Tipton Co., Ind by Wm. Covert

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 10, 1872

Tipton Co., Ind

By Wm. Covert

Curiosity.

ELD. S. G. CLARK, of the “age-to-come” advocates, preached three discourses lately at Little Wild Cat, Tipton Co., Ind., against the Sabbath and law. If there was any point he was trying to make, it was that the ten commandments were the old covenant; and yet he claimed there was no distinction between moral and ceremonial law. If there is no distinction, why are the “ten commandments alone” the covenant as they claim.

He tried to make a great show of argument from Gal. 4. His argument was as follows: The ten commandments are the covenant from Sinai, but this covenant gendereth to bondage; therefore, those who keep the ten commandments are in bondage, and shall not be heir with those who are free from this yoke.

Now, I would like to ask those friends, if keeping the ten commandments makes a slave of a person, how can you be free while you are bound to keep nine of the same commandments? Besides this, there is nothing oppressive in the one you reject, or the Creator did not understand the wants of his creatures when he made the Sabbath for man, Mark 2:27, and would have him call it a delight, holy and honorable, Isa. 58:13. Is there anything oppressive in rest? Do you feel that your rights are trampled upon when God asks you to keep your feet off his holy time? Certainly this can oppress none but the carnal mind. Rom. 8:7.

But Paul does not say that the old covenant answers to the ten commandments, but to the Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children. But the Elder and his brethren claim “the Jerusalem that now is” as the capital of the kingdom of God, and that the Jews, the literal children of that city, are to be heirs with them and chief of the nation, and that their generations must continue for 24,000 years after the setting up of the kingdom. They argue from Ps. 105:8, to prove that there must be 1000 generations of the literal seed of Abraham; that it takes 30 years to produce a generation; that at this rate there can be only 200 generations even from Adam to the ending of the six thousand years, and Eld. C. told us that the remaining 800 generations must be born in the “age-to-come.”

They see that the 1000 year “age-to-come” is too short to suit their theory; so they are discarding it. Then if we are children of Hagar, as the Elder told us, we may expect to be rulers instead of being cast out in the coming kingdom. He has evidently mistaken the parties, and asserts that Hagar “is the free woman.”

Wm. COVERT.