IN DEFENSE OF THE FAITH
The
Truth About Seventh-day Adventists
A
REPLY TO CANRIGHT
by
William
H. Branson
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.
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:
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?
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.
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. . . .
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?
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.
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. '
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
14.
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.
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.
MR.
CANRIGHT'S CONFESSION
The
strangest thing of all in connection with Mr. Canright's case is the
fact that he must have fully
realized
that in repudiating Adventism he was going from light into darkness, as
is evidenced by a
confession
made by him after one of his disaffection experiences, when he, for a
time, gave up preaching,
but
was still a member of the Adventist Church. This disaffection took place
about 1882, and for some two
years
Mr. Canright worked on a farm. In 1894 he accepted an invitation to
attend some general meeting's to
be
held in Michigan by the Seventh-day Adventists, and while there he made
a voluntary public confession,
which
was afterward published by him in the Review and Herald, the Seventh-day
Adventist official
church
organ, in the issue bearing the date, October 7, 1884. In this
confession he said in part:
Most
of the readers of the REVIEW know the part which I have acted in this
cause for many
years,
both in preaching and in writing. They also know that for two years past
I have dropped out of the
work.
Then,
after speaking of certain reproofs that were given him because of a
wrong course he was
taking
in the conduct of his work, he added:
This
I did not receive at all well, but felt hard toward Sister White, and
soon quit the work
entirely....
So I went to farming, resolved to live a devoted life, and to do all I
could that way. But I soon
found
my doubts and fears increasing and my devotion decreasing, till at
length I found myself largely swallowed
up in my work, with little time, taste, or interest for religious work.
. . . So it always is when a
person
lets go of one point of the truth, he begins to drift, he knows not
whither.
A
short time since I attended the Northern Michigan *camp meeting with
Elder Butler. Here we
had
a long time for consultation, prayer, and careful examination of my
difficulties. I began to see that at
least
some of my objections were not tenable, and that I myself was not right
and in the light. . . . I saw that I
had put a wrong meaning on some things, and that other things were
certainly true. If these were true, then
I
had certainly been wrong all the way through. . . . Everything looked
different. Then I felt how wrong,
sinful,
and in the dark I had been. My sins came up before me as never before in
all my life. Like Job I
cried,
'Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes .. . . . .
Friday,
September 26, while on the camp ground at Jackson, Michigan, I felt in
my heart the
most
remarkable change that I ever experienced in all my life. It was a
complete reversion of all my
feelings.
Light and faith came into my soul, and I felt that God had give me
another heart. I never felt such
a
change before, not even when first connected.... I believe it was
directly from heaven-the work the Spirit
of
God. I now believe the message as firmly and re understandingly than
ever before. . . . Such nearness
God,
such earnest devotion, such solemn appeals to live a holy life, can only
be prompted by the Spirit of God.
Where at is, there I want to be. I am fully satisfied that my own
salvation and my usefulness in saving
others
depends upon being connected with this people and this work, and here
take my stand to risk all I am,
or have, or hope for, in is life and the life to come, with this people
and this work.
This
remarkable statement was published by Mr. Canright only a little more
than two years before he
became
grieved again at some of his associates, and finally dropped out of the
Seventh-day Adventist
Church
altogether. He immediately began to advocate the doctrines which he had
declared only two years before
to be darkness. In the foregoing confession he graphically relates how
the Spirit of God had led
him
out of the darkness of his fears and doubts and hard feelings, and had
restored him to the light. He was
led
to feel how wrong sinful, and in the dark he had been. He had had
a new conversion, and was
convinced
that his salvation depended upon his connection with this people and
this work.
Said he, I
believe
it was directly from heaven-the work of the Spirit of God.
Let
the reader remember that these words were not uttered and published by
the mere boy,
uneducated,
with no knowledge of the Bible, of history, or of other churches,
that Mr. Canright presents
himself
to have been when he first became a Seventh-day Adventist. But by a
seasoned minister of some twenty-six
years' experience, and only about two years before he finally left the
church and posed before
the
world as the great exposer of Seventh day Adventist errors!
WHAT
SPIRIT?
If,
therefore, the Spirit of God led Mr. Canright back into the light in
October, 1884, and placed in
his
heart a settled conviction that Seventh-day Adventism was truth, what
spirit was it that led him to
renounce
this light on February 17, 1887, two years and four months later? Could
the same spirit have led him
on both occasions? He was certain in 1884 that the experience that came
to him and which fully settled
him
in the Adventist faith was directly from heaven-the work of the
Spirit of God. Whence, then, came
the
change two years and four months later, which led him to repudiate this
whole experience? Does he
claim
this also to be from heaven and the work of God's Spirit? Is, then, God
divided against Himself,
leading
men one way today and another way tomorrow?
And
if Mr. Canright was in the light in 1884, when he became fully
settled in the Seventh-day
Adventist
faith, what was he in when he renounced it two years later? Should it be
said that when he left
the
Adventists he had .had his eyes opened and saw clearly that he had been
in darkness all the time that he
was
connected with them, we would reply that only two years and four months
before, he tells of having
felt
in his heart the most remarkable change he had ever experienced in all
his life. It is described as a
wonderful
work of God, direct from heaven, an experience that could only be
prompted by the Spirit of
God,
which fully satisfied him with the Seventh-day Adventist doctrines, and
caused him to take his stand,
to
risk all he was or had or hoped for, in this life and the life to come,
with the Seventh-day Adventist
people
and their work.
Which
experience, therefore, shall we take to be 1: genuine? If he was
mistaken in the first
instance,
can we be sure that he was right in the second? If he was right in the
1884 experience, then he
must
have been wrong in the 1887 experience. At any rate, can a man who thus
frequently changes his
mind
and who has so many experiences, all of which he in turn attributes to
the Holy Spirit, be a safe guide
for
other men in religious matters? We think not, and we believe that our
readers will also seriously
question
his qualifications as a spiritual counselor and interpreter of the Word
and will of God.
In
our reply to Mr. Canright's arguments against the moral law and the
seventh-day Sabbath we
shall
follow quite largely the plan of permitting him to answer himself, by
comparing what he wrote on
these
subjects while he was still a Seventh-day Adventist preacher, with what
he later said in his book
Seventh-day
Adventism Renounced. His former statements in support of the enduring
claims of the Ten
Commandments
and the original seventh-day Sabbath are so clear and convincing and so
full of Bible
proof,
whereas his later arguments against these doctrines are so confusing and
unbiblical, that we feel sure
a
careful comparison of the two will readily serve to convince any candid
reader that in renouncing
Seventh-day
Adventism, Mr. Canright went from clear light into dense darkness.
It
is of such persons we are warned by Isaiah the prophet when he said:
Woe
unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for
light, and light for
darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Because they have
cast away the law of the Lord
of
hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 5:20,
24.
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