F. G. Smith

“ If this Congress shall faithfully execute its duties with which it has been charged, it shall become the joy of the whole earth, and stand in human history like a new Mount Zion, crowned with glory, and marking the actual beginning of a new epoch of brotherhood and peace. For when the religious faiths of the world recognize each other as brothers, children of one Father, whom all profess to love and serve, then, and not until then, will the nations of the earth yield to the spirit of concord and learn war no more.... ”

“ Multitudes already recognize no other bonds of union than that moral and spiritual affinity which is the common heritage of all the disciples of Jesus that know the blessed experience of the heavenly birth. Multitudes more are beginning to see the light of this glorious truth, and in due time Christ, the Light, will illuminate the hearts of all the saved ones. All hail the day that lies just ahead!
"Back to the one foundation, from sects and creeds made free,
Come saints of every nation to blessed unity. ”

“ At the close of the Revolution the French nation had not virtue nor religion necessary to remedy the evils under which they had long been suffering from the oppression of their monarchs; for when they undertook the work and demolished the throne, they let loose all the wildest elements of wrath to rage without restraint. The nation rejected God, and God rejected the nation. He gave them up to their own madness, to the fury of the most atrocious wickedness that was ever developed under heaven. ”

“ To rally around a creed framed by human authority and make it the basis of union is but to teach a system—a sect system; but to rally around the person of Jesus Christ and make him the supreme object of our faith, hope, and love is to contend for what the Bible terms the faith, the truth, the gospel. ”

“ The marriage scene is one of the most joyful that we witness on earth, and among Eastern nations especially was celebrated with great pomp and magnificence, the joy and splendor of the occasion being enhanced according to the rank and wealth of the parties. But earth has never witnessed such an event as this special marriage of the Lamb. Well may the inhabitants of heaven and earth, in view of this sublime spectacle, swell the song of praise—"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready." ”

“ Is the modern sect system the ultimate goal of Christian attainment in this world? While the sects contain much truth and many of the people of God, their ecclesiastical constitutions are foreign to the true church of Jesus Christ, and it is inconceivable that the great Founder would make no provision either in his Word or in his plan for the correction of the evils which have grown up around the Christian system during the dark ages of the world and which have in a great measure perverted the gospel itself and lessened its wholesome efficiency as the universal remedy for human ills. ”

“ Protestantism certainly has placed the Bible on the dissecting table and dismembered it in a manner wholly unknown before. While Protestants will not for a moment allow the blessed Book to be hidden out of sight—put "into graves"—still they will not grant it that place it should occupy as the sole discipline of faith, so it is a dead letter to them. That all-glorious doctrine of Bible unity, which fills the whole New Testament, strikes a deathblow to all the carnal divisions and institutions of sectarianism; and so with one accord they unite in fighting it. ”

“ Instead of the church representing all the truth to the world, we find the beginning of a great apostasy, which in time was to eclipse and well nigh extinguish the light and glory of primitive Christianity by substituting in its place the darkness of the apostasy born in ages of ignorance and superstition. ”

“ Will the sects themselves fade away and gradually become dissolved? or will the powers that rule in the ecclesiastical world finally set themselves against the spirit of catholicity and thus practically force the true people of God to ignore absolutely all sectarian lines and step out on the broad platform of truth and universality, united in Christ alone, knowing no head but Christ and no creed but His truth? ”

“ Again, there are no victories of love and mercy described at all in the vision before us; but, on the contrary, it is a scene of fearful judgment—a terrible treading of "the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God," the complete overthrow of every opposing power; while the beast and the false prophet are represented as taken and cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. Surely, this is not the work of the church of God. ”

“ It is evident, therefore, that the true church and the false church of the gospel era are represented.
Notice carefully the symbols: holy city, temple, altar, worshipers, and living witnesses, or prophets. These represent the sum and substance of all divine revelation in the Mosaic age: holy city, Jerusalem—the place where God set his name; the temple—divinely authorised, holy, acceptable worship based on careful adherence to God's commandments formerly given; the altar—the great symbol of atonement, the reconciliation of humanity with the divinity ”

“ D'Aubigne again: "In every age it has been seen how great is the strength of an idea to penetrate the masses, to stir nations, and to hurry them, if required, by thousands to the battle-field and to death. But if so great be the strength of a human idea, what power must not a heaven-descended idea possess, when God opens to it the gates of the heart! The world has not often seen so much power at work; it was seen, however, in the early days of Christianity, and in the time of the Reformation ”

“ The gradual development of church organization under the labors of the apostles, therefore, no more proves the theory of a constant historic development than does the fact of a gradual unfolding of the Christian faith and doctrine by the apostles prove a constant and unending revelation of the gospel through all succeeding ages. One writer has well said, "The same promise of the Spirit which renders the New Testament an unerring and sufficient rule of faith renders it also an unerring and sufficient rule of practise for the church in all places and times." ”

“ Thus, a beautiful virgin bride is chosen to represent the church of God; whereas a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns is chosen to symbolize the Pagan Roman empire. The glorious body of God's reformers is set forth under the symbol of an angel from heaven, with his face as the sun, his feet as pillars of fire, and a rainbow upon his head; whereas the Saracen warriors of Mahomet are locusts upon the earth, with stings of scorpions. ”

“ To represent the glorious triumphs of Christianity by the mission of the church, the gospel and the Holy Spirit, under the symbol of Christ, going forth to judge, to make war, and to tread the winepress of God's wrath, is at war with every principle of symbolic language. ”

“ The establishment of man-made creeds and the concentration and centralization of church power and governmental authority in human hands—a church-rule patterned after the kingdoms of this world—is a rejection of the divine government of God just as the appointment of a king in the Old Testament times was a rejection of God's plan of governing Israel. In this sense God's two witnesses have been openly ignored and rejected in Protestantism as well as in Romanism and the ancient churches of the East, and man-made creeds and systems of government substituted in their stead. ”

“ It dazzles but to blind, it promises but to deceive; it allures by worldly considerations to a heaven of purity, which no worldling can enter; it gives to its votaries, who long to eat of forbidden fruit, the assurance of impunity from the threatened evils, and leads them on by siren strains from the Paradise of purity into the broad road which ends at last in the blackness of the darkness of an eternal night of despair! ”