Impending Persecutions
It is well for us to be periodically reminded that Rome, in both the Old World and the New, is indeed "piling up her lofty and massive structures, in the secret recesses of which her former persecutions will be repeated." Time and distance—those great modifiers of historic perspective—tend to subdue the vivid reality of those past persecutions, and thus to soften our witness against the returning ruthlessness of Rome, who never changes, and whose present mildness is but subservience to her present lack of power. This power she is steadily regaining. And this latter fact is so much more obvious in the Old World than in the New.
But when one sees, as in Paris at the Protestant Library of France, some of those actual instruments of torture used in times past, in the name of God, upon the hapless Huguenots, under the relentless philosophy born of the pit, —that would torture a fellow man to death in order, if possible, to save his soul, or at least to destroy his subversive influence,—it becomes a stark reality.
Crude, clumsy contrivances of wrought iron they were—the vicious clamp that screwed down mercilessly upon the tongue to extract it; the hollow, perforated tube thrust into the mouth and fastened in place with brace and strap to the back of the head, through which liters of water were forced into the anguished victim; the heavy iron ladle from which molten lead was poured on its mission of torture and death; the leathern scourge with rows of concealed balls of iron; uncovered laceworks of iron to lacerate the back of the hapless victim; flesh pincers in the form of iron claws; arm and leg encasements, with their protruding nobs and spikes to agonize; and heavy ankle irons, stretching racks, and so on ad nauseam. These are the grim evidences of her "former days" of persecution which, we are admonished, will be renewed, and that sooner than some of us are wont to realize.
Rome never changes. How clear, then, should be our understanding of the issues, and how faithful our witness today! Indeed, our distinctive commission as a movement involves a head-on collision with this age-old power, and leads straight to the climaxing death decree for those who refuse to bow to her final mandate. How comforting in the light of all this to know that the great day of God, and the advent of our absent Lord, will thwart the consummation of this heinous design. But woe to the watchman on the walls of Zion who does not discern the far-flung, eternal issues, and who fails to warn a heedless world of the impending clash!
Nor does this imply a tactless antagonism, or call for the precipitation of premature crises. We are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But it does mean faithfulness of witness in the midst of the most pronounced abandonment of the Protestant platform and Romeward drift since the days of the Oxford movement of the last century. It means standing virtually alone in a world swinging toward Rome. Of this we should be fully aware, and act in the fear of God.
L. E. F.
Sound Doctrine
It is most regrettable to hear occasional I thrusts at Bible doctrine. Incalculable harm may be done by disparaging remarks of this character. It is unseemly to make light of the rugged framework of the threefold message,—the foundation facts and revealed premises of the everlasting gospel, without which all our beliefs and hopes become blurred and confused, and our witness is made ineffective. Sound doctrine is imperative to a sound faith. Departure here means spiritual death.
True views of the Godhead, the universe, the creation and fall of man, the plan of redemption, the incarnation, the substitutionary death, resurrection, ascension, and priestly ministry of Christ, the work of judgment, the moral law, the Sabbath, the remnant church, the Spirit of prophecy, the nature of man and of angels, the final eradication of sin from the universe, God's relationship to the universe, the prophetic course of history outlined in symbolic and chronological prophecy convergent in the climax now at hand, God's final message to men, for whom we have the most solemn and weighty commission of all time,—these, and many related features, must be rightly understood, and in proper relationship, if we are to be intrinsically sound, and are to avoid the subtle pitfalls scattered about on every hand. It is incumbent upon us to have a thoroughly sound knowledge of sound doctrine.
True it is, of course, that a mere knowledge of correct doctrine, without spiritual life, is profitless, and that such a fatal lack often leads to a false security as perilous as it is subtle. We sympathize deeply with those burdened over the formalism, the rigidity, the coldness, often accompanying a smug complacency as to orthodoxy that is not infrequently joined to a spirit utterly alien to the spirit of the gospel. We lift our voice with such against this tragic thing. But spiritual life in this hour of concentrated iniquity, and of Catholic and Protestant perversion of every factual truth of the Scriptures and every provision of salvation, necessitates a sound, systematized understanding of revealed truth in its varied and related aspects, as enunciated in Holy Writ by God the Father and by Christ the Son. This we must have, but not without the other. The emphasis must-he placed where the heed of the moment is obvious and the danger apparent.
L. E. F.
