The Image and Mark

Notes

Ans.—A union of church and state, by which the church will use the state to accomplish its own objects.

Notes

Ans.—The churches in various ways have brought pressure to bear upon the government until the government has committed itself in its several departments to the principle of religious legislation. See note 1.

Notes

Ans.—The next logical step of the government would be to change the organic law so that it would conform to the decision of the Supreme Court, though all this may be accomplished irregularly by some construction of the Supreme Court. Man does not know what phase the movement will take.

Notes

Ans.—A servant. It was a custom anciently to brand slaves with the mark of their master, as men now brand cattle. The mark showed to whom the slave belonged and whom he served.

Notes

Ans.—To worship the beast is to serve him instead of God. The real essence of worship is service. Matt. 4:10.

Notes

Ans.—"Q.—How prove you that the church hath power to command feasts and holy days?

"A.—By the very act of changing Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants themselves allow of. . . .

"By keeping Sunday they [Protestants] acknowledge the church's power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin."—Abridgment of Christian Doctrine. See "The Lord's Day," pp. 83 to 85, for other testimony. See also note 3.

Notes

Ans.—Almost every effort thus far made to unite church and state in this country has had for its center the Sunday question, and has had Sunday legislation or establishment as its object.

Notes

1. Note the movements and events which have led up, and contributed to, the present state of things:—

(a) The National Reform Association, which has been working for a union of church and state ever since 1863. The literature and lectures of this organization have leavened the minds of men in all the various denominations.

(b) The adoption of the same principles by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1886.

(c) The Prohibition party committed to the same in 1887.

(d) The American Sabbath Union, organized in 1888, one object of which is to obtain and secure the enforcement of religious legislation.

(e) The Trinity Church decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, February 29, 1892, declared that "this is a Christian nation." See "Rights of the People," part 2, chapter 6.

(f) The decision by both houses of Congress in the same year of a religious controversy, the Sabbath question, and the endorsement of the same by the President, thus committing the legislative and executive branches to religious legislation.

(g) The enforcement of religious laws in various states, thus bringing persecution upon men for conscience' sake. The fulfillment of the prophecy of Revelation 13 is no longer a matter of prophecy; it is fulfilling before our eyes. The old political parties are indorsing Sunday laws to either save or win votes. See New York in 1895. See "Rights of the People," chap. 9.

2. Religious persecution, if pursued to the extreme, either ends in the yielding of the heretic or the death penalty. Gibbon well says: "It is incumbent on the authors of persecution previously to reflect whether they are determined to support it to the last extreme. They excite the flame which they try to extinguish; and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy as well as the crime of the offender. The fine which he is unable or unwilling to discharge exposes his person to the severity of the law; and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of capital punishment."—Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, chap. 37, par. 23, part 5.

"The right to use force implies the right to take the life of those who make resistance."—Young's Class-book on Civil Government, p. 267.

3. Many sincere Christians have died observing Sunday as the Sabbath. It was in their heart and will to do God's pleasure, and He accepted them. There are many observing it in ignorance to-day. It is when men reject light from God's word that they are condemned; but it is not for man or men to say when that time is reached. The judgment belongs to God. It is the duty of the Christian to preach the word.

4. The reception of the mark in the forehead would indicate full assent to the iniquitous assumptions of the beast; receiving it in the hand would indicate assent to its demand through some other motive than that of belief.