Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/31



The question as to how we shall interpret the Bible is solved by taking the book as a whole and thinking of the true and evident nature of God as infinitely and eternally loving, incapable of the weaknesses of hating humanity, and avenging Himself upon them. It seems true to say that God hates sin, but loves the sinner; that his hatred of sin is not because of His fastidious dislike of what is offensive to Him as an individual being, but because of its harmful effect upon the sinner. The God the theologians have invented is a base calumny, an atrocious misrepresentation of a Deity who actually is forever like the father of the Prodigal Son. The real God of the Bible is a Divine Being whose love followed the sinner down into hell itself and overthrew the hells in order to release mankind from the illusions of wickedness and from spiritual death. God is not at all like the God behind the so-called Plan of Salvation. God, manifested in Jesus, did actually come forth into the lowest planes of man's earthly life, and in the inner world of spirit met and fought against and overcame man's deadly enemies, rescuing man from their cruel and malignant power, setting him forever in a place of equilibrium, or balance, between hell and heaven, so that aided by the Lord and His angels, man could freely choose the good and reject the evil. This was the Rescue of mankind, His Redemption; and Salvation is man's choice of the good and rejection of the evil helped by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who is God dwelling with man. ls not this latter Plan of Salvation, if one wishes to call it that, in harmony with the true nature of God as revealed in Old and New Testament?

Is not this the picture of Redemption and Salvation disclosed in the 40th chapter of Isaiah? For example, we have there the picture of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the Messiah who was to prepare the way of Jehovah. Mind you, he was to prepare the way