TWENTY-FIVE years ago the past month we issued the first number of a little paper entitled The Present Truth. On that very month, July 1849, our second son, James Edson White, who has charge of The Signs of the Times in our absence, was born. As indicated by the title of the sheet we started a quarter of a century ago, we then held, and still hold, that certain great doctrines of the Bible are applicable to our time in an especial sense.
The second coming of Christ is the crowning event of the stupendous plan of redemption, and has been a truth of the greatest importance to fallen man since the hope of salvation through Jesus Christ was first opened to the representative of the fallen race. Hence holy Enoch, the seventh from Adam, looking forward to this glorious event as the consummation of the hope of all the just, prophesied, "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all." Jude 14, 15.
But the doctrine of the second appearing of Jesus Christ becomes present truth in our day, from the fact that the generation is reached when the event may be scripturally expected, and in which the world is to be warned of its coming doom. We trace the several lines of the prophecy of Daniel over the four monarchies of Babylon, Persia, Grecia and Rome, and they bring us to our time as the grand epoch of utter distruction of all earthly dominions, the establishment of the immortal kingdom, and the eternal reign of the righteous. And if we follow the several prophetic lines of the book of the Revelation down over the fourth empire, Rome, we are brought to the same conclusion, that the last generation of men is reached, and that we stand before the naked glare of eternal scenes.
And when we consider the signs in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, and among the nations, of which Christ spake when a teacher of the people at his first advent, as he pointed forward to his second appearing, we feel the force of his application of the parable of the fig tree when he says, "So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors." Matt. 24 : 33.
The Sabbath of the Bible is as old as the world. It is no more a truth to-day that the Creator rested on the last day of the first week, that he blessed the day of his rest, and that he set it apart for the sacred observance of man, than when Adam entered upon the second week of time. These facts underlie the Sabbatic institution, which exists in all dispensations, and running into the eternal age, parallel with the existence of the facts. When it ceases to be a fact that Jehovah rested on the last day of the first week of time, that he put his blessing on that day, and set that day apart for man, then the Sabbath of the Lord will cease. Sabbath signifies rest. The seventh, and no other day of the week, is the Rest [Sabbath] of the Lord, for the reason that the Lord our God rested on the seventh, and on no other day of the week.
The prophets of God, Christ and his apostles, honored the Sabbath. The Jews at the time of the first advent of the Son of God supposed the institution theirs alone. But their bigoted narrowness stands rebuked by these emphatic words of our Lord, "The Sabbath was made for man." He identifies himself with the Sabbath in declaring that "the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath," and thus he hands the creation Sabbath down to the Christian church.
The measurement of time by weeks originated with what God did on the first seven days of time. Years are marked by the revolution of the earth around the sun. Scriptural months by the phases of the moon, and days by the revolution of the earth upon its axis. But there is nothing on earth, in Heaven, or in the physical or spiritual nature and wants of the race, to mark the measurement of time into sevens of days. This custom, as old as our world, is traceable only to what God did on the first seven days. Hence the reason for this institution is given in the law which regulates the Sabbath in these words: "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 and hallowed it."
The Sabbath, however, becomes present truth to us in the light of those prophetic declarations which teach its restoration. "And they that shall be of thee," says the prophet Isaiah, "shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations. And thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words." Chap. 58 : 12, 13.
And when we come down to our time, to the message of the third angel which ripens the harvest of the earth, just prior to the appearing of the Son of man on the great white cloud, Rev. 14, the declaration, "Here are they that keep the commandments of God," has the ring of present truth in it. If the first message of this chapter is fulfilled in the great second advent movement of the near past and the present, and if the second message applies in a special sense to all corrupted Christianity of our time, then the words "Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus," apply to the Sabbath reform now progressing among those Christians who are looking for the second coming of Christ and the judgment, in a most clear and forcible manner. Most certainly, men in all past time should have kept the commandments of God. They should keep them at the present time. And as certainly as the words "Here are they that keep the commandments of God," apply to a particular period, and especially to our time, the passage does present before us the great Sabbath reformation in the sense of present truth.
It was as true six thousand years ago, when repenting Adam bowed his head to the decree of death for his transgression, and bedewed his pathway with tears as he in sorrow passed out the gate of Paradise, that immortality is the gift of God, and that the future life depends upon the resurrection of the dead, as it is true to-day. And yet this doctrine is the only shield against the seductions of modern spiritualism, which ism God permits to take millions of the present generation within its hellish folds, the doctrine of immortality through Christ alone becomes present truth.
And now that the great work is fairly begun, and is extending to the nations, and is rapidly increasing in strength, it becomes those whose duty it may be to lead out in the general directing and managing the several branches of the work, to act in the fear of God with wisdom. We have spoken freely in the Review of broader plans in the execution of the great work before us. And in the same articles we have suggested that branch offices of publication should be established on the Atlantic, and on the Pacific.
By broader plans we do not mean that capital should be drawn from all parts of the wide field to build up unwieldy institutions at any given point to the neglect of others. We need a good school in Michigan. We need another on the Pacific coast, and another on the Atlantic, and still others, one in Western New York, and another between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Michigan must own their own school located at Battle Creek, by refunding to help build up schools in other localities what she has received from other States.
We plead for the Pacific coast. We shall call the attention of the General Conference to the importance of school advantages of the right sort in California at the present time. We shall ask that body to sanction a furlough to Bro. U. Smith to spend three or four months in that good State. And if the California Conference can furnish him a class of fifty, he can, before his return, give a full course of Biblical Lectures. Our attention has been forcibly called to this subject by the case of two young men in Oakland who have been struggling with poverty, while studying for the ministry. They were about ready to enter the University at Oakland. We were happy to hear them both speak freely in a public meeting a few days since, at which time they fully committed themselves to this. There are forty-eight others, more or less, on the Pacific who should immediately have a thorough drilling on the fundamental principles of present truth. And no man among us needs a trip to the Pacific more, or can do that kind of work better, than our brother Smith.
Broader plans, does not mean to keep a man of Bro. Smith's powers shut up to one office, and to one school, in one little city of seven thousand people. We must have men and women educated on the Pacific, for editors, preachers, and missionary laborers. The General Conference will ask the friends in California to give Bro. Smith a full class, to care for him while he is in the State, and to send him home with a "God bless you." The Conference will do the rest. Here will be a good chance for the editor of the Yolo Democrat to fit for a work vastly broader and more important than to serve a party in one county. From these suggestions, and more of the like we have to make, the reader can gain some clue to what we mean by "broader plans."
Eastern friends have shown their confidence in the cause of present truth, and also in those who have been connected with it from the first, by their liberal pledges for the establishment of the press on the Pacific coast. But let it be understood, that not one dollar of the money so kindly and liberally offered for this purpose by the devoted friends of the cause east of the Plains, should be sunk in publishing west of the Plains. Let the One Hundred Dollar men east of the Plains furnish the steam press and materials complete, to be kept complete in value; and then let the friends on the Pacific coast support the Signs of the Times.