Thanksgiving Day

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 25, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 45.

Two days after the date of this paper is the time set apart by our president for thanksgiving throughout the nation. This custom, handed down to us from the fathers of the republic, is a very fitting and proper one.

It will mean more than just a mere custom to the truly Christian portion of our country; for he who has learned to know the Christ of the living God, finds things about him all the time to cause him to be truly thankful.

And while we have our great problems in this nation, and while many of our statesmen are at their wits' end to know what to do with the difficulties, both internal and external, yet may we be thankful for our great prosperity. We may be thankful for the bountiful crops that have been harvested in almost every section of the land. We may be thankful that there is peace within our borders, even though there are many mutterings of war, particularly to the south of us. And even though our nation may be plunged into a conflict with our southern neighbor almost any day, yet may we be grateful to the infinite Father that peace has been prolonged thus far.

But above all the things for which we may be thankful, to the student of prophecy a knowledge of Christ's soon coming is the preeminent source of gratitude. This world is confronted more and more by its distressing problems. It is loaded down beneath its increasing weight of misery and sorrow. There is no one so happily situated but that the dark shadows are continually throwing sadness into his soul; and a large part of the race is, humanly speaking, doomed to destitution, hardship, and despair. In the midst of conditions of this kind that are acknowledged by all to exist, how the soul thrills with joy when it learns, as a definitely demonstrated truth, that Jesus is coming soon!

Those who do not know the delights of this knowledge that Christ is coming, of course can not understand its joys; but to him who has had this great well-spring of faith in his soul there is constant thanksgiving and praise, even amid the darkest, the most foreboding, and the most hopeless surroundings, because he knows he is in contact with the Infinite One, and infinite power and infinite wisdom are never confronted by impossibilities.

The temporal blessings and the temporal joys of this life are indeed a source of thanksgiving, and should call forth rich songs of praise; but it is impossible to describe the thankfulness that fills the heart of the one who stands in the watchtower of prophecy and beholds the unmistakable evidences that all distress and sorrow is about to end in the glorious event of the soon coming of the Son of the living God.