Orthodox Denial of the Resurrection
Orthodoxy vs. the Resurrection of the Body. SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS declaim with some earnestness against the growing faithlessness of the orthodox in reference to the doctrine of the resurrection. This often causes a squirming with those who have not clean gone to said error, and occasionally a flat denial that such is the case. To sustain our position that the popular churches are eminently Sadducean in their creed (see Matt. xxii, 23) we quote the following from an editorial of one of the leading journals of the Episcopalian Church, in an article on Passion Week and Easter: "The Congregational paper of Illinois has been writing systematically against the resurrection and the general judgment, for months past, and we have heard no word of warning or of protest. It has declared that there is no resurrection of the flesh, in so many words: that the soul's going to Heaven, immediately after death, is all there is. The body is not needed at all. "And this is not the only case. Evidently the mass who have accepted the folly and blasphemy of Spiritualism, could have done so only because they had never been trained in any belief in the resurrection. The common teaching about the state after death, that the good go at once to Heaven and the bad at once to hell, has made the resurrection superfluous, and led to the denial of its existence. Why bring a saint of six thousand years' standing out of Heaven, or a sinner, of as many, out of hell, to go through the farce of a judgment, or receive the useless clog of a body? In truth, we question seriously whether the mass of the members of the so-called 'Evangelical Churches' are not utter unbelievers in that article of the creed, 'I believe in the resurrection of the body.'" QUERY. Is it any worse for a Seventh-day Adventist to preach the truth than for an Episcopalian? I trow not. G.