To Us the Scriptures Clearly Teach

The Herald and Its Mission

To Us the Scriptures Clearly Teach
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For over ninety years this journal has proclaimed, “To Us the Scriptures Clearly Teach.” It is our continuing faith and mission. While in the spirit of tolerance and good will toward all, we do not propose to make any creed to be enforced upon others, we present our hope for the faithful church and for all the rest of the world.

This issue of The Herald discusses those beliefs that the Bible requires to be recognized as a Christian. Many other things are true which are not made fundamental by the Bible (including those which do not apply before “the last day”). The foremost purpose of this journal is to aid the last members of the predestinated number of the true Church—the body of Christ. And then we are glad to present the Bible hope for the rest of the world.

• The Church is the “temple of the living God,” whose construction has been the main purpose throughout the Gospel age. When this priesthood is complete, Jesus Christ and his church will begin the blessing of Israel

• and all the other families of the earth.

• The character development of the Church—consecrated believers in Christ’s atonement for sin—must continue until the last member has been fully trained and faithful. Developing character is least pleasant but most rewarding.

• The hope for both the church and the world is that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself and thereby “tasted death for every man.” Jesus is “a ransom for all,” of whom the world will learn well in the king dom of Christ.

• The hope of the church is to be like her Lord, to be “a partaker of the divine nature,” with “a celestial body.”

• The perfecting of the saints is not for an eternal retirement, but for the great work benefitting the whole rest of the world in the kingdom of Christ on earth. (In preparation, the world’s Jews are already being brought back to Israel, to the land God had promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and then to Jacob.)

• The hope for the whole world of mankind lies in the resurrection in Christ’s thousand year kingdom, in their retraining into righteousness and human perfection. Thereafter, Satan will be no more; God, Jesus Christ, and his church, the rest of the heavenly host, and the whole world of mankind will be in complete harmony through out all the perfect ages of eternity.

The priest hood has two functions: 1) sacrifice, and 2) teaching and blessing. Leviticus 9 shows us that sacrifice comes first, and the blessings afterwards. That was the sequence for the Levitical priesthood, and it is to be also for the priesthood of Christ and the church.

Jesus Christ alone could offer an accept able sacrifice for the sin of Adam, under which we are all born. “As through one trespass condemnation cometh unto all men; even so through one act of righteousness justification of life cometh unto all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous” (Romans 5:18,19, RVIC; 1 Corinthians 15:21,22).

But the sacrifice would be vain unless the priesthood afterward will bless the people. Every Christian must therefore learn now to have love even for his enemies, if he is later to join with Christ in that priesthood for the blessing of the whole world in the ages to come.