NOTWITHSTANDING the power and blessing of God which were manifest upon and through the Reformation churches, Protestantism was divided. The creed power held them in bonds of iron, suppressed growth and progress, and fostered enmity and tyranny. The early Reformers did not see all the light. The one great truth emphasized by them was “justification by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Great errors were still retained and fostered, over which the great Protestant division of Christianity and the various denominations were divided. Among these were the following: 1. The immortality of the soul and the conscious state of the dead, a breeding-soil for Spiritism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Christian Science, New Thought, and other antichristian cults and philosophies. 2. The eternal torment of the incorrigible wicked—a blot upon Christianity and an excuse for infidelity. 3. A wrong view of the priesthood and work of Christ, placing the atonement at the cross, having the tendency to divide Christendom between Calvinistic election on the one side, and Universalism on the other, both of which are erroneous. 4. With but few exceptions, a wrong view of the millennium—the majority resting in the conscience-soothing belief of a converted world. 5. Placing the reward of the dying at death in hell or in heaven, thus setting aside the necessity of the resurrection, the judgment, the second coming of Christ, and making null and void a multitude of clear, definite declarations and promises concerning the fate of the wicked and the eternal inheritance of the righteous. 6. A general disregard of the prophecies of God’s word, thus depriving the church and the world of the light which is so greatly needed in these last days. 7. A wrong conception of the dispensations, or of the changes which took place and were involved at the first advent. This led either to an awful antinomianism which set aside the government and law of God, or, at the least, made God a mutable law and sets one dispensation against the other—the Father against the Son. 8. This has been specially manifest over the question of the Sabbath, some holding to an abolition of God’s law and no Sabbath; some to a change of the Sabbath under perpetual law; and some to the authority of tradition only, upheld by the state. Out of this has grown a world-wide controversy, which has largely left the purely religious circles of discussion and has been transferred to legislative halls, and the demand for civil statute and enforcement. Out of this has grown intolerance and persecution. 9. Rejecting as obsolete the Sabbath, the memorial of God’s creative power, “illogical geology” has entered as a rival of the Genesis record and the Deluge. 10. Rejecting the creation record and the Sabbath as the memorial of that creation, the sign of the redemption and recreation in Christ Jesus, evolution in theory as also in practical life has largely set aside the new birth and instantaneous conversion. The above are awful statements, and yet every man who believes God’s word and has taken time to think upon it, knows that we have not misstated the matter. If so, will some one tell us where? This confusion of belief breeds confusion, and confusion in the symbolic language of the Bible is spelled “Babylon.” And yet God did not condemn this great Protestant Babylon. He knew all the travail by the way, all the dreary wilderness of the Dark Ages from which that church emerged. He blessed the Reformation church notwithstanding her errors. He desired to heal her. His own words by His own prophets are: “We would have healed Babylon.” What is the remedy? Listen: “And I saw another angel flying in mid heaven, having eternal good tidings to proclaim unto them that dwell on the earth, and unto every nation and tribe and tongue and people; and he saith with a great voice, Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters.” Rev. 14:6, 7. That message began its work in 1844 and onward. If it had been received, how the errors held by the church would have melted away! God’s everlasting good tidings reveal the great fact that His plan in all the ages is one; His remedy for saving men the same. It is the “power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” That power is creative power; for the one distinguishing mark of the true God in contradistinction to all false gods, is creative power. He is the One that the message brings to view. We are not to fear men; not to fear anything that men may do, or any combinations of men; but to “fear God,” and “worship Him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters.” Faith in that simple message would have confirmed God’s word; disproved the theories of geology by the great Deluge to which every land in the world testifies. It would have disproved evolution; it would have shown man to be mortal. That message for the last days showing God’s impending judgment, would have revealed also the great rule of judgment,—the rule by which character will be determined, and in that very thing would have brought the divided churches together on the great law of God, honored by Him in its giving, honored by Christ in His living and in His dying. The fact that the message announces a judgment impending would have led to the study of prophecy, the light that shines in the darkness of this world, which reveals the dangers of the present and points forward to the transcendent glories of the future. That message would have set aside all human creed-power; the glory of man would have been laid in the dust; God’s word and God’s Spirit would alone have been exalted. Men would have learned by experience in faith in that message that God’s word is of itself sufficient to hold men, without binding them by the iron law of a creed written by dead hands. Believing in that Gospel, the utter futility of any power which the state could furnish would have been seen, all civil power would have been repudiated. The state would have been left to care for its own, and the church would have occupied her own sphere. And yet in that legitimate sphere of her own, the saving of souls, she would have had a tremendous indirect influence upon the state, which no direct influence can ever equal. That message believed would have regenerated souls; it would have placed church-membership where God placed it,—with the believer,—and His church would be composed of regenerated, recreated believers. That message received would have set before the world a church begotten of the word, born of the Spirit, nourished by His truth, and bound in the bundle of His life, going forth on her Master’s mission, “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners.” [How this message has been regarded and the results we will consider in our next.]