laid on the shelf. At the present day God is giving His people wonderful light on this book of mysteries. Oh, how He is lighting it up to the
“Holiness people” The value of this book to the present generation is actually inestimable. Peter, James, Jude, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul have all left us most brilliant prophecies, revealing the wonders of the latter days. But John transcendently climaxes all. But a youth when called to the apostleship, he enjoyed the nearest proximity to Jesus, leaning on His breast. He was permitted to live a whole generation after all the other apostles were dead and gone. Hence he enjoyed wonderful experimental maturity. His spiritual illumination was transcendent, and his prophetic interpenetration and perspicacity illimitable. All his apostolic comrades prophesied tersely and isolatedly. John gives us the grand and wonderful panorama, sweeping down the intervening ages, not only to the end of the present Gentile Dispensation, when the Lord shall come in His glory and reign in triumph through the millennial ages, culminating in the final judgment, the earth’s cremation, and the end of time; but he sweeps right
on, luminously revealing the re-creation of the earth and its ethereal environments, the glory of the heavenly state, when this world shall have been reannexed to the celestial empire, conferred upon the saints as a soldier’s bounty, reminiscent of fidelity and valor during Immanuel’s exterminating war against sin and Satan; the descension of the New Jerusalem into visible proximity, and the reign of the saints through all eternity.
THE SECOND BLESSING CONFIRMED AND FUTURE PROBATION ANNIHILATED
11. “Let the unrighteous man still be unrighteous and the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous still do righteousness; and let the holy still be sanctified.” The prophetical panorama has already swept through the whole realm of human probation. This significant verse is the verdict of the Holy Ghost pronounced on all the sons and daughters of Adam’s fallen race. You see indubitably entire humanity divided into four classes;
i.e., the righteous, the wicked, the holy, and the filthy. Justification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated, takes away the guilt pertinent to your own sins, and makes you righteous. This does not reach the deep pollution of your fallen. nature. Hence the Holy Spirit calls you “filthy.” The Greek word hagiadzo, throughout the Bible translated
“sanctify,” is a compound, from alpha (not) and gee (the earth). Hence it means to take the world out of you. <620216>
1 John 2:16 says:
“All this is the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.”
Therefore, you see that sanctification is the antithesis of pollution, and the grace by which all the filthiness of the flesh and spirit are expurgated. In these Scriptures, certainly the two works of grace are distinctly and irrefutably set forth, the one to save you from condemnation and make you righteous, and the other to save you from “all filthiness of the flesh and spirit” (<470701>
2 Corinthians 7:1), and make you holy. This verse not only establishes beyond controversy the two distinct works of grace in the plan of salvation — i.e., justification and entire sanctification — but, with the irresistible logic of the divine ipse dixit, positively reveals the fact that these indispensable graces must be received in the present life, or forever
forfeited, thus triumphantly and irrefutably sweeping from the field all the specious dogmata propagated by the advocates of physical death, fiery purgatory, or any other theory of post-mortem sanctification. You are liable this moment to reach the end of your probation. How awful to think, as you are now under condemnation for your sins — i.e., unrighteous — you are liable instantly to forfeit the last possibility of change, and remain a miserable culprit through all eternity! Though your own sins are forgiven, and you are saved from evil habits, yet you are not saved from evil tempers. The pollution of the Adamic nature still inheres in the deep interior of your spiritual organism; i.e., in the bold phraseology of the Holy Ghost, you are still “filthy.” Will you not fly to the cleansing fountain lest the black curtain fall, eclipsing the last hope of your
sanctification and sealing your doom, consigning you to the society of the
“filthy” through all eternity? Perhaps you are not saved from the filth of tobacco, opium, strong drink, gluttony, jewelry, and needless
ornamentation, which defile your body. Are you saved from pride, vanity, folly, anger, wrath, malice, revenge, hatred, envy, jealousy, ambition, covetousness, love of the world, self-love, selfishness, Church pride, and other forms of spiritual filthiness? Hasten to the cleansing fountain, get washed from all this “filthiness of the flesh and spirit,” lest the dark curtain fall and consign you to remain filthy through all eternity. When God speaks, let angels, men, and devils be silent. You know this is the positive word of the Almighty. You must have these two works of grace.
If you are not both righteous and holy, you are liable any moment to be shut out of heaven forever. God give you a superlative appreciation of His word! You will not be judged by your creed, nor what your preacher says;
but by the word of God.
12. “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give unto each as his work is.” While our work is not the condition of our salvation, yet it is the measure of our reward in heaven. Consequently, the rewards of the righteous and the retributions of the wicked will be as diversified as their lives in this world. This declaration of the Almighty should present every conceivable incentive to do our utmost to help Jesus save the world. The smallest deeds of philanthropy, mercy, and grace will receive an abundant reward in the good time coning. We should all substitute the expectation of death with the constant outlook for our glorious Lord.
13. Alpha and Omega are simply the first and last letters of the Greek