p. 356 | Indepen(t)ce by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 10, 1882

Indepen(t)ce.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

It makes little difference nowadays whether a practice can be defended by the Scriptures or not. If the Bible supports a doctrine or custom, it is still popular to quote it, but modern religionists are not troubled one whit if the Bible does not agree with them. They can get along without it. The following, from the Independent, is a case in point:—

"A correspondent asks an opinion as to the validity of the arguments advanced in favor of infant baptism. This is our view of the case: No authority for any rite or ordinance can, in the nature of the case, have final, irrepealable authority. The form is the servant of the principle; the letter, of the spirit. You may prove what you will about a rite, and it can yet be discarded when circumstances make it advisable. Prove, if you will, that Jesus Christ when on earth commanded any ordinances in the most express terms, as he did baptism and the Lord's Supper, and yet they may both be discarded, and should be, by the private judgment of the believer, or by vote of the church or of a denomination, or by concurrent voice of Christendom, if it should ever appear that these ordinances, in the nature of them, minister to disunity, instead of unity, to formalism, instead of piety."

The question, "What think ye of Christ?" might very pertinently be put to the Independent. Does it believe in Christ at all? Not if it really believes the statement quoted above. Christ prayed that his followers might be one even as he and the Father were one. Since this was his desire, he certainly would not teach his disciples to do anything that would tend to disunity. But he did, as the Independent admits, command baptism and the Lord's Supper in the most express terms. Still that paper says there is danger that they may tend to disunity. If this is not impeaching the wisdom of Christ, what would be?

Again it says: "The important point is that we should do what in this nineteenth century is best for the spiritual condition of the church." Very good; so say we; but who shall decide what is best for the spiritual condition of the church? Christ himself has given us directions, both personally and through the prophets and apostles, but the Independent decides that those directions are not of universal application; that Christ had not sufficient foresight to know what men in this age would need; that it rests with each individual to decide what is best for himself. Thus it puts Christ on a level with men, limiting his work to the short time which he spent on this earth. The Bible used to be considered the rule of life, but now we are told that we need not follow its teachings when it is not best! That is, everybody can do as he pleases. Surely no worldling, however profligate, would object to such a religion as this.

If the millennium is to consist in the fact that all men will be brought into the church, then it cannot be far distant, for such teaching as the above is becoming decidedly popular in the church, as it always has been outside.

"A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so." Jer. 5:30, 31. E. J. W.