Joseph Bates

“ If the seventh day Sabbath is included in the 17th verse, then it must be a shadow; if it is not a shadow, then Paul has no reference to it, and it stands forever! Moses says the ten commandments were written by the finger of God on tables of stone; whatever God has done with his own hand is stamped with immortality, and is as enduring as the sun, moon and stars. ”

“ When the Saviour comes the second time, it will be with the City, (the Capital of his kingdom) seated upon his throne. Hear him: "When the son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he be seated upon the throne of his glory." Matt. xxv. 31. "And the city had no need of the sun—for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamb is the light thereof." "But the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it." ”

“ I say, therefore, if there has been any change one way or the other in the Sabbath, since that promise, it would be impossible to understand any other promise in the Bible; how much more reasonable to believe God than man. If men will allow themselves to believe the monstrous absurdity that forever, as in this promise, ended at the resurrection, then they can easily believe that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week. Or if they choose the other extreme, abolished until the people of God should awake to be clothed on with immortality. ”

“ One thing I know, you will never mend the law of God: It is as immutable as the sun in the heavens! and it would be far easier work for you and all of like faith to blot out that luminary than to prove that one jot or tittle of the ten commandments had failed by being changed or abolished. I intend to prove this from the new testament as I pass on, and if you and your adherents will still misrepresent the plain teaching and lead others to do so, then the words of Jesus will surely condemn you, and you “will be in no esteem in the reign of heaven.” ”

“ Think you that this little speck of earth is the only thing that is defiled, among the millions and myriads of worlds which stud the diadem of space? We are told that the "stars are not pure in his sight." "Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight." Job xv: 15; xxv: 5. Was not the sanctuary on earth which the high priest cleansed the tenth day of the seventh month every year, a pattern of the true? Does not Paul tell us that Jesus our high priest has entered into the true sanctuary, into heaven itself. ”

“ I say again, if the Sabbath is abolished, we ask those who teach it to cite us to the chapter and verse, not to the law of rites and ceremonies which are abolished, for we have already shown that the Sabbath was instituted more than twenty-five hundred years before Moses wrote the carnal ordinances or ceremonies. God said, "Abraham kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws." ”

“ Take out the fourth commandment and the law is imperfect, and we shall fail in one point.
The uncompromising advocate for present truth, which feeds and nourishes the little flock in whatever country or place, is the restorer of all things; one man like John the Baptist, cannot discharge this duty to every kindred, nation, tongue and people, and still remain in one place. The truth is what we want. ”

“ These texts alone teach us that we yet know but little of the power and wisdom of the Sovereign of the universe, whose spirit fills unlimited space; which space is undoubtedly coeval and coextensive with eternity; studded with millions on millions of worlds, each moving in its appropriate Sphere, like our own Planet. But a still greater wonder is the thousands and millions of blazing Comets, even in the Solar System, (Dick, vol. viii: p. 339,) seemingly sailing with a roving commission, sweeping their burning trails all over the perceptible universe of God, each moving in its proper Orbit! ”

“ And as you pass along through these peace and safety valves in your prophetical history, watching and anxiously waiting for God to give the fourth sign of the coming of Jesus by shaking the heavens and earth, the sea and all nations, and give you the time of Jesus' coming, you will more clearly discover the widening track these advocates are pursuing with almost to a unit every professed advent minister in their train. You will also see that the Waymarks and high heaps in your pathway, past and present, are the only sure earthly guides to the peaceful haven of eternal rest. ”

“ How could the Saviour have been more explicit and plain. "Him that overcometh." Who? Why, the Saint; not the City, the new Jerusalem. Again: "Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." If the city is the Saints, what is this that enters into and have right to the tree of life? Can the City go into the City? If so, then we acknowledge the City is the Saints. But it reads, the Saints go in there. ”

“ It is painful to me to expose the errors of one whom I have so long venerated, and still love for the flood of light he has given the world in respect to the Second Advent of our Saviour; but God's word must be vindicated if we have to cut off a right arm, "there is nothing true but truth!" I pray God to forgive him in joining the great multitude of Advent believers, to sound the retreat back beyond the tarrying time, just when the virgins had gained a glorious victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil! ”

“ As that men, who had just committed one of the most aggravating crimes ever recorded in the annals of history, in barbarously and cruelly murdering the son of the living God, should then for fear of having it recorded against them as touching the purity of their motives that they had violated the holy Sabbath of God by calling on the Governor, on the Sabbath of the Lord God, to set a watch over their victim, for fear that some of his disciples would come and steal him away, and thus openly expose them to the scorn of the world. ”

“ Now then, whenever we want to understand about the heavenly sanctuary, we must turn to Moses's description of the sanctuary in the wilderness, which he made after the pattern God gave him; which Paul says were shadows of heavenly things. How will a man dare (in the face of all this inspired testimony) to stand here on God's earth, and assert that the heavenly sanctuary with all that pertains to it is a FIGURE, and spiritualize it away. ”

“ Now let us look at the Apostle John's testimony.
"And hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a LIAR, and the truth is not in him." Now no man, more especially one who professes to abide by the whole truth, feels entirely easy if he is called a liar. Now John please explain yourself.—Hear him: "Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment that ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning." What do you mean by beginning? ”

“ God grant them repentance which is unto life.” That we believe in the shut door, and seventh-day Sabbath, is true; that we wash one another's feet, as Jesus taught, and greet one another as Paul has taught, is true of a great portion of those who keep the Sabbath and believe in the past and present truth. If you mean these, that it be a shame to speak of, we answer that we do it openly and avowedly, and teach and practice the same wherever we go, and prove it clearly by the scriptures. If there is any thing secretly practiced by us, it is as much unknown to the church as it is to you. ”

“ Nothing could be more deceptive to the mariner; the flying clouds at one moment light up the firmament by the thinness of its vapor, (encouraging the mariner to believe that he shall now see the light house) the next moment it grows darker, and so it continues to deceive them, until of a sudden the breakers are roaring all around them—the ship is dashed upon the rocks—one general cry goes aloft for mercy! ”

“ This is the tendency of your no commandment no law system. Why Jesus tells you that the teachings of the bible have no other foundations to stand upon. Well the multitude would not believe him then as you and others will not now. See what confusion and shame they suffered and bore in withering silence from his simple direction about enforcing the old law for the violation of the seventh commandment. Here she is master, “Now Moses in the law, (not God's code of laws,) commanded that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?” “Let him that is without sin, cast the first stone at her.” ”

“ Sabbath is included, or it may be the everlasting covenant of redemption, given to Jesus just previous to the resurrection. Paul clearly shows that there are but two covenants under the law in his allegory to the Galatians iv: 21-27, and these two must of necessity, as I have shown embrace the ten commandments. Now has this new covenant been broken by man as was the first? Hear Isaiah: "Behold the Lord maketh the earth empty, the inhabitants of the earth burned, and but few left." Why? "Because they have broken the everlasting covenant." ”

“ Not quite so fast: Jesus forseeing such kind of teaching as this, placed the commandments of God, (on which hung all the law and the prophets,) on an immovable and fixed foundation and carried the teaching and keeping of them clear into the reign of heaven; and any honest man who is seeking for the truth though he be ever so ignorant in other things, will admit, when he reads the 17-19, 21, 27 and 33d verses in this chapter, the force of this truth. What an idea that Jesus should promise such invaluable blessings to his followers after they become immortal only to mislead and tantalize them. ”

“ Theirs was nailed to the cross when Jesus died, while the Lord's is an everlasting sign a perpetual covenant. The Jews, as a nation, broke their covenant. Jesus and his disciples were one week (the last of the seventy) that is seven years, confirming the new covenant for another people, the Gentiles. Now I ask if this changing the subjects from Jew to Gentile made void the commandments and law of God, or in other words, abolished the fourth commandment? If so, the other nine are not binding. It cannot be that God ever intended to mislead his subjects. ”

“ This is so plain that all who have been engaged and laboring in the Second Advent Doctrine must admit it to represent William Miller, and those of his faith, as the flying messengers preaching the advent of Jesus to their fellow men, since 1840. Invisible angels never yet preached the gospel to men; but as it has been here—man preaching to man,—then these angels represent our own neighbors, preaching, lecturing, and exhorting us with loud voices to listen to their message, for the judgment was at hand. ”

“ Paul nowhere speaks of the first four commandments, but he quotes the other six. James only quotes two, the sixth and seventh, for his perfect royal law of liberty, by which man is to be judged; but that we might not misunderstand that he meant what he said, that it was a perfect law, including the whole ten, he declares that “if we fail with respect to one precept, we become guilty of all.” Here you, and all of like faith, must see the fallacy of your reasoning, which is, that because the fourth commandment has not been distinctly expressed, then there is no Sabbath. ”

“ I ask if there be a rational being on earth that for a moment would believe that God ever intended to give the whole human family such a choice as this, after he had required them to keep the Sabbath day. No, he is a God of order, and he sanctified and set apart the seventh day for man and beast. ”