The Greatest Wonder by R. F. COTTRELL

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 8, 1870

The Greatest Wonder.

By R. F. COTTRELL

I CHANCED to form a short acquaintance, recently, on board the cars, with an Adventist, a minister, with whom I had an interesting conversation. He expressed great wonder that the people could not see the fulfillment of prophecies in the signs in heaven and on earth, that show unmistakably that the great day of the Lord is right before us. I agreed with him that it was truly wonderful. And I called his attention to the predicted warnings laid down in prophecy expressly to point out the experience and work of Advent believers in the last days, and show them the necessary preparation to meet the Coming One in peace. I pointed him to the fact that the last message, that of the third angel, must necessarily be the all-engrossing topic of Adventists just before the coming of Christ, and that their preparation for the event would depend upon their heeding the warning, and keeping the commandments and the faith spoken of in the message. Now, said I, if we are very near the end, as you believe we are, it is time to look for the fulfillment of this message. If the coming of Christ is within a very few years, it is time that this message should be doing its work. Where is it? When it is fulfilled, those who heed it will keep certain commandments which others do not. The commandment-keepers will be right, and the others will be wrong. If we are on the very eve of the advent, this message should be in process of fulfillment. Who are giving this timely warning? No people under heaven but Seventh-day Adventists. They are preaching certain commandments, and they are “commandments of God,” too, that other people reject. Now when this great controversy on the commandments comes, and come it will before the advent, for the prophetic word of God cannot be broken, the right will be on the side of keeping them. These doubtless are the ten commandments, for they were put into the ark of the covenant on earth, which was a representation of things in Heaven. The great original is in Heaven; and this fact comes to light under the sounding of the seventh trumpet. “And the temple of God was opened in Heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.”

Here my friend began to grow eloquent upon the subject of the old covenant being done away; and that Paul taught that the ten commandments, “written and engraven on stones,” were abolished. After showing him that Christ and the apostles taught the perpetuity of the entire moral law, I called back his attention to the last great warning of prophecy, which, if the advent is at hand, must be the great point of present truth. I desired him to read the prophecy with the inquiry in mind, Where is its fulfillment? And so we parted.

Now it is a wonder that even worldlings with the Bible in their hands “cannot discern the signs of the times.” And especially it is a wonder that professed Christians can see no signs of the coming of Him they love and long to see—the very persons who “love his appearing.” But the greatest wonder of all is, that those who see by the fulfillment of prophecy that the advent is right at hand, cannot see that this most thrilling message must come first, and that when this test on the commandments does come, the approved will keep them, and consequently not claim that they are abolished. It is exceeding strange that those who join the cry, “The hour of his judgment is come,” should take the ground that the very law by which the apostles teach all are to be judged in the day of Jesus Christ, is abolished. This is the greatest wonder of all.

Let me repeat; for I want the point to be seen. If the coming of Christ is at hand, now is the very time for agitation, controversy, and a test upon the commandments of God, in order to restore what the beast—the Papacy—has trodden under foot. Such agitation and controversy is now taking place. And while the religious world in general are trying to make it appear that the change of the ten commandments is by divine authority, professed believers in the fulfillment of prophecy, who know from the signs of the times that the advent is at hand, seeing others fail to prove a change, coolly tell us that the entire moral code has been abolished. Can they not see that the prophecy of this controversy and test on the commandments itself shows where the truth lies? And when this predicted controversy is taking place on the only moral code of commandments God ever gave to men, can they, while they take the ground that the code itself has been abolished and superseded by the faith of the gospel, believe that they are the very persons referred to in the saying, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus”? This is the greatest wonder. R. F. COTTRELL.