A PROPHECY FULFILLED by Uriah Smith

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1880

A PROPHECY FULFILLED.

By Uriah Smith

PAUL gives the following plain description of professedly Christian people in the last days: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." 2 Tim. 4: 3, 4. We claim to have reached that time, and that the disposition which Paul describes is plainly exhibited on the part of most of the churches of the land. This is why it is so hard to gain the ears of the people for the proclamation of the truth. They are turned away from it to pleasing fables which suit them better. Hence it is at this time that the ministers of God are reined up by the charge of the apostles, in view of the impending advent of the Lord Jesus, to preach the word.

But when we apply this language to the popular churches, we are accused of being captious and uncharitable. Well, will they receive it any better from one of their own number? If so, we have the testimony. The celebrated C. H. Spurgeon will not be accused of any sympathy with the Adventists or their views; yet he bears the following unwitting testimony to the fulfillment of Paul's language at the present time. We italicize a few words for the special consideration of the reader:—

"It is, I think, a matter for very deep regret that this is not an age in which Christian people want to be edified. It is an age in which they like to have their ears tickled, and delight to have a multiplicity of anecdotes and of exciting matter; but they little care to be well instructed in the sound and solid doctrines of the grace of God. In the old Puritanic times, sermons must have been tiresome to the thoughtless, but now-a-days, I should think they are more tiresome to the thoughtful. The Christian of those days wanted to know a great deal of the things of God; and provided that the preacher could open up some point of Christian practice to make him holier and wiser, he was well satisfied, though the man was no orator, and might lead him in no fields of novel speculation. Christians did not want a new faith; but, having received the old faith, they wished to be well rooted and grounded in it, and, therefore, sought daily for an illumination, as well as for quickening; they desired, not only to have the emotions excited, but also to have the intellect richly stored with divine truth, and there must be much of this in every church, if it is built up. No neglect of an appeal to the passions, certainly; no forgetfulness as to what is popular and exciting; but with this, we must have the solid bread-corn of the kingdom, without which, God's children will faint in the weary way of the wilderness."

U. S.