REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL PROPHETIC CONFERENCE.
By John D. Bradley
[From notes taken for the Signs of the Times by Mr. John D. Bradley, editor of the Sentinel of Christian Liberty, New York.] The much-advertised International Prophetic Conference at Boston has concluded its sessions, with resolutions to continue the conference work and arrange for the holding of similar conferences in other parts of the country. The Boston conference purported to be interdenominational; but the interdenominationalness was limited and provisoed—limited to those denominations who had not hitherto made any specialty of matters prophetic, and provisoed by ruling out of the discussions those who believe God's declaration that the dead know not anything. Starting out under such a handicap, the conclusions of the conference were bound to be at variance with the truth of God. Clinging to that subtle error planted in Eden by the tongue of Satanic deceit, man can not rightly interpret the prophecies pertaining to the second coming of Christ. Clinging to that error, and continuing to propagate it by denying to those who oppose it the opportunity to speak in such conferences, all such conferences are bound to be propagators of error, disseminators of darkness. All such effort is bound to be, as the work of this conference has been, an entering wedge for greater error, a remover of obstacles from the path of him who would deceive the whole world—as we shall see. The prophecies dwelt upon by this conference were the prophecies that show the certainty and the nearness of Christ's coming. Now that Christ's coming is near, God is giving more and more power in declaring it, and will increase that power to the end. Satan will not be silent in this crisis. With all the subtlety of six thousand years' experience in sin, he will teach men to misinterpret and misconstrue the plainest prophecy of Christ's return, or teach men to expect it in a way in which it never can come, so that when it does come, they will be taken unawares. Just such interpretation of prophecy and just such explaining of the manner of Christ's coming were indulged in at the prophetic conference recently closed in Boston. As the resolutions adopted provided for a continuation of such work as was done there, the deceiver's policy of “clouding the issue” has been duly inaugurated for the great and final struggle. That there were men in that conference who stood for truth in reference to the nearness and manner of Christ's coming, is admitted; but the great bulk of the teaching in reference to that event was damp and heavy with the fog of error. Christ has made known the manner in which He would come. It is Satan's purpose to induce men to believe that Christ will come in some other way; then present himself in that manner, and claim to be Christ. For that deception he is now busily preparing the world. The manner of Christ's coming, as He Himself declared it, has been faithfully set forth from time to time in these columns, and with that most of the readers of this paper are familiar. Such will readily detect the error in the views presented at that conference, and will also see the subtlety with which the great deceiver is planning his master deception. Those who are not thus familiar should take those doctrines and faithfully compare them with the Word. Perhaps no one thought was made more prominent than that of the return of the Jews to Palestine as a necessary forerunner of Christ's return. In attempting to prove this proposition, the prophetic period of seventy weeks, spoken of in Daniel 9: 24-27 (the beginning of which is anchored in the decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus for the restoration and rebuilding of Jerusalem), is made to drag its anchor down to a period still in the future. The rebuilding of Jerusalem, authorized in that ancient decree, is made to apply to the establishment of the New Jerusalem in the new earth, and the “little horn” of Daniel 8: 9-12 is snatched out of its true prophetic and historical connection, and is made to do duty in the period immediately following the restoration of the Jews to nationality; and the cutting off of the Messiah in the midst of the last week of that prophetic period is made to represent the breaking of a hypothetical covenant between Israel restored and the Gentile nations of the earth. The climax of these inconsistencies comes in the application of Rev. 20:9. It is made to represent the armies of the Gentile nations when they come up around the camp of the returned Israelites in Palestine. The immediate connection shows that the verse refers to the doom of the resurrected wicked who (verse 5) have been sleeping for a thousand years while the saints were in heaven. In the interpretation of this scripture given at the conference, the destruction of the armies of the “powers” makes Christ king of this world and of all the kingdoms in this world; and that interpretation completely banishes Matthew 24 and 2 Peter 3:7-13. But the believer in God's Word must cling to the truth of these scriptures still, and let the “interpretation” topple to its own fall, as it is bound to do in the end. The second speaker sought to prove that the “man of sin” (2 Thess. 2:3, 4) “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped,” etc., would not be revealed until the church was “caught up” away from the earth, whereas he has been sitting upon the “throne of St. Peter” some hundreds of years. He would also have literal Babylon restored and become a great commercial center, through railroads and irrigation; and the coming of Christ must wait until such time as that can be accomplished. The burden of this address also was the restoration of the Jews to a place among the nations of the world, which must occur before the second advent. Thus is the world blinded to the nearness of that event, and the servant is made to say, “My Lord delayeth His coming.” Discourse number three was based entirely on the return of the Jews and their re-establishment as a nation. Literal Israel was to remain on the earth during the thousand years, and Christ was to work through that nation for the salvation of the rest of the world. In discourse number five, by Rev. Henry Varley, Christ is set forth as a disappointed seeker after an earthly kingdom. The setting up of an earthly kingdom in this world at Christ's first advent was declared to have been the purpose of the Redeemer at that time, whereas He Himself openly declares that no such purpose was His. According to this speaker, Christ's coming was to be followed by the salvation of the world, whereas the teachings of Christ orally and through prophets and apostles show plainly that when He comes the second time, all who are not His are consumed in the fires that purify the sin-sick world. He also asserted that Christ would not have a throne in the earth after His coming; but would move from place to place, appearing now here and now there; whereas the Word declares that “the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it” (the earth). And this was one of the addresses to which the greatest attention was paid, and which seemed to make the greatest impression upon the audience. How subtly do such teachings prepare the world for the appearance of Satan in the name of Christ. Before the end, Satan, “transformed into an angel of light,” will impersonate Christ, and many will believe the Messiah has come. These are the teachings which make such deception possible; and the steadily growing doctrine of the Jews sets the world expecting an event which is not warranted in the Word, in order that they may be blinded to the event of all events, be looking for something that will never occur, and lose sight of God's present truth and present work, and be unprepared to meet Him when He comes. That event is near, as a few of the speakers at that conference declared; but they who are looking for it to come through the restoration of the Jewish nation are allowing themselves to be made victims of a fatal deception—fatal to themselves and fatal to those to whom they teach it. At the conclusion of the conference, a large standing committee was appointed, composed of ministers residing in different parts of the country, whose business will be to push the prophetic conference work. In the resolutions adopted, the conference declared that while it believed in the second coming of Christ, it had no sympathy with the doctrine of the unconscious state of the dead (or in other words, did believe that man is immortal), thus declaring, in effect, that Christ's death in man's stead was superfluous and His second coming unnecessary. One of the great deceiver's weapons against the Gospel and work of God is to make them seem inconsistent to men, out of harmony with themselves, and therefore unreasonable. In this regard he certainly was not disappointed in most of the discussions participated in at that gathering. This should lead the child of God diligently to seek Him, that he be not caught in the great deception in this most important time of all this earth's history.