History

Global Trends from a Prophetic Perspective

by

At the writing of these words, the presidential election in the United States has already been decided. It is strongly felt that the history of this world has become more dynamic since that moment. The eschatological (end time) perspective has significantly accelerated. Certain historical events, viewed through an eschatological lens, can either speed up or slow down the passage of time. In this sense, time is not a constant but is subject to various changes. The history of this world demonstrates that geopolitical realities, which may appear utterly unshakable and eternal, often prove to be highly unstable, fragile, and susceptible to change. The dynamics of history can be surprising, though they tend to follow a fairly predictable mechanism of emergence, growth (expansion), disintegration, and decline—and occasionally, the rebirth—of states and civilizations. While geopolitical changes can occur relatively quickly, shifts in political systems within individual countries happen with even greater dynamism. The most dynamic, however, are changes in social sentiments.

In response to a specific crisis, public sentiment can transform at an extremely rapid pace, essentially overnight. The recent events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic are a perfect example of this. Crisis leads to change. A political-economic crisis triggers political-economic change. A religious crisis brings about religious change. Crises are naturally embedded in the stages of history. While not every change is preceded by a crisis, every crisis invariably leads to some form of change. I do not intend to turn a specific political event into a definitive turning point in world history. There have been many such turning points, and when connected, they form a line that, as defined by Jesus Christ, has a predetermined end. What matters is not the individual or event but the broader trajectory of the political and social change we are experiencing. This is not about sensationalism or media narratives and slogans but about seeing the bigger picture—assembling the puzzle pieces to understand the current political, social, and religious trends. Ultimately, these trends will lead to the breakdown of the wall separating church and state in the U.S., bringing us closer to fulfilling the role attributed to the United States in Revelation 13.

A Broader Perspective

Since the end of World War II, the world has operated under a bipolar system in which the United States led the “West” against the totalitarian Soviet empire. In 1980, the social movement “Solidarity” emerged in Poland, marking the beginning of the end of the communist system in Central and Eastern Europe. On February 6, 1989, negotiations began in Poland between the communists and representatives of Solidarity, which led to the end of the communist dictatorship in Poland just four months later.1

The fall of communism in Poland and the transition to a democratic and capitalist political system influenced the process of communism’s collapse across all of Central and Eastern Europe. However, few predicted that a power like the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia (USSR) would collapse under its own weight just three years later, on January 1, 1992, and become part of history.2 Thus, a new world order emerged, a new era in which the U.S. became the global hegemon—a political, military, and economic superpower.

The world entered a golden decade of Pax Americana, in which the U.S. displayed multilateral dominance in the global system, expanding American values of democracy and free markets. With the beginning of the new millennium, we can observe the rise of emerging powers—BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China)—and the relative decline of the West, including the U.S. Globalization and shaping a multipolar international order favor the rapidly developing China in its struggle for global primacy with the West. China is already an unquestionable economic and trade powerhouse, systematically modernizing and implementing new technologies while increasing its military potential. However, it is worth noting that China has only a potential perspective for growth toward a new role as a world leader. At the same time, the U.S. remains the only global superpower and intends to maintain this global primacy. Therefore, a confrontation between the U.S. and China is inevitable if it intends to halt China’s rise. However, some, such as Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, believe that “The Pax Americana will officially end on Jan. 20, 2025, when the U.S. inaugurates Donald J. Trump as its 47th president.”3

The position of the U.S. as the sole global superpower fits precisely into the Adventist scenario of the end times. Identifying the “beast from the earth,” resembling a lamb in Revelation 13, as the U.S. fulfills all the conditions that can only be realized by a power such as the United States. As the sole superpower, only this power can compel the world to accept the “mark of the beast.”4 This is confirmed by the language used in the brief description of the beast with the lamb-like horns. The Greek word poiei (“to make” or “to cause”) appears five times, which highlights its role as the global enforcer.5

The (Un)Holy Alliance

The overthrow of communism in Europe was achieved through the cooperation of the United States and the Vatican. The world learned of the secret alliance that was formed on June 7, 1982, thanks to the investigative journalism of Carl Bernstein that was published in Time magazine in February 1992. This cooperation resulted in burying communism, thus allowing the U.S. to achieve global political hegemony, while the Papacy emerged as the undisputed global moral authority.6 And so it happened! Communism fell, and from then on, in Eastern and Central Europe, the Catholic Church gained political influence that it had not held since the Middle Ages.

In the history of U.S. and Vatican relations, this was not the first meeting of heads of state. The first meeting between a U.S. president and the pope occurred in 1919. Many years later, in 1959, the second meeting occurred. The meeting between President John F. Kennedy and Pope Paul VI in 1963 sparked a cascade of meetings between American presidents and popes, with 29 such meetings by 2021. This shows a clear upward trend in the number of meetings, indicating the tightening cooperation between these two global players for the sake of common global interests.7

The Gulf. Does anyone still perceive a gulf?

The political cooperation between the U.S. and the Vatican, symbolized by the political alliance described in Time magazine, is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the powerful alliance between Protestants and Catholics, which today is essentially ready to fulfill its eschatological role. These two aspects of cooperation demonstrate the mutual understanding between Protestants and Catholics regarding the main directions of socio-political actions despite their theological differences. Even these theological differences no longer concerned Protestants once they understood the significance of the Reformation and the nature of Roman Catholicism.

Today, anti-Catholic sentiment has long ceased to be fashionable in Protestantism. Now, not only is the Roman Catholic Church respected and accepted by Protestants as one of the Christian Churches, but the current trend is such that many evangelical Christians are converting to Roman Catholicism. For young Protestants, the “move to papal Rome” has become fashionable because they want to belong to a church with ancient roots. At the same time, these young people often do not understand why the Reformation occurred.

An example of this trend is J.D. Vance’s abandonment of evangelical Christianity in favor of the Roman Catholic Church.8 Ellen White wrote long ago that there once existed an abyss between Protestants and Catholics, an abyss that no one questioned. However, she prophesied that Protestants would reach out across this gulf: “When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.”9 She also wrote: “There is an increasing indifference concerning the doctrines that separate the reformed churches from the papal hierarchy; the opinion is gaining ground that, after all, we do not differ so widely upon vital points as has been supposed … .”10

It’s interesting, then, what Protestants are saying today. Let’s take a look at the statement of Protestant theology professor Stanley Hauerwas: “… like many Protestants, I don’t see the gulf between us and our Catholic brothers and sisters as particularly pronounced. The separation I once saw as default now makes less sense to me.”11 He further argues: “Most of the reforms Protestants wanted Catholics to make have been made.”12 Really? Rome has not carried out any reforms of its false doctrines and dogmas that would address the issues raised by the Reformation. So why does a professor of theology such as Stanley Hauerwas claim this has happened? At the end of his article, Hauerwas shares a candid admission: “… a number of my Protestant graduate students have become Roman Catholics over the years. … They convert because Catholicism is an intellectually rich theological tradition better able to negotiate the acids of our culture. They also take seriously that Roman Catholicism represents a commitment to Christian unity toward non-Catholic Christians and between the poor and those who are not poor. I have watched these students join the Catholic Church over the years. They are not wrong. And yet, I remain a Protestant. It is hard for me to explain why that is.”13

If a Protestant theologian holds such views, imagine how the average Protestant perceives the Roman Catholic Church. Many evangelical Christians likely consider Catholics to be fellow Bible-believing Christians, or conversely, many evangelical Christians might actually consider themselves to be Catholics. Am I exaggerating? Unfortunately, this is the reality for many contemporary evangelical Christians in America. It has even reached the point where some Protestants openly proclaim that the Reformation is over.

At a conference of Pentecostal leaders associated with the ministry of Kenneth Copeland, which took place on January 21–23, 2014, Anglican Bishop Tony Palmer, referencing the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification issued by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, publicly declared that Luther’s protest is over. Palmer then asked, “If there is no more protest; how can there be a Protestant Church? Maybe now we’re all Catholics again.”14 This Anglican bishop and papal agent blatantly lied and manipulated the naive Pentecostals, who eagerly accepted every word of Palmer. After this statement, Palmer presented a short video message from Pope Francis, expressing his “longing” for the end of the division between Catholics and other Christians. The entire performance concluded with the Pentecostal leaders receiving the Pope’s blessing, after which they prayed for him, blessed him, and recorded their message for him on their smartphones.

The Reformation is still alive

This segment of evangelical and Pentecostal Christians, who desire so much to return to Rome, fails to understand that rejecting the Reformation means restoring totalitarian power to the Roman Church, which will lead once again to the persecution of those who stubbornly hold to their Biblical beliefs that oppose Catholic dogma. “The theological differences between Catholics and Protestants were once so great that millions preferred to die rather than compromise with Rome. Even the inquisitors were so convinced of the importance of these differences that they tortured and killed those with differing beliefs. The fact is that the doctrine of the Roman Church has not changed since the time of the Reformation. What has changed is the Protestants.”15

As long as the papacy continues to teach its false, unbiblical doctrines, the Reformation will remain alive in those Protestant churches that stay faithful to God’s word. As long as the principles of the Reformation remain alive in the hearts of every true Christian, we can be confident that the system foretold in Revelation chapter 13 will not arise.

Contemporary Protestant Fundamentalism

The neo-Marxist cultural revolution is destroying the principles, laws, and values of Western civilization. Developed over centuries, it also poses a threat to freedom of conscience. This left-wing progressivism manifested in censorship, climate hysteria, gender ideology, and LGBT+ issues, as well as the mutilation and manipulation of children through gender transition, leads to the point where conservative Christian churches are unwilling to passively observe the moral decay of society, especially as they begin to lose followers.16

Conservative Protestant churches in America have allied with conservative Catholics to counteract these unfavorable cultural changes. However, this action is not based on preaching the gospel but on organized efforts to influence politics and the government to implement policies that will halt the moral decline of the American nation.17 Thus, in the 1970s, the religious right was born, with the primary goal of restoring Christian America through influencing American politics and government. Politically-engaged conservative Christians aimed to elect conservative activists and politicians at all decision-making levels, influence legislation, and appoint judges to the Supreme Court who would share their views. Restoring Christian America for Protestant fundamentalists meant dismantling the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state. This would allow for legal, social, and moral changes through the political leaders they selected. “Unfortunately, while the religious right takes an undeniably positive stance on moral issues, the situation is different when it comes to personal liberty and religious freedom. The Adventist scenario of recent events, clearly described in the book The Great Controversy, can only unfold if the United States rejects the principles of the separation of church and state, as laid out in the First Amendment to the Constitution, principles to which the religious right has openly declared war.”18

There is something in the psyche of Seventh-day Adventists that causes us to react when someone tries to undermine the importance of the separation of church and state. This is not only due to our understanding of the prophetic role of the U.S. in an eschatological perspective, but also because history has shown that wherever the separation of church and state is lacking, discrimination against nonconformists and, ultimately, persecution of religious minorities occurs. This has always been the case in history. That is why John Locke wrote: “… so that neither one party may disguise their persecution and cruelty, contrary to the spirit of Christianity, under the guise of concern for the state and respect for the law, nor that others may seek to cover up their own immoral behavior and lawlessness under the pretext of religion—in short, so that no one may deceive themselves or others by pretending to be a faithful subject of the ruler or a sincere worshiper of God—I believe that, first and foremost, a separation between the affairs of the state and the affairs of religion must be made, and the boundaries between church and state must be justly defined. If this separation is not achieved, no dispute will ever come to an end—disputes between those who genuinely care for the welfare of souls or the state, or those who merely pretend to care.”19 Unfortunately, the religious right in the United States either does not understand this or, worse, refuses to understand it. From the Pharisees to today’s religious right, fundamentalists have always had good intentions but misguided zeal. Unable to draw people toward their religion through love and logic, they resort to wielding the secular sword.20 In the next article, we will look at selected examples from history to see what the lack of separation between church and state leads to.

Marcin Watras lives in Katowice, Poland. He is interested in the philosophy of religion and trends in society. He works for the European Union.

Endnotes:

  1. “1989. Czas, w którym wygasała czerwień”, January 31, 2019, https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/1989-czas-w-ktorym-wygasala-czerwien, accessibility: 05.11.2024
  2. “Upadek ZSRR: Koniec imperium zła”, November 24, 2018, https://historia.rp.pl/historia/art9546571-upadek-zsrr-koniec-imperium-zla, accessibility: 05.11.2024
  3. Ivo Daalder, “The end of Pax Americana”, Politico, November 8, 2024, politico.eu/article/pax-america-donald-trump-us-elections-president-reelection-deport/, accessibility: 10.11.2024
  4. Clifford Goldstein, Dzień smoka, publishing house “Znaki Czasu”, Warszawa 1996, p. 22
  5. Jonatan Dunkel, Apokalipsa, publishing house Orion plus 2001, p. 85
  6. Carl Bernstein, “The Holy Alliance: Ronald Reagan and John Paul II”, Time, February 24, 1992, https://time.com/archive/6719650/the-holy-alliance-ronald-reagan-and-john-paul-ii/, accessibility: 11.11.2024
  7. Papieskie audiencje dla prezydentów USA, November 29, 2021, ekai.pl/papieskie-audiencje-dla-prezydentow-usa/, accessibility: 11.11.2024
  8. youtube.com/watch?v=fVHdhnfVldE&t=1s
  9. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, p. 451
  10. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 563
  11. Stanley Hauerwas, “The Reformation is over. Protestants won. So why are we still here?”, The Washington Post, October 27, 2017, washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-reformation-is-over-protestants-won-so-why-are-we-still-here/2017/10/26/71a2ad02-b831-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html, accessibility: 12.11.2024
  12. Ibid.
  13. Ibid.
  14. youtube.com/watch?v=fxup_QnfSHg
  15. Jonatan Dunkel, Apokalipsa, publishing house Orion plus 2001, p. 103
  16. America’s Changing Religious Landscape, report Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/, accessibility: 17.11.2024
  17. Jonatan Dunkel, Apokalipsa, publishing house Orion plus 2001, p. 88
  18. Clifford Goldstein, Dzień smoka, publishing house “Znaki Czasu”, Warszawa 1996, p. 46
  19. John Locke, List o tolerancji, publishing house PWN, Warszawa 1963, p. 7
  20. Jonatan Dunkel, Apokalipsa, publishing house Orion plus 2001, p. 87

Guards on the Wall

by

I have often wondered how the prophecies of the book of Revelation concerning the establishment of a global political, economic, and religious system might be fulfilled. More specifically, I continue to ponder how the wall separating church and state will be demolished in the Western world. The destruction of this wall and this great separation is necessary for realizing all the components of the totalitarian system described in the book of Revelation. What must happen for this to come about? After all, we live in an era of secularism, humanism, human rights, and liberal democracy. It seems unthinkable.

The origins of the idea of the great separation

The idea of the separation of church and state is not accepted worldwide. There are countries where this idea is entirely foreign and hostile, as their political systems are based on the integration of state and religion into a single entity. But is this idea of separation self-evident for the Western world, something the West has always nurtured and acknowledged? The answer is no; separation was not always self-evident (although we have become so accustomed to it that we sometimes fail to see how unconventional it is).

The idea of separation took root in the 16th century within the radical branch of the Protestant Reformation known as Anabaptism. It was then formulated in the next century into concrete constitutional solutions proposed and implemented by figures such as William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Penn, fascinated from a young age by Quaker doctrine, aimed to establish Pennsylvania as an official Quaker colony, respecting the fundamental Quaker principle of religious freedom. This principle was enshrined in the first constitutional document (Frame of Government) and applied to all who believed in one God. In this way, Penn was ahead of his time, a precursor of religious freedom in America, which only truly triumphed after the War of Independence in 1776.1 Pastor Roger Williams also wholly rejected the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts, eventually founding the colony of Rhode Island. This colony was the first in modern times to completely separate church and state under the principle that the government cannot compel anyone to adhere to any particular religious beliefs or practices. Williams became a leading figure in the tradition of state neutrality concerning religion and political liberalism in America. He was also one of the few colonists who vocally protested against the extermination of Native Americans.2

The sphere of faith and state coercion

John Locke, the English political philosopher, developed the concept of the separation of church and state in his work titled A Letter Concerning Toleration, in which he presented the justification for the doctrine that the state should not interfere in religious life and should guarantee religious freedom. Locke argues that tolerance is the criterion of the “true church.” God did not grant people the right to compel others to accept their own religion. The realm of faith lies beyond the reach of state power, and the responsibility for seeking the best path to salvation should rest with the individual. The separation of religion from politics simultaneously presupposes the existence of religious freedom and freedom of conscience within the state. However, according to Locke, religious tolerance has its limits. It does not extend to those who claim privileges that exempt them from obeying state law, nor to those who are unwilling to tolerate others with different beliefs, nor to a church whose faith requires obedience to a foreign ruler, which includes not only Muslim communities but also, notably, the Roman Catholic Church.3

Tolerance

There can be no doubt that the idea of ​​religious freedom formulated by Penn, Williams, and Locke is one of the most important values ​​defining the identity of countries belonging to the circle of Western culture. For liberal thought, “… the starting point … was the fight for religious freedom, i.e., freedom of conscience, which logically led into the fight for complete freedom of thought and speech.”4 John Locke breaks with the traditional understanding of tolerance as disapproval of the tolerated behavior. In the traditional sense, tolerance was not a value or a virtue; it was an attitude adopted for social reasons. Tolerance involved patiently enduring behavior considered wrong in order to maintain social peace. We also read in A Letter Concerning Toleration that Locke departed from this understanding. He elevated tolerance to the status of a civic virtue, a foundation of modern society. For Locke, tolerance is a natural consequence of the Christian attitude of love for one’s neighbor. It is the result of separating the secular and spiritual spheres.5 Let us therefore summarize: the world before the idea of ​​separation of church and state was formulated and implemented by radical Protestant thinkers in the 17th century was a world in which the unity of religion and state was the foundation of the political system. Starting with the builders of the first civilizations, through the period of the Papacy in medieval Europe, until modern times, people have known no other political order except this union of church and state.

Polish experiment

In my view, an exceptionally interesting case is the history of the idea of tolerance in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which since 1569, was a federal state composed of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—the former Poland. While in Western Europe during the 16th century people were killing each other in the name of God, a remarkable event occurred in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1573, the Polish parliament enacted a pioneering document in European history—the Warsaw Confederation, which was a document guaranteeing religious freedom in the Commonwealth. Poland thus became a safe haven for all those persecuted for their faith.6 Everything changed in Poland when the wars of the 17th century between Protestant Sweden, Orthodox Russia, and Muslim Turkey (the Ottoman Empire), as well as the Counter-Reformation led by the Jesuits, ended religious tolerance in Poland. The once-established religious freedom in a state is not something guaranteed and can unfortunately prove very fragile, as evidenced in Poland during the 16th and 17th centuries. Today, Poland’s Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state; however, the Catholic Church has a significant influence on state politics, which in practice means that the constitutional separation of church and state is often questioned.

An idea materialized in reality

The practical realization of the idea of the separation of church and state began with the Constitution of the United States of America, specifically the First Amendment of 1791, which stipulated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” From the provisions of the First Amendment, two clauses concerning religious freedom are derived: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The first emphasizes the neutral character of the state, thus necessitating the separation of church and state and the prohibition of establishing any religion as the official one. The second clause underscores the rights of all religious groups to freely practice their religion within the United States and prohibits the authorities from any interference in their doctrine or worship.7 According to Mark Noll, an American historian specializing in the history of Christianity in the United States, “From the perspective of European Christians, the American experiment in establishing the separation of church and state was doomed to failure, as nothing similar had been attempted in European history before.”8 However, it was indeed the United States that set the direction for other countries. In Europe, revolutionary France introduced legislation regulating the separation of church and state in 1795, and later other countries followed suit. Today, the principle of the “great separation” is the dominant solution in democratic states, essentially in most countries around the world—at least formally.

Sixteen words

As Clifford Goldstein once observed: “We may think that the Constitution clearly and specifically defines our religious freedoms. Not quite. The basis for these assurances for a nation of two hundred fifty million citizens with hundreds of different denominations is found in just sixteen English words: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ ”9

Religious diversity in the United States

The ideas of religious freedom and pluralism enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution have allowed the development of a society with extraordinary religious diversity. A 2008 analysis of the religious composition of U.S. citizens reveals the presence of adherents to virtually all religions in the world. The largest group is Christians, constituting 78.4% of the population, with Protestants comprising 51.3%.10 This study shows that American society remains predominantly shaped by Protestant tradition, which influences American political culture. The principles of religious freedom and the separation of church and state are indeed owed to Protestant thought and Enlightenment ideals. If Protestants, who uphold the legacy of William Penn, Roger Williams, and John Locke, guard religious freedom in the U.S., the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution will be preserved. However, if Protestantism in the U.S. turns against the principles of religious freedom, embracing the legacy of Puritan theocracy, then religious freedoms will be trampled upon and constitutional guarantees nullified. In that case, the United States will speak with the dragon’s voice.

Fragile matter

The separation of church and state is the foundation of freedom and tolerance in every country where such freedom exists. The United States currently protects religious liberty and the separation of church and state. However, according to the prophecy of Revelation 13, she will lead the world into religious deception, creating the “image of the beast,” a global religious-economic-political system. It is regrettable that this country, where millions of people have found refuge from war and persecution, religious freedom, and prosperity, will become a country that will trample on religious and civil liberties and force obedience to religious commands. The U.S. will become a tyrant. The lamb will become a beast and speak with the dragon’s voice.

Does anyone in the U.S. speak the dragon’s language? Yes, there are Protestant and Catholic fundamentalists who believe in the idea of ​​a Christian America, who would replace Jefferson’s wall of separation of state and religion. Fundamentalists see the American state as politically and economically weak, with unjust laws and demoralized customs, for which fundamentalists blame the principles of secularism, rationalism, religious tolerance, liberal pluralism, and individualism. They are convinced that the changes will be achieved with the help of their elected political leaders who will make the legal, social, and moral changes they want.11 Ellen White warns of such a scenario: “When the leading churches of the United States, uniting upon such points of doctrine as are held by them in common, shall influence the state to enforce their decrees and to sustain their institutions, then Protestant America will have formed an image of the Roman hierarchy, and the infliction of civil penalties upon dissenters will inevitably result.”12 The religious right in the U.S. persistently and consistently strives to realize the “image of the beast,” and one dreadful day, according to Bible prophecy, it will eventually succeed in its efforts.

A thin veil

What surrounds us—the entire structure of our political, social, and religious reality—seems remarkably stable, predictable, obvious, and routine. We can feel calm and secure. We enjoy religious freedom—freedom of conscience, speech, and the press. All these wonderful, hard-won freedoms and civil rights are part of our everyday life. We benefit from the prosperity and liberty of the Western world. We observe and experience this serene social and political reality as if we were strolling down the street in an American town, enjoying the sight of white houses, neatly trimmed green lawns, flowers in gardens, and the gentle breeze swaying the American flag at each home. Yet behind this sleepy, blissful everyday life lurks a shadow, a sinister darkness, a sense of dread and fear. We suspect that within the structure of this cheerful daily reality lies a crack, a glimpse of something else. Instinctively, we might sense a lurking, hostile, and terrifying alternative reality. The veil separating these two realities—one real, the other potential—seems incredibly delicate and fragile. Behind the orderly routine of our liberal democratic world lies a demonic darkness of political theology, the union of religion and state, religious despotism, and religious persecution.

The nature of the human mind

In his book Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion, Mircea Eliade, the Romanian religious historian, argues that the religious sphere is primordial compared to the secular world. According to Eliade, humans are inherently spiritual beings. Religion represents the most profound expression of the human mind. People are naturally open to the religious sphere, as the human mind is fundamentally oriented towards what is sacred and transcendent, which it can revere. Thus, from the dawn of history, humans have been religious beings and have remained so—often unconsciously—up to the present day.

Although many people in Europe and the Western world live in a desacralized and highly secularized world, stripped of religious feelings, they remain religious at a profound level of their minds because humans are intrinsically religious beings. This means that such individuals have a deeply rooted potential to reclaim a religious experience of life.13 If this is the case, then religious individuals who interpret their faith in a legalistic manner will be inclined to impose their religious truths on others. In legalistic religions, there is a significant potential for authoritarianism and despotism, especially towards other religious adherents and those who follow different religious doctrines. Furthermore, religious but sinful human nature often seeks to impose its will and authority upon others.

The illusion of stability

Political theology is the concept of viewing politics as a sphere of social life regulated by religion. Mark Lilla, an American philosopher, highlights that political theology represents a primordial form of human thought, serving for millennia as a deep well from which ideas and symbols were drawn to organize social life and inspire actions both good and evil. However, due to intellectual complacency, there has been a neglect in recognizing that political theology has not vanished and still possesses the ability to shape human thought and life. In the era of the “great separation,” which began roughly four hundred years ago, Western civilization represents an anomaly. What started as a thought experiment evolved into a practical experience within the societies from which we inherit our values. The experiment continues, yet, increasingly, people in the West forget why separation of church and state was initiated in the first place and what challenge it was originally meant to address. Meanwhile, that challenge has never ceased to exist. This mental fragility is disconcerting; hence, our world of liberal democracy and religious tolerance remains precarious. Concepts such as modernization, secularization, democratization, and others function as the fairy tales of our times. They provide people in the West with the illusion that they are safe. These concepts serve in our culture the same role that fairy tales do: they make the world comprehensible, reassure us of the irreversibility of ongoing processes, and absolve us from responsibility for maintaining the world in its current form.14

Conclusions and perspectives

If sinful human nature is essentially religious and if man’s eternal thinking about politics is political theology, then we can better understand how in a world where liberal democracy prevails and societies are very secularized, civil rights and religious freedoms are universally recognized—there will be the emergence of an oppressive religious-political-economic system. A dark night is coming for the world. A great crisis is coming, which will allow the demons of theocracy and religious persecution to once again take over human minds and entire societies. I wrote that the United States was the first to establish the constitutional separation of church and state, setting the course for other countries that followed. Unfortunately, in the times just before the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, “America, the land of religious liberty, shall unite with the papacy in forcing the conscience and compelling men to honor the false sabbath, the people of every country on the globe will be led to follow her example.”15 However, as long as the wall separating the church from the state stands, we have an obligation to guard it to the very end, praying to the Lord for grace and defending the principles of freedom in speech, acting against hostile forces seeking to introduce, through state-sanctioned and/or state-instigated violence, a new social order based on “religious” doctrines.

Endnotes:

  1. A. Noll, Protestantyzm, publishing house Łódz University 2017, p. 58
  2. Ibiden, p. 60
  3. Tomaszewska, Bóg i religia w filozofii Johna Locke’a, published 29 August 2022, https://teologiapolityczna.pl/anna-tomaszewska-bog-i-religia-w-filozofii-johna-lockea, accessibility: 15.07.2024
  4. Walicki, Nieporozumienia wokół liberalizmu, “Przegląd polityczny”, no. 109/110, Gdańsk 2011, p. 25
  5. Drelich, List o tolerancji o kilku ograniczeniach zasady tolerancji, http://liberte.pl/list-o-tolerancji-o-kilku-ograniczeniach-zasady-tolerancji, accessibility: 05.07.2012
  6. Szczepańska, Taka tolerancja religijna istniała tylko w Polsce. Dzieje konfederacji warszawskiej, published 28 January 2024, https://historia.dorzeczy.pl/nowozytnosc/543291/konfederacja-warszawska-taka-tolerancja-religijna-byla-tylko-w-polsce.html, accessibility: 17.07.2024
  7. Pomarański, Współczesny amerykański fundamentalizm protestancki, publishing house UMCS, pp. 73, 74
  8. A. Noll, Protestantyzm, publishing house Łódz University 2017, p. 70
  9. Goldstein, Dzień smoka, publishing house Znaki Czasu, Warszawa 1996, p. 63
  10. S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation, report Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2008/02/01/u-s-religious-landscape-survey-religious-affiliation/, accessibility: 18.07.2024
  11. Pomarański, Współczesny amerykański fundamentalizm protestancki, publishing house UMCS, pp. 14, 15
  12. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 445.1
  13. Eliade, Sacrum a profanum. O istocie sfery religijnej, publishing house Aletheia 2022, p. 221
  14. Lilla, Bezsilny Bóg – religia, polityka i nowoczesny Zachód, publishing house W.A.B. 2009, pp. 9-12
  15. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, p. 18.2

Marcin Watras lives in Katowice, Poland. He is interested in the philosophy of religion and trends in society. He works for the European Union.

The Calvinist Reformation

by

We know that thanks to the Reformation, Christianity changed irreversibly and thus also man’s religious and spiritual understanding of God.

Sola Scriptura

Thanks to the Reformation, the Bible as God’s word gained its due authority as the only rule of Christian faith and practice of Christianity.

Sola Gratia

It was the Reformation that showed us that the way to man’s salvation was not through religious rituals, sacraments, or works, but only through the grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus.

Sola Fide

God’s grace alone is the basis for a sinner’s justification, and that only through faith.

Solus Christus

In reading the Bible, the Christian reformers discovered the hidden truth that it is not the Catholic church and its saints who mediate our salvation, but that Jesus Christ alone, being both God and man, is the only One who can reconcile us with God and thus save us.

Relationship with Jesus

Freedom and forgiveness is in Christ. For free. All I need is to come to Christ and entrust my life to Him. It is very personal, but this is Christianity. Thanks to the Reformation, we understand that Christianity is inherently a personal confession. Christianity based on the Bible must always be an individual, personal relationship with God. Since we are the subject of God’s grace, we have incredible value as individuals. The Reformation therefore also restored individual human dignity.

The Impact on the World

It is worth noting that the Reformation also had an equally significant impact in the political, socio-economic, and civilizational dimensions. If philosophers influence the world, it seems that it is all the more true of religious ideas and especially of the Reformation. In this sense we can say that the Reformation became the antithesis of the previous world order, leading to an irreversible change in the world. From this point on, we can observe the development of two distinct models of societies in the Western world—the Roman civilization model and the Protestant civilization model. Living in one of these societies, belonging to one or the other circle of civilization, it can be difficult to see on how many levels these social models differ in their assumptions. This is all the more difficult since both these models belong to the broader Euro-Atlantic civilization.

Corruption

Transparency International has published the Corruption Perceptions Index 2021, which measures the level of perceived corruption in the public sector in 180 countries. Research conducted since 1995 has consistently shown the regularity that countries that were directly or indirectly influenced by the Reformation are the least susceptible to corruption. The same cannot be said of Catholic countries, which show greater susceptibility to corruption. A patient going to a doctor in Denmark or Switzerland is unlikely to think about giving the doctor a bribe, while in countries low on the Corruption Perceptions Index it is much more likely.

Human Dignity and Worth

One of the characteristics of Protestant religiosity is the social valuing of the individual and the primacy of the individual over the collective. This approach to the individual is something that distinguishes the West from all other civilizations and cultures. In the rest of the world, the collective is always more important than the individual. Whether we are talking about Russia (especially in the context of Russia’s bandit attack on Ukraine), China, or Muslim countries, where the value of a single human life is practically none.

The Social Thought of Calvinism

The driving force behind the Reformation’s efforts to change social relations was the Reformed theology, whose founder was John Calvin. It is John Calvin more than Martin Luther whom we recognize as the real father of modern civilization. This may sound paradoxical, but it is the Reformers, as men full of passion for God and the gospel, who became the founders of the modern world more than the atheistic philosophers of the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that Reformed theology was written by people who were not free from their sinful nature. Therefore, one can find tendencies in Calvinism that are anti-liberal. As John Witte accurately notes, Calvinism became the leading force in the drafting of many important constitutional acts, which gradually expanded the Western system of human rights in the modern era.

Law, Democracy, Freedom

John Calvin transformed the church by combining three principles: the rule of law, democracy, and spiritual freedom.

The Rule of Law

Calvin drafted laws that defined the church’s teaching and rules of discipline, the rights and duties of officials and believers. These were intended to protect the church from interference from the outside as well as from within. In addition, the introduction of new laws was accompanied by public discussion.

Democracy

Calvin ended the hierarchical church based on the feudal power of the clergy. Church officials were to be elected by the congregation, and delegates to church synods were appointed by their members.

Freedom

Every believer should be free to join or leave a church, to practice his or her faith without compulsion, to assemble, or to act freely in matters of faith left to the judgment of the individual. This meant mutual respect for each other’s freedom.

Calvin’s brilliant integration of these three principles allowed the church to achieve a constant balance between law and liberty, structure and spirit, order and innovation, doctrine and the sphere of freedom in faith.

Political Practice

The adoption of these principles became possible in those countries influenced by the reformed theology. The theories and practice of the first Calvinist congregations would in fact become the foundation for liberal political ideas such as individualism, egalitarianism, and democratism, which together will form republicanism—seeing the state as a common good for all inhabitants. For example, in Switzerland, if you park your car at the wrong place, the helpful citizens, aware of the rules they have worked out and the institutions they have created, will call to the police to make you understand the common good of all inhabitants.

Human Rights

It is evident that society has also been irreversibly changed by the Reformation because man’s view of others and of himself has changed. The history of human rights did not begin in the minds of the secularized eighteenth-century philosophers of the Enlightenment. The foundations of human rights owe much to the bearded Calvinist thinkers. Human rights, grounded in and derived from the decalogue, were respected in early Protestantism before it became fashionable in the Age of Enlightenment and liberalism.

The biblical formulas of rights spread and continued to be spread among all factions of the Reformation.

Catholic and Protestant Approaches to Human Rights

It is not hard to guess that the approach to human rights in Catholicism is different than in Protestantism. This can also be seen in the approach to political liberalism. Human rights are its component. Liberalism is derived from the ideas of the Calvinist Reformation. The different attitude of the Roman church towards human rights and liberal values is not dictated only by the natural historical opposition to the Reformation. It is, of course, about the very nature of Catholicism, which by definition rejects liberal ideas such as individualism, egalitarianism, and democratism because the Roman church is inherently collectivist, hierarchical, and undemocratic.

Separation of Church and State

Freedom of conscience, pluralism of beliefs, religious tolerance—these values are principles of the separation of church and state and are the fundamental political principles of political liberalism. This meant that the traditional Catholic teaching on the primacy of the church over the secular order was finally overthrown, at least in those countries that embraced the Reformation. Hence, the critical attitude of the Catholic church towards liberalism, described as the “civilization of death,” is not surprising.

The Image of the Beast

The papacy does not change. Wherever the Roman church has the upper hand and the constitution does not guarantee the separation of church and state, as in some Latin countries, there is also persecution of Christian minorities. In this context, it is extremely sad that in the United States, the Protestant religious right is striving to tear down the wall separating the sphere of religion from the state. Where there is no separation of church and state, there is always persecution of those who think differently. The book of Revelation calls the system the image of the beast (Revelation. 13:14, 15). By allusions to the medieval order of things, where power was at the service of the church, the clergy manipulated the majority, and minorities were oppressed.

Capitalist Economy = Protestant Economy?

What about the economy? Was this sphere of society also transformed by the ideas of the Reformation? The answer is a firm yes. Ideas are contagious and can spread very quickly, changing reality.

Coca-Cola is just a drink, but thanks to the idea of freedom it contains (due to marketing) it is much more than that. How did the Reformation influence the economic system in Europe and the United States? What ideas of the Reformation led to the birth of capitalism? The answer was given by a famous German sociologist Max Weber in his work entitled “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Weber does not claim that Protestantism created modern capitalism, but it was Protestantism that created the conditions for the transformation of economic relations in Europe. Protestantism gave birth to these new ideas:

  1. Free labor (as opposed to slavery)
  2. Saving and investing
  3. Activity and entrepreneurship
  4. Work as a vocation

Consequently, countries that were influenced by Protestantism rank today as the world’s richest and most developed.

The Evolution of the Spirit of Capitalism

Since Weber’s time, the spirit of capitalism has evolved and the ascetic ethic has been replaced by unbridled consumerism. However, the changes in capitalism are as natural as the fact that the church, according to Calvin’s desire, was to be a constantly reforming church, per the thesis: Ecclesia Reformata et Semper Reformanda. In the context of the transformation of the economy by Protestantism, one can see a measurable difference between the countries of Roman civilization and the countries of Protestant civilization—check the rankings of the richest countries in the world! Yes, capitalism has its flaws, especially when it is reduced to the mechanisms of an economic system without Protestant ethics or any ethics at all. Nevertheless, it is within capitalist economies with a balanced social policy where it’s possible for the standard of living to rise for all.

The Counter-Reformation and the Plans of the Papacy

It should come as no surprise that the Catholic church, with its program of the Counter-Reformation, seeks the removal of all that the world owes to the Reformation. This includes the social and economic system that emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Just as the Reformation is not over and is still ongoing, the Counter-Reformation is also ongoing.

During a speech in Asuncion, Paraguay, the pope called on world leaders to change the global economic order. Pope Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, wrote: “There is an urgent need for a true world political authority—already spoken of by my predecessor, Blessed John XXIII—to govern the world economy. The integral development of nations and cooperation require the establishment of a higher-level international order based on the principle of subsidiarity to manage globalization.”

Gratitude and Hope

We owe much to the Protestant Reformation. And we owe it all to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The heritage of the Reformation is still alive in the minds and hearts of men and women, in their religious and social lives. As long as the ideas of the Reformation are alive in their bearers, we can be sure that the system foretold in Revelation will not arise.

References:

1  www.transparency.org/cpi/2021, accessibility: 22.02.2012

2  T. Zieliński, http://protestantyzm.media.pl/1-2.php, accessibility: 23.06.2012

3  J. Witte, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism, p. 3.

4  Ibidem, pp. 5–7.

5  Ibidem, p. 33.

6  P. Łyżwa, Ideologia, doktryny i ruch współczesnego liberalizmu, pp. 86, 87.

7  J. Dunkel, Apokalipsa, p. 104.

8  P. Pullella, D. Desantis, www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-latam-paraguay-idUSKCN0PL0Q420150712, accessibility: 22.02.2022

9  www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html, accessibility: 14.03.2022

Marcin Watras lives in Katowice, Poland. He is a Bible student, especially knowledgeable in the Protestant Reformation.

A New Day Dawns

by

On the banks of the old Erie Canal was situated the town of Port Gibson, New York. A mile south of town lay the farm of Hiram Edson. He was the leader of the advent believers in that community and they often met in his house when the district schoolhouse was not available.

Dr. Franklin B. Hahn, a physician living nearby, was another prominent member of the Adventist company in that area. A third influential member was Owen R. L. Crosier, an orphan youth that had become a keen Bible student and promising writer. Edson and Hahn had befriended him and provided him with a home.

These three men joined together and published a paper called the Day-Dawn. It was one of a number of Adventist journals that were published following the Disappointment. Crosier served as editor of the paper.

Like thousands of other Adventist groups scattered over the land, those in Port Gibson met on October 22, 1844, to wait for the expected return of Christ. Edson invited the people to come to that last meeting, and said good-by to those who refused, expecting to never see them again.

The believers “reviewed the evidences, and lived in hope as the hours passed slowly away. Spalding phrases it impressively: ‘Would it be in the morning? The frost of the dawn melted under the rising sun. Might it be at noon? The meridian was reached and the sun began to decline. Surely the evening! But the shades of night fell lowering. Still there was hope:’ ‘For ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning.’

“The neighborhood company of believers expected to meet their Lord at any moment. Says Edson: ‘We looked for our coming Lord until the clock tolled twelve at midnight. The day had then passed, and our disappointment became a certainty. Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted.’” The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 878, 879.

At the dawning of October 23 many of the believers returned to their homes. Edson suggested, to those that remained, that they go into the barn and pray. There they poured out their souls to God in earnest prayer that He would not desert them and would shed light as to what to do next. Finally the conviction came that their prayers had been heard and accepted and that light would be given explaining the Disappointment. Edson was reassured that there is a God and that His word is sure. God had blessed them abundantly in their advent experience, and He would make known to them the nature of their mistake and reveal His plan. Edson said that the cause of their perplexity would be made plain as day. He further encouraged the believers to have faith in God.

After breakfast, Edson suggested to Crosier that they should go and reassure the other believers of God’s promise to guide them through this crisis. To avoid meeting people on the way Edson thought it would be wise to not travel on the roads but to go cross-country instead.

As they walked along silently, suddenly Edson stopped and in deep meditation he looked to the skies overhead and prayed for light. He pondered the Biblical evidence of Christ’s ministration, in the sanctuary in heaven, on the anti-typical Day of Atonement. Suddenly he realized that there were two phases to Christ’s ministry in heaven as there had been in the earthly sanctuary of Old Testament times. “In his own words, an overwhelming conviction came over him—

‘That instead of our High Priest coming out of the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at the end of the 2300 days, He for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary and that He had a work to perform in the Most Holy before coming to this earth.’” Ibid., 881.

Thus the light shown on the confusion over the Disappointment and revealed that the sanctuary to be cleansed was that in heaven and not the earth. This came to Edson as a new idea and a wondrous discovery. It was the answer to the prayer he and Crosier had made that morning. He saw how Christ, the Bridegroom, went at that time to the Ancient of days to receive dominion, glory and a kingdom; and that we are to wait for Him to return from the wedding.

Edson stated, “My mind was directed to the tenth chapter of Revelation where I could see the vision had spoken and did not lie.” Ibid., 883. This chapter reveals the symbol of the sweet followed by the bitter book. The experience of the advent believers had surely been sweet in the beginning but had become as gall following the day of disappointment. The prophecy indicated that they were to testify again. But how was that to be? After October 22, when Christ did not come as proclaimed, who would listen?

Edson and Crosier walked quickly from home to home telling the brethren the good news that Christ’s priestly ministry in heaven was fulfilling another Mosaic type, that He had just entered into, instead of coming out of, the Most Holy as they had formerly believed. This meant that this was the beginning, not the ending, of the anti-typical Day of Atonement. Christ had fulfilled the prophecy. It would be some time before He completed His work, and not until then would He come out as King.

Edson and Crosier invited Dr. Hahn to join them in continuing Bible study of the prophecies regarding Christ’s work in the sanctuary as revealed in the book of Hebrews, especially chapters 8 and 9, until it should be made clear. They focused upon the whole Mosaic system of types and ceremonies and their meaning for the end time. They also studied diligently the prophecies as outlined in the books of Daniel and Revelation concerning the latter times. This study time went on for many months and confirmed their understanding of how and why Christ had entered the Most Holy place to cleanse it.

“But there was yet another angle demanding study, an inkling of which had also been caught by Edson as he walked through the cornfield that epochal October day in 1844. With Crosier and Hahn he also saw that the bitterness of the Disappointment—and in fact of the whole advent experience—was itself a matter of inspired prediction, portrayed through the apostle John in Revelation 10. This they also studied. Here a message, that ‘there should be time no longer,’ is represented as proclaimed on land and sea by a ‘mighty angel come down from heaven.’ And the heavenly messenger ‘clothed with a cloud’ seemingly indicated something that at the time was obscured, or not clearly understood. And with the message that prophetic ‘time shall be no longer,’ there was opened a ‘little book’—apparently the book of Daniel, a portion of which had been sealed. The eating of this bittersweet book obviously symbolized the joy of expectation and the bitterness of disappointment, after which came the declaration, ‘Thou must prophesy again.’ Apparently God still had a work to be done by those who had passed through the disappointment. Another message was obviously to go forth, after the first and second angel’s message had spent their initial force. But how—with all the bitter, unreasoning prejudice from without and the factional disputes within already beginning to grow out of the Disappointment—could they meet the people? And what would be their message?” Ibid., 900.

By the spring of 1845 the studies of the sanctuary and its services were sufficiently solidified in their minds to the point that they understood more clearly the whole question of the Disappointment as well as the justification for the existence of the Advent Movement. It gave meaning to their past experience and direction for their present and future course of action.

Edson, Crosier and Hahn decided to publish another issue of the Day-Dawn to spread the truth regarding the cleansing of the sanctuary and the work of Christ therein. The paper came into the hands of Joseph Bates and James White, both of whom received it gladly. Edson and Hahn submitted an expanded article that was published in the Day- Star Extra (another Adventist journal published following the Disappointment). Bates and White were especially pleased with this enlarged treatise. Bates said it was the best produced so far on the subject bringing light and hope to many people.

A conference was convened at Edson’s place and Bates was invited to attend. “Bates’ burden was the relation of the seventh-day Sabbath to the sanctuary position. During his presentation Edson became so interested and delighted that he could hardly keep his seat. And upon its conclusion he was on his feet with the declaration: ‘That is light and truth!’ He had already caught certain glimpses of the Sabbath through his study of the sanctuary, the ark, and the Ten Commandments, and through reading ‘a few lines from T. M. Preble,’ but he had not yet seen its importance. This was the first public instance of joining the sanctuary and the Sabbath position in united relationship, these constituting two of the three distinctive tenets of faith characterizing this slowly forming body of believers, which had their inception in widely separated spots.” Ibid., 904.

The Port Gibson group was the first to take a stand on the two phases of Christ’s work in the sanctuary. This group made contact with those in New Hampshire that had begun keeping the Seventh-day Sabbath. These two groups were the nucleus of Sabbatarian Adventism that developed into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Enslaving the Souls of Men

by

EDITORS NOTE: The following is a chapter taken from, The Jesuits in North America, by Francis Parkman. The book’s preface is dated, May 1, 1867.

It was an evil day for new-born Protestantism when a French artilleryman fired the shot that struck down Ignatius Loyola in the breach of Pampeluna. A proud noble, an aspiring soldier, a graceful courtier, an ardent and daring gallant was metamorphosed by that stroke into the zealot whose brain engendered and brought forth the mighty Society of Jesus. His story is a familiar one,—how, in the solitude of his sick-room, a change came over him, upheaving, like an earthquake, all the forces of his nature; how, in the cave of Manresa, the mysteries of Heaven were revealed to him; how he passed from agonies to transports, from transports to the calm of a determined purpose. The soldier gave himself to a new warfare. In the forge of his great intellect, heated, but not disturbed by the intense fires of his zeal, was wrought the prodigious enginery whose power has been felt to the uttermost confines of the world.

Loyola’s training had been in court and camps; of books he knew little or nothing. He had lived the unquestioning faith of one born and bred in the very focus of Romanism; and thus, at the age of about thirty, his conversion found him. It was a change of life and purpose, not of belief. He presumed not to inquire into the doctrines of the Church. It was for him to enforce those doctrines; and to this end he turned all the faculties of his potent intellect, and all his deep knowledge of mankind. He did not aim to build up barren communities of secluded monks, aspiring to heaven through prayer, penance, and mediation, but to subdue the world to the dominion of the dogmas which had subdued him; to organize and discipline a mighty host, controlled by one purpose and one mind, fired by a quenchless zeal or nerved by a fixed resolve, yet impelled, restrained, and directed by a single master hand. The Jesuit is no dreamer: he is emphatically a man of action; action is the end of his existence.

It was an arduous problem which Loyola undertook to solve—to rob a man of volition, yet to preserve in him, nay, to stimulate, those energies which would make him the most efficient instrument of a great design. To this end the Jesuit novitiate and the constitutions of the Order are directed. The enthusiasm of the novice is urged to its intensest pitch; then in the name of religion, he is summoned to the utter abnegation of intellect and will in favor of the superior, in whom he is commanded to recognize the representative of God on earth. Thus the young zealot makes no slavish sacrifice of intellect and will—at least, so he is taught—for he sacrifices them, not to man, but to his Maker. No limit is set to his submission: if the Superior pronounces black to be white, he is bound in conscience to acquiesce.1

Loyola’s book of Spiritual Exercises is well known. In these exercises lies the hard and narrow path which is the only entrance to the Society of Jesus. The book is, to all appearance, a dry and superstitious formulary; but in the hands of a skillful director of consciences it has proved of terrible efficacy. The novice, in solitude and darkness, day after day and night after night, ponders its images of perdition and despair. He is taught to hear in imagination the howlings of the damned, to see their convulsive agonies, to feel the flames that burn without consuming, to smell the corruption of the tomb and the fumes of the infernal pit. He must picture to himself an array of adverse armies—one commanded by Satan on the plains of Babylon, one encamped under Christ about the walls of Jerusalem; and the perturbed mind, humbled by long contemplation of its own vileness, is ordered to enroll itself under one or the other banner. Then, the choice made, it is led to a region of serenity and celestial peace, and soothed with images of divine benignity and grace. These meditations last, without intermission, about a month; and under an astute and experienced directorship, they have been found of such power that the Manual of Spiritual Exercises boasts to have saved souls more in number than the letters it contains.

To this succeed two years of discipline and preparation, directed, above all things else, to perfecting the virtues of humility and obedience. The novice is obliged to perform the lowest menial offices and the most repulsive duties of the sick-room and the hospital; and he is sent forth, for weeks together, to beg his bread like a common mendicant. He is required to reveal to his confessor not only his sins, but all those hidden tendencies, instincts and impulses which form the distinctive traits of character. He is set to watch his comrades, and his comrades are set to watch him. Each must report what he observes of the acts and dispositions of the others; and his mutual espionage does not end with the novitiate, but extends to the close of life. The characteristics of every member of the Order are minutely analyzed, and methodically put on record.

This horrible violence to the noblest qualities of manhood, joined to that equivocal system of morality which eminent casuists of the Order have inculcated, must, it may be thought, produce deplorable effects upon the characters of those under its influence. Whether this has been actually the case, the reader of history may determine. It is certain, however, that the Society of Jesus has numbered among its members men whose fervent and exalted natures have been intensified, without being abased, by the pressure to which they have been subjected.

It is not for nothing that the Society studies the character of its members so intently, and by methods so startling. It not only uses its knowledge to thrust into obscurity or cast out altogether those whom it discovers to be dull, feeble or unwilling instruments of its purposes, but it assigns to every one the task to which his talents or his disposition may best adapt him: to one, the care of a royal conscience, whereby, unseen, his whispered word may guide the destiny of nations; to another, the instruction of children; to another, a career of letters or science; and to the fervent and the self-sacrificing, sometimes also to the restless and uncompliant, the distant missions to the heathen.

The Jesuit was, and is, everywhere—in the school-room, in the library, in the cabinets of princes and ministers, in the huts of savages, in the tropics, in the frozen North, in India, in China, in Japan, in Africa, in America; now as a Christian priest, now as a soldier, a mathematician, an astrologer, a Brahmin, a mandarin—under countless disguises, by a thousand arts, luring, persuading, or compelling souls into the fold of Rome. Of this vast mechanism for guiding and governing the minds of men, this mighty enginery for subduing the earth to the dominion of an idea, this harmony of contradictions, this moral Proteus, the faintest sketch must now suffice. A disquisition on the Society of Jesus would be without end. No religious Order has ever united in itself so much to be admired and so much to be detested. Unmixed praise has been poured on its Canadian members. It is not for me to eulogize them, but to portray them as they were.

1 Those who wish to know the nature of the Jesuit virtue of obedience will find it set forth in the famous Letter on Obedience of Loyola.

The Rise of Sabbatarian Adventism

by

“We now turn to the second distinguishing doctrine of the Sabbatarian Adventists—their acceptance and observance of the seventh-day Sabbath. Prophetic interpretation, as we have seen from the sources, has persisted through the vicissitudes of the passing centuries, despite certain stormy upheavals and periodic setbacks. In a similar way, though not so commonly known, the Christian observance of the seventh-day Sabbath has likewise persisted throughout the Christian era. At times it has been driven underground, into silence and obscurity. But it has inevitably reappeared to bear its witness and urge its message upon mankind. The Sabbath, and its change and restoration, are tied inseparably into the very structure of Bible prophecy, the Sabbatarian Adventists firmly believed.” The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 906.

Following the death of the apostles, Sabbath observance continued in various parts of the Roman Empire. There were some in the Celtic Church of Scotland that kept the seventh-day Sabbath. The same was true in Ethiopia and Abyssinia as well as in pre-Reformation Norway. During and after the Reformation period, Sabbath-keeping reappeared in Sweden, Finland, Bohemia, England, Poland, France and Germany. These groups developed into the Seventh-Day Baptist communion. Samuel Mumford took this movement from England to America in 1664. The years following saw the establishment of the Seventh-Day Baptists in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

“The seventeenth-century revival of the seventh-day Sabbath centered chiefly in England, touched Continental Europe slightly, and was projected into the New World. And we have seen how, in North America, agitation over the seventh-day Sabbath appeared first in the Colonial Era, and then in the early National period, and this among men of British as well as German background. And now, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, simultaneously in Argentina and Scotland, new Sabbatarian voices break forth early in the great revival of prophetic exposition, which appeared at the same time in the different countries of Christendom. Thus the Sabbath message was brought out in connection with the Old World Advent Awakening, and in the New World Second Advent Movement.

“These two doctrines combined—the second-advent and the Sabbath—were proclaimed. . . by two widely separated pioneer advent heralds—Francisco Ramos Mexia, prominent Argentine patriot (with a Scottish Protestant background on his mothers side), and Presbyterian James A. Begg, substantial bookseller, printer, and author of Glasgow, Scotland. Within a few years of each other they began to combine emphasis on the binding obligation of an unchanged seventh-day Sabbath with the heralding of the imminent second advent, planting both doctrines squarely on the foundation of Bible prophecy.” Ibid., 941.

The Sabbath Message Presented to the Adventists

During the years 1843 and 1844, the Seventh-Day Baptists, through fasting and prayer, supplicated God to raise up others that were Sabbathkeepers. In the meantime Rachel Oakes began the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath and proclaimed this truth in Washington, New Hampshire, where two ministers accepted it. One was a Methodist circuit rider named Frederick Wheeler. The other was Thomas M. Preble, the first Adventist to advocate the Sabbath in print. An article that he wrote and published in The Hope of Israel in 1845, introduced the Sabbath to J. N. Andrews and Joseph Bates. (Unfortunately, later Preble turned against the Sabbath truth and wrote against it.) It was by means of a tract, Bates wrote, that the Sabbath was brought to James and Ellen White.

For almost two hundred years the Seventh-Day Baptists were practically the only ones that upheld the seventh day as the Sabbath. The Sunday-keeping churches all rejected the appeals of the Seventh-Day Baptists. This was also the response of the Millerites in general. The leaders and editors of the Adventist journals were highly critical of the agitation among the Adventists about the seventh-day Sabbath.

In August, of 1844, an article appeared that stated: “We feel borne irresistibly to the conclusion that there is no particular portion of time which Christians are required by Law to set apart, as holy time. If the Scriptures, and the considerations presented, do not convince our readers of this, then we think there is another conclusion to which they must come, viz. The particular portion of time which God requires us to observe as holy, is the seventh day of the week, that is, Saturday.

“We regret to leave the argument at this point, but space fails and we must beg our readers to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so. They have learned to bow to no authority but God’s, and having that, to treat the decisions of men as utterly worthless.

“We love the seventh-day brethren and sisters, but we think they are trying to mend the old broken Jewish yoke, and put it on their necks, instead of standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ makes free.” Ibid., 944.

After Bates heard about the Sabbath through Preble’s article, he met Frederick Wheeler. Bates was so interested in what he had to say that they conversed all night about the Law of God and the neglected Sabbath. Together they went to confer with Cyrus Farnsworth, an early lay pioneer of the Adventists. These three men sealed a pact among them about the Law of God and in particular the most neglected part of it, the seventh-day Sabbath. Thus by the efforts of these three men, New Hampshire became the cradle of the Seventh-day Adventists.

In 1846, Joseph Bates published a forty-eight page tract entitled The Seventh Day Sabbath, A Perpetual Sign. He based his premise upon the fact that the Sabbath was instituted at Creation and was reinforced at Sinai. And since the Ten Commandments are the moral guide for everyone, the Sabbath commandment should be obeyed just like the others.

This tract was followed by another, entitled A Seal of the Living God, January 1849, where he set forth the Sabbath as being the seal of God. Bates concluded that the remnant “who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ would number 144,000.”

Prominent Adventist Leaders Accept the Sabbath

At first, Ellen Harmon and James White did not accept the Sabbath truth as presented by Bates. Ellen was brought up a Methodist and believed in “free grace and dying love.” James claimed that Christians are not “under the Law.” They both regarded the Sabbath as Jewish and felt that Bates had placed too much emphasis upon keeping it. However, after their marriage they studied Bates’ tract more closely and, comparing the clear Biblical and historical evidence, shortly began to keep the Sabbath.

John Nevins Andrews was another young man that accepted the Sabbath when Marian Stowell, a fellow Advent believer, who was staying in the Andrew’s home, gave him a copy of Preble’s Hope of Israel. The parents of both these young people, after reading the tract, accepted the seventh-day Sabbath. The Cyprian Stevens family was the next to believe in the seventh-day Sabbath. One of their daughters later became Mrs. J. N. Andrews and the other one Mrs. Uriah Smith.

“Although the seventh-day Sabbath came to the attention of a group of Adventists through the Seventh-Day Baptists, it was the light on the sanctuary and the prophecy of Daniel 7:25 coupled with that of Revelation 14:9–12 that invested it with a significance and an importance that the Sabbath had never had under the Seventh-Day Baptists. They had long held that all the Ten Commandments are moral, not ceremonial; that they are unchangeable, being a revelation of the character of God; and that the change of the Sabbath was made by the papal church without authorization from God. Their position in this was impregnable. But Mrs. Preston (Rachel Oakes), in Washington, New Hampshire, simply urging the claim of the unchanged seventh-day Sabbath, did not have much initial success. Only in the sanctuary setting did it begin to grip hearts. The belief that men were living in the judgment hour, and were to be judged by the great unchanged standard of the judgment, with the coming of Christ drawing near, drove home the conviction that the Lord was calling men to obey all of His commandments.” Ibid., 960.

In 1849, Joseph Bates went to Michigan where he raised up a company of Sabbath-keepers in Jackson. He went to Battle Creek in 1852 and when he arrived he asked the postmaster for the name of the most honest man in that town. He was given the name of David Hewitt. Bates spent all day at the Hewitt home presenting a thorough and systematic study of the Advent Movement, including the Three Angels’ Messages of Revelation 14. The family accepted the entire presentation and soon a group was meeting in their home until a building could be erected for meetings.

And this was Bates’ typical method. When he went where there were no churches, he rented a hall, schoolhouse or a home, hung up his 1843 chart and preached on the new found light. Many churches were established. The success of these churches was always based on the prophecies. In 1860, when the Sabbatarian Adventists decided to organize, Joseph Bates was made the chairman and directed the conference to a successful conclusion.

“So, to the concept of Christ entering the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, on October 22, 1844, for the final work of judgment and the receiving of His kingdom, was added the Sabbath . . . . This concept of the ‘seal’ was likewise built into the message of the Sabbath, as an added prophetic element. And this thought was similarly attested by Ellen White, who wrote, ‘This seal is the Sabbath,’ and described the most holy place in which was the ark (Revelation 11:9), containing the Ten Commandments, with a halo of light surrounding the fourth. Thus the Sabbath and the sanctuary became inseparably tied together.” Ibid., 958.

The Road to Persecution, Part I

by

When I was growing up, my parents used to receive sermon tapes from Elder W.D. Frazee in Wildwood, Georgia. My parents had worked with Elder Frazee in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in evangelistic work before I was born so they were well-acquainted with him and he had visited in our home when my Father was working for Madison Sanitarium and hospital in Madison, Tennessee.

One of the tapes that we listened to from Elder Frazee was entitled “The Road to Persecution.” Back in those days, many things that were written in the Spirit of Prophecy, we understood as only applying to the churches in “Babylon.” But as you will see, decades ago, even most of a century ago, there were leaders in Adventism who foresaw the situation today in Adventism and tried to warn the church of the very things that we are now experiencing. The experience of true and faithful Adventists, who are censured or disfellowshipped by the majority in Seventh-day Adventist churches, was foreseen by godly leaders decades ago as you will see in this article.

The subject which Elder Frazee developed in that sermon is applicable today and is screaming in siren tones to warn us of what we are about to experience in the very near future from Seventh-day Adventists. The major points from that sermon are included in this article.

In those days, we did not perceive (perhaps in the mercy of God) that many of the prophecies about faithful Adventists being persecuted would be fulfilled not only in Babylon, but also in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. But as these prophecies have been in the process of fulfillment, and we read the inspired statements again, we have found over and over that the prophecies were not all directed at Babylon. Some have been given specifically to God’s professed remnant in these last days; for example:

“He [Dr. Kellogg] is working under the advice of the one who talked with Eve. Through this subtle reasoning the future of the cause is imperiled. I shall now have to be far more explicit than I have been in the past. I shall be compelled to make statements that I have not wanted to make, but I must be more explicit in order save the flock of God from deceptive influences.

“Every movement made now is to be carefully guarded, for the forces of Satan have minds under their control, and will strive through them to unsettle faith in the experience of the past, which bears the signature of Heaven. The delusive influences working upon human minds are of a character to unsettle the faith of the people of God in the experience of the past, which has borne the signature of Heaven.

“In His Word the Lord declared what He would do for Israel if they would obey His voice. But the leaders of the people yielded to the temptations of Satan, and God could not give them the blessings He designed them to have, because they did not obey His voice but listened to the voice and policy of Lucifer. This experience will be repeated in the last years of the history of the people of God, who have been established by His grace and power. Men whom He has greatly honored will in the closing scenes of this earth’s history pattern after ancient Israel.” Manuscript Releases, vol. 13, 378, 379.

“We want to understand the time in which we live. We do not half understand it. We do not half take it in. My heart trembles in me when I think of what a foe we have to meet, and how poorly we are prepared to meet him. The trials of the children of Israel, and their attitude just before the first coming of Christ, have been presented before me again and again to illustrate the position of the people of God in their experience before the second coming of Christ—how the enemy sought every occasion to take control of the minds of the Jews, and today he is seeking to blind the minds of God’s servants, that they may not be able to discern the precious truth.” Selected Messages, Book 1, 406.

Compare with this statement the following: “The people whom God had called to be the pillar and ground of the truth had become representatives of Satan.” Desire of Ages, 36.

“Satan’s skill is exercised in devising plans and methods without number to accomplish his purposes. He works to restrict religious liberty and to bring into the religious world a species of slavery. Organizations, institutions, unless kept by the power of God, will work under Satan’s dictation to bring men under the control of men; and fraud and guile will bear the semblance of zeal for truth and for the advancement of the kingdom of God. Whatever in our practice is not as open as the day belongs to the methods of the prince of evil.” Testimonies, vol. 7, 180, 181.

“The work which the church has failed to do in a time of peace and prosperity, she will have to do in a terrible crisis, under most discouraging, forbidding, circumstances. The warnings that worldly conformity has silenced or withheld, must be given under the fiercest opposition from enemies of the faith. And at that time the superficial, conservative class, whose influence has steadily retarded the progress of the work, will renounce the faith, and take their stand with its avowed enemies, toward whom their sympathies have long been tending. These apostates will then manifest the most bitter enmity, doing all in their power to oppress and malign their former brethren, and to excite indignation against them. This day is just before us. The members of the church will individually be tested and proved. They will be placed in circumstances where they will be forced to bear witness for the truth. Many will be called to speak before councils and in courts of justice, perhaps separately and alone.” Testimonies, vol. 5, 463.

We know that persecution is coming because Revelation 13:15–17 says, “He had power to give life unto the Image of the Beast, that the Image of the Beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship him, should be killed. And he causeth all both small, and great, rich, and poor, both free, and bond to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the Beast, or the number of his name.”

A great persecution is coming. There will be a boycott against those who will not receive the mark of the Beast or worship the beast or his image. They will not be able to buy or sell and eventually a death decree will be issued against all those who honor all the commandments of God.

Jesus predicted that this persecution would come from organized religion—from those who call themselves God’s people: “These things have I spoken to you that you shall not be offended. They shall put you out of the Synagogues, yes the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he does God service.” This persecution is not going to be carried on simply by pagans or infidels. The men who lead out in this persecution will think that they are doing service for God. How do men come to a point where they can persecute the people of God and think that they are doing Him a service? Is there any possible danger that you and I, or that Seventh-day Adventists or those who claim to be the remnant of God could do such a thing. There most definitely is. But it does not happen in a moment, rather it generally takes a generation or longer. There is a road that leads men to the place where they will finally persecute their former brethren in the name of God. This is the road to persecution.

Revelation 13 speaks about the image to the Beast. We know that the Beast, in Revelation 13, which God warns us is a union of church and state, is the Papacy or Roman Catholicism. She became the greatest persecuting power of all times. And that is why she is pictured there in Revelation as drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

But now the issue that is ahead of us here in the United States, according to Revelation 13, is the issue of making an Image to the Beast or an Image of the Beast—both expressions are used. Now, what is an image anyway? An image, by definition, is a likeness of something else. So, there is to be formed, or should I say there is already being formed before our eyes, a likeness of that Roman power, which was drunken with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And, as the Beast was formed, so the Image is being formed. The likeness is striking. That is one of the great reasons why God, in His providence, gave us this wonderful book The Great Controversy.

Rome was Christian in its beginning. There was a church at Rome. Peter was there and Paul was there. Those are facts of church history. However, that very city eventually became the headquarters of that vast persecuting system which filled the earth with blood, in the name of Christ.

How did Rome begin its work and how will that Image be formed today? The Great Controversy, 289, 290 reads, ” The very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement the authority of God by that of the church. Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined.” Now this is one of those wonderful statements in the Spirit of Prophecy which shine out like a great beacon. Let us ponder these things.

The great apostasy began when men started to supplement the authority of God with that of the church. When Jesus left this world, He gave His church a commission and told them what they were to teach. Matthew 28:18–20 says, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Was that enough? Rome did not think so.

Rome did not begin by taking away from what God had said. Rome began by adding to what God has said was necessary. For example, it took centuries to accomplish the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. First the Christian world remembered the death and resurrection of Christ every year at passover time—we can well understand how those who witnessed this most awesome event of all the ages would especially remember it every passover season, for Jesus died during that time.

The Christians wanted to avoid being associated with the Jews, who the apostles stated were contrary to all men. Thousands and thousands of their heathen neighbors paid particular attention to the first day of the week which bore the name of the sun god. And they noted that Jesus Christ had arisen from the dead on the first day of the week. That was, no doubt, in their mind a happy coincidence. And, it appeared to be good public relations, to take advantage of the honor that was given to the Sun god, on the first day of the week, and connect with it the historical fact that Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, had risen on the first day of the week, And so, over decades and decades, there gradually came to be a certain honor attached to that first day of the week, and the Christians in some places began to meet on that day every year to celebrate the resurrection.

In fact, by the middle of the second century, the Bishop of Rome decreed that the resurrection should be celebrated not on passover day, but on the Sunday nearest to passover day. And, if Passover day fell on a Sunday, then it was to be celebrated not on that Sunday but on the next Sunday, thus being as much unlike the Jews and as much like the Sun worshippers as possible.

The time soon came when it was decided not to celebrate the resurrection just one Sunday a year but every week. Since there is no commandment for any of this in the Bible, this is “enjoining what God had not forbidden.” But, for hundreds of years, even in churches that met on Sunday, the Sabbath was also kept. But gradually the honor given to Sunday was increased and the honor given to the Sabbath was decreased. Finally, the Roman Catholic church, in the council of Laodicea (over three hundred years after Jesus went back to heaven) dared to come out in the open and officially abolish the observance of the Sabbath and substitute Sunday. Three hundred years. That is a long time, but that is how long it took from when Rome began to enjoin what God had not forbidden, until she ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined. And from then there were still more steps to the point where she began to persecute dissenters who were determined to be true to their conscience. A few martyrdoms occurred before the end of the fourth century, but later tens of thousands were put to death because they chose to obey what Christ had said instead of what the church said. That was the issue.

The setting of these sentences we have been studying from The Great Controversy, 289, 290 is very interesting. They appear in the middle of that book, in the chapter called The Pilgrim Fathers. In the paragraphs around this sentence, Sister White discussed the days of the reformation and the distinction of two types of reformers, those who were willing to come only part way out of Rome and those who felt that they ought to come all the way out of Rome. I encourage you to read the entire chapter.

Now, I want to study with you a little more on the point of adding to or supplementing Divine Authority. Remember, “Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined.” In doing this, Rome set herself against the word of God. God foresaw the results of all such things and He told us in advance not to put our feet on this forbidden ground. In Deuteronomy 4:2 we read, “Ye shall not add unto the word that I command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it. That ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I commanded you.” You must not do what? You must not add. What else must you not do? You must not diminish. If you do the first you are bound to do the second.

No one ever added anything to what God said, who did not eventually turn around and cut off something else that God had commanded. Do you know why that is? It is because there is only so much room. There is just four quarts in a gallon, just sixteen ounces in a pound, just twelve inches in a foot, and because there is only so much room there is only room for so much. Whenever you add something that God has not commanded, you crowd out something that He did command. That is the way Rome sank into apostasy.

That is the issue today. Did you know that Jesus did not go to the schools of His time for that reason? In Education, 77 we are told, “The schools of His time with their magnifying of things small and their belittling of things great, He did not seek.” What was the problem? They magnified the little things and, as a result, they had only time to belittle the big things.

Oh, that we might understand the implications of this. Thousands, not only in Babylon but thousands in Adventism, are traveling the road which Rome has traveled before us, and we are so far down the road that persecution already began several years ago. But it is going to get worse, much worse. We will learn even better, before it is over, that we have much more to fear from within than from without and that our worst enemies will come from the same direction that Jesus’ worst enemies came from—God’s professed people. We do well to ponder what road we are traveling before we come to the end of it.

There is a gradual change, which starts with the apparently innocent, and ends up with the image of Satan. It starts by calling evil good. In Isaiah 5: 20-23 we read: “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!”

Those against whom the wrath of God is announced are those that call evil good and good evil. The two things inevitably are joined together and they come—watch the preciseness of the Scripture— in this order. How did the verse start out? “They call evil good” and then they call “good evil.” I wonder why they would do that. Notice in the 23rd verse it says, “they justify the wicked for reward and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.” Again it is the same sequence. Here is a bad man but they say he is a good man. And inevitably, when they start in to do that, they are forced to call the good man bad.

That is exactly what happened in Rome. Rome first opened her doors and let in a whole multitude of image worshipping idolaters. But as the inevitable result, they came to the point that they were able to kill the true saints of God. And so it is happening today. “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.”

Every man who gets so broad minded–watch this point–so tolerant, so kind, and so charitable that he can put his arms around iniquity and fellowship with sinners who defy the law of God, is preparing himself, whether he knows it or not, to come to the place where he can persecute the men that God calls righteous in this world.

This is what is happening in the United States as she prepares to set up an image to the Beast. “As the Protestant churches have been seeking the favor of the world, false charity has blinded their eyes. They do not see but that it is right to believe good of all evil, and as the inevitable result they will finally believe evil of all good.” The Great Controversy, 571. Oh, friends, what a warning against false charity.

What is false charity? Charity, in the sense that it is being used here, means to be tolerant of sin or to tolerate wrongdoing. It is said today that we should not blame the sinner because Jesus said, “he that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone.” Reproof and rebuke of sin is termed criticism and faultfinding. Toleration of sin is excused by saying that we must allow the wheat and the tares to grow together until the harvest. As a result of this type of thinking, there are people in the church, even in leading positions, who have been divorced and remarried without Biblical grounds and who attend social gatherings, fairs, and parades etc. on the Sabbath and buy food on the Sabbath. (Some call it witnessing.) We have people, even leaders in the church, who have deceived church members about business matters or the relations of the church to other churches and the ecumenical movement. A person may break the Sabbath, lie, kill, steal, commit adultery, go with the world and be worldly, but God is merciful, and “we ought to be all things to all men and be kind and be charitable and not be hard on people.” All that sort of talk, with the many variations and adaptation we hear today, is false charity.

The Protestant churches of our time, with their false charity, have opened up the doors and let all kinds of sinners into the church. The drunkard, the profligate, the lawbreaker, the grafter, the politician who gets caught in some great scandal, may be members of the church. Right? Today this type of person may not only be a member of the church, he may be the leader or the president of the church, but everyone thinks that it would be highly uncharitable if he received just discipline for his behavior. He must simply be transferred to some outlying district until people have forgotten the past scandal and then he may even be promoted and the same sins repeated again. Any careful observer has seen this happen in Adventism.

We are living in a time when the scandal of leading clergymen of different churches is frequent news. Today, as I am editing this article, national news is reporting about the leader of a Protestant church who might receive up to five or more years in prison for, what the church leaders say, is the result of some failed business ventures. The reports do not say he has been disfellowshiped however, or even had his credentials taken away for these crimes. It is thought that that would be absolutely uncharitable. The way to get your ministerial credentials taken away or to be disfellowshiped from a church today is to stand up and protest the iniquity and preach and teach the straight testimony and attempt to fulfill the gospel commission. That is happening all over the world today.

False charity blinds the eyes of all churches that allow it and the inevitable result of accepting, as good, that which is evil, is to soon begin believing evil of all good. They will take the very people who stand for truth, who stand for law keeping, who stand for God’s standards, and will make them the mark of the most bitter persecution that this world has seen.

There is no middle ground in this issue. Every soul in this world is either going down the road of false charity and will end up persecuting, or he is going to stand with God against iniquity and end up being among the persecuted. Out of the two there is no middle ground.

continued…

The Road to Persecution, Part II

by

Editor’s Note: Last month we looked at the road which the Roman power traveled to persecution, which began when she added to what God had commanded and ended with her commanding what God had not, and persecuting those who would not agree with her.

We also studied what the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy say the sure results will be for anyone who calls good evil and evil good, even for Adventists. This month we will consider how we should respond to these solemn truths.

Tearing Down the Wall

In Ezekiel 13, the prophet deals with breaking down, or the making of a gap, in the wall of the law of God. The result is that a terrible flood of sin pours into the church. God is calling for people who will be restorers of the breach. In Isaiah 58, God’s people are pictured as Sabbath keepers who restore that breach in the law. But, Ezekiel 13 deals with the false prophets of Israel that follow their own spirit, and are compared to desert foxes, who, when driven from one hole, come up in another. These leaders do not fill in the gaps in the wall, verse five says they have not “made up the hedge, for the house of Israel to stand in the battle of the day of the Lord.” (In other words, those who follow this plan will be unprepared when the last crisis breaks.)

Notice, especially, God’s message on this in verse 19 and 22. “And will you pollute Me among My people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to My people that hear your lies?” What are these false prophets doing? They turn the criminal out and let him go free, but the good men they put to death. They are too charitable to allow any criminal to receive the death penalty, even if he has killed or tortured his victims, but they are willing to put in jail the very ones that uphold the law of God. How is that for crooked thinking? Does it sound like what is happening today? Are there those who are very determined that criminals should not receive the death penalty, who, prophecy foretells, will eventually make a death decree against those who keep the law of God? Read Revelation 13:15.

Ezekiel 13:22 says, “Because with lies you have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life.” There we have it. Every influence that leads to toleration of evil in the church eventually leads inevitably down the road to persecution of the righteous.

False Love Leads to Hatred

Do you know who it was that crucified Jesus? Did the Roman governor, Pilate, sign Christ’s death warrant? No, it was the leaders of the professed people of God that committed this terrible atrocity against the Son of God. And remember, it was in the name of God that the martyrs were put to death in the dark ages, and it will be in the name of God that commandment keepers, in the last days, will be boycotted and put under a death decree.

How does this come about? It comes about through the road of false charity. “Ministers of the gospel sometimes do great harm by allowing their forbearance toward the erring to degenerate into toleration of sins and even participation in them. Thus they are led to excuse and palliate that which God condemns, and after a time they become so blinded as to commend the very ones whom God commands them to reprove. He who has blunted his spiritual perceptions by sinful leniency toward those whom God condemns, will erelong commit a greater sin by severity and harshness toward those whom God approves.” Acts of the Apostles, 504. [All emphasis supplied.]

We must face the issue squarely. Do you think this warning is needed only in Roman Catholicism? Do you think it is needed only in the large Protestant churches? Or might it be possible that Adventists could be in danger on this question? Is there a liberalizing element among us that desires to make us more acceptable to other churches and to the world? Is there a false charity that manifests itself by calling reproof and rebuke of sin criticism and faultfinding, thereby clothing the servants of God, who are commanded to do this work, in filthy garments? (See Testimonies, vol. 1, 321.) Are there some who allow socially acceptable sins to come into the church unrebuked and undisciplined so that the church becomes polluted and even drunk with the wine of Babylon? (One of the central features of the wine of Babylon is allowing sin into the church and the doctrine that you can be saved while you are still sinning.)

Has not a false charity, a liberalizing element, which has attempted to make the church more acceptable to the professed Christian world, come into Adventism? Was not this the very reason that was given for the development of the evangelical conferences and the publishing of the book Questions on Doctrine? A positive answer to the previous question cannot be denied because this writer has heard the answer given in public from the lips of Elder R. A. Anderson himself, and the answer is yes.

Have there not been many instances when, instead of dealing with crimes or unethical behavior, in ministers or other workers in the denomination, we have simply moved the offenders to another conference or institution and allowed the evil to appear there? What has happened to the New Testament teaching that before sin is forgiven and the person restored to work or office in the church the sin must be confessed to the parties wronged, forsaken and restitution made, as far as possible? Have we come to a time when the standards among God’s professed people are not even as high as in some worldly organizations?

Whether it be in Rome, fifteen hundred years ago, or in the professed Protestants of our time, or even among professed Adventists, every influence of false charity, every effort that works to widen the door so that the sins of the world can come into the professed church, leads us down the road to persecution. This road leads its travelers to becoming a part of a persecuting movement.

Who Will Someday Oppose the Loud Cry?

In the Review and Herald Extra, December 23, 1890, the servant of the Lord spoke of the loud cry when the power of the last movement will bring a great multitude into the church, while, at the same time, many will be losing their way. (Editorial comments on the following statement by Ellen White are in brackets.) “There is to be in the churches a wonderful manifestation of the power of God, but it will not move upon those who have not humbled themselves before the Lord, and opened the door of the heart by confession and repentance. [If I have done something wrong I must repent and confess my wrong to those I have injured. And if I have injured the whole church then I must confess to the whole church. If I do not, even if I am retained in the work in a different area, I will not receive the latter rain or have a part in the Loud Cry. There is no statute of limitations in God’s law. Whenever it comes to my knowledge that I have committed a wrong, no matter how long ago, I am to repent and confess that wrong to the appropriate individuals and make restitution, as far as possible, if I am really serious about salvation.]

“In the manifestation of that power which lightens the earth with the glory of God, they will see only something which, in their blindness, they think dangerous, something which will arouse their fears, and they will brace themselves to resist it. Because the Lord does not work according to their ideas and expectations, they will oppose the work. ‘Why,’ they say, ‘should not we know the Spirit of God, when we have been in the work so many years?’—Because they did not respond to the warnings, the entreaties of the messages of God, but persistently said, ‘I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.’ [Why did they not respond to the warnings and entreaties of the messages of God? Because they called these warnings criticism and faultfinding and instead of yielding to the divine influence they called it the influence of the adversary. They referred to those bringing the message as fanatics, offshoots, extremists and legalists, and in so doing, braced themselves against the message of God until there was no further way to reach their heart and spirit.]

“Talent, long experience, will not make men channels of light, unless they place themselves under the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and are called, and chosen, and prepared by the endowment of the Holy Spirit. When men who handle sacred things [Notice that the people who reject the loud cry in this paragraph are described as ministers of talent and long experience.] will humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, the Lord will lift them up. He will make them men of discernment—men rich in the grace of His Spirit. Their strong, selfish traits of character, their stubbornness, will be seen in the light shining from the Light of the world. ‘I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.’ ”

Do you see the danger you and I are in? We may have been in this church for many years. We may have preached this message. We may have brought many into the truth. But if we allow the false charity of the Beast and his Image to get into our hearts, eventually we shall follow the Beast and his Image in resisting and opposing the very message of God which demands a cleaning up of the church, and a restoring of His straight testimony and the high standard. Which side will we be on in this closing conflict? Will we be with those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus or will we be with the Beast and his Image?

War Rather Than Compromise

Hebrews 1:9, speaking of Jesus, says, “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.” There is no such thing as really loving righteousness, without hating lawlessness. One can not be a child of God and a friend of the Devil. There is no such thing as working with God to cleanse the church from every lawless deed and at the same time sympathizing with elements that weaken the influence of the church in dealing with evil, until sin is tolerated in the church without protest. Those who do this will eventually embrace that which they once hated, because they chose to tolerate it in the interest of love (false charity) and unity.

It is better to stand alone and have war than to purchase peace by compromising and tolerating lawlessness. This is the exact decision that the Waldenses had to make. “After a long and severe conflict, the faithful few decided to dissolve all union with the apostate church if she still refused to free herself from falsehood and idolatry. They saw that separation was an absolute necessity if they would obey the word of God. They dared not tolerate errors fatal to their own souls, and set an example which would imperil the faith of their children and children’s children. To secure peace and unity they were ready to make any concession consistent with fidelity to God; but they felt that even peace would be too dearly purchased at the sacrifice of principle. If unity could be secured only by the compromise of truth and righteousness, then let there be difference, and even war.

“Well would it be for the church and the world if the principles that actuated those steadfast souls were revived in the hearts of God’s professed people.” The Great Controversy, 45, 46.

We must be on the side of exalting the law of God as the standard and not allowing open sin to remain in the church unrebuked and undisciplined. If the church that you are attending will not tolerate the rebuke of sin, and the majority is determined to allow sin in the church, your marching orders are contained in the above statement. (Notice that this statement is written especially for Seventh-day Adventists.)

Wisdom From Leaders of the Past

Elder Wilcox, former Review editor, writing in the Review and Herald, June 26, 1947, gives Adventists the following warning: “Some today…fail to point out in their personal labor besetting sins which if not overcome, will shut men and women out of the kingdom of God. There is a failure to bear a strong and decided testimony against the attendance of the movies and theaters, skating rinks, and ice carnivals, against the desecration of the Sabbath, against robbery of God in tithes and offerings, against worldly and immodest dress, against the violation of health principles, against the growing divorce evil of severing the marriage relation for trivial causes, when the Bible permits it for but one reason; against the marriage of young men and women with unbelievers, a union that is strongly condemned in Scripture, against the seductive influence of fictional magazines and books, and equal sinful practice of listening to much that comes over the radio.”

He then asks, “Will not men and women who are fully converted forsake these sinful practices. They should indeed. But many do not recognize the true character of these evils and therefore need instruction regarding them.”

Here Elder Wilcox is dealing with the idea, which some well meaning people advance in the church, that all you need to do is preach Christ and pay no attention to the details of life. And he is hitting that right where it ought to be hit, laying the axe at the root of the tree. “Our church members should be earnestly and kindly warned of these influences, destructive to vital and living Christian experience. For lack of restraint, testimony which should be borne by some of our church leaders, these evils are increasing in our midst. Will not God hold us as His representatives responsible for failure in these matters? He surely will.”

Also applicable to our study is the address which Elder J. L. McElhany, former President of the General Conference, gave to Adventist educational leaders. He stated: “Would the pioneers know this movement if they should awaken. To me this is a very important question. Oh, some may say, ‘they were a lot of old fogies, they were out of date, they were entirely behind the times. Today’s standards have changed.’ This is a favorite expression with some, but I do not believe it. Too many of our young people today are being led into worldly conformity by some leaders who are themselves adhering to forms of worldly amusements. My friends I wish our young people could be kept away from all the beach parties, and nudity parades, and moving picture shows, and other questionable places where they ought not to go, but where they are sometimes led by their leaders.” Review and Herald, October 14, 1937.

What was the General Conference president talking about? Was he talking about what he saw going on, or merely a ghost that he was shooting at? Most of us can easily answer from our own experience. The godly are heart-burdened and greatly grieved as they see church standards lowered and the world coming in like a flood through a hole in the dyke. What side are you standing on? Are you protesting lawlessness? Are you openly in opposition (a true protestant) to “All acts of injustice that tend to shorten life; the spirit of hatred and revenge, or the indulgence of any passion that leads to injurious acts toward others, or causes us even to wish them harm (for ‘whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer’); a selfish neglect of caring for the needy or suffering; all self-indulgence or unnecessary deprivation or excessive labor that tends to injure health?” (Patriarchs and Prophets, 308.) Are you openly opposed not only to sensual thoughts and desires, but to any practice that tends to excite them? (Ibid.) Are you openly opposed to “every attempt to advantage yourself by the ignorance, weakness, or misfortune of another?” Ibid., 309. Do you abhor all intent to deceive, such as intentional overstatements, every hint or insinuation calculated to convey an erroneous or exaggerated impression and even the statement of facts in such a manner as to mislead? Will you tolerate without protest efforts to injure your neighbor’s reputation by misrepresentation or evil surmising, by slander or tale bearing or by the suppression of truth? (Ibid.) Has selfishness become abhorrent to you? Are you against it in any guise? Or are you willing to tolerate it and eventually call it good and finally disfellowship and persecute those who refuse to go along with it?

Do you see that we are on the road to persecution and we are so far down the road that persecution against the faithful started, in Adventism, years ago. We are all on the road to persecution. The only difference is that some of us are going to be among those persecuted for standing faithful and true to the principles of righteousness and truth vouchsafed to us by God Himself through the writings of the prophets and apostles. The others, by first seeking to supplement the authority of God with that of the church, and by enjoining what God has not forbidden, are now forbidding what He has explicitly enjoined and are at the place right now where they are ready to persecute their former brethren. The solemn truth is that there are only two groups. One is getting ready to be the persecuted and the rest are getting ready to be the persecutors. There is no third group. We must ask ourselves, which of these two groups are we in?

No Longer Brethren

When persecution takes place, the people who are persecuting you are not your brethren anymore. You may be attending the same church for a little while longer. You may have the same name and claim to believe the same doctrines. You may have attended the same schools. You may even have worked together in evangelism in the past, but you are no longer brethren for two reasons.

It is the followers, the disciples of Christ who are called brethren in Scripture (Matthew 23:8) and Christ never fights Himself. Christ in one person will never, even once, fight Christ in another person. When persecution takes place, a spiritual war is occurring and at least one side has to be motivated either by the natural carnal heart, which is by nature destined to wrath, or by the devil or his angels. When people were taken to the basement of the church and put on the rack, their tormentors were not their brethren. Since they were not the brethren, it should be more than obvious that they were not serving the same Lord and therefore they were not really members of the same church, no matter what the profession was.

Concerning the “elect church” (Desire of Ages, 680), Jesus said that He was their divine Lord and Master. (John 13:14–17.) Therefore, the two groups are not part of the same church, are not really brethren (although they may be so in name) and are not both going to be saved. “There [outside the Holy City at the end of the millenium] are papist priests and prelates, who claimed to be Christ’s ambassadors, yet employed the rack, the dungeon, and the stake to control the consciences of His people.… Christ identifies His interest with that of His suffering people; and they feel the force of His own words: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’ Matthew 25:40.” The Great Controversy, 668.

It is impossible to be a disciple, one of the brothers of Christ (Hebrews 2:11) and a disciple of Satan at the same time. “With what amazement do angels hear men judging and condemning their brethren, causing them most cruel suffering of body and mind, and claiming that they do it under the sanction of God? Instead of being under the leadership of Christ, they are following the leadership of Satan. Paul at one time pursued this course, actually believing that he was doing God service; but Jesus spoke to him, and told him that in persecuting His saints he was persecuting Him. All persecution, all force employed to compel conscience, is after Satan’s own order; and those who carry out these designs are his agents to execute his hellish purpose. In following Satan’s cruel proposals, in becoming his agents, men become the enemies of God and His church.” Review and Herald, January 10, 1893. (It is time to discard shibboleths and think clearly. If you do not know who your brethren are or are not, your chances of falling in time of test are greatly increased. This has proven true in the past and will prove true in the future.)

From the Review and Herald of May 8, 1958, Elder Dickson declares: “We see dangerous trends resulting from a diminished spiritual emphasis in much of our service in all levels of the movement. The spiritual possessions that distinguished the Apostolic life of the early church and the pioneers of our faith have leaped from us to a very alarming degree. . . .There seems to be a fear of standing alone if necessary, in speaking forth against evils that are apparent. This fear of man and his power to demote and retaliate must be dismissed from among us. The domination of man must give way to the domination of God’s Holy Spirit.”

Are you standing true to the testimonies of the Holy Spirit, fearing not the face of man? Will you be one of those who stands for truth and righteousness even if the heavens seem to fall? Will you be true even if you are disfellowshipped, your reputation destroyed and you are finally persecuted, perhaps imprisoned or put to death by God’s professed people?

Rome began by adding much that God had never commanded, and she ended by forbidding obedience to God’s commandments. Rome began by introducing worldly trends under the plea of making it easier for the heathen to accept Christianity, and she ended by persecuting the very people, within the church, that stood up against that worldliness. Rome began with false charity by closing her eyes to sin in a plea for broad mindedness and brotherly love toward even the lawbreakers, and she ended up where? Showing brotherly love? No, certainly not!

Think of the crusades against the Waldensees and the Albigenses. Think of those thousands of armed troops who entered their villages with swords and spears and cut down men, women and children, until streams ran red with blood. Think of those who in inhuman cruelty hurled mothers and infants together over the cliffs to be dashed on the rocks below. How did that cruel persecution begin? With so called love and charity that would let sin linger on in the church.

Sin is a terrible thing. It is like the serpent, which when chilled may not seem to be very dangerous. But take that poisonous snake into your bosom, warm it with your loving interest, and it will turn and bite you. And so it is when sin is allowed into the church. Little do we realize what we are asking for when we allow the standards of God to be dragged down by the worldly element. Little do we realize what is ahead. Oh, that God may stir our hearts.

I urge you to a renewed study of the book The Great Controversy. May I urge a renewed study of how Rome began, and how these principles are working in the great religious movements of our day. And, may I urge that in our own Christian experience, we will pray that God will so completely purge us from this false charity that we will hate sin as God hates it, and love righteousness as God loves it.

A very important point we must remember when we study this subject is that we must never confuse the sinner with the sin. Jesus, while He hated sin, was always ready to forgive, and welcome the repentant sinner. The Prodigal son was welcomed home, but I want to tell you something, he did not bring his whisky and his harlots home with him. And the church of Christ is loving enough, and charitable enough to forgive the worst sinner, if he will come to Jesus and experience repentance, make confession to the wronged parties, forsake sin and make restitution as far as possible. In other words, He must receive cleansing from his sins by the blood of Christ and have his heart purified by the Holy Spirit so that the guilt and enslaving power of his sinful life is in the past. The gate of heaven is narrow, too narrow to admit one cherished sin remaining in the heart. (See Our High Calling, 38.)

Let us pray for ourselves that we will be purged from sin. Let us pray that God will bless in holding back the flood of persecution that is about to sweep over this world. Let us pray that God will bless the Second Advent movement—God’s remnant in these latter days—the apple of His eye. Let us pray that God will sustain those who are enduring the present shaking time, who are giving the trumpet a certain sound, reproving and rebuking lawlessness even though it is costing them their jobs and they are threatened with hostile legal actions, fines and imprisonment from so-called “brethren” in “the church.” Let us pray that God’s true watchmen will continue to seek to uplift the standard to the level of the divine blueprint. And let us pray that He will bless us all with that love for righteousness and that hatred for lawlessness which will identify us, in the judgment, as belonging to Christ, not just in name, but in a character of righteousness and holiness.

Easter Eggs, Bunnies & Religious Freedom

by

For some reason, there is great confusion among God’s professed people today about some very fundamental principles. If you study sacred history, you will find that God’s people have a poor track record in recognizing when prophecy is fulfilled.

Jesus got into great difficulty with God’s professed people in His day because He said to them, “This day is this word fulfilled in your ears.” And a little bit after He said that, they decided to kill Him. You see, I think all churches have a tendency to do one of two things with prophecy. We tend to say it was fulfilled in the past, or it is going to be fulfilled in the future. Is there no prophecy being fulfilled today? Is all prophecy either in the past or in the future? Very often prophecy is being fulfilled right in front of our eyes but we do not recognize what we see.

We want to look at Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, and religious freedom. Have you ever wondered how Easter eggs and Easter bunnies came into the Christian Church? Have you read anything about it in your Bible? I never have.

Here is a more difficult question. Have you ever wondered how a worldwide Virgin Mary Cult got into the Christian Church? Did you know that the images of the Madonna and her son are over four thousand years old, yet Jesus was not born until two thousand years ago? It is a documented fact. If you would like to see pictures of some of those images, look at The New Illustrated Great Controversy and you will see pictures of the Madonna.

The Son of the Sun

It started back in Genesis, a short time after the flood, with Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis. Nimrod died a violent death. After he died, Semiramis became pregnant. She was the queen and wanted to retain her power, so she told the people her dead husband had gone up into the sky. He was now the sun god and she was carrying his child. She bore a son, the “son of the sun,” she said, and he was named Tammuz. You can read about Tammuz in the Old Testament. Those images of the woman and the child, are actually images of Semiramis and Tammuz, and they were taken into the Christian Church. There were people in the Christian Church who had been taught by the followers of the apostles. These people had been taught both the Old and the New Testament, and they knew about idolatry. So the people who wanted to bring these things into the church, had to figure out a way to get them accepted. Do you know what they did? They changed the names of the images! They no longer called the woman, Semiramis, or the queen of heaven, they called her the Virgin Mary, and the son, of course, would no longer be Tammuz, but Jesus Christ.

The symbol for Tammuz was a cross, and all the Pagan people had crosses. They also had fertility gods and goddesses, and these things came into the Christian Church, too. That is where we got Easter. The egg was a symbol of fertility, and the rabbit, being prolific, was also a symbol of fertility, so the Easter egg and the Easter bunny were also brought into the Church.

“That which Satan has led men to do in the past he will, if possible, lead them to do again.” Review and Herald, November 22, 1892.

Pagan Christians?

Let me ask you a question, and remember, we are studying fundamental principles here. We want to understand the significance of what happened then and its relevance for us today. What did they do in the past? In the past they combined Paganism and Christianity. They took Pagan philosophy and combined it with the Christian Church.

Have you heard the theory that is in many Christian Churches today concerning the immortality of the soul? They teach that man has an immortal soul and that when you die, your immortal soul goes on living forever. Of course, if it can live forever, it can burn forever.

Do you know where that idea came from? It did not come from Scripture! It came from Plato! Plato was a Greek philosopher, and he believed that man had an immortal soul. Plato got his theory from the Egyptians, and he taught others that man had an immortal soul, and when man died, he had some entity that went on living forever. The Bible does not say that. According to the Bible, only God has immortality! (See 1 Timothy 6:15, 16.) But Plato’s teachings came into the Christian Church. And so, all of these Pagan ideas were joined to the Christian Church and they made it all one.

If you had been living back then, what would you have done? Here you are, going to church, and you come to church one Sabbath morning and there stands an image of a woman and child, right in the church. You might say, “What is that? I am a Christian, I don’t worship images,” and the response would come back, “Oh, that is just to remind us of the Virgin Mary and her Son, Jesus.” What would you have done? Do you think there were any people back then who saw those images in the church and said, “I cannot go to a church that is worshipping images. I am getting out of here?” There were a few, but not very many.

Why were there not very many? Because most of the people said the same thing they are saying today. They said, “Jesus Christ said that the gates of hell will not prevail against My church. So all I have to do is stay here and I will be saved.” That is what the majority said.

The Faithful Few

There were a few who felt they could not stay in a church that was worshipping idols, because that really was not the true church. It could not be! We can find out who the church is by turning to Scripture. The apostle Paul writes to a young minister, and he tells him who the church is: “But if I am delayed, I write so you will know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15. Notice the house of God is the church, and it is “the pillar and the ground of the truth.” That could also be translated, “the foundation, the ground or the foundation of the truth.”

The Foundation, the Rock, on which the church is built, is the truth. That is what it says, and that is what Jesus said. “On this Rock (that is Himself) I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” The church is built on the truth. There were a few people who knew from the Scripture that the church is built on the truth, and the church cannot go into idolatry and keep being the true church. That just cannot happen.

There was something else that happened about the same time that all of this was going on. “That which Satan has led men to do in the past, he will, if possible, lead them to do again. The early church was deceived by the enemy of God and man, and apostasy was brought into the ranks of those who professed to love God; and today, unless the people of God awake out of sleep, they will be taken unawares by the devices of Satan.” Ibid.

The Day of the Sun

At the same time that they were bringing these images into the church, people noticed that the Pagans got together to have a wild solar holiday on the first day of every week, and that is where the name Sunday comes from, it was the day of the sun.

Monday was the day of the moon, Wednesday, the day of Wardes [a German Pagan god], Saturday, the day of Saturn. All of our days of the week are named after the Pagan gods of that day. So the Pagans worshipped different heavenly bodies and different Pagan gods every single day of the week. But the greatest of all, was the sun god and Sunday. The Christians wanted to incorporate this into the Christian religion along with everything else they were bringing in, and they found a ready excuse to remember Sunday; it was the day that Jesus came out of the tomb. The Pagans worshipped the sun at sunrise on Sunday morning, and they worshipped toward the east. You will find, when you study the Sanctuary, that when God had the Sanctuary erected, He told Moses which direction it was to face. When you entered God’s Sanctuary, you were facing west. This was God’s instruction because the whole Pagan world faced east and worshipped the sun. (See Ezekiel 7, 8, 9.)

That had been going on for thousands of years, and it was going on by the latter part of the second century. So much so, that by 200 a.d. there were Pagan philosophers who told the Christians they were no different than them! The Christians claimed they were different, even though it was true that they were worshipping the rising sun on Sunday, they claimed they were actually worshipping the “Son of righteousness.”

The Shaking Has Begun!

Remember, that which Satan did before, if possible, he is going to do again. I want to tell you, he is doing it right now! He is doing it in Adventism; and Seventh-day Adventists are looking into the future saying there is going to be a national Sunday law sometime, and then everything is going to be shaken out. What they do not realize is, the shaking out has already begun, and the national Sunday law is the end of the shaking, not the beginning.

What would you do if you came to church some Sabbath and there was an image standing in your church? Pray to God that we will never have images in our church! That is why we do not have crosses in our church. Not because the cross itself is wrong, but it is wrong when people start worshipping it. You cannot find any place in the Bible where we are instructed to worship a cross. Of course, people claim they are not worshipping the cross, they are worshipping the Son of God, Who was on the cross. Be careful!

The Name of the Game is Compromise

What would you do if you came to church and found that the majority of the people had gotten together and decided to compromise to have more influence in the community?

This is the way it happened in early times. They wanted to have more influence with the Pagan world, thus they would have more converts, more influence. “We are going to have more converts if we accommodate ourselves to the customs of the people,” they said. It is not wrong to accommodate yourself to a culture or custom, if it does not involve the violation of the Word of God. But they decided to accommodate themselves to the Pagan world by doing what the Pagan world was doing. They were still going to worship on Sabbath, but they would join the Pagans in the customs of their sun day. If you study history, you will find that it was very insidious the way Sunday-keeping came into the Christian Church. It started really early in Alexandria [in Egypt], and in Rome. But for most of the Christian world, Sunday-keeping took hundreds of years to become established.

Ten years ago, I was in one of the largest Seventh-day Adventist Churches in the Midwest, and I listened with astonishment as the pastor announced that they were going to start having services on Sabbath and Sunday, because they would be able to get the community to come on Sunday. I was amazed!

The reason I was so astonished was that I had read a little bit of history. Some people do not like history, but when you do not know history, you can make the same mistakes made fifteen hundred years ago and not even know what you are doing.

That is what the early Christian church did. There were churches in the Roman Empire that kept both Sabbath and Sunday for hundreds of years. You could not tell them they were breaking the Sabbath, because they kept the Sabbath. But eventually the time came when Sunday was elevated more and more, and the Sabbath was pushed down. It took a long time, but it finally happened, and it is happening again!

People were saying this is God’s church and Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. So if you stay in here, you are going to be all right and are going to wind up on the heavenly shore. The fact of the matter is, the great majority of those people lost their souls. (See Early Writings, or The Great Controversy.)

“There is no union between the Prince of Light and the prince of darkness, and there can be no union between their followers.” The Great Controversy, 45.

Who were the followers of the Prince of Light and the followers of the prince of darkness? Remember they all called themselves Christians, so you could not divide them that way. How do you tell the difference between a follower of the Prince of Light and the prince of darkness? Is it what church they go to? Is it what organization they belong to? Absolutely not!

“When Christians consented to unite with those who were but half converted by Paganism, they entered upon a path which led further and further from the truth.” Ibid. They consented to unite with those who were not totally converted, they would become one church. They would baptize people who were not yet converted. In this way, they brought into the church a mass of “professors” of Christianity who were still worshipping idols and doing things contrary to the Bible.

Has that happened in Adventism? Yes, it has! What does that do to the church? It takes you on a path that leads farther and farther from the truth, but you do not realize it because it is only one step at a time.

The Majority is Never Right

There were a few people who decided that they were not going to go along with this program. There is no question that they tried to persuade their brethren against this move because they knew it was not in harmony with the Word of God. They tried, but they could not persuade them because they were in the minority. If you study religious history, you will find that there has never been a time recorded in the Bible, since Adam and Eve sinned, when the majority was in the right. That just never happens.

“It required a desperate struggle for those who would be faithful to stand firm against the deceptions and abominations which were disguised in sacerdotal garments and introduced into the church.” Ibid., 45. What happened to those who decided to stand firm? It required a desperate struggle.

Have you ever been involved in a desperate struggle? Have you ever seen someone involved in a desperate struggle? Have you ever seen anyone who is about to drown, flailing around trying to get out? That is a desperate struggle, and it required that same kind of struggle for those who would stand firm against these deceptions. We are in that kind of struggle again today.

Deceptions are flooding into the churches all over the world, including the Adventist Church. What has happened? “The Bible was not accepted as the standard of faith. The doctrine of religious freedom was termed heresy, and its upholders were hated and proscribed.” Ibid.

Just think that over. First, the Bible was not the rule of faith. The same thing is happening today with the Spirit of Prophecy. Secondly, they did not believe in the doctrine of religious freedom. Where did the religious freedom go?

The Pagans had a custom that was thousands of years old, and as the church combined with Paganism, this custom applied to them. You can read about it in Scripture, and in early Christian history. The ruler of the country dictated what religion you were going to follow, and you had to comply.

That is what Nebuchadnezzar did. It is what the Medo-Persians did. That is why Daniel got thrown into the den of lions. It is what the Greeks did. That is why forty thousand Jews were killed in Egypt during the time of the Greek wars. During just one war, forty thousand Jews were killed. Read the Macabees, the history of God’s people during that period.

How about the Roman Caesar? The Roman Caesar was called the personification of the sun god, and they would build an altar in the center of the city. They had town squares in Roman times, and they put an altar right in the middle of it. They would light a fire on the altar and burn incense there. The people of the town were required to walk by, take a pinch of incense, throw it in the fire and say, Caesar es corius. Meaning, Caesar is lord. They did this to find out who the Christians were. Can a Christian say that? No! When a Christian would come by, he would not take the incense, because that would be offering incense to the sun god, but he would say, Cristos es corius, meaning, Christ is Lord. We will never know, until the Day of Judgment, how many were martyred on that one point alone, just because they would not acknowledge Caesar as lord.

You see, in the Pagan countries, you had a state religion and you had to be of the same religious persuasion as the president or the king, or you could lose your head. As you study religious history, you find this went on in Europe all during the dark ages. In England, in the sixteenth century, when the Protestant ruler died and a Catholic Queen came to the throne, over a three-year period they burned at the stake, or got rid of, almost all of the Protestant leaders in the country.

When Elizabeth became queen, all of a sudden the Protestants could exercise their religion without getting killed any more. What was it that they took from Paganism? The idea that the state could dictate in regard to religion. Is that happening today? Yes! And it is not finished yet. It is going to get worse.

Clasping the Arm of the State

When you go into a court and ask them to make a ruling on something about religion, you have done the same thing they did back there. We are doing it, and we have been for several years.

When it gets so bad that you no longer have religious liberty, what should you do? The same as they did. The majority went along with it, but there were a faithful few that said we are not going to go along with this, no matter what, because it is wrong.

Do you believe that there are, in God’s government, moral absolutes? A moral absolute is a principle that is always wrong to violate—no matter what. It is even wrong to violate it to save your life. The world today does not believe in moral absolutes. The thing that made America a great nation was, as late as World War II, most of our population still believed in moral absolutes. But since World War II, the majority in our country have changed their minds.

In 1967, I was listening to a religious radio program. The speaker said, “In front of every one of the Ten Commandments you should put the word ‘ordinarily.’” Now if you put the word ‘ordinarily’ in front of every single one of the Ten Commandments, what does that do to them? It takes away their moral absolute character. It makes them say, you can do it most of the time, but you do not have to do it in certain situations. Today, we call this ‘situation ethics.’

People are living in fornication and adultery. When a Christian pastor goes to plead with them, they say things like “God does not expect me to be unhappy all my life and live in loneliness.” Do you see? Once you put the word “ordinarily” in front of any one of the Ten Commandments, you have no idea where you are going to end up.

Today there are people who are professional killers, claiming to be Christians. They go to confession, confess their sins, and would tell you they expect to go to heaven. But I want to tell you that, according to the Bible, they will not. (See Revelation 22:15.)

What do people do, who decide to resist this “after a long and severe conflict?” Has it been going on in Adventism? Yes, it has. I meet people all the time that have been going through a long and severe conflict for years and years in their churches. And the church is going into more apostasy and worldliness, and they cannot stop it. Notice what Christians did in the past. “After a long and severe conflict, the faithful few decided to dissolve all union with the apostate church if she still refused to free herself from falsehood and adultery.” Ibid., 45.

A Harlot Church

The apostate church decided to unite with the state. Read this carefully. What I am telling you now is something that I have thought through for many years and I do not expect to back down on this, because I know from history, and God’s word, it is so. When any church decides to unite with the state, that church has become a harlot church. That church is in apostasy. And it is not something to happen in the future, it is happening now.

Let me explain that for someone who has not thought that through before. Do you believe in marriage? Does the Bible teach that marriage is holy? Yes, it is so explicit in the Bible: “Marriage is holy in all things and the marriage bed is not defiled.” Hebrews 13:4. But in regard to marriage, Paul said, “What I am really talking about is Christ and the church.” (See Ephesians 5:32.) “The two [quoting from Genesis 2:24 where God instituted the marriage relationship] shall be one flesh.” Ephesians 5:31. So if the two are one flesh it is holy. But what if it is three? Is it holy then? No, it is not holy any more. It is wicked. Now let us think this through. Paul says, what I am really talking about here, when I talk about the two being one flesh, is Christ and the church.

The church is the bride of Christ. Is that what the Bible says? Yes, and Paul says, I have espoused you to how many husbands? One. God gave Adam only one wife and He gave Eve only one husband. Now the church is to be espoused to Christ and Christ says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” John 18:36. What if the church that is to be espoused to Christ, instead of having her relationship totally with the Lord, develops a relationship with a civil government in this world? What then? The church has two husbands. Can you have two husbands and be holy? No. Would you agree that a woman who has two husbands is a harlot? So, anytime any church develops a union with the state, that church has become a harlot because the church is to be united with the Lord only.

Jesus is very clear about this. (See Matthew 22:21.) “They said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’ And He said to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar.” Who is Caesar? He is the state government. In those days it was the government of the whole world. Caesar had a world empire and Jesus said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” In other words, it is lawful for you, as a Christian, to pay your taxes and to abide by the laws of Caesar. However, did Jesus make it clear that there are some things that do not belong to Caesar? Look at what the end of the text says, “And to God, the things that are God’s.” Ibid.

Are there some things that belong to God, that do not belong to Caesar? God does not forbid you, but He tells you to render to Caesar those things that belong to him. The New Testament spells out exactly what is due to the state government. (See Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.)

As Christians we attempt to follow the Word of God and so we are loyal citizens—as long as the state government does not interfere with what belongs to God. You see, when a church unites with, and starts working through the government to get her way, she has become a harlot church. If you are in such a church and you cannot get that church to stop doing what it is doing, you are going to have to get free, or you are going to be a member of a harlot church too. You are going to be part of the harlotry, the spiritual adultery. That is the problem in the last days. (See Revelation.) The whole world is gone after this thing and the kings of the earth have committed fornication. It is not talking about physical fornication, even though there is plenty of that going on, it is talking about spiritual fornication. Spiritual fornication is when you claim that you are united with the Lord, but you are united with something else—a state government. It is union of church and state.

Separate—Dissolve all Union

“After a long and severe conflict, the faithful few decided to dissolve all union with the apostate church if she still refused to free herself from falsehood and adultery. They saw that separation was an absolute necessity if they would obey the Word of God.” The Great Controversy, 45.

“Oh, no,” someone says, “you are teaching separationism!” I just quoted it from The Great Controversy. I never cease to be amazed at how frightened people are of what they call separationism. If the early Christian church had been afraid of separationism, they would have stayed in the organization and would have wound up being part of Babylon.

When a church becomes a harlot church, you cannot stay in it, participate, support and fund it, and not be contaminated. It is like living in a commune with a group of men and women who are living together in sin. You may think you will just live there, and not participate, but you will be taken by surprise after a while.

“They saw that separation was an absolute necessity if they would obey the Word of God.” Ibid. Are you and your family obedient to the Word of God? If you want to stay that way, if you want to be ready for Jesus to come, you have to separate from apostasy and not participate in it.

“They dared not tolerate errors fatal to their own souls, and set an example which would imperil the faith of their children and children’s children.” Ibid. Praise the Lord there were people like this. They were from all nations. Rome became the center, and in Italy those people who could not tolerate this went into the northern part of Italy, into Milan, and later on to Deuteron, and even later into what we call the Waldensian Valley. They became the Waldenses.

The Waldenses were a group of people who actually came from many different nations, part of the true church, but they were not the only group. There were the Albagenses and Paulicians. We do not know how many Paulicians there were, but we do know, from historical records, that in the middle ages, the Paulicians were farther up in the eastern Roman Empire. We also know that during the reign of just one queen, she had one hundred thousand of them killed. So we know there were a lot of them. But they were not very many in proportion to what the whole church was, because the whole church was in the many millions.

Peace at the Sacrifice of Principles?

“To secure peace and unity they were ready to make any concession consistent with fidelity to God; but they felt that even peace would be too dearly purchased at the sacrifice of principle.” Ibid.

Oh, friend, do you have some moral principles based on the Word of God that you are not going to sacrifice, no matter what happens? I hope you do. Because if you do not, if you are willing to purchase peace by compromising, you are on a downhill run and will end up in Babylon and not even know what happened.

You may not think you will ever do that because you are part of Zion, but remember that is what all those people, who called themselves Christians, thought, and the great majority lost out. What we are talking about has caused the loss of billions of souls.

This idea of trying to keep peace by compromising your principles a little bit is dangerous. As time goes on, you have to compromise a little bit more, and a little bit more, until there is no end.

You may think that the Lord is going to sort it out when the National Sunday Law comes. The Lord is going to sort it out, all right. Do you think the people who are compromising a little bit here and there right now will, all of a sudden, turn around and go the opposite direction when the National Sunday Law comes?

Think! If we cannot stand up and not compromise the truth in a relative time of peace, what do you think we are going to do when the pressure is put on us?

Let There be Difference—Even War!

Ellen White writes about the feelings of this small, faithful few. “If unity could be secured only by the compromise of truth and righteousness, then let there be difference, and even war.” Ibid.

Do you mean a Christian would say, “Let there be war?” That is exactly what it said. “Well would it be for the church and the world if the principles that actuated those steadfast souls were revived in the hearts of God’s professed people.” Ibid., 46.

What were the principles that actuated these steadfast souls? They decided that they were going to absolve all union with an apostate church and would not listen to anyone that was united with the world. They would not be part of it.

Do you know what the apostate church called them, and has been calling them for over fifteen hundred years? They called them separationists!

In Vatican II, the Pope called them “separated brethren.” The Papacy is still calling them that, and they are not going to be content until they get them all back.

Who Really are the Separationists?

All Protestants are separationists according to the Pope. Who really are the separationists?

“Romanists have persisted in bringing against Protestants the charge of heresy and willful separation from the true church.” In other words, they accuse Protestants of being separationists because of willful separation from the true church. Now look at the next sentence. “But these accusations apply rather to themselves.” The Great Controversy, 51.

Who were the separationists? It was the majority, not the minority. The majority kept the church building, the pastor, the organization, the finances, the name, the collusion with the government, everything. They had worldly peace and prosperity, but Inspiration says they were the separationists.

How do you know that they were the separationists? There are two things that make a person a separationist. If these apply to you, or me, then we are separationists. But whoever they apply to, they are separationists.

“They are the ones who lay down the banner of Christ and departed from the ‘faith which was once delivered unto the saints.’ Jude 3.” Ibid.

They did two things. They laid down the banner of Christ! They did that by accepting Pagan customs and teachings. They laid down the truth and picked up Pagan ideas and brought them into the church. They laid down the banner of Christ and “They departed from the faith, which was once delivered unto the saints. Jude 3.”

That is why I personally like the term Historic Seventh-day Adventist, because I want the historic Seventh-day Adventist faith that the saints of all ages knew, what the pioneers of Adventism, who understood the judgment hour message, accepted.

Our Pioneers said, “We do not have any creed. The Bible is our creed.” When I was a young boy, I was taught this in the Adventist Church, and as a young preacher, I used to tell people, when I was studying the Bible with them in their homes, the Bible is the only creed that I have, and I am very sincere and I can say it in public today. I am still sincere when I say it. If you could show me anything in the Bible that is contrary to the way I am living, I am willing to change, starting today.

I want to live according to the Bible. The faith once delivered to the saints is in the Bible. The separationists are the people that lay the banner down and start following other teachings, customs, or traditions of philosophy. The separationists are the majority. The faithful few, who keep the faith that was once delivered unto the saints, are not the separationists, they are the true church.

The Future Brings the End of the Shaking

The same thing that happened back there is happening right now. Do not let somebody fool you and tell you it is going to happen some time in the future. It is going on right now. The future will not bring the beginning of the shaking, it is going to bring the end of the shaking. Are you ready?

There were a faithful few back then, and we know through prophecy (See Revelation 12:17,) there is going to be a faithful few again at the end. It says so. “The woman fled into the wilderness.” (See verse 6) It was the faithful few that fled into the wilderness.

At the end there is going to be a faithful few again, just a small group in proportion to the world’s population. Although, it will be a large group in terms of total numbers. I want to be part of 1the remnant that is talked about in Revelation 12:17, who still keep the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus. If that is what you want, and you want to dedicate your life to the Lord today, say, “Lord, whatever it takes. I am willing to go through the desperate struggle. I am willing to be called a separationist. I am willing, whatever people want to call me, I want to be part of the remnant that keep the commandments and have the faith of Jesus.” Pray and ask Him to help you be part of that group today.

America’s Twin Towers Toppling

by

Our Days are Numbered

In the United States of America, the keepers of national security and national prosperity of the most powerful nation in the world, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, have been attacked. We may be witnessing what could very well accelerate the shift of public trust from civil government power for security, to the church or religious power. History shows that when a nation suffers imponderable reverses and the civil government is perceived to be impotent to deal with the crisis, it turns to religion as a “city of refuge.” The same historical fact also reveals that when this happens, national religious bigotry blossoms very rapidly and persecution is not far behind.

Or it may precipitate the Third World War, if the United States resorts to “righteous” retaliation, justified, as it may seem to many. Violence breeds violence. But no military might can match or cope successfully with suicidal missions of religious convictions. When men are taught the terrible lie that death is the entrance to heaven or that a soul survives the body, what is there to stop desperate men from committing suicide as the ultimate release, or killing others as a means of gaining heaven, if the ones being destroyed are perceived as “enemies of the truth.”

Scapegoats

Finding and punishing the perpetrators of such a history-making travesty of this magnitude hardly ever gets traced back to the real masterminds. Were the true masterminds of St. Bartholomew’s Massacre in France ever brought to justice by the world’s tribunal? It was called by historian Henry White, in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the “. . . blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries . . . .” The Great Controversy, 271, 272. The king of France, then, will be blamed for “the butchery [that] continued for two months” where “seventy thousand of the very flower of the nation perished.” But who was behind it all? “The king of France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the plighted honor of their king, were dragged forth without a warning and murdered in cold blood.” Ibid., 272. There will be scapegoats and fall guys galore, but never the ones who hatched, developed and engineered the scheme—not till the day when all the secrets of man are revealed in Heaven. All real wars, since the fall of man, have had a religious agenda in the background although not acknowledged as such by contemporary historians. Those who did acknowledge this fact were, and continue to be, discredited, not because they were inaccurate, but because they chronicled the truth. The same masterminds behind these religious wars of conquest are responsible for such misinformation campaigns as “the Reformation led by Luther was a rebellion against church authority.”

The papacy that has survived all individual popes, and the Roman Catholic Church, the “mother of harlots” (Revelation 17:5) has slowly returned to world prominence, quietly solidifying its worldwide power as prophesied in Revelation 13. All other world religions and denominations, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and historic Adventists as well, are splintering through internal dissension and intrigue over minor issues rendered major by spiritual myopia. Talk about the enemy from within! Sometimes we do not even need our enemies to vex us. We can discomfit each other and hand the victory to them.

“If We Lose Our Freedom, We Lose Our Nation”

A cryptic statement made by an U.S. Senator reflects the brave, yet confounded, spirits of officials at the highest echelons of government, over these well-coordinated “terrorist attacks.” It is an honest yet fearful admission of helplessness to say, “there were security lapses.” Post-war U.S. invincibility is now a myth, even as the Jews believed that Jerusalem’s walls were impregnable. Titus and his Roman horde desolated Jerusalem for at least six months in a.d. 70, literally leaving not “one stone upon another,” (Matthew 24:2) as Jesus tearfully prophesied 40 years prior.

But the “attack against freedom” to which many of our nation’s leaders referred to as “begging for retaliation against its cowardly perpetrators” was not on the incomparably more vital religious liberty issue—the ultimate freedom—but “freedom from fear of being attacked by terrorists.” Their declaration had more to do with losing temporal life and its advantages, financial wealth and stability—not freedom to worship God according to dictates of conscience as currently guaranteed by the First Amendment. It is always those things, opportunities, and the people who matter most that are taken for granted and ignored—until they are suddenly yanked away without a moment’s notice.

This is a foretaste and a forewarning of how the element of surprise has never failed. It will be the same strategy used in the final national crisis, which will also be the final and ultimate religious crisis.

“Marvelous in her shrewdness and cunning is the Romish Church. She can read what is to be. She bides her time, seeing that the Protestant churches are paying her homage in their acceptance of the false Sabbath, and that they are preparing to employ the very means which she herself employed in by-gone days. . . . The Christian world will learn what Romanism really is, when it is too late to escape the snare. She is silently growing into power. Her doctrines are exerting their influence in legislative halls, in the churches, and in the hearts of men. Throughout the land she is piling up her lofty and massive structures, in the secret recesses of which her former persecutions will be repeated. She is stealthily and unsuspectedly strengthening her forces to further her own ends when the time shall come for her to strike. All that she desires is vantage ground, and this is soon to be given her. In the near future we shall see and shall feel what the purpose of the Roman element is. Whoever shall believe and obey the word of God will incur reproach and persecution.” The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 397.

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Definitions: Thesis: create the problem. Antithesis: manufacture and propose the solution. Synthesis: control the situation. This simple formula has been used in micro scale and macro scale for generations, increasing merely in sophistication and deadly affectivity. It began in heaven as the “mystery of iniquity.” The Problem: the Son of God was in the way of Lucifer’s ambition to be greater than the Creator. The Solution: create doubt in the minds of the angels by making it appear that he was working for their interest, ultimately resulting in rebellion. The Situation: Lucifer thought he finally had control of the situation until he and one-third of the rebellious angels were cast from heaven down to earth. What he attempted to accomplish in heaven, he simply repeated with more devilish cunning in the Garden of Eden, with devastating success. Since then he has been successful in destroying untold millions through the generations by this method employed by his agents on earth, both civil and religious.

The Decline of America’s Image of Invincibility

From the worldly point of view, the twin symbols of the United States’ might and wealth—the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., nerve center of military power, and the World Trade Center in New York, symbol of economic and financial strength, have been exposed as frightfully vulnerable. All the high-flying, budget-busting “star wars” and “missile shield technology” projects of the past and present administrations suddenly look so pitifully puny and futile. But according to The Great Controversy, page 441, America’s secrets of power and prosperity as one of the world’s greatest nations, are the principles known as Protestantism and Republicanism. The true basis of America’s success and prosperity will not be appreciated by the vast majority till they lose it—in the coming days.

Freedom Attacked, Freedom Defended

One of President George W. Bush’s earliest statements following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was, “Freedom itself was attacked . . . Freedom will be defended.” O, that the leaders of this nation knew on what true freedom is based, as did past leaders such as James Madison, Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ulysses Grant, and others. All the current brave talk and rhetoric, in spite of inspiring human endeavors crossing political party lines and race and religious differences, to collectively deal with the crisis, will not erase one stark fact—the ultimate enemy will come from within. It will be the least suspected, for it will present itself, as it has in past generations, culminating during the Dark Ages, as Christ’s representative on earth!

All world empires, beginning with ancient Babylon, ultimately crumbled when their time was up, according to the unfailing prophetic timetable of Daniel and Revelation. They fell by Divine fiat, through a fundamental flaw from within, which the enemy recognized and used to their advantage. The last and final world-wide spiritual Babylon will fall as did its type—by forsaking God and replacing His immutable, unchangeable law of Ten Commandments with man-made laws that ultimately counterfeit the seventh-day Sabbath memorial of creation with Sunday Sabbath, and enforcing it as a law of the land. This is the final apostasy that comprises the national crisis, which leads to national destruction.

Why New York?

God’s prophet of the end was shown, in vision, the fiery destruction of fire-proof buildings in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other major cities of the United States. Here are some excerpts:

“February 15, 1904: ‘When I was last in New York, I was in the night season called upon to behold buildings rising story after story toward heaven. These building were warranted to be fireproof, and they were erected to glorify the owners. Higher and still higher these buildings rose, and in them the most costly material was used. . . .

“‘As these lofty buildings went up, the owners rejoiced with ambitious pride that they had money to use in glorifying self. . . . Much of the money that they thus invested had been obtained through exaction, through grinding the faces of the poor. In the books of heaven, an account of every business transaction is kept. There every unjust deal, every fraudulent act, is recorded. The time is coming when in their fraud and insolence men will reach a point that the Lord will not permit them to pass, and they will learn that there is a limit to the forbearance of Jehovah.

“‘The scene that next passed before me was an alarm of fire. Men looked at lofty and supposedly fireproof buildings, and said, “They are perfectly safe.” But these buildings were consumed as if made of pitch. The fire engines could do nothing to stay the destruction. The firemen were unable to operate the engines.’” Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 413.

“I have no light in particular in regard to what is coming on New York, only I know that one day the great buildings there will be thrown down by the turning and overturning of God’s power.” Ibid., 412. (See also Testimonies, vol. 9, 12, 13.)

While the foregoing testimonies refer to the time when the enactment and enforcement of the Sunday Law take place in the United States, what happened to the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York is a clear sampling of what is yet to come—a great terror, an overwhelming surprise, a blinding force! The most powerful machinery to wound and kill human beings is being prepared.

Note the following statement: “Transgression has almost reached its limit. Confusion fills the world, and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings. The end is very near. We who know the truth should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise. . . .“ Maranatha, 138.

“The work of the people of God is to prepare for events of the future, which will soon come upon them with blinding force.” Ibid., 182.

“The Lord is removing His restrictions from the earth, and soon there will be death and destruction, increasing crime, and cruel, evil working against the rich who have exalted themselves against the poor. Those who are without God’s protection will find no safety in any place or position. Human agents are being trained and are using their inventive power to put in operation the most powerful machinery to wound and to kill. . . .” Ibid., 137.

Troubles Will Increase

Over 100 years ago, the Spirit of Prophecy warned: “Satan delights in war; for it excites the worst passions of the soul, and then sweeps into eternity its victims steeped in vice and blood. It is his object to incite nations to war against one another; for he can thus divert the minds of the people from the work of preparation to stand in the day of God.

“Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. . . . It is God that shields His creatures, and hedges them in from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world has shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord does just what He has declared that He would do, He withdraws His blessings from the earth, and removes His protecting care from those who are rebelling against His law, and teaching and forcing others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. . . .

“Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, is Satan exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon the inhabitants of the world. The beasts of the field will groan, and the earth will languish.

“And then the great deceiver will persuade men that those who serve God are causing these evils. The class that have provoked the displeasure of Heaven will charge all their troubles upon the faithful few whom the Lord has sent to them with messages of warning and reproof. It will be declared that the nation is offending God by the violation of the Sunday Sabbath, that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sunday observance shall be strictly enforced, and that those who present the claims of the fourth commandment, thus destroying reverence for Sunday, are troublers of the nation, preventing its restoration to divine favor and temporal prosperity. Thus, the accusation urged of old against the servant of God will be repeated, and upon grounds equally well established.“ The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 406, 408.

Scenario of What is to Come

So what does the future hold? The following listing gives you a brief, general scenario of what lies ahead according to prophecy. These events are not listed in any suggested chronological order.

  1. Troubles, crimes, calamities and disasters, both domestic and worldwide, increase. (See Review and Herald, November 17, 1910; Ibid., February 26, 1914.)
  2. Immorality, infidelity, and spiritualism increase; anti-typical spiritual Sodom and Gomorrah and atheistic Egypt reinstated. (See Maranatha, 153; Counsels on Health, 615.)
  3. Economy deteriorates. (See Signs of the Times, August 24,1904; The Upward Look, 362.)
  4. Religious fervor picks up; mainstream preachers go on the offensive to get people to return to church and “old, traditional” values are revived. (See The Publishing Ministry, 38, 39; The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 415.)
  5. Political leaders, at a loss for political answers, turn to religion. (See The Publishing Ministry, 38, 39.)
  6. Political and religious leaders join hands in an attempt to solve problems. (See The Great Controversy, 450.)
  7. Spiritualistic and miraculous manifestations increase. (See Early Writings, 85; Maranatha, 156.)
  8. Calamities increase. (See Christian Service, 155.)
  9. Religious fanaticism increases; more suicidal attacks by extremists; more mass suicides; bombings and public disturbances renewed with more violent color and religious discrimination and prejudice. (See Evangelism, 610, 611.)
  10. Every principle of the United States’ Constitution is repudiated. (See Testimonies, vol. 5, 451.)
  11. Mainstream churches now join together in reversing themselves on their former position of anti-nomism; they now urge the nations to keep the Ten Commandments, where the fourth commandment is Sunday, not the seventh-day Sabbath. Moribund state Sunday Laws are revived. (See The Great Controversy, 573.)
  12. Sunday Law passes in Congress in the United States. Other nations and governments follow suit shortly. (See The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, vol. 2, 477, 478.)
  13. The Latter Rain poured out on the prepared saints—their sins are blotted out as well as the sins of all who accept the final message—this is the judgment of the living. (See The Great Controversy, 611; Review and Herald, April 21, 1891.)
  14. The Final Loud Cry of Revelation 18 goes forth throughout the world. Many miracles follow. (See The Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 429, 430.)
  15. Standard after standard will be left to trail in the dust as company after company from the Lord’s army join the foe and tribe after tribe from the ranks of the enemy unite with the commandment-keeping people of God. (See Testimonies, vol. 8, 41.)
  16. The Sunday Law will now be enforced, first, by inducements and fines. (See The Great Controversy, 607.)
  17. All faithful Sabbath-keepers throughout the world suffer persecution in varied forms and in different degrees. (See Early Writings, 33, 34.)
  18. Sunday Law now enforced by death penalty. There are many martyrs, as a witness. As a result, more people are converted. (See The Great Controversy, 615, 616.)
  19. The seal of God is placed upon foreheads of the faithful. (See Early Writings, 38.)
  20. Probation closes. (See The Great Controversy, 490.)
  21. Holy Spirit fully withdrawn from the earth; Jesus casts down the censer and declares, “It is done,” signaling the end of the Investigative Judgment. Four winds of strife let loose. (See Early Writings, 279, 280; The Great Controversy, 614.)
  22. Seven last plagues begin to fall. God finally announces, “It is done.” (Revelation 16:17.) To the living saints it is like “voice of many waters,” to the living wicked, it sounds like terrible “thunder.” (See Revelation 19:6; Last Day Events, 272.)
  23. This voice of God opens up the graves for the Special Resurrection of two classes of people:
    • Those faithful of the Advent Movement who died in the faith of the Third Angel’s Message, keeping the Sabbath holy, and
    • Those who pierced Jesus’ side at the cross and the most violent persecutors of God’s people. (See Early Writings, 285; The Great Controversy, 637.)
  24. The 144,000, who have lived through six of the seven last plagues under the protection of the heavenly angels, and the specially resurrected saints now hear the voice of God
    • Announcing the day and hour of Jesus’ coming, and
    • Delivering the everlasting covenant to them that kept the law when the world made it void. (See The Great Controversy, 640.)
  25. Midnight Deliverance—the final anti-type of the midnight deliverance of ancient Israel at the Passover in Egypt. The universal death decree has gone into effect. Some try to slay God’s people but their swords fall like straw. (See Early Writings, 284, 285.)
  26. In the east, God’s living Israel, the church triumphant, see the unmistakable sign of Jesus’ appearing—a “black cloud, about half the size of a man’s hand.” (See The Great Controversy, 640.)

Message of the Hour

What we desperately need now is genuine and thorough repentance over our sins of self-righteousness (Laodiceanism) and Christ’s unity among brethren! Stop magnifying the faults of others! Never pass judgment on others based on your own personal convictions and opinions. Help one another overcome weaknesses and acquire good habits through education and example. Encourage and motivate one another to carry forward the work and message of the third angel in love, patience, longsuffering, tact, consistency, and mercy.

Remember ancient, literal Israel—the type of modern, spiritual Israel, the Seventh-day Adventist people? As God’s people, they were far from perfect, even as is modern Israel! But whenever one of them sinned, whatever sin it was, and repented, the priest did not condemn him. A divine remedy for forgiveness of sins by confession and offering of an animal sacrifice as the symbolic substitute and surety was available through the sanctuary services. After the blood was spilt and obtained, the priest interceded in the holy places for the repentant sinner. The same is true for spiritual Israel today through a much better hope, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and His all-powerful mediatorial work as our great High Priest during this anti-typical Day of Atonement! In and through Christ alone there is complete justification and perfect, progressive sanctification by living faith that works by love and purifies the soul from sin. This is the amazing, enabling, empowering, sin-destroying, saving grace of Christ!

Secrets of Unity

“The secret of unity is found in the equality of believers in Christ. The reason for all division, discord, and difference is found in separation from Christ. Christ is the center to which all should be attracted; for the nearer we approach the center, the closer we shall come together in feeling, in sympathy, in love, growing into the character and image of Jesus. With God there is no respect of persons.” Selected Messages, Book 1, 259.

“But spiritual success comes only to those who have learned meekness and lowliness in the school of Christ.

“We should remember that the world will judge us by what we appear to be. Let those who are seeking to represent Christ be careful not to exhibit inconsistent features of character. Before we come fully to the front, let us see to it that the Holy Spirit is poured upon us from on high. When this is the case, we shall give a decided message, but it will be of a far less condemnatory character than that which some have been giving; and all who believe will be far more earnest for the salvation of our opponents.” Counsels to Writers and Editors, 72.

“Every association of life calls for the exercise of self-control, forbearance, and sympathy. We differ so widely in disposition, habits, education, that our ways of looking at things vary. We judge differently. Our understanding of truth, our ideas in regard to the conduct of life, are not in all respects the same. There are no two whose experience is alike in every particular. The trials of one are not the trials of another. The duties that one finds light are to another most difficult and perplexing.

“So frail, so ignorant, so liable to misconception is human nature, that each should be careful in the estimate he places upon another. We little know the bearing of our acts upon the experience of others. What we do or say may seem to us of little moment, when, could our eyes be opened, we should see that upon it depended the most important results for good or for evil.” The Ministry of Healing, 483.

“We cannot afford to let our spirits chafe over any real or supposed wrong done to ourselves. Self is the enemy we most need to fear. No form of vice has a more baleful effect upon the character than has human passion not under control of the Holy Spirit. No other victory we can gain will be so precious as the victory gained
over self.

“We should not allow our feelings to be easily wounded. We are to live, not to guard our feelings or our reputation, but to save souls. As we become interested in the salvation of souls we cease to mind the little differences that so often arise in our association with one another. Whatever others may think of us or do to us, it need not disturb our oneness with Christ, the fellowship of the Spirit. [1 Peter 2:20 quoted.]” Ibid., 485.

Unconverted Christians

The truly heart-converted Christian is known by his fruits—the very first of which is meekness, learned from the school of Christ. Jesus said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.” Matthew 11:28. Working out our own salvation by our own self-righteousness is going to wear out our life forces in a very short time. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18. He who struts around like a peacock today will be nothing but a feather duster tomorrow. Premature spiritual and physical death is the result, but Jesus came to give life, and to give it more abundantly, hence, He pleads, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:29. Meekness and lowliness of heart—not appearance nor words—is the condition for the divine rest that our Gentle Shepherd promises to the rest-less, stressed-out yet proud Christian.

“Where the Spirit of God is, there is meekness, patience, gentleness, and longsuffering; there is a tenderness of soul, a mildness which savors of Christ. But these fruits are not manifested by the unconverted. The more real need there is for this class to humble themselves before God, the less sense they have of their real standing, and the more self-confidence they assume. The more they claim to be led by God, the more overbearing they are to all around them, the more incapable of receiving any reproof, the more impatient of contradiction, and the less they feel the need of counsel. Instead of being meek and gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy, love, and good fruits, they are exacting and tyrannical; instead of being swift to hear and slow to speak [or write], they are slow to hear and swift to speak.

“They are unwilling to learn of anyone. The temper is fiery and vehement. There is a set determination, a fierceness in the very looks and deportment. They speak and act as though they would take the work out of God’s hands and pass judgment themselves upon those whom they consider in the wrong.

“A true disciple of Christ will seek to imitate the Pattern. His love will lead to perfect obedience. He will study to do the will of God on earth, as it is done in heaven. He whose heart is still defiled with sin cannot be zealous of good works; and is not careful to abstain from evil, is not vigilant and watchful over his own motives and conduct, is not jealous over his unruly tongue; he is not careful to deny self and lift the cross of Christ. These poor, deceived souls fail to keep the first four precepts of the decalogue, defining the duty of man to God, neither do they keep the last six commandments, defining the duty of man to his fellow men. [See Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14; John 14:15; Romans 14:10.]

“The fruits of the Spirit, ruling in the heart and controlling the life, are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, bowels of mercies, and humbleness of mind. True believers walk after the Spirit, and the Spirit of God dwells in them.—Manuscript 1, October 9, 1878, ‘Church Difficulties.’” This Day With God, 291.

[All Emphasis Supplied.]