How good is it to find gems in books by authors you have never heard of. I owned and distributed Christian books for over 30 years. I purchased Christian Press in 1983 but had never heard of Scottish theologian, Peter James Forsyth or his books, The Cruciality of the Cross (1899), The Work of Christ (1910) and The Justification of God (1917) just three gems of over 100 books published.

I give you two quotes from The Justification of God:

“No reason of man can justify God for His treatment of His Son; but whatever does justify it justifies God’s whole providence with the universe, and solves its problem. He so spared not His Son as with Him to give us all things. The true theology of the Cross and its atonement is the solution of the world. There is no other. It is that or none. And that theology is that the Cross is not simply the nadir of Incarnation, but that it is God’s self-offering (under the worst conditions that love could feel for evil man) to His own holy name. The just God is the chief sufferer, and sole Doer. The holy love there is in action everywhere. The most universal thing in the universal Christ is His cross. Everywhere, according to God’s ubiquity, imminence, or what you will, His holy love is invincibly at issue with death, sin, and sorrow. Everywhere is redemption. And that is the only theodicy. The purpose of salvation is the principle of creation; and the ruling power of the world is the purpose of God.“

It is no light problem that faces the Creator in His world. There was never such a fateful experiment as when God trusted man with freedom. But our Christian faith is that He well knew what He was about. He did not do that as a mere adventure, not without knowing that He had the power to remedy any abuse of it that might occur, and to do this by a new creation more mighty, marvellous, and mysterious than the first. He had means to emancipate even freedom, to convert moral freedom, even in its ruin, into spiritual. After the first creation drew on His might, the second taxed his all-might. It revealed His power as moral majesty, as holy omnipotence, most chiefly shown in the mercy that redeems and reconciles. To redeem creation is a more creative act than it was to create it. It is the last thing omnipotence could do. What is omnipotence but the costly and inevitable action of holiness in establishing itself everywhere for ever. The supreme power in the world is not simply the power of a God but of a holy God, upon whose rule all things wait, and may wait long. It is no slack knot that the Saviour has to undo. All the energy of a perverse world in its created freedom pulled on the tangle to tighten it. And its undoing has given the supreme form to all God’s dealing with the world. But at the same time the snarl is not beyond being untied. Man is born to be redeemed. The final key to the first creation is the second; and the first was done with the second in view. If moral freedom is the crown of the first creation, spiritual, holy freedom is the goal of moral; and it is the gift in the second creation. The first creation was the prophecy of the second; the second was the first tragically ‘arrived.’ There was moral resource in the Creator equal to anything that might happen to the creature or by him. And that resource is put forth in Christ — in His overcoming of the world on the Cross, and His new creation of it in the Spirit. All God’s omnipotence is finally there. The great goal is not the mere fruitage of the first creation, but another creation more creative still. The first does not glide into the second; there is a crisis of entirely new departure. (pp. 122-124)

And the book’s final paragraph must also be shared here:

Faith is more than an individual calm; it is the Church’s collective confidence on the scale of the world for the destiny of the world. The evil world will not win at last, because it failed to win at the only time it ever could. It is a vanquished world where men play with devilries. Christ has overcome it. It can make tribulation, but desolation it can never make. (p. 223)

Jesus return to earth to restore righteousness is not too far distant. The many Biblical end times prophecies are playing out in our day. Hallelujah!

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and He has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron.” Revelation 19:11-13

Jesus Millennial Kingdom is next on God’s agenda for planet earth. To prepare yourself to rule with Jesus go to http://www.millennialkingdom.net