An Important Fact, With Its Attendant Responsibilities
By George I. Butler
This glorious message, which arose in obscurity, great weakness, and from small beginnings, has now reached a stage of influence and numbers which surprises multitudes, and leading newspapers give it respectable notice. Its missionary stations are established in all the important nations. The regular per cent of annual increase in membership has been greater than that of any other religious denomination. These are facts which can not truthfully be denied. How Were These Results Reached? Were Any Difficulties Overcome?
Perhaps there never was an important movement which encountered greater difficulties. It commenced its work immediately after the passing of the time in 1844, when the very name of Adventism was looked upon with contempt; when its believers were hooted at in the streets; when that miserable falsehood about “ascension robes” was commonly believed; when all sorts of fantastic, fanatical stories were invented and heaped upon the poor, despondent, disappointed believers; when thousands, yea, tens of thousands, of those who had professed strong belief in the soon coming of their Lord renounced their faith in it, and joined with the jeering crowd of advent haters in maligning the comparatively few stanch, firm believers who clung to the precious advent doctrine. Great poverty was the lot of many who first became believers in this movement. Their means had been largely used up in proclaiming the first message. To commence a movement with such a cloud hanging over it, and such difficulties confronting it, might seem to ordinary people as preposterous, and such would have been the legitimate conclusion, but for one striking fact: the Lord our God was with his humble, despised believers in the grand truth, The Lord is soon coming. In all this world's history we can recall but one parallel of a people beginning under such discouraging circumstances,—the little band of perhaps one hundred twenty poor, heart-broken disciples, who had just witnessed the crucifixion of their blessed Lord when they had fondly supposed he was about to occupy the throne of his father David, drive out the Roman oppressor, and establish his kingdom. Him they saw seized by cruel hands, buffeted with fists and lashed with stripes, hissed at, derided, spit upon, hung up between heaven and earth, spiked to the cross like the vilest criminal between two thieves, till death came as a relief. All their fond hopes had been dashed to the ground. Yet in spite of all this, after the Spirit of God had illumined their minds, they went forth in their poverty, and triumphed over death and hell in the grandest movement this earth has ever seen. That triumph was in the heaven-born message of the Saviour's first coming. God was back of it and in it. It triumphed in the cross. This message has thus far succeeded and triumphed in the cross of ridicule, poverty, disappointment, hatred of the respectable worldly professor; and in spite of all difficulties is still onward. A great truth lies couched in both of these experiences. God's work is one of self-humiliation, weakness made strong through faith in the Infinite. Our “God can take a worm and thrash a mountain.” One man with God is a majority. His power transcends all creation. Was the Message This People Gave a Popular One?
It was anything but that. It was the same blessed gospel God has ever had for man, with the cross of Christ in it—downtrodden truth, hated by pagan and papist alike. It was summed up beautifully by the revelator in these words: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12),—the solemn truths of the Old and New Testaments both, obedience to God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Among the commandments of God is the seventh-day Sabbath, the creation Sabbath, the only weekly Sabbath ever mentioned in all the Bible, hated by all idolaters. False gods could never create anything but sin. It was hated by the Papacy, the very power which led the people away from the true Sabbath in order to set up a man-made sabbath in its place. That change is the highest evidence the Papacy can bring of its right to rule. When Protestants keep the Catholic Sunday-sabbath, they in that very act practically acknowledge the power and authority of the Papacy. This last message of warning to a fallen world will be nowhere popular with a world-loving church. How Has This Message Been Enabled to Make Such a Wonderful Growth?
Here is the real kernel of the whole matter. This unpopular message never could have made the growth it has unless a power greater than that of humanity had attended it. From its first inception it has given marked evidences of divine power. God has been with it all the way along. We boast not of what we as men and women have done. We are conscious that far more could and should have been done had we as a people been always as whole-hearted and faithful and devoted as we should have been. We must confess that we could have accomplished more had our faith been stronger, our spirit of sacrifice greater, our love to God and man more unswerving. But it is not wrong to rejoice at what has been accomplished. It is right to feel happy in the knowledge that at least one hundred thousand souls are now rejoicing in God's message for the last days. What loyal believer can fail to be happy when he realizes that the blessed banner of light and truth is waving in all the great nations of the earth to-day? Who can but rejoice that in the darkest heathen lands on earth, in the strongholds of the Papacy itself—Spain, Portugal, Italy, in the states of South America—the third angel's message is being proclaimed to-day, and hundreds upon hundreds of honest Catholics are embracing it? Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, that in the dark strongholds of heathenism many are coming to believe in the true God. Something must be wrong with the hearts of those cold, critical ones who feel indifferent to these precious facts. The Duties of the Present and Near Future
It was a blessed privilege to be at the recent General Conference, and to hear the reports from the great field, to look into the faces of faithful men of God from Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, laborers in dark Africa, South America, and the isles of the ocean, yea, from all parts of the world. Praise God for men, and noble women, too, who have braved the perils of those hard fields for the sake of perishing souls for whom Christ died. The hearts of all present were ablaze with warm emotions, and longings to see the work go forward with still greater rapidity and power. As a denomination we have no8thought of being content with what we are already doing. It is expected that before another General Conference, forty families, at least, will have entered China and become established in the various divisions of that great empire; and that these centers of light will begin to radiate in the dense darkness of heathenism. Medical missions will be established to relieve the sick and suffering as well as to point those in moral and religious darkness to the Light of the world. We speak of China, because it is the leading heathen nation of the world. A forward movement will at the same time be going on in various other countries, as the last message is everywhere presented. The truth is for all the world, and our work is a work for the whole world. Of course the responsibilities resting upon us as a people will be greatly enlarged. Our obligations as a people to sacrifice of our means and thus assist in bringing the light of truth to the whole world will be vastly greater as the work goes on. As time grows shorter, the hold of the true believer on this world's riches should grow less and less. Here is a vast field for thought.