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Only a few. How many to-day, dear friends, do you know who are disciples of Christ? You do not know very many. Did Jesus ever say He was to convert the world? By no means. What then? What does the apostle Peter say? He said, "God at first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them the people for his name." What did Peter say that God did? He said Hc did not visit the Gentiles to take in all the Gentiles, He did not visit the Gentiles to make them a little flock or to take them to glory, but He visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name, to gather out of them that little flock. The message goes to the whole world, but only a few of the world at the present time are people to hear, by reason of the gross darkness and the defiling influence of the great adversary. Only a few now can hear; the great masses are blind and deaf, some of them in the gross darkness of heathenism; and many of them in great darkness even in Cincinnati, Pittsburg, and every other part of the civilized world-in gross darkness as respects God. They will study politics and finance and everything else except to know God. They are not much interested in intelligently knowing God. It is only a few that have an interest in looking unto God and his word, and studying what they teach.

Our brother speaks of God giving law unto the world. The Scriptures say nothing about God giving the law unto the world. God gave law to Israel sixteen hundred years before Christ came. He gave a law to Israel out of the mouth of Moses, but He did not give that law to the other nations. The other nations were without hope in the world, as the Bible says. And when it came to the gospel time, our Lord, as the apostle says, broke down the middle wall of the partition so that the Jews should no longer have a preference or distinction above the Gentiles. Then the gospel message went to every creature. That did not mean that every creature would hear, but it meant that there was no longer a distinction to be made; He was to no longer single out the Jew and say that the message of God is only for the Jew; it was henceforth to be given to everybody who hath an ear to hear. And that is what you and I do; but we do not confine our message to the Jews, we do not confine it to some particular nationality. The Lord said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." But does everybody hear? No. Is everybody able to hear? No. Why not? The god of this world hath blinded them. Will he always blind them? No, the time will come when Satan shall be bound and will deceive and blind the nations no more until the thousand years of Christ's reign are finished, then he shall be loosed for a little season, we are told. Meantime that will be the period of Christ's reign, for He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet.

Our brother would have us understand that Christ has been reigning for the last eighteen hundred years. How many enemies has He under His feet now, do you think? He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet, and the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. I tell you.

dear friends, He is not reigning; there are not any of them put under His feet. Those that are under Christ are those that have come under voluntarily, as you did, and as I did, because of hearing the message of the Gospel. We have gladly presented our bodies a living sacrifice. By and by He shall reign; He shall put down all opposition, everything contrary to God, and He will reign for a thousand years, the Scriptures say. In that time He will subdue everything, and unto Him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.

Look for a moment to see how much prospect there is of our dear brother converting the heathen. He seemed to give us the impression that he is going to convert the heathen. I wish he would. I would give him all that I have now and everything that I ever expect to have on earth if he would convert the heathen; but, my dear friends, what do we know about the heathen? We know that a century ago there were six hundred million heathen; to-day there are twice as many-twelve hundred million. Our brother is not getting along very fast converting the heathen, is he? Why don't he convert the heathen? He is not to blame, and nobody else is to blame except the god of this world who has stopped their ears and blinded their minds. Why does he have the power? He could not have the power unless God permitted it. Will God always permit it? God answers, no. He answers that when he shall have accomplished his purpose of taking out the elect, known as the little flock, then the reign of sin shall have ended, then Satan shall no longer be the prince of this world; then Jesus shall be the Prince of this world-the prince of light, the prince of glory-and the kingdom of God's dear Son will come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is what we are waiting on, dear friends. Our brother says that the world was lost without God's law. I answer yes, the whole world was lost, the whole world is still lost; they are not found yet. Are they not still lost? Of course they are lost. They are still under the sentence of death just as they were at first. They are under the same sentence of death that they were when Adam first transgressed. All the children of Adam came under that sentence, "Dying, thou shalt die;" you have no right to eternal life. That penalty of death has come to the whole world, and the only ones who are saved are those who have accepted Christ, as illustrated by Noah and his family getting into the ark, which the apostle Peter says is a like figure whereunto baptism doth even now save us. But shall the world ever have an opportunity? Shall their ears ever hear? Not certainly in the present life. Of the two hundred thousand millions that have gone down in the tomb, or approximately that, the great mass of them never even heard of Jesus. They were not saved; they were all lost; but, my dear friends, Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man, for every one of them, yes, just as much as for you and for me. He tasted death for every member of Adam's race. "As by man came death, by man also comes the resurrection of the dead, for as all in Adam

die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." The time is coming when all those who have gone down without a knowlege of the Lord shall be brought to a knowlege of the truth. That is what the Scriptures teach. Quoting again from the Scriptures our brother referred to, it says, "There is one God and one mediator between God and man"-not a mediator between God and the church. You do not need a mediator to come in between you and God. The Father himself loveth you. You and I do not need a mediator. We need an advocate; the church needs an advocate. So the Scriptures say we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, who hath appeared in the presence of God for us and in our behalf as our advocate or attorney. We do not need a mediator. Mediators are necessary when there are two in opposition. God is only in opposition bcause the world is in a condition of sin, and God says He can not receive the world while they are in alienation and loving unrighteousness; and the world says, we do not love God. They think of God from the standpoint that our brother has been misrepresenting Him, as a revengeful God, as being a very devil who planned their eternal torment before He created them; one who is keeping them in ignorance and laying pitfalls to blind them and take them to eternal torment.

That is the kind of doctrine that has made infidels, and that is what is keeping the heathen from approaching more nearly to Christ. We have a missionary in China who writes me that he has been telling them something of the truth over there. He says those who have been hearing Presbyterianism and Methodism are coming to him and saying, "Tell us some more about the love of God." They call it the Jesus Doctrine, as distinguished from Presbyterianism, Methodism, and so forth. They want to hear some more of the Jesus Doctrine.

Dear friends, if the world could hear the Jesus Doctrine it would be a blessed thing for them. Many hearts are moved by the love of God that will never be moved by thinking of God as the great devil who has made a place in hell for them where there are a thousand fire-proof devils ready to receive nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand that are not of the elect, that are not of the little flock. Now, that is the doctrine that has kept people away from God. That is the doctrine of devils the apostle speaks of. Nothing has done more than that doctrine to harden the hearts of men and make them abhor the word of God, and turn them from Himself. So if you try to talk religion to a man he immediately thinks of devils, and he does not want anything to do with you. He thinks it is bad enough to die, and if he is a Catholic to go through purgatory, or a Protestant to eternal torment, which is worse. He thinks he is in a bad condition any way. He has no hope of being one of the saints. He knows the Bible promises reward to no one at this time but the little flock who walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who lay aside every weight and run with

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patience the race set before them, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Now, there is the difference between the one Gospel and the other. Our Gospel is the one which is for the world and all mankind. It holds strictly with the Scriptures, first of all, that Jesus is the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He is the true light. Every man must yet see this great light. The world is going down, nevertheless, without seeing that light. Thousands of millions have gone into the great prison-house of death without seeing God or knowing Jesus at all. He gave himself a ransom for all, which must be testified in due time to every man. If it has been testified to every man now, then this is your due time to make your calling and election sure. Seek to enter in at the strait gate. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way." If this is not your due time and if you do not hear now, or whoever does not hear now, in the sense not merely of hearing with his outer ear, but with the ear of his heart, so as to understand the message of God's grace, whoever does not get that hearing ear in the present time is not in the same responsibility that you and I are who have had that hearing ear. Blessed are those that hear.

Our brother has quoted that God is able to save to the uttermost all those that come unto the Father by Him. Yes, He is able to save, not only able to save us at the present time, but He is able to save those that have gone down into the prison-house of death without a knowledge of His dear Son. He is able to bring the light of the knowledge of God to every creature. He tells us that the knowledge of that time is to come when under the whole heavens the knowledge of God shall fill the whole earth, and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Then shall there be no need for any one to say to his neighbor, "Know the Lord now," because all will know the Lord from the least of them to the greatest, saith the Lord.

Our brother calls our attention to the Jews. He says that they had one chance and lost it. He knows something about chances that I do not know anything about. I find, according to the Scriptures, there was one chance in Eden, and that was lost, and that Christ Jesus tasted death for every man, and that Christ dies no more for every man, and therefore by the death of Christ there is one chance secured for every creature; you have your chance and I have my chance, and every heathen man must have his chance, because that is what Christ died for. He died to give every man a chance, and they will get it, not as one that is bound. You will admit that the heathen have not got it now; they are lost, they will be lost until they hear that message, and they can not hear that message till the prince of this world is bound, until their ears are opened and until the message of the Lord's grace goes forth and the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the whole earth-the knowledge of the glory of God. That is the way it reads in one place: "If our Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost"—yes, indeed, and that is to the whole world. The whole world is lost. Our

Gospel is hid to them nearly all. It is only to a few that it is not hid. It is hid to a good many even in civilized lands-the true Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel of which we are not ashamed.

I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God of salvation to every one that believeth. I would be ashamed of the Gospel of damnation. The word "gospel" means "good tidings," as the angel preaches it: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people." All the people are going to hear these good tidings. The heathen will get them in good time; that is, the millennial time. You and I have got the good tidings now at the present time. We will have a severe test in the narrow way. 'Tis difficult to walk in the footprints of Jesus, but we have offered to us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we may become partakers of the divine nature, which will be restitution back to human perfection. But the salvation that God is now offering to the little flock whom He is now selecting as the joint heirs of Jesus Christ, is glory, honor and immortality, to sit with Him in His throne, to be associated with Him in blessing all mankind.

Dear brethren and sisters, this is the Gospel of which we are not ashamed. I have yet to find a man that is not ashamed of the ordinary misnamed Gospel of damnation, which makes out that God is the one responsible for nearly the whole world going to eternal torment. That is a misfit name— no Gospel about that. That is damnation in every sense of the word. God has a glorious Gospel of His dear Son, a Gospel of love, a Gospel of redemption, a Gospel of the high calling of the church, a Gospel of the restitution of the world and all mankind. Let us rejoice therein.

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