HE SPAKE AS A DRAGON by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 23, 1915

"HE SPAKE AS A DRAGON"

By Editor

The Stealthy Tread of Religious Bigotry — The Best of Men Often Deceived Thereby

This is the fifth of several articles furnished by Elder Wilcox on the sevenfold sign of the end to be seen in this government in the light of the prophecy made concerning it. The prophecy upon the subject is remarkably clear. But one of the greatest dangers with humanity is that we will see everything clearly except what pertains to ourselves and our own times. Personal prejudice keeps us from seeing the plainest truth.

THUS far in our study of the prophetic symbol of Rev. 13: 11-17, we have learned that each and all of the specifications of the two-horned beast have been clearly and strongly met in the United States of America.

The prophecy demanded a world-molding nation rising to power in the last days. The demand was met in this nation alone.

The prophecy demanded that this world-molding power should arise in hitherto historically unknown territory. The demand was met in this nation, and in this nation alone.

The prophecy demanded a nation rising rapidly to great power under peaceful conditions, by growth, not by conquest. The demand was met by this nation, and by this nation alone.

The prophecy demanded a nation rising to power having in its forefront two great principles which gave it influence and prestige, principles unique in the Christian religion, of all religions, and in the nation symbolized, of all nations. This nation met the demand in the equality of man, and in liberty of conscience. No other nation did.

Will the United States meet the next particular in the symbol? That specification is the beast with the lamblike horns.

SPAKE AS A DRAGON

This is not a unique symbol. It may be said of other powers as well. The dragon voice is not strange in this world. It has spoken throughout the centuries.

Its meaning is not difficult to understand. It is explained in the chapter previous to the one in which the prophecy is found, namely, Revelation 12. In that chapter is revealed a dragon having seven heads and ten horns, a symbol of the civil power used by the devil; for this dragon is expressly called "the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan." Verse 9. He is not permitted of God to use his own supernatural physical energy against the frail humanity of God's children. Hence he deceives the men who make and rule earthly governments (he is "the deceiver of the whole world"), so that they unite church and state, or enforce state religions, and thus bring persecution upon the souls who look for direction in worship, beyond the enforced creeds of men.

The dragon speaks through earthly powers. "Out of his mouth," through these powers, go decrees that would swallow up the woman, the church. Verse 15. In other words, "the dragon . . . persecuted the woman." Verse 13. He could not, in his diabolical wrath, destroy the Man Child, Christ Jesus, when our Lord was compassed in the infirmities and limitations of humanity; therefore is his pitiless wrath visited upon the church. Thus to speak as a dragon is to speak, utter, issue laws that result in persecution. Through every great power, every world dynasty, in the past, Satan has done this. From Babylon of old, through Medo-Persia, Grecia, pagan Rome, papal Rome, and the church-and-state governments of the Old World, both papal and Protestant, which followed the papal régime, has Satan persecuted.

WILL PERSECUTION BE SEEN HERE?

Will persecution be repeated in "time's noblest offspring," as Bishop Berkeley called America? Will the nation that has been the refuge for the oppressed of all nations, the day-star of hope in the long night of tyranny, whose very example has turned the peoples of the Old World with longing faces toward liberty — will this nation become a persecutor? Will that nation which placed upon its great seal the motto, Novus ordo seclorum ("a new order of ages"), turn back to the old order? So the prophecy declares; and the beginning of fulfillment is in evidence.

SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

1. A right nation or true state government disconnected from religion, from religious bodies, from the church, will not persecute, will not oppress conscience. It has no incentive so to do. Its subjects are equal in the eyes of the law. The conscience of one is as sacred as that of the other, of the few as of the many. Its fundamental laws, its charters of existence, make no reference to the duty of its subjects toward God. It does not assume to act for God. It does not usurp His throne. It demands only that the rights of the individual shall be guarded, protected, conserved, preeminently his right to worship or not to worship; and in the conservation of the rights of the individual, the rights of all are conserved.

No government is rightly constituted which acts on the principle of the greatest-good-to-the-greatest-number fallacy. Right governments are designed to protect the rights of the minority, to guard those in their rights who cannot by force of numbers protect themselves. In protecting the rights of the individual, all are protected.

2. A church disconnected from the state cannot persecute. Religious bodies that for long periods were connected with the state and were persecutors, have, since that union was broken, become harmless, though just as intolerant in spirit as ever.

3. A backslidden church, if there be prospects of success, will clamor for power to enforce its decrees and dogmas. A church would not do this if she stood in right relation to Jesus Christ. No truly converted, rightly instructed soul could ever ask for power to coerce conscience or compel acquiescence in religious things. He knows the means God used to subdue and control his sinful heart and bring it into glad service to the Master; and he knows that that same power, and that alone, can reach others. Jesus tells us that those who persecute, really believing that they are doing God service, do this "because they have not known the Father, nor Me." John 16: 2, 3.

DEMANDS FOR CHANGE

For the fullest religious liberty has the federal government of America stood, and the attitude of the federal government has made dead letters largely the remains of colonial statutes that passed into state legislation. But the agitation for religious legislation has grown, and this has been and is the danger center in this country. It was to guard against this that the first amendment of the constitution was adopted, declaring that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It embodied that principle of freedom in the constitution to withstand the demands of those who had been nurtured under colonial unions of church and state, which the spirit of this first amendment has since largely made inoperative.

It was to this prohibition men could point when the mistaken religionists in after years demanded that Congress should pass Sabbath restrictions in reference to the carrying and management of the mails. In 1829 and 1831, petitions came before Congress for this purpose. In the answer of the committee to whom the appeal was referred, adopted by the United States Senate in 1829, it is said:

"Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. This first effort of the kind calls for the establishment of a principle which . . . would lay the foundation for dangerous innovations upon the spirit of the constitution, and upon the religious rights of citizens. If admitted, it may be justly apprehended that the future measures of the government will be strongly marked, if not eventually controlled, by the same influence. All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence." "If the principle is once established that religion or religious observances shall be interwoven with our legislative acts, we must pursue it to its ultimatum."

The report, accepted by Congress as final, was a merciful warning from God through the state to the church. It is a pity that it was not heeded; that men could not see the evil principle involved, and in the principle, see all its evil outworkings. They had not read history with anointed vision. If they had so read, they would have caught the lesson of the early centuries of the Christian era, which dawned with such glory of righteousness, but was soon lost in the fogs of heathen philosophy, puerile superstitions, and a union with the state.

BEGAN MILDLY AND WITH APPARENT GOOD REASON

That union of church and state which in the days of Constantine developed into the medieval persecutions, began mildly, and with as good reasons for establishment as exist now. Nay, it had better reasons. The church had suffered long under pagan Rome; what a blessed thing if she could but possess the citadel of power! All persecutions would cease, and the church would prosper. So men fallaciously reasoned then. But now the church has the fullest freedom to pursue her divine calling without let or hindrance in a free land. She has no such shadow of excuse to yield to the temptation of the devil, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me," as had the early church. But let her know that as that union in the days of Constantine led to the worst period of persecution the world ever knew, so will it here and now. The baleful seed-sowing, however mild and beneficent it may seem, will produce the baleful and diabolical crop.

WORKING FOR RELIGIOUS LEGISLATION

Let us briefly name successive and combined organizations formed to promote religious legislation:

1. There is the National Reform Association, the first of them all, which is working to put the name of God in the federal constitution, and to place "Christian laws and institutions and usages" on "an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land." It had its birth in 1863 in a meeting in Xenia, Ohio. The great Civil War retarded and obscured its work; but it has worked diligently ever since in sowing its apparently good seed, which is inevitably bringing its evil crop. Its last manifestations were in the big International Christian Citizenship conferences held in Philadelphia and in Portland, Oregon.

2. The multitude of "Sabbath" associations are leagues that have come into existence for better Sabbath observance, which from the Bible viewpoint is a good thing; but these organizations exist to promote Sunday observance by Sunday law. These are still working with vigor to accomplish this end.

3. These organizations have been greatly helped by other reform associations. Mighty influential bodies, like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, and the Epworth League, have been led to give the Sunday-by-law movement their support. The Men and Religion Forward Movement and labor organizations have indorsed it. The most influential of all organizations that have thrown their strength to that movement is the Federal Council of Protestant Churches of America, which aims at other political reforms besides Sunday. This organization represents more than thirty of the leading Protestant denominations of America.

These men feel, in the first place, that they are the best of the citizenship of the nation; why should they not know what is best for the nation, and embody it in law? Why should not the Sunday, held by the vast majority as the religious day of rest, be safeguarded by law from the "desecration" of labor? And they hope that when the crisis comes, they will have the fullest cooperation of the Roman Catholic Church. And why not, when the Sunday is the child of that church?

NOT FULLY UNITED AS YET

It is but just to say that these mighty organizations are not wholly united as yet. Many in the aggregate of their own membership are either indifferent or opposed to such things. But the organizations are getting together, and the great Church Federation will doubtless furnish the platform upon which all organizations outside of the Catholic Church will stand.

There is scarcely a state in which these organizations are not working either to make existing state Sunday laws more effective or to enact new laws. Legislatures are besieged. Petitions are obtained. Legislators are threatened.

SUFFERED PERSECUTION IN THIS LAND

But we know what such laws would mean if they became universal, and the power to enforce them were but placed in the hands of zealots. In various states,—Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, for instance,—these laws have been enforced. The dragon heart and the dragon voice have been revealed locally. Many have suffered fine and imprisonment, and sickness and death, for doing honest, unobtrusive work for themselves on Sunday, the very day on which our Lord worked at the carpenter's bench.

California is one of the free states. Her legislature and people, though under siege for years, still refuse to bend the knee to the Sunday-law advocates who are waging their mistaken and misguided conflict. Will California swing the nation back to fullest liberty, or will all at last yield to the growing momentum of church and state, to the dragon voice? Further developments will be studied next week. M. C. W.