(Scripture Reading Exercise.)

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE GOSPEL.^[A]

(An Argumentative Discourse.)

TEXT: "In hope of Eternal Life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching." (Titus i:2, 3.)

[Footnote A: Such is the importance of this subject—a subject which perhaps more than any other differentiates the view-point of Latter-Day Saints as to the Gospel of Jesus Christ from that of sectarian Christendom, that I here depart from the usual lesson formula to introduce in place of detached notes an unbroken presentation of the subject. This lesson may be regarded as a review of those that have preceded it in the present rear Book, also as an illustration of argumentative discourse The reference opposite the Analysis are those on which the argument is based.]

[Footnote B: This cites the close of one chapter and the opening verses of an other, but it should be remembered that Paul did not divide his epistle into chapters and verses; and this awkward division is but one of many that exist in the Scriptures.]

NOTES.

1. Numerous Dispensations of the Gospel Given: That there have been many dispensations of the Gospel, many times that divine authority has been conferred upon men, is apparent from the Scripture narratives of such events. And yet, strange as it may seem, in the face of such Scripture narratives, there are those among professing Christians who hold that the Gospel had no earlier origin than the time of Messiah's ministry in the flesh. As a matter of fact, however, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has existed from the very earliest ages of the world. There are, indeed, certain passages of Scripture which lead us to believe that even before the earth was made or ever man was placed upon it the Gospel had been formulated and was understood by the spirits which inhabited the kingdom of the Father; and who, in course of time, would be blessed with a probation on the earth—an earth-life. If this be not true, of what significance is the Scripture which speaks of Jesus as the Lamb ordained before the foundation of the world, but revealed in this day for the salvation of men. What of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? And further: "They that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world." "Where wast thou," asked the Lord of Job, "when I laid the foundations of the earth? * * * * * When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" There is evidence in these expressions found in Scripture that before the foundations of the earth were laid the sacrifice necessary to the redemption of men was understood, and the "Lamb" for the sacrifice was chosen, Jesus, the Messiah. There is evidence in these expressions from Scripture of the pre-existence of the spirits of men, and the names of some of them at least were written in the "Book of Life" from the foundation of the world, and it is not unlikely that the shouting of all the sons of God for joy, at the creation of the earth was in consequence of the prospects which opened before them because of the earth-life and the salvation that would come to them through the Gospel—even in the prospects of that "eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began." (See the text of this discourse.)

The Gospel, then, is of great antiquity. Older than the hills, older than the earth; for in the heavenly kingdom was it formulated before the foundations of the earth were laid.

2. The Gospel Revealed to Adam: Nor were men left in ignorance of the plan of their redemption until the coming of the Messiah in the flesh. From the first that plan was known. Our annals are imperfect on that head, doubtless, but enough exists even in the Jewish scriptures to indicate the existence of a knowledge of the fact of the Atonement and of the redemption of man through that means. Abel, the son cf Adam, is the first we read of in the Jewish scriptures as offering "the firstlings of his flock" as a sacrifice unto God. How came he to offer sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock? Doubtless behind Abel's sacrifice, as behind similar offerings in subsequent ages, stood the fact of the Christ's Atonement. In it was figured forth the means of man's redemption—through a sacrifice, and that the sacrifice of the first-born. But where learned Abel to offer sacrifice if not from his father, Adam? It is reasonably certain that Adam as well as Abel offered sacrifices, in like manner and for the same intent; and to Adam, though the Jewish scriptures are silent respecting it, God must have revealed both the necessity of offering sacrifice and the great thing of which it was but the symbol. And here, to some advantage, may be quoted a passage from the writings of Moses, as revealed to Joseph Smith, in December, 1830. From what was then made known to the great Latter-Day Prophet of the writings of Moses, it appears that our book of Genesis does not contain all that was revealed to Moses respecting the revelations of God to Adam and his children of the first generation. According to this more complete account of the revelation to Moses, after Adam was driven from Eden, God gave commandments both to him and his wife, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks for an offering unto the Lord, and Adam was obedient unto the commandment:

"And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why doest thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. And the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth. Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son for evermore."

After some time elapsed and men multiplied in the earth and wickedness increased; after Abel, the righteous, was slain and Cain was a vagabond in the earth for the murder; after Lamech had also become a murderer and Satan had great power among the disobedient—then, it is written:

"And God cursed the earth with a sore curse, and was angry with the wicked, with all the sons of men whom he had made; for they would not hearken unto his voice, nor believe on His Only Begotten Son, even Him whom He declared should come in the meridian of time, who was prepared from before the foundation of the world. And thus the Gospel began to be preached, from the beginning, being declared by holy angels sent forth from the presence of God, and by His own voice, and by the gift of the Holy Ghost. And thus all things were confirmed unto Adam, by an holy ordinance, and the Gospel preached, and a decree sent forth, that it should be in the world, until the end thereof."

Establishment of the Ancient Church:

As the Gospel was thus preached there were those among the children of Adam who obeyed it, and a record of those men was kept, and they constituted the ancient Church of God. Enoch was of the number of righteous ones, and a preacher of righteousness. In these revealed writings of Moses he is represented in the course of his ministry as referring to the manner in which the Gospel was taught to Adam:

"And he said unto them: Because that Adam fell, we are and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe. Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them to worship him; and men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are shut out from the presence of God. But God hath made known unto our fathers that all men must repent. And He called upon our father Adam by His own voice saying: I am God; I made the world, and men before they were in the flesh. And He also said unto him: If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized even in water in the name of mine Only Begotten Son who is full of grace and truth which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in His name and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you."

Adam was obedient to the commandments of the Lord, and taught them to his children, any of whom believed them obeyed, and became the sons of God.

Enoch, we are told, "walked with God; and he was not; for God took him." Paul, in speaking of him, says: "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him." But the writings of Moses, as revealed to Joseph Smith, and from which I have been quoting, give information that not only was Enoch translated but the Saints inhabiting his city, into which he had gathered his people, and this city was called Zion; "And it came to pass that Zion was not, for God received it up into His own bosom; and from thence went forth the saying, Zion is fled."

The Gospel Plus the Law:

Thus the Gospel was taught to the ancients. Noah was a preacher of it as well as Enoch. So, too, was Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, King of Salem, who met Abraham in his day and blessed him. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, bears unmistakable testimony to the fact that the Gospel was preached unto Abraham; and also that it was offered to Israel under Moses before "the law of carnal commandments" was given. "I would not that ye should be ignorant," he says, "how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ."

Referring again to the fact of the presentation of the Gospel to ancient Israel, Paul says that the Gospel was preached unto ancient Israel, as well as unto Israel in his day; but the preaching of the Gospel to ancient Israel was not profitable to them, because they received it not in faith, and as a result displeased God by their unbelief, and the rebellious perished in the wilderness.

Paul's great controversy with the Christian Jews was in relation to the superiority of the Gospel to the law of Moses. Many of the Christian Jews, while accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, still held to the law with something like superstitious reverence, and could not be persuaded that the Gospel superceded the law, and was, in fact, a fulfillment of all its types and symbols. This controversy culminated in Paul's now celebrated letter to the Galatians, wherein he says:

"Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He sayeth not and to seeds, as of many; but as one. And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. * * * Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. * * Wherefore the law was our school-master that faith is come, we are no longer under a school-master. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."

From Moses to John the Baptist:

In greater clearness, however, than in these sayings of Paul gathered up from his writings like scattered rays of light from a prism's reflection, the antiquity of the Gospel, as far as it concerns ancient Israel, is stated in a revelation of God to the Prophet Joseph Smith. And not only the antiquity of the Gospel, but in greater clearness also is stated the reasons why, after the Gospel was first preached to ancient Israel, the law of carnal commandments was "added" to the Gospel, or given in its place to act as a school-master to bring Israel unto Christ. And by the knowledge imparted in that revelation the time between the Mosaic dispensation and the coming of John the Baptist, to prepare the way for the coming of the Christ, is spanned by a statement so rational, that the truth of it cannot be reasonably questioned. Speaking of the Melchizedek Priesthood and its powers in administering the ordinances of the Gospel, and how it came to disappear as an organization in Israel, the passage in question says:

"This greater Priesthood administereth the Gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God; therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest; and without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the Priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh; for without this no man can see the face of God, even the Father, and live. Now this Moses plainly taught to the children of Israel in the wilderness, and sought diligently to sanctify his people that they might behold the face of God; but they hardened their hearts and could not endure his presence, therefore the Lord in His wrath (for His anger was kindled against them) sware that they should not enter into His rest while in the wilderness, which rest is the fullness of His glory. Therefore He took Moses out of their midst, and the Holy Priesthood also; and the lesser Priesthood continued, which Priesthood holdeth the key of the ministering of angels and the preparatory Gospel; which Gospel is the Gospel of repentance and of baptism, and the remission of sins, and the law of carnal commandments, which the Lord in His wrath, caused to continue with the house of Aaron among the children of Israel until John, whom God raised up, being filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb; for he was baptized while he was yet in his childhood, and was ordained by the angel of God at the time he was eight days old unto this power to overthrow the kingdom of the Jews, and to make straight the way of the Lord, before the face of his people, to prepare them for the coming of the Lord, in whose hand is given all power."

As before remarked, this passage spans the interval of time between Moses and John the Baptist, and gives a fuller explanation than can be found in the writings of Paul or elsewhere, for the reason why and in what manner the law was added to the Gospel; and what measure of the Priesthood remained with Israel unto the coming of John; in what the mission of John consisted, and in what manner he was qualified to fulfill that mission.

6. Of Origin: It is a question that has been much discussed whether Christianity has been derived from the mythologies of heathen nations, or the mythologies of heathen nations—wherein they seem to be related to Christian Gospel ideas,—derived from a very early revelation of the Gospel, say in the patriarchal age. Dr. John W. Draper at the conclusion of an exhaustive review of the conclusions of Greek and Oriental philosophies, says: "On this point we may therefore accept as correct the general impression entertained by philosophers, Greek, Alexandrian, and Roman after the Christian era, that, at the bottom, the Greek and Oriental philosophies were alike, not only as respects the questions they proposed for solution, but also in the decisions they arrived at. As we have said, this impression led to the belief that there must have been in the remote past a revelation common to both, though subsequently obscured and vitiated by the infirmities and wickedness of man." (Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 224.)

Later the Dr. remarks: "Indeed, so complete is the parallel between the course of mental evolution in Asia and Europe, that it is difficult to designate a matter of minor detail in the philosophy of the one which cannot be pointed out in that of the other. It was not without reason, therefore, that the Alexandrian philosophers, who were profoundly initiated in the detail of both systems, time to the conclusion that such surprising coincidences could only be accounted for upon the admission that there had been an ancient revelation, the vestiges of which had descended to their time." (Ibid, p. 237.. )

The author of the "Intellectual Development of Europe," however, does not acquiesce in this conclusion, but offers the following as an explanation: "In this, however, they judged erroneously: the true explanation consisting in the fact that the process of development of the intellect of man, and the final results to which he arrives in examining similar problems, are in all countries the same." (p. 237.) Which is a most lame and impotent conclusion, and one not borne out by the facts of the history of ideas. Much juster is the conclusion presented by the late President John Taylor, who, at the end of a some what extended review of traditions respecting the mythologies of various races, wherein seemed to be reflected essential Christian facts and ideas, says:

"The fact is clearly proved, instead of Christianity, deriving its existence and acts from the ideas and practices of heathen mythologists, and from various false systems that had been introduced by apostacy, unrecognized pretensions and fraud, that those very systems themselves were obtained from the true Priesthood, and founded on its teachings from the earliest ages to the advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: that those holy principles were taught to Adam, and by him to his posterity; that Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the various Prophets had all borne testimony of this grand and important event, wherein the interest and happiness of the whole world was concerned, pertaining to time and to eternity. The Gospel is a system, great, grand and comprehensive commencing in eternity, extending through all time, and then reaching into [Transcriber's note: break in text here appears to be a printer's error in the original.]

Concluding Reflections:

The view here presented of the antiquity of the Gospel, as remarked in the foot note at page 100, differentiates the viewpoint of the Latter-day Saints from that of sectarian Christendom, concerning the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It presents that Gospel as "The hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began." Jesus is "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." The sons of God shouted for joy when "the foundations of the earth were laid," in prospect of that eternal life promised through the Gospel of the Christ. It is of greater antiquity than the earth itself, then. Older than the hills, or the mountains, or the sea. Is it not older than the stars, since it comes of the love of God, also the Christ love for man; answered by the love of man for God, and or Christ, and or fellow man? In all worlds and in all world-systems does not the same Gospel prevail? Is not eternal law maintained by its constant and eternal vindication, what some call the maintenance of Justice? Does not violation of law involve intelligences in suffering in all worlds? Everywhere, as here in this world, may not one suffer for another, because bound together in that mysterious sympathy, which proclaims the universal kinship of intelligences, and emphasises the truth that no man lives unto himself alone? If the implied answer to these questions be true, will there not in some form be an expression of the Christ-love that will offer itself a ransome for others that the element of mercy may be brought into God's economy of things, even as it was brought into the moral economy of this our world by such an offering? And out of these fundamental realities and universalities will there not grow up all those relations of Redeemer and redeemed; Teacher and the taught; penitent and Forgiver? Will not God be in such worlds reconciling them to himself through the Christ and the Christ spirit that shall be made every where to abound?

To all this I answer undoubtedly. And as in the last analysis of things there is one God-nature into which Intelligences who are sons of God arise, and in which they live; for there is one Justice and one Mercy and one Love and one Plan of Salvation which saves all worlds—one Gospel and that is from eternity. I say nothing of the forms through which that one Gospel may receive its manifestations in other worlds. I only know the forms through which it is expressed in this world, and that only because of the revelations that God has given in the various dispensations granted to this world, and that is enough. But I am sure that in the last analysis of things the essential principles of the Gospel that are ordained to save our world is the Gospel that will redeem all worlds; for the principle of our Gospel stripped of local coloring are in their nature permanent and universal and hence, not only of great antiquity, but eternal, it is the "Ever Lasting Gospel."