4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken Yahweh, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

Why do not brethren reflect more before they take their pen in hand? And when their errors are plainly pointed out, why do they not pause and own up instead of wriggling? Why are brethren so ignoble, so flippant and daring when dealing with the great and solemn truths of God?

These are questions that arise as one looks upon a pile of saddening, distracting, faith-killing printed matter—leaflets, pamphlets, and magazines—that has emanated from various brethren since the days of Dr. Thomas.

Words, words, words—rash assertion, spiteful controversy, self-justification, without rhyme or reason. Dr. Thomas, whom these foolish writers essay to correct and explain, has opened our eyes to the sublime truths of the gospel, and these brethren, by their illogical and unscriptural arguments, tend to shut them up again.

Oh! that brethren would realise that, if ever there is a time for man to abase himself, exhibit humility, carefulness, straightforwardness, and caution, it is when undertaking the task of setting forth the Word of God. Would that brethren would realise more keenly the sacred place that the truth of God holds in His estimation—that He esteems it of infinitely greater value than flesh and blood.

If they did so, many would hesitate and shake before writing as they do. We may be quite sure of this—that if we tamper with the truth, oppose it, deal with it dishonestly or wrongly, we shall, sooner or later, be ruthlessly brushed aside.

With the sad havoc caused by Renunciationism, Partial-inspirationism, and other unscriptural notions of the last thirty years, before us, let us think many times before we commit a novel exegesis or doctrine to writing.

Bro AT Jannaway

The Christadelphian, Oct 1906

5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

Such was declared to be Israel's state in the midst of a busy system of worship which had no sincerity,‭ ‬and which was loaded with observances of their own invention of which God said,

‭ "‬Who hath required this at your hands‭?"

‭TC 10/1887

The air is dry; the land is parched; there is no rain. The heavens are iron; the earth is brass. A drought consumes all things. The scorpions and serpents are in their element. They feel no inconvenience; they are at home in the glare. The sons of God pant for the day of rain: they wait for God, for the day in which He will come near—in which He will make His arm visible, His voice heard, His presence in the earth felt and known and read of all men.

The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. The great men are vanity and the mean men a lie. The rich, in their fatness, swell proudly in a factitious importance, forgetting the reality of God and the unreality of themselves, and scorning the less fortunate, as if their own superior privilege were their own merit, and the lowliness of others were not an inheritance to be pitied—flaunting their wealth, boasting themselves in their riches, piling their hoard, adding house to house and field to field, forgetful of God, casting His word behind their back, and, in a moment, going down to the grave.

The poor, in their poverty, have their heart on small things, their intellects narrowed to a small compass, their minds inexpansive to the thoughts of God, their minds unbent to His commandments.

The world is a great mockery—very busy dying—doing a roaring trade that ends in nothing, wearying themselves in the fire of vanity that consumes, burns up and destroys them all at last.

Wisdom stands on a very high place, but her voice is unheard in the din; so she is about to come down from her pedestal, and flash her lightning sword in the eyes of the infatuated crowds, and scatter death in their ranks, that the rest may attend and do her bidding. There will be no good time on earth till this occur. The watchers watch for it and wait. The tokens multiply.

The Christadelphian, Apr 1874

9 Except Yahweh hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah [Amora].

He predicted that Judah would turn his back upon Him; and that if "a very small remnant" had not been left, the nation would have become like Sodom and Gomorrha, and would have partaken of their fate.

This "remnant" is that portion of the Jews which accept Jesus of Nazareth as "the Holy One of Ail;" who in Apoc. i. 18, says,

"I am the First and the Last and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold I am living for the Aions of the Aions: the Amen."

This is the AIL GIVBOR, the Hero-Power, or "Mighty God," to whom Shearyahshuv, or the

"remnant shall return,"

called the remnant of Jacob, "which shall stay upon Yahweh the Holy One of Israel " (Isa. x. 20, 21).

Eureka 3.2.1.

16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

Literally this is done by subjecting the mind to the influence of the word of God. The word of God is always spoken of as the cleansing power (John 15:3; Psa. 119:9; Eph. 5:26), and, in actual experience, it is found to be so. Kept clean by the word, we shall be qualified for admission into the holiest, in the change to the incorruptible.

Law of Moses Ch 16.

18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith Yahweh: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Though your sins be as scarlet.

But the difficulty with some is how to associate such an ingredient with the sinless Son of God. There ought to be no difficulty if the whole case is kept before the mind. It is not the whole case that "he was without sin": it is part of the case that he was "made sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21); that he was made of a woman in the likeness of sinful flesh (Gal. 4:4; Rom. 8:3), and that by a figure God hath laid on him the iniquities of us all (Isa. 53:6), and that he bore our sins in his own body to the tree (1 Pet. 2:24).

These are the testified facts; they need have no difficulty for us in view of the historic fact that he was born of a mortal woman who was under death because of sin. As we contemplate the babe of Bethlehem, born after nine months' gestation, built out of his mother's blood, and nourished by his mother's milk, we cannot resist the conclusion forced on us by the words of Paul, that "he partook of the same flesh and blood" as those he came to redeem, and that he was made in all points like unto his brethren (Heb. 2:14-17).

He was palpably and before our eyes thus made subject to the sin-constitution of things that has prevailed on the earth "through one man's offence", which enables us to understand the otherwise unintelligible statement of Paul that, when he died,

"he died unto sin once" (Rom. 6:10).

A sinless man made subject to the consequence of sin: this is the combination of the fine-twined linen and the scarlet. There is no difficulty when each element in the case is allowed its place. The difficulties arise from looking too exclusively at one or two elements.

Rome has created difficulty by her doctrine of immaculate conception, in which she has latterly included Mary herself. This doctrine has gone through the world by tradition, and breaks out here and there in unsuspected places. Renunciationism has troubled us with it in a special shape, and well-meaning minds perpetuate the trouble by their superficial partiality for a view that seems more honouring to Christ than the truth.

Law of Moses Ch 14.

29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.

Oak-Grove Superstition

In mythology, the Oak is sacred to Jupiter, or Baal. The Druids worshipped in groves of oak, and ever held them sacred. To them they were holy temples, in which were their altars and sacrifices.

"The shadow of the oaks was good"—an agreeable retreat from the sun's heat in a weary land. The idolators assembled under them, after the fashion of a camp-meeting, to "get religion," or conscience-salvos, through the priests of Baal, Jupiter, or Jove—various names for the lord of all the gods.

Very discreditable practices were indulged in by the devout; too gross, indeed, to be named in print. Besides these orgies, they stormed heaven with vain repetitions and loud cries, which they termed prayers—shouting on the top of their voices for Baal to hear them, as if he were asleep, or were absent from home on a hunting expedition. A scene of the kind alluded to, is well described in the Book of Kings.

The Israelites, contaminated by the abominations of the surrounding nations, introduced this oak-grove superstition among themselves. Having forsaken the Jerusalem-Temple worship of Yahweh for the calves of Bethel, they prepared groves of oaks, poplars, and elms, upon the tops of the hills and mountains, and then offered sacrifice and burned incense to the idol-gods of the nations. Thus, God, by the hand of Hosea, writes an accusation against the ten tribes, saying,

"They have gone a whoring from their God. They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains. and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because the shadow is good. Their daughters and spouses are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots; therefore the people that doth not understand, shall fall."

The cruelty, as well as the licentiousness of the Druidical Oak-Grove superstition appears from the inquiry put to Judah through Isaiah:

—"Are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood: inflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks? Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice."

With their hands dyed in the blood of these murders, they passed from the valleys of slaughter to the temple of Yahweh, presuming he would accept an allegiance divided between him and Baal, and all the abominations of his idolatry. "They have committed adultery," saith Yahweh,

"and blood is in their hands, and with their idols have they committed adultery; and have also caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire to devour them. They have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my sabbaths. For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it."

The most celebrated of these valleys of slaughter was the Vale of Hinnom, southeast of Jerusalem, styled Gehenna in the New Testament, where it is translated "hell." There, all these abominations were practiced in the worst days of Jerusalem's apostacy, in all their enormity.

All classes of the people flocked thither to witness the horrors of the place, as the vile rabble among the Gentiles hasten in crowds to enjoy the spectacle of an execution, and to crack their ribald jests upon the scene—a scene of corporeal death, with benefit of clergy for the immortal soul!!

The earliest account of Oak-Grove superstition is that of scripture. There can be no doubt it was the same as that described by Julius Cæsar as obtaining among the aborigines of the British Isles, and termed Druidical. It was probably introduced there by the Phenicians, or Philistines, neighbors to Israel in Palestine, and traders in the ships of Tarshish to Britannia for lead, iron, and tin; an island they are supposed to have named so from Baratanac, "the Land of Tin."

There is a society in Richmond to which several Israelites belong, styling itself that of "The Ancient Order of Druids." One of the Jews was appointed to invite me to deliver the annual oration. Had I accepted the appointment, I must have shown them the origin of Druidism in Oak-Grove superstition, and its discreditableness to Israelites who professed to be zealous of the law, and the unity of their nation's God.

But as becoming a Druid myself would have been necessary to my appearance as an orator before them, my popularity with the society was preserved from that ruin which certainly awaits the reputation of those who convict men of wrong in the establishing of the truth.

But the time is fast approaching when Israelites, instead of enrolling themselves in Druidical societies, will be ashamed of all things connected with the rebellion of their fathers against Yahweh. Druidism will fall into contempt when the Mighty One of Israel shall

"redeem Zion with judgment, and her returned captives with righteousness. They shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water."

Yea, may the time soon arrive when Druidism and all its cognate absurdities and follies, may be abandoned by the Gentiles; and instead thereof, may they rally to Yahweh's ensign, and in the words of his servant Moses, "Rejoice with his people, when he shall be merciful to Israel, and his land.

Editor.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Apr 1853