p. 88 | The Song of the Saved

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1867

The Song of the Saved.

“And they sing a new song, saying: Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals of it; for thou wert slain, and redeemedst us to God by thy blood, out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and thou madest us unto our God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth.” Rev. v. 9, 10. (Revised text.)

SOME people tell us that it is quite too low and coarse a thing to think of the earth in connection with the final bliss of the saints. They preach that we do but degrade and pervert the exalted things of Holy Scripture, when we hint the declaration of the wise man, that “the earth endureth forever,” and that over it the glorious and everlasting kingdom of Christ and his saints, is to be established in literal reality. But if the ransomed in Heaven, with golden crowns upon their brows, kneeling at the feet of the Lamb, before the very throne of God, and with the prayers of all saints, and the predictions of all prophets in their hands, could sing of it as one of the elements of their loftiest hopes and joys, I beg to turn a deaf ear to the surly cry of “carnal”—“sensual”—“unspiritual”—with which some would turn me from the “blessed hope.” Shall the saints in glory shout, “We shall reign on the earth,” and we be accounted heretics for believing that they knew what they were saying? Is it come to this, that to be orthodox we must believe that these approved and crowned ones kneel before the throne of God with a lie upon their lips?! Shall they, from thrones in Heaven, point to earth as the future theatre of their administrations, and give adoring thanks and praises to the Lamb for it, and we be stigmatized as fanatics and Judaisers, for undertaking to pronounce the blessed fact in mortal hearing? Oh! I wonder, I wonder, how the dear God above us can endure the unbelief with which some men deal with his Holy Word.

Shall we then keep silence on the subject? When the Living ones and Elders fail to sing about it in Heaven; when inspired apostles no longer admit the subject into their holy writings; then, but not till then, let it be dropped from the discourses of our sanctuaries, and from the inculcations of them that fear God. And woe, woe, to that man who is convinced of its truth, but, for the sake of place or friendship, refrains from confessing it! Well has it been said of him: “He barters away his kingdom for the applause of men. He eclipseth the glory of Christ to enhance his own.” He stultifieth the adoring songs of celestial Kings, that he may win a little empty favor by base pandering to the pleasures of an ignorant, unbelieving, and godless world.—Seiss’ Lectures on the Apoc., pp. 291-2.