p. 1 | Untitled article by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 3, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 12

FAITH IN PROPHECY.

By R. F. Cottrell

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.

(Concluded.)

Those prophecies that have their fulfillment through the agency of men are equally sure and reliable. No man but John the Baptist ever appeared in fulfillment of the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” or the “messenger” sent before the face of the Lord, to prepare his way before him. In like manner there will be but one fulfillment of the three messages which are to precede the second coming of the Son of man. Rev. xiv, 6-12. When the time came that the Christ was about to be manifested to Israel, John began to preach in the wilderness the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, to prepare the people to receive the Messiah. Those who believed the preaching of the Baptist, and were baptized by him, were approved of God; while those who rejected his preaching and baptism, “rejected the counsel of God against themselves.” Luke vii, 30.

Now what were the evidences of John’s mission?—what were his credentials that laid the people under obligation to believe? It is expressly stated that “John did no miracle.” John x, 41. There was nothing, then, to convince the people, but the signs of the times in the fulfillment of prophecy, the expiration of the prophetic period of Dan. ix, 25, and the simple declaration of John: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah.” John i, 23; Isa. xl, 3. Would John’s preaching have been received upon such evidences in our day, had it been designed for this generation? Would he not rather have been regarded as a wild and presumptuous fanatic? We can best decide this by the way the prophetic messages designed for our own day are received.

These are recorded in Rev. xiv, and are now being fulfilled. A child can understand, from the reading and the connection, that they are warning messages to be preached to men just before the second coming of Jesus. Are they not plainer and easier to be understood than the message of John the Baptist, as recorded in Isa. xl, 3? And here is the advantage of three messages to be delivered in regular, specific order. The first is evidently based on prophetic time, and announces the commencement of a period called, “The hour of judgment.” As our Saviour in the beginning of his ministry said, “The time is fulfilled,” referring to the sixty-nine weeks of Dan. ix, 25, so this message, evidently with reference to the ending of the 2300 days of Dan. viii, 14, makes the solemn annunciation, “Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come.” The second message announces the moral state of the divided, confused, Babelized organizations of religionists, who are following in the footsteps of “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots.” The cry is, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, because she made ALL NATIONS drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. If there are any churches that do not partake of the false doctrines of her who professes to be the Mother Church, but is in reality the “mother of abominations”—the head and leader of the great apostasy—churches that have not thus partaken of the wine of her “raging fornication,” they are not alluded to in this annunciation. Therefore they will take no offense at the faithful proclamation of this message. The third message is a solemn warning against following in the footsteps of the papal apostasy; and, on the other hand, it characterizes those who heed it as those “that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” This is the final, reformatory message before the coming of the Lord. It is a judgment message, dividing worshippers into two classes; separating the worshippers of God from the worshippers of the beast. Wrath unmingled follows it, closing the history of the present state.

Now to the point in our argument. These messages have all been announced in the given order in our own day, by those who have preached the advent of Christ at hand. Previous to 1844 it was clearly discovered by the fulfillment of prophecies and predicted signs in heaven and on earth, that the second advent of Christ was at hand, even at the doors. It was also demonstrated that the prophetic numbers were understood, and it was clearly proved that the great prophetic period of 2300 days, at the end of which the sanctuary should be cleansed, would end at the close of 1843, or in 1844. Based upon this definite time, given in prophecy, the cry was raised, “Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come.” This sound was heard to the ends of the earth; and, as the beasts of the forest tremble “when a lion roareth,” so the inhabitants of the earth were moved at the sound of this solemn announcement. In the summer and fall of 1844, the announcement of the second prophetic message, Babylon is fallen, became a matter of historic record. And since that time, the third and last solemn warning has been rising; the work and worship of the beast are being made clear, and thousands, in obedience to it, are now trying to keep all the ten commandments of God, having discovered, by the light of this proclamation, that they were not doing so before. It is a matter of fact, then, that these messages have all been announced in their order, and the closing one is doing a work corresponding exactly to the prophecy.

Is this work true or false? If it is false, what is the God of prophecy, the Author and finisher of faith, doing, that he does not bring it to confusion and put a stop to it? Instead of this, it seems to be doing a good work—reforming men, making them more pious and devoted to God, and causing them to keep more of the commandments of God than before, and keep them all more zealously. If this work is not of God, he could stop it; or, rather, he could have prevented its rise. And was he not under obligation to do so? The prophecies are his word; and what confidence can be reposed in his word, if he suffer it thus to be trifled with? There is an end of faith, if the word of God is thus valuable to the enemy, being liable to derangement by a false fulfillment; and that at the very time when we should look, according to his instructions, for the true. His providence had veiled the sun and moon, in fulfillment of the prediction of his word, and caused the falling stars innumerable to trace their luminous paths adown the strangely resplendent heavens, to notify the inhabitants of earth of the glorious appearing of the Son of Man at hand; and then a false fulfillment of the promised messages of his prophetic word is permitted to go forth, to cheat the faith of those who rely upon, and trust his word! I cannot thus charge God with breaking his word and trifling with those that believe it. Then we can come to only one conclusion; and that is, that the promised messages are now being proclaimed by divine impulse; that their fulfillment, like the mission of John the Baptist, is from Heaven and not of men; and that to believe and obey their warnings is to be saved, and to disbelieve and disobey is to reject the counsel of God against ourselves and to be condemned.

It may be asked, as an offset to what I have said, Why does God permit the world to be deceived by Spiritualism? Could he not have prevented its introduction? or can he not stop its progress? I reply: Spiritualism is abundantly predicted in the word of God, as the “working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders”—as the last work of Satan and his angels in the earth—“the spirits of devils working miracles,” who gather the wicked to the “battle of the great day of God Almighty.” The fulfillment of these predictions does not destroy the faith of the Christian, but confirms it. If those things did not begin to appear, we might well begin to doubt. But the preaching of the advent messages is a promised work of God. To let Satan fulfill these, would be a failure of the word and promise of God. Again, it may be objected that the preaching of the first of these messages was a failure; that the hour of

judgment did not then come, and that it ended in the disappointment of its believers, at the expiration of the set time in 1844.

To the assertion that the hour of Judgment did not then come, I reply by asking, How do you know it? It may refer to the time and work of the cleansing of the sanctuary or the blotting out of the sins of God’s people, which must be done by Christ while he is a High Priest before the throne of mercy, and therefore before his second advent. But if you will have it that Christ must come to the earth, at the time when this judgment hour arrives, you will be disappointed, as we were, should the true message be proclaimed in your day; for there are two divine warnings to be given after the judgment-hour cry, before the coming of the Son of man. You will do better to learn the lesson which our disappointment taught us, than to claim that the judgment-hour message is the last, and thus ignore the messages which are to follow it. Probation does not close with this message, but men are still to choose between the commandments of God and those of the beast, before the day of the revelation of the Lord Jesus in flaming fire, in the great day of the “wrath of the Lamb.”

As to the fact of our great disappointment, it proves nothing against the divinity, the heavenly origin of the message, but confirms it. As the testimony in favor of the resurrection of Christ is more convincing from the fact that his most intimate disciples evidently did not expect it, so the fact that we thought our work was done when only the first and second of the three messages had been announced, is proof that the providence of God, and not the shrewdness of men, is fulfilling these messages of his word. As it was necessary for Jesus to convince the disciples of his resurrection by “many infallible proofs,” so the Adventists of 1844 ignored the last, most solemn and important message of all, till forced, as it were, by the providence, the word and the Spirit of God, to accept and proclaim it.

Does the disappointment disprove our position in the work of God? Not at all! The first disciples were disappointed also. They were sadly disappointed when the Lord was slain; and again most happily disappointed when they learned that he was risen from the dead. I love to trace the parallel between their experience and ours. They were buoyant in expectation of the reign of Christ; so were we. They shouted, and so did we. They strewed their garments in the way; we seemed to set but little value upon earthly goods. They cried, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! We cried, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come. The Son of David is coming the second time. “Some of the Pharisees,” were offended at their shouting and wished them rebuked; so it was in our case. They fulfilled an important prophecy; so did we. Had they not done so, the stones would have cried out; so it would have been in this case; for prophecy must be fulfilled. They were blind as to what should follow; so were we. Consequently they were sadly disappointed; so were we. They were sad, while the world rejoiced; so were we. But their sorrow was turned into joy when the prophecies were more fully opened to their minds; so it was with us. They could take the prophecies and explain their disappointment; so can we. They learned that their work of preaching was but just begun; we have learned the same. They had a new message to preach; so have we. Theirs was a further development of God’s truth in a crucified and risen Saviour; ours is the last development of saving truth—the last merciful warning to mankind, before the return of that same Jesus. Theirs proclaimed Jesus, the crucified, exalted at the right hand of God, as a Prince and High Priest, there, beyond the reach of mortal ken, pleading before the throne of mercy in behalf of those who come to God through him; ours proclaims him within the ‘second veil,’ closing up his intercessions, and about to return to gather his elect—those who have been reconciled to God through his blood—and reward them with eternal life. Both are things out of sight, and are matters purely of revelation and of faith, the one as much as the other. There is no difference between the two, except that the latter is “the present truth,” and consequently requires actual, living faith, while the former has been so long held that it is an easy matter to assent to it.

Now, dear friends, the great truth I wish you to learn is, that the prophecies are, like every other part of the word of God, infallible. That they are not only sure of fulfillment, but that they cannot be fulfilled out of their proper time; so that an exact fulfillment may always be safely relied upon. Especially I wish you to bear in mind that when God promises a message of truth, a message of warning, it never comes until he sends it; and when it does come, it must be heeded by those who would please God; for “without faith it is impossible to please him.”

These principles being correct—and they cannot be disproved—the last solemn warning which is to be given before the coming of Christ, is now doing its fearful, heart-trying, sifting, separating, judgment work. It requires of you the very work of reform which you need and must have, to be saved alive by him at his coming. Will you believe God’s word, obey his warning voice and be translated to Heaven at his coming? The Lord is offering you the very thing—the only thing—that can prepare you for that great event, which is as surely pending as his word is true. Will you believe? Will you obey? Will you be saved? May God grant it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.