INTERPRETATION by R. F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 5, 1880

INTERPRETATION.

By R. F. Cottrell

THE Bible is not the book which the religious world make it. The Scriptures of truth are defamed, blasphemed, libeled, by the interpretations that are given them by all those sectaries who, to prove that their creeds are, at least, as good as the truth, construe them to mean anything and everything, except that which they say. Unity of faith is very desirable. It is that for which the divine Redeemer prayed—that his disciples might be one, as he and the Father are one. But this oneness never can be restored to the church but by discarding false, mystical interpretations, and by taking the Scriptures in their rational and obvious meaning—understanding them to mean what they evidently and positively declare. Those who can be induced to abandon interpretations for what the Scriptures say, will attain to truth and unity. There is no hope for union in the truth for those who will not do this.

The word of God is not yea and nay. It is in harmony with itself. Its teachings are not diverse and contradictory. The Bible has been compared, by its professed friends, to an old fiddle which will play any tune you please. The way the fiddle is made to do so is by fingering it. Hands off from the Bible, and it will tell the truth every time, and the same truth to all.

The precepts of the law of God are not hard to be understood if we will let them mean what they say; and so of the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel. And the harmony of the law and the gospel is clear to all who are willing to see it. The idea that the law which condemns the sinner is abolished or superseded by the gospel of salvation from sin through the atoning blood of Christ, is the offspring of the desire to evade some requirement of that law which is holy, just, and good. The idea is preposterous. Neither revelation nor reason is its father. It is alike abhorrent to either. The sinful desire to have it so is the father of this illicit, insane, and monstrous progeny. God's word is plain. Sin is the transgression of the law. Christ died to redeem us from sin, and to bring us back to obedience; and those who do not accept of Christ and turn to God will be judged by the law, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to the gospel. Rom. 2: 12-16.

The ordinances of the gospel are simple and expressive, and plainly revealed. There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. Who has a right to teach three or four modes of baptism? Who has the right to substitute something else for what Christ has plainly taught by precept and example?

The Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testament teach us that the dead are asleep. What of that interpretation that persists in saying that they are awake? The Scriptures assure us that Christ is to come to earth a second time, and that at his coming he will awake his people from their sleep; that they shall come forth from their graves. Do they mean what they say? If not, who is authorized to tell us what they do mean? Are uninspired men to tell us that the word of inspiration does not mean what it says, but something else?

Oh! ye interpreters of God's revelation, come and bow submissively to what God has said. Believe what he has spoken, and obey what he has required. Ye that fancy that ye see in the Bible that which is not there, while that which is therein taught is ignored and evaded, anoint your eyes with eye-salve, that ye may see. Come to the fountain of truth and drink. Acknowledge and obey God's word as it is, and no longer make it void by baseless interpretations. Come to the living fountain—the well of life.

R. F. COTTRELL.