REAPING THE WHIRLWIND by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 36.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

By Editor

For the last half century there has been growing disrespect for God's word and law among the religious teachers of our land. While nearly all Protestant creeds acknowledge the Decalogue as the great moral standard, that which points out sin, that which embraces within itself the sum total of all righteousness, and condemns all sin or lawlessness, many of the Protestant clergy have ceased not to cast reproach upon that infinite code, counting it as "obsolete," "Jewish," "abrogated," "defunct," etc.

The reason of this is that they have been faced with a mighty problem, easy of solution to the heart which is submitted to God, difficult indeed to those who have chosen their own ways in preference to the way of the Infinite. They have found themselves and their practice called in question by one of the precepts—the fourth—of that law. Questions innumerable have come to them from members of their churches. They have attempted, honestly, no doubt, to meet these questions by holding to the integrity of the law, while attempting to justify their discordant practice. But the words of the law condemn both practice and argument, and this has of late been admitted by many. Therefore, to justify themselves, instead of yielding

to God, they have declared the law abrogated, repealed, changed, done away. They have said in effect to all their hearers, God's word is not to be respected; he does not mean what he says; his law, in this one respect, at least, is subject to the desires, the exigencies, the environments, and the practices of an apostate church.

This has been the teaching of many of the Protestant clergy. Two denominations, one of no small influence, have committed themselves wholly to this position. They have in so doing struck directly at the very foundation of the government of God, and so of all governments; for men have reasoned, and logically, too, that if one precept of God's law is not to be obeyed, if God does not mean what he says in one thing, the other nine precepts of his law are valueless, and may be violated with impunity. And from such teaching and such reasoning come disrespect, disloyalty, and irreverence toward God, and general lawlessness is everywhere rampant.

Witness the socialism, the anarchy, increasingly prevalent in this land of plenty. Witness the lawless mobs of strikers in the various parts of the country during the last few months. Witness the not less lawless, or at least iniquitous, corporations, many of whose members find honored places in various churches. Witness the present lawless railway trouble, which is destroying property, driving therefrom its owners, ruining hundreds, and causing unmeasured loss and suffering upon untold thousands who are not in the remotest sense parties to the controversy in question. The lawless mobs take forcible possession of property not their own. Peaceable men are driven by threats or forced by violence from honest employment. The police and municipal authorities command these lawless hordes to disperse, and they refuse to obey. The military authorities, in order to protect property and life and uphold the peace and dignity of the State, call out their forces, and the military forces are persuaded to leave to lawlessness the field. The crowd cheers, and some of the great dailies and political parties hark them on. The tension tightens. Men and women live weeks in days. The world suffers, but lawlessness abounds, and the very machinery of government seems as powerless as the "dead" engines on the rusty and oiled track of some of our great iron thoroughfares.

We are not defending wrong. Our sympathies are with all workingmen who suffer from the oppression of the great, greedy, soulless corporations. Let these corporations answer to the people in the legitimate way. But our principles are with the government always when government confines itself to its own sphere of civil law and order. The worst government the world ever knew is better than anarchy. And those who are lawless now will, in their triumph, reap a bitterer harvest than in their defeat.

But we are not writing this to discuss the bone of contention between employers and employed. That is one thing. Legitimate methods of settling differences are proper.

But the repeated and various acts of lawlessness, whenever opposition is met from owners or civic officers, is quite another thing, which should alarm every lover of law, order, and true liberty. What we desire to point out in this article is that: (1) These very things are evidences of the approaching end of the age, and Christ's everlasting reign; (2) God has predicted them as such; and (3) these things are the legitimate fruit of the seed sown by the professed ministers of the word, those who should have stood most loyal to God and his government, but who, instead, have sanctioned all lawlessness by repudiating God's law and the plainest instruction of his word. Now for the proof. The fiftieth psalm opens with the following sublime declaration:—

"The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth (that he may judge his people). Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; for God is judge himself."

In these few words are set forth the majesty of God, his coming again in Christ Jesus to execute judgment, the witnesses of heaven and earth to his judgment, and the declaration by the heavens of his righteous law, the rule of judgment (Rom. 2: 12; James 2: 8-12), which men have trampled underfoot, and deemed unworthy to be obeyed, albeit honored by the Lord of glory. In the latter part of the psalm God speaks of those who thus degrade his law and dishonor his government, and yet who profess to declare his statutes:—

"But unto the wicked, God saith, What hast thou to do, to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou gavest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son." Verses 16-20.

But these religious teachers may ask, How have we consented with the thief? How have we been partakers with adulterers? How have we hated instruction, or framed deceit?

In these ways: (1) The same law which said, "Thou shalt not steal," and, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," says also, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. . . . The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." Now he who transgresses the fourth precept of God's law, or teaches its abrogation, thereby justifies him who transgresses the seventh or eighth precept, and can protest with little force against him who transgresses the sixth. Thus it is that the professed preacher of the gospel makes Christ the minister of sin, consents with the thief, and is a partaker with adulterers. (2) He frames deceitful arguments and theories to justify his position on God's law, and thus belies a brother in his own church, mayhap, who is framing contradictory theories, equally deceitful, for the same purpose. (3) He refuses the instruction which is shining from God's word with reference to the true Sabbath and its restoration. And while doing these things, because of multiplied numbers, God's blessing and prosperity are claimed. This the Lord foreknew, and thus he warned:—

"These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver." Verses 21, 22.

Much more might be said on this scripture, but we present another. Says our Saviour, in speaking of the end of the gospel age:—

"And because iniquity [lawlessness] shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." Matt. 24: 12, 13.

The apostle Paul thus writes of the last days:—

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, . . . trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, . . . traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away." 2 Tim. 3: 1-5.

It will be noted that these sins exist among those who profess godliness—who affect its form, but in their lives deny its power. Do we not see these things now? and are they not signs of the last days? Again the Lord says:—

"Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane [common], neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them." Eze. 22: 24-26.

"O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel, to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith, and the Lord hath not sent them; and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word. Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it; albeit I have not spoken? . . . Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life." Eze. 13: 4-22.

These are only a part of what God has said in his word of these times and of the responsibility which rests upon religious teachers. Here are the words of God; here are the conditions predicted. Are they not counterparts, the one the prediction, the other the fulfillment?

Disrespect, irreverence, disobedience of God and his law, beget disrespect and disobedience of parental authority, and governmental authority, and surely breed disorder, treason, anarchy, and destruction.

Of course these results were not designed by the teachers and leaders. The crop is not expected when the young man sows his wild oats nor takes his first drink, but it surely comes. As is the sowing so the reaping. These men who claimed to be the voice of God "have sown the wind;" they are already beginning the reaping of the whirlwind. Is it not time?—Yea, "it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you."