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Signs of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 8.

Significant Changes in Seventy Years
Earlier text: A DANGEROUS PROPOSAL

Called to Glory and Virtue

By John Norton Loughborough

By J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH
THE apostle Peter, when speaking of the high calling of God to us, said, "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord." 2 Peter 1: 2.
A knowledge of the character and love of God and Christ will bring to us a sense of the inestimable treasure placed before us, and which it is our blessed privilege to accept, if we confess our sins, and yield ourselves to the Lord for Him to guide us, and work in us to do His will.
Of the dealings of the Lord with us and for us, the apostle says, "According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness." 2 Peter 1: 3. That is, He has provided just as freely for the life of holiness as for the temporal life. Regarding the abundant provisions for this life, we quote the words of another: "Every tree and shrub and leaf pours forth that element of life, without which neither man nor animal could live." As Paul said to the Athenians, speaking of all life as sustained by God's power, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." Acts 17: 28.
Peter goes on to show that aid for God's service is just as abundantly provided as the preparation for animal life. We obtain the benefit of this "grace" "through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue." 2 Peter 1: 3. The glory to which the Lord has called us is a holy character. This is the real import of the word "glory" as here used. When Moses pleaded with the Lord to show him His glory, He proclaimed before him His name and His character. See Ex. 34: 5-7. The margin of 2 Peter 1: 3, "called us to glory," is, "called us by glory."
As we contemplate the character of the Lord, and His great love manifest to poor sinners, we can say with the apostle John, "We love Him, because He first loved us." 1 John 4: 19. The working out of this is thus delineated by the apostle Paul: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory [character] of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory [character] to glory [character] even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Cor. 3: 18.

CHANGED BY THE PROMISES

To show how this character may be developed in mortals, Peter continues, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." 2 Peter 1: 4. As we renounce the world—"the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," 1 John 2: 16—deciding, by the Lord's aid, to follow Him in the way of His commandments, we have the great promise of the Saviour, "If a man love Me, He will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." John 14: 23. "Man needs a power outside of himself to restore him to the image of God." "The soul yielded to Christ becomes His fortress. No authority is known in it but His."
With the indwelling of the Father and the Son, who need fail of the victory? Submitting to God, we may have complete deliverance by the power of an indwelling Saviour. He knocks for admission to our hearts. Rev. 3: 20. May we each say to Him, Blessed Lord, come in, and cast out all that is unlike Thee, and dwell in us as Thou hast promised.

The Saloon’s Deadly Work

By Henry W. Grady

THE saloon is the mortal enemy of peace and order, the despoiler of men and terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face of children, the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls unshriven to Judgment than all the pestilences that have wasted life since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the other wars since Joshua stood beyond Jericho.—Henry W. Grady.

"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.

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THE DREAM OF PEACE

By George Butler Thompson

JULY 25, 1870, during the war between Germany and France, George Meredith wrote to John Morley, at that time one of England's noted men, as follows:
"The tremendous armaments on both sides were meant for this duel, and it mattered very little what was the pretext of the outbreak. . . . At any rate, it was a fight to come on; and here we have it; and if we are energetic and wise, it may be the last of the great fights of Europe."
Forty-five years later, instead of this being "the last of the great fights of Europe," we find the continent involved in the most calamitous contest known in history, and men's dream of peace again shattered. No such bloody struggle, where so many men are arrayed in battle line, with such implements of slaughter at their command, is recorded since the fall of man.
Again men are predicting that when the present death struggle shall in some way terminate, the price paid in blood and treasure will be so enormous that the world will have learned a lesson which will lead the nations to settle all differences in the future by arbitration, and the world will know war no more.
But the hope expressed is a vain one. The nations are planning larger and swifter Dreadnoughts, and inventing new and more improved methods of slaying one another. They are preparing for a greater and more desperate struggle in the future, preparing for the Armageddon of the Scriptures.
Not till the Prince of peace shall come, and put down all earthly rule and authority, and sweep from the earth with the besom of destruction all the nations of earth like chaff from the threshing floor, and establish His kingdom forever and ever, will the earth be free from war and bloodshed, and know peace. May this glad day soon dawn. G. B. T.

PRAYER IN EXTREMITY, AND THE MESSENGER OF DELIVERANCE

By Uriah Smith

IN an article under the title, "God's Hand as I Saw It in Arabia," Mr. John Van Ess, a missionary, tells how deliverance came to him at a moment of peril as he called on God for help. It was in the year 1910. The tribesmen of the Mesopotamian border, by the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates, were in conflict with the Turkish forces. All was tumult and violence in the district. In journeying from Bagdad to his mission station at Nasiriyeh, southward on the Euphrates, Mr. Van Ess found himself in the hands of men evidently intent on killing and robbing him. They wanted him to push on out of their village, but he had insisted on resting for a time in a hut, with the tribesmen waiting outside. He says:
"My cook, who was an Arab, had in the meantime been sitting outside of the hut hearing the conversation among the tribesmen. Partly to give him something to eat, and mostly to hear what he had heard, I called him in. He understood the situation at once, and sat with his back to the door. Then he broke off a piece of the bread, and as he raised it to his mouth, he whispered, 'By no means leave the hut, for they have planned to shoot us.' Toward three o'clock in the afternoon, they became impatient at our stubbornness, and one of their number began to insult me, and this was a signal for the rest. In my extremity, I lifted my heart to God, and asked Him to show His face.
"Scarcely had the petition left my heart when a shadow darkened the doorway, and a tall Arab, with face closely muffled, entered the hut. He was a member of the tribe, and a man of some consequence, judging by the respect paid him. He at once spied me sitting in the corner, looked me over a minute or two, and then came forward and said: 'Salaam Sahib, I am glad to see you here.'
"I must have looked puzzled, for he unmuffled his face, and said: 'I was a patient in your hospital at Busrah two years ago. Your doctor there performed an operation on me, and I was a guest in your hospital for thirty days. Welcome to our camp.' Then he began to tell the Arabs of our work at Busrah, and of how he was fed and nursed and healed. He added: 'O Arabs, do these men no harm. They and their companions are disciples of Isa el Messiah. They fear Allah and are our best friends.'
"A deep silence fell on those assembled, and I thanked God for His great deliverance. Then I told them I wanted to reach Nasiriyeh if possible before sunset. Mohammed at once took his rifle and cartridge belt; and with him and five other Arabs, we rode until we reached a ditch about half a mile outside of Nasiriyeh. They dared not enter, for fear of the soldiers, but said they would hide in a ditch, and see that I reached the Turkish line in safety. Just as I turned the corner to enter the town, I looked back, and there stood those six Arabs, faithful to their word. They waved their rifles in farewell, and thus I rode into the town and into safety."—Missionary Review of the World, October, 1913.
No wonder the missionary says that he saw God's hand in Arabia. In many perils on this journey described, he was sensible of the Lord's protecting care over him; but of the crisis in the experience he could truly say with the psalmist, "I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me."

87—THE LORD'S DAY

Is there a commandment in the Bible where it says to keep the Lord's day? Where do you get that name?
The only place that the term "Lord's day" is found in the Bible is Rev. 1:10: "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." This scripture does not tell us what day that was. It does not say anything about whether the day should be kept, or how it should be kept. It simply shows this fact,—that there was in John's time a day which He called the Lord's day. Now what is the Lord's day? Certainly we ought to learn what the Lord's day is from the Lord's own book. That is the only correct source of information. The Lord's own book will tell us what the Lord's own day was.
First, we turn to the words of our Saviour in Mark 2:28: "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Jesus honors the Sabbath by calling Himself Lord of the Sabbath. In Isa. 58:13, the Lord speaks in this way through Isaiah, a prophet who spoke by the Spirit of Christ: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable." We are again informed here that the Sabbath is the Lord's day. His holy day. We again refer to the fourth commandment, Ex. 20:10, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God."
These three witnesses thus testify that the seventh day is the Lord's day, and that the seventh day is the Sabbath. Therefore we do have a command for keeping the true Lord's day. That is the fourth commandment of the Decalogue, Ex. 20:8-11. Could we ask more than this?
We know that later in the Christian dispensation, what are called the "fathers" spoke of the first day as the Lord's day. Tertullian called it that two hundred years after Christ; but Tertullian also taught that we should make offerings for the dead, as birthday offerings, and a great many other superstitions for which he had no Scripture at all. Error began very early in the Christian church. Even the Galatian brethren had begun in Paul's day to observe days that God had not commanded—heathen days. Gal. 4:8-10.
Sunday is therefore an interloper. It has no sacredness in God's word, no command for its observance. It does not in any way memorialize the resurrection of Christ. It cannot take the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. It has neither command nor holy example for the Christian; while the Sabbath, the memorial of God's creative power, the sign of His redeeming and sanctifying power, brings with it all the grace and power of God to the child of faith—confirmed by the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.

88—ORIGIN OF AMALEKITES

What was the origin of the Amalekites? Did they spring from Esau?
Some have so thought because Esau had a grandson named Amalek. See Gen. 36:12. But a mere similarity of names is insufficient evidence, especially when there is evidence to the contrary. We learn by Gen. 14:7 that Chedorlaomer and his allies, a century and a quarter before, "smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that dwelt in Hazezon-tamar." A people existing in B. C. 1917 could not have sprung from a man who was born subsequently, about B. C. 1796. The children of Esau's grandson formed part of the kingdom of Edom, but the Amalekites were once "the first of the nations." In the Septuagint translation of Esther, Haman, a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15), is called by the king a "Macedonian," "an alien from the blood of the Persians." It is clear that the origin of the Amalekites is unknown.

89—THE EVENING OF THE FIRST DAY

We read in John 20:19 of "the same day at evening." That day was the first day of the week. Was not that evening the first-day evening when the disciples met together? In Acts 20:7 we say that when the disciples met together to break bread on the first day of the week, it was the same as our Saturday night, and that seems to be very clear; but how can we harmonize the two expressions?
There is very little difficulty in this. The Bible rule for observing the Sabbath is from evening to evening, for the day began at evening and closed at evening. See the first chapter of Genesis. "The evening and the morning were the first day," and second day, and so on. Therefore the first day and each day of the week, began with the evening, or at sunset. Consequently the meeting that Paul held, as recorded in Acts 20—a meeting that lasted all night—began with Sunday evening, or what would be our Saturday night. And all the next day the apostle Paul spent in travel. Referring to the meeting of the disciples in John 20:19, they doubtless met together in the closing hour of the first day.
The Jews recognized two evenings. See Ex. 12:6, margin, "between the two evenings." When the day began to decline, it was called evening, the same as we call it at the present time. That same day, as the sun declined, the disciples met together; but when Jesus Himself met with them, the first day had passed, and the second day had begun. We read, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, that two disciples went down to Emmaus.
It was the afternoon of that day when they started. They walked the seven and one half miles to Emmaus. Jesus walked with them. They sat down to the table and ate; and while they were eating their meal, He was revealed to them. Immediately He vanished from them. "They rose up the same hour" and went back to Jerusalem. And it must have been long after sunset when they reached there. They told the disciples they had seen Jesus; and the disciples themselves did not believe it, for they did not then believe that He was risen from the dead. But while they were talking about it, Jesus stood in their midst. Luke 24:36-42; Mark 16:12-14. That was the time recorded in John 20. The disciples had gathered together before the second day began, while the first day was still with them; but Jesus did not meet with them until some time after that, so that His first meeting with His disciples was really on the second day of the week.

90—THE NEW COMMANDMENT

If Jesus gave us a new commandment, what was it? Was it the doing away with the old law and commandment?
In the "new commandment" that our Lord gave us, no single new principle was enunciated. It was simply the application of a principle as old as eternity. We have that new commandment recorded in John 13:34: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
Nay, it was always duty for men to love one another, and for brethren to love one another; but the world had never had an example of what that love meant until Jesus came, until He Himself had demonstrated what love meant. Jesus showed love that would lead a man not only to die for his friends, but for his enemies. See Rom. 5:6-8.
In this new commandment, we have an explanation of 1 John 2:7, 8: "Beloved, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the Word which ye heard. Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth." In the tenth verse we read, "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light." The commandment became new when it came to them in the new light of the life and love of Christ and His power to make it effective. It had absolutely nothing to do with the abolition of any law or any commandment whatsoever; for as our correspondent says, Jesus came not "to destroy the law or the prophets, . . . but to fulfill." Matt. 5:17.
Continue reading: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH DRUNKARDS