NOT TIME - SETTERS by C. C. Holbrook

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 3, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 27.

NOT TIME - SETTERS.

By C. C. Holbrook

[By Judge C. C. Holbrook, 12th Judicial District, Colorado, in the Alamosa (Colo.) Independent Journal of May 16, 1901.]

EDITOR INDEPENDENT JOURNAL:—

I SEE in your last issue a clipping from the Hooper Press, as follows, to-wit:—

The Adventists are expecting to see the destruction of the world this year, and are patiently waiting the crack of doom.—Prospector.

When the “crack” comes, the 12th judicial district will, in all probability, have a judge who will hold court on Saturday.—Hooper Press.

It is true that the first day, or Sunday-keeping Adventists, the Guinnessites, the Dimblebyites, the Tottenites, the Rossites and others, all Sunday-keepers, or supporters of first-day sacredness, are time-setters, and have set various times for the second coming of the Lord.

But the above clipping is so worded as to lead the readers of the paper to believe that Seventh-day Adventists have also set the time, which is utterly false. The observers of the fourth commandment, or seventh-day keepers, have never been time-setters. From the day of the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist church, it has steadily opposed the time-setting theory. It has always been the doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist church that no man can know more about the time when the Saviour is to come again to this earth than God has revealed in His Word; as, for instance, when the disciples, on Mount Olivet, just prior to the crucifixion, asked the Saviour, “What shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?” Christ answered the question by telling them of many important events that should transpire in the world, all of which have since been fulfilled, as shown by the pages of history, in the exact order in which He mentioned them. He then told them of certain last-day signs, and added, “When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors,” or, as some translators render it, “Know that He is near, even at the doors.”

Living, as we are to-day, in the time of the fulfilment of the last sign mentioned by the Saviour in that interview, we know that the time “is near, even at the doors,” but how much time the Lord calls “near, even at the doors,” He has not revealed unto man. It may be years. Suffice it to say, that the end can not occur in this year; for there are unfulfilled prophecies which, according to Scripture, will require longer time for their fulfilment.

All the great international alliances which have been taking place since August, 1897, and all the great combinations of capital which we have witnessed of late, and many other things recently in evidence, are all fulfilments of prophecies of the Bible for the last days; yet the end can not occur in this year, for the reason that there are prophecies to be fulfilled after this year.

If the Hooper Press wants to keep Sunday or any substitution for God’s Sabbath, it may do so without fear of interference by the district judge or any other reasonable person.

After all efforts to induce the people of England and Scotland to change from the observance of the seventh day to the new sabbath had failed, Eustace went from Normandy over to England in A. D. 1201, and carried with him a roll, certified by certain ones in high authority to have come “from heaven to Jerusalem,” “upon the altar of Saint Simeon, in Golgotha, where Christ was crucified for the sins of the world.” This roll supplied the authority for the change of the Sabbath, which authority God had, in some way, neglected to put into the Bible. This roll commanded, “that no one, from the ninth hour on Saturday until sunrise on Monday, shall do any work except that which is good,” adding severe temporal punishment as a penalty for the violation of this new command. In the same year, A. D. 1201, the church in England, deeming the evidence sufficient, changed from the observance of the seventh day to obedience to the new command. Two years later,

at a church council held in Scotland, the same evidence was produced, was deemed sufficient, and upon that evidence the same change was made in Scotland. Since that the portion of Saturday and the portion of Monday have been gradually dropped, and the new sabbath limited to Sunday, without the authority of another roll from heaven upon Saint Simeon’s altar or any other altar.

The Hooper Press may, without the slightest danger of interference, observe the new sabbath as established by the new command found upon Saint Simeon’s altar, or it may, with like freedom, observe it in its present amputated form with both ends cut off. This is a free country, in which every individual may keep the amputated sabbath, or any other sabbath, or no sabbath at all, according as conscience may dictate. We inherited the new sabbath from across the water, both headless and tailless, and every one who wishes to observe it is at perfect liberty to do so.

Respectfully,

C. C. HOLBROOK.