Page 10 - The Basic Conflict between Christianity and Communism

came to this earth to make it a base of their conflict against God, bur were again

driven out and allowed to remain only in the atmosphere surrounding this earth. As a
result of their defilement of this fair planet, Jehovah was compelled to purge it with a
period of darkness and ice, of sufficient length to accommodate the geologic ages and
the fossil-remains in the earth’s crust. Then came the restoration to glory and beauty

and life, as unfolded in the six days of the first chapter of Genesis and consummated
in the creation of the first man and women in the divine image, who were given
dominion over the whole.

A God of truth and love will not enslave His children nor compel their obedience.
This fact is tremendously important in understanding the Christian philosophy. He
insists on safeguarding freedom of choice and action on the part of His subjects. He
wants their love and obedience, and upon those that render it voluntarily He will heap

infinite rewards, but He will never enforce it. Where shackles and tyranny appear,
they are always the handiwork of Satan.

So determined was God not to saddle His overlordship of the renewed earth upon

His regent King and Queen─Adam and Eve─that He actually provided an
alternative in a forbidden tree in the midst of the Garden and He left the Devil to
remain at large to exploit it and to test their obedience. He will not compel obedience
but He will first warn of the penalty, and without hesitation inflict it in the face of

disobedience.

Our first parents failed the test and sinned in eating of the forbidden tree and
brought our fair world under the dominion of sin and death and the Devil. From this

awful condemnation it was redeemed by the death of the Son of God on the cross.
He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven from whence He will return again at
the last day to make actual what He had already made legal─the restoration of the
Divine Kingdom on the earth when Satan and his evil followers will be shut up in the

pit and be able to deceive the nations no more. This will be the Golden Age of peace
and righteousness to which men of every race and nation have looked, the reign of
Messiah on earth.

The Christian philosophy, then, sees in human history a great struggle between sin
and righteousness, the deadly hatred that the forces of evil have for the moral law of
God, and sees all this to be the earthly counterpart of that great conflict between God
and Satan that goes on behind the sense. This warfare goes on in every human heart

because there is sin present in each and yet there is that moral conscience that God has

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