1885 Watch Tower - A2Z.org

the New Testament repeatedly. Hence to hold the one is to holdthe other, to reject the one is to deny the other. Already, we areseeing from the TOWER with the Telescope of faith great andimportant lessons in these things, which while actual occurrenceswere specially valuable as lessons and types of doctrines to theGospel Church, and in the Age to follow, when the knowledge ofthe Lord and an appreciation of His plans shall fill the wholeearth and none need say unto his neighbor, know thou the Lord,for all shall know Him.R728 : page 7====================A WIDE DIFFERENCE.Seeing that the Scriptures teach that all who shall be of the"body" of Christ must follow the example of the Head, andsacrifice--even unto death; all who think at all, must form someidea of what is meant by the command. And those who fail toget the Scriptural view of it, get an unscriptural one which mustmore or less becloud their views of the entire plan of God.The Scriptural view of our sacrifice must harmonize fully withthe Scriptural teaching regarding the nature and value of Jesus'sacrifice. And therefore any view of our sacrifice which doesnot thus harmonize must be unscriptural.The most common of these unscriptural views is set forth aboutas follows in an item which has been going the rounds of thereligious press:--"Not the death of the cross, but our death to sin reconciles us toGod.--Key to the Scriptures."A more deceptive and hurtful little paragraph could scarcely beconstructed. It certainly is not of God, and was not indicted byany one under the control of the holy spirit, for it is in directconflict with the Scriptures. Its claim to be a "Key to theScriptures" is the bate upon Satan's hook, to make it attractiveand easily swallowed. To the vast majority the Scripture is asealed book (Isa. 29:11,) and that in great measure because ofunwillingness to sacrifice needful time and effort in its carefulstudy; yet to such, the thought of finding condensed into onesentence a "key" by which the whole Bible would at once andwithout labor and study become plain to them, is a temptationsomewhat similar to the one with which the same adversarybeguiled Eve. And "I fear lest by any means, as the Serpentbeguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should becorrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ"--to "anothergospel." (?) 2 Cor. 11:3, and Gal. 1:6-9.The temptation put before Eve, was an easy acquirement ofknowledge, and to all intelligent people this must ever remain