Commissioned of God by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 4, 1909

Commissioned of God

By C. M. S.

WHAT a full surrender to the purpose of God means is thus set forth by our Saviour: “Whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple.” The words of our Saviour preceding this statement in the twelfth chapter of Luke illustrate what he means. A certain man had made a great supper, and invited many. Those invited put forth many excuses of a personal nature for not accepting the invitation. The lesson taught is that nothing of a personal or worldly or temporal nature must be allowed to stand between us and the acceptance of his invitation.

The acceptance of the invitation which he gives makes us not simply guests at his table, but inheritors with him in the purchased redemption. But it involves something also; we are his messengers, the army of his campaign. Said Jesus: “Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you. . . . Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.” Again he said: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Thus is it made manifest that our acceptance of Christ involves a complete surrender to his purpose. “Whatsoever I command you” is all-comprehensive. A work is set before us, not a theory. A campaign is on hand, not a discussion of abstruse theological themes. Says Inspiration, through the prophet Malachi: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple.” To that temple our Lord never would come until the people had been prepared for that event by the message which God’s messengers were commissioned to give. The giving of that message was the preparing of the way for that coming. God has appointed none of his workmen to positions of ease and indolence, to positions where it is not required of them that they let shine the light entrusted to them. “Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,

and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall it be among you: . . . whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” Every faithful follower of Christ is doing something for the advancement of his kingdom. “Well done,” is the divine passport into eternal life, into the mansions of bliss in the New Jerusalem. It will never be said to those who have done nothing. Each accepted child of God is a commissioned messenger of God.

The business of the commissioned messenger of God is more than to worship; it is more than to propound deep moral themes; it is more than to “live a moral life,” and teach or preach about the attributes of God; it means more than to “get religion.” The messenger of God may do all this; but his true occupation is more definite. It is, to be the Spirit’s mouthpiece to convince the world of sin, to warn of the impending penalty for transgression, to proclaim the risen Saviour, who saves his people from their sins, and to declare the proximity of the return of our blessed Lord. This is the gospel work, the occupation of God’s messengers. It does not exclude works of charity for humanity; they are its inevitable result.

When God has a message for the world, he expects his messengers—that is, his professed followers—to give that message. Their continual, every-day work is to “preach the gospel to every creature”—the “good news” of salvation; but salvation itself means a saving from something as well as a saving to something. Man is to be saved to righteousness and eternal life; he is to be saved from sin and its consequences, eternal death. That penalty is hanging over every unregenerate soul. It is about to be executed. The judgment will be without partiality, without favor; the execution will be without partiality, without favor, terribly exact, terribly just, summary and soon.

The execution of the judgment upon the unjust will take place in connection with the rewarding of those who have been God’s true children. These two culminating events, than which none are more fearfully—or gloriously—important to every human being, are intimately associated in the Word which foretells them. The revelator declares: “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Rev. 22:12. That includes the recompense of the wicked, as well as the reward of the righteous. For the latter there is a reward indeed; for the former there is the recompense which the works of the flesh have merited, the wages of sin—death.

God has been warning the world from

the time of creation down to the present time that “the wages of sin is death.” In the very nature of the case, there must come a time when that penalty would be carried out. That time God calls “the harvest” of the world. In the parable of the sower our Lord declares: “The harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire.” Matt. 13:39-42. This time of woe for the wicked is the very time when the righteous are glorified and immortalized. Verse 43.

So, side by side, these two great events, which bring to a culmination the history of mortal man on this earth, are marching down upon the closing days of this generation—the one buoyant with blessing, the other heavy with the black fruit of the curse. In the days of great calamities God has always required that his messengers, his watchmen, shall make the approach of those calamities known. His admonition is, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” Isa. 58:1. “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” Eze. 3:18.

Now, God has spoken; but the great mass of his professed followers are not warning the wicked of the penalty for their wickedness, nor of the impending executive judgment. The judgment draws on, and the world sleeps on in its sin, heedless of the terrible calamity which hangs over the sin-cursed earth. Multitudes are not aware of the proximity of that event, are not aware of the fact that God has hung out in the heavens and spread out upon the earth unmistakable signs of the approach of that event. But they have occurred and are occurring, and they tell in one universal and unmistakable language that the coming of the Just One, with all that it means, both to the righteous and to the wicked, draws on with rapid pace.

In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible the Lord tells us that the lights of the heavens are to be “for signs,” as well as for seasons, days, and years. When Jesus’ disciples asked him, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” he gave them the signs for which they asked, the signs which were to precede his coming, and were to warn the world of its approaching end. Those signs are put into our hands, that we, as messengers of God, may lay before the world a warning and a way of escape. Whoever knows and believes this truth, and professes the name of Christ, is a commissioned messenger of God to make it known to those who have not yet become acquainted with it. We can not put it upon the living preacher alone. He can deliver but his own soul by sounding the message given to him. His performance of his duty in that regard will clear his skirts, but not ours who are not ministers. “To every man his work,” is the Lord’s own method. If we can not speak in public to give the message, the Lord has other means, which will leave us all without excuse who have failed to heed our Saviour’s command to carry the message to the people. Paul said, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.” Let every Seventh-day Adventist join Paul in this declaration, and then with voice or book or paper or tract take up the message of warning and salvation committed to this people. C. M. S.