p. 164 | SUBSTITUTION by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1861

SUBSTITUTION.

By R. F. Cottrell

“You are to behold him [Elijah] then at present on the heights of Carmel, surrounded by the four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, the four hundred prophets of the groves, who ate at Jezebel's table, a lewd and profligate race, by the idolatrous king and his pompous court, and by multitudes of the poor, perishing, seduced people, awaiting, with anxious curiosity, the transactions about to transpire.

“These being assembled, Elijah appears before them upon the rising ground, conspicuous to all; a plain man covered with a mantle. He looks around him with a cheerful and undaunted countenance, while all are silent to listen to his address. He then exclaims audibly to the whole assembly, ‘How long halt ye between two opinions? If Jehovah be God, follow him: but if Baal, follow him.’ The effect of this bold and serious address was a dead silence on the part of the assembled multitude. They seem to have felt the power of his expostulation concerning their doubt and indecision. With the court and the priesthood the case was different; they were decided idolaters, who had sold themselves to work wickedness in the service of Baal. But the people, perhaps, had not been able entirely to forget what great things Jehovah had done for their forefathers; they could not bring themselves to renounce entirely all allegiance to him; therefore they sought to persuade themselves that they were not idolaters in reality, but worshipers of the true God under the name of Baal. They confounded Jehovah and Baal together, and invented a religion in which they gave themselves up to all the lusts and abominations of heathenism, but retained the self-complacent notion that they still walked in the way of their fathers; that though the form of their worship might be a little different from that of their ancestors, the substance was the same. What awful self-delusion! what pitiful double-mindedness! Such were the people to whom Elijah addressed his remonstrance.”—Elijah the Tishbite.

We have a parallel at the present day. Those idolaters broke the first commandment, these the fourth. To worship the true God under the name of Baal, and to keep the true Sabbath on the first day of the week, are equally consistent. One idea has as much plausibility as the other. Doubtless they both had one origin.

The commencement of that great apostasy in Israel which culminated in the worship of Baal, under the reign of Ahab, or, rather, that of his wife Jezebel, was characterized by some seemingly slight changes in what God had ordained, similar to a change of the Sabbath to another day. “And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made. So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel.” 1 Kings xii, 32, 33. In like manner has “that woman Jezebel”—the papal church seduced Christ's servants in this dispensation. Rev. ii, 20.

The third angel's message is almost precisely like that of Elijah. The reader may carry out the analogy. R. F. Cottrell.