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.”
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Daniel 8, and John in <661619>
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