p. 240 | Age to Come Doctrine by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1879

Age to Come Doctrine.

By Editor

In the Sabbath Memorial (London), for July, is some correspondence between Theodora W. Jones, and Mr. Robert Roberts, on the Sabbath. Mr. Roberts says:—

“The law of the Sabbath will doubtless be a public law in the age to come, as it was in the Mosaic age, in the past. Meanwhile believers are under law to Christ alone, who is the end of the law for righteousness to them, &c. Christ himself was under the law (Gal. 4:4) but we are not. I have read much you have written on this subject without conviction. On the contrary, I believe your views to be a hurtful encroachment on the liberty that is in Christ Jesus.”

To keep the Sabbath, then, is a deprivation of the liberty which is in Christ Jesus, but in the age to come the Sabbath law will be in force, which is to say, that in the age to come our liberty in Christ Jesus will be taken away from us! We have placed about the same estimate upon the “age to come” theory, but for a far different reason. We believe Rom. 10:4. Christ, in giving life, answers the end or object of the law, for the law was ordained unto life; Rom. 7:10; and this is unto righteousness, or right doing; see 1 John 3:7. But according to the antinomian creed, Christ abolished the law for righteousness, which is a strange way to advance righteousness—to abolish a law which is holy, just, and good, so good that opposition to it is enmity to God. Rom. 7:12; 8:7. And if the law was abolished for righteousness, will it be re-enforced in the age to come for unrighteousness? How shall we understand this age to come no-lawism?

Of all blind people, antinomians are most to be pitied. Their errors are the most evident, and the most fatal, because most dishonoring to the government of Jehovah, but they are the hardest to convince.