Square Come-Outism

By Brother D S Warner

"Probably this means the doctrine of coming out of all the sects, and giving the church of Christ no visible organization." -- Christian Harvester. 

I wish to ask the editor of The Harvester if human sects are essential to the visible organization of Christ? The above language so implies. 

Then, according to this statement, the church of Christ was without a visible organization hundreds of years, until the present-day sects arose. And if the visible organization thus provided is a necessary adjunct to the church, then the apostle Peter made a mistake when he said that God had already "given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness." 

Again, if the formation of sects gives the church of Christ a visible organization, will The Harvester please point out the time, in the history of the church, when that important event occurred? 

Was it when the first sect was formed, namely, the Roman Catholic sect, in the beginning of the apostasy? Did she give the church of Christ a visible organization? If so, what need of subsequent efforts at organization? 

We presume that The Harvester does not admit that this corrupt hierarchy is the church of Christ. So there was one sect formed, and Christ's church still not visibly organized. 

Out of her came the Church of England. She claims to be the identical church of Christ. Does The Harvester admit the assumption? If not, then he must admit that a second sect failed to organize and represent the Church of Christ. 

Again, from the old mother of sects came forth the Lutheran sect and her daughters--granddaughters of Rome. Did any of them organize the visible church of Christ? If so, which one? 

Or was it left for John Wesley to organize the church of Christ in the formation of the Methodist Episcopal sect? If that sect is really the identical church of Christ, then the editor of The Harvester is in a hopeless condition, since severed from that body; but we presume that he still felt that he was in the church of Christ after dismembered from that great sect, therefore it is not identical with the church of Christ, and her organization was not the organization of Christ's church at all. 

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.