Divine Certainty by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 13, 1910

Divine Certainty

By William Ambrose Spicer

“THAT thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.” Luke 1:4.

On the divine certainties of the truth and work of God one may build his faith, and know that the foundations will stand to all eternity.

The Word of God, fulfilled and fulfilling, is the light for the sure pathway. “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” And it is to this “sure word of prophecy” that we do well to take heed, “as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn.”

The sure word had told of the coming Messiah. In the fulness of time he came, and did the work foretold; and his disciples went forth to bear witness to the certainties of the divine fulfilment. “I delivered unto you first of all,” said Paul, “that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

Their message was a message of certainties by the sure voice of fulfilling prophecy.

The same sure word has foretold the second coming of Christ, and the events to precede it.

Daniel in vision saw the great apostasy warring against the truth of God. He heard the cry, “How long shall be the vision?” and he heard also the glad answer, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” In other words, Then shall the hour of God’s judgment in heaven begin, and the time come for some message of reform to lift its voice against the apostasy which the prophet had seen perverting the truth of God.

To John, in the Revelation, was also shown the work that was to be done on earth when this hour of cleansing, or judgment, began in the heavenly sanctuary.

He saw a movement rising and spreading to every nation and tongue, crying, “The hour of his judgment is come.” He heard the protest against following the apostasy, and the call to worship the God that made heaven and earth. He saw the people who were proclaiming that message, and who had been developed by it: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:6-12.

In the fulness of time the fulfilment came. When that longest prophetic period of Daniel’s vision expired in 1844, just 2,300 years from the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (Dan. 9:25), there was a movement in the world crying, “The hour of his judgment is come.” And at once there began to gather a people keeping the commandments of God, who have ever since been spreading forth toward every nation and tribe, proclaiming that same threefold message of the prophecy. The sure word had declared it; and the unerring hand of God wrought the fulfilment in the rise of the advent movement and the development of the Seventh-day Adventist people. They keep the commandments of God, and have the “testimony of Jesus,” as the sure word foretold of the remnant church. And the work rose at the right time, according to the Scriptures. It is the hand of God.

We have not followed cunningly devised fables in this movement, but have been these many years eye-witnesses of the fulfilling of the “sure word of prophecy” in all the details of the rise and progress of the third angel’s message.

We know the certainty of those things wherein we have been instructed, and the certainty of the triumph of this movement in but a little while.

W. A. S.