He Should Know Better by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 18, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 51.

He Should Know Better.

By Editor

In an Old Theological Quarterly, number 76, part 1, January, 1907, is the report of a sermon by C. T. Russell, of Millennial Dawn fame, on "Earthquakes in Prophecy." As it is his own publication the report is presumably correct. He says:

"It is true that our Second Adventist and Seventh-day Adventist friends have also been calling attention to the Scriptural predictions of great tribulations upon the world, now near at hand; but our message is still a very different one from theirs and used for a very different purpose. Their message is that the convulsions of nature that are now due are to result in a 'wreck of matter and a crash of worlds'—in the utter destruction of our race and the reduction of this earth to a mass of cinder. And they use their message as a club to threaten and to drive the wicked to seek the cover and protection of the Lord. Be it noticed how different is our reference to these calamities. We hold with the Scriptures that the 'earth abideth forever,' and that cold and heat, summer and winter, will continue as long as the earth abideth. We hold again with the Scriptures that God made not the earth in vain—He made it to be inhabited. Eccl. 1:4; Gen. 8:22; Isa. 45:18."

In other words, "they" do not believe or teach the Bible; "we" do. Now Mr. Russell knows or ought to know that Seventh-day Adventists teach that the "earth abideth forever," that God "created it not in vain," that "He formed it to be inhabited." Eccl. 1:4; Isa. 45:17, 18. No Adventist, so far as we know, believes that the earth will be burned up, but purified by fire and fitted for the eternal home of the redeemed, when "the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." Among the things that Seventh-day Adventists do not believe is Mr. Russell's unscriptural theories.