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Does He Understand Us?

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 23, 1874

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 44, No. 2.

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Does He Understand Us?

By T. S.

A WRITER in the Sabbath Recorder of June 4, 1874, deprecates our promulgation of the Advent doctrine. A few expressions will sufficiently indicate his views and feelings in reference to the matter. He says:—
“Among the soul-ruining errors of the times and the professed Christian world, materialism assumes a prominent place.”
“Many persons believe in the personal reign of Christ on earth previous to the Judgment, and they are strong Sabbatarians and make all manner of sacrifices to sustain and propagate their views. As to their speculation in reference to the second advent, and personal reign of Christ for a thousand years, they will do no harm as mere opinions. When presented as special items of faith, and absorb the mind to enthusiasm, to the neglect of the great theme of salvation by Christ’s death, resurrection, and intercession, it is about time to lift up the voice against them. It is a matter of no account comparatively whether Christ come and reign in person or not, for the salvation offered to man has nothing to do with it—if men believe it, it will do them no good—if they reject it, no harm can come from it; for it is not among the conditions of salvation. On the other hand, if it is going to strike at the immortality of the soul and the Christian’s hope of direct blessedness after death, let us take the alarm, and protest against such fatal heresy.”
“Suppose in connection with the second advent doctrines, the true Sabbath is promoted; balance one against the other, and see which has the most weight.”
“It is true every lover of the Sabbath of the Lord wants it made known and embraced, but not at the sacrifice of all other truths. If all men become Sabbatarians and neglect the saving truths of the gospel, what will it avail? Paul said in view of the Judgment, ‘By the terror of the Lord we persuade men;’ but will they be persuaded with annihilation before them? We may expect men to sin on with such a hope entertained. It is a fearful thing to present such an inducement.”
The evils here charged upon Adventism are serious ones, and if it is guilty of them, the choler of our friend is none too bitter. But do these evils result from the proclamation of the Advent doctrine? Did the writer of the foregoing extracts make his statements from actual observation, or reliable information? Does he understand the facts in the case? or is the whole field of his vision discolored and distorted by the goggles of misconception and prejudice through which he views it?
We infer that he is not well informed in regard to our belief, from what he says about Christ’s reigning personally on the earth previous to the Judgment. We know of no S. D. Adventist who holds such a view. We have been acquainted, almost from its very commencement, with that movement which unites the doctrine of the advent and the Sabbath, and we ask where the effects here charged upon it are to be found. Has it caused the “great theme of salvation” by Christ’s death, resurrection, and intercession to be overlooked? If so, when? where? and by whom? Is it ignored by our preachers? Is it left out of the faith of our people? Is it passed by in silence in our books or periodicals? On this point we are willing to compare notes even with the able organ of his own denomination. What companies of Sabbath-keeping Adventists, or what individuals among them, are neglecting the “saving truths of the gospel,” in consequence of their views of prophecy? If they can be found, let them be specified, and their cases be held up as warnings to others; but if they cannot be found, then let the very ink blush that records such insinuations against them. Certainly, if there is any doctrine calculated to lead men to seek Christ till they know that by compliance with the “saving truths of the gospel,” they are accepted of him, it is the doctrine that he is soon coming to reckon with his servants.
By materialism this writer means the view that the dead are unconscious, and that the wicked are to be finally destroyed. This he calls a soul-ruining error. Will he show us some who have been ruined by it. What is the kind of ruin which it works? What particular phase of iniquity do they exhibit who have been led away by it?
On the other hand, we can point to a delusion which has ruined more millions of the human family than any other evil in the same length of time that has ever afflicted the human race. And that is spiritualism. And what is the foundation of spiritualism? Its foundation and superstructure, head and body, bone and sinew, is this doctrine of the immortality of the soul which our friend thinks such a lovely and blessed doctrine. Take away this, and the soul of that whole system of evil is gone, and men have an effectual safeguard against it.
But what has he to guard himself against it? If departed spirits can communicate with the living, who shall say that they do not do it, and hence that spiritualism, in its fundamental fact, is not true? While men are in the flesh, it is their duty to labor for the benefit of their fellow-men. God and Christ and angels are interested in the same work. But do Christians as soon as they leave this state of existence become such disembodied embodiments of selfishness that they seek only their own enjoyment in the spirit world, and think no more of their friends on earth? If the dead, having the power to communicate and give us the benefit of their experience in the spirit world, will not do it, then are they deserving of the execration of the living. Let no man hug to his bosom the doctrine through which spiritualism has ruined its millions, and then talk to us about that being a soul-ruining error which is the only antidote against its damning influence.
Another of his statements is, if anything, still more surprising; namely, “It is a matter of no account comparatively whether Christ come and reign in person or not, for the salvation offered to man has nothing to do with it.”
Paul, in 1 Cor. 15, makes the resurrection of the dead to depend on the resurrection of Christ. Christ has been raised from the dead, therefore the dead will be raised. But if this does not take place, he says, “Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” Verse 18.
Yes, PERISHED! Does our friend hear? Without a resurrection of the dead, then, there can be no future life for our race. And what causes the resurrection itself to take place? The second appearing of Christ; for it is by the voice of the Son of God, at the moment of his revelation in the clouds of heaven, that the dead are called forth. John 5: 28, 29; 1 Thess. 4: 16.
As the Bible presents it, then, the matter stands thus: If Christ does not come, there will be no resurrection of the dead; and if there is no resurrection of the dead, then even those who have fallen asleep in Christ are perished, and can have no future existence; and if there is no future existence for us, there is of course no salvation. Yet, we are in the most positive language assured that the salvation offered to man has nothing to do with Christ’s coming! Shade of blind Bartimæus! Who hath sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? No, we will not say born blind; for we believe it is his theological training that has wrought all this mischief with his spiritual eyesight.
“Will they be persuaded,” he asks, “with annihilation before them? We may expect men to sin on with such a hope entertained. It is a fearful thing to present such an inducement.” A new mark of astonishment needs to be invented for such declarations as these. The celebrated Alger, in his “Doctrine of a Future Life,” pp. 652–661, makes many good remarks on this point. We give one extract. Though not holding with us as to the future destruction of the wicked, he nevertheless could not tolerate such sophistry as this even on his side of the question. He says:—
“It has often been argued that with the denial of a retributive life beyond the grave, all restraints are taken off from the passions, free course given to every impulse. Chateaubriand says bluntly, There can be no morality if there be no future state. . . . What bible of Moloch had he been studying to form, for the time, so horrid a theory of the happiest life, and to put so degrading an estimate upon human nature? Is man’s will a starved wolf, only held back by the triple chain of fear of death, Satan, and hell, from tearing forth with ravenous bounds to flesh the fangs of his desires in bleeding virtue and innocence? Does the greatest satisfaction man is capable of here, the highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness, gluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the appetite of a tiger or a vulture,—then thus to wallow in the offal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon himself to reveling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct and his happiness.”
Pertinent as are these remarks, our view is infinitely better than the one here supposed; for we do not deny a retribution beyond the grave, and that too of a most fearful nature, to a life of sin here. But as we have said before, we say again, This is a matter that can be easily tested. If the doctrine of destruction leads men to throw off restraint and plunge into sin, show us some that have been so affected by it. Let even one man be found who from a life of comparative rectitude is now giving himself up to iniquity and crime, because, forsooth, he has become persuaded that there is no immortality out of Christ, and that those who sin shall finally be put out of existence in the lake of fire, which is the second death. Or show us one who even makes this an excuse for not taking an active interest in religious things. The first instance of this kind is yet to be produced; and we say, Let those who would fain make so much of this point, now produce an instance of this kind or forever after hold their peace.
It is the justness and certainty of punishment, rather than its severity, that restrains men. The mother who screams at her boy that she will “skin him alive,” which he knows she will never do, has no government compared with her whose threatening is more moderate and the punishment certain. So with the relation sustained to the government of God. The idea of eternal torture for the wrongs of this brief mortal life, makes the crime and the punishment so disproportionate that men cannot accept it; for, as Bishop Newton remarks, Though they may imagine it, they “can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God, and goodness.” This doctrine of eternal misery is what makes infidels. Of this, the reader can satisfy himself by conversing with skeptics of any grade.
There is terror enough in the retribution which the Bible reveals to persuade any who will be influenced thereby. Our friend refers to the expressions found therein, the damnation of hell,
the undying worm, the quenchless fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, torment in flame, vengeance of eternal fire, second death, and lake of fire and brimstone; and he asks, “Are these figures?” To which he answers, “Yes. What then must the reality be?” If these are figures, men may imagine the reality to be something more tolerable. But we answer, No; these are not figures, but the dread reality itself; more dreadful than any sane man would brave for all the imagined pleasures of a lifetime of sin. But they are the agents of complete and utter extinction.
The Sabbath truth is one of transcendent interest and importance, first, because it takes hold of our practice, and shows us, every week, as observers or transgressors of God’s law; and secondly, because in it is involved the honor of God. Isa. 58: 13. But when men esteem the doctrine of the immortality of the soul of so much more consequence than the Sabbath that they would prefer that the Sabbath should not be taught, and that men should live on in disobedience to the law of God, rather than that this dogma should be contradicted, they have yet something to learn before the truth can prosper very extensively in their hands. T. S.