Earlier text: General ArticlesIs Saturday the True Seventh-Day.
By M. C. Wilcox
THIS is a question that is frequently asked by many to whom the subject of the Bible Sabbath has been presented. With some no doubt it is a mere cavil or excuse to evade duty, while with others it is a serious objection. Some few have been taught that Sunday is the seventh day, others that time somehow has been lost, and that no one knows when the seventh day comes. These objections to some seem to be very specious and forcible, yet they are easily proved to be false. In the first place it is neither reasonable nor just that God should so definitely and plainly command us to keep a certain day and then deprive us of the means of knowing when that certain day comes. He has told us that if we transgress his law the penalty visited upon us will be death. Eze. 18:4, 20; Rom. 6:23; that the Sabbath law as found in Ex. 20:8-11 is plain, positive, and definite no candid, honest man will deny. Shall we then, dear reader, charge God with requiring his subjects to obey a law that they cannot understand? Has he required us to keep the seventh day and yet hidden it from us? “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Yes, just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.” But for proof positive that Saturday is the seventh day. The history of the world, ecclesiastically, is divided into three dispensations. 1. The patriarchal, from Adam to the exodus from Egypt; 2. the Mosaic or Levitical, from the exodus to the crucifixion; 3. the Christian, from the cross to the time when Christ shall come again. It is a forcible fact, and one which the careful student of the Bible would expect to find, that the seventh-day Sabbath is found at the beginning and ending of each of these dispensations. Let us take them in their order. 1. The patriarchal dispensation.. At the beginning of this, before sin entered the world, we find the institution of the Sabbath, God’s sacred, sanctified rest-day. Gen. 2:2, 3. Note this fact. Sabbath means rest. The Lord’s Sabbath is the Lord’s rest. As the Lord did not rest on any day of the week but the seventh, no day of the week but the seventh could ever be the Lord’s Sabbath. Consequently whenever we find his holy Sabbath mentioned by inspiration it can refer to no other day than the seventh day: This conclusion is inevitable as all must see. At the beginning of this dispensation the Sabbath was sanctified “or set apart,” in other words commanded to be kept. And when we reach the close the Sabbath is found still, not as something new, but as an already existing institution. Ex. 16:23, 25-29. 2. The Levitical dispensation. When the Lord separated Israel from all people and made them the depositaries of his truth, he gave them his law written with his own finger on tables of stone, that it might ever be with them. The fourth commandment in that law was the Sabbath commandment, Ex. 20:8-11, enforcing the seventh-day Sabbath, the memorial of the Creator’s rest. Further than this the Lord pointed out by a three-fold weekly miracle, in the falling of the manna for forty successive years, that the seventh day was the Sabbath. In fact no other day could be kept. Even if the Sabbath had been lost in the patriarchal age, it was here restored and made plain to all, by the great Creator himself. We come to the closing years of the Levitical dispensation and we find the Sabbath recognized and kept by our Saviour. Luke 4:16, 31. 3. The Christian dispensation. In the first four books of the New Testament we have our Saviour’s teachings recorded respecting the light in which he regarded the commandments of God. In Matt. 19:16, 17, Jesus teaches the young man that if he would have eternal life he must “keep the commandments.” In Matt. 5:17-19, he plainly tells us (1) that he did not come to “destroy the law;” (2) that “one jot or one tittle” should not pass away; (3) that it was easier for heaven and earth to pass than one title (the smallest point of a letter) of the law to fail. See Luke 16:17. And right here, please notice that the first and last mentioned institution in each of the dispensations is the Sabbath of the Lord our God; and this side the cross just entering upon the new dispensation we find holy women keeping “the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. Inspiration has marked it again, it is the seventh day Sabbath still; for, first, the seventh day is the only Bible Sabbath, and secondly, the next day was the first day of the week. Luke 24:1. Thus far there is no mistake. Though man may have lost the time, the Lord has not. But has man lost the time since? We say, No; he has not, for the following reasons:— 1. It is a very rare occurrence that every one in a family should lose the day of the week. But one week could thus pass without their neighbors correcting them. It would be unreasonable and absurd to suppose a whole town could lose the reckoning of the weekly cycle. How much more absurd that all the nations of the earth should lose the correct numbering of the days of the week? 2. The Jews had no names for the days of the week. They were simply called first day, second day, and so on to the seventh day, which was called Sabbath. The names of the days of the week came from the heathens. Sunday was named in honor of the sun; and each day after some heathen deity. So when the Jews came to mingle with other nations, as the Chaldeans, Romans, etc., it was found that the Jewish, or Bible first-day, corresponded to the Roman Sunday; the Bible second day to the Roman Monday, and so on to the Bible seventh-day or the Lord’s Sabbath to the heathen Saturday or Saturn’s day. Thus have the nations of the world reckoned and there is no disagreement. 3. The Jews scattered all over the world, separated and remote from each other, have kept the seventh-day Sabbath since their dispersion thirty-nine years after the crucifixion. If a mistake had been made or time been lost it would have caused a dissension among them; but nothing of this kind has ever occurred. 4. The records of eclipses which date as far back as 500 years before Christ have come down to us. The dates upon which these occurred are given in the record. All admit that astronomers can foretell to a minute the occurrence of an eclipse. The loss of a minute could be found out in this way, so that it is impossible that time should be lost. Thus we see that God has preserved his holy Sabbath. It is all fenced in with irrefutable arguments, with proofs which cannot be overthrown. He has commanded us to keep his Sabbath, and he has made known the Sabbath that we may keep it. The last great reform in the Christian dispensation is upon the Sabbath. Rev. 17:1-4; Isa. 58:13; 8:16; Rev. 14:6-14 and other passages teach the same thing. Here, dear reader, is presented before you briefly and imperfectly the proofs that we can know the true seventh day. In fact all orthodox denominations hold Sunday as the Bible first-day. We know that the more you study with an earnest desire to know God’s will in order that you may do it, the clearer will grow the light on this important question. And one of the glories and beauties of that new earth state—the everlasting dispensation—is the Sabbath of the Lord our God. Isa. 66:22, 23. All will keep it then. May God help you, dear reader, to learn to keep it now that you may be privileged to enjoy it then. “Blessed are they that do his commandments.” Can You Prove that the Bible Is Inspired?
By G. D. Ballou
SUPPOSE a stranger moves into your community with the purpose of making it his future home. The question is in every mind, What kind of man is he? His friends may refer to his reputation, and show that he has always borne a good character, and this would be sufficient to admit him into good society. But no matter how good his reputation, no one would be quite ready to take him at once into full confidence. If he should want to borrow a thousand dollars you would be sure to ask for security. Now what more is needed to lead you to trust him implicitly? Simply a thorough acquaintance gained by dealing with him for a year or so and scrutinizing his actions until you see that none but pure motives actuate him. So with the Bible. It comes to us with a good reputation. The best men of earth have honored its name and exalted its principles. Its influence has been good, and only good, upon those who have conformed their ways to its teachings. The noblest characters of earth, those whose names have been immortalized in the pages of history, have been developed by conformity to the moral principles taught in the Word. True, the Bible has had enemies, but the best of its enemies have owned at last the folly of their opposition to it. The celebrated Ethan Allen, whose wife was an earnest Christian, was asked by his weeping daughter at his death-bed: "Whose teaching shall I follow, yours or mother's?" The reply came promptly, "Follow your mother's." This reputation which the Bible has ever sustained ought to be sufficient to recommend it to your careful consideration. What you need to prove to you that the Bible is inspired, is to become acquainted with its teachings, and with the Spirit that prompted those who wrote its pages. Every book ever made breathes the spirit of its author, and the only way to come in contact with the Spirit that inspired the Bible is to earnestly study the book itself. In this way only will you ever become thoroughly convinced that it is indeed the word of God. Like all the works of God in nature this book gives internal evidence of having been produced by infinite power and wisdom. External evidence does not prove it to be of divine origin, but internal evidence does. Would you know those truths which will develop symmetry and perfection of character, and be possessed of that hope which has sustained the noblest and best of earth, drink deep at this fountain of truth, and let the Spirit which opened this fountain flow into your heart and life, and you will then have confidence in the Bible and its author, like that which unites earthly friends; only it will be more complete and perfect. In the battle of Gettysburg, a young color-bearer of the Sixteenth Regiment of Vermont Volunteers fell mortally wounded. Holding on firmly to his color-staff, he felt some one taking hold, and heard a voice saying, "Give us the flag." Death was already blinding his eyes, and he was unable to see who it was. "Are you friends or enemies?" he asked. "We are friends," they replied. "Then, if you are friends," the dying boy continued, "let me hold the flag till I die." And uttering these words, he fell back and expired. That was the impulse and act of a brave and true heart. The flag had been intrusted to his keeping. He could not and would not yield it to an enemy. He could not yield it to a friend, because he would cling to his trust to the end. His example, though but that of a boy, is one of the noblest and truest in history. Have you a trust committed to you? Yes. God has intrusted you with gifts and opportunities and duties. And Jesus says: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Paul, just before his martyrdom, wrote to Timothy: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day."—Children's Friend. Christ not Wanted.
By Rev. E. A. Stockman
The truth is—sad and painful truth—Christ is not wanted in this world. When he came in his first advent he was regarded as an intruder, and put away as quickly as possible—by bloody hands. The dominant religious sentiment of that time acknowledged the need of no such Christ as he. And great Christendom of to-day is fond of a Christ afar off; but with a personal Jesus coming soon to reign literally on earth they will have nothing to do. Of such a Christ the cry still is, “Away with him!” Nevertheless, “Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” Awfully will the doom of the Judgment Day fall on many classes of unsaved men; but none will wail with deeper anguish than the evil servants who seek to smother the awakened apprehensions of the world with contemptuous scoffing at the “promise of his coming.”—Rev. E. A. Stockman. True Glory Outlasts False Pretenses
By Cicero
TRUE glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretenses, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.—Cicero. A Man's Reception Depends on His Coat
A MAN'S reception depends upon his coat; his dismissal upon the wit he shows. The Sabbath-School.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
Lesson for the Pacific Coast—Aug. 4.
"Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, traveled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only." These, as we learn from Acts 8 : 1, 4, were lay members, for the apostles remained in Jerusalem. They could not refrain from telling the wondrous truths that they had learned. This is in accordance with our Saviour's injunction, "And let him that heareth say, Come." The proof of their fitness to preach is found in verse 21, "And the hand of the Lord was with them; and a great number believed, and turned to the Lord." The enemies of the gospel thought they were crushing it out, when they drove the disciples away from Jerusalem, but instead of that they were causing it to spread. The enemies of the truth may rage, but God can cause even their wrath to praise him. Paul says, "We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." 2 Cor. 13 : 8. We may learn a lesson from the course of these disciples under persecution. When Christians are in trouble they are too liable to think that God has forgotten them; but these disciples did not stop to pity themselves, and mourn over their hardships. And the result proved that God had an object in allowing this persecution to come upon them; he wanted to use them in his service. If they had murmured at their hard lot, how much they would have lost; they would not have been honored by God with a position in his service, and their selfishness might have resulted in the loss of many souls who, under the circumstances, received the truth at their hands. Who knows but that all who complain on account of trials lose just as much? "And some . . . . spake unto the Grecians." The Revised Version, following some of the best authorities, has "Greeks" instead of "Grecians." And this seems the most harmonious. The most of them confined their labors to the Jews, but others, having less national prejudice, or a clearer view of the scope of the gospel, preached to the Gentiles also. The following remarks of H. Clay Trumbull in the Sunday-School Times, are pertinent:— "Christianity is sure to carry some men ahead of their age in the right direction. However the mass of those who are in the church may be bound by the common customs of the present, or by the blind traditions of the past, there will ever be more or less of radical and progressive reformers, who will do as others ought to do, instead of being content to do as others do. From the days of the apostles this has been the way of moral and religious reforms; their beginning has been with the few extremists, rather than with the many conservatists. So it was with modern missions, with the Sunday-school work, with the cause of temperance, and of anti-slavery, and of anti-church lotteries, and of anti-duelling; so it was with the progress of both religious and civil liberty; so it was with the now world-wide plan of uniform Bible study. So it is with prohibitory liquor legislation, with the battling of the anti-Chinese spirit, with the pressing of the anti-tobacco reform, and of the anti-church debt movement, and with a host of other good enterprises. Whatever may be the views or the practices of Christians generally, there are 'some' who have taken an advanced position on these points, a position which they don't propose to yield for anything short of death, or the second coming of our Lord." When tidings of these things reached the church at Jerusalem, "they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch." The object in sending Barnabas was to assist and direct these disciples in their work. "As far as Antioch," indicates that he should follow up the work in the various places where the scattered ones had preached. The preaching to the Gentiles may have struck the church in Jerusalem as an irregularity that must be checked. But when Barnabas arrived at the field of labor, he found that he had only to exhort the new converts to continue in the way as they had begun. When he saw the grace of God he was glad. He had no feeling of envy because the Gentiles had received the word, or because some humble persons had been the instruments of their conversion, "For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith." The Bible never deals in flattery, and when it says of a man that he was good, it means a great deal. The highest titles of honor that this world can bestow sink into insignificance in comparison with the words, "Thou good and faithful servant," when spoken by the King of glory. "And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." On the reason why Antioch should have been the place where this term was first used, "Conybeare and Howson's Life of Paul" says:— "As new converts in vast numbers came in from the ranks of the Gentiles, the church began to lose its ancient appearance of a Jewish sect, and to stand out in relief as a great self-existent community in the face both of Jews and Gentiles. Hitherto it had been possible, and even natural, that the Christians should be considered—by the Jews themselves, and by the Gentiles whose notice they attracted—as only one among the many theological parties which prevailed in Jerusalem and in the Dispersion. But when Gentiles began to listen to what was preached concerning Christ,—when they were united as brethren on equal terms, and admitted to baptism without the necessity of a previous circumcision,—when the Mosaic features of this society were lost in the wider character of the New Covenant,—then it became evident that these men were something more than the Pharisees or Sadducees, the Essenes or Herodians, or any other sect or party among the Jews. Thus a new term in the vocabulary of the human race came into existence at Antioch about the year 44. Thus Jews and Gentiles, who under the teaching of Paul believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Saviour of the world, 'were first called Christians.'" "Herod the King." It is not to be wondered at that many persons find it difficult to distinguish between the several Herods mentioned in the New Testament. In character they were all alike,—slaves of lust and ambition, and monsters of cruelty. This Herod was Herod Agrippa I., grandson of Herod the Great, who ordered the massacre of the infants, and nephew of Herod Antipas, who caused John the Baptist to be beheaded, and father of Herod Agrippa II., called simply Agrippa. Acts 26. The Herod under consideration is designated as "Herod the King," because he was the first one since Herod the Great, who had ruled over Judea. On this, Paley, in his "Evidences" makes the following point:— "The accuracy of our historian, or rather the unmeditated coincidence which truth of its own accord produces, is in this instance remarkable. There was no portion of time, for thirty years before, or ever afterwards, in which there was a king at Jerusalem, a person exercising that authority in Judea, to whom that title could be applied, except the last three years of this Herod's life, within which period the transaction recorded in the Acts is said to have taken place." The death of James and the prospective death of Peter pleased the Jews. It seems that the church had lost some of that "favor with all the people," which they gained soon after the day of Pentecost. The reason for this may be found in the fact that they were making many converts, and necessarily showing the errors of the Jewish Church. However much of the favor of the world the people of God may gain on account of their upright course, they may be sure that in time they will lose it for the same reason. The purer the lives and doctrines of God's people, the more will they be hated by the world, and an apostate church. The antithesis in verses 4 and 5 of chapter 12 is worthy of notice. Peter was in prison with no prospect of coming forth until he was led to execution. He was constantly guarded by four soldiers, two of whom were in the cell with him, and two before the door. Added to this, he was chained to the two soldiers in the cell. There was no use of trying to bribe the guard, for should they allow him to escape their lives would be forfeited. All this was done by Herod; "but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God" for Peter. The disciples had no power to draw the bolts of Peter's prison door, nor could they hope for any favor from the king, but they had a key that would admit them to the presence of the King of kings, before the weakest of whose messengers Herod's whole army was as nothing. Well was it for Peter that the church could do nothing but pray. Although the disciples had been earnestly and perseveringly praying for Peter, they could not believe that their prayers were answered. We are not to suppose that they had been praying without any faith, but that they did not expect that their prayers would be answered in that manner. They may have expected that the Lord would so move Herod's heart that he would release Peter; at any rate it is evident that God did more for them than they had hoped. Their surprise, however, showed that they did not have that full faith that comes from an intimate acquaintance with God. It is as easy for him to do a great deed as a small one; nothing is too hard for him. Therefore we ought to ask and expect great things from him. "Then said they, It is his angel." Why the disciples should think that Peter's guardian angel should come to them, it is needless to inquire. In their surprise and excitement they themselves may not have been able to give a reason. But it is not out of place to state what the text not mean. It does not mean "The angel Peter," as we have seen it misquoted. Some commentators say that it was the belief among the Jews at that time that departed souls of good men officiated as ministering angels. Whether or not some Jews believed this is of no consequence, for it is certain that the Bible Christians entertained no such belief. The fact that Protestant commentators can now believe such a theory, gives a clue to the rapid spread of modern Spiritualism. Angels are not departed dead men. This may be proved (1) by the fact that "the dead know not anything," Eccl. 9:5; that "their thoughts perish," as soon as they die, Ps. 146:4; and that they know absolutely nothing about that which would concern them most if they were conscious, Job 14:21; Eccl. 9:6; and (2) by the fact that angels were in existence before any man had died, Gen. 3:24, and even before man was created, Job 38:4-7. Angels are a superior order of beings, entirely distinct from man. And this distinction will remain throughout eternity, for saints will never become angels. The promise to the righteous is, that in the resurrection they shall be "equal unto the angels," and this of itself shows that they will never become angels. Angels are now "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation;" and it was in this capacity that one of them rescued Peter from prison. E. J. W. Covetousness Makes Wealth the Master
By T. L. Cuyler.
A covetous man does not possess his wealth, his wealth possesses him.—Bias. STARVED CHRISTIANS.
By T. L. Cuyler
There is a sufficient reason why so many members of our churches are so pitiably weak, either to work or to resist temptation. Starvation has reduced them to living skeletons. A Christian soul cannot keep fat and strong on daily newspapers, or on the best of secular literature. Such self-weakening is wickedness. Food is fuel to the body, repairing what is burnt away by various vital processes. How can a soul be either fed or warmed that seldom touches the Bread of Life? All the most growing Christians are large feeders on the word of God.—T. L. Cuyler. If anything in the world will make a man feel badly, except pinching his fingers in the crack of a door, it is a quarrel. No man fails to think less of himself after than he did before; it degrades him in the eyes of others, and, what is worse, tends to blunt his sensibilities, and increase his irritability. The truth is, that the more peaceably and quietly we get on, the better for our neighbors. In nine cases out of ten, the better course is, if the man cheat you, to quit dealing with him; if he slanders you, take care to live down his slanders. Let such persons alone, for there is nothing better than this way of dealing with those who injure us. SOME Adventists profess to believe, and they say, that “the Lord may come at any time; he may come this day.” But we are not of that number. All Seventh-day Adventists believe that great and stirring events, both in America and in Europe, must take place before the Lord comes. Many prophecies remain to be fulfilled prior to the advent. When we make this statement, those who do not believe with us accuse us of being among those who say, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” But we do not believe in setting any time for the Lord’s coming. Delays are generally reckoned, from some* time appointed for a person to come; if the time passes by, and he does not come, there is said to be a delay. We have never set any time, nor suffered our mind to question in regard to the time. “There is no time in the Third Angel’s Message.” At this conclusion we arrived when we first studied the message, which was more than thirty years ago. We also heard it declared in a powerful manner some years afterward, and we have long been rooted and grounded in that faith. Not “the time,” but “the signs of the times” were given to the disciples, whereby they might “know that he is near, even at the doors.” We do not assert that a person may not fulfill that saying of our Lord, concerning his supposed delay, without having any time set for his coming. He may think that it is very near, and after some time passes, he may relapse into coldness and neglect because so much time has passed and the Lord has not appeared. We fear that many are in that condition now. Their lives, their worldly calculations, show that they say in their heart, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” Such are in peculiar danger. They have placed themselves where they may never be aroused to a sense of their dangerous condition until it is too late to remedy their great mistake; that day may come upon them unawares. Seventh-day Adventists have always believed that great and important events are to transpire before the coming of the Lord, both in the work of God and in the working of Satan among the people of all the nations. But to us the work of God occupies the first place in the field of observation. We have said, and we repeat it, that whatever may take place among the nations; whatever preparations for war may be made by the Governments of the earth; whatever wars may break out and for a time fill the world with fear, they do not, any and all of them, lead us to expect the immediate coming of the Lord unless the work of God in the message be also accomplished. Here is where they are constantly deceiving themselves who look to the nations alone—perhaps to the fate of Turkey—to afford evidence of the near coming of our Lord. They have no special message or present truth. They have no special work of God to watch. Their watching is of the things of the earth; and, rejecting those scriptures, those warnings and duties, which specially relate to and are given for the present time, they cannot possibly understand how the Lord holds these things in check to the accomplishment of his work of grace for the remnant. By watching only the progress of the things of the earth, their interest becomes gradually linked to earthly matters. Besides this, in rejecting the last, the special message of the advent faith (Rev. 14:9–12), they have cast off the restraining influence of the law of God, the ten commandments, and their being is so far removed from the refining influence of God’s Spirit. The commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ are associated in the lives and characters of the remnant. Rev. 12:17. And they who lack the Spirit of God must be lacking in that discernment which is necessary to understand the signs of the times. We verily expect that a great disappointment will come upon all those professed Adventists who reject the Third Angel’s Message of Rev. 14. Their minding of the things of the world subjects them to disappointments now, for nothing is yet to be determined by these things. They can at best only approximate the truth in regard to the advent near; and they will find themselves at last just outside the true line of observation and of safety. Thus, some looked to Napoleon III. as “the destined monarch of the world;” and when he started out in his war against Prussia they predicted his speedy triumph over all the nations of Europe! We pitied them in their blindness then, even more than we pitied them in the crushing of their cherished opinions and hopes in the imprisonment and death of their ideal hero. Even as we write we look into a professed Adventist paper and read the following words:— “I learned the other day that the Rothschilds had come in possession of Jerusalem at last, that they had closed the mortgage. Oh, joyous news! Let us watch the moving of the nations now.” This is little short of fanaticism; an overjoy in human theories which will only end in disappointment and regrets. “Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” We are looking for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” A city whose gates will open to them “that do his commandments.” (Rev. 22:14), but which the gold of the Rothschilds cannot purchase. “The poor of this world” may inherit it, and rejoice in its glory, when “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children,” shall be cast out with those who build their hopes on her. The work of God which is to be carried on to its completion before the second advent, is exactly parallel to that which was committed to John the Baptist at the first advent,—“to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:17. When we look at the consecration, the measure of holiness, necessary to pass safely through the time of trouble, and “to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord” (Eze. 13): when we consider that, prior to the advent, every case will be decided, and the filthy and unjust must ever remain so, because the priesthood and intercession of the blessed Saviour will end before he comes the second time, we can readily see that the churches, the professed Christians of this day, are not prepared for that great event. They are filled with pride and ambition and worldliness; allied to the world, and its fashions, and follies, and selfish methods. They court the influence and power of the world as a means of exalting themselves and their dogmas to a high place in the world. Losing sight of the power of the truth and Spirit of God as the sole means of enlightening and reforming the world, they ask the votes of the impenitent masses, and the acts of legislatures, to give Christian character and standing to the nation and to communities! Yet, confident in their worship and in their own sincerity, they see not the end to which they are hurrying on. The Pharisees thought they were the very ones to whom God should commit his treasures of knowledge—to whom the Messiah would accord special honor in the work of redeeming his people. Standing at the head of the church, as teachers and leaders of the people of God, they knew as little of the nature of the foretold work of God’s anointed as they did of the corruptions of their own hearts. They longed for the restoration of the kingdom of God among them, but it must be by methods of their own choosing, and by means consistent with their own ambitious desires. They merged all the prophecies of the promised “seed of the woman” into one advent, the object of which was, as they had persuaded themselves to believe, to redeem them from the bondage of Roman domination. But the bondage of sin, of the corruptions of a fallen nature and a carnal heart, they did not feel. When the Messiah came, meek and lowly, announcing that the kingdom of Heaven was for the poor in spirit, and was not of this world, that such righteousness as that possessed by the Scribes and Pharisees gave no title to it; that pomp in religion and a high position in this life already have their reward in the praise of this world, and can have no part in the kingdom, they rejected him as a matter of course. There was peculiar force in his question, “How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor which cometh from God only?” This history is unfortunately repeated in the present position of the religious world. The wise and learned leaders in the churches—the modern Scribes and Pharisees—have turned all the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah into one advent, the object of which was to supersede the law, to offer the true sacrifice, and to enter upon his ministry. A second advent, with all its glories and glorious results to the little flock, is ignored, or spiritualized, or so belittled by theories of present-age glory, that it is no longer esteemed as “that blessed hope.” Titus 2:11–13. To neglect a practical truth is the same as to reject it. The doctrine of the second advent is truly rejected by the mass of professed Christians in their rejection of the message of warning and of duty which is given to prepare us for that all-important event. Shutting their eyes to the signs of the times, which the Saviour gave in order that we may know when he is near, and turning away from the commandment to know when he is near, even at the door, and unmindful of the example of those who knew not when the flood was coming, in the days of Noah, they are exactly in a condition to be led captive by the deceptions of the enemy, and to have that day come upon them unawares. In the final conflict there will be but two classes known, as but two classes are recognized now in the Scriptures which relate to that time. At the present time there are many parties, both for and against religion. But as the lines are drawn, and the time of trouble draws near, the opposing forces will be so allied by compromises that they will compose one party. The true people of God will also be united, not by compromises, but by entire submission to God’s plan; by complete rejection of all false theories and traditions, and an earnest acceptance of “the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:9–12. In advocating the truths of the Bible contained in this message, the claims of the Sabbath of the Lord and the doctrine of the advent near, we have continually laid before our readers the position of those who will be prepared to stand before the Son of man at his appearing. It is our purpose now, in a few articles, to notice the opposing work, which we place under the head of “Compromises,” in America and in Europe. The message of warning for both continents—for all the world—is found in Rev. 14:9–12. The work of the enemies of God—the opposers of this message, especially as it relates to the United States—is pointed out in Rev. 13. To this we will call the attention of our readers next week. Years ago objections were presented to our views, because the objectors did not believe it possible that the parties indicated in our expositions would act as they must act to fulfill this prophecy. They did not understand that these things would be carried out by compromises, and we could then offer them no proof beyond the mere exposition of the prophecy, which we believed to be sure because we believed we had the truth of the message. Now events are so shaping as to make it evident to every impartial inquirer for truth, that, not only is our exposition a reasonable one—the true one—but, the events foretold are on the very eve of their full accomplishment. May God give us wisdom to read and understand.