The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1914-02-12
THE PEOPLES FORUM.
Teaching of Seventh Day Adventists.

To the Editor of The Republican.
Of course the question of the Sabbath
is cardinal point with them, in connect
ton with which is bound up the veal or
woe OF all who bear their testimony.
Their teaching is that of the third
angel in Rev. IA. All who receive their
testimony are sealed with the seal of the
Living God and are among the IA, 900
who are sealed of the twelve tribes of
Israel If they refuse they are doomed
to the judgment proclaimed by the angel
in Rev. IA Gil. The keeping of the
seventh day is the seal that marks the
faithful. The rest are doomed as wor-
shippers of the beast. This is another
gospel, one without Christ and no Sa
viour in it.
They deny the Immortality of the
soul. They seem to think that the soul
is not capable of any conscious exist
ence apart from the body.
Death with them is the cessation of
existence. When man dies his soul
dies. The soul then is nothing more
than the animal life, and hence it ceases
to exist and there is nothing but the
body, which returns to dust in the
grave. When believers die there is,
with them, no intermediate state for
the soul between death and the resur-
rection. Scripture bearing on this is
wrested and tortured to set aside its
force. When the Lord says, Fear not
kill the soul, it means nothing. When
he reveals the state of men after death,
in the unseen world, when the rich man
is seen in hades IN torment and pleading
for drop of water to cool his tongue,
they say it is only parable. 1t means
nothing, or if it has any meaning it IS
the burning up of the wicked after
the resurrection! But the destruction
of the wicked after the resurrection is
in hell (gehenna), not hades. Besides,
the rich man had five brothers who he
thought would listen to one who should
rise from the dead. showing clearly that
the passage describes state of exist
ence between death and the resurrec-
ton. The passage teaches state of
blessedness for the righteous and of tor
ment for the wicked in the unseen
world.
When Jesus said to the penitent thief,
This day shalt thou be with me in
Paradise, - they say it only means that
the Lord said it that day, and not that
the thief would be with Him.
Thus they make the Lord use an
expression which would falsify the
hopes of His people, by leading
them to suppose that they would not be
in Paradise as soon as death set the soul
free from the body. A false system
that must trim the Word of God to fit it
may accept this, but 40 honest soul who
feels the power of truth shrinks back
with horror from such meckery.
They teach the annihiation of the
wicked after resurrection. They believe
the wicked will be raised up and con
sumed into nonexistence amid the dis
solving elements when the earth Is des-
troyed. Here again they correct the
Scriptures. We need not be surprised
then to find them attacking the atone
ment of Christ.
In Lev 10 we have in type the great
atoning work of Christ. In that chap
ter we find two goats were chosen-one
whose blood was shed to make propitia-
ton before Jehovah, and the other u
bear away the sins of the people, This
one was called the scape-goat. Both
were types of Christ, one as making
precipitation, as in Rom. %, the other
as the sinbearing substitute, according
to Rom. 4: Is and Pet. 2 "a, who His
own self bare our sins in His own body
on the tree.
The Adventists make satan to be the
scape-goat, and thus one blessed aspect
of the Lord atoning work is attributed
to satan and Christ is robbed of halt of
His glory.
Their theory is: There is a sanctuary
in heaven like the one that is on earth,
to which all the sins of Gods people are
being transferred, and where they have
been accommodating for ages past. This
sanctuary is to be cleansed. In fact,
they believe the cleansing began in 1874
and is nearly done now. This accumu-
lation of sins will be removed from the
sanctuary and laid upon Satan as the
scape goat at the coming of the Lord,
when The wicked will be given to the
slaughter and their putrefying flesh and
bleaching bones lie unburied, ungath-
cred and unlamented from one end of
the earth to the other end thereof
The earth will then be a scene of des-
olation, when satan will be confined a
thousand years. According to this we
do not have completed work of atone
ment Their theory is that Christ could
not have entered the hottest till 1874.
1t is horrid absurdity denying the fin
ished work of Jesus. Heb. 10 shows the
way was opened into the hottest by the
death of Jesus, and that for nineteen
hundred years the saints have had
access into the hottest by the blood of
Jesus
They even deny the Eternity of the
Son of God. With them Jesus had a
beginning. He was a Son of God be-
cause God was His Father, but He was
the Son-God. and when he died on the
cross the divine part died as well as the
human. He ceased to exist save that
flesh that was nailed to tire cross. So
they bring Christ to fit their system,
not the Christ of God.
1t aims to bring Christians under the
law and rob them of the liberty into
which grace brings them. 1t would
destroy the fabric of Christianity and
substitute for it a lfeless Judaism,
which can only plunge the soul into
darkness. I'VE are not under law but
under grace: Rom. 6 : Ia.
1t DESTROYS the whole fabric of Chris
tian truth. Christians must turn away
from 1t with horror. Avoiding the
snare that is spread for 1.-THE unwary.
The movement is of the enemy and not
of God and should be avoided.
Yours truly,
FIRST DAY.
A Writer Claiming No Connection