p. 9 | The Independent Church by C. F. Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 21, 1907

The Independent Church

By C. F. Wilcox

C. F. WILCOX

SATAN'S latest attack seems to be on organization. The position is taken that the local church is the highest body under the gospel plan. It must then follow that each church is to use its own tithes and offerings, support its own work, send out its own missionaries, and in general engage in the work of the gospel. Is this principle of independent action correct?

Let us look at the logic of the principle. If the individual church is independent of all other churches, or combinations of like churches, then may not the individual families of that church likewise claim individual rights of independence in all Christian work and effort?—Certainly they may. And if each family may thus act, then each person in each of these families has the same right to independent action.

This principle applied to church order is disunion and anarchy. There would be no union, no fellowship, no members one of another, no oneness, no submitting one to another.

The whole trend of the principle is exactly in line with Satan's first apostasy in heaven. He claimed that so high and exalted beings as himself and the angels should be absolutely free from all law, subject to no order, independent of all higher control. As the result, Lucifer and many of the angels left, or withdrew, from “their own habitation,” and were eventually expelled from heaven.

Then, here on the earth, this very principle was in operation from the gates of Eden to the flood. Every man was for himself, and against every other man.

The ripened fruit of this principle can be seen in the conditions just before the flood. There is no necessity of experimenting with this false principle in the remnant church. Order, system, joint action, union, organized planning, is the need of the hour in carrying forward the work demanded by the gospel.

Takoma Park, D. C.