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SAVING SOCIETY

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 6, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 23.

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SAVING SOCIETY.

THE Gospel of Jesus Christ is an appeal to the individual. The commission is: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He [the individual] that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned." Mark 16:15, 16, R.V. There is no such idea in the Scriptures as men being saved because they are a part of any community—not even because of membership in a church organization.
Within the last few years, however, there has been quite a departure from this principle, and we hear much talk of saving society. This is a part of the "Christian nation" doctrine, and a prominent feature of the modus operandi is the compulsory enforcement of religion by the gospel of civil law. The saving of society is another of the dogmas which backsliding Protestantism has borrowed from Rome. It is essentially a Roman doctrine, as Rome teaches that all in the Roman Church will be saved; so that a Roman society may be saved, and, of course, a nation all Roman Catholic would be saved. Thus when Protestantism adopts the society-saving scheme, it is adding one more round to the development of the "image." That it is a Catholic doctrine is shown by the following extract from a letter written by Pope Leo XIII., soon after his elevation to the pontificate, in 1878:—
"In the very first days of our pontificate, and from the height of this apostolic chair, we turned our eyes to society as it is at present, to ascertain its condition, to examine its needs, and to discover proper remedies. Since then, in the encyclical letters addressed to all our brother bishops, we lamented the decadence not only of the supernatural truths made known to us by faith, but of the natural truths, both speculative and practical, the prevalence of the most fatal errors, and the very serious peril of society from the ever-increasing disorders which confront it on every side.
"We said that the chief reason of this great moral ruin was the openly proclaimed separation and the attempted apostasy of the society of our day from Christ and His church, which alone has the power to repair all the evils of society."