God’s Message Rejected, Accepted
THE great Gospel message with its present truth for to-day was God’s means for healing all the divisions of Protestantism. That message with its present truth—its special truth for to-day—includes the preaching and acceptance of His word with its fulfilled and fulfilling prophecy, the omens and heralds of Christ’s second coming, the restoration of every down-trodden truth by the apostasies of the past, and the separation of the church from the world and from the state. Before that message creeds would have crumbled. Denominational barriers would have been burned away in the glory of the light of God’s truth. The broken and divided church, scattered in Babylon, would have become one in Christ Jesus, one in doctrine, in teaching, in purpose. True, it would have laid the glory of man in the dust, but it would have exalted God and His word. Human organizations with all their elaborate machinery, their ornate rituals, their systems of caste, their voluminous creeds, would have fallen before the simple Gospel church of Jesus Christ. There would have been demonstrated in the sect-weakened Christian church, as God desired to demonstrate in the sect-weakened Jewish church, the power of that double prophetic message recorded in Isa. 40:6-10. “The voice of One saying, Cry. And one said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of Jehovah bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever. “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up on a high mountain; O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold, your God! Behold, the Lord Jehovah will come as a mighty One, and His arm will rule for Him: Behold, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.” God’s Spirit would rule in His church through His word, if this message were received by His people, and they would thus be prepared to meet their Lord. But the churches as churches did not receive the healing remedy. Rather it was shut out of their churches. The preaching of Christ’s coming, the upholding of His entire word, the advocacy of an obedient faith to His holy law in its entirety, have been largely confined to tents, to halls, to street corners, to publications. Men who were followers of Jesus have been tried by the creeds and not by the word. In the place of the Gospel in the churches came in the teachings of geological hypotheses, undermining faith in the books of Moses. Evolution followed, undermining faith in creation, regeneration, the new birth. “Higher criticism” grew apace, till now “advanced Protestantism” has no standards. As the Independent of June 24, 1909 declares, this drift “sends us back to human reason with such divine guidance as may be allowed; the authority of the Bible and the authority of the church both to be validated only by human reason.” What naturally follows this backsliding?—Union with the state, state-enforced dogmas, religious tyranny, and the recrudescence of the Dark Ages. For this very thing—state enforcement of church dogmas and institutions—the National Reform party has been working for years. Organizations for the better observance of Sunday have been working for the same thing. And now we have the Federation of the Churches of America rapidly becoming a world-wide movement, working to control in politics, and to enforce Sunday by law. That the day has no sacred authority behind it matters little to men who have repudiated the word for “science falsely so-called,” and for tradition. Thank God there are still men in these great professed Protestant bodies who believe the word. Tho they have not seen and are not following God’s last great message, they believe the Bible, and are loyal to its claims. If faithful to principle, they will yet see the full light of God’s message. They will know the Sabbath-keeping of Christ Jesus. Still tho the message has been rejected by the churches as such, God has demonstrated the power of the everlasting Gospel by calling out a people from all churches, from all creeds,—from Catholicism and Protestantism, from Judaism and Mohammedanism, from Spiritism and Buddhism,—who hold His word above all human authority, and are content to place their feet on the simple platform, “the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. To that people the great Threefold Message of Revelation 14 inevitably leads. The first part of that message is a positive Gospel truth, calling God’s children back to the pure worship and service of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Logically, it leads to the Bible and to the teachings of the Bible in the light of the offering, teaching, priesthood, and reign of Jesus Christ—“the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” The second part of that message is the sad announcement that the Babylon of churches which have rejected this message have fallen, and gone into fornication, illicit connection with the world. The third part is God’s strong protest against that great system of union of church and state, denominated the “beast and his image.” When Christ shall come, may both reader and writer be found standing on the divine platform of truth.