“A FEW NUTS FOR THE ADVENTS TO CRACK.”
By C. W. S.
The above is the heading of a small sheet, printed on one side, that has just been sent us by a friend, who states that it is the production of a certain M. E. presiding elder. We are fond of cracking good, sound, doctrinal nuts, for they contain a good meat that is food for the soul; but on examination, these “nuts” passed over to the “Advents” prove to be wooden nuts, a miserable deception; and we propose to lay them open simply to show that there is no meat in them. The first nut that we find is in the heading itself, and evidently has a softer shell than surrounds the brain from which it sprung. Does the author know of a sect called Advents? Having frequently heard this mistake ignorantly made, we are prepared to presume that the author wishes to offer these nuts to the Adventists. The whole design of the sheet is to create an apparent discord between the doctrine of corporeal death as the Adamic penalty, and the doctrine of the atonement; and then, with this ethereal support, to prop up the tottering tower of the doctrine of man’s natural immortality. How strange that man should claim to be equal to God in his attribute of immortality, when he expressly declares that he alone is immortal (1 Tim. 6:16), when he offers eternal life as a reward to those who seek for immortality by patient continuance in well-doing! Rom. 2:6, 7. The marvel is that God has opened a way through which we may at last have the gift of immortality bestowed upon us. But to the point. His first statement and conclusion are as follows:— “1. Christ satisfies the penalty of the law by his own death. Gal. 3:13; 4:5. That which he does not save from is not a part of the penalty. But he does not save his people from corporeal death; therefore corporeal death is no part of the penalty.” The trouble here is that Christ never proposed to save any one from the curse of the law. To save, in this sense, is to hinder from occurrence, to prevent. Paul does not say that Christ by being made a curse for us saves us from the penalty of the law; but he does say that he redeems us from it. To redeem is “to purchase back; to regain possession of by payment of a stipulated price; to repurchase.”—WEBSTER. Now this is just what Paul says Christ has done. He has redeemed us, repurchased us. “For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God’s.” 1 Cor. 6:20. Our body and spirit are his; for Jesus has bought, repurchased, redeemed them. 2 Pet. 2:1. John was carried forward in vision to see an innumerable company of people who were redeemed or bought (Rev. 14:4; margin) by the blood of Christ. Rev. 5:9. Now these were redeemed from death, ransomed, recalled, liberated, from the grave. “Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves.” Eze. 37:13. “All that are in the graves shall hear his [Christ’s] voice, and shall come forth.” John 5:28, 29. Paul speaks of the redemption of the body. Rom. 8:23. To put the matter beyond all dispute, Paul places this redemption of the body, the resurrection from the dead, as the direct undoing of the Adamic penalty. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;” that is, Christ will recall us from that death that we die as a consequence of Adam’s sin. 1 Cor. 15:22. If, then, we can find what this making alive is, we shall know what the dying was, or, in other words, what kind of death was the penalty of Adam’s sin. Paul tells us very plainly. He says first that those that are Christ’s shall be made alive at his coming. Verse 23. This is at the resurrection, and Paul describes it. He says, “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” Verse 52. “Together with my dead body shall they arise,” says the prophet Isaiah. We shall have an incorruptible, spiritual body. 1 Cor. 15:42–44. This making alive, then, being nothing less than the resurrection, redemption, of the man, the resumption of the life of the body and the consequent resumption of thought, brought about by bringing the dead up out of the grave, the dying in Adam can be nothing else than the death of the man, the cessation of thought (Ps. 146:4), and the mingling of the body with the dust from which it came (Gen. 3:19); for “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” We submit that Christ does not save his people from corporeal death; but, on the authority of Paul, Peter, John, the holy prophets, and Christ himself, we state that he will redeem his people from death and the dominion of the grave.