ANCIENT TESTIMONY by M. E. Cornell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 17, 1861

ANCIENT TESTIMONY.

By M. E. Cornell

THE following extracts from an old translation or paraphrase of the New Testament, were published some time ago in the World's Crisis. It was there stated that the book from which they are taken was so worn with age that no trace of publisher or date could be found. These extracts are interesting, and they may shed some light upon several Bible subjects.

M. E. CORNELL.

Col. i, 13. Who hath rescued us heathens from the horrors of our dark and gloomy confinement, and vindicated us into the light and liberty of the glorious kingdom of his beloved Son.

1 Tim. iv, 1. But from this divine religion great numbers, the Spirit of God expressly assures us, will in subsequent ages apostatize, eagerly embracing the delusions of impostors, and doctrines concerning departed spirits.

Verse 2. Being duped by the frauds and dissimulation of false teachers, who have abandoned all sense of conscience and virtue.

Chap. vii, 3. His father, his mother, his pedigree, are no where mentioned—the time of his birth and of his decease is not recorded—a character this, extremely similar to the Son of God, as he was invested with a priesthood liable to no succession.

James ii, 26. For as an human body, when uninformed with life, is only a torpid and inert mass of senseless matter—just so faith, unconnected with good works, is a dead, unanimated principle.

1 Pet. iii, 18 (last clause). Suffering death, indeed, in the flesh, but restored to life by the Spirit of God.

Verse 19. By whose afflatus (Spirit) in the primitive ages of the world he delivered solemn admonitions to those who are now in the state of the dead:

Verse 20. But these repeated warnings they rejected, though God in the days of Noah waited their repentance during the whole time the ark was constructing—in which only eight souls escaped the general inundation.

Verse 21. To this escape from the common ruin corresponds the everlasting salvation, into the firm belief of which our baptismal profession of christianity introduces us—that baptism which is not merely the ablution of the body, but the attestation of a good conscience toward God—and this salvation is ascertained and ratified to us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Heb. xi, 14. Since therefore the sons of God are compounded of flesh and blood, he also, in like manner, assumed humanity in order that by his submission to death he might totally crush and annihilate the empire of that being who held the sovereign dominion of death, that is, the Devil.

Rev. i, 9. I, John, your fellow-christian, fellow-sufferer, and fellow-expectant of the future glorious kingdom of Jesus Christ, being in the island of Patmos, &c.

Verse 12. He who cordially embraces the religion of Jesus, is entitled to immortality. But he who rejects the Christian revelation forfeits immortality.

Heb. xii, 22. But under the gospel you are conducted to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels.

Col. iii, 3. For you are dead, and your future life hath been deposited by the Deity in the hands of Christ.

Verse 4. When Christ, who will re-animate our sleeping dust, shall appear, then shall you, at the same time with him, be exhibited in glorious splendor.

2 Tim. iv, 3. For the time will arrive when men will not bear the true and salutary doctrines of christianity; but their taste being vitiated, and their prurient ears tickled with sounds, they will accordingly countenance a number of public teachers, who will soothe their depraved passions.

Verse 4. These will reject truth with the last aversion, and drink in fictions and fables with insatiable avidity.

1 John v, 18. We know that every one who is born of God, doth not live in the practice of wickedness—but he, who hath been happy in this moral birth, preserves an inviolate purity, and the wicked being can not injure him.

Chap. iii, 9. Every one, who hath been born of God, doth not lead a wicked life, because the principles he received at his moral birth are inherent in him, and it is morally impossible for him to practice wickedness, because he hath been born of God.

Eph. iv, 26. Should your resentments be excited, let them not transport you into any criminal excesses—let not the sun set on your unrelenting anger.