A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath and the Commandments of God: With a Further History of God's Peculiar People from 1847-1848Bates, Joseph
Religion
A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath and the Commandments of God: With a Further History of God's Peculiar People from 1847-1848
Bates, Joseph
Sabbath; Seventh-Day Adventists -- Doctrinal and controversial works
See also Rev. xxii: 14. They believe
the holy Apostles, Paul, John and James—that “the law is holy, and the
commandments holy, just and good.” “Here are they [Jan. 1848] that keep
the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. xiv: 12. “If we keep
the whole law and yet offend in one point, we are guilty of all.” They
feel perfectly secure in following such leaders, and they understand that
though you be ever so moral in regard to the nine commandments, you fail
in the fourth, the Sabbath. They believe this to be the “plain word of the
Lord,” and on this Sabbath question they will all be united, waiting for
Jesus. And just so sure as the first class of expositors were overthrown
by rejecting the sure word, just so sure you will be overwhelmed in utter
confusion that oppose God’s holy Sabbath and commandments, and your case
is now hanging in awful suspense. O Lord, let the clear light shine.
A word more—as your wonderful prototype has also threatened to unsettle
the world with respect to the history of the seventh-day Sabbath. If he
proceeds with it as he has with the unerring word of God, our minds will
have to be remodelled, to believe with him. If any of the little flock
feel desirous of spending an hour in looking into this subject, I would
recommend them to send to the New York Sabbath Tract Society, and purchase
Sabbath tract No. 4, vol. 1, 48 pages. This will save the labor of poring
over Roman and English history, or of following the sophistical arguments
of the blind leading the blind. Much reliance is placed upon the history
of the “early fathers,” so called, who succeeded the Apostles, to settle
the question. We ought to remember that these were uninspired men, and we
do not know even so much about their characters, as we do of the
uninspired fathers of the last century, whose teaching led us all into
Babylon. If the true history of the advent doctrine from 1842 to the
autumn of 1844, had, with the subsequent events in our history up to 1848,
been published 1800 years ago from the Advent Heralds, and their
conductors had been called the fathers—it would have puzzled all the wise
heads in Christendom, in this age, to have expounded their meaning; for we
see it requires all the energies of the human mind to trace their crooked
tracks, even when right before us. For this reason, I have said but little
about history; my whole and entire reliance being upon the inspired word
of the living God. This, we are told, will make us “_perfect_ and
_entire_—_wanting nothing_.”—2d Tim. iii: 17.
If what I have and may here present in this work will not stand the test
of what we have seen and felt ourselves—fulfilling the clear word of God
in these last days, then I shall fail in my object of comforting and
strengthening the flock of God. I fully believe in history, when all
deductions are fully allowed.
PAST AND PRESENT EXPERIENCE.
TO WILLIAM MILLER,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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