FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
SPIRITUAL DECADENCE IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.
IF, at the time of the first advent of Jesus, the teachers and rulers in Israel had really believed the testimony of the Old Testament prophets, they would have recognized and accepted Jesus as their expected Messiah and Saviour. Did not Christ tell them that if they had believed Moses and the prophets they would have accepted and believed Him? But their faith and practise were hopelessly bound up in their traditions—their philosophy, and what was, in effect, their "higher criticism." The awful result was that, in ignorance—albeit culpable ignorance—they crucified the Lord of glory. They knew not the day of their visitation, simply because they refused to believe God's prophets. Even so should it be in the days when the Son of Man shall be revealed. Just as Jesus prophetically foresaw, there is no "faith on the earth." Our Lord had His prophetic eye on these very days just preceding His glorious return, when He declared: "Because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of many shall wax cold." Matt. 24:12. The context shows convincingly that this divine forecast would find its fulfilment in the days when "this Gospel of the kingdom" should "be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations;" immediately after which, "shall the end come." Verse 14. In the preceding article of this series an array of evidence was set forth calculated to prove the incredible extent to which the holy Scriptures have been repudiated. As briefly as may be practicable, I shall indicate the sweeping completeness with which the propitiatory atonement wrought by the sacrificial death of Christ has been nullified and subverted in the teachings of present-day theologians. The Divine Atonement Rejected.
The Rev. G. Bettex, one of the few German scholars who have not thrown their Christian faith to the winds, in his work entitled, "The Bible, the Word of God," gives the following startling summary of the results of modern Biblical criticism. It should most assuredly open the eyes of all sincere Christian believers: According to this radical criticism is there any inspiration?—None. Any Trinity?—None. Any fall into sin?—None. Any devil or angel?—None. Any miracles?—None. Any law from Mount Sinai?—None. Any wrath of God?—None. Any prophecy?—None. Is Christ God?—No. Is the death of Christ vicarious?—No. Did Christ rise from the dead?—No. Has there been any outpouring of the Holy Ghost?—No. Will there be any resurrection of all the dead or a final judgment?—No. This is rather radical, and practically robs Christianity of everything that it has. With this kind of a faith Christianity can not live. Does not all this virtually amount to a declaration of war on the Gospel, on the part of its ostensible champions and interpreters? Of course the only regrettable result of such impious warfare is the inevitable subversion of the faith of many. But as for Christianity itself, she is eternally invincible, for the Most High is her author and defender. He has reared her battlements of adamant against which her enemies will impotently dash themselves to pieces. S. D. McConnell, D.D., LL.D., rector of All-Souls' Episcopal Church, New York City, is the author of a recently-published book, entitled "Christ," in which he struggles like a modern Ajax to prove that the doctrine of a sacrificial atonement is foreign to the primitive Gospel. A few citations from his book will suffice to show how utterly at variance with the whole tenor and genius of the Gospel are his contentions. To the question, "Did the apostles and early teachers at first believe in or preach the doctrine of the Atonement?" the author gives the unqualified answer, "They did not." For thirty years, he insists, they had no defined Christology. Now, every reader who knows his Bible must know that Dr. McConnell and the inspired record of the apostolic church can not both be true. We can only say with David, "LET GOD BE TRUE." Observe how the doctor again flatly contradicts the sacred record, in the following astounding question, with its answer: "To begin with, let us ask the plain question, Did Jesus Himself conceive of Himself as a propitiatory sacrifice, or His work as an expiation? The only answer is, Clearly He did not." It is evident that Dr. McConnell has made shipwreck of his faith in the authenticity of the four Gospels and the epistles of the New Testament, or else he could not possibly reason (!) as he does and at the same time lay claim to mental sanity. A score of citations from the Saviour's own words could be adduced to prove that He did conceive of Himself as a propitiatory sacrifice. Note this unequivocal statement from His own lips, as recorded in Mark 10:45: "For the Son of Man also came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a RANSOM for many." Now, Dr. McConnell is one of the most learned and influential men in the American Episcopal Church. He avows himself not only a Christian but a Christian minister, and yet instead of "contending for the faith once delivered to the fathers," he strenuously contends for the subversion and overthrow of that same "faith." He is a type of hundreds of professedly Christian clergymen who are all equally heterodox and self-stultifying. My sole purpose in referring to the doctor's remarkable book at all, is the evidence it affords of the solemn fact that we are even now living in those "last days" in which the Holy Spirit declares that the nominal Christian churches will have a "form of godliness," but deny "the power thereof." Be it remembered that Dr. M.'s "strange" teaching is not an exceptional or sporadic incident, but is typical of the views and teachings which obtain with practically all the so-called "higher clergy" of the Protestant world. Spiritual Barrenness of the Churches.
It would not be difficult to compile a large volume of testimony from earnest Christian workers, to the effect that the professed Christian churches are deplorably destitute of spiritual power. I shall first transcribe a few strikingly pertinent excerpts from The Universalist Leader, dated August 27, 1904, and published at Boston: "The Christian church is being starved to death by its friends. Emaciated and weakened, this once regal figure stands with outstretched hands pitifully pleading the privilege to live. . . . Once autocratic, now apologetic; once loved and respected, now lonesome and rejected." After stating that we have had ebb tides of religious interest in past years, the writer proceeds: "We are persuaded that we are not merely approaching one of these ebb tides in religious history; the religious waters are already far out, and the world is stranded on the rocks of sin, in imminent danger of appalling disaster." The writer next enumerates an astounding number of crimes and sins that are to-day rampant in society, and states that "we are eye-witnesses of a public degeneracy which should appal us." He continues: The decadence of the church is not so much due to these conditions as these conditions are due to the decadence of the church [italics his]. We have turned things right around, and have been working at the wrong end. As the church has declined, sin and evil have increased and the real problem which we face to-day is not this, that, or some other specific evil, but the church itself, for every problem, individual, social, economic, municipal, or national, is primarily a religious question. A great cause, if not the great cause, of the decline, is found in the fact that the church has ceased to be a church where the people may come for the worship of God, and through that worship receive the divine influence into their souls, and has become almost everything the ingenuity of man could conceive. The church has become a social center, a lectureship, a school, a college, a literary society, a place of amusement, a bazaar, a library, an institution of philanthropy, a nursery, a kindergarten, a soup kitchen, an employment bureau, or a political caucus. And you ministers are responsible for this absence of soul life. You have sold your divine birthright for a mess of pottage. . . . You have not stuck to your calling; you run after every scheme for saving the world by fiat, or by vote, or by purchase, or by organization, or by institution, when there is no other name under heaven by which the world can be saved except Christ Jesus; and if you do not believe that, what are you doing in the Christian ministry? You know ten times as much about the Bible as the fathers did, but you do not know as much Bible; you know all the theories of prayer, but you do not pray. You are the victims of every fad; you had rather quote Browning than Jesus Christ; you had rather lecture on the North Pole than to preach the Gospel; you had rather write a popular novel than to write a sermon; you ride your hobbies, you get up excursions, you give entertainments, you take up an agency or run a hotel, anything, everything, except sticking to your calling to which you are called of God. . . . The Christian laity, you men and women of the church, have not taken this divine institution seriously. You have not thought of it as of far more lasting importance than the government under which you live, of far more vital moment to you than the schools and colleges which you generously support and richly endow—yea, far more to you in the great eternity in which you must live, than your homes, your business, your bodies, your very lives. . . . You will spend ten times as much on a two weeks' vacation as you do on a year's food for your—souls'. You have no sense of obligation to your church; you give to that if you have anything to spare, you pay your bills at the grocery. Why do9you not lift the church to the dignity that is hers by right? Every candid observer must admit that this caustic stricture on the spiritual status of the churches does not in the least exaggerate the actual conditions prevailing in the religious realm. [The remainder of this article deals with "The Church and Tainted Money," "Why So Few Able Men Prepare for the Ministry," and "The Crisis of the Hour."]