IT CAME FROM GOD by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 39.

IT CAME FROM GOD.

By Editor

A Suggestive Parallelism.

The Monitor, a Roman Catholic paper of San Francisco, referring to the utterances against Sunday “desecration” in this city, remarks in its usual courteous way:—

“We often wonder if membership in the Protestant churches steals away men’s brains. If the ‘young people’—the ‘young people’ over in the Oakland conventicles will never see forty—think at all about the day of rest, or the sabbath, as they call it, they must inquire why should it be observed. There is no Biblical authority for observing it on the first day of the week. In fact, the Biblical Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, and the Sunday is a church and not a Bible institution.”

“The Seventh-day Adventists, a crude and fanatical sect, which, by the way, flourishes in Oakland, have, by some mysterious dispensation of Providence, been permitted to see that the observance of Sunday as the day of rest can not be justified on Protestant principles. Therefore its members observe the seventh day in common with the Jews. But even these sectarians do not realize that they are in the very same boat with the Protestants, whom they affect to denounce as corrupt followers of the man of sin. They make much of the Bible, but their Bible is in precisely the same case as the Sunday. They can not prove the Bible by the Bible. They got it from the church. Its authority is the authority of the church. Without the church there could have been no Bible, and when people give up the church it is but a short time until they give up the Bible also. The so-called orthodox and the so-called unorthodox are alike, inconsistent and illogical. If they only used the minds which God gave them, they would soon see that there is only one reasonable form of Christianity on earth, and that is the Catholic Church.”

The argument of the Monitor is precisely that of the Jews of old. “We have Abraham for our father.” “We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to any man.” But the answer of both John and our blessed Lord forever showed that a long line of tribal or priestly succession was no evidence of a title to the church of God. Said the former, “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Matt. 3:9. And Jesus said, “Whosoever committeth sin [“sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4] is the servant of sin.” “If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham.” John 8:39, Douay Version. The Pharisees of that day could also have said, “We are the teachers. The Scriptures are with us; we were brought them to you,” as indeed they did. But they had made the Scriptures and law of God void through their tradition. The Sabbath had been buried under a heap of rabbinical superstition, and the fifth commandment had, in one particular at least, been made of no effect. Luke 13:11-17; Mark 7:1-13. So the great apostate church since Christ, while depositaries of the written Word, have through priestly and pagan tradition, made void in some particulars the second commandment, and in all particulars, so far as her influence extends, the Sabbath commandment. God's Word contains the proof of itself in itself to him who has faith. The words of Christ are as true to-day as when uttered, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” John 7:17. But what if the Roman Catholic Church had never existed?—Well, we would probably have had far more of earlier copies of the Word of God in the original tongues than we have to-day. God has preserved his Book, as he has his Sabbath, despite apostasy, not because of it, and he would have done so had every king been an Ahab or a Manasseh, and every pope a Sixtus IV., or an Alexander VI. There were faithful men of God in the darkest days of the Jewish apostasy, not because of the apostasy, but, by the grace of God, despite the apostasy. There have been, and are, faithful Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, but not because of the doctrines or teaching, or grace of that church, but by the grace of God despite the corrupt system.

The test of Jesus Christ is, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 7:21, Douay Version.