Ripening for the Harvest

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 3, 1908

Ripening for the Harvest

As one of the signs of the times, Jesus declared that “as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” An observer so conservative as the well-known English preacher, Prebendary Webb-Peploe, bears testimony in the following words to the similarity between the present time and the time of Noah:—

As in the days of Noah gross immorality had ripened; as in the times of our Lord men had ripened in luxury and art, and yet they were living grossly immoral lives, so that the Lord was compelled to bring judgment again; so we have advanced marvelously in regard to the veneering of gross sins,—but behind all this there is undoubtedly the manifestation of self-assertion, the attempt to deify and glorify humanity, the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are ripening in the assertion of human nature as against the deity; and, ere long, though it may be by subtle terminology, God will be laid aside altogether.

Those who mistake mental culture for religion, and who regard beautiful and costly church buildings as an index to character, reiterate the assertion that the world is growing better; but those who look beneath the surface, and are able to perceive the actual conditions in society and in the church, are not deceived by this claim. To the Pharisees who prided themselves in the glories of the temple, and were sticklers for all the forms of religion, Jesus declared, “Ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” This is the indictment which we present against the men of this generation.