Without the Power Thereof

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 27, 1908

Without the Power Thereof

Some careful observers of the present conditions in the religious world are finding cause for apprehension concerning the future of Christianity. One of the current magazines analyzes the situation in the following way:—

Whatever may be the truth as to the technical and numerical decline in Christian denominational strength, there are good reasons for believing that Christianity, as a whole, is passing through a period of depression in this country. . . . Clergymen of many denominations seem to feel that church methods now employed are futile and ineffective, and that new methods must be adopted if the power of Christianity is to prevail. . . . To a greater and greater extent, the church is engaging in social work. Young ministers are studying the social problem as never before. . . . The gospel is preached as a message of physical health, redeeming the body as well as the soul of man. We hear in our day of the rise of a unique phenomenon—the “church clinic”—with its “cures” of all the ailments to which flesh is heir.

The difficulty is not that the gospel has lost its power, but that the churches have lost the gospel. It is more than likely that “church methods now employed are futile and ineffective,” but there is little hope of changing the situation for the better by turning to “social work,” or by attempting to substitute ministry to the physical man for ministry to the spiritual man. We do not read of any “period of depression” when the apostles were preaching the simple gospel of salvation through faith in the atoning work of Christ. A return to the preaching of the apostolic gospel would bring a return of apostolic power.