The American Sentinel 12
June 10, 1897
“Editorial” American Sentinel 12, 23, pp. 353, 354.
FORTY years the Lord led and fed his people in the wilderness. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.1
All this time he was teaching them the way of allegiance to himself—the way of faith. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.2
This he did in order that his purpose might be fulfilled through them in the land whither they were going to possess it. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.3
At the end of the forty years they were encamped in the plain of Moab, opposite Jericho, preparatory to entering the land of their possession. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.4
While there encamped, the will of God concerning them was declared by an irresistible inspiration upon the prophet Balaam, and in words of instruction to his people for all time. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.5
And the words are these: “LO, THE PEOPLE SHALL DWELL ALONE, AND SHALL NOT BE RECKONED AMONG THE NATIONS.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.6
At that time the Lord’s people composed “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38); and in thus declaring that they should dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations, he plainly declared his will that his church should be forever separated from every State and nation on the earth. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.7
God never intended that his people should be formed into a kingdom, or State, or government, like the people of this world; nor that they should in any way be connected with any kingdom, or State, or government, of this world. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.8
They were not to be like the nations or the people around them. They were to be separated unto God “from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.” The people were to dwell alone, and were not to be reckoned among the nations. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.9
Their government was to be a Theocracy pure and simple—God their only king, their only Ruler, their only Lawgiver. It was indeed to be a church organization, beginning with the organization of the church in the wilderness; and was to be separated from every idea of a State. The system formed in the wilderness through Moses, was to continue in Canaan; and was intended to be perpetual. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.10
“The government of Israel was administered in the name and by the authority of Jehovah. The work of Moses, of the seventy elders, of the rulers and judges, was simply to enforce the laws that God had given. They had no authority to legislate for the nation.” For God had declared plainly: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.11
Thus the principles of their government were solely those of a pure theocracy. And such “was and continued to be the condition of Israel’s existence as a nation.” In any government it is only loyalty to the principles of the government, on the part of its citizens, that can make it a success. Consequently, on the part of Israel, it was only loyalty to the principles of a pure Theocracy—God their only King, their only Ruler, their only Lawgiver—that could possibly make that government a success. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.12
But loyalty to these principles demanded that each one of the people should constantly recognize, and court, the abiding presence of God with him as the sole King, Ruler, and Lawgiver, in all the conduct of his daily life. Yet it is “by faith” that God dwells in the heart and rules in the life. And “without faith it is impossible to please him.” Therefore the existence of the original government of Israel, and the existence of Israel as a nation, depended upon a living, abiding faith in God, on the part of each individual of the people of Israel. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.13
And just here, the only point where Israel could fail, Israel failed. The people did not abide in faith. They did not remain loyal to God as their King. “And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old.... And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel. AMS June 10, 1897, page 353.14
“And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim: and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.1
Then all the evils that came upon them only as the result of their apostasy and idolatry, they charged back upon the government of God. In their unbelief and apostasy, they could see in the continued raids of the heathen, by which their country was sacked, and themselves were oppressed, only evidence that for all practical purposes the government of God had failed. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.2
They therefore reached the conclusion “that in order to maintain their standing among the nations, the tribes must be united under a strong central government. As they departed from obedience to God’s law, they desired to be freed from the rule of their divine Sovereign; and thus the demand for a monarchy became widespread throughout Israel.” Accordingly, they said to Samuel, “Make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.3
As their hearts were fully set on having a king like all the nations, and as practically they were much like all the nations anyhow, the best thing the Lord could do for them was to let them have their king. Nevertheless, He said to Samuel, “Protest solemnly unto them.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.4
Samuel did so, but still they insisted: “Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles for us.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.5
And of it all the Lord said to Samuel, “They have not rejected thee; but THEY HAVE REJECTED ME, that I should not reign over them.” And Samuel said unto them, “YE HAVE THIS DAY REJECTED YOUR GOD ... and have said unto Him, Nay; but set a king over us.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.6
It was the same story of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, over again. When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. And as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, the arch-deceiver seduced them into idolatry, and from idolatry into monarchy, in order that he might gain supremacy over them, and by worldly influence entire them, or by force prohibit them, from the service of God. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.7
It was to save them from all this that the Lord had said of them, “The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.8
If they had remained faithful to this principle, there never would have been amongst Israel a State or a kingdom. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.9
Therefore, in announcing this principle, God intended forever that they should be completely separated from any such thing as a State or kingdom on the earth. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.10
And as when that word was spoken they were “the church,” it is absolutely certain that in announcing that principle, God intended to teach them and all people forever that his plainly-declared will is that there shall be a complete separation between his church and every State or kingdom on the earth: that there shall never be any connection between his religion and any State or kingdom in the world. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.11
And, further: As that people were then the church, and as the Lord said they rejected Him when they formed that State and kingdom, it is perfectly plain by the word of the Lord that whenever the church forms any connection with any State or kingdom on the earth, in the very doing of it she rejects God. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.12
And from ancient time all this was written for the admonition of those upon whom the ends of the world are come. Will the people to-day be admonished by it? AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.13
“The Mission of the American Sentinel” American Sentinel 12, 23, pp. 354, 355.
THE AMERICAN SENTINEL stands in defense of a principle, and that is why the paper exists. From the day it was established it has been an uncompromising advocate of the absolute separation of religion from the State, not in name only, but in fact. This is a question that concerns every intelligent person in every land under the sun. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.1
Government and religion are both essential, but the spheres of action of each are sharply circumscribed. One presides over the realm of conscience, taking cognizance of the thoughts and intents of the heart; the other deals with overacts, beyond which it cannot go. One leads the individual to do right because it is right, the other restrains him from evil through fear of punishment of hope of reward. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.2
Every individual is endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights. Government is simply a compact entered into whereby the united strength of the majority is exercised in the maintenance of these rights against the encroachments of selfishness and greed. One of these rights is the freedom to worship or not to worship God, according to the dictates of conscience. Jesus Christ, the author of Christianity, gave this liberty of thought and action to all his followers; but this privilege many who have claimed to be his disciples, have refused to their fellows. They have read from his teachings, and from their interpretation of them have formulated a creed. Everything that disagrees with this is wrong, as they view it. Failing by argument to convince those who differ from them, they have sought to invoke the arm of the law to compel an outward acknowledgment under penalty of physical punishment. At best this can only make hypocrites, and a hypocrite is two-fold more the child of the evil one than the open opposer. AMS June 10, 1897, page 354.3
Now the point: The trend of passing events indicates that among many so-called Christians there is creeping in the idea that the civil law can be made an adjunct in the propagation of the gospel; and not in our own country alone is this true, but it is pervading Christian country alone is this true, but is it true, but it is pervading Christian lands everywhere. Pride, worldliness and Pharisaism are fast passing into the churches, and just to the extent that the churches have lost the primitive power of the gospel in their work, just to that extent is there a clamoring for civil power to forward their ends, and the logical result of this is but one thing—persecution pure and simple of dissenters. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.1
Against all this the SENTINEL raises a warning voice. There is no power under heaven to make men good at heart but the transforming power of Jesus Christ, and this kingdom is not of this world. His weapons are not carnal, but spiritual; love, not force. In the light of the ... and of the sure word of prophecy, the SENTINEL beseeches the people everywhere to open their eyes and discern the signs of the times. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.2
“Note” American Sentinel 12, 23, p. 355.
THE most practical education any person can receive education of the conscience. He will have more use for us than for any other, and more momentous issues will hang on its decisions. The teacher in this education is the Holy Spirit, and the text-book is the Word of God. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.1
“Falling Back Upon Rome” American Sentinel 12, 23, p. 355.
SPEAKING of a change of views recently experienced by a W. C. T. U. evangelist relative to the question of which day is the Sabbath, the N. Y. Christian Advocate, of May 6, says:— AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.1
“The question between those who observe Sunday as the Lord’s day and those who maintain that the only day to be observed as a sacred day is the seventh day, is a complex one, that the study of many years would not really exhaust. There are some questions upon which practical wisdom for busy Christians is to follow the teachings of the Church in all matters that are not flatly and unmistakably contradictory to the Word of God.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.2
In other words, this question of which day is the sabbath being so complex and difficult of solution, it is impracticable for the individual Christian to undertake it, and his proper course is to follow the teachings of the Church. This is the principle of popery, as straightly put as it would be by an acknowledged spokesman of Rome. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.3
It sounds odd to hear this leading Methodist organ falling back upon this purely papal principle in defense of Protestant practice in the observance of the Sabbath. Yet, after all, it is not strange, but perfectly natural; for Protestant practice in this important matter, as generally observed, is not Protestant at all, but papal; that is, the observance of Sunday as a sacred day rests not upon the Word of God, but upon tradition and the precepts of “the Church”; and when the champions of Sunday observance find themselves under the necessity of defending it, they at once fall back upon the papal principle of directing conscience by the word of man, instead of the Word of God. Papal practice must be defended by papal principles. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.4
“An Unchristian Petition” American Sentinel 12, 23, pp. 355, 356.
AT a special meeting of the Charleston (S. C.) Ministerial Union, May 14, as reported in the Charleston News and Courier, the following petition to the Postmaster-General was presented and unanimously indorsed:— AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.1
“To the Hon. James A. Gary, Postmaster-General— AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.2
“Honored Sir: The Sunday railway train, by its ready and wide-extended inducement to travel, both for pleasure and business, is undoubtedly the most influential agency now undermining public reverence for the divinely appointed sabbath. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.3
“The transportation of the mail, except in the vicinity of large cities, is the chief cause and support of the Sunday train. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.4
“The great facilities for daily intercommunication by rail, telegraph and telephone leave no excuse for the Sunday mail as a necessity, a fact sustained by the diminished mail service and almost universal closing of post-offices in England and Canada. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.5
“State legislation cannot stop United States mail trains, therefore the responsibility for Sunday mail service and largely for all Sunday travel rests solely upon the post-office department. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.6
“If the United States Government, through you and your department, by the approval and direction of the President, would set the example of reverence for the Lord’s day by stopping the transmission of mails and closing all post offices on Sunday, it would evoke a divine blessing upon itself and the whole country; would teach a sublime lesson to the world; would confer a great boon upon thousands of its own and other officials and employés, and would put such a stamp of condemnation upon all acts of public desecration of the sabbath as would deter good citizens from their commission, and render all proper Sunday laws, State and municipal, easy of enforcement. AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.7
“We, therefore, do most earnestly but respectfully petition you, and through you his Excellency the President, to forbid the transmission of any mails on Sunday, and order the closing of all post-offices throughout the United States on that day.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.8
Let it be observed that this petition is avowedly in behalf of “the divinely-appointed sabbath.” It does not claim to speak for any “civil” institution. Also, that it asks the Government to “set the example of reverence for the Lord’s day,” and thus—as it says—“evoke a divine blessing upon itself and the whole country,” and “put such a stamp of condemnation upon all acts of public desecration of the sabbath” as would give life to “all proper Sunday laws, State and municipal.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 355.9
As the matter now stands, these State and municipal Sunday statutes are for the most part shorn of their intended force by their manifest hostility to the spirit of the Constitution, which declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Postmaster-General is asked by this petition to take a step which will commit the Government to the recognition and enforcement of religion, and thus get over the objection offered by the Constitution. AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.1
All this is plain enough to the view of any person who will look at the facts; and that such undisguised Church-and-State demands are being made upon the Government is a fact which should cause American citizens who love liberty and believe in the separation of Church and State to do some serious thinking. AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.2
“A Menace to Liberty” American Sentinel 12, 23, p. 356.
“OPEN the Convents,” says the Michigan Christian Advocate, of May 22, in commenting upon the death of an unfortunate inmate of one of those institutions, while attempting to escape. The victim was a young woman twenty-two years of age, and her death resulted from injuries caused by leaping from a second-story window of the “Convent of the Good Shepherd,” in Indianapolis, Ind. The Advocate says it is scandalous that such things can happen in “the land of the free.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.1
It is very true that such happenings are altogether incompatible with the theory upon which this Government assumes to stand, and such involuntary servitude should be at once abolished by the strong arm of the law. To quote the Advocate’s word, “Ecclesiastical prisons are not compatible with civil liberty. Barred doors, rusty keys, dark recesses, unscalable walls, mysterious secrecy, are forbidding enough under State auspices.... What was the American Government established for, anyway? If Spanish institutions are to be fostered and perpetuated here, Columbus might as well have refrained from his big discovery.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.2
But what the liberty-loving people of this country need to realize is that more formidable than all the ecclesiastical prisons which Rome maintains, as a menace to American liberty, is the presence of Romish principles in the beliefs and practices of the American people. While these principles remain to enslave the understanding, there can be no safety for that personal liberty which is lost behind barred doors and unscalable walls. AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.3
“Notes” American Sentinel 12, 23, p. 356.
THERE is reported to be a great surplus in the ministry of the Protestant church, no less than four hundred applications having been received for one pulpit in New York City. Nevertheless there is no surplus in the number who are preaching the glad tidings of salvation to sinners, or who are ministering to their unfortunate fellow beings in the name of Jesus Christ. AMS June 10, 1897, page 356.1
“Noted” American Sentinel 12, 23, pp. 358, 359.
THE Catholic Standard and Times, of May 15, makes mention of the recent rebellion of the Catholic members of the Ninth New York regiment against an order to attend religious service in Bloomingdale Reformed Church. New York City; in justification of which it says:— AMS June 10, 1897, page 358.1
“We believe there is no rule of the service compelling Catholics to attend a form of service offensive to their feelings and which, as individuals, they are prohibited by their own church under pain of sin from attending.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 358.2
The Catholics were right in refusing to attend religious service at the dictation of the Government; and they would be equally right in refusing to do a religious act at the dictation of the church. In each case the dictation is that of man, and therefore essentially the same in character. The Government has as good right to compel the performance of a religious act as the church has to prohibit it. AMS June 10, 1897, page 358.3
The individual is responsible to God for the character of his actions. And when he submits to any human dictation in religion, whether from State or Church, he denies God’s right to govern his actions by the divine principle of love, and to guide him by His Word and His Spirit. AMS June 10, 1897, page 349.1
“Noting” American Sentinel 12, 23, pp. 358, 359.
SPEAKING of the humiliation of the Greeks and the rehabilitating of Turkey which has been the result of the war between them, an antichristian journal says: “There is a lesson in this, we hope. After the experience of Greece nobody should be deluded into a belief that the Christian God will help those who fight in His name; no people should depend upon the powers of Europe for defense; none should be misled by the fanatical jingoism of Christians; none should raise the question of religious differences between nations, nor go to war to settle them.” AMS June 10, 1897, page 358.1
The Word of the Christian’s God says plainly that His servants must not fight, because His kingdom is not of this world; hence it should not need the experience through which Greece has passed to convince people that God will not help those who fight in His name. The fact that some nations and individuals do fight in His name does not constitute an indictment of God, any more than the many crimes committed in the name of Liberty constitute an indictment of Liberty. AMS June 10, 1897, page 358.2
“Notings” American Sentinel 12, 23, p. 359.
IT would seem that at last even Ecuador is to a considerable degree shaking herself free from the incubus and blight of papal priestcraft and Jesuitism. The Jesuits have been banished from the country by a government edict, and the distribution of Bibles is now freely permitted. As a result many of the inhabitants are calling for the Word of God. The weakening of the last strongholds of anti-biblical religion points to the completion of the work of preaching the gospel in all the world for a witness unto all nations, which the Saviour said should immediately precede his second coming. AMS June 10, 1897, page 359.1