p. 6 | An Earnest Protest

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 30, 1902

An Earnest Protest

WHILE so many so-called religious teachers are apologizing to an infidel science for the faith which they once held, and others are accepting the destructive conclusions of the new school of Biblical critics, it is refreshing to read such an outspoken repudiation of this modern infidelity as we find in an editorial in the January number of The Missionary Review of the World. In view of the evident tendency of some of the teaching which is now being urged upon this denomination, we believe that it will be profitable for our readers to understand what is involved in this scientific treatment of the gospel. This is our apology, if any is needed, for making the following liberal extracts from this vigorous arraignment of that science falsely so called which subverts the gospel:—

We confess to a strong and growing conviction that the whole cause of a world's evangelization is threatened by the evolutionary theory which is becoming so alarmingly prevalent and more alarmingly aggressive.

Beginning in the scientific sphere, it has not only encroached upon, but is gradually permeating the whole domain of Christian truth, life, and work. It seems to have so fascinated the minds of preachers and teachers in the church that Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer are becoming authorities more final and infallible than Paul, Peter, John, or even Jesus Christ himself. Professed leaders of religious thought are recasting in this new mold the whole history of Christianity and Judaism, and even the Word of God is being melted down and run into the same matrix, and taking a new and strange shape, and in the process somehow the whole supernatural element is being evaporated or eliminated.

Evolution by natural selection, carried into the moral and spiritual realm, makes direct regeneration by the Holy Spirit unnecessary and impossible, just as in the vegetable and animal kingdoms it provides for all improvement by development. Evolution is a process of development by natural law, and leaves no room for any supernatural working. Miracle, prophecy, inspiration, and even divine illumination find no place in such a scheme. There is no God in history, as there is none in creation, unless he be simply the maker of a vast machine that runs itself with an undeviating uniformity.

The advances of this modern philosophy, since Darwin first announced it, have been not by steps, but by huge strides; and nowhere has it marched forward more audaciously than in trampling upon the old, revered truths of the Bible. It tells us that Deuteronomy was a product not of the Mosaic period, but of the days of Josiah, and with subtlety set in its present position as a sacerdotal support to the pretensions of a priestly caste! Exodus and Leviticus are post-exilic in origin, and Sinai and the desert journey, and all the wonders wrought in Egypt and the Red Sea are myths! Of course Genesis, Book of the Beginnings, with the story of Eden and the fall, the flood and Babel, patriarchal history, etc., is a mass of legend and tradition, partly, if not wholly, borrowed from other and older nations.

The whole basis of both Christian faith and Christian missions is thus being undermined. We have no Bible to carry to the heathen, and no new birth from above to proclaim. Man was not created in the image of God. There was no fall. There was no Noachian flood, no Babel confusion of tongues, no miraculous exodus, no miraculous supply of manna or pillar of cloud; it is more than doubtful if there was any tabernacle in the wilderness. Nay, we are now told by a dean of the Anglican Church that there is no authentic testimony either to the miraculous birth or resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth! And as to Pentecost, it follows, of course, that it is only the latest of fables!

We write—even to record—such words with hesitation, as though even to repeat them were blasphemy. But it is time that we faced the real issue. These teachers in the church proclaim these doctrines, and yet go unchallenged. They are subverting the faith they are sworn to uphold, and yet go on preaching to congregations, and training a generation of preachers to attack the holy mysteries of Christianity with axes and hammers. . . .

We have neither disposition nor occasion to pursue this theme further than to call attention to the fact that, in allowing our faith in the Scriptures and our courage for the work of gospel missions to be impaired or destroyed, we are accepting the dictum of a body of scientists, who, consciously or unconsciously, are determined to eliminate the supernatural factor from creation and revelation. Many men who are disposed to “hold fast the faithful Word as they have been taught,” are not disposed to be called ignorant, and be classed with the uneducated masses. They bow to the authority of scientists, as in other ages men bowed to the authority of priests. It is the fashion nowadays to doubt what has been most surely believed, and thousands yield before the tyranny of fashion. Few are willing to be sneered at as “unlearned and ignorant men,” while so many “of the rulers and Pharisees” do not believe. And consequently even the pulpit is becoming the platform from whence to proclaim, at second-hand, opinions destructive of both faith and missionary work. For if evolution be true, all faiths, however false, are but spiral movements in the grand onward progress. They have their place in the grand scheme, and befit their period. Even Christianity, which may belong to a higher point in the spiral, is imperfect, and will yet drop some excrescences unfit to survive, and develop some new and improved features or forms which in the ages to come will make it essentially a new faith. This is the real trend and outcome of this virtually infidel philosophy. . . . It is obvious that we are being compelled either to abandon evolution or to abandon Christian missions. Perhaps it may be well just now to turn once more to the words of the Lord in Jer. 8:8, 9: “How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? . . . The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?”

We are thankful to see that there are some editors yet who have not bowed the knee to Baal, and who are willing to stand up and be counted on the side of an old-fashioned faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God, and in the Christianity of the Old and New Testaments as the one only saving religion. We commend this article to the earnest consideration of Seventh-day Adventists who may have been inclined to yield their faith in some of the fundamental truths of their own message to the world, simply because they have come to be regarded as out of harmony with modern thought, and as needing adjusting to the demands of modern science. Let us understand plainly that we must abandon one or the other. As for ourselves, we do not hesitate to take our stand openly for the fundamental truths of this definite message as against any effort either within or without the denomination to substitute for them the teachings of a speculative philosophy. And here we expect to stand.