Special Insights No. 2
First Quarter 2007
“Ecclesiastes”
(Produced by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)
“Nothing New Under the Sun”
A comment by one of the 1888 messengers is apropos (quoting an evolutionist): “‘Evolution is the theory that represents the course of the world as a gradual transition from the indeterminate to the determinate, from the uniform to the varied, and which assumes the cause of these processes to be immanent in the world itself that is to be thus transformed.
“‘Evolution is thus almost synonymous with progress. It is a transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better. Thus progress points to an increased value in existence, as judged by our feelings.’
“Now notice the particular points in these three sentences: evolution represents the course of the world as a gradual transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better; and assumes that this process is immanent in the world itself thus to be transformed. That is to say, the thing gets better of itself; and that which causes it to get better is itself. And this progress marks ‘an increased value in existence, as judged by our feelings.’ That is to say, you know you are better because you feel better. You know there has been progress, because you feel it. Your feelings regulate your standing. Your knowledge of your feelings regulates your progress from worse to better (emphasis in bold added).
“Now this matter of progress from worse to better, have your feelings anything to do with it? If they have, what are you? Every one here this afternoon who measures his progress, the value of his experience, by his feelings, is an evolutionist: I care not if he has been a Seventh-day Adventist for forty years, he is an evolutionist just the same. And all his Christianity, all his religion, is a mere profession without the fact, simply a form without the power” (A. T. Jones, Lessons on Faith, pp. 49-50 (emphasis in italics original).
“One of the branches of this sort of science, that has done most toward the establishment of the doctrine of evolution, is the ... science of geology, which has instituted the conception of vast and unimaginable periods of time in the past history of our globe. These vast and unimaginable periods, as another one of the chief writers on this subject—the author of it indeed—says, ‘is the indispensable basis for understanding man’s origin’ in the process of evolution. So that the progress that has been made, has been through countless ages. Yet this progress has not been steady and straight forward from its inception until its present condition. It has been through many ups and downs. There have been many times of great beauty and symmetry; then there would come a cataclysm, or an eruption, and all would go to pieces, as it were. Again the process would start from that condition of things, and build up again. Many, many times this process has been gone through; and that is the process of evolution,—the transition from the lower to a higher, from the worse to the better.
“Now, what has been the process of your progress from the worse to the better? Has it been through ‘many ups and downs’? Has your acquiring of the power to do the good—the good works which are of God—been through a long process of ups and downs from the time of your first profession of Christianity until now? Has it appeared sometimes that you had apparently made great progress, that you were doing well, and that everything was nice and neat and pleasant; and then, without a moment’s warning there would come a cataclysm, or an eruption, and all be spoiled? Nevertheless, in spite of all the ups and downs, you start in for another effort: and so through this process, long-continued, you have come to where you are to-day; and in ‘looking back’ over it all, you can mark some progress, you think, as judged by your feelings,—is that your experience? Is that the way you have made progress?
“In other words, are you an evolutionist?” (ibid., pp. 50-51, emphasis original).
Please note what Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 1:
Ecc 1:2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity.
Ecc 1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
Ecc 1:4 [One] generation passeth away, and [another] generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
Ecc 1:5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
Ecc 1:6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
Ecc 1:7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea [is] not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
Ecc 1:8 All things [are] full of labour; man cannot utter [it]: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
Ecc 1:9 The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun.
Ecc
The earth is not evolving. People are not improving. Fallen sinful human flesh, being what it is, is not getting better, but, thankfully, is doomed to destruction. What we call the “new” covenant, has been in existence from “before the foundation of the world”, and we are still “accepted in the Beloved” if we have not thrown God’s love away (Eph. 1:4-6). The “old” covenant has been in existence since Adam and Eve ate what they were told not to eat and such covenant is still in existence today (Gen. 3:7). The same Voice of creation (Genesis 1) is still speaking to hearts today with the same transforming power that “made something from nothing”(Heb. 11:3; Rom.
Nothing has changed. God has not changed—neither has man. Any thought that the condition of the world is advancing to new heights, or that man can improve either from some power that emanates from within himself or because of some decision he has made that might perhaps change God’s mind about him, is meaningless vanity and unbelief. The 1888 “most precious message” as given to Jones and Waggoner is not new light but old light presented in new circumstances even today*. Believe His creative word, and go free!
—Craig Barnes
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* “Great truths that have lain unheeded and unseen since the day of Pentecost, are to shine from God's word in their native purity” (Fundamentals of Christian Education, p. 473).
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