The Form Without the Power by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 3, 1910

The Form Without the Power

By F. M. W.

THE Scriptures indicate that the last days would be marked with great spiritual declension. Moral degeneracy would be seen, not alone in the great world where it might naturally be expected, but even the professed church of God itself would have so failed in its divine mission and lost its holy character, as to have a name to live, and yet be dead. In the third chapter of 2 Timothy the apostle Paul enumerates a long list of sins which would characterize the last generation of men. He states in verse five that these would be found among those “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”

In the seventeenth chapter of Revelation there is brought to view the great system of apostate Christianity in the last days, under the symbol of Babylon. Separating from her rightful Lord, Christ Jesus, rejecting his counsels and admonitions, but still retaining his name, the church would join affinity with worldly powers, and seek to the arm of flesh for her support and influence. That these conditions are fast meeting fulfilment, is most apparent.

Denominations once humble in spirit and yielding to the simplicity of the Christian life, have become rich and popular, and careless and indifferent. They are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and are reaching out to secure through popular and worldly methods the power with man which they have lost through departure from God. Truly Babylon has fallen and is fast becoming the hold of every evil doctrine and unholy delusion.

And Babylon will never be reformed. The great church institutions to-day will never again as churches regain their former gospel power. A new movement is at this time due, a message that shall call from Babylon those who, while still within her folds, recognize her condition and are longing and praying for light and power. God will not lead Babylon out of her present condition, but God will lead many honest men and women out of Babylon, and reveal to them his saving gospel for this day and generation.

The following sad lament by Francis Wayland, in the Western Recorder (Baptist) of Nov. 4, 1909, expresses the longing cry from many burdened hearts and throughout the world to-day:—

On us devolved the momentous duty of exemplifying this doctrine in all its moral beauty, to the whole Christian world. Had we been true to our Master and to our own principles, what blessings might we not have conferred upon the church of Christ! The wave of worldliness that has been rising so fearfully, would have beat harmlessly at our feet, and our example might have strengthened our brethren of other denominations to check its destructive progress. Is it yet too late? May we not yet arise from the dust, and put on our beautiful garments? Is it too much to hope that God will yet honor us as the harbingers of an era of more elevated piety in the history of the church? Good men of all denominations are becoming greatly alarmed at the present tendencies. The vast discrepancy between Christianity as it now appears, and the Christianity taught and exemplified by Christ and his apostles, is mournfully apparent. Poets, satirists, and journalists scoff at it, and jeer at it, and hold it up to stinging and universal ridicule. Merchants declare that they consider an account against a professor of religion worth no more than that against any other man. Ought not every denomination of Christians, then, to awake out of sleep, and does it not become us to be the first to set them the example?

This statement presents a pathetic but striking picture of conditions which we see, not alone in any one denomination, but in Christendom as a whole. It furnishes no occasion for rejoicing, but rather for sorrow. We should sense continually more and more deeply, the work committed to us, and the position to which we are called. This movement, embracing the doctrine of Christ’s soon coming, together with allied truths, is to go, not alone to the heathen world, but to the world of Christian profession as well. The Lord through the prophet Joel gives to his people this commission: “Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand.” The sound of the trumpet must first be heard in Zion, in the holy mountain, and from there it goes out to all the world.

The position of those engaged in this movement is a unique one. As Israel of old stood alone among the nations, so this church and this people must stand alone in the midst of all the churches, and all the last-day denominations, because to it God has committed a message for all the others. This is not because, as men and women, those engaged in this movement are better than those to whom they carry the message. God’s people to-day, those who make up the number that shall stand on Mount Zion at the coming of the Son of man, are largely within the communion of the various churches of the world. God counts them as his people, and because they love the truth and are longing for the light, and grow sick at heart at the travesty of religion which they see around them, the Lord sends to them the message, “Come out of her, my people.” We are no better than they. As individuals, their Christian experience may be even in advance of ours, and to us the grace of God has been given, as it were by accident, perhaps in his providence, a little in advance of its revelation to them, and so we are to reach out to them the hand of a brother, calling their attention in love to the blessed light which God has permitted to shine upon our pathway.

In every church communion, Protestant and Catholic alike, are humble followers of the Lord Jesus to-day, who are living up to all the light they possess, and following on to know the Lord. May our relationship to them and our efforts for them be actuated by such a spirit of humility and Christian courtesy as shall reveal to them a knowledge of the Lord’s soon coming, and lead them to rejoice in the great system of truth which has brought into being this people and this movement.

F. M. W.