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LOOKING BACKWARD

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Feb 14, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 7.

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"LOOKING BACKWARD."

By G.

FROM a report, by Brother H. W. Reed, of the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, and the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Sunday Rest-day Association, we take these words of Secretary J. B. Davidson:
We are going before the officials and showing them the fines and imprisonments which will be imposed upon them if they do not enforce the laws. And we are trying to get men in office who will enforce the laws. . . . It is the work of every association which has to do with good morals, and it is the work of the Christian church.
On this basis the Gospel commission ought to read something like this: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations," etc.; and of the disciples form societies that will show the officials their duty in the matter of enforcing the laws. Also, endeavor to get men in office who will enforce the laws." In principle, this is about the way it came to be interpreted after the "mystery of iniquity" had developed into the Papacy. All that the Papacy did in the darkest of the Dark Ages was to get the state to enact such laws as would further the interests of the church, and then go to the officials and press upon them their duty to enforce the laws. This was deemed to be "the work of the Christian church," and "the church" carried it out to the letter, and with a vengeance.
A further expression on this point in the secretary's report is as follows:
Of course I do not mean to say that the Christian church is going to prosecute.
Certainly not. Neither did "the church" prosecute during the Dark Ages. She just dictated to the state what laws she wanted, and then told the officials that they must do the prosecuting, impressing upon them the nature of the penalty for failure to do their duty.
Yet another admission as to the purpose of this Wisconsin Federation and Rest-day Association. The secretary says:
These are the kind of things we are after, because it saves the people.
Of course that is the purpose; and that was the purpose of the Papacy in pursuing a like principle. The Inquisition, the rack, the thumbscrew, and the dungeon were all designed to save the people. It was all on the theory that it was better that the body be punished under state law in order that the soul might be saved. When the principles that led up to such bloody results in former times were first enunciated, they sounded just as innocent, just as plausible, as they do when declared by a Wisconsin federation of churches. This whole movement is a looking backward to Rome.