THE INEVITABLE RESULT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 13.

THE INEVITABLE RESULT.

Union of Church and State.

It was the glory of Protestantism expounded by Martin Luther that it rejected the arm of flesh and looked to God alone. Errors were retained by him and his co-laborers. Some of the forms of the apostate church were continued. The day does not break all at once. The first dawning of the sun illuminates only the mountain tops, but leaves the valleys in shade. But the light is as truly the sunlight as when streaming upon the earth at effulgent noonday. Wickliffe has been called the "morning star" of the Reformation; the light which God gave through Luther, Tindale, and others was the morning dawn.

But in Germany, as nowhere else, the movement was separate from the state. Kings and princes would have helped. The Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse would have risked their dominions in the defense of the Gospel, but it was not God’s plan, and Luther said them nay. The cause was God’s, was wholly spiritual, as all true, permanent reformations must be, and God must guide by His Word, and furnish a plenitude of power by His Spirit. The hand of civil power must not be put forth to steady the ark of God.

Well would it have been if the church of the Reformation had held to this fundamental principle of no alliance in any way with the state, and had coupled with it one equally essential, the forming of no creed. To turn to the state for help is to turn from Christ. To elevate human creeds is to exalt the wisdom of man above the words of God, is to bind about the warm, throbbing words of life by the dead, cold forms of inexpansible law.

The true church of Christ can endure neither one nor the other. She can not bow to human authority when God speaks differently. She can not abide by cold creeds, bound by dead hands, when Christ speaks the living words, "Go forward."

Every worthy schism from great popular bodies which has occurred in Christendom since the Reformation has been to throw off the paralyzing hand of the state and the fettering shackles of creed. And every worthy schism God has greatly blessed. Witness the Baptists, who have in a measure kept free from both these incumbrances. Witness Congregationalism, Methodism, and Presbyterianism, who cast off the state, but still held to creed. Their intent, of course, was that the creed should express the Word, which in some respects it did, but which sooner or later would come in conflict with truth in the increasing light of truth’s rising sun.

In God’s closing message, as has been pointed out, God calls men back to His fear, His worship: "Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth." Rev. 14:6, 7. Thus is man brought back to the Word of God. By that message God would heal the Babylon of Christendom, and restore Christ as ruler, His Word as guide, His Spirit as power. But Babylon would not. Creed must crumble, and confession of past wrong, mistake, and error must be made; and the proud popular church can not do it. The dead hand of the past is more than God’s present message of light and truth.

What is the result? What must ever be the result? When Israel turned from God, she turned to Egypt and Assyria. When she could no longer claim His power she sought the support of the broken reed of civil power. Isaiah 30 and 31. She left her lawful Husband and committed fornication with the kings of earth.

The modern church is doing the same. God’s Word, God’s law, Christ’s example, condemn the pseudo-Sunday sabbath, foisted in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord by apostasy, condemn the making void of His law through tradition, condemn the false doctrine of inherent immortal soulism, condemn creed. Attentive ears in every church hear the call. Hearts in every church heed the call. Feet in every church willingly walk in the path of His commandments. Souls in every church drink in of the outpouring Spirit of God, which always accompanies the turning to God’s law. John 14:15, 16.

But Babylon will not forsake the error. Creed condemns the "come outers," and the great mass unthinkingly, ignorant of consequence, abide by the creed, and cast out as heretics those who have followed the Word and Christ Jesus. The next step is easy to take; it is the logical step: and that is to call upon the state to enforce dogmas and compel the observance of institutions which are not supported by the Bible. So did Rome in the early centuries. So did the backslidden churches of the post-Reformation period. And so also, at a rapid rate, are the churches of the present day doing all in their power to unite with the state.

The state has not asked this union. The state has not wooed the bride of Christ away from allegiance to her Lord. Nay, more, when the church has asked—demanded—of the state that some religious institution—as the Sunday-sabbath—be protected, embodied in statute law, and enforced contrary to the rights of men, the charters of our civil liberty, and the Gospel of Christ, upon the consciences of men, the state has emphatically told the church to keep her place, attend to her own appointed work, and leave the state free to act in its own proper sphere.

Yet, notwithstanding this rebuke, notwithstanding the teachings of God’s Word, notwithstanding the ages’ long record of the history of church-and-state union with all its evil results, the church still forces upon the state the constant demand. Her representatives are found in the lobbies of Legislatures; politicians are threatened with retirement; and by entreaty, by superstitious appeal, by political threats, the government has bent under the influence, and three several times committed itself to the evil principle of religious legislation.

And thus has this last division of Babylon taken the first decisive steps in fornication, and justified the message, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Later Babylon is following in the footsteps of the old mother, and with her fall is dragging down all the world to everlasting ruin.

We know, reader, that the influence of this church over the world promises much. So it did in the early centuries, but it proved a power for evil, the cradle in which was nurtured all the cruelty and persecution of the Dark Ages.

To save souls from all this we know of but one, and only one, remedy—the everlasting Gospel; "Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him." O, turn to God with full purpose of heart. His Gospel is all-sufficient.