p. 45 | What Does It Mean?

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 9, 1866

What Does It Mean?

Forty years ago, men were not rising up here and there, and professing to be Christ, either the very Christ of the New Testament, or his successor. The people of those comparatively sober times, would have been startled out of all sense of propriety by such a thing. But we have only reached the year of grace, 1866, and now those exhibitions are so common as scarcely to excite comment. What does it mean? Will those answer who do not believe we have reached the time when false prophets and false christs should appear as signs of the near advent of the Saviour?

Under the heading of "A New Socialistic Order," the Detroit Tribune gives the claims of another pretender, as follows:—

A man named Thomas Cook, living at Huntsville, Indiana, has established a new socialistic community at that place. It is styled "The Independent Order of Free and Independent Men and Women," and declares all its members independent and free of all external powers, such as human rulers and governors, so far as it is possible for human souls at present to be. There will be no priest, king, president, governor or other functionary, no master and slave, no husband and wife, no landlord and tenant. The children in a certain sense, will be given "the democratic power of choosing their own parents." With this preface no one will be surprised to learn that the principles of force and compulsion are discarded; that each member is guided and governed by the spirit of perfect love which gives an unbounded spirit of charity and forbearance, casts out doubting, emancipates the soul from all forms and conventionalities, and gives unrestrained freedom. Mr. Cook has begun the publication of a journal denominated the "True Union, or Scientific Socialist," supporting these principles, and proclaims himself as the second Christ, regularly succeeding Jesus of Nazareth.