“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” 1 John 5:12.

When you skip with a rope, or roll your hoop, or play with your dog or cat, or help your father or mother, do you ever stop to think who gives you the power to skip and run and shout? Who filled you so brimful of life and activity? And who keeps you alive during the long nights when you, as well as your father and mother, are sound asleep? Think a moment, and see if you cannot remember.

We have learned that “In Him [the Lord] we live, and move, and have our being,” and that “it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves,” for “with Him is the fountain of life.” [Acts 17:28; Psalm 100:3; 36:9]

Well, then, since we live in Him, and there is no other fountain of life, suppose we should shut ourselves away from Him, what would happen to us?

Yes, we should surely die, for we have no life of our own at all. We cannot live without God any more than the grass or the trees or the beasts can, for from Him flows “the life of every living thing.”

Then can you not see how hopelessly lost we were when man in Eden shut himself away from God by the “thick cloud,” or “wall,” of sin? And can you not see how hopelessly lost we are now, if we do not accept Jesus as our good Shepherd, and allow Him to take our sins away and bring us back to God?

As we learned last week, Jesus is the only “door” and only “way” to God, the fountain of life. That is the reason that God says, “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Jesus is our only hope, our only salvation.

By sin we have shut ourselves away from all right to the life that God gave us, and which He now lends us but for a little while that we may have time to learn of Jesus, and to take Him for our Saviour. We shall soon die and return to dust, just as God said we should, and just as Adam and Eve did long ago.

If we have accepted Jesus, we have accepted His life, and we need not fear, for we shall live again, never to die anymore. While we sleep in the grave Jesus will safely keep for us His own eternal life which we have accepted, and He will come in a little while and wake us up to receive it again.

But if we will not accept Him and His life now, we shall have no life then to be hid with Christ in God, and therefore we shall have to be awakened to everlasting destruction instead of to everlasting life.

Satan knows this, and so he does everything that he can to keep us away from Jesus. He knows that if we have Jesus, we have life, and He does not want us to go to Jesus that we may have life. He wants to make us believe that we can live without God just as well as with Him, and that we cannot die no matter how wicked we are. If he can get us to believe that, he knows that we shall not feel any need of Jesus, for we shall think that we have life in ourselves; thus he will be able to keep us away from the only One who can save us.

Whenever, therefore, we are tempted to disobey God and commit any naughty sin, Satan whispers to us just as he did to Eve, “Fear not; it will not do any harm; ye shall not surely die, even though you do disobey God, and shut Him away with your sins; there is no such thing as death; even though you appear to die it is not death, and so you can never die.”

Though with our own eyes we may have seen our friends die, and lie perfectly still and helpless, and deaf to all our cries, yet he has said, “Ye shall not surely die; this is not death, but another and better and more beautiful way of living; your friends are not dead but alive, and they hear every word you say, and are watching over you and thinking about you all the time, and they can help you to live as you ought.”

He is so very anxious to have us believe this, and thus lead us away from seeking Jesus for help and life, that he and his angels sometimes cause themselves to look like people who have died, and then they come and show themselves and say that they are the friends who were supposed to be dead. They look so much like them, and talk so much like them, that people are easily deceived, and believe that they are really talking with their dead friends.

Satan has also written messages to people in the handwriting of their dead friends, thus causing them to think that their friends were alive and writing to them.

Although we are told that Satan will soon work “with all power and signs and lying wonders,” we need not fear that we shall be deceived if we know and love and really believe God’s word. He has told us very plainly all that we need to know.

God said to man, If thou eatest of the tree, “thou shalt surely die.” In Ezekiel we read, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Notice, God does not say that it shall appear to die, but that “it shall die.” [Ezek. 18:4]

Again, God says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” [Psalm 146:3]

How plain that is! “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” and in the very day that he dies, “his thoughts perish.” [Psalm 146:4] He cannot be thinking about us, then, can he?

In another place we read, “His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” [Job 14:21] No wonder that he does not know what happens to his children after he is dead, for God says that “his thoughts perish.”

But here is another word of God which is still plainer; “The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.” [Eccl. 9:5]

Notice the difference between God’s word and Satan’s: Satan says, They shall not surely die; God says, They shall surely die. Satan says, They are thinking about us; God says, Their thoughts perish. Satan says, They know as much or more than they did before; God says, They know not anything.

Then let us believe God even though Satan appears to us, looking and talking to us like our friends who have died, and even though He sends us writing that looks just like theirs. We may be sure that Satan is just trying to fool us, for God says the dead cannot think, or know, or do, for they are dead. They, therefore, cannot help us, and they cannot harm us.

Jesus is the only One that can save us from our sins and bring us to God that we may have life. Without Him we shall have no life and no hope of life. Oh, let us not believe Satan, but let us come to Jesus now that we may have life.

1. Who made you? Ps. 100:3.
2. By the power of whose life do you live and move? Acts 17:28.
3. With whom is the only fountain of life? Ps. 36:9.
4. Then if we should shut ourselves away from God, what would happen to us?
5. How much do we need God?—As much as the grass and beasts.
6. Why? Job 12:10, margin; Eccl. 3:19.
7. Then what happened to man as soon as he shut himself away from God by sin?—He was doomed to death. Gen. 2:17.
8. How many of us have sinned? Rom. 3:23.
9. Is there, then, no hope for us? John 3:16; 1 John 5:12.
10. What did Satan say to Eve when she was tempted to sin? Gen. 3:4.
11. What does he say to us when we are tempted to sin?—The same thing. 2 Cor. 11:3.
12. How else does he try to make us believe that there is no death?
13. Why is he so anxious to have us believe that we can sin and yet live?
14. What does God say about the soul that sins? Ezek. 18:20.
15. And what takes place the very day that a man dies? Ps. 146:4.
16. Then can a dead man know what his children are doing? Job 14:21.
17. How much can he know? Eccl. 9:5.
18. Is it necessary to be deceived by Satan when God has spoken so plainly?
19. If we do not have Jesus, what else do we not have? 1 John 5:12.
20. Then who is our only hope? Acts 4:12.
21. If we accept Jesus now, what will be safe even though we sleep in the grave a little while? Col. 3:3, 4.
22. But if we will not accept Him now, to what shall we be awakened? John 5:29.
23. Then can we afford to grieve away the only One who can give us life?

The Present Truth – April 5, 1894
E. J. Waggoner

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When you carry a Bible, the devil gets a headache.
When you open it, he collapses.
When he sees you reading it, he faints.
When he sees you’re living it, he flees.