A friend tells me of her experience with Seventh-day Adventism. Saved at 15 without any knowledge of the Scriptures, she saw some Bible-teaching meetings advertised and went with a hungry heart to the tent night after night, taking down in her notebook what she heard from the platform. She had never heard of Seventh-day Adventism but that is what it was. She attracted the attention of the "leaders” by her eagerness to learn all she could and soon they sent one of their women workers to call on her at her home. This woman stayed all night although she was a stranger to the Christian girl. They discussed religious mat ters all night long. The girl did not know her Bible. All she knew was that she had given her heart to Christ in a little Methodist revival service. She wanted to do anything the Lord asked her to do. So when this woman—who was a very pleasant and dynamic personality— told her that the next step in her Christian life was to start keeping the Lord’s sabbath and to abstain from eating meats, etc., she agreed to do it to the best of her ability. S he had to leave for a town some distance away where her parents lived and she left, armed with their liter ature, which she distributed faithfully, but timidly, thinking she was doing God’s service. Her attempts to "keep the sabbath” at home and to eat no "unclean” foods brought much ridicule from her unconverted family, who put this new "fad” all on a par with her recent conversion of which she had testified to them. Life was pretty hard for her but she persisted in her Adventist convictions for about three months. Then doubts began to assail her mind. She said to herself, "Why are they such a little group? Why don’t other Christians keep the sabbath? Is it because they do not know anything about it?” She made a rather long journey to visit a Methodist minister’s wife in whom she had confidence. She explained the whole problem, especially making it plain to this friend that if it were God’s will for her to do these things, she was willing to do it. But she was puzzled because this minister’s wife, and her husband, and all the Methodists she knew, worshipped on the first day of the week. The dear woman was much moved. She saw the confusion and yet the earnestness of the little 15-year-old girl, and she put her arms around her, and sat down with her and the Bible. In a very short time she showed her that these fanatics were trying to take themselves and everybody that they could influence back to the Old Covenant. They were seeking to be justified by the law-—not by faith in Christ. The girl’s heart was very light as she left that house. She hurried to write a letter to the Adventist woman who had spent the night with her, telling her what the Methodist minister’s wife had told her, and shown her from the Scriptures, and returning all the Adventist literature. She went on to a Bible Institute and has been in Christian work ever since. God has enabled her to help those who are "bewitched” (Gal., 3rd chapter) by the "Christian” appearance of Adventism. God bless and keep you from its errors. END. (This series by Dr. Talbot on Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, and Seventh-day Adventism is being pub lished in booklet form by the Zondervan Publishing Co., 1415 Lake Dr. S.E., Grand Rapids 6, Mich. Price and publication dates will be announced in a later issue.) NEXT MONTH How to recognize any false religion 19
called it in Rev. 1:10. On that day Jesus rose as the Head of a new creation. On the Lord’s Day He appeared to His disciples. On the Lord’s Day the Holy Ghost was given. On the Lord’s Day the door of the kingdom was unlocked and 3,000 souls entered in. On the Lord’s Day the disciples came together to break bread in remembrance of Him” (Acts 20:7). The church fathers of the second and third centuries all concur in their statements that they met on the first day of the week, read the Scriptures, had communion, just as Christians of our times do. One quotation from The Epistle o f Ignatius, A.D. 107, will suffice: "Be not deceived with strange doctrines, nor with old fables, which are unprofitable. For if we still live according to the Jewish law, we acknowledge that we have not received grace . . . If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things come to the pos session of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death.” T he Lord foresaw all of this difficulty about sab baths and diets, etc., in which people would be come entangled, so He made it as plain as He could in His Word: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath (day is in italics indicating it was supplied): Which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ” (Col. 2:16, 17). Who wants to live in the shadows when he can have the substance? The Adventists draw a terrible picture of the end times and it all has to do with the Sabbath. Mrs. White has thus expressed it in her book, The Great Controversy, pp. 638 and 640: "Through a rift in the clouds, there beams a star whose brilliancy is increased four fold in contrast with the darkness. It speaks hope and joy to thevfaithful but severity and wrath to the transgressors of God’s law .. . . Too late they see that the sabbath of the fourth commandment is the seal of the living God . . . The voice of God is heard from heaven, declaring the day and hour of Jesus’ coming and delivering the everlasting cove nant to His people.” Since not ten per cent of the people on earth keep the seventh day sabbath, this will certainly be a very exclusive company, if the seeress of the Adventists is right. But she is not. What divides this world into two classes is not the day of worship, but their attitude toward the One whom they worship or refuse to worship. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). The Adventists are clever propagandists and proselyters. Years ago the good D. M. Canright said o f them: "Advent ists will work a whole year, will go a hundred times, will give scores of tracts, to proselyte one person. If we would work a tenth as hard, scarcely one would be led away.” The method in their tent campaigns and other special meetings is to introduce subjects o f general interest and to avoid their specific dogmas. They give away attractive Bible lessons; sell books by the millions; distribute innumerable tracts. Their field is not the lost world, but the church members of other denominations. The mission societies com plain that they use exactly the same proselyting tactics on the foreign field, ever seeking to draw the hard-won con verts from paganism into the confusion of their law-keeping system. MAY, 19 5 5
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