Some of my friends say, "If it is important to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, why have not Wesley, Spurgeon, Müller, General Booth, and other good Christian men seen it and kept it?"
The best way to find out would be to ask them, instead of me; for I cannot answer for them. No man can know the working of another man's mind and conscience. But every man can read the Bible; therefore, we may easily know that the seventh day is the Sabbath, and that its observance is most important; but we cannot tell why certain good men have not kept it.
The three men first mentioned are dead, and cannot be questioned; but Mr. Booth is still alive, and your friends might, if they wish to, asking the following questions:
a) If baptism and the Lord's Supper are important, why has the Salvation Army, under its leadership, not merely ignored them, but formally voted not to allow them? If those ordinances of the Lord's appointment are important, why is any officer instantly dismissed if he begins to preach repentance and baptism?
b) If the coming of the Lord is important, why does General Booth call it a secondary matter, and advise his people to let it alone, and never say anything about it?
When he has answered these questions, perhaps he will tell you why he does not keep the Sabbath.
Whom are your friends following--Wesley, Spurgeon, and Booth? or are they following Christ? What is their guide--the practice of those men? or the precepts of God's Word? If asked in the Judgment why they did not keep the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, would they say to the Lord: "I know you told me to keep it, but Wesley, Spurgeon, and Booth did not keep it, and so I thought it was not necessary for me to."
The Judge asks, "You professed to believe; why then were you not baptized?"
And your friends would doubtless reply, "General Booth did not believe in baptism, and so I thought it was of no importance."
They no doubt often sing,
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
--Edward Mote, Hymn: My Hope is Built on Nothing Less, 1834.
But here, instead of building on Christ's Word, they are building on emptiness. Thus: God's Word gives positive commandments: but instead of building on them, they are resting their hope of salvation on somebody's neglect of them. Is not that building on a "sinking sand"? Is a man's failure to obey God's Word of more authority than the Word itself?
There is not a commandment that has not been broken by some good man; shall we therefore say that none of the commandments are of any importance? No one can deny that there have been good Christians in the Roman Catholic Church, not only in the centuries before the Reformation, but since; shall we therefore say that the second commandment, which forbids the bowing down to images, is unimportant?
No man was ever yet good enough to be saved by his own good works: yet there are many people who think that they can be saved by even the failures of good men. Is it not strange that a man who will acknowledge that his own good works will not save him, will trust for salvation in the absence of some good work in another man? The mistakes and errors of good men form a very shaky foundation on which to build Christian experience and character.
It is a very narrow mind which supposes that the preaching of any truth is the condemnation of everybody who has not seen it. Christ was the truth, and He preached the truth, yet He said that He came not into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. (John 12:47; 3:17) The divine command is, "He that has my Word, let him speak my Word faithfully." (Jeremiah 23:28)
But that does not mean that we are to pronounce sentence of condemnation on those who do not see it; nor, on the other hand, are we to ignore God's Word, because some good man does not see it all. If every man had always waited until every other good man saw and accepted all the truth, before he took a step in advance, there would never have been any Christian growth in the world.
The case may be summed up in the words of Christ to Peter. The Lord had told Peter something about his future life, and Peter, looking around, and seeing John walking near them, asked, "What shall this man do?" (John 21:21)
Jesus replied, "What is that to you? follow me." (John 21:22)
So in the case of these good men and the Sabbath. You read God's commandment, telling you to keep His Sabbath, and you understand it; but you look around, and see some of His servants who are not keeping it; and you say, "What about these men? If I ought to keep the Sabbath, why don't they do it?"
And God replies, "What is that to you? follow me."
Each one stands or falls to his own master; (Romans 14:4) and each man shall give account of himself to God; (Romans 14:12) and we shall have enough to do to give account of ourselves, without troubling about other men.
Christ and His Word is the one foundation. He alone is perfect, and He alone, of all the men who ever trod this earth may be taken as an example. If we follow Him in everything, we can never make a mistake; but if we take as our model any other man that ever lived, even though it be Moses or Paul, we shall be sure to go wrong.
Whom will you follow?--Present Truth, March 27, 1902.