The Downward Trend by ARDIEL

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 1, 1910

The Downward Trend

By ARDIEL

An Appeal

EDITOR SIGNS OF THE TIMES: Suffer a soldier in the army of Christ to appeal to his Christian brethren in the Protestant churches:

My brethren, I desire to bring home to your mind and heart certain facts and questions which to me seem worthy of careful, serious consideration.

The Son of God, the anointed One, the Word, who, according to the Scriptures, “was made flesh,” who suffered and “died for our sin,” who rose from the dead, who “showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs”—is it all a myth?

We are at least professed believers in the Gospel of God through Jesus Christ. We have seen its mighty regenerating effect upon those who believe it to be “the power of God unto salvation.” We have not seen that change of regeneration and reformation evolved in the soul through a long process of years, but wrought by the creative power of the Holy Spirit through the Word.

We have seen the magical and tremendous indirect effect of this Gospel upon all the nations of the earth, so that wherever the Book has gone and has been received, blessings have followed, civilization has advanced, refinement has manifested itself, social relationships have been lifted to a higher plane, and education in all its various departments has progressed, and various beneficences have multiplied.

We know that all this has come about by the simple preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Do we not also appreciate its call to union, to the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, the one God and Father of all?

Can we not see the deplorable effects of a departure from that Gospel, and the divisions which have followed that departure?

Do we not see the departure from that pure Gospel in the early ages of the Christian era? How pagan philosophy, and worldly customs, came in and perverted the Gospel, and disunion and confusion followed,—a disunion and confusion which God denominated Babylon!

Do we not see that the great strides made in the time of the Reformation came because the Reformers returned to the simple preaching of the Word of God? They did not understand it all; they did not see all that God had for His church, but what they did see they preached, and the simple doctrine of justification by faith changed the face of the world. Was the Reformation a mistake?

Have we not also read with sad hearts of the disunion which followed? That movement which gave promise of being a united movement, which would cement together the Christians of the world, became divided, and out of that, as in the early church, confusion came—a second Babylon, not named of God because wholly apostate, but because of the confusion consequent upon division; the confusion caused by men leaving the Word, building up human creeds, and determining that souls should adhere to circumscribed beliefs, bounded by the limitations of the human.

Yet notwithstanding this, God’s children were and are scattered among these divided branches; for every creed formed, professedly placed as its very basis, the Bible and the Bible only.

But can we not see the departure from that standard?

Do we not now see the present drift away from the Book? The inspiration of the Bible is openly denied; its miracles are flouted, its story of creation is set aside; the virgin birth of our Lord, the miracles which He wrought, and His resurrection from the dead, are considered myths, fables, traditions.

Do we not see that as faith in the Word was lost in the beginning of the Christian era, so the church which turned from the Word, which combined tradition and heathen philosophy with that Word, turned to the state to enforce their human dogmas? and that just as the church did then, so is she passing over the same by-paths now?

As she is losing faith in God, she is demanding the power of the state to do the work which the church has not power to do; and that power to be exercised in enforcing dogmas that are entirely unscriptural.

Now, if the Bible is true, if it is what it professes to be, if it is what the church has held it to be—the complete norm of faith and duty—if it has been given by a God who sees the end from the beginning, can we not see that He certainly must have anticipated this drift, this apostasy away from His Word? and that He would have pointed it out, and thus have warned His children?

Divine foresight anticipated the Jewish apostasy, and from the time of Moses to Malachi predicted that apostasy clearly, defined its various features, and also presented the true remedy.

Divine foresight through prophet and apostle pointed out the apostasy in the early church, and also gave the remedy. Can we not believe, nay, ought we not to expect, ought we not to be assured, that the same Word would point out the present-day apostasy? that it would show clearly just how the church would depart from the Word and “heap to itself teachers, having itching ears”?

Did not the very Master Himself ask the question which can be answered only in one way, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?”

Has He not by message after message, by Old Testament prophet, by New Testament apostle and prophet, and by His own words, pointed out the last-day apostasy, in which, “because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold”? Does He not say that all the various sins manifest in the heathendom of the early centuries will be found in Christendom in the last days?

We know that there are many in the

various churches of the land who see this, whose hearts bleed not only because of the divisions in Zion, but on account of the apostasies in the great Christian churches whom God has used so wonderfully in the past.

Where shall the remedy be found to heal the divisions, to save the souls who are being led by the blind into the ditches of doubt and destruction?

Shall we look to science for the healing balm? — Science built on human hypotheses and uncertain conclusions, denies the Word of God; nor does it recognize the disease.

Shall we look to long ages of evolution for the regeneration of the race? — That is absolute denial of the creative power of God which He would exercise through the Gospel in behalf of humanity.

Shall we look to the tradition of the great Roman Catholic Church for hope in this time? — It is that tradition which brought the Dark Ages.

To what then shall we look? — To the very message of the very Word which comes to us, pointing out all these dangers, and difficulties, and departures.

The faithful physician who makes the sad diagnosis, also gives us the healing remedy; and that panacea is a return to “the everlasting Gospel” of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is a return to the law which God Himself spoke from Sinai, and which our Lord Jesus Christ taught and observed in His earthly life of example. In the one there is salvation from sin; in the other there is the holy, unwavering, immutable standard of conduct.

May I plead with our brethren in all these various denominations to study these things? I am not pleading for the building up of a church or sect. I am not pleading in behalf of any denomination. I am pleading in behalf of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; in behalf of the messages which He has given us in His Word. I am pleading in view of the sad wreck which must follow the apostasies which are making such rapid progress now, and in the light of that judgment-seat before which every man must appear and give an account of his work. I am pleading by the love of Christ who gave His life that His way, His truth, His life may be recognized in their fulness.

And so again I plead with you to study these things, and give these questions, as tame as they seem when compared with the great subject with which they have to do, the consideration which the awful, vital facts demand. ARDIEL.