What Is The True Christian Religion?/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
THE PLAN OF SALVATION
The world is filled with books, articles and sermons in defense of the so-called Plan of Salvation. Mankind in general has been so impressed by the arguments for its truth and correctness that it is firmly believed to be identical with Christianity. The Scriptures have been so used and quoted that the Plan of Salvation seems to be their legitimate and only explanation. It would seem to be impossible to disentangle truth from error in this case so that men may see that the religion of Jesus does not teach the Plan of Salvation. It will possibly horrify many people to be told that the Plan of Salvation is an invention of man and did not exist until the time of St. Anslem. 1033 to 1109, an Italian ecclesiastic who became Archibishop of Canterbury in England and was later expelled by the king and later wrote his book which developed the theory involved in the so-called Plan of Salvation. This was in 1098. over a thousand years after the Crucifixion.
St. Anselm's position was that of the Roman influenced by the idea of Law and Justice. The idea of the Atonement between God and Man ceased to be thought of as the relationship between a Heavenly Father and His Children and thenceforward became the idea of the relationship between a King and His Subjects. It was thereafter thought of as purely legal and the legalistic idea was profoundly impressed upon Christian teaching, so much so that the idea which the Lord impressed upon mankind in the parable of the Prodigal Son of our Heavenly Father standing with open arms to receive back His children into the haven of His love has been forgotten. In the legalistic idea it was necessary, because of the father's demand, that the elder brother of the prodigal should have come forward and offered himself as an object of punishment. It was necessary that the elder brother should have been duly punished as a substitute for his wayward brother. And as the wages of sin. or of wandering from the father's home, was death it was indispensable that the elder brother should have suffered the death penalty.
The Plan of Salvation demanded the death penalty for all sin, whatever it was that was done in violation of God's law. There was no escape. All who sinned after the sin of Adam came under this penalty, not merely Adam. It meant as well dill all of his progeny forever would perish. This did not mean merely physical death, but eternal death in hell prepared for the devil and his angels. This meant that the entire human race came under this penalty—innocent little children, infants, as well as all older men and women. God simply had to have His justice satisfied. Law had been broken. There could he no escape. The hideous injustice of such a curse upon the human race was explained as the justice of a Supreme Being who could do whatever He willed, regardless of human ideas of justice Men began to praise God because of His justice in condemning humanity to eternal death as the offspring of Adam. In the Middle Ages men praised God for the sufferings of little children in hell. A more monstrous idea oi the Divine Being could not have been imagined. Moloch, whose priests claimed that the only way to gain the favor of this monster was to place their infants and little children in the attended brazen arms of the idol and then to see the children withdrawn, shrieking with terror, into the burning fiery furnace within the image, was not so cruel. Moloch murdered only a few comparatively; God the human race.
This is the basis of the Plan of Salvation.
The human race was to be saved by the mercy of their Elder Brother, Christ, who would undertake to come no earth after some thousands of years and be murdered, the innocent for the guilty. The idea of the Plan of Salvation was to save mankind by substitution—the innocent Son of God for the wicked human race. It involved the murder of Jesus by the Jewish race. If the Jews had not murdered Jesus, there could have been no penalty paid for Adam's sin. A crime had to he committed in order for God to have mercy. He demanded the death penalty. He could not escape from His own dreadful situation.
The suggestion immediately comes to mind, a searching question it is, "What would have happened if the Jews had not murdered Jesus?" Had they accepted Him, as He sought to have them do, He could not have saved them, nor the human race. A crime had so be committed in order to permit God to save humanity. Blood had to be shed, innocent blood had to be shed, a sacrifice commensurate with the extent of the human race; Otherwise God. in His Infinite Justice, could not have saved humanity. But even then He did not agree to save them all. only certain ones who would plead that Jesus had died in their place. The rest would perish eternally in the tortures of hell. This is the Plan of Salvation, the idea of an Italian priest whose theory gained universal acceptance. This is still regarded by millions of the human race as identical with Christianity, as the plan of the Bible.
Immediately thousands of good men and women who accept this theory of salvation rise up to condemn a man who would thus enter what is to them as the temple of God and break down their image, their belief, try to discredit what is to them the plain and only teaching of the Sacred Scriptures.
And yet they know in their hearts that if a man will repent and turn from his evil ways, turn to his Heavenly Father, or to the Lord Jesus, which is for Christians, of course, the same, and therafter live a life of love to God and the neighbor, which Jesus said is the summing up of religion, he will be saved. The whole Bible can be brought forward to support this statement. Just one passage in proof of what has been said: "If the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done shall he live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?" What did Jesus say? "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." He did not mention the Plan of Salvation.
Is not what is now being said the evident teaching of the Sacred Scriptures?
When does the Plan of Salvation come in? It is an attempt to explain the life and mission of Jesus, but utterly mispresenting it, as is evident. Then what is the true explanation of the life and mission of Jesus?