George E. Fifield • November 12, 1896 • American Sentinel, Vol. 11, No. 45
"GOD is love." 1 John 4:8.
Last week we sought for the source of all power, and we found that source to be God. Says D'Aubigne, "There is a living principle emanating from God, in every national movement. God is ever present on that vast theatre where successive generations of men meet and struggle." "History should live by that life which belongs to it, and that life is God. The history of the world should be set forth as the annals of the government of the Sovereign King."
This is true, for God is the fountain of all life, and even bad men and devils live only in him. It should be remembered though, that when he made us of free will, he limited his will by the extent of our own, making it possible for us to resist him. He, therefore, who looks only at the outward show of things in this world of sin, will often see other than God's will wrought out. Only he who looks within, and beyond, and above all this conflict of evil,—only he will catch a glimpse of the King Eternal, and know that he is still supreme, and that the everlasting tendencies of all things are toward the realization of his divine ideal.
The Irresistible and the Divine.
Immersed in the turmoil of one of our large cities, amid the grand works of man, and surrounded by the hum and throng of multitudinous life, it would almost seem as if the world itself were a thing of human effort, and human struggle. But he who ascends to a sufficient elevation loses sight of the passing conflict and no longer hears its contentions. He discovers that the merely human is diminishing as the panorama beneath him is extending. And if he could attain to the truly philosophical the general point of view, disengaging himself from all terrestrial influences and entanglements, rising high enough to see the whole globe at a glance, his acutest vision would fail to discover the slightest indication of man, his free will or his works. In her resistless onward sweep, in the clock-like precision of her daily and mighty revolutions, in the well-known pictured forms of her continents and seas, now no longer dark, but shining with a planetary light, he beholds only the irresistible, and the divine. Well might he ask what has become of all the aspirations and anxieties, the pleasures, the agony, and the struggle of human life. As the human and voluntary vanished from sight, the irresistible and the divine remained, and became each movement more distinct.
This well illustrates two views of human history. From the human standpoint, gazing as merely one of the struggling, thronging, scheming crowd, too often we see the false and the evil triumph, while truth, ever wearing its crown of thorns, toils, cross-laden, up new Calvaries to be crucified afresh. But lifted by inspired prophetic vision to the divine summit, or viewpoint, we may behold the evil and the human disappear, while the Prince of Peace and King of Truth is seen triumphing ever onward toward the final, the universal, and eternal victory.
It is only the point of view that has changed, but on this how much has depended. A little nearer we behold the struggles and the victories and defeats of human ambition, a little farther off we realize the panoramic vision of Deity.*
God's Ideal of Government.
But now, since God is really and truly King over all, we want to know his character and what are his ideals of government.
Inspiration tells us "God is love."
He is not love and justice, for justice is only one of the manifestations of love. How can he who loves all with an impartial love, be unjust to any? Mercy and grace are also only manifestations of love. Even the omniscience of God is an attribute of his love. He is all-knowing because he is all-loving. Envy and hatred and jealousy cannot know love; they do not even know themselves. Once, unselfish Love was in the world, and they crucified Him because they "leave Him not." Only love comprehended love, and it can know all things.
Even the wrath of God is revealed in the holy book to be only the manifestation of his love. Jesus was here to reveal God. He infinitely loved the sinner, while he infinitely hated the sin. This therefore is true of God. He hates the sin because it is the enemy of the sinner whom he loves. The measure of his hatred of the sin, is the measure of his love for the sinner. Sin means misery and death, and because God is love, he has everlastingly decreed that sin with its misery and woe must go, and that there shall be a clean universe, and all tears shall be wiped away. All God's wrath is against sin, not against the sinner. The plan of redemption is his effort to separate the sin from the sinner, that he may destroy the sin, and save the sinner alive. Only those who inseparably connect themselves with sin have to drink God's wrath, and God says, "As I live, . . . I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" This shows that even at the last God's wrath is not against the sinner, but only against the sin. The sinner has so connected himself with sin as to be compelled to drink God's wrath against sin. For this God grieves, but it is the best thing that love can do, both for the universe and for the sinner himself. Thus God is seen to be all love, and only love, and all his attributes are only the attributes of love. As God is love his law is a law of love. "Thou shalt have no other God's before me." He pleads for our supreme love because he loves us supremely. He would lift all his creatures into the undivided worship of one All Father, that they might be one, happy unbroken family of brothers and sisters. He forbade image worship, for it is ever by symbolizing God that men have come to have different Gods, and so the unity of the family has been broken. He forbade the taking of his name in vain, for that sacred name must ever have the power to lift us nearer him, and so nearer each other. He commanded the observance of the Sabbath as a weekly memorial that the only true God was the Creator. If all men worshiped the Creator they would worship the one God. They would find, too, an infinity of beauty in every flower he had made, an infinity which with all their microscopes they could not fathom. This is true of all his works. If they cannot fathom the work, how can they measure the worker, or feel that they know all his truth?
No, those who truly worship the Creator can never write out their creed, but must ever humbly walk into the infinity of his truth, nearer him, and therefore ever nearer each other. Murder, theft, adultery, falsehood, and the dishonor of parents were all forbidden, and the opposite enjoined, that the joys of living, of property, of the family relation, and of the home life might all be sacredly guarded. The law of God is the natural law of happiness and life, as the laws of meteorology are the natural laws of rain and snow. It is a statement of the eternal principles in accordance with which is happiness and life, as the laws of meteorology are the statement of these conditions and principles accordance with which brings rain and snow. God did not say do so and so, and I will let you live, but do otherwise and I will kill you. On the contrary, in infinite wisdom he foreknew, and in infinite love he foretold, the principles of happiness and life, saying, This way my child, and thou shalt live; do not go that way for there is misery and death. Thus God's law is a law of love.
Yet God did not compel men to obey that law, but made them as free to disobey as to obey, seeking to win them by love to an accord with the everlasting principles of love. He left them thus free because he is love, and because love is by its very nature opposed to all diminishment of freedom, and therefore to all forced restraint. Forced obedience, even to the principles of happiness, would itself be an imperfection of happiness and an impediment to its perfect realization.
No, God's kingdom is not the kingdom of arbitrary force: it is the kingdom of love. Its territory is the mighty universe,—infinite space peopled with worlds, and each world peopled with intelligent beings subject to the law of love of which we have spoken. This world was only one of the States in the United States of God. God, the fountain of all life; with him Christ, in all things having the preeminence with God above all others; beneath them the angels, and a little lower than the angels, man and other beings in other worlds corresponding to man in this world, created to inhabit those worlds, as man was to inhabit this, and as the angels were to inhabit heaven; then under man, and the beings corresponding to him, the various orders of animal life, looking up to him as master, as he was to look up to God. And in all this holy mountain of life they were not to hurt or destroy, but love was to be the only hand that should bind; but it, with its silken fetters lighter than the spider's web, yet stronger than steel, was to unite each to all the others and all to God.
It is true, sin has come in here. This world has seceded from the government of God, and joining Satan has established a kingdom on principles of rebellion. But God has not abdicated even here, but through Christ, and the power of redeeming love, continues his authority. There are two kingdoms here now, and when a man is truly converted, the Bible says he is "translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son." No, God has not abdicated, but he is yet to be supreme even here, and on every hilltop, where for a little time there has waved the black standard of the man of sin, there shall forever float the white pennon of the Prince of Peace.
God's ideal is to be realized in spite of sin and Satan, and "every creature which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them," shall be heard saying, "Blessing and honor, and glory and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever."
The triumph of this kingdom of love will be the triumph of love over hatred and force, and of truth over falsehood and wrong. The kingdom of God, as such, is never manifest as a kingdom of arbitrary force, and in the full realization of that divine kingdom there can be no place left anywhere for the exercise of such force. God the King is love, and the divine love will have conquered and completely subdued all the subjects, so that each being perfectly won by the power of love to the principles of the law of love, will please to do nothing contrary to those principles. Each will therefore throughout eternity do precisely what he pleases to do, and liberty will be perfect and complete. Toward this sublime end, God is working. God is love, and arbitrary force is opposed to his nature, for arbitrary force is a limitation of the liberty of love, and God would have that liberty unlimited and therefore complete. When his kingdom is fully victorious, the kingdoms of force and of intrigue and arbitrary power, will be as the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind of this divine and mighty conquest will carry them away that no place shall be found for them. The flag represents the principles of the kingdom, and we read: "His banner over me was love."
*Illustration adapted from Draper.
There is the worship of God through the motive of love; and the worship of the devil, through motives of fear."
— George E. Fifield in the Sermon Love Versus Fear
Nothing is clearer than that the Bible teaches that a separation of true Christianity from the false, so-called Christianity will take place prior to Christ’s return to this earth. Some people believe this separation will take place over the day that will be observed as the Sabbath; and, so they go about devoting almost their entire effort to getting people to observe the right day, and necessarily paying little attention to getting people to experience the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, since they have not had that experience themselves. In other words, they put the sign before the experience signified, just as the later Jews did with the sign of circumcision, and just the opposite from the way in which, it is clearly stated, God gave circumcision to Abraham. This inevitably puts the Sabbath into the Old Covenant, just as the Jews put circumcision there, and teaches the people to seek their righteousness through obedience, instead of seeking to be made righteous by the divine indwelling, so they can truly and spiritually obey.