Brazen Serpent

‎T. W.—You would like to hear more of the cross. Perhaps you hear as much as is Scriptural. Consider that the cross, as a structure of wood, was in Roman times on a par with the modern gallows, and could only be used figuratively of the doctrine involved in the death of Christ. It occurs in Paul’s letters, not as a literal expression—though having its origin in a literal occurrence. It cannot be that the cross itself, the actual framework upon which Christ was cruelly impaled by the Jews and Romans, had any vitality or place in the preaching of the apostles. Otherwise, the Roman Catholics are right in their superstitious deference to the structural form, and in their devout appreciation of “the wood of the true cross,” which has been distributed in ship loads among the million worshippers of the beast. Unless we put the cross in its proper place, as the symbolical expression of the great doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice, in its absolute truth, it becomes an idol, whether clasped in material form with the devotions of the benighted Catholic, or cherished as a spiritual ideal with the undiscerning enthusiasm of “evangelical religion.” The brazen serpent, elevated in the wilderness for the cure of believing, serpent-bitten Israelites, was a legitimate object of regard, when accepted as a divine appointment for good; but when, afterwards, the children of Israel degenerated to the idolatrous worship of it, Hezekiah, with divine approbation, “brake it in pieces,” calling it contemptuously “a piece of brass” (2 Kings 18:4). So weeping, as the expression of an intelligently broken and contrite heart, is an acceptable sacrifice to God; but when put in the place of truth and righteousness, it became a cause of offence in Israel, as we read: “And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with goodwill at your hands” (Malachi 2:13). The religious outcry about “the cross” of the present day, is in the same category of perverted truth, and is doubtless as displeasing to the Almighty, as the excessive and irrational zeal of the Jews for the sacrifices and feasts of the law, while neglecting the “weightier matters” with which they were associated.
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. Vol. 35: The Christadelphian: Volume 35. 2001 (electronic ed.) (109–110). Birmingham: Christadelphian Magazine & Publishing Association.