WESLEY MCCORMICK by Wesley McCormick

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 23, 1860

WESLEY MCCORMICK

By Wesley McCormick

From Bro. McCormick.

Bro. SMITH: We have had a very interesting time for a few weeks past. I got hold of some books published at the Review Office, and among them was a Sabbath tract. We read it over and over, and compared it with the Bible and found that it contained the truth. On the 21st of September, 1860, I was ploughing in the field with a yoke of oxen. My wife sent word to me if I was going to keep the Sabbath, to come to the house and prepare for it. I was struck with astonishment. I thought of Elisha, who left his oxen standing with the plough in the midst of the field and hastened after the man of God. We do not find that he resisted the call with a variety of objections. I took my oxen from the field, went to the house, and found my wife in earnest about keeping the Sabbath. Here was the testing point, as I am and have been a member of the M. E. Church for about 19 years, and superintendent of the Sunday-school. At once these reflections flashed through my mind. But the matter was speedily settled. We resolved to obey God and keep his commandments; and thus far we feel well satisfied. We are the only Sabbath-keepers in this part of the country.

I then commenced to examine the question of the state of the dead, and came to the conclusion that the dead know not anything. Eccl. ix, 5. I don't believe in the separate existence of the body and soul, when God declares that the soul that sinneth it shall die. Eze. xviii, 4. David taught the dying nature of the soul when he said, God spared not their [the people's] souls from death. Ps. lxxviii, 50. And again, when he said, None can keep alive his own soul. Ps. xxii, 29. I cannot believe that man's thoughts live on when the body dies and his breath goes forth, when David says that they perish in that very day. Ps. cxlvi, 3, 4. I cannot believe that God made man's body and put a soul into it, when Paul says the first man was made a living soul. Man, I believe to be unconscious until the resurrection; for we read that the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 1 Cor. xv, 16, 17. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

I then got a view of the kingdom, by faith, which hath foundations, whose maker and builder is God; one that looked real, something that the human mind can comprehend. It was not wafted away beyond the bounds of time and space.

Please send the Review for six months for investigation.

Yours in search of truth,

WESLEY MCCORMICK

Menomonee, Wis.