172
The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 3
“Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whoseso-
ever sins ye retain, they are retained.” These words conveyed to the
disciples a sense of the sacredness of their work, and its tremendous
results. Imbued with the Spirit of God, they were to go forth preaching
the merits of a sin-pardoning Saviour; and they had the assurance that
all Heaven was interested in their labors, and that what they did on
earth, in the spirit and power of Christ, should be ratified in Heaven.
Jesus did not, by this assurance, give the apostles or their successors
power to forgive sins, as his representatives. The Roman Catholic
[245]
Church directs its people to confess the secrets of their lives to the
priest, and from him, acting in the place of Christ, to receive absolution
from their sins. The Saviour taught that his is the only name given
under Heaven whereby men shall be saved. Jesus, however, delegated
to his church upon earth, in her organized capacity, the power to
censure and to remove censure according to the rules prescribed by
inspiration; but these acts were only to be done by men of good ree,
who were consecrated by the great Head of the church, and who
showed by their lives that they were earnestly seeking to follow the
guidance of the Spirit of God.
No man was to exercise an arbitrary power over another man’s
conscience. Christ gave no ecclesiastical right to forgive sin, nor to
sell indulgences, that men may sin without incurring the displeasure
of God, nor did he give his servants liberty to accept a gift or bribe for
cloaking sin, that it may escape merited censure. Jesus charged his
disciples to preach the remission of sin in his name among all nations;
but they themselves were not empowered to remove one stain of sin
from the children of Adam. Nor were they to execute judgment against
the guilty; the wrath of an offended God was to be proclaimed against
the sinner; but the power which the Roman Church assumes to visit
that wrath upon the offender is not established by any direction of
Christ; he himself will execute the sentence pronounced against the
impenitent. Whoever would attract the people to himself as one in
whom is invested power to forgive sins, incurs the wrath of God, for
he turns souls away from the heavenly Pardoner to a weak and erring
[246]
mortal.
Jesus showed his disciples that only as they should partake of
his Spirit, and be assimilated to his merciful character, would they
be endowed with spiritual discernment and miraculous power. All