Are our services inferior to other Protestant services in form and impressiveness? Did not the forms of the Mosaic worship in Old Testament times reveal the faith of the Hebrew people? Should we not emulate more of the stately forms and ritual that made their worship beautiful and impressive? Is not the fact that God gave these forms to them a wholly sufficient precedent and justification for us to encourage more ritual in services?
It is true that God gave to the Hebrew people a very definite liturgical system of worship. This ritual, as you say, was to reveal their faith. But all these types pointed to the great antitypical realities of the Christian dispensation to come. The various sacrifices to be slain by the Hebrews all pointed to the divine Lamb of God who was to be slain on Calvary, and all types were to end in the antitypical realities of the Christian dispensation. Thus, when Christ came to establish the Christian church by selecting apostles to propagate the new faith, He swept away all Jewish symbols—the ornate robes, the fragrant incense, the elaborate form of ceremony—and instituted instead a simple, spiritual worship of God without the accouterments of the Jewish worship.
The New Testament example and command of Christ and the apostles is our mandate, not the practices of Jewish worship which were superseded by the simplicities of the Christian church. Their worship was to be simple and direct through hymns, prayers, preaching, and testifying to others. They thus revealed their faith in a Saviour who had come, had died and conquered death through His resurrection, and after ascending to heaven was ministering as our heavenly High Priest and Mediator. It was a new order.
The questioner suggests that Adventist church services are inferior to other Protestant services. If cold, formal liturgy and stately decorum is superior worship, then the cold, elaborate, liturgical forms of the Episcopal Church and the more elaborate ceremonialism of the Roman Catholic Church would constitute the peak of acceptable worship to God. But these stately forms without the true spirit of worship,. and without the substance of truth, are an abomination to God, just as the Jewish forms became obnoxious to Him in olden days. This He declared again and again.
Our worship should ever be conducted decently and in order, according to the apostle Paul. It should be beautiful, orderly, and uplifting. But we have more than the edification of the saints to consider. We have an evangelistic message to give to the world, and a host of honesthearted to win to God and to His message. This is something that nominal Protestantism has tragically lost. It no longer has any message or mission, so it simply seeks to edify itself through its increasingly elaborate and ornate forms.
Beautifully appointed churches, noble architecture, magnificent windows, elaborate organs and professional choirs, and the very vastness of these classic structures, all make for impressive esthetic religious services. But while the form is there, the spirit is usually lacking. And so God denominates it "Babylon," and bids us come out and be separate therefrom. If their worship is superior, why should we come out —then the more liturgical the better. But that is not God's viewpoint, and it must not be ours.
Let us ever seek to increase the simple dignity and worshipfulness of our services, while maintaining the glorious reality of our mission and message—blending true worship and service and quiet devotion with evangelistic fervor. The two must never be separated. We must not become like Babylon.
L. E. F.
