THE APPOINTED FAST by John Nevins Andrews

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 7, 1867

THE APPOINTED FAST.

By John Nevins Andrews

THE coming Sabbath has been designated as a fast, that the blessing of God may attend our General Conference, and rest upon our labors in his cause during the year. This is a well-timed act. But what is it to fast in such a manner that God will accept it? Fasting is an acknowledgment of sins, and a public profession of repentance. Those who suppose that a day spent in abstinence from food, and in public humiliation, will square the account of their past backslidings and lack of devotion to God, and that when that day is past they may with less danger than before live as they had been living, are the very persons to whom the prophet refers when he says:—

“Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?” Isa. lviii, 5.

But did the prophet mean to condemn such acts as this in days of fasting and prayer? Far from it; for, one hundred and sixty years after this, we find Daniel, the man greatly beloved, fasting in precisely this way so far as outward forms are concerned, and God answered him in the most signal manner. See Dan. ix and x.

If we should insert the word “merely,” in the earnest expostulation of Isaiah, we should no doubt express the precise idea of the prophet. We should then have him ask the question: Does God accept that fast in which the sinner expresses great humiliation, and distress for his sins, but for all that when his fast is ended, continues in the same course of life? In other words is it MERELY to “bow down the head as a bulrush and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?”

No indeed. Fasting is not only an acknowledgment of sins, but a solemn public profession of repentance, and a pledge in the sight of God and man, that we will from this time forth, and forever desist from those acts whereby the Spirit of God has been grieved from us. Fasting, like repentance, with which it is indeed inseparably connected, does not end with the days on which we thus humble ourselves in the sight of God and man. Those are the days in which we make our solemn vows, accompanied by suitable acts of self abasement; but the performance of these vows will require the most faithful action on our part, for the whole period of our lives.

Our coming fast is that we may humble ourselves in the sight of God, for all our backsliding from him, and all our sins in his sight. But let us remember that if we do not in our hearts solemnly promise God, while we thus fast, that we will hereafter desist from these sins, our fast is only a solemn mockery. And let us further remember that if we make this solemn promise, we must devote all our lives to its sacred fulfillment. SUCH a fast God will accept.

J. N. ANDREWS.