p. 100 | ARE THEY HONEST?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 27, 1879

ARE THEY HONEST?

The question, “Is he honest?” is quite a serious one to raise in regard to any individual. It is still more so when we are obliged to apply it to a whole class, and ask, “Are they honest?” Yet the course taken by the opponents of the Sabbath of the Lord; their tortuous and self-contradictory reasoning; their frequent, and apparently willful, suppression of half the truth, which turns the other half into a lie, compels us to ask this question respecting them.

In the World’s Crisis of March 5, 1879, appears an article by H. F. Carpenter, headed, “The—Not Two—Which?” in which he denies that the Bible makes any distinction between laws moral and laws ceremonial, and bases that denial on the fact that the expression “the law” is used in the New Testament, but “never once the two laws.”

He then says, “Now, my friends, which of your two laws is the law? The ten commandments, I hear you say.” Following this, certain references are given in which the term “the law” occurs, showing the most astonishing confusion in his mind in regard to the matter. He then adds, “Perhaps you regret saying that the law meant the decalogue, and wish to change it and have it mean the ceremonial.” Quoting, then, several texts in which the words “the law” refer to the moral code, he adds, “Are these things said of the ceremonial? Certainly not. But they are said of the law, consequently the ceremonial is not the law. What a muddle we are in! What has mixed us up so? Trying to make two of one.”

No, sir! The muddle is one of your own manufacture. It is one in which S. D. Adventists never find themselves. It is a very easy thing to represent them as believing that “the law” must mean one and the same thing in all places; and to one who believes that the ninth commandment of the decalogue has been abolished, the temptation to do so for the purpose of carrying a point, is too strong to be resisted.

With an air of apparent triumph he asks, “Supposing for a moment this [the idea of two laws] to be true, to which of these laws does the Scripture apply the expression, the law?” Nothing can be more simple and easy than the answer. The Scriptures sometimes apply it to one and sometimes to the other; and no S. D. Adventist, so far as we are aware, ever took any other ground. Had not Mr. C. carefully kept this fact out of sight, and represented just the opposite as being true (whether intentionally or not we will not press our opinion), his whole article would have been spoiled.

We ask the reader to look a moment candidly at this question of the two laws. Why are such frantic efforts made by our opponents to break down this distinction? An effort so unreasonable shows that they are under some terrible pressure. Is it not a fact that this distinction does exist in the very nature of things? Are there not laws which are moral, and only moral, in the generally-accepted signification of that term? Are there not also laws which are ceremonial, and that only? Any one possessed of a particle of either sense or candor will admit both these propositions. Then, secondly, does the Bible have anything to say about both these kinds of law? Every one knows that it does. Now, thirdly, is the Bible as accurate as other books? Is it a book of common sense? When it treats of laws which are distinct from each other, being of an entirely different nature, does it recognize that distinction, or does it blunder through the whole subject, and mix up all laws in the most bewildering confusion? Why do despite to the good sense of the word of God, to say nothing of its inspiration?

Now this is all that we claim concerning moral and ceremonial laws; that is, that the Bible recognizes the same distinction which we find in all the lexicons, which every one acknowledges, and which does exist in the very nature of things; and that it says certain things about the moral law, and other things about the ceremonial; namely, that the latter, as the shadow, has lost itself in Christ, while the former still remains to be practiced and taught till the earth shall pass away, if we would be great in the kingdom of Heaven. Matt. 5: 19.

And Mr. Carpenter himself acknowledges this distinction; for quoting Ps. 19: 7; Matt. 5: 17; Rom. 7: 7; 1 Cor. 15: 56, he says: “Are these things said of the ceremonial? Certainly not.” Here he unconsciously suffered his innate good sense to get the better for a while of his artificial theology, and give utterance to a little truth. But it was not intentional; for he immediately chokes it down, and commits himself to this contradictory and fatal position: “The law is one thing and one only, and that one thing embraces all God’s precepts and judgments given to Israel, whether moral or ceremonial.”

Now Christ did abolish and take out of the way some law. If there is but one, he abolished all law. Then when, where, how, and by whom, was a new one enacted? or haven’t we any yet? and as “sin is the transgression of the law,” and “where no law is, there is no transgression,” and “sin is not imputed when there is no law,” is there any sin in the world now? And if so, by what is it shown? We have been waiting twenty-five years for these no-lawyers to give us their system of theology and answer these points; but as yet they have failed utterly to meet the issue. Like the cuttle-fish, which ejects from its ink-bag a muddy fluid to darken the water and cover its retreat, so all these men do is to try to raise a dust to blind the eyes of the investigator and to conceal their position.

But just as clearly as we are told that there is a law which Christ did abolish, we are also told by Christ himself that there is a law which was not to change in one jot or tittle while heaven and earth endured,—commandments which his disciples were to faithfully do and teach, as they valued Heaven itself. What law was this? How can the same law be both established and abolished at the same time?

If the reader wishes to involve himself in a “muddle” that is a muddle, and in absurdities and contradictions without end, let him try to harmonize this one—no—new law position of these anomalous expositors with the declarations of the New Testament. We have not space to draw out the particulars, twenty-five at least, in which he would find the Bible, according to this view, contradicting itself; nor is it necessary to restate an argument which has been so often repeated. Any advocate of the single-law theory has but to read Eld. Canright’s pamphlet on the two laws, published at this Office, to become ashamed of his position, if he is still susceptible of that emotion.

We look with pain upon the work of these men, who, to get rid of the Sabbath of God, are fighting his law. They are warring against an instrument which comes to us bearing the authority of Jehovah, and clothed with the holiness of the highest Heaven. “The law is holy, just, and good,” says Paul. They are warring against a law with which the carnal mind is at enmity, but in which the spiritual man delights; a law which the Saviour, by his teaching, sinless life, and sacrificial death, magnified and made honorable; for he died to bring man’s deformed and guilt-stained character back into conformity with that righteous law, by which we must all be judged at last. Jas. 2: 10-12.

We know that these men are preparing for a terrible disappointment unless they change their course. In words of startling import, Christ says, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in Heaven.” Matt. 7: 21. Doing the will of God is keeping the commandments, or law of God. Search carefully, and see if it is not so. And when he speaks of the many who have not done this, but who will still say, Lord, Lord, he says: “I will profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity”—ἀνομίαν, violation of law!

We warn all those who in word, or heart, or life, are fighting against God’s law, breaking any commandment and teaching men so, to desist from their unholy work. The day of the Lord is at hand, when every wall daubed with untempered mortar will fall, and every effort to mislead and deceive ourselves or others will receive its just reward. In the name of all that is true in this world, or desirable in the world to come, we exhort them to prepare for Him who is soon to appear on the great white cloud, by coming into a place in which it may be said of them, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” Rev. 14: 12, 14, and to them at last, “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life [from which man was driven for violating law at first], and may enter in through the gates into the city.”