The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

XI. 100,000 Leave the Various Communions

That was the background and development of the call to separate from “Babylon,” both mother and daughter churches. It was the same issue, they firmly believed, faced and met by the early Christian church in regard to the Jewish communion, and the later Protestant Reformation bodies as concerned the Roman faith, and the Wesleyan group as pertained to continuance in the Church of England fold, and Alexander Campbell and the Disciple Church-and similar crises that had faced other bodies through the centuries. Their action was not against the host of godly individuals still in the various Protestant churches, but against their official attitudes and actions as a denominational rejection of the imminent second advent through prohibiting the holding or teaching of such views. From such they must separate. And separate they did-some fifty to one hundred thousand leaving the various communions and forming distinctive groups of their own. The crisis was on. PFF4 783.2