The Rejected Preacher

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 3, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 31.

The Rejected Preacher.

There is a rejected preacher. There always has been a rejected preacher. His cry is heard through all the ages, sometimes a warning cry turning into wrath, and again a pitiful, pleading cry turning into grief. Among the voices of men none has spoken so sadly. Like winter winds wailing in a frost-stricken forest we hear the refrain of his anguish sounding across the desolation of generations. “He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He has left messages to the world stained with tears and throbbing with pain. An Isaiah, a Jeremiah, a Jesus of Nazareth, or a Paul, we find him sooner or later weeping over a people who would not hear.

Whether born in that age or this, or preaching there or here, the marks which the rejected preacher bears are always the same. He is God’s man. In the endless controversy between

God and man he is on God’s side. He believes that God is right, and that man is wrong. His convictions are clear and straight. He draws the line at God’s will. Whatever is against that will is disobedience, rebellion, and not only so, it is dangerous, fraught with final disaster. No man who is against God can succeed. And hence his great sorrow, his tears, his cry of anguish. He sees men going to ruin, refusing to hear the word of warning, to see the sign of danger, blind, deaf, secure, saying to themselves peace, when there is no peace. If he believed less in God and less in man, if he loved God less and man less, he would have less sorrow. But, knowing what God is, and what man may be, and loving both, he sees his message rejected with a pain that smites to the heart.—Christian Advocate.