Churchmen to Dominate by Ross C. Porter

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 22, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 50.

Churchmen to Dominate

By Ross C. Porter

Congress Discussed the Sabbath Question — Politicians Cater to the Voice of the Church — America Reckoned a Catholic Nation — Enforcement of Mark of Beast

By ROSS C. PORTER

This is the second of two articles by Elder Porter presenting evidences that the world is soon to see another manifestation of religious despotism and persecution. Last week he dwelt more particularly upon prophecies in the Bible that foretell it. This week he deals with some things of recent occurrence that show how public sentiment and teaching are growing toward the adoption of state creeds, and hence toward tyranny by the church.

IN the year 1893, the old order of things was begun in the United States Congress. Senator Quay introduced an amendment to a bill making an appropriation for the Chicago world's fair as follows: "On page 122, line 13, after the word 'act,' moved to insert: 'And that provision has been made by the proper authority for the closing of the exposition on the Sabbath day.'"

Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. A group of poor people who have fled from the war zone in Europe. The forlorn appearing little child is in all probability left an orphan, and can not understand why she should be so ruthlessly driven from her home and have to suffer in this way.

"The reasons for the amendment I will send to the desk to be read. The secretary will have the kindness to read from the Book of law (the Bible) I will send to the desk, the part enclosed in brackets."

The vice-president: "The part indicated will be read." The secretary read as follows: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."

The reason here given for the amendment providing for the closing of the world's fair on the Sabbath day, was the Sabbath law of Jehovah. That Sabbath law enjoins rest on the seventh day of the week, which is Saturday.

CONGRESS DISCUSSING THE SABBATH QUESTION

Senator Manderson objected to the wording of the amendment, for the following reasons: "The language of this amendment is that the exposition shall be closed 'on the Sabbath day.' I submit that if the senator from Pennsylvania desires that the exposition shall be closed on Sunday, this language will not necessarily meet that idea. The Sabbath day is not Sunday. Decisions are abundant upon the proposition that that language does not mean the first day of the week, even in this Christian nation." (Congressional Record, July 12, 1892, page 6694.)

Senator Bowers said, "I desire to move an amendment to the section." The clerk read as follows: "Resolved, that the government exhibits at the world's fair shall not be open to the public on the Sabbath day, which is Saturday." This brought the question of the Bible Sabbath squarely before Congress for discussion. It was a new thing for the United States Congress to enact laws upon religious questions.

Mr. Bowers: "This is a religious question; and Saturday is the only Sabbath day. It was the Sabbath day when Christ was on earth, and it is the Sabbath day now." (Cries of "Vote! Vote!") The question being taken, the chairman said, "The noes seem to have it."

Mr. Bowers: "I call for a division." The question being taken again, the amendment of Mr. Bowers was rejected; there being ayes 11, and noes 149. (Ibid., May 27, 1892, page 5204.)

Senator Palmer said: "There are a large number of seventh-day people, who believe that Sunday is not the holy day. There are a great many people who agree with me, that the legislature has no right to dictate to others what day shall be kept as the holy one." (Ibid., page 6752.)

CHURCH THREATENS THE POLITICIANS

Senator Hiscock said: "If I had charge of this amendment in the interests of the Columbian Exhibition, I would write the provision for the closure in any form that the religious sentiment of the country demands, and not stand here hesitating and quibbling about it." (Ibid., page 6755.)

The petitions sent in to Congress by the Presbyterian churches of New York contained the following threat:

"Resolved, That we do hereby pledge ourselves and each other, that we will from this time henceforth refuse to vote for or support for any office or position of trust, any member of Congress, either senator or representative, who shall vote for any further aid of any kind to the world's fair except on conditions named in these resolutions." (Ibid., May 25, 1892, page 5144.)

WOULD CATER TO RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT

The demoralizing effect of the campaign for national Sunday legislation was shown in the House of Representatives. A member of that body, in an interview with a Chicago Daily Post representative, is reported to have said:

"The reason we shall vote for it is, I will confess to you, a fear that, unless we do, the church folks will get together, and knife us at the polls; and — well, you know we all want to come back, and we can't afford to take any risks."

"Do you think it will pass the House?"

Churchmen to Dominate

(Continued from page 2)

"Yes; and the Senate too. We are all in the same boat. I am sorry for those in charge of the fair; but self-preservation is the first law of nature, and that is all there is about it."

The following words of warning from the United States Senate in its early days, when individual liberty was the burning question of the hour, are a prophecy of the future of the American republic:

A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT

"Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will have been established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge of the fairest portions of the Old World."—United States Senate Sunday Mail Report, 1829.

The prophecy has well given in advance the history of the trend of events in America. Immediately after the Supreme Court decision declaring this to be a Christian nation, in 1892, the New York Sun of July 11 published a letter from the Vatican, outlining the future policy of Pope Leo XIII. From that letter we extract the following: "What the church has done in the past for others, she will now do for the United States."

Rome had seen a change of policy in the United States government. In the September issue of the Catholic World of 1871, page 736, comment upon the United States constitution was made as follows:

"As it is interpreted by the liberal and sectarian journals that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or is interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, . . . we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principles of Protestantism, it is sure to fail. . . . Hence it is we so often say that if the American republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principles of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people."

That was published to the American people more than forty-three years ago, and for twenty-one years it stood unchallenged as the authoritative expression of the attitude of the Roman Church toward this government.

On September 5, 1893, Rome's "apostolic delegate" to the world's Catholic Congress in Chicago said: "In the name of Leo XIII I salute the great American republic; and I call upon the Catholics of America to go forward, in one hand bearing the Book of Christian truth, and in the other the constitution of the United States."

On October 18 of the same year, Archbishop Ireland, at the Cardinal Gibbons Jubilee Celebration, said: "I preach the new, the most glorious crusade, church and age! . . . Monsignor Satolli, the church and the age; Rome is the church; America is the age."

The following evening, at the banquet, the archbishop spoke as follows: "I do not know whether you appreciate the full value of the union you see typified here to-night,—the union of the Catholic Church and America. . . . The vice-president of the United States comes here and takes his seat alongside the cardinal. The spirit of fraternity between church and state thus typified, is the result of the work of our American cardinal."

FIRST RANK AS A CATHOLIC NATION

On September 24 of the following year, 1894, newspaper despatches from Rome stated that Bishop Keene was bearing to America from the Vatican a rescript of the following import:

"The papal rescript elevates the United States to the first rank as a Catholic nation. Heretofore this country has stood before the church as a missionary country (a mission field). It had no more recognition officially at Rome than had China. . . . By the new rescript, the country is freed from the propaganda, and is declared to be a Catholic country. . . . The importance not only to Catholics, but to all citizens of the United States, of this radical change in the relations to Rome of the church in America, can scarcely be overestimated."

That was indeed a radical change, and the writer of the despatch was not the only one who understood it so. Let us read the sentiments of Pope Leo himself, as expressed in his encyclical of January 6, 1895:

"We highly esteem and love exceedingly the young and vigorous American nation, in which we plainly discern latent forces for the advancement alike of civilization and of Christianity."

What has caused this change in Rome's attitude toward the United States constitution and the American republic as a nation since 1892? Has the constitution been changed? — No. Has Rome changed? — No. The constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. Congress has since voted upon that interpretation by passing Sunday closing legislation. The government has turned from the word of God's divine law to the tradition of the Catholic Church on the question of the Sabbath and the manner of its enforcement. Thus there has come a change of policy in the government, and Rome sees it. John saw it in vision 1,800 years ago. He said the change would be from the two horns of a lamb to the voice of a dragon. Reader, do you see it?

THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE MARK OF THE BEAST

The Rev. Bird Wilkins, pastor Bethesda Church, Chicago, is reported in the Chicago Tribune of June 13, 1888, as follows:

"It is no advantage to the religion of Christ or His church that laws are being enacted at our state capitol, looking to a strict observance of Sunday as a holy day. That is what it means. It is church legislation. Whenever and wherever the church has entered the halls of legislation, she has left her power outside. She, upon entering the political arena, lays aside her robes of victory. She may have a majority, and thus carry her point, but I tell you it is contrary to the genius of the gospel of Christ. He did not leave us the political sword with which to set up His kingdom in the hearts and lives of men.

"I tell you the United States herself will lose her robe of honor whenever she puts religion into her statute-books. Whenever Jesus is to appeal to Blackstone, then will Jesus become a politician; then will come to pass the attempt to force men to bear the mark of the beast. I am not ready to see the church scrambling amid the political corruptions of the day to have laws passed for the preservation of her holy days. Whenever I think the religion of love given by Jesus needs the arm of the states to support it or protect it, I will renounce it. Whenever I believe the Baptist Church covets secular power to save her holy days, I will be a Baptist no more. It is a declaration of weakness on our part to ask such legislation, and suicidal to rejoice over it. Say it is not religious intolerance if you choose, but I know it is, and you know it is.

"To endorse these Sunday laws as a church is to endorse or to approve one of the festivals of the ancient sun-god, and an edict of a pope of Rome."

A religious boycott will eventually fulfil Rev. 13:16, 17. Since many Protestants have ceased to protest, as seen in the Chicago convention of the Church Federation movement, in order to secure a union with Catholicism for the enforcement of religious obligations, they have taken the step Romeward, and need but a little more time to develop a complete image to the papacy.

IN THE FACE OF THE LAW OF GOD

We have seen that in the United States Congress the Sabbath law of Jehovah was read, and understood to require the observance of the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. Yet in the face of the law of God, the United States Congress legislated against that commandment, and in favor of Sunday, a rival day of worship, inaugurated by the Catholic Church.

What did the prophecy predict? — The enforcement of the mark of the beast by the government which at the first presented lamb-like principles. The change from the Sabbath to Sunday is cited by the papacy as the mark of her authority. Thus the die is cast. The United States government, which began with the lamblike principles of equality of rights to all people in both civil and religious matters, has now started over the trail of the beast, the papacy, which preceded her. She is now making an image to that beast. That beast was a union of church and state. One of the first steps in the history of the beast was the enforcement of Sunday observance. The United States government has laid the foundation for taking that step. The future will complete the history of the United States in making an image to the papacy.

Enough has already been done to leave no doubt as to the policy the government will pursue in the future on the question of enforced Sunday observance. At the last this two-horned beast was to speak as a dragon. Since legislation enforcing Sunday closing has been enacted by the United States Congress, in the face of God's commanding seventh-day Sabbath observance, it means in the end persecution for those who observe the commandments of God. This was the way the dragon spoke in the past. See Rev. 12:17. This is the beginning toward making an image to the papacy. Rev. 13:12-17.

SAW THE IMAGE TO THE PAPACY

In the United States government, where Protestantism had its greatest freedom, and where it developed the lamblike principles of civil and religious liberty, the prophet saw the apostasy develop that would result in making an image to the papacy, and set the pace for the entire Protestant world to turn from its principles to the papal traditions, and from the power of Christ to the power of the state for their support.

Every specification of the prophecy is met in the United States government. It arose just as the papacy went into captivity. It was "another beast." It established an entirely new order of government. It was to develop two horns like a lamb; it established a government based upon the two principles of Protestantism and republicanism. It was finally to apostatize, and speak as a dragon, and make an image to the beast, the papacy. This it has begun, in many states, in the enforcement, by civil enactment, of Sunday laws, which are traditions of the Catholic Church.

DESTINED TO BE WORLD-WIDE

This movement is not confined to the United States. It is destined to be worldwide. In 1906 France, Russia, China, Belgium, and Canada were all reported to have passed laws in behalf of Sunday observance. Other nations have since followed, until the agitation has reached the boundaries of Protestantism. This shows too plainly that many Protestants have ceased to protest, and are turning toward Romish traditions; and, according to the prophecy, an image to the beast is forming in Protestant circles. It will end in religious persecution. The beast was drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs of Jesus. Rev. 17:6. An image to the beast could not be made without a union of church and state, with the state as an instrument of persecution in the hands of the church. But this will come. Rev. 13:15.

THE RIGHTEOUS NOT TO BE SLAUGHTERED

At that time, however, the saints are not to be slaughtered, as they were under the previous reign of papal supremacy. The saints are to be victors in this conflict, and the persecutors are to become the vanquished. The second coming of Christ will change the schemes of men and nations, and the people of God will stand triumphant. The outcome of the conflict is pictured by the revelator thus: "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having His Father's name written in their foreheads." Rev. 14:1. "And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest." Rev. 15:2-4.

The unmingled wrath of God under the seven last plagues, spoken of in this and the following chapters, fall upon those who have been disloyal to the commandments of God, and who have worshiped the beast and his image and received his mark.

SUNDAY LAWS WILL BECOME POPULAR

The beast joins the two-horned beast in this closing conflict against Christ and His people. It will therefore be popular on earth, for a short time, to enforce the observance of Sunday, and persecute those who stand loyal to the Sabbath of the Lord. But the loyal ones who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus will stand triumphant when the Master comes.

Reader, there is no middle ground in this conflict. On which side will you stand? "Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." Rev. 22:14.