Judgment To Come; The Dispensation of Divine Awards To Responsible Classes At The Return of Christ, continued

This principle of absolute equity in the matter of responsibility is exemplified in the words of Jesus:-- "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin" (John 15v 22). "That servant which knew his lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes" (Luke 12v 47). "He that REJECTETH me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day" (John 12v 48).

The operation of these principles is illustrated in the history of human experience. From Adam to Noah, there was but a little light. The promise of a seed, by the side of the woman, to crush out the serpent principle of disobedience and its results, was almost the only star that shone in the darkness of that time. Prophetic glimpses of the coming interference in its ultimate shape, such as those vouchsafed to Enoch (Jude 14), and the precepts of Noah, the preacher of righteousness, through whom the Anointing Spirit promulgated the divine principles to those who were disobedient (I Peter 3v 18-20), added a little to the light of these times, but, apparently, not more than was sufficient to confer a title of resurrection on those who laid hold on it by faith. So far as we have any information, few became responsible to a resurrection to condemnation in pre-Noahic times. Human wickedness, culminating in universal corruption, was visited with the almost total destruction of the species by a flood, which may be regarded as having been a winding-up of all judicial questions arising out of the preceding period, so far as condemnation is concerned, and, therefore, as precluding from resurrection to judgment those who were the subjects of it.

On this point, however, positive ground cannot be taken. Since resurrection unto life will take place in several cases belonging to that dispensation, it is not improbable that resurrection to condemnation may also take place among those who were obnoxiously related to that which gave the others their title, including the class specified in Enoch's prophecy--" the ungodly," who were guilty of "ungodly deeds" and "hard speeches" against Jehovah, and who must, therefore, have possessed the amount of knowledge necessary to constitute a basis of responsibility. This must remain an open question, not because the principle upon which judgment will be administered is obscure, but bemuse we have not a sufficient amount of information as to the facts of the time in question to enable us accurately to apply the principle.

The principle itself, that responsibility Godward, is only created by contact with divine law in a tangible and authorised form, holds good in every form of human relation to the Almighty. Noah's immediate family were within the pale of the divine cognition, and responsibility in reference to another life may arise out of that; but their descendants wandered far out of the way of righteousness and understanding, sinking below moral responsibility, degenerating to the level of the beast, and establishing those "times of ignorance" throughout the world which we have Paul's authority for saying were "winked at."

In the call of Abraham, the member of an idolatrous family, but who possessed the latent disposition to be faithful, God arrested the tendency to repeat the universal corruption of antediluvian times. The germ of a more direct responsibility was planted among men by his election, and by the bestowal of promises upon him which had ultimate reference to the whole of the race. Abraham individually, while constituted a man of privilege, was also constituted a man of responsibility. Abram, the idolater, was his own--his own to live, like the insect of the moment--his own to die and disappear like the vapour. Abraham, the called of God, was no longer his own, but bought with the price of God's promise. He entered upon a higher relation of being. He was exalted to a higher destiny, and had imposed upon him Godward obligations, unknown to his former condition. Success or failure in the ordering of his life, was of much greater moment than before. Faith and obedience would constitute him the heir of the world, and the subject of resurrection to immortality: unbelief would make him obnoxious to a severer and farther-reaching displeasure than fell upon Adam.

In this respect, the children of Abraham by faith, that is, those who walk in the steps of the faith which Abraham had being yet uncircumcised (Rom. 4v 12), who, being Christ's, are Abraham's seed (Gal. 3v 29) through believing the gospel, and being baptised into Christ, are like their father. By nature children of wrath, even as others, they were in the days of their ignorance "without God and without hope in the world" (Eph. 2v 12), "strangers from the covenants of promise" (ibid.), "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them" (Eph. 4v 18), living without law, and destined, as the result of that condition, to perish without law in Adam; inheriting death without resurrection--death without remedy; having neither the, privileges nor the responsibilities of a divine relationship.