A Cry of Peace and Safety
By E. R. Seaman
A Cry of Peace and Safety.
ELDER J. B. COOK remarked to his audience, a few Sundays since, in substance, as follows: You (my congregation) need not be troubled about the third angel's message, for we have not had the first, nor the second yet; neither can we, until after the Second Advent. (That is I suppose until we get into the future age.) What means this premonitory admonition? The inference certainly is, that some are troubled, and in order to pacify the minds of some honest souls, this soothing exhortation is made, to forestall as far as possible all further investigation, and set their minds at rest; for certainly we should not expect to hear the third angel's message if the two that precede it have not yet been given. This would not be in numerical order. But as it takes something more than assertion to amount to scriptural proof we will quote a little from the New Testament, to see what those should do who are troubled. Says the inspired Apostle, (2 Thess. i, 7-9,) "And to you, who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." Then how much more appropriate the exhortation of the Apostle, than that of C. We are told to rest in hope of deliverance at Christ's second coming, and obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, a part of which reads like this; if you would enter into life, keep the commandments I (says Christ, the prophet we should hear in all things) have kept my Father's commandments, &c. The great truth so plainly stated and incorporated in the gospel is, that all the commandments of God should be kept, that we may be able to stand in the time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation. The Sabbath is enlisting the sympathies of thousands that never saw the light before : and all efforts to hide the commandments of God, which are presented by the class of messengers symbolized by the third angel of Rev. xiv, from his honest children, will prove abortive; because it is first necessary to invalidate the testimony of Christ and his apostles, and I might say of God himself. I should like to ask some one who is best skilled in the future-age doctrine, to please tell what will constitute the beast, and his image; and his mark, and the number of his name, which we are to get the victory over, AFTER the Lord comes and has destroyed the man of sin by the brightness of his coming? or who will be left to come out of Babylon AFTER she sinks like a great mill-stone to rise no more? Who are those on the sea of glass that have got the victory over the same powers warned against, in the third angel's message? I might multiply questions, but I expect no answer, for none can be given. Here I will leave this part of the subject. If they say unto you, Lo here, or Lo there, believe them not; (that is, that Christ is in the desert, or at Old Jerusalem, go not after them;) "for as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." St. Paul looked for the Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all. Well, says the objector, that means above the hills. Does it? By what rule of interpretation? Who gave you authority to add to the plain, positive declaration of the Apostle. Ans. No one; only we know Paul's words were to be wrested in the last days, by some. But I believe it as it stands; for St. Paul looked for only one Jerusalem, which was a City that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is—man? No sir, (unfortunate for the future-age theory,) it is God. This changes the scene materially. Rochester, N. Y., June 24, 1852.