LET US AWAKE by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1880

LET US AWAKE.

By R. F. Cottrell

THE world is dark. Its scenes of woe and terror are sickening to the heart. As if its unavoidable evils were not sufficient for our sinful race, ambition, oppression and malevolence unite to curse our earth with desolation, and steep its fields in human blood, while corruption, fraud, and crimes of the darkest dye are common in the most favored places. We might be relieved, in some measure, from our calamities, but, alas! there is not salt enough left to save us. The people are everywhere too corrupt. And yet men flatter themselves, that there are better days for our earth ahead. That, on the whole, men are growing better, and the fabled conversion of the world will yet prove a reality. Men are so blinded by sin and the corrupting currents of this world, that they fancy themselves in a good case, that they are the favored of the Lord, and are valiant for the truth, when they are in the broad road to perdition. The religious teachings of the day flatter the people with the idea of peace and progress. They lack the "present truth" for the present times. They lack those great prophetic truths which describe the present time with its vast and solemn issues, and they fall short of enforcing the moral obligations which are due to God and his holy law. Here people flatter themselves that they may choose their own course, live in disobedience, and still secure the immortal prize.

Can a stream rise higher than its fountain? And yet this generation cannot be saved, unless they rise higher than the tone of the popular teaching of the present day. Oh, that the vail of deception might be rent assunder! Oh, that men could be aroused to their own eternal interests! Oh, that the honest in heart might see the vanity of the flimsy covering with which popular religion covers itself at the present day.

If the tremendous scenes, which, as its immediate harbingers, are ushering in the day of the Lord, cannot arouse men to seek for a shelter, what, oh, what can be done for them! Oh, for the Spirit and power of Elijah's God in the hearts of the people who know the solemn truth of the third and last message! Let us arouse, dear brethren, to the thrilling interests of the salvation of men, which hang upon the improvement of so brief a period. When we are fully awake, the Lord will pour out his Spirit—the times of refreshing will come—and the closing work of probation will speedily be accomplished.

Let us awake. There is power with God; and we may receive power and guidance from on high, if we earnestly pray, and zealously and diligently work for it. May God reach down his arm of power and help us. "Send us help from the Sanctuary and strengthen us out of Zion." R. F. COTTRELL.