They Subvert the Gospel.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
The Christian Statesman of August 22 contains an extract from one Dr. Bellville on “The Change of the Sabbath,” which shows again how completely the imbibing of National Reform ideas tends to wipe out what knowledge of the true gospel of Christ one may already have. The writer says:— “Expositors are of the opinion that the 118th psalm is a direct prediction that the day of Christ’s resurrection was to be the day on which the Sabbath should be kept under the gospel dispensation; and if it does, the first day is established beyond a doubt. The fourteenth verse of this psalm reads: ‘The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.’ Now, this fact was accomplished when Christ arose from the dead; for Christ never became the salvation of the world until the resurrection.” This will be news to thousands of Bible students. If Christ was not the salvation of the world until the resurrection, then one of two things must be true,—either there was no salvation for anybody until after the resurrection, or else there was another Saviour besides Christ. That the first of these is not true may be proved by any child that has read the Old Testament; for, aside from the many passages which show the writers to have a full knowledge of saving grace, we have the recorded fact that Elijah and Enoch were taken bodily to heaven. These two instances prove that there was salvation for mankind before the resurrection. And that the second position is not true is proved by the words of Peter, who said that besides the name of Jesus there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Yet in order to have a show of authority for Sunday observance, and thereby to have a still further show of authority for Sunday legislation, Sunday advocates boldly deny the fundamental principles of the gospel. The more one studies this so-called National Reform movement, the more he will be convinced that it is the most subtle scheme for the undermining of Christianity that Satan ever invented. While National Reform Sunday-law advocates are making wholesale charges of atheism against those who differ with them, we should like to see them show some indication of a knowledge on their part of what Christianity is. All the avowed infidels that the world has known, from Celsus to Ingersoll, have not done so much against the Christian religion as the National Reformers are doing. E. J. W.