SEVENTH -DAY A D V EN T ISM
continued
Seventh-day Adventists claim to have turned over one million Christians from worshiping on Stmday
Great Controversy, pp. 485, 4 8 6 ). She also wrote: "Those who accept the Saviour, however sincere their conversion, should never be taught to say or feel that they are saved. This is misleading. . . . Those who accept Christ, and in their first confidence say, I am saved, are in danger of trusting to themselves” ( Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 155). So that back of the lovely phrases piously used by the Voice of Prophecy speaker lie these ugly heresies, and this alluring "front” is but a trap for the untaught. Heresies Covered in Previous Articles In the April issue we considered briefly the Seventh-day Adventist teaching that Christ, our holy Saviour, was born with a "sinful” nature — a nature which, in the blasphemous language employed by a former writer of an official Seventh- day Adventist publication, The Signs o f the Times, was defiled by "inherited meanness,” and that "bad blood” flowed in His veins! The Scriptures teach that the humanity of Christ was as spotless as His deity. Whether in heaven or on earth, there was no change in His nature; He was from eternity to eternity, ". . . holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb. 7 :2 6 ). He bore our sins "in his own body on the tree,” not in His nature. Dr. I. M. Haldeman* rightly declared: "He [Christ] was begotten of God from the seed of the woman, by and through the Holy Ghost. That which was begotten was not a person but a nature — a human nature. This human nature was holy; Scripture calls it that holy thing. It was the holiness produced by and out of God. Since its quality was the holiness of God, there was no sin in it, and no possible tendency to sin. This holy, sinless human nature was indissolubly joined to the eternal personality of the Son.” The Seventh-day Adventists have dragged the Lord Jesus Christ down to the level of unregen erate man in their denial of the impeccability of this Holy One. In the May issue we attempted to explain the fantastic, man-devised, Satanically-inspired Seventh-day Adventist teachings of the sanctuary, investigative judgment, unfin ished atonement and the scapegoat-Satan error. W e allowed the Seventh-day Adventist authors to state these gospel conflicting views which came into being as an emergency measure to cover the embarrassment suffered by the sect’s founders when the prediction of William Miller, Adventists’ spiritual progenitor, that Christ would return in 1844 failed of fulfillment. Since there are no Scriptures to support these doctrines, they must be repudiated by anyone who relies upon God’s Word and who calls himself evangelical. The editors of Eternity themselves reject these views but defend those who teach them! I consider this position untenable •and inconsistent.
The Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath Now we come to a consideration of the favorite — or at least, the most zealously advocated — teaching of the Seventh-day Adventists. I refer to "the Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath.” I call it that because it certainly is not a New Testament or Christian doctrine. In Seventh-day Adventism this so-called "truth” ranks in importance second only to its sanctuary teaching and is the very heart of that legalistic system. Dr. J. B. Rowell wisely observes: "It is not likely that many Seventh-day Adventists know all the steps in the strange development of this Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, nor how many confessed mistakes in the interpretation of Scripture were made. However, it is well that they should know that it was their unscriptural teaching regarding the heavenly sanctuary, and Satan being the sin-bearer, which led to the emphasis on the Sabbath. I quote directly from their standard work The Great Controversy. . . . 'In the very bosom of the decalogue is the fourth commandment, as it was first proclaimed: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”. . . . None could fail to see that if the earthly sanctuary was a figure or pattern of the heavenly, the Law deposited in the ark on earth was an exact transcript of the Law in the ark in heaven: and that an acceptance of the truth concerning the heavenly sanctuary involved an acknowledgment of the claims of God’s Law, and obli gation of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. . . . The work of judgment which began in 1844 must continue until the cases of all are decided. In order to be prepared for judgment, it is necessary that men should keep the law o f God’ (pp. 435, 436 — italics mine). The Seventh-day Adventists, by their legalistic teachings regarding the Law and the Sabbath, practically deny the doctrine of salvation by the free gift of God, and go in direct opposition to the Epistle to the Galatians.”* Where is the Emphasis? Early this year I was conducting meetings in the Central Presbyterian Church of St. Petersburg, Fla., when, to my surprise, upon opening the local newspaper one morning I was greeted with a half-page advertisement appearing in the section reserved for church announcements for the forth coming Sunday. In a condensed form we are reproducing that ad in the next column. Immediately I cut out one of these advertisements and sent it to the editors of Eternity with the following com ments, in substance, if not in these exact words: "The enclosed announcement appeared in the St. Peters burg paper this morning. You contend that the Seventh-day Adventists believe in the deity o f Christ and other truths o f the Word, but it is very evident from the enclosed
•Copyright by The Sunday School Times Co. Used by their permission.
•Used by permission of Fleming H. Revell, New York.
24
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker