Fanaticism by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 6, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 10.

Fanaticism.

By Editor

THOSE who have read Eld. James White's "Life Sketches"—and if there is a Seventh-day Adventist who has not, we hope they will early improve the opportunity to do so—and the account of the early experience of Mrs. E. G. White, well know that from the very beginning of the work of the Third Angel's Message we have had to meet fanaticism, and to guard the "little flock" from its wild and scattering influence. We have to meet it at Oakland. It is the natural outgrowth of this so-called "holiness" movement. These sanctimonious boasters are all antinomians. Of them Andrew Fuller, the celebrated Baptist author, said: "Such views of the atonement excite to irreverent familiarity with God, and in some cases a daring boldness in approaching him; yet such is the strength of the antinomian delusion that it passes for intimate communion with him."

Words could not be made to better characterize this work. We are happy to know that it cannot coalesce with the Third Angel's Message. "The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus" are not pleasant to the feelings of these antinomian zealots. One who kept the Sabbath for several years as a professed Seventh-day Adventist, has fallen in with the "holiness" people, and now he professes to talk with God face to face, and says the Lord has told him it is not necessary to keep the Sabbath! If Satan has a more delusive snare than this, we pity the man who falls into it.