APOSTASY NOT A RELIABLE STANDARD.
By G.
THE apostle Paul mentions several laborers in the cause of Christ who afterward apostatized, and some of them became conspicuous opponents of the Gospel truth. Among these were Hymenæus and Alexander and Philetus and Demas. He says: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works; of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly withstood our words. At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me; I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me." Because Alexander had once believed and proclaimed the Gospel, he was probably the more able to oppose it, when the spirit of the adversary so moved him. That is, people who did not want to believe the truth would be likely to listen to him, and to quote what he said against the faith. They would say, "This man was once a believer, and proclaimed that doctrine of Christianity for so many years, and of course his testimony is invincible. He and Demas and Hymenæus, and some others, were among the leading men, and if they have seen that the doctrines preached by Paul and his fellow workers are fallacious, that settles it for us." Many people held that Paul could not meet the arguments of these men, and that they completely overthrew their own previous arguments in behalf of the truth. Now few, if any, professed Christians to-day would believe that to be good logic with reference to the positions of Alexander and other apostates of his time. But there are some who hold exactly the same ideas concerning men who once proclaimed the doctrines of Seventh-day Adventists, but afterwards turned against them. Some champions of these men seem to imagine that they are the acme of authority on the subjects they once advocated but now oppose. That is just what the people thought who stood with Alexander as against Paul and the Gospel. But the Lord deemed that kind of judgment to be all wrong. And this ruling of the Lord is good for all time. "Ex-seventh-day preachers" have no better pretexts for denying the faith they once held than those opponents have who never accepted it. Their arguments are precisely the same, and are no stronger because repeated by men who once rejected them; they are not even strengthened by such as have several times gone back and forth between advocacy and opposition. All the positions espoused by the enemies of the Sabbath of the Lord and the Spirit of prophecy have been answered from the Word of God many times, and are being answered by it continually. If men will not believe this, they would not believe "tho one rose from the dead." One who deserts the cause of truth may greatly encourage other opponents by his action, but their arguments are in no sense rendered more truthful by the accession. G.