p. 244 | Our Faith and Hope by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 15, 1878

Our Faith and Hope.

By James White

SERMON ONE—CONCLUDED.

TEXT: “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” 1 Pet. 3:15.

THE popular clergy may claim that there are certain positions of the Bible which are mysterious, and charge us with prying into the hidden things of God. The prophet says, however, “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophecy?” Amos 3:6-8.

The book of Revelation especially is called a mysterious book. Thus the writer was taught from his youth. Our godly father, who was a deacon of the church, was once so grieved with the minister because he selected his text from the book of Revelation, that he took up labor with him. But how absurd to call a revelation a mystery. Before revealed it was such, but when it became a matter of revelation it was no longer a mystery. Who can conceive of a revealed mystery?

The learned Dr. Scott issued an edition of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress with notes, and gave a copy to a poor washerwoman of his parish. In a few days the doctor met this unsophisticated woman, and asked her if she had read the book, to which she replied: “The book which you gave me I have read.” Could you understand it? interrogated the learned doctor. “I could understand very well what Mr. Bunyan says, and I hope by a few weeks’ study to be able to understand the notes.” This was not much of a compliment to the learning of the doctor! So with the Bible. The people who understand it as meaning what it says, do not find the difficulties which learned men argue. This is a species of popery. The Catholic church consider it dangerous for the people to be educated and furnished with the Scriptures. Herein lies their power. And to wrap the Scriptures in mysteries, to blind the eyes of the people, and to feed them Sunday after Sunday upon dishes of popular fables is the strength of the opposition. The Sabbath, and the declarations relative to it when taken as meaning just what they say, is one of the plainest of God’s revealed truths. With the Bible and the almanac to show the days of the week, the common people will not fail to see that the seventh day is the Sabbath. The ten commandments are given in so simple a style that all accountable beings whose acts are to be brought into judgment can understand them. And yet they are given in words to commend them to the most educated minds. But of all the ten, the great Author of the moral code has been more definite and particular to simplify the fourth. God first commands us to remember the Sabbath day, and then goes on to state that the Sabbath day, the rest day of the Lord our God, is the seventh day. On that day Jehovah rested after the six days of creation. He next put his blessing upon that day. And as the finishing act, he sanctified it, set it apart to a holy use. But the masses say they cannot understand it, while the real difficulty with them is, they do not want to understand it. They can understand the other nine, but when they come to the fourth commandment, which is the plainest of the ten, they say they cannot comprehend its meaning. We would here speak words of comfort to all such that if they really cannot understand the simple language of the fourth commandment they will have no accounts to settle at the bar of God, for our holy and just God does not keep accounts with idiots.

Then when we come to the subject of baptism, and take the words of Christ and the apostles as meaning just what they say, all is plain again. John the Baptist led our adorable Redeemer down into Jordan, and then led him up out of the water again. Both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and after the holy rite was performed, they came up out of the water. Paul uses the simple figure of the burial of the dead to illustrate baptism. His words are, “Buried with him in baptism.” And he uses words in the same chapter which if possible are still stronger: “For if we have been planted in the likeness of his death we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” Behold Christ lying in Joseph’s new tomb in death, occupying a horizontal position. Baptism is to represent the very posture of the Son of God in death. To perform this, the administrator leads the candidate down into the water at a suitable depth, lays him backward until he is buried in a liquid grave in imitation of Christ’s burial, and raises him up out of the water in imitation of the resurrection of his Lord. This is Christian baptism. There is no child that has ever read the New Testament and witnessed the scene but will be impressed that this and this alone is Christian baptism.

And when we come to the subject of the second advent, we take the Scriptures as meaning just what they say. When our Lord ascended from Olivet, the record states that two men appeared in white, who were doubtless angels. And as he was being taken up from the disciples, they gazed intently to catch the last glimpse of their dear Master, when the angels said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye see him go into heaven.” And as he was attended by legions of angels to his Father’s throne, so will he come again. The language of the revelation is to the point. “Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” Rev. 1:7. Of his coming our Lord has said, “And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Matt. 24:30. And less some might erroneously apply the grand and triumphant description of the descent of our Lord, attended by all the holy angels, to the destruction of Jerusalem to Mormonism, Shakerism, Spiritualism, to departed spirits, to death, and to conversion. Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica in the following words: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet him in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Should we employ the same rule of interpretation in our understanding of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, that is, to take that precept as meaning just what it says, we are forced by the plainest facts in the case, to adopt and obey the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. J. W.