Brother F.A. Chick of Maine has desired us to give our views to the signs on Acts 17.39. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent.
In reading this text and its immediate connection, we are sensibly impressed with the striking analogy in which the circumstances are presented. Here bear to the time, place, and circumstances occupied at the present day by those few who contend for the truth, and against the superstition and idolatry of the present hour in our own country and throughout the world.
Paul was a stranger in a sojourner at Athens, waiting the arrival of Silas and Timothy. Driven by persecution, he came to Athens and found that whole city was given to idolatry, and his spirit was stirred in him, and he disputed with the Jews, and in the market daily with den that came to him. God's ministers and witnesses are now strangers and pilgrims in the world, driven about at this time by persecution and shocked at the abominable idolatry, which they encounter at every hand. Their testimony, like that of Paul, is in direct contradiction to that which is popular, involving them continually in disputation with legalists and idolaters. The doctrine of God, our Savior, as preached then by Paul, was new and strange to that people. And their curiosity was excited. And they brought him to Aeropagus, saying, may we know what this new doctrine, whereof you speak is? For all the Athenians and strangers, which were spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing. Perhaps from that to the present time there has never been a greater disposition manifested in the religious circles for telling and hearing new things. But with all their relish for new things, the gospel, which was both new and strange to their ears, had no attraction for them as a sequel will show. None can deny that in the present time, in which the inventions of human ingenuity has been upon the rack to forge new theories of divinity and new machinery for what they profanely call “evangelizing the world,” while everything of human invention has its admirers and advocates the simple truths as it is in Jesus, is today about as unpopular in the world as it was in Paul's time in Athens.
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill. Let us notice and compare his standpoint with that of the servants of God who preached the same doctrine which Paul preached then. Mars, in pagan mythology was the imaginary God of War which was worshipped and relied upon to give success in human butchery. And Mars Hill was an eminence probably which was so named and consecrated in honor of that idol. Among the thousands of heathen deities to whom they had built altars and offered sacrifices, none seemed to be more popular than Mars.
Brother Chick, Ascend the Hill of Mars and look around you and report what you see. There stands an altar inscribed Missionism or the God of missions, calling loud and pathetically for men and money to save a sinking world. Millions have been offered upon this missionary altar, and yet its avarice is not satisfied. No soul has ever yet been saved by it. No soul ever will or can be saved by it, for there is salvation nowhere else but in the name of Jesus. Hence all the men and all the money offered upon this idol’s altar is offered in vain. Yonder, yet near the first, towers up another goal. Read its superscription. The Sabbath school, as a means of grace, is chiseled upon its front. Like Molech of old, it has received its hundreds of thousands of children which have been offered upon it. And although its flaming claws have not consumed the bodies of the victims which have been offered. They have consumed in them all that respect for the truth of divine revelation and reverence for the God which made the heavens and the earth that they naturally possessed, and has seared their consciousness with a hot iron, and fostered in them the spirit of delusion, infidelity and bitter persecution.
Hard by, your eyes rest upon another magnificent altar on which is inscribed Track Society. It's God is made of paper daubed with ink. Costly sacrifices are laid in grand profusion upon it, and the salvation of souls is credited to it.
Turn yet again, and you gaze upon an altar bearing the title Theological Seminary and on the other side the engraving Educational Society. This idol is by all the modern Athenian worshippers, regarded as the Lord of their harvest, to whom they cry out for all the ministerial laborers they desire. From this altar proceeds such flattering titles as Reverend, Doctors of Divinity, Right Reverence, Holy Fathers, Popes, Cardinals and bishops, chaplains. Deans, monks, Friars, coleporters, and numerous others, which are forbidden to be used in the church and Kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
We are told that the pagans had some 30,000 gods canonized and held in their sacred veneration. But how the number will compare with those of modern times, we will not presume to say. For time would fail us to speak of all the sculptured altars that may be distinctly seen and read from the summit of Mars Hill.
Stained with the blood of millions, we shudder as we behold the altar of the God of War. Who from the days of Cain has crimsoned the earth with human gore. Yet this detestable monster has in all ages, had his votaries. But never in our own beloved country, so many so violent and so cruel as in the last few years. Pile up the mangled, ghastly bodies of two million who have been slain in the late war with our sister states, and heap on that frightful pile 1,000,000 blacks who have perished under the since the war began In consequence of being forced or allured away from comfortable homes[1], And you will have a hill for Mars which will suffer nothing by comparison with that Mars hill on which the Holy Apostle stood. Let anyone who fears God rise to the summit of this hill of Mars, and we doubt not that his spirit will be stirred as was the spirit of Paul, to protest in the name of the Lord, against the abominable idolatry and superstition of the present times.
But we will not now stop to institute a further comparison between a number or qualities of the ancient and modern imaginary gods which are made and worshipped by what our apostle calls “art or man's device.” Seeing that they are all alike condemned by divine authority, as superstitious and idolatrous, we will pass the notice, more particularly the verse on which our views are solicited.
“And the times of this ignorance?” What times, and what ignorance? Observe the apostle does not confine the application of his remarks to any one particular time, but speaks of the times as though there were many, and then contrasting all former times, when this abominable idolatry has prevailed with its prevalence in subsequent ages. Says that the former he had winked at. But henceforth a righteous judgment should meet due recompense to the offenders.
Under the former agents, especially while national Israel stood the type of Christ’s spiritual Kingdom, while Israel was sorely punished for the sin of idolatry, the heathen nation of the earth were allowed to worship their idols without rebuke. The punishments inflicted upon Israel for worshipping idols were all temporal judgments such as sword, pestilence and famine, captivity, final extinction as a nation. But no such punishments were visited upon any. But that typical people. It was thus that God had winked at the idolatry of the Gentiles, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. Now or from the time the separating partition between Jew and Gentile was removed. Not that the Jewish organization and Jewish rights were abolished. From that time the Apostle had taught that there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles. All were alike to be judged and punished for the sins of idolatry.
Here lest our views be misapprehended, we still observe that we do not understand that it was in point of guilt before God or exposure to everlasting damnation any less criminal for the Gentiles to worship the works of their own hands before then subsequently to the abolition of Judaism. No more in that sense any more abominable for Jews than for the heathens to worship idols. But because Israel as a covenant and typical people, were called in distinction from all other nations to be a peculiar people and were held under a conditional covenant which required a day. It should maintain the character of a peculiar people. Consequently, there are special obedience to the law and the severe chastisements for their disobedience were especially provided in the law of a carnal commandment.
But now, as Paul stands addressing the Athenians in all subsequent ages of the world, a just and righteous retribution for idolatry shall be inflicted alike upon Jewish and Gentiles without discrimination.
The times of this ignorance included the time in which the giving of the Law, the prophets, the priesthood, etc., were all confined to Israel, giving them instructions line upon line. Nor prophets were sent to the Gentiles. Consequently, these were times of ignorance to them. But now that the authorized apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, by divine authority were sent forth to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, the plea of ignorance could no longer be made or admitted. The repentance now commanded is to desist from the worship of idols, from paying their devotions to gods, which are likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and men's device. Of course, it is not that repentance which Christ as a Prince and Savior, is exalted to give unto Israel with the remission of sins. For that they have no power to obtain. For it requires the same display of the divine power of the Exalted Savior to give it as to forgive their sins. But as rational and intelligent beings, creatures are offspring of God, now that the gospel is preached unto the Gentiles, and light has come late into the world. They have no cloak for their persistence. Adhesion to the worship of dumb idols. Christ said on one occasion, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not sinned. But now they have no cloak for their sin, if I had not done among them the works which none other than man did they had not had sin, but now they have. Both seen and hated both me and my Father John 15.22-24. The light which they then had beyond what they had in former ages, is expressed by the Apostle in connection with our subject:
“Because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained, whereof he has given assurance unto all men, and that he has raised him from the dead.” The resurrection of Christ from the dead afforded incontestable evidence of the supreme power and government of the God, which raised him up and set him far above all principalities and powers, thrones and dominions. Giving him a name which is above every name in the world or in the world to come. So that at his name every knee shall bow both of things in heaven, and things in earth, and of things under the earth. Thus fully demonstrating that God would hold all men answerable to him for their transgressions, and that he would judge them at a day appointed by that man whom he has entertained. In the day appointed, he will judge “the world in righteousness.” That is, he will execute the judgments as already recorded in His Word, against all unrighteousness. The righteousness of His judgment and of the final execution of His judgments will be measured by His law as the righteous standard of righteousness, which law forbids the worshipping or having any other God than the true and living God. The proclamation in all the world to every creature that the Lord is God, and beside him there is no other, implies a command of God that men should no longer bow down to idols or worship the work of their own hands.
The judgment of God against idolatry is now already pronounced. The irrevocable sentence, which was before published to Israel, has now proclaimed to earth's remotest bounds, that they shall all go to confusion together, who are makers of idols, and that the wicked shall be turned into hell with all the nations that forget God.
This fearful judgment in sentence applies as well to those who sit at this day ascribe salvation to imaginary gods, or to the work of men's hands, as to those who gave form and shape to masses of gold, silver, or stone, and called them gods or ascribed the works or attributes of God to them in former times. Those who are today worshipping Mars, the God of War, and ascribing salvation to the bloody works of their own hands, and exulting in what they have accomplished by the Spirit of Mars will not be found guiltless when arraigned before him, whose spirit proclaims peace on earth and goodwill to men. “Their judgment, now of a long time lingered not, and their damnation slumbers not.”
The idolaters of the present time, as well as those of former ages, ignorantly worship the God, who is to them unknown. When they presumptuously call on him to assist him in doing the very things which he has forbidden them to do. They pray to him who has said you shall not kill, to enable them to slaughter their fellow men, to whom he says you shall not steal or covet to prosper them in disposing of their neighbours, of their men servants and maid servants, their oxen, asses and every other description of property. Such worship is idolatrous and vain, for it is written “in vain do you worship me teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Like the too superstitious Athenians, modern idolaters all performed their religious service as though they believe that God needs something which can be supplied by them and can be worshipped with men's hands. May God preserve his children in these dark and trying times from all evil and make them valiant for the truth. His word says to them, “little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
Elder Gilbert Beebe
Editorial, Signs of the Times
August 1, 1866
[1] We must understand that Beebe was a man of his time. We do not judge him by our modern times. It should be noted that he was a pacifist and was against all wars or violence of any type.
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