Don't be too Positive by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1856

Don't be too Positive.

By Editor

We don't wish to be. But are you sure we are too positive? Are you sure that the positiveness is in us, and that the charge belongs to us? Have you ever heard us lay down as positive truth any assertions or mere opinions of our own? Then how do you charge us with being too positive? We dare not be less positive than the word of God; we dare not throw doubt over points which that declares certain. When that word expressly says that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, we cannot satisfy our consciences by saying that we guess it is, or we think it is, or it may be; for we know it's so, if the book lies not. Then the positiveness is not in us: it is in the Bible.

And when we affirm without qualification that there is a time of trouble coming such as never was, that the great day of the Lord is near, that the King will soon descend from heaven to the joy of his saints, and to the terror and dismay of all his enemies, it must not be mistaken that these are assertions of our own, that we make them on our own authority, as though they were events of our own imagining. But we find them in the Word, and like faithful watchmen we must preach that word faithfully.

Tell us which is the greater evil, if these things be so, to be too positive, or not positive enough? Which is safest, if the end of all things is at hand, to get ready a year before it comes, or be an hour too late? We see no danger of being too positive on Bible truth; and we trust that on any point where the word of God will bear us out, we shall be permitted to be as positive as that word itself.