Your ShelfYour Projects

The Last Crisis

4%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 13, 1915

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 92, No. 24.

Read the full edition

The Last Crisis

By C. S. LONGACRE

THE Scriptures bring to view the last crisis between commandment keepers and the beast and his image, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of the book of Revelation. The last issue which will be raised in the final conflict is the enforcement of the mark of the beast by the image of the beast. The image of the beast in the United States must constitute an organization or federation of organizations which is a facsimile, or likeness, of what the beast was in the Roman Empire.
The Roman church united with the Roman state constitutes the beast of the book of Revelation. Analogy would force us to conclude that an image to the beast in the United States would have to constitute a legally established religion in this nation. The prevailing religion in the United States is Protestantism. If any religion is ever established in the United States, it will be apostate Protestantism or a union of Protestantism and Romanism.
The mark of the beast must be a religious institution which demands worship. It must be a religious institution originating with the beast, or it could not be denominated “the mark of the beast.” The image of the beast has accepted a papal institution as a part of its own worship. The mark of the beast is religiously held by both Protestants and Catholics. It is upon this issue, namely, the enforcement of the mark of the beast, that both Protestants and Catholics unite.
The image of the beast is to compel all people to worship the image of the beast and to receive the mark of the beast. In order to accomplish this it will be necessary for the state to do the compelling. The state will have to enforce the mark of the beast by law, otherwise people could not be compelled to accept it.
What religious institution has Protestantism accepted from Catholicism which it is asking the state to enforce by law? Of all the dogmas which Protestantism has accepted from Romanism there is only one religious tenet which is strictly papal that Protestants are requesting the state to enforce by law and thus compel all the people to observe it, and that is Sunday as a day of rest and worship. No other religious institution held in common by Protestants and Catholics is being enforced by law.
Thus compulsory Sunday observance must of necessity be “the mark of the beast” which the image of the beast will seek to enforce, first by means of the boycott in the commercial world, and lastly, after the boycott has failed to bring the desired results, by the death penalty.
This was the exact mode of procedure which the Papacy pursued in compelling people to observe Sunday at the time the Catholic Church was in supreme command. The image of the beast, or apostate Protestantism, the prophecy asserts, is to pursue a similar course in the United States.
In Volume V of the “Testimonies for the Church,” pages 449-451, we read:—
“The same spirit which actuated papists in ages past, will lead Protestants to pursue a similar course toward those who will maintain their loyalty to God. . . . To secure popularity and patronage, legislators will yield to the demand for a Sunday law. Those who fear God cannot accept an institution that violates a precept of the decalogue. On this battle field comes the last great conflict of the controversy between truth and error.”
In Volume VII, page 141, occurs this significant statement:—
“The substitution of the laws of men for the law of God, the exaltation, by mere human authority, of Sunday in the place of the Bible Sabbath, is the last act of the drama.”
This shows conclusively that the last great issue which will bring on the final crisis is the compulsory Sunday law controversy between God’s loyal followers and those who have forsaken his law.
In our last article, we furnished facts showing the National Reform Association to be the leading aggressive factor in this great Protestant movement in the United States to secure a union of church and state. This association has many allied organizations aiding in this backward and revolutionary movement in America.
The first organized ally of the National Reform Association was the W. C. T. U., which was induced by the National Reform Association to second its efforts to secure Sunday legislation, the recognition of Jesus Christ as the governor of the nation, and the establishment of all the laws and usages of the Christian religion as a part of the fundamental law of the land. The W. C. T. U., at the request of the National Reform Association in 1887, added the department of Sabbath observance to its organization, and Mrs. J. C. Bateham, of Ohio, was put in charge of this new religio-political department.
That the W. C. T. U. had fully accepted the platform principles of the National Reform Association is quite evident from the following W. C. T. U. authoritative utterances:—
“A true theocracy is yet to come, and the enthronement of Christ in law and lawmakers; hence I pray devoutly, as a Christian patriot, for the ballots in the hands of women, and rejoice that the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has so long championed this cause.”—W. C. T. U. Monthly Reading for September, 1886. “The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, local, State, national, and world-wide, has one vital, organic thought, one all-absorbing purpose, one undying enthusiasm, and that is that Christ shall be this world’s king, yea, verily, this world’s king in its realm of cause and effect,—the king of its courts, its camps, its commerce; king of its colleges and cloisters; king of its customs and constitutions. . . . The kingdom of Christ must enter the realm of law through the gateway of politics.”—W. C. T. U. National Convention.1887. See “Religious Liberty in America,” by C. M. Snow, pages 281, 282.
In 1887 the American Sabbath Union was organized, and at once allied itself with the political schemes of the National Reform Association by adopting the platform principles of that union in its own constitution, and working hand in hand with the National Reformers to secure compulsory Sunday observance in Congress and the State legislatures.
The following year the Third Party Prohibition party, at the instigation of the National Reform Association, adopted its platform principles in its own constitution by favoring a union of religion with the state, the Lord as supreme ruler of the nation, “to whose laws all human laws should conform.”
The secretary of the National Prohibition Convention held in 1888, made the following significant statement:—
“I want to see the day come when the church shall be the arbiter of all legislation, State, national, and municipal; when the great churches of the country can come together harmoniously, and issue their edict, and the legislative powers will respect it, and enact it into laws.”
There are more than a score of Protestant organizations which have been won over to the platform principles of the National Reform Association. We are told that “the National Reform Movement, exercising the power of religious legislation, will, when fully developed, manifest the same intolerance and oppression that have prevailed in past ages.”
C. S. LONGACRE.