p. 21 | WHAT THEY ARE SAYING by C. W. Stone

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 17, 1878

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.

By C. W. Stone

From a study of the word of God, and through the light that the Spirit of God has given to God-fearing men, our people years ago declared the certainty of the progress and final triumph of the third angel’s message. They also saw clearly that that same word teaches that opposition of the bitterest kind, and of the strongest earthly sort, will be waged against that truth in the last days, and in that territory symbolized by the two-horned beast of Rev. 13; and for more than twenty-five years they have proclaimed this truth. And during the past few years we have seen in motion the machinery which is to establish the observance of Sunday on a legal basis, making it an offense against the Constitution to disregard Sunday.

The third angel’s message is going with power. Everywhere it carries conviction to those who hear it; and while a few, some of whom were professing Christians, and some of whom were not, embrace the truth, the rest learn that there is no Bible for Sunday-keeping. Finding this, many of those professors who refuse the truth, become blindly zealous in their defense of Sunday. That must be sustained, Bible evidence or not. So they raise the cry, “These Seventh-day Adventists are destroying the faith of the people in our Christian Sabbath, and are thus doing great harm. It must not be allowed.”

This is what they are beginning to say. Several times within a few days has this argument been presented to me. Said a man, “You do not convert to your faith more than one in fifty who hear you, and you destroy the Christianity of the other forty-nine; for before they hear you, they believe in keeping Sunday as the Sabbath, but afterward they have no faith in Sunday at all, nor do they keep Saturday. Perhaps twenty-five of them were Christians. Then you destroy the Christianity of twenty-five to convert one. You are doing more hurt than good.”

Our enemies will admit that we have a convincing truth, that every one who hears it is convinced by it; and then they will argue that it ought not to be preached because people will not obey it, and cannot afterwards go on violating God’s law with an easy conscience. Joined to their idols! I wonder if people didn’t advance the same idea to Noah, when he warned them to repent lest they be destroyed in the flood.

“Perhaps twenty-five were Christians”? That is a proportion vastly too great, as every one knows. Had he said “professors,” he would have been nearer right. But does God’s truth destroy the Christianity of Christians? Then let it go. Such Christianity (!) would not be worth nourishing. No, no; when a true Christian hears the truth of God, he obeys it, though the world be against him. “Fear not, little flock.”

But this argument is being used more and more, and as the power of the “loud cry” of the third angel is felt, the wakening hordes of the opposition will pull upon this string harder and harder, as they say to them that dwell on the earth, “Let us make an image to the beast.” Rev. 13. C. W. STONE.