DISCUSSION BETWEEN ELD. HAINES, SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST, AND ELD. MOULTON, FIRST-DAY ADVENTIST
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DISCUSSION BETWEEN ELD. HAINES, SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST, AND ELD. MOULTON, FIRST-DAY ADVENTIST.
By C. W. Stone
The debate at Seabrook, N. H., six miles from Newburyport, Mass., was no less interesting. Eld. Moulton is of the same belief as Eld. Barnes, but a great deal more open in declaring it. The first two evenings the question was like that at Danvers. The third evening it was, “Resolved, That the Scriptures teach that there is no Sabbath or Lord’s day for the Christian church.” Eld. Moulton did not bring up anything new, and was very rambling, mentioning every point the first evening that he brought up at all. He was very rash in his statements, and used no reason at all. He said that Christ told the young man in Matt. 19:16-22 all that it was necessary to do to have eternal life; but said nothing about the Sabbath. He said that Paul, in Rom. 13:9, gave command for all that was necessary for Christianity; but he didn’t mention the Sabbath. He said the third time that all that a Christian need do is summed up in the decision of the Apostolic Council. Acts 15:28, 29. Eld. Haines showed that both Christ and Paul in the cases mentioned, omitted saying anything about false gods, image worship, and swearing, as well as the Sabbath; therefore, if their silence on the fourth commandment releases us from its observance, so of the first three; therefore a man may worship idols, and profane the name of God, and yet be a Christian according to Eld. M. Eld. Moulton in reply said, “The word ‘comprehended’ in Rom. 13:9 is a very broad term. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you wont swear before him.” Eld. Haines inquired, “Why not, if there is no command forbidding it? How do you know it is wrong? ‘For where no law is, there is no transgression.’ Rom. 4:15. If you know it is wrong to swear, while there is no law to tell you so, why not know that it is wrong to break the Sabbath under the same circumstances? But again, if this loving your neighbor as yourself keeps you from swearing before him, it certainly could not ‘comprehend’ the man away out behind the barn, who swears at his oxen when his ‘neighbor’ is not near.” Eld. Moulton, in his first speech the last evening, said that Lord’s day, Rev. 1:10, “as he was informed by an able Greek scholar,” meant the day of Judgment. In his last speech, having forgotten this, and wishing to heal the wounds he feared he might have made in the minds of some of his audience by sweeping away Sabbath and Sunday too, he said, “Now don’t think I would trample upon the Lord’s day,” “but still there is no command for keeping it.” Eld. Haines asked in closing, “What does he mean? Does he mean that he is not trampling on the day of Judgment? or has he forgotten that that is what he said ‘Lord’s day’ means?” Eld. M. said that the word “Lord” in that verse, as everywhere else in the New Testament, meant Christ. Eld. H. read Rev. 11:15,—“The kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ,” showing the falsity of that; for Lord and Christ here are certainly two different persons. Eld. M. could hardly use his last half hour. Finally, like Balaam (Num. 23:11), whom the Lord made to bless, when he would have cursed, Israel, he said: “If there is any Sabbath, it is the seventh day; for that is the only day God ever blessed. Do you wish to know where your Sunday came from? It rests upon the decree of the heathen emperor Constantine, issued A. D. 321. It is a Catholic institution from top to bottom.” Eld. Haines had great freedom in defending the truth, and though he has had the light himself but a short time, he was enabled to present it in a clear and forcible manner. He feels much strengthened himself; and we are satisfied that the debate has made an excellent impression on the minds of the people who heard. It was held in the first-day Adventist chapel, where Eld. Canright was refused a hearing in December, and where Eld. S. S. Brewer, of the same church as Eld. Moulton, had just finished a series of lectures designed to prove the holiness of Sunday. The people there cannot fail to see the discord in their own teachers, and the weakness of the position taken by all of them when compared with the Bible truth of God’s holy day. C. W. STONE.