Your ShelfYour Projects

Misrepresenting Christ

33%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 3, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 1.

Read the full edition

Misrepresenting Christ

By Editor

THAT is a striking remark made by Brother W. W. Miller in his article on page 15 of this issue, that “we have only more to fear from the heathen who profess Christianity and are tutored by the churches than we have from the heathen who still worship their idols.” The two incidents which he mentions indicate that he is well within the truth in making the statement which he does. The reason for this condition of things lies in the fact that they have not been taught to love the law of God. Many a foreign missionary has taught the heathen the abolition of the law of God. The originator of that false teaching found it the easiest way to combat the Sabbath of Jehovah, contained in that law. They have not dwelt upon the principles enunciated by the psalmist, “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day”; “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” The spirit that led men to cry out against Christ, “Crucify him, crucify him,” is not different from the spirit which led men in the convention at Gopalgunj, East Bengal, to cry out against the keepers of God’s commandments, “Beat them,” when their only offense had been the teaching of the binding obligations of God’s holy law. This failure to rightly represent Christ among the nations that had forgotten God is a serious fact, when we consider the result of it in the lives of those who, in that land, profess a conversion to the principles of Christ.
Our workers in Africa have found that they have more to expect from those who are not yet professors of Christianity than from many of those who have gone to the Dark Continent to teach Christ to the heathen. This, too, has come about through the antipathy which many of these missionaries maintain toward the law of God, and their failure to take its principles into their lives. The experience of Brother Branch in British Central Africa, as recounted in his article on page 18 emphasizes this sorrowful fact. It all indicates the near approach of that time when all the inhabitants of this world will be lined up for or against the law of Jehovah.