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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 17, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 14

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ANOTHER EFFORT AGAINST THE SABBATH.

By R. F. COTTRELL

A young minister took the following positions in a recent effort against the truth, the holy law of God. “Thy law is the truth.”
1. “Christ took the curse of the law upon himself and abolished the law.”
That is to say, The law crucified Christ and Christ crucified the law at the same time. Now it seems to me that only one of these need to die. Christ died for our sins against the law; and why need the law die? Both were holy. If the law could have died, why could not the Son of God have been spared? But according to our friend’s position they came in collision and slew each other. The Son was raised from the dead, but the law, equally holy with the Son of God, does not deserve a resurrection, but is superseded by something better. What is that which is better than perfect holiness? for such is the law of God. Christ was to magnify the law and make it honorable. It is not honoring it very much to nail it to the cross.
2. “They were without law from Abraham to Moses, a space of 430 years.”
Then there was no sin during that time; for “sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Rom. v, 13. “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” Rom. iv, 15. “Sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John iii, 4. Abraham kept God’s law. “Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” Gen. xxvi, 5.
3. He represented that the stoning to death under the civil law of the Jews was all the penalty of transgression they would suffer. Said he, “God will not punish a man twice for the same transgression.” From this he argued the ten commandments were abolished, because the penalty was abolished. Still he professes to believe in the resurrection of the wicked and the second death. Will not those that were stoned to death suffer the second death? If they do, the stoning was only the penalty of the civil law of the theocracy and a shadow of the real penalty, the second death. Then the penalty of the law has not been abolished, and the argument falls to the ground. Sinners will yet find that the law of God has a penalty.
4. He said the law was made for transgressors—that Christians would not transgress any moral precept—they would not murder, steal, &c., because they loved their neighbor. That love was not recorded in the ten commandments. We might keep every one of them and not love our neighbor, &c.
Yes, the law was made for transgressors—for those that transgress the fourth precept as well as the rest. But were all that were under obligation to keep the law in the former dispensation sinners above all others, and therefore must have the law to restrain them? Do not the ten commandments encourage people to love God and keep his commandments? See the second commandment. And does not an apostle testify that this is the love of God that we keep his commandments? Then why will people impudently talk of loving God while they refuse to keep his commandments? Does our young friend love God better than David did who kept the ten commandments—so much better that he is not under obligation to keep them? Is love the abolition of the law, or the fulfilling of it? Was the law made for such transgressors as the holy men of old were, and not for the pious Christians of the nineteenth century who hold that it was not made for them, because they do love the Lord so well, while they break the commandments and teach men so? What if a child should refuse to obey his parents, because he loved them so well!
5. He repeatedly said that circumcision was the seal of the law.
“And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the FAITH which he had yet being uncircumcised.” Rom. iv, 11.
6. “Christians have the Holy Spirit instead of circumcision.”
Did not those that were circumcised have the Holy Spirit? Why, then, did David pray, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me?”
7. His exposition of the text, “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,” was, that unless we do better than to keep the ten commandments, the law which they kept, we cannot be saved.
Did they keep the commandments all right? 1. Christ tells us he came not to destroy the law. 2. That one jot or one tittle should not pass from the law till heaven and earth pass. 3. He drew the conclusion that if any one in the future should break these commandments and teach men so, he should be of no esteem in the kingdom of Heaven. Does he not then mean to teach that unless we keep them better than the scribes and Pharisees did, we shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven? What is this law which is better than the ten commandments, which inspiration has pronounced perfect, holy, just, and good? Is it better to love God and break his law?
8. He said there was no proof that the ten commandments only were written on the tables of stone. That the evidence was that the whole Mosaic law was written on them.
“And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire; ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” “These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.” Deut. iv, 12, 13; v, 22.
9. He said we are not saved by keeping any of the commandments.
Who has taught that we are? We can be saved from our sins only through Jesus Christ. The broken law condemns us; it cannot save us. But shall we sin because we are saved through Christ? Shall we go on in transgression of the same law for our transgression of which Christ died? If we may do so in respect to one of the commandments, we may in respect to them all. Shall we kill and steal, then, because we cannot be saved by keeping those commandments which forbid these things? It is true, the broken law cannot save us, but it can condemn us in the last day. How hard men labor to deceive themselves and lose eternal life! If, when they get what they think is a good argument for breaking the fourth commandment, they would try its force on any other precept of the same law, of which it is a part, they might see the utter fallacy of every argument they frame.
10. “John records it that Christ broke the Sabbath.” Jno. v, 16–18.
John records it that the Jews accused him of breaking the Sabbath; and notwithstanding Jesus repelled the charge by saying that such acts of mercy were “lawful” to be done on the Sabbath, i. e., according to the Sabbath law; yet professed Christians of the nineteenth century take sides with the Jews, reiterating the accusation that he broke the law. It never can be lawful to break a law. It is claimed that the Sabbath law was nailed to the cross. If it was, it was binding till the crucifixion; and to break it before it was abrogated would be sin. This would make Christ a sinner before he was offered for our sins.
11. “We have no right to sin any day.”
Who teaches that we have? Is the man that devotes one day to the exclusive service of God more likely to sin on the other days of the week than one that has no Sabbath? If it is not right to sin on any day, it is not right to break the Sabbath on any day. You can actually violate it upon the seventh day, and you can sin against it by speaking words of blasphemy against it all the rest of the week.
12. “I cannot see that labor is a sin.”
What sophistry! Satan might have told Eve that eating fruit was not a sin. But when God had freely given her the fruit of every other tree, but had reserved one, it was a great sin to take that by theft. So when God gives us six days out of seven in which to labor for ourselves, it is a grievous sin to rob him of the only day he has reserved to his exclusive service.
13. “But it is good to keep a day—a day of rest from physical labor, and in which to meet for the worship of God.”
If that is the truth, I presume the Lord knew it before my young friend. And knowing it, he provided for it by appointing the day. But my friend would have the Sabbath abolished while the need of it is as great as ever. The Lord does not work so. He does not abolish a good thing that is still useful.
14. If it was intended the Gentiles should keep the Sabbath, the apostles should have commanded them to keep it; for they knew nothing about it. “They never received the Scriptures before Peter preached the gospel to them. They knew nothing of the Bible, not a word of it.”
The Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into the Greek some hundreds of years before the first advent. And Cornelius, the first Gentile to whom Peter preached the gospel, was “a devout man and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.” He was also a man “of good report among all the nation of the Jews,” and knew “that it was an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come near unto one of another nation.” He was praying in his house “at the ninth hour,” the hour recognized by the Jewish people as the “hour of prayer,” when the angel appeared to him and told him to send for Peter. See Acts x, 2, 22, 28, 30; iii, 1. Was he so ignorant as not to know the Sabbath law?
Again, the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip baptized, was found by him “sitting in his chariot” reading “Isaiah the prophet.” Going from Ethiopia all the way to Jerusalem to worship with the Jews, and having the prophecy of Isaiah in his hand and able to read it, did he need be told of the weekly Sabbath? Was he ignorant of it?
Again, the apostle James said, “For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogue every Sabbath day.” Acts xv, 21. Almost wherever the apostles traveled among the Gentiles, they found Jews and Jewish synagogues, and in one case the Gentiles requested preaching the next Sabbath, and yet they are made entirely ignorant of every word of revelation just to create the necessity for the apostles to reveal to them the fact that God had from the beginning set apart the seventh day to himself!
I might add much testimony to show that from the time of the captivity in Babylon, the Jews were mingled with other nations, and that the Sabbath was well known among Greek and Roman writers, some of whom followed the example of the Babylonians that “mocked at” the Sabbath; (Lam. i, 7,) but it is not necessary.
15. After proving, to his own satisfaction, that the Sabbath was abolished, he told his hearers the old story that we cannot tell which the seventh day is, and added, “It was changed [i. e., the reckoning of the week] several times by the papal power, as history proves.”
Unfortunately for the unlearned he did not quote the histories that prove this point, but left us all to find the testimonies for ourselves, or take it on his word alone without inquiry. For one, I should be gratified to hear the testimonies.
R. F. COTTRELL.