I Am Thy Sign by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 9, 1907

“I Am Thy Sign”

By C. M. S.

God is not establishing any half-way method for carrying on his great business of saving souls out of a sin-smitten world. That fact ought to be patent to every one, in view of the great sacrifice on Calvary.

God kept back nothing that he could give, and Christ withheld nothing he possessed. That was what man’s redemption required, and the requirement was met in its entirety. Heaven made known what it would require of itself before it made known to man what it would require of him. The seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent’s head, but in the bruising he wounded himself. That had in it Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary; and not only that, but he must bear reproach through all his ministry, that he might be “for a sign” to a rebellious people. Luke 2:34.

And what is the purpose of a sign?—It is to point the way. Jesus was God’s sign in this world, pointing the way back to the Father. He was rebuked and mocked by some, misjudged and misunderstood by many. But there were some—a few—who permitted him to become not only the Father’s sign, but their leader, and he led them into the everlasting fold.

“As he is, so are we in this world.” And so we read: “Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait for Jehovah, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me are for signs and for wonders.” Isa. 8:16-18. What people is this that is to be “for signs and for wonders”?—The people who are engaged in the work of binding up the law and sealing the testimony among God’s people. More than that, they are waiting for Jehovah and looking for him, and while doing that they are warning the people against the delusions of Satan through the instrumentality of Spiritualism, as shown in verse 19.

When we find a people, then, who are seeking to set the law of God rightly before the world, and are at the same time looking for the return of their Lord, and are bearing positive testimony against Spiritualism and all doctrines that lead to it, we will find a people whom God has set for a sign. We need not expect it to be a business pleasant to the natural man—this standing as God’s sign in this wicked world. It is hardly supposable that Ezekiel found it a pleasant task to lie three hundred and ninety days upon his left side while he was typically bearing the iniquity of the house of Israel, and to follow that with a forty-day period of the same nature, lying upon his right side for the iniquity of the house of Judah. Isaiah was not consulting his own convenience and his own feelings when he “walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder.” Isa. 20:3.

The Lord instructed Ezekiel at one time to carry out his possessions as if for hasty flight, dig through the wall, and carry away his belongings under cover of darkness. When they should ask what he was doing, he was to reply, “I am your sign.” Eze. 12:1-11.

God has a sign now set in all the countries of the world. It is his people bearing his last message. While they preach the gospel of the kingdom “for a witness” unto all nations, they themselves are a living, speaking sign—God’s sign—to turn the attention of the people once more away from their idols, their self-seeking, their disloyal practises, and bring them, if possible, into God’s fold. Every possible effort will be made by the enemy to make it impossible for men to read God’s sign in you. You may expect to see your message perverted, and yourself misrepresented and persecuted; but so did they to the holy men of old, and even to our great Example. But it is more essential that God should have a “sign” in this last generation than that we should escape persecution, or even death itself. When they ask, “What doest thou?” say, “I am your sign;” for, says the Lord, “It may be they will consider.” Eze. 12:3.

In the midst of a generation that is not looking for nor desiring the return of our Lord, God has set this people “for a sign,” calling the attention of the world to that great and portentous event. “It may be they will consider.” Throughout the nations that have turned their back upon the Sabbath of Jehovah while they keep a day God never recognized as his, God is sending out his messengers “for a sign” to the people, that they may not come up to the final day of earth’s history ignorant of his requirements.

“I am your sign.” Let us realize it as we go in and out among the people, and so live before them and so proclaim God’s message to them that the honest hearted will pause and consider and accept and be saved. C. M. S.