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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 15, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 20.

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The Lord's Return—No. 5

By F. M. W.

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Heb. 10: 35-39.
THE people connected with this movement have reached the greatest time of danger in their entire history. The danger is not from the persecution or opposition which the cause of truth may meet, nor from those natural obstacles which dispute its advancement into every part of the world. The danger is that the multiplied signs of the coming of the Lord which exist on every hand, that the fulfilling prophecies which are so plain in their meaning and portent, shall become common in our estimation, and fail to make that appeal to our hearts and lives which God designs they should.
Many readers of this paper expected that earth’s history would close long before this. Failing to comprehend the work that was to be done in the world, they expected that years ago the coming of the Lord would take place. This delay has come to every heart as a great test, a test of patience and of faith. The Scriptures recognize this danger, and repeatedly is the warning sounded to the church of this period. In the scripture at the head of this article earnest admonition is expressed: “Cast not away therefore your confidence, . . . for ye have need of patience.” This indicates that some will be tempted to cast away their confidence in this work; that some will be inclined to grow impatient at the long delay.
Our Saviour in his great prophetic discourseas recorded in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, sounds the same warning. “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.” Some are represented as saying in their hearts, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” and losing out of their lives the power of the truth, they begin to eat and to drink with the drunken. This does not indicate a spirit of opposition against the message on the part of worldlings, but rather a condition that would exist in the church itself. Those who say this evidently profess outward faith in the Lord, but in their hearts are questioning the certainties of the message, and their lives show that their hope has become dimmed.
In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the pilgrims, in journeying to the celestial city, are represented as passing through the enchanted land just before they reached the end of the way. Here everything conspires to deaden the sensibilities, to produce indifference and apathy. It was only by the most heroic efforts that the spirit of drowsiness could be banished, and the pilgrims prevent themselves from falling into the sleep of carnal security and forever losing their sense of eternal things.
We are passing through the enchanted land to-day. The things of time and sense around us are seeking to draw us away from God. The world is bidding high for the souls of men and women connected with this movement, and here and there we see one after another yielding to the voice of the tempter. In the heart of one the love of gain supplants the love of Christ; the spirit of commercialism and of money making occupies the mind to the exclusion of God and the eternal riches of heaven. Some of our young men and young women are drowned in the vortex of the world’s pleasures. Some form alliances with worldlings, and in this worldly union lose that close, vital connection with heaven which they have heretofore enjoyed.
We see this spirit of departure in some of our homes to-day. There is not that old-time careful regard for the Sabbath of the Lord that was once seen among this people. Some have lost their conscientiousness in rendering to God the means that he has sacredly reserved for the extension of his work in the earth. Some are departing from gospel simplicity in dress and general living. The extravagance of the age possesses their hearts.
On the other hand, while we see these tendencies working in the lives of some, it is cause for rejoicing that so many of the people of God, with new consecration, are pressing forward earnestly and faithfully.
The question as to where we stand in this time is a question of individual responsibility and personal concern. Dear reader, where do you stand? Are you growing indifferent to the things of God? Are the truths of this message becoming to you as idle tales? Do the fulfilling signs appeal to you in the light of the Scriptures of Truth, or do they come now as mere matters of course, making but little impression on your heart? Are you maintaining in your Christian experience that simplicity which once marked your life? Is your hope growing brighter, your faith stronger, and your experience clearer as the days go by, or are you little by little allowing your hope in this message and in God to become dimmed by the influences that surround you? If so, we earnestly urge you to return to your first love.
Soon “he that shall come will come, and will not tarry;” soon faith will be lost in sight, and the one for whom we have waited these many years, the hope of our hearts and the desire of our eyes, will appear in the clouds of heaven. O, what a blessed day that will be! The darkness of our night is past, the warfare is ended, and with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the redeemed of every age, we are gathered home to go out no more forever,—no longer orphans; no longer strangers and pilgrims; no longer suffering from cold or heat, from hunger or thirst, from trial or persecution, from bodily pain or physical discomfort, from nervousness or anxiety or mental worry. With unabating vigor of eternal youth, with pleasures at God’s right hand forevermore, we shall come to Zion with songs and with everlasting joy upon our heads, and sorrow and sighing shall forever flee away.
All this lies just a little way in the future, and it all may be ours, unworthy as we are, through the merits and mercies of the Lord Jesus Christ, if we will but prove true to him. Let us give ourselves to God with a new consecration, to go anywhere, to do anything, to become in his province and purpose whatever he may desire and design. It is this consecration that will bring into our lives the sweet assurance of the Holy Spirit, which will clothe our labors with power, and give us a place among the redeemed.
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.”
F. M. W.