God Never Stultifies Himself by Roswell Fenner Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 2, 1871

“God Never Stultifies Himself.”

By Roswell Fenner Cottrell

The Maker of the universe is the author of all genuine revelation. This being the case, there is no inconsistency between the things made and the things revealed. It has been in vain that men of different ages have attempted to array scientific facts against the Bible. All real discoveries in natural science, in the heavens, on the earth, or within it, present nothing to conflict with this revelation; yet those who soar and range and dig for objections, something to overthrow the word of God, are still frequently and exultingly exclaiming, Eureka!—I have found it!

But it is not alone the open enemies of the Bible that thus assail it. There are many professed believers who, to evade the obvious claims of the moral law of God, exert to the utmost their ingenuity to make it appear that the providence of God is out of harmony with that law as it reads, and therefore that the law cannot require that which it most positively and explicitly asserts and demands.

According to revelation, God made man to inhabit the earth. The Sabbath also “was made for man.” The commandment affirms that “the seventh day is the Sabbath,” the day on which God rested from the work of creation, and that he sanctified it, that is, set it apart, or appointed it, for this reason.

To this it is objected that the earth is a revolving globe; that in God’s providence the day does not begin all around at once; and for this reason it is impossible for all to observe one particular day. And hence it is concluded that the commandment does not mean what it says, “the seventh day;” but that it means what it does not say, “a seventh portion of time.”

Now if God’s providence conflicts with the literal and explicit requirement of the law, we are at liberty not only to reject the day which it enjoins, and choose one for ourselves, but to reject the law itself as not proceeding from the Maker, whose rest-day it professedly commemorates, but from some other source. God never stultifies himself. If his law does not harmonize with his own arrangements, whom has he commissioned to amend it so that it will? And if all are free to amend it, it makes him the author of confusion. If he meant a seventh portion of time, he was capable of saying so. A law which we are obliged to amend before we can keep it, we would do better to reject at once.

But the God of nature is the God of the Bible. The Maker of the heavens and the earth is the author of the ten commandments. He has appointed a particular day, the day on which he rested, to be observed in commemoration of that rest. And there is nothing in his arrangement which conflicts with that appointment. Men may “compass sea and land” to find objections; but none of them will stand. Facts, stubborn facts, are arrayed against them. The days and weeks have never failed to come in regular order to every nation of the whole world. The wisdom of God has laid the line which divides one day from another in the midst of the Pacific ocean; so that from eastern Asia to western America, all nations are recognizing the same definite days of the week. It is proposed that all the citizens of the United States should observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. Could it be done? Yes. And did our government control the whole world, the same regulation might be extended to Europe, Africa, and Asia. There would be no confusion, but perfect harmony throughout. The confusion is manufactured by the objectors to God’s order and arrangements as they exist. But what could be done with the Alaskans? Teach them that in crossing the Pacific they crossed the line which separates one day from another, and thus got out of harmony with all the rest of the world.

It will at length be found, and to the sorrow of many cavillers, that the Creator of all things made no blunder in requiring universal man to rest from his labors on the very day in its weekly cycle on which God did from his. The time will come, the word of prophecy being true, (Isa. 66: 23,) that “all flesh” will observe the Sabbath. This never has been since Isaiah wrote; therefore it is yet to be. All will be agreed in a definite day. Which day will it be? the seventh and last day of the week, the ancient Sabbath, or the first day of the universally acknowledged week, now called the Christian Sabbath?

Suppose it to be the latter. On what foundation does this first-day Sabbath rest? How is the change sustained? In the first place it is alleged from the supposed impossibility of observing a definite day in all the world, that the commandment is not intended to enforce the observance of a definite day, and therefore the day could be changed without the least change in the commandment. Next, custom decides the day to which the Sabbath is changed, and the new day is enforced from the fact that uniformity in practice is very desirable, if not absolutely necessary; (a fact that seems to have been overlooked, when the indefinite-day commandment was given;) then human legislation proposes to supply the defect and remedy the oversight, by calling for uniformity; and last of all, when the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in the new earth, God accepts of the changed day, because that every one has the undoubted right to change it, and “all flesh” observe it, making it universal and necessarily definite in respect to the particular day! This is human wisdom!—Folly in the sight of God! It stultifies itself in its attempts to force the law of God to approve its innovations and continued and determined violations of the same.

God never stultifies himself. No unforeseen difficulty or emergency will arise to thwart his plan and render void his law. He knew that uniformity was desirable, and therefore immovably fixed the day of the Sabbath, requiring all to rest on the day in the weekly cycle on which he rested. The seventh day, and that alone, is the Sabbath-day (rest-day) of God; because he rested on no other. And he will judge men for their abuse and perversion of the intellectual faculties he has given them, in order to justify themselves in their departures from his law, while striving in vain to render his word foolish and his law of no effect. They will see, sooner or later, that they have exhibited their own folly, while they have sought to impeach the wisdom of their Creator and thus make void his law.

The ignorance of past centuries will excuse those who have served the Lord according to the best light they could get. But light has come; light too clear to be rejected with impunity by those whose mental faculties are unimpaired. Those whose faculties are so far gone as to make them incapable of appreciating the evidences of the truth that now shines, are ready to fall into the grave, and will soon be there. Then woe to those who have willfully rejected the light, trusting that their wisdom would defeat the wisdom and counsel of God and make them void.

Brethren, beware of the seductions of Satan and the carnal mind. If obstacles are thrown in your way which you do not at once see how to surmount, do not distrust the wisdom of God’s plan, and play into the hands of the enemies of his truth. His counsel will not fail. His plan, as well as his law, is perfect. His foresight has provided against every objection that can be urged; and his purposes cannot be frustrated, nor his law rendered foolish and void. It is safe to trust in God and humbly obey him; but very unsafe to cast ourselves into the opposite scale of the balance. Those who do so are always sure to be found wanting. Remember my text. Though not found in the Bible, it is nevertheless true: “God never stultifies himself.”

R. F. COTTRELL.