p. 248 | Should Change Its Name

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 21, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 16

Should Change Its Name.

A BROTHER has sent us a clipping from a paper calling itself “Herald of Truth,” wherein the editor undertakes to warn his readers against Seventh-day Adventists.

1. He first accuses them of spreading “corrupt and unscriptural doctrines.” The verb “corrupt” means, according to Webster, “to change from good to bad; to vitiate; to deprave; to pervert; to make base; to defile; to entice; to bribe.” If this charge is true, then the doctrine we teach makes people corrupt, depraves, debases, and defiles them. But does it? Where can an instance be found? Is not the standard of morality in heart and life, in everything that pertains to social and Christian duties, to purity, sobriety, temperance, and all other virtues, as high as that of the Bible itself, embracing as it does “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus”? Remember we are speaking only of doctrines. If these are good and the charge above noticed is false, how can the paper which makes them call it a “Herald of Truth”?

2. It charges them, secondly, with “trying to bring men back to the Mosaic dispensation.” In this the editor of the Herald betrays his utter ignorance of what we do teach; for everyone who knows anything of S. D. Adventist doctrine knows that it draws the very sharpest distinction between the dispensations, showing that the former has passed away, ceasing at the cross, and Christians are under no obligations to it whatever. In this it is certainly not a “Herald of Truth.”

3. “Instead of teaching them to observe the Lord’s day in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, as the apostles and the early Christians did.” This quotation connects with number 1. In this we score three more falsehoods: First, we do not teach people to observe the Lord’s day, for we do teach them to observe it—not, however, Sunday; for Sunday is not the Lord’s day. Secondly, that Sunday is the Lord’s day; which it is not. Thirdly, that the apostles and early Christians taught men to observe that day in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ. They taught no such thing, and not a hint of anything of the kind can be found in the Scriptures nor in any early Christian writer for over two hundred years after the birth of Christ. These assertions have been set afloat in the theological world, and men flip-flap them from lip to lip without thought and without sense. There is not a word of truth in any of it. Here again it is nothing but a “Herald of Truth.”

4. “Many are led to discard all obligations to the day of rest, and work on both Saturday and Sunday; and as a result we see Sabbath desecration, failure to attend public worship, and many baneful demoralizing influences being brought to bear upon the community where these people labor.”

This is a charge that is often made. It always trenches itself behind general statements, but fails to present the proof. It is inconsistent with itself; for our work is to build up. We tear nothing down without putting something better in its place. Those who are particularly influenced by our teaching are positively influenced; that is, they are turned to the observance of the divine Sabbath in place of the human. It may be said that men believe our teaching, and are persuaded we have the truth so far as to give up Sunday-keeping, but there suddenly stop short, and refuse our teaching with reference to Sabbath-keeping, and thereby show that they are not governed by

principle, but are willing to avail themselves of any excuse, however hypocritical it may be, to throw off responsibility. In this case their characters are not changed, but only developed. They are no worse than they were before.

They also teach that after death the soul lies in the grave with the body until the resurrection. This, though not so direct a misstatement as others, is nevertheless almost equally calculated to deceive; for it proceeds upon the supposition that we recognize man as having such a soul as is popularly dreamed of, and hold that it dies simultaneously with the body, and lies in the grave as a dead entity separate from it. Whereas, as we understand the Scriptures, they teach no such duality of man; and consequently such a representation is an utter perversion.

In regard to the immediate personal appearing of Christ upon earth they have in past years gone to the wildest extremes, and have set days and times when Christ should appear in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ, and proved themselves false prophets on every occasion, because Christ says that no man, not even the angels, but God knows the day and the hour when these things come to pass.”

We have an untruth more inexcusable than the others. Seventh-day Adventists have set a time—a day or a month, or even a year—for the Lord to appear. Those who know anything know that rejection of time is one of our cardinal points in the exposition of prophecy. Our very faith forbids it; and we never can set a time till we change our whole system of belief. How gross a misrepresentation the foregoing statement is, the reader can therefore judge.

If it be pleaded in extenuation of such a course, the Herald does not know the difference between Seventh-day Adventists and other Adventists who are time-setters, we answer, Let it then bear the disgrace of being a public journal on a capital stock of ignorance, and the shame of heedlessly and dishonestly heralding that out as truth, which the slightest investigation would have shown to be false. How much worse than it would be to assert deliberately what it knows to be untrue? Let it be silent about that of which it knows nothing. We submit to the reader, taking this as a specimen of its teaching, whether or not to change its name from Herald of Truth, which it does herald.

The article closes with a few good exhortations which we wish it might itself follow: 1. “Hold fast to the teachings of the Saviour.” So say we: “I will give a handsome reward for all the good it has ever taught in favor of Sunday-keeping.” 2. “Be slow to accept new doctrines.” So say we: “Let us look back to the past, and there on the threshold of the great apostasy in the church, Sunday-keeping was a ‘new doctrine.’ It ought to have been rejected. It ought to be so still. The Herald failed to see this fact. It should enlarge its horizon and take a broader view. 3. ‘Prove all things by the word of God.’” So say we. But the Herald will find, upon a little candid investigation, that the word of God furnishes no proof for a weekly Sabbath, the immortality of the soul, the conscious state of the dead, eternal torment, sprinkling for baptism, a temporal millennium. We shake our garments entirely free from all the defilement of its great slough of errors.