GETTING READY FOR THE MARK.
A SERIES of articles on the Sabbath, by J. M. Stephenson, has just been concluded in the Herald of the Coming Kingdom. In his conclusion, Mr. S. says: “We are required to be in subjection to the powers that be, as far as possible without violating the law of Christ. . . . In the absence of any precept for the observance of one day above another, we are left to the law of the land, and the example of Christians as our guide. No man has a right to ignore the claims of civil law, unless it requires a clear and palpable violation of the law of Christ; and he who shall do so, will violate some of the plainest precepts in the Christian constitution.”
Eradicate from the minds of men the idea that God has any requirement in reference to the Sabbath, as Mr. S. is laboring to do, and, of course, they are ready to yield to the requirements which any power, however antichristian, may set up in reference to this institution. So far as his teaching shall be received, men will be prepared to receive the mark of the beast, prepared to take a course by which they will render themselves subjects of the most terrible threatening ever uttered against men in this mortal state. Fearful thought! God has told us, in language that cannot without a great effort be misunderstood, which day is his Sabbath; and he requires us to remember it to keep it holy. The great antichristian power of this dispensation has undertaken to set aside this institution of Jehovah, and erect in its place a rival one of its own; and this, if we interpret the prophecy aright, is to be enforced by the civil law. Now it matters not on what ground men yield to such a law, in opposition to the requirements of God. Whether they do it with a clear conviction in their own minds that God requires something different, and commands them not to yield to the opposing requirements of men, or whether they do it with the belief that God has no law upon the point, the result is the same: the institution of Jehovah, in the face of the plain precept by which he has guarded it, is ignored and set aside, and the authority of that power which has thought to exalt itself above God, and has endeavored to change his times and laws, is reverenced and obeyed. To openly break the law of God, in deference to the requirement of men, under a full sense and conviction of what they were doing, would involve a degree of presumption of which we may charitably believe that not many professed Christians would be guilty; hence it is more natural to suppose that they will do it after first having made themselves believe that God has no law upon the point, and hence that their practice in this respect is a matter of complete indifference. In this case, why should they not yield to the civil law, whatever its requirements may be? And to this point, Mr. S. is laboring to bring all those to whom he can find access; and he is not content with simply attempting to show an absence of any precept for the Sabbath, but he even seems to anticipate the enactment of the civil law, and counsel obedience thereto, under the divine sanction of Christianity. Who can fathom the responsibility of such a course! Of his arguments for no Sabbath, we need not speak particularly. They are such as he has himself a thousand times refuted, if, before his apostasy from the Sabbath truth, he became at all posted on the subject, or if he ever defended it with any degree of ability. As a specimen of his present dealing with the question, let us look at his remarks on Rev. 1, 10. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” He says, “The thousand years is called the Lord’s day.” “There is no difference,” he asserts, “in the import of the phrases, ‘Lord’s day,’ and ‘day of the Lord;’” and adds, “John was carried forward in spirit, or vision, to the thousand years’ reign of Christ.”
Unfortunately for him, the text does not assert anything of the kind, but just the contrary. John does not say, I was carried away in the Spirit to the Lord’s day, as he says concerning the woman in chap. xvii, 3, but, I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. The first, natural, and only conclusion to which the disinterested reader can come on this passage, is that it is given to denote the time when, just as the previous verse gives the place where, John’s vision was given. It was in the isle of Patmos on the Lord’s day. The word rendered “on,” is en (ἐν), and signifies time when; it is not peri (περί), which means about, concerning, or in reference to. Now if John had meant to say that he had had a vision concerning the day of the Lord, he would have used the word peri. What he does mean to tell us is, on what day he had his vision, and hence he uses en, which just expresses it. Mr. S. offers no criticism on this word. He professes great candor in his treatment of the subject. But any candid criticism on that word is fatal to the view he advances. In not one of the many hundred times of its occurrence in the New Testament, is it translated about or concerning; and from none of the definitions can we draw a meaning which we should have to assign it, according to Mr. S., in this construction. This text is one of great importance. It settles forever the question that there is a day in this dispensation which the Lord has set apart to himself, and calls his day; and at our peril, we use that day for common or secular purposes. This day cannot be the day of Judgment; for John could not, in the year 96, have a vision on that day, which was many hundred years in the future. It cannot be the gospel day; for John would not be guilty of the folly of stating that his vision was in this dispensation, sixty-five years after it had commenced, as though his readers would not be aware of that fact. It cannot be the first day of the week; for the Lord has nowhere spoken of that day, nor set up any claim to it whatever. It must be the seventh day of the week; for the Lord, in the Old Testament and the New, in the former dispensation and the present, has expressly claimed that day as his. Connected with the no-Sabbath theory, there is a certain anomaly everywhere noticeable. The logical deduction from that theory is, that the observance of the seventh day is a matter of complete indifference; it does no hurt, it is as good as any other day, and does not mar, in the least degree, our acceptance with God. Yet they will labor and declaim against it, with all their energies, as a fatal and damnable heresy. Thus Mr. S., even within the compass of one article, makes the following assertions. On the question of whether one day is to be observed more than another, he says: “Paul meets this issue fairly. He affirms that every day, in contrast with one day, is alike; and that whether a man observes one day above another, or every day alike, he is equally acceptable to God.” Mark the close of this declaration, and contrast it with the following, which we find only nine short paragraphs further on: “We leave the subject with the reader, hoping the foregoing articles may be instrumental in opening the eyes of some who we believe have imbibed a great error, and of preventing others from embracing this erroneous doctrine.” Imbibing great error, embracing an erroneous doctrine, and yet “equally acceptable to God!” Strange theology. Why not permit people to embrace and practice it, if they can thereby better satisfy their own conscience, and are equally acceptable to God? Why? Because the human heart, in spite of the theories and asseverations of its possessor will persist in bearing witness to the truth of Paul’s declaration in Rom. viii, 7.