In Defense of the Faith

Enemies of the Law

But, sad to say, Mr. Canright has not been alone in this attempt to nullify the law of Jehovah. We live in a lawless age. Men are not only trying to remove the restraints of the law of God, but to get rid of God Himself. Infidelity openly stalks in the pulpit, and skepticism sits in the pew. Men are losing their former sense of sin. They no longer feel the need of a sin-pardoning Savior. They are therefore rejecting the doctrine of the atonement, the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, and are telling us that Jesus was only a man, although a peer among His fellows. The evolution theory has robbed God of the glory of the original creation, and removed the evidence of His power for regeneration. Naturally, men who accept these heresies would desire to be rid of a law which purports to have come from God who, in their reckoning, does not exist. This no-law doctrine is a fitting companion to the evolutionary, modernistic teaching that has lately spread throughout Christendom as an overwhelming flood. DOF 26.5

But have those churches which have been betrayed by their leaders into an abandonment of God’s moral precepts as a rule of life binding upon Christians grown more holy? Have they progressed more rapidly in their conquest of the world for Christ? Are their converts truer Christians than were those made by the church in the days when the Ten Commandments was held up as the standard of a final judgment before the great white throne? Is the world growing better under this no-law, no-atonement preaching? Is it? We will permit Mr. William T. Ellis to reply to these queries as we quote from an article published by him in the Washington Post, July 15, 1919: DOF 27.1

“What portends this turbulence of our time; which has swept around the earth like a seismic current? With so much that was for ages accepted going now into the scrap heap, are we to discard also the teachings of our mothers and of the Book they taught us to revere? Is a new philosophy of life, a new creed of religion, to be forged in the day’s superheated furnace of unrest? Shall we look for a herald of a better social order who will bear in his hand a different code of laws for the regulation of man’s relationship with man, and with the Unseen? Is there to come out of Russia or out of Germany a working faith for a revolutionized world?” DOF 27.2

“With all the honesty of soul I possess I have sought to see straight into the causes and character of conditions. Turn whichever way I will, follow whatever set of conditions I can call to mind (and I have had recent personal experience of Bolshevized Russia, of proud and discontented Europe, of sullen and menacing Asia), I find myself led straight up to the mount of the law. Here is the answer to every question. Things have gone wrong because ... people have departed from this law. They will never get right until ...people have the clarity of vision and the courage to turn to the keeping of the ten words spoken on Sinai.” DOF 27.3

“Let us confess the truth.... We have wandered from the straight paths of our fathers, and have turned aside from the simple faith that made them great.... DOF 28.1

“Is there any one of the Ten Commandments that we as a civilization have not openly, flagrantly, and shamelessly violated, in disdain of God and in disregard of the proved social utility of these laws?” DOF 28.2

“A universal acceptance of the Ten Commandments, together with the summary of the law given by Jesus, would straightway, overnight, relax the tension of the times, settle revolutions, and bring in that better day toward which the world is blindly and violently groping.... The path runs straight as a sunbeam from the granite crest of ‘Jebel Musa,’ Mt. Sinai. The master word is here: ‘Keep you the law, be swift in all obedience.’ ... The Ten Commandments are an exposition of universal justice.” DOF 28.3

Seventh-day Adventists Fundamentalists

Seventh-day Adventists are absolute Fundamentalists. As has already been pointed out, they hold strictly to all the great fundamentals of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They have nothing in common with Modernists, who would remove the foundation stones of the plan of redemption. They are endeavoring, through the grace of God, to fulfill the words of the Master, spoken through John the revelator, when He said of those who were to be called out of the nations and tribes of earth in preparation for His Second Advent: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12. Or, as rendered by Goodspeed: “On this fact rests the endurance of God’s people, who obey God’s commands and cling to their faith in Jesus.” DOF 28.4

The teachings of this church, therefore, are not some new-fangled theories, novelties just discovered, but rather a going back to the “old paths,” a restoration of precious truths lost through the great apostasy of the Dark Ages, but necessary to be restored to the people of God, that they may be in readiness when Christ comes. When He comes He will find a “remnant” waiting for Him, who will be without “spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing,” yes, “without fault before the throne of God.” Ephesians 5:27; Revelation 143. DOF 29.1

Seventh-day Adventists do not admit that they are the “troublers of Israel.” When Elijah was accused by King Ahab of having troubled Israel, the prophet replied: “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou has followed Baalim.” 1 Kings 18:18. DOF 29.2

This, then, is our answer to the charge that the Seventh-day Adventist teachings confuse the people. There is no confusion so long as men believe in God and obey His law. The only confused ones are those who prefer to follow a tradition that makes void the law of the Most High. And we submit that Mr. Canright’s confusion began when he renounced the binding claims of the Ten Commandments, and not when he, by the grace of God, was obedient to the divine law. Mr. Canright did not advance from darkness to light when he repudiated Seventh-day Adventism, but the light that was in him evidently became darkness. (See Matthew 6:23.) “It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.” “And thou shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and thou shall not prosper in thy ways.” Deuteronomy 28:15, 29. DOF 29.3