The Certainty of the Triumph
By W. A. S.
The triumph of this message of preparation for the coming of Christ is assured. In holy vision, the apostle John saw the message actually speeding through the earth, sounding out to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. He saw also, in vision of the future, the band of the blood-washed saints, called out by the final message, standing on Mount Zion. He heard the songs of the ransomed, and their shout of triumph over the beast and his image. There is no uncertainty, no shadow of doubt, about the triumph of this message in this generation. But there is a snare to the unwatchful in the very certainty of the victory. It is very easy to say that the truths for which this movement stands are impregnably fortified by all the word of the living God, and that the hand of Providence is clearly manifest in the rise and progress of the movement; and then to sit by practically as a spectator, looking at the progress of the message, and reiterating the certainty of its triumphant conclusion. The message will triumph, but every soul who triumphs with it will know by experience the labor and the travail, the burden and the conflict, by which a people is to be prepared for the coming of the Saviour and the warning borne to all the world within one generation. Just as certainly as the truth is true, the mere spectator, or the half-hearted straggler in the campaign that is now on, is surely lost if he does not speedily arouse and let the intensity of the conflict surge into his own soul. Heaven is in earnest. The certainty of the triumph involves the certainty that God will find a people willing in the day of his power to let the intensity of heaven into their own lives. We are not onlookers in God's work, but a very part of it if loyal to-day.