p. 451 | COMMUNICATIONS by Sister Waldorf

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Nov 15, 1853

COMMUNICATIONS.

By Sister Waldorf

From Sister Waldorf.

DEAR BRO. WHITE:—The experience of fourteen years has taught me that it is not a vain thing to serve the Lord; therefore I am not ashamed to confess Jesus before a gainsaying world. I know I am not my own; for I am bought with a price: my blessed Saviour purchased me with his own precious blood, when he gave his soul an offering for sin. O that I may love him more and more. He is my present Saviour, a Saviour from all sin. He has taught me to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. His word, also, teaches me that "there is, therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." Rom. viii. It teaches me also to set my affections on things above; not on things on the earth; for we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God. Col. iii, 1, 2.

The things of earth are fading and fleeting—they are transitory in their nature; therefore we should not set our heart upon them, lest they bring a snare upon us.

I feel truly thankful to my heavenly Father that I am a monument of his great mercy! Jesus is my friend, my elder brother! How sweet, how precious is his name! How good and kind he is to me! and not to me only, but to all who believe in him. His love abounds to all his dear children, who love and serve him here below. Truly he has done great things for us! O what a rich and glorious treasure he has laid up in store, for all who prove faithful unto the end! My desire is to live as though each day would be the last I should have to stay in this vale of tears. I want to live a life wholly devoted to the service of my Lord and Saviour, and to enjoy the sanctifying grace of the holy Spirit from day to day: to live above the world, and to be more spiritually minded, that I may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that I may be filled with the fullness of God.

For some time past my mind has been considerably wrought upon, with respect to the seventh-day Sabbath. For two years past I have heard a great deal about first-day Sabbath. I always believed in keeping one day as a Sabbath, or day of rest: in which faith I was strengthened by reading the Sabbath Manual.—A book, entitled, "The First-day Sabbath not of divine appointment," fell in my way: I read the most of it. I was taught from a child to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. But the author could see no necessity for keeping it holy. He said, "why keep it holy? it is no more holy than any other day of the week." As it regarded the changing of the day from the seventh to the first day of the week, I have tho't a great deal about it. Did men change the day?—Who gave them authority? They did not receive it from the great I Am! For in the beginning, when God made the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein, he did it in six days. He rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. "And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." And is not the sanctifying of any thing, making it holy? it certainly is therefore, the day being sanctified was made holy. "This is that which the Lord hath said, to morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Ex. xvi, 23. In Chap. xx he says, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy—the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day and hallowed it." "But the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." Lev. xxiii, 3.

Some presume to say, that when our Saviour rose from the tomb it was abolished, or that the apostles changed it by divine authority. If so, I would like to see the record; for I cannot find in all the Bible that they received such authority from their Lord, or that they ever did make such a change.