Increasing Light by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 7, 1903

Increasing Light

By L. A. S.

“The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” Prov. 4:18. This is the Christian pathway. It is a pathway of increasing light.

The new light which comes to the Zion-bound traveler is not separate and distinct from the old light. It blends with the old, and the result is a brighter shining of the light in which he has already walked. No light about the Christian’s pathway ever gets dimmer by reason of his approach to “the perfect day.”

The first truth which the Christian accepted is just as bright a truth at the last stage of his journey as it was at the first. No amount of new truth received by him lessens its luster or its importance. On the contrary, with every accession of light the old truth becomes brighter and more essential to his faith. All divine truth, first and last, is a revelation of God, and the effect of each new truth is to make the whole revelation more complete.

But there is a kind of “new light,” so-called, which tends to belittle the old doctrines, and even to throw about them a haze of uncertainty. There is a kind of “new light” which tends to unsettle belief in what were once well-settled points of the faith. This is applicable to the system of doctrine which we call present truth. Has a part of this system now been “outgrown”? or do we see, by the light that shines now, that the message preached by the pioneers in this work was more or less mixed with error? Is it by such views that we assure ourselves that we possess special light by which God would lead us at this time?

Let us beware of all such teaching. Let us beware of “new light” which casts a shadow upon any of the old paths. Let us beware of doctrines which would take away any part of the foundation upon which the last solemn message to the world has so long stood. “Woe to him who shall move a block or stir a pin of these messages. The true understanding of these messages is of vital importance. The destiny of souls hangs upon the manner in which they are received.”—Early Writings, page 121.

Let the new light which we receive be that which makes the old truths brighter. The householder who “is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven,” “bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” Matt. 13:52. They are not new things alone, but things “new and old,” and in the new light, the old things become new. The truth of God is always new, because it is like God himself. The human mind can never get to the end of it, can never outgrow it. It will gather brightness to the end of time.

The pathway of present truth is a bright pathway from beginning to end. It is a straight pathway, with no turning to shut off the radiance from the throne set up at its termination. When the pathway behind us becomes obscured, it is evidence that we have fallen into some other way than that which terminates at the gates of the heavenly city.

L. A. S.