A WHOLE GOSPEL | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 23, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 29.

A WHOLE GOSPEL.

Says a writer in the Pacific Christian of July 11:—

When will the Adventists learn that the Gospel is complete in itself—that it is a new covenant? It has its own and a new lawgiver. It has its own and a new priesthood. It has its own sacrifice. If the blood of bulls and goats ratified the old covenant, what did the blood of Jesus confirm? According to an Adventist, nothing. It has its own law of pardon; its own rule of life; its own message of love and mercy for man. There never would have been a Gospel to preach had it not been for the hands that were pierced; and yet the Seventh-day Adventists have no day to commemorate anything in Christ or Christianity. Is Jesus not worthy of a day?

They have already learned it, brother. The Gospel is complete in itself. It needs no human commands, no man-made traditions, no pago-papal fathers to complete it. It needs no mutilation either. He who embraces it does not need to cut off the Gospel which God revealed through Moses in promise and type, through Joshua, through Samuel, through the royal records, through the Psalms, through the prophets—from Isaiah to Malachi. He does not then need, in order to in some way get rid of the sign of Christ’s power, the Sabbath of the Lord, the only Biblical Lord’s day, to delete the four Gospels, much of the record of the work and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He finds the Gospel complete in itself; he is willing to accept it complete in both precept and promise without subtraction or addition.

It has its new covenant, given to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to all the faithful of all ages, and confirmed in Christ for all the world, and confirmed in every heart which will accept him. But it has the same law, even as it is the same Gospel and the same Lawgiver—“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” It was Christ who created man, who wrote the law of God in his heart, who, when man had to a great degree by sin obliterated the holy principles, spake the law from Sinai, who lived it in his life, that he might live it in our lives, who confirmed it by his death. But it is the same law, bringing condemnation and wrath to the sinner, but hope and joy to the believer through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 8:1-4.)

The covenant of works is old, and as far as man’s salvation is concerned, “gendereth to bondage.” It is man’s substitute, it has been in principle all the way, for free and full salvation in Jesus Christ. It is putting man’s efforts, man’s vows, man’s promises, man’s power, in the place of God. It was as truly present in principle in Cain’s substitution, it is as truly present in principle in the modern Sunday substitute, in Sunday laws, in salvation by works of various kinds, as it was at Horeb when Israel in their own strength promised, “All that the Lord hath spoken will we do,” and at the same time prayed, “Let not the Lord speak to us any more.” The difference between then and now is that then the people proposed to do God’s will, in their own strength, and now many propose to do their will, in God’s strength. God works with neither method, only to show to the sincere heart its own nothingness and ineffectiveness.

The blood of Christ confirmed God’s righteous promises, God’s righteous law in and through Christ, and made salvation sure for every son and daughter of Adam if they will but accept it. It secured that which God had for ages pledged, that for which his Sabbath stood, a living memorial of creative power, a present sign of redeeming power. To every true commandment-keeping child of God the blood—the life—of Christ confirms it all.

True, there never would have been a gospel without a Saviour; never a sin pardoned without a sacrifice; but the Saviour was from the beginning, the Sacrifice was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” So Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Moses, and the prophets, had the Gospel and believed it, and are therefore enrolled among the illustrious examples of faith, in Hebrews 11.

And because of all this and much more that might be said, Seventh-day Adventists have a day which commemorates by a living and present commemoration Christ Jesus, the Son of the living God, as Creator of heaven and earth, and Redeemer, mighty to regenerate, re-create, and keep, even as he has created and upheld the world.

“Is Jesus not worthy of a day?”—Most truly. But this is not the question. The question is, Whose day,—the day that paganism originally substituted for the truth of God, the day which God has not commanded or in anywise honored above its six fellows? or shall it be the day which Christ, the Creator, made, which he set apart, which he kept, and which he commanded? Shall it be a whole Gospel, without alloy? or shall it be a base mixture, a mutilated gospel, mixed with the basest of counterfeits? This is a question for Christians to settle. Let us have the whole Gospel.