p. 13 | Forces in Training by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 16, 1911

Forces in Training

By C. M. S.

If Satan can convince men that this world never was destroyed by a flood, he will be able to convince them also that it never will be destroyed by fire. If he can convince them that the world never will be destroyed by fire, he can and will convince them that it never will be destroyed at all, and that all our Lord has said concerning his second coming is untrue.

We see thus how vital, how fundamental, are the truths of creation and the records of God’s dealings with men; and we can see also what the purpose of the adversary is in attacking the declarations of Holy Writ upon these points. It is his effort to induce every man and woman in this world to believe that this gospel, which means so much to mankind, is based upon a falsehood, that with one grand sweep he may hurl every vestige of foundation from beneath their feet, and plunge them into the abyss of eternal ruin.

The work of the Higher Critic we must not pass. He poses as a religionist, but he works as a valiant soldier in the ranks of those forces that are being laid hold on by the powers from beneath. With a scalpel of satanic designing, sharpened and furbished by a shrewd human intellect, he lays hold of the printed Word of God in an attempt to dissect it, and find out by that process the hidden source of its life and power.

His experience is somewhat similar to that of the Indian who found a watch on the body of a murdered immigrant. He could see the second-hand going around, and he could hear the watch ticking; but he wanted to see what was making the noise. He took his hatchet, and pried off the case, and pried out the works, but he could not by that process find out what was making the noise. Then when he tried to put it back together again, the hands wouldn’t go, the wheels wouldn’t work, and the watch wouldn’t tick any more. He came to the conclusion that it was some sort of bewitched thing that had fooled him into thinking he saw and heard what he had not seen and had not heard, and he threw it away.

So with the Higher Critic, when he has finished his dissection, and tries to put the fragments back together again, he finds that it has lost its power,—for him,—and he comes to the conclusion that it was only a human thing, after all, and tosses it aside. He doesn’t even give it a place on “the minister’s five-foot shelf.” To him as literature it is more or less faulty; as science, it contradicts what he terms the “known laws of the evolution of nature;” as history, he challenges it; and this in spite of the fact that hardly a month passes in which the spade of the archeologist does not turn up some ancient record written in stone confirming the history written ages ago in the blessed Book of God. In the dissecting process, he has lost his reverence for the Book, and it has lost its hold upon his soul. That is what Satan intended when he projected the scheme. Then that power from beneath lays hold upon his soul, and he goes forth to the world making a gospel of his doubts, that he may turn away a multitude after him.

One prominent clergyman, with a bent toward the Higher Criticism, and yet with a friendly feeling for the Bible, attempts to help the divine record out by explaining some of the miracles on a rational basis. Concerning the animals going into the ark, he holds it should not be difficult to believe they did so, inasmuch as animals will usually take to cover when they see the lightning and hear the thunder and the roar of the approaching tempest. But his explanation is more embarrassing than helpful. In the first place, the storm did not begin until seven days after the animals were safely housed in the ark. In the second place, what an embarrassing situation it would be if the Almighty, after directing the construction of an ark to save his creatures, could not with certainty induce those creatures to enter it, but must be dependent upon the uncertain happening of some natural phenomena to accomplish his purpose! God is more dishonored than glorified by such a defense as this.

Dr. McIntosh declares that the Higher Criticism “would bury an expired Christianity with an incredible Bible beside a dead Christ in a hopeless grave, from which there is no resurrection; and bury along with them the only consolation of a sorrowful humanity amid the desolations of death and the darkness of futurity, without one ray to alleviate the eternal gloom; and would turn mankind

backward millenniums, and convert the dawn of a new century into a midnight darkness and a world’s despair.”

It is not generally known that Higher Criticism was conceived and brought forth in the Catholic Church; but such is the case; and like many another child of that mother, it has been widely adopted into the Protestant portion of Christendom. It was originated by Richard Simon, a Catholic priest, in the year 1678. In 1753 another Catholic, Jean Astruc, took up the work, going far beyond what Richard Simon had accomplished, and others have carried his work still farther, until the movement has now become insidious, wide-spread, and alarming. It is one of those forces from beneath, with which the Christian forces of this generation must earnestly contend.

That misinterpretation of the work and purpose of God which will have it that God will provide an age of one thousand years wherein there is to be no sin, wherein men and women who have failed to perfect a Christian character in this life under the handicap of trials, troubles, poverty, and sin, will have a second chance, free from the temptations of the devil and evil men, to work out a character of which God can approve, is another of those disintegrating forces of which we must speak. That misinterpretation puts a libel and a stigma on God’s dealings with men in the past, and puts a premium on sin in the present, while it relieves men and women now of the necessity of exerting themselves in the work of God. It is in truth a plan of the deceiver to palliate sin in the minds of men, and take the vitality and the zeal and energy out of the souls of men, and that, too, at the very time when every faculty ought to be running under full head, the heart zealous and courageous, and every purpose of the soul focused unwaveringly upon the goal of victory.

Our work is not done when we have simply saved ourselves from such deception. It is our business in this last great battle of this six-thousand-year campaign to warn others of the same dangers from which we flee. We are to remember that Jesus Christ came into this world to dwell in human flesh, that he might, through his example and the power of the Holy Spirit, enable men to live the Christ-life in spite of temptations and trials and conflicts within and without. He is able to keep men from falling and save them from sin now. It is our business to make men understand that fact, and to understand that the miasma of eternal ruin lurks in the idea of another chance beyond the grave.

We have heard of Christian Science, a system that would nullify some of the most fundamental principles of Christianity, and turn science upside down; a system that stands pyramids on their heads instead of on their bases, makes unrealities of those things that are most real, and is chiefly conspicuous because of its utter unlikeness to anything represented by the two words from which it takes its name. A child of the philosophies of the heathen world, it has named itself after that which most quickly appeals to the child of God on the one hand, and to the imagination of the philosopher on the other; and then it opens a crusade against that which is truly Christian on the one hand and truly scientific on the other, proving itself an enemy of both, and therefore one of those forces from beneath. The sickness and pain which Jesus Christ spent so much of the time of his earthly ministry in relieving, is declared to be a figment of a disordered imagination, an “error of mortal mind.”

That system puts our Saviour in the position of one who was fighting shadows for three and one-half years. In permitting his life to be sacrificed on Calvary to pay, on man’s behalf, the penalty for sin, our Saviour must again be in error, if that system be true; for sin, as an actuality, does not exist in the teachings of Christian Science. The very name of our divine Master becomes a misnomer to those who accept such a doctrine. “Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins.” If Satan can erase from the minds of men and women everywhere a belief in the actuality of sin, while the thing itself is eating into the soul like a cancer into human flesh, he has accomplished a master-stroke in the snaring of souls for ruin.

The germs of this soul-sickness are spreading through the earth more swiftly than the germs of the great white plague, and the death that follows in their wake is that death on which the seal of the eternal God is fixed to stay fixed forever.

The world must be warned against these insidious teachings. God has his forces in training to do that warning work. We are a part of those forces. We must let the world know the truth of God, which is the only shield against the deceptions of that system.

Our warfare is not with individuals but with systems of untruth, and our weapons are shaped and furbished for us in the armory of heaven. The sword of truth is our weapon, and we aim its blows at systems that deceive, enchain, and enslave the souls of men. Moving in the ranks of the forces of God, girded with his strength, and armed with his weapons, we face these forces in the final struggle. C. M. S.

(To be concluded)