“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9. The great mercy of the infinite love of God is ever willing to forgive the sinner his past debt of sin, while the infinite power of His love cleanses from the disposition to sin. Christ’s work is not only to save the sinner from past sins, but also to deliver him from present sin,—from the sinning habit. Christ not only bears the sins already committed, but He stands ready and willing to save us from committing sin; for it is written: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins.” Matt. 1:21. It is one thing to be free from the guilt of past transgressions, and another thing to have power to resist present temptations. If we are faithful in confessing our sins, God will be faithful in forgiving them. And He does more: He cleanses “us from all unrighteousness.”
Dear reader, is this the kind of forgiveness you have laid hold of? Is your forgiveness of sin with or without cleansing? Have you accepted the Master’s forgiveness, purchased at such infinite cost, only to commit again the same sins before the going down of the sun? Have you been pardoned only to use your liberty to transgress again? We must seek not only to free ourselves from the burden of the guilt of past sins, but also to be delivered from the disposition to sin. If I were an extravagant person, always running in debt, and an elder brother should follow me around paying up my debts, through his generosity I would always be free from debt; but neither his generosity nor my freedom from debt would help me one iota in overcoming my sinful habit of getting into debt. If my brother would help me permanently, he must not only continue to pay up my debts, but he must discover some plan whereby I can be saved from the notion of getting into debt. It is not our sins—that is, our past sins—that will keep us out of heaven, for they are all under the blood of Christ. He bears them in His body; by the virtue of His sacrifice they are all forgiven. It is this disposition to sin that will keep us out of heaven. If Christ should come to-day, it is not enough that He find us having repented of our sins, and having received forgiveness up to date; He6must find in the candidate for translation a soul both forgiven of sin and cleansed from the disposition to sin. The sinner must not only be free from sin upon entering heaven, but he must also be free from the liability of ever desiring to sin after he gets to heaven.
Brother, sister, when we have discovered sin in our lives, shall we not go at once for forgiveness?—Yes, most certainly; but in asking for the forgiveness which the Lord so willingly grants, let us seek not only His loving pardon for the sin committed, but also His cleansing power. Let us by faith claim that forgiveness that has associated with it power to “cleanse from all unrighteousness.”
God’s forgiveness of any sin carries along with it enough of the divine power to save us from repeatedly committing that sin. However, this power is not arbitrarily exercised in behalf of the forgiven soul; we ourselves must intelligently co-operate with His saving grace. Confession, then, brings full and free forgiveness for all our debt of sin; for it is written: “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” 1 Peter 2:24. “If there be first a willing mind [in other words, a disposition to be free from sin], it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” 2 Cor. 8:12. Then may we experience the cleansing work of Christ. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7. We are forgiven by the sacrifice of His death; we are cleansed by the present impartation of His life. He forgives us by bearing our sins in His death; He cleanses us by His own blood, and “the blood is the life.”
Let us not only seek the Father’s face to obtain forgiveness of past sins, but as well let us seek for “that mind which was in Christ Jesus,” and pray as did David: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” The margin reads “a constant spirit.” Ps. 51:10. Let us earnestly seek God for a spirit that will enable us constantly to live above sin, instead of constantly being overcome with evil. Then can we praise and thank God for His forgiving love and cleansing power. W. S. SADLER.
The Law of God
By E. J. Hibbard
The Ninth Commandment.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The devil “was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the father of it.” “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Says Jesus, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “Sanctify them [My disciples] through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice.” But to those who were not “of the truth,” but “of their father” (the father of lies), Christ said, “Because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not.” People who have mingled with liars, who have heard lies, believed lies, and lived lies, until they hold them to be truth, will of course reject truth when they hear it, because it is opposite to the lies which they hold to be truth. “I said in my haste, All men are liars.” What a forbidding field for the truth to enter!
For what reasons do people bear false witness against one another? What lies at the base of it all?—In one word it may be told, and that is the root of all sin, namely, “selfishness.” Witness the case of Ahab, who desired the vineyard of Naboth. That vineyard was the inheritance of Naboth’s fathers; the one apportioned to them when the land was divided among the tribes. And the Lord had commanded that the “land should not be sold.” It was a gift of God, a type of the everlasting inheritance. Yet in order to procure the prize they coveted, Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, secured two men, the “sons of Belial,” to testify in court that they had heard Naboth blaspheme God and the king. As this crime was by law punishable by death, Naboth was stoned, and Ahab secured the vineyard. Covetousness, false witnessing, murder, and then robbery; and high heaven noted it all. Swift came the verdict from the King of kings, and was delivered by that fearless prophet, Elijah: “Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will cut off thy posterity.”
Why were false witnesses secured to testify against the Son of God?—Because His life and words of purity and truth were condemnatory to the false-hearted teachers of that day; because the truth was winning the admiration and support of the multitudes; because these things lessened the influence of those who had a form of godliness without the power thereof. In their desperation they cried, “If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.” Yes, and “our place,” in the eyes of such men, meant, first of all, the office and influence we are holding among the people. And this is a sample of what has cursed the earth from that day until this.
False witnesses against Stephen; false witnesses against Paul; false witnesses against the martyrs of Christ through all the ages which have followed. Heaven knows that in no other sphere of life, have men so wilfully, so persistently, so violently, trodden under foot the ninth commandment, as where false-headed and false-hearted professors of Christianity have sought a way to get rid of the testimony of the truth.
Note the contemptible falsity of those Jews who came to accuse Paul before Felix. Ananias the high priest was at the bottom of it all. He secured an orator by the name of Tertullus. This orator represented Paul as a “mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world.” He said they had found him in the act of profaning the temple. “Whom,” said he, “we took, and would have judged according to our law. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands.” Now the facts were that they were the ones using the “great violence.” They were not intending to examine or judge him at all; but would have torn Paul limb from limb, had it not been for the interposition of the chief captain. Nor was he a mover of sedition; nor had they found him profaning the temple. The whole accusation, from first to last, was a fabrication inspired by the devil. To such lengths will men go, who, having rejected the Word and Spirit of God, still hold a form of godliness.
Rumors of this kind of doing have reached our ears, even in these latter days. At least the writer has heard them. If the reader has not, he soon will, if he keeps an account of the daily happenings.
In political life, in military life, in social life, in commercial life, what bold-faced and blasphemous transgression of this ninth command is daily committed!
Is some one a candidate for a political office? His friends overstate his virtues, and his foes his vices. Are they rival candidates? Each one, together with his constituency, endeavors to smirch the character of the other. Has some general or admiral won a famous battle? He who did it is not found out so quickly as was the one who killed “cock robin.” Is some one called handsome or brilliant? What rival is not ready to say, “The ugly, stupid thing.” But as to the commercial world, let us be delivered. Their ways are past finding out. O, that false hair, false eyes, false teeth, false limbs, would sum up the matter; but they are not a beginning. False hearts, false mouths, false minds, false characters, are the rule and not the exception here below. Men and women have become a living negative to the ninth commandment of Jehovah’s law.
What is the crying need of the hour? Is it that false-hearted professors of the religion of Christ secure the co-operation of the civil arm to enforce the form of godliness upon that class of sinners who are open in their transgressions? That would only be to create a class of hypocrites not superior to themselves. Is not hypocrisy the worst form of false witnessing? “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God.” But if my life denies my profession, am I not a false witness? In heaven there is no need of witnesses to the fact that the Lord is God. Where, then, are witnesses needed?—On earth, to be sure. And why are they needed so much here?—Because the world does not know God. To the Christians it is said, “Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men.” Ungodly men do not read their Bibles; they read professing Christians. Have they not a right to do so? But if while I “profess” that I know Christ, I in works deny Him, before whom
and among whom is that denial?—My neighbors, of course—the ones nearest me. Is not this the worst possible form of false witnessing against my neighbor? A godly life might have won him. The other kind has driven him away.
But what is the need of the hour?—The same that has been since sin obscured the glory of God—that men might behold Him; not a picture of Him; not a description of Him; but Him, Himself, as He is indeed. This, men saw in Christ. He was a true witness of the Father. He could truthfully say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” And to His disciples He said, “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.” Did He not therefore send us in order that the world, seeing us, would see Him? Were not our lives intended to be a reflection only of His? This demands conversion. This demands the birth from above. This demands the anointing and abiding of the Holy Spirit. This means entire harmony with the Word of God. This IS the ninth commandment. E. J. Hibbard.
TWO DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE CONDITIONS:
“From Darkness to Light.”
“Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” This it is for which the apostle gives thanks to God. God delivers from the power of darkness into the kingdom of Christ, “the Light of the world.” Col. 1:12, 13, R.V.
You, reader, may have passed from a room of black, impenetrable darkness into one flooded with electric light or brightly illuminated by the sun. The change was decided, wasn’t it? It was literally “from darkness to light.” But not less decided and actual is the change that is wrought in what is commonly called conversion. That soul who yields all to Christ, and accepts with all his heart all that Christ Jesus longs to be to him, is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of light. In the darkness he knew not the way. He stumbled and fell, and walked in circles, and beat his head against the wall, trampled upon precious things, and fell into the holes of the pit of darkness, till his own soul became enswathed in the gloom of the shadow and despair of death.
But he hears a Voice. One has come to deliver. He opens the darkened den, and floods the way of deliverance with light. He takes the soul from the cell of darkness-wrought chaos, and lifts it to the glorious kingdom of light. The former state is this world. The latter is the kingdom of God’s grace established in this world in the hearts of His children. The former is the unregenerate, carnal, natural heart of man; the latter is the heart changed, made new by God’s grace. The transition period from darkness to light may be through the gloom, but the two conditions themselves are diametrically opposite; and he who does not know it, is yet in the darkness or gloom of a transition period unnecessarily prolonged. O, it is the very message of the glad news of the Gospel, “to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” Acts 26:18. The world, sin, self, is darkness; Christianity is the light of life.
From Slavery to Authority.
It is not alone by light and darkness that the apostle illustrates the change wrought by God’s grace. Read again the work wrought in Christ for which Paul thanks God: “Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” Deliverance presumes previous bondage. And that is the condition of every sinner. “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant [“bond-servant,” literally] of sin.” Sin is master, the man is slave. But God delivers the trusting soul from sin’s bondage, and translates him to a throne. He is delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom, not to serve as an involuntary slave there, but to reign with the King. He hath made us to sit together with Christ in heavenly places; He hath made us to be kings and priests unto our God, and we reign on the earth, even here and now, over sin and all its vile brood.
Surely in this also there is marked distinction between the two states of the man. Yesterday he was a slave; to-day he is free. Yesterday he served sin; to-day he is a servant of God, triumphing over sin. Yesterday he served a hard bondage; to-day he reigns a king. And it is all wrought by the power of God.
From Hate to Love.
But there is more than this. As darkness is connected with sin, even so it is with hate; for “he that hateth his brother is in darkness.” Hate is the black negative of love, eating like a living mass of worms at the heart’s center, rejoicing at others’ ills, and injuring those hated where selfish prudence will permit. But God takes the selfish hater in darkness who surrenders, and translates him into the kingdom of the Son of His love. It is no longer a7negative life of hate, but a positive life of love. It is no longer darkness, but light. It is no longer bondage, but freedom.
SURELY there is a difference between Christianity and the world. The great, sad fact is, that so few, even among those who profess His name, know this. Would to God that many more could thank Him, as did the apostle, because of His power. Then, indeed, would they say, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” Many are in the ever-deepening gloom. They wanted God. They purposed to serve God. New light broke in. They joined the church, and professed His name. Their path was darkness brightening to dawn and morning. But they found a church moulded after precedent, tradition, worldly forms, and many, so many, of the poor blinded souls have remained in the transition period, some going back to the world through gloom to darkness, some going forward through the twilight to dawn. O soul, Christianity means something. It is life; it is light; it is power; it is love; it is all things good. If you do not know it, you are not yet translated. Many persons are hoping for translation to God’s everlasting kingdom in immortal bodies; but the soul must be translated here. The character must first become incorruptible, immortal, before God can change the body. Set the face Godward. Yield all to Him and know Him as He is.
(Alexander McLaren, D.D., in Sunday School, Times.)
A STRANGE oneness fused all together. In that blessed early hour were no discords. And, as all were melted into one mass, “they had all things common.” When they were so closely knit, “mine” and “yours” ceased to mean anything, and “ours” came to be the only natural word. That was no appointed community of goods, for we see that Ananias had liberty either to sell or keep his property, and that Mark’s mother had a house and at least one slave girl.
Enjoined community of goods is worthless. Let a common love to a common redeeming Lord draw men together, and they will need no regulations about property. Nobody told these believers to share their goods. Their own hearts told them. Communists and Socialists begin at the wrong end when they wish to regulate property, and leave the proprietors’ natural selfishness undealt with.
No less do Christian people err when they button up their pockets, as a consequence of having shut up their hearts, against their needy brethren. The spring of love to men, which is love to Jesus Christ, must have run nearly dry, when the stream trickles from it so scantily as is too often the case. The owners were still owners, and there was care in distribution “according as every man had need.” That is not communism, as modern ideas go, but it is stewardship and wise administration. The individual still “possessed,” but did not call it or use it for his own. Would that rich and less rich among our present-day Christians did the same! There would be fewer miseries and less unrest, and less dangerous questioning whether property has any right at all, even the right to be.
THOU ART MY GOD.
By George MacDonald
Be Thou the well by which I lie and rest;
Be Thou my tree of life, my garden ground;
Be Thou my home, my fire, my chamber blest,
My book of wisdom, loved of all the best;
O, be my friend, each day still nearer found,
As the eternal days and nights go round!
Nay, nay—Thou art my God, in whom all loves are bound!
—George MacDonald.
SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE.
There is not so much need of learning as of grace to apprehend those things which concern our everlasting peace; neither is it our brain that must be set to work, but our hearts. However excellent the use of scholarship in all the sacred employments of Divinity, yet, in the main act, which imparts salvation, skill must give place to affection.
Happy is the soul that is possessed of Christ, how poor soever in all inferior endowments. Ye are wide, O ye great wits, while ye spend yourselves in curious questions and learned extravagances. Ye shall find one touch of Christ more worth to your souls than all your deep and laborious disquisitions. In vain shall ye seek for this in your books, if ye miss it in your bosoms.
If you know all things, and can not say, “I know whom I have believed,” you have but knowledge enough to know yourselves completely miserable. The deep mysteries of godliness, which to the great clerks of the world are as a book clasped and sealed up, lie open before him (the pious and devout man) fair and legible; and while those book-men know whom they have heard of, “he knows whom he hath believed!”
“The truth of Christianity,” says a pious author, “is the Spirit of God living and working in it; and when the Spirit is not the life of it, then the outward form is but like the carcass of a departed soul.”
Divinity has certainly been confused and perplexed by the learned. It requires to be disentangled and simplified. It appears to me to consist of this single point, the restoration of the Divine life, the image of God (lost and defaced at the fall), by the operation of the Holy Ghost. When this is restored, every other advantage of Christianity follows in course.—Bishop Hall.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
“BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
Heaven and the Cross
“HEAVEN is in the cross, but the cross is not in heaven.”
The Practical Part of Religion
“THE soul of religion is the practical part.— Bunyan.”
Coming to Himself
“A MAN is not in his place before he comes to himself.”
Purest Gold Is Most Pliable
“THE purest gold is the most pliable.
WALKING AS HE WALKED.
By S.
It should be our own test upon our own discipleship. We are told in 1 John 2:6 that “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” We can not escape it by saying, that, while we are Christians, we have not yet reached the condition of abiding in Christ. The profession of Christianity is in itself a profession of abiding in Him. One of Christ’s last oral admonitions to His followers was, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch can not bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.” “If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” John 15:4, 6.
It would be impossible to state more clearly than is here stated the fact that the Christian must abide in Christ, and that he who does not has no part or place with Him. Being a Christian, he abides with Christ necessarily. Having made the profession of Christianity, and therefore the profession of abiding with Christ, the duty is perfectly clear. It is to “walk even as He walked.” The one who does not do this denies in his life the profession which his lips have made. He is a living, walking contradiction. There is a continual dispute between his words and his deeds, and he is bound to become an unfruitful branch. The branch which should have borne grapes bears none, or bears wild grapes.
So it is true that the fruit-bearing Christian is the one who abides in Christ, the one who walks “even as He walked.” How did He walk?—He “humbled Himself,” laid aside His own glory, “emptied Himself,” put aside His own will, allowed His own way to be swallowed up in the way of the Father. He says of Himself, “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.” John 6:38. Again: “I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.” John 5:30. That His whole being was consecrated to do that will is shown in His declaration: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” John 4:34. No particle of self came into the ministry of Christ. That is how He walked; not doing His own will; not following His own way; not seeking pleasure in the things which minister to the cravings of the carnal heart; not “whiling away the time” in amusements. There were then, as there are now, plenty of opportunities for ministering to the sensuous and the frivolous in man; plenty of opportunities for making gain of a brother’s need. But these were not the ways of Christ. He did not thus walk. “He that saith He abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.”
Recently a Sunday-school superintendent in a large city issued an edict that each teacher in the school should pledge himself or herself to abstain absolutely from all such vices as theater-going, card-playing, dancing, and the use of intoxicating drinks. If they were unwilling to do this, he requested their resignations. Out of thirty-five teachers thirty-one said that they indulged in one or more of these vices. They did not choose to abstain from this indulgence; and they did not wish to resign, as some of them had been teaching for many years. As this was true of all but four of the teachers, it was probably true of a like proportion of the church and Sunday-school at large. It certainly reveals a deplorable condition in that particular church; and yet many another church could have made no better showing. It is possible that the condition of some is even worse. We know that this condition prevails in a great portion of the professed church of Christ to-day, especially in what are known as the “fashionable churches.”
Now, the question is, Were these walking “even as He walked”? Were they not rather following their own way, doing their own will, finding their own pleasure? Could it be said of such that their meat was to do the will of God? They had taken upon themselves the name of Christ, thereby professing to abide in Him; but Christ was never found walking in such a way. Because they were not walking as He walked, they were not abiding in Him. But “if a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” There is no escaping the conclusion. If we do not walk as He walked, we do not abide in Him; and if we do not abide in Him, we are cut off.
The promise of the kingdom is not made to those who do their own wills, but to those who do “the will of My Father which is in heaven.” Matt. 7:21. The one who has passed through the watery grave must leave the “old man” of sin, and pleasures of the world, and rise to “walk in newness of life.” Rom. 6:4. Anything else is a contradiction, a denial of the profession made. The true child of God will “walk in the light, as He is in the light.” Then he will have the true fellowship, and the sacrifice of Christ will atone for his transgression. 1 John 1:7. Anything less than that is failure. Anything short of that will bring disappointment and death, and to the disappointment and death to which such go they take with them those who have patterned after their ways. There is a better way, and that way is to “walk even as He walked.”
S.
“TO AID THE GOVERNMENT.”
By G.
THE Catholic movement “to aid the government in Americanizing the Philippines, by having the church represented there by prominent American Catholic clergymen,” is said to be “now well under way.” It is characteristic of Rome to aid governments; and if aiding to Americanize means to Central or South Americanize, the “movement” in question is logical. If it means to Americanize after the manner of a Catholicized United States, it is still logical. But to Americanize after the principles of the Constitution of the United States is certainly foreign to any purpose of Rome.
Pope Pius IX., in an encyclical letter of Aug. 15, 1854, said: “The absurd and erroneous doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience, are a pestilential error—a pest of all others most to be dreaded in a State.” In another encyclical of Dec. 8, 1864, the same pope anathematized “those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious worship,” also “all such as maintain that the church may not employ force.”
Bishop O’Connor once voiced the real Roman sentiment when he said, “Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.” And the archbishop of St. Louis emphasized this principle when he said that “heresy and unbelief are crimes; and in Christian countries, as in Italy and Spain, for instance, where all the people are Catholics, and where the Catholic religion is an essential part of the land, they are punished as other crimes.”
In an encyclical by the present pope we find the following mandate: “All Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitutions of States, and legislation, to be modeled on the principles of the true church, and all Catholic writers and journalists should never lose sight, for an instant, from the view of the above prescriptions.”
When the Southern States inaugurated the revolution of 1861–65, Pope Pius IX. gave his blessing and encouragement to that effort to disrupt the United States Government; and when the late war with Spain began, Pope Leo XIII. gave his blessing to the Spanish armies, thus bidding them Godspeed. And since the occupation of the Philippines by the United States—as also in Cuba and Porto Rico—there has been great jealousy in Roman Catholic circles lest Protestantism gain a foothold. Now the American principle of Church and State separation is distinctively Protestant, and Rome has been using every endeavor to keep this principle out of the new possessions. She is now bitterly opposing the secular schools established in the Philippines, and claims the natives en masse as her exclusive charge religiously.
What Rome really means by aiding the United States Government to Americanize the Philippines is predicated upon the theory that America is fast becoming Romanized, and Americanism is estimated from that standpoint. Another Catholic authority, a priest named Hecker, says: “The Catholic Church numbers one-third of the American population. There is, erelong, to be State religion, and that State religion is to be Roman Catholic.” And nothing encourages this idea more than the fact that professed Protestants are paving the way for such a consummation by pressing religion into politics, and politics into religion—a process which opens the door for all that pertains to State religion. And State religion is always a Roman principle when applied to professed Christianity, no matter by what church it is supplied or by what State supported.
Rome never will aid any government in the furtherance of any purpose that is not primarily and ultimately for the interest of Roman Catholicism. And the sooner the people of the United States come to realize this fact, the better it will be for the maintenance of American institutions—for civil and religious liberty. G.
Question Corner
1206.—SCRIPTURE REFERENCES.—THEIR AUTHORITY AND USE.
A correspondent who encloses subscription to the Signs thus writes us:—
(1) I send a few Bible references which I would like you to notice, as they have direct bearing on the Sabbath question as given in the subject index of Thomas Nelson’s edition of the Bible, and as taught by most of the orthodox churches of to-day. Therefore, as I believe you are the exponents of the truth, I call your attention to this subject. Under heading of “Sabbath” and “observance of” in New Testament, I find these references: Matt. 12:1–13; Mark 2:23–28; 3:1–5; Luke 6:1–10; 14:1–5; John 5:8–18; Rom. 14:5, 6; Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16; apparently aiming to teach that it does not make any difference what day we keep, so we keep one day. (2) I also desire to call your attention to Luke 1. What does he mean by the “second Sabbath after the first”? (3) What day is referred to in Romans 14, where the subject matters not, so we keep the day to the Lord? I believe that the Seventh-day Adventist people are right; but to be able to convince others, we must be armed with proof that is as strong as the Word of God can make it. I have no doubt on the subject myself, but there are doubters, and, like Thomas of old, they want proof.
1. References to other passages in the margins of our Bibles or in Bible text-books are no part of God’s Word. They are wholly the work of man, quite useful for the one who knows their purpose, but to those who do not, sometimes misleading. The compiler of the references in the text-book in question evidently designed to place together all the texts which to him seemed to have a bearing upon the day. The supposition is that the student will examine them all by the aid of the Spirit, and give each its due weight and proper setting. Simply because we find a number of texts under a certain heading, we are not supposed to think that all teach or pertain to the thought of the heading, unless the Scriptures themselves warrant this conclusion. For instance, in Dan. 12:1 mention is made of a great “time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time,” and reference is made to Matt. 24:21 where the great tribulation is spoken of, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” Many conclude that both texts refer to the same thing; but the context of each shows that the “trouble” is upon the wicked, from which God’s people will be delivered, while the tribulation is upon the saints. All that references can rightly be used for is convenience and suggestion, never for authority in interpretation.
2. The expression would mean no more than on a second Sabbath after one previously mentioned. The Revised Version reads, “It came to pass on a Sabbath.” The Syriac and others are similar. The best Greek copies do not give either second or first Sabbaths.
3. The reference in Rom. 14:5, 6, is evidently to days and feasts connected with ancient ceremonies; but in the light of the whole chapter it may be given the broadest application, namely, that whatever day a man may keep or whether he keeps no day, man is not his judge; he is responsible alone to God. Of course, this does not imply that God has not a Sabbath day, or that He does not require man to keep it, or that Christians should not teach God’s Word, and persuade the disobedient to obey, but no man is judge of another. It is not for any man to say when a soul has passed the line of condemnation. “Preach the Word.” By that man must stand with God or fall with sin.
