-34
The True God Lives
If the death-of-God theologians had sufficient faith to accept the testimony of the Bible, they would recognize that the true God of all creation is very much alive, and that with certainty, and majestically, he is carrying forward his wise and loving plan for the ultimate blessing of all his earthly creatures. They would see in the ransom feature of the divine plan, as mentioned by Paul, the wisdom, justice, love, and power of God.
They would see that the great God and Creator of the universe did not become incarnate in flesh, and go about for three and-a-half years praying to himself, and finally ask himself on the cross why he had been forsaken. They would learn that it was God’s created Son who was made flesh and dwelt among men, and that he was made flesh in order that he might become a substitute in death for condemned father Adam, and thus redeem him and the entire human race from sin and death.
They would also see that the loving God of creation did not plan for the torture of his human creatures, but decreed that “the wages of sin” would be death. (Rom. 6:23) God does not propose to torture even his enemies; for those who, when fully enlightened, continue willfully to oppose him shall “be destroyed from among the people”—not tormented.—Acts 3:23
We do not blame the death-of-God theologians for discarding a god who supposedly would one day rain down fire from the skies and reduce this earth to a cinder. How crude an idea this is when we really think about it! Those today who think along humane lines are questioning the morality of dropping hydrogen bombs on cities and countryside’s in times of war. But the destruction and horror wrought by hydrogen bombs would be as nothing when compared with the tradition that God, in a few hours, would destroy the whole earth!
The true God has never had any intention of destroying the earth. He assures us that he created the earth, not in vain, but f armed it to be inhabited. (Isa. 45:18) This divine purpose was Elated at the time of man’s creation, when the first human pair yore instructed to multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it. (Gen. 1:28) Man was also given dominion over the earth, David confirms this. (Ps. 8:4-8) Paul observes, however, that “we see Lot yet all things put under him [man]. But we do “see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”—Heb. 2:6-9
The death of Jesus as man’s Redeemer opened the way for the restoration of mankind to life on earth as humans in what the Apostle Peter describes as “the times of restitution of all things, which,” he declares, was “spoken by the mouth of all his [God’s] holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:19-21) It is because of God’s provision for the restoration of the human race to life on the earth that the earth, despite man’s fall into sin and death, was not created in vain.
A Heavenly Hope
While mankind in general will be restored to life on earth, the Bible also holds out a heavenly hope for some; for those, that is, who follow faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus. But even this beautiful facet of the divine plan was distorted by Dark-Age theology—distorted into meaning that all who would ever be saved from torture would spend eternity in heaven. In the minds of many, “going to heaven” came to mean escape from hell-fire.
But how wonderful is the heavenly hope set forth in the Word of God, and how reasonable! Christians are invited to suffer and to die with Jesus that they might live and reign with him in his thousand-year kingdom, through and by which “all the families of the earth” are to be blessed. (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:8,27-29, II Tim. 2:11,12; Rev. 20:4,6) Jesus said to his disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”—John 14:2,3
Yes, there will be a few of earth’s millions exalted in the resurrection to live and reign with Christ, but this is not in order that they might escape the torments of a Dark-Age hell, but that they might participate with Jesus in the glorious work of his kingdom. Speaking of Jesus’ kingdom reign, Paul wrote that it would continue until all enemies were subdued, and that the last enemy to be destroyed is Death.—I Cor. 15:25,26
Paul further wrote, “But when he saith all things are put under him [Christ], it is manifest that he [God] is excepted, which did put all things under him [Christ]. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (I Cor. 15:27,28) Yes, the true God of the Bible is a living God. And when his great plan of salvation shall have been completed, he will continue to live, and as Paul says, be “all in all” to his restored and happy creation here on earth. Truly we can say, “Great and marvelous are thy ways, Lord God Almighty!”