p. 5 | Changing One’s Mind-Willingly or Unwillingly

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 19, 1914

Changing One’s Mind—Willingly or Unwillingly

By John N. Quinn

JOHN N. QUINN

ENTRANCE into the kingdom of God cannot be obtained without a change of mind. “Repent” (which means to change the mind) was the cry of John the Baptist, a cry taken up by the Lord Jesus on entering his ministry, and by the apostles, after Pentecost, carried to “every creature which is under heaven.”

National Disaster

Had the Jews changed their minds about Jesus, his personality, message, and work, Jerusalem, instead of being made desolate, would have been a joy and rejoicing to the world. National and personal disaster came to the Jewish people because of a refusal to change their minds.

Men today need a change of mind concerning God, his character, his purpose, his government. God’s law is being rejected, and the blood of the everlasting covenant trampled underfoot, resulting in local, national, and world-wide disaster. The covetousness of the human heart lies at the base of our troubles. In the mad strife for wealth, God is forgotten, but when men are brought face to face with death, gold is abhorred; they change their minds about it.

Gold “the Veriest Dross”

“When the steamer ‘Central America,’ with nearly six hundred passengers aboard, was wrecked off Cape Hatteras, Sept. 12, 1857, in a fearful storm, many of the passengers who were returning miners from the gold mines of California, divested themselves of their treasure belts and scattered the gold upon the cabin floors, telling those to take it who would, lest its weight about their persons should carry them to their death. ‘Full purses, containing in some instances thousands of dollars, lay around untouched. Carpetbags were opened, and the shining metal was poured out on the floor with the prodigality of death’s despair. One of the passengers opened a bag and dashed about the cabin twenty thousand dollars in gold dust, and told him who wanted to gratify his greed for gold to take it. But it was passed by untouched, as the veriest dross.’”—“Our First Century,” pages 642, 643.

“When the steamship ‘Arctic’ was lost from a collision in mid-ocean, Sept. 20, 1854, one passenger offered thirty thousand pounds sterling, or one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, if the life-boats would put back to save him. They turned to do so, but he sank before they reached him.”—Id., page 614.

In that day, when “the Lord alone shall be exalted,” the idols of gold and silver will be cast to the moles and to the bats, and men shall flee to the rocks, to the tops of the ragged rocks, seeking to hide from the glory of God’s majesty when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. See Isa. 2: 10-22. The mind will be changed, but the change will be an unwilling one.

By the majority of human beings sin is regarded as something to be reveled in; a change of mind makes it something to be abhorred.

Pomp and Pageantry in Religion

To the carnal mind, pomp and pageantry are the ultimate in religion. Possessed of the mind of Jesus, neither “Jerusalem” nor “this mount” is necessary to the worship of Jehovah. With the mind God is served, with the mind God is worshiped; and wherever the person may be who has surrendered the carnal mind and taken the mind of the Spirit, there that person can worship God and worship him acceptably.

God has exalted Jesus to his right hand that he might give a change of mind to men. “Ask, and ye shall receive,” but ask in faith, for a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”