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ALONE
WITH GOD
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Spiritual Answers and Reasons
for Faith |
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Sect Making
Multitudes
of cold professors will not endure sound doctrine, but
heap to themselves these teachers who turn away their ears
from the truth unto fables. The more people these
preachers can gather into their drag, the more they
rejoice, "supposing gain is godliness." Many of
them sacrifice to their drag—sect—more than they do to
their God. Thus they slay the nations. Woe unto you
sectarian preachers, blind guides, hypocrites! You compass
land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made,
he is twofold more the child of hell than when you found
him. You are the very ones who are making division
contrary to the doctrine of Christ, and we are commanded
to avoid you. You oppose the truth, not only refusing to
obey it yourselves, but also hindering those who would.
Thus you are likened unto whitened sepulchers, which
appear beautiful outward: within you are full of
uncleanness, hypocrisies, and iniquity. For a pretense you
make long prayers; therefore you shall receive the greater
damnation. The pulpits of Protestantism are filled with a
hireling ministry, a worthless set of preachers, who love
greetings in the market and the highest seats of honor?
who love the praise of men more than the praise of God,
and who are filled with pride and formality.
Turning again to the eleventh
chapter of Revelation, we find mention of two prophets—
the Word and Spirit of God—the true vicars of Christ
during the Protestant age. " And when they shall have
finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of
the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall
overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall
lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is
called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and
nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an
half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in
graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice
over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to
another; because these two prophets tormented them that
dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half the
Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood
upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw
them." Verses 7-11.
In this prophecy we see that the
beast finally succeeded in slaying tile two prophets that
he had been fighting for 1,260 years. The first part of
this prophecy we have already considered in the reign of
popery. After the 1,260 years of papacy, they lay dead
three days and a half. This was fulfilled when those
children of God who had been standing out clear against
popery in the papal age united with Protestantism.
Protestantism, as well as Romanism, accepts human vicars.
Protestants bitterly oppose the government of the church
by the Word and Spirit of God, and set up human vicars,
who are their lawmakers and governors. Whether the vicar
be one individual or a legislative body, it is a human
vicar just the same; and when all God's people throughout
the world accepted human vicars, the two prophets—the
Word and Spirit of God—were virtually slain.
The three days and a half during
which they were to lie dead signify three and one-half
centuries, or three hundred and fifty years. The term
"day" when applied to the papal age signifies a
year, and when applied to the Protestant age it signifies
a century. There is reason for this. The events of each
century of the Protestant age are naturally divided into
separate periods. The divisions of the centuries of the
Protestant age are so marked that historians have adopted
them. The following quotation from D'Aubigne's History of
the Reforrnation, book II, chap. 9, is a fair sample of
the use historians have made of this figure: "It as
been said that tile three last centuries, the sixteenth,
the seventeenth, and tile eighteenth, may be conceived as
an immense battle of three days' duration. We willingly
adopt this comparison. The first day was tile battle of
God; the second, the battle of the priest; the third, the
battle of reason. What will be the fourth? In our opinion
the confused strife and deadly contest of all these powers
together is to end in the victory of Him to whom triumph
belongs." It is because the centuries of the
Protestant age are thus divided into separate periods that
God makes use of a day to signify a century. Counting,
therefore, a day for a hundred years, we see that the
three days and a half during which the two prophets were
to lie dead signify three hundred and fifty years.
During this period the people were
to make merry because the two prophets did not torment
them. Ah, the Protestant people have been fulfilling this
to the letter in their shameful socials and revelings.
Measuring this 350 years from 1530, the date when the two
prophets were slain, we have the year 1880, at; which
time, according to the prophecy, the spirit of life from
God was to enter into the two prophets. So the reader can
see that we are now diving in the age when the Word and
the Spirit of God were to resume their places as sole
governors of the church of God. The gathering together of
God's people out of sects into the one body, a process
which has been taking place since 1880, is due to the
resurrection of the Word and Spirit of God. The kingdom of
God again triumphs upon earth.
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