THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, February 24, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 8

THE TEMPLE IN HEAVEN.

By W. H. Littlejohn

THE FALL OF THE CHURCHES EXAMINED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THEIR GROWING UNBELIEF IN THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OF ADAM AS NARRATED IN THE SCRIPTURES.

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN.

Mr. Biblist.—Perhaps I have already said as much as it is necessary to say in regard to the fall of the churches when looked upon from the standpoint of their complaisance toward Rome. I think that you must see that, as stated at our last interview, the present situation of things cannot be attributed to a reformation of the papacy; since, according to the prophecies cited hitherto, such a reformation is never to take place. This being the case, we are shut up to the conclusion that a change for the worse has taken place in Protestantism, by which its affiliation with a power that it once spurned as worthy only of contempt and loathing, has been made possible.

There are two or three points more that should be touched upon before leaving that branch of the subject which relates to the demoralized condition of orthodoxy. They would probably come under the head of unbelief.

Nothing is more plain than the teachings of the word of God respecting the creation of the world and all that it contains. In that word it is clearly stated that by an exercise of the Divine energy the present order of things was brought into being within the space of six days. According to the record the crowning act of the creation week was the bringing into being of Adam, the progenitor of our race. It is said in so many words that “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” All this is easily understood, and believers in all ages have accepted the account given in Genesis as a narrative of creation, setting forth at least two facts upon which all could agree; viz., the formation of the body of Adam out of the dust of the ground, and the breathing into the nostrils of the inanimate body thus produced, the vivifying breath of life, which instantly transformed the shapeless though dead mass into the living, thinking Adam, who was destined to become the father of all living. From Moses to Christ, and from Christ to the last writer of the canonical Scriptures, the inspired penmen proceed upon the hypothesis that God was personally present at the creation of the world, and that within the space of a literal week, the earth, the air, the grass, the trees, the animals, man, and indeed,

everything that pertains to this planet of ours, were made, each in its proper order and of its particular kind, as the result of a series of distinct acts on the part of Jehovah. So far as the creation of Adam and Eve is concerned, the account as found in Genesis is everywhere treated as strictly literal.

Let me refer to two instances where it is mentioned for the purpose of settling controverted points. I will read from Mark, the 10th chapter, commencing with the 4th verse, after premising that the words that I shall read from that chapter were uttered by Christ in the discussion which arose between him and the Pharisees on the subject of divorce: “And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Note these words! Beyond dispute the reference is to the creation of Adam and Eve in the beginning, and to their being united at that time in the sacred bonds of wedlock by the fiat of the Mighty God. The reasoning of the Saviour is this: “In the beginning of the creation Jehovah made one pair of one flesh, and only one pair. Had he designed that men should at will put away one wife and take another, he would not have created but one woman in the outset, and made her of the same flesh of which her husband was made, thus signifying that the twain were as nearly one being as two persons possibly could be. Be careful, therefore, that you do not treat with contempt the example furnished to you in the case of Adam and Eve, by dissolving for trivial causes the marriage relation.”

How beautiful and forcible is such logic in the light of the record given by Moses in the first book of the Pentateuch! It proves that in creating one male and one female in the outset, forming the latter from the rib which he took from the side of the former, Jehovah meant to teach by these two acts to all coming generations the perfect oneness of man and wife and his approval of the system of monogamy, by which one man and one woman are expected to sustain to each other the relation of wedlock to the exclusion of all other persons.

Again, commencing with the 12th verse, I read from the 2d chapter of First Timothy: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” Here, as in the former text, an issue is pending. Paul is deciding the pre-eminence of the two sexes as it regards their relative capacity for teaching and exercising authority. It does not accord with my present purpose to enter into a discussion of the question which relates to the kind of “teaching” or that of the “authority,” here spoken of by the apostle. Suffice it to say that the “teaching” and the “authority” mentioned, whatever they may have been, were of such a nature that Paul decides, virtually, that in the practice of the one and the exercise of the other the man is the superior of the woman. His premises are these: Adam was first formed, then Eve. Adam was not deceived; but Eve was, being the first in the transgression. The conclusion drawn from these premises is this: As Adam was made first, and as he was the last to transgress, he must have been the superior of Eve in the direction of controversy; since priority of creation and subsequence in sinning and freedom from being deceived, proves the pre-eminence of the one respecting whom these things are true over the one of whom the opposite is true.

Now will any candid person deny that in this logic, Paul intended to be understood as using for the purposes of his argument the narrative in which Moses sets forth the temptation and fall of our first parents? If he does, however, he must have considered that the narrative itself was correct; else there would have been no force in his argument. When we remember also that it was not Paul alone, but rather the Holy Spirit speaking through him, who thus endorses the account of the fall as given in Genesis, the force of the passage upon the question at issue is magnified to an infinite degree, since God himself never trifles with his creatures. Having, therefore, the authority of Holy Writ for the accuracy of the account of the apostasy of Adam and Eve, he would be incredulous indeed who should refuse to accept as literal the account of their creation as found in the same connection.

Maud.—But I cannot see, father, how it was possible for God to make a man out of the dust of the ground.

Mr. B.—Perhaps you cannot, Maud; but the Scriptures say that God did that very thing; and we must not measure God’s capacity to do the thing in question by our ability to comprehend how he is able to do it. Neither you nor I, nor any other person, however wise he may be, can fathom the methods by which God holds his universe together; and yet we know that he does this, despite our ignorance of the principles involved. It is no more marvelous that the Lord should have created a man from the dust originally than it is that he should re-construct him from that material several times in our day, during his natural life. You, Mr. Thoughtful, must be about forty-nine years of age. If so, the tissues of your body, according to scientific authorities, have been cast off and entirely replaced at least seven times. In other words, since your birth you have been rebuilt seven times. Now I ask, Where did the material come from that has been employed in these repeated re-constructions? The answer is obvious: It has been drawn from the mother earth by vegetables, grains, fruit, etc., and after several transmutations has been converted into the tissues of either your present body or your former bodies.

We are not to understand the Scriptures as teaching that God formed Adam from the dust of the ground in the sense that he collected it together and molded it into the form of a human being in its crude and unchanged state. Reason and observation would teach the contrary. All that the record requires us to believe is that in the outset Jehovah obtained from the ground the necessary material and elements which entered into the physical organization of Adam. Glass, for example, is made from sand; and yet when it is finished, it is very different from the material out of which it was produced. Just so with flesh. In its present form it is not dust or earth; still, all of its constituent elements are found in the soil of our globe, as proved by the fact that from that soil, either directly or indirectly, comes the food which by digestion is converted into the solids and fluids of our bodies.

In conclusion on this point let me repeat that though infidels may ridicule and scoff at the Bible statement that man was originally made from the dust of the ground, the facts of science are against them and in favor of the Mosaic record; since they demonstrate the soundness of the theory that we are constantly undergoing physical changes which result in the casting off of the old body and the putting on of a new one which is made up of elements found in the very dust from which it is said Adam was formed. As said before, it is no more wonderful that Adam should have been created out of dust than that his posterity should be continually in a process of re-creation out of dust. Furthermore, as the bodies of men are now sustained and built up from the earth, it is but reasonable to suppose that the Creator would have constructed them in the beginning from materials drawn from the same source as that from which they were to be sustained and re-constructed thereafter.

Mr. T.—I thank you, sir, for your suggestions on this point. I confess that you have brought relief to my own mind. Never before have I known exactly how to meet the cavils of infidelity on this subject.

Mr. B.—Now it is time to return to the objective point of my argument.

Maud.—I think as much, father; for I don’t know where we are, or whence we came.

Mr. B.—Nevertheless, Maud, there is a connection between all that has been said. I started out with the proposition that the Bible account of the creation is plain and literal, and that Christians in all ages had agreed in understanding it to teach that God made the world in six natural days, creating Adam in the meantime from the dust of the ground by a distinct act. We were then diverted for a few moments by the consideration of the question whether such a view was logical as well as Scriptural. Having decided that it was, we are now ready to test the doctrines of modern orthodoxy by this standard. I ask now whether the church of to-day is in harmony with the church of the past and with the Bible on this subject. Unfortunately for them, generally speaking, the answer must be in the negative. On this point they have departed to an alarming extent from the faith of their fathers, as well as that which was once committed to the saints. As a rule, the doctrine now preached from the pulpits respecting the length of time occupied in the creation of the world is that it covered millions of years.

It is not an uncommon thing also to hear ministers of the gospel publicly advocating the view that the first man instead of being brought into existence by a direct exercise of the creative power of God, had to trace his genealogy back for countless ages through a line of apes, orang-outangs, chimpanzees, monkeys, baboons, etc., etc., until he reached the original monad or germ away back somewhere—nobody knows just where—from which sprang at first the lowest forms of animal life. The fact is—deny it those who may—God is crowded out of the creation pretty much entirely by many of the theologians of to-day, so far as his specific work as Creator is concerned. Law,—mysterious, unexplainable law,—has come to be the source to which the origin of everything is attributed. It has now become quite fashionable to sniff at anyone who persists in holding on to the old-time faith respecting the creation. He is looked upon as one who is behind the age, which, it is claimed in religion as well as in other things, is eminently progressive.

Mr. T.—Then what will you do with the opinions of scientists in regard to the probable age of the world?

Mr. B.—Why, I will not trouble myself about them any more than I would about a thousand other matters which are purely speculative in their character. The theories of scholars in reference to this question are so numerous, so varied, so contradictory and so changeable that it would not be safe to adopt any one of them even though they were not all in conflict with the word of God. I think that if we were to wait a few years the scientific gentlemen who advocate so strongly their anti-scriptural views in reference to the time required for the creation of the world, would so completely demolish the theories of each other that we should have no need to fear them any longer. Let me read you a paragraph from a little book entitled “The Soul and the Resurrection.” The author is Dr. J. H. Kellogg, a gentleman of no small scientific attainment. I will commence on page 24:— “Lord Lyell claims to prove by incontestable

evidence that the world must have occupied at least 20,000,000,000,000 (twenty million millions) years in reaching its present state. He asserted that the changes which had taken place must have occupied at least this space of time. In the few years which have elapsed since his time, further observations have shown that many changes occur with much greater rapidity than was formerly supposed, and so the time has been reduced to 200,000,000 years, a period of time 100,000 times less than the old estimate. If the period should be reduced one-third as much during the next quarter of a century as in the last, geologic time would agree with the Mosaic record.”

Here I will close our talk for this evening by fulfilling the promise made to Maud to the effect that I would show its logical connection with the general subject under discussion. That subject is the fall of the churches. I submit, therefore, that in proving that the orthodox denominations of to-day tolerate in their midst thousands of ministers and tens of thousands of lay members who scout the Bible doctrine concerning the creation, and adopt the absurd theory of evolution and its concomitant errors, I have called attention to a state of things which can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that those churches are in a fallen condition.