IN past numbers we have demonstrated the need of a reformation in the churches of this century, as shown, not only by their low spiritual condition, but by their divisions and babel of creeds. It has also been shown that God has sent just such a message as would effect the reformation needed, and heal all wounds and divisions.
The Message of Healing.
"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."
This, the gospel message of Jesus Christ, taught by the inspiration of his Spirit in the entire word of God; and lived in his life, would, if accepted, have healed every division, covered every defect, and clothed the church with the power manifest in apostolic times. In fact, returning to God would have brought the return of the fullness of the Spirit of God, the outpouring of the latter rain, the gracious manifestations of all its bounteous gifts, the refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Take, for instance, some of the great crucial questions of the day, over which the church is agitated and divided, and mark the effect which would have been produced if the church had returned to the word of God and turned away from all creeds and traditions of men.722
1. The Inspiration of the Word.
The Bible presents no theories, but simple facts. The words are the words of Moses, the words of David, the words of Christ, the words of Paul; but they are also the words of God. "Thus saith the Lord," we ever hear from the mouth of the prophets, and "as the Holy Ghost saith" is a common New Testament expression as regards the Scriptures of the Old Testament. David declares that "the Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue." The apostle Paul, in speaking of the message proclaimed by him and his fellow-apostles, says, "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." And again he declares, while speaking of the Holy Scriptures, which Timothy, a Jew, had known from a child: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God [literally, "is God-breathed"], and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." And Jesus Christ, the manifestation of God to the world, the Incarnate Word, the One through whom the entire word came,—how did he treat the word?—Always with the utmost reverence. He never questioned it. He never discriminated. Three times in Satan's assault he meets him with weapons forged by his own Spirit through Moses, whose writings are cut, carved, and rejected by the higher critics to-day. He builds an argument on a word, and declares that "the Scripture cannot be broken." But the "critics" of the church to-day (and they are not few) presume to sit in judgment upon what was never questioned by Him in whom dwelt "all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;" and a harvest of infidelity is the result of their criticisms. But the Bible stands.
If the different churches with implicit faith had turned to the ways of their Redeemer in the acceptance of the word of the gospel, they would have turned from the tradition of men, from the cold, lifeless creeds of human devising, to the living fountain of God's grace; and there, at the center of all life, and light, and power, would each have met the other, united in Him. Human documents, human creeds, human ordinances, human institutions, errors from the great apostasy, would have stood out in all their deformity and utter inefficiency before the mighty search light of God's word. They would have been seen, as they truly are, not as helps, but hindrances in the life and work of the church. In the exaltation of God's word, God alone would have been exalted.
2. Life through Christ.
Upon this great truth the word of God is most explicit. Man is sinful, mortal, dying. He is a sinner, because he has transgressed God's law. "Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." Of this solemn fact God warned man in the beginning; and when man refused to heed the warning, choosing death rather than life, choosing sin rather than righteousness, God in his love shut him away from the tree of life, lest he should perpetuate forever a sinful existence. True, it was told our first parents that they should "not surely die," but should become as God. The falsehood of the great deceiver has been believed ever since by the greater part of the world; and from it has sprung a mighty brood of evil birds, under the names of Demon-worship, Buddhism, Shintoism, Brahmanism, all the heathen mythology of ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Egypt, Transmigration of Souls, Purgatory, Saint-worship, Mariolatry, prayers and masses for the dead, and, last of all, including the evils of all the others, Modern Spiritualism. These all and more are the baleful fruit of the seed sown in Eden by the great deceiver. The deception will end in eternal death with the deceived and its author.
On the other hand, the word of God, while not hiding the disease and its sure result, points us to the great Healer. In Christ is righteousness; in Christ, therefore, is life. He died that the believing might have life. He has sent his word, in which is his own life and power, to give life to all who will receive it. To the unbelieving Jews he said, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." And of the same class John the Baptist says that they "shall not see life," that is, the everlasting life, which Jesus Christ alone can give, and without which one must utterly perish. But the evidences of this we have not space to give. Let it suffice to say that righteousness through Christ by faith means life, eternal life, here, and immortality at his coming, while persistency in sin means eternal death and extinction of being. But this error, moulded into creeds, engrafted into the hymnology of the day, engraven on the memorial stones of the dead, adorned by the poetry of heathen and Christian times, has no place in God's word, which declares that "the dead know not anything," and that in the resurrection alone is their only hope. Upon this error is based the doctrine of eternal misery for the hopelessly lost, universal salvation, and future probation, every one of which is unscriptural, divisive in tendency, and subversive of the atonement in Christ Jesus. The Scriptures do teach everlasting punishment, and they do teach that there will come a time when every tongue in all the universe shall be attuned to glad praise for God, and "there shall be no more curse." Both are true; the everlasting punishment is the everlasting death and everlasting destruction chosen by the wicked; and when "the wicked are cut off" then shall the righteous "inherit the earth," "and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." Upon the doctrine of man's inherent immortality is based the erroneous teachings respecting a place of reward "beyond the bounds of time and space," the conversion of the world, and the millennium. It exalts man; it degrades God. Coming to the word of God alone, irrespective of all creeds and traditions, union would have resulted, error would have been exorcised, and the Lord, our righteousness and life, alone exalted, as he will be in that day.
3. The Law and the Sabbath.
Upon this question the Christian world is divided. Some contend that the Decalogue is abolished; others, that it has been changed. Some seem to think from the expression, "We are not under the law, but under grace," that before Christ men were subject to the law, but now the law has no jurisdiction; we are under the grace of the gospel. Some will have the law abolished at the cross; others hold that it is immutable and eternal.
But it is not the purpose of this article to enter into a detailed examination of the Scripture teaching concerning the law. Briefly, it may be said that God is the moral Governor of the universe, and, hence, of this world; he must, therefore, have a law. This law, or rule of conduct, must also be the rule of judgment, and the reflect of God's character. He, being unchangeable in character, his law, reflecting his character, must of necessity be unchangeable also. It would seem that this would be obvious to everyone, and it once was. Every leading Protestant denomination once took the position that God's moral law—summarily comprehended in the Decalogue—was immutable and eternal. But multitudes in all these churches are now teaching otherwise. Why?—Evidently for the one sole purpose of justifying the transgression of the fourth precept of that law, the profaning of God's holy Sabbath, and thus defending or excusing the Sunday sabbath as a divine institution. From this perversion of God's law the modern Babel is now claiming that there was no Sabbath till the Exodus, and none since Christ; that the seventh day was the Sabbath till the Crucifixion, and since that the first day is holy; that there is no obligation resting upon us save that of civil law; that Sunday is the true seventh day that we cannot tell when the seventh day comes; that a seventh part of time (which must come upon Sunday) is all that is required!!! And it is not difficult to find advocates of all these positions in one denomination, and sometimes the greater part of them in one man. But "let God be true and every man a liar." There is but one Bible Sabbath, but one weekly Sabbath, known in God's word from Genesis to the Revelation, and that is the hallowed and sanctified rest day of the Creator, the seventh day. This day, set apart by God in Eden, kept by patriarch, prophet, apostle, and by Jesus Christ, is the Sabbath still, as abundantly testified to in the word of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Returning to the word of God, the church would have rejected the page-papal sun's day, and united on the Sabbath of the Lord. In the light of God's law, increased by the glory of Christ's example, would the church itself have become illuminated as never before in her history. The message borne by her heralds would have been, "Fear God, and give glory to him; . . . and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters," and gave as the memorial of his creative and redeeming power the Sabbath. The inspired word, life and righteousness through Jesus Christ alone, the immutability of God's law, and the elevation from the dust of God's symbol and seal, if accepted by the church, would have dissipated the mists of error, brought light upon a multitude of other things, and given the church a unity and power in Christ Jesus that no creed, pope, nor council could produce. The message, if received, would have healed all division.
The Message Rejected.
This message began to be preached to the723world by the people whom this journal represents, and in other ways, about 1845. The Lord said, as he said of old, "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." Read God's message to Israel of old, repeated now, both on God's part and on the part of his people:—
"Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken."
And what was the result then? It was just what it is in this day:—
"Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth; behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it."
Read the records of the churches for the last twenty years. Note the positions which they have taken in their assemblies and conventions as regards those questions wherein customs and tradition came in conflict with God's law. Note the excommunication of hundreds of members, not because they had transgressed God's law or walked contrary to the example of Christ, but because they had not observed Sunday, a tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. While professedly claiming to accept the word of God as the sole standard of faith, they have rejected it, that they "may keep their own tradition." They have turned from the cup of the pure wine of God's truth,—the medicine of healing,—and have received from the golden cup of the old mother harlot the wine of fornication, the errors of tradition,—the poison of death. "We would have healed Babylon," says the Lord, "but she is not healed." Therefore we read:—
"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."
Rejecting the only remedy which would heal her divisions and bind up her wounds leaves her inevitably in a helpless, hopeless condition. She is fallen. The wine of Babylon is the wine of wrath. God does not condemn for error held unwittingly; but the condemnation of wrath does come because of truth rejected.
Sad as it is, the truth must be spoken. Bad as it is, the fearful consequences must be set forth. But for the sadness and the badness there is gladness, because there is healing in Jesus Christ. But more in our next.