NOT CHRISTIAN UNION

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 13.

NOT CHRISTIAN UNION.

“Church federation” is one of the delusions of the last days. It is being palmed off on credulous people for Christian union. It is an outgrowth of the erroneous idea that there are denominational “branches” in the church of Christ. But Christ is not divided (1 Cor. 1:13). “For whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?” Ch. 3:3. Christ says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches;” that is, ye individual disciples, not ye various divisions. Now the Lord has individual branches in the various sects, but the sects as such are not branches. “Church federation” never means anything more than united effort to do something that will not affect the divisions themselves. Not one of them would enter a federation that would tend to obliterate its own denominational lines. All the objects of federation have in view the furtherance of some human scheme, some human law. Whoever heard of a church federation on the basis of the law of God? Such a basis would preclude the federation idea altogether, and bring the individual branches into harmony with the “commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” This could not be federation at all; it would be a union of individual branches, and there would be nothing left for confederation, in the ordinary use of that term. The idea of church federation, as popularly advocated, is an endorsement of all the divisions federated, an endorsement of the spirit of doctrinal division in the church. It implies that Christ is divided; for they recognize each other as Christian, and yet agree to be divided in the matter of doctrine. Hence, in the light of Paul’s reasoning, they are “carnal, and walk as men.”