p. 7 | A STRIKING PARALLEL

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 21, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 47.

A STRIKING PARALLEL.

JESUS said to the Jewish Church in its last generation of existence: "Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition. For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother; . . . but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to say, Given to God; ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his mother; making void the Word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered." Mark 7:9-13, R.V.

Which means that, however wealthy a man might be, he need not support his father or his mother; he could say that his property was dedicated to God, that he could not use it or his parents, and yet at the same time have, as a self-appointed steward, the full use of it himself. Thus they made void a sacred command of God, enjoining solemn duty to parents.

The last generation of the Christian church is now on the stage of action. One of the solemn commands of God, a part of the great Decalogue observed by Jesus Christ, is this: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; . . . for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day [the day of His rest], and hallowed IT."

But tradition, received and retained in the place of that solemn law, says, "Keep the first day in honor of Christ's resurrection from the dead." God never commanded this. The church has only tradition for it. And the keeping of that tradition makes void the command of God. Are not the words of Jesus as applicable to the church now as then? Do God's laws get too old to keep? Is not He ever the same? Will years make an eternal truth a lie?