Joseph Bates

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ To The Editor Of The “Advent Harbinger.” Sir:—After your repeated and unsuccessful attempts to stigmatize, put down, demolish, and forever abolish the TEN WORDS, the law and commandments of the living God, the only foundation for the bible, you come forth in the A. H. of Nov. 9th, and say “We are not under the law (of Moses,) but under (the law of) grace, the New Testament, and now all we want to know is, does the New Testament either by precept or example require us to keep any day as a SABBATH?... We do not want your inferences, but plain, direct New Testament testimony ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now send the reapers forth the next morning after the Sabbath, what day is that? why, it is Sunday in the morning; so we see in the anti-type the morning of the resurrection instead of being a holy day (and as the world will have it the Sabbath) it was the day for the laborers to go out into the fields to reap the spring harvest. ”

“ Now to make it still plainer for us, he says, “For he who commanded do not commit adultery, hath commanded also, do not kill. Now if thou commit not adultery, but killest, thou hast become a transgressor of the law.” Now I ask in all candor which of these five are right? You answer, James, the inspired one. Well, does he justify either of the other four? You answer no, for he has directed us to the tables of stone, the ten commandments in the law, recorded in Exodus xx: 1-17. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And so when the Sabbath closes here, although it is precisely the same hour of the day, viz. six P. M., and in like manner all round the globe. Hence the necessity of beginning the twenty-four hour day at sun set from the centre of the earth. We are told that we cannot keep time right, because men, who circumnavigate the globe, make a difference of twenty-four hours in time. Well, suppose men could girt the globe with their magnetic wires, so that half of the inhabitants of the United States could pass clear round ten times a day, what odds would that make to the motion of the globe. ”

“ We believe, what I shall attempt to prove by-and-by, that there will be 144,000 saved at the coming of Jesus. Furthermore, we believe that the same commandment which teaches us to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, also teaches that we may labor the other six days for just as much as we comfortably need; more than that would counteract the direction of Jesus, viz. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on the earth,” [pg 067] &c. This is all right, for our faith teaches us we do not need it. If we hoard up what we have got, it certainly is not selling and giving alms. ”

“ So, I trust, the second advent believers will know you hereafter. They will also know that God never employed a righteous man to stigmatize and attempt to make void his Sabbath and commandments. That is, and ever has been, the work of “the Devil and his angels.” “Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he reveals his secrets unto his servants, the prophets.” Amos. But “he that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” All men are liable to err and make mistakes, but when persevered in, under disguise, they are to be rebuked. ”

“ The plain, simple truth in regard to the holy Sabbath flows out from the blessed bible in one clear, strait channel; while erroneous views are fated to run crooked and devour themselves. I think that those who are not fully settled as to what day of the week is the seventh or Sabbath, would do well to refer to the type, in Lev. xxii: 5-21. Here are three types which were fulfilled at the time of the first advent. Every adventist in the land once believed that these types were exactly fulfilled as to time. The paschal lamb was slain on the 14th day of the first month. ”

“ It also requires the stranger (the Gentile) to keep it, and God has promised to make him joyful in his house of prayer, by doing so; Isa. lvi: 6, 7. He has also given this day of rest to the beasts of burden, and makes man accountable for causing them to violate his day. They cannot speak for themselves; how important, therefore, that we should not, in any way, allow our beast to labor on that day. But, says the objector, surely there is no harm in using my horse to carry my family three or five miles to meeting on the Sabbath. The word says “obedience is better than sacrifice.” ”

“ Does Friday night come after twenty-four hours of that day are spent? You see how difficult God makes the way of transgressors. You may reply that you made a mistake. Will you allow me to tell you where your mistake commenced on this subject. If I am not very much mistaken it was when you gave up keeping the true seventh day, the only historical, chronological or biblical day of the week ever given to man. ”

“ Surely no living person can be condemned [pg 078] for this. Then let us keep the day as the bible teaches us that he did.
The Sabbath, God says, is a sign and covenant between him and the children of Israel forever; see Exo. xxxi: 16, 17; Ezek. xx: 12, 20. Read the curse that followed their violating it—xxii: 8, 25-28. Do you still say this is only for the Jewish dispensation? read in Deut. vii: 9, the promise to them who keep his commandments to a thousand generations. Suppose a generation to be thirty years: then you have 24,000 years yet to come. ”

“ We do not, by any means, expect this is all of it, because we know that the devil will never yield, nor discharge the volunteer company which he is so judiciously marshalling out of the second advent ranks, until every device to destroy the remnant is resorted to, and they are seen emerging from the smoke and carnage of this unholy warfare, ascending to the gates of the holy city, under the waving banner of the commandments of God.—Rev. ”

“ Another writer J. Porter, states, that Jesus took these saints that arose at Jerusalem right up to his Father, and then received his power, and returned the same day; and he might also have added, travelled with the two to Emmaus, seven and a half miles; and as others will have it, was back time enough to keep the whole day with his disciples, for the first Sabbath after his resurrection. If we really want the truth, God will give it to us, but not by rejecting other truths. ”

“ Now every bible student must admit that Paul was contrasting the ministration of the Jewish nation with that of his own, the Gospel ministration, (11th v.) under the two dispensations. If Moses' ministry was glorious, then is the Gospel much more so. Now that which was to be done away was not the decalogue itself, the ten commandments, but the ministration of it, which was emblematically illustrated by the glory of Moses' countenance, which was only for the time being. This [pg 042] clause refers expressly to the glory of his countenance, and not to the glory of the law on the tables of stone. ”

“ God will speak as in Joel iii: 16, 17: the Sanctuary will be cleansed; the sins of God's people blotted out—in other words, the atonement finished and their trials ended; their captivity turned. Two such ones will then put ten thousand to flight. Jesus comes out of the most holy place, changes his garments, puts on his kingly robes and stands up to reign over the nations, as in Dan. xii: 1; mounts his cloudy chariot with his sharp sickle to reap the harvest of the earth. Here the 144,000 are in a state of deliverance, ready for the next and last message in the 17th and 18th verses. ”

“ If the true history of the advent doctrine from 1842 to the autumn of 1844, had, with the subsequent events in our history up to 1848, been published 1800 years ago from the Advent Heralds, and their conductors had been called the fathers—it would have puzzled all the wise heads in Christendom, in this age, to have expounded their meaning; for we see it requires all the energies of the human mind to trace their crooked tracks, even when right before us. ”

“ Under The Gospel. Christ, the Son of God, and his Disciples, kept the same Sabbath— (it is folly to speak of any other, the scriptures forbid it.) He was the Lord of the Sabbath, and he said it “was made for man.”—Mark ii: 27, 28. For what man?— [See article, 2d Pillar.] He says he kept his Father's commandments. Paul says they are holy, just and good. John says, they are from the beginning, and points a company who are now keeping them. James tells us we are to keep the whole—surely the Sabbath is here; God himself, says it is.—Exo. xvi: 27, 28, and xx: 8-11.
Jesus, then, is our example. ”

“ That portion who abandoned the idea of the days being ended, of which you boast, are of those that organized and entered the state of the Laodocean church, “neither hot nor cold;” neither in one position nor yet in another; “always learning and never coming to the knowledge of (the present) truth.” The ending of the 2300 days was the great burden of the advent teaching in '43 and '44; “then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.” You will have it that this cannot be before the coming of the Lord, and you see he may come at any time; yes, now, by the first of January, as your Bible Advocate states. ”