Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/164

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years since and the four thousand years before the death of Christ were appointed times for other parts of the work, preparatory to "the times of restitution of all things."

Let no one hastily suppose that there is in this view any- thing in conflict with the teaching of the Scriptures that faith toward God, repentance for sin and reformation of character are indispensable to salvation. This feature will be treated more at length hereafter, but we now suggest that only the few have ever had a sufficiency of light to produce full faith, repentance and reformation. Some have been blinded in part, and some completely, by the god of this world, and they must be recovered from blindness as well as from death, that they, each for himself, may have a full chance to prove, by obedience or disobedience, their worthi- ness or unworthiness of life everlasting. Then those who prove themselves unworthy of life will die again the second death from which there will be no redemption, and con- sequently no resurrection. The death which comes on ac- count of Adam's sin, and all the imperfections which fol- low in its wake, will be removed because of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus ; but the death which comes as a result of individual, wilful apostasy is final. This sin hath never forgiveness, and ils penalty, the second death, will be everlasting not everlasting dying, but everlasting death a death unbroken by a resurrection.

The philosophy of the plan of redemption will be treated in a succeeding volume. Here we merely establish the fact that the redemption through Christ Jesus is to be as far-reaching in its blessed results and opportunities as was the sin of Adam in its blight and ruin that all who were condemned and who suffered on account of the ore may as surely, "in due time,'* be set free from all those ills on account of the other, However, none can appreciate this Scriptural argument who do not admit the Scriptural state*

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