King's Business - 1922-06

T H E K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S 551 ing doctrine. Those who oppose it will probably be driven out of the meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis in June. I say this with sorrow and on authentic authority.” He claims authentic authority and of course, being a prophet, it must come true. So there is nothing left for our dear brethren but to go to Indianapolis in June and witness the eruption. Having divided the Baptist Church, he now takes pleasure in probing the Presbyterians, gives good Dr. Robert Speer a blow between the eyes, and then proceeds to throw William Jennings Bryan onto the ash heap: “ The Presbyterian Church is in a hardly less grievous state of division. Their great missionary leader, who is also President of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Dr. Robert E. Speer, is a second coming enthusiast; counting it the chief doctrine in Christendom. You all know William Jennings Bryan is another zealot, giving most of his time to lectures and Bible talks on this alarming belief.” Then he takes a fling at his old friend, Dr. Cortland Myers, and also at the Gordon Bible Institute, in these words: “ Dr. Cortland Myers, who left his pastorate in Tremont Temple, Boston’s hothouse (no doubt he meant slaughter-house) of this sanguinary doctrine, is paid to go up and down the country to preach, ‘The time is at hand’. He is wonderfully successful. Even among our Congregational friends (notice he softens down a little when he comes to the Congregationalists), there are Second Coming devotees. Dr. A. Z. Conrad and Rev. E. A. Byington, teachers in the Gordon College, which will admit no one who doubts or refuses to teach the literal coming in the flesh of Jesus Christ.” ■•/ • . Now he takes a fresh breath and vomits forth words of wrath, telling us poor premillennialists just what we are destined to do. We might as well get ready for the fray, for is he not a prophet? How then can we help our- “What gives me most concern, what alarms me most, is the inevitable results of this terrifying preaching. As you know, a religious conviction is the most pow­ erful thing in the world.” (It is, if it is backed by truth and courage!) “ The doctrine of trampling the bodies of men will surely lead its believers, under the power of fanatics” (Such, no doubt, as Wyclif, Luther, Melancthon, Knox, Wesley, Seiss, Bunyan, Baxter, Talmage, Spurgeon, Pentecost, Moody, Chapman, Needham, Whittle, Munhall, Gordon, Erdman, Gaebelein, Pierson, Torrey, Gray, Mueller, Myers, and a thousand others who are now living and preaching this devilish’ ( !) doctrine) “ to go forth on a murderous career against men, women clliu u m u i c u . . _ , . “ What do they teach? They teach that the world will be destroyed and that Christ will be the destroyer. I tell you within a little while you will see some of my prophecies fulfilled. The expectation of most of the Second Coming leaders is that the end of the world is due in not more than six years.” (Here this mad man becomes a first class -liar. Premillennialists do not set dates for the Lord’s coming.) ' "They are getting ready. And if tomorrow one of their recognized spokes­ men should say, ‘The end has come,’ we should witness a spectacle the most awful in the record of world’s wars and massacres.” Is that so ? Why not call, then, upon the government of the United States to put these premiilennialists upon an island and feed them on New Theology until the virus of the literal Word of God was eliminated from their system, and they would promise to join the Unitarian Church and sit at the feet of the latest of the world’s great prophets, Dr. Different-book? Now he comes to the crux of the whole matter: “ I call again for the flaying of this monstrous iniquity which threatens even our colleges, and gathers frenzy with its proof texts. The only question before the world in this matter is this: Is the Bible the inerrant Word of God, or is it simply a record of spiritual experience and thought, reflecting the religion, knowledge

Made with FlippingBook Annual report