THE FOUNDATION OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM.
By Editor
We clip the following from the Harbinger, a “Christian,” or Disciple, paper:— The Signs of the Times, a Seventh-day Adventist paper, says:— Every editor of a religious Christian paper ought to know that the Sabbath kept by the Jews was the seventh day of the week. (See Mark 16:1, 2 and the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke.) Yet in the Sabbath and Sunday-law discussions we not only have Sunday spoken of as though it was the Sabbath of the Decalogue, but we have the Sabbath of the Decalogue called Sunday. What shall we call such statements, such teaching? If a lawyer should make such a statement to his client regarding the plainly expressed provisions of a code of civil laws no larger than the Bible, he would be set down as an ignoramus or a dishonest man. Yes, that is all true. There is great confusion in the world in regard to the Sabbath, and a great many good people, some of them learned men who ought to know better, talk about the “Christian sabbath,” and try in some way to connect the first day of the week with the Sabbath of the Decalogue. It is this great blunder that is responsible for Seventh-day Adventism. If a proper distinction were made between the Sabbath of the Decalogue and the Lord's day of the gospel, there would be no foundation on which Seventh-day Adventism could stand. But, neighbor, there would be just the same foundation for Seventh-day Adventism then as now; the eternal Rock of God's word is its foundation. The “proper distinction” “between the Sabbath of the Decalogue and the Lord's day of the gospel” is no distinction at all, for the two are identical. The Sabbath is the Lord's day, and the only “Lord's day” is the Sabbath, radiant with the ever-increasing light of the gospel of the risen Christ. The foundation cannot be moved; it is as firm as the throne of the Eternal. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth; but the word of the Lord abideth forever.” “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”