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Review and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 17.

The Annual Lesson

Review and Herald

Apr 29, 1909

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 29, 1909

The Annual Lesson

For, lo, the winter is past; The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land; The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs, And the vines are in blossom; They give forth their fragrance.
“Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see it and know of your own selves that the summer is now nigh. Even so . . . know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh.”
Luke 21:29, 30, A. R. V.

THE WORK

By Editor

— AND — THE WORKERS
For description of, and table of contents for, Liberty for the second quarter, see notice on page 21.
ONE thousand copies of Life and Health have just been ordered by the Indiana company of magazine agents who are working their way to this place.
THE trade edition of “Desire of Ages” can no longer be obtained in the cloth. We have a very few copies left of the leather style. The price of the leather is $2.
DURING less than one month’s time, Brother J. A. Skinner has ordered 1,500 copies of the magazine Liberty. In his last letter, dated April 20, he says: “I think the last number of Liberty is all right. It will be a good seller.”
HAVE you seen the booklet, “A Scholarship for You”? It’s free for the asking. It explains how you can get a scholarship in the medical department of the George Washington University, without its costing you one cent.
“THE CHANGE OF THE SABBATH,” by G. I. Butler, covers very fully the subject of how the supposed change came in. The book is just the thing to hand to any of your friends or neighbors who may be inquiring. Paper covers, 25 cents; cloth, 50 cents.
CONFERENCE presidents and tract society secretaries will be interested to read the note under Notices and Appointments, entitled “Where the April Life and Health Went.” Forty-three States are listed, together with the number of copies ordered by each.
ELDER R. M. KILGORE accompanies his order for five copies of our new quarterly with the following encouraging comment: “I have just seen the announcement of the new Protestant Magazine. It is not born out of due time. The times demand it, and are ripe for it. Its suggestion is of the Spirit of God.”
“PLEASE place my name on the list for 1,000 copies of the May Life and Health,” writes Mrs. S. N. Haskell, of California. “The April number was a very nice one, and sold well. We have none left of the thousand copies we received about two weeks ago.” We are pleased to note that California ordered the second highest number of copies of the April issue.
A LADY not of our faith, recently wrote to inquire whether she could obtain all of the back numbers of the Sabbath School Worker. She had in some way obtained a copy, and was delighted to discover such a valuable help to the study of her Bible. Does this valuable monthly visit your home regularly? The low subscription price puts it within the easy reach of every family. Yearly subscription, 35 cents. Two or more copies, one year, to one address, only 25 cents each. Address Sabbath School Worker, Takoma Park, Washington, D. C.
THERE are 45 numbers and over 1,000 pages in the Words of Truth Series. All the principal points of faith are covered. How a full set of the tracts will be sent post-paid, for only 60 cents.
“PLEASE send 200 copies of Life and Health to ——, 500 to ——, and 500 to ——,” writes a successful lady agent. Twelve hundred copies ordered at one time, is a good record!
ABOUT 50,000 religious liberty postcards have already been sold. We have about an equal number awaiting your orders. Don’t let an opportunity to educate the people pass. Ten cards for 10 cents; 100 for 60 cents.
THE little folder entitled “How to Earn a Scholarship” is now ready. It will tell you how to secure your next year’s schooling, through the sale of four magazines. Address the Periodical Department for the same.
THE issue of the Instructor dated April 20 contains the first outline for the reading of “Daybreak in the Dark Continent.” Have you procured a copy of that book? If not, send for one at once. Cloth, 50 cents; paper, 40 cents.
DO you read your own copy of the REVIEW each week, or are you borrowing the paper? Why not subscribe yourself? If you can not do any better, send 50 cents for a four-months’ subscription; or 75 cents for a six-months’ subscription.
“I WENT out yesterday,” writes a Georgia brother, “and though it rained all the time, I sold 46 copies of Life and Health. My success has exceeded my expectations. Enclosed please find post-office money-order for $8, for magazines sent. Please send 300 more copies.”
“DANIEL AND THE REVELATION,” morocco, $2.25, post-paid. We have a few morocco “Daniel and the Revelation” of the old edition left, which we are closing out at this low price. You should order at once, and secure one of these books; they are a bargain.
BROTHER TECK L. SORY, our Liberty agent in Oakland, Cal., sends us a telegram for 1,000 copies of the Temperance number of the Youth’s Instructor. The Oakland Sabbath-school members will sell them. As previously stated, this special number will be a good seller all summer—and longer.
“I READ with great interest your advertisement of the Protestant Magazine, in the REVIEW of March 18,” writes Brother Ed. F. Forga, who, for years, championed the cause of Protestantism in Catholic Peru. “I congratulate you very heartily upon your bold undertaking, and believe that this publication will fill a long-felt want. I wish that it might have a million subscribers. Enclosed find money-order for $3, for which please send the magazine for one year to the twenty addresses enclosed.” Seventy-five cents will pay for five copies, one year, all to your address, or to five separate addresses, as you may choose. Send cash with order. Address the Protestant Magazine, Takoma Park, Washington, D. C.
ONLY good words have reached us regarding Liberty for the second quarter. How could it be otherwise, with such interesting contents and such a beautiful cover?
BROTHER WALTER HARPER recently sent us a list of 57 yearly subscriptions for Life and Health, which he secured while canvassing in Arizona. He does this often.
“IT is a very easy matter for Miss —— and me to sell 100 copies each, a day,” writes one of our lady agents for Life and Health. “We never work more than four hours a day.”
IT is said that statistics show that ten per cent of the students in the universities of the United States are self-supporting. Statisticians also agree in saying that ninety per cent of the men who enter business fail. Can it be that the ten per cent of self-supporting students hold the key to successful enterprise?
DO you wish to realize as never before what God can accomplish through a weak but willing people? Then read “The Great Second Advent Movement,” by J. N. Loughborough, and see the rapid strides of the advent message within the recollection of one man. Cloth, $1.25; paper, 50 cents.
MANY times those who are selling Life and Health can introduce a small book to advantage. Nothing is better, at this season of the year, than “Colds; Their Cause, Prevention, and Cure,” by Dr. G. H. Heald. We allow the regular agent’s discount on this book, to those who are devoting their time to selling the printed page. Price, 25 cents.
“BIBLE OBJECT LESSONS” contains fifty-two lessons on the life of Christ, especially prepared for the children. Every kindergarten teacher needs this book; the suggestions are invaluable. Price, board, $1.50; cloth, $2. Kindergarten material, to accompany the book, $2.40, post-paid. When both material and book are ordered at once, we include “Portfolio of Blackboard Sketches” free. Ask for full description.
AT last accounts, California had ordered 9,567 copies of the Temperance number of the Youth’s Instructor. Michigan follows, with 8,177 copies to its credit. Washington is third, with 7,158 copies ordered. Following these, come Colorado, with 5,537 copies ordered; Indiana, 3,781 copies; Oregon, 3,582 copies; Iowa, 2,763 copies; Nebraska, 2,713 copies; Illinois, 2,366 copies; Canada, 2,137 copies; New York, 2,032 copies; Massachusetts, 1,948 copies; Missouri, 1,766 copies; Pennsylvania, 1,616 copies; Kansas, 1,588 copies; Wisconsin, 1,454 copies; Tennessee, 1,326 copies; Ohio, 1,308 copies; New Jersey, 1,293 copies; Minnesota, 1,191 copies; Texas, 1,186 copies; Oklahoma, 983 copies; and Idaho, with 932 copies to its credit. It will be seen that we have listed twenty-three States (including Canada), twenty-one of which have ordered more than 1,000 copies. The other twenty-nine States and countries from which orders have been received, fall under the one thousand mark.

Two Great Crises: The End of the Jewish Nation and the End of the World

Experiences of the Generation Which Saw the End of the Jewish Nation

IN his prophetic description of the things which would come upon the generation then living, Jesus first spoke of the experience which would befall the nation, and then referred to the trials through which his disciples would pass.
Matt. 24: 9-12: “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”
A partial fulfilment of these predictions is recorded in the book of Acts. The apostles were cast into prison (Acts 5: 18); they were severely punished (verse 40); Stephen was stoned (chap. 7: 58, 59); James, the brother of John, was put to death, and Peter was again imprisoned (chap. 12: 2, 3); Paul was stoned (chap. 14: 19); others were exiled. Chap. 18: 2. From other sources we learn that the apostles, almost without exception, suffered martyrdom. The believers in the time of Nero endured almost indescribable persecution, and a very large number testified to the genuineness of their faith by suffering even unto death rather than to deny their Lord. As all nations acknowledged the rule of the Romans, and as the Romans would not tolerate the new religion, so all the nations united in persecuting the followers of the Nazarene.
The early Christians were not only exposed to the hatred of the pagans, but under the stress of the times they were betrayed by their own kinsmen and friends. To this Tacitus (Annal. I, 15) bears testimony: “At first several were seized, who confessed, and then by their discovery a great multitude of others were convicted and executed.”
The church maintained her original purity only a short time. The apostle Paul wrote of “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ” (2 Cor. 11: 13), and of “perils among false brethren.” Verse 26. He also specifically mentioned certain false teachers, such as “Hymeneus and Philetus; who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already.” 2 Tim. 2: 17, 18.
He wrote to the Galatian brethren concerning “false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage.” Gal. 2: 4. But above all, he declares that “the mystery of iniquity doth already work” (2 Thess. 2: 7), thus showing that the great apostasy which resulted in the full development of Antichrist had its beginning in his day.
In describing the experiences directly connected with the downfall of Jerusalem, Josephus writes:—
A false prophet was the occasion of this people’s destruction [in the burning of a temple cloister]: who had made a public proclamation in the city, that very day, that “God commanded them to get up upon the temple; and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.” Now there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who told them that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting; and that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes. . . . Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend, nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and which plainly foretold their future desolation.—“Wars of the Jews, Book 6, chap. 5, pars. 2, 3.”
The rejection of any Heaven-sent message, such as that of John the Baptist, inevitably brings the same result—abounding iniquity. Light refused becomes darkness. The rejection of divine leadership opens the way for satanic control. Under these circumstances professed believers are severely tried, and some become indifferent to the claims of truth. The love which appeared to be warm and full under favorable conditions, grows cold in the chilling atmosphere of iniquity. While many thousands were added to the church as the result of the pentecostal blessing, yet many afterward fell away when under the influence of prevailing evil or bitter persecution.
Verse 13: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
The fate of the Jewish nation, as such, was sealed on that day when Jesus rode into the city acclaimed by the people as “the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee,” but finally rejected by the chief priests and scribes. Then it was that Jesus wept over the city and proclaimed its fate:—
“If thou hadst known, even thou, atleast in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” Luke 19: 42-44.
From the hour when these words were spoken, there was no further hope of salvation for the nation as a whole, but saving mercy was still offered to those individuals who would prove faithful. The experience of the believing disciples was in perfect harmony with the promise of Jesus.
Verse 14: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
John the Baptist was the herald of the kingdom. Jesus himself “came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.” During the interval between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus spoke with his disciples “of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” The apostle Paul went among both the Jews and Greeks, “preaching the kingdom of God.” The very heart of the gospel of the kingdom as proclaimed to that generation was the testimony that the prophecies had been fulfilled, and that the Messiah had been manifested. This good news concerning the kingdom of God was to be made known to all men before the sentence of desolation pronounced upon Jerusalem and the chosen people would be carried into effect.
Speaking as representatives of the Jewish nation, “the chief priests and elders of the people” had assumed the responsibility for the sentence of death upon “Jesus which is called Christ,” saying, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” But in the face of this voluntary acceptance of the results of their course, divine mercy was extended, and the fullest opportunity for repentance was granted. As children are not held responsible for the sins of their fathers, so in the time intervening between the crucifixion and the end of the Jewish nation, the children having grown to years of understanding, were to hear the gospel of the kingdom, were to have presented to them the clear evidences concerning the coming of the Messiah, and were to be given the privilege of choosing whether they would reject him, and so perish in the overthrow of the city, or whether they would be delivered through their faith in the instruction which Jesus gave to his disciples.
Not only so, but the same testimony was to be borne to all nations, in order that the judgment of God upon those who had crucified the Messiah might be fully justified before all the world. Thus it will be made clear that the terrible calamities which befell the Jews were the result of their own course in rejecting him, the Great Deliverer.
There is unimpeachable testimony to show that the gospel of the kingdom was proclaimed in all the world before the end of the Jewish nation. Writing “to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse,” about six years before the downfall of the city, the apostle Paul spoke of the gospel “which is come unto you, as it is in all the world;” and in this same letter he refers to the gospel, “which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven.” Thus does history answer to the prophecy.
That the predictions of Jesus which had so clear a fulfilment in the time of the generation to which he was speaking are again fulfilled in this last generation is abundantly clear. As iniquity abounded then, so it does now. As the love of many waxed cold then, so it does now. As the gospel of the kingdom testifying to the first advent of Christ was preached in all the world for a witness in that generation, so in this generation the same gospel testifying to the nearness of the second advent is to be preached in all the world. As the giving of that world-wide message was the sign of the approaching end of the Jewish nation, so the giving of the world-wide message in this day is the sign of the approaching end of the world. As the words of Jesus did not fail in that generation, neither will they fail in this generation.

Editorial

By Editor

The Motive of Labor

WHEN the disciples urged Christ to partake of the food they had procured for him, he said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” They questioned if others had brought him food. He then made clearer to them his meaning: “My meat is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work.” Christ, while on earth, required food, the same as his disciples. But his temporal necessities were matters of secondary importance and consideration. They were a means to an end merely, not that for which he labored. His delight came not in the satisfaction of the appetite, or of any temporal or physical enjoyment, but in doing the will of his Father. Ps. 40: 8. The motive power behind his labor, the inspiration which moved him in his work, was love. This enabled him to brave the dangers of his mission, to bear its burdens, to endure its toils and privations. Some kind of motive power prompts all human effort. With some it is love, with others fear or selfishness. And the labor is gauged by this controlling principle, and life with its trials and perplexities is vitalized, and made beautiful, or it becomes a drudgery, a slavish, galling bondage and servitude. Christ operating in the experience can make life beautiful, because all service will be rendered as unto him, and love will make light the burdens, and sweet the bitter drafts, and put into the heart a song of praise and rejoicing. Then the disciple may say, as did the Master, “My meat is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work.”

Our Imperishable Inheritance

By C. M. S.

The Doom of the Disobedient

God said to man, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Satan said, “Ye shall not surely die: . . . ye shall be as God.” God is immortal—the only being who is. 1 Tim. 6:16. God was predicting death—mortality—for the disobedient. Satan was predicting for the disobedient the attribute of God himself—freedom from death, immortality.
God’s statement was plain both to Adam and to Satan. The penalty God pronounced meant for man dissolution, the cessation of life. When warning man of the penalty for disobedience, the Lord gave him no intimation of a deathless entity within the body structure, no intimation of an immortal soul in man; nor has he given such intimation to any who have lived since Adam. There is no word in the pronouncement of the penalty that would lead man to suppose that the curse pronounced meant an eternity in misery. There was much involved in man’s receiving at the outset of his career a perfect understanding of God’s purpose and of the consequences of disobedience as well as of obedience.
Therefore we should expect the Creator to use plain language at such a time if he was ever to use plain language at any time in communicating with man. “Ye shall surely die,” is plain language. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” is also plain language. A course in theology is not necessary in order to understand what it means. It meant corruption, dissolution, a return to the elements of which the being was composed, a cessation of being—in a word, death.
Man, at the moment when God thus addressed him, had life. The penalty for disobedience as God pronounced it, and as Adam and Eve understood it, was that they were to lose what they then had—life. Their condition after disobedience was to be the opposite of what it was before disobedience. There were two rewards before them. They could have only one. It was either obedience and life or disobedience and death. It would be accusing God of insincerity in the use of language to assert that when he said, “Ye shall surely die,” he meant, “Ye shall spend eternity in torment.” In that case, Satan would have told the truth, and could have proved it; for to be in torment throughout eternity would necessarily be to live throughout eternity, as Satan declared. It is contrary to all rules for judging the meaning of words to hold that while meaning life when he speaks of life, God also means life when he speaks of death, the difference being that in the first case God means life in happiness, and in the second case he means life in misery. To reason thus is to make language a medium for obscuring thought rather than for expressing thought.
We can not suppose that God uses the word death to mean one condition in one place and an entirely different condition in another place. Men, in attempting to deceive one another, have frequently juggled with words. We can not conceive of the Almighty doing so, especially when instructing his creatures with reference to the things of eternity. We must trust him to give us his meaning in the plainest language that it is possible for divinity to use in addressing humanity. As if to illustrate what the word to die means, the Creator declares that men would return to the dust whence they were taken. If a further divine comment or explanation of the word were needed, we have it later in these words: “The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything. . . . As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is perished long ago; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.”
... There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in sheol [the grave] whither thou goest.” Eccl. 9:5-10.
The being who knows “not anything,” whose love and hatred and envy are perished, who takes part in nothing that “is done under the sun,” and who is gone to a place where there is neither work, device, knowledge, nor wisdom, could hardly be enduring torture or experiencing the joys of eternal life in heaven. This text teaches that conscious existence entirely ceases the moment death claims any human being. Nevertheless, God has not forgotten them, and their record will endure until the final adjustment of rewards and punishments. Says the same writer: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Eccl. 12:13, 14.
And we have this further testimony concerning the condition of man in death: “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Ps. 146:4. Life and death do not reign in the same human tenement at the same time. When death enters, life departs. On the other hand, when the great resurrection morning comes, death is forced to give up its dominion over man, and life tenants again the form that once was man. So the redeemed can then sing: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Still further to teach that in death there is no continuance of conscious existence. Inspiration declares: “In death there is no remembrance of thee: in sheol [the grave] who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 6:5.
Though many other scriptures might be given whose import is the same as those here quoted, it is unnecessary to the argument. One statement of Inspiration upon any point makes the proof as strong as a hundred could make it. When Jehovah utters a truth, a thousand repetitions could not make it more true. So, from the scriptures cited there is no escaping the conclusion that the punishment pronounced upon man was a complete cessation of conscious existence. It was not continued existence with a change of environment, not immortality in misery, but death, the antithesis of life. The one gift that makes it possible to enjoy any other gift is life. By depriving man of that, God would sweep away all others in its train. So the loss of that gift of all gifts was to be the penalty for disobedience.
There were held before man two ways of achieving immortality. God did not deny to man the right to come to the tree of life and partake of its fruit. He had access to that tree before the fall, and if obedient, would have lived forever by virtue of partaking of the fruit of that tree, even if no pronouncement of immortality were ever made.
But it was in the purpose of God finally to make man immortal. This is shown in the fact that Christ, who came to “destroy the works of the devil” and to restore all things, has brought “life and immortality to light through the gospel.” When that work has been accomplished, and mortality has been “swallowed up of life,” God’s original purpose concerning man will have been wrought out. But when man sinned, the Creator took precautions to insure that man should not live forever. “And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever—therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.” Gen. 3:22, 23. Man’s continued existence was dependent upon his obedience. The Lord himself set before man that way of attaining to immortality.
The other way of attaining that attribute was set before man by the father of deception. It was to make immortal gods of men, and that through disobedience to the only One possessing immortality, and the only One who could confer it upon any. To the guileless pair in Eden the deceiver’s plan seemed the shorter and easier way. The promise was greater, and seemed nearer of fulfilment. The glamour of being gods outshone the quiet virtue of obedience. It was when called to account by his Creator, that man began to realize fully what his disobedience was to cost him and his posterity. It is summed up by Paul in these words: “As through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned.” Rom. 5:12. He found, as Inspiration later expresses it, that “the wages of sin is death.” Adam could then look down through the long history of this earth and see the swift reaping of Death’s sickle through succeeding generations. He had given up life for death, and in his punishment all his posterity must share.
Infidels have made much of “the injustice of the Creator” in pronouncing death upon Adam “for eating an apple.” To state the case in such a way is to show an utter blindness to every moral principle involved. In Adam’s course there was every element of anarchy. The law of the Ruler of the universe was set at naught, and the fallen angel, Satan, had brought under his power the one whom God had made the ruler of the earth. Heaven could not look with indifference upon such a condition.
When man disobeyed God, the earth, of which he was ruler, was in rebellion against the government of heaven. It was as if the governor of a state should refuse allegiance to the nation of which the state was a part. No nation could exist with its smaller divisions in rebellion against it. For God to permit man to go unpunished for his disobedience, would be to condone similar conditions in any part of the universe where they might arise, and finally to destroy all government in all parts of the universe, and bring ruin to all concerned. Can God consistently continue to give life to those who will use it in opposition to his purpose and contrary to their own best interests? To ask such a question is to answer it. God in his wisdom took the only course he could take and be just to all concerned. Therefore he gave the warning of death as the punishment for transgression, and carried the warning into execution when the transgression took place. “So death passed unto all men,” and to-day and every day we see carried out that divine mandate: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Mortality has become the heritage of men; but we are not left without hope. There is another Adam given to the race. “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:22. The doom of death rests heavily on the world, but a way has been found out of that prison-house, of which all may avail themselves who will.
C. M. S.

A General Council, or Conference

By W. A. S.

Gospel Order—No. 6

A General Council, or Conference

As churches increased, it was just as essential that they should keep in fellowship with one another as that individual members in the local church should be united as one body. Independent teachers had gone out from Jerusalem to the regions of Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, teaching contrary to the faith of the body. The need arose for the churches to deal with the matter, and it was arranged that representatives, or delegates, should be selected to attend a council, or conference, at Jerusalem. Just as soon as believers multiplied in various places, so that all could not meet together in one place, the plan of delegate assemblies was introduced.
The brief record of this conference is found in Acts 15. It is summarized in the following words of the spirit of prophecy:—
The council which decided this case was composed of the founders of the Jewish and Gentile Christian churches. Elders from Jerusalem, and deputies [delegates] from Antioch were present; and the most influential churches were represented. The council did not claim infallibility in their deliberations, but moved from the dictates of enlightened judgment, and with the dignity of achurch established by the divine will.—
“Life of Paul,” page 70.
Because it was an assembly engaged in God’s work, there was all the more reason that its business should be done “decently and in order.” Again the spirit of prophecy says:—
James presided at the council, and his final decision was, “Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God.”
This ended the discussion. In this instance we have a refutation of the doctrine held by the Roman Catholic Church—that Peter was the head of the church. Those who, as popes, have claimed to be his successors, have no foundation for their pretensions. Nothing in the life of Peter gives sanction to those pretended claims. If the professed successors of Peter had imitated his example, they would have taken no authoritative position, but one on an equality with that of their brethren.
James, in this instance, seems to have been chosen to decide the matter which was brought before the council.—Id., pages 68, 69.
Because James was chosen as presiding officer, he was no more head of the general church than the presiding officer or elder of the local body of believers is head of the local church. The responsibilities of office in the work of the church, whether local or general, are not laid upon men as conferring lordship or headship over any, but as appointments to special service and leadership in the common work of the church. Christ is the head of every man, and the head of every church; because he is the head of the whole church, which is his body. Thus the plan of representative, or delegate, meetings was inaugurated:—
The entire body of Christians were not called to vote upon the question. The apostles and elders—men of influence and judgment—framed and issued the decree, which was thereupon generally accepted by the Christian churches.—Id., page 70.
The decisions of the conference were published by letter, and authorized representatives were furnished with credentials from the body to carry the word to those churches which had been disturbed by the work of the independent and self-appointed teachers. As the spirit of prophecy says:—
The four servants of God were sent to Antioch with the epistle and message, which put an end to all controversy; for it was the voice of the highest authority upon earth.—Id., page 70.
Paul and Silas went among the churches in Syria and Cilicia:—
“And as they went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the truth, and increased in number daily.” Acts 16:4, 5.
Others who went out from the conference must have done similar work elsewhere, for at the council there had been recognition and agreement as to assignment of general fields of labor. In behalf of the council, James, Peter, and John, upon whom the Lord had laid special burden for the work among the Jewish people, had given the right hand of fellowship to the apostles commissioned of the Lord to oversee the work among the Gentile peoples to the northward. Gal. 2:9.
We have this inspired record of the first general council, or conference, showing the church in council to establish harmonious action and co-operation among all the churches; while the churches truly connected with Christ, the head, recognized the united decisions of the conference as of authority, under the word of God, in order that harmony and unity might prevail.
But already there were springing up in the church those who sought to bring in separation and error. Their spirit was one of independence and anarchy. These were not ready to accept the decision of the conference. As the spirit of prophecy says:—
All were not pleased, however, with this decision; there was a faction of false brethren who assumed to engage in a work on their own responsibility. They indulged in murmuring and fault-finding, proposing new plans, and seeking to pull down the work of the experienced men whom God ordained to teach the doctrine of Christ. The church has had such obstacles to meet from the first, and will ever have them to the close of time.—Id., page 71.
These were the elements that led the way toward apostasy and the papacy. The papacy did not spring from any excess of zeal or loyalty to gospel order and recognition of the rightful authority of the church. It sprang from opposition to order and organization. It is the spirit that must have its own way despite the counsels of the Lord and of the brethren. Against every such influence that made for separation and division the Spirit of God ceased not to bear earnest testimony through New Testament times.
W. A. S.
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