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Turn Ye, Turn Ye

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1863

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 22, No. 2.

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"Turn Ye, Turn Ye"

By E. Goodrich

In mathematics we have points, lines, angles, courses and distances, all of which are used in surveying and navigation, and are necessary in order to determine the relative position of places. In morals and religion also, as well as in mathematics, the mind clearly recognizes the above primary principles. Every action has a point or place of beginning and a certain direction. The man who gets wrong, will if he continues, surely end wrong. And the necessity of turning is found in the fact that the right point or course has been left. The point where a treasure is lost or dropped is the place to find it. Wandering will not regain it.
Men seek to be happy. They want truth on their side; and they want to accomplish their designs. Yet to turn round and retrace their steps when going wrong or astray is a cross. And the doctrine of repentance, however crossing to the carnal mind, is a moral necessity growing out of the fact that "all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." We are wrong. We have left God and the truth. We have altogether become filthy. Now if we regain what has been lost, if we would know the truth and be free, we must turn back to God, to the place of beginning. Repentance is turning again to the right point, is giving up our wills for the will of God. Man rebelled in claiming that which belonged to God, in arrogating to himself that which God never gave but prohibited, in trying to exalt self in opposition to the law of God. The doctrine of repentance therefore says, Turn back; give up; yield. Yea every lesson of Christianity from A to Z, teaches to deny self and serve the Lord. If men will persist in straying away, and wandering without hope and without God in the world, why of course they can in spite of all the pleadings of mercy and the wooings of love and charity.
God loves man, yet he does not, neither can he, sufficiently to save him in his sin. Such would not benefit man. God does not grant pardon to the impenitent; that would do him no good. Angels rejoice over sinners that repent; and religion even in its most extended and benevolent form cannot rejoice in iniquity but in the truth. The fact is, man has sinned; hence the language, "Cease to do evil, learn to do well". Again, "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."
Some there are who teach that the law of God was all abolished, nailed to the cross, taken out of the way. Such a sentiment is a monstrous absurdity alike dishonoring to God and false. What! Would God give his only begotten Son to redeem man from the curse of a broken law when the same blow that sacrificed his Son killed the law also!
Christ magnified the law and made it honorable by keeping it to the least and last jot and tittle, and by being made a curse for us, suffering the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. Christ came expressly to seek and save that which was lost. He came to show men the way of life by turning them back to God and the truth.
It was the disobedience of one that brought misery and death into our world. It was sin, the transgression of just laws that insulted and offended God. And it is obedience, that renders him gracious toward man.
It was the sin of one man that shut us from the tree of life, and it is the obedience of another that opens the way of salvation to us. The law teaches us not to stray from God. The gospel finds us astray and seeks to turn us back to God. Does the gospel then make void the law? Certainly not.
Does it teach that we may continue in sin that the favor of God may abound? Assuredly this cannot be.
What then are we to do? Why repent! Turn back to God and live. We are to exercise repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance toward God, because it is against him we have wickedly sinned, and faith in Jesus because he is the remedy that God has provided for us. Yea he is the life the truth and the way. Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die, oh ruined sinners. E. Goodrich. Edinboro, Pa.