Fallen Churches by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 26, 1883

Fallen Churches.

By Editor

The Southern Presbyterian gives a few reasons why the preaching of the gospel has so little effect in Christian lands, and in the following manner lays the fault at the door of the churches:—

“They get up a church raffle—a pious sideshow of some kind—and ask sinners to take a chance. They get up a miniature theater, mostly farcical, and ask godly and ungodly men and women to take parts so as to draw money out of godly and ungodly pockets. And what does the sinner say and think of this? Why, that the church is no better than the world. If he does not say it out, he thinks it in his heart.”

And if he said it out would he not speak the truth? We believe that churches which practice such abominations are more demoralizing in a community than an infidel club would be. Under a cloak of Christianity they misrepresent the religion of Christ, and mislead unbelievers as to the true way of life. They are blind leaders of the blind. We firmly believe in the old Protestant faith that Babylon of the Apocalypse is the Romish church, and that as the “mother of harlots” she is represented as the parent of those churches which cling to her traditions and follow her worldly practices. The selling of indulgences was no more misleading, no more a perversion of the gospel, than are Protestant church fairs where petty gambling is carried on under the wicked pretense of supporting the religion of Christ. “Babylon is fallen.” What does this mean, if not that the mother and her daughters have alike left the spirit and power of the truth, and brought their traffic and merchandise into the house of God, “supposing that gain is godliness”? They are wise who flee from these things before they are ruined by contact with them.