Christianity vs. the Papacy
By L. A. S.
The gospel message to mankind is a continual call for a reformation. It speaks to the individual, urging him to turn from his evil ways, and walk in the pathway of God’s commandments; to exchange the carnal nature for the divine nature; to be transformed by the renewing of his mind. To accept this message and be converted means the reformation of the individual, and individual reformation has been the basis of every reformation that the world has known. Since this individual reformation, which is the basis of all other reformations, is continually in progress wherever the gospel call is heard, it is not strange that frequent general reformations have marked the progress of Christianity in this world. As the spirit of self seeks continually to gain the ascendancy in the human heart, and as man is by nature subject to that spirit, there has been in the church a continual falling away from the truth of God, first secretly in the individual heart, and next in an open departure from the rules of righteousness, under the leading of those whose aim has been to draw away disciples after themselves. Thus there have been periods marked by a general falling away, when the spirit of self became dominant in the church, and error and sin supplanted the true worship of God until it seemed that only a hidden few remained who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Then some servant of the Most High would come forward in answer to the call of God, and raise aloft the standard of truth and righteousness, and the word of the Lord would go forth like a fire and “like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces,” and there would follow a turning back to the old paths which that word marks out. There would be a visible reformation. The purpose of a reformation is to put God in the place of self. The body is the temple of God; every heart is his rightful throne. But the natural heart is the throne of self. The natural mind exalts self, and the individual ruled by the natural mind follows the dictates of self, rather than the commands of God. Every false system of worship is based on the exaltation of self; its foundation principle is the substitution of the human in the place of the divine. And so it is written of that power which stands foremost in the earth in opposition to the worship of God, that he “opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” 2 Thess. 2:4. This power represents self-exaltation carried out to the fullest limit. It presents a man—finite, mortal, and fallible, as are other men—in the place of God; so that its adherents look to a man—to priest, or cardinal, or pope—rather than to Jesus Christ, for the words of eternal life. A man—a poor mortal like themselves—bounds their farthest vision heavenward; they dare not go beyond his words; he opens or closes to them the way of life; all their knowledge of God and of his will must come through this human source, and be such as a human mind chooses to portray it, and circumscribed as a human will chooses to limit it. Thus is a man made to sit in the temple of God, and the people made to look to him as to God. Thus is the human, in which there is no salvation, put in the place of the divine, from which alone can any salvation come. And this system of false worship pertains not merely to a single power in the religious world, but extends to every church in which human authority is put in the place of the authority of the Word of God. The development of this evil system in the Christian church brought about the necessity of a reformation. A new people had to be called out and intrusted with the work of carrying to the world the pure gospel message of salvation. Thus there came about under the preaching of Luther and other reformers, a great separation from the corrupt church of Rome. But the spirit of self-exaltation continued to assert itself, and human traditions were allowed to make void the commandments of God, in the very churches which, because of this evil, had been led to withdraw from Rome. Gradually there came about a new falling away, a new development of the papal system, in the churches which derived their name from their protest against this system when they renounced the papal church. And such has been the history of the professedly Christian church. There has been a rising up of the spirit of self-exaltation, setting up the human will against the will of God, and substituting human ideas in the place of the truths of revelation, causing first a secret falling away from God in the hearts of those affected by this spirit, and next an open falling away in the practices and precepts of the church, until a separation from the church became necessary on the part of all those who would worship God in spirit and in truth. Then the call was sounded, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord;” the separation was made, a reformation was accomplished, and this process was repeated with each successive falling away from the truth on the part of those to whom it had been committed. New companies of men have thus from time to time been called out from the church and from the world, not because it was necessary or in harmony with the plan of God that his church should be split up into separate companies or denominations, but because6there have been successive apostasies from the truth, necessitating new organizations to carry on the proclamation of the everlasting gospel. For this reason it is that there exists to-day a denomination known as Seventh-day Adventists. This body came into existence because there had come at the time of its rise a necessity for another reformation. The spirit of the papacy had become dominant in the Protestant churches. The traditions of men had become honored above the commandments of God. The message which came down from God could find no place in his professed temple. Those who professed to constitute that temple refused to proclaim the word of the Lord foretelling his second coming to the earth. They set aside that word by the traditions of men and by arguments of human devising. The pastor, like the priest, put himself between the people and the word of God, assuming to interpret that word and to guide the conscience by his pronouncements. The name Protestant had become a cloak to cover a system which was essentially papal. Seventh-day Adventists are the true Protestants of this day, who take their stand on the Word of God as against the traditions and commandments of men. They are proclaiming to the world the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, through which alone can the world receive salvation. This is their mission to the world, which explains and abundantly justifies their existence as a separate people. L. A. S.