My Experience by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1874

“My Experience.”

By R. F. Cottrell

CONVERSING with a stranger on the question of the claims of the seventh and first days to be regarded as the Sabbath, he referred me to the testimony of learned men who declared that the first day has ever been observed as such by the church from the days of the apostles. I replied that other men equally learned denied it, and asked him how we should decide. We have the writings of the apostles, and must go to them to decide the question. But said he, “The testimony of these learned and good men agrees with my experience.” So he decided the question of history by his experience.

I find there are many that profess a deep experience and perfect consecration, who reason like this: The Lord blesses me abundantly, giving me the witness of the Spirit that he owns me as his child. He would not do this, if I were in error in regard to the Sabbath, and were sinning against him every week in laboring on the seventh day. Therefore I must be right in keeping the first day. The Lord blesses us in keeping Sunday; therefore we are doing right.

These, instead of trying the spirits by revealed truth, try the word of the living God by the spirit that is in them. Their experience and their conscience are exalted above the word of God. Instead of going “to the law and to the testimony,” to prove that they have the “light in them,” they take the light that is in them to prove that they need not heed the law and testimony. They seem to forget that the word of God shall judge them in the last day. What a terrible delusion! Instead of receiving the truth and being sanctified by it, they make their sanctification a shield against the truth. Says Jesus, “Sanctify them through Thy truth; thy word is truth.”

R. F. COTTRELL.