PREDICTION AND FULFILLMENT.
Our Lord declared that just before his coming to earth again, the following condition of things would exist in the world and church:— “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” Matt. 24:11-13. We have the false prophets manifest in those who are crying, “Peace and safety,” who predict the coming of the kingdom of God through other than Gospel means. We have the abounding iniquity in the amazing carnival of crime and evil, which has become so common as no longer to amaze. We have the waxing, or growing, cold of those who once were warm—the members of the church of God. Upon this point we present a few extracts from a sermon by Rev. F. F. Passmore (M. E.), of Denver, published in the Seattle (Wash.) Call of July 11, 1895. His text was Eze. 33:7 and John 21:15-17. Among other things he said:— “Watchmen are men who are appointed to look out for danger, and when they see it to give the alarm and warn the people. “Shepherds are men who are to look after sheep, all the sheep, and all the interests of the sheep. “The time has come when every true minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from our bishops down, must take a stand squarely on God’s word for justice, purity, and truth. It is enough to make night and sin themselves blush to see how the ministry, including our bishops, are pandering to the world, and uphold crime and criminals.” “From the sermons coming from our pulpits to-day it would seem as if our leading preachers had not the faintest idea of the nature of the divine mission to which they claim to have been called. The prophets, Christ, and the apostles, were the true ministers of Bible history, and they are to be our patterns in subjects, manner, and methods.” “If the Bible teaches anything on the subject of the ministry, it teaches that those who go to the world with this message of salvation are to give up the world, its wealth, its honor, its care, its glory, and be wholly consecrated to the welfare of mankind. “When the history of the ministry of to-day is written, it will read strangely, and sound more like the doings of pagan priests than of the Methodist ministry. There is nothing in the world so powerful and effective as a consecrated, sanctified, spiritual, live, and courageous pulpit. On the other hand, there is nothing so pale, so cumbersome, so weak, so lifeless, so contemptible, so useless, and so cowardly, as a man-serving, time-serving, money-seeking ministry. A ministry that is so far lost to the Spirit of the Master that it can preach to please the rich and corrupt who are violating every law of God and desecrating every sacred right of man, is in a condition that should arouse a sleeping church and slumbering age. The trouble with our age is that Christ is not being preached in our great churches by our great preachers. I mean just what I say: Christ is not being preached in one of the great Methodist Churches from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” “Great churches in whose pulpits stand men sending forth peals of impassioned oratory for the pleasure of a few rich and favored, and never a word for the thousands of poor, hungry, and cold of humanity, who have been brought to this distress by the very men who are sitting enraptured by such eloquence, is about as far from being the true Spirit of Christ as heaven is from hell. Some women and children are picking up coal in the great city of Denver to keep from freezing, while other women and children are worshiping (?) God in a $250,000 Methodist Church only a few blocks away, with the added luxury of soul-enravishing music from a $30,000 organ. Does any sane man, saint or sinner, believe for a moment that either of these pictures—the one on the river or the one on Capitol Hill—are the products of Christianity? If the people in the bottoms were not so poor, the people on the hill would not be so rich. If the people on the hill were not so rich, the people on the bottoms would not be so poor. Yet we have D.D.’s and schools of theology that are teaching that both these conditions are the result of Christianity. Can we hope to change these conditions while Bishop Warren and the other chief watchmen and shepherds are living in fine mansions in Denver and University Park, are clothed in purple and fine linen, and are faring sumptuously every day?” This is the condition of things at the present time. God calls upon his people to heed his word, be loyal to him whatever others may do, watch for his coming, and endure hardness, affliction, reproach, and persecutions if need be even to the end. And does not this very condition of things demand the message given in Rev. 14:6-12 and 18:1-4?