NOT OUR HOME by Adolphus Smith

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 16, 1868

NOT OUR HOME.

By Adolphus Smith

“ARISE ye, and depart; for this is not your rest.” Micah xi, 10.

In the world is tribulation, broken only occasionally by glimpses of the glory to be revealed. The whole creation groans under the heavy curse, and man has more than ever become the willing vassal of the Devil, working his satanic pleasure, and fast ripening for the judgments of God.

The earth, which in the beginning was clad in Edenic beauty, whose soil was productive, and its climate salubrious, has become old and worn, waiting to be folded as a vesture, and changed by an Almighty hand.

But a small portion of the earth’s surface is inhabitable, about three-fourths of it being covered with water; but in the new earth, “there shall be no more sea.”

The climate of the frigid zone is inhospitable, and the heat of the torrid, hardly endurable. Of the temperate zones, only small tracts here and there are really rich in their vegetable productions.

With the most desirable locations are connected some disadvantages, to escape which, man seeks a removal, sometimes resulting in sad disappointment. Those who are disposed to abandon the flesh-pots of Egypt for hygienic food, sometimes find a removal expedient to procure fruit in abundance and variety; but the caterpillar and the locust are there, and the fairest fruits decay; our earthly habitations waste away, and every pulsation of the heart warns us of approaching dissolution.

It is often very difficult to procure a perfect title to earthly estate. Satan has, by fraud, obtained almost unlimited control of this earth, and the child of God finds himself a stranger here in an enemy’s land. Sometimes, through defect of title, he is driven from his earthly home, and an enemy reaps the fruits of his weary toil. There is no hope that a better state of things will exist until wicked men are destroyed out of the earth; in the meantime, trouble will increase, and the child of God suffer the ire of the dragon until, in answer to agonizing prayer, he is delivered from this corruption by the mighty power of God.

As the mariner takes in sail, and makes everything snug before an approaching tempest, so the child of God, in view of the time of trouble just before us, ought so to arrange his business as not to be cumbered with earthly cares, when “that day shall come as a snare upon all them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth.”

Dear brethren and sisters, will you heed the admonition, and make ready for the coming of our dear Saviour? Are you one of those who take right hold of the work and never draw back? Or is it necessary that the church drag you along as a cumbrous weight? Why do you delay the work of preparation? Do you expect to be surrounded with more favorable circumstances? Do you think a time will come when it will be easier to serve God than it now is? Or do you propose to live carelessly now, and trust to a chance of being warned just in time to make (if I may use the expression) a hasty moral toilet to meet the King in his glory? Oh! fatal delusion! “What a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

Although in the latter rain, every honest-hearted one will be called to take his stand with commandment keepers, I do not believe that any one who now rejects the light, or neglects a preparation, will have any lot or part in that great work. Nor has he any right to flatter himself that God will grant him or her any especial warning. Repentance may then be unfound, though as by Esau, sought earnestly and with tears.

ADOLPHUS SMITH. Ottawa Co., Mich.