p. 207 | A Contrast by J. T. McCrory

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 10, 1883

A Contrast.

By J. T. McCrory

THE true gospel-teacher tells men the truth, however severe or distasteful it may be. What a contrast between Peter's method and that of not a few so-called teachers in our day!—men standing before the godless and guilty with cringing, shuffling, apologetic words and manner, aiming to excuse Moses and David and Isaiah and all the inspired teachers and prophets and apostles for their hard sayings against sin and sinners: "Oh you know the race was not enlightened in the time of David;" or, "Paul, being a Jew, could not, of course, get entirely rid of his Jewish ideas and prejudices." Miserable gospel-tinkers! The thunders and lightnings of trembling, flame-wrapped Sinai, as the eternal Jehovah speaks out from its darkness a law for the race, are turned by them into a meaningless display of theological pyrotechnics. The awful agony of the cross, that speaks so plainly the fearful penalty that sin deserves, and, if unpardoned, will receive, tells them no story of human guilt and impending woe, or of eternal justice and consuming wrath. They rob the word of its power to convict, and hence of its power to convert and save. God have mercy upon the sinner who dares thus to emasculate the gospel, and also upon the sinners he instructs. The one has never been shaken by "the powers of the world to come," and the others never are likely to be under such teaching.—Rev. J. T. McCrory.