Our Solemn Responsibility
It is wrong, cruel, and blameworthy I to tell men and women of the inescapable judgment and its inexorable standard, and the impending fiat that will usher in that fateful period when mankind stands henceforth without an Intercessor, leaving them there to stagger in despair. As Heaven's spokesmen, we are under bonds before God to reveal painstakingly the divine provision along with the divine warning. The divine enabling should never be separated from the divine requirement.
Christ enshrined within through the medium of the Holy Spirit is the only way devised in time or eternity for sustaining and keeping then. This is the only way the commandments can ever be kept,—by the faith of Jesus. And this must be an experimental actuality now, operative before probation closes. It will not be arbitrarily thrust upon, nor involuntarily received by, men then.
Are we experiencing this matchless enabling ourselves? and are we leading every convert into this required reality? Yea, more, are we presenting this in the midst of our warnings so that our hearers may see the way through to a right conclusion and deliverance? It is simply the operation of the new covenant relationship. God pity the laborer who presents the old covenant, human promise as the motivating power of obedience to the commandments of God. God will not hold him guiltless in these new covenant times.
We must distinguish sharply between a principle and a policy. We can yield policies because of legitimate expediency, but a principle, never!
The Spirit of the Pioneers
There are two equally regrettable and unfortunate views concerning the position and writings of the pioneers and builders of this movement, which should be avoided. One is to assign to them an infallibility, a finality, and a freedom from error they never once claimed nor tolerated while living, and which, moreover, they would vehemently disclaim if they could now speak. Their recorded writings attest this times without number. Their positions were far more sane, Scriptural, and consistent than the unwarranted assertions of certain of their modern champions.
They never claimed that all their positions on prophetic interpretation were inerrant. They never claimed to have received all the light, nor to have explored all truth. They were not agreed among themselves any more than we are today, on similar questions of detail. But they mutually respected the views of others who differed. They did not claim to have exhausted all the depths nor to have compassed all the heights. But they were outstandingly sincere, and God was graciously with them. They were honest men, but fallible men. Of course an angel was by the side of Uriah Smith when he wrote "Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation." Anyone with a discerning eye can see that, just as angels are by the side of some who write today. That volume was the most complete and harmonious commentary on the prophecies that had been produced up to that time (and so far yet, for that matter), and the freest from strange and erroneous interpretations that were current.
It has been an inestimable boon and a wonderful blessing to man and the movement. But it made no pretense to infallibility. It was never designed to become a sterile and rigid prophetic creed and a deterrent to further expansive study. Anyone who has read the volumes then extant, that Elder Smith studied so assiduously, recognizes the source of most of his positions, apart from the unique sanctuary truth. There can be only admiration for his fine discerning powers in discriminating between sound prophetic positions and those fanciful vagaries so interspersed in the writings on prophecy current in his day, and which he painstakingly perused. But light, he believed, was to increase more and more, confirming and correcting, expanding and clarifying, along with the developing work of God.
He was not a finalist. But it is this strange spirit of hero worship that has been the blight of the- popular churches that occasionally manifests itself in our ranks, relative to his writings. It is the spirit that has formed the creeds, with death to progress and to growth. It has crystallized and codified and ossified. It assumes that there is no further light and no additional truth, and consequently there is resultant stagnation and retrogression.
On the other hand, there are, unfortunately, a few who look with a critical and iconoclastic eye upon anything the pioneers wrote or taught, and incline to reject and revise seemingly for the mere sake of change. Such a course is equally deplorable and indefensible.
We should always be transparently honest men. We should not cover any known mistake through false loyalty, nor support any untenable positions, however sincerely the early pioneers may have introduced them. We should never deny the fact of a manifestly erroneous teaching of the pioneers merely to sustain the halo that attends their names. Denial and suppression are ignoble and dishonest. Neither should we, on the other hand, change our position on a prophetic interpretation, unless the former exposition is manifestly erroneous. Loyal to the past and open toward the future, we should constantly seek and follow the unfolding light of God. There are still some things that were obscure in the past and upon which we have thus far no special added light. And therefore upon such points silence is still golden.
We need the fearless yet reverent spirit of the pioneers. We should never change for the sake of change, nor because someone else holds a different view. Neither should we cling to some position because venerable men in times past have sincerely held it, if added investigation and evidence show some point untenable. Our regard for our pioneers must not become pioneer worship. Honesty demands harmony with the facts; candor demands all the facts. And truth is glorified of her adherents.
Christ was unique and solitary in that He was the embodiment in His own person and ministry of all the varied gifts that He afterward scattered through the ranks of His followers severally as He chose. Let no one, therefore, reproach his brother because he does not have the gift of healing, or evangelism, or government. We are to use gratefully what God has given, and we are not to look askance at a brother whose allotted gifts differ from ours. God has set His hand to do a perfect and unlimited work through a host of limited and imperfect instrumentalities.
He does not truly preach the gospel who fails to preach it in the light of local circumstances and living conditions which call for specific emphasis, applying general principles to meet the particular needs.
L. E. F.
