SABBATH APOSTASY AND FALSE VIEWS OF THE KINGDOM
By R. C. Porter
Hailstones and Stormy Wind Shall Rend It—Fearful Arraignment—God’s Kingdom and Man’s Views Concerning It at Variance
Last week, Mr. Porter told of the doctrines of old Babylon. He spoke of their very ancient origin, and how they have worked to counterfeit God’s plans in all the ages.
This week, he shows how these Babylonian doctrines worked through paganism, before the time of Christ, to supplant the Sabbath of Jehovah, and also to give false conceptions of God’s kingdom.
Next week, he will show how these Babylonian principles have worked through the papacy; and the week following, he will present how they are at work through organized Protestantism. He will close with the stirring warning from God against the iniquity and deception of it all. ELIJAH encountered the Babylonian system, with its four hundred fifty prophets of Baal and its four hundred prophets of the groves. 1 Kings 18: 19. The contest between the two religious systems in the days of Elijah was over the question of obedience to the law of God. “And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim.” Elijah’s appeal was: “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.” Verse 21. Obedience is the test of discipleship. “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” Rom. 6: 16. Through a most wonderful miracle, the Lord expressed His decided approval of Elijah’s religious system, which maintained a loyal attitude toward the law of God; and He caused all the assembled worshipers of Baal to cry out, “The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is the God.” 1 Kings 18: 39. With apostasy from God to sun worship and to the worship of other deities, there has always been an apostasy from the creation Sabbath, by which the Lord designed to preserve a knowledge of Himself as the true God that sanctifies and saves His people. Eze. 20: 12. Not only did Elijah meet this Babylonian system with decided rebuke in the name of the Lord, when it sought by intrigue and force to introduce its system of polytheism instead of the worship of the true God; but Ezekiel gives the following scathing denunciation of the Babylonian system, and its attempt to lead the people away from the true Sabbath, and hence away from the worship and service of the true God, which the Lord’s Sabbath always enjoins: A DIVINE AND STIRRING WARNING
“Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word. Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it; albeit I have not spoken? “Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God. And Mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of My people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. Because, even because they have seduced My people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar: say unto them which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it. Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it? Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in My fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in Mine anger, and great hailstones in My fury to consume it. So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.” Eze. 13: 3-14. This is a fearful arraignment of those who were making a gap in God’s law, and building up a wall in place of the gap they had made. To evade the truth, these apostate Babylonian priests had dodged from one position to another, as foxes in the desert dodge to avoid the trap of the hunter. When they saw their wall falling under fair and candid criticism, they would come to the rescue, and daub it over with untempered mortar. In what particular part of God’s law was the gap made and a new wall built?—The Sabbath precept, which announced and enjoined the worship of the true God by a perpetually recurring weekly memorial. This is no sophistry or guesswork. Let the prophet speak, as he spoke to the teachers in ancient Israel, in terms too plain to be misunderstood: “And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey: they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated My law, and have profaned Mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.” Eze. 22: 23-26. THE MOST PROMINENT MEN REACHED
This apostasy to sun worship and observance of the day of the sun reached even some of the most prominent men of Israel. “And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshiped the sun toward the east.” Eze. 8: 16. With the apostasy from the true Sabbath to the day of the sun came the demand for Sunday enforcement by civil enactment.11 Webster says of Sunday, “So called because anciently dedicated to the sun and its worship.” The North British Review calls it “the wild solar holiday of all pagan times.” The observance of this “venerable day of the sun” was made compulsory by a decree of Constantine A. D. 321. See “Encyclopædia Britannica,” article “Sunday.” APOSTASY FROM A RELIGION OF LOVE
In giving the history of the cruel oppressions of the nations under the Babylonian system, Jeremiah says: “Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.” Jer. 50: 17. Daniel presents the oppression of the people of God under this persecuting system, as seen in the compulsory worship of false gods in the cases of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Daniel 3. In Dan. 6: 1-24 is described the passing of a law the sole purpose of which was to entrap Daniel, who was prime minister of the kingdom and a worshiper of the true God. The law was passed under a pretext altogether different from the purpose for which it was designed. This is the custom of this Babylonish system in laying its foundation for persecution. The persecutions in the days of Nero, when many Christians were torn by wild beasts in the amphitheater, and the early disciples suffered imprisonment, torture, and death at the hands of pagan Rome, are too familiar to require extended comment. A FALSE VIEW OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Ever since his fall, Satan has determined to overthrow the kingdom of God. Failing in this, it has been his fixed purpose so to misinterpret that kingdom as to inculcate false views, in order that men may be prevented from preparing to inherit it. Through the pagan division of the Babylonian system, instead of the humility and simplicity of the kingdom of Christ, he established a system of self-exaltation, which was an entire perversion of the principles of the kingdom of God. With satanic skill and cunning he sought to satisfy the minds of men with forms of religion without the power. The doctrines of baptismal regeneration, or infant sprinkling, justification by works, purgatory, and prayers for the dead, and the sacrifices of the mass, followed by idol processions, relic worship, the clothing and crowning of images, the rosary, and the worship of the sacred heart, lamps and wax candles, and the sign of the cross, with the religious orders of vestal virgins, nuns, monks, priests, and sovereign pontiffs, and multiplied holy days, constitute the great body of the pagan system. See “Two Babylons,” pages 128-224. Instead of looking for the coming of a King who was “just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass,” they looked for the coming of a mighty temporal monarch, who should dethrone all earthly kings, and place himself at the head of a universal dominion. Herod in fear issued an edict that all children two years old and under, living within his jurisdiction, should be slain at the time of the birth of the promised Messiah, in order to slay the infant King and save his kingdom. But the Child of promise escaped into the land of Egypt, and was safe. Matt. 2: 13-18. This temporal view of the kingdom was so general that although Christ from first to last protested that His kingdom was not of this world, in the very last audience He held with His disciples, they still raised the question, “Wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” Acts 1: 6. Thus the minds of men were led to look upon Christ as a temporal king in place of a Saviour from sin; and His mission left them unbenefited, because they were wedded to a false creed. The climax of the iniquitous Babylonian system was reached when Christ came from heaven to save a lost world. Through the government of Rome, a creed was established, by civil enactment, that no man should have particular gods of his own. In Israel, Jewish tradition required worship only according to Jewish custom. But He came proclaiming a particular God, and introducing customs which were innovations on Jewish traditions. With this creed He was confronted. Having repudiated it, He was brought before the judgment bar of Pilate, tried, condemned, and crucified. The object sought was the dethronement of the King, and the usurpation of His dominion. They said: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.” Mark 12: 7. HALTED WITH CONSTERNATION
With what consternation they beheld Him rise from the dead the third day, as He had predicted before His crucifixion! Then in the majesty of resurrection power they saw the gospel of this crucified and risen One march through the length and breadth of the earth, conquering and to conquer. The world halted, and for a time beheld “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1: 14. Public sentiment for a time turned so favorably toward Christianity that the very Jews who had said, “His blood be on us, and on our children,” now cried in consternation, “Ye . . . intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” Heaven could make no mightier appeal than had now been made for the recovery of the pagan division of the Babylonian system from apostasy. There might have been a universal reformation if those hearing the call had accepted it and surrendered their hearts for salvation. Thus the Lord said, “We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed.” Her rejection was due to having persecuted her benefactors and forsaken and crucified the only One able to save her. R. C. P.