Having now followed two branches of Rome to the second generation without finding in any of these sister denominations the identical church of Christ, we must pass on to the third generation.
Is any of the sects that have branched out from the Methodist Episcopal sect the church of Christ? If so, will the Harvester point out the one? Will he assume that the one he represents is the church of Christ? If so, then he has been without Christ's church until recently. If not, then the founding of the Wesleyan Methodist sect was not the organization of the body of Christ. It is a fact which no man of intelligence will deny, that no one sect on earth is the identical church of God.
But it may be claimed by some that all the sects taken together constitute the true church in her visible organization. This is also a great mistake. How can all these bodies sum up the one organic visible church of God, when they have no organic relation to each other? In what a disgraceful light sectism presents the church! Does that look like a divine and heaven-born family, that is composed of numerous, rival, jealous, independent, and conflicting organisms? Oh, I beseech you for Christ's sake, do not dishonor God by confounding his church with Babylon confusion!
Instead of sects giving the church of Christ a visible organization they mar and destroy the visible organization and unity of the church of Christ. A striking want of identity in the membership of God's church and human sects also proves conclusively that no sect, nor yet all sects together, constitutes the divine fold. Their walls are not the walls of God's house at all, neither are "their thresholds" his threshold. Many are in them who never entered God's church, and, thank God, many have entered by Christ the door who have never attached themselves to any of the factions that are not of God, but the result of sin. If, then, the constituent elements of sects are not identical with the elements of God's church, sects themselves are not identical with her, and consequently their organization is not her organization.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
(Aug. 15, 1881.)
First: "Does the come-out element constitute the true church of God?"
Answer: All true Christians in heaven and earth constitute the true church of God. Eph. 3:15.
Second: "In what particular is the separationist, or come-out church, better than the Wesleyan Methodist Church?"
Answer: This language places antisect Christians in a false light. They never teach such a thing as a new sect, whose distinguishing characteristic is simply the coming out of all other sects; such is the impression made by the question, and it is a false one. The Christians branded "come-outers" have founded no church or sect, nor do they intend to; but, on the contrary, they have abandoned all sects to live in the one church that Christ founded, and into which we were inducted by regeneration. This fact is known by hundreds who nevertheless misrepresent them continually: this goes with them. God's church is composed altogether of "come-outers." The word "church" (ecclesia) means the "called out," they are called out of the world, out of heathen religions, and all corrupt and bogus Christianity. But while the come-out element is embodied in the very word "church," she is not to be called "Come-out" church. She embodies water baptism, but is not a Baptist church. She teaches the Sabbath, and the second advent, but is not a Sabbatarian nor Adventist church. Her members are all brethren, and united, but she is not the United Brethren church. The sin of all this is in making one of the subordinate elements of the system the center, and not God in Christ Jesus. But to the question. The Wesleyan Methodist sect is an organized party in Christendom, a schismatic, or cut-off party, all of which is condemned in the Bible. "There should be no schisms in the body." The origin of all such disintegrating factions, whether for Paul, Peter, or Wesley, is carnality, as the Word of God teaches, "the result of sin," says the Harvester. The Wesleyan Methodist sect is human, fragmentary, and earthly, and will be utterly annihilated at the coming of Christ, with every other schismatic party. The church of the living God, in which "come-outers" inhere, to the exclusion of all human organisms, was purchased, built, and sanctified by Christ Jesus, who is its head, door, and foundation. It is the "pillar and ground of the truth," and will stand through all eternity, that's the difference.