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FALSE REASONING OF OPPONENTS

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 25, 1875

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 45, No. 13.

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FALSE REASONING OF OPPONENTS.

The opposers of the law of God affect to think that they have established their premises when they have shown that the ten commandments are, in the Scriptures, called a covenant. But in showing that, they do nothing whatever toward maintaining their position. It is one thing to prove that they were a covenant, and quite another to prove that they were the first covenant, to which Paul refers when he says it is passed away. It is neither the first found in the Scriptures, nor the first recorded after the children of Israel were led out of Egypt. There is a contract or agreement found in Ex. 19, not only answering to the first signification of the word, covenant, but it possesses exactly the characteristics which are ascribed to the “old covenant” in the Scriptures. It was made with them three days before the ten commandments were spoken to them. Note the promises, and the Lord’s reference to them in the promise to make the new covenant. In the covenant,
  1. They agreed to obey his voice and to keep his covenant.
  2. For which the Lord promised to regard them as a peculiar treasure unto himself.
Their failure and the consequences are referred to in the prophecy of the new covenant, so as, unmistakably, to point out this as the first covenant.
  1. “They continued not in my covenant”—they did not fulfill their agreement.
  2. “And I regarded them not, saith the Lord”; he therefore refused to fulfill his promise.
Indeed, it was impossible that he should regard them according to the covenant of Ex. 19, for he therein promised to regard them as “a holy nation”—“a peculiar treasure above all people.” But inasmuch as they did not regard his moral law—the rule of holiness—they were not holy; they were sinners, even as all the nations around them. And if God had then regarded them as a peculiar treasure above all people, or as a holy nation, he would have denied himself, for such was not their character. In the matter of that covenant God acted toward them as he always acts, as he will deal with us, according to his own declaration: “Them that honor me I will honor; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.” 1 Sam. 2:30.