The Conditions Not Exaggerated

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 14, 1910

The Conditions Not Exaggerated

No close observer requires an array of facts and figures to be made cognizant of the spiritual dearth existing throughout the professed Christian world to-day. With scores of religious teachers through the pulpit and religious press endeavoring to undermine primitive faith in the Word of God, with the spirit of commercialism and worldliness which has swept like a mighty tidal wave into the great churches of the land, so that, as expressed by one, they have become “great fashionable social organizations,” what can be expected of the rank and file of the church-membership? Some there are in every denomination who sense this situation, and ministers are found in every communion who are lifting up their voices in protest against these inroads of skepticism and indifference. In the Western Recorder of March 10 Francis Wayland, under the head “General Inefficiency of Professors of Religion,” speaks as follows:—

Brethren, beloved in the Lord, excuse my plainness in this matter. I write not to please you, but to do you good. I humbly hope that “the love of Christ constraineth me.” Look abroad upon Zion; consider her desolations. Iniquity abounds. The love of many waxes cold. Our youth are growing up without any regard for religion, and are yielding themselves up to all the allurements of a soul-destroying world. The masses of our people are not under the influence of the institutions of religion. Multitudes among us, even at our own doors, are pressing on to the judgment day, as ignorant of the way of salvation as the heathen in India or in Africa. And at such a time as this, are we all to sit down quietly and satisfy ourselves with doing nothing for Christ, because we pay the minister’s salary that he may do it for us?—No! the cause, at this emergency, requires the most active employment of every talent of every true disciple. The masses of the church must be aroused, or the enemy will come in like a flood, and there will be neither faith nor power to raise up a standard against him.

But, while we do this, we must rely on something infinitely better than an arm of flesh. Let us meditate over these things, and ask the Master to show us our duty. Let us with one heart pray for a universal descent of the Holy Spirit upon all his churches. Should the dayspring from on high visit us once more, we could not remain in our present condition. We should be constrained to arise and make sacrifices for God. Then the feeblest among us would be as the house of David, and the house of David as the angel of the Lord.

Mr. Wayland does not misrepresent the actual situation which is found in nearly every community. Sad that these earnest words should not awaken a response in reformation of life. In so far as they apply to us as Seventh-day Adventists, we also do well to be admonished. While we bear a message of reform to the world, we should take diligent heed to our ways that we do not fall under the power of the same influences which will finally engulf the world. Only by a living personal connection with God shall we be enabled to escape the snares of the last days.