Gods Sabbath

T HE R EAPPEARANCE OF THE P ROBLEM

441

The leaders in Jerusalem had not worked on the task of erad icating all the roots of their erroneous thinking and traditional concepts. As a result, old habits of thought and earlier preju dices came to the surface again, stronger than before. Again those men began to strive for the maintenance of the ceremoni al law, even though they had previously confirmed that it need not be kept any longer. Their good motives gave them a halo of justification for their wrong procedures. It provided sheep’s clothing for the evil wolf underneath. The evil was the leaders’ insistence “that they had the author ity to direct their brethren” and give them personal orders as to the methods they used and the places in which they were to la bor. They were demanding Christ’s place in the church for them selves. There is no “wolf” more ravening and destructive than this one. The sheep’s clothing was their position in the church and the motive which controlled them. They were members of high standing in the one true church, they really loved the cause, and they were “desirous of safeguarding the best interests of the Christian church”. They were quite genuine and would be the last to wittingly make any moves that would injure the move ment. They would have been confident that there was little dan ger of this, because they could not see how anything they insti gated would be against the church. It was easy to persuade themselves that, with the motives they had, whatever they did had to be right. The sheep’s clothing was most convincing. But, no matter how thoroughly a person may be deceived by it, the sheep’s clothing never changes the wolf underneath. Nor could the genuine motives of those leaders save the church from the evil results of the course they insisted on following. They did not rightly analyse their spirit and work, nor did they cor rectly read the lessons of the Old Testament. They were not able to understand the cause and continuation of Israel’s en slavement to the Romans. They did not discern that the Jews had put themselves into this awful predicament by their deter mination to establish themselves as heads of the church in Christ’s place. If they had, they would have realized that, in the Christian church, should they continue the same principles of operation which had proved so disastrous to Israel, they would