GOD'S WORK IS TIMELY by M. W. Howard

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 2, 1867

GOD'S WORK IS TIMELY.

By M. W. Howard

SOME of the ideas concerning the different messages, being in just the time, to meet the felt wants of a world (a church, I had almost said) lying in wickedness, brought out in the sermon by Bro. D. M. Canright, in Review No. 4, Vol. xxix, so accords with some paragraphs from the pen of another writer, that I lay aside the Review, to copy them out to lay before the reader along side of those:

"Timeliness marks all the works and ways of God. Truth has its seasons, and the kingdom of God has its periods.

"The great truths which now have their unchangeable position in the faith and formulas of the church, have been born into the world one by one, and one by one have taken their position in orderly array in the great family of truths. Like children they have come crying into the world, and like warriors in battle, each has had its own way to fight. Like Damascus blades, each has been tried and tempered in the fire, and under the hammer of controversy, and like the martyr throng, they have all come up to their permanent place in the bright galaxy of truth through much tribulation, with their robes made white in the blood of the slain.

"It would be a work to enlarge the largest heart, and expand the most liberal mind, if it were done as it deserves, to sketch truthfully and graphically the biography of each one of the evangelical truths comprising the faith. Each has a life, and time of its own. Indeed the historical prominence of the great men of the church from Abel and Enoch down to Whitefield and Wesley, and Edwards, comes from the fact of their being each one the representative, the embodiment—the incarnation, of some one great truth of revealed religion, in some stage of its development, just, as Newton and Copernicus were the representatives of astronomical principles.

"Revelation had its stages—two great ones—the old and the new, with many minor ones marking them both; each in its own time and each in its own way. . . . It is beautiful to mark the times and occasions of truth in its connection with the orderly march of events, as in single file, with solemn tread, they come forward at the command of the Lord.

"The translation of Enoch was just at the time when the heavens had become overcast with dark clouds of unbelief, and a window in heaven was needed that man might see it, and not forget that there is a Heaven above.

"The flood came just when the fear of God had died out, and violence had run riot, filling the earth; just in time to let all the generations know that there is a God of justice and judgment ruling over all, who does not shrink from wrapping a world in its own winding sheet, regardless of its agonizing shrieks of despair, if the cry of its guilt and the call of justice demand it.

"The overthrow of Babel and confusion of tongues was just at the moment when the pride of man and his desire to cast off fear and restrain prayer had concentrated and culminated in the great city and tower, which were to be at once both the glory, and safety, and the bond of union of the whole human race. . . . Just then it was that God overthrew their city and tower, confounded their speech, broke up their confederacy, and scattered them over the earth hopeless of ever being united again: a timely lesson to the whole world that there is no tower of safety but God alone, and no abiding city, save the city of God, and no glorying but in the Lord, which will not be put to shame, and no union that can stand, except the union of the one faith, by the one baptism, under the one Lord, in the one family of our Father in Heaven.

"The call of Abraham was just at a moment when idolatry was fairly beginning to rise and make head in the world, and when, therefore, it was needful to make head against it. . . .

Omitting many others that would be interesting to cite, we pass on. The coming of Christ is happily marked by the apostle as just when the fullness of time had come; when the Jewish dispensation was waxing old, and ready to pass away. . . .

"The advent of the Holy Spirit, when Pentecost was fully come, was just when the time for the Holy Spirit had fully come; just when the resurrection was accomplished, and the risen Saviour had ascended to the right hand of God; just when a demonstration of his power as the living Almighty Saviour, was needed to revive the drooping disciples and convince a gainsaying world. . . .

"Then passing by the events of fourteen hundred years, each as timely as any before or after, the Reformation came when all things were ready. Two hundred years later came what is termed The Great Awakening, in which the fact of the new birth as an experience for all was added to the faith of the church. . . . And now in the intervening hundred years, oh! how great events have thickened. The old slow march seems to have hastened into double quick time, and the single file to have formed up into the order of platoons."—Rev. W. E. Boardman.

In another chapter he remarks, "The present is ever the stepping-stone of the future. Each stage of progress is the bud of the next. . . . The present—the now present, would seem to be a round in the heaven-stretching ladder near the top. One step more, or two at most, and it seems the summit will be gained."

And now are we brought to the very point for which I have copied these extracts, that Adventists may take up and carry on the thread as can so easily be done, or as I said at the commencement that they might be placed alongside with those already given in the sermon referred to.

One of our great poets has brought out the idea that God first inspires, then hears our prayers. Of course the idea was borrowed from the Bible; and where are the praying ones who have not at some time or other, found occasion to observe this in their own experience, —even in their personal experience.

As illustration of this timeliness, and also of the fact that God inspires prayer; or in other words, that God brings forward the proper agents in his own appointed time, two cases occur to mind, of such prominence, that I will recall the reader's attention to them. One, recorded in the ninth chapter of Daniel: When Daniel understood by books, that the end of the captivity drew near, he set his heart to make confession for the sins of his people, and to pray for their deliverance. The other, fresh in the memory of the readers of the Review, when four days of fasting and prayer were observed for the deliverance of our nation from our late war.

Reasoning from analogy, if the unbeliever chooses to so say, but as the Christian would say, judging of God's dealings for the future, by his workings in the past, is it difficult to anticipate that when the timely hour shall have arrived, for God's children to cry day and night unto him, it will be in their hearts even as an inspiration from the Almighty? so that in his own appointed way, of being inquired of by the house of Israel, to do these things for them, "He will avenge his own elect and that speedily."

M. W. HOWARD.

Malone, N. Y.