A People's War by W. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1902

A People's War

By W. A. S.

There is an idea generally abroad in Christendom that it is the duty of preachers to look after the interests of religion, and see that religious enterprises are properly put through.

This notion must never be entertained among us. This is a people's battle, and the call of the hour is to individual consecration to service. The preachers are to be but the generals in the campaign, leading the hosts of God into conflict.

In a recent article, Dr. A. T. Pierson discusses some of the backward movements of our time in the matter of missionary enterprises. He says:—

There has been a decline in the sense of individual responsibility. Part of this is due to the very completeness of organization, which should be a help, not a hindrance, to personal work. Societies and boards and committees are not meant as proxies, but as channels. They are not to do work for others, but others are to do their own work through them. They are a mere convenience, meant to promote economy of administration. But, as a telegraphic apparatus is of no use without a circuit, without a current, a board depends on the piety, intelligence, liberality, and zeal of individuals for all the real power in service. If there be no one to go, none can be sent; if there be no gifts, no support can be supplied; and if the individual disciple does not pray, how can there be blessing? Yet how perverse is the tendency to shirk all individual duty, and leave everything to the administrative body, or at best be content with putting a pittance in the annual collection! Every child of God is a divinely constituted committee of one for the evangelization of the world, a debtor to the race, a trustee of the gospel.

We ourselves need the warning suggestion of this paragraph. Our mission boards and our conference committees can never see this work through. There must be a whole people in line of battle, working on the right hand and on the left, going, giving, praying,—living but for the one purpose of carrying this message to the world, and finishing the work that Jesus presses into our hands.

There is a vast difference between an ordinary government war and a people's war. When a far-off campaign is on, the people expect the government to call for funds and send troops, but the everyday life goes on at home as usual. The cabinet and war-office officials are paid to win the campaign. But when the home land is invaded, and the enemy is at the gate, the people rise up as one man. The farmer leaves his plow, the smith his forge, and the serious reality of war is pressed home to every soul—man, woman, and child. It is no battle by proxy. It is a people's war.

That is exactly what we have on hand now in this fight for God and for right. “To every man his work,”—that is the commission that separates every one of us from the mass, and makes us personally responsible for doing our part. A whole people is to be anointed to service, and sent forth “to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” and now, too, the solemn message of the day of vengeance of our God. Then of the whole people shall the words be true: “Ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God. . . . All that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed.” Isaiah 61.

“To every man his work,” and now and henceforward, EVERY MAN TO HIS WORK! until the battle is won.

W. A. S.