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PRESENT TRUTH

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 30, No. 1.

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PRESENT TRUTH.

By Cornelia Rice

How these two words once sounded to my unsanctified ear! I was ready to say, Bible truth was always truth, and truth for all time. But reason and revelation have taught me that every age has had its present truth. A thorough knowledge of the will of God and firm belief in his word, has led holy men of all ages to embrace present truth. Thus Noah built the ark, Abraham departed from his father's house and his kindred, Moses left Egypt, and Jeremiah earnestly besought his brethren to peaceably go into Babylon. A lack of this knowledge and this faith on the part of the Jews, caused our Saviour to weep over Jerusalem, saying, If thou hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. Paul warned his Thessalonian brethren that the soon coming of Christ was not then present truth. The prophecies had been explained by Paul as a part of his profitable teachings. He tells them that the Man of Sin must have his day. And what view, think ye, did the church have of present truth during that long reign of papal power? How many knew from the Scriptures that that power would hold its sway forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty years? And how easy for the unlearned and faltering to give up the hope of the coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, for that pleasing but delusive doctrine of the immortality of the soul? a view that they had only to shuffle off this mortal coil, to gain their desired rest? But no doubt there were some Bible students and faithful children of God that knew where they were in the stream of time, and looked forward through the dim distance to the coming of Christ.
How thankful should we now be for the light that shines on our pathway! We can truly say, The darkness is past and the true light now shineth. Let us walk in the light that we may be the children of light. I want my heart engaged in present truth; and as the paper is now enlarged, I may say more about it.
CORNELIA RICE.
Folsomdale, N. Y.