The Messenger and the Message by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 7, 1910

The Messenger and the Message

By C. M. S.

To the messengers of Jesus Christ there is given the greatest trust ever committed to man. The apostle says: “As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.” The example of Paul in this regard is one that every minister of God should strive to emulate. In fact that is the only attitude of the professed minister of God that is honoring to God. Wherever the ministry is regarded as a vocation, a calling, the means for making a livelihood, the message is discounted, and the messenger has mistaken his “calling.” It was when men began to look upon the ministry as a profession, that they came to look upon the Bible as a fit subject for the dissector’s scalpel, and forgot that the Bible was the very Word of God, “Sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow.” As Christ declared that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for those cities of his day which refused his witness with all the light they had, so may we know that it will be more tolerable in the day of judgment for such men as Paine, Voltaire, and Ingersoll than for those professed ministers of God who have stood in the sacred desk and cast discredit and doubt upon the Word of God. Those were open enemies in the field; these are traitors in the camp. Men who were yearning for God and desiring to know and to do his ways, would not go to such men as Ingersoll in their soul hunger. But when they go to those who were entrusted with the gospel, they go in sincerity, with open minds and hearts, ready to believe, anxious to know what the messenger of God has to teach them. He who casts a single doubt into the mind of such an inquirer, “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Such men as Paine and Voltaire have drawn their sustenance from the commissariat of the enemy while working for him; but the unfaithful trustee of the gospel message has drawn his support from the church of Christ while working against it and its Founder. The hungry soul expects through the doctor of divinity the bread and the water of life—and has a right to expect them; and such a professed servant of Christ who feeds to a single soul a stone of doubt and a serpent of unbelief has taken upon himself the most fearful responsibility that it is possible for a human being to assume. The consistent, open infidel will fare better in that day than he who, in the garb of religion, has taught men to look upon the Word of God as a myth, an unreality, the work of human minds and hands.

It is infinitely better to anchor to the Rock of Ages and believe in him for whose glory we were created, and then live and reign with him eternally, than to fill the world with the philosophies of doubt and then perish on the grave of our false theories.

What God wants of those who have named his name is unswerving loyalty to him and his Word. The disloyal, the doubters, the questioners, the critics of “that which is written,” God has not commissioned and can not use in the promulgation of his message of salvation. If the pulpits were relieved of such teachers, the atmosphere of the professed church of Christ would be cleansed and vivified, the zeal of the church would be aroused, souls would be converted, cold hearts would be melted, and there would be no “empty pew” question.

Says the Inspired Word: “I charge thee in the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine: but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables.” 2 Tim. 4:1-4. If ever scripture prophecy was fulfilled, this has been fulfilled to the letter and is being fulfilled to-day on the part of thousands of congregations. Ordained teachers of the gospel have left the sacred work to which they were called—if at any time they were really called—and have turned to the fables of evolution, New Thought, and the Higher Criticism, Socialism, politics, and “civic righteousness.” The teachers have taught what they would, or what the people wanted, rather than what they were commissioned to teach, and the result has been doubt, frivolity, sin.

Nevertheless, God has not changed. In spite of the fact that men have turned away from him in large measure, have abandoned the Book of truth for the guesses of a self-contradicting science, yet he goes to them with another message, that earth’s history may not end with earth’s millions unwarned. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.” Matt. 24:14. That is God’s program, from which we need not expect him to vary. We have had the long waiting period, now is going the warning—the last warning—and then comes the end. It is the end of this present world, the end of misery, the end of sin, the end of him who was and is the root of sin; but the end of that condition is synchronous with the beginning of another and better and more glorious time. It is the beginning of a joy that will never be alloyed with sorrow; a peace that will never be disturbed by fear of terror either by night or by day; it will be the beginning in literal actuality of that reconciled relationship between God and his estranged children for whose accomplishment Christ became man and man’s sacrifice and mediator. When we think of the terrible end awaiting an impenitent world, we must not forget the glorious beginnings of better things which lie beyond that end. These things are the realities that should absorb the attention of those who speak for God in the congregations of his professed people. Of infinitely greater importance are they than any amount of learned essays upon the structure or literature of the Bible, or any amount of criticism, either higher or lower, that would create a cloud of dust to blind the eyes of the child of God regarding Jesus Christ and his work for man. Criticisms of the Bible have never yet convicted men of sin or shown them the necessity of seeking shelter in Christ, and yet the world is full of it, and the libraries of the people are being filled with books that seek to rob Christ of his rightful position and man of his Saviour.

We are in the greatest crisis this world has ever known, and happy is that teacher of the word, who, being called of God to his holy calling, is faithfully giving the message God has for man in this present day. C. M. S.