PROLOGUE AUTHORSHIP The author’s name is not found in this book. Consequently, we are utterly at sea with reference to the writer. It was never assigned to Paul till about 500 years ago, when the Roman Catholics first Classified it in the Pauline series. Much investigation, and a vast diversity of opinion in reference to its authorship, have prevailed among the critics. I do not think Paul wrote this letter. 1. All of the other letters assigned to Paul contain his name.

Consequently, I think he would have given his name in this one if he had written it. 2. It is not the Pauline style, which is exceedingly plain, clear and logical, whereas this letter is diffuse, florid and eloquent. 3. In all of Paul’s letters he evolves the plan of salvation out of the Abrahamic covenant. In Hebrews it is evolved out of the high priesthood of Christ.

I believe with Dean Alford, the prince of English Critics, that Apollos wrote it. 1. It is literally crowded full of the Judaic institutions. This would harmonize with the authorship of Apollos, as he was educated at Alexandria, Egypt, at that time the greatest literary emporium on the globe. Under the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, B.C. 290, for the convenience of his Jewish subjects. 2. Apollos was the most eloquent man in the world during the apostolic age, whereas Paul avowedly discarded eloquence. Corinthians 2:4. This Hebrew letter is transcendently eloquent.

Of course the reader understands the utter insignificance of the whole question appertaining to human authorship, since the letter is actually indicted by the Holy Ghost. Consequently we should not consider it the revelation of Paul, or Apollos, or any other man, to the Hebrews, but God’s letter straight from heaven to us. These Hebrews were the Palestinian Christians who had passed out of the Mosaic into the gospel dispensation under the preaching of Christ and the apostles. They not only suffered a terrible persecution by the Jewish church, but incessant and most powerful temptations to return to the so-called religion of Moses and the prophets.

Though God had raised up the Jewish church through the inspired leadership of Abraham, Moses Joshua, and all the holy prophets, the good old people had died and gone to heaven, and new generations succeeded them, who had never known God in His saving power. Consequently, the church, with its membership and pastors, had degenerated into dead formality and torpid hypocrisy; so they signally failed to recognize their own Christ when, after the fond expectancy of four thousand years, He appeared on the earth.

Therefore, instead of receiving Him with jubilant enthusiasm, they not only ignored Him, but actually repudiated and crucified Him. The true Church of God is identical in all ages, and under all dispensations, and in all nations, simply consisting of God’s family on the earth, entered by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost, and matured by the sanctification of the Spirit. Therefore, these Palestinian Christians, though denounced by the pastors and church members as come-outers and heretics, were the true and orthodox nucleus of God’s Church, perpetuated out of Judaism into Christianity. The great end of this letter is to fortify those Palestinian Christians against the incessant and overwhelming temptations to apostatize into fallen Judaism and to edify them in the great climacteric Bible truth of Christian perfection. If Paul wrote the letter we know that he was abundantly competent for the responsible duty of elucidating and enforcing the great doctrine of entire sanctification.

The case is equally obvious if Apollos wrote it, as we know he received the sky-blue experience of sanctification under the ministry of Priscilla and Aquila. Acts 18:26. Hence we learn from this letter that the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification constitute the only available breakwater against apostasy. (CHAPTER) - 1. This verse sweeps forever from the field all the prophets, like Mohammed and Joe Smith, claiming inspiration, since the days of Christ. 2. “Whom he set forth the heir of all things, through whom also he ordained the ages.” Satan conquered this world in Eden when he captured Adam and Eve, its king and queen. God recognized his conquest. Corinthians 4:4. If Satan had carried out his scheme he would have added this world to hell. Christ volunteered, bled and died, gloriously redeeming this world from Satan’s conquest. When he flew up to heaven God received him as a conqueror and said: “Well done.” Hence Christ is the rightful heir of all things, i .e ., the whole earth and all the people. Hence he saves all the people who will let him and will completely save the whole earth and firmament, not only from sin, but all the effects of sin, completely sanctifying and restoring it back to the heavenly state in which Satan found it. This world was a part of heaven before the devil broke it loose in order to add it to hell. Christ is going to purify it by the fiery baptism ( 2 Peter 3:10-13), and add it back to heaven. Revelation 21:1.

Where the old English says, “made the world,” the Greek has aioonas , i .e ., the ages. Hence we translate it, “ordained the ages.” The popular opinion, proclaimed from a hundred thousand pulpits, that the world is to have an end, originated from a wrong translation of this word aioon . It does not mean “world,” as the old English has it, but “age,” while cosmos means world. The Bible positively reveals the eternal perpetuity of this world.

Time, which is simply the measure of the mediatorial kingdom, will have an end. After the glorious millennial ages shall have come and gone, during the final judgment the earth will be cremated and thoroughly sanctified by fire, made over and transformed into a heaven, and given to the occupancy of the redeemed saints and glorified angels forever. The last two chapters in the Bible present a vivid and glorious description of this earth and firmament after their glorious transformation into the heavenly state. In this verse we see the ages were instituted in the divine restitutionary economy in the progressive development of this miserable, fallen world, preparatory for the coming kingdom. The antediluvian, patriarchal, Mosaic, Judaic ages have come and gone, each verifying its office in the grand preparatory drama. The Gentile age winds up the grand panorama and ushers in the glorious kingdom. 3. “Who being the brightness of His glory and the character of His person.” ... The Greek word for “express image” is character. Since that word has been transferred into the English language, it should not be translated. Hence, in the life of Jesus, faithfully delineated by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, his inspired biographers, we see the very character of God. Therefore, we find that God is “meek and lowly in heart,” going about doing good. Therefore, if you would go up and live with God in heaven you must be like Him, i .e ., meek and lowly in heart, doing good, and no harm. “Having made the expurgation of sins He sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” You see from this statement that Jesus completely and forever settled the awful sin-problem, so far as this world is concerned. When He died on the cross He perfectly and eternally satisfied the violated law, and swept every conceivable difficulty completely out of the way; so the vilest sinner on the whole earth has nothing to do but totally, radically and unconditionally abandon sin and Satan world without end, look away to Calvary, and shout victory over the world, the flesh and the devil, now and through all eternity. Nothing but stubborn unbelief can ever keep a soul out of heaven. The very fact of the Father’s royal congratulation and glorious coronation of Jesus on the mediatorial throne a His right hand is an indisputable and eternal recognition of His perfect and satisfactory approval of the expiation and redemption Jesus came on the earth to execute. He is this day Mediatorial King, interceding at God’s right hand, in behalf of a guilty world. 4. The angels are all created finite intelligences, and infinitely inferior to the divinity. Christ is perfect God and perfect man. Pursuant to His human perfection, He ha a perfect human soul an body. He is called the second Adam because In Him God gave humanity a second chance. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, consisting of spirit, mind, and body. The human spirit, soul or heart is composed of the conscience, the will and the affections The conscience is the voice of God in the soul. It is the solitary survivor of the fall, and, even in the sinner, always takes God’s side. The will is the king of humanity. In the sinner, it is on the devil’s side, ingeniously manipulated by him for the destruction of his victim. In conversion, the will turns over from the devil to God, and from sin to righteousness; meanwhile original sin, though subjugated by the Holy Ghost, still survives in the deep subterranean regions of the soul, till utterly eradicated by the cleansing blood and the consuming fire of entire sanctification. The mind consists of the intellect, the judgment, the memory and the sensibilities. The mind is not made perfect in sanctification, which is only spiritual perfection, leaving us encumbered with multitudinous infirmities because of our mental and physical imperfection, all of which are swept away in glorification when this mortal shall put on immortality. In Adam the first, Satan found an easy victim, and slew him on his first assault, made against his physical being in the simple temptation of his bodily appetite. But when he attacked Adam the Second he lost all of his ammunition. Beginning with his body he tempted Him to eat, after a fast of forty days. Signally defeated in his assault against His physical manhood, he tempted His intellect by offering Him the whole world. Again signally defeated, he attacked His faith, which is the basis of all spirituality, by tempting Him to leap from the pinnacle of the temple, presuming that God would hold Him up. In that case His faith would have been superseded by presumption, which is Satan’s counterfeit, and would have ultimated in spiritual apostasy and collapse, as in case of Adam the first; meanwhile the divinity, leaving the humanity, would have returned back to heaven, the hope of the world being blighted forever.

Hence, the humanity of Christ has deservedly achieved a name whose glory eclipses that of all the angels. 5. This verse describes what theologians call “the eternal generation of the Son.” 6. “First begotten” means the first to be giorified from the dead, i .e ., the first one raised from the dead in the transfigured glory. Elijah, Elisha and Christ had raised people from the dead before the resurrection of Jesus.

But we have no evidence that any of them received the transfigured body, but simply their mortal body subject to dissolution, as formerly. Hence, Jesus was the first one to rise from the dead in His transfigured glory. “Into the world” literally means into the inhabited universe, and here means heaven instead of earth, as we see from the subsequent portion of the verse, because God says, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” So this verse describes our Savior’s glorious congratulation and reception into heaven when He ascended up from Mt. Olivet in His transfigured body. 7. “He maketh the winds his messengers and the flames of fire His ministers.” The Holy Ghost fills the material world, going wherever the atmosphere interpenetrates, offering life to all human spirits, whether in heathendom or Christendom. The wind is the symbol of regeneration ( John 3:8), while fire everywhere emblematizes sanctification. The wind is the breath of life, and the fire consumes all impurity. Hence, the Holy Ghost administers regeneration to all sinners, and sanctification to all Christians who will receive Him. We here have God’s definition of His ministers, “a flame of fire.” Remember, this is the only definition God gives of His ministers in all the Bible. So, if you would be a minister of God, you must get filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost. Then you will be a moving cyclone of sin-consuming flame whithersoever you go. Reader, do you not want to be a minister of God? You need but one qualification, and that is the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. 8. This verse certifies that our Lord’s everlasting kingdom is an administration of righteousness. The kingdom of Christ is set up in the heart by the Holy Ghost in regeneration, confirmed and perpetuated in sanctification. Here, however, the more direct allusion is to our Lord’s millennial reign, which will follow the present age, and continue forever.

Though the millennium will only last about a thousand years, our glorious King will encumber the throne of final judgment, and reign on forever over this world after its cremation, celestialization and readmission into the Heavenly Universe. 9. Here we learn that God “hath anointed” the glorified humanity of Christ with a richer enduement of spiritual rhapsody than any of his comrades in the redeemed world. This would follow somewhat as a legitimate, logical sequence from the fact that the Man Christ is the only unfallen human being in all the universe. If Adam had not yielded to the physical temptation, Satan would have proceeded to the intellectual and the spiritual. But in the case of Adam the first, the devil saved two-thirds of his ammunition, and won his game. In the case of Adam the Second, he expended all of his ammunition, and finally lost his enterprise. As here we find the humanity of Christ endued by the Holy Ghost with a degree of bliss and rhapsody beyond that of all His comrades, therefore we conclude that our capacity for spiritual joy and rapture is in proportion to our purity. Of course, the cleansing blood and consuming fire are abundantly competent to make us all perfectly clean and pure. Still doubtless, all the sins we have ever committed impede and detract from our spiritual capacity for the reception of the joys, rhapsodies and glories imparted by the Holy Ghost. Hence, the person who has never been blackened by vulgar vices and low debaucheries is susceptible of a richer enduement of heavenly bliss and glory in this world and the world to come than the soul who has wallowed in the slime of Satan’s filth. While all the inhabitants of heaven are perfectly happy, since there is no sorrow in that bright world, all are not equally happy, but there are infinite degiees in the kingdom of glory, as well as in probationary grace. 10. We see here that our Savior, the second person of the Trinity, actually created this world; or, rather, that God in the person of the Eternal Son created this world, with its atmospheric environments and luminaries to vitalize it. No wonder He was not willing for Satan to wither and blight it, and add it to hell; but He generously volunteered and came to its rescue. 11. “These will perish,” i .e . they will cease to exist in their present form; they will undergo revolutions, transformations and renovations. “All these will grow old like a garment.” The earth is rapidly wearing out and washing away into the sea, and losing its pristine fertility, significant of the fact that we are fast approaching the end of the present order of things. 12. “Thou wilt roll them away like a book, and they shall be changed.” Books of olden time were skins of animals inscribed and rolled up like a side of leather. This is a vivid description of the wonderful transformations which Omnipotence will execute in the great and radical revolutions and renovations which await the material worlds in the coming ages. 13...”Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thy enemies Thy footstool.” This verse reveals the congratulation of the So by the Father when He flew up from Mt. Olivet, having triumphed on the cross and victoriously evacuated the sepulcher, thus having gloriously consummated the expiatory work, for whose execution He evacuated His celestial throne.

This gushing, welcome reception on the part of the Father was an indisputable confirmation of His perfect satisfaction with the work wrought by His son, vindicatory of the violated law, and expiatory of a guilty world. Therefore, the Father actually crowns Him mediatorial King forever, having the sole and perfect right to rule this world in righteousness and live through all eternity. Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King simultaneously. Yet these offices have their respective periods of predominance. While on earth, His prophetic office predominated, and He was the most indefatigable preacher the world ever saw. When He offered up His body on the cross, a sacrifice for the whole world, His official High Priesthood became predominant, and has so continued ever since, and will be pre-eminent till he descends on His royal throne, to inaugurate the millennial reign. Then His Kingship will rise pre-eminent, brighten through the millennial ages, and sweep on through all eternity. Since the Son has actually redeemed this world by His blood, and conquered it by His heroic labor and suffering, He has the sole right to possess and rule it forever.

Therefore, it is the province of the Fatter as the executive of the Diving Government, to enforce the claim of His Son over all the kingdoms of the earth. Consequently, in His royal, Fatherly, congratulatory reception, He says, “Well done, my Son; sit down on the mediatorial throne till I make all of thine enemies thy footstool.” This the Father has been faithful to do in His castigatory judgments against wicked nations in all ages, but the grand finale of this fulfillment will be consummated during the great Tribulation. “I beheld till the throne was cast down and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool; His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth before Him; a thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.” ( Daniel 7:9,10) I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” ( Daniel 7:13,14) We see clearly and unequivocally in these visions of Daniel the final and summary fulfillment of the Father’s promise to the Son, to make His enemies His footstool. We see clearly how the Father will come down in the great Tribulation and shake every potentate from his throne, both political and ecclesiastical, thus preparing the way for the universal reign of His Son. “I beheld till the thrones were cast down.” The connection shows plainly and positively that these thrones are none other than all the dominions of this world, both political and ecclesiastical. Whiteness signifies the perfect purity of God and His administration. Fire, throughout the Bible, symbolizes destruction. No one will question that the Ancient of days means the Father, in contradistinction to the Son.

Now remember, the Father has no incarnation. Hence, He will be utterly invisible, though present on the earth in His awful castigatory judgments.

While the Ancient of days will be invisible, Antichrist will rise, visible to mortal eyes, and lead myriads after him to perdition. The “horn” here mentioned means the pope, who will be Antichrist in the Tribulation, speaking “great words.” “I beheld till the beast was slain and his body given to the burning flame.” Beast here means human government in contradistinction to the Theocracy. The fact that the beast was slain and his body given to the burning flame, can mean nothing less than the utter destruction of all human kingdoms. God’s original plan was to rule the world by righteousness, love and wisdom, both in state and church. When the people became so wicked as to utterly reject the divine government they set up governments of their own, ruled by men instead of God. The Holy Ghost constantly in the prophecies designates them “wild beast governments.” The Greek word theerion , meaning a cruel, bloodthirsty wild beast, is constantly used by the Holy Ghost to designate human governments. This is strictly pertinent, because they all rule by brute force, selfish and cruel as the grave. These wild beast powers have already killed enough people in wars to populate the globe fourteen times. Still the people, blinded by the devil, hold on to the wild beast, and reject God who has always wanted to rule the world in peace, righteousness and love.

Theologians have generally applied these prophecies to the final judgment, which is utterly untrue, because here we see the Ancient of days, i .e ., the Father, presides; whereas in the final judgment, at the end of time, the Son will encumber the judgment seat. You clearly see the connection of the Son and the Father, in the execution of these judgments. The Father comes and casts down all human thrones, destroys all human power, political and ecclesiastical, for Babylon falls meanwhile ( Revelation 18:2), and with her all human ecclesiasticism goes down. Since the Son of God has the sole right to the sovereignty of this world, in both church and state, all human governments, both political and ecclesiastical, which are not really subordinated to divine rule, are His uncompromising enemies, and destined to fall beneath His conquering tread. In these prophecies you plainly see the Father descending in His awful retributive judgments, and preparing the whole world for the reign of His Son. After which the Son rides down on the throne of His glory and enters upon the millennial reign. “But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, ever’ forever and ever.” ( Daniel 7:8) “Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” ( Daniel 7:22) Away with the popular theology which construes this to be the spiritual kingdom. Common sense teaches you that every saint has already received the spiritual kingdom, otherwise he could not be a saint. There is no possible evasion of the conclusion that “the kingdom” here means the government of the world, political and ecclesiastical. Christ will rule the world during the millennial ages through the instrumentality of His transfigured saints. Since He is to encumber the final judgment throne, and then reign over the sanctified, renovated and celestialized world forever, “to His kingdom there will be no end.” Hence, you see the pertinency of the declaration that the saints will “possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” 14. This verse reveals angelic ministry. When they interviewed our Savior relative to the woman who had survived her seventh husband, as to whose wile she should be in the resurrection, He responded: “In that day there will neither be marrying nor giving in marriage, but all will be as the angels of God.” The Greek says isoi anggeloi , which means “like the angels” or “equal to the angels.” This statement of our Savior reveals the fact that glorification confers angelic perfection, while sanctification effects Christian perfection. Justification saves us from guilt; sanctification saves us from depravity, while glorification saves us from infirmity, and the resurrection saves us from mortality. The fact that at glorification we receive angelic perfection certainly recognizes in us a near kinship to the angels. Perhaps this is the reason why the angels have always taken a preeminent interest in the human race. They were present in the creation, and made the heavens roar with triumphant shouts of joyful approval. They brightened the firmament of Eden with the splendor of their pinions, serving Adam and Eve as guardians. When humanity collapsed under Satan’s invasion they flew up to heaven, heralding the mournful tidings which filled heaven with lugubrious wailings, while golden harps were suspended on weeping willows. Thus all heaven became a Bochim of weeping over the sad ruins of our world, till the Son of God proclaimed His heroic espousal of the lost cause, to the unutterable astonishment of all the heavenly host. Then swift angel couriers flew down to the bottomless pit, and then and there proclaimed Immanuel’s philanthropic intervention in behalf of the ruined race. Never before was hell so racked with astonishment and appalled with consternation. The angels not only proclaimed the conception of the Incarnate God, but heralded to the shepherds His birth in Bethlehem. They came down and rolled the stone from the sepulcher, proclaiming to the women their risen Lord.

Myriads of angels belt this world night and day. Serving as our faithful guardians, they protect us from thousands of unseen perils. The moment we evacuate these bodies we see them, faithful to their trust, standing by us, conversing with us about heavenly glories, and serving as our faithful escorts up to the celestial city. (CHAPTER) - 1. “Lest we let them slip” should read, “Lest we leak out.” This is an exceedingly profitable warning, admonishing us to watch and pray incessantly lest we sadly incur the leakage of love. Not only regenerated people, but the sanctified are in imminent danger of losing ground by the leakage of grace. In this way multiplied thousands unconsciously and inadvertently become backsliders, having lost the joy of their salvation, the fire and the power by which they save others. The simile is that of a water barrel leaking out its contents. There is but one way to prevent this leakage, and that is to keep it full. When it gets partially empty, the burning solar rays — which powerfully symbolize Satan’s temptationswill shrink the staves, producing constant leakage, increasing more and more till the barrel is empty, dry, and falls. The only remedy in the case of the barrel is to keep it under the spout, where it will always keep full; meanwhile, the overflow will be a constant blessing to the circumambient fruits and flowers. Therefore, O soul, if you would heed this warning so faithfully given by the Holy Ghost, and not suffer the fatal evanescence of the grace out of your heart, you must constantly keep under the mercyseat, where you will not only keep full, but the perpetual overflow will make you a benediction to all you meet. 2-4. Here we have a vivid contrast of the augmented responsibility under the broader and deeper light of the Gospel dispensation in contradistinction to the Mosaic. During the former dispensation, God sent angels to speak to the patriarchs and prophets. Among these angels the most prominent was the Angel of the Covenant, who was none other than the Excarnate Christ. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Christ of the New. Matthew 3:3, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” This is the language of Isaiah, and reads in the Hebrew, “Prepare ye the way of Jehovah.” Hence we see that the Jehovah of Isaiah is the Christ of John the Baptist. 1 Corinthians 10: 9. “They tempted Christ and were destroyed by serpents.” This is a quotation from the Pentateuch, where the Hebrew says, “They tempted Jehovah.” Hence we see the Jehovah of Moses is the Christ of Paul. But while this is true, there is an inconceivable difference between the Invisible Jehovah and the incarnate Christ, recognizable by our natural senses. it was vastly more difficult for the people under the old dispensation to look through the dim lights of type and prophecy and see the world’s Redeemer bleeding and dying to expiate their guilt, than it is for us to look back through the clear and indubitable annals of history and appropriate by faith His triumphant substitutionary death. In the former dispensation, God, in sympathy with the faltering faith of a doubting people, established justification as the normal attitude of Christian responsibility. The stars shone out in the patriarchal dispensation. The moon rose in the mediatorship of Moses. Day dawned with John the Baptist. The sun rose when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and the noonday culminated in the Pentecostal baptisms of the Holy Ghost and fire. Hence the normal attitude of Christian privilege and responsibility under the Gospel dispensation is that of entire sanctification. Therefore, momentous will be our responsibility if we neglect this great salvation. We can no longer hide under the shadows of a moonlit dispensation. No longer are we dependent on the messages carried down from the throne by ministering angels, because God Himself has come down, invested in mortal flesh, even born of our race. He lived and died among us. Having perfectly expiated our guilt, completely satisfying the violated law, He has triumphed over death, hell and the grave, ascended into heaven, fully recognized by the Father, who has joyfully received His complete mediatorial work, and crowned Him King of saints at His right hand, where He ever liveth to intercede for us. When an assembled universe shall stand before the judgment seat, there will be three different kinds of judgment. The people who have lived under the Gospel will be judged by the entire Bible; those who lived under the former dispensation will be judged by the Old Testament alone; while the heathen will not be judged by the Bible at all, but by the laws of nature.

Hence the hottest of all the hells awaits the people who reject the light of full salvation, radiating from the glorious Sun of Righteousness. in His noonday splendor revealed in the Gospel age. 5. “For He did not subordinate the world to come, concerning which we speak to angels.” The Greek word translated “world” in this verse is a passive participle, and simply means “the inhabited” (earth). It means this world in the glorious restoration of its Mediatorial King. In the grand restitution which will properly be inaugurated when our Lord rides down on His millennial throne to reign in righteousness a thousand years, then it will be consummated by the fiery sanctification of the world, its final renovation and celestialization ( Revelation 21:1). This redeemed and glorified world is not committed to angels, but the glorified Christ, with His transfigured saints, will rule over it forever. 6, 7. No angel was ever subjected to mortality. For the Son of God to submit to the disabilities of birth, babyhood, childhood and mortal manhood was an inconceivable humiliation, such as no angel ever knew. As His humiliation was consummate beyond conception, so His exaltation is proportionally transcendent. 8. This verse testifies to the fact that the Father, in view of the Son’s heroic and vicarious humiliation, has actually subordinated all things in this world beneath His feet. The autocratic decree of the Almighty bas gone forth, eternally irrevocable; but, as it here says, “we do not now see that all things have yet been subordinated to Him.” The final verification of this promise of the Father to subordinate all things to the Son has been reserved to the awful executive retributions to be inflicted on the wicked nations and fallen churches of this rebel world, during the premilennial judgments of the great Tribulation. 9. “In order that He may by the grace of God taste death for every one.” The humiliation of Christ brought Him down low enough to put His philanthropic shoulder under the lowest reprobate that ever blackened the globe, and lift him up to heaven. In His infinitesimal condescension, He tasted death for every human being, thus procuring an absolutely universal atonement and forever sweeping from the field every possible defalcation as to the gracious possibility of universal salvation. 10. We see from this verse that the Lord Jesus Christ actually created this world for His own eternal sovereignty. Hence His deadly conflict with the devil, who had the audacious impudence to attempt to wrest it out of His hands. Jesus is the great and infallible Archetype of universal saintship.

Therefore it was pertinent that He should travel this road before them and point out the way. He never claimed perfection in His Messianic office and character till after He suffered crucifixion. Just as He was imperfect in His mediatorship till after He suffered death on the cross, so are His followers imperfect in their Christian character till Adam the first is crucified. Perfect is from the Latin facio , to make, and per , complete.

Hence it simply means to make complete. Sanctification is from sanctus , holy, and facio , to make, and just means to make holy. Therefore perfection and sanctification are derivatives from the same Latin facio , and have the same meaning. In the Greek, hagiasmos means holiness and also means sanctification. It is indiscriminately translated holiness or sanctification. Hence you see Wesley was correct when he pronounced perfection, holiness and sanctification all synonymous. Just as it was necessary for the physical nature of Jesus to die in order to the perfection of His Messiahship, so the crucifixion of our Adamic nature is essential to the completion of our Christian character. As the Man Jesus was the only Son of unfallen Adam, his humanity was pure, whereas that of the whole human race is contaminated by the fall. A disciple is a follower of Jesus.

None but disciples go to heaven. Hence, if you aspire to a place in heaven, you must follow Christ to the cross and be crucified. He is our infallible Leader. We must walk in His footprints. We must follow Him to the manger, and be born in utter obscurity. This is regeneration. Then we must follow Him to Calvary and be nailed to the cross. Our fallen Adamic nature must die. This is sanctification. 11. “For He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” This is God’s infallible definition of sanctification, i .e ., oneness with God.

Hence, we see that sanctification unifies us with God, that is, gives us the divine nature. Holiness is the divine nature. It is original in God, but imparted to us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost is called “holy,” not because He is more holy than the Father or the Son, but because it is His office to make us holy. Hence, all true religion is the direct work of the Holy Ghost. Anti-holiness preachers, Roman Catholic priests, Moslems, and all sorts of heathens, preach holiness to the people, but all they mean by holiness is loyalty to the church and obedience to their leaders. All this is Satan’s counterfeit holiness. All of this buncombe twaddle about loyalty to the church belongs to the dogmata of counterfeit holiness, as true holiness makes you loyal to God. When you are loyal to God you are always loyal to God’s Church. Christ is the Head and the Church is His body. Therefore, they are identical and there is no such a thin as being loyal to the one and disloyal to the other Here we see the reason why the popular clergy and secular ecclesiasticism in all ages have fought sanctification. It is because it makes the people loyal to God instead of themselves. Liquori, a distinguished Roman Catholic commentator, furiously denounces the doctrine of perfection as the worst of all heresies, certifying that it has given them more trouble than all other heresies combined. This problem explains itself when the preachers are not in harmony with God, as none can be till they are sanctified wholly; they are unwilling for the people to get sanctified, because they know it will take them out of their hands and put them where they can no longer rely on them as conservators of their carnal policy. The worldly churches heap mountains of labor on their members to conserve their financial and ecclesiastical enterprises, crowding God out and actually causing their members to backslide. The true church is not a social and financial organization, but the children of God united in prayer and labor to save souls. “For which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” This follows as a logical sequence from God’s definition of sanctification, i .e ., that it is oneness with God, i .e ., unification with the divine nature. When the Holy Ghost imparts to the very nature of God, He is no longer ashamed to call us brethren. 12. David says, “In the midst of the church I will sing praises unto Thee.”

Ecclesia is the word for church throughout the Bible. It is from ek , out, and kaleo , to call. Hence, it means all the people who have heard the call of the Holy Ghost, come out of the world and separated themselves unto God.

These, and these alone, constitute the Church of God. Sanctification, which means taking the world out of you, is a subsequent work performed in the hearts of the church members. Therefore, all true Christians desire to be sanctified wholly. Dr. Clarke says, “The man who is opposed to Christian perfection is no Christian.” Dr. Albert Barnes, the Presbyterian commentator, says, “When you ask your own heart, Would you like to be wholly sanctified to God now? and receive a negative answer, you may set it down that you are no Christian.” The Apostolic Church consisted of nothing but the simple Ecclesiai . Satan has subsequently laid under contribution all the wisdom of earth and hell to build on it and round it so many magnitudinous ecclesiasticisms as utterly to hide it from human vision: meanwhile he has millions of carnal creatures pointing the blind multitudes of all ages and nations to these mammoth human institutions and crying, “Behold the church!” Two hundred millions of martyrs have bled for their disloyalty to human ecclesiasticism and their loyalty to God and His Church. 13. This verse exhibits Jesus and all of God’s children invested in transfigured glory, standing before the great white throne, constituting the Church of the Firstborn, written in heaven. 14. It is absolutely necessary that the world’s Redeemer should be both human and divine. Humanity had fallen from the exalted eminence of the divine fellowship, down into the deep abyss of sin, misery, death and damnation. When the river ha fallen down from the mountain crag, it can never flow back. If Christ had been God only, man could never have reached it. If He had been man only, He would have been utterly incompetent to the rescue of fallen humanity. In His human humiliation He comes down low enough to put His shoulder under the most degraded wretch on the face of the earth. The vilest reprobate has nothing to do, but take Him by the hand. This done, he has taken the hand of the Omnipotent God, which lifts him to the highest heaven. Thus, in the hypostatic union of perfect humanity and perfect divinity, in our glorious Mediator, we receive the man-Christ, while the God-Christ saves us. “In order that through death He may destroy the one having the power of death, that is the devil.” Destruction is not annihilation. When you burn a piece of wood the gases and ashes weigh precisely as much as the wood before cremation.

In the economy of nature there is no such thing as annihilation. God in providence and grace is identical. Therefore, the doctrine of annihilation is heretical and equally contradictory to both nature and revelation. The destruction of the devil does not mean his annihilation, but his utter and eternal discomfiture and defeat. 15. “That He might liberate those so many as through fear of death were all their life subject to slavery.” The near proximity and absolute certainty of death have in all ages invested the grim monster with terrors at once horrific and appalling. Who has not suffered ten thousand tortures under the foreboding fear of this merciless tyrant? My childhood was one protracted ordeal of torture, more or less intermittent in proportion to the periods intervening between the funerals I was permitted to attend. Perfect love is the only conqueror of the grim monster, from which he is forced to retreat, vanquished, crestfallen and defeated forever. Entire sanctification is the only emancipator of a sighing world from the galling slavery everywhere superinduced by the King of Terrors. 16. The tallest archangel commanding millions of the heavenly host could never have saved a solitary soul. He is doomed to fail on both of the essential fines of the mediatorship, i .e ., the humanity and the divinity. 17. This verse vividly reveals the absolute essentiality of the Mediatorial Manhood in order to reach every condition of fallen humanity. Jesus was the poorest of the poor. He would preach all day on the streets of Jerusalem, then go off to Mount Olivet at night and sleep on the ground.

Thus He condescended to the lowest depths of human poverty, that He might perfect the sympathetic brotherhood with the poorest of the poor.

At the same time nothing but Omnipotence could successfully grapple with the powers of sin, mortality, the world, and Satan. 18. “For in that He Himself suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor those who are tempted.” It was absolutely necessary to the perfection of the Mediatorial Christhood that Jesus should pass through the entire curriculum of possible Satanic temptations. For reasons to us inscrutable, Satan was permitted to assault the whole human race in Adam the first, their federal representative. There never was but one creation. When God created Adam, He created the race. Eve was no exception, being an evolution from Adam. When Satan tempted Adam, he tempted the entire human race. When Adam fell, the race fell. God, in his unutterable mercy to fallen humanity, gave them a second chance in Jesus Christ, who for that very reason is designated Adam the Second. Man is a trinity, similitudinous to God, consisting of body, mind, and spirit. In Satan’s war against Adam the first, he saved two-thirds of his ammunition, triumphantly slaying him on the first round, in which he tempted his body with the beautiful and delicious fruit. If Adam had not yielded to the physical temptations, Satan would have proceeded to the intellectual. If he had not then yielded, the devil would have gone on to the bombardment of the spiritual citadel. When I was in the Holy Land, in 1895, I saw the gloomy mountain overhanging the site of old Jericho, in the wilderness of Judaea, where Jesus was tempted by the devil. Well does the Scripture say, “He suffered, being tempted.” Of course, during a fast of forty days, He suffered with hunger. This was an extreme case, and actually takes in all the physical temptations to which we can ever be exposed, as probably none of us will ever do without food so long as forty days. Yet Jesus heroically resisted the devil’s offer and achieved a transcendent triumph.

When Satan failed in his assault on His physical being, he proceeded to attack the intellectual. Consequently, he offered Him all the kingdoms of this world, if He would simply recognize his Satanic majesty. This was no sham, as some have thought, as Satan had actually captured this world by conquest in his war against Adam the first. God recognizes Satan’s earthly sovereignty ( 2 Corinthians 4:4) where he calls him the god of this world.

If Christ had yielded to Satan’s temptation the humanity would have been transformed into a great archdemon, meanwhile the divinity, leaving it, would have gone back to heaven. In that case, the redemptive scheme must have collapsed forever, leaving the last hope of humanity eclipsed in the gloom of an eternal night. After Satan’s signal defeat on the battlefield of mentality, he proceeds at once to attack the citadel of His spirituality. As faith is the basis of all spirituality and divine allegiance, Satan takes Jesus up to the topmost pinnacle of the Temple, suggesting to Him to leap off, as God would surely take care of Him. If Jesus had indulged this experiment, He would have tempted God, thus superseding His faith, which is the bond of divine loyalty, by presumption, which is the devil’s counterfeit for a faith. Here Satan signally fails a third time. Having exhausted all of his ammunition, he retreats crestfallen and humiliated from the battlefield. Thus humanity, in the victory of Adam the Second, regained the fearful losses sustained in the defeat of Adam the first. If Adam had not fallen under the temptation offered to his body, Satan would have gone on tempting his mind and finally his soul. Our Savior passed through these temptations that we may all walk in His footprints and triumph over the devil throughout. Vainly do sanctified people conclude they will have no more temptations. Far from it. They have just reached the great temptation line. Satan is not fool enough to waste ammunition on sinners who spontaneously do his will, neither does he turn his heavy artillery against unsanctified Christians, whom he can successfully scare off with popgun batteries. When Jesus received the Holy Ghost, immediately after His inauguration into His official Messiahship by John’s baptism, this was His sanctification; forthwith the Holy Spirit led Him away into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. As the infallible Exemplar of universal saintship, it was absolutely necessary for our great Archetype to pass through the summary temptations of Satan. The devil from the beginning has played a most conspicuous part in human probation, for reasons to us unfathomable, but doubtless to be revealed more fully in the coming evolutions of transfigured saintship. Consequently all sanctified people are assaulted by Satan on the three great embattled lines of triple humanity. If we yield to his physical temptations — to drunkenness, gluttony, tobacco and debauchery — we become hoggish. When we yield to intellectual temptations — blind to what doesn’t glisten and deaf to what doesn’t jingle — become worldly, unspiritual, and lose our souls. Popular churches are largely filled up with this class of people. When we yield to spiritual temptations — skepticism, infidelity, spiritualism, theosophy, and atheism — we become devilish. Beware of congratulating yourself that you are past the temptation line. When Satan doesn’t shoot at you it is confirmatory proof that you are not worth shooting at, since he is not fool enough to waste his ammunition on dead game. If you are really true to God he will never cease to shoot at you till you pass the pearly portal. (CHAPTER) - 1. This verse holds up Jesus as the Apostle, High Priest and Paragon of all religious profession, the only infallible Exemplar, the universal Archetype of the Gospel dispensation, in contradistinction to Moses in bygone ages. 2. Christ is perfect man and perfect God. The man Jesus was created by the Almighty like all other creatures. The God Christ, uncreated, existed from all eternity. 3. The Greek oikos , house, in the Bible means family. When Paul said to the jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou and thy house shall he saved,” it would better read, “Thou and thy family shall be saved.” In these verses we now expound, house means the Church, i .e ., the family of God. It is used synonymously with the divine ecclesia , i .e ., the people whom the Holy Ghost has “called out” of the world, and separated unto God to be His elect witnesses in a world oblivious of God and His laws, and dominated by Satan. The Bible says there never was such a man as Moses who actually spoke with God face to face. He was leader, legislator, prophet and mediator. At the same time he was a fallible mortal, and only a servant in the house of God. Contrastively with Moses, Jesus was the omnipotent Builder of the house, in which Moses was a servant.

While He is our Elder Brother, the Firstborn of the Church, He is also the omnipotent, infallible Creator of the Church. We honor Moses as the paragon saint in his dispensation; but since the great Antitype has come and revealed to us the summary of essential truth, and sealed it with His blood, we are no longer under Moses, the types and shadows all having retreated before the effulgent glory of the great Archetype. If the Apostolic Church had proved true to the Pentecostal dispensation of entire sanctification, walking in the cloudless splendor of the glorious Sun of Righteousness, and not fallen back into the types and shadows of Mosaic moonlight, the Gospel would have been preached to every creature long before you and I ever saw the light of day, and the millennium in all its glory would have belted the globe long centuries ago. The Mosaic dispensation looked through the dim lights of type and prophecy to a coming Redeemer. Of course, vast clouds of uncertainty and doubt enveloping the future constituted the normal state of the Church, which did not rise above the plane of justification. The patriarchs and prophets enjoyed the experience of sanctification, living in advance of their dispensation. When all the concurrent symbolism type and prophecy were verified in the personal advent, presence, living, teaching and vicarious sufferings of the Incarnate God, every cloud, doubt and fear retreated from the firmament of faith and hope; meanwhile the personal descension of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, inaugurated the glorious dispensation of entire sanctification, the normal attitude of Christian experience, life and character, till God’s perfected saints shall hail the glorious King descended on his millennial throne.

ARGUMENT THE TWO CROSSINGS. 7-16. You must remember this letter is written to the Palestinian Christians, whose progenitors made the fatal mistake of turning back at Kadesh-Barnea, in open violation of the positive commandment of God, and defiant of Moses their leader. They had not left Egypt for a home in Arabia, but with the distinct understanding that they are to possess and perpetually inhabit the land of Canaan. It was no long journey from the Red Sea crossing to Palestine, as it only took them eleven days to travel from Mt. Sinai on the sea coast to Kadesh-Barnea on the Canaan border.

Kadesh means “holy” and Barnea means “delight.” So, in eleven days’ march they actually reached Canaan, the land of holy delight. God’s order was to enter unhesitatingly and take possession of the land. Their hearts failed them at Kadesh-Barnea; they go into camp and send out twelve leaders representing the twelve tribes, to explore the land and bring them word. They spend forty days peregrinating the country, admiring the majestic cities, “walled up to heaven,” contemplating the huge warrior giants who inhabit the land. Meanwhile they are unutterably astonished and delighted with the paradoxical fruitfulness of the land. In their travels they pass through the valley of Eschol, are delighted with the delicious grapes, of which they carry on with them specimens. I traveled through that valley in 1895, down to its terminus in the city of Hebron, over the same ground trodden by the spies. The entire valley is still devoted to the growing of grapes, which excel the productions of all other lands in sweetness and size. After forty days the spies returned to Kadesh-Barnea, loaded with specimens of the exuberant and delicious fruits of the land.

They unanimously not only corroborate the wonderful