Northwestern Bible School - Scroll Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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transgress the holy law of God. He is the only Indiv idual that ever lived Who could throw out the challenge, Convict Me of sin! Dr. I. M. Haldeman once described Him in this unforgettable way. Jesus Christ is a White Rose in a bed of scarlet poppies. The Roman centurion who stood at the foot of the cross spoke the truth for eternity when he said, Truly, this is a Right¬ eous Man, He was the White One. The only way in which the scarlet man could ever be made while is through God ' s plan of salvation. In other words, the Scarlet may today be made White because nineteen hundred years ago the White One was made Scarlet. Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe; Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. Scarlet has in it the meaning of sacrifice, for it is the color of blood. The Bible is a bloody Book. In the Old Testament, a continual stream of blood flows at the sacrificial altar. This blood is typical of the blood of the Lamb of God, shed on Calvary ' s tree. This blood our Lord declared to be for the remission of sins (Matt, 26:28). SALVATION Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, Snow comes from heaven. So does true righteousness! A missionary in the Province of Natal, South Africa, was served tea every morning in his bed¬ room by his Zulu servant. One morning, after a snowfall, the servant burst into the room without knocking and without the tea. He cried, Oh, Missy, the sky has fallen in and we are all in heaven! It was his lirst sight of snow and as its white beauty excited his wonder, he could think only of heaven. He had read in I Cor. 1:30 that He is made unto us righteousness. Snow is a covering whiteness. How beautiful to look out upon the snow- covered earth. Whiteness everywhere! All the dingy dark places of earth covered. The same thing happens when a sinner is clad in the robe of God ' s righteousness. Dressed in His righteousness alone, Faultless I stand before the throne. We have a double imputation in Scripture. When Christ went to the cross, our sins were imputed to Him: when we come to Him, His righteousness is imputed to us. The following illustration may help to make clear what we mean. In the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, the Lord Jesus is delivered by Pilate into the hands of Roman soldiers. They took Him into the common hall and stripped Him of the white robe which He wore, and put upon Him a scarlet robe (Matt. 27:23). There He stood in their midst—the Sinless Man, scarlet clad. Just a s that scarlet robe was placed upon Him, even so God laid our sins upon Him. The same chapter in Matthew pictures the soldiers gambling for His garments at the foot of the cross (verse 35). Have you ever stopped to think that a sinner went away from the foot of the cross to wear the Lord ' s white garment? When we come as lost sinners to the cross, we are arrayed in God ' s garments of white. Our scarlet robe was upon Him; His white robe is upon us. But salvation goes beyond the mere imputation of righteousness. There is also an importation of righteousness in the Person of the Holy Spirit, Who dwells within the saint to make of him a temple of God. The crimson wool spoken of has reference to a woolen cloth placed in the pot of crimson dye and boiled and boiled until every thread is crimson. This takes us beyond the thought of sin as some superficial act of man. Sin is part of the very nature of man, and to deal with sin, we must get back to the very fiber of a man ' s being. (Continued on Page 73) ( 72 )

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WHITE AS SNOW By R. L. Moyer Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isa, 1:18.) This text is the message of God to the rebellious, sinful house of Israel. It has its application, however, to ail men born of Adam. The language of the text is figurative. The color is symbolical of spiritual states, foseph Parker said, There is a philosophy of colors: a theology of hues. We shall attempt to set that forth in this study CONDEMNATION Scarlet is the color of sin. I have read that the old law of England did not declare the color of the letter “A,” which was to be sewed on the dress of an adulteress. When Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he added the scarlet because he felt that to be the proper color to symbolize sin Men make a mistake in classifying only certain sins as scarlet. For example, a sinful woman is sometimes called a scarlet woman. Scarlet, however, is not the color of just a certain class of sins. It is the color of all sin. All are sinners; all must be classified as scarlet. Sin means to miss the mark; that is, to miss the Divine standard of holiness and perfection The Word of God is built about two perfect Things. In the Old Testament we have the Law of God, and we read concerning it that the Law of the Lord is perfect. The New Testament is built about the perfect Son of God. These two de¬ clare God ' s standard of perfection. Every man, however, has fallen short of that standard—he has missed the mark of God ' s perfection Man is condemned not only because of the Scarlet; he is condemned also by the White. Everyone knows that white is the color of righteousness, but man is not White. The Scriptures declare over and over again that the sinner is an unrighteous man. The White declares what man should be, but demonstrates also what he is not. All have sinned gives to us the condemnation of the Scarlet. There is none righteous, no not one gives to us the condemnation of the White. The Scarlet gives to us a positive aspect of sin, while the White brings to us the negative aspect of sin. The Scarlet tells us of the evils we have done, but White tells us of the good we have failed to do. The Scarlet tells us v hat we are; the Y hite tells us what we are not. In the mind of man, red is always connected with danger Man ' s danger signal is a red light. The scarlet of a man ' s sins in itself is a warning signal, calling out to a man the danger of judgment, declaring to a man the neces¬ sity of being saved. SUBSTITUTION Humanly speaking, it is impossible for the Scarlet to be made White—just as impossible as salvation by human means, Hugh MacMillan said, The ancient world could not make a black fleece white, nor could it make a scarlet cloth white. The modern chemist is just as helpless His most power¬ ful chemicals still leave a trace of red, I once asked a paper mill owner what he did with the red cloth that came to his mill. He said, ' We sort it out and make pink blotting paper out of it We can take out all colors but red. We can reduce the red to pink, but that is as far as we can go ' The only way whereby scarlet sins can be made white is through the sub¬ stitutionary, sacrificial death ol Jesus Christ. Nineteen hundred years ago there came One into this world Who was White. He was the sinless One. He was the Man without fault. The Scriptures declare that He had no sin. He did no sin; He knew no sin. Never in deed, word, nor thought did He (71 )

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The Preacher’s Promissory Note (Continued from Page TO) Word of God has been the instrument ol the Holy Ghost, sometimes a hammer to break the heart; sometimes a sharp two-edged sword to cleave from one the evil habits that had long enthralled him; sometimes a magni¬ fying glass, compelling him to see his sins and all other features of horror that God beholds in the unregenerate heart. Truly it is a discemer of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12) and on that account is used by the Spirit to reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment, (John 16:8.) Finney gives us a page out of his life to the effect that he came one after¬ noon to a neighborhood where they had never had any religious meetings. Calling the people to the school-house he found them moved by curiosity to look on his face and by hatred against what he should have to say. When he asked them to sing, the discords were such that he put his hands over his own ears, and when he prayed they sat bolt upright and scowled. What text to employ he knew not, But suddenly there came to him the Scripture: Up, get you out of this place; for the lord will destroy this city. (Gen, 19:15.) Standing before them for a few minutes, he declared their state tike that of Sodom, and in spite of their threatening countenances from which he (eared they might even strike him, he went on to tell them that their judgment would be the same. Suddenly a solemnity settled over them and imme¬ diately there seemed to fall upon the congregation a sort of shock. The Word had cut like a sword! Finney later learned that the wickedness of the town had given it the nick¬ name of SODOM, and the one man who had invited him there was nick¬ named LOT. But even there many converts were made, for the Word was the power of God unto salvation. Little wonder, then, that Paul, advising his Junior Timothy, did it in the brief sentence: Preach the Word! White As Snow (Continued from Page 72) God declares that the scarlet wool shall be made as white as snow. This speaks of a great change that is beyond the power of man. The white wool does not teach the eradication of a sinful nature, but it is a figurative way of declaring the great change which takes place in man in salvation. With some of these changes we are familiar. Get away from that man, for the God he is cursing will split the earth and swallow him up and let him go down alive into hell for his awful blas¬ phemy 1 said a gypsy in old England, of John Bunyan, who afterward wrote The Pilgrims Progress, the book that ranks next to the Bible. Jerry Macaulay once made this statement: There were days in my past life when I would have murdered a man had I known he had five dollars on him. Yet he became the saint of the Bowery, the man v ho stands foremost among all the rescue mission workers America has ever had. This is v hat God means when He says, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. ( 73 )