Facing a Crisis by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 3, 1903

Facing a Crisis

By L. A. S.

“Is the church on the verge of a crisis?” inquires the Rev. D. S. Gregory in a recent contribution to the Homiletic Review. “Does not the church,” he asks, “face possibilities for good whose achievement would distance the loftiest imaginings of the optimist, and possibilities for evil whose realization would go immeasurably beyond the worst dreams of the pessimist?” He believes that a crisis has been reached by the church in the matter of her attitude toward the Word of God, and also in the work of world-wide evangelism. Members of the churches, he says, stand face to face with two diametrically opposite views—the one that the Bible is the word of God, the other that it is the word of men. “The crisis is already on, and the choice is being pressed between what the new critics propose and what the church of the age has held to be true, and has built into the foundations of Christianity.”

The zeal of the church in the great cause of world-wide evangelism, as indicated by existing facts, is at a very low ebb. “The Protestant Christians of the United States,” says Robert Speer, the well-known missionary evangelist, “were worth last year $23,000,000,000. They gave to the foreign mission cause one fourth of a tithe of a tithe of a tithe of their wealth, and one twelfth of a tithe of what they added to their permanent wealth last year, after all expenses of life were paid, after all their luxuries were indulged in, after all their waste.”

There is certainly a direct connection between the attitude of the church toward the word of God, and the zeal of the church to preach the gospel to “every creature.” Where the Bible is received only as the word of man, a zeal to proclaim its words to the heathen as a means of salvation from sin is not to be looked for. How can one who does not himself receive the word in faith ask others to receive it in faith? The fact that only one fourth of a tithe of a tithe of the wealth of the church is expended yearly to evangelize the world, is a sure indication that there is in the church only about one fourth of a tithe of a tithe of a tithe of the faith which should be manifested there.

How greatly the evangelization of the world might be hastened if the church

would give a full tithe of her wealth to this work. The third angel’s message stands for the support of the gospel work by tithes and offerings; it stands for the acceptance of the whole Bible as the word of God, and for the evangelization of the world in this generation. It holds up the standard of divine truth at every point where a crisis has been reached, and where the church has been led by worldly influences to lower it. This message came at the time when it was needed, and it is the rallying point for all who would contend to-day for the faith once delivered to the saints.

L. A. S.