p. 9 | The Unchangeable God by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 22, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 12.

The Unchangeable God

By Editor

THE following excerpt is from a sermon by the Rev. D. S. Phelan, D.D., editor of the Roman Catholic Western Watchman, and is published in that paper in its issue of February 10 last:

"Men tell us that everything is changing; that development is the universal law; that the world is changing; that men are changing; that the moral system is changing; that everything is undergoing a process of change. Therefore, religion must change, the Gospel of Jesus Christ must change, the world needs now another Redeemer. Men demand a new Gospel. Now what has changed? Has anything changed? Has the sun changed? Does he not rise and set as he always did? Have the stars changed in their courses? Have the rivers changed? Have the mountain ranges changed? Have the seasons changed? Do they not follow each other in regular course, and have they not been doing it from the beginning? Have the animals changed? Are not the bears what bears always were? Are not lions what lions always were? Are not the oxen, and the sheep, and the domestic animals, what they always were? There is nothing changed there; nothing changed in the heavens above, nothing changed in the earth beneath. Then what has changed? Has God changed? God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; He knows no change; upon Him never falls a shadow of alteration. God is essentially immutable. Has truth changed? Has the multiplication table changed? Have men's minds changed? Have men's hearts changed? No, men are the same as they always were; men are the same inconstant and inconsistent beings they always were. Men to-day love what is good and run after what is bad. Men to-day approve the right and do the wrong. Men to-day are false to themselves and false to each other, as men always were. If we read the history of the world aright, we will find that men are the same in every age, and there is no change in humanity."

All of which is generally true, and as regards God's immutability emphatically true. "I am Jehovah; I change not;" "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," are the words of Holy Writ. How is it, then, that the Roman Catholic Church would presume to change the holy law of God in the substitution of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week? She claims authority to do that. Does not that very claim, prove, demonstrate that she is not the true church of the unchangeable God?