GEO. O. STATES by GEO. O. STATES

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 17, 1910

GEO. O. STATES

By GEO. O. STATES

My Lodge Experience—No. 4

GEO. O. STATES

“A POWER from beneath is working to bring about the last great scenes in the drama,—Satan coming as Christ, and working with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in those who are binding themselves together in secret societies. Those who are yielding to the passion for confederation are working out the plans of the enemy. The cause will be followed by the effect. Transgression has almost reached its limit. Confusion fills the world, and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings. The end is very near. We who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VIII, page 28.

I believe the only way to keep our children from being led into these deceptions is to teach them the dangers. If we ever receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we must be a united people, entirely free from all such influences.

“It is a solemn and terrible truth that many who have been zealous in proclaiming the third angel’s message are now becoming listless and indifferent. The line of demarcation between worldlings and many professed Christians is almost indistinguishable. Many who once were earnest Adventists are conforming to the world,—to its practises, its customs, its selfishness. Instead of leading the world to render obedience to God’s law, the church is uniting more and more closely with the world in transgression. Daily the church is becoming converted to the world.”—Id., pages 118, 119.

Unless we take a decided stand and heed the spirit of prophecy, I believe that we shall go as other denominations have gone. God’s work will be accomplished in the earth, for we are told, “Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion.” That is my hope on this lodge question, and I believe the spirit of prophecy will bring about this unity.

While in California in 1905, I heard Sister White say that some wonder what would happen if she should be taken away. She said, “The Lord has given this people light enough to take them through, if it was only heeded.” That is the trouble with us as a people,—neglect to heed the counsel God has sent. In spite of our neglect, the Lord has just sent us timely counsel in “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. IX, page 19:—

“In a special sense Seventh-day Adventists have been set in the world as watchmen and light-bearers. To them has been entrusted the last warning for a perishing world. On them is shining wonderful light from the Word of God. They have been given a work of the most solemn import,—the proclamation of the first, second, and third angels’ messages. There is no other work of so great importance. They are to allow nothing else to absorb their attention. The most solemn truths ever entrusted to mortals have been given us to proclaim to the world. The proclamation of these truths is to be our work. The world is to be warned, and God’s people are to be true to the trust committed to them. They are not to engage in speculation, neither are they to enter into business enterprises with unbelievers; for this would hinder them in their God-given work.”

From my personal experience I know we can not heed this counsel and have our minds taken up with lodge work; for we are to allow nothing else to absorb our attention.

“We are living in the midst of an ‘epidemic of crime,’ at which thoughtful, God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast. The corruption that prevails is beyond the power of the human pen to describe. Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud; every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering; of brutal, fiendish destruction of human life. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide.

“The cities of to-day are fast becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah. Holidays are numerous; the whirl of excitement and pleasure attracts thousands from the sober duties of life. The exciting sports—theater-going, horse-racing, gambling, liquor drinking, and reveling—stimulate every passion to activity.”—Id., page 89.

When we old people were children, there were only a few lodges. The World’s Almanac of 1908, in giving a few of the principal lodges, gives the names of fifty-six in the United States. The number given by those who have investigated the question is nearly three hundred. All this helps to bring about the sad condition of the present.

The ministers of the various denominations are perplexed, not knowing what to do. The Homiletic Review of June, 1909 (pages 459, 460), has an article, “The Ideal Funeral Service,” from which we quote:—

“At the ideal funeral service, no lodge will have charge. . . . Personally, it is very humiliating to me to be shoved aside in the home or at the grave by the uniformed ‘chaplain’ of some many-lettered organization. But I could swallow that as just a little pique, if that were all. But it is not all. I am there as the representative of the one divine institution among men, the church of the living Christ, to minister to the dead. And when these human organizations step in at such a solemn moment, for which even their stoutest advocates dare claim no divine authority, they seem to be elevating themselves to a place level with the church. As an ordained representative of the church of Christ, I have stood aside twirling my thumbs while men whose morals I knew were rotten clashed their swords across the casket, or sang songs, which, so far as the expression of any vital and distinct Christian sentiment is concerned, might be used at the funeral of the grand lama at Lhasa, or read prayers made ‘for humanity’s sake, Amen.’ And whatever may have been the fault of the church in failing to provide within herself that which men seem to crave and to find in these organizations, and however worthy the motives of the originators may have been, the impression they seem to give by thus officiating as a religious organization, and the impression a great many men take, is that the lodge is just as good as the church. . . . ‘Ministers, themselves lodge men, have said to me, “These organizations have no business with a man after he is dead.” And while burial is not a sacrament, yet if we grant these purely fraternal organizations the right to assume that much of the prerogatives of the church of Jesus Christ, why should it be a very far cry to the day when they might begin to baptize candidates and administer the Lord’s supper to full-fledged members? And so much display is certainly out of harmony with the simplicity of Christian thought, until it has become a proverb in certain quarters that the more plumes and brass bands and mummery at a funeral, the ungodlier the man.’”

This shows how a minister who probably knows little or nothing of the solemn message for this time, looks at these things.

School fraternities have gone so far that many of the States have been forced to pass laws abolishing them. I believe that unless we as a people stand united on this question, it is only a matter of time when this evil will get into our schools and colleges.

There is another phase of this question, and that is the life insurance. The Lord’s servant told us in 1867: “I was shown that Sabbath-keeping Adventists should not engage in life insurance. This is a commerce with the world which God does not approve. Those who engage in this enterprise are uniting with the world, while God calls his people to come out from among them and to be separate.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. I, page 549.

How much might have been saved to our people if this counsel had been heeded! “Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.” Joel 2:17, 18.

Cedaredge, Colo.