p. 16 | Not Needed

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 33.

Not Needed.

In speaking of the “New Sayings” of Jesus, the New York Observer of August 12 says: “The average student will find in the Logia just about what he brings to them. Some will say that the true things in them are not new and the new things are not true. Others will try to buttress up their asceticism, their Judaistic Seventh-dayism, or their vague pantheism, by a reference to one or another of these sayings.” How it may be with the ascetics or pantheists we do not know; but this we do know, that no well-informed Bible Christian will seek to buttress up Seventh-dayism by an appeal to these sayings, because, granting their genuineness, no such appeal is needed. Seventh-day observers have the Word of the eternal God and the example of Jesus Christ. What more do they need? And true Sabbath-keeping, altho respecting the seventh day, is not Judaistic, but Christian. But what if this saying referred to Sunday? Of course it would be eagerly seized. It would be the last but forlorn hope of a dying cause.

It has never been true that God's prophets have been welcomed by the age in which they lived. After ages have praised them, adored them, worshiped them, built monuments to their praise, and likened their theological favorites to them, but the prophets in the present that are like God's prophets of old are unpopular. The prophet did not call the attention of the people to himself, but to God; and the true disciples magnified the Word of the Lord. It is true that at times men would have worshiped them, but the same ones afterward stoned them. Every true message and messenger to the church of Jesus Christ will exalt Jesus Christ, and every one who receives the message will not glorify the man, but God. When men preach themselves, it is well to receive them with suspicion.