Get Ready

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 8, 1902

Editorial

Get Ready

The Lord is coming. Get ready. He is coming soon. Get ready. He is coming in this generation. Get ready. No one can meet him in peace whose sins are unconfessed and unforgiven. Get ready. The message of the Lord’s soon coming is to be given in all the earth. Get ready. The best way to get ready is to help others to get ready.

Individual Experience

It is self-evident that each one who lives must himself exercise all the functions of life. No one can take nourishment or exercise for another. The circulation of the blood in one man does not build up the body of another man. He who depends upon another to do his breathing for him refuses the gift of life. These principles apply just as forcibly to Christian experience. No one can confess sin for another. No one can accept forgiveness for another. No one can believe for another. The Christian life cannot be lived by proxy. The time of peril and test upon which we have entered will soon reveal the difference between those who are really having a Christian experience and those who are depending upon some one else’s experience. Some of those who have no root in themselves are already falling out by the way, and others are showing signs of weakness. We must learn to stand alone with God and for his truth. We must individually know whom we have believed, and be persuaded that he is able to keep that which we have committed unto him against that day. We must each have an individual experience in the things of God.

A Test of Faith

We do not buy our salvation with the money which we pay toward the expense of spreading the gospel of the kingdom. Homes in the New Jerusalem are not sold by auction to the highest bidder. We do not secure a right to the tree of life by allowing the Lord to have a part of that which belongs wholly to him. It is no test of our faith in God and his truth when we divide our surplus with the Lord, and place in his treasury that which we can spare “just as well as not, and never miss it.” The rich cast in of their abundance, but the poor widow “cast in all that she had, even all her living.” In doing this she cast in more than all the rest, although she only “threw in two mites, which make a farthing.” The test of faith is not in giving what we do not miss, that which costs us no sacrifice, after we have fully provided for our own present needs, and laid up something “for a rainy day.” The test of faith in God’s work is found when we place the needs of his work ahead of our own needs, and act upon this basis. This spirit of self-sacrifice, which is in itself the gift of God, brings us into that relationship with God that he can supply all our need “according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” He that ministereth seed to the sower will both minister bread for our food, and multiply our seed sown, and increase the fruits of our righteousness.

The Charter of Our Liberties

To those who have known the bondage of sin there can be no declaration of independence more highly prized than this one: “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” The proclamation of liberty has been made. A blessed release has been provided, and there is a royal mandate which says “to the prisoners, Go forth.” This command has the power to compel him “that opened not the house of his prisoners” to loose them and let them go. Thus are we delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into Christ’s kingdom. What a deliverance! What a change! Light in the place of darkness; sight in the place of blindness; freedom in the place of bondage; hope in the place of despair; joy in the place of sorrow; in short, it is life in place of death. “Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling . . . What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. . . . O Lord, truly I am thy servant: I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.”

“Christ hath for sin atonement made; What a wonderful Saviour! We are redeemed!—the price is paid; What a wonderful Saviour! “He gives me overcoming power; What a wonderful Saviour! And triumph in each trying hour; What a wonderful Saviour!”

The Heart of Christianity

There are many so-called religions in the world. What is the cardinal difference between Christianity and these so-called religions? It is just in this: they are after the power of a carnal commandment, but Christianity is after the power of an endless life. On the one hand, we have merely a system of morals, a dead description of an ideal course of conduct, a kind of shadow of the law once written in the heart; on the other hand, we have the perfect living law, incarnated in the flesh, the union of divinity with humanity. Any professed Christianity in which this is not found as the fundamental fact of the teaching and the experience is simply a variation of paganism masquerading under the name of Christianity. A Christianity which was once genuine and founded upon this principle, but out of which it has been lost, is like a human body from which the heart has been removed. Such a pretended Christianity is a mere sham. It may exhibit all the forms and paraphernalia of salvation, but it never saves a single soul.

The Rock Foundation

The divine principle of Christianity is revealed in the great fact that Jesus, the man of Nazareth, was the Son of God. Jesus himself declared that this was the rock foundation upon which he would build his church, and death would not overthrow it. The question was, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” The testimony of Peter was, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Then came the statement, “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The gates of hell are the gates of the grave. The power of the endless life in Jesus, Son of man and Son of God, in whom the divine principle of the union of divinity with humanity was a personality, would conquer death and the grave, not for himself alone, but for his church, his body, all who are found in him. Death and the grave are not conquered as mere abstractions. They are conquered by destroying “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and by saving from sin, which, “when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” This victory is gained by the divine life working in us. “We shall be saved by his life.” This is the power of the working of the endless life. It is here that we see what Christianity really is, and how it differs from other so-called religions. The Founder of Christianity gave himself to be the foundation. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” He is “the rock of my salvation.” It is the work of the gospel to build upon this rock foundation “the house of God, which is the church of the living God.”

Building on the Rock

We know that “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it,” but because of their co-operation with God in this work men are also spoken of as the builders of the house. Because of their rejection of Christ, Peter said to the “rulers of the people, and elders of Israel,” after the healing of the lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,” “This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders.” The apostle Paul writes thus of the gospel work: “I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.” At the close of his sermon on the mount, in which he had applied to daily life the principles which he had spoken in the ten commandments at Sinai, Jesus said, “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” The words of Jesus are life. “The words that I speak unto you, they . . . are life.” When we hear his words and do them, we receive his life, and manifest his life in this mortal body. In this way we come unto him “as unto a living stone,” and “are built up a spiritual house.” This makes clear what is meant by “building up yourselves on your most holy faith.” When we build on the rock by hearing and doing the words of Jesus, we so completely identify ourselves with his life in receiving it that in this we build up ourselves in him, and thus build up the body of Christ, the church, the house of God. It thus appears that the likeness between the one who hears and does the sayings of Christ and the one who builds his house upon a rock is very real. Both build a house upon a rock. The one builds a dead house out of dead material upon a dead rock. The other builds a living house out of living material upon a living Rock. In receiving the words of Jesus we receive his divine life, his divinity, and become “partakers of the divine nature.” In doing his words this divine nature is wrought into our very being, and manifested in our experience. By this process the union of divinity and humanity becomes a fact in us. Thus is fulfilled the declaration of Christ, “Upon this Rock I will build my church.” The storm is now gathering which will beat upon every house, and only those which are built upon the rock Christ Jesus will stand in that day. Be sure of your foundation. Be sure that you are using only good material in your building. Be sure that you are “rooted and built up in him.”

“We’ll build on the Rock, the living Rock, On Jesus, the Rock of Ages; So shall we abide the fearful shock, When loud the tempest rages.”