Its Rejection and the Result
IN this series of articles on the great message of to-day, have been set before us God's great oneness, and the unity that He requires among His children—nay, more, not only that which He requires, that they shall all speak the same things, and be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment, but it was the preeminent burden of the greatest prayer of our Lord that has been left on record, 'That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.' This condition was to a great degree realized in the apostolic church; and yet, shortly after that, divisions came in. Men tried man's way in developing, compelling, and maintaining unity; and as the result, we had the Papacy. But the way of force, or anathema, is not God's way—that must be the way of love. As a result of men's following their own ways, we have the condition of Christendom as it is to-day, and as it has been for centuries. It is in a divided condition, and this divided condition in detail has been set before us; not only divided in doctrine, but in ways, in purposes, and in methods, and among the great Protestant denominations men are drifting away from the Word of God, and are coming to that place where they no longer believe it as the Word of God. This division of sentiment, division of doctrine, of methods of belief, God denominates, in His prophetic Word, 'Babylon,' simply because of the confusion that exists in the great religious world. He does not present it as a name of rejection. The thought of His heart was, 'We would have healed Babylon;' and the great, everlasting gospel message, '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,' was designed, and is designed, to bring healing, not only to the individual's sinful heart, but to the people of God. That message has been going to the world for the last half century. Wherever it has been allowed to have its way, it has brought union of heart. It has laid the glory of man in the dust, and has exalted the Word of God, and Christ Jesus as Lord. But it is also clearly evident that if God's message is rejected, the evil must persist. If a physician comes and truly diagnoses a fatal disease, a disease which will surely terminate fatally if allowed to run its course, and the wise physician presents the only remedy which will cure, and that remedy is rejected, the patient must go on to dissolution—death must certainly ensue. And so the great, last, healing message of God has been rejected by Christendom as a whole. The churches have turned from the everlasting gospel as God's great means of healing her ills and woes. God deals with individuals. The church is endeavoring to achieve her triumphs by the mass. God presents His Word, 'It is written,' as the necessary element of conversion. The church not only fails to present that Word, but has taken from it its power in the current 'higher criticism' of to-day, and the glory of man is put in the place of the glory of God. It is God's plan to heal the soul by regeneration and re-creation. But for that the doctors in the church have substituted evolution, what they call 'divine immanence,' within the man; and the world is growing worse, and that which was designed to be the salt of the earth has lost its savor. These things were bound to follow the rejection, passive or active, of the great message which God has given for the healing of the world's ills. Necessarily there must follow first a moral fall, moral deterioration in the church. This we need not take time to argue. It is felt by all the spiritual leaders in the great Protestant churches of to-day that there has been a tremendous lowering of standards, moral standards; that expediency has taken the place of principle; that church-members are received who know nothing of regeneration, or change of heart; that men are countenanced in the church, and held within the church, who are immoral in life and character, who are dishonest according to gospel standards, in their dealing with their fellow men. We have developed before us to-day the picture which the apostle Paul draws of the last days among those who have a form of godliness, but deny its power. Read the description in 2 Tim. 3:1-5: 'But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away.' But more than this, whenever the church of God has been reproved of her sins, and she has rejected that reproof, she has sought for some substitute to make good. There are strong, able men who are longing for better conditions in the religious life of to-day, and also in the political life of to-day, made up, as it is, to a large extent, of religious influences. They see the tremendous cataclysm to which the nations are marching; but instead of humbling their hearts before God and seeking Him, they are seeking for the power of civil law to enforce religious decrees, to bend men to their moral and ecclesiastical standards. But the union of church and state is what made the beast power, set forth so vividly and strongly in the prophecies of the Revelation. The beast power is not the Roman Catholic5Church as such, it is not the ecclesiastical body; it is the church connected with civil power, and the civil power thus dominated by the church becomes the beast of prophecy, passing through all its various phases, indicated by the seven heads. That beast power is the one which has been dominant in the Old World. In the New World we have men endeavoring to make an image to that beast. We have the whole power of the Federal Council of Protestant Churches uniting for the purpose of controlling not simply religious matters, but civil matters. And the one thought, or object, around which all these efforts are centering, is the Sunday-sabbath—a sabbath which men have the right to observe if they desire, as between man and man, but which man has no right to enforce upon his fellows; and when he does enforce it upon his fellows through civil law, it then and there becomes the mark of the beast. Remember, we are not saying that those who observe Sunday have the mark of the beast. There are many, and we know not how many, who are observing the day because they believe it to be a holy day, and that they are honoring God in so doing. But when that time comes that Sunday is made the slogan for patriotism, and the shibboleth of loyalty to God, and is enforced by a union of church and state, or religion and the state, it becomes at that very time a mark of the beast; and it is to this that the rejection of the simple, mighty, everlasting gospel has led the churches of to-day. Against this, God warns the world: “If any man worshipeth the beast and his image, and receiveth a mark on his forehead, or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment goeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whose receiveth the mark of his name.” Rev. 14:9-11. This, to you, reader, may seem nonsense; but we plead with you to study the prophecy, and study religious conditions in the world in the light of that prophecy. Consider the healing message which God has given us in verses 6 and 7 of that prophecy of Revelation 14. Think of what it would do if it were received by the churches of to-day, how it would break down all barriers which exist between the denominations, how it would turn from sin of every form and kind, and would lead men back to glorify their Creator and Redeemer. But its rejection has led to the moral fall, more and more manifest, of the churches themselves, and to the demand for a union of church and state, or of religion and the state, and the elevation of the Sunday-sabbath, which has no ground of authority at all in the Word of God, in the place of that Sabbath day which is the memorial of creative power, and the sign of redeeming power. Ex. 20:8-11; Eze. 20:12. But God has given us a practical demonstration of what that message will do. It has gone to nearly every nation on the face of the earth. It is doing its work in Protestant and Roman Catholic lands; it has stretched out into the great heathen nations of the world. And wherever it goes, it brings men to the Word of God as the sole standard, and develops a class of whom the Scriptures themselves speak, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Certainly it is not doing an evil work. It does not rest in merely protesting against sin and error; it develops positive characters, those who are willing through loss of reputation, or property, or opportunity, to stand for God, obedient to all the commands of God, as did the Lord Jesus Christ, in the power and strength which implicit faith in Him brings. This third angel’s message is the protest which God is making to the world to-day. We plead with our readers to turn from the thing against which Inspiration does protest, and turn to the great, positive, gospel message which is able to save to the uttermost.