Aggression? Yes | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 18, 1870

Aggression? Yes.

[The following, which we find under the above caption in the Sabbath Recorder, is part of a stirring appeal from Eld. A. H. Lewis to his brethren, the Seventh-day Baptists. Will not Seventh-day Adventists find in it much that they can apply to themselves?]

The way is now opened for the spread of the truth. This is our golden opportunity. It is the time for “sowing beside all waters;” for doing much, and, under God, expecting much. At such time, it is unwise and criminal to act upon plans no larger than those which were laid during the years of self-defense. Then it was enough to defend a few fortresses. Now the banner of truth must be carried into a thousand new fields. What? Do you say we have no forces? Then we must draw recruits from the ranks of the enemy. There are good, earnest men and women all over the land, who are at heart true Sabbath-keepers, but who need instruction. These will rally whenever the banner is planted within their reach. They are waiting for the truth, waiting for us to come to them. Brethren, we must go forward—a long way forward; and we must go now. Our churches must be taught to rely more upon themselves, and to send their pastors into the field. We are too much like an army of “home guards,” each defending the other. This leads to indolence, and churches grow weak and sickly with wordliness. No wonder. To pay a pastor for “doing the religious,” while we serve ourselves, is a sure road to death. God never ordained that plan for circumstances like those which surround us, if, indeed, he ever ordained it at all. If it has been well enough in the past, it cannot be adhered to in the future without serious loss.

But, says the objector, “Why seek to proselyte others, when we are unable to keep all of those who are born to us?” For that very reason. Men will always leave an idle army. Give them something to do, and they have no time to think of deserting “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop;” and idle reformers (?) are the prey of every evil influence. Indeed, an “idle reformer” is a contradiction in terms. Such a thing cannot be. We repeat it—Seventh-day Baptists must go forward—a long way forward; MUST go now. Do you ask what is to be done with the compromisers, the men who make the Sabbath subservient to convenience, money-getting, and popularity? Go on and leave them. God will reconvert all whom he can use, and the rest better be left behind.

Above all, there must be more praying, more communion with him who is our hope and our life. We must go in the wisdom of God, breathed upon by the Holy Spirit, and guided by the angels of truth.