PROLOGUE AUTHORSHIP The author’s name is not found in this book. Consequently, we are utterly at sea with reference to the writer. It was never assigned to Paul till about 500 years ago, when the Roman Catholics first Classified it in the Pauline series. Much investigation, and a vast diversity of opinion in reference to its authorship, have prevailed among the critics. I do not think Paul wrote this letter. 1. All of the other letters assigned to Paul contain his name.

Consequently, I think he would have given his name in this one if he had written it. 2. It is not the Pauline style, which is exceedingly plain, clear and logical, whereas this letter is diffuse, florid and eloquent. 3. In all of Paul’s letters he evolves the plan of salvation out of the Abrahamic covenant. In Hebrews it is evolved out of the high priesthood of Christ.

I believe with Dean Alford, the prince of English Critics, that Apollos wrote it. 1. It is literally crowded full of the Judaic institutions. This would harmonize with the authorship of Apollos, as he was educated at Alexandria, Egypt, at that time the greatest literary emporium on the globe. Under the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, B.C. 290, for the convenience of his Jewish subjects. 2. Apollos was the most eloquent man in the world during the apostolic age, whereas Paul avowedly discarded eloquence. Corinthians 2:4. This Hebrew letter is transcendently eloquent.

Of course the reader understands the utter insignificance of the whole question appertaining to human authorship, since the letter is actually indicted by the Holy Ghost. Consequently we should not consider it the revelation of Paul, or Apollos, or any other man, to the Hebrews, but God’s letter straight from heaven to us. These Hebrews were the Palestinian Christians who had passed out of the Mosaic into the gospel dispensation under the preaching of Christ and the apostles. They not only suffered a terrible persecution by the Jewish church, but incessant and most powerful temptations to return to the so-called religion of Moses and the prophets.

Though God had raised up the Jewish church through the inspired leadership of Abraham, Moses Joshua, and all the holy prophets, the good old people had died and gone to heaven, and new generations succeeded them, who had never known God in His saving power. Consequently, the church, with its membership and pastors, had degenerated into dead formality and torpid hypocrisy; so they signally failed to recognize their own Christ when, after the fond expectancy of four thousand years, He appeared on the earth.

Therefore, instead of receiving Him with jubilant enthusiasm, they not only ignored Him, but actually repudiated and crucified Him. The true Church of God is identical in all ages, and under all dispensations, and in all nations, simply consisting of God’s family on the earth, entered by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, and matured by the sanctification of the Spirit. Therefore, these Palestinian Christians, though denounced by the pastors and church members as come-outers and heretics, were the true and orthodox nucleus of God’s Church, perpetuated out of Judaism into Christianity. The great end of this letter is to fortify those Palestinian Christians against the incessant and overwhelming temptations to apostatize into fallen Judaism and to edify them in the great climacteric Bible truth of Christian perfection. If Paul wrote the letter we know that he was abundantly competent for the responsible duty of elucidating and enforcing the great doctrine of entire sanctification.

The case is equally obvious if Apollos wrote it, as we know he received the sky-blue experience of sanctification under the ministry of Priscilla and Aquila. Acts 18:26. Hence we learn from this letter that the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification constitute the only available breakwater against apostasy. (CHAPTER) - 1. This verse sweeps forever from the field all the prophets, like Mohammed and Joe Smith, claiming inspiration, since the days of Christ. 2. “Whom he set forth the heir of all things, through whom also he ordained the ages.” Satan conquered this world in Eden when he captured Adam and Eve, its king and queen. God recognized his conquest. Corinthians 4:4. If Satan had carried out his scheme he would have added this world to hell. Christ volunteered, bled and died, gloriously redeeming this world from Satan’s conquest. When he flew up to heaven God received him as a conqueror and said: “Well done.” Hence Christ is the rightful heir of all things, i .e ., the whole earth and all the people. Hence he saves all the people who will let him and will completely save the whole earth and firmament, not only from sin, but all the effects of sin, completely sanctifying and restoring it back to the heavenly state in which Satan found it. This world was a part of heaven before the devil broke it loose in order to add it to hell. Christ is going to purify it by the fiery baptism ( 2 Peter 3:10-13), and add it back to heaven. Revelation 21:1.

Where the old English says, “made the world,” the Greek has aioonas , i .e ., the ages. Hence we translate it, “ordained the ages.” The popular opinion, proclaimed from a hundred thousand pulpits, that the world is to have an end, originated from a wrong translation of this word aioon . It does not mean “world,” as the old English has it, but “age,” while cosmos means world. The Bible positively reveals the eternal perpetuity of this world.

Time, which is simply the measure of the mediatorial kingdom, will have an end. After the glorious millennial ages shall have come and gone, during the final judgment the earth will be cremated and thoroughly sanctified by fire, made over and transformed into a heaven, and given to the occupancy of the redeemed saints and glorified angels forever. The last two chapters in the Bible present a vivid and glorious description of this earth and firmament after their glorious transformation into the heavenly state. In this verse we see the ages were instituted in the divine restitutionary economy in the progressive development of this miserable, fallen world, preparatory for the coming kingdom. The antediluvian, patriarchal, Mosaic, Judaic ages have come and gone, each verifying its office in the grand preparatory drama. The Gentile age winds up the grand panorama and ushers in the glorious kingdom. 3. “Who being the brightness of His glory and the character of His person.” ... The Greek word for “express image” is character. Since that word has been transferred into the English language, it should not be translated. Hence, in the life of Jesus, faithfully delineated by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, his inspired biographers, we see the very character of God. Therefore, we find that God is “meek and lowly in heart,” going about doing good. Therefore, if you would go up and live with God in heaven you must be like Him, i .e ., meek and lowly in heart, doing good, and no harm. “Having made the expurgation of sins He sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” You see from this statement that Jesus completely and forever settled the awful sin-problem, so far as this world is concerned. When He died on the cross He perfectly and eternally satisfied the violated law, and swept every conceivable difficulty completely out of the way; so the vilest sinner on the whole earth has nothing to do but totally, radically and unconditionally abandon sin and Satan world without end, look away to Calvary, and shout victory over the world, the flesh and the devil, now and through all eternity. Nothing but stubborn unbelief can ever keep a soul out of heaven. The very fact of the Father’s royal congratulation and glorious coronation of Jesus on the mediatorial throne a His right hand is an indisputable and eternal recognition of His perfect and satisfactory approval of the expiation and redemption Jesus came on the earth to execute. He is this day Mediatorial King, interceding at God’s right hand, in behalf of a guilty world. 4. The angels are all created finite intelligences, and infinitely inferior to the divinity. Christ is perfect God and perfect man. Pursuant to His human perfection, He ha a perfect human soul an body. He is called the second Adam because In Him God gave humanity a second chance. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, consisting of spirit, mind, and body. The human spirit, soul or heart is composed of the conscience, the will and the affections The conscience is the voice of God in the soul. It is the solitary survivor of the fall, and, even in the sinner, always takes God’s side. The will is the king of humanity. In the sinner, it is on the devil’s side, ingeniously manipulated by him for the destruction of his victim. In conversion, the will turns over from the devil to God, and from sin to righteousness; meanwhile original sin, though subjugated by the Holy Ghost, still survives in the deep subterranean regions of the soul, till utterly eradicated by the cleansing blood and the consuming fire of entire sanctification. The mind consists of the intellect, the judgment, the memory and the sensibilities. The mind is not made perfect in sanctification, which is only spiritual perfection, leaving us encumbered with multitudinous infirmities because of our mental and physical imperfection, all of which are swept away in glorification when this mortal shall put on immortality. In Adam the first, Satan found an easy victim, and slew him on his first assault, made against his physical being in the simple temptation of his bodily appetite. But when he attacked Adam the Second he lost all of his ammunition. Beginning with his body he tempted Him to eat, after a fast of forty days. Signally defeated in his assault against His physical manhood, he tempted His intellect by offering Him the whole world. Again signally defeated, he attacked His faith, which is the basis of all spirituality, by tempting Him to leap from the pinnacle of the temple, presuming that God would hold Him up. In that case His faith would have been superseded by presumption, which is Satan’s counterfeit, and would have ultimated in spiritual apostasy and collapse, as in case of Adam the first; meanwhile the divinity, leaving the humanity, would have returned back to heaven, the hope of the world being blighted forever.

Hence, the humanity of Christ has deservedly achieved a name whose glory eclipses that of all the angels. 5. This verse describes what theologians call “the eternal generation of the Son.” 6. “First begotten” means the first to be giorified from the dead, i .e ., the first one raised from the dead in the transfigured glory. Elijah, Elisha and Christ had raised people from the dead before the resurrection of Jesus.

But we have no evidence that any of them received the transfigured body, but simply their mortal body subject to dissolution, as formerly. Hence, Jesus was the first one to rise from the dead in His transfigured glory. “Into the world” literally means into the inhabited universe, and here means heaven instead of earth, as we see from the subsequent portion of the verse, because God says, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” So this verse describes our Savior’s glorious congratulation and reception into heaven when He ascended up from Mt. Olivet in His transfigured body. 7. “He maketh the winds his messengers and the flames of fire His ministers.” The Holy Ghost fills the material world, going wherever the atmosphere interpenetrates, offering life to all human spirits, whether in heathendom or Christendom. The wind is the symbol of regeneration ( John 3:8), while fire everywhere emblematizes sanctification. The wind is the breath of life, and the fire consumes all impurity. Hence, the Holy Ghost administers regeneration to all sinners, and sanctification to all Christians who will receive Him. We here have God’s definition of His ministers, “a flame of fire.” Remember, this is the only definition God gives of His ministers in all the Bible. So, if you would be a minister of God, you must get filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost. Then you will be a moving cyclone of sin-consuming flame whithersoever you go. Reader, do you not want to be a minister of God? You need but one qualification, and that is the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. 8. This verse certifies that our Lord’s everlasting kingdom is an administration of righteousness. The kingdom of Christ is set up in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, confirmed and perpetuated in sanctification. Here, however, the more direct allusion is to our Lord’s millennial reign, which will follow the present age, and continue forever.

Though the millennium will only last about a thousand years, our glorious King will encumber the throne of final judgment, and reign on forever over this world after its cremation, celestialization and readmission into the Heavenly Universe. 9. Here we learn that God “hath anointed” the glorified humanity of Christ with a richer enduement of spiritual rhapsody than any of his comrades in the redeemed world. This would follow somewhat as a legitimate, logical sequence from the fact that the Man Christ is the only unfallen human being in all the universe. If Adam had not yielded to the physical temptation, Satan would have proceeded to the intellectual and the spiritual. But in the case of Adam the first, the devil saved two-thirds of his ammunition, and won his game. In the case of Adam the Second, he expended all of his ammunition, and finally lost his enterprise. As here we find the humanity of Christ endued by the Holy Ghost with a degree of bliss and rhapsody beyond that of all His comrades, therefore we conclude that our capacity for spiritual joy and rapture is in proportion to our purity. Of course, the cleansing blood and consuming fire are abundantly competent to make us all perfectly clean and pure. Still doubtless, all the sins we have ever committed impede and detract from our spiritual capacity for the reception of the joys, rhapsodies and glories imparted by the Holy Ghost. Hence, the person who has never been blackened by vulgar vices and low debaucheries is susceptible of a richer enduement of heavenly bliss and glory in this world and the world to come than the soul who has wallowed in the slime of Satan’s filth. While all the inhabitants of heaven are perfectly happy, since there is no sorrow in that bright world, all are not equally happy, but there are infinite degiees in the kingdom of glory, as well as in probationary grace. 10. We see here that our Savior, the second person of the Trinity, actually created this world; or, rather, that God in the person of the Eternal Son created this world, with its atmospheric environments and luminaries to vitalize it. No wonder He was not willing for Satan to wither and blight it, and add it to hell; but He generously volunteered and came to its rescue. 11. “These will perish,” i .e . they will cease to exist in their present form; they will undergo revolutions, transformations and renovations. “All these will grow old like a garment.” The earth is rapidly wearing out and washing away into the sea, and losing its pristine fertility, significant of the fact that we are fast approaching the end of the present order of things. 12. “Thou wilt roll them away like a book, and they shall be changed.” Books of olden time were skins of animals inscribed and rolled up like a side of leather. This is a vivid description of the wonderful transformations which Omnipotence will execute in the great and radical revolutions and renovations which await the material worlds in the coming ages. 13...”Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thy enemies Thy footstool.” This verse reveals the congratulation of the So by the Father when He flew up from Mt. Olivet, having triumphed on the cross and victoriously evacuated the sepulcher, thus having gloriously consummated the expiatory work, for whose execution He evacuated His celestial throne.

This gushing, welcome reception on the part of the Father was an indisputable confirmation of His perfect satisfaction with the work wrought by His son, vindicatory of the violated law, and expiatory of a guilty world. Therefore, the Father actually crowns Him mediatorial King forever, having the sole and perfect right to rule this world in righteousness and live through all eternity. Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King simultaneously. Yet these offices have their respective periods of predominance. While on earth, His prophetic office predominated, and He was the most indefatigable preacher the world ever saw. When He offered up His body on the cross, a sacrifice for the whole world, His official High Priesthood became predominant, and has so continued ever since, and will be pre-eminent till he descends on His royal throne, to inaugurate the millennial reign. Then His Kingship will rise pre-eminent, brighten through the millennial ages, and sweep on through all eternity. Since the Son has actually redeemed this world by His blood, and conquered it by His heroic labor and suffering, He has the sole right to possess and rule it forever.

Therefore, it is the province of the Fatter as the executive of the Diving Government, to enforce the claim of His Son over all the kingdoms of the earth. Consequently, in His royal, Fatherly, congratulatory reception, He says, “Well done, my Son; sit down on the mediatorial throne till I make all of thine enemies thy footstool.” This the Father has been faithful to do in His castigatory judgments against wicked nations in all ages, but the grand finale of this fulfillment will be consummated during the great Tribulation. “I beheld till the throne was cast down and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool; His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth before Him; a thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.” ( Daniel 7:9,10) I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” ( Daniel 7:13,14) We see clearly and unequivocally in these visions of Daniel the final and summary fulfillment of the Father’s promise to the Son, to make His enemies His footstool. We see clearly how the Father will come down in the great Tribulation and shake every potentate from his throne, both political and ecclesiastical, thus preparing the way for the universal reign of His Son. “I beheld till the thrones were cast down.” The connection shows plainly and positively that these thrones are none other than all the dominions of this world, both political and ecclesiastical. Whiteness signifies the perfect purity of God and His administration. Fire, throughout the Bible, symbolizes destruction. No one will question that the Ancient of days means the Father, in contradistinction to the Son.

Now remember, the Father has no incarnation. Hence, He will be utterly invisible, though present on the earth in His awful castigatory judgments.

While the Ancient of days will be invisible, Antichrist will rise, visible to mortal eyes, and lead myriads after him to perdition. The “horn” here mentioned means the pope, who will be Antichrist in the Tribulation, speaking “great words.” “I beheld till the beast was slain and his body given to the burning flame.” Beast here means human government in contradistinction to the Theocracy. The fact that the beast was slain and his body given to the burning flame, can mean nothing less than the utter destruction of all human kingdoms. God’s original plan was to rule the world by righteousness, love and wisdom, both in state and church. When the people became so wicked as to utterly reject the divine government they set up governments of their own, ruled by men instead of God. The Holy Ghost constantly in the prophecies designates them “wild beast governments.” The Greek word theerion , meaning a cruel, bloodthirsty wild beast, is constantly used by the Holy Ghost to designate human governments. This is strictly pertinent, because they all rule by brute force, selfish and cruel as the grave. These wild beast powers have already killed enough people in wars to populate the globe fourteen times. Still the people, blinded by the devil, hold on to the wild beast, and reject God who has always wanted to rule the world in peace, righteousness and love.

Theologians have generally applied these prophecies to the final judgment, which is utterly untrue, because here we see the Ancient of days, i .e ., the Father, presides; whereas in the final judgment, at the end of time, the Son will encumber the judgment seat. You clearly see the connection of the Son and the Father, in the execution of these judgments. The Father comes and casts down all human thrones, destroys all human power, political and ecclesiastical, for Babylon falls meanwhile ( Revelation 18:2), and with her all human ecclesiasticism goes down. Since the Son of God has the sole right to the sovereignty of this world, in both church and state, all human governments, both political and ecclesiastical, which are not really subordinated to divine rule, are His uncompromising enemies, and destined to fall beneath His conquering tread. In these prophecies you plainly see the Father descending in His awful retributive judgments, and preparing the whole world for the reign of His Son. After which the Son rides down on the throne of His glory and enters upon the millennial reign. “But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, ever’ forever and ever.” ( Daniel 7:8) “Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” ( Daniel 7:22) Away with the popular theology which construes this to be the spiritual kingdom. Common sense teaches you that every saint has already received the spiritual kingdom, otherwise he could not be a saint. There is no possible evasion of the conclusion that “the kingdom” here means the government of the world, political and ecclesiastical. Christ will rule the world during the millennial ages through the instrumentality of His transfigured saints. Since He is to encumber the final judgment throne, and then reign over the sanctified, renovated and celestialized world forever, “to His kingdom there will be no end.” Hence, you see the pertinency of the declaration that the saints will “possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” 14. This verse reveals angelic ministry. When they interviewed our Savior relative to the woman who had survived her seventh husband, as to whose wile she should be in the resurrection, He responded: “In that day there will neither be marrying nor giving in marriage, but all will be as the angels of God.” The Greek says isoi anggeloi , which means “like the angels” or “equal to the angels.” This statement of our Savior reveals the fact that glorification confers angelic perfection, while sanctification effects Christian perfection. Justification saves us from guilt; sanctification saves us from depravity, while glorification saves us from infirmity, and the resurrection saves us from mortality. The fact that at glorification we receive angelic perfection certainly recognizes in us a near kinship to the angels. Perhaps this is the reason why the angels have always taken a preeminent interest in the human race. They were present in the creation, and made the heavens roar with triumphant shouts of joyful approval. They brightened the firmament of Eden with the splendor of their pinions, serving Adam and Eve as guardians. When humanity collapsed under Satan’s invasion they flew up to heaven, heralding the mournful tidings which filled heaven with lugubrious wailings, while golden harps were suspended on weeping willows. Thus all heaven became a Bochim of weeping over the sad ruins of our world, till the Son of God proclaimed His heroic espousal of the lost cause, to the unutterable astonishment of all the heavenly host. Then swift angel couriers flew down to the bottomless pit, and then and there proclaimed Immanuel’s philanthropic intervention in behalf of the ruined race. Never before was hell so racked with astonishment and appalled with consternation. The angels not only proclaimed the conception of the Incarnate God, but heralded to the shepherds His birth in Bethlehem. They came down and rolled the stone from the sepulcher, proclaiming to the women their risen Lord.

Myriads of angels belt this world night and day. Serving as our faithful guardians, they protect us from thousands of unseen perils. The moment we evacuate these bodies we see them, faithful to their trust, standing by us, conversing with us about heavenly glories, and serving as our faithful escorts up to the celestial city. (CHAPTER) - 1. “Lest we let them slip” should read, “Lest we leak out.” This is an exceedingly profitable warning, admonishing us to watch and pray incessantly lest we sadly incur the leakage of love. Not only regenerated people, but the sanctified are in imminent danger of losing ground by the leakage of grace. In this way multiplied thousands unconsciously and inadvertently become backsliders, having lost the joy of their salvation, the fire and the power by which they save others. The simile is that of a water barrel leaking out its contents. There is but one way to prevent this leakage, and that is to keep it full. When it gets partially empty, the burning solar rays — which powerfully symbolize Satan’s temptationswill shrink the staves, producing constant leakage, increasing more and more till the barrel is empty, dry, and falls. The only remedy in the case of the barrel is to keep it under the spout, where it will always keep full; meanwhile, the overflow will be a constant blessing to the circumambient fruits and flowers. Therefore, O soul, if you would heed this warning so faithfully given by the Holy Ghost, and not suffer the fatal evanescence of the grace out of your heart, you must constantly keep under the mercyseat, where you will not only keep full, but the perpetual overflow will make you a benediction to all you meet. 2-4. Here we have a vivid contrast of the augmented responsibility under the broader and deeper light of the Gospel dispensation in contradistinction to the Mosaic. During the former dispensation, God sent angels to speak to the patriarchs and prophets. Among these angels the most prominent was the Angel of the Covenant, who was none other than the Excarnate Christ. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New. Matthew 3:3, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” This is the language of Isaiah, and reads in the Hebrew, “Prepare ye the way of Jehovah.” Hence we see that the Jehovah of Isaiah is the Christ of John the Baptist. 1 Corinthians 10: 9. “They tempted Christ and were destroyed by serpents.” This is a quotation from the Pentateuch, where the Hebrew says, “They tempted Jehovah.” Hence we see the Jehovah of Moses is the Christ of Paul. But while this is true, there is an inconceivable difference between the Invisible Jehovah and the incarnate Christ, recognizable by our natural senses. it was vastly more difficult for the people under the old dispensation to look through the dim lights of type and prophecy and see the world’s Redeemer bleeding and dying to expiate their guilt, than it is for us to look back through the clear and indubitable annals of history and appropriate by faith His triumphant substitutionary death. In the former dispensation, God, in sympathy with the faltering faith of a doubting people, established justification as the normal attitude of Christian responsibility. The stars shone out in the patriarchal dispensation. The moon rose in the mediatorship of Moses. Day dawned with John the Baptist. The sun rose when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and the noonday culminated in the Pentecostal baptisms of the Holy Ghost and fire. Hence the normal attitude of Christian privilege and responsibility under the Gospel dispensation is that of entire sanctification. Therefore, momentous will be our responsibility if we neglect this great salvation. We can no longer hide under the shadows of a moonlit dispensation. No longer are we dependent on the messages carried down from the throne by ministering angels, because God Himself has come down, invested in mortal flesh, even born of our race. He lived and died among us. Having perfectly expiated our guilt, completely satisfying the violated law, He has triumphed over death, hell and the grave, ascended into heaven, fully recognized by the Father, who has joyfully received His complete mediatorial work, and crowned Him King of saints at His right hand, where He ever liveth to intercede for us. When an assembled universe shall stand before the judgment seat, there will be three different kinds of judgment. The people who have lived under the Gospel will be judged by the entire Bible; those who lived under the former dispensation will be judged by the Old Testament alone; while the heathen will not be judged by the Bible at all, but by the laws of nature.

Hence the hottest of all the hells awaits the people who reject the light of full salvation, radiating from the glorious Sun of Righteousness. in His noonday splendor revealed in the Gospel age. 5. “For He did not subordinate the world to come, concerning which we speak to angels.” The Greek word translated “world” in this verse is a passive participle, and simply means “the inhabited” (earth). It means this world in the glorious restoration of its Mediatorial King. In the grand restitution which will properly be inaugurated when our Lord rides down on His millennial throne to reign in righteousness a thousand years, then it will be consummated by the fiery sanctification of the world, its final renovation and celestialization ( Revelation 21:1). This redeemed and glorified world is not committed to angels, but the glorified Christ, with His transfigured saints, will rule over it forever. 6, 7. No angel was ever subjected to mortality. For the Son of God to submit to the disabilities of birth, babyhood, childhood and mortal manhood was an inconceivable humiliation, such as no angel ever knew. As His humiliation was consummate beyond conception, so His exaltation is proportionally transcendent. 8. This verse testifies to the fact that the Father, in view of the Son’s heroic and vicarious humiliation, has actually subordinated all things in this world beneath His feet. The autocratic decree of the Almighty bas gone forth, eternally irrevocable; but, as it here says, “we do not now see that all things have yet been subordinated to Him.” The final verification of this promise of the Father to subordinate all things to the Son has been reserved to the awful executive retributions to be inflicted on the wicked nations and fallen churches of this rebel world, during the premilennial judgments of the great Tribulation. 9. “In order that He may by the grace of God taste death for every one.” The humiliation of Christ brought Him down low enough to put His philanthropic shoulder under the lowest reprobate that ever blackened the globe, and lift him up to heaven. In His infinitesimal condescension, He tasted death for every human being, thus procuring an absolutely universal atonement and forever sweeping from the field every possible defalcation as to the gracious possibility of universal salvation. 10. We see from this verse that the Lord Jesus Christ actually created this world for His own eternal sovereignty. Hence His deadly conflict with the devil, who had the audacious impudence to attempt to wrest it out of His hands. Jesus is the great and infallible Archetype of universal saintship.

Therefore it was pertinent that He should travel this road before them and point out the way. He never claimed perfection in His Messianic office and character till after He suffered crucifixion. Just as He was imperfect in His mediatorship till after He suffered death on the cross, so are His followers imperfect in their Christian character till Adam the first is crucified. Perfect is from the Latin facio , to make, and per , complete.

Hence it simply means to make complete. Sanctification is from sanctus , holy, and facio , to make, and just means to make holy. Therefore perfection and sanctification are derivatives from the same Latin facio , and have the same meaning. In the Greek, hagiasmos means holiness and also means sanctification. It is indiscriminately translated holiness or sanctification. Hence you see Wesley was correct when he pronounced perfection, holiness and sanctification all synonymous. Just as it was necessary for the physical nature of Jesus to die in order to the perfection of His Messiahship, so the crucifixion of our Adamic nature is essential to the completion of our Christian character. As the Man Jesus was the only Son of unfallen Adam, his humanity was pure, whereas that of the whole human race is contaminated by the fall. A disciple is a follower of Jesus.

None but disciples go to heaven. Hence, if you aspire to a place in heaven, you must follow Christ to the cross and be crucified. He is our infallible Leader. We must walk in His footprints. We must follow Him to the manger, and be born in utter obscurity. This is regeneration. Then we must follow Him to Calvary and be nailed to the cross. Our fallen Adamic nature must die. This is sanctification. 11. “For He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” This is God’s infallible definition of sanctification, i .e ., oneness with God.

Hence, we see that sanctification unifies us with God, that is, gives us the divine nature. Holiness is the divine nature. It is original in God, but imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is called “holy,” not because He is more holy than the Father or the Son, but because it is His office to make us holy. Hence, all true religion is the direct work of the Holy Ghost. Anti-holiness preachers, Roman Catholic priests, Moslems, and all sorts of heathens, preach holiness to the people, but all they mean by holiness is loyalty to the church and obedience to their leaders. All this is Satan’s counterfeit holiness. All of this buncombe twaddle about loyalty to the church belongs to the dogmata of counterfeit holiness, as true holiness makes you loyal to God. When you are loyal to God you are always loyal to God’s Church. Christ is the Head and the Church is His body. Therefore, they are identical and there is no such a thin as being loyal to the one and disloyal to the other Here we see the reason why the popular clergy and secular ecclesiasticism in all ages have fought sanctification. It is because it makes the people loyal to God instead of themselves. Liquori, a distinguished Roman Catholic commentator, furiously denounces the doctrine of perfection as the worst of all heresies, certifying that it has given them more trouble than all other heresies combined. This problem explains itself when the preachers are not in harmony with God, as none can be till they are sanctified wholly; they are unwilling for the people to get sanctified, because they know it will take them out of their hands and put them where they can no longer rely on them as conservators of their carnal policy. The worldly churches heap mountains of labor on their members to conserve their financial and ecclesiastical enterprises, crowding God out and actually causing their members to backslide. The true church is not a social and financial organization, but the children of God united in prayer and labor to save souls. “For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” This follows as a logical sequence from God’s definition of sanctification, i .e ., that it is oneness with God, i .e ., unification with the divine nature. When the Holy Ghost imparts to the very nature of God, He is no longer ashamed to call us brethren. 12. David says, “In the midst of the church I will sing praises unto Thee.”

Ecclesia is the word for church throughout the Bible. It is from ek , out, and kaleo , to call. Hence, it means all the people who have heard the call of the Holy Ghost, come out of the world and separated themselves unto God.

These, and these alone, constitute the Church of God. Sanctification, which means taking the world out of you, is a subsequent work performed in the hearts of the church members. Therefore, all true Christians desire to be sanctified wholly. Dr. Clarke says, “The man who is opposed to Christian perfection is no Christian.” Dr. Albert Barnes, the Presbyterian commentator, says, “When you ask your own heart, Would you like to be wholly sanctified to God now? and receive a negative answer, you may set it down that you are no Christian.” The Apostolic Church consisted of nothing but the simple Ecclesiai . Satan has subsequently laid under contribution all the wisdom of earth and hell to build on it and round it so many magnitudinous ecclesiasticisms as utterly to hide it from human vision: meanwhile he has millions of carnal creatures pointing the blind multitudes of all ages and nations to these mammoth human institutions and crying, “Behold the church!” Two hundred millions of martyrs have bled for their disloyalty to human ecclesiasticism and their loyalty to God and His Church. 13. This verse exhibits Jesus and all of God’s children invested in transfigured glory, standing before the great white throne, constituting the Church of the Firstborn, written in heaven. 14. It is absolutely necessary that the world’s Redeemer should be both human and divine. Humanity had fallen from the exalted eminence of the divine fellowship, down into the deep abyss of sin, misery, death and damnation. When the river ha fallen down from the mountain crag, it can never flow back. If Christ had been God only, man could never have reached it. If He had been man only, He would have been utterly incompetent to the rescue of fallen humanity. In His human humiliation He comes down low enough to put His shoulder under the most degraded wretch on the face of the earth. The vilest reprobate has nothing to do, but take Him by the hand. This done, he has taken the hand of the Omnipotent God, which lifts him to the highest heaven. Thus, in the hypostatic union of perfect humanity and perfect divinity, in our glorious Mediator, we receive the man-Christ, while the God-Christ saves us. “In order that through death He may destroy the one having the power of death, that is the devil.” Destruction is not annihilation. When you burn a piece of wood the gases and ashes weigh precisely as much as the wood before cremation.

In the economy of nature there is no such thing as annihilation. God in providence and grace is identical. Therefore, the doctrine of annihilation is heretical and equally contradictory to both nature and revelation. The destruction of the devil does not mean his annihilation, but his utter and eternal discomfiture and defeat. 15. “That He might liberate those so many as through fear of death were all their life subject to slavery.” The near proximity and absolute certainty of death have in all ages invested the grim monster with terrors at once horrific and appalling. Who has not suffered ten thousand tortures under the foreboding fear of this merciless tyrant? My childhood was one protracted ordeal of torture, more or less intermittent in proportion to the periods intervening between the funerals I was permitted to attend. Perfect love is the only conqueror of the grim monster, from which he is forced to retreat, vanquished, crestfallen and defeated forever. Entire sanctification is the only emancipator of a sighing world from the galling slavery everywhere superinduced by the King of Terrors. 16. The tallest archangel commanding millions of the heavenly host could never have saved a solitary soul. He is doomed to fail on both of the essential fines of the mediatorship, i .e ., the humanity and the divinity. 17. This verse vividly reveals the absolute essentiality of the Mediatorial Manhood in order to reach every condition of fallen humanity. Jesus was the poorest of the poor. He would preach all day on the streets of Jerusalem, then go off to Mount Olivet at night and sleep on the ground.

Thus He condescended to the lowest depths of human poverty, that He might perfect the sympathetic brotherhood with the poorest of the poor.

At the same time nothing but Omnipotence could successfully grapple with the powers of sin, mortality, the world, and Satan. 18. “For in that He Himself suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor those who are tempted.” It was absolutely necessary to the perfection of the Mediatorial Christhood that Jesus should pass through the entire curriculum of possible Satanic temptations. For reasons to us inscrutable, Satan was permitted to assault the whole human race in Adam the first, their federal representative. There never was but one creation. When God created Adam, He created the race. Eve was no exception, being an evolution from Adam. When Satan tempted Adam, he tempted the entire human race. When Adam fell, the race fell. God, in his unutterable mercy to fallen humanity, gave them a second chance in Jesus Christ, who for that very reason is designated Adam the Second. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, consisting of body, mind, and spirit. In Satan’s war against Adam the first, he saved two-thirds of his ammunition, triumphantly slaying him on the first round, in which he tempted his body with the beautiful and delicious fruit. If Adam had not yielded to the physical temptations, Satan would have proceeded to the intellectual. If he had not then yielded, the devil would have gone on to the bombardment of the spiritual citadel. When I was in the Holy Land, in 1895, I saw the gloomy mountain overhanging the site of old Jericho, in the wilderness of Judaea, where Jesus was tempted by the devil. Well does the Scripture say, “He suffered, being tempted.” Of course, during a fast of forty days, He suffered with hunger. This was an extreme case, and actually takes in all the physical temptations to which we can ever be exposed, as probably none of us will ever do without food so long as forty days. Yet Jesus heroically resisted the devil’s offer and achieved a transcendent triumph.

When Satan failed in his assault on His physical being, he proceeded to attack the intellectual. Consequently, he offered Him all the kingdoms of this world, if He would simply recognize his Satanic majesty. This was no sham, as some have thought, as Satan had actually captured this world by conquest in his war against Adam the first. God recognizes Satan’s earthly sovereignty ( 2 Corinthians 4:4) where he calls him the god of this world.

If Christ had yielded to Satan’s temptation the humanity would have been transformed into a great archdemon, meanwhile the divinity, leaving it, would have gone back to heaven. In that case, the redemptive scheme must have collapsed forever, leaving the last hope of humanity eclipsed in the gloom of an eternal night. After Satan’s signal defeat on the battlefield of mentality, he proceeds at once to attack the citadel of His spirituality. As faith is the basis of all spirituality and divine allegiance, Satan takes Jesus up to the topmost pinnacle of the Temple, suggesting to Him to leap off, as God would surely take care of Him. If Jesus had indulged this experiment, He would have tempted God, thus superseding His faith, which is the bond of divine loyalty, by presumption, which is the devil’s counterfeit for a faith. Here Satan signally fails a third time. Having exhausted all of his ammunition, he retreats crestfallen and humiliated from the battlefield. Thus humanity, in the victory of Adam the Second, regained the fearful losses sustained in the defeat of Adam the first. If Adam had not fallen under the temptation offered to his body, Satan would have gone on tempting his mind and finally his soul. Our Savior passed through these temptations that we may all walk in His footprints and triumph over the devil throughout. Vainly do sanctified people conclude they will have no more temptations. Far from it. They have just reached the great temptation line. Satan is not fool enough to waste ammunition on sinners who spontaneously do his will, neither does he turn his heavy artillery against unsanctified Christians, whom he can successfully scare off with popgun batteries. When Jesus received the Holy Ghost, immediately after His inauguration into His official Messiahship by John’s baptism, this was His sanctification; forthwith the Holy Spirit led Him away into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. As the infallible Exemplar of universal saintship, it was absolutely necessary for our great Archetype to pass through the summary temptations of Satan. The devil from the beginning has played a most conspicuous part in human probation, for reasons to us unfathomable, but doubtless to be revealed more fully in the coming evolutions of transfigured saintship. Consequently all sanctified people are assaulted by Satan on the three great embattled lines of triple humanity. If we yield to his physical temptations — to drunkenness, gluttony, tobacco and debauchery — we become hoggish. When we yield to intellectual temptations — blind to what doesn’t glisten and deaf to what doesn’t jingle — become worldly, unspiritual, and lose our souls. Popular churches are largely filled up with this class of people. When we yield to spiritual temptations — skepticism, infidelity, spiritualism, theosophy, and atheism — we become devilish. Beware of congratulating yourself that you are past the temptation line. When Satan doesn’t shoot at you it is confirmatory proof that you are not worth shooting at, since he is not fool enough to waste his ammunition on dead game. If you are really true to God he will never cease to shoot at you till you pass the pearly portal. (CHAPTER) - 1. This verse holds up Jesus as the Apostle, High Priest and Paragon of all religious profession, the only infallible Exemplar, the universal Archetype of the Gospel dispensation, in contradistinction to Moses in bygone ages. 2. Christ is perfect man and perfect God. The man Jesus was created by the Almighty like all other creatures. The God Christ, uncreated, existed from all eternity. 3. The Greek oikos , house, in the Bible means family. When Paul said to the jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou and thy house shall he saved,” it would better read, “Thou and thy family shall be saved.” In these verses we now expound, house means the Church, i .e ., the family of God. It is used synonymously with the divine ecclesia , i .e ., the people whom the Holy Ghost has “called out” of the world, and separated unto God to be His elect witnesses in a world oblivious of God and His laws, and dominated by Satan. The Bible says there never was such a man as Moses who actually spoke with God face to face. He was leader, legislator, prophet and mediator. At the same time he was a fallible mortal, and only a servant in the house of God. Contrastively with Moses, Jesus was the omnipotent Builder of the house, in which Moses was a servant.

While He is our Elder Brother, the Firstborn of the Church, He is also the omnipotent, infallible Creator of the Church. We honor Moses as the paragon saint in his dispensation; but since the great Antitype has come and revealed to us the summary of essential truth, and sealed it with His blood, we are no longer under Moses, the types and shadows all having retreated before the effulgent glory of the great Archetype. If the Apostolic Church had proved true to the Pentecostal dispensation of entire sanctification, walking in the cloudless splendor of the glorious Sun of Righteousness, and not fallen back into the types and shadows of Mosaic moonlight, the Gospel would have been preached to every creature long before you and I ever saw the light of day, and the millennium in all its glory would have belted the globe long centuries ago. The Mosaic dispensation looked through the dim lights of type and prophecy to a coming Redeemer. Of course, vast clouds of uncertainty and doubt enveloping the future constituted the normal state of the Church, which did not rise above the plane of justification. The patriarchs and prophets enjoyed the experience of sanctification, living in advance of their dispensation. When all the concurrent symbolism type and prophecy were verified in the personal advent, presence, living, teaching and vicarious sufferings of the Incarnate God, every cloud, doubt and fear retreated from the firmament of faith and hope; meanwhile the personal descension of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, inaugurated the glorious dispensation of entire sanctification, the normal attitude of Christian experience, life and character, till God’s perfected saints shall hail the glorious King descended on his millennial throne.

ARGUMENT THE TWO CROSSINGS. 7-16. You must remember this letter is written to the Palestinian Christians, whose progenitors made the fatal mistake of turning back at Kadesh-Barnea, in open violation of the positive commandment of God, and defiant of Moses their leader. They had not left Egypt for a home in Arabia, but with the distinct understanding that they are to possess and perpetually inhabit the land of Canaan. It was no long journey from the Red Sea crossing to Palestine, as it only took them eleven days to travel from Mt. Sinai on the sea coast to Kadesh-Barnea on the Canaan border.

Kadesh means “holy” and Barnea means “delight.” So, in eleven days’ march they actually reached Canaan, the land of holy delight. God’s order was to enter unhesitatingly and take possession of the land. Their hearts failed them at Kadesh-Barnea; they go into camp and send out twelve leaders representing the twelve tribes, to explore the land and bring them word. They spend forty days peregrinating the country, admiring the majestic cities, “walled up to heaven,” contemplating the huge warrior giants who inhabit the land. Meanwhile they are unutterably astonished and delighted with the paradoxical fruitfulness of the land. In their travels they pass through the valley of Eschol, are delighted with the delicious grapes, of which they carry on with them specimens. I traveled through that valley in 1895, down to its terminus in the city of Hebron, over the same ground trodden by the spies. The entire valley is still devoted to the growing of grapes, which excel the productions of all other lands in sweetness and size. After forty days the spies returned to Kadesh-Barnea, loaded with specimens of the exuberant and delicious fruits of the land.

They unanimously not only corroborate the wonderful reports which they had heard while in Egyptian bondage, but certify that the land is even better than the, had ever heard. While this is the unanimous report, the majority of ten asseverate positively that the land is utterly impregnable by reason of its walled cities and innumerable panoplied, gigantic warriors, in consequence of which it is utterly impossible for them to take it by conquest. At the same time Joshua and Caleb stand up side by side and proclaim aloud to all Israel, “Let us go up at once and possess the land, for we are abundantly able.” They did not mean that they were able by their own power, but the reason why they declare boldly that they are able to take it was because they had faith in God to conquer the giants and give them the land, according to His promise, whereas the faith of the other ten had woefully collapsed. Consequently, they took the cowardly side of the question. The multitude believe the ten rather than the two, and uproariously clamor aloud, ‘Back into Egypt!” Joshua and Caleb, Moses, Aaron and Miriam do their utmost to lead them from Kadesh-Barnea into the land; but they rebel against them and march back into the wilderness.

God now decrees that none who had reached majority when they had crossed the sea shall ever see the land of promise, but they shall all die in the wilderness. This decree symbolizes the fact that God wants us to go directly from our conversion into entire sanctification. When we refuse we come under the decree that everything in our hearts which rebelled against holiness must die before we can ever enter the sanctified experience. Did all those people who died in the wilderness go to hell? We hope not. They turned back from Kadesh-Barnea about the first of July in the second year of the Exodus, wandered in the wilderness thirty-eight years, returning again to Kadesh-Barnea. While they were marching toward Canaan they were in the justified experience, but while marching back- toward Egypt they were under condemnation. The dark history of these thirty-eight years is unwritten. Where they went and what they did we know not.

Terrible was their mortality during this period. From the time they turned back at Kadesh-Barnea God put them under an awful castigatory discipline, symbolic of the miserable life of the backslider. Before they got away from Kadesh-Barnea God sent an awful pestilence, heaping the camp with mountains of e dead. During this pestilence every one of the ten spies who brought in the evil report of the land fell dead. This symbolizes the appalling fact that all the preachers who oppose entire sanctification fall dead spiritually, as these spies were all great tribal leaders, and rank as preachers. Do you know the names of the ten cowardly spies? I do not know them, though they are laid down in the Scriptures. They are not worth remembering. We can not afford to fill up our memories with trash.

But we all know the names of Joshua and Caleb throughout all Christendom. Children have been named for them in very many families.

Only one hundred and fifty years ago the big preachers closed all the churches against John Wesley and the Methodist preachers. In this short time we have forgotten their names. They have utterly sunk into oblivion.

But we have not forgotten Wesley, Fletcher, and others whom they drove out of the churches. History repeats itself. The very names of the great men in the church who are this day persecuting the holiness people will rot in a century; while, as in the case of Joshua and Caleb, all future generations will remember with gratitude the people who in this day stand in the front of the battle, and unfurl the banner of truth and holiness. Why did not Moses, Aaron and Miriam, who had enjoyed the sanctified experience forty years,-Moses and Aaron having received it at the burning bush, and Miriam doubtless at an earlier date,-enter the promised land?

Though Moses lost his experience by impatience at the waters of Meribah, doubtless he soon regained it, growing brighter and brighter to the end.

There was a fundamental reason why Moses could not lead Israel into Canaan. He was the great lawgiver, and emblematizes the law. If he had led them into Canaan, it would involve the conclusion that we can be sanctified by loyal obedience, i .e ., by good works, which is utterly untrue, and has proved a snare to millions. It is this day the fatal heresy of the popular churches. Therefore, it would not do for Moses to lead them into the land. Aaron was the high priest, and emblematizes the visible Church.

If he had led them in it would inculcate the fatal heresy that you can be sanctified by church rites, and obedience to the preachers. Miriam was a fire-baptized prophetess. If she had reached the land it would involve the conclusion that the holiness evangelist can sanctify you, which is also a fatal heresy. Joshua is a Hebrew word which means Jesus . Hence, Joshua was the only one who could lead them in, thus forever teaching the world that none but Jesus can save and sanctify. Doubtless the terrible castigatory judgments of wasting pestilences, fiery serpents, destroying angels, burning thirst, withering sandstorms, signal defeats by their enemies, and perpetual devastating wars waged against them by the Arabs, conduced much to their humiliation, bringing about many genuine deathbed repentances. Meanwhile, they enjoyed the powerful preaching of Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua, and Caleb. Therefore, it is to be hoped that many of them were reclaimed, sanctified and taken to heaven, But it is a significant fact that they lost their Canaan-life in this world, sadly whiling away their days in the howling wilderness. The great majority of Christians at the present day have nothing in this life but a howling wilderness experience. Oh. how we need a million Joshuas to lead the Church O the present day out of the wilderness into the land of corn and wine! Glory to God, He is fast raising them up! We are now in the van of a grand army of lay preachers, male and female, whom God is raising up to preach holiness to the ends of the earth, hasten His coming, and bring on the millennium. 17. “Whose carcasses fell in the wilderness.” It is a sad phenomenon which no luminous Christian can deny, i .e ., that the popular church at the present day is largely filled up with spiritual carcasses, fallen in the wilderness. A grave council of preachers representing a great ecclesiasticism recently held a council of twenty days, legislating and deliberating in the interest of the church. At the beginning of the period, a committee of profound theologians was appointed to deliberate and legislate, and if possible find a remedy for the appalling worldliness which is freezing the church into an iceberg and sweeping the members into hell.

They spent the whole twenty days in the execution of the work committed to their charge. The result was a series of legislations establishing restrictive laws against dancing, card-playing, theater-going, circuses, horse races, and whisky drinking, giving all these restrictive rules the full force of disciplinary law. Six years have elapsed. I have traveled in about thirty States of the Union, made diligent investigation, and not found a solitary instance in which those restrictive laws have been enforced by a pastor in that church. What a lamentable demonstration of deficient spiritual light, wisdom and experience on the part of the great theologians who represented that church in her highest ecclesiastical council! Why did they not all get down on their knees and cry to God for the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire, thus leading the clergy and the membership by precept and example to the only possible remedy in the case? We everywhere see the devil’s buzzards — i .e ., popular and sinful amusements, vices and follies — devouring the Lord’s sheep in the pastures of the various popular churches. What is the true remedy?

Common sense, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, readily gives the answer.

Buzzards will not eat live sheep; they eat only the dead ones. Jesus Christ still lives. He is the resurrection and the life. Why do n’ t they call them all to the altar, get on their knees, and pray till the resurrection power comes down and raises all their members from the dead? That is not sanctification which the popular clergy are fighting, but it is the regeneration which they all claim; it is the complete and effectual remedy for all the vices and follies which now flood the churches, blot out the distinction between the Church and the world, bring heathen shame on the name of religion, and send the people to hell by the wholesale.

ARGUMENT THE TWO RESTS: REST AND PERFECT REST.

When Israel evacuated the brick kilns and mortar yards they rested from the toils of slavery and the rod of the taskmaster. When they crossed the Red Sea they escaped forever out of the dominion of Pharaoh. Egypt emblematizes sin; the taskmasters, evil habits; and Pharaoh, the devil. It is said in Deuteronomy, “God led them out that he might lead them in,” i .e ., out of Egypt into Canaan. Though the congregations to which Moses preached in Egypt were all “sinners,” the great burden of his preaching was on sanctification. He said very little about the wilderness which they would enter when they crossed the sea, but much about the land flowing with milk and honey, and abounding in corn and wine. The grand incentive and culminating aspiration for which they left Egypt was the land of Canaan. Jesus, in Matthew 11:28-30, promises the sinner two rests: first, rest from his burden of guilt; and second, rest for his soul. In Old Testament symbolism the soul is typified by the body. in the emancipation under Moses, Israel rested from slavery and Pharaoh. Still their weary feet and hungry bodies found no rest in the howling wilderness till they crossed the Jordan, where comfortable houses which they had never built, and abundance of old corn which they had not reared, and delicious fruits pendant from trees which they had never planted, saluted them on all sides, and bade them rest from their long and weary wanderings in perfect peace and enjoy all the luxuries heart can wish. Pursuant to this instructive similitude, justification gives us rest from the awful slavery of evil habits and the power of Satan; but it is not the perfect rest for which the heart sighs, while it wanders through the howling wilderness of inbred sin. Old Adam, though conquered and bound, still lives in the deep subterranean jungles of unsanctified affection. He growls and rages like a sore-headed bear, and if we do not constantly watch and pray he will get loose and play sad havoc, again bringing us into bondage. The soul can not enjoy perfect rest so long as it is beleaguered with internal enemies. Entire sanctification crucifies old Adam, puts all of our enemies on the outside, expurgates evil affections from the deep interior of the spiritual organism, and superinduces the perfect rest which we lost in Eden. It is truly, significantly and pre-eminently the soul’s repose, for which the whole world has been roaming, sighing and crying for the last six thousand years.

It is a sweet prelibation of the heavenly rest. It is never enjoyed in simple justification, which is the reversal of the condemnatory sentence, and always brings the peace of pardon, but never the peace of purity.

Regeneration gives you a new heart, but does not exterminate the hereditary depravity from which all actual sins emanate. The heart of the whole world aches, longs and yearns for this perfect rest, but blinded by Satan they seek it in myriad ways, only to add disappointment, mortification, withered hopes and perished aspirations to the mountains of sin already crushing them into hopeless despair. Millions of blind guides throughout the whole earth raise the hue and cry, “Come this way!” only to plunge you into blacker darkness, eclipsing the last lingering ray of the forlorn hope which has impelled you on, like the ignis fatuus , “whose delusive ray Lights up unreal worlds and glows but to betray.” Meanwhile millions of preachers — Protestant, papal, pagan and Moslem — are vociferously clamoring and indefatigably toiling to acquiesce and tranquilize the discontented multitudes, vainly and mournfully looking to them for the great universal desideratum of fallen humanity, which they are painfully conscious of their utter incompetency ever to impart. Hence the carnal clergy of all ages and nations have done their utmost to satisfy their people without this perfect rest; meanwhile it has been their study and labor night and day to persuade them that there is no such thing. Still the insatiable longing of poor fallen humanity will not down. Like Banquo’s ghost, it haunts all nations, semper et ubique . This universal discontentment and longing after soul repose is superinduced by the conviction of the Holy Ghost, who most assuredly would never provoke this soul cry if He were not able and willing to satisfy it. The secular clergy in all ages, whether pagan, Moslem, papal or Protestant, have pertinaciously fought the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification, because it takes the people out of their hands and turns them over to God, thus interfering with their ecclesiastical organizations and enterprises, notwithstanding their utter incompetency to satisfy this universal clamor for soul rest. Their great hobby is theological complicity unscrupulously concocted, simply to effect indefinite postponement. They will have you like the boy, forever running to the rainbow’s end to find the pot of gold, only with weary limb and broken heart to learn at last the same sad lesson over and over, that pursuit and possession are different words. 18. In this verse it is stated that God hath sworn that they never can enter into this rest save by faith alone. 19. “We see that they were not able to enter in on account of their unbelief.” This refers to Israel at Kadesh-Barnea where they made the fatal mistake of all their history. Instead of entering Canaan for which they had left Egypt and traveled through the wilderness, having reached the very border, “holy delight,” they turned back again into the howling wilderness.

It is not because they did not desire and intend to possess the land, for this was the great enterprise of their lives; but they felt utterly incompetent to conquer those giants, and take the land by conquest. Hence, they retreat away, thinking to wait till they get in better fix for the arduous enterprise of conquering the country. All this was because they were seeking it by their own works, and not by faith in God. As Wesley well says, “So long as you put it off you are evidently seeking it by works.” God had promised to conquer the giants and give them the land. Hence, their fatal mistake was in seeking it by their own efforts. (CHAPTER) - 1... “Lest some one of you may be made manifest to have failed.” The Greek in this passage reveals an actual failure made manifest, not as the English would indicate, only a seeming failure. There is a fearful liability of actual failure arising from our unbelief. 2. This verse affirms a literal similitude between the ancient and modern Church. They had the Gospel preached to them, but fatally blundered through unbelief, forfeiting Canaan, and bleaching their bones on the burning sand. A similar fate awaits us if, after conversion, we turn back from sanctification like Israel at Kadesh-Barnea. They postponed because they sought it by works. This has been the fatal wooden horse which has brought the cruel Greeks into Israel’s camp in all ages. 3. “For we who believe do enter into rest.” This positive and unequivocal statement of the Holy Ghost outweighs all the gradualistic theologies of all ages. It solves the problem without possible defalcation that we enter into this rest by faith alone. Hence, it is now, and all postponement is dangerous heresy. “As I swore in my wrath: they shall not enter into my rest even though their works being from the foundation of the world.” Mark this wonderful statement of the Holy Ghost, which you do not have in the old English. He it certifies that God has sworn that you never shall enter this soul rest by works, but by faith alone. H furthermore certifies that if you had begun your good works on Creation’s morn and labored on incessantly all these six thousand years, even then you could not enter this perfect rest by works This is a most important passage, which does not appear in King James’ Version. It sweeps forever from the field the last conceivable apology for seeking sanctification by works. In justification you enter into rest, but enemies, i .e ., evil tempers, passions and appetites survive in your heart, ever and anon rising up and disturbing your rest, so the soul can not abide in perfect peace. These enemies are the works of Satan which none but Jesus can destroy. 1 John 3:8. You may spend your whole life in assiduous toil to exterminate the evil of your nature, and you will never succeed. Remember the climacteric affirmation of the Holy Ghost in this verse, confirmed by the oath of God that, if your works for the sanctification of your heart had begun with creation, and you had lived upon the earth laboring assiduously ever since, your sanctification would be no nearer than when you began. I do not wonder that the Holy Spirit gave us this sweeping and unanswerable affirmation, because He foresaw that the mammoth heresy of all ages would be sanctification by works.

This world has two kinds of religion in it. God’s religion offers you salvation by the grace of God through faith, and no other way. Man’s religion, manipulated by priestcraft, couples on indefinite human works, thus vitiating the grace of God, grieving the Holy Spirit, running into idolatry, robbing Christ of His glory and plunging into hell. 4. This verse illustrates soul rest by the rest of God from the work of creation on the seventh day. Of course, God’s Sabbath means perfect rest.

Sabbath is a Hebrew word which means rest. Before you get sanctified wholly you are much encumbered with toil, physical, mental and spiritual, to bring about the great desideratum, for which the soul is sighing and the heart crying, i .e ., perfect rest. Never does it come till you abandon all your enterprises, smash all your air castles, and commit the work unreservedly and eternally to God, who, in the twinkling of an eye, expels out of your heart all disturbing elements, and fills you with perfect rest. 5. Here we again have God’s oath confirming forever the utter impossibility for us to receive this perfect rest by our own good works, or the intercessions of a thousand clergymen. 6, 7. The Holy Ghost is this moment calling you into His perfect rest, and in these Scriptures importunately pleading and solemnly warning you, lest you reject His call, harden your heart go zigzagging through the howling wilderness of inbred sin and bleach your bones beneath a tropical sky; like old Israel because they turned back from Kadesh-Barnea, despite the positive promises of Jehovah to conquer their enemies and give them the land, and the terrible warnings of castigatory judgments in case of apostasy. 8. “If Joshua had given them rest he would not have spoken concerning another day after these things.” The glorious temporal rest of Canaan into which Joshua led them was not the ultimatum of their hopes and anticipations, but a glorious reminder an adumbration of the heavenly rest to which they aspired. 9. “Therefore a rest is reserved for the people of God.” In all the preceding passages the Greek word for rest is katapausis . In this verse it is sabbatismos , which means sabbatism, or the sabbath, which the soul enjoys in its unutterable and perfect repose in Jesus. Under the law of Moses the Sabbath breaker was punished with death, which is strikingly significant of the iron rule, characteristic of the divine administration in the sanctified experience. Just as every Sabbath breaker was punished with death, so God requires us to inflict death upon every intruder into the soul’s perfect repose. Nothing but sin can ever disturb this perfect rest.

God’s method with sin is destruction. Hence He requires the utter extermination of every evil temper and inclination in order that we enter this glorious spiritual Sabbatism. Having entered we are to put on the whole panoply and stand guard, night and day, with glittering sword lifted high, ready on a moment’s warning, which is always faithfully given by the Holy Ghost, to execute summary destruction to every sin, daring to invade this heavenly Sabbatism. Of course this holy Sabbatic soul rest is the heavenly state in prelibation. All of our enemies have been taken out by the great Omnipotent Deliverer. Our Sabbatism is perfect, heavenly and unutterably sweet. So deep, broad, high, delectable and elysian is this rest that it beggars all description.

Amid political and ecclesiastical paroxysms, revolutions, ostracisms and persecutions, it is absolutely imperturbable. Neither poverty, disappointment, denunciation, excommunication, scandal, physical suffering, death nor judgment can disturb this blessed Sabbath of the soul.

It will not only abide in this perfect rest, but shout glory amid the awful thunders of the judgment day, the tremendous earthquakes of the resurrection morn, the appalling realities of burning worlds and the precipitate sweep of eternal ages. 10. This verse certifies that the soul rest of the believer is complete as the rest which God enjoyed on the Sabbath following the creation. Of course, everything appertaining to God is perfect. Hence it follows as a legitimate sequence that the soul, in full and complete abandonment of every burden to Jesus, enters into perfect and imperturbable repose. It is pertinent to remember that this is the rest of faith. Therefore the rest can not be perfect unless the faith is perfect. What is perfect faith? It is simply faith utterly free from doubt. The same perfect faith which is the indispensable precursor of this perfect rest must be forever perpetuated in order to the maintenance of the perfect rest. 11. “Therefore let us labor to enter into that rest, lest any one may fall by the same example of unbelief.” Thus the writer holds up before the eyes of the Palestinian Christians the sad example of their ancestors who, through unbelief, turned back at Kadesh-Barnea, lost their inheritance, and found graves in the burning sands, assuring them, as well as the Christians of all ages, that the only available panacea for unbelief, apostasy and death is this perfect rest, which he constantly holds up as the glorious privilege of the Christian. The metaphor in this verse is transcendently forcible. The conception of the writer is that we have become so habituated to, and even enamored of, this toilsome, laborious religion, in which we sweat, sigh and cry, night and day, enduring penances to expiate our guilt, and expurgate our impurity, sanctify ourselves and get ready for heaven, that it becomes the hardest task that we ever did in all our lives just to let go, fold our arms, tilt back, give Jesus the job, leave it forever in His hands, believe without a doubt that He doeth it, and raise the shout of victory. When the rustic, riding along the road, going to mill with a sack with corn in one end and a big rock in the other, was persuaded by the cottager to drop out the rock, lie went on his way rejoicing over the lightness of his load. But on his return, seeing that old smooth rock, which lie had carried twenty years, lying by the roadside, he was moved with compassion for the companion of his toils. Consequently, dismounting, he put his meal in one end of the sack and the old rock in the other, strained it up on his horse again, mounting, went on his way. How extremely difficult to prevail on people to abandon all their burdens to the Good Samaritan! While multiplied thousands, having cast woes, sorrows, troubles and trials on Him, anon take them out of His hands, again piling them on their own shoulders. 12. “The word of God is living and powerful, even sharper than any twoedged sword.”... How pertinently this declaration follows the importunate appeal of the Holy Ghost for our complete and eternal abandonment of all labor and burden to God! The Omnipotent Savior wields this wonderful two-edged sword which is none other than the inspired Word of the Infallible God. Long and hard has been the battle between your poor soul and Adam the first. Terribly have you suffered in this devastating war.

Fast are you wearing out, while the trend of conflict is decisively against you. What a glorious privilege to turn over your incorrigible enemy to another. Adam the Second in His heroic majesty is smiling on you, anxious to take the fight off your hands. The moment you turn over to Him the old man of inbred sin, He draws His glittering sword and hews him all to pieces, like Samuel hewed Agag before the Lord. Oh reader, beware of this wonderful two-edged sword, which is none other than the blessed Bible!

But do not forget it has two edges, both sharp a lightning. If you receive the salvation edge, it will cut out all your sins. If you reject the salvation edge, you are bound to receive the damnation edge which will cut out all your hopes of heaven. We live in perilous times when men will not endure sound doctrine. It is almost a rare thing now to find a popular church whose members will receive the truth as it is in Jesus. As a rule, if a man preaches the Bible as it is, fearless of men and devils, he will either soon see a general stampede of the members or himself closed out. This, of itself, is a striking, universal and most obvious fulfillment of the latter day prophecies. In this verse the Holy Ghost clearly discriminates between the soul, or mind, and spirit. This is one of the innumerable Scriptures confirmatory of Biblical trichotomy. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, and not a dichotomy, as the great majority of preachers teach. The result of substituting dichotomy for trichotomy in the popular pulpits, is to feed the people on mentalities, instead of spiritualities and actually derail the church from the orthodox gospel track into intellectualism. and materialism. Total depravity, which is fundamental in revelation, does not appertain to mind and matter, but only to spirit. In the fall Adam did not forfeit physical life nor mental perspicacity, but only spiritual life. Hence the feasibility of propagating religion and building up churches indefinitely on material and intellectual lines, with no spirituality in them and, of course, no salvation, is nothing but wholesale delusion — Satan’s greased planks on which to slide people into hell. 13. It is the province of this wonderful sword, the living Word, when honestly received amid the illuminations of the Holy Ghost, to literally dissect the entire spiritual organism, interpenetrating the remotest fibers and fasciculi of the deepest recesses and darkest jungles throughout the fallen spiritual organism, unearthing all the hidden things of darkness and revealing to the illuminated spiritual eye everything in his heart disconformatory to the divine image and will, and simultaneously unveiling the wondrous fountain of radical and complete expurgation. Reader, if you ever expect to live in heaven, begin now to bare your bosom to the glittering sword of God’s infallible Word. Satan will compass you with myriad temptations to evade it. If you do, mark it down, you will land in hell. You will hear people on all sides actually “handling the Word of God deceitfully,” blindly manipulated by Satan for the damnation of all who hear them. Remember, your creed will not be mentioned when you stand before the great white throne. You will be judged by the Bible alone. Look out, for your soul is certainly in imminent peril. So it is the current policy of the popular churches to close out, and even ecclesiastically decapitate, the man who refuses to soften God’s hard truth, and to smooth God’s rough truth, and thus “handle the Word of the Lord deceitfully,” but, true to the Holy Ghost, lifts up the two-edged sword, scores deep and hews to the line, regardless of consequences. If you are too cowardly to preach the Word as it is, regardless of creeds, councils, ostracism and decapitation, God will excuse you, but another more worthy will take your crown. Earth and hell are now combined to handicap the preachers. These are perilous times, which try men’s souls. Few have the courage to stem the popular tide, brook official carnality, and ignore the castigations of the hierarchy.

Under these terrible gatling guns of earth and hell, preachers are going down in solid platoons. Yet God is not going to want for voices to cry aloud and spare not. If the cultured clergy will not be true, God will excuse them and fill their places ten to one with the rustic laity, uncouth, from the slums and jungles, washed in the blood, and baptized with fire, filled with the perfect love, which makes them like Gideon’s braves, competent to put to flight one thousand to one. The world must have the Gospel, and will have it speedily. The Lord is nigh, and the King’s business requireth haste. The Holy Ghost wants none to bear His message who will not cry aloud and spare not, giving to saint an sinner his portion. As Paul and Wesley both said, it is only by declaring to the people all the counsel of God that we can be clear of the blood of all men.

ARGUMENT THE TWO MEDIATORSHIPS:

THAT OF MOSES AND THAT OF CHRIST.

This argument is not only well authenticated in <580301> 3:1-6 and 4:14 to 5:10, but especially is it involved in the general consensus of the entire epistle. The old dispensation under the mediatorship of Moses was on the plane of justification, whose normal attitude is that of spiritual infancy or ecclesiastical minority, while the new dispensation is on the plane of entire sanctification, its normal attitude Christian perfection, its crowning glory the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and its legitimate status ecclesiastical adultage. During the period of her minority, the Church peregrinated but slightly beyond the limits of an isolated nation. On the arrival of her majority, she received the commission, “Go disciple all nations, teaching them to observe all things which I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway.” When Satan succeeded in derailing the Apostolic Church from the glorious doctrine and experience of entire sanctification, he dragged her down from the Delectable Mountains of full salvation, where she walked with Jesus in cloudless sunshine above mosquitoes and malaria, into the low grounds and malarious swamps of carnality and worldliness.

Consequently, with an exception here and there, clergy and membership about the time of the Constantinian apostasy dropped back into the Mosaic dispensation. We must remember that Moses himself, with other patriarchs and prophets, lived and died in advance of his dispensation, having been gloriously sanctified at the burning bush, after a curriculum of forty years in God’s theological seminary — the crags and precipices of Mt. Sinai. While the patriarchs and prophets of the former dispensation, with their supernatural faith, inspired by the Holy Ghost, looked through type and prophecy, received and appropriated the perfect work of Christ, thus triumphing in the glorious experience of entire sanctification, the body of the Church only entered it as nowadays in the article of death, thus forfeiting the victory, blessedness, glory and triumph — a heaven in which to go to heaven. If the Christian Church had not retrogressed into the Mosaic dispensation, the Gospel would have flooded the earth like a shoreless ocean long centuries ago, and Jesus have come down on the throne of His glory, belting the globe with the splendors and triumphs of the millennial reign. This explains the almost universal antagonism of the popular clergy to the glorious experience of Christian perfection. They stand in the attitude of Moses, and want the people to follow them, as they followed Moses. In the dispensation of Christ we no longer follow Moses, but Jesus only. That is the reason why the Roman Catholics in all ages have done their utmost to keep the Bible out of the hands of the people. They are afraid they will become unmanageable. During the moonlit dispensation of type and symbolism the people needed mortal men like Moses to guide them through the darkness, but since the glorious Sun of Righteousness has risen on the world with healing on His wings we no longer need Moses and Aaron, but Jesus only. The truly sanctified man desires no following. His only effort is to get the people to follow Jesus.

In the Mosaic dispensation, Israel had twelve tribes. The Apostolic Church was a unit, and would ever so have remained if human rule had not superseded the Holy Ghost, dragging the Church down from the heights of spirituality and unanimity into the fogs of schism and ecclesiasticism. The unsanctified preacher at the present day is two thousand years behind the age, blundering along in the moonlight of the old dispensation. 14. While Moses was typical of Christ in his mediatorship, Aaron typified Him in his priestly office. So Moses and Aaron, in their respective capacities as leaders of Israel, are both forever superseded by Christ, who not only verified the typical characters of all His predecessors, completely expiating the sins of the whole world by the sacrifice of Himself, but has carried our glorified humanity into the very presence of God, where, fully and eternally accepted as our substitute, He ever liveth to intercede for the lost millions of earth. “Let us hold fast our confession.” This word “confession” is from homos , like, and logos , speech. Hence it means that we are to speak like God henceforth and forever. The speech is the exponent of the heart, and necessarily hypocritical if the heart is not like God. 15. Here the Holy Ghost certifies for our comfort that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, but without sin. Satan with his utmost capacity tempted Jesus physically to satisfy His hunger; intellectually, to possess the whole world, and spiritually, to vitiate his faith by presumption in the leap from the pinnacle of the temple. So the devil will do his utmost to throw the lasso of his temptations around our physical appetites, and make us brutish; or our intellectual faculties, and make us worldly; or our spiritual experiences, and make us devilish. In all these assaults we have nothing to do but answer Satan in the language of Jesus when under the same temptation, and the victory comes. 16. Here we are importuned by the Holy Spirit to come boldly to a throne of grace, assuring us that we shall receive all needed help in every possible emergency. (CHAPTER) - 1-3. Here we see the vivid picture of the Aaronic priest in his sacerdotal office’ ministering in the temple, offering sacrifices for the sins of the people. Meanwhile, it is absolutely necessary that he first offer sacrifices for himself, since he is encompassed with infirmity as well as the people.

How decisive the contrast between Aaron, encompassed with infirmity, and Jesus, perfectly free from the slightest contamination of the violated law, and eternally triumphant over the world, the flesh and the devil. He is our Paragon. Inspired Paul says, “Having been made free from sin we have our fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life.” ( Romans 6:22.)

Our great High Priest stands ready to wash us with His blood, and impart to us His own purity. An unsanctified preacher comes into an unsanctified church to hold a protracted meeting in order to get sinners converted. As I have observed on sundry occasions, they have to preach, pray and sing about ten days to get their own souls revived before they can do anything to rescue the perishing. The Aaronic preacher away back in the Mosaic dispensation has to pray and toil and work till he gets his own soul revived before he can help anybody else. I know this by sad experience, for I preached fifteen years unsanctified. Oh, what a contrast with sanctified people! They open the campaign with shouts of victory ringing from their lips. They do not need a protracted meeting to revive themselves, for they are already revived. Hence, in their first service they open their batteries on the devil’s works, and the salvation of the Lord is the normal order of every service. 4. This verse settles forever the divine call to the ministry. Without the call of God the most superb education is an essential failure. 5, 6. God’s call to the ministry is abundantly corroborated by the example of Christ Himself, whom God called and “made a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec.” 7. This verse describes the memorable agony of Christ in Gethsemane. The clause, “in that He feared,” in the English should read, “because of His piety.” Of course He had no fear, as He was always free from sin. Many have been astonished over the terrible agony of Jesus in Gethsemane, especially contrastive with the heroic fortitude of the martyrs, who went joyfully and exultantly to the burning stake. The case is in no way parallel.

The martyrs were free as angels, Jesus having carried all their burdens. No human being has ever been competent to sympathize with the Son of God in Gethsemane, because He there carried on His spotless soul the sins of a guilty world. His agony was homogeneous to torment. There His human will passed the terrible ordeal of consecration for Calvary, acquiescing submissively to His Father’s will, i .e ., that He should redeem the doomed world by His vicarious sufferings and substitutionary death. We see Him come to the cross without a sigh or a groan, submissively and acquiescently bleed and die. Gethsemane solves the problem. There the battle was fought with the powers of darkness and the victory won.

Whereas He was made perfect in His Messianic office and character by crucifixion, i .e ., sanctified, to the redemptive scheme, He was fully consecrated in Gethsemane. He is our Paragon. When we perfectly submit to God in the Gethsemane of entire consecration, sanctification becomes easy and almost natural as breathing. The great trouble with seekers of sanctification is in consecration. They recoil from the terrible ordeals of Gethsemane. A preacher is convicted and proceeds to seek holiness. He soon enters the Gethsemane of consecration. The Holy Spirit holds up before his illuminated gaze ecclesiastical ostracism, humiliation, financial embarrassment, ejectment and decapitation. Then the bloody sweat breaks out and the bitter cup is presented to his lips. His courage fails, collapse follows and all is lost. Or, fortunately for him, grace prevails, and he says, “O God, give me the front of the battle and the thickest of the fight; let me die in the war and be buried on the battlefield; anything and everything for Jesus’ sake.” Then God turns on him a river from the heavenly ocean. He sinks, dies and floats, forever oblivious to his former troubles. Old friends have all skedaddled away, but God has given him more new ones than he knows what to do with, and they ‘re a thousand times better than his old ones. 8. What a wonderful condescension for the Son of God to suffer the terrible agonies of Gethsemane and the tortures of Calvary! This was not only indispensable to the redemption of a lost world, but preeminently pertinent for our exemplification. We must all, like Jesus, learn obedience from suffering. 9. “Being made perfect He became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.” The Greek word is the same for faith and obedience, and for unbelief and disobedience. This is positively confirmatory of the lexical synonymy of faith and obedience, and unbelief and disobedience, because true faith is always obedient and unbelief disobedient. Faith is the cause and obedience the effect. Unbelief is the cause and disobedience the effect. Hence you see the nonsense of imputing salvation to obedience, which is simply the normal fruit of justifying and sanctifying faith. You also see the pertinency of the Scriptural imputation of damnation to unbelief. This verse certifies that Jesus was made perfect by His crucifixion. Hence it follows as a legitimate sequence that He did not claim perfection in His Messianic office and character till He suffered crucifixion on the cross. This was His sanctification, the Gethsemane being His consecration. Therefore it follows as a logical sequence that we are all imperfect Christians till Adam the first is crucified. Jesus is our great Exemplar. We must follow Him to the manger and be born in utter obscurity, then to the cross and be crucified with Him ( Romans 6:6), if we would ascend and live with Him in glory. Before Christ was crucified justification was the normal status of earthly saintship. Since He has been crucified and thus made perfect, Christian perfection, or entire sanctification, has become the normal status of Christian discipleship.

What a deplorable pity to see the Christian world this day plodding along in the dispensation of Moses three thousand years behind the age, the preachers sitting in Moses’ seat jealous lest the rod of their clerical authority be broken by the sanctification of their members! 10. In chapter seven we give a full exegesis of Melchisedec.

ARGUMENT SPIRITUAL INFANCY AND ADULTAGE. 11. It is difficult so to expound Christian perfection to the unsanctified as to enable them intelligently to apprehend it. Here the Holy Ghost certifies that these Palestinian Christians were “dull of hearing.” The Greek means spiritual stupidity and indifference, soul paralysis setting down on them. 12. This verse certifies that they were not simply babies, but old babies. It is believed that this letter was short time he fore the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which took place forty years after the crucifixion of our Savior. Hence these Palestinian Christians had been converted ten to thirty years. Of course, some of them had been sanctified, but the multitude to whom He now appeals had not received this indispensable grace. This undue and unnatural prolongation of spiritual babyhood had culminated in miserable dwarfage. Babyhood is all right in its time, but if perpetuated it runs into dwarfhood and soon spiritual death supervenes. The Holy Ghost says they had need of milk instead of solid food, because old as they were they had never yet cut their teeth. This is the great trouble with the churches at the present day. They ‘re filled up with toothless babies and dwarfs, incompetent to mastcate the beefsteak, loaf-bread, apples, pears, peaches, pomegranates and melons of full salvation. If the preacher don’t reach out the suckling-bottle he will soon find himself bewildered and dumbfounded amid the crying babies and muttering, whining dwarfs. Now remember that every unsanctified soul is a babe or dwarf. You know babies have to be humored, petted, caressed and candied to keep them quiet. No wonder we have a squally time in the churches when so many pastors, presiding elders, doctors of divinity and official boards, as well as the rank and file of the membership, are babies and dwarfs. No wonder there is no harmony among them. They can’t even agree in their opposition to holiness, but they divide up into all sorts of silly heresies, creeds and dogmas, scarcely any two agreeing. Not so with spiritual men and women. In our holiness meetings all creeds, nationalities, sectarianisms, and sectionalisms are completely lost sight of. 13. “For every one that taketh milk is unskillful, in the word of righteousness, because he is a babe.” No wonder our Savior positively forbade His own disciples to go and preach the Gospel till they received the sanctifying baptism of Pentecostal fire. They were still in spiritual babyhood. Hence their dissensions, ambition, cowardice, and doubt. All this was consumed by the Pentecostal fire, and never afterwards seen.

Jesus knew that they were “unskillful in the word of righteousness” so long as they remained in babyhood, and consequently incompetent to expound the Scriptures. So long as the Church retained the sanctified experience pursuant to the commandment of her Lord, she was without a faction or schism. The six thousand schisms now lacerating the visible Church are all the fruits of her apostasy into spiritual babyhood and dwarfhood. An army of babies will never conquer the world. The holiness people this day have more missionaries in the heathen field, penniless and unsalaried, than all the rich sectarian churches with their millions of money. Bishop Taylor has twelve hundred, Hudson Taylor eight hundred.

A. B. Simpson four hundred, and General Booth several thousand. The problem is forever settled. The sanctified people have to fulfill the commission, carry the Gospel to all nations, evangelize the world, and bring on the millennium. 14. “Solid food belongs to the perfect, who have their senses thoroughly disciplined by exercise unto the discernment both of the good and the evil.” You see from this Scripture that the great and glorious doctrines of Christian perfection are denominated solid food, in contradistinction to the rudimentary truths of the Gospel appertaining to the conviction of sinners and the regeneration of penitents, which are here denominated “milk.” Precisely as the human body has five physical senses — i .e ., sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch — even so the human spirit has these same five senses. Though a dead man has eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and nerves, he neither sees hears, smells, tastes, nor touches. Even so the dead human spirit is incapable of sensation till quickened into life by the Holy Spirit.

These spiritual senses receive vitality in regeneration, but complete recuperation from torpitude, paralysis and all sorts of spiritual ailments, disabilities and incapacities in entire sanctification. The blessed grace of full salvation matriculates you into the school of Christ, i .e ., God’s gymnasium, where all your spiritual senses receive not only complete restitution, but grand, glorious and wonderful development, qualifying them for the most adroit and acute detection of every evil approach, thus effectually and triumphantly fortifying us against all the temptation superinduced b the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Greek word here means gymnasium. John Wesley had but three institutions, i .e ., the classmeeting, for the conversion of penitents; the holiness band, for the sanctification of Christians; and the select societies for the, culture of the sanctified, He understood the Lord’s gymnasium. Oh, that his Gospel sons could only inherit his sanctifigumption! Babies are so deficient in sensical discrimination as to need constant attention to keep them from eating dirt and all sorts of filth. We see the churches full of poor spiritual babies, eating and drinking Satan’s poison so indiscriminately as to blot out the distinction between them and the devil’s people. Even preachers, in the stupidity of spiritual babyhood, use filthy, poisonous and expensive tobacco, ruining the youth by their example. We see church members decked with jewelry and arrayed in all the phantasmagoria of the world’s foolish and costly styles, fashions, jewelry, and all sorts of needless and injurious ornamentation, like babies fond of showy toys. There is but one possible remedy for this lamentable heathen disgrace and shame, which hangs like a nightmare of paralysis of the Church. It is Satan’s vampire sucking out her heart’s blood. The remedy is plain simple, unmistakable, and positively revealed in this Scripture. It is none other than Christian perfection. (CHAPTER) - It is to be regretted that they inserted this chapter division in the middle of this great and absorbing argument of the Apostle on the infancy and manhood of the Church. The reader must remember that the inspired writers never divided the Bible into chapters and verses. It is the work of modern times, and unfortunately performed by people who knew very little about the Bible. So you must learn to read your Bible without the slightest reference to chapter or verse. 1. “Therefore having left the word of the beginning of Christ, let us be carried unto perfection.” The Greek word pheroo , translated “go on” in this verse, has no such meaning in the dictionary. It is a great pity that King James’ translators ever rendered it “go on.” In the first place, because it does not mean “go on,” and they had no right so to render it. In the second place, because it has helped the devil to slow down the Church to a miserable standstill and freeze preachers and people into icebergs. You must remember that King James’ version was made by forty-seven Episcopalians in 1611. At that time the Church was wrapped in the fogs of Romanism and superstition, just emerging out of the dark ages. In as much brighter day, John Wesley preached ten years before his soul was converted. While none of the translators had the experience of sanctification, it is very doubtful if half of them were clear in their justification. The Bible is an experimental book. Scholarship alone qualifies no man to translate nor preach it, since we only see clearly what we experience in our hearts. These translators were experimentally ignorant of sanctification. Consequently, they lamentably emasculated that doctrine in their translation. Notwithstanding all this, entire sanctification is by far the strongest and most prominent doctrine in the English Bible. Yet it is one hundred per cent. stronger in the inspired original which the Holy Ghost revealed and which I have used extensively the last twenty-five years, and from which I give you all of these expositions. Unconverted preachers take all conversion out of the Bible. Unsanctified preachers take sanctification out of it. Men in all ages have labored to bring the Bible down to their experiences, instead of seeking the grace of God to lift their experiences up to the Bible. So these translators, like the unsanctified clergy at the present day, believed in reaching it at the end of life, after long and gradual approach. They were “going on.” So they exhorted all of us to “go on,” though the Bible flatly contradicts it. The word pheroometha here used by the Holy Ghost has no meaning but to carry or to bear. It is in the present tense and imperative mood, and reads, “Let us be carried to perfection,” i .e ., the Omnipotent Savior is standing by our side ready and anxious for the job of our perfection. We have nothing to do but give up our own ways and fall into His arms, and let Him carry us into the glorious experience of Christian perfection. “In the twinkling of an eye Jesus’ blood can Sanctify.” From the time of your conversion the Omnipotent Jesus has been standing by you, longing for the delicious privilege of your perfection. Led astray by false guides, telling you that you have to “go on,” till you die, you have grieved the Holy Spirit all these years. Therefore I pray you wait not a moment, but glorify your Omnipotent Sanctifier this moment standing by you and saying, “Let us now be carried to perfection.” It is a lamentable fact that men have been preaching perfection by growth ever since the Constantinian apostasy fifteen hundred years ago. You know the Epistle to Hebrews is all on Christian perfection, and the word “growth” does not occur in it. Away with your nonsensical twaddle. The Bible is its own expositor. How is this perfection wrought? “And the God of peace, who raised up from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ the great Shepherd of the sheep, make you perfect through the blood of the everlasting covenant.” ( Hebrews 13:20,21) This is the key which unlocks the mystery and settles the question forever. So you see our author explains himself. This is a perfection wrought by the cleansing blood of Jesus, and not by growth nor good works, as Satan would have you believe, so you may forfeit the blessing and land in hell. The devil’s climateric hobby in all ages and with all souls has been procrastination. The Bible is a now book. It offers present salvation to all penitent sinners and present perfection to all consecrated Christians. Postponement and gradualism are the devil’s greased planks on which to slide people down to hell. There are only two spiritual attitudes mentioned by the Holy Ghost in this grand argument, and these are infancy and perfection. Hence we have a beautiful and glorious antithesis, homogenous and co-extensive. While the Spirit constantly uses natural analogies in the elucidation of His glorious. truth, pursuant to a familiar rule in rhetoric we must not press a metaphor too far. Is there not a gradualism in the natural birth? Whereas in the English Testament “begotten” and “born” both occur, corresponding with the kingdom of nature, in the inspired Greek we only have the one word gennaoo , translated “begotten” in some passages and “born” in others. This settles the fact that in the language of the Holy Ghost “begotten” and “born” are precisely synonymous. Hence the very moment the Holy Ghost begets a soul, that soul is born of God. You must not judge God like a man. The gradualism in the plan of salvation is all on the human side. When God works, a sentence is as good as a century. The effect of the gradualistic theologies preached from the pulpits is to take God out of the Church and run the people into infidelity. When you eliminate the instantaneous interventions, you eliminate God and leave the people nothing but a pitiful humanism which you falsely call “Gospel.” When you fail to preach to sinners the instantaneous salvation by the Holy Ghost and to Christians instantaneous and entire sanctification wrought by the Holy Ghost through the cleansing blood of Jesus, you had better evacuate the pulpit and go to hoeing potatoes. “Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works.”... This clause reveals the indisputable fact that the second work of grace is God’s key to hold the first. So if you do not let Jesus carry you into perfection, you will grieve the Holy Ghost, backslide and fall again into the snare of the devil, so you will have all your first works to do again, i .e ., get reclaimed, or make your bed in a backslider’s hell. 3-8. This sentence, containing five verses, has served as an alarm bell to the backsliders of all ages. We here have conspicuously set forth the mournful alternative of Christian perfection, i .e ., apostasy and damnation. Not only does the Holy Ghost positively so reveal, but He confirms it by a plain and forcible illustration deduced from the material world, just as the perfected Christian is symbolized by the fertile, well-watered field, adorned with perennial flowers and burdened with all the luxuriant fruits of human industry, while the burning waste of the tropical desert equally vividly symbolizes the appalling doom of the poor backslider, collapsed into hopeless condemnation, through his unfortunate neglect of perfection, having finally grieved away the Holy Sanctifier and made his bed in a burning hell. 9. The fire-baptized author of this wonderful epistle, so transcendently climateric on Christian perfection, winds up this smashing argument, deduced from infancy and adultage in the spiritual kingdom, by bringing in a beautiful suaviter in modo , softly and sweetly cadencing his alarming fortiter in re . “But, beloved, we are persuaded concerning you, better things even appertaining to salvation, if indeed we do thus speak.” 10. The encouraging phenomena among the Palestinian Christians are mentioned in this verse, especially their generous philanthropy and hospitality to the saints. You remember ( Acts 2:) how they even sold their possessions to support the converts of Pentecost from foreign lands and perpetuate that wonderful revival. This was doubtless somewhat facilitated by the confiscation which followed their profession of Christianity. The forfeiture of this beautiful and amiable grace of hospitality out of the Church at the present day, is among the saddest omens of the fatal apostasy into which she is everywhere plunging by the rejection of holiness. 11, 12. “But we desire each one of you to manifest the same zeal unto the full assurance of hope unto perfection, in order that you may not be stupid, but imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and longsuffering.” These verses explain themselves, i .e ., that every one of us ought to press directly on after conversion, seeking perfection with the same diligence with which we sought justification, till we find it. The Methodist General Conference of 1832 substantially reiterated this wonderful Scripture in their encyclical to the entire membership, importunately pleading with them and admonishing them not to stop with justification, but press right on to sanctification, with the same zeal, energy and perseverance with which they had sought pardon. Oh, that the conferences of the present day would emulate the heroic orthodoxy of their predecessors. 13. God in His condescending mercy has certainly exhausted Omnipotence to disencumber us of doubt; since we ‘re bound to be saved by faith, if saved at all, to interfere with our free agency would dehumanize us.

Therefore, God has not only given us His Word confirmatory of the momentous problem of holiness, but has swept all possible cavil from the field by the annexation of His oath. “The oath which He sware to our father Abraham, to grant unto us being delivered out of the hand of our enemies to serve Him in holiness and righteousness in His presence all our days.” ( Luke 1:73,75) The enemies spoken of in this Scripture are the spiritual foes, i .e ., evil tempers, passions, appetites, and all the members of Adam the first, which constitute the body of inbred sin, and survive in the heart of the regenerate, till destroyed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Romans 6:6. You see from this Scripture that the man who does not believe in the glorious possibility of entire sanctification in this life, not only accuses God of falsification but actually arraigns Him for perjury. God have mercy on him! He would certainly better never have been born. 14. This is God’s wonderful promise of blessings, paradoxically multiplied on the sanctified. The dogma of the popular pulpits that sanctification is the ultimatum of all progress is radically heretical. Instead of constituting the ultimatum. it is really the substratum of a grand and glorious Christian experience, destined to brighten, broaden. deepen and tower through this life, take new impetus when this mortal puts on immortality, accumulating fresh luster through the flight of eternal ages. Therefore, entire sanctification introduces you into a land of showers, sunshine, flowers never fading and fruits never failing, where you will grow in grace infinitely more rapidly than ever before. 15-18. The two immutable things here spoken of are, God’s Word and His oath. Well does the author say that it is impossible for God to lie. The slightest falsification would be irreconcilably incompatible with the Divine attributes. Now, in addition to His infallible Word, He has added the solemnities of His oath, culminating in the a fortiori argument, logically unanswerable. 19, 20. These two verses present a most beautiful and instructive metaphor, in which the ocean is the world; the ship, the human soul floating in it. While the ocean is racked with storms, plowed with tempests, swept by hurricanes and lashed with cyclones, a thousand perils threatening the ship. Fortunately, she has cast out her great iron anchor, whose herculean flukes have caught fast hold of the eternal strata of the massive mountain. Despite the rage of the storm, the anchor not only holds secure but draws the ship safe into her moorings. In a similar manner the soul of the Christian, floating in this wicked and perilous world, beleaguered on all sides with diabolical foes, has cast the anchor of Hope through the vail of mortality out on the heavenly shore, where it has caught fast hold of Jesus, the impregnable Rock of Ages, who will never let go the anchor, but certainly draw the soul through the vail and laud it safe amid shouts of saints and angels in the glory land. (CHAPTER) - ARGUMENT THE TWO HIGH PRIESTHOODS:

THAT OF AARON AND THAT OF CHRIST. 1-3. Melchisedec was a Shemitish priest and prophet, belonging to the Patriarchal dispensation which preceded the Mosaic. He lived and officiated at Salem, which is the old name of Jerusalem. Salem means peace and Jerus means possession. Hence when David took the citadel of Mount Zion from the Jebusites he called it Jerusalem. Melchisedec met Abraham returning from his expedition after the Oriental kings. Genesis 14. He was his pastor, residing at Jerusalem. Pursuant to the tithe law, doubtless of antediluvian recognition, Abraham paid him one tenth of all the spoils.

The statement that he was without father, mother or genealogy has no reference to his natural manhood, but purely to his sacerdotal character and office. Under the Patriarchal dispensation to which he belonged, the priests were not identified with a certain family, as the Levitical priests all belonged to the Aaronic, but were indiscriminately called of God from the popular masses, as under the Gospel dispensation. Here Melchisedec is contrasted with the Aaronic priesthood, all of whom must of necessity have a priestly father, mother and posterity. In process of time the Aaronic priests became so numerous as to overcrowd the official demand.

Therefore, during the reign of David they were divided into classes, and their services regulated by courses, pursuant to which each priest had his time to enter upon his official service and to go out. In the providence of God, Zacharias was officiating in his priestly office when the angel Gabriel announced the conception of John the Baptist. The priesthood of Christ was inaugurated in heaven, when He took His mediatorial seat at the right hand of God. It was inaugurated on earth when the Pentecostal baptisms ushered forth the new ministry forever superseding the Aaronic priesthood. Therefore Melchisedec is a prominent isolated character selected from the patriarchal dispensation to represent the priesthood of Christ, i .e ., the true Christian of the Gospel dispensation, who is utterly unencumbered by sacerdotal consanguinities ad libitum , called of God to preach the everlasting Gospel. perfectly, freely, without the slightest human restrictions. 4-10. The historic statement in this paragraph logically enforces the superiority of Melchisedec, i .e . of Christ, over the Aaronic priesthood, authenticated by the fact that the latter paid tithes to the former. Is the tithe law obligatory on the Church of God at the present day? The very fact that we are not living under the law, but under grace, renders it impertinent to enforce the tithe law, yet Jesus says He “came not to destroy the law but to fulfill.” Therefore the Gospel Church can never fall below the law dispensation. Consequently, we must give the Lord at least one-tenth, and pursuant to the glorious spiritual liberty of entire sanctification, we ought to just give Him all, and ourselves, too. The present state of legal bondage prevalent in the Church, is deplorable in the extreme; not only Romanism but the Protestant churches have lamentably gone back into the legal bondage of the Mosaic dispensation, so awfully encumbered with human institutions of their own inventions as to put yokes on the necks of their members too heavy to bear, thus working them hard for that which is not bread, and never can satisfy the hungry soul.

Meanwhile they give them no time to serve God, but actually crowd Him out of the heart. It is deplorable on a Sabbath morning to hear the announcements for the ensuing week, taking up all the time on financial, social and ecclesiastical enterprises, instead of devoting the solid week to the Lord’s war for the salvation of perishing souls. Thus the popular churches of all countries, papal and Protestant, are this day groaning under the yoke of legal bondage, plodding along in the Mosaic dispensation three thousand years behind the age. Nothing hut the glorious gospel of entire sanctification can ever emancipate the Church from the hard bondage of the Mosaic law. The holiness movement at the present day is shaking the world with the momentum of an earthquake, everywhere snapping the fetters and smashing the chains of legal bondage which have bound the Gospel Church ever since the Constantinian apostasy, despite all the efforts of popery, prelacy and priestcraft to hold all the members fast in this legal bondage. Egypt is sin-land; the wilderness, law-land; Canaan, grace-land; and heaven, glory-land. Pharaoh, who represents the devil, holds the unconverted in the bondage of sin; the law, which thundered forth from Mt. Sinai in the wilderness, holds all the peregrinators of that land in legal bondage, because it has a quarrel with them. Adam the first, who still survives in their hearts, is a violator of the law, and doomed to die under it. When all antagonism to the divine law has been eradicated out of our hearts, so that we are perfectly free from all inclination to violate the law, then we are just as free from the law as if there were no law. 11, 12. Here the Holy Ghost certifies the impossibility of perfection under the Levitical priesthood. The stream can never rise above its source. With an imperfect exemplar, no one will ever reach perfection, hence the utter impossibility of Christian perfection under the Aaronic priesthood. Many of the patriarchs and prophets, swept out by faith into the Gospel dispensation, received and enjoyed full salvation, but they were in advance of the Levitical priesthood. The normal economy under the former dispensation was to reach perfection in the article of death. Since the great majority of church members at the present day are really in the Mosaic dispensation, they only reach perfection in the article of death. Sinners follow Satan. Unsanctified Christians follow the Lord to an extent, but mainly do they follow preachers and church officials; while wholly sanctified people follow the Lord alone. Preachers blindly covet intolerable labor, burden and responsibility, when they seek popular leadership, since no human being is competent to the emergency. Pastors and people will never he truly happy, prosperous and useful, till they get saved from all human leadership and follow Jesus only. 13, 14. Here the author reminds us that our Lord emanated from the tribe of Judah, to which no priest belonged, and not from the tribe of Levi, with which all the Aaronic priests were identified. The Holy Ghost makes no mistake. He has made the Bible precisely right. If our Lord had sprung from the tribe of Levi, it would have given a slight plausibility to the greatest of all the heresies which have ever paralyzed the church, i .e ., that of priestcraft. Without the slightest authority or plausible pretext the Gospel Church, long ages ago, has gone back into the Mosaic dispensation, despite the positive deliverances of God’s Word to the contrary. Hence, if our Lord had been a Levite, oh, how they would have mixed Him up with the Aaronic priests, and what a bold pretext they would have for the intriguing priesthood which belts the globe this day, boldly usurping the throne of Christ, each audacious to proclaim his heretical, secular ecclesiasticism as the only true church of God on the earth, and clamoring aloud to the people to come, join his sect, receive water baptism at his hands, assuring him that his sins are forgiven and his name written in heaven. Not only do the clergy usurp the throne of Christ in their wicked and audacious pretensions to administer the grace of absolution, but they everywhere boldly transcend their official prerogative and again pertinaciously usurp the throne of Christ in their arrogant interdictions to the people to pass beyond their official administrations and seek the glorious, omnipotent Savior in the full sanctification of their hearts and the Pentecostal enduement of the Holy Ghost. Then they rage worse than ever when the sanctified people, pursuant to their heavenly calling, push out into the highways and hedges, determined to press the Lord’s war to the gate of the enemy, girdling the globe with salvation, filling all lands with the glory of God, and ushering in the millennium. The very fact that our Savior did not spring from the tribe to which all the pastors belonged, is incontrovertible proof of His transcendent superiority and utter independence of all human ecclesiasticism, or pontifical authority and dictation As He is so are His people. Two hundred millions of martyrs have laid down their lives for this glorious freedom. We are now rushing into the perils of the last days, which will try men’s souls as in the martyr ages. We might apologize for creeds during the dark ages when not one man in a thousand could read or write, but certainly the age of creeds is past.

We need them no more, as all can now read the Bible, the only creed of God’s true and free people, and Jesus our only Leader and Exemplar, and the Holy Ghost our Convictor, Regenerator and Sanctifier. 15-17. “Who was not made after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.” This describes the humanity of Christ.

Jesus is perfect God and perfect man. His humanity the only unfallen son of Adam and Eve. As he is free from the fall, he was not made subject to the carnal commandment, but endued with the power of an endless life. We all enter this world in Adam the first, contaminated and encumbered by the fall. Since Adam the first violated the law and fell under its penalty, our only hope is in the transition to Adam the Second. Since the law of God is indefragable, all who are finally involved in its violation must go down in its condemnation, when the whole world shall stand before the great white throne. In that momentous ordeal none will pass with impunity outside of Adam the Second. He is the only human being who has. never violated the divine law. Consequently, He alone will stand with impunity in that great day. The great work of the gracious economy is the successful transference out of Adam the first into Adam the Second. In regeneration, the nature of Adam the Second is born in our hearts, enthroned to abide and rule forever.

In sanctification, Adam the first, having been subjugated in regeneration, is forever eliminated. This Scripture explains the irrepressible conflict of all ages between the Christ nature in our hearts and secular ecclesiasticism, which in all ages have pertinaciously striven to enforce their carnal commandments on the children of God. Here the martyrs have bled The true saints of God are not subject to the Aaronic priesthood, but belong to that of Melchisedec, who is not only free from all earthly restrictions and encumbrances, but even free from all the ties of consanguinity, but equally free from all the restrictions of ecclesiastical legislation. Glory to God for this wonderful and perfect spiritual and evangelistic freedom! Reader, do you enjoy it? Neither father nor mother, son nor daughter, nor ecclesiastical court can ever lay the weight of a feather on your spiritual liberties. It may he your glorious privilege to glorify your great High Priest by suffering even unto martyrdom; all of which, and a thousand times more, is blessed for Jesus’ sake, since this liberty is sweeter than life and stronger than death. 18-25. These eight verses constitute a beautiful paragraph in the inspired Greek, in which this grand argument on the high priesthood of Christ, contrastively with the Aaronic, reaches its climateric culmination. 19. “The law made nothing perfect.” This declaration of the Holy Ghost forever sweeps from the field the popular dogma of perfection by growth, i .e ., by works. All of our good works consist in obedience to the commandments. This vain delusion has been the deceiver of millions in all ages. How natural to conclude that good works will make us perfect! This would take the glory from Christ and confer it on ourselves. He alone is our Perfecter. We may wear our lives out in legal obedience and drop into hell at last. 25. “Therefore truly He is able to save unto the uttermost those who come unto God through Him, ever living to intercede for them.” “Uttermost” is panteles , which is a compound superlative adjective here used adverbially to qualify “save.” This word is from pan , all, and telos , the end or perfection. Hence it means entirely and completely, i.e. , every constituency of our being, unto perfection. This wonderful Greek compound does not occur in the classics. The inspired writer of this wonderful epistle made that word under the leadership of the Holy Ghost.

It most indubitably and forever sweeps away all possible cavil as to the great Scriptural doctrine of Christian perfection. The Holy Ghost ransacked the most beautiful and forcible language in the world, culled out the two strongest words and put them together, in order to reveal this glorious truth of Christian perfection. To doubt it in the least, or lay the slightest restriction on it, is to impeach the veracity of the Holy Ghost.

Our great High Priest has not only fully, perfectly and eternally satisfied the violated law by offering His own body a sacrifice and substitute on the cross, but having ascended up to heaven, the Father has accepted the ransom paid for this guilty world, crowned Him Mediatorial King at His right hand, where He ever liveth to intercede for every penitent soul who crieth unto God. He never sleeps and never evacuates His office. Hence every fleeting moment He is ready to intercede for us. The Father has already and forever accepted the atonement He has made for all this guilty world. Hence, our own blind unbelief is the only conceivable preventive of this uttermost salvation for every soul beneath the skies. The very idea of necessary postponement is utterly out of the question. The man who does not believe in an instantaneous and entire sanctification thereby evinces to the world that he is still groping amid the disabilities of the Aaronic priesthood. 26, 27... “Who hath need daily as the high priest, first to offer up sacrifices for his own sins, and then for those of the people; for he did this once offering up himself.” Here we have a striking contrast between the priesthood of Aaron and that of Christ. The Aaronic priest in all of his administrations first offered up a sacrifice for himself and then made offerings for the sins of the people. You have been a lifelong witness to the same fact in the public ministrations of the popular clergy. A preacher holds a protracted meeting in a revival effort. He has to make his own soul a specialty first of all, to get the revival started in his own heart. If in a week’s preaching and praying he himself gets revived, the revival omen is really auspicious for a good work in his church. It is quite different with the sanctified preacher. He is already emptied of sin and filled with the Holy Spirit, enjoying a constant revival in his own heart. Hence he opens the campaign with a shout of victory in his own soul. The revival fire burning brightly in his own experience, quickly catches the dry fuel of consecration and faith in the members of his audience. Consequently the fire blazes and the revival moves from the opening service, without the arduous labor of two weeks expended to get up a revival. As Jesus our great High Priest made our offering on the cross, and forever sat down at God’s right hand, so His true and faithful followers make the one offering, in which, unreservedly and eternally consecrating all to God, they consign Adam the first, the body of sin surviving in the heart of the regenerate, to the Holy Ghost that He may nail him to the cross to bleed and die. Jesus never claimed to be perfect in His Messianic office and character until He suffered death on the cross. Even so His followers are imperfect in their Christian character and experience till they suffer the crucifixion of Adam the first on the cross. Thus we follow in the footprints of Jesus to the lowly manger where we are born in utter obscurity, then to the rugged cross where we die to the world, the flesh and the devil. As Jesus achieved an everlasting victory at the cross, so do His followers triumph over the world, the flesh and the devil when they suffer spiritual crucifixion on the cross, wrought by the Holy Ghost when, pursuant to our perfect consecration and submissive faith, He nails the body of sin surviving in our hearts to the cross, and with it the native evil in our organism is at once and forever exterminated. When our hearts are thus thoroughly expurgated of all spiritual foes, victory comes to stay, we have a true and genuine revival of religion within, and have it forever. This experience inaugurates us into the High Priesthood of Christ. Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King.

While on earth His prophetical office predominated. He was the most indefatigable preacher the world ever saw. The first great act of His priestly office was the consecration of His own body to bleed and die on the cross. Then and there His priestly office predominated over the prophetical, and will so continue till He rides down onto His millennial throne, after which His kingly office will predominate forever. He is our great, infallible Paragon and only Exemplar. Therefore all who follow Him beyond the cross enter His royal high priesthood on the bloody summit of Calvary. The old man of sin is crucified, washed away and consumed by the Pentecostal fires. This experience gives us an everlasting victory within, sweeping away all the restrictions and disabilities which encumbered the Aaronic priesthood. Melchisedec is our human illustrative example, without father, mother, genealogy or periodic limitation. Thus you see the members of our Savior’s High Priesthood are perfectly free from all human limitations, natural, ecclesiastical and secular. Jesus proposes perfectly to disencumber and gloriously enfranchise the members of His priesthood so that they shall be “free indeed.” The apostasy of the Apostolic Church from the experience of Christian perfection is the greatest calamity of the Apostolic age, as it reverted the Gospel dispensation back into the Aaronic priesthood, again foisting upon the Church the innumerable inconveniences and disabilities of that onerous legal bondage, from which Jesus died to set her free. 28. “For the law maketh men high priests having infirmity, but the word of the oath which is after the law the Son having been made perfect forever.” God’s memorable oath ( Luke 1:73-75), confirmatory of the glorious possibility of entire sanctification, experimentally received and permanently enjoyed, enthrones Jesus the glorified High Priest in the heart to reign forever, expurgating the malady of the fall by His blood, and vitalizing our whole soul and life by His Spirit, filling and flooding us forever. Thus in the sanctified believer, enjoying the full Gospel salvation under the High Priesthood of Christ, He is Lord of all, God blessed for evermore. The great ecclesiasticisms which belt the globe at the present day, unknown and unheard of in the Bible, have lamentably usurped the High Priesthood of Christ, and thus carried the Gospel Church back into the Mosaic dispensation, again encumbering the necks of the people with multitudinous burdens of legal bondage. They fight Christian perfection because it lifts the yoke of legal bondage and enfranchises the people of ecclesiastical thralldom. (CHAPTER) - 1, 2. The first word in this chapter is kephalaion , the head. Hence here it means the pinnacle climacteric fact in this glorious reality is that the meek and lowly Galilean, born in a stable, reared at the bottom of slumdom, condescending low enough to put His philanthropic arm under the vilest of the vile, having compassed the globe with the Briarean arms of His condescending love, by His own death on Calvary having fully, completely and eternally expiated the guilt of a lost world, ascended up to heaven, glorified and triumphant over death, hell and the grave, received cordially by His loving Father, fully and eternally satisfied with the atonement made, in the presence of angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim, has been crowned Mediatorial High Priest, Omnipotent Intercessor of fallen humanity, world without end. Amen! 3-6. Jesus emanated not from the tribe of Levi, to which all the Aaronic priests belonged, but from that of Judah. [How significant the fact that all the Jews have lost their tribehood except Judah. That is the tribe of Jesus, still surviving on the earth, waiting to hail their royal Brother descending from the skies.] Therefore Jesus never belonged to the Levitical priesthood, whose restrictions and disabilities encumbered it with a trend and habitude peculiarly earthly, and strikingly contrastive with the spiritual, heavenly and unearthly priesthood of Jesus. When Moses spent forty days on Mt. Sinai, in communion with Jehovah, preparatory to the building of the portable wilderness tabernacle, God gave him all needed specifications and instructions even unto minutiae appertaining to that wonderful superstructure. Hence a volume of spiritual truth is typically revealed in the different parts and connections constituting the tabernacle.

It was all symbolic of Christian experience, adumbrating the sanctified heart under the Gospel dispensation, which is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The millions of money uselessly expended on church edifices at the present day, every dollar of which belongs to God, and ought to go to heathen lands, are a universal memento of our sad apostasy back into the Mosaic dispensation. We frequently hear them actually apologize for this criminal prodigality of the Lord’s money, by reference to the gorgeous splendors and beauties and costliness of Solomon’s temple. In that argument they confess judgment against themselves. The wilderness tabernacle and Solomon’s temple belong to the typical dispensation of an earthly priesthood. We are living in the spiritual, experimental dispensation of a heavenly priesthood. The gold of the tabernacle and the temple emblematized the holiness of a sanctified heart. So, if you want to be in harmony with the tabernacle and the temple, get sanctified wholly and you are there. The money thus shamefully pilfered from the Lord’s treasury and wasted in church edifices would have evangelized the whole world long ago, and brought on the millennium. This is the result of preachers and churches living in the dispensation of Moses three thousand years behind the age.

ARGUMENT THE TWO COVENANTS Pursuant to the great double experimental salvation of the gracious economy, everything in the Bible is double. Suntheekee means a covenant of man with man. Diatheekee means a covenant of God with man. This latter word is injudiciously translated testament . Instead of calling God’s book the Old and New Testament, we should say the Old and New Covenant, as that is the correct meaning of both the Hebrew and the Greek. The Mosaic is the old covenant, and being the most conspicuous transaction of the former dispensation, it gave name to God’s book. Hence we call it the Old Testament or, as we should say, the Old Covenant. The covenant of redemption made by the divinity and humanity of Christ is the great transaction of the New Testament. Hence it gives name to that wonderful book which should be called the New Covenant. These two covenants are unanswerable confirmations of the two works of grace wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, in the consummation of experimental salvation. Since the new covenant is the plan of salvation, of course it was inaugurated in heaven, about the time of the fall, when the Son of God espoused the lost cause. Abel and all of the antediluvian saints, as well as the postdiluvian patriarchs, were saved under the new covenant.

It is called new in contradistinction to the covenant of probation which collapsed in Eden on Satan’s invasion. The adjective “new” has a further and deeper signification in the purely and transcendently gracious character of that covenant. “Old” conveys the idea of decay, dilapidation and evanescence. God, angels and redeemed spirits are eternally new. The grace of God is always new, bright, vital and heavenly. Hence when we receive the glorious experience of Christian perfection, pursuant to the wonderful provisions of the new covenant, our experience is no longer stale and old, but ever fresh, bright and buoyant. It is an effectual fortification against old age. Sanctified old people have the spiritual freshness and vigor of youth.

The Mosaic covenant is called old, because it is a reminiscence of the primary probationary covenant, forfeited by Adam and Eve in the fall.

Again it is called old because of its destined decay and transiency consequent upon its imperfection. The Edenic covenant once forfeited could never he regained. Under the omnipotent intervention of the new covenant, through the vicarious atonement of the eternal Son, the Edenic state is regained in the human soul in entire sanctification, and in the world in the millennium. Hence, as Paul says, the old covenant, or the law, is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. The great signification of the law dispensation through its copious bloody rites and ceremonies, is to teach the world the great work of Christ, through the atoning and cleansing blood, and that of the Holy Ghost in regeneration and sanctification, emblematized by water, blood, fire and oil. The old covenant gives great prominence to the material phases of religion, i .e . the robed priest officiating and interceding, and bleeding birds and beasts, purifying ablutions and paying tithes, while the new covenant in its transcendent prominence of spiritualities throws all materialities into eternal eclipse. 7. This verse declares the imperfection of the Mosaic covenant, i .e ., the justified experience. 8-10. These verses indisputably settle the question confirming the identity of the old covenant with the Mosaic, and at the same time certifying its insufficiency. Where your English says, “I will make a new covenant,” the Greek says, “I will complete a new covenant.” Hence the idea that the new covenant was a de novo transaction in the days of Christ on the earth, is untrue and untenable. When Christ came He perfected the new covenant of redemption, projected in heaven when He espoused the rescue of this fallen world, the same covenant He sealed with His blood when He died on the cross. 10. “This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; putting my laws in their mind, truly I will write them on their heart: and I will be unto them a God, and they shall be unto me a people.” Here God clearly defines and lucidly expounds the differentia of the new covenant. It is peculiarized by His putting His laws in our minds, and writing them in our hearts, so we have nothing to do but read them, the Holy Spirit giving us all the help we need to discern and understand them. 11. “And they may not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know ye the Lord because all shall know me from their small even unto the greatest.’” These verses clearly and unequivocally define the character and privilege of the new covenant. When we enter that covenant the Holy Spirit writes the laws of God in our minds, and superscribes them in our hearts, so that all, great and small, have a personal acquaintance with God, so clear, full and satisfactory, as to preclude the necessity of human teaching. The illiterate Hottentot, when fully saved, and filled with the Spirit, knows his duty to God each fleeting moment, and has at his command all the grace requisite to do God’s will. Hence you see the citizens of the new covenant are neither subject to, nor dependent on, human leaders and teachers. The Holy Ghost has become the Teacher and Leader of all, great and small, educated and illiterate. Unconverted people follow Satan only. Unsanctified Christians follow the Lord in a measure, but very largely do they follow human leaders. People who are sanctified wholly follow the Lord alone, enjoying the perfect freedom of God himself, which is full liberty to do everything good and nothing bad.

This is the glorious freedom of God, angels and redeemed saints, which makes heaven so sweet. The new covenant was gloriously inaugurated by the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire on the day of Pentecost, consuming all the debris of original sin out of the heart, and sweeping away all the rubbish of Levitical rites and ceremonies. No wonder the carnal clergy in all ages have fought Christian perfection, because it interferes with their plan of ruling the people. Sanctified Moses was delighted when God raised tip seventy elders to share with him the labor and responsibility of leading Israel. When his and-holiness friends interposed and asked him to shut their mouths, lest they supersede him in his official majesty, in the chagrin of his righteous soul he shouted aloud, “Would to God that every man in Israel did prophesy!” Sanctified preachers are delighted with the relief from care and responsibility which legitimately supervenes upon the sanctification of their members. The poor deluded pastors fret and chafe, paralyze their nerves, get old prematurely and die before their time, because the care, labor and responsibility of leading their people is more than they can bear. If they were only sanctified they would let Jesus the Omnipotent Sanctifier bear all their burdens, cares, labors and responsibilities. How sad to see the Gospel Church in all lands toiling and sweating in legal bondage. They have not only resumed the laws of Moses, but they have made a thousand more and added to their burdens, already intolerable. The people work night and day and still fall far short of their duty, incurring the galling yoke of a guilty conscience in addition to insuperable toils of legal bondage. All this was apologetical during the dispensation of Moses. But since the Omnipotent Christ has forever superseded Moses and Aaron, triumphantly fulfilling the law by paying its full penalty, it is lamentable to see the ecclesiastical world again staggering under the law dispensation. This has postponed the millennium eighteen hundred years. “Truly I say unto you that there are certain ones of those standing here who may not taste death till they may see the Son of man coining in His kingdom.” ( Matthew 16:28) We see clearly from this declaration of the Savior the glorious possibility of getting the world ready for the Lord to ride down on His millennial throne before the death of the Pentecostal generation. The Greek subjunctive shows the human contingency involved, which verily came to pass, i.e. , the apostasy from the Pentecostal experience postponed the coming kingdom, by defeating the evangelization of the world.

Consequently, the Lord is still waiting for sanctification to furnish a sufficiency of charter members to set up His kingdom. The glory of the millennial reign obtains largely in the fact that every subject, great and small, rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, will have the laws of God written in his heart and superscribed in his understanding. This will be the secret of universal harmony. It is true now with all who are wholly and really sanctified. Regardless of race, color, nationality, country, language, costume, sect or creed, they are a perfect unit and a universal brotherhood.

What unutterable relief from the perplexity, ambiguity, incertitude and consummate bewilderment of human creeds, sectarian jargon, and autocratic despotism, to have the laws of God inscribed in our minds and written in our hearts, so we know our duty every moment of our existence, have all the grace we need to perform it, and are so delighted in doing the sweet will of God that we actually enjoy a heaven in which to go to heaven. What delectable relief from legal bondage! No wonder two hundred millions of martyrs died rather than surrender this glorious freedom.

Reader, are you in the new covenant of glorious spiritual light and liberty, or plodding along in the old covenant, two thousand years behind the age, your necked galled with the yoke of legal bondage? 12. Truly the glorious liberty of the new covenant settles the sin problem and keeps it settled forever. Omnipotent grace manages that vexed question. 13. We see from this verse that God’s plan was for the old covenant to vanish eternally before the splendors of Pentecostal glory and the triumphs of the millennial reign. Oh, how sad the apostasy of the Apostolic Church back into the law dispensation Humanity has always been a failure. It failed in Eden. It failed in the antediluvian dispensation. It failed in postdiluvian patriarchy. It failed in the Mosaical and prophetical ages. But the saddest failure of all is the collapse from the Pentecostal victories and glories of the new covenant, and the glorious privileges of the Melchisedec priesthood back into the burdensome drudgery of the moonlit dispensation. (CHAPTER) - ARGUMENT THE TWO SANCTUARIES Apollos had been gloriously converted under the preaching of John the Baptist and powerfully sanctified through the ministry of Priscilla and Aquila. Having been educated at Alexandria, Egypt, the greatest literary emporium in the world, he was thoroughly versed in all Judaic institutions.

Hence he takes up every ramification of the Mosaic religion and uses it as a substratum on which to build the triumphant doctrine of Christian perfection, which constitutes the crowning glory of the Gospel dispensation. He here builds a majestic and irrefragable argument on the great, notable and prominent institution of the Jewish tabernacle and temple. 1. “The first tabernacle has ordinances of worship and a worldly sanctuary.” Before the Jew could enter the sanctuary, he must offer a burnt offering on the brazen altar, which stood without. This emblematized his justification from the guilt of his actual sins. Then he must go to the laver and receive a watery ablution, typifying the regeneration of his heart by the Holy Ghost. Having passed the altar and the laver, he enters the sanctuary of the Lord, which emblematizes the kingdom of grace. This is called a worldly sanctuary, because worldly elements could get into it. The Greek ecclesia , church, means the called out of the world. Hagiazo , sanctify, means to take the world out of you. This is precisely corroborated by the two temples. The outer is called a worldly sanctuary because the regenerated people who enter it still have worldly elements in their hearts. The world could not enter the sanctum sanctorum , into which the high priest alone went once a yea. Hence you see the perfect synonymy of the two temples with the two experiences. The first was called worldly because the elements of the world were in it. The second was called the holy of holies because none but the high priest, who emblematized Christ, and the wholly sanctified could enter it. While regeneration brings us out of the world, we carry much of the world with us in our hearts into the kingdom of grace. Sanctify means to take the world out of you, and thus bring you into the holy of holies. 2. The first sanctuary had to be lighted by human agency, like the churches of the present day. It also contained the shew bread for the past to eat, which must be frequently renewed or it will get stale and mold. How strikingly all this illustrates the unsanctified experience! Though you have the candlestick, i.e. , your experience of conversion, yet much of the time you are under a cloud, walking in darkness, hoping some man of God or sanctified woman will come along and light your lamp again. Though you generally have some bread on the table, frequently it is so old and hard that you can’t chew it and so moldy as to nauseate you. How you wish for some holiness crank to come along and bring you a fresh loaf! 3-5. While the first temple has the brazen altar, the second has the golden.

Justification is an inferior state, represented by brass, which also vividly emblematizes the egotism and pomposity always characterizing carnality.

Meanwhile the golden altar of the sanctum sanctorum emblematizes the pure and undefiled religion of the sanctified experience, — the most valuable possession this side of heaven, fitly illustrated by the gold in contradistinction to the brass. Not only is the altar gold, but the ark of the covenant is covered with gold and the manna pot is pure gold. Hence we see entire sanctification is significantly and pre-eminently a pure gold experience. The sanctum sanctorum was lined internally with coal black badger skins throughout, having neither doors nor windows. Hence every ray of solar light was excluded, so midday was as dark as midnight. Neither were they permitted ever to introduce an artificial light. Hence the sanctum sanctorum was dependent entirely upon the light of the shekinah, which was the ineffable glory of the divine presence. While the outer temple is dependent on human agency to come and light the candles to drive away the darkness, the inner court is not only independent of all human agency, but independent of the sun, moon and stars. Pursuant to this forcible analogy, the justified Christian is dependent on his pastor to come round and give him light, while the sanctified are independent, not only of all human agency but of all natural resources. He has the glorious Sun of Righteousness shining in his soul night and day. He is no longer dependent on the nightly fall of manna in the wilderness which bred worms in twenty-four hours, so he could not eat it; but he has an ample supply in the golden pot, always sweet, delicious and pre-eminently nutritious, just ready ad libitum to take a mess. Besides, Aaron’s rod, evergreen, flourishing, budding, blooming and laden with fruits, growing, mature, delicious and fragrant, is constantly before his eyes, inviting him to eat and be filled. Reader, are you in the sanctum sanctorum , illuminated by the glorious heavenly light of the shekinah, giving you perennial noonday in your soul, feasting on the delicious manna in the golden pot, always sweet and fresh, eating the luscious, ripe fruits and beholding the blooming flowers of Aaron ‘ budding rod, cheered by the angelic presence of the glorified cherubim and blessed with the perpetual presence of the mercyseat?

If you lived in the former dispensation, encumbered by the Levitical law, you might apologize. But since God, with His own hand, rent the vail from top to bottom when its great Antitype was lacerated by the Roman spear, so you have nothing to do but shove it aside with the hand of faith, walk in, and forever abide amid the unearthly glories of the sanctum sanctorum , you certainly are left without excuse. 6, 7. The Greek says the high priest offered sacrifice for the sins of ignorance, i .e ., the infirmities of the people. There are three kinds of sins, i.e. actual, original and sins of ignorance, or in Wesleyan theology infirmities. Justification saves us from actual sins; sanctification, from original sins, and glorification, from infirmities or sins of ignorance. When our Savior was interviewed in reference to the woman who survived her seventh husband, as to whose wife she should be in the resurrection, he responded: “In the resurrection there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but all are as the angels of God.” The Greek is isoi anggeloi , i .e ., like the angels, or equal to the angels. Hence we have from this utterance of the Savior the clear revelation that glorification confers angelic perfection.

Sanctification imparts Christian perfection, which is the normal status of Gospel salvation. The man who does not enjoy Christian perfection in his own experience is still under the law, living in the dispensation of Moses.

Christian perfection, i .e ., entire sanctification, prepares us to live a holy life, glorify God in the salvation of others, and enjoy a heavenly prelibation in this world. Glorification which the Holy Ghost confers the moment the soul evacuates the body, sweeps away all the infirmities incident to the soul through the media of the mortal body and fallen mind, conferring on us angelic perfection, with which we leave this world and enter heaven, to live among the angels, like them forever free from the mistakes, blunders, infirmities and failures incident to probation. 8-10. In these verses Apollos certifies the typical character of these Judaic institutions and their consequent incompetency “to make the worshiper perfect as to his conscience.” We are all ready to bear witness to the testimony of Apollos and the Holy Ghost here given. I preached fifteen years in the typical dispensation, all the time striving and aspiring to perfection of conscience, but never reaching it. I exhausted the types, shadows, ordinances, humanisms and legalisms, finally to give up in utter desperation. When, twenty-eight years ago, I bade adieu to all human, ritualistic and legislative agencies, and turned over the momentous problem of perfection of conscience to the Omnipotent Savior, victory came to stay. Early in this legalistic period of my Christian experience, I came to the conclusion that baby sprinkling was not water enough. Consequently I prevailed on a Methodist preacher, who has long been playing on his golden harp, to immerse me deep in Pitman’s Creek. I did not receive it for the remission of sins, for I had been gloriously converted and at that time enjoyed the witness of the Spirit to my acceptance with God. I was in a terrible conflict with inbred sin, on which, in the silence of the pulpit, I was groping in darkness. Hence I ignorantly received immersion as a sanctifier. To my unutterable disappointment I found the change only physical, i .e ., from dry to wet. I found the devil amphibious, like his symbol the snake, competent to live in water as well as on the land. So I am a living witness, along with Apollos, to the utter incompetency of all humanism and all legalism “to make perfect the worshiper as to his conscience.” Millions of people are wearing themselves out in church work of all sorts, vainly aspiring to a perfect conscience, which they will never receive on that line, as Paul well says, “Though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, without perfect love I am nothing.” It is lamentable to contemplate the wholesale delusion this day enslaving the popular churches with the vain aspiration, by good works, noble enterprises, fine church edifices, big organs and eloquent sermons, “to make the worshiper perfect as to his conscience.” It is nonsense in the extreme. Perfection can not possibly come in that way. It is the work of the Omnipotent Perfector, through faith. “Washings,” in the tenth verse, is baptisms in the Greek. Amid the multitudinous typical institutions of the Levitical economy, the watery ablutions and bloody sacrifices stood pre-eminent, the former representing the Holy Ghost and the latter the Christ, and both almost infinitesimal in quantity and quality. In ways innumerable the Jews contracted ceremonial defilement incidentally, accidentally and necessarily, which could only be removed by the application of the catharistic ablutions, which were prepared by dropping the blood of the red heifer into water, or more generally as a matter of convenience some of the ashes of the red heifer which had been slaughtered, burned and carefully kept convenient for all demands. “Ordinance of the flesh appointed till the time of restitution.” These innumerable watery catharisms expurgatory of ceremonial defilement, along with the innumerable bloody sacrifices being fulfilled on the cross of Calvary and in the upper room on Mt. Zion, forever became effete, the simple institution of Christian baptism surviving the one, and the eucharist the other, neither of which is essential to salvation, from the simple fact that they are both carnal ordinances, whereas we are living in the spiritual dispensation. 11, 12. Whereas the high priest under the symbolic dispensation must enter the sanctum sanctorum every year, repeating the atonement over and over, because his work at best was only typical and transitory, Christ, our great and infallible High Priest, having offered His own body on the cross, the great Antitype, adumbrated by all the bleeding birds and beasts slain during the annals of four thousand years, ascended into the heavenly sanctuary, “having found eternal redemption.” Euramenos is the aorist participle from euriskoo . Hence it means that our Savior instantaneously found this eternal redemption when he expired on the cross. So complete and perfect is that redemption, as forever to preclude the slightest necessity for any human soul to be lost. Hence the wretched millions in hell have gone hither gratuitously, without the most remote legal necessity, the sad reminiscence of which will doubtless prove the blackest ghost to haunt and torment them through all eternity.

ARGUMENT THE TWO SANCTIFICATIONS. 13, 14. The old dispensation gave prominence to materialities and the new to spiritualities. Under the former ceremonial, defilement must be sanctified from the body before they were allowed to enter the sanctuary and enjoy its privileges. We see in the thirteenth verse that the water of purification was sprinkled on the subject of ceremonial defilement. It is called the sanctifying of the flesh, and typifies the sprinkling of the blood upon the polluted conscience by the Holy Ghost. The effect of the blood of Christ sprinkled on the polluted conscience by the Holy Ghost is to sanctify it from dead works to serve the living God. The phrase “dead works” has a double meaning in the Scriptures. When it applies to sinners, it means wicked works producing spiritual death. When it applies to Christians, as in this passage, it simply means our religious works devoid of the Holy Ghost, the only vitalizer. The great trouble of unsanctified Christians is that they are forever doing dead works which do not know the Holy Ghost. They are frequently indefatigable church workers, e.g. , in Sunday-school, prayer-meeting, and the innumerable ecclesiastical societies and institutions. But the great trouble with them is that all their works are dead. They sing dead songs, pray dead prayers, deliver dead testimonies and exhortations, preach dead sermons and conduct dead protracted meetings, thus losing their time and labor, as the people are not profited, neither is God glorified by all their arduous labors. The sanctification of their hearts by the precious blood of Jesus at once takes the graveyard wail out of their voices and floods them with hallelujahs, makes life a constant sunshine, and all duty transcendently delectable. 15-17. In these verses we have the words “testament” and “ testator.” The Greek is the same word, diatheekee , covenant. It means the covenant of the world’s redemption through Christ. Since it is the most prominent institution in the Bible, it has given name to that wonderful book, Old and New Testament, or, as it should read, Old and New Covenant. Really there is but one covenant involving the world’s redemption, and that was inaugurated by the Son of God when He espoused the cause of lost humanity about the time of the fall. The old covenant was superadded in the days of Moses for didactic purposes. It is called old because it is reminiscent of the probationary covenant forfeited in Eden. A prominent and peculiar phase of the great redemptive scheme is involved in these verses, and that is the will peculiarity of the covenant. A will is neither irrevocable nor finally valid till after the death of the testator, from the simple fact that it is optionary with the testator during his life to revoke or cancel it ad libitum . Now, let us see the application of this fact to the covenant of redemption. While the Father gave the wondrous plan, the Son freely volunteered in its vicarious execution. He said, “No man taketh my life from me, but I lay down my life for the sheep.” Hence it was perfectly optionary with Jesus till the very arrival of Calvary’s bloody tragedy. Of course. in case that He had declined to lay down His life for the world the plan of salvation must have hopelessly collapsed. Hence in the very nature of the transaction the covenant was not finally and irrevocably valid till sealed by the blood of the covenant. Hence the plan of salvation under the old dispensation was essentially initial and incomplete, issuing bills of pardon, redeemable by the blood of the great Archetype, typified by millions of dying animals. This explains the pertinency of the Intermediate Paradise, — Abraham’s bosom — the receptacle of the Old Testament saints till the redemption of Calvary. See 1 Peter 3:18.

ARGUMENT THE TWO BAPTISMS. 19-22. Here we learn that Moses sprinkled the tabernacle, the Pentateuch, and all the people assembled at the tabernacle door, with water tinged with blood, upon the ratification of the Sinai covenant and the dedication of the tabernacle in the wilderness. Washings in verse 10 is baptisms in the Greek. In verse 13 it is said they were performed by sprinkling the bloody water on the bodies of the people for the sanctification of their flesh from ceremonial pollution. In verse 19 the Holy Spirit says Moses sprinkled all the people, i .e ., three millions, at the tabernacle door in the use of hyssop and scarlet wool, by which he sprinkled the bloody water on the people and the tabernacle. If you want a case of Scriptural baptism by sprinkling you have it here on a grand scale. When Moses sprinkled three millions of people at the tabernacle door, the Holy Spirit says he baptized them (verse 10). I am no stickler on water baptism. I care nothing about modes.

However, it is absolutely certain that they baptized by sprinkling in the days of Moses and the prophets. Water baptism in our day is an eliminated survivor of the copious catharisms peculiar to Judaism, and has nothing whatever to do with salvation. It merely typifies the baptism with the Spirit. 23. “Therefore truly it is necessary that the patterns of things in these heavens be purified, but the heavenlies themselves by greater sacrifices than these.” We have here the Greek epourania , the heavenlies, rendered emphatic by the specific pronoun auta . Now, what are these heavenlies which must be purified by greater sacrifices than the constituencies of the material kingdom, i .e ., the tabernacle and the physical bodies of the people? The literal meaning of epourania is the heavenlies, and simply means our immortal spirits, which become heavenly by virtue of this wonderful purification, and are destined to live in heaven forever, associated eternally with celestial entities. Now you are prepared to appreciate this beautiful argument given by the inspired Apollos. Just as it was absolutely necessary under the Mosaic law that the bodies of the people should be sprinkled, i .e ., baptized with water and animal blood before they were allowed to enter the visible tabernacle and enjoy its privileges, even so is it pre-eminently essential that our immortal spirits shall be baptized, i .e ., sanctified by the Holy Ghost, typified by the water which Moses sprinkled on the people, and the blood of Jesus symbolized by the animal blood, with which Moses sprinkled the people. Here you see the beautiful and powerful analogy between the type and the antitype, the physical and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, Moses and Christ, the water and the Holy Ghost, the blood of bulls and goats and the blood of Jesus. We are fortunate to live in the spiritual dispensation, after the evanescence of all the types and shadows, and the glorious sunburst of the long anticipated Antitype on the world.

ARGUMENT THE TWO COMINGS OF JESUS. 24-26. These verses vividly recapitulate the wonderful work of Christ contrastively with the Aaronic high priest, who was under the necessity of annual repetition while the Son of God by one offering at the end of the ages has manifested Himself to the world and all other worlds in the complete expiation of sin out of the universe, by the sacrifice of Himself.

This argument stands purely on the human hemisphere of the Christhood.

The whole Bible is simply the biography of Christ; the Old Testament that of Christ excarnate, and the New Testament that of Christ incarnate.

The entire Apostolic Church, without a dissenting voice, remained orthodox in the Cliristhood, constantly anticipating His personal return and millennial kingdom, down to the Constantinian apostasy; after which heresy and defection, relative to the coming kingdom, began to creep in.

The theological world at present exhibits a medley of irreconcilable contradict ions relative to the Christhood, sweeping throughout the entire arc, from the radical heresy of the soul-sleeper on the one side, repudiating all spirituality, to the ultimathule or Swedenborgianism on the other side, ignoring utterly the literal Christhood, even to the repudiation of physical resurrection. We have need to come back to first principles, taking the Bible as it is, losing sight of creeds and accepting the magnificent globe of perfect, consistent, revealed truth, delineating and expounding the Christhood, in His unutterable grandeur and glory, both human and divine.

Of course the divine Christ has never left this world, but in His condescending mercy has stayed with us, pursuant to the promise He made to His faithful disciples while preaching the Gospel to all nations: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age.” But the glorified Man-Christ ascended up from Mt. Olivet and sat on the mediatorial throne at God’s right hand. He will certainly, pursuant to His promise, ride down on the throne of His glory, set up His kingdom on the earth and reign a thousand years. The statement, “end of the world,” in verse 26, should read “end of the ages.” The Edenic, antediluvian, patriarchal, Mosaic and Judaic ages had come and gone and the Gentile age, the last of all to precede the millennial kingdom, had culminated when Jesus came on the earth; Augustus Caesar, a Gentile monarch, sitting on the throne of the world, his crown radiant with the rays of an unsetting sun, and his scepter sweeping the circumference of the earth. Matthew 24:3. “End of the world,” and other similar statements, which should read “end of the age,” have given prominence to the popular dogma that this world is going to be blotted out of existence. It will certainly at the end of time be sanctified by fire, but not exterminated. On the contrary, having been thoroughly sanctified by the crematory fires, Omnipotence will resume the work of creation, make it new, transform it into a heaven and add it back to the celestial empire, to which it belonged before Satan broke it loose in view of adding it to hell. The last two chapters of the Bible describe this world after its glorious sanctification, re-creation, celestialization and reoccupancy by glorified saints and angels, here shine and shout forever, hoary Time having his ourney now superseded by the roll of eternal ages. 27, 28. “It is appointed unto men once to die.” Dying once here is antithetical to the dying of Christ on the cross, alluded to in the same sentence. Hence the emphasis is on the death of sin which must take place when Adam the first in our hearts is nailed to he cross, like Adam the Second when He bled and died for a guilty world. Just as the death of Christ on the cross gave Him the victor’s wreath and the monarch’s crown, and seated Him on the throne of His glory to reign forever, so the death of Adam the first in the human heart, which consummates entire sanctification, gives us the victory over the world, the flesh and the devil, and crowns us king in Zion forever. In regeneration, Christ comes into the heart the first time homogeneously with his first advent into the world. In sanctification, He comes into the heart the second tune homogeneously with His coming into the world the second time to sit on the throne of His glory and reign forever. He came the first time to suffer and to die for the sins of the world. He will come the second time to conquer and to reign forever. All the truly sanctified who have received His second coming in their experiences are ready, watching and waiting for Him to come on the earth the second time. The great reason why the preachers and church members are not looking for Jesus to come the second time is because they are not ready to receive Him, neither will they ever be ready till they receive Him into their hearts as their Sanctifier in a second work of grace.

There is perfect harmony between the two hemispheres of the Christhood, i .e ., the spiritual and the literal. The coming of the spiritual Christ into the heart is necessary to prepare us for the reception of the glorified Man Jesus. Nothing but entire sanctification, which is wrought by the spiritual Christ in His second coming into the heart, can prepare us to meet our glorious coming King. The unsanctified preachers are not preaching on the Lord’s second coming from the simple fact that they are not ready for Him. For this reason the Church gave up the expectancy of her coming Lord and His glorious earthly kingdom, when she apostatized from the glorious doctrine and triumphant experience of entire sanctification. (CHAPTER) - ARGUMENT LAW AND GOSPEL. 1. “Law” here means the bloody ritual of Sinai, instituted to serve as a schoolmaster ( Galatians 3:24) to bring us to Christ. The innumerable bloody rites, which under the Gospel have been reduced to the simple eucharist, emblematized the work of Christ, while the vast and copious ablutions, typifying the work of the Spirit, have been simplified into the initiatory rite of water baptism. “For the Law having the shadow of good things to come and not the precise form of the things.” From this statement we see the folly of all sticklerism on Church ordinances. It is simple nonsense, since as we here see the precise form has not been revealed. The ordinance is the “shadow” of the great spiritual reality. A shadow is a very indefinite thing. It may be infinitely less or greater than the substance, owing to the position of the luminary, or it may have a very different shape, as there is nothing definite nor arbitrary about it. Hence we see the unscriptural folly of the vast dogmatism on water baptism, which has so long constituted the battlefield among the sects. In the first place, it is nothing but a “shadow” and utterly unsubstantial. In the second place, it is not definitely revealed as to form or quantity. This is divine wisdom, as specification would only augment the ecclesiastical tendency to idolatry, which has already wrecked millions of souls. Again, the “shadow” is no part of the substance and not at all essential to its existence. Hence the ordinances are no part of Christianity, nor at all essential to salvation.

They are only shadows representing spiritual realities. Multiplied millions of superficial professors have taken the “shadow” for the substance, starved to death, and made their bed in hell. No wonder, when they have so many preachers unconverted and utterly ignorant of spiritual, and at the same time egotistical and bombastic in collegiate learning, standing in the pulpit and doing their utmost to persuade the people that these empty shadows constitute the alpha and omega of the Christian religion. The Gospel is no ritualism, morality, philanthropy nor churchism. It is all spirituality. Paul, in Romans 1:16, gives a positive, lexical definition of Gospel, i .e ., “The power [Greek, dynamite] of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” When the sinner believes convicting truth, then the dynamite of the Holy Ghost convicts him. When the penitent believes converting truth, then the dynamite of conversion strikes him. And when the Christian believes the great Bible truth of original sin surviving in the regenerate, then the dynamite of conviction for sanctification strikes in.

When the consecrated Christian believes sanctifying truth then the dynamite of sanctification blows all the inbred sin out of his heart. It is sad to contemplate thousands in the pulpits and the pews utterly ignorant of the very definition of the Gospel they vainly think they preach and the religion they hypocritically profess. No wonder Jesus says the saved are few. The great popular churches, both papal and Protestant, have gone back into the fogs of Mosaic legalism. “Are not able to make the comers thereunto perfect.” Heaven is a perfect world. Hence all hope of heaven, founded on God’s word, utterly and eternally breaks down without perfection. The great trouble with all of this legalistic religion is that it is only a shadow, destitute of the substance, which is spiritual salvation. 2. “Since they would have ceased being offered because the worshipers, having been once purified, would have had no more conscience of sins.” It is a significant fact this day that no worshipers in all the world ever g rid of the “conscience of sins” except the “holiness people.” The simple truth of the matter is, they are groping along amid the shadows and burdens of the Law dispensation, seeking salvation not by the free, glorious, omnipotent grace of God in Christ, witnessed by the Holy Ghost, but by the works of the Law. It is wonderful with what rapidity the great Protestant churches are annually adding to their ecclesiastical codes more and more laws, thus burdening their necks with still more yokes, though they are unable to bear what they have. The effect of all this is to crowd God out, increase the reign of that legal bondage which is already intolerable, thus drifting farther from God and spirituality. The extent to which the intolerable legalism in the churches is multiplying infidels and alienating the multitudes from Christianity is simply fearful. They come and try the so-called Christian religion, find nothing in it but a yoke of bondage, give it up in disgust, turn infidels, make the most of this world and plunge into hell. 3, 4. If the Mosaic ritual, one hundred times so operose as the Gospel ritual, had no power to take away sins, away with the silly sophistry that simple church joining and water baptism will take away sin. It is nonsense in the extreme. 5-7. We learn from these verses that the body of Christ is the only ransom for the sins of the world. When Solomon dedicated the temple he sacrificed twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. All this immense sacrifice had no power to take away sins. It is only adumbratory of the great Antitype bleeding on the Cross of Calvary.

Water baptism and the eucharist are surviving symbolisms on the same line, the latter representing Christ and the former the Holy Ghost. How utterly silly, preposterous and nonsensical to impute salvation to these minified shadows! The imputation of saving efficacy to church ordinances is downright idolatry. Their utility is simply to teach us the work of Christ and the Holy Ghost, without which the soul is irretrievably lost. 9. “He taketh away the first that He may establish the second.” God has taken away the Law dispensation that He may establish that of the Gospel, i .e ., the pure spirituality of salvation by grace. It is deplorable with this statement before our eyes to see the Church of the present day crowded full of legalisms, if possible eclipsing the Mosaic dispensation, competing with each other in the multiplication of institutions and laws, the fearful trend of which is to idolatry and infidelity. No wonder they fight the holiness movement, which is really the only advocate of pure, Bible, spiritual religion on the globe. While the Law has nothing but conviction, and is utterly destitute of salvation, the justified Christian is in a mixed experience. The new creation created in his heart by the Holy Ghost by regeneration is under grace, but the man of sin conquered and hound in regeneration is still under the law. Hence the crucifixion of Adam the first is the only full and final deliverance from legal bondage. When a child learns its alphabet it passes on to spelling and reading; forever leaving the alphabet as a study, though carrying it on, he still uses it as an instrument in spelling and reading. Likewise in sanctification, we pass on from the plain of justification up to the beautiful highlands of entire sanctification, above the line of fog, malaria and mosquitoes, where the Sun of Righteousness shines night and day, the flowers never fade and the fruits never fail, though we still hold the justification plain in our spiritual conquest. If defeated and forced to retreat, we could drop back, recuperate our shattered forces and give the devil another fight on the justification plain. 10. “By whose will we have been sanctified once by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, and have it yet better than ever.” In this verse Apollos and his comrades certainly give us a grand testimony to their sanctification. In my translation the latter clause is given by way of circumlocution in order to translate fully the Greek perfect tense. Like the English perfect it conveys an action complete in past time, developing a state which continues down to the present. But unlike the English which gives the emphasis to the past the Greek lays it on the present. Hence the necessity of adding the latter clause by circumlocution, i .e ., have it yet better than ever. So when you want a clear and unequivocal inspired testimony to entire sanctification received instantaneously and retained with augmented brilliancy, unction and glory, read Apollos ( Hebrews 10:10). 11. Here the Holy Ghost again affirms the frequently repeated declaration of the utter incompetency of the Mosaic ritual to take away sins. Since it was a thousand times so magnitudinous as the simple Gospel ritual, which is homogeneous with it and a simple survival of it, how ridiculously foolish to impute salvation to the latter, which is the damnable heresy of the present age. Millions of people in the churches are humbugged with the senseless sophistry that water baptism and other church rites take away their sins. Momentous will be the responsibility of the blind preachers who thus deceive them, when they all stand before the great white throne. 12, 13. “But Himself having offered up one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God, waiting till His enemies may finally be made His footstool.” Here the Holy Ghost, by His clear and unequivocal affirmation, forever settles the sin problem. The sacrifice of our Savior’s body is the only possible vicarious offering, to which all the world are invited to come and be saved. Not only did Jesus once for all settle the sin problem when He died on the cross, but He completely triumphed over the devil, who the last six thousand years has been doing his utmost to establish his diabolical claim to this world. Jesus not only bought and paid for all the human souls and bodies, from fallen Adam down to the remotest generation, but he bought and paid for this world itself, with its meteorological environments, all of which had been so polluted by sin as to absolutely necessitate their complete sanctification and renovation. Having bought and paid for this whole world, with its population and environments, the Father crowned Him Mediatorial King at His right hand, significant of His perfect satisfaction of the redemption which Jesus wrought on the cross. Pursuant to His acceptance of the Son’s perfect mediatorial work, the Father said to Him, “Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Daniel 8, and John in Revelation 16:19, vividly describe the awful premilennial judgments, when the Father shall come down and verify this promise to His Son, shaking from His throne every usurper, political or ecclesiastical, and thus preparing the way for the Son to ride down on the millennial throne of His glory, to take possession of the world which He purchased by His blood, Satan being finally ejected and incarcerated in the dungeons of hell. 14. “For by one offering He forever perfected the sanctified.” The connection of this wonderful verse by the causative conjugation with the preceding promise ratifies the glowing anticipations of the crowns and kingdoms awaiting the sanctified members of the bridehood in the millennial triumphs. Oh, the unutterable gracious possibilities emanating from the one offering which Jesus made on the cross, i .e ., full and complete justification, glorious and thorough sanctification and eternal promotion to thrones, crowns and scepters in the coming kingdom. 15. “And the Holy Spirit doth witness this to us.” Well does Richard Watson, the great Methodist theologian, testify that the Holy Spirit doth witness to the work of entire sanctification separate and distinct from justification, quite as clearly as He doth witness to our regeneration. At the present day we have great preachers proclaiming through the church papers that no one can have the witness of sanctification distinct from regeneration. I still prefer to keep company with the Bible and the old Methodists. The only conclusion deducible from such a statement is that the man who makes that statement has never been sanctified and, consequently, has no witness to the experience. This verse settles forever the testimony of the Holy Ghost witnessing to our sanctification. 16, 17. Here we have again the beautiful statement of the Holy Ghost, how God peculiarizes the sanctified by putting his laws in their hearts and writing them on their minds, so they have nothing to do but read God’s will in their minds and hearts each fleeting moment. Thus God not only reveals to them their whole duty every minute, but gives them all the grace they need to perform it. Roman Catholic priests and carnal preachers want the people to be dependent on them for leadership. Hence they fight sanctification with desperation, because it takes the people out of their hands and turns them over to God. The sanctified preacher does not want any popular following. He only wants the people to follow Jesus, himself happily disencumbered of burden and responsibility. This human following of the unsanctified has developed the sectarian ecclesiasticisms now belting the globe, and enthroned Satan the god of the world. 18. “Where there is removal of these there is no more offering for sin.” The unsanctified are forever repeating their offering for sins like the priests and people of the old dispensation, because sin is always there; like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down. Hence they never get rid of the painful consciousness of its presence. Not so in the glorious experience of entire sanctification, when sin is utterly eradicated and forever exterminated.

Therefore the worshiper, consciously and gloriously delivered from the sin principle, his conscience, though intensely acute and completely quickened by the Holy Spirit, is no longer contaminated by the slightest taint of sin, and he goes on singing, “They are all taken away!” 19-25. The unsanctified preachers and church members, staggering under the galling yoke of legal bondage, groping along in the dispensation of Moses three thousand years behind the age, are shocked and almost hysterical at the boldness of the sanctified. Here we are exhorted to exercise this boldness; meanwhile the most plausible reasons are given, i .e . (verse 20), when Christ expired on the cross, God with His own hand rent the veil from top to bottom, forever opening the Holy of Holies to every Christian on the globe. The temple veil emblematized the body of Christ, which hid the Omnipotent Savior dwelling in that body from the eyes of the world. The divine presence abode in the sanctum sanctorum , hidden by the intervening veil from the worshipers in the temple. When the great Antitype was lacerated by the Roman spear God did rend the type from top to bottom; so there is nothing to do but push it aside with the hand of faith and walk into the Holy of Holies. 21. “Truly, having a great High Priest over the family of God.” “House” throughout the Bible generally means family. Every Christian belongs to the family of God. The poorest and the meanest of God’s children enjoy the intercessions of this great High Priest, who has actually swept every difficulty out of the way, leaving no possible defalcation nor conceivable reason why all of God’s children should not walk unhesitatingly into the sanctum sanctorum and there abide forever. 22. “Let us draw nigh with a true heart with full assurance, having been sprinkled as to our hearts from an evil conscience.” Here the Holy Spirit exhorts us to draw nigh. A “true heart” is a heart sincere and entirely consecrated to God. “In full assurance of faith,” i .e ., faith in God’s promises, without the shadow of doubt. You can not be sanctified and have anything to do with the devil. Sin and doubt are Siamese twins, and belong to the devil. You must not only eternally abnegate all sin, but turn over to the devil every shadow of doubt, along with every vestige of sin.

This done, the Holy Spirit instantly sprinkles the blood on your conscience, utterly expurgating all evil, and sanctifying you wholly. 22. “Having been washed as to our body with purifying water.” This is simple allusion to the Jewish custom of sprinkling the water purification on the subject of ceremonial defilement. Hence it means the sanctification of your body simultaneously with your soul. Of course, your body is completely turned over to God fully consecrated and sanctified to His service and occupancy forever. The efforts of certain sticklers on water theology to make an argument for immersion out of this are nonsensical in the extreme. The very fact here stated that the heart is sanctified by the sprinkling of the Savior’s blood, involves the conclusion that the body is purified by the affusion of water, in symbolic reference to the Jewish catharisms which were always performed by sprinkling. 24. “Let us know one another into a paroxysm of divine love and good works.” This is certainly exceedingly wholesome exhortation. The Holy Ghost importunes all Christians in this paragraph to get sanctified wholly soul and body, unhesitatingly, and then to compete with each other in actual earthquake shocks of pure Holy Ghost religion and good works, i.e. , go ahead and do your best to excel all your comrades in the love of God coming in cataracts into your own heart and flowing out in good works in behalf of others. 25. Here the Spirit exhorts us never to give up going to meeting, since the Lord is coming soon. We should be on the constant outlook for our glorious King to ride down on a cloud. Blessed for me and for you if we are standing before the people preaching the glorious gospel when our King cometh!

ARGUMENT ADMONITORY OF HOPELESS COLLAPSE. 26... “Perfect knowledge of the truth.” The Greek here is epignoosi , which means sanctification, whereas gnoosis is regeneration. 27. This verse is alarming in the extreme, setting forth the hopeless doom of the apostate. 28, 29. Here the doom of the apostate far transcends that of the malefactor under the law of Moses whose penalty was death, “having trodden under foot the Son of God and counted the blood of the covenant with which He was sanctified common, and insulted the Spirit of grace.” 30, 31. These verses set forth the appalling doom of the hopeless apostate having fallen into the hands of an infinitely just and holy God, with no Christ to intercede for him. This paragraph, and verses 26-31, vividly describes the hopeless doom of the Palestinian Christian who repudiates Christ and apostatizes to Judaism. The rank and file of the Jewish church, with their pastors and official members, unfortunately rejected Christ, endorsed His crucifixion as a malefactor, plunged into idolatry and hastened to their awful doom of destruction and slavery under the invasion of the Roman armies which followed the writing of this letter in a few years. A most powerful combination of social, ecclesiastical and consanguineous influences were brought to bear on the Palestinian Christians to lead them into this awful apostasy with their Jewish brethren. Where your English says, “counted the blood of Christ an unholy thing,” the Greek says “common.” Whereas, the Palestinian Christians had trusted the blood of Jesus to sanctify them, their brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, influential friends and relatives, church-members and pastors, ridiculed them, certifying that Jesus was nothing but a sinner like other men, and that instead of His blood possessing saving virtue, it was nothing but common blood, like that which dropped down from the wounds of the two thieves on either side of Him, and that it was the silliest chimera to think that the blood of Jesus could wash away their sins.

Now see the meaning of this paragraph. Here are the sanctified Palestinian Christians, trusting the blood of Jesus to cleanse them from all unrighteousness and keep them clean. Now suppose they yielded to the clamorous criticisms and terrible persecutions of their Jewish brethren, and gave up the Christhood of Jesus, acquiescing in the popular verdict of the Jewish Church, that He was nothing but a wicked impostor, utterly powerless to save, and that His blood was simply crimson blood like that of any other man. You see how in the very nature of the case there is no possibility of their salvation, since they have rejected the only Savior of the world. In their attitude there is nothing for them but hopeless damnation, since there is “no other sacrifice for sin.” Doubtless you see the application of this awful paragraph to the Hebrew Christians who utterly reject Christ and conclude, with their Jewish comrades, that He is an impostor. But how does it apply to the Apostolic Christians of the present day? Precisely as it applied to the fallen Hebrews. If we repudiate the Christhood of Jesus, recognizing Him as an impostor, and His blood nothing but “common” human blood, utterly destitute of all saving efficacy, we are certainly at the end of our row, hopelessly doomed to damnation, “since there is no longer a sacrifice for sins,” as we have rejected the only one God ever made. You see from this Scripture how utterly inconsistent it is to conclude that an ordinary backslider out of the sanctified experience can never be reclaimed and sanctified. If such au one repudiate the Christhood of Jesus, and then turn infidel, of course there is no reclamation. But did you ever know a case of the kind? I never did.

Backsliders, as a rule, believe in the Christhood of Jesus as much as they ever did. They have simply inadvertently fallen away through unwatchfulness. In an evil hour Satan has dropped his lasso around head, hand or foot, or perhaps the whole body, and dragged them away into sin.

Since they have not rejected the Christhood of Jesus, nor counted His blood “common,” they still have access to the mercy-seat, through the intercession of the blessed atoning Savior, who pleads for them at God’s right hand. The conclusion that an apostate from the sanctified experience who still believes in the Christhood of Jesus can not be restored to sanctification and eternally saved in heaven, is in no way deducible from this paragraph. If you will let it alone where the Holy Ghost has put it you will have no trouble with it.

ARGUMENT GOD’S PREACHERS, THEATRICIANS. 32, 33. “Remember the former days, in which shining you endured a great fight of affliction both being theatrical actors, in reproaches and tribulations, and being the companions of those thus exposed.” Where the English says “gazing-stock,” the Greek is theaizomenoi i .e ., theatrical actors are constituting a theatrical stage. I dictate these pages in San Francisco, Cal., during the morning; meanwhile I preach afternoon and night in the Peniel Mission. attending the church services as an auditor on Sunday mornings. Last Sunday, at 11 A.M., I attended service in a large edifice with an audience of about two hundred and an eloquent sermon, setting forth the optimistic views of the age, assuring us that the world was fast growing better in every respect. While he preached to two hundred in an auditorium competent to seat two thousand, I was reliably informed that a theater within two squares, at the same time, had an audience of three thousand. The pastor complained of the absence of his members, stating that one hundred had utterly skedaddled away, leaving neither trace nor track. In the afternoon of the same day the audience of our sanctification meeting was packed and overflowing. In this vast wicked metropolis of the great Pacific, churches are decimated and theaters crowded. We have the solution in the testimony of Apollos, given in this paragraph, i .e ., that the gospel meetings in the apostolic age affected the people just like a free theater. Our holiness camp meetings are thronged with countless multitudes, meanwhile those held on unspiritual lines are very meagerly attended. They while away a whole week with a handful of people, waiting for Sunday to come and bring out the picnic crowd. When fiery baptisms copiously fl on the people, flooding them with rhapsody, casting out all the dumb devils and giving all the ready utterance of the Spirit, a lively sensation and thrilling enthusiasm characterize the meeting, affecting the unspiritual rabble just like a theater. The theater is the devil’s great meeting, running vigorously the encircling year. We can only compete with the devil’s theory by the Lord’s theory, i .e ., red-hot Holy Ghost religion, characterized by lightning convictions, sky-blue conversions, sunburst sanctifications, and showers of blessings rain down from heaven on the saints of God. In no other way can we possibly compete with the devil’s theater, saloon and race-track. The churches are everywhere fighting the holiness movement, meanwhile it is their only antidote for spiritual death and numerical decimation. 34. “For truly you suffered along with the prisoners and received with joy the confiscation of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an abiding possession.” Not only did the Jews turn on the poor Nazarenes a most implacable persecution into bonds, imprisonment and martyrdom, but they drove them from their homes, confiscating their property because of their religion. Here we see how they shouted over their persecutors when they drove them away from their homes, because their spiritual eyes were on their heavenly home, which will never grow old, he sold, nor burned down. 35. “Therefore cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward.” Reader, be sure you obey this command. Come what may, never let go your hold on God, never in the least relax your grip on faith. Though Satan uptrip you a thousand times, hold on to Jesus amid all, with the pertinacity of a drowning man. 36, 37. Here Apollos fervently exhorts us to indefatigable patience in view of the Lord’s near coming. The apostolical were on the constant outlook for Jesus to ride down on the throne of His glory and set up His millennial kingdom. All this would have been fulfilled had not the Church yielded to Satan in the fatal apostasy, which brought on the dark ages, i .e ., the devil’s millennium, instead of God’s.

ARGUMENT FAITH AND THE WITNRSS OF THE SPIRIT. 38, 39. “But my righteous man shall live by faith.” Among all the spiritual graces constituting the economy of salvation, faith constitutes the climax and bears the palm. It is really the grand human hemisphere, while grace is the divine counterpart, constituting the globe of salvation. While radical and thorough repentance is indispensable to put the sinner on believing ground for justification, it is equally true that complete and bottom-rock consecration is the sine qua non indispensable to put the Christian on believing ground for entire sanctification. In repentance, the sinner gives up all of his bad things to the devil where they belong, and leaves sin and Satan forever. In consecration, the Christian gives up all of his good things to God to be used for His glory forever. Thus the sinner is freely justified by the grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith. It is equally true that the Christian is freely and fully sanctified by the grace of God in Christ received by faith. During the dark ages, Satan succeeded in utterly eviscerating the Gospel and leaving nothing but the bony skeleton, all spiritual truth having been eliminated out of the pulpit. God used Martin Luther to restore the great fundamental doctrine of justification by faith, independently of all priestly manipulations and absolutions. While Luther was in Rome agonizing for the satisfaction of his longing heart, through priestcraft and papistical benefactions, while climbing up and down the stone stairway of Pilate on his bare knees, punishing his body for the good of his soul, he heard a voice from heaven, “The just shall live by faith.” Obedient to the heavenly voice he comes down, leaves Rome, returns to Germany, and begins to preach justification by faith alone like a messenger from heaven. While Luther’s preaching was shaking all Germany, the Pope wrote to his bishop in that country, “Why do you not stop that man’s mouth with gold?” The bishop having done his best to bribe Luther, wrote back to the Pope, “The German beast does not love gold.” When the Pope sent his bull of excommunication to Wittenberg, which meant the burning of Luther, behold, Luther kindles a fire on the public square and burns the Pope’s bull. When summoned to the city of Worms to stand before the Pope and his grave hierarchy and answer charges for heresy, involving martyrdom, and importuned by friends not to go, he responded: “I will enter Worms if there are as many devils in the city as tiles on the roofs.” There he boldly defended the truth amid the thunders of the Vatican and the lightnings of martyrdom; and amid the popular uproar which broke up the council, his enemies aimed to seize him for the faggot and flame. Fortunately, his friends get hold of him, carry him far away to an old ruined castle on the summit of a lofty mountain. There in a deep subterranean dungeon, having incarcerated him they kept him a prisoner a whole year; meanwhile he thinks he is in the hands of his enemies, but, behold, they are his friends, preserving his life till the seeds of truth, which he has sown in Germany, can spring up and bring forth the glorious harvest of the Protestant Church, in open defiance of the Papal hierarchy. One hundred years later God used Wesley and his compeers to restore to the Church the long-lost doctrine of entire sanctification. Wesley frequently certified that this was his only doctrine, the great despositum committed to the Methodists to propagate throughout the world. It is the glory of the present holiness movement to restore to the Church the great Bible doctrines of divine healing, woman’s ministry, the Lord’s second coming, and the millennial reign. (CHAPTER) - 1. “Faith is the realization of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is the glorious summary grace which makes real unseen creations, worlds, entities, felicities and eternities. The faith by which a sinner is justified and a Christian sanctified, is but an act put forth by the full volition of the human spirit; meanwhile the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire which follows, develops the substantiality of faith, i.e. , erects the glorious experimental superstructure. 2. “For by it the elders received the witness of the Spirit.” The phrase “good report” is certainly a very unintelligent translation of this beautiful Greek word, emartureetheesan , which is the passive verb from martyr, which is a pure Greek word and means witness; hence the simple statement of the Holy Ghost is that the patriarchs, prophets and saints of the old dispensation enjoyed the witness of the Spirit, like we do, and that they received it through faith. Oh, how few church members enjoy the witness of the Spirit, even to their regeneration, to say nothing about sanctification Most assuredly it is a demonstration that their faith is deficient. Where your faith is all right, the Holy Spirit always does His work, invariably witnessing to the same. Hence, if you have not the witness of the Spirit, re-examine your consecration, go down to bottomrock and take on another Benjamin’s mess of faith. 3. “... That which is seen was not made from things which do appear.” The man of faith has no trouble to believe that God created this world and all other worlds out of nothing at all. It is only the poor, dreary, caviling skeptic and the bankrupt infidel that needs the science of evolution to lielp him out on the problem of creation. 4. This verse not only affirms the faith of Abel, but certifies that he had the witness of the Spirit. Abel plunged beneath the crimson flood of the Savior’s blood, emblematized his bleeding lamb, four thousand years before the great Antitype bled on Calvary. Cain was a very religious man, the patriarch of the great antediluvian and-holiness church, a fac simile of the bloodless popular churches which belt the globe this day, and hasten to the swift destruction of the great Tribulation, typified by Noah’s flood, which swept away the antediluvian millions with all their churchisms. Seth was the successor of Abel on the holiness line, perpetuating the testimony of the cleansing blood, symbolized in all their sacrifices by the bleeding lamb, typical of the innocent Savior. About one hundred and fifty years before the flood the holiness people, designated the “sons of God,” unfortunately united in matrimony with the “daughters of men,” i .e ., the Lord’s people entered into matrimonial alliances with the people of this wicked world. This proved fatal to the antediluvian church, which was soon engulfed in the world-wide vortex of the anti-holiness ecclesiasticism founded by Cain. Therefore, God took up the only surviving family in the ark, leaving a godless world to grapple with the devouring flood. The old Methodists never intermarried with the wicked, neither did the members of the Apostolic Church. This universal phenomenon at the present day lifts the flood-gate and pours the wicked world into the church, drowning out every spark of spiritual fire and expediting the awful doom of the oncoming Tribulation, when Babylon shall go down in a dismal night of blood; meanwhile the cloud emblematized by Noah’s ark will descend and deliver the Lord’s true people. 5. Here we have the inspired affirmation that Enoch, having enjoyed the sanctified experience for three hundred years, was translated to heaven by faith. Let us all learn this lesson and govern ourselves accordingly. Just as we are regenerated by faith and sanctified by faith, so are we translated by faith. Hence the pertinency that all of God’s saints should live in the constant exercise of translating faith, as we know not at what moment our Lord will ride down and translate the true members of His bridehood. As Enoch was translated by faith, so shall we be. Just as we live in the constant expectancy of our Lord to come and translate us, so we ought to live in the perpetual exercise of faith for tratislation. 6. “... That He is and that He becomes a rewarder to them who seek him out,” i .e ., seek Him till they find Him. The Greek here is ekzeetousin . Zeeteoo means seek, and ek means out. Hence the Holy Ghost says that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him out, i .e ., seek Him till they find Him. Hence you see that you’re to seek the Lord by the job, and not by the hour nor the day. That job is to find Him, amid the clear attestations of the Holy Spirit. Hence you must never conclude that you are justified or sanctified till you actually find the Lord in the experience of those graces. 7. This is the beautiful testimony of the Holy Ghost in reference to Noah.

Just as he believed God, built the ark, rode above the devouring flood and a dying world, and became the heir of this world after the flood, so the Lord’s true people, who now hear His warning voice, get sanctified wholly, robed and ready to enter the cloud when the Lord descends, will rise above the destructive storms of premilennial judgment, emblematized by Noah’s flood and destined to engulf this wicked world; will descend with Jesus when He shall ride down on the throne of His millennial glory, and become the heirs of this world under the triumphant coming kingdom. 8. When God called Abraham out of the land of Chaldea to become a pilgrim and sojourner in the earth he went out not knowing whither he went. Abraham is the father of the faithful, and illustrates; the pilgrimage of all God’s true people, led by the Spirit, knowing not whither they go.

The Divine leadership is always in the present tense, and seldom adumbrates the future. 9. When Abraham came out of Mesopotamia, he sojourned in Canaan four hundred years before the conquest of Joshua. 10. Though God made Abraham rich in herds and flocks and silver and gold, he refused to dwell in a house, lest it might detract his affections from his house in heaven. When I was in the Holy Land, in 1895, I visited the Plain of Mamre, where the patriarch abode in his tent when our Lord, accompanied by the two angels, visited him, announcing the conception of Isaac and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is certainly very unwise on the part of God’s people to erect costly mansions, since they certainly wield a potent influence in the centralization of the affections on earthly things. We would all do well to emulate the example of Father Abraham dwelling in a tent, with his gold and silver, herds and flocks consecrated to God. 11. Paul, in Galatians 4, elucidates regeneration from the birth of Isaac by the supernatural intervention of the Holy Ghost, while Ishmael, the patriarch of carnal religion, was born by natural generation. Here we have the bold antithesis between the worldly and the spiritual Church. The former, like Ishmael, originates from human manipulation, and the latter, like Isaac, from the supernatural intervention of the Holy Ghost. 12. The wonderful fulfillment of this prophecy is reserved for the millennial reign, “when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” When the bright day of Eden passed into eclipse under the black wing of Satan, a dismal night of six thousand years supervened, during which the saved are only here and there a traveler, recognized by Inspiration as the “first fruits,” adumbratory of the grand oncoming millennial harvest, when Satan and his myrmidons will be cast out of the earth and the glory of holiness envelope the world. 13... “Not receiving the promises.” By way of pre-eminence among the thirty-two thousand promises of God to His people, those focalizing in the incarnation of Christ are called “the promises” by way of conspicuity and emphasis, as they truly absorb and eclipse all others. Before the expulsion of humanity out of paradise, Jehovah preached to them the first gospel sermon, culminating in that grand Messianic promise, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,” thus spanning the cloudy canopy of the fallen world with the rainbow of infallible promise, that a Son should rise from the unfortunate twain, destined to conquer the devil, regain paradise and restore a fallen world. So vivid were their hopeful anticipations of the glorious restoration, that Mother Eve saluted her firstborn son as the Lord’s Messiah, exclaiming in her enthusiasm, “I have brought forth the man Jehovah.” [English, “I have gotten a man from the Lord.”] O, how her heart was crushed when Cain; instead of proving himself the world’s Redeemer, turned out to be a murderer. Fondly and lovingly was Christ anticipated by the antediluvian saints. The postdiluvian ages revived the same glowing expectancy, which accumulated new luster while the Messianic prophets flooded the Old Testament with their vivid predictions of the coming Shiloh, until every Jewish damsel dared to hope for ‘e honored maternity of her Lord. 14-16. In harmony with the Greek significance of the divine ecclesia , i .e ., the called out of the world, God’s ancient people always and everywhere distinctly maintained their pilgrim character, ignoring their identity with this wicked world and testifying that they were pilgrims and strangers upon the earth, seeking a city beyond the stars, whose Builder and Maker is God. O, what a contrast with the worldly churchisms of the present day! If the holiness people would verify their claims to real saintship, they must not be indifferent to their pilgrim attitude toward the world. When we settle down, entering into worldly identities and secular alliances, we forfeit our testimony, lose our power and cease to bear in our foreheads the marks of true saintship. 17-19. In the Old Testament account of this transaction it says, “God tempted Abraham.” It should read as in this passage, “God tested Abraham.” Well does James (1:13) say, “God can not be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man.” This notable trial of Abraham’s faith pours a flood of light on the saints of all ages who “walk in the steps of Abraham,” the father of the faithful. The great dogma of infidelity of ages has been the antagonism of reason to revelation. No doubt but Abraham was a man of extraordinary natural intelligence, far transcending the skeptical wiseacres of modern times. Fortunately, unlike the infidels. he had sense enough t. know he was a fool. Paul ( 1 Corinthians 3) assures us that if any man would be wise he must first become a fool, i .e ., the first lesson we learn in the curriculum of true wisdom is that we are fools.

Abraham had learned that lesson which gloriously fortified him against the suicidal mistake of exercising his puny ratiocination against the divine ipse dixit . God had repeatedly assured Abraham that Isaac was to be the progenitor of Christ, the Savior of the world. He now positively orders Abraham to offer Isaac for a burnt offering on the summit of Moriah. The pinnacle rock of Moriah, on which Abraham offered Isaac, is now enclosed in the great Mosque of Omar, which occupies the site of Solomon’s temple. The Mohammedan Arabs claim that Abraham offered Ishmael instead of Isaac, as he is their ancestor, and they do their utmost to steal all the promises from the Jews and the Christians. Despite the flat and irreconcilable contradiction, i .e ., that Isaac was to be the progenitor of Christ and that Abraham should offer him for a burnt-offering on Mount Moriah, the stalwart faith of the patriarch wavered not. 19. “Considering that God was able to raise Him -from the dead; whence He received Him even in a panorama.” From this Scripture we see how Abraham in the reconcilement of the contradictory promise and commandment of God, now soliloquizes: “God has repeatedly assured me that my son Isaac is to be the progenitor of Christ, the Savior of the world.

He now commands me to offer him for a sacrifice on the pinnacle of Mount Moriah, and burn him into ashes. I know God makes no mistakes and He is able to raise us from the dead. Therefore I shall obey his commandment, offer my son on Mt. Moriah, see him burn into ashes, stand by till God raises him up from his ashes, restores him to my bosom flooded with new life, to return with me, greet his loving mother and relate to her his wonderful experience.” Thus, confident that Isaac will return home with him, he declines to tell the mother the momentous ordeal through which lie is to pass. By the time he reaches Moriah, on the third day, he has fully expounded the matter to Isaac, who is a bright young man of twenty-five years, and so thrilled with heavenly enthusiasm under the preaching of his father that he willingly and gladly carries the wood for his own cremation, bounding with delight at the privilege of dying for God and sweeping into new life. The momentous crisis arises. God takes the will for the deed, cuts the word short in righteousness, and spares the life of Isaac. So vividly had Abraham seen in panorama his son go out in cremation, rise from his own ashes and return with him to his expectant mother, that he exultantly embraces and covers him with kisses as risen from the dead. Let us all learn from this lesson to obey God in the darkness as well as in the light. The truly sanctified always have light within, but frequently providential darkness without. Job ran into a long, dark, providential tunnel, but inward spiritual light enabled him to shout all the way through it. Be not surprised when you run into a providential tunnel, dark as midnight. Be sure you keep your seat, and you will make good time through the tunnel. 20. We observe here that the spirit of prophecy, as well as salvation, is by faith. 21. The wonderful blessings which dying Jacob pronounced on his children, sweeping down the prophetical ages to the end of time, are found in the last chapter of Genesis. 22. Through faith the spirit of prophecy came on Joseph in Egypt, revealing to him the return of his people to the land of Canaan; meanwhile he administered to them his solemn obligation to carry out his body with them and bury him in the promised land. Having carefully preserved his remains one hundred and fifty years during their bondage, they carried them during their perigrinations forty years in the wilderness, finally to sepulture them at Shechem in the land of Canaan. History says the body of Joseph, deposited in a stone coffin on a wagon drawn by twelve oxen, headed the procession during all their long and weary marches, giving it quite the aspect of a funeral train. 23. “... Because they saw that he was a beautiful child.” Wonderful is the biography of Moses, whom God honored above all men on the face of earth. He was more than a prophet: he was a mediator with whom God condescended to talk face to face. His wonderful life of one hundred and twenty years, forty at the court of Egypt, forty with the flocks of Jethro, and the last forty in the leadership of Israel and the legislatorship of the world, is without a parallel in six thousand years. He was born amid that perilous period when Pharaoh’s soldiers were ransacking the land of Goshen with orders to murder every male Hebrew infant. The beautiful and majestic face of the babe inspired the hearts of his parents with the hope of his snrvival and eminent usefulness. When they are no longer able to conceal him from the royal guards, in an ark of bulrushes, thoroughly cemented and waterproof, they commit him to the placid waves of the beautiful Nile. Miriam, seven years his senior, wends along the bank, keeping her eagle eye on the ark containing her beloved little brother. It pauses in an eddy where the queen enjoys her ablution at day dawn.

Recognizing it, she orders her maidens to bring and let her see what is in it.

His beauty and majesty win her admiration; meanwhile his pitiful cry breaks her sympathetic heart. History says the reigning prince had recently fallen upon an Ethiopian battlefield, leaving the queen without all heir to succeed her in the kingdom. In her enthusiasm to retain and transmit the crown, won by his beauty and moved by her sympathy for the little foundling, she conceives the bold design of his adoption, feigns maternity, banishes the only two maidens who were cognizant of the fact, through the instrumentality of his little sister employs his own mother to serve as royal nurse, bringing the family to the royal palace and employing Amram to superintend the royal gardens. Thus Moses is reared amid all the luxuries, pomp, splendor and culture of the only organized monarchy on the face of the earth; being educated “in all the arts, science and wisdom of the Egyptians, he was mighty in word and deed,” i .e ., endued with the highest literary culture and excelling in military tactics. At that time Ethiopia was second only to Egypt in military power, being her only competitor for the throne of the world. During the long and bloody wars between the two nations, Moses arose to eminence as a military chieftain, repeatedly defeating the Ethiopian armies, finally laying siege to Thebes, their magnificent capital. Amid the terrible conflict, the beautiful daughter of the Ethiopian king, from the palace watch-towers, sees Moses, is charmed and won by the beauty and majesty of his person and the gallantry of his achievements. Therefore, sending him love messages, she proposes to maneuver the opening of the gates on condition that he shall receive her hand in wedlock. Thus, as we learn in the Pentateuch, “Moses married an Ethiopian woman.” Of course she had passed away before he wedded Zipporah in the land of Midian. 24-26. These verses relate the wonderful choice of Moses. Why did he refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, i .e ., the king of Egypt?

During the childhood and youth of Moses at the court of Egypt he is the admiration of the aristocracy and the nobility for the beauty of his person, the brilliancy of his intellect and his wonderful proficiency in every ramification of learning and of wisdom. They flatter themselves that he will prove the brightest and most glorious king in all the history of Egypt.

Having reached majority he not only commanded the Egyptian armies, but relieved his royal mother of the more weighty administrative responsibilities. Finally at the age of thirty-five his queen mother proposed to have him crowned king. Against this he remonstrated: “My beloved mother, so long as you live your head shall wear the crown.

Assuredly, I am your humble servant, and will cheerfully bear all the burdens of administration, relieving you as really as if I were king.”

Knowing that if the Egyptians ever find that Moses is a Hebrew, they will never permit him to reign, she is afraid that if she died before his coronation something will turn up and the cherished scheme of her life, i .e ., her succession by her adopted son, will prove a failure. Finally, Moses yields to her importunities and acquiesces in coronation. He is now committed to the priests and magicians, to carry him through the long and tedious vigils, incantations and ceremonies preparatory and disciplinary preliminary to his public coronation. Amid the prolixity of these preparatory and disciplinary preliminaries, he sees a vision of the scenes transpiring in his infancy passing before him, i.e. , the babe rescued from destruction, committed to the Nile, taken out of the water and adopted by the queen. Thus, in a vision, his Hebrew origin is revealed to him. Leaving the preparatory vigils he hastens to the palace, falls down at the feet of his royal mother, divulges the secret of his Hebrew origin and forever abdicates all claim to the kingdom. It is said the queen, now venerable with years, sank under the disappointment in the coronation of her adopted son, and died of a broken heart, at once succeeded by the nearest Egyptian in the blood royal. Meanwhile Moses hastens away to the land of Goshen, identifies himself with his servile consanguinity, espouses the cause of the downtrodden Hebrew, proceeds to the execution of magisterial justice, fully anticipating a general revolt of all Israel rallied under the insurgent banner. In this he was sadly disappointed. They had been in slavery two hundred and fifteen years, and the spirit of liberty was dead. 27. There is now nothing left for Moses but precipitate flight for life. Since his powerful conversion in the preceding vision, in which history says the God of Israel appeared to him, during his coronation vigils, revealing to him his Hebrew origin, his faith has never faltered. “Therefore he went out, as seeing the Invisible One.” Having descended from the throne of royal regent, he becomes a penniless fugitive in the land of Midian, weds Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro, a patriarchal priest belonging to a Noachian dispensation, becomes a shepherd in the wilds of Mt. Sinai, studies forty years in God’s theological college, and is gloriously sanctified at the burning bush. 28. He now returns to Egypt radically and intrinsically revolutionized by the sanctifying fire, which had utterly consumed the great military chieftain, who, forty years previously, had sought to deliver Israel vi et armis . No longer the belligerent warrior, he is now a meek and lowly firebaptized preacher of the Gospel, at the court of Pharaoh as well as the brick kilns and mortar yards. The ten terrible plagues directed by Jehovah against Egyptian idolatry culminate in the death of the first born in all the land of Egypt. Meanwhile Israel enjoys a glorious deliverance through the blood of the slain lamb, typical of the sinner’s ransom through the blood that crimsoned Calvary. 29. The Red Sea emblematizes our actual sins; Egypt, Satan’s kingdom; Pharaoh, the Devil; and Moses, Christ. After weary marches, behold Israel is confronted by the deep rolling sea, environed by mountains, by mountains impassable, and hotly pursued by Pharaoh’s bloodthirsty warriors, ready to tear them to pieces and drag them back into slavery. The last hope takes its flight, and despair seizes them. This is precisely the attitude of the sinner. He never will surrender and cry to God so long as he hopes in church rites, priestly absolution or his own good works. In the moment of desperation, Moses commands them to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” A mighty roaring wind over the Red Sea symbolized a cyclone revival. Meanwhile Moses smites the sea with his rod so furiously as if he would divide it by physical violence. Behold the waters recede, and a vast calm intervenes. They now follow their shouting leader through the sea, forever leaving the land of bondage and cruel Pharaoh. Thus the sinner in his utter desperation is met by some heroic altar worker who smites the sea of his countless sins with the rod of God’s infallible promise, leaps into the breach with a shout of victory, inspiring the desponding penitent with his heroic faith. He leads the van, and the mourner follows with a shout of victory into the kingdom of God, forever leaving sin and the devil. The drowning of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea beautifully symbolizes the utter destruction of our sins, when in true repentance we at once and forever leave the devil and his kingdom. 30. Old Jericho stood in full view of the Jordan ford, fifteen miles toward sunset, on the beautiful Jordan bottom, overshadowed by the mountain of temptation, where Jesus fought and conquered the devil. The successor of Sodom and Gomorrah, twenty miles up the Jordan Valley, Jericho was the great stronghold and metropolis of the Amorites. The impregnable walls of this redoubtable citadel tumbled down amid the uproarious shouts of Israel, having marched around them seven days. This beautifully illustrates the victories of the Canaan life. After you reach the land flowing with milk and honey, Satan will confront you with many a Jericho. But, remember, you can shout them all down. You have nothing to do but shout and Jesus will whip the devil and give you victory on every battlefield. Remember, this is not the shout of feeling but of faith. Almost any coward could have shouted after he saw the walls fall down and the city in their hands. But it took flint and steel to shout when there was no sign of victory — before a solitary stone had moved or tower tottered. That was a significant shout, for the walls are still down. I saw them and rode around them in 1895. 31. “By faith Rahab the tavern-keeper perished not with those that believe not, receiving the spies with peace.” The Hebrew word zanah simply means a woman keeping a public house, without discrimination as to her moral character. Unfortunately they were generally bad, hence the translation “harlot.” Rahab was a Christian. She had faith, espoused the cause of Israel, became the wife of an Israelitish man by the name of Salmon, and was honored with the maternity of our Lord. 32. Here Apollos condenses and abbreviates the faith roll. Of course all these stand unimpeached, shining out as paragon saints. The cases of Gideon and Barak pass unchallenged along with David, Samuel and the prophets; but not so with Samson and Jephtha, whose Christian characters are somewhat impeached, though evidently unjustly, or their names would not appear in the catalogue of God’s sainted heroes. Samson, the last of the illustrious line of holiness evangelists sent in divine mercy to apostatizing Israel, who having reached the ultima thule of that fatal backsliding which culminated in their Babylonian captivity, was a Nazarite, i .e ., a holiness leader wearing his symbolic locks, indicative of his holy vows. His wonderful supernatural strength, emblematizes the divine power of a holy experience and life. Doubtless this was the reason why carnal Israel was utterly blind to her opportunities. Under the leadership of Samson they might not only have defeated their enemies, but conquered the world. Samson never had an army to help him. His people all forsook him; yet, single-handed and alone, he fought and defeated great armies of Philistine giants. Instead of his people rallying round him and utilizing such a leader as the world never saw before nor since, they only betrayed him to his enemies. Samson was a grand prototype of the present holiness movement. If a man is gloriously sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost so as to qualify him pre-eminently for the leadership of the Church, he is the very man they repudiate, outlaw and decapitate, a sad memento of the mournful fact that we’re living in the last stage of religious apostasy, while awful retribution heaves in view. Did not Samson stop at a bad house at Gaza ( Judges 16)? That stigma in his Christian character disappears when instead of reading “harlot,” we simply read it “female tavernkeeper.”

The sad fall of Samson under the temptations of the beautiful Delilah in the lovely valley of Sorek, is a solemn warning to all the holiness people. How have the mighty fallen! We should all remember that we are never out of reach of temptation till we pass the pearly portals and shout within the jasper walls. This dark page in Samson’s biography is gloriously relieved by his happy reclamation and triumphant death. He died certainly flooded with the power of the Holy Ghost. Oh, that you and I may die like Samson, inundated with victory. Jephtha’s case is still darker, as it is generally supposed that he killed his only child. It is strange that this conclusion ever received popular credence, as it is utterly without foundation in the Word of God. Read Judges 11. It says the daughter “bewailed her virginity,” “knew no man,” and after her father had performed his vow relative to her, the daughters of Israel went periodically to converse with her (Hebrew, see margin). There is not an intimation that he slew her, but simply devoted her to the Lord in a life of celibacy, i.e. , made her a holiness evangelist, with the understanding that she was to forego matrimony and live single for the glory of God. This was regarded by a Jew as exceedingly calamitous, because every damsel was hoping for the honor of her Lord’s maternity. Again, she was Jephtha’s only child.

Therefore her celibacy meant the forfeiture of his inheritance in Israel. 34. These verses describe the bloody martyrdom and heroic adventures of the Old Testament saints and impute it all to their faith. 35. God raised the dead, through the instrumentality of His prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha. God’s saints were tortured in all sorts of ways. It is said that Isaiah, the prophet, was sawn in twain. All these terrible sufferings did they endure that they might obtain a better resurrection.

ARGUMENT THE BETTER RESURRECTION. “Better” is not antithetical to bad, but to good. Hence the logical sequence follows that while there is a bad resurrection for the wicked, there are also two resurrections for the righteous — the good and the better, the first and the last. It is stated positively “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power, they shall be priests of God and Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.” ( Revelation 20:6) This Scripture, as well as others, settles the question of the two resurrections without the possibility of cavil. I am sorry this important revelation has been obscured by the spiritualization of the first resurrection. This is a gross and flagrant error, utterly untenable, as it breaks up and destroys the antithesis, doing away with the corporeal resurrection altogether, and plunging headlong into the Swedenborgian heresy. The Greek is ezeean in both cases, which simply means, “they lived.” If it is spiritual in one sense it is in the other, and physical resurrection is forever gone. Hence we see the utter untenability of this construction and receive unequivocally the doctrine of the two resurrections. In the rapture described by Paul ( 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), we have another graphic account of the first resurrection, when the Lord shall come after His bride, preparatory to His millennial kingdom. Philippians 3:11, “If perchance I may attain unto the resurrection which is out from among the dead.”

The Old Testament saints were not ignorant of the glorious reality of the Lord’s bridehood. Therefore they suffered the most terrible tortures of martyrdom that they might have a place in the first resurrection; which will take place before the millennium, the last resurrection being postponed till the final judgment. It is certainly a glorious privilege to rise and shout o my grave a thousand years before the general resurrection, especially when we consider the glorious privileges of the bridehood to reign with Christ during the millennial ages. 36-38. Here the Holy Ghost describes the terrible tortures inflicted by a wicked world and a fallen Church on the Old Testament martyrs. They shouted in the fires anticipating the glories awaiting them in the Lord’s bridehood and the first resurrection. 39. “All these having received the witness of the Spirit through faith, obtained not the promise.” ... While the Bible is flooded with thousands of promises, especially considering the synonymy of promise and commandment in the Greek and Hebrew, by which the number is doubled, the great Messianic promise of the Lord’s incarnation and the world’s literal and actual redemption by the bleeding Christ on the cross, his triumphant resurrection, glorious ascension and mediatorial coronation and intercession throughout the Bible is magnified as “the promise” by way of pre-eminence and exaltation. While the saints of all ages lived in glowing anticipation of this wonderful prophetical fulfillment, and the realization of the Messianic promise, yet they all died without the sight.

Contrastively with the verification of this promise, theirs was a dispensation of Christian imperfection. Yet their stalwart and sanguine hope swept onward through the lights of type and prophecy into the personal experience of Christian perfection. This grand faith brigade lived, testified and shouted, in the realization of Gospel experiences many centuries in advance of their age and generation, while the rank and file of the Church barely reached perfection in the article of death, passing into eternity in a state of spiritual infancy, like the great bulk of the Gospel Church of the present day. Their case was apologizable, as they were in harmony with their dispensation, while the unsanctified millions of the Church of the present day, both clerical and laic, are blundering along amid the fogs of carnality, three thousand years behind the age. (CHAPTER) - ARGUMENT THE KINGDOM AND STADIUM When I was at Athens, Greece, in 1895, they were busy repairing the old Stadium, after an iterregnum of fifteen hundred years. In the apostolic age the Olympic games celebrated in this Stadium had worldwide notice. They took place at the end of every quadriennium , attracting the attention of all nations. The contestants diligently labored and passed through all sorts of gymnastic exercises four solid years preparatory for these games, the racers carrying weights which they laid aside to run, wrestle and box in the Stadium. Time was measured by these Olympiads, and the year named in honor of the victor. Hence the great prominence of the Olympic races in the Pauline Epistles. 1. “Cloud of witnesses” refers to the faith brigade given in the preceding catalogue. How cheering to the apostolic saints to contemplate this cloud of heroes and martyrs! But we have the same cloud augmented by two hundred millions of Christian martyrs. Hence we certainly have an inspiring spectacle. Regeneration brings us through the gate of confession into the kingdom of grace. Heaven is still a long way off. If we ever get there we must run through the Stadium, under the inspection of multiplied millions of saints, angels and devils. The Athenium Stadium here alluded to is about a thousand yards long, terminating in an amphitheater, seating one hundred thousand spectators besides the multiplied myriads viewing the scene from Mount Hymettus, which overshadows the Stadium. This gospel metaphor is intensified by the renewing of the amphitheater and the reopening of the Olympic games, April, 1896. What a fatal mistake when you get converted to sit down at the gate, incurring the constant temptations by Satan to go back and enjoy the flesh-pots of Egypt! The sad effects of an emasculated Gospel preached by an unsanctified ministry is to leave converted people just inside of the gate. Soon attracted by Satan’s phantasmagoria, they slip out and participate in his pleasures. The avenger of blood gets on their track and chases them. Again they run to the gate and cry so pitifully that the Lord lets them in. Instead of moving right on, they still loiter about the gate, yield to temptation, slip out and take the devil’s bait. Again the bloody avenger chases them, and with greater difficulty than before, because they have gone further off, by the hardest effort they make the gate, crying so pitifully and promising so fairly that a merciful Savior takes them back. Again they linger about the gate as formerly, get out and this time becoming more venturesome than ever, wander far away. The third time the avenger of blood gets oil their track.

So great is the space intervening between them and the gates, he heads them off, overtakes them, hewing them to pieces without mercy. We see in this verse an indispensable preparation, absolutely necessary to the heavenly racer, i .e ., laying aside every weight and the besetting sins. The participle here is in the aorist tense, showing its instantaneity. It was impossible for an Olympic racer to win the prize unless he were utterly disencumbered. Entire consecration turns over everything we possess to God, thus completely divesting us of every ounce, so we are light as a bird of paradise, on celestial pinion, darting through the air. The Greek adjective euperistaton is from eu , good; peri , around; isteemai , to stand; hence it means the sin always standing round you and sticking close to you. Here the Holy Spirit is addressing the citizens of the kingdom, whose actual sins have all been left in the devil’s country, whence they came. Therefore, in harmony with the Greek definition of this word, we see it can be none other than the original inbred sin, which still inheres in the hearts of the regenerate. Hence we see, beyond the possibility of cavil, that entire consecration, disencumbering you of every burden, and complete sanctification, eradicating all besetting, i .e ., inbred, sin, constitute the indispensable qualifications for the heavenly racer. Just as it was impossible for the Olympic racer to win a prize in the Athenian Stadium without these preparations, so it is absolutely nonsensical for the Christian to flatter himself that he shall wear a crown in heaven unless he consecrates all to God, gets wholly sanctified from all besetting sin, and then runs with patience the race set before him. 2. “Looking unto Jesus, the Beginner and Perfector of the faith.” Jesus begins our faith in regeneration and perfects our faith in sanctification.

Hence, with a faith not only begun but perfected, we are to run this race, keeping our eyes on Jesus. So long as we keep our eyes on Him He keeps His hand on us, giving us all the help we need successfully to run the heavenly race. Meanwhile we are constantly inspired, energized and indefatigably electrified by His own heroic example; when He braved the rage of men and devils, stormed the bloody tide of Cavalry, thus triumphing over all of His enemies, and becoming our glorified Mediatorial King at God’s right hand. 3. This verse continues the thrilling exhortation to us, constantly to contemplate and emulate the heroic example of the Great Captain of our salvation, lest our hearts fail, our courage flicker and we again take on Satan’s blues.

ARGUMENT CASTIGATION AND SANCTIFICATION.

When a collegiate student we were frequently made to mourn over the experiences of some of our comrades. Those were memorable occasions when the President of the Faculty at chapel service announced from the rostrum the expulsion of one or more of our school companions.

Frequently the college was transformed into a Bochim of weeping on the announcement of the sad news. How striking the contrast with commencement day, when twenty of us young men delivered our orations to an audience of three thousand, and received our diplomas with the blessing of our teachers! This world is a great school in which God is teaching fifteen hundred millions of people, manifesting every conceivable diversity of character. After due and patient toil for their correction and culture, myriads proving utterly incorrigible are expelled from the school of probationary grace and turned over to Satan for an eternity of woe.

Meanwhile thousands, having faithfully and courageously graduated amid the congratulatory shouts of the saints and angels, are crowned with diadems in the realms of fadeless glory. Thus the mighty waves of earth’s flooded population are rushing to diametrically opposite directions. All are born with an evil nature, resulting from the Fall, which must be eliminated by castigatory grace, if they ever go up to live in heaven. The ultimatum of these divine castigations is sanctification or damnation. 4. This letter was written just before the great Roman invasion, which desolated Palestine, destroyed Jerusalem and expatriated the Jews to the ends of the earth, inaugurating a great flood-tide of martyrdom. 5. Here we are admonished to be on the outlook for chastisements which must inevitably come to all, testing our stamina to the bottom. 6. “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” This is positive confirmatory proof that all have something in them which must be eliminated by chastisement, of hopeless ruin intervenes. 7. “For what son is there whom the Father chasteneth not?” This positively and unequivocally settles the question in favor of universal chastisement, without a solitary exception. 8. “But if you are without chastisement, of which all are partners, then are you bastards and not sons.” This verse sweeps all controversy forever from the field, settling the castigatory problem unequivocally in case of all of God’s children; irreconcilably demolishing the Zinzendorfian theology, which teaches that we receive complete purification in conversion. This castigatory simile is deduced from domestic government, which is the nucleus of civil society. The delinquency of home government and the relaxation of parental discipline are filling the world with anarchy, misrule, political dissension and commotion, this day. Solomon says, “If you beat a boy with a rod you shall save his soul.” Why do you chastise your children? To get the evil out which was born in them. Here we have a perfect illustrative parallel with God’s family. He says He chastises all of His children, and those who receive no chastisement are not His children, but bastards, i .e ., illegitimate claimants, i .e ., hypocrites. If you chastise your child when there is no evil in him you are a merciless tyrant and unworthy to be a parent. You would not dare say that God chastises His children unless He sees some evil in them to be eliminated by the castigatory rod. Hence the very fact that He chastises all of His children is incontestable proof that they all have some evil in them which must be eliminated by castigations. Therefore, the dogma that we get it all in conversion, i .e ., that all Christians have pure hearts, flatly contradicts these Scriptures, and makes God a merciless tyrant, chastising His children when there is no evil in them to be eliminated. 9. Here we have the beautiful parallelism between domestic and divine government, vividly portrayed, inspiring the fervent exhortation, that we shall all “submit to the Father of spirits and live.” 10. “For they during a few days chastised us according to that which seemed good to them, but He for our profit in order that we partake of His holiness.” Here we have the castigatory problem clearly and forever solved, incontestably setting forth the end in view, i .e ., that we become partakers of His holiness. In God, holiness is original; in us, it is imparted.

Hence we do not have our own holiness but God’s. This Scripture forever settles the conclusion that the reception of God’s holiness on the part of His children puts an end to all divine chastisements. Hence we see that entire sanctification winds up all chastisements, as it eliminates all the hereditary evil, leaving nothing to be removed by farther chastisement. Are not sanctified people incident to the adversities of this life, like others?

Certainly they are. But when we sink into God, adversity and prosperity become synonyms, and disappointments forever take their flight. God’s will never fails with me, if I do not antagonize it. Entire sanctification forever eliminates all antagonisms and puts an end to all disappointments.

If I am lost in God’s will I certainly have no disappointments. The insults, rebuffs, criticisms, scandals, persecutions, bankruptcies, empty coffins, and open graves, which sorely chastise the unsanctified, become messengers of love and mercy over which the wholly sanctified can shout victory till Gabriel blows his trumpet. Baalam’s big curses were all turned into blessings before they reached Israel. “God worketh together for good all things to them that love God” ( Romans 8:28). Truly God is in everything to His wholly sanctified people, brightening the darkest adversity with the sunshine of prosperity. The very things which chastise God’s unsanctified children are bright with blessing to all those who experience the death of sin and self. 11... “But afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto those who have been exercised by it.” We have here the Greek word gymnasium , so profoundly significant of all possible disciplinary tergiversations, essential to the perfect development of the entire physical organism.

Hence we see the inscrutable mercy of God’s providence and grace, which have placed us in this wonderful spiritual gymnasium, so indispensable to the complete development of our gifts and graces and thorough enduement, not only for the battlefields of probation, hut for the illimitable susceptibilities, capacities and achievements which await immortal intelligences in the illimitable cycles of celestial ages. “Therefore hold up the hands which hang down and the paralyzed knees.” We need our hands to work for God and our knees to worship Him. God says ( Philippians 2:10), “Every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, in earth and beneath the earth.”

Hence we see there is no defalcation. Those who do not how in this world will all how in hell. The knee is the worshipping joint. Hence it must be free from Satan’s paralysis. O, the magnitude of this awful knee paralysis in the churches In a great church in this city (San Francisco, Cal.) last Sunday morning, the pastor stood and all the people but myself sat during prayer. Nothing but the baptism with fire is competent to burn up this awful knee paralysis and restore the worship of God to our congregations. 13. “Make straight paths for your feet in order that the lame may not be turned out of the way, but rather healed.” In regeneration the omnipotent Christ raises the sinner from the dead. Yet he is affected with multitudinous ailments transmitted from Adam the first. It is the subsequent work of entire sanctification to eliminate all of these ailments and restore perfect soul-health. Since heaven is a perfect world, nothing can enter there having the slightest spiritual ailment. The great panacea, the infallible elixir, the cleansing blood, was not shed in heaven but on earth.

Hence it must be applied here or never. 14. “Follow peace with all people and the sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord.” This verse is the grand climax of the wonderful book of Hebrews. Blind preachers have crazed the world on water baptism and other non-essential church rites and human creeds. Suppose they could find in the Bible, “Without water baptism, no one shall see the Lord,” they would vociferate themselves hoarse proclaiming it to the ends of the earth, and you would see the whole country flocking to receive this ordinance.

Why do not they ring changes on “Without the sanctification no one shall see the Lord”? Dead men never get high enough to ring the bells of heaven.

If these preachers could only get their souls converted to God and the devil’s black hand lifted from their spirits, and the light of the Holy Ghost poured into their minds, they would jump a million of miles beyond the water line and preach holiness to the Lord, like messengers from heaven.

They are opposed to holiness because holiness is opposed to them. It means crucifixion, and they are not ready to die. Remember, “peace with all men” is the inseparable concomitant of this holiness, without which “no one shall see the Lord.” No wonder the sectarian churches fight it, as they are full of belligerents to all others. Sanctification always kills Satan’s sectarianism, and floods the soul with peace to all mankind. No one receives this grand sine qua non in conversion. This argument is addressed to none but God’s children, all of whom need castigation till they become partakers of God’s holiness. In our Savior’s prayer for the sanctification of his disciples ( John 17), he certifies positively that the world, i .e ., the sinners, can not receive it. God has conversion for all sinners and sanctification for all Christians. The opposition to sanctification in the churches is demonstrative proof that they are unconverted; for most assuredly all the children of God desire to be holy and hunger and thirst after righteousness, longing to be filled. What people want with religion is a conundrum, if they do not expect to get to heaven. Then there is no sense in making any profession of religion if you do not intend, by the grace of God, to reach entire sanctification, since failure, collapse and damnation are inevitable if you do not receive the “sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord.” 15. “Watching diligently lest any one may fall from the grace of God, lest some root of bitterness springing up may trouble you and through it many may be defiled.” Here we have a clear corroboration of the warning, ringing from Alpha to Omega, that if we do not nave the bitter roots of inbred sin eradicated by the cleansing blood and consumed by the refining fire of entire sanctification, they will certainly sooner or later spring up and grow a crop of actual transgression, forever choking out the new life imparted by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, thus confirming you in final apostasy and dooming you to damnation. 16. Apollos corroborates this mournful conclusion by the lamentable case of Esau, who sold his birthright. This is the great trouble on sanctification: people are not willing to die to this world, and have their carnal appetites forever eradicated. They want the mess of pottage. The hog-life will not down. Hence the angel of spiritual life must take her everlasting flight. 17. This verse settles the problem of hopeless reprobacy as the inevitable alternative in case of failure to get sanctified. It is pertinent here to observe that while Esau’s reprobacy, as here stated, was absolute and irrecoverable, confirming forever the hopeless doom of the soul rejecting or neglecting sanctification, as, as it says, “he found no place of repentance, though earnestly seeking it with tears.” From your conversion you are in the hands of the Holy Ghost, whose office is your complete sanctification, by the eradication of all the roots sent down into the deep interior of your heart by the old upas tree of sin, which was cut down in regeneration. If you commit the awful sin of grieving away the Holy Ghost because you will not let Him sanctify you wholly, then He leaves you to the devil, sin and damnation. So you have crossed the dead line, committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, for which “there is never forgiveness, neither in this life nor in that which is to come” ( Matthew 12:32).

This conclusion is here not only corroborated, but indisputably confirmed by the case of Esau, who earnestly sought and wept aloud with flowing tears when it was forever too late, because he was reprobated. While Apollos uses this unanswerable illustration to clinch his climacteric argument on the absolute necessity of sanctification as the condition of seeing God, and thunders the awful anathemas of hopeless apostasy and damnation against the wicked, we must remember that Esau’s reprobation pertained to another line of things altogether. We have no evidence that Jacob was elected to heaven, or Esau reprobated to hell. The simple truth of the inspired records is that Jacob was elected to the progenitorship of Christ, and Esau reprobated from the same. Repentance means a change of mind. In case of the sinner, it means that he must get rid of the carnal mind and receive the mind of Christ. In case of Esau, he did not seek a repentance in his own heart, but that of his father Isaac, that he should change his mind, revoking the patriarchal blessing from Jacob and conferring it on himself. That blessing did not raise a question of salvation, which was always free to all, but simply the privilege of the divine progenitorship. Pursuant to the will of God, Isaac had already conferred that blessing on Jacob, and could not give it to Esau. Hence he sought it in utter desperation, though bathed in tears and vociferous in pleading. Of course, Christ died for Esau as well as for Jacob, hence salvation was free for Esau and all the Edomites, as for Jacob and the Israelites. On the memorable night of Jacob’s sanctification at Peniel, we have prima facie evidence that Esau also received a great spiritual blessing, perhaps regeneration. though he had plotted twenty years to kill his brother, and at that time had brought four hundred fierce Arabic warriors to execute the bloody tragedy. Certainly God alone could work the wonderful changes wrought in this wild man of the desert. When he met Jacob, instead of killing him, he ran to him, embracing, kissing him, wept over him for joy.

So the brothers mutually embraced, kissed, congratulated, wept, shouted and blessed each other. We have the record of Jacob’s wonderful Peniel experience, resulting from the night of wrestling prayer spent alone with God on the bank of the Jabbok. Hence we understand why he was not afraid to meet his brother, who had twenty years plotted to kill him. While we are minus the history of Esau, we can only explain the wonderful change manifested on meeting his brother on the hypothesis that he, too, had spent an eventful night with God. The reconciliation of this notable meeting proved genuine, as Jacob and Esau ever afterward remained faithful friends. I fondly hope to meet Esau, the illustrious father of the Arabs, as well as Jacob, the immortal patriarch of Israel, in heaven.

ARGUMENT THE THREE EVANGELICAL MOUNTAINS — SINAI, CALVARY, AND ZION.

This paragraph, including verses 18-29, is the grand Apollonian climax exhibitory of the threefold gospel, i,e., conviction, regeneration, and sanctification. 18-21. These four verses describe the memorable scene when God Almighty descended on Mount Sinai in densely black clouds, roaring tornadoes, terrific lightnings, appalling thunder-bolts, stentorian thunderclaps and paroxysmal earthquakes, striking paralyzing affright and horrible trepidation into all the people, so they trembled, quaked, screamed and fled from the scene, beseeching Moses to stand between them and the awful God of Sinai. This indescribable scene emblematizes the gospel of conviction, when the fire-baptized preacher, fearless of men and devils, takes Mount Sinai for his pulpit, trusting God to supply the lightning, thunder, tempest and earthquake, while he uncaps hell and shakes the people over the seething, burning, unfathomable billows, with a strong hand and a fearless heart. This explains the historic fact that the apostles raised a row, provoked persecution, and received bleeding backs and broken beads wherever they went. The Sinai Gospel, indispensable to conviction, is the great deficiency of the present age. In popular pulpits it is considered discourteous to speak of hell and damnation, and intolerable to preach on it. A cultured clergyman, in a city pulpit, found it necessary in the process of his discourse to say “hell.” He said it so softly that a lot of money-loving merchants present thought he said “sell” some Universalists in his audience thought he said, “all’s well,” while an old saint in the amen corner actually certified that the man said “hell.” While the Sinai Gospel is dead and forgotten in the popular churches, so the members actually go to perdition at race-horse speed without any serious trouble in the way of conscientious compunction, it is a lamentable fact that it is fearfully deficient in the holiness movement. Consequently, the people are professing in platoons, while possession is like the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. Internal superficiality is the greatest enemy of the holiness work. Sanctification is impossible without regeneration, and regeneration without conviction, while the Sinai Gospel is God’s artillery for conviction. I am an old revivalist. In the vigor of my manhood I delighted to go into the very hotbed of Satan’s kingdom, take Sinai for my pulpit, trust God for thunder, lightning and earthquakes, stand like a messenger from heaven and preach the terrors of the violated law, the blackness of sin, the horrors of hell and the doom of the damned for days and weeks and see conviction settle down on all the people like a nightmare from the regions of woe, hope take her flight and despair on raven wing hover around the doomed people till they would fall on all sides, crying for mercy. Then I would open the altar and at least half of the whole congregation would pile into it. I have frequently seen meetings like it is said of heaven, “Congregations ne’er break up and Sabbaths have no end,” the slain of the Lord, unable to stand on their feet, lying prostrate till the next meeting, so there was really no adjournment. Scenes of this kind were accompanied by sky-blue conversions and sun-burst sanctifications.

We have great need of an overhauling and a reformation in the holiness movement, and a return to first principles, less we retrogress so far as to run into formalistic manipulation and routine profession, like the dead churches, taking mentalities for spiritualities. I find people in my travels professing sanctification who satisfy me upon spiritual diagnosis that they are not only unsanctified but ignorant of regeneration, the trouble consisting in the fact that they have never had a spiritual conviction.

Consequently all their professions have been intellectual, formalistic and perfunctory, their own immortal spirit all the time dead in the sepulcher of sin. The soul abides in an interior citadel, surrounded by the mind, which must be interpenetrated in order to reach the immortal spirit, the man himself. While human words can reach the man, convince the judgment, influence the will and stir the emotions, all of which is right, proper and necessary in the plan of salvation, God’s lightning flashing from Sinai’s melting summit is necessary to interpenetrate materiality, mentality and reach the immortal spirit on its throne in the center of the soul. While the awful thunders of Sinai must wake up the sleeping sinner, the smashing, convulsing earthquakes of God’s convicting Spirit alone can shake him from his sandy foundations. God help us all to study and preach the Sinai Gospel, till we see the wicked fall like dead men, as I have so often seen, especially in my early evangelistic ministry. While the Sinai Gospel, when faithfully preached, brings conviction, it is equally true that the Calvary Gospel, when faithfully preached, invariably brings conversions. Our Savior warned us not to cast our pearls before swine. O, how we have need to heed this warning. Preaching God’s pardoning love to impenitent sinners is casting your pearls before the swine and calculated not only to harden them in their wicked courses, till they will go on from bad to worse, congratulating themselves, “God loves me too well to send me to hell.”

The Gospel of Sinai is for impenitent sinners, and should be preached to them till conviction strikes them. The Gospel of Calvary is for all penitent sinners, and should be faithfully preached to them till they are gloriously converted. As a rule, the popular churches are mainly filled up with proud impenitent sinners. What a mistake to preach sanctification to such people! Of course, they trample the jewels of holiness under their carnal feet, and get mad enough to tear one to pieces because he did not give them corn to eat. Such people need the Gospel of Sinai to convict them, so they may see their lost estate and fly for refuge. It is frequently quite different when we preach to the drunkards, harlots, thieves and murderers in the slums. In their case, frequently ruined health, terrible physical suffering, abject poverty, dissipated fortunes and alienated friends have reacted on them with the crushing weight of an avalanche, broken their hearts and blighted all their hopes; meanwhile the Holy Ghost, through these sad and awful calamities, has reached their hearts with a true and genuine conviction. Therefore they are already penitent and ready with gushing gratitude to hear you tell of Jesus, the sinner’s Friend, and the sinner’s Savior dying on the cross to take away their sins, keep them out of hell and lift them up to heaven. In the normal economy of Gospel grace, the sinner is convicted by the thunder and lightnings of Sinai, flies to Cavalry, falls beneath the reeking cross, looks up at the dying Savior, hears Him say, “It is finished.” He now soliloquizes, “What is finished? My salvation? Then what have I to do? Nothing, but take it. I do, by the grace of God, and eternity will be too short for me to serve, praise, honor and adore Thee as I ought, because Thou hast come all the way from heaven down to save this my lost soul.” 22. The New Covenant of entire sanctification was inaugurated on Mount Zion, when Jesus poured down on His disciples the Pentecostal fire. This glorious experience identifies us with the “heavenly Jerusalem,” the Bride of Christ and the mother of God’s children, bringing us into angelic sympathy and fellowship 23. bringing us into the “Church of the firstborn,” of which Jesus is the Head, and the truly sanctified people His body, the spirits of justified people having been made perfect, i.e. , converted people who have afterwards been sanctified 24. and to “Jesus, the Mediator of the covenant, and to the blood that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel.” Whereas Moses was the mediator of the Old Covenant, sanctified by the blood of animals, Jesus is the Mediator of the New Covenant sanctified by His own blood. We are all now living in the Mount Zion dispensation, which was inaugurated at Pentecost, to prepare the world for the millennium. It is a deplorable pity for us to go back and live under the dispensation of Moses, following human guides, depending on church rites and legal obedience which have no power to take away sins. 25. Disobedience under the Mosaic dispensation was punished with physical death, adumbrating the sad fate of the soul rejecting the blood of the New Covenant, the baptisms of Pentecost, the glories and victories of full salvation. 26. The memorable scene of Sinai also typified the summary vengeance of the violated law in the cremation of the earth with its aerial environments, in order to the complete, final and total extirpation not only of sin, but of its effects from the created universe. 27. “But this yet once exhibits the removal of things shakable as having been created, in order that things unshakable may remain.” When Satan invaded Eden and captured Adam and Eve, the king and queen of this world, he threw the black banner of this conquest around the globe, polluting all from center to circumference, warp and woof, intrinsical and extrinsical. Therefore this whole world with its contents passed under condemnation and was excommunicated from the celestial empire. When the Son of God espoused the lost cause, satisfying the violated law by paying the penalty, the Holy Ghost was sent into this world to execute the stupendous work of the new creation, anticipatory of earth’s reannexation to the heavenly universe. Regeneration is the creation of the new life in to human spirit, while sanctification is the elimination of the old creation. Thus the new creation of the soul is consummated in sanctification; that of the body in the resurrection, and that of the mind in glorification. But this is not enough; the whole earth and firmament are contaminated with sin and must pass through the purgatorial fires like the Pentecostal flames, which sanctify the soul. Contemporaneously with the final judgment, this earth with its environments will be subjected to a thorough cremation, consuming not only all sin, but exterminating all the effects of sin from the terrestrial sphere. Then it will be the glorious prerogative of the Holy Ghost, the Executor of the new creation, to renew this earth and environments in the purity, glory, majesty, splendor and immortal beauty peculiar to the unfallen heavenly worlds. 28. “Therefore, receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us have grace through which we may worship God acceptably, with reverence and Godly fear.” Under the wonderful provisions of the New Covenant, providing an uttermost salvation for all of God’s children, there is no reason why we should not worship Him acceptably, like the angels in heaven. The fallen creation, having passed under condemnation. can never render Him any acceptable service, but when the Holy Ghost has wrought in us the new creation and eliminated out of us the old, there is no reason why we should not have constant victory in our souls and perpetual and delectable communion with God. 29. “For truly our God is a consuming fire.” The connection here involves the conclusion that our God consumes all inbred sin and hereditary depravity out of the hearts of His people, who fully consecrate and solidly trust Him for the execution of that great work. It also follows, the logical sequence, that God out of Christ is a consuming fire to the wicked. When the New Covenant was inaugurated on Mount Zion, amid the Pentecostal baptisms, tongues of fire did sit on the heads of the apostles. These tongues were cloven in twain, significant of the Gospel economy. Hence we see that our Gospel is all fire, consisting of two messages, i .e ., hell fire, to warn and convict the wicked to flee the wrath to come; and heavenly fire, to sanctify the righteous for the glorified presence of God. This is the condemnation of the popular pulpit. It has no fire. It neither preaches hell fire, to alarm the wicked, nor heavenly fire, to sanctify the Christian. It has a North Pole atmosphere, surrounded by icebergs and glaciers. The gospel that does not burn is Satan’s counterfeit, to hoax the people and lead them to hell. All cold religion is a diabolical delusion. Satan freezes the people in this world and burns them in the world to me. God’s religion is full of fire in this world, but has no fire in the world to come. There is no mention of fire in heaven, because there is nothing there that ought to be destroyed. (CHAPTER) - 1. “Let brotherly love abide.” O, how pertinent this Apostolical exhortation, and how beautiful and amiable the grace of brotherly love! The sable Ethiopian, the almond-eyed Chinaman, the superstitions Esquimau and the Rocky Mountain Comanche, are all my brethren. Entire sanctification is the only grace competent to obey this commandment. It knocks down all sectarian fences and demolishes all race lines. 2. The departure of the angelic grace of Christian hospitality oat of the churches of the present day is the swift harbinger of the awful apostasy now sadly verifying many alarming latter day prophecies. The Old Testament saints were pre-eminent for their hospitality, while the Jerusalem Church actually sold their estates that they might extend hospitality to their brethren providentially detained in the metropolis by the Pentecostal revival. The Arabic children of Abraham relate a notable incident in the life of the patriarch, i.e. , one tempestuous night an old man called at his tent soliciting entertainment, which was courteously granted.