1 Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.

Chapter 6 is all related, though the relationship may not be immediately apparent. It is about slavery, and godliness, and contentment, and riches, and the good fight of faith, and finally and above all, defending and preserving that glorious treasure entrusted to our care.

The common theme throughout is that present conditions and circumstances -- either of handicap or privilege -- from the extremes of abject slavery on the one hand to abundant riches on the other -- are utterly unimportant, and not to be either rebelled against or sought. Life is too short.

The important thing is GODLINESS WITH CONTENTMENT. Not just godliness, not just contentment, but godliness with contentment. A faithful life; and a joyful, peaceful, thankful mind.

This chapter is the complete opposite -- the complete rebuttal -- of the common, natural philosophy of life. The natural mind rebels against slavery and poverty, and desires freedom and material possessions. This is the highest ideal of the natural mind -- the "Great Society."

The Scriptures do not condone slavery. But neither do they seek to destroy it, any more than they seek to directly destroy any others of the vast multitude of inequities that make up natural human society.

The purpose of God is, at the present time, concerned with something on an entirely different and vastly higher plane --

PREPARING A PEOPLE FOR ETERNITY BY ADVERSITY.

And, in God's wisdom, slavery and poverty are sometimes part of the general, evil, human background that God is using to develop character and shape His determined ends.

Slaves are told to count their owners worthy of all honour. This is galling to the pride of the flesh, but as the command of God, faithfully obeyed, it is strengthening to the spirit.

Anything that contributes to pride and self-satisfaction -- possessions, position, knowledge, power, prestige -- hinders in the Way of Life.

Anything that contributes to humility and self-abasement and recognition of weakness and need -- slavery, poverty, low position -- helps in the Way of Life.

To the "wise" of the world, this is incomprehensible folly.

Bro Growcott. Grace, Mercy and Peace.

3 If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness;

By what means shall a community, based on the truth, preserve the truth in purity in its midst?

Obviously by the means indicated by Paul and John, that is, by exacting of all who are in it an implicit adherence to the things, facts, principles, points, tenets, or whatever else they may be called, which go to make up the truth in its entirety and by refusing to associate with those who oppose or refuse to endorse any of its elements.

The ecclesia is not a place for argument; it is for worship in agreement. When a man requires to be argued with, his natural place is outside, and if he will not go outside, separation must be enforced by withdrawal on the part of the rest.

Division is the inevitable concomitant of an uncompromising adherence to the truth. Peace purchased at the cost of compromise is doubly dangerous.

The truth is the standard and must alone be allowed to rule.

Bro Roberts - 'Contending for the Faith'

***

Those who are indifferent can easily afford to ignore disagreement, and to preach cordially of the virtue of "agreeing to differ." This is no characteristic of the Ecclesia of the Living God. It contends for the Faith once delivered to the saints, and obeys Paul's command to "turn away" from the perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds.

Bro Roberts

The words of our Lord Yahoshua Anointed

Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore Elohim hath blessed thee for ever. (Psalm 45:2)

'If any man teach otherwise...'

4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,

We know, by experience, how readily "fellows of the baser sort," pretending to great conscientiousness, and zeal for religion, busy themselves, for the promotion of their own wicked purposes, in defaming and bearing false witness against men whose lives are devoted to the propagation and defense of the truth.

Eureka 13.13.

5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself. (cp. Rom 16:17: Gal 1:6-7)

What does this phrase mean -- "supposing that gain is godliness" -- and what connection does it have with the general line of exhortation about slavery?

It is this: they confused the aim and purpose of the Gospel -- which is godliness -- with the aim of present human betterment and improvement of social conditions. This is sacrificing an eternal betterment for a mere temporal one.

Their course, though well-meant, would at best bring only present, external, material betterment; and in the endless upheaval and striving for present good, the eternal purpose would be confused and lost.

The basic principle involved is a vital one, and one we all need to learn lest we well-meaningly fall into the same diversion of effort and attention. It is, this --

Accept all outward conditions as they are -- evil and good -- and concentrate directly and continuously on the eternal, spiritual work of preparing a holy people.

The aspect of riches, into which he goes next, is the other side of the same picture. The natural desire and tendency is to accumulate money and possessions, for various real and supposed motives of "taking care of their own" or doing great and spectacular things for the Truth.

This, if we are not very careful, leads again to confusing gain with godliness.

God's work is primarily with the poor, and He chooses weak and poor instruments for the purpose that the glory may be of God and not of man. He sends the 30,000 home, that the 300 with Gideon may manifest THEIR faith and HIS glory in victory.

We must keep bringing ourselves back to this -- the simple, personal work of each individual, day after day -- not the great well-financed and well-organized schemes.

The Truth is a very simple, individual, personal thing -- passed on in joyful zeal from person to person -- radiated in personal example, personal dedication, personal holiness.

Look at the example of Christ. Look at the example of Paul. This was the living power that swept the Roman Empire in the early centuries, and this is the work we have to carry forward each individual one of us, in this our brief day.

Bro Growcott. Grace, Mercy and Peace.

6 But godliness with contentment is great gain.

CONTENTMENT: absolute, total happiness with things as they are; freedom from the folly and frustration of unsatisfied (and usually illusionary) desire. Contentment, not because things are "ideal," but because they are exactly as God's love and wisdom wills them to be at the moment.

Contentment, not that they stay as they are, but that they are moving in the direction they are going -- "working together for good to those that love God." This is the assurance that underwrites godly contentment.

Without it, "contentment" would be a lunatic's pitiful self-delusion. Happiness is full, thankful enjoyment of that which is. Unhappiness is desire for that which is not. But "that which is" must be seen as the great, eternal "IS" of which God is the center and meaning.

Contentment is not stagnation or indolence or indifference. It is intensely alive and vibrant and active. Paul "yearned" and "wept" and "strove" and "agonised" -- yet he was joyfully content in the most hazardous and miserable and destitute of circumstances

'Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.' (Ph. 4:11).

Contentment is bedrock, inner peace with God, desiring nothing but the glorious privilege and honour of serving in the great work of God among men. "Godliness with contentment is great gain."

Bro Growcott

7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

The mind of Christ, and certainly the example that he gave us, is that we should be content with the bare necessities of life, and beyond that point should concentrate ALL our labour and time in the service of God. He gave us an example to follow, and he gently but very pointedly reminded us that:

"The servant is not above his Lord."

The apostles who followed him, and lived as he lived, call our attention to his example in this respect.

And even the bare necessities must not be our primary concern, for that is lack of faith:

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you."

We seem to be speaking more of restrictions -- what we should not do, rather than that we should do, but this is not really the case. The biggest harm in many things of the flesh simply lies in the fact that they fill the mind and take the time and effort and attention from spiritual things.

We are called upon to be positively spiritual, to be CONSTRUCTIVELY spiritual -- to "always abound in the work of the Lord." We are not called upon to be just negatively spiritual just to not do things forbidden -- we are here to work actively and to the fulness of our strength in the works of God.

In many things the positive will crowd out the negative if the positive gets big and strong enough.

We must not only "always abound in the work of the Lord" we must WANT to do so, we must be lovingly and gratefully anxious to do so. God insists upon, not just all our strength, but --far more important -- all our heart and soul.

Bro Growcott - BYT 1.3.

8 And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

We live in a luxury unknown to all previous generations. To what extent are we justified in allowing ourselves to be swept up into this modern treadmill? Let us pray for enlightenment and guidance in this matter, that we do not find to our sorrow that the cares of this life have won their bitter victory in the end.

"I will pull down my barns and build bigger" {Ik. 12:18)  

-how deep does this folly go? Would Christ find it in our hearts too? Have we found it "necessary" to build a bigger barn?

For example, and this is only an example, for it applies in so many ways: we may be quite justified in spending God's money for an automobile, and God's time and strength in getting that money (for all we have is God's), for under modern conditions an automobile can contribute effectively to the overall usefulness of our lives in God's service (and that is the ONLY justification for anything)-

BUT-can we justify spending God's money for a better one than three-quarters of our worldly neighbours find quite adequate?

The same with our houses. Whose money are we spending? And what is our real purpose in life? For everything we do must be in harmony with one purpose, if we sincerely seek salvation. Are we princes, or pilgrims? We cannot be both. These questions are for each to consider and decide. If we will face their implications, we shall find that they apply to every aspect of our lives.

Are the cares of this life-those-so pleasant, self-chosen, self-gratifying cares-choking out the fruit, cutting into time and effort that belong to the work of God?

Bro Growcott - Our Call to holiness

The things of the flesh are the things of this present life food, raiment, shelter, entertainment -- all human and natural activity -- the natural daily round of possessing and enjoying. The things of the flesh also include all natural thoughts, reactions, emotions, desires, affections, pleasures, etc.

Some of the things of the flesh are good and some are not. Those that are good are those necessary for the continuance of our life and maximum usefulness to God. Whatever does not contribute to this is a harmful detriment.

Where does the line of necessity come? Where does necessity end, and unfaithful stewardship and misusing our Master's goods begin?

It is not for us to say in individual cases, but we are sure that the Scriptures, frankly faced, leave no doubt that the line of duty cuts lower and deeper than most of us desire to live.

Bro Growcott - BYT 1.3.

9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

TO engross ourselves in business under the plea of making money to assist the truth, is dangerous. To do so at the expense of actual duty is sinful. God could easily divert the wealth of the whole world into the channels of the truth if He so willed But He does not, though He will at the right time.

For the present, He has a different work, that of preparing men for His glorious Kingdom. In this work we can become co-workers with Him. We are to regard ourselves as strangers and pilgrims, to esteem riches as a snare (1 Tim. 6:9), and prosperity as dangerous (Prov. 30:8, 9).

Our aim should be to serve God without distraction: an aim not compatible with unnecessarily involving ourselves in the cares and anxieties of commercial life. No amount of money made and applied to the service of the truth will excuse from certain clearly revealed duties, to wit, daily reading, attendance at the meetings, exhorting one another, proclaiming the word, visiting the sick, etc., etc.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Mar 1888

Paul M Hart

Yes- but being comfortable means being able to assist others...

Answer

"Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations".

Yes. Wise use of surplus will be accounted as sowing to the spirit.

But danger! Foolish use of riches will prove destructive 1 Tim 6: 9. Covetousness, self indulgence and spendthrift habits are as leaven - destructive of sincerity and truth. Hence

"give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me" Prov 30: 8.

15 Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;

The elohal superintendence of the affairs of the "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" of the world, is clearly revealed in the book of Daniel. In the fourth chapter of this prophet it is declared that the matter set forth therein was revealed to teach

"the living that the Highest One is the ruler in the kingdom of men, and that He giveth it to him whom He shall please, and sets up over it the lowest of men."

Besides this it shows, that though the ruler or Lord, He does not administer the government alone, but associates with Himself others, styled irin "watchers," who are, like Himself, kaddishin, "Holy Ones."

...Our Elohim shall come and not keep silence; a fire before His (Yahweh's) faces (the Elohim) shall devour; and around Him it is very tempestuous.

Phanerosis - Angelic Supervision Of World Events

16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

Immortality, in an underived sense, belongs only to God; He alone is naturally deathless and inherently immortal.

The Christadelphian, Mar 1873

Who only hath immortality

The Arch-Elohim said that the man had become LIKE one of themselves in the matter of knowing good and evil. This also is an argument for his likeness to a plurality of persons; and it further shews that the Elohim were once in a condition similar to man after he had transgressed.

The Lord of the Elohim himself declares that they also had been experimentally sensible of evil, for this is the idea expressed by the Hebrew word YADA, to know, which the LXX translate by eidew, eideo. In short, it is credible that none of the Elohim of the Only Potentate's dominion were created immortal, but earthly, or animal, like Adam.

The Eternal King is the only Being who is originally immortal in any sense, hence it is written that He "only hath immortality." The immortality of all other intelligences is derived from Him as a reward for the "obedience of faith."

Just men at the resurrection of the First Fruits will be equal to the Elohim. Shall we say that these "Morning Stars and Sons of God" did not attain to the spiritual nature by a progression similar to man, seeing that He "who was made so much better than they," even Jesus, the "Bright and the Morning Star," was made perfect through sufferings?"

Have they had no trials to endure, no probation to pass through for the refining of their faith as gold is tried? It is credible, rather, that they were once animal men of other spheres; that in a former state they were "made subject to vanity not willingly;" that while in the flesh they believed and obeyed God with the self-sacrificing disposition afterwards evinced by Abraham; that their faith was counted to them for righteousness; that they succumbed to death as mortal men; that they rose from the dead, and so attained to incorruptibility and immortality as the Elohim of the Invisible God.

Our mundane system is but the pattern of things in other worlds, which may, ere this, have attained to that perfection which awaits the earth, and probably an illustration of what may even now obtain in other planets where the inhabitants have not yet progressed beyond the animal and probationary era of their history.

Our angels, or Elohim, those I mean of the heavenly hosts to whose superintendence terrestrial affairs are consigned until the Lord Jesus shall assume the reins of government -- not all the Elohim, but those of them related to us -- "always behold the face of God," and minister His will towards the sons of men. This is their glory -- a part of their reward. He sent them to form and fill the earth with living souls. They executed their commission according to His purpose.

Behold, then, the consummation. Mortal and corruptible beings like ourselves become Elohim, mighty in strength and framers of new worlds, of which the planet we inhabit, even in its present state, is a grand and glorious specimen.

"Behold," says Jesus, once an infant at the breast, powerless in death, but now endued with all power, "I make all things new." He will educe, from the things which exist, a new and magnificent world as a fit and appropriate habitation for His companions, redeemed by His blood from the sons of men. This is the destiny set before those who shall become "equal to the angels" by a resurrection to eternal life.

Elpis Israel 1.6.

It is the "Father-Spirit" that Paul refers to in 1 Tim. 6:16, whom no man hath seen in His unveiled splendour. Veiled in flesh, "the Vail of the Covering" (Exodus 35:12): he that discerneth him who spoke to Philip, "saw the Father" (John 14:9; 12:45). But, veiled or unveiled, the Father-Spirit is substantial. Speaking of the Unveiled Father-Spirit, Paul says in Heb. 1:2, 3, that the Son is the Character of his Hypostasis, rendered, in the common version, "express image of his person."

The Son is the character or exact representation, and the Father is the hypostasis. In reference to the former, the Father says, in Zech 3:9:

"Upon One Stone there shall be Seven Eyes; behold I will engrave the graving thereof (that is, of the stone), saith He who shall be hosts."

The graving engraved on the stone is termed, in Greek, character, an impress wrought into a substance after some archetype or pattern. The archetype is the hypostasis, so that hypostasis is the basis or foundation of character; wherefore the same apostle in Col. 1:15, styles the character engraved the "Image" of Theos the Invisible (eikon tou Theou tou aoratou).

Phanerosis - One Deity in Multiplicity

...a Father dwelling in light from whom emanates the Spirit of His own substance, filling all space, and constituting the basis of all creative developments, and yet with which he is essentially one, and by it, consequently fills heaven and earth in consciousness and power... The Spirit of God fills the universe, and all things exist by means of it. Without it, there is no power of any kind.

Bro Roberts TC THE OPERATIONS OF THE DEITY

The Christadelphian, May 1870. p143-151

Paul affirms the plurality of Gods, and Moses shows that they existed before the creation of man.

But then, both Paul and Moses teach that there is One who is surpreme over them all. This is AIL, who created them, and who is alone to be an object of adoration, not with the blank amazement of superstition but of an adoration in an earnest belief of His promises, and willing and loving obedience to His commands. Of this supreme God it is that Paul and Jesus say: "There is none other God but one." He is the only Head of the universe, who will permit none to take precedence of himself in the affection and adoration of His creatures.

He does not, however, manifest Himself to all the intelligences who reside in the sun, moon, stars and earth, through the same medium. To us on earth, He presents Himself, not through Gabriel, but through Jesus as the medium of manifestation -- incipient manifestation, for the manifestation is not yet complete -- "To us there is but one God the Father out of whom are all things and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Anointed, on account of whom are all things, and we through him."

Down to the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis, the creation of all things is affirmed of "God", that is of Elohim or Gods. But from the fourth verse to the end of the third chapter, where the divine power is mentioned, it is not simply "God" but "Lord God", that is Yahweh Elohim. The common version would merely indicate by prefixing Lord to God, that the Lord God was the supreme God. But if this were admitted, we should be unable to reconcile the saying of John, and Jesus, and Paul, who all declare that "no man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18; 6:46; 1 Tim. 6: 16).

Now Adam and Eve saw and conversed with the Lord God; and multitudes saw Jesus. But we remark that "Lord God" is not used by Moses to express POWER IN-CREATE UNVEILED, or Ail; but as a word-combination synonymous with "Spirit of God" of Gen. 1:2, or literally Ruach Elohim, spirit of Gods or mighty ones -- the "One Spirit" veiled in the mighty ones through whom He made all that was made.

Phanerosis - The Memorial Name

Immortality is neither innate nor disembodied. "The Deity only hath it," Paul says; and he only bestows it upon obedient believers of the truth as it is in the Jesus he preached; and that bestowal is upon men and women bodily existing; and by clothing their bodies with incorruptibility and deathlessness after resurrection from among the dead.

Immortality

The testimony of Scripture concerning it.

"God only hath immortality."—1 Tim. 6:16.

"When this mortal shall have put on immortality."—1 Cor. 15:54.

"Immortality," athanasia, is a word signifying deathlessness; hence we are taught that the only deathless being in the universe is "the Incorruptible God," ho aphthartos theos,

"dwelling in the light, whom no man hath seen, nor can see."

The Invisible God was never deathful nor subject to death; but all other intelligences of the universe have, or will be subjected to death, or to something equivalent to it. Their immortality is bestowed at some time subsequent to death; but His, who is the Life of the Universe, is underived; for He is from everlasting to everlasting deathless.

The testimony that "God only hath deathlessness," teaches that the immortality or deathlessness of men and angels dates from a change or resurrection from the death state.

At this crisis their "mortal body" puts on deathlessness, so that thenceforth "they die no more." To constitute them deathless their bodies must become "incorruptible"—aphtharsia; for a corruptible body cannot be deathless or immortal.

Aphtharsia is the substratum of Athanasia; that is, Incorruptibility is the underlay of Immortality. Incorruptibility is not immortality; but without incorruptibility, immortality cannot be. Hence Immortality is something more than incorruptibility. It is "Life and Incorruptibility"—zoe kai aphtharsia—combined.

Incorruptibility has regard to physical quality of body, which may be living or inanimate. A diamond may represent an incorruptible body; but because incorruptible, it is not therefore living or deathless. An immortal body, however, is necessarily an incorruptible body; because immortality cannot be without incorruptibility.

God though "a spirit" is also a body; for he is styled "the incorruptible God," and incorruptibility is scripturally affirmed of body. Immortality is life manifested through an incorruptible body; and is the opposite to mortality, which is life manifested through a corruptible body. Such is the immortality brought to light by Jesus in the gospel of the kingdom—"mortality swallowed up of life."

The supposition of deathliness and deathlessness co-existing in the same body, or of an "immortal soul" in mortal flesh, is pagan foolishness; and implies ignorance of "the truth as it is in Jesus." It is the Spirit of God that makes alive; the flesh profiteth nothing. Hereditary immortality is a fiction of the carnal mind, at once revolting to reason and the word of God.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, May 1851

17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;

Think Not Highly Of Yourself

Get your mind off yourself! You are totally unimportant. You can BECOME important -- eternally important to God -- but it will never be by thinking about yourself. It will only be forgetting yourself, and setting your mind totally on God and on others.

Thinking of yourself shrinks your mind smaller and smaller until at last it shrivels and dies. Thinking about God and others expands your mind more and more until at last it bursts into glorious, eternal Life and Beauty.

God's Way is the only way. Beware of the great diabolos-deceiver: your own desires.

Bro Growcott -  Search Me O God

The respectable and the learned are surrounded with the views and influences from the very cradle, which bring men into bondage to the traditions and practices of the world, and withhold them from the enlightening power of the testimony of God.

The poor are no better off so far as the positive tendency of their surroundings is concerned; but in their poverty, they are at least free from some of the impediments that beset the path of the well-to-do, and their minds are more flexible to the divine bent than where riches foster pride and harden the heart.

Thirteen lectures on the apocalypse

19 Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.

Christ means to say that as men cannot in the nature of things retain the wealth they have,-seeing they are bound to part company when death comes, the course of wisdom is to so use them that when the day of reckoning comes, everlasting results may come from them instead of results of destruction, which are the usual results, for, as he says,

"How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God."

The Christadelphian, July 1898

20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

Committed to thy Trust.

We are prepared to accept "the co-operation of the intelligence of scripturally-enlightened brethren and sisters," in getting up the Ambassador. We desire such co-operation, and as a matter of fact, we avail ourselves of it, so far as it is within reach in a useful form; but this policy must be kept strictly subordinate to the interests of the truth, the interest of the reader, and the interest of the Ambassador.

It would not be conducive to any of these interests to publish everything that sincerity may put on paper. Sincerity is sometimes ignorant, and sometimes unable to use itself to the profit of others. We are obliged to exercise the degree of supervision, necessary occasionally to hold back the productions of such a state of mind-productions written from the best of motives, but too feeble to be effective for good, too flimsy and hypercritical to be useful, or too narrow (and perhaps a little mistaken) in the apprehension of the subject dealt with, to be profitable.

The Ambassador of the Coming Age, Aug 1867. p227

The Oriental Philosophy

Orientalism is denominated, not philosophy, but "science falsely so called," by Paul in his letter to Timothy. The votaries of it were numerous in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, and Egypt. Of this science there were many sects. It has been thought worthy of remark, that, while,

"the Greek and Roman sects of philosophy were much divided about the first principles of science, all the sects of the oriental science deduced their tenets from one fundamental principle."

This science supposed that,

"The origin of evils, with which the universe abounds, was to be found not in God, whom they viewed as essentially good and benevolent; but as there was nothing beyond or without the Deity but matter, therefore matter is the centre and source of all evil, and vice. That matter was eternal and derived its present form, not from the will of the supreme God, but from the creating power of some inferior intelligence, to whom the world and its inhabitants owed their existence.

Some imagined two eternal principles from whence all things proceeded, the one presiding over light, and the other over matter; and by their perpetual conflict, explained the mixture of good and evil that appears in the universe.

Others maintained that the being who presided over matter was not an eternal principle, but a subordinate intelligence, one of those whom the supreme God produced from himself. They supposed that this being was moved by a sudden impulse to reduce to order the rude mass of matter and to create the human race.

A third sort fell upon another system, and said there was a Triple Divine Principle or a triumvirate in which the Supreme Deity was distinguished from the material, and from the creator of this world. The Supreme Being they supposed to be a radiant light, most pure, different from the immensity of space, called the Pleroma.

The eternal nature, having dwelt long in solitude, produced from itself two minds of a different sex, which resembled the Supreme Parent in the most perfect manner. In process of time, from these two proceeded a celestial family. These were called Eons. How many of these there were was not decided. The creator of this world they styled Demiurgus.

"Man they considered a compound of terrestrial and celestial nature; of the evil principle of matter, and of divinity. Those who subdue the evil principle that propels them to sin against the Supreme, ascend directly to the Pleroma: those yielding to the evil principle shall be sent after death into other bodies, until they awake from their sinful lethargy.

In the end, the Supreme God shall come forth victorious, and, having delivered from their servitude the greatest part of those enslaved souls, shall dissolve the frame of the visible world, and involve it in ruin. After this primitive tranquility will be restored in the universe, and God shall reign with happy spirits in undisturbed felicity through endless ages.

Such is a brief outline of the opinions current among the Gentiles elaborated by the thinking of the flesh, darkened by ignorance of the divine testimony, and sin, in the last days of the Mosaic world. It was a hash, well and truly designated by Paul, "philosophy and vain deceit," vain babbling and oppositions of science, falsely so called."

No one professing the faith, who received them in whole or in part, could avoid being spoiled by them. It was the commingling of these fleshly thinkings with the word of God that corrupted the faith of Israel: and afterward the doctrine of the apostles delivered to both Jews and Gentiles.

They faithfully discharged their mission, but "false brethren" who "had pleasure in unrighteousness," who desired to popularize the truth, that they might be zealously affected by the simpletons they deceived, mixed it up with these crotchets of the flesh, and out of the offensive mixture presented to the world the mess of stuff "the spirit spued out of his mouth," in the early part of the fourth century.—Revelations 3:16.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Apr 1861