p. 4 | Having a Definite Message by B. G. Wilkinson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

Having a Definite Message

By B. G. Wilkinson

B. G. WILKINSON

God never sends destruction without first sending a warning, just as he never allows a soul to enter a life of sin without first sending conviction. If man then, through weakness, is slow in repenting, God, through love, is slow in destroying. He gives time for the transgressor to repent, and in many cases he states definitely how long.

He sent Jonah to cry to the great capital of Assyria, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Some might have said, Impossible! Others might have reasoned, Would God use only one man to proclaim this great judgment, and a foreigner at that? Does it not seem incredible that he would pass over our great body of priests, and use this fellow, who, according to his own story, has been a weak man?

Nevertheless, Nineveh repented. And it was genuine repentance too; for God accepted it. From the king on the throne to the lowliest slave, all clothed themselves in sackcloth, and bowed down in ashes. These were fruits of repentance, and the threatened ruin was averted. There was a definiteness about Jonah’s preaching; it declared that God would not permit wickedness to go on indefinitely, and that preaching was followed by definite results.

Such should be the character of all preaching. The prevailing wickedness of to-day is evidence that God somewhere has those proclaiming a definite message. True preaching will reveal the truth that God will not permit wickedness to endure long. It will be noted that the people of Nineveh did not repent because they had been eye-witnesses of Jonah’s deliverance from the deep. Jonah may have related this experience, but of their repentance the Saviour says, “The men of Nineveh . . . repented at the preaching of Jonas.” They were not moved so much by the story of Jonah’s deliverance as they were by the need of their own deliverance. Heathen men had cast Jonah into the sea, but in forty days the great God was going to cast them and their city into ruin. Not only they, but their works, would perish. Therefore they cried to God for repentance.

Christ took courage from the definiteness of Jonah’s work to proclaim judgment on his generation. “There shall no sign be given it,” he said, “but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

We also may take courage from the definiteness of Jonah’s preaching. “The men of Nineveh,” said Christ, “shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” The preaching of Christ was as much more definite than that of Jonah as his message was greater than the message of Jonah. But was it to stop there? With the passing of Christ from the earth, was definiteness and positiveness of preaching to pass?—No. The Master, speaking of the work of his disciples in the future, said, “Greater works than these shall he do.”

It is too late now to advance the theory of indefiniteness—an indefinite church, an indefinite revelation, and an indefinite message. And it is too late for God’s people to permit themselves to be lost in the mists of uncertainty. Many great reformers and messengers of God have already done much good in preaching God’s judgment, dimly seen through the idea of a burning hell; but how much greater good may those do who have received clearer light on what the judgment actually is, and not only on what it is, but on when it is; for they are to proclaim, “The hour of his judgment is come.”

Takoma Park, D. C.