Religious Ranting by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 28, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 21.

Religious Ranting.

By Editor

AMONG the papers deposited in our "distributers" in Oakland is one having a long article on the coming of Christ and the resurrection. Well, those are glorious themes, but how are they treated? They say that Christ is come. But Jesus himself said, "Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not." We shall not believe it, because we believe all that the Scriptures say, that when he comes the archangel's voice will be heard, the trump of God will sound, every eye shall see Christ, the tribes of the earth will mourn, the wicked will flee in dismay, the graves will be opened, the dead will arise, and the living saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. These things cannot be counterfeited. But they who believe not these things are under a terrible deception.

Now let us hear them on the resurrection. The first paragraph perverts the words of Christ as follows:—

"He that believeth in me is resurrected, and he that believeth in me is changed in the twinkling of an eye."

And the next paragraph opens thus:—

"But you say, Shall not the dead who died in their sins be raised also? Certainly. But not till by faith they lay hold of Christ at the resurrection."

Such perversions of Scriptures as this are shameful. But let us hear once more:—

"When God shall have prepared us, and when 'we know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death' (Phil. 3:10), then shall we attain the resurrection of the dead (v. 2), that is, we shall have power to call forth the dead, and by virtue of the God power in us, assist them to put on incorruption."

It is only because deplorable ignorance of the Bible prevails, that such abuses of the sacred word are tolerated. It is strange that in this land of Bibles and Bible light, people will believe that they are led by the Spirit of God, who so fearfully pervert the word of God. These writers profess to be superlatively holy,—led wholly by the Spirit. But Jesus prayed the Father that his people might be sanctified through the truth; and he said: "Thy word is truth." And he also said that the Spirit would guide them into the truth; into an understanding of the word of God. How, then, can people be guided by the Spirit of truth who continually pervert and abuse the plainest declarations of the word? It is because, in proclaiming their own holiness they have become "vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind." As the Methodist minister in Ohio said, theirs is a remarkable case of "humility on stilts."