Which Is the Greater Wonder?
By R. F. Cottrell
The unbelief, repeated murmurings, and the disposition of the Israelites to turn to idolatry, after they had seen God’s wonders in Egypt and at the Red Sea, and had seen his glory upon Sinai and had heard his majestic voice from its fiery summit proclaiming his holy law, is truly a wonder. The people of the present day are astonished at it; and, instead of accepting it as a true picture of fallen human nature, in which they may, as in a glass behold themselves, they come to the conclusion that that people were the most flagrantly wicked of any that have ever existed upon the earth. If we had45only been there and witnessed those miracles, how believing and obedient we should have been! We imagine that if we should not have been tempted to bow down to the idols of Egypt and other surrounding nations. Like the Jews in the days of Christ, the language is, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. But the solution of the mystery is, idolatry was the fashion in those days—it was a common custom to break the second commandment of the decalogue. The same species of idolatry is not now in vogue in countries called Christian. It is not the custom in these countries to worship a calf, as in Egypt of olden time; but it is the custom to break the fourth commandment of that same decalogue, the utterance of the same voice, that forbade idolatry. And there are many who, knowing that the holy law of God requires the observance of the seventh day, would willingly obey, only that it is the prevailing custom to observe the first in its stead. They would be glad if it were the fashion to do what God says, but it seems to them impossible, since all their friends and neighbors observe a different day. They may be so far enlightened as to know that the “man of sin,” the great apostasy predicted by the apostles, the pope of Rome standing at the head, has made the change from the day God appointed—the holy rest-day—to another; yet since it is the established custom they fancy they can yield to it, and yet please God. As the ancient idolaters could follow the customs of their times, and though too much enlightened to regard idols as truly gods, yet could excuse themselves by the thought that they only worshiped the true God through the similitude of a graven image; as these seem to imagine that they can please and honor God, and keep in spirit the fourth commandment, while they openly disregard the God-appointed day, and keep in its stead the rival Sabbath of the man of sin—the day on which the popes have sabbatized, and not the one on which the great Creator rested from his work. Now I ask, Is not this the greater wonder—that a people having the light of the experience of ancient Israel on record for their instruction and admonition (see 1 Cor. 10), and all the subsequent history of the Jewish people down to their rejection of the promised Messiah; and furthermore, all the light of the present dispensation, with its record of the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies and also the predictions of the apostles, warning all of the usurpations of the great apostasy and its corruptions of the word of God, thinking itself able to change God’s times and laws (Dan. 7:25), and living at a time when these predictions have become matters of history, and also when the final warning against these corruptions is being given, is it not, I ask, the greatest of all wonders that people can disregard what God has said, and in its stead do what he expressly warns them against, and still hope to be accepted in his sight?! If Israel and the “mixed multitude” that left Egypt with them were an astonishingly wicked rabble for falling into the customary sin of their times, what shall be said of those now living in this enlightened nineteenth century who, with all the light of the past and the present, can disobey what God has plainly said, because it is the custom to do that which he has not commanded? A substitute for what God has commanded is not acceptable. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord, and they died. (Lev. 10.) Can we follow their example and hope to live? Rather let us learn the lessons which the records of the past are designed to teach us, and so escape the dangers that are imminent. “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 1 Cor. 10:11, 12.