ARE MR. DOWIE'S CLAIMS TRUE?
There have been in various periodicals which have come to us reports of a declaration by Mr. John Alex. Dowie, that he was Elijah the prophet, predicted in Mal. 4:5 and elsewhere. We have been slow to believe the exact reports of an antagonistic and sensational press, and have therefore waited for confirmation. This we have over Mr. Dowie's own signature, in the Laws of Healing of June 8, his own paper. In a letter dated June 8, addressed “to the Overseers, Elders, Evangelists, Deacons, Deaconesses, Zion's Seventies, and Members of the Christian Catholic Church in Zion throughout the World; and to all Lovers of God,” he tells us that a new era opened in Zion June 2. He declares:— For more than two years we have taken the responsibility before the church and the world of being the Messenger of the Covenant. The Scriptural and logical issue of our action was the declaration as Elijah the Restorer, which we made in the Chicago Auditorium before about seven thousand persons last Lord's day afternoon. The Messenger of the Covenant, Jesus tells us, was John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Jesus said, was Elijah. . . . Malachi and Jesus say that the Messenger of the Covenant and Elijah must come again. . . . If we are the Messenger of the Covenant, we must also be Elijah the Restorer. . . . God does not rebuke us now in saying that we are Elijah the Restorer. Both offices center in one man. . . . The preparation of God's people for Christ's coming can only be made through Elijah, since God has so decreed it, and through no other person. The “restoration of all things” was to be accompanied by the prophet, of whom God spake to Moses in Deut. 18:15–22. . . . The Messenger of the Covenant, and Elijah the Restorer, and that prophet of whom Moses spake, are all one and the same person. The declaration that we are that person is either . . . a great blasphemy, or a tremendous fact of the utmost importance to the whole world. Which is it? The omissions we have made, and indicated, take nothing from the above declarations, nor in any way modify them. We have omitted them for the sole reason of lack of space. The above astounding claims are either true or false. They are either Scriptural or unscriptural. No Christian, no wise man, will take Mr. Dowie's unsupported word; he will desire the proof from the Word of God. Let us ask and examine the following questions:—- Who is the Elijah that is to come? and how is he to come?
- Who is the Messenger of the Covenant?
- Who is that prophet like unto Moses?
- What does restoration of all things include?
- What are the Biblical credentials?
1. Who Is the Elijah That Is to Come?
Elijah was a prophet of God who lived in the time of the weak king Ahab, and his Baal-worshiping wife, Jezebel, who had corrupted and cursed all Israel by their idolatrous apostasy. See the record in 1 Kings 16 and onward. Baal was the Phoenician sun-god, and his system of idolatry the worst and most corrupting of any of the heathen cults. Nearly the whole nation of Israel had become corrupted, and were transgressing God's commandments. Elijah was the pre-eminent one among God's servants who denounced the fearful sin of the nation, and called the people back to the true worship of Jehovah, and obedience to His holy law, tho there were seven thousand others in Israel, unknown to the prophet, who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Two characteristics stand out clearly in the prophet: (1) His fearlessness for God; and (2) his faithfulness in overcoming, which fitted him for translation without seeing death. The Lord through Malachi tells us: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Ch. 4:5. In Matthew 11, Jesus, in speaking of John the Baptist, says: “And if ye will receive it, this is Elijah, which was for to come.” Verse 14. (Elias in the New Testament is the Greek form of Elijah. The Revised Version is uniform with the Old Testament.) On the mount of transfiguration Elijah appeared with Moses and Jesus, glorified. The disciples asked, “Why then say the scribes that Elijah must first ‘come’?” Jesus replied, “Elijah truly shall first ‘come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, ‘That Elijah is come already, and they knew him ‘not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. . . . Then the disciples understood that He spake ‘unto them of John the Baptist.’ See Matt. 17:1–13. But when John the Baptist was asked by the committee of inquiry sent to him, “Art thou Elijah?” unlike Mr. Dowie, he replied, “I am not.” John 1:21. But when Jesus tells us that John was Elijah, and when John tells us that he was not, what are we to understand? How can their words be harmonized?—There is no inharmony in their words; Inspiration strikes the note that completes the chord and reveals the harmony. The angel said of John at his birth: “He shall be ‘great in the sight of the Lord; . . . he shall be ‘filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's ‘womb; . . . and he shall go before Him [the ‘Lord] in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the ‘hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a ‘people prepared for the Lord.’” Luke 1:15–17. Elijah was in spirit and power a prototype of John, God's next similar messenger to the same people. Both spent their early life in the rugged wilderness alone with God and nature. Both there learned to know and fear God, and fearing God, no fear of man could swerve them from duty. Both denounced the sins of the people, high as well as low. Both preached with mighty power. Both were persecuted. Both had weak, vacillating kings, and strong, unscrupulous queens for their enemies. Both preached the need of deep repentance, and turning again to implicit obedience to God's law. In these respects Elijah was a type of John to the Jewish people. Not a Complete Fulfillment.
But John and his times did not meet all the requirements of the type in Elijah; neither did Elijah and his times meet all the antitype in John. Elijah was translated; he did not see death; John was slain. Elijah's career ended gloriously; John's career ended in eclipse. Elijah had to meet in apostasy the foul abominations and rebellion against God manifest in sun-worship; John had to meet apostasy in cold, hypocritical formalism. Elijah sought to restore Israel to the true worship of God; John preached again God's truth in its beauty, that Israel might be prepared for the coming King. It takes the times of both Elijah and John properly to typify the last days. It takes both Elijah and John to typify the work and character of God's servants in the last days. God has used the individuals of the past as the archetypes of a class; the one little country as the type of the world; the one people as the type of all who profess His name; for all now are the inheritors of those who lived then. To illustrate: In the days of Elijah we have the people of God joined with the world in the great general forms of worldly idolatry, chief of which was Baal, or sun-worship. We have as the chief personage in this seduction from truth Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, the Zidonian, sun-worshiping king. We have this unholy union terminating in the treading down of God's law, and the persecution of the prophet and true worshipers of Jehovah. In short, we have a union of Church and State. In the days of John we have an apostasy, in form different, but not less evil, namely, a cold, self-righteous, ceremonial, hypocritical formalism, manifest in Pharisaism; an infidelic, critical, loose liberalism, manifest in Sadduceeism; a low condition of business morals; a gross commercialism, invading even the temple precincts. We have the nominal, local ruler bewitched by a low, designing woman—Herodias. We have the coming of the Lord impending, indicated by prophecy, and heralded in mighty power by John, the messenger of Christ, who called people to repent, to turn to obedience to God, and thus prepare for Christ's coming. For even then, if His own people had received Him with all the heart, the destruction of people and city would have been averted. The people of Israel in Elijah's day and in John's day are both typical of conditions and classes now. We have Jezebel reproduced in the great apostate church under the symbols of woman and city. Rev. 2:20; 14:8; 17:1–6, 18, etc. We have the antitype of Ahab in the weak rulers of earth, relinquishing to the idolatrous woman their power. We have the growing tendency to union of Church and State, and that around “the wild solar holiday of all pagan ‘times,” the Sunday. We have the faithful voices of God's children calling men from all this idolatry, this7denial of God's Gospel power, to His holy law, and the Sabbath, the seal of His creative power. We have the Sadducees reproduced in the “higher ‘critics,” the evolutionists of religion. We have the same cold, hypocritical, Pharisaical formalism,—form without power. We see the same gross commercialism, which traffics with things divine as tho they were common. We have piled-up evidence to show that Christ's coming is near at hand. In the providence of God there are those carrying to the world His great three-fold Gospel message of healing, of proclamation, of prophecy, of warning, summarized in Revelation 14, to prepare a people for Christ's coming to reap the harvest of the earth. That message develops the very character in the people who receive it as in those who bear it; for they are all one; and of them the Lord says: “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. They keep all the commandments of God; they have all the faith of Jesus. Herein are reproduced Elijah and John,—their antitypes,—not in person, but in character. It is not persons that God respects. The only thing of value in His sight is character. As John, who went before Christ “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” was the reproduction of Elijah's service and mission, so God's servants, in the last days, as they bear the last great three-fold message to the world, will be the antitype of the mission and character of both John and Elijah. John's message was to prepare a people for Christ's first coming. The mission of God's servants in the last days is to prepare a people for Christ's second coming. Elijah met by the Word the great sun-worshiping system of Baal, which dethroned the Sabbath of the Lord. God's servants in the last days meet the same old error in the pseudo-sabbath, Sunday, which has usurped the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. By this error the Creator is forgotten, creative power in the Gospel is almost unknown, evolution has taken the place of regeneration, the State is sought to supplement by its force the lack of the power of the Spirit, and souls are lost, tho the prophets of error are a multitude. John met the formalism of his day by pointing out the transgression; by the preaching of repentance and faith. God's servants in the last days meet the fearful formalism by the simple preaching of the Word. Elijah was translated without seeing death; so will the remnant be who give God's last message to the world. John the Baptist died; but his chief delight was in seeing no glory come to him, but in seeing his own light diminish in the ever-increasing light of Christ's presence. So God's people of the last days will not glory in men, nor will they take glory to themselves, nor will each or any proclaim himself or some other some great one; but all will rejoice that they are privileged to give the message, “Fear God, ‘and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment ‘is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and ‘earth, the sea, and the fountains of waters.” “All ‘flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the ‘flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the ‘flower falleth; but the Word of the Lord abideth ‘forever.” The other questions raised in the beginning will be considered in subsequent issues. Please follow them to the close.