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Two Significant Pictures

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Apr 25, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 17.

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Two Significant Pictures.

Following are two pictures representing two phases of what the world is called upon to recognize as the Christian church. One shows the church as it was in apostolic times, and as it must be in order to do effective missionary work in the name of the Master; the other shows a declining, time-serving, nominal church. They are taken from the Missionary Review:—
SEVEN FEATURES OF A MISSIONARY CHURCH.
  1. A church that knows how to keep praying.
  2. A church that knows the divine enduement.
  3. A church that is united in love and labor.
  4. A church that makes obedience to Christ its law.
  5. A church that as a body witnesses to Christ.
  6. A church that knows separation from the world.
  7. A church that works on spiritual lines.
SEVEN FEATURES OF A DECLINING CHURCH.
  1. The skepticism that doubts the authority of the Word of God.
  2. The dethronement of Jesus Christ from His proper deity.
  3. The selfishness that ignores the debt to a lost world.
  4. The worldliness that practically unseats the Holy Spirit from His place as overseer.
  5. The caste spirit that destroys sympathy with man as man.
  6. The preaching that substitutes popular lectures for Gospel themes.
  7. The spirit that changes churches into select religious clubs.