Our attitude toward truth is a life-anddeath question, both for us as individual workers, and for the denomination. Our very destiny depends upon the attitude we assume. This question is consequently of inescapable moment to every one of us.
Differing attitudes prevail, finding their ultimate expression in two extremes. These extremes represent small minorities, we believe, but minorities of peril. Let us note them briefly.
One group takes pride in stressing its orthodox conservatism, which when stripped of its assuring phraseology is often just plain reactionism, however harsh the term may sound. Such, complacently, in the spirit of super-orthodoxy, and with the mind closed to reasoning and critical analyses, take their stand upon some traditional detail. They become seemingly oblivious and impervious to any additional facts or factors that might modify former conclusions based upon incomplete or partial data. They look upon any change or revision as perilous, principally because it is a change.
Such cleverly contrive to place themselves in the strategic position of the ultimate defenders of the faith delivered once for all, the last stand of loyalty. They classify, by implication if not by declaration, all who differ from them as dangerous innovators. Their penchant is to maintain that status quo which supports their own rigid views. They condemn openly, or by implication, equally loyal, self-sacrificing, truth-loving heralds of this message who differ from them. This group represents one minority extreme.
At the other end of the pendulum's arc, stressing its liberal progressivism, stands an opposite group ready to press views that are seriously revolutionary, perilous, and disruptive. And these two opposite groups, each appealing to a partial set of principles of commonly acknowledged truth, make more difficult the sound, reverent, and loyal stand of the majority who reject upon principle the positions and perils of both extremes. It is essential for us clearly to understand the situation in order intelligently and properly to relate ourselves thereto.
Truly we need the spirit of sound judgment, of spiritual discernment, and unswerving fidelity to God's ever-expanding truth, revealed in His Word and buttressed by the confirming witness of the Spirit of prophecy. Anything else or anything less will prove disastrous. At the same time we should not permit ourselves to be forced into situations that are intolerable and unnecessary. There is no need of permitting a few reactionaries to blockade all legitimate advance. The majority voice, avoiding both extremes, should prevail.
We must avoid the attitude of the first group—a stultifying subservience to tradition and mere traditional teaching of the fathers of this movement, with its weight of authority vested chiefly in its antiquity. It was this position that wrecked the Jewish church of old. And this is a present peril of very real dimensions.
We must beware, similarly, of the stultifying creedalism of the historic Protestant bodies. Driving their doctrinal stakes after the first great period of discoverative study, they said with complacence and finality, "Thus far and no farther. We have the full truth." Hence they braced against any and all additional light and truth, and deadening stagnation has resulted. This is the rigid orthodoxy of inertia. We as a people must watch lest one or the other, or both, of these twin errors take disastrous root in our midst.
At the other extreme and opposite end of the pendulum's swing, before mentioned, lies the peril of abandonment of distinctive advent movement principles, rooted in Scripture and confirmed by the Spirit of prophecy, through the acceptance of specious principles that simulate light, but contradict or neutralize the soundly buttressed historic positions which have made us a separate people. Such usually touch either the sanctuary truth or the Spirit of prophecy, which constitute the distinctive and separating features of this movement, and the stone of stumbling to all critics and apostates. Here again we must watch and stand by revealed truth no matter who may be the innovator, what his standing may be, or his record.
The pathway of the advent herald is beset with perils today. Our only safety lies in ceaseless, progressive study of the Word,—individually and in groups,—invoking the promised presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the matchless counsel of the Spirit of prophecy. He who follows this divine program for worker guidance and protection has the assurance of divine keeping from the pitfalls of the hour.
L. E. F.
