GO FORWARD by Wm. S. Foote

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 4, 1862

GO FORWARD.

By Wm. S. Foote

“SPEAK to the children of Israel that they go forward.” Ex. xiv, 15. All Bible students will recollect on what occasion the above language was used. The

children of Israel were in such straightened circumstances that to go backward was death, and to go forward was seeming destruction; the first by the Egyptian host, and the latter by the waters of the Red sea. But we are told that “by faith they passed through the Red sea and were saved.” The commandment-keeper is now placed in a position not unlike that of ancient Israel; he knows that to go back and unite again with Egypt’s dark and confused host would result in spiritual death; and although before him lies a broad and perilous looking sea, whose angry waves he sometimes looks upon with fear, yet his only hope and chance for life is in obeying his great Leader saying to him, “Go forward.”

Says one, “My lovers and my friends stand aloof from me, and my kinsmen stand afar off; they also that render evil for good are mine adversaries; because I follow the thing that good is.” So it was with your Lord and Saviour; follow him, and rejoice that you are accounted worthy to suffer with him. “Go forward.”

Another exclaims, “‘Mine enemies would daily swallow me up; for they be many that fight against me.’ I am poor as to temporal things, my health is bad, and it is with difficulty that I can support myself and family, and I can do but little to advance the cause of truth. These things weigh down my spirits, and I sometimes fear that I shall at last fail of eternal life.” Be patient, brother; the Lord in mercy has influenced you by his Spirit to embrace the last message of mercy to our fallen world; through tribulation he designs to prepare you for a seat in glory at the end. “At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh: neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth; and thou shalt know that thy tabernacle (the new earth) shall be in peace.” In the strength of Israel’s God “go forward.”

Says another, “Our number is so small, and so many who set out with us in the present truth have gone away from us, and have become our enemies, and have made us ‘a strife among our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves.’ My bosom companion, too, taunts me with being a companion of hypocrites and fanatics. These things discourage me, and”—

Stop! christian friend. Do you believe that the Lord will fail to carry on his own work aright? Do you wish him to retain those in the church who dishonor him, or would be stumbling-blocks in your path to the heavenly city? Depend upon it, he will not suffer a kernel of wheat to fall to the ground; but the chaff will assuredly be all blown away, and when your Lord shall come he will have “a glorious church, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” And for our further encouragement let us look forward to the time when the latter rain shall be poured out; when a host of honest-hearted ones shall come out of Babylon, and join our little company, and make our now saddened hearts to leap for joy. “Look not behind thee, tarry not in all the plain,” but through grace divine “go forward.”

WM. S. FOOTE.