1671. VI. In Denying Spirit or Angel, the Sadducees Denied Salvation and the Saviour

VI. In Denying Spirit or Angel, the Sadducees Denied Salvation and the Saviour

1. The Sadducees know nothing of salvation which reaches out into the ages to come. There is nothing in Sadduceeism which could say that saints, "are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1Pe_1:5).

There is nothing in Sadduceeism which could say of saints, that, "unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, apart from sin, unto Salvation" (Heb 91 Bible).

There is nothing in Sadduceeism which could say unto saints: "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy" (Jdg_1:24).

Sadduceeism concedes no age to come, and therefore can recognize no salvation to be consummated then.

2. The Sadducees circumscribe salvation in its operation to the present world life. If salvation carries any meaning to him who says, "There is no resurrection, neither spirit nor angel," it must be included in the things which are seen.

The best that such a salvation can do for man, is to grant him a better environment down here.

The mission of the church to the Sadducee is civic and social.

The church can do no better than to equalize wealth and wages, than to regulate commerce and capital, than to inaugurate education and ethics.

Salvation, so far as the Sadducee is concerned, is wholly foreign to the grace of God; it only seeks to develop graciousness with men.

Salvation, so far as the Sadducee is concerned, is ignorant of Christ and His substitution for sin; it deals with man and his sanitation against sickness.

Salvation, so far as the Sadducee is concerned, is in darkness concerning regeneration, but in the lime-light when it comes to Americanization.

3. The Sadducees have no need of Christ as a Saviour. There is no place for Christ in a salvation centered in self-improvement, and obtained by a process of development.

There is no need of the Bible, with its story of Christ the Saviour, if salvation is to be based upon a revelation taken from human observation.

There is no need of the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Christ and to reveal them unto man, if man must find within himself all he needs to save himself.

In Sadduceeism there is nothing greater than man; there was nothing before him; there is nothing after him–he is the maker and the shaper of the weal or the woe that surrounds him, and indwells him.

Jesus Christ can be no more than a super-man who lived a holy life and died a martyr's death, but who was wholly deceived in His conceptions and claims.

Jesus Christ, accordingly, could not have come down from God, for there is no God, neither spirit nor angel; He could not have suffered the Just for the unjust, to bring man to God, because man is acclaimed as his own saviour.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR