We Choose to Believe by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 5, 1882

“We Choose to Believe.”

By Uriah Smith

The great trouble in the theological world, the great cause of such a lamentable diversity of teaching and opinion, seems to be the fact that so many choose to believe what accords with their own fancy, or corresponds with early instruction, or nurses their prejudices, instead of rigidly fashioning their belief according to the plain declaration of the Scriptures.

A case directly in point has just come under our observation. One of our exchanges, noticing the death of a young and very estimable young lady, says, “We choose to believe that she did not die, but ‘was not for God took her.’” Of only one individual have we the record in all the Bible, that he “was not for God took him,” and that is the faithful and holy Enoch, who walked with God three hundred years. But of him it is plainly recorded that he “was translated that he should not see death.” Heb. 11:5.

Apparently bearing in mind the fact that Enoch was said to have been translated, and that it would be manifestly very inappropriate to apply the language used in Enoch’s case to anything that was not a translation, this writer has even the temerity to call this death “the translation of this fair young girl.”

But hold! the Bible speaks of many others besides Enoch whose life on this earth has ended. But it says of them that they lived a certain number of years, “and died.” Now does any man, who is governed in the least particular by common sense, doubt that the death of this young lady corresponded exactly to these last named, and that she experienced the same change which they experienced when it is said of them that they “died”? No one. But there was a difference between the cases of these men and the case of Enoch. They died; but he “was not, for God took him;” which Paul explains by saying that he “was translated that he should not see death.” But now a person dies, as all the antediluvians, with the exception of Enoch, died, and people “choose to believe,” in the face of all Scripture and reason, that such person has not died, but was translated as Enoch was! What hope is there for a sound and uniform religious faith among men while they will take such liberties with the only source of knowledge on these subjects? Of what use is the Bible, if men are to be allowed to pervert its plainest testimony, and make their own choice the standard of what they shall believe?

But this is only one point on which, by this means, huge errors have been enabled to spread over the world. Men “choose to believe” that there is in every person a separate being, an independent entity, called the soul or spirit, capable of surviving the dissolution of the body, and living, in this disembodied condition, an uninterrupted and superior life. This has given rise to all the vagaries afloat concerning the intermediate state, purgatory, masses for the dead, saint worship, Mariolatry, spiritualism, etc. But the Bible recognizes no such entity, and always treats man as a unit, having only this state of existence and one in the future, beyond the resurrection.

So men choose to believe that they are by nature immortal, whereas the Bible plainly assures them that there is no immortality to be secured except through Christ. They choose to believe that the first day of the week is the Sabbath, whereas the Bible recognizes only the seventh day, and teaches the perpetuity of that, not only through this dispensation, but even while the new earth itself shall endure. Isa. 66:22, 23.

They choose to believe that the world is yet in its infancy, and that a temporal millennium is at hand, instead of recognizing the facts that it has “waxed old as a garment,” and everywhere gives tokens of its coming dissolution; and that the wheat and tares must grow together till the harvest, which is the end of the world; and that the monster system of iniquity, the papal apostasy, will continue to dominate a great portion of Christendom till consumed by the spirit of Christ’s mouth and destroyed by the brightness of his coming. 2 Thess. 2:8.

They choose to believe that all things continue as they were, and that there is no sign of Christ’s coming, instead of listening to the many voices, in the earth beneath and in the heavens above, which herald with one accord, that his coming is at the door. And so it will be found at last that they have chosen delusion and a snare, and that the great day of the Lord, when, alas! it is too late to escape, has come upon them like a thief in the night.

Let us “choose to believe” what the Bible teaches, and act according to its instructions, and all will be well. U. S.